In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  Jonathan sat back in the chair and stared into his wineglass. Lena made some joke about the stove, then slipped onto his lap and kissed him, her tongue teasing against his lips. He kissed her back, but just barely. He was thinking about Mary. Something was not right. If someone from Atlanta needed Mary Crow, they’d contact Stump Logan, the county sheriff, who would probably contact him. He’d worked with city cops before, even the Feds. Nobody in legitimate law enforcement would just drive up and hire Billy Swimmer in his Sioux war bonnet. He gave Lena a disengaging peck, then shifted backward in the chair. “Have we got a couple of minutes till dinner?”

  “A couple.” Lena raised a wary eyebrow. “Why?”

  “I think I might walk over to the trailhead and see what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on, Jonathan.” Lena seemed to press down harder in his lap. “Somebody just needed to find Mary. Somebody hired Billy to help. What’s the big deal?”

  “It sounds odd. I’d like to check it out.”

  She stood up quickly and folded her arms. A flush of irritation pinkened the bridge of her nose. “Should I wait dinner?”

  “No. I’ll be back by the time the bread gets done.”

  Jonathan hurried downstairs before Lena could say anything more and wove through the darkened store to the front door. Outside, the cool air felt good against his skin, the breeze a crisp relief from the suddenly cloying aroma of simmering stew.

  He hurried off the porch and strode west, where the Little Jump Off Trail began. Mary had taken up a lot of space in his head since she’d stopped by the store two days ago. Every time he passed the Coke cooler he thought of when they’d sat and washed salted peanuts down with two small-sized Cokes. Often he could hear her laughter echoing through his room, and for the past two nights he could almost feel the warm weight of her body on the bed, as if she lay beside him instead of his old pillow. If only , his thoughts would crank up like a chorus of manic cicadas. If only you’d just walked her home that afternoon. What then? He would never have had to see that terrible look in her eyes, nor would he have ever felt Stump Logan’s official wrath pointed straight at him like the barrel of a shotgun.

  I understand you and Mary Crow were together when the murder occurred. Jonathan had nodded, his eyes downcast. “Have you got anybody who can testify to that?” Jonathan’s mouth felt like the inside of an old cornhusk; he could only shake his head. Stump’s eyes bored into him. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what you two were doing?” Jonathan looked straight at him then. There was not a man on earth, white or Cherokee, who could pull that answer from him. Stump stared back, then the very ends of his mouth twisted up in a sardonic smile.“Well, boy, that kind of puts you right at the top of the suspect list, don’t it?”

  “Let it go,” he whispered, turning away from the twelve-year-old tape that played inside his head. “You can’t change history.”

  He lengthened his stride, hurrying to the trailhead. No point in making Lena any madder than she already was. As he walked, the moon began to peek over Little Haw Mountain, illuminating the shallow, rushing river that tumbled along the left side of the road. Jonathan could hear the splash of trout as they leapt against the current, and along the bank one die-hard bullfrog bellowed a hopeful love song to a breeding season long past.

  “Better get buried fast, buddy,” Jonathan called to the frog. “Or your ass is gonna be ice cubes.”

  The road curled away from the river in a tight curve through the mountains, then the trailhead came into view. Jonathan pinged a rock against the grapeshotpeppered sign that read SCENIC OVERLOOK and turned from the highway up onto the narrow access road. His footsteps crunched in the gravel as he walked to the small, flat area that had been graded off to accommodate cars. He stopped and looked around. At one end of the tiny lot sat three cars, near a Park Service garbage can. The red Beemer Mary had driven up in glowed burgundy in the moonlight. Beside it stood the battered silhouette of Billy’s rusted-out truck. Next to that sat a gleaming white shape Jonathan did not recognize. He walked toward it, his steps making not a sound.

  The driver had backed in, revealing only a front license plate from a car rental agency. Jonathan approached the car carefully, then recognized the lines of a new Ford Taurus. He touched the hood with one finger. The finish felt like silk.

  “Damn,” breathed Jonathan. “I bet this car doesn’t have a thousand miles on it.”

  The doors were locked, so he peered inside the driver’s window. All he could see was a crumpled gas receipt and a manila envelope on the passenger seat. He cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face against the glass. Then his heart stopped. On one corner of the envelope, printed in bright red letters, was the name Whitman.

  THIRTY

  Are you going to Atagahi before we even eat?” Lena clutched a long wooden spoon, the cassoulet bubbling merrily on the stove beside her.

  He nodded from the kitchen chair as he tightened the laces of his boots.

  “Jonathan, we’re just about to sit down to a four-course dinner with two different kinds of wine. You’ve already tromped around the woods most of the day.” She scowled at him, then sought to soften her voice. “If you’re that concerned about Mary, why don’t you call Sheriff Logan?”

  “Because Stump won’t get his lazy ass in gear until daybreak,” he replied. “If I leave now, I’ll have half a day’s head start.”

  “But you don’t even know anything’s wrong. Maybe she and her friends were having so much fun they decided to stay longer.”

  “Lena, she just nailed some rich bastard named Whitman for murder. Don’t you think it’s a bit coincidental that the guy who hires Billy to find her leaves an envelope with the name Whitman on the front seat of his rental car?”

  “Not if he’s from her office. It probably has something to do with the case she was working on.”

  “Nobody from the Deckard County DA’s office would drive up here and hire Billy Swimmer out of the blue. It just doesn’t work like that.”

  “It could, though.” Lena turned the heat off under the cassoulet, her lower lip beginning to tremble.

  He looked at her and felt a pang of guilt. “Hey, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to check this out. Just put the stew in the freezer. We can eat it next weekend.”

  “It’s not stew, Jonathan. It’s cassoulet and it won’t be any good next weekend.” She tossed the wooden spoon in the sink.

  Jonathan reached for the phone on the wall and dialed a number. Busy. He hung up and dialed another number. A moment later, he slammed the phone down.

  “I’m going to grab some gear,” he told Lena, who wouldn’t look at him. “Would you try Stump Logan again in a few minutes? Tell him what’s going on, and tell him I’m on my way to Atagahi to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Isn’t Atagahi a whole day away?” She grabbed his old pink dish sponge and began to scrub at the counter.

  “Yes. But I figure if I leave now and hike fast, I can make it there by dawn.”

  The small muscle in her jaw twitched as she scoured the stained grout between the tile. For a moment neither one spoke, then Jonathan broke the silence.

  “Lena, why are you acting like this?”

  She turned to him, her brown eyes moist with tears. “Because I have spent most of three days and a week’s salary on this meal that we both agreed last week would be a lovely thing to do.” She flung the sponge in the sink beside the wooden spoon. “Of course that was before Mary Crow showed back up.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Mary’s an old friend. She might be in a lot of trouble.”

  “That’s why we have a sheriff, Jonathan. And tribal police and the Forest Service. You just pick up the phone and dial 911 and let them deal with it.”

  “Give me a break, Lena. Mary’s not in the Quallah boundary. She’s somewhere either in North Carolina or Tennessee. The tribal cops would be way out of their jurisdiction and the Forest Service guys can’t find their asses with both h
ands.” He stomped into the bedroom. In a few moments he returned, his old army pack on his back.

  She was still standing in front of the sink, her face tight with disappointment, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “Look,” he said softly. “I’m sorry to ruin your supper, but I need to check this out. We’ll eat the stew another time, okay?”

  “Cassoulet,” she whispered as he moved toward her. He held her lightly in his arms. When she felt his mouth brush against hers she wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and opened her lips. She tried to pull him deep inside, but his tongue danced with play instead of passion, and in a moment he pulled away.

  “I’ll see you when I get back,” he told her, hurrying downstairs to the store. “Don’t forget to call Stump, okay?”

  She tried to ignore the brightness in his eyes and the high color of his cheeks as she watched him grab his shotgun from under the counter and disappear behind the cigarette display. She heard him walk to the candy aisle, then his footsteps crossed the room.

  “Bye,” he called. The door banged behind him and she stood alone in silence, save for a final gasp of steam that hissed from the now cooling cassoulet.

  “Bye,” she replied to the empty store. For a long moment she stared at the pot on the stove, counting the hours she’d spent preparing this meal. They were much like the hours she’d spent waiting for Jonathan to call her, or slip his hand in hers, or even kiss her first in greeting each time they met. Suddenly another door slammed inside her head, and she realized that here, at Little Jump Off, “cassoulet” would always be “stew” and Mary Crow would always be the real dish Jonathan Walkingstick hungered for.

  “You bastard,” she hissed as she lifted the lid of the pot and dumped a hundred dollars’ worth of food and a three-hour trip to Asheville in the sink. A moist cloud of clove and garlic boiled up as she turned and pulled the bread from the oven. She ripped it in half and dropped it on the cassoulet, then fired the raspberries on top, one by one. When the mess looked repulsive enough she took the half-empty Pouilly-Fumé bottle and smashed it against the edge of the counter. Glass and wine exploded all over the tiny kitchen.

  “You damn bastard!” she screamed, as hot tears rolled down her cheeks. Sobbing, she turned and looked at the telephone. She should, she supposed, try and call Sheriff Logan. Good old Lena would certainly do that. Good old Lena washed clothes and cleaned up kitchens and provided sex and Sunday papers. Surely she could make the small gesture of dialing the three digits that might save Mary Crow’s life. After all, Jonathan had asked her to.

  “To hell with that!” She jerked the receiver off the wall and threw it in the sink, where it sat like some bizarre garnish on top of the rest of the ruined meal. If Jonathan wanted to call Stump Logan that badly, then he could just damn well dial him himself. She had wasted too much time here already. She grabbed her coat and hurried downstairs to the front door. She had a life of her own, goddamn it. If she started right this instant, she might be able to find it before it became as lost as stupid Mary Crow.

  Jonathan loped straight down the middle of the road. No cars approached from either direction, and his footsteps broke the moonlit stillness with a rapid, staccato cadence. In the glittering sky, Orion was rising in the east, out for an evening’s stellar prey. Jonathan remembered another, long-ago hunt.

  “We don’t know who we’re looking for,” Stump Logan said to the men clustered around the map unfolded on the hood of his cruiser. “Other than a male who knows his way through the woods. I want you to divide into two-man teams and choose a section of the forest to search. If you see anything, radio me back here. Do not attempt a capture and don’t try to be a hero. I don’t need anybody else getting themselves killed.” Jonathan and Billy had listened, then stepped forward. Logan had glared at them, but the teenagers had signed their names to the farthest, most difficult section. They didn’t care about the danger, and they didn’t give a shit about what Stump Logan wanted. They would bring back the head of Martha Crow’s killer and lay it at Mary’s feet; then they would eat the heart on a cracker. Hell, they were young Cherokee bucks with the blood of the great warrior Tsali in their veins. It probably wouldn’t take them the morning.

  Five days later they returned with nothing. Not a trail or a sign, or a shadow of a clue. Stump Logan had only shrugged when they reported their utter failure, but Mary had watched eagerly as Jonathan climbed the steps to her house. How hard it had been to look into her face and tell her they hadn’t found her mother’s killer.

  How long ago that had been, Jonathan realized as he turned his gaze away from the stars and shifted the pack on his shoulders. Billy had all his teeth, he had reliable knees and they both had legs that could run forever. Still, they came up short. Tonight, he thought, maybe it’ll turn out different.

  He glanced once at the pale silhouette of the Taurus as he crossed the trailhead parking lot; then, carrying a single small flashlight, he plunged into the forest.

  Immediately he surprised two possums snuffling beneath the low branches of a pine tree. They looked up, their retinas flashing red, then ambled into the underbrush, naked pink tails curling behind them.

  He watched them disappear, then he ran through a mental checklist about Mary. What do you know about her, he asked in the ancient tradition of the tracker. That she’s smart. That she’s probably in fair physical shape. That she’s very capable in the woods.

  What do you know about her pursuer? Nothing, other than he’d driven up in a rented Ford and paid Billy Swimmer a thousand bucks to lead him to Mary. Could he hike? Did he know how to track? Jonathan shook his head as he splashed across a shallow creek that glinted silver in the rising moon. It didn’t matter what the guy knew. He had Billy Swimmer, and Billy knew the woods better than the strings of his fiddle.

  For three hours he moved through the dark forest. Along a streambed, where the trail grew muddy, he knelt and beamed his flashlight on the ground. Footprints in varying sizes indented the mud, all going the same direction. The smallest set bore the crisp ridges of new boots. All the other prints were worn. Adds up, Jonathan thought. The dark-haired girl with the Brooklyn accent was new at camping. Mary and her taller friend had camped before.

  He hiked on, hurrying through the hours, weaving through the moonlit trees like a shadow. At last he reached the point where the trail divided. He looked once toward the Ghosts and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. Then he tightened his grip on his shotgun and turned right, where the trail rose like an escalator through a stand of trees.

  He climbed until that odd hour of the night when the earth belonged to neither sun nor moon. As he approached the last mountain before Atagahi, he blinked. Lights. Thirty yards to his right. He saw lights. Someone was camping.

  “Mary!” His impulsive cry broke the silence like a gunshot. There was no reply. They’re sleeping, he decided, trembling with relief. They took the harder trail home and staked lights around their campsite before they went to sleep. He ran forward, crashing through the underbrush. “Mary! It’s Jonathan!”

  He splashed through a creek, cold water soaking his pants up to his knees. The lights were clustered just ahead, around both sides of the stream. He ran faster. “Mary!” he called again.

  Suddenly he stopped. He realized what he was running toward. What he was seeing through the trees was not the flares of campers, but just a growth of fox fire. The luminescent fungi that people attributed to everything from fairies to spacemen.

  “Fuck!” he cried, kicking at one incandescent chunk of decayed log. It tumbled rotten into the stream, still shining brightly as the water swept it away.

  He took his pack off and sat down on a log. What an idiot he was! A big-time guide being fooled by fox fire. Next he’d be heading for the caves to consult with the Nunnehi. Keeping his shotgun close beside him, he stretched out on the ground and considered the facts he knew. The three women had come this way, yet he had seen no sign of them other than their footprints. If
he didn’t find them tomorrow at Atagahi, then he would retrace his steps and go through the Ghosts.

  He put it out of his mind and closed his eyes. Cullasaja, the last mountain that guarded Atagahi, was too treacherous to climb in the dark. He might as well get an hour or two of rest and start again at first light. Leaning back against the log, he cradled his shotgun in his arms. Suddenly he was years away; strong, and incredibly young.

  “I heard your grandmother is coming for you,” he said to her. They sat side by side on the back porch of the funeral home, he throwing Ribtickler in a nervous game of mumblety-peg.

  “I don’t want to stay here, Jonathan,” she replied. She wore a white blouse and a blue gingham skirt that came to her ankles.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mary. It wasn’t our fault. There was nothing anybody could have done.” He tossed words at her willy nilly, hoping a few would come close to what he wanted to say.

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  “And they’re right,” he insisted, flicking the knife in the dirt.

  “My grandmother wants me to do this, Jonathan. She wants to send me to college.”

  “But what about us?” He had not touched her since that afternoon. He longed to feel her skin against his, to twine his fingers through hers. “I love you.”

  She looked at him for what seemed like forever. Her eyes reminded him of the mottled creek stones that lay under clear water. “I love you, too,” she replied. “But that doesn’t change a thing.”

  An ovenbird woke him, its happy teacher-teacher-teacher call carrying through the woods. He sat up and looked around. For a moment he thought he’d heard Mary. Then he realized that it was a bird; that Mary was still just as gone as she had been when he drifted off to sleep. He forced himself to be optimistic. The day was new: he would surely find them lolling in the warm waters of the spring. And Billy was no fool; if this mystery man from Deckard County meant Mary any harm he would piece it together. Right now he was probably leading the man surreptitiously back toward Stump Logan’s jail. Jonathan opened his pack and drank a warm Coke, then, shouldering his gear, he began to climb.