He took two bills from his pocket and handed them to her. She said, “I’ll let you have a cucumber for fifty cents.”
“Deal,” he said.
And now the woman faced him. “What is it you’re wanting with Mr. Stumpner so early in the morning?”
“Just have a couple of questions,” he said.
She looked to the RV. “You won’t be getting that thing down the lane. Not less you’re planning to drive the ditches.”
“I don’t mind walking,” he told her. “I could use the exercise.”
“If you’re wanting some wood cut,” she told him, “he won’t be able to get to it until the fall. Leave me your number and he’ll give you a call tonight.”
“It’s not about that,” he said. “It’s about his brother. Virgil.”
She looked at him a moment longer, face expressionless, then turned to the girl and extended an open hand. The girl reached into an apron pocket, pulled out a cell phone, and passed it over the counter. Without a word the woman crossed to the rear of the stand and into the corn.
DeMarco smiled at the girl. “Will she be coming back?”
The girl grinned, blue eyes clear and lively. “She’s calling him.”
DeMarco nodded. “I thought Amish didn’t use such things as cell phones and pickup trucks.”
“We’re Mennonite,” the girl said. “Where are you from?”
“Aberdeen, for now. But my home is back in Pennsylvania.”
“We’ve been to Lancaster,” she told him.
“That’s across the state from me. Did you like it there?”
“It’s busy,” she said. “But I enjoyed it. Though I wouldn’t want to live there.”
“I don’t blame you. This here is about as beautiful as it gets.”
“If you like corn,” she said.
And now the woman reappeared out of the corn. She came back to the stand, handed the phone to the girl. To DeMarco she said, “He’s getting ready to take the tractor out. If you can get there in the next five minutes, you might still catch him.”
“Thank you,” he said. He picked up his tomatoes and cucumber, carried them to the RV, and laid them on the seat. Then he started down the dirt road. A quarter mile ahead he could see a white farmhouse, a barn, and several outbuildings. “Oh joy,” he said, and broke into a heavy-footed jog.
EIGHTY-FIVE
Still fifty yards from the farmhouse, DeMarco could jog no farther. He hunkered down over a shallow drainage ditch, panting, trying to decide if he needed to throw up or not. Moments later the rumble of a diesel engine overpowered the pounding in his ears. He cranked his head to the left, saw a large John Deere tractor making a turn away from the barn and heading his way, Stumpner’s straw hat bouncing to the wheels’ heavy rolling thrump thrump thrump.
Three deep breaths, then DeMarco pushed himself more or less erect and walked toward the tractor. It soon pulled alongside him.
Stumpner cut the engine, looked down. His face showed neither surprise nor fear. “You fellas sure took your time getting here,” he said. “Who you with?”
DeMarco guessed his age at sixty or more, face hardened and browned by sun and wind, hands thick from years of toil, beard and hair threaded with gray. “I’m just helping out,” DeMarco told him. “As a favor. I’m visiting from Pennsylvania, with the state police there.”
Stumpner nodded. “We been as far as Lancaster. Seen Gettysburg too.”
“So I heard.” He moved closer to the tractor, laid one hand on the thick tire. “Am I really the first person to speak to you about Virgil?”
Stumpner put a hand to his chin, lightly stroked his beard. “Me and him never spent much time together. His mother left the church just after he was born.”
“So there are probably no public records to show the family connection.”
“We keep our own records,” Stumpner said. “Keep our business to ourselves.”
DeMarco nodded. Then looked down the road, scuffed his sneaker atop the hardpan. Secrets everywhere, he thought. Piety is not immune.
In Pennsylvania he had dealt with several young Amish women over the years, all runaways due to incest, rape, or physical abuse. For every girl who ran away there were probably five who stayed behind and suffered in silence. Their church tended to blame the girls for tempting the men, often their own brothers and fathers. As a result DeMarco had little respect for Amish piety. The men hired themselves out to those they call English, demanded high wages, and even charged unsuspecting clients a day’s wages for the drivers who delivered them to work in air-conditioned vans and SUVs. Nearly every Amish family had a cell phone or two registered in the name of a non-Amish neighbor. Some kept their own vehicles hidden in garages a few miles from the Amish community. He knew one man who also owned a twenty-seven-foot walleye boat kept at a marina on Lake Erie.
At least most Mennonites had dropped the pretense of avoiding engines and electronics. He wondered how much information he could gather from Stumpner, and how best to fish for it.
Stumpner shifted in his seat, rolled his shoulders. “There’s places I got to get to,” he said. “If you have something to ask me, better ask quick.”
“When was the last time you saw Virgil?” DeMarco said.
“I only seen him twice in the last dozen years or more. When he got back from that war in Iraq, he spent a night at the house. Then back in July 2014. He stopped by one night to ask could he get some canned meat and such. That’s the last I seen or heard from him.”
“Did he say where he was going that night?”
“Did not.”
“Do you have any ideas on that?”
Stumpner stroked his beard again. “Let me ask you a question now. How sure are you he done that awful thing?”
DeMarco considered his answer. “He had what we call opportunity. At least in regard to where the bodies were found. As for motivation…so far, there’s not a sliver of evidence he was the type for it.”
Stumpner nodded.
“And you?” DeMarco asked. “I’m sure you’ve thought about it. Could he have done it?”
“That’s not for me to judge. Only God can say what’s in a man’s heart.”
“And yet we have to find out, don’t we? For the girls’ sake, if nothing else.”
Stumpner let only a few moments pass. “We done?”
“You know which way he headed, don’t you? You would have watched him leave. Probably even asked where he was going.”
“Weren’t my business to ask,” Stumpner said.
Now it was DeMarco’s turn to wait. He stood gazing up at the man, eyes soft, encouraging.
And finally Stumpner spoke. “‘And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.’”
DeMarco asked, “And where might those woods be?”
Stumpner put a thick finger and thumb to his eyes, pushed at the corners. Then lifted his head and looked toward the sun. “His mother’s family is supposed to have come from out that way originally. Mountain folks. Just about the only real woods and mountains you’re going to find in this state.”
“Any chance you could get a little more specific?” DeMarco asked. “And remember, I have no jurisdiction in this state. All I’m looking to do is talk. Get Virgil’s side of things.”
Stumpner sat with one hand on the ignition key, another on the gearshift, his foot on the clutch. He blew out a soft breath. “Said he wanted to be buried with his mother. He was having some health problems from being in that war.”
“You have an idea where she’s buried?”
“I do not.”
“You know her name?”
The man stared at him a long time.
DeMarco said, “Just so you know, Mr. Stumpner
, I’m more or less obligated to pass on any information I collect to the county sheriff. More or less.”
“Meaning what?” Stumpner said.
“Meaning I realize how important it is to your lifestyle, your religion, to not get involved in the ways of the English. I’m not sure the sheriff would care about that, however. I suspect he won’t. So when I say I am more or less obligated to report everything to him, I’m saying I’ve been known to suffer a bit of amnesia from time to time. Such as how I learned Virgil’s mother’s name.”
Again Stumpner was silent. His expression betrayed no emotion.
Then he said, “Leah Grace.” He leaned forward a bit to take the ignition key between finger and thumb. “Summerville,” he said. He turned the ignition key, and the engine boomed to life. He let out the clutch, and the tractor lurched forward with a startling growl, nearly running over DeMarco’s foot before he jumped to the side. Then out the lane it went, raising a small cloud of yellow dust to swirl around DeMarco as he watched the machine pull away.
EIGHTY-SIX
She slept poorly throughout the night, waking, it seemed, every hour or so to the sound of a door closing, or footsteps coming down the hall, or the feel of the mattress being pushed down from the side, as if he were easing himself into bed beside her. But when she reached out he was not there, nor when she sat up to listen and looked around the dark room for his moving shadow.
When she awoke she was surprised to find the room so warm and full of light. She picked her phone off the end table—7:29. No indentation in the pillow beside hers. No warmth lingering on the sheets.
She went to the window and looked out. No RV. “Sonofabitch,” she muttered.
When the tears started, she returned to the bed, curled up, and cried with the cell phone clutched in one hand. And then she was angry at herself for crying, and stopped for a while, and pushed the phone away.
She could not remember a time when men had not disappointed her. If they lost themselves for a few minutes in the act of love, afterward they would be apologetic and filled with guilt, or else arrogant and self-satisfied, or silent and closed off. Even her father, her first love, had let her down again and again. Every clement Saturday morning he and the three boys would leave early for eighteen holes of golf at the country club. Why had he never asked her to go along? Why had he never taken her instead of one of the boys? She played golf with her mother sometimes, always in an all-female foursome, and by the age of fourteen was outdriving and outscoring all of them. But what she had longed for was the company of men. She wanted to see how they acted with each other, if they laughed freely and unselfconsciously then, if they hid their emotions, bragged about their talents, or sought commiseration for their shortcomings.
It never happened. They remained a mystery to her. A frustrating, maddening mystery.
She loved them all, loved them still, yet felt somehow alien from her father and brothers. Even Galen, whom she had loved the strongest. And now DeMarco. Another disappointment.
She wondered if maybe he was a kind of surrogate for the love she felt denied by her father. Maybe Galen had been too. Which would make DeMarco a surrogate for both her father and Galen.
Love is so messed up, she thought.
She hated them all, singly and collectively. All just a bunch of assholes. She hoped he never came back.
Well, that was a lie. He’d come back sooner or later, tail tucked between his legs. Until then she was giving him nothing. Not a single word. No way was she going to call or text with a pitiful Where are you? When are you coming back? Let him sweat for a while. Give him time to realize the error of his ways.
And when he did come back, things were going to be different. No more deference on her part. They were civilians now. Equals. Except that she was more than equal. She outranked him in intelligence. Sexiness. Jogging. Let’s see if he could give himself a blowjob. Oh, you want to have sex now? So go fuck yourself—how about that?
He was lucky to have her. And if he expected to keep her, he had better be ready to open up with her. No more secrets. No more half-truths. It was going to be all or nothing, buster. Save that strong, silent, hard-ass persona for everybody else.
“Damn straight,” she told his pillow, and gave it a punch. Then, for good measure, she hammered it twice with her fist. “Screw you!” she told it. For extra good measure she turned off her cell phone, vowed she would not turn it on again until nightfall.
Then she buried her face in the pillow. Smelled his scent. Felt herself go hollow and weak. And decided to try to sleep through it all, to sleep as long as she could. With luck she would wake up sane and single again.
EIGHTY-SEVEN
From his air-conditioned captain’s seat in the RV, surrounded by cornfields and a sky turning pale with sunlight, DeMarco Googled Kentucky mountains. Elevated prominences ranged across the state, but the highest were part of the Daniel Boone National Forest in the lower Appalachians south and east of Lexington. The entire mountain range lay like a long, gnarled finger, knuckles wrenched and broken and swollen, across parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and up through Pennsylvania into New England, as wide as three hundred miles in some places, and over fifteen hundred miles long. The Kentucky component comprised a mere seven hundred thousand acres.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” DeMarco muttered.
He sat up and peered through the windshield’s glare. How could he possibly find a man inside all those trees? Especially a man who neither the local police nor the FBI had been able to trace.
He must have been using an assumed name, DeMarco told himself.
Would he carry that name with him to the grave?
The Department of Veterans Affairs online gravesite locator showed no record for Virgil Helm. DeMarco had expected that result, seeing as how no military records for Virgil Helm seemed to exist. The graves registry displayed Helm graves scattered all over the state, including along the southern range of Kentucky’s forested mountains, but listed no individual names.
He’d wanted to be buried next to his mother, Helm’s half brother had said.
DeMarco tried the gravesite locator again. No Virgil Summerville. So he was either alive or hadn’t been buried with a government marker, or hadn’t used that name.
A search of military records found eleven Virgil Summervilles, but none of them came close to matching Virgil’s age.
Maybe, DeMarco thought, he’d made up a first name too. Which would make further searching statistically impossible.
Now what?
Stumpner had indicated two things: that Virgil had fled to the mountains and wilderness, and that he wanted to be buried with his mother. Which implied that she was already deceased.
Leah Grace, DeMarco thought. Find her grave.
The national graves registry showed Summervilles planted all over the country, of course, including throughout Kentucky. Which one is yours, Leah Grace?
Back to a map of the forest. Wilderness and mountains, DeMarco told himself. Wilderness and mountains…
A section of land between London and Corbin seemed to fit the bill. Only a few county roads in and out. No large towns. No major tourist attractions. Hard up against an eastern edge of the Daniel Boone National Forest.
Back to the graves registry. Five Summervilles buried in a little town of Blue Goose.
Five hours from his current destination, MapQuest said.
Five hours there, five hours back, he thought. A day of searching. Two days minimum.
What was Jayme doing now? If awake, she would know the RV was gone. And him with it. Was she worried?
He checked his phone. No texts, no missed calls.
Okay, she wasn’t worried. Still pissed off, no doubt. Maybe permanently.
DeMarco considered his options. He could return to Aberdeen, beg forgiveness, be forgiven or spurned. He put the odds against for
giveness at six to one. Which would leave him exactly where he was at that moment, facing east alone. Jayme would follow at her leisure in her grandmother’s car. Back in Pennsylvania he would sell the RV and split the money with her. She would return to her job and bright future, and he would…
What? he asked himself. You will do what?
One text, he told himself. If he received a response that did not consist of only expletives, he would turn around, hightail it back to her, do whatever was necessary to patch things up. Until then, he wasn’t going to just sit there staring into the morning sun.
What was the original quote old Horace Greeley had borrowed? “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.”
So okay, a different variation for me, he thought. Go east, old man, and grow up already.
With his index finger he typed out a text: Got a pretty solid lead on Virgil Helm, need to follow it up. Should take two days at most. Will stay in touch. I hope you know how sorry I am. How much you mean to me.
Should he say anything else? Add a smiley face?
No, not a good idea. He hit Send. And waited. If she responded, if she wrote Come back, he would go back.
Five minutes. No reply. He checked to make sure he had service out there in the country. Checked to make sure the text had been sent. Waited five minutes more. No reply.
He shut off the idling engine, climbed out of the RV, leaned against the fender, looked out across the field of corn.
Watched the slowly scudding clouds, gray destroyers and frigates.
Listened to the insects buzzing. Watched three buzzards circling to the north.
No reply.
No reply.
So okay, he thought. You have clothes in the drawers. Hiking boots in the closet. Coffee and some food in the cupboards. Jayme’s backpack and sleeping bag. As for Jayme…she’s not ready to talk. Give her some time.
He climbed back into the RV. “East,” he told himself, and turned the key.
EIGHTY-EIGHT
Walking the Bones Page 23
