chapter five

The day started hazy gray, threatening rain right from the beginning. When I opened my window, the sticky green smell of it rolled in on a warm breeze. The curtains fluttered, blowing out and rippling at the edges, whispering against my desk.

I hurried to get dressed and start investigating. Me and Collette and Ben had split our list of people quoted in the paper on the subject of Elijah, and Deputy Wood was on mine. The sheriff’s station was right outside town, close enough that I could ride my bike.

In old pictures, Deputy Wood had stood tall and skinny, with a thick black mustache that waterfalled down either side of his mouth. Having seen him lately, though, I knew that his mustache had gone salt-and-pepper and he’d thickened out in the middle. The blue uniform stretched tight across his chest, and his star didn’t lie flat anymore.

Most days, he sat in his cruiser just off the highway, cherry-picking the hot-rodders who had nothing to do but drive fast between Ondine and Baton Rouge. Everybody over sixteen hated him, but since I couldn’t drive yet, he seemed all right to me. Besides, I thought folks ought to know better than to speed on his stretch, anyway. Gambling on its being his day off came with pretty bad odds.

I wasn’t sure if it was against the law to walk up to him while he was working, but I figured the worst that could happen was that he’d send me home with a warning to stay off the big roads. Since I’d be on my bike, he wouldn’t clock me at more than five miles an hour, so I couldn’t get a ticket; I just might be wasting my morning.

On my way out, I stopped at the Red Stripe to get a soda. Fishing around for the coldest can, I leaned into the refrigerator case and apologized when Mr. Ourso shuffled past with a box of toilet paper nearly bigger than him.

I felt like I should help him. I knew better than to offer, though, because he liked things just so. Even Ben just opened and unpacked the boxes when he worked; he left everything in the back for Mr. Ourso to put away. Mr. Ourso was particular about everything in the Red Stripe, probably because that was all he had.

Normally, I wouldn’t have given him much thought, but his name was on our list, too. He hadn’t joined the search parties—my guess was he’d been old even then—but he had donated sandwiches and coffee. Since everybody had met up here, he’d have to know something, even if it was just the places they’d looked and found nothing.

When I got to the register, I was careful to hold my can instead of setting it down. I didn’t want to get a dirty look for leaving a ring on his counter. Mr. Ourso returned from the back, scrubbed his hands with a dish towel, then threw it over his shoulder when he saw me waiting.

“Got some salt and vinegar chips that go real good with that,” he said, nodding at my soda as he opened the gate to get behind the counter. “They’re on sale.”

I hesitated, because I didn’t really like salt and vinegar chips. They were only fifty cents, though, and I thought Mr. Ourso might like me a little better if I bought them. Plucking a green bag from the stand, I turned and dropped it on the counter with a smile. “Now I’m set.”

Nodding, Mr. Ourso punched a couple of buttons on his register, one at a time. He probably knew how much everything in the Red Stripe cost, down to the penny and the tax, but he always rang it up slowly anyway.

Since I had him there, I didn’t see anything wrong with asking about Elijah. I did just buy a snack from him I didn’t want after all. “Hey, Mr. Ourso?”

He answered me with a grunt, the register chiming when he hit TOTAL. “Two sixty-two.”

I dug the last of my coins from my pocket. Between Shea and Mr. Ourso, finding Elijah had started to get expensive. “You’ve had the Red Stripe a long time, huh?”

“Forty-seven years,” he said. He smoothed my dollars with the heel of his hand before putting them in the register. I guess he didn’t want the rest of the money getting any ideas about being unruly in the drawer.

“Wow.”

He looked up at me with watery blue eyes, but he didn’t nod, or smile, or even frown. He had the stillest face I’d ever seen. Thin lines dug down around his mouth and across his brow, but he seemed made out of paper. I could see the thin blue veins beneath his skin. In fact, I could see his heartbeat, his pulse fluttering at his temple. The quiet scared me more than yelling would have, and I think I might have flinched when he said, “Thirty-eight cents.”

The change went in my pocket, and I mumbled a thank-you as I slunk toward the door. Tucking the chips and soda into my bike bag, I decided that cracking Mr. Ourso could wait until later. A lot later.

Sweaty and out of breath, I stood on the side of the highway. There were tire tracks where Deputy Wood should have been; he must have needed some new scenery.

In my brilliant plans, he was sitting right out in his cherry-picking spot, just waiting to spill terrible secrets about Elijah’s disappearance, if only somebody would come along and ask him.

I stood there for a long time, like wishing would make his cruiser appear. Funny enough, it didn’t, so I got back on my bike.

The police outpost wasn’t much, just a cinder-block box with some dingy windows, but it had air-conditioning, at least. The frigid, tinny blast of it went right through my sweat-soaked shirt as I approached the front desk.

The woman there didn’t look up from her computer. Her fingers rushed along, still going as she asked, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Deputy Wood,” I said. I craned to see if he might be in the back. “Is he here?”

“He’s on patrol. Is there something I can help you with?”

“I don’t know,” I said, studying her smooth skin and unlined hands. “How old are you?”

The typing stopped. “Excuse me?”

Something started bubbling in my chest. “I mean, I was wondering about something that happened a long time ago, and you don’t look very old. . . .”

The woman typed out four more letters, pounding the keyboard hard on each one before spinning her chair to face me. “Do you have a report number?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

“Do you have new evidence you’d like to share?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Are you an interested party?”

Drawing my shoulders up, I hesitated. “Well, I am interested.”

Her voice clipped, she plucked a pen out of a can on her desk and produced a form. “If there’s something you want to claim, fill out your name and address, and to the best of your abilities, describe the object or objects you believe should be returned to you.”

I shook my head when she tried to hand me the pen. “There’s nothing I want, not a thing I want, I mean. I just wanted to talk to Deputy Wood.”

She whisked the form off the counter and replaced it with a new one. “Requests for interviews need to go through the Public Information Office.”

“I don’t want to interview him. I just want to talk to him!”

The woman drew her fingers across the counter. She spoke slowly, like I wasn’t bright enough to follow her. “About a police matter?”

“No, ma’am, never mind,” I said, and gave up.

Waterlogged and weepy, I got back on my bike. Between jerking my head back every time I snuffled and trying to swipe at my face to keep my view clear, it was a lucky thing I didn’t get run over.

More than anything, I just wanted to be home, curled up in the armchair, rubbing my fingers on the air conditioner. I wanted to be home just like that, right that minute, but I was stuck.

Daddy didn’t keep the ringer on in his room during the daytime, so even if I’d had a way to call, he wouldn’t have answered. Collette’s mama would have come to fetch me, but I could imagine the way her voice would go up and down all the way home if she had to leave the diner to carry me home.

The highway was dizzy hot, white waves rolling off the asphalt to make fun-house mirages out of the distance. I kept telling myself I only had to make it to the next sign, but the next sign always looked closer than it was.

Cars zipped by me, and sometimes, out of pure meanness, they honked. It was a surprise every time, and I kept wobbling off into the gravel to get away from them.

I wished horrible things on those people. I prayed they’d get a flat tire and have to walk—at least I had a bicycle. And then, when I ran across them staggering toward Ondine, I’d laugh and pedal faster.

Meanness of spirit was all I had left in me. I was burning from the inside, my legs started turning to jelly, and it got harder to keep myself from sitting down in the tall grass to bawl.

I hated that woman at the sheriff’s station, her and her dyed red hair that wasn’t fooling anybody; I hated Deputy Wood for being somewhere besides his cherry-picking spot, where he could have written slips for half of Ascension Parish, considering how fast everybody drove past me.

Just for good measure, I hated Shea Duvall, too, because he didn’t happen past on a whim and pick me up. Me and my bike would have fit in the back of his bronze and primer station wagon just fine, and I had almost a dollar left. That should have been enough for a ride home. Next time I saw him, I planned to call him Horatio, just out of spite—he’d been named for a Shakespeare character, too.

The sky folded over on itself, new shades of bruise and brown painting the clouds, but the rain wouldn’t come, no matter how hard I wished it. Road dirt clung to my sweaty skin, and my clothes were soaked through. A good gully washer would clean me off and cool me down, and besides, nobody would be able to tell I had cried all the way home if the rain came.

I slid off my bike to walk it for a while; as I walked I made mystic signs with one hand, like I was one of those traveling rainmakers who used to come through during a drought. I kept at it until the sky finally opened.

Whether I had anything to do with it or not, I took credit for the storm. Maybe the secret to making wonders happen was just waiting for the right time to try.

I left my bike in the front yard, and I’d just started inside when I saw the red and blue lights coming down my street, gliding slow enough that I knew the police weren’t on an emergency.

The rain dulled everything, even the bright red stripes on the white-paneled sheriff’s car, and it made the tires sound like they had a scrub brush to the pavement.

My heart jumped, beating hard and happy in my chest. Elijah had decided to help after all, sending Deputy Wood all but to my door. I squeezed the wet from the hem of my shirt, as if that’d make me more presentable, and waited.

Rennie Delancie came onto his porch with a big aw-shucks smile. His strawberry-blond hair fell into his eyes, and I guessed if you liked the wicked type, Rennie was probably pretty fine to look at. Waving a bandaged hand at me he shifted from one foot to the other, looking like he had to pee.

Since gawking was rude, I pretended to fumble for my key, listening as Deputy Wood went up Rennie’s walk.

“No, sir, we haven’t blown up anything for weeks.”

Rennie lied like most people breathed, natural and smooth. I couldn’t see him, but I figured he had painted on that smile of his until it was permanent.

Rennie and Deputy Wood went back and forth awhile; the bandage came from a cooking accident, and Lord, no, he hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary. Deputy Wood took a peek in the garage and around the back of the house, then told Rennie he and his brother needed to knock it off or next time he’d haul them in. They probably heard that once a week, though, so when Rennie said, “Yes, sir, I promise,” I laughed under my breath.

Deputy Wood headed for his car, and I jumped down the steps. I tried to walk fast but not too fast, in case that was suspicious, and caught him as he fit himself behind the steering wheel again.

“Everything all right, sugar?” He hung his hat out the door, shaking the rain off before tossing it onto the seat next to him.

“Yes, sir, but could I ask you a question?”

Deputy Wood turned down the radio on his shoulder. He rested an arm across the steering wheel and grinned up at me. His dark brown eyes sparkled. They didn’t look as old as the rest of him did. “Besides that one?”

“Yes, sir.” I blushed, but I didn’t shy away. “You helped look for Elijah Landry, didn’t you?”

“Well, me and most of the parish, but yes, ma’am, I did.” His smile curled with curiosity, crooked at one corner like his brows. “I reckon that was before your time, though.”

I nodded. “It was, but I was . . . Me and my friend, we’re gonna do a report on local mysteries, and that’s the biggest one we’ve got.”

“I don’t know that it’s much of a mystery,” he said. “Fact is, he probably run off.”

I didn’t mean to shake my head, but I did. Folks ran away from Ondine all the time; it was practically tradition. When you lived in a town as big as a flea, anywhere with a movie theater was a step up. Everybody in town had an uncle or cousin what did that and nobody ever searched for them except maybe their mamas.

So right off, Elijah’s disappearance was different.

“How come you all had that big search party?”

Grinning again, Deputy Wood crooked a finger to draw me closer, then whispered like he was telling a secret. “His granddaddy was friends with the parish president.”

What that had to do with anything, I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t say that. “There was blood on his pillow, too.”

“Sugar, if you’ve ever had a nosebleed, there’s probably been blood on your pillow.” Deputy Wood had finished answering questions. Twisting himself to sit proper in the car, he reached up to play with his radio. “How about you write your report on fox fire? I had some follow me half a mile once. Now, that’s a mystery.”

Disappointed, I shook my head. “My daddy says that’s just swamp gas lighting up.” I shrugged and stepped up on the curb, curling a hand against my forehead to keep the rain from my eyes.

For me and Daddy, talking didn’t stop at the end of supper, but the subjects changed. Dinner-table conversation covered news and information; dish-washing talk was sort of philosophical, or maybe just thinking out loud, so it was the best time to bring up Elijah.

“Deputy Wood says Elijah Landry just run off.”

Daddy hummed, the sound lost in plate clatter. “Does he, now?”

“Yup.” Digging into the corner of a pan, I scraped hard to get the last of the cheese off. “He said the only reason folks looked for him was because of his granddaddy’s friends.”

“Well, Mark Wood never did think too hard or too long.” Taking the pan, Daddy glanced at me. “That’s between us; you respect your elders.”

Crossing my heart, I nodded. “Anyway, so what’s that got to do with it? If somebody took me, people would look, right? Even though we don’t know the parish president?”

Without hesitating, Daddy took the next plate with a nod. “Naturally, sugar, but you’re younger than Elijah was. And a girl.”

Daddy usually made things more clear, but with that, he had jumped in with Deputy Wood to complicate things. My questions weren’t hard—“What?” and “Why?” mostly—so there ought to have been simple answers. “So?”

“Elijah was just shy of being grown. It’s not against the law to be grown and leave if you want.” Daddy turned the faucet to his side of the sink, rerinsing glasses before putting them in the tray. “Folks don’t worry about boys as much. It may not be right, but that’s the way it is.”

“Well, what do you think?”

Putting a glass down hard, Daddy chimed it against the rest of them, the whole drainer rattling. Tension tightened his mouth to a thin line. “I think he’s gone, Iris, and that’s the most anybody can say.”

I swallowed, feeling vaguely ashamed, though I didn’t know why. “I’m sorry.”

As if he’d remembered something, Daddy shook his head, and the lines drawn around his mouth faded. “What’s got you thinking about it, anyway?”

“I just wondered.” Then I added, “You knew him, right?” Daddy flipped his towel over. “It’s a small town; everybody did.”

“But he was in your class.”

Stopping for a minute, Daddy turned to me. “What are you after?”

Shrugging, I swiped a plate with my sponge and passed it to him. I couldn’t answer that honestly, partly because it was a secret and partly because I didn’t want him to warn me off of it. “I don’t know.”

Leaving the dish in the sink, Daddy scrubbed his hand dry and put it on my shoulder. “Are you afraid of staying here at night by yourself? Baby, if you are, Mrs. Thacker—”

“No!”

Mrs. Thacker was seventysomething, and she smelled like a house full of cats. Until last fall, Daddy had paid her to come in at night to keep an eye on me. Being a widow herself, Mrs. Thacker grieved for my daddy and for my mama in a way that made me feel sick to my stomach. Her chandelier earrings rang like church bells calling good people to Mass, sending good people to God. She was forever prodding me to talk about Mama so I wouldn’t forget. I hated Mrs. Thacker’s knobby knuckles and her morbid chiming, but I knew it wasn’t polite to ignore your elders, so I made things up to make her leave me alone.

A visit to Mississippi for a cousin’s funeral had kept Mrs. Thacker away for a week last September, and I’d used that week to convince Daddy she was completely unnecessary.

“I’m fine on my own, I promise.”

The quiet went on and on while Daddy thought about it; then he nodded. “All right, then, if you’re sure.”

“I am.” In my head, I added, One hundred percent, absolutely, totally sure, but I kept that to myself. If I sounded too eager, it might make him suspicious.

Returning to my dishes, I twisted the tap to add more hot water to my side. Carefully, I wound my way toward the right subject again. “Anyway, I was just curious because me and Collette read some stories about him at the library. They said he was on the football team.”

Daddy held his hand out for another plate. “He kept track of the equipment.”

That little sentence seemed to sparkle; it was so real, like a direct line to Elijah. “He couldn’t play, then?”

“No, he could.” A faraway gaze settled over Daddy. “He volunteered to be the manager since his mama wouldn’t sign his permission slip.”

Before I could ask why not, Daddy put the last plate in the drainer and changed the subject. “How’d you run up on Deputy Wood, anyhow?”

Lucky for me, I could tell the truth. I don’t know what I would have said if I’d found him on the highway, after all.

My bedroom ceiling had plaster swirls on it, and when I couldn’t sleep, I liked to stare at it and try to make new patterns out of the curls. I followed the shadows with my gaze, waves hitting the trim and flowing back into fancy swirls. Curlicues drifted into ribbons, splaying into butterflies. They flew away over green, green grass, leading me to the creek.

The scent of rich, dark earth tickled my nose, and I pushed tallgrass aside to get to the water. My heart turned over when I finally reached the riverbank. Lying there propped on one elbow, chucking rocks into the water, was Elijah.

Scooping up another stone, he drew back lazily, measuring his mark with his eyes before he threw. Somehow I’d expected him to be skinny like Ben, but he wasn’t. He had a fine shape, with broad shoulders and strong arms.

My shadow fell on him, and he tipped his baseball hat back to look up at me. I’d been right; he had dark brown eyes to go with his brown hair, and creamy, Acadian skin with a hint of peach to it.

Smiling crookedly, he flicked his rock toward the water. “Where y’at, Iris?”

Swimming awake, I blinked at my desk and my posters. Dark as ever, my room didn’t smell like anything, and I was alone, just like I should have been. Swinging my feet over the side of the bed, I stood up, unsteady because somehow I expected marshy earth under me instead of carpet.

I stumbled to my desk so I could write down the details of my dream. It started to unravel in my head as I yanked my spellbook from the drawer. Flipping past the warning curse and all our other incantations, I stopped on the last half-used page.

Leaning over the spellbook, I slashed the page with ink, my handwriting sloped long like afternoon shadows. My words spilled out. They crashed into each other, and I had to read over them to make sure they were sense and not scribbles.

I flipped through the book once more before I collapsed back in bed. Throwing my forearm across my eyes, I exhaled, waiting for sleep to creep up on me again.

Then, against the blackness of my eyelids, I saw tiny print letters, soft white on dark. They rose like a ghost, chilling me till the hair stood up on my arms.

It’s a dream, I told myself. You’re just sleeping again.

But I heard the crickets singing outside. My nightgown stuck to my skin, and a sour taste bittered the back of my tongue. That was waking; I was awake.

Scrambling out of bed, I tore through my spellbook. I stopped and flattened my hand on the page, the one that had floated up behind my closed eyes. My throat went tight; I couldn’t breathe.

Somebody had written in my book.

My sprawling cursive had been marked out. I didn’t have a spell to go crazy anymore, not according to the new block letters at the top of the page.

I had a spell called How to Talk to Elijah.