Harmless (13 page)

“Why did you come here?” Jane screamed at him. “Why didn’t you leave us alone?”

She was right. This was all his fault. She started to say more but her face collapsed and she screamed again, a high, heaving shriek that seemed to freeze the fire, hush the crickets, and still the breeze. Her eyes grew so wide they would have swallowed Joseph if she hadn’t collapsed into Alex’s arms and started weeping, a wailing moan from ancient days when women keened over the bodies of fallen sons and husbands.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Joseph mumbled. The pain
clamped his head even tighter as he tried to think about how to fix this. He struggled to his knees, a sob expanding in his lungs that a cough could knock loose. He choked it down. Not now. No tears for him. He stood up, his brain encased in a second, heavier skull. His friends turned to look at him, amazed to see him standing. He felt a wave of nostalgia for their concern, as if it were already deep in the past. He was alone in this. He knew what he had to do.

“I’m going to search the woods for the girls,” he said. He nodded, the pain and dizziness almost tipping him backward. “I think the girls followed us to the pasture and then went into the woods. It got dark, and now they’re lost. I’m going to take that path near the highway.”

Alex lifted his head from the tangle of Jane’s splayed hair, his mouth pinched shut like a scar. His eyes locked on Joseph, but he was also seeing through him, or into him. The intimacy was unnerving. It made the iron wall of pain in Joseph’s skull hum.

“I’m going with you,” Alex said, finally breaking the connection.

“I’m going alone.”

“You won’t last twenty minutes in there. You don’t know your way around.”

Alex did know the woods. He was resourceful, strong, even-keeled. Joseph nodded. He needed him. Alex was already doing an inventory of the available cell phones. Mike and Liz had theirs. Alex and Amber had freed themselves from cell phone plans, and Jane had given up hers to save money. Julian’s phone was out of batteries, and Liz’s was close to it.

“Mike, give Joseph your iPhone,” Alex said, taking charge of the operation. “Take Liz’s cell and drive to Derek’s place to see if the girls are there. If no one’s home, check the highway alongside the woods. If you see
anything
, call your cell, which we’ll take with us. Liz, you call the police from the land line and wait here with Jane. Julian, you and Amber keep searching near the farm.”

People were moving, performing the tasks assigned to them by Alex with a new sense of purpose. Joseph wasn’t ashamed to admit he was relieved. Alex rushed over to him and guided them away from the fire, Joseph’s legs still feeling slightly foreign, as if they’d been transplanted from another body while he was knocked out.

“I saw someone standing in the trees earlier,” Alex said. “A man, in khaki.”

“A soldier?”

“A little quieter, please. He was wearing old army pants and shirt, at the edge of the woods, just after we smoked the first joint.”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“You guys would have made it into a joke.”

“I would have locked the girls in a bedroom.”
Maybe
.

“It’s not unusual to see people near the woods.”

“I thought I saw movement in the trees,” Joseph said, remembering his stoned ruminations by the fire.

“You probably did. One of the main paths exits at our property line, near the road.”

“I was there!”

“Exactly. The forest is full of paths. People get up to all kinds of stuff.” Alex leaned closer. “I’ve seen a couple of guys
on my walks—too young for Nam or the first Gulf War.”

“In
those
woods?” He glanced over at Mike.

“Mike lives in town,” Alex said. “Those trees could be stage scenery and he wouldn’t know the difference.” He pressed Joseph’s shoulder. “I didn’t like the look of the guy I saw tonight. His eyes weren’t right. Reminded me of a couple of my officers who were in combat and never really came back. I need you to keep your head. The others would freak if they heard this.”

“Franny doesn’t talk to men she doesn’t know.” A post-traumatic stress disorder victim in khaki wouldn’t get within twenty feet of her, and if he did, she was a fast runner.

“That might not be the problem.”

Joseph started to blubber something.

“Listen,” Alex ordered. “If we leave now we can still catch up to them.”

Franny in the woods with a crazed war vet—could it get any worse?

“We have to be prepared,” Alex said.

“The gun! Bring the gun!” Joseph didn’t want it to have to come to this—not a gun for God’s sake—but it
had
come to this. There was always going to be a gun.

“There’s nothing we can do here,” Alex told Julian and Mike, who’d walked up to them. “If the girls are lost in the woods, anything can happen—quickly.”

“I’ll go with you,” Julian said.

“No. I need you to keep searching near the farm. And to be here when the cops arrive.”

None of them said it, but they wanted a man to stay behind and guard the place. Julian nodded, the selfless obedience
coming naturally to him. Joseph was moved, but he didn’t want to start finding the good in people. God no. He and Alex were going to find the girls before anyone hurt them.

Mike handed over his iPhone. Joseph almost asked him why he’d switched from BlackBerry, the need for banal conversation still so deep. He reached into his pocket. The egg had survived the fall. It was a good sign.

“There’s not much battery time left,” Mike said.

“We’ll be out of range a few hundred yards in,” Alex said. “But it can’t hurt.”

Mike gave Joseph his passcode and mumbled generic good wishes, unable to summon a working persona for such a profound crisis, then half-ran to his car.

“I’m going to get my rifle,” Alex told Julian. “If we’re out of phone range and we find the girls, I’ll fire a shot. If you hear it, call off the search. Two shots means we need help, but it won’t come to that.” He ran toward his shed to get the gun.

“Your head …” Julian said.

“It’s fine.” Joseph touched the lump. It was kidney-shaped and raw and it gave off heat.

“Shit, man.”

“I know. I know.”

An engine started. Mike’s car crawled up the driveway as Liz and Amber helped Jane into the house. The world was spinning too fast—he’d see light streaks trailing the stars soon. When did the night slip from his grasp and go hurtling down a slope? In the clearing with Jane? When they smoked the joint? At dinner? He could trace it back further if he tried, back to his betrayal of Martha and
Franny. He touched the egg in his pocket, then the lump behind his ear, but he couldn’t connect them to what was happening. He’d lost Franny when he wasn’t looking.

Alex returned with the rifle and two flashlights, the smaller of which he handed to Joseph. He stepped close to Julian. “Listen, don’t tell anybody, but we think we saw someone hanging out at the edge of the woods earlier.”

“What?” Julian looked at Joseph and recoiled when he nodded in assent. “Who?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex said. “One or two guys in khaki. But we’re not taking any chances.”

“Wait!” An idea had finally crossed the moat of pain in Joseph’s head. “What about the dogs? They can track Rebecca.”

“They don’t remember the smell of their dinner,” Alex said, but Julian was already running toward the dogs, who were sitting in the light from the back porch, ears perked, tongues folded into their mouths like bills in a wallet. Alex followed Julian, picking up a sandal from the mat beside the sliding doors and presenting it to the dogs. As he unleashed them, Alex spoke softly into Lady’s ear, then Tyler’s.

Julian took the other sandal and waved it in front of the dogs. “Hey boy! Where’s Rebecca? Hey girl! Go find Rebecca!”

Lady paced the porch, some Law of Boundaries preventing her from breaking routine, but that didn’t stop Tyler from taking off and jumping the back fence. The three men gathered, leaning against the fence’s top board, and watched the husky cut diagonally across the field toward the forest,
stopping every few seconds to pick up Rebecca’s scent from a teeming reef of night odours.

“I think I know where he’s going,” Alex said. “There’s a path into the woods, where the second pasture begins.”

Alex jumped the fence and started to run, but Julian stopped Joseph from following. Julian’s face and posture exuded frustration, even agitation. He shook his head but got no closer to what needed saying.

“I don’t know, man. Something’s not right.”

Joseph nodded, despite having no idea what he was talking about.

“Be careful,” Julian said. He reached into a side pocket of his baggy pants and took out a small knife in a moulded plastic sheath. He slid the knife free and held it up. The short blade was almost triangular, with a serrated section running along the top like a ridge of fish spines evolved to shred the mouth of an attacker. The bottom edge was almost as thin as a razor.

“Keep it to yourself. Only take it out if you need it.” Julian paused for a few, long seconds, driving home his point. “I don’t know, man. Just be careful.”

“I will,” Joseph said, pocketing the knife.

Julian put his hands on Joseph’s shoulders. “You’re in a dark place, brother.”

“I know.” Thank God someone had finally said it.

“I’ve been there. I saw some things, and I had to fight for them not to change me—essentially … 
inside
.”

Joseph thought he understood. “You’re a good man, Julian.” It was important to say it.

“I’m just one of those sad clowns, brother. You’re a dad.”

“Am I?”

“Of course you are. That counts for a lot. Remember that.” Julian gave a big smile that wrinkled all the worn places on his face and he hugged Joseph, patting him on the shoulder blades. For thousands of years men had said goodbye like this, linking in a last embrace before the chosen one set out to prove himself in the hunt or on the battlefield. The trick was to let go before you chickened out, and even here Julian helped out, letting go first.

Joseph turned and put his foot on the fence’s middle board. The last time he climbed over to the field, Jane had been waiting for him on the other side to take his hand. He’d made a joke about falling. He couldn’t remember it now.

J
oseph and Alex watched Tyler pacing in front of the woods, his oversized dog smile like a dollop of pink clown makeup slapped on dull grey fur. What had he found? Joseph squinted to bring the trees into focus, but they only blended into suggestive shapes—unlit houses, low buildings, and alleyways, peaked rooftops against the navy blue sky, their occupants long gone to escape the marauding armies of bandits and rapists and pillagers. These things happened all the time—towns and villages fell off the map and out of memory. The moonlit pasture was no better, offering the stock scenery of a nightmare—the boulder not quite hiding the mangled body, the sapling revealing itself as an animated skeleton. Any moment a coyote would emerge from the woods, its jaws clamped around a dead baby with a monkey’s face.

Alex cradled the gun in his arms and watched Tyler pace, oblivious to the dog’s excited whimpers. What was Tyler so excited about? Had he followed Rebecca’s footsteps back to the same clearing where Joseph had fucked Jane? How was Joseph going to explain that one?

“There’s a narrow path there,” Alex said, pointing to where the dog was waiting.

“It makes sense the girls went in there.” Joseph noted a tinny edge to his voice that any good interrogator would catch. “We went further into the pasture.”

“How far did you go?” Alex’s cheeks and forehead seemed to gather the milky light, throwing his eyes and mouth into shadow. It was like staring at a second moon.

“Probably another hundred yards, up to that rise, to watch the sunset.” Joseph screened himself for confessional intent. “We were really high.”

“I didn’t ask that.”

He looked away from Alex’s terrifying face. The grass seemed to brighten, and he raised his eyes to catch the last ribbons of a long, fish-shaped cloud as it passed over the moon and deposited the orb behind it like a shining egg. He was pretty sure they were nowhere near the clearing. He’d be spared one horror this evening.

“Go on boy!” Alex shouted, his commanding tone bringing Tyler’s keen animal senses to a joyful focus. The dog ran straight at the trees and dived in, his tail and hind legs vanishing in a faint silver flash.

“Don’t use up the flashlight batteries unless you have to,” Alex said. “We don’t know how long we’ll be.”

Joseph followed Alex until they were a few yards from the trees, then stopped to watch Alex part a wedge of leaves like a stage curtain and step into the forest.

They were really doing this. Two girls were missing. Their fathers were searching the wilderness for them. These things
happened
. You read about these personal catastrophes,
relieved that
your
kid wasn’t missing, but also secretly disappointed to have missed out on the experience, because how often in this bloodless age do you get the chance to test your mettle against the elements, against the bad guys? You imagine what you’d do in the parents’ situation, how you’d act with courage, sacrifice, and resolve right up until the final scene, when your dirt-streaked child jumps into your arms, crying, “Daddy, you found me!”

Alex was calling from inside the woods—a real voice issuing a real summons. Joseph took a last peek at the pasture beneath the moon, feeling like an intruder on the beautiful scene. He wasn’t a bad man. He’d always meant well. That had to count for something.

He followed the path for a few minutes before stopping to adjust to the darkness, which was leaking into his peripheral vision like black smoke. He closed his eyes. The forest gave off a faint background noise, a pulse without bass that he could almost see against the deep velvet curtain of his eyelids. Other sounds appeared, each with its own shape and motion—the ruffle of an owl’s wings, like a magazine flapping open in the wind, and the breeze in the treetops like a stream frothing over stones. With his eyes still closed he took a few steps forward, his arms stretched out, hands open, nerves and ears straining to detect the particular sound-shape of a tree in front of him before he reached it. He walked on, sensing a block-like structure beyond his outstretched fingertips, and when he opened his eyes he was standing before a tree. He hadn’t cheated—he’d
sensed
the tree with his eyes closed. If Franny was near he should pick up her presence like seeing a plane on a radar screen. Why not? Who better to sense her body’s unique frequencies than her father? Atoms can communicate across time and space, the scientists and mystics agreed, so wherever Franny was now, his atoms need only contact hers and close the space between them, reeling in the miles like fishing line.