Absentee List_An Old Horse Mystery

by Elskan Triumph

“Or you use never having received the award as some sort of twisted proof that you aren’t pandering to the whims of parents or current trends. Being impervious to popularity and being a good teacher are two different things.”

  “Can be,” Horse replied.

  “What?”

  “They can be two different things. But, it’s a point. An intelligent point. I give so little thought to awards that I might be stuck in a rut. Bravo. I’m quite surprised it came from you.”

  “Well, a broken clock is right twice a day.”

  “You said it, not me.”

  Horse didn’t bother mentioning he’d won the award five years prior.

  “Did he drop the lawsuit?” Horse asked.

  The two sat in his office eating a late lunch. Mostly, Horse was eating from a supply of candy Wells had in a bowl to bribe kids in an emergency.

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Does it matter? It’s not so easy. Lawyers. Superintendent. Parents. School board. He could kiss you at this point and you’ll be lucky to keep your job.”

  “If he kisses me I’m sure that’ll be a new lawsuit of some kind.” Horse washed a chocolate-covered wafer candy down with coffee. “So, you just spoke about old times, then?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What was his wife like?”

  “Sonja?”

  “You two went to college together, right?”

  “You know...”

  “That you dated...”

  “Horse...”

  “And you were having an affair.”

  “I don’t...”

  Horse cut him off. “I knew then.”

  Throughout Wells had been eating, and he continued to chew. Slowly.

  “How?” he said, swallowing.

  “You and I hung out together two nights a week. You went to the Tomlinsons’ one night a week. And you dated another night a week. Add parent meetings and school boards…”

  “So?”

  “I never met your date.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  “For not introducing me to the married woman you were having an affair with? No.”

  “Listen... It was not...”

  “I don’t care. I’m sure it was sweet. She was leaving him soon. Their tensions were affecting poor Amanda. Yes, yes...”

  Putting down his sandwich, Wells tiredly begged in the soft way that friends can without a loss of ace. “Can we not talk about this.”

  “Did the father know?”

  “No.”

  “I mean, now? I knew he didn’t when Amanda was my student, but now?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s be honest.” Horse picked up his coffee mug and raised it to his mouth, taking a slow drink. “We’ve never been honest about this. It’s a little lie I’ve allowed you to keep because it’s all so sad. You had an affair. She died. You did you best to help the orphan child.”

  “Something like that. Except she wasn’t an orphan. Her father...”

  “Yes, yes...” Horse waved his protests away. “But orphan sounds more pathetic.”

  “Yes, it does. It’s not accurate, though.”

  Picking up his sandwich, Wells put it down again and looked out the window.

  “And he still doesn’t know?”

  “No,” Wells replied. “He doesn’t know.”

  “Okay. That’s all I wanted to confirm.”

  “Are we square?”

  Smiling, Horse replied, “What do I care about an affair from nearly ten years ago?”

  CHAPTER 17

  Looking around his classroom, Horse noticed that five seats were empty.

  “Has sugaring begun?” Horse asked Tillie, a big-boned blonde girl who seemed oblivious to most things happening around her. She wore clothes meant for a thinner girl, but Horse admired her stubborn willingness to feel comfortable in her body. “Dumb as a box of rocks,” her father had told him. Horse liked her. She’s my kind of student, he had told Wells during placement.

  “I think so,” she replied. “My father’s been tramping around the woods for a week, pulling on lines. I dunno if he’s collected any sap, yet.”

  ‘How many bottles of Jim Beam does he have hidden out there?’ Horse thought.

  The weather had turned warmer, and the four feet of snow covering everything began to take on a dense, rounded shape. Driving in, the streets were wet and still slick from the night chill, but drops were not evident in the windows of the classroom.

  “Perhaps we need to take a field trip,” the teacher said.

  The class grew excited.

  A few times Horse had surprised a student by showing up at their house. Of course, he had brought the other twenty-odd students in the class, and everyone knew the kid in question was playing hooky. These trips were now the stuff of legend—so much so that no one could remember it actually occurring. Still, some of his class had hoped this was one of those times.

  But the old teacher had no intention of interfering with this Vermont lifeblood—sugaring must not be stopped. Sugaring was different than playing hooky. It was tradition that students missed certain days, including the first week of hunting season and the height of sugaring. Many of his families relied on the income sugaring brought, if only to pay the taxes on the land the trees sat on. Horse knew of at least twenty families that clung to ancestral woodlots. Those fifty-acre clusters of trees held the sum total of the family’s wealth. The old man understood. For that week, only independent reading was assigned; in the community, everyone knew that he knew and approved. For his concern, Horse always got a nice quart of Grade A maple syrup from each of the families when the kids showed up the following week. “They are,” he tells Wells every year, “great for re-gifting.”

  Seven years prior, Horse had had a student that missed the first week of every season: not only deer, moose, and turkey, but bow, black powder, and rifle season. When the boy’s father pulled him at the start of fishing season, and then for a week of sugaring, Wells forced Horse to set up an alternative program for the boy, as the older brother, similarly pulled by the dad in order to indulge in the hunt, had found himself an adult unable to hold a job and had resorted to selling meth. “Great, more work,” Horse had said. “Why not give everyone an alternative program?” But then he walked away before Wells replied, fearful he would take Horse’s sarcasm as an initiative. The boy’s plan was a success, even as Wells saw it as a stopgap at the time. Last year Horse’s former student went to college down in Castleton and the grateful father sent him a full gallon of maple syrup, Grade B, Horse’s favorite.

  That day, Horse did want to check out a sugaring operation. A quick phone call to Laporte Construction confirmed that the woods behind Dan’s house was in operation. He had not given his name, nor his intent to show up with a class of students.

  “This is kind of a sudden trip,” Wells said, hearing of it for the first time as twenty students slogged through the main corridor, past the main office, in their winter boots.

  “I’ve been planning it for quite some time,” Horse replied.

  Wells held up the unsigned field trip form. “No signature?”

  Horse shrugged, but Wells waived it off.

  “I accept that.”

  “Great…”

  “But, you forgot to fill in the location.”

  At this Horse smiled.

  Wells knew where they were going.

  “So, you’re going to bring twenty seventh graders to the woods around Dan’s house in hopes of finding the dead body of one of their classmate’s dad?”

  “It takes a village.”

  “No.”

  He had said it in a tone that was final. It was not a tone he had used often, but when he did Horse knew he was treading on thin ice. The old teacher paid attention. Moving his body so that his shoulders were square with Wells, he laid out his reasons.

  “But they won’t find a body.”

  “Then why go?”

&nb
sp; “Honestly?”

  “No.” Wells did not want to know. He did, though, want the kids to be safe. “Don’t tell me.”

  Then he added, “No body.”

  “If I thought…”

  With a cheap Papermate pen that barely wrote, Wells signed the form and filled in the location.

  “See that you don’t,” he said.

  Laporte had an old guy poking around the lines, a local with sixty years of tapping experience and relatives that sent construction business the contractor’s way. The forest was a web of blue plastic tubing, and looked to Horse less intimidating in the daylight.

  “I’m Jerry,” the man grunted at Horse. No handshake. “Tell the kids not to touch anything.”

  Instead, Horse instructed his students to look at everything.

  “Tramp around,” he told them.

  A few parent chaperones—Horse had a list of parents panting to be involved in anything he did—stood around in the snow, unsure of what to do but looking cold. Instead of spending money for a bus, Horse had created a network of parents that could pile a few kids into their car or van for local destinations. They also acted as chaperones, which made both Wells and the parents feel better; Wells because someone was watching Horse, and the parents because of a perceived connection with their child. On that day, he was able to find Ms. Hall, owner of a ten-passenger van.

  “Get out there,” he told Ms. Hall. “Stomp some blood into your feet.”

  Most of the time, Horse ignored the parents or sent them on errands. Parents who stay after the drop-off wanted to be useful, he knew. They fetched coffee, at Horse’s request, or he tethered them to his least trustworthy students. After a stressful few hours, Horse noted that they appreciate both his job and their own child more. Today, though, he wanted as much ground searched as possible.

  “For what?” he thought. I doubt there’s a body here.

  “Hey,” he called out to Jerry. “Where’s Dan? I thought he’d be working the lines, as his house is right there.”

  “Other stuff to do,” Jerry replied. It’s unclear if Dan was on a worksite, or if Jerry simply had more important things to do than talk to Horse. He turned and headed into the woods. Horse could tell he was resisting all of his urges to yell at the students. None of them had touched a single blue line—in Vermont, you learn early that some things are simply off limits—but twenty hyperactive children otherwise unrestrained made Jerry nervous. Horse figured he has about twenty minutes of goodwill left.

  Then Horse heard the crying. Vicky forgot to wear anything resembling winter footwear that day, but didn’t tell Horse when he had asked. She knew that he would pull out a milk crate of old boots, mittens, and hats and expect her to wear them. Instead, she lied. Now she was in tears, her feet ice in the fake leather flats and thin cotton tights. Beyond a web of blue plastic tubing, she was up to her thigh in melting spring snow.

  Always the caretaker, Horse began making his way under the tubes and towards his student.

  Meanwhile, it was Ms. Hall, feet cold and exploring beyond where the students congregated in clusters of three and four while they checked the reception of their cell phones, who found the body.

  “Look at that,” was all Jerry had said as Horse led the children, a now hysterical Vicky and a shocked Ms. Hall back to the cars.

  CHAPTER 18

  Two hours later only Horse and Ms. Hall were left, along with half a dozen troopers and other police personnel, and Jerry. Parents had been called to pick up their kids, which they did without hesitation. Horse figured no one would pass up the chance to snoop on the crime scene; Horse found himself answering inane questions by parents so they could look over his shoulder for a glimpse of the body.

  “They took the body away already,” Horse had said to Ms. Matron in response to her question about potential food allergies in the classroom. The mother turned around without a word.

  Ms. Hall’s son went home with another classmate. Another parent came to ferry the few remaining students back to school.

  Because no one could get hold of Dan—or as Horse began calling him to Wells, the man claiming to be Peter’s dad—the police couldn’t use his house as a base, so Horse and Ms. Hall were forced to stand on a shoveled but cold walkway. A trooper had offered his car to sit in, and Horse had declined. Ms. Hall had lasted two minutes before feeling claustrophobic in the back of the cruiser. In her own van, she felt alone. Now she stood with a green wool blanket wrapped around her body, next to Horse. One of the men had given them coffee from a thermos, but as they had no cream or sugar Horse drank both cups while Ms. Hall looked miserable. It wasn’t the cold that bothered her, but not being able to leave.

  Not being able to leave, with that body so close.

  A team was examining it, but Horse was pretty sure it was Dan.

  On the old teacher’s feet were Sorels, which kept them warm, but he stomped them to wake them up. He had been wearing Sorels from when he had tried snowboarding before snowboarding had its own shoe. Before he ruined his right knee. That was five pairs ago, but he still wore the same model: the 1964 Premium Leather Boot. They were warm, and heavy, and when he walked in them he could feel a slight tug in his knee from the weight. That tug was a feeling that he took for granted, but never really forgot was there. He found it oddly comforting.

  “Do you think we’ll get to go soon?” Ms. Hall asked.

  “Sure,” Horse grunted.

  “I have to get my kids.”

  With that information in hand, Horse trod through a path already made to the troopers milling around. Explaining the situation, one came back. After a few questions Ms. Hall was free to go.

  “Are you going to be all right to drive?” the trooper asked.

  Ms. Hall shrugged, unsure. But she left just the same, her giant van skidding down the icy road.

  The trooper returned to his colleagues, but another came to talk to Horse.

  “You’ve been busy,” Trooper Danielson said. His face did not offer friendship or anger; it was all business. “All these years of not seeing you, and now…”

  “Like a bad penny,” Horse replied.

  “Let’s hope not.”

  After Horse had explained why his class were there, and how Ms. Hall found the body, the two stood in silence. Trooper Danielson was thinking, because he knew that nothing Horse did was as it seemed.

  “Why this sugaring operation?” he asked.

  “I was here a few weeks ago, looking for Dan’s body,” Horse said, voice gruff from the damp cold. “Well, before Dan showed up.”

  Horse wanted to look at the corpse, to see if it was indeed Dan—the man Horse thought of as Dan. If it was, then who was the man posing as Peter’s father? Or was it someone else? They had, after all, searched the woods just a few weeks ago. Perhaps this was a new victim.

  Was Peter in trouble?

  It was something he had thought many times in the past two hours. Even as his students left, Horse stayed in the hope of intercepting Peter as he came home from school. He looked at his watch; a little before three. ‘Peter’s bus would be coming soon,’ Horse thought.

  Instead, Dan II drove up.

  That was the shorthand name Horse used when talking to Wells.

  Piling out of the late model Ford F150 that Horse had seen in the barn a few weeks prior, Dan—the man claiming to be Dan, Horse thought—slammed the driver’s door and stormed up to the trooper, barking, “What the hell is going on here!” Horse watched spit fly from his mouth. As he had approached the trooper, Dan had glanced at Horse. A flash of recognition passed over him—what was this man doing at his house—but Dan ignored him to engage the trooper.

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  Trooper Danielson hadn’t budged. “We have found…” the trooper began.

  “Yes,” Dan said curtly, “I know. Everyone knows. That’s why I’m here.”

  “The body was found while a school group was observing the sugaring operation.”

&
nbsp; “What gave you,” Dan said, turning to Horse, “the right to be here?”

  Horse leaned against the state police car. His knee had begun to hurt, and as the afternoon wore on it hurt more. And Dan II was pissing him off.

  “I got the okay from Laporte,” he said. His tone was dismissive, indicating that Dan really had no right to be on his own property. Which was true.

  Saying nothing, Dan stomped up his walk to the front door and let himself in. After a few minutes it was clear he was not coming out again, and Horse noticed black smoke coming from the chimney hooked up to the woodstove. A few of the personnel came from the area around the body. They opened the back of their van and withdrew halogen lights.

  ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ Horse thought.

  And it was.

  At two a.m. Horse had corrected only seven papers, but had gone through the rest of his scotch. He was drinking diet Polar tonic water straight, sitting in the microfiber club chair recliner, tumbler in hand. Horse looked at the handmade clock that hung over his woodstove, a gift from a former student. Really noticing it for the first time in years, he was surprised it had survived his yearly clearings—every year, the old teacher went through and tossed all but the most useful gifts. There was little sentimentality in his house, only function and things he bought himself; his comic book collection, for example. The clock had somehow made it through—hung and kept. Four hours until he had to get up.

  It was little comfort that the clock was often wrong.

  ‘Like the kid who made it for me,’ Horse thought with a yawn. It wasn’t wrong enough.

  Then, he drowned himself in more quinine.

  On the back of Tracy Jenkins’ paper he had diagramed his thoughts.

  Laporte interested in keeping me away from Dan.

  Dan had worked for Laporte, but official records showed that work was sporadic and none of it recent.

  When Dan was missing, Laporte had thirty men, on the clock, help search for him.

  A body was found behind Dan’s house, which is also Laporte’s sugaring spot.