The Child Finder

by Rene Denfeld

  Each child she found was a molecule, a part of herself still remaining in the scary world she had left behind. Eventually they would all come together and form one being, knitted together in triumph. We are not forgotten, her actions told her. You will not put us aside.

  The microfiche collection turned out to be crooked copies of a defunct local paper, the Skookum Challenge, which had ceased publication decades before. Naomi was immediately charmed by the old-fashioned stories—“Mrs. Hornbuckle Promises This Christmas Recital Will Be Full of Cheer”—and the antiquated prices.

  She broke for a cup of coffee and a fresh pastry from the bakery and returned. The sky outside was slate. She could taste ice in the air.

  Avalanches noted as incidental, the first live child of the year a hurrah, and death notices outnumbering the births. Obituaries with the common phrase died in the woods. Naomi had spent enough time in Oregon to know that meant a logging accident. The discovery of a frozen creature in the ice, with a correction to follow: Readers, it was April 1st; we are sorry the joke did not go over well.

  She read until she had a headache, but found little on the trappers or where they cached their cabins. Like many hunters, they had learned how to avoid attention. This was the perfect place to do it.

  Before she called it a day she noted a headline about the missing boy on the poster on Ranger Dave’s wall. The same black-and-white photo smiled at her. He was seven when he went missing. He would have been close to fifty now, had he survived.

  Stepping outside, nursing the headache, Naomi almost stumbled directly into the orange crummy the Murphy family drove. Looking around, she saw no one else on the empty street. The butcher shop was down another block. It might be where the brothers were, if not a local bar. It was getting quite cold, and the air had a sharp, almost pine tang.

  Naomi inspected the crummy. She had grown up in Oregon—she knew there was a time when these large old-fashioned trucks were used to cram loggers, thicker than stinky sardines, for the long ride into the woods. Nowadays they were seldom used for anything except illegal hunting, which seemed to be the case here, from what could be seen in the back of the Murphys’ truck. There were powerful-looking bright lights and—

  “What are you doin’?”

  She whipped around. It was one of the Murphy brothers. Not the older one she had seen in the restaurant, but a younger one.

  Naomi tried to slow her beating heart. This man—this hunter—had walked up behind her as silently as the air itself.

  “I’m looking in your truck,” Naomi said calmly.

  He stepped a scant inch back, but not enough to signal defeat. More like the wisdom of the hunter.

  “We’ve been seeing you around. The Strikes store. The restaurant.” He frowned. He had a reddish beard, trimmed, Naomi noted, and warm pink lips. His eyes were hazel. Up close he looked cleaner than she would have assumed.

  “So?” she said with bristle. What was it boxers said? The best defense is a good offense.

  “You with the game officials or something?”

  Naomi’s face split into a grin that even the Murphy brother couldn’t help but smile at in response. “Or something.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Naomi didn’t want to trap herself in a story she wasn’t prepared to tell. Instead she smiled, nodded her head, and walked away to her car. She could feel his eyes on her all the way.

  Naomi had loved Mrs. Cottle, and loved Jerome. But what was love without escape?

  Making applesauce cake the year she was sixteen—“How many ways can we have these damn apples,” Jerome had moaned, before Mrs. Cottle said, “Don’t swear and hallelujah.” The three of them in a kitchen, the night lighting outside—so serene, always—a dish clanging in a sink, the little red light on the stove, everything as it should be, but part of Naomi wanted to knock it all aside and run. Run, in a panic. Run, to find her—

  “Jerome.” Mrs. Cottle’s voice was a warning.

  Jerome came to Naomi. Put his two arms—one the war would steal—around her. Stiff at first, she melted into the comfort of his embrace. He held her longer than he needed to, until Mrs. Cottle coughed behind them.

  “You’re here, Naomi,” Mrs. Cottle had said, as always, when these moments came over her. Mrs. Cottle was careful never to say Naomi was home. She could not define for Naomi what home meant. For some children it was a terror word. So she said, You are here. Here in the white light of her kitchen, the smell of home-canned applesauce and the cinnamon stick steeping in the jar of buttermilk, ready to add to the cake—the secret recipe to a good applesauce cake, Mrs. Cottle said. Here with two people who loved her.

  “I’m here,” Naomi said tiredly, which is how they knew it was okay. The moment had passed.

  Later Naomi went and stood on the front porch. Behind her the baked cake was on the counter with three squares cut from it, a drool of frosting over the edges. The smell of cinnamon still filled the kitchen, and she was filled with ache at all the things she did not remember and yet still knew.

  She had looked to the stars she had studied each night during the first months and realized that over the years she studied them less and less. Her mother was still there, watching above. She could feel it. Some things were a mystery in life, but Naomi knew her mother was dead with a certainty that defined her.

  The screen door slammed behind her. Jerome. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she had said, drinking in the cool night air, the stars.

  He touched her arm, more tentative now. “What are you afraid of?” he asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “I used to be afraid Mrs. Cottle would give me back,” he confessed.

  Naomi was startled. This idea had never occurred to her.

  “Who would she give you back to?” Naomi had asked.

  “The last foster home I was in,” he had said. His eyes went blank for a moment. “I never knew it was wrong until I came here. Isn’t that awful? They used to beat me, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be. Mrs. Cottle saved me.” He said it simply, with reverence.

  That was when Naomi realized that Jerome, in his own way, truly was a kindred spirit. “Do you feel safe here?” she had asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Yes.” That was the mystery. Now that she was safe, why did she still want to leave?

  10

  The deer and the elk lived passionately on this land, a tall square that snow girl drew on the walls of the cave. She knew the dimensions in her mind, from the limits of the trap lines she traveled with Mr. B. She carved the places on the map: the high ridges where they walked, the deep forests, the spaces where the land widened to hidden lakes that appeared as glistening blue eyes in the brief summer. The snow girl drew the deer and elk on her walls, feeling their bodies in the dark. Over time the map became as wild and furred as the forest itself.

  The deer and the elk were free. Other things were free, too: The deadly sun, which melted the snow. The wild moon, which rose over forests of cold, was free. The wind was free as it passed. Even the snow, which melted down from an iron sky, was free.

  But she was not free. Increasingly she understood that Mr. B was not free either. He was chained here as sure as she was, through bonds as delicate as the threads of the snares, and as hard as prisons of ice. If you just let me, Mr. B, she thought, I can make both of us free.

  When Mr. B wasn’t looking the snow girl continued to tie her tiny threads on the trees when he took her out. Sometimes months would pass before she had a chance to tie another. She wasn’t sure why she did it, but over time she was reassured by the very thought of them: tiny tags of color that strode through the dark forests, like a giant walking, or the color that flows in slants down from the heavens.

  It took a very long time. A thread here, a tiny bow tied there.

  On the mud canvas of her walls she carved the large square she made for this world, and tried to trace where she had
tied the strings. Dot by tiny dot, like a web of lines all leading to one place.

  Mr. B had been silent, as usual. Only it wasn’t really silence: she had learned to listen for the clicks in his throat, the damp sound of eyelashes, the gush when he peed out in the snow, the flat thud as he chopped wood for the stove.

  Over time her life had filled with music.

  They were eating skunk—she had learned not to complain, not even with her eyes—and Mr. B was humming inside himself, she could tell. He had his eyes half closed, as if remembering. What was he remembering?

  Now that they were married, she felt it would be okay to touch his hand. His eyes opened wide. For a moment it was like she was seeing inside him. He batted her hand away like a wild animal. The cold began descending, and she heard a mewing, like she was lost. That could not be true. Snow girls are never lost. They are only waiting to be found.

  Later she woke up in the cave. Her head hurt. There was blood crusted there. Mr. B was holding a wet cloth to her. The cloth was icy cold—of course; he had dipped it in the melted snow they drank for water. His eyes were faraway and cold. After a while he got up and left.

  Once upon a time there was a girl named Madison who thought she knew what marriage meant.

  In Madison’s world, marriage meant her mom and dad. Madison’s dad was happy, and so she thought when she got married her husband would be happy, too.

  But then Madison went on a journey.

  In the place she visited the earth itself was angry: dangerous ice buckled under your feet, wolves howled until the very moon seemed fat with blood, animals died in iron traps.

  “Do you know what marriage means?” Madison asked the skunk, the wolf, the coyote, and the rabbit.

  But instead of answering they all scampered away.

  “Why are you hiding?” Madison called after them.

  “We are hiding because your husband might catch us and eat us for dinner. And if you’re not careful he might eat you, too.”

  “Is there a way out of this world?” Madison called after the animals.

  None of them answered, except for a tiny red-throated bird that landed on a branch near Madison. The bird held a pink thread in one claw.

  “You shouldn’t feel bad,” the little bird said. “The rules are different here.”

  “You again,” Earl Strikes said churlishly, clearing his throat. But Naomi could see he was glad to see her.

  “I might just set up shop here,” she said.

  “Ha!”

  She wandered the store, thinking to herself: Elk heads, shells, and double-bagged plastic sacks of flour, potatoes, and carrots. Jugs of real maple syrup she never saw anymore. Dusty cans of creamed corn. Outside a light snow was falling. There were tire marks in the lot: people had been visiting.

  She didn’t want to miss anything. Because this store, too, was a form of census. All stores are. Not just in being the place where everyone has to go—eventually—but in what is sold off their shelves.

  She reversed her steps, walking slowly backwards. From the counter Earl smirked. Naomi ignored him. She had found walking backwards helped her think in new ways. It jogged her mind in a way that opened it up.

  Chips, the bags of dried macaroni, canned soup, toilet paper, bags of lime. A small section of auto parts; household items, including kerosene for lamps, rock salt for preserving. Dog food. Canned cat food. Candy, old-fashioned peppermint sticks, a small shelf devoted to—

  Toys.

  She remembered cheap toys like this from her time with Mrs. Cottle, sold in the Opal five-and-dime. Bags of green army men, plastic dinosaurs stamped from molds, plastic horses that came in different colors, sturdy enough for a toddler to gum. A myopic doll with pink eyes stared vacantly from a water-warped cardboard container. Naomi touched one of the bags of army men. The plastic was so old it felt brittle. Her fingers came away silver with dust, like a moth.

  She turned to ask Earl something and—

  A man came in, the door ringing behind him. He had a bale of furs with him, and without speaking he dropped them cursorily next to the counter.

  The man walked past Earl, who said nothing. Naomi watched. He turned down the aisles. Like the hunters she had seen before, he had greasy hair, the sides of his face grizzled with unshaved beard. He wore an ancient oilcloth jacket, and as he passed her she could smell fresh blood on him.

  He looked at her, his gaze passing through her.

  Inside every stone is a gem. The words of Jerome came to her.

  The man opened the frosted door, reached in and took out two frozen dinners, and added them to the pile of food at the counter. Earl made a tally on a grimy notepad. They finished the transaction without exchanging a single word. The man loaded his supplies into an old haversack and left.

  Naomi approached the counter after the man was gone.

  “That’s the trapper,” he said, without her asking.

  “Why do you call him that?” she asked.

  “That’s all we know him as, ’cause he can’t read or write. Or talk. He’s deaf.”

  “He seemed a little dirty.”

  “Smelled him, did ya? That’s blood. It don’t wash out so good.”

  She signaled at the notepad. “He pays you in furs?”

  The old man hesitated, and nodded.

  Naomi suspected that Earl definitely came out on the better side of that deal. She didn’t say that.

  “Where is his homestead?”

  Earl scratched the base of his head. “You know, I don’t know. He came around after I got back from the war, years ago. Best trapper around, is he. But don’t try to talk to him—he can’t read lips. Gets all mad, like you are sayin’ the wrong thing.”

  Naomi went and stood by the door. The deaf trapper had disappeared. There was something in his face she knew. She wondered if it was the same old song of familiarity, as keen as the wind over the fields, a cock at sunrise.

  She turned to Earl. “When you came back from the war and he was here, who was missing?”

  “Whatcha mean? Like children?”

  “Anyone. Other trappers.”

  “Oh! You know, I never thought of it. But there used to be this real angry coot when I was just a kid. Nasty old cuss. Put honey in his mouth and he’d spit vinegar. Name was Hallsetter. Sir you had to call him, too!”

  Walter Hallsetter: the man who had gotten a claim high in the mountains above where Madison went missing.

  “I always figured Walter passed on,” Earl continued. “No one is too mean to die, thank the Lord.” He made a cross in the air. “That’s what my wife, Lucinda, used to say, and she was a hellion herself.”

  “Back so soon?” Detective Winfield looked amused.

  Naomi was outside the state police office, standing without a hat in a sheeting spring rain. It was seven in the morning and she had been up all night. She held a wet manila folder to her chest.

  He opened the door to his office.

  She sat down in the leather chair, seemingly oblivious of the squish. Winfield frowned, annoyed at the water on his nice chair. He handed her a clean gym towel.

  “You must have been raised by wolves,” he commented.

  Naomi’s large eyes turned up, as if there was nothing wrong with that.

  “I have some names I’d like you to run for me,” she said. “I could do it myself, but it will take weeks to get the results back. I don’t have time for that.”

  Winfield pulled his yellow notepad forward. “Why not?” He sounded jovial.

  Her cold hand dipped in the folder and pulled out a sheaf of damp papers.

  “Walter Hallsetter,” she said, beginning to read through the claims as he wrote. “Earl Strikes. Desmond Strikes. Robert Claymore.” She paused. “Dave Cross.”

  His hooded eyes lifted from the notepad. “The ranger?”

  “You never know.”

  “So true. Which is why I already cleared him. He was out with another search party when Madison went missing. He came up clea
n.”

  Naomi nodded, feeling both relief and disappointment.

  Detective Winfield laughed to see her face. “You ever known anyone you don’t suspect?”

  “Of course,” Naomi said. She thought of her friend Diane, Mrs. Cottle, and Jerome. Okay, maybe there weren’t a lot of people she trusted. Detective Winfield—yes, she would put him on the list. Maybe.

  Winfield finished writing the names and sat back in his chair. “What would happen if I ran you, child finder?”

  “You would find nothing.”

  “I can believe that.” His dark gaze studied her. “A good girl.”

  Naomi almost visibly jerked. Her face colored. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  She pulled the manila folder closer to her, as if it would protect her. He felt sorry for her then.

  “That’s okay,” he told her soothingly. “I don’t believe there is such a thing.”

  As she had told Danita, Naomi usually worked only one case at a time. It allowed her absolute focus, homing in to absorb one life and the crack where the child disappeared. It might be the hair salon the child was taken to every few months, where the man behind the spinning black leather chair had a record. Or it might be the neighbor who stood on point every day just as school let out, spooning fertilizer on roses. But now Naomi had found herself working two cases in the same town—Madison Culver and Baby Danforth—and she wondered how each case might detract from, or bless, the other.

  “Would you care for some ham?” Danita’s grandmother Violet asked.

  Naomi was accustomed to being offered food—the poorer the family, the more they wanted to cook for you. “I was just making some green beans, too.” The powerful smell of green beans with bacon at the simmer came from the stove.