Deep Down (I)

by Karen Harper

  Cassie’s house came in sight, pouring light into the darkness of Fancy Gap Hollow where she’d been raised. Her form appeared at the window, then disappeared before her front door opened. In a long, ghostly white nightgown, with a shawl around her thin shoulders, she came out on the porch as they pulled up. Jess opened the door before he could get out.

  “Jessie!” he heard Cassie cry as she embraced her friend. “Despite the troubles, welcome home!”

  Chapter 4

  4

  C assie Keenan had known Jessica Lockwood her whole life. Both only children, a rarity in the area, they had clung together like sisters, however different their personalities. Cassandra and Jessica—Cassie and Jessie—their lives had seemed to rhyme like their names, until Mariah sent Jessie away. If folks thought Mariah did that just because of Drew Webb, Cassie knew they were wrong, ’cause Mariah had always wanted a different life for her child.

  Still, however distant their lives had become, Cassie treasured how they could pick up where they’d left off, just like they hadn’t been apart a long time. Though Jessie hadn’t visited Deep Down this August as usual, she’d been here last Christmas with all sorts of gifts for her and Pearl. But things might be different now with Mariah missing. Desperate to help her friend get through this, whatever befell, Cassie hugged Jessie hard, then led her inside while Drew followed with her suitcase and matching smaller bag.

  “I hope we won’t wake Pearl,” he said as Cassie sat Jessie down at the plank table, shoving potted herbs aside to make a spot for her. She’d meant to straighten up the little house a bit when she heard Jessie would spend the night, but there was nowhere to put her precious plants unless she carried them outside with the others. Herbs, both live and dried, covered the floor, walls and ceiling. It was like a grotto in here, Elinor Gering had said, when she’d come to record Cassie talking about life here in Deep Down.

  “Now don’t you all fret about making noise,” she told Drew. “Once that little angel’s out, she sleeps like the dead.”

  Cassie saw Jessie wince at that. She scolded herself for not thinking ahead of her mouth. “This here’s ginseng tea with a touch of chamomile,” she told her friend as she set a cup before her. “Gives you energy and yet makes you sleep. Drew, you want some coffee? Won’t take a minute.”

  “No, thanks. I’m coffeed out for the day and need to hit the sack myself for a couple of hours.”

  Looking beyond exhausted, Jessie wrapped her hands around the hot cup, then lifted it to her lips.

  “I’ll be going,” Drew said. “Jess, I’ll be here at eight sharp, though I know you need the sleep.”

  “What I need is my mother back,” she said, turning to face him. Then she added, “Sorry about the heavy bag. I didn’t repack at home, just got my car and headed out.”

  Cassie watched the two of them talk, both tipping their heads in the same direction and leaning slightly toward each other as if they were straining against a fence. She recognized the wild wind between them, the kind you couldn’t hold back. She’d figured both of them still had feelings for each other, and now she knew it. Tarnation, she understood that sort of pull, that turning toward the sun as if it were the source of life itself.

  “’Night and thanks, Cassie,” Drew said as he started for the door.

  “Come a few minutes early for pancakes,” she told him. “I’m gonna put a good, hot meal in Jessie first thing tomorrow, so you come, too. Thanks for that bag of groceries you brought me back from Highboro the other day,” she added, hurrying after him to the door. “Me and Pearl’s beholden to you, ’specially for standing up for my right to keep silent. I heard what you told Vern Tarver.”

  “You’re only beholden for a pancake breakfast,” he said. He stood at the door as if he hated to leave, then looked past her to Jessie again. “We’ll find her, Jess,” he said and went out into the night.

  “Whew-ee,” Cassie said as she went to sit across the narrow table from her friend. “I know you two will find Mariah. But for now, least you found each other.”

  “Except for the fact I need his professional help—” Jessie’s voice came real sharp “—our past has nothing to do with the present situation.”

  “Listen, my Deep Down sister, don’t you go lecturing ’bout things of the heart, even if you are way smarter’n me,” Cassie scolded, shaking her finger at Jessie like she did at Pearl. “My girl’s daddy may be out of my life and hers, but she was a love child.” Afraid she’d say more, she pinched her lips tight.

  “Of course she is. I never said otherwise.”

  “So I know it when I see it, even if I don’t have it no more.” Cassie made herself sit back and calm down. No way did she want someone clever as Jessie catching on to who Pearl’s daddy was or what she had planned.

  “I don’t know which way’s up, that’s all,” her friend said, taking another big swig of the tea. “What you’re seeing and hearing is sheer exhaustion. I just feel so weak—helpless.”

  “I got some mushroom soup and corn bread, if you’re hungry for that kind of food ’fore you go to bed.”

  “My system’s so screwed up from time zone changes and I have stomach cramps from being afraid and grieved—”

  “And on edge back with Drew again. Like most men, he may be dense as a wall on that, but you’re not. Anybody like you who can look in a microscope and find a way to stop killer cells can—”

  “Can find a killer?” Jessie blurted and, to Cassie’s dismay, burst into tears. She banged the cup down and covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders shook and the curly blond hair Cassie had always thought was way better than her own straight red hair bounced against her hands. “It’s just,” Jessie got out between big, choking sobs, “I think something awful—might have happened—to her. She knows the woods, she’s always safe in the woods…”

  Cassie jumped up and went around the table to hug her from behind. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to set you off, and I shouldn’t bring up Drew like that. I promise, I won’t say no more about it till you’re ready to admit it.”

  “You’re so damned annoying and stubborn, Cassandra Keenan.”

  “That’s me,” she said and went back to her place across the table as Jessie reached in her purse, looking kind of surprised to find it still over her shoulder, and took out a tissue. “’Member how Elinor told us that Cassandra in some old Greek stories was a woman who always told the truth, even predicted the future, but no one believed her?” Cassie asked.

  “Elinor said a lot of things,” Jessie muttered and blew her nose. “She once made me read a book she loved called You Can’t Go Home Again, and here I am. And I hated the book.”

  “Jessie, anything I can do to help, I will.”

  Jessie reached across the table, past the plants, to put one hand on hers. “I’d better get to sleep. Morning and Drew will be here early.”

  “I’m gonna sleep with Pearl, and you take my bed. Want to wash up?”

  “In the morning. Right now, I just need a couple of things out of my carry-on bag and a bed.”

  Cassie rolled Jessie’s big suitcase into her bedroom, the one that had been her grandparents’ and parents’ room before it was hers. In truth, she was glad to give it up, ’cause after watching the smothered desire between Jessie and Drew, she might be too het up and not sleep well in there tonight. Too often she didn’t, remembering her own sweeping passion in that bed and then how the midwife had helped her birth the result of that there.

  She’d buried that love and lust now, put it away and closed up all her wounds, though they still festered under the surface. Sure as rain, she was laying plans to make him pay for his betrayal of her and Pearl. She knew people whispered that she never spoke his name nor hinted who he was because she was too shattered over the desertion, still so much in love that she was giving him a pass, protecting him.

  Well, they were all dead wrong. As soon as she got her herbal potions mixed, no matter how important a man he was, he was th
e one who was gonna wish he was dead.

  Something woke Jessie instantly. A shifting sound. Movement. Shadows huddled in the room. As out-of-it as she was, she became instantly alert with her pulse pounding in her ears.

  Was that noise inside or out? Yes, another sound, but from where? Someone sneaking in through the door she’d left ajar? Had Cassie locked the outside doors? What if someone who wanted to stop her mother from handing in her ginseng count had heard Jessie was back and thought she knew more than she did? What if…

  She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, concentrating, straining to listen. Yes, something outside. Maybe a branch scraping or tapping against the glass. She wished Cassie had a clock in the room.

  With a groan, she got out of bed and shuffled to the window, shifting the left edge of the homemade drapes slightly aside. Black as it was outside, a half moon etched the bizarre backyard in faintest silver.

  The usual clutter stretched across the back of the house between two herb gardens. Jessie saw the solid, black silhouettes of the old iron kettles where her friend boiled the natural dyes she used to make wild plant mordants, which weavers used to set colors in cloth. Above that, lines of barbed wire dangled from tall post to post, not to keep people out but to dry moss Cassie sold to florists and craft stores for about five dollars a sack. Humps of moss were draped there now, looking like the tops of furry heads peering over the wire at the house.

  Then one of them on the top wire moved. It rose, turned away, then disappeared.

  No. No, she could not have seen that. It was just the breeze moving the moss, the slant of moonlight or even her tired eyes playing tricks on her.

  She squeezed her eyelids tight, then opened them to look again. The moss-heavy barbed wire shifted in the breeze, gilded by moonlight, that was all. Surely, she had not heard something scratching on the window or seen a big, hairy head move. She was getting back in bed at least until dawn or until Cassie, ever an early riser, woke her up. Even now, her stomach did a little roll and plunge to think that Drew was coming for her, even if it was to find out what dreadful thing must have happened to her mother.

  Back in bed, she tossed and turned. She didn’t think she slept again, but she must have because she saw strange shapes of huge, hairy ginseng roots come to life and chase her, through the trees, through the Hong Kong market…

  “Aunt Jessie?” came the tiny voice and then the little face peered up over the side of the bed in the graying room. “I heard you was coming. But why isn’t Mommy here in this bed ’stead of you?”

  “Pearl, sweetie, how are you? But your mommy’s in with you. She let me sleep here for the night.” As her head cleared, she helped the child climb up beside her. “You mean she’s not in bed?” she asked.

  Pearl shook her head, making her reddish-blond hair swing. “Maybe she’s in the bad part of the garden. Even in the dark, she’s there.”

  Jessie frowned at the child’s babble, but covered her up with the blanket, then got out of bed to be sure that Cassie was around somewhere. Surely, those nearest and dearest to her weren’t just disappearing.

  She glanced out her window first at the drying moss and iron kettles. Yes, that’s what she’d seen last night, nothing else.

  “Stay here,” she whispered to Pearl. “I’ll be right back.”

  She checked the bathroom—empty—then peered out a side window. In the first dusting of dawn, Cassie was in her eastern garden, gone to riot in late-summer growth. She was cutting herbs with a long, curved knife, hacking away as if she were angry at them. Jessie knocked on the window and waved. Startled, Cassie looked up and held up a finger to indicate “just a minute,” then bent back to her work.

  Her friend had always been a hard worker, but then she’d had to be, especially lately to eke out a living for herself and Pearl. Cassie would not take donated money. But why work out there in the dark and chill of morning? Maybe she’d gotten behind, since, like so many Deep Downers, she’d spent time looking for Mariah.

  Jessie padded back to the bedroom, checking her watch as she went by the dresser. Seven. She had to get moving to take a bath—no shower here, just a big, old claw-footed tub you could almost swim laps in—and get ready for a grueling day before Drew arrived.

  “She’s outside, just like you said,” she told Pearl, who looked like a little elf in the middle of the big double bed. The child had a pert, freckled face; her pale complexion and reddish hair were a clear heritage from her mother. No hints of who might have sired her in the child herself. If Mariah didn’t have a clue who might have made Cassie pregnant—or so she’d said—no one but Pearl’s parents must know.

  Mariah and Cassie had also been close for years. Sometimes, Jessie thought with a pang, it was as if, after Cassie’s mother died and her father left the area, Cassie took Jessie’s place. Besides digging some sang, both Mariah and Cassie made their livings from wildcrafting for seasonal moss, ferns, morel mushrooms and herbs to sell to craft and floral shops, health stores and dyers in Kentucky towns. But Cassie had said, just before they went to bed, that she had not been to most of Mariah’s sang sites with her and she couldn’t find a trace of her in their usual wildcrafting areas. Jessie could only pray she’d find some of her mother’s notes in the house or that she’d recall the sang counting sites once she was out in the woods with Drew.

  She snapped open her big suitcase and pulled out two of the silk scarves she’d bought in Hong Kong as gifts for friends and coworkers—and for her mother, as strange as it would be to see her in silk. The jade-hued one she tied around Pearl’s cotton nightgown like a sash while the child was all big eyes, so excited at the gift. The scarlet one she kept out for Cassie, since that was her favorite color.

  “Now you just stay snug as a bug in a rug in that bed until I take a bath, and, after I get dressed, you can help me set the table for breakfast,” she told Pearl.

  She bent back down to her tightly packed suitcase and dug past her two business suits and the array of blouses she’d taken until she found the single pair of clean jeans and a long-sleeved sweatshirt that, unfortunately, was emblazoned with a Phi Beta Kappa key. Not that most Deep Downers would know or care what that was, but what had seemed so right for the conference was all wrong here. She decided she’d just wear it inside out and find something of her mother’s to wear later—if Drew let her touch anything in her house.

  “You from the Highboro Herald or another paper?” Drew asked the blond guy with the expensive camera equipment. The stranger was leaning against Jessie’s car, in front of the police office, to steady himself while he took a picture down the street toward the bridge. He looked almost Nordic—like a Viking—with light blue eyes and white-blond hair.

  Drew had been wondering if Mariah’s disappearance would attract any media. Unless he could find out she’d been abducted and taken out of the area, he didn’t want them involved, but it was hard to keep the search low-key with so many people helping.

  “Newspaper? Not me,” the man said almost defensively as he lowered the camera and turned to face Drew. “Officer, I plead not guilty to being part or parcel of the American media today.” Unlike most civilians, he did not hesitate to step forward and shake hands. “Tyler Finch,” he said. “I was just in the area, that’s all. I’m doing a photo book on Appalachia.”

  “Sheriff Drew Webb. You just drive in this morning?”

  “I stayed in Highboro last night at a B and B—my cousin’s place, actually—so I do know the basic area. My bread-and-butter job is as a site analyst for the advertising firm Bailey and Keller, in New York City.”

  Drew observed he had a video camera as well, hanging behind his back on a shoulder sling. A notebook and pen stuck out of his denim jacket. Drew didn’t put it past a reporter to try to sneak in around here, but for some reason, he believed this man.

  “We’ve got a missing person case ongoing here, Mr. Finch. That’s why I thought you might be media.”

  “Sure, no problem. Besides my own stuff, my payi
ng assignment is to shoot some possible scenes for future magazine and TV ads, but I’ll be sure to stay out of your way. Actually, I’m going to photograph what my boss calls the mecca of ginseng. Bailey and Keller’s going to do some ads for G-Men and G-Women new caffeine and ginseng drinks. Their company rep, Beth Brazzo, has already scouted some places, but I’m not very good at directions, even with notes.”

  Drew thought of Mariah’s notes on her sang sites. He hoped they weren’t missing. But he could hardly force this guy to stay out of the woods around here.

  “I’ve met Ms. Brazzo,” he told Finch. “Tall, brunette.”

  “That’s her. Look, I know you’re busy, but could you suggest someone who’d like to be my assistant—point out spots for shots?—I’d pay them.”

  “I do have someone in mind. How about I meet you right here around eight-thirty and bring her along? Cassandra Keenan’s her name, and she’s what they call a wildcrafter, knows the hills well from gathering herbs and such.”

  “That would be great. Let me know if I can do anything for you.”

  After he drove away, Drew did think of something Tyler Finch might be able to do for him, besides providing Cassie and Pearl with some income to get them through the winter. If Drew and Jess found any evidence of foul play in Mariah’s disappearance, he might need a photographer faster than it would take Sheriff Akers or the highway patrol to get one in here. He had an old camera in the Cherokee, but he was lousy with it.

  As he turned down Cassie’s bumpy lane, he shook his head as if to rid himself of the growing fear that something really bad had happened to Mariah. More than once, he’d wanted a case to prove himself around here, but not this one.

  Chapter 5

  5

  T hrough the front window, Jessie watched Cassie arguing with Drew outside. She wore her new scarf, tied around her like a thin shawl, and it fluttered in the breeze, snapping itself into an S shape.