Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff

by J. E. Thompson

  Professor Washburn and Grandma Em went around the edges of the plot, looking at the ground with great care and tying the colored tape to different bushes and trees to mark off a rough square. When they finished, Professor Washburn came to where Bee and I were standing, and he led us to some of the depressions in the ground, where he squatted down and felt around under the thick litter of fallen magnolia leaves, finding several small pieces of pottery.

  “Very often either yuccas or cedars or magnolias were used to mark the graves because the slaves had no gravestones, and these plates and cups would have been some of the very few possessions the slaves had,” he said. “Their loved ones put them around the graves to help the spirits on their journey.”

  I looked at the small pieces of plates or cups the professor had found, but when I looked over at Bee, she was staring at a piece of a broken bowl and I could tell her mind was going a million miles an hour.

  Grandma Em came up and put her hand on Bee’s shoulder. “You okay, sweetheart?” she said gently.

  Bee nodded but kept staring at the little shard. “This could have belonged to somebody in our family,” she said, after a few moments.

  “Yes,” Grandma Em whispered.

  A few seconds later, when we put all the pieces back under the leaves where the professor had found them, I felt bad, like I wanted to apologize for something. I wasn’t quite sure how to put it into words, so I said nothing.

  When we finished at the grave site, Grandma Em and Professor Washburn dropped us off at the barn. Bee had been quiet on the way back to the plantation, and she was still quiet when we walked back into the cool darkness of the barn. At one point as I saddled Timmy I felt Bee’s eyes on me, and when I turned around she was staring at me the way she might have looked at a complete stranger.

  “What?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was.

  Bee took a deep breath and let it hiss out. “I’m just trying to understand how anyone could have treated people so badly.”

  I nodded and felt my shoulders sag. I knew she was talking about my family and her family. It was the same question that had been digging away at my brain ever since we’d found those pieces of pottery. That was just about all those people had owned, a plate and maybe a bowl, along with the shoes on their feet and the shirts on their backs. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “But I’m sorry.”

  Bee came over and gave me a soft punch on the shoulder. “I know,” she said. “It’s just that, living here, all that stuff seems so close sometimes.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Wanting to find a way to break the awkwardness, I took out the map from a day earlier, where I had marked off the roads we’d already gone down. “Look, we’ve done these,” I said, showing Bee. “Okay with you if we start here?” I pointed at the dirt road where we’d been just a little while earlier. I hadn’t seen any place on that road before we reached the slave graveyard that we needed to explore.

  Bee shrugged. “Sure,” she said.

  We led the ponies out of the barn and mounted up, and just as it always did, the act of getting up on Timmy’s back made me feel better. I looked overhead and saw that the sky was cloudless, which meant it was going to be another scorcher. Even the breeze seemed so tired out by a long summer of hot days that it could hardly be bothered to blow.

  My brain sort of went to sleep in heat, and I forgot about everything but riding ponies and finding Yemassee as we trotted off the plantation, to the end of the dirt road and then along the paved county road, once again seeing very few other cars or trucks. A horse van went by, a pickup and a tractor, and then another of the big tractor trailers roared past loaded with dirt that blew off the top and burned our eyes and noses. Just like yesterday we saw no white pickup trucks with double rear tires.

  We took the fork to Bishop’s Point and turned onto the road I had marked, and when we passed the slave graveyard, we once again began riding the fence line of the big properties. We stayed at it for nearly three hours and covered four more roads before we stopped to eat the snacks we had brought along and give the ponies a rest.

  “Sure would be nice to take a swim this afternoon,” Bee said as we mounted again.

  “Yeah,” I said, wiping the sweat from my face with the tail of my T-shirt. “But we should keep going a little while longer,” I said. “School starts tomorrow, and we won’t have very much time to search.”

  Bee sighed and slumped in her saddle. “We haven’t seen anything except some big houses and barns and a bunch of tractors and other farm junk and about twenty snakes.”

  I felt just as hot and tired as she did, but I kept thinking about the judge and about Daddy, who I was pretty sure had gotten a ride into his office with Custis and was working all day getting ready for tomorrow’s hearing. “None of the snakes were poisonous,” I said.

  “But they all scare me. I hate them, even the ones that aren’t poisonous, even their little tiny babies.”

  “But don’t you feel sorry for the judge and Yemassee? Don’t you want to help Daddy and Willie Smalls?”

  “Yeeessss,” Bee drawled out in her most frustrated tone. “You know I do.”

  “Then we need to keep looking.”

  Bee let out a sigh, but she gave Buck a kick and headed down the road beside me.

  We rode for another couple hours until we had covered nearly everything that was left of Bishop’s Point. I felt as hot and cranky as Bee and just as frustrated, because we hadn’t seen a thing that resembled the big white pickup truck or a stolen dog. We were getting close to the end of the very last road on the point when we came to another large property.

  “This has to be the last place,” Bee said. “If I don’t get in the river soon, I’m gonna die.”

  “Okay,” I promised.

  The property had a white fence along its front and an electric gate across its drive. Low, swampy land ran along the near side of the property, and that meant snakes and alligators, so we stayed on the road and went all the way to the far corner. When we reached it, we saw that the fence turned ninety degrees and ran through fairly dry ground as it headed toward the back of the property and the Leadenwah River. A few yards beyond the fence line what looked like a rutted dirt path also ran back through the palmettos and wild oleander, seeming to run roughly parallel to the plantation’s fence.

  I turned and waved to Bee, who had stopped about twenty yards behind me. “This is the last place, and we have an easy way to sneak along the side.”

  Bee was slumped in her saddle in a way that let me know she was more than ready to quit. I started into the dirt track, but when I glanced back again she still wasn’t following. “Look,” I said, pointing, “solid ground. No swamps in sight. Last place, I promise. Come on.”

  Bee pressed her lips together, swallowing whatever complaint she wanted to make. After a second she gave Buck a reluctant kick and caught up. We started up the path but went only a few yards before the vegetation thickened, pressing close on both sides and cutting off our view ahead or behind. It also killed the breeze, and the air became steamy and close, smelling of mud and rot. Mosquitoes buzzed around my exposed skin, and behind me I could hear Bee slapping as they landed on her.

  When I glanced down at the ground, it looked like a set of big tires had recently gouged the soft dirt. It made me a little nervous, and I tried to look through the thick undergrowth for signs of a shanty or a rusted trailer up ahead. It sure didn’t look like we were riding into a place where someone actually lived, but it wasn’t unheard of to have your basic hillbilly or redneck living next door to a fancy plantation.

  The plantation fence was somewhere off to our right, but the trees were too thick to see it. To my dismay the dirt track bent to the left, heading away from where I sensed the fence had to be, and at the same time it also seemed to get darker and spookier.

  “Abbey!” Bee whispered behind me. “I think we ought to turn around.”

  I was afraid, too, but Bee was m
aking me act braver than I felt. “Just a little farther,” I insisted.

  “Forget it!” Bee’s pony came to a stop behind me.

  My sense of unease had blossomed like a magnolia flower in full sun, but I thought about Daddy and Willie Smalls and Yemassee and Judge Gator and tried to fight off my fear.

  I turned in my saddle and whispered, “Maybe this is where the truck is. How are we ever going to know if we don’t keep going? Remember all the people we need to help.”

  “We won’t help anybody much if some crazy old man lives back here and he shoots us.”

  I looked at her, wishing she wouldn’t talk like that, because it just made it harder for me to keep my own fear under control. “Just a little farther.”

  Bee scowled, but when I nudged Timmy forward with my heels, she came, too. The ground under us was getting wetter, because I could hear the muck sucking at our ponies’ hooves each time they took a step. When I glanced down, I could see that whatever had recently driven in here had also sunk deeper and deeper into the mud as it continued onward.

  Up ahead the path turned even sharper to the left, completely cutting off our view. It felt like flies were buzzing in my stomach, but I said nothing, afraid if I did Bee would turn around and trot back to the road.

  As we came around the curve, my heart went straight into my mouth, and I jerked Timmy to a halt. Up ahead, so deeply buried in the undergrowth that it was almost invisible, I saw the rear end of what looked like a white pickup truck. My heart went even further into my mouth when my gaze dropped and I saw the set of double rear tires.

  I turned in the saddle and looked back at Bee, who hadn’t seen the truck because I was blocking her view. What she didn’t miss was that my eyes were as big as saucers. “What?” she demanded.

  “It’s the truck!” I mouthed.

  Bee’s jaw dropped. She wheeled Buck around, and for a half second I was afraid she was going to start galloping in the other direction.

  “Wait!” I hissed.

  We fast walked the ponies back around the curve until we were out of sight of the truck, and the whole time my brain was racing. I had no idea where the driver and passenger might be. Maybe they’d been close enough to overhear us. I held my breath, listening for voices or the truck engine starting up, but the buzzing of mosquitoes was all that disturbed the heavy silence. After a few seconds my stomach began to unclench.

  “I don’t think they’re here,” I whispered. “The truck is just, like, jammed really far into the bushes. It looks like they drove it as far as they could and left it.”

  Bee let Buck take a couple steps back toward the road. “Fine. We need to call the police! Let them figure it out!”

  I had to admit what she was saying made sense. That was what Daddy and Grandma Em would want us to do. But I started to wonder about Yemassee. “What if Yemassee is here right now? What if she’s right around the corner tied to a tree? What if they just left her there and she’s thirsty and doesn’t have any water? You want to leave when we could maybe get her and take her home right now?”

  “Abbey, sometimes you’re impossible. Those men could be sitting there with guns, just waiting for someone to come looking for them.”

  I shook my head. “If they were here, we would’ve heard them because they would have heard us.”

  I climbed down off Timmy, tied his reins to a bush, and tiptoed back toward the curve. “Abbey!” Bee whispered, but I ignored her. I told myself to relax and think about what was obvious: the truck engine wasn’t running, and it was way too hot for people to be sitting in a truck cab getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

  I came back around the curve feeling like I had a whole covey of quail fluttering around in my stomach, and I peeked at the truck from behind some bushes. Something about where it was, the way it had been left, something I couldn’t put my finger on, wasn’t right. I could see lots of bugs buzzing around the open window. They were either bees or flies, and I wondered what had gotten them all stirred up.

  When I glanced back, I was surprised to see that Bee had climbed down off Buck and followed me. She gave me an angry glance but then crept forward and peeked at the truck with a frightened expression. “What’s it doing there?” she whispered.

  I said nothing as I started toward the rear of the pickup, not wanting to go but dragged forward by a growing sense of dread. The mud was deeper here, and my feet made loud sucking noises as I lifted them, but the closer I got, the surer I was that nobody was there.

  I could see the bugs more clearly. They were flies—black and heavy and moving with a blowsy slowness as if they had eaten big meals and were too stuffed to fly fast.

  I took another couple of steps, and a terrible smell hit me. It hit Bee, too, because she made a choking sound. We probably would have smelled the stink earlier but for the total absence of a breeze in the heavy undergrowth. I took another step, and the smell grew worse.

  “Breathe through your mouth,” I whispered to Bee.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  It was a stomach-twisting stench that reminded me of a dead deer I had found in the woods one time, and it was definitely coming from the truck. “I don’t know,” I whispered, but I had a terrible, heart-wrenching certainty that Yemassee had died, that the men had panicked for some weird reason and abandoned their truck here with her body inside.

  I felt tears bunching at the corners of my eyes, but I sucked a huge breath through my mouth and moved toward the back of the truck, intending to take a quick look and confirm my fears. When I put my head over the side, to my great relief I saw that the truck bed was empty. There was nothing in it but a couple of two-by-fours and some empty burlap sacks.

  My relief caused me to forget the stink, and I took a fresh breath through my nose that nearly made me gag. I had to bend over and take a few quick gulps of air through my mouth to keep from barfing.

  “You okay?” Bee whispered.

  I nodded, but then I noticed that the driver’s side window was open. For a second fresh panic welled up inside. Maybe the driver was sitting there waiting for us after all? No way, I thought. There was absolutely no way anybody could sit quietly and breathe in this stink.

  I took another couple steps forward, and that was when I saw the hand. I choked back the scream that tried to break from my throat.

  “What?” Bee whispered.

  I shook my head for silence, because somebody was in the truck after all. They must have seen us sneaking up the whole time, but if they had, what were they waiting for? I told myself to turn and run, but my feet were half stuck in the mud, and I was nearly paralyzed with fear.

  My eyes stayed riveted on the hand. A fly landed on it, then another. Strangely the man didn’t twitch his fingers to get them off. His skin color was also strange. It was too white, so pale it reminded me of a lemon ice pop.

  This close the smell was even worse. Even though I breathed through my mouth, the stink was so powerful, I could actually taste it. When my fear finally eased enough for me to move, I took another step closer.

  I never took my eyes off the hand, not for a single second. I was only a couple feet away now. There were raw places where the flies had been eating the skin. I knew it had to hurt like crazy, but the hand still didn’t move.

  I glanced around, saw a small dead branch, and picked it up. Trembling, I gave the hand a little poke and immediately jumped back, nearly falling as the mud sucked at my feet. The hand still didn’t move.

  “What are you doing?” Bee whispered.

  I had no voice. My words had seized in my throat. I stepped back toward the door and poked the hand again, harder. Nothing. I turned around, no longer caring if I made noise, because I knew it didn’t matter.

  “What?” Bee demanded.

  I tried to explain, but before I could I bent over and threw up.

  Six

  An hour later Daddy, Grandma Em, and Judge Gator were all gathered around Bee and me. We were back out on the county road, where our po
nies had been tied up in some afternoon shade and where someone had brought a big bucket of water for them to drink. Police cars were parked all up and down the road with their flashers going. Our local deputy, Cyrus Middleton, was there along with state police officers and some men from an organization called SLED, which stands for State Law Enforcement Division.

  An ambulance had arrived a few minutes earlier, and it was backed up to the dirt path with its rear doors standing open. The two attendants had carried a stretcher back through the mud to fetch the body, but they hadn’t returned yet. All we knew so far was that the man in the pickup truck was dead, but we didn’t know who he was. I’d never gotten close enough to get a look at his face, so I didn’t know whether he was one of the two men who had stolen Yemassee and robbed the gas company.

  Daddy and Grandma Em were fit to be tied by everything that had happened. Grandma Em hovered near us with her arms crossed, glaring at every policeman who came within twenty feet, as if she held each one of them personally responsible for leaving a dead body in the woods where we could find it. But she saved all of her worst glares for Bee and me. Daddy was probably as upset as Grandma Em, but he kept it inside better. Even so, I knew I was in serious trouble.

  Judge Gator was nearly as upset as Grandma Em. He had been pacing up and down ever since he had arrived, stopping every couple of minutes to shoot a look at Bee and me, give his head a shake, then start pacing again. “If I’d had the slightest inkling that you two girls were going to go out searching for a couple dognappers who also committed grand larceny,” he said, “I would have locked you in your bedrooms myself.”

  Before either of us could say for the fortieth or fiftieth time that we were sorry, one of the SLED officers came over to where we were standing and motioned for Daddy, Grandma Em, and Judge Gator to speak with him privately.

  Grandma Em shot us one more look. “You two girls stay right here,” she snapped, then marched over to hear what the policeman had to say. The policeman talked for a moment, and then they went back and forth with a lot of whispering. At one point Grandma Em started to hiss at the policeman in a way that reminded me of an angry cottonmouth.