The Child Finder

by Rene Denfeld

7

  Mr. B’s hands were gentle—when he was setting the traps.

  Snow girl liked the delicate wire snares the best. They looked so beautiful hung in the saplings, like strings of saliva. Mr. B showed her how to use smaller snowshoes to beat a false path, so that the animal would follow it right into the thin, elegant loops. The next day they might find a coyote there, snow dusting its jaws.

  The metal claw traps Mr. B carefully opened and buried in the snow, and then they sprinkled the area with blood from the offal bucket. The animal would dig for the intoxicating scents, expecting to find a carcass, and instead find its foot in the trap. Snow girl liked to search for the foxes later, like delicate red scarves in the snow.

  Mr. B carried a metal bar, tucked into his belt, for the times the animals were still alive when they found them. He showed her how to end them, quickly, by hitting them in the head. Snow girl didn’t like to do that, so Mr. B did it instead.

  In frozen creek beds they hunted rabbit. In the hills they found brown marten. In wild thick brush they bowed their backs. The world took endless journeys—they would walk an entire day for one pelt. And then sometimes, like a snowfall, the world around them rained meat.

  Mr. B’s cheeks grew red around the fire then, and he looked like a father, or a grandfather, maybe. She helped him scrape the hides, and they dried them and stacked them in bundles.

  When the bundles were big enough, he put her in the cellar and left her there. She learned to be patient—Don’t panic, her insides said—because when he came back he was oh so proud. There, on the table, was a tin of Crisco, a jar of oil—oh, how she craved oil—bags of potatoes and carrots and flour and cans of food and, always, a Hungry-Man dinner.

  Mr. B heated the Hungry-Man dinner in the woodstove. At first he wouldn’t let her see him eat this treasure and would put her in the cellar. But now he let her watch. He hummed to himself as he savored it: tiny wedge of mashed potato, the Salisbury steak, the little square of dessert. She watched with drool running. When he was done, nodding, his stocking feet up on the stove, he beckoned to her, and she crawled like a pet to his side. He stroked her hair absently and gave her the tray.

  That was when she discovered he had saved some for her: a bit of a cherry, a taste of the steak, and the last bite of potato. She sat at his heels and looked up with adoration. He saw, and was delighted, and for the first time she heard the rumble of a chuckle inside him.

  He looked as surprised as she felt: that joy had entered Mr. B, and found his heart.

  One day they were on a trap line far from the cabin, high in the mountains. Far down below them she could see a line that was not natural. It wrote in a way that nature did not understand. An ancient part of her brain spoke:

  Road.

  Mr. B caught her looking down at the road, and the frown on his face told her he was not happy. Take care, snow girl, or he will put you back in the cellar. Maybe forever, and you will die there.

  She had no interest in Road. She reached tentatively for his hand, looking away.

  After a while he took it.

  That night he was angry. It was hard to tell why Mr. B got angry—he was like the storms that poured over the mountains. One moment he was calm; the next he was dark and torrential, pouring down ice that was so cold it felt hot.

  He dragged her from the cellar, where he had thrown her after their return. The table was covered with the metal claw traps. He had opened all the traps. The spit in her mouth suddenly dried. She had seen the ways the jaws snapped shut: the crushed bones of the fox, the coyote, the delicate rabbit, which tasted like grass and pine needles. With lightning fastness, Mr. B grabbed her hair. He held her over an open trap so she might see. She nodded. He lifted one of her unwilling hands, which she opened to a starfish plea. He held the soft pale hand over the rusted metal jaws so that she would know. I understand, her blue eyes told him, looking up at him. She could feel the tears welling and fought them back.

  She slowly let her air out, so it would touch him. That was how sensitive he was: like a plant in the wind. He drank in her air and was pleased. His eyes relaxed, and he let go of her hand. Snow girl knew then what to do. He had made her, had he not?

  She whipped around, and faster than he could stop her she put her hand right into the trap. Her finger stopped just before touching the metal trigger. She held her hand there, looking straight up at him, giving an answer with her eyes. She was willing to sacrifice, to be the broken animal in the trap.

  Mr. B had a look of pleasure on his face. I will not run, that offering hand told him. I will not go.

  The parents looked at Naomi, fear on their faces. It was her first update meeting, and Naomi had nothing. The mother had her hands on her knees. The father, typical to many men, looked out the window. He was sitting in the recliner again, far across the room from his wife.

  Naomi carefully outlined what she had done so far. What she didn’t mention were the messages on her phone from other panicked parents, the line that was always growing. Including many calls from the attorney on the local Danita Danforth case, which was all over the news.

  “We can pay you for more—” the mom began, frantic.

  “I don’t do this for the money,” Naomi snapped. She softened, knowing their grief, wanting them to understand anyway.

  “Sometimes I don’t find anything,” she said. It was her deepest shame. The worst cases were the ones where she found nothing. Telling the parents she was moving on was one of the hardest things she had to do.

  Naomi could remember the name of every child she had not found. Sometimes they came to her in her dreams, their hands open and pleading, bald spots on their scalps where hair had been torn, burn marks that filled her with remorse and shame.

  The father turned his face towards her. “We haven’t given up and we don’t want you to either.”

  “What’s the longest you worked on a case?” the mother prodded.

  Naomi smiled fondly to herself, in memory. “Eight months,” she said.

  “You found her alive, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Everyone thought she was lost, but she had been abducted, isn’t that the truth?”

  “Yes.” Her name was Elizabeth Wiley. Naomi remembered now how close she had been to giving up. Ten-year-old Elizabeth had disappeared one day from her home in a remote Kentucky woods. Her mother, an artist, had left her kiln that afternoon, clay drying on her hands, to find her daughter was not in the kitchen, not in her room—was not anywhere, as a matter of fact.

  Police, combing the home for details, finally concluded the girl, a passionate gatherer of wildflowers, had gone into the woods to collect more, and gotten lost. It would not be the first time a child had gone missing in the vast, tangled, and sometimes impenetrable Kentucky woods.

  There had been no sign of foul play, nothing missing. It was a tragedy, the papers said, and then everyone moved on—except Elizabeth’s mother.

  For eight months Naomi had worked the case diligently, finding nothing. She spent weeks combing the woods near the secluded home, finding nothing but old horse trails and tracts of poison ivy. She cleared everyone who had ever come into contact with Elizabeth Wiley, from teachers to the butcher in town. It was by chance one day she had driven past a derelict horse farm, and saw the rows of silent shed rows marching into a misty Kentucky morning—and an old man shoveling hay, his face broken out in a raw rash.

  “Please keep trying.”

  “I will.”

  The mother sighed, relieved, and Naomi felt as always a pang at the helplessness of love. Would she feel this way if she had a child who was then lost? She knew she would. She would feel as if wild animals were tearing her apart. Had her mother felt that way? There was no way of knowing.

  She picked up the stack of books Madison had left on the living room table. The top one was a story Naomi knew and loved: Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Under it was a collection of African folklore stories. Next was a collection of Russian
fairy tales. Naomi thumbed the pages and saw gorgeous color plates of a girl in peasant dress, wandering a white forest.

  “She likes fairy tales,” she said, and the mother smiled in relief to hear the present tense.

  “My mother is from Russia,” the father said. “Fairy tales are our milk. Everyone needs faith.”

  Naomi tilted her head at him. He had made her think of something.

  She held out the book of Russian tales. “Which story does she like the best?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” the mom said. “It’s called ‘The Snow Girl.’” She paused, in memory, and Naomi could imagine Madison curled on her lap, reading together. “It’s about a little girl made of snow.”

  “Does the snow girl come alive?” Naomi’s own face was one of seeking and hunger.

  “Yes, she does.”

  “How wonderful,” Naomi said.

  She left the house with the book in hand.

  “What’s that?”

  Her friend Diane was smiling broadly at her from the door of her brightly painted Victorian home across the river as Naomi made her way up the steps, holding the book in one hand.

  “Fairy tales,” Naomi said, leaning in for a big embrace.

  Diane held her for a long time. Naomi melted into the embrace in a way she seldom did with anyone else.

  They had met on one of Naomi’s cases, when she was still working primarily in Oregon. Before the word got out, as Diane liked to joke. Diane was a psychologist who worked with traumatized children, and was well known for her fiery courtroom testimony. She had been hired by the state for a case Naomi had solved—they had met on the benches outside the courtroom, waiting their turn for the witness stand, and instantly became fast friends.

  Diane was a large woman with flaming red hair and the brightest green eyes Naomi had ever seen. Now in her sixties, she had an ease about her that Naomi felt could be a role model for aging. Several years before, Diane had offered Naomi her spare room, to use as a home base of sorts.

  Naomi rarely stayed overnight, but it felt good to have that little room under the eaves, crammed with boxes. Diane accepted Naomi in a way no one else ever had, besides Jerome. When Naomi came by, she was always happy to see her. When Naomi left, she was okay, too—whether days or weeks or months had passed between visits.

  The walls of her home were painted in bright, comforting colors. Shawls were over sofas, soft lamps lit in corners. The walls were lined with books and carefully arranged art. It was a soothing, warm home that instantly put Naomi at ease, as Diane did.

  “Tell me,” Diane commanded in the kitchen, making them tea. She pulled out her favorite platter.

  “Another case, what else is new?” Naomi smiled. “The parents live here in town.”

  Diane reached in the fridge. Cold cuts, cheese, a small jar of homemade pickles. From the pantry she pulled a pile of cocktail bread, rough crackers, a jar of spicy mustard.

  “Gonna lay me out?” Naomi joked.

  “Only if you beat me to the finish line.” Diane laughed that delightful laugh.

  They ate in the living room, drinking tea while bathed in soft light from the shaded windows. The house smelled like lemons and incense. Naomi felt her heart slow, and her body relaxed. She talked—a little—about Madison, and then, when she felt ready, about Mrs. Cottle dying.

  “Regrets?” Diane asked cheerfully. She made a gusty little sandwich out of crackers and cheese.

  “I guess. Maybe something more like fear. And secrets.”

  Diane’s eyebrows rose. “Jerome.”

  “Stop.” Naomi’s voice was shaky. One night, in a moment of weakness—or perhaps strength—she had told Diane something she was afraid to admit to herself.

  “Suit yourself,” Diane said. She finished her cracker sandwich and made another.

  Naomi folded cold cuts around some cheese, ate without tasting, waiting for the follow-up question. None came.

  Diane nodded at the ornate fairy tale book, edged in white, on the living room table. “Did your little girl like fairy tales?”

  “Does like fairy tales.”

  “Hope springs eternal. Just remember: so does evil. Sometimes they are impossible to tell apart.”

  “No one knows that like me.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes. Naomi couldn’t help but notice the faint look of disappointment on her friend’s face. She wants me to talk about Jerome, Naomi thought. But a snake got my tongue. The serpent is in my chest, and right outside? The apple.

  Before she left she looked in her little room upstairs: The neat bed, a row of rocks from Jerome on the windowsill. Cards from the children she had saved. Pictures from them on the walls. YOU, one crayon-illustrated picture said, with an arrow pointing to a smiling woman next to a little child. No matter where she was, Naomi found comfort in knowing this room was here. She could imagine a child here—a Naomi child—sleeping in that tidy bed, waking up to those cards.

  “Staying the night?” Diane asked behind her, coming up the narrow stairs with a stack of clean towels in her hands.

  Naomi shook her head. “Going to drive back up to the motel in the mountains, get started again first thing in the morning.”

  “The Skookum National Forest,” Diane mused. “You know what Skookum means?”

  Naomi shook her head.

  “‘Dangerous place,’” Diane said. “It’s a native word.”

  Naomi left her child self behind, warm in the bed.

  The next morning Naomi read Madison’s favorite fairy tale while sitting on a fallen log overlooking the summit where she had gone missing. She read it out loud, as if Madison were listening.

  Once upon a time, in an old village, there lived an old man and his wife.

  The old man wore a vest and had a beard. His wife was always out of range, as if she didn’t exist. Naomi found this interesting.

  The old man was unhappy. He wanted a girl-child. So he formed one of snow.

  A perfect girl made of snow, with hair like meadows of ice and eyes like the bluest cold: a pretty little white-haired snow girl.

  “I am little snow girl, rolled from the snow.”

  A genesis story, Naomi thought: Birth from nothing. Naomi No-Name.

  Snow girl grew up, but she discovered life—always—comes with a cost. For mere mortals it is age: the ticking of the seasons much like the slow death of the earth. For gods and spirits there is no death, but they must never leave the heavens.

  “There is one thing you must never do,” the snow girl’s father told her. “You must never fall in love. For if you do, your heart will warm. You will melt, and you will die.”

  Snow girl grew up. One day she met a hunter in the forest. The hunter played a flute for her. The world came alive for the snow girl. She fell in love with the hunter, and her heart warmed. Naomi turned the last page. The girl was lying in the snow, her cheeks pink. Did the girl die then, or did she just become mortal? It wasn’t clear.

  Her father knew he had lost her and grieved.

  Naomi looked over the lonely, unforgiving mountains. In all likelihood Madison was not only dead, but her body unrecoverable, too. But she couldn’t give up—not yet.

  This story was not over.

  It was the comment the father made that stuck with Naomi as she drove down to the motel that evening. Fairy tales are our milk.

  During the summers she lived in the Cottle foster home, Naomi and Jerome would run down to the town library after doing their chores, filling grocery sacks with books, and then would walk home under a lavender sky, the air filled with the heady scent of fresh corn.

  Jerome liked the rock-hunting books, and reading about his Kalapuya tribe. Naomi liked the fairy tales. They were filled with kids left alone, abandoned in the woods, being roasted in ovens, held captive in the highest towers, all trying to find their way back home.

  Everyone needs faith: faith that even though the world is full of evil, a suitor will come and kiss us awake; faith tha
t the girl will escape the tower, the big bad wolf will die, and even those poisoned by malevolence can be reborn, as innocent as purity itself.

  “You two would live outside if you could, wouldn’t you?” Mrs. Cottle had chided.

  Naomi, who still worried about a scolding—or something, unnamed, worse—had nodded, carefully. She and Jerome had set up a mock tent in the back pasture. It really wasn’t a tent. It was a blanket over a rope, cleverly weighted and hung from branches at both ends. And the fire in front of them wasn’t really a campfire, but a camp stove made out of a Folgers can.

  Mrs. Cottle had come all the way from the kitchen, picking her way across the old pasture, past the dried cow patties from the cattle that had been here before, before it cost more to raise beef than to sell them.

  Jerome had popped his head out of the tent, smiling. “Don’t come in here, Mrs. Cottle. I farted.”

  Mrs. Cottle and Naomi had laughed, exchanging private looks. Mrs. Cottle sat back on her haunches. “Well, then, what are you two making me for supper?”

  The two children looked at each other, embarrassed. They had planned to sneak back inside later for food, when their foster mom wasn’t looking.

  “I made an awful nice beef ’n’ beans in there, and no one to eat it with me.” Mrs. Cottle sounded sad. She snapped her fingers. “I got it! It’s like a chuck wagon.”

  Jerome and Naomi swung their heads around. The light from the farmhouse window now looked different. Yes, like a chuck wagon, hitched on the slopes of prairie, with an honest-to-goodness chuck wagon cook inside. They could smell the mouthwatering beef ’n’ beans already.

  “You should be careful out here, with the Indians afoot,” Mrs. Cottle said.

  Jerome looked at her, sternly. “That’s not how it was, Mrs. Cottle,” he informed her. “Most of the natives were friendly.”

  She smiled. “Of course. I do know the cook. Maybe you campers will mosey in and fill your plates—you can bring them back out here to eat.”

  Jerome whooped, darting from the mock tent. “You mean we can spend the night out here?”