“Do you see that?” he said, holding his fist to the moon in the sky. He dared it to speak. “Do you see that!”
Exhaustion and nausea came upon him again, and he let his head fall back in the shallow water. He was beaten and wet and had lost his firearm. If there was ever a moment he hadn’t measured up, this was it. But for some strange reason, he felt indescribably safe, free of condemnation. The moon hadn’t spoken. Cal had spoken, and wept too, and he didn’t care if anyone knew it. Just then, Cal heard footfalls in the water behind him, the jingle of tack. He felt warm breath against the side of his face, a wet muzzle. Cal closed his eyes and reached a tired arm toward the horse’s face, but his hand met thick fur, and a collar with tags on it. When the horse whimpered the way a dog whimpers, Cal sat bolt upright on his aching tailbone, fumbled for his flashlight, and stared for what felt like a very long time at his dog.
There he stood in the bright light—Jacks—beaming, half a leash dangling from his neck, his tail wagging in river water, holding in his mouth what appeared to be a dead striped cat.
Nine
TIFFANY SAT WITH FOLDED LEGS ON THE LARGE SILL OF THE kitchen window. Her third cup of tea had long grown cold. The sky outside was black. It was past midnight, and there was nothing to do but lean against the window and wait. Wait for what exactly? She hardly knew. She spent some time thinking about the poem she was working on, about the coyote sprinting through a pine forest, but the poem felt aimless. Tiffany couldn’t find the turn, and so the coyote just kept running, breathless, for line after line. But toward what? Tiffany sighed, folded her hands in her lap, and stared out at the darkness.
Miranda had temporarily busied herself upstairs, but Tiffany wasn’t left without company. At the kitchen table sat the constable Sheriff Cal put in charge before leaving for the forest. His name was Bobby. Bobby was an old, red-faced man, kind, with an off-center bald spot that shone in the lamplight. He liked to talk.
“Now mind you,” Bobby said, resting a cup of coffee on his large belly, “my ma wasn’t much bigger than you are, but she could bale some hay.” He nodded, and his bald spot caught the light again. “Oh yes, that woman could get right up there in that wagon en catch bales and stack ’em faster en you seen most boys do.”
Tiffany exhaled and leaned into the coolness of the darkened windowpane. Miranda had excused herself from the room several minutes ago, and Tiffany hoped she wouldn’t be much longer. They found they had to take turns listening to Bobby, nodding at him, raising their eyebrows in surprise during the more revealing moments in his stories, like the time his brother did find the possum under the steps. That was a hoot. So, he’d say. Oh well. Bobby showed up at the Branson ranch about twenty minutes after Tiffany did, to “stand by” like Cal asked and make sure all was well at home as the investigation unfolded.
“Oh well. That was before Ma passed, of course. The farm’s sold now to folks who don’t farm it, so the top fields ain’t been baled in, well, let’s see”—Bobby tapped out some arithmetic on his coffee cup with his shaky fingers—“several years now.” Bobby then acted surprised by the package of Oreos Miranda set out for him earlier in the evening. He examined one and plucked it from its nest.
“So,” he said, “of course I stop out there at the farm from time to time to see how things are going, only for an hour or two, mind you—new owners ain’t much for conversation, always having someplace to get to.” Bobby dunked the cookie in his coffee. “I always wonder what place could be worth getting to if a person’s got a farm as fine as that farm is. If I’d of had the money to pay the banks, I’d live my life on that farm without leaving it. But all Ma had was that farm, and family farmin’ ain’t paid bills in, well, let’s see.” Bobby bobbed his cookie up and down in his coffee, stuffed it in his mouth.
Miranda strode back into the room. Tiffany lifted her head from the windowpane. Miranda didn’t look refreshed despite her reprieve. The entire evening she had looked markedly tired, and afraid too. She had stopped asking the constable questions about the search once it became apparent he knew little about it. Cal had been out of radio contact since the search began. Bobby’s only concern was that all was well and calm, and that they waited the thing out for word from the sheriff.
“There she is,” said Bobby, swallowing his cookie. “Lady of the house. Yes sir, everyone here is staying nice en calm, en this is all going to work out in the end. Sheriff Cal will see to that. We have a fine sheriff in Sheriff Cal. County’s been plenty impressed by him. Board’s gonna vote to make him permanent this summer. I’m sure of it.”
Miranda forced a smile and moved to the kitchen counter, where she wiped up a coffee spill with a rag. She put a few plates in the sink and turned on the hot water. There wasn’t much to do that hadn’t been done already.
“Just a sec, Miranda. I’ll do those dishes,” said Tiffany, hopping off the windowsill.
“No,” said Miranda, a bit too abruptly, and caught herself. “I don’t mind. Just keep the constable company if you would. Constable Bobby, could you use some more coffee?”
“Oh, that is nice of you, miss. Yes, I’ll have some more coffee, just a spot.”
“And how about more cookies?”
Bobby peered into the cookie package and gave Miranda a thumbs-up. “We’re good on the cookies over here. Say, did I already ask you about what your pa still farmed out this way, acrewise?”
Tiffany let out an exasperated smile and met Miranda’s gaze. Miranda held back a pained grin as she lifted the coffee pot. “You did,” she said, crossing the kitchen.
Bobby held out his cup and thanked her.
“Any word from that radio, Constable?” Miranda asked.
Bobby set his coffee on the table and checked the radio clipped to his belt. He squinted at it, fiddled with a knob, made sure it was on.
“Nope. Nothing yet, but try not to worry. We’ve got a good sheriff out there, and he’ll bring your boy back.” He looked at Tiffany. “And yours too, miss.”
“My boy ain’t out there, Bobby. I don’t have a boy.”
Bobby lifted a finger. “I knew that, of course, I knew that already. My apologies.”
Something stirred in Tiffany at the mention of the Breadwin boy. She didn’t know the boy well but had interacted with him a few times at the gas station. He was polite. He’d come in to buy a loaf of the cheapest white bread and a jar of peanut butter, and pay with a couple of oily bills and change from his dad’s shop. Then she’d see him the next day, hiking toward the school in his sneakers, carrying only a paper sack. There was no doubt the boy had to make his own sad lunches. Tiffany knew what that was like, how lonesome it felt when the other kids unpacked perfectly cut sandwiches and handwritten notes with drawings of smiley faces on the napkins. Once, Tiffany wrote herself a note with a smiley face on a piece of paper towel, but the other kids could tell it was her writing, and they laughed at her. She ran to the bathroom, locked herself in a stall with her feet up on the toilet, flushed the note, and wept. The first time Tiffany ever saw the Breadwin boy was during the spring she finally lost the house. She was driving up Main Street and it was snowing hard, and there was this boy walking along a guardrail through the slush. He had no hat and his jacket was unzipped. Traffic slowed. A car stopped, and a woman got out and crouched next to the boy. As Tiffany drove past them at a crawl, she saw the woman ask him a question and the boy shake his head. Tiffany couldn’t tell from his red face whether he was crying, or cold, or both. There was shame on his face. Thinking about that made her feel the way she did in that bathroom stall.
Against Miranda’s will, Tiffany walked quickly to the sink. Miranda turned off the coffee pot and stood by her side.
“I’ll wash, you rinse,” Tiffany begged in a whisper. Miranda nodded and smiled.
“I’m glad you’re here, Tiffany,” she said.
Tiffany pushed the sleeves of her sweatshirt up to her elbows and swept her hair behind her ears. She was glad to be here too. She liked Miranda.
She liked the farmhouse. And the thought of going back to her lonely rental seemed awful.
“So,” said Bobby, “I expect to hear from the sheriff in no time at all.” He leaned back in his chair and didn’t face them as he spoke. He knew they were within earshot, and that was good enough. “In my experience that’s how these things pan out. You just gotta wait for your radio here to light up, and it always does, and then it’s over and everyone gets a little rest. The hard part’s the vigil, is my experience of it. And a vigil is even harder when you’re waiting on children. But they will come. Your boy will be found.”
Miranda thanked him.
“And this is good coffee, thank you. Oh! And here’s a cookie.”
There was a window over the sink, and Tiffany looked out at her reflection as she scrubbed mindlessly at a dish. She couldn’t see it now, but Tiffany knew that beyond the barn lay the field, and beyond that, the forest where Cal and the boys were.
“How far out do you think they are?” she asked quietly.
Miranda waited for the dish with her hands on the edge of the sink. She looked out into the night. Tiffany studied the woman’s gaze in the windowpane. She was a pretty woman, Tiffany recognized that in her right away. She was older and taller than Tiffany, and had a darker complexion, darker hair, but also something more. There was something very dignified in the way Miranda carried herself, folded a rag, wiped up a spill, filled up coffee, held back tears. It wasn’t feigned dignity either, like a person who bandied big words. It was genuine, deeper down, whatever it was. The woman made her own clothes from the looks of it, a flat-fronted denim dress of the sort Tiffany usually saw the wives of church people wearing. Tiffany hated those dresses. She hated watching women try to get into their husband’s pickups with those things on, the way they restricted natural form. But something about Miranda’s manner seemed incredibly noble, or hard-won, or both. The woman seemed to know who she was, which made her seem clothed in more than just denim and piety. Tiffany wished she had that kind of certainty. She wondered what Miranda thought of her purple bangs.
“They’d have made it past the islands by now,” said Miranda. She straightened herself, took her hands off the sink. “It will be easier to find the boys at night anyway. They’ll make a fire.”
“So,” said Bobby, speaking to no one in particular, “them boys is just having a bit of a run around in the forest, but they’ll be fine, if I know anything about boys—”
“Do you think they’ll make one, though,” asked Tiffany, “if they’re trying to hide?” She handed Miranda the dish to rinse. Miranda took it, and then surprised Tiffany with a broad smile.
“Fischer won’t make anything but a bonfire so big we’ll probably see it from here.” She turned the faucet on. Her boy was there in her eyes, like fire itself. “I remember a time Fischer had a friend over and they slept in the yard in tents, had a campfire, told stories, that sort of thing.”
“I did that sort of thing as a girl,” said Tiffany, and she smiled to think of it as she scrubbed the next plate, and then she frowned. She’d slept in the yard in a tent, but never with friends. She never had any to come over. She had huge braces as a kid. And her green eyes were too bright for her skin. But she did love sleeping out in the yard, feeling so far away with her books and her flashlight, the stars and crickets and quiet. It didn’t feel the same later in life. Tiffany didn’t care for tents anymore.
“The last time Fischer had a campout, I woke up at three in the morning to a fire truck parked in my yard, lights blazing, blasting down Fischer’s fire and knocking the door off my garden shed in the process.” Miranda shook her head. “He and his friend stacked twelve pine pallets on the coals—twelve pallets, can you imagine?—to keep it going through the night, he said. Those flames were as high as the house. I’m just glad his father wasn’t home. He wouldn’t have been able to laugh at it, not then.”
Tiffany noticed the woman’s demeanor change at the mention of her husband. There was sadness there, and Tiffany wondered where the man was, who he was. Tiffany second-guessed the nobility of Miranda’s denim dress and conservative hair. Maybe it was a carryover from a bad marriage, a thing the woman couldn’t learn to shed. If that was the case, maybe Tiffany could help her loosen up, break a few rules.
“Of course,” Bobby went on, “after the search is over, there’s always plenty of paperwork to fill out for a situation like this. First the sheriff’s department paperwork. County paperwork too. I’ve even seen paperwork from as far off as Washington!”
Tiffany admired the flame that grew in Miranda’s eyes whenever she talked about Fischer. She’d seen tears threaten to choke that flame many times this evening, but the fire always won. There was a hunger in Miranda’s eyes. That’s what it was. And that hunger was fierce, and jealous, and consuming. Tiffany didn’t recognize it right away. She’d never seen that look in her own mother’s eyes, and certainly not in her dad’s. She had a childhood memory of dancing on a coffee table in front of her dad, trying to get his attention. As she remembers it, she was four or five, and she put on her nicest dress and twirled and twirled, but he never even looked at her. He just watched the TV like she wasn’t there.
“And that’s Washington, D.C., mind you,” said Bobby. “Not the state. I’ve got a cousin out there in Washington State. Good berry farming out that way.”
Tiffany stopped washing her plate and looked Miranda in the eyes. An idea had come. She desired more than anything to watch what happened to those eyes when they spotted Fischer again. Tiffany imagined an unapproachable fire of a woman, shreds of denim bursting into flame. And she wanted to go get that Breadwin boy, too, wipe the shame off his face, tell him he was good.
“Miranda,” she said, “if you want to go out there and search, right now, I’ll go with you, tonight.”
“I thought of that,” Miranda said. “Prayed about it. I know the woods pretty well, the river especially. I spent a lot of time out there when I was younger.”
“Well, let’s go, then.” It made Tiffany feel strong to say it, though she knew nothing about the forest, or spending the night in it. Her camping excursions never made it past the backyard or Burt’s fields. But standing next to Miranda, she felt brave. Here was this noble mother who loved her son, and here she was rinsing plates and feeding cookies to Bobby.
“God told me to wait here,” said Miranda, taking the plate from Tiffany’s hands.
“God told you that?” Tiffany asked.
Miranda nodded.
Tiffany felt instantly disappointed. In her brief experience with the church, when God spoke, he usually told people disappointing things, or convenient ones to suit their desires. That, or people became out-of-touch miracle seekers. Tiffany tried church once, about a week after she received the twenty-five dollars in the mail from her mother. She knew nothing of denominations, only that she felt very alone, and a group of people sounded comforting, particularly ones who were supposed to be nice. She made the mistake of walking into the sort of church where people moaned as they sang, and one of them fell down on the floor, and then two older women led her to the front during the worship service and shook her shoulders and spoke in tongues to “receive a word” from the Lord. It scared her so badly, she physically pulled away from them and ran for the door. She told Burt Akinson about it the next day at the Sunrise Café. He laughed, even though Tiffany still felt like crying.
“Pentecostals,” said Burt knowingly. “The heck you go in there for?” But then Tiffany did start to cry, and Burt cleared his throat and became gentle. “Listen, Tiff, if you’re gonna try church, listen, don’t start off with the Pentecostals. Pentecostals is like the straight whiskey of church types. Start with something tamer. Take the Baptist church in town, for instance. Stacey used to drag me there on Easters. Let me tell you, the Baptists don’t hardly do much of anything at all. They just sit there in their pretty clothes and take notes, pretend they’re happy. If you’re gonna do church, start there next time.” There ne
ver was a next time. Tiffany had made her decisions about all of that. And she was particularly annoyed right now that God, or whatever it was people called God, was the one preventing her and Miranda from going to get the boys.
“And God will tell us when we might go, too, I suppose?” Tiffany regretted her tone and knew she’d apologize for it. She couldn’t help it. She imagined Miranda’s husband, a man like her own father, cold and absent, his beautiful wife tiptoeing around in silence and serving him.
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