Pin Eyes gazed out the plate glass window. In the light, her eyes were walnut brown. “I lost both my brothers in the war. A friend delivered a letter from Josiah, the youngest, telling us that if he died, we should know he’d made peace with his Lord and Savior. But Luke? We never found out what happened to Luke. I hope someone buried him. It is not right for someone to die in service to their country and have no one tell their family.”
“You’re assuming my sister died,” I said.
She looked at me incredulously. “Has she written?”
I pressed my lips together.
She reached out and touched my elbow. “Maybe she’ll write,” she said.
I saw in her eyes she meant it.
“Thank you, ma’am.” I blotted my eyes, gathered my purchases and the photograph, and quickly left.
I glanced back at her one last time and saw that plank-hard face again. I did feel bad, though, about calling her Pin Eyes, and I suddenly realized that her girlish ruffles made sense if you thought of her age at the time she lost her brothers. It seemed likely that after hearing about the death of two brothers, a person might lack the desire to consider clothing. In addition, I was beginning to understand how the past can seem more alive than the present. I thought of Agatha all the time.
Outside, I put the purchases in a saddlebag, reserving a sugar cube for Long Ears. I planted it in my palm and let his snout snuffle in my hand while I wrangled my emotions. I cannot do this, I thought. I wanted to sit down on that porch and avoid mankind all together.
But the main street of Dog Hollow bustled with people. This is your one chance to ask them, I told myself.
So I got to work, starting with a line of three men sitting on a bench outside the sawmill. I marched up to them like I was all business. (Though men rarely take someone of my age or stature seriously, they will be taken by surprise.)
The oldermost seemed to have grown on that bench, slumped some, and then stuck. A toadstool would have been more responsive to my questions. But the other two took the photograph from my hands most willingly, and peered closer when they heard my sister’s hair was auburn.
The one with the pencil-thin mustache whistled.
The man next to him tittered away. “Myself? Never gone over for carroty hair. But he likes it.” He pointed a dirt-encrusted finger at his friend. “You like the Garrow girl. All that Scottish red hair. But where she been? Not missing you. She’s not been a-visiting.” The man barked a laugh, showing a row of tiny, sharp teeth.
“Shut up,” said the mustached man.
The sharp-toothed one kept on. “He notes if there’s a redhead in town.”
“Shut up,” said the mustached man again.
I took the photo from the sharp-toothed one and put it under the other man’s mustache. “Well?” I said.
“You’re young to be trampousing about,” interrupted Sharp Tooth.
“That’s neither here nor there,” I said to him before turning again to his mustached friend. “Tell me if you’ve seen her. Please.”
The mustached man put his hand on the photograph. “Maybe. Maybe with another woman and a man in a wagon? After the nesting broke?”
“Did you talk to her? Or did you see anyone else talk to her? Do you know where she might have gone? Or who might know?”
“I observed her. She may have talked to those people she was with. I did not speak with her.”
The sharp-toothed man set to rocking back and forth, sniggering all the while. “Oh, miss, he wishes he could talk to these gals. All he can do is look. Has to pay for his company. If you take my meaning.”
The oldermost, the toadstool, glanced over, set his jaw, and stilled.
The mustached man gave the sharp-toothed one a direct look. “I told you to shut up.”
“I appreciate your time,” I said.
I spoke with a good handful of people. Some refused to talk. One—a flush-faced woman with a rooster clamped under an arm and a stride brisk as scissors—put out a hand. “No nearer—I’m liable to snap you instead of this rooster’s neck. Tonight all his cock-a-doodling becomes chicken-noodling.”
Others took their time: for instance, the cowboy with as pronounced a parenthetical gait as I’ve ever seen. He held that photograph so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep standing up. He startled me when he handed it back. And after all that wait, what does he say? “Sure did.” It took me two minutes of questioning to find out that he’d seen Agatha with the two men and one woman. When I asked where she might have gone? He pointed at the road.
Finally, I sat back down on the Dog Hollow General Store porch for a breather. I pulled out one of those licorice sticks and let the sweetness melt on my tongue.
Long Ears watched me. I glanced at him and saw him thinking, Sugar cubes.
“Sugar is for when you’re good,” I said.
Long Ears snorted, and put his muzzle back into the water trough.
Agatha had been here. She’d been noticed. People had even noticed the pigeoners with her. But that was it. They didn’t seem to know anything more, like where Agatha or the pigeoners might have gone, or who else the pigeoners knew (if they did know anyone). The people in Dog Hollow had simply noticed strangers passing through town.
I needed to do better than this. Much better. If I could not have a lead on my sister’s whereabouts, then—at the very least—I wanted to find something that made it impossible for my sister to be the body wearing that blue-green dress.
I had not done that. I had not even come close.
“Girl?” I heard from behind me.
“Girl?” I heard again. Two fingers rapped my shoulder. I shifted around from my seated position on the porch, looked up, and saw the store owner. Out in the open, she was even more impressive. I stood.
“Yes, ma’am?” I said.
“Come with me,” she said. I followed her back into the store. She handed me a bottle labeled GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU. I read the small print:
This powder, when mixed with water, helps disorders in the Eyes, the Coats of the Stomach, and cures all bloody Fluxes. The major ingredient comes from the dung of the hottest of all Fowls and is wonderfully attractive, yet accompanied with an Anodyne force and helps the Head-ach, Megrim, pain in the Side and Stomach, Pleurisy, Cholick, Apoplexy, Lethargy and Many other Disorders.
I met the store owner’s gaze.
She started: “Your sister traveled with the man that sold me these. I believe he said his name was …” Here, the store owner tugged at a pile of papers spiked on a banker’s stake. She sorted through them. “Metcalf?”
I glanced at the receipt and handed it back. There was nothing of note upon it, other than the name at the bottom.
The store owner nodded. “Your sister was pretty. I noticed her outside waiting in the wagon. Including your sister, there were four of them—two men and two women.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“I didn’t ask. He did not look like somebody that would tell me his plans.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, he was the type that does a little of this and a little of that. I doubt Metcalf is his name. Your sister did not fit with those people.”
“They were dangerous?”
The store owner paused before answering. “You’re young. I do not want to pain you. But you came all this way. That man was the type that takes to fast, easy money. Those kinds will do anything—legal or not. People like that mix with the wrong sorts.”
She set her hand on mine. “It would not surprise me if your sister came in harm’s way.”
It was not what I’d been hoping to hear, and I stepped onto the porch with a heavy heart.
Then I saw something. From the corner of my eye, I saw Billy McCabe coming out of the telegraph office. It was the tiniest office and barely visible from where I sat. But I saw him leave and I leapt to a conclusion. I watched him cross to the butcher shop. As soon as he stepped inside, I raced down the street to
the telegraph office.
I pulled open the door and skidded to a stop in the middle of the wood floor. “Who was that telegram for? The one done by that blond boy. He just left? Tell me who he sent word to. It’s urgent. Life and death!”
The door slammed shut behind me.
A tiny man, all bones and knobs, and in a mostly clean shirt, sat behind a large oak desk. To his right stood the telegraph machine. He took off his glasses, wiped the matter out of his eyes, and squinted at me. Then he set the glasses back on his nose and wrapped their wire temples around his ears one at a time.
“Your name?” His voice creaked, as if it had run out of sound like a pen will of ink.
“Show me the telegram,” I said. I put my hands on his desk and leaned to read it.
A bony hand slipped the piece of paper and the logbook into a drawer. “Your name?”
“Agatha Burkhardt,” I said loud and clear.
He giggled. He did! What was left of his hair bobbed about his head like some sort of angelic nimbus. “Well, Miss Agatha, you can still catch that young man if you’d like to ask him. He said he was going to the butcher’s. That’s what I can tell you. Otherwise, Western Union is not in the habit of divulging private communications.” He peered over his fingertips, which he tapped together in anticipation of my next move.
“Fine,” I said.
I disliked that man. I did not give him the courtesy of a good-bye.
I waited for Billy on the store porch.
When he appeared, waving a package of pork sausage over his head and asking if I’d gotten the bread and cheese, I walked at him with purpose.
I grabbed a clump of his shirt. “Who did you write a telegram to? Who was it?”
“It wasn’t any secret.…”
“Tell me the truth, Billy. Did she answer you? Where is she?”
He stopped. “She? It wasn’t she. It was my pa. Now let go.”
My hand unclenched. His shirt fabric slipped from my fingers.
Then his eyes got wide. “Did you think I telegraphed Agatha?”
I stared at him.
“Agatha is dead, Fry. I thought that’s why we came out here. So you’d see sense.”
“I came here to find my sister,” I said. My eyes felt damp. I could not believe this. “You sent a telegraph to your pa? Grandfather Bolte knows too, doesn’t he? What is going on?”
He stood there, mute.
It came to me: “I asked you for a horse—paid good money too—and for privacy, and you went to them! All of you decided that this trip would be good for me. If I went, you all thought, I’d finally understand that my sister was dead.” A stunned numbness overtook me.
I looked at him. “Did Ma know about this?”
Billy’s chin lifted defensively. “Your grandfather was going to tell her.”
“I cannot believe it.”
Billy held up his hands. “Did you think no one would notice our absence? Your grandfather would follow you in two snaps after what happened to Agatha. I was ready to tell if you asked.”
“That’s less than honest,” I said.
I remembered how Grandfather Bolte had cleaned both the guns—the Springfield and the double-barrel—right before we left. I remembered how he’d put the Springfield into my hands and called it a “good rifle.” I had thought it odd that he cleaned them in June when he’d just done it in February.
I felt my strength leave me. I crossed my arms over my body, more to hold myself together than anything else. “Why’d you agree to come?”
In retrospect, I can see that I wanted him to say something about my companionable nature. Sure, the trip was a task, but not an onerous one, because Billy liked me. Any small hint would have done it—it would have been merely polite.
Instead, Billy said: “You approached me! I was the best choice. Come on, Fry, we all know you. You were resolute. Even Mr. Bolte said he didn’t think he could dissuade you, not after he heard you’d offered me the Bechtler dollars.”
“To force me to face the facts.”
“Absolutely.”
“Anything else I need to ask you so I know what you’re hiding?”
“Nope.”
I laid my eyes on him. “What about pay? Did Grandfather Bolte pay you to chaperone me?”
“Criminy, Fry.”
“Tell me.”
Billy puffed up his cheeks and exhaled. “Some. Yeah. For my time.”
That was it for me. I turned on my heel and began to load up my mule.
“I’m sorry, Fry.”
I did not answer that.
“Where are we going?” he said.
I looked over my shoulder at him. “We’re going to see this spot where the body was found, remember? You’re a hired hand, so I expect you to do as I say and not give me a hint of trouble. You hear me?”
“Is that the way it’s going to be?”
“Are you hired or not?”
“I swear,” said Billy.
So now I knew: Billy was not out here to meet Agatha. Money was his motive. It made too much sense for me to ignore. Weren’t he and Polly planning to move to Minnesota? Homesteading is nothing if not expensive. That was why Billy was traveling with me, and why Polly Barfod would not object.
Farther on, we roasted pork sausage for dinner. Our destination was about five miles up the road, but I decided that I wanted to view that spot fresh, after I’d tried to get some sleep. I had a lot on my mind.
I questioned Billy good and hard over dinner. Billy said that his pa, the sheriff, had tracked Agatha and the pigeoners to Dog Hollow. He figured that they were headed to Prairie du Chien, so he continued on Miller Road past Dog Hollow. When he found the body in the blue-green dress, he thought he should bring it home as quickly as possible for Ma to identify.
At this point, Billy pulled out a leather pouch that hung around his neck. He opened it and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “He gave me this.”
I unfolded it and saw a crude diagram of the roadside location of each body part found. I swallowed hard and handed it back to him. “Tomorrow,” I said.
Who had the sheriff talked to in Dog Hollow? He told Billy that he’d talked to several people, and though some had seen Agatha and the pigeoners, no one seemed to know much about them. They didn’t know their names, or where they were headed. It seemed the pigeoners kept to themselves.
I told Billy about the Dog Hollow store owner and the bottles of medicine made from pigeon dung, and how one of the pigeoners had used the name of Metcalf. It was news to him, which meant I’d sniffed out something the sheriff had not. I felt no pride in it. It amounted to the same situation—not enough information.
I asked if Sheriff McCabe had theorized about how this all came to be.
But Billy said that his pa didn’t engage in scenarios and what-ifs. “You know how Pa always says that keeping the peace is his main job. He called those pigeoners ‘lazy schemers.’ I don’t think he considered them murderous. He was curious about why that body had been left out so animals could get it. But his first concern was to get the body back to your ma.”
“To identify,” I said.
Billy shrugged. “Whatever you want, Fry.”
I kept company with my thoughts for the rest of that dinner. Afterward, I did my chores and Billy did his. I had momentary notions of subjecting Billy to hired-hand treatment, but as it turned out, I did not have the energy for exerting authority, and in the few days we’d traveled together, we’d developed certain routines. For instance, I cleaned the dishes, and Billy took care of our mounts. So I let that desire go.
As I was preparing for bed, Billy grabbed my elbow and looked me square in the eye. “We were saying good-bye. That was all.”
It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the kiss.
“She said she was going to marry Mr. Olmstead. She wished me well. That’s it. It didn’t mean nothing. I never made a plan to meet her. I didn’t send her a telegram. If you think she could have made all he
r family think she was dead …” He shook his head. “Agatha wasn’t like that.”
“You whistled,” I said quietly.
“It didn’t mean nothing.”
Then he walked away.
* * *
That night I unfolded my bedroll out in the open and lay on top. Take me. I offered myself to any passing cougar that might want to feast on one skinny little neck. But no cougars came. Apparently, I wasn’t worth dragging off. I stared up at a sky spread over with stars. Silken breezes brushed against my skin. The scent of evergreen lingered in the air. It was an irritatingly beautiful night.
I closed my eyes, and instead of counting sheep, I counted ifs: If I hadn’t seen that kiss. If I hadn’t told Mr. Olmstead. If I had told Agatha instead. What if I could not find her? What if there was a good reason for Agatha’s tracks ending in Dog Hollow?
What if she was …?
It was a nowhere place. It wasn’t even in Dog Hollow. It was a half day’s ride out of Dog Hollow.
As Billy and I rode the next morning, I was silent. I guess my head was working so hard there was no way to make talk too. I did worry about Long Ears taking it personally. Don’t know why. He was only a mule. But for some reason, I cared, so every once in a while I’d feed Long Ears a sugar cube, which made him like me better. I wish sugar cubes worked that well with people. I’d carry them in my coat pockets, my hat, my shoes.
“Lying off the side of the road” was the only description I’d heard when people explained the location of the body. Still, I’d imagined this place so many times that without hesitation I’d have described it as somewhere with sweeping vistas, a rock formation jutting into open air, and nearby, a knotty oak. The limbs of that oak would tangle in every direction, testifying to the struggles of wind, sun, fire, and rain, and yet there it stood, going on, full of leaves. The body, of course, would lie under this tree.
I’d like to point out that this is a sight short of what the place of someone’s death should look like. People are supposed to die at home. They’re supposed to have time to tell last wishes. They’re supposed to be able to pray, to repent for their sins, and to commend their soul to God. And the family? We’re supposed to be able to gather round the deathbed, hear those final words, watch the dying breathe their last, and witness their countenance. So given all this, I do not think the presence of a big oak tree was asking too much.
One Came Home Page 9
