One Came Home

by Amy Timberlake

  But no matter what I had imagined before, I had never imagined this: that we would pass the spot right up. This spot was that unremarkable. Billy figured it out—a sure miracle if there ever was one. He pulled Storm up short, took Sheriff McCabe’s diagram from the pouch around his neck, studied it, and then turned around. For about a mile, we couldn’t have gone any slower if we’d been strolling on foot. Finally, Billy stopped and got down off Storm.

  I knew what that meant. “Are you sure?” I said.

  If Billy felt any surprise at my finding my tongue, he didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded and stared down at the paper. He lifted his head to gaze at a rock, then pointed at it. “See that fissure? It’s the same on the diagram. This is it.”

  My feet felt leaden as I eased myself off Long Ears. (I still hear the scuff sound my shoes made as they hit dirt.) After that, about all I could do was keep hold of Long Ears’ reins and stare about me.

  This is all wrong, I thought. Not here. This was nowhere. Instead of being wide and generous, this was a squeezing, wrenching place, somewhere with a grip around the windpipe. It barely held a set of wagon-wheel tracks. A high hill with a rocky front formed a wall on one side, tossing shade over the road. On the other side, brambles, thistles, and tall grasses blanketed a slope leading down to the Wisconsin River. We’d passed miles and miles of road that looked like this—pass-through spaces, not stopping places.

  It couldn’t be here.

  I can hear your thoughts. You’re thinking: See, she cares. This isn’t about some body—this is about Agatha’s body. It’s good to see her coming round to her senses.

  Though I’d argue with you on principle. Think about it: no one should be found dead in a nowhere place—somewhere between here and there with no distinguishing marks except (like I found) a fresh pile of horse apples confettied with flies.

  Now, I know people die in nowhere places. My own pa is gone. He’s probably dead, and we never did find out what happened to him, let alone his last wishes. And what about Pin Eyes’ brothers who died in the Civil War? Down South they’re still burying bodies, and it’s six years past the end of the war.

  Of course, I knew all of this as I stood by the side of the road. But I was learning that knowing things does not mean you understand them.

  Billy reached for his hat.

  “Do not take off your hat,” I said.

  He lifted the hat off his head and brought it down to his chest. He held it there.

  I let go of Long Ears’ reins and started slugging Billy anywhere I could reach. “Do not take off your hat! Do not take off your hat!”

  Billy pulled me toward him, pressing my face into his chest with the hat hand. The hat clapped against my back. I yelped. Under that hat, it was a dark, dark place with the sound of a shovel, then dirt and rocks striking pine boards.

  My teeth found flesh and clamped down.

  “Almighty!” he yelled, letting me go.

  I ran up the hill on the north side of the road. I could hear his voice as I ascended. “You bit my arm? I’m bleeding.” But his words were wallpaper to the sound of my feet pummeling the ground, my hands swatting back saplings, and my lungs gasping for breath.

  At the top, I saw the rocks—big rocks piled high. As I tried to catch my breath, I knew that if Agatha had been anywhere nearby, she’d have climbed up here. She wouldn’t have been able to resist. Agatha would have seen this place was full of hiding spots. She’d have left something here—her sketch pad or perhaps a note. Yes.

  I ran over to those rocks, climbed to the highest point, and stuck my hand in a crevice all the way around the rock. Everything I touched—living or dead—I pulled out. Then I did it again and again, working my way over that entire pile of rocks. I shoved, leaning into them until they moved and I could see what lay underneath.

  There was one rock I couldn’t move easily. I pushed it with the palms of my hands. I pushed at it from east, north, south, and west, and then picked the most promising angle, put my back against it, and heaved.

  My feet slipped and gave way. I rolled ten feet, ripping my sleeve, bruising every part of my body, and banging my cheek hard. I felt my cheek swell—heat rising in it. (No wonder my face later looked like a topographic map.)

  Still, I picked myself up and sifted through what I’d collected: dead beetles and flies, decomposing leaves, twigs wrapped in old spiderwebs, a snake skin, a deserted mouse nest, live pill bugs and centipedes.

  Oh! I felt something leggy run up my arm. I brushed a spider off. Then I saw another on my foot, and another on my elbow. I was brushing myself everywhere, half crying out. I quick untied my hair and shook it—dancing like a greenhorn since I do not like creeping things. I saw a four-inch centipede caught in my hair. I picked it out and slung it away, stepping back at the same time. My ankle twisted. I swore.

  There was not one piece of paper in all that mess—not a note, a sketch, or a scrap with a message. I had been so sure too: I’d felt it. I’d known it. Agatha would leave me something. It would be here. She would not leave me with nothing!

  I felt everything I cared about drain from me as a result of that word: nothing. No thing. No.

  My legs would not hold. I sat down.

  Was I truly expecting to get to the place where the body was found and find a note? Maybe. Yes. All right then, I admit it. People in stories are sometimes expected to possess sterling character, to act with courageous purpose, and, on top of it all, to be a smidge smarter than everyone else. Well, maybe if I were writing my memoirs, I’d polish myself up and forget a few things. But I’m telling the entire truth now. My story, as best I can tell it, is all I have to offer.

  I sat on top of that bluff. That’s where I dried up and turned into jerky. It felt like that, anyway. Every bit of juice in me gone. My skin tightened and started to itch. I’m sure my lips went blue and my brown eyes took on the powdery quality of dried beans in a bag.

  At first, my mind felt empty, as if a powerful wind had blown it clean. But little bits crept in: birdsong, leaves shushing in a breeze. I noticed clouds combed thin across a blue sky, and the odd red-purple boulders flecked with white. I noted that grass was greenest at the point it came out of the ground.

  In Dog Hollow, I had wanted to hear something that would make me think Agatha couldn’t be the body in the blue-green dress—a hint, the slightest mention, a whisper, an innuendo, anything at all. But instead, I heard that Agatha had been traveling with people of less-than-reputable character. The shopkeeper had concluded that the body on Miller Road was, indeed, Agatha.

  The body wore a dress made from a bolt of cloth I’d seen in our store all summer and into the fall. I remembered running my hands over that cloth. I remembered Ma asking me if my hands were clean. That fabric was punctured by Ma’s needle and thread. I could read Ma’s stitching as easily as a book. That dress was worn by that body.

  The body was of a young woman. The young woman had auburn hair.

  The body should be Agatha. It would be strange if the body weren’t Agatha. Why wouldn’t the body be Agatha?

  Agatha was—very likely, for the most part, probably, almost certainly, yes, surely—dead. That was a d at the beginning, a d at the end. No forward or backward. No breath either.

  Why didn’t she write? If she wrote one solitary letter … It was a thought from some younger part of me. But the voice was tiny and weak, barely a whisper. It petered to a squeak, and then was gone.

  I howled.

  I wasn’t crying. I was howling—like coyotes do. That’s the best I can describe it. I didn’t hear it—I was it. I became a high-pitched whine that rose and dropped, sometimes clear in tone, and sometimes a ragged, gravelly bark. I went on like that for some time. Minutes? Hours? Who knew? I did not care.

  Then I walked down the hill on legs that felt as hollow as flutes.

  Billy stood in the middle of Miller Road studying the sheriff’s diagram. I made my way to him, and he talked to me like I’d been there the entire ti
me. He pointed at the rock with the fissure again. “That’s the spot everything is measured from,” he said.

  I met his eyes and saw red in them. His face was streaked. (I couldn’t help but notice a full set of teeth marks swelling on his arm.) I took a breath to steady myself, nodded, and turned my body toward the rock.

  We got to work. We used Billy’s strides (he’s about the same height as his pa) and measured everything out. There were three spots where parts of a body had been found. At each, Billy stopped walking and said the name of what was found. He spoke so softly I asked him to repeat himself more than once.

  (I’d rather not repeat those words. It was enough to see that body and, later, to hear the words for each part spoken aloud at the place where they were found. There is no one—not even you—who can force me to speak it out as well.)

  Then we’d done it. We stood there for a moment and watched the river pass by. At some point, Billy looked at me. “Maybe we should search more generally,” he said.

  “I’ll do the river,” I said.

  Billy nodded and turned to walk toward the hill.

  I said: “You don’t need to check the rocks. I did a thorough job.” It was a joke, but I was many miles from a smile.

  “I heard,” said Billy. It was the only thing he ever said about my howl.

  There is nothing so final as turning around.

  Billy and I were back in Dog Hollow. It was noon. We were eating lunch on the banks of the Smoke River. I watched a train pull into the station and thought for the first time, I am going home.

  We hadn’t spoken the words outright. They didn’t need saying. It was a foregone conclusion. There was no new evidence. Our search near the nowhere place hadn’t netted a thing: Billy didn’t find anything on the hillside and I didn’t find anything by the river. Billy said his pa would have done a thorough search, and anyway, it was half a month since Agatha had run off. We were too late.

  What could I do but go home? I’d been to the nowhere place. I’d questioned all the people I could in Dog Hollow. There was not a thing to find.

  My lunch tasted like sawdust. The bread, cheese, and dried meat were of fine enough quality, but nothing tasted anymore. The only thing I wanted was the one thing I could not have: my sister’s companionship.

  From here on out, I’d have to keep my own company. Trouble was, I didn’t like myself much. In the course of this journey, I’d made an unpleasant discovery. I had discovered that I willfully deny the facts, even when the facts are arranged before me in a pine box with the lid slid off.

  Then I did taste something—bitterness. I hated how Grandfather Bolte, the sheriff, and Billy had used my plan to fashion their own. Worse, I hated how well it had worked: I had come around. I’d seen the light. Hallelujah, my sister was dead.

  “Agatha is dead,” I called out. I threw a crust at the river passing beyond my feet. “Isn’t that what you want to hear? I am going home changed. I am a girl with a palatable attitude.”

  To his credit, Billy did not reply. He simply bit off another hunk of bread.

  After four or five feet of river had ambled by, Billy reached out and touched my cheekbone. “None of my brothers ever managed one that good. Does it hurt?”

  “Now that you mention it,” I said. I had noticed the heat gathering around my cheekbone. My left eye had difficulty opening. Billy’s fingers on my face caused the most pleasant feeling I’d had in hours. When he ran his hand through my hair, sorting it out in a most caring manner, I could not meet his eyes.

  I knew Billy was only doing what he’d do for his younger brothers. “You’re a mess. You should clean yourself up while I put lunch away,” he said. He stood.

  I grabbed his forearm. “I murdered her. If I hadn’t told Mr. Olmstead …”

  Billy turned quickly. “Don’t. I’m warning you.”

  “I know I didn’t shoot her. But if I had let it be. Or talked to Agatha. Or done anything other than talk to Mr. Olmstead …”

  Billy gripped my shoulder and squeezed hard. “I will not listen to this. Clean yourself up. We’re going home.”

  Billy let go and, without a backward glance, walked toward our mounts.

  His anger hushed me. Perhaps he was right. Who could endure listening? I felt ashamed. I resolved to be made of sterner stuff.

  My reflection alarmed me (and I’m not one to set store by appearances). Nearly everything on the left side of my face blazed blue, purple, and red, like leadplant in full bloom. My left eye was swelling shut. I put my hand on it tentatively. The rest of me wasn’t much better: ripped and soiled clothing, bits of everything trapped in my hair. I splashed river water on my banged-up face and on the sullied parts of my clothing. My hands shook, so it took double the time to undo my hair and braid it up again.

  As I did this, all that I had found out about Agatha bobbled vaguely in my mind. Suddenly I realized something—something that I had not asked about. I needed to do it. Right now.

  I marched past Billy, who stood by our mounts.

  Billy mentioned getting going.

  I held out my hand. “Give me a moment. Wait here,” I said.

  I did not mean to push open the door to the Dog Hollow General Store with such force, but I did enter with a purposeful momentum. That door hit the wall and rattled.

  “You,” came her voice. “What happened to your face?”

  I saw the owner slowly stand upright. I walked to the counter, talking as I went. “Those people with my sister—the ones that sold you the quack cures—”

  “I observed their beneficial effects myself,” she said quickly.

  “The medicines—yes,” I said, putting my hand on the counter. “Where do you think the pigeoners went after they sold those bottles to you? I work at a store too. We know where people tend to go. We get an idea of who consorts with who, even if we’re not told outright. You can’t own a store and not know what’s what.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That man was completely unknown to me.”

  “I’m sure you can guess. Those people that sell medicines and the like travel on a circuit. They buy something here, sell it over there. If those pigeoners were to buy something to sell, who would they buy from? You told me you hear things.”

  “You think that man gave me his confidence? He didn’t say more than a dozen words.”

  “But what about a person like him? Someone that straddles the fence of legality.”

  She looked at me close. “You are begging for trouble. Have you seen your face? Yesterday you looked like a girl. Today you look like …” She did not finish her sentence. “Young miss, you should walk out of this store right now.”

  “There is no rest until this is settled. I will endure anything.” I gestured at the one thing that seemed to be moving her—my face.

  The store owner sighed. “You must give your word not to mention my name. Or my store.”

  “I give my word,” I said.

  “The Garrows. Up on the bluff. I don’t know what they do, or what they sell. I don’t want to know. But people of certain reputations seem to be acquaintances of the Garrows. Those people traveling with your sister were the type.”

  I asked for directions.

  Billy thought I’d lost my mind. He screwed his hat on. “Fry, your ma stitched the dress found on the body.”

  “It’s only a half day out of the way. Isn’t half a day worth it? The Garrows may know where those pigeoners went. Think of it as tying up loose ends.”

  He locked his eyes on me. “Your sister was shot.”

  “I won’t accuse them! I’ll ask if the pigeoners have been there and which way they went. I will not bring my sister up at all.”

  “No.”

  “If we do not find anything, I will go home willingly. I can’t take much more anyway. I’m wrung out.”

  Billy adjusted his stance.

  “It will only take half a day.”

  Billy crooked a finger at me. “You’re not harboring any notion that your siste
r is alive, are you? Tell me now: Is Agatha dead or alive?”

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  Finger jab. “After this we head home?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “A half day out of the way?”

  “That’s all I need,” I said.

  We stopped by the telegraph office. The telegram read: “At DH. Garrow lead, then home. Billy.”

  The store owner had described the Garrows as people who kept to themselves on a land “riddled with rocks and caves.” I thought about those rocks and caves as we rode away from Dog Hollow and into the bluffs that embraced the Wisconsin River. It was a landscape Agatha would relish, which sparked hope that Agatha was indeed alive. I knew this was a silliness. It was like what I’d done at the nowhere place when I’d pushed aside rocks to look for notes. I will also admit that when I considered going home, I imagined a letter waiting. This was my third day gone—a letter could arrive in three days. It was hopeless because surely Agatha was dead. Yet I persisted in thinking these things, hoping where I should not hope.

  What was I doing going up to the Garrows’? Wasn’t this like all the others—an acting out of a fanciful hope?

  But I was determined to go. I said to myself: Only half a day out of my way. Or: Dead or not, I will never rest easily until I know what happened. Or: If this amounts to nothing, I will go home.

  We would travel eight miles northeast on a mostly unused road known as Old Line. There we’d find Garrow Farm. Upon concluding our visit, we could continue on Old Line over the top of the bluff, following it until it joined up with Miller Road, our route home. The store owner had stressed that past Garrow Farm, Old Line wouldn’t be much more than a footpath since the road hadn’t been used in twenty-odd years. But on horseback we should be able to follow what was left of it, and this shortcut would save us several hours of travel. We were essentially heading home (albeit in a roundabout manner).