Harvest of Bones (20 page)

“She’s not here,” Fay hollered up. “Hartley, come back down. Where was Glenna anyway? When did you last see her? Your stepmother called; she’s furious. You can’t get away with this, Hartley. You can’t postpone fate.”

“No, no, you can’t! You can try, but it comes running after you,” Willard echoed. “Like that greyhound,” he said as Hartley stomped back down again, the dog’s angular head pushing her onward.

“Like Gandalf. Like fate,” Willard repeated, “you think you’ve buried the past, and up it pops.”

Fay was impressed with Willard’s grasp of metaphor. Maybe he was right. The greyhound was fate. Her fate. She reached down to pat the animal and he gazed up at her with damp eyes. She’d tied an orange scarf around his neck. He was really quite handsome. The curve of belly, of tail, the way the rear legs angled back and then down into sturdy white paws—never mind the missing nails. She hugged him and he thumped against her.

“You don’t understand,” said Hartley, plumping her rear end on the kitchen table. Willard hastily removed his glass. “She’s gone missing. Maybe she’s walking back from the cabin.”

“What cabin?” Fay asked.

Hartley gushed out the tale. “But we were only planning to hang out for a couple of days. Then, when things calmed down, I’d bring her back here.”

“A couple of days? Your stepmother says she’s notifying the police. They’ll be out looking for Glenna. For you,” she modified.

“Oh, yes, absolutely. For you, too, dear,” said Willard.

“Gleeps,” said Hartley. “I didn’t think about police.”

“You’re learning,” said Fay. “And I suggest you call your folks right this minute and tell them you’re safe. But say that Glenna—”

“I never thought she’d walk out like that. She likes to be contrary, make threats. But it was dark. Pitch-black.”

Now Fay was wholly alarmed. She ran for the phone. “Wait,” Hartley cried, “call that other guy first—before the fuzz. You know, that Colm. He knows Aunty. If Aunty’s on the road somewhere, she won’t want the police coming after her. Aunty hates police.”

But Colm wasn’t at Hanna’s Funeral Home. It was his father who answered. He only wanted to talk about Colm. “He’s been on a wild-goose chase down in the city. Colm’s not a city boy. He’s no detective. Never mind his grandfather was a cop. He was crazy to go down there.”

So Fay dialed Ruth. It was an old-fashioned phone; her fingers got stuck in the black holes of the dial. Finally, it rang.

“Colm’s here,” Ruth told Fay. “He’s got Mac.”

“What?” Fay envisioned the bones heaped up on Ruth’s kitchen table.

“He’s alive. He’s here. It has to be somebody else, that skeleton.”

Fay was quiet a moment, trying to absorb the news. “Mac’s alive,” she yelled to Hartley and Willard, and Hartley shrieked. “I was talking to Willard and Hartley,” she told Ruth. She realized she was breathless. She couldn’t seem to absorb any of it: Glenna gone missing, really missing, and now Mac, alive? Fay just wanted to be with Willard and Gandalf. She wanted to see her daughter and her grandson. She wanted peace in her life. She didn’t need any of this bones business. Though she did want Glenna back. Yes, yes, she did, in spite of herself.

“Then Mac’s got Aunty! What do you bet?” Fay heard the girl jump up, the chair crash back on the old floorboards, the dog give a short unaccustomed bark.

“What about Glenna?” Ruth shouted over the line. “You told me she got out of that home. I put Emily on the case—she’s friendly with Hartley now. But Emily’s been looking smug lately. She’s up to something, I think.”

“Glenna’s gone missing, Ruth, really missing. Hartley had her, up in some cabin. Now Glenna’s taken off, alone, in the dark. Tonight.”

“The police?” Ruth was saying, raising her voice over Fay’s.

“Hartley says no police. She says Glenna would have a heart attack if she saw a policeman.”

“Well, they’ll have to be called if she doesn’t come home. Tell the girl to stay put,” said Ruth, sounding resigned. “We’re coming right over,” and the line clicked off.

Peering through the kitchen window, Fay imagined Glenna, that crazy, passionate old woman, alive, out there in another black hole.... Alive?

“Oh Jesus,” she said. “Sweet Jesus. Glenna.” And Willard got up, put his hands on her trembly shoulders.

“Now now, now now,” he said. “That man in the hole is gone; he can’t hurt Glenna anymore. Glenna will be all right. You’ll see. She’ll walk through the door any minute.” And he squeezed her aging clavicles.

****

Glenna was dropping deeper and deeper into a black hole, her flesh melting, bones waxing; she was Mac, shrinking into a skeleton. “Mac,” she cried aloud, “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to, Mac!”

Someone was shushing her, warning her—something about a handkerchief, a gag—but her voice was weak, her muscles limp and aching, her head separated from her feet. She couldn’t see. Where were her glasses?

Now she was nauseous, angry. It was Mac dug that hole, wanting to bury her horse, her Jenny Two.
“You
can’t, can’t— what right—you have?” she yelled, though it came out a long sibilant hiss. She tried to lift her head, and the pressure came down again on her mouth. Her teeth squealed; her head was a screaming ache on her neck. She couldn’t see.
She couldn’t see!

“Why you do it to me, why-yy...” The voice was almost weeping now.

She was too weak to make him understand: She was Glenna Flint, at the bottom of a hole. It was filling in on top of her; she was being buried, alive....

But he kept on whining. “Why? Why?” His voice getting angrier, heavier, as if his tongue were shoveling dirt on her, heaping it on—till it took—her—breath .…

“It was my idea, Mom, the hunter’s cabin,” Emily confessed on the way to Fay’s with her mother and Colm. “She couldn’t stay in that awful place, that state hospital. She was a prisoner there.”

“Where is she now then, Em? A prisoner somewhere else—where we can’t even visit her? Feed her? What were you girls thinking of? Em, are you listening? It was irresponsible of you! And you’ve missed school again. Oh, yes, Emily, you can’t fool me. Your bookbag is still in your room!”

Teenaged girls were so full of false ideals, so unrealistic, though as girls went, Emily was a practical one. It was this crazy city girl, Hartley, Ruth decided, who was leading her astray. But there wasn’t time now for regrets. They had to find the old lady. They’d left Mac at the farm with Tim; all they needed now, Colm had said, was for
Mac
to disappear. If that happened, who would believe that he was still alive? “He needs to be watched,” Colm argued when Ruth wanted to send an overworked Tim home. So she’d given in.

At Fay’s, they found Fay and Hartley ready to leave for the search; Willard, too, insisted on going along. “I’ve real good night vision,” he said, “My mother calls me a tomcat.” He laughed: “I didn’t mean .…”

“Never mind,” said Fay. “Just let’s get going.”

They went first to the hunter’s cabin, found it deserted as Hartley had said, though Glenna’s black wool coat was still there, the black scarf. “Would she have gone outdoors without it?” Colm asked, and the others were quiet, realizing what that suggested. Beyond that, there were only the crusty remains of a cheese pizza, a carton of soda, a small case of clothing, the kerosene heater, Vic’s telescope, Glenna’s shawl, a Dickens novel, and a tattered copy of
The Hobbit.
Outside, as well, there was nothing unusual. Ruth supposed a forensics team would find evidence: hairs, threads, fingerprints inside or out, on the door perhaps—prints that weren’t Glenna’s or the two girls’.

“Don’t touch or move anything,” she ordered. “If it comes to police, they’ll want things just as they were.”

“No police, please, no police,” Hartley murmured, but she was shushed by Emily. “Mother’s right, for once,” Emily said. “Do you want to find your aunt alive?”

Ruth smiled grimly at the “for once.”

“There’s no outhouse,” Colm said. “It’s possible she went in the bushes to, um, pee, and then—”

“A warg,” said Hartley. “A catamount! Oh God .…”

“Come on,” said Fay. “There’s been no catamounts in this state since 1860 something.”

“No, no,” said Willard, “I heard one, oh yes, a high-pitched cry, like a woman screaming. But it wouldn’t come near Glenna. No, those big cats are shy. Yes . . .” His voice trailed off as though he was linking himself up with that cat. He curled his fists quietly into his chest.

“We all know Glenna,” said Ruth. Someone has to be sensible, she thought. “Most likely, she set out down that path. You said, Hartley, she wouldn’t promise to stay. Though we ought to see if there’s any disturbance—like broken twigs, in case—I mean, it was dark out. She could have gotten disoriented, wandered off the path. Her poor vision.”

She divided them into pairs: Fay with Willard, herself with Emily; Colm with Hartley and the greyhound—the girl had insisted on bringing the dog. “The cat, you know. Aunty’s got Puffy’s scent on her black sweater,” Hartley had explained and now dog and girl plunged into the woods. Colm touched Ruth’s arm, gave it a squeeze. “Thanks a lot, Ruthie,” he whispered sarcastically, and ran after the pair. Ruth didn’t care what Colm thought. The girl needed guidance. Whose fault was it, anyway, that Glenna was missing?

Each pair took a different direction, flashing lights into brush, and cleared out muddy areas, where the old lady might have stumbled, her vision dimmed by cataracts. It was Willard who found the muddy spot in the snow where someone had recently peed. He said, “Oh, oh,” but couldn’t get any more words out. Fay said, “She peed here, or someone else did. Yanked these leaves off to dry herself.” And Willard sneezed.

Ruth and Emily moved on down the path, Ruth trying to hold back her annoyance at Emily’s complicity; after all, her daughter seemed genuinely upset about Glenna’s disappearance.

“She’s a great old lady,” Emily whispered. “I got a neat story for my project. She was really into telling stories about the old days. You, know, Mom, I kind of enjoy hearing about what life used to be like. I mean, even our own farm—it was in the family—how many generations?”

“Five, your father said. He knows the history; you should ask him. When he comes.”

“Halloween,” Emily whispered, glancing at her mother meaningfully. “But I asked him once. He didn’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s because . . . well, he needed some excuse for leaving the place. Painful to think about leaving the farm, I suppose. Guilt? Maybe that’s why he wants to sell. This could be the last generation. Sharon’s not interested. Unless you or Vic—”

“Mom, you’re evading the issue. You’re always evading the issue. When Dad comes, I want you to be open. I want you to listen to his side. There’re two sides to everything. Wilder says his mom—”

“Never mind that now. We have a missing woman. She may be in the bushes somewhere. Trying to call out.”

“Evading again, Mom. Are we ever going to face this?”

“October thirty-first,” Ruth said, feeling something sour in her stomach. “Then you’ll have answers. But be open yourself, my dear girl. They may not be the answers
you
want.”

They were at the road now. Ruth shone her flashlight to the west side of the path. She’d thought it a bare spot, but a closer inspection showed the brush was trampled down, as though something had been dragged there. She pulled at Emily’s sleeve, and together they explored the terrain. The scrubs had been knocked down by an object the size of— She couldn’t say the word. But Glenn’s frail body rose up behind her eyes.

“Signal Colm,” she said, and Emily gave the soft hoot they’d agreed upon. Moments later, Colm was there, breathing hard behind Ruth. She smelled the sweat on him. His glasses gleamed in the circle of her flashlight; she saw that he’d torn his shirtsleeve on something sharp. She touched it, and the blood came off on her fingers. He waved away her concern.

“It might have been somebody dragging a deer. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

“Deer season doesn’t start till Thanks-giving,” Ruth reminded him. “Not that that deters some of the hunters around here.”

“Right,” said Colm, and they followed the path to its end in the dirt road, flashing their lights at the surrounding brush. But they saw no further disturbance beyond a scattering of leaves and twigs at the edge of the road itself.

“Dragged into a car maybe?” Ruth whispered. “Someone pulled her into a car after she was hurt and had lain there in the bushes?”

“Oh God, a rapist,” hissed Hartley, suddenly crashing in sight with Gandalf. The dog was panting, straining on its leash, but glad to see them. It leapt at Colm, and he stumbled against Ruth with a whispered oath. For a moment, there was that warm pressure of his body and she couldn’t move.

“Sorry,” he said, and of course he wasn’t.

“But it could have been someone helpful, and right now she’s at the hospital,” said Emily, and Ruth was grateful for the girl’s optimism, the break in the mood.

“Rape,” Hartley said again, and Ruth turned on her. “No! Rape? Of an old woman?” But Hartley came from the suburbs; terrible things happened there: muggings, rapes, killings—age wasn’t a deterrent. Though crime was creeping into Vermont, too. Ruth should know that, shouldn’t she? What kind of world was her young grandson growing up in—and a new one coming along. Sometimes she hated the world, really hated it. Couldn’t bear to read the newspapers. At this very moment even, Sharon could be in childbirth. What was Ruth Willmarth doing here, anyway? She was needed at home, home.

Fay and Willard appeared on the path, but had nothing to report. “Looks like we reached a dead end,” said Fay, though her eyes shone; Ruth saw she was holding Willard’s hand. “I tripped. A willow root in the path,” she said, and dropped his hand.

“My, yes, head over teakettle,” Willard mumbled, then laughed softly, glancing at Fay.

“Not a dead end, don’t say that,” and, dropping her head in her hands, Hartley sobbed. Fay put her arms around the girl while Willard looked on, hands dropped at his sides like broken twigs, his big face woebegone.

“I’ve a hunch she’s just fine,” said Ruth, squeezing Hartley’s arm. “We’ll check the hospital. What do you think, Colm? Try out Emily’s suggestion? And if not—”