The Third Hill North of Town

by Noah Bly

  “Everybody must be in bed,” she muttered. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, though, as late as it is.”

  Elijah and Jon looked at each other grimly. Aside from another gravel road that headed north at the foot of the hill where Julianna’s attention was focused, there was nothing except hayfields and an occasional tree. Julianna proceeded down the hill and turned onto the northbound road when they reached the bottom; the Beetle’s headlights allowed them to see a sign that read “County Road YY.”

  “There’s the post office where Momma works!” Julianna told Jon, coming to a stop and pointing out his window as she allowed the Beetle to idle in neutral. “And there’s the bakery right over there. Tomorrow morning we can come back to town and buy a loaf of Nellie’s sourdough bread to have with breakfast. It’s so good you’ll think you’ve died and gone to heaven!”

  For all of Julianna’s enthusiasm, every time she turned her head the familiar structures of Pawnee seemed to vanish before her eyes, replaced by shadows in the moonlight. Doc Colby’s porch could have been a patch of brush by the roadside, Lars Olson’s smithy a stand of Scotch pine trees.

  “Julianna,” Elijah murmured. “I don’t see anything.”

  She swallowed hard and eased the car into gear. “Benjamin Taylor,” she responded wearily. She was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open. “The second we get home, I swear I’m going to slap you silly for giving me such a hard time today.”

  “Where’s your house, Julianna?” Jon asked carefully, sensing just how fragile Julianna was becoming.

  “Right down this road, about a mile and a half from here,” she answered. The Volkswagen was picking up speed as they headed north. “We always tell visitors to go to the top of the third big hill north of town and turn left at the mailbox. You’d have to be blind to miss it.”

  After a few hundred yards, they passed a lonely farmhouse with a mobile home parked in its driveway. There were no lights on at the house and Julianna didn’t even spare it a glance. She was now staring straight ahead, refusing to look at anything except the road itself. It had no shoulders and was barely wide enough for one car; it wound up and down the steep hills just as it should, and she began to breathe freely again, reassured by the tractor ruts in the mud next to the gravel and the smell of wild roses and juniper bushes in the air.

  The third hill north of Pawnee appeared in the headlights. She smiled joyfully as the Beetle struggled toward the crest and she began honking the horn to let her family know she was finally home. As they reached the summit she cranked the wheel to the left to pull into their driveway, still honking the horn.

  “What on earth?” she cried, slamming on the brakes and stalling the engine.

  The front wheels of the Volkswagen slid to a stop a few inches from a shallow ditch lining the edge of the road. On the other side of the ditch—looking like a military cemetery in the moonlight—was a cornfield.

  Julianna’s skin was the color of wax as she gaped through the windshield of the Beetle at the knee-high rows of cornstalks revealed in the headlights. Her hands fell limply from the steering wheel into her lap and her breathing was the only sound in the car. Elijah reached out to touch her again, putting his hand on the back of her neck and murmuring her name.

  Home sweet home, Jon Tate thought bleakly.

  The speed limit was twenty-five miles per hour, but Samuel Hunter—driving the “borrowed” 1959 Ford Country Sedan station wagon owned by Bonnor Tucker—barreled through the town of Mullwein, Iowa, at more than three times that speed, praying nobody else would be on the road at eleven thirty on a Sunday night. Sam knew he’d never forgive himself if he plowed into another car, or God forbid a pedestrian, but it was a risk he had to take if he, Mary, and Edgar were to have any chance at all of catching up to Elijah and his companions ahead of Gabriel and the police.

  Mary was in the passenger seat, holding herself as still as possible by clutching the door handle with her right hand and bracing her left palm against the dash. Sam could sense the tension in his wife’s body as the public library and the Mullwein State Bank blurred past their windows, but he knew she wanted him to do exactly what he was doing, in spite of the peril to themselves and others. On the highway between the jailhouse and Mullwein, she had urged him to push the station wagon to its limit, but a series of hills and sharp curves had seldom allowed them to go full out for more than a few hundred yards at a time. The constant acceleration and frenzied braking had made for a stomach-churning ride, and Sam feared the rest of the journey would be no less harrowing.

  “Oh God Oh God Oh God,” Edgar Reilly moaned in the backseat. To Sam’s surprise, the tightly wound psychiatrist had not suggested slowing down, but the roller coaster–like ride was clearly not agreeing with the older man at all. He had unwrapped at least a dozen lemon drops in the past ten miles, yet even with his cheeks packed like a squirrel’s he seemed unable to refrain from moaning under his breath every few seconds.

  They sped violently over a set of railroad tracks, the headlights of the station wagon bouncing crazily on the asphalt road in front of them, and then shot down a steep hill; Mary gasped out a warning when she noticed how the highway veered to the left on the other side of a Dairy Queen at the bottom of the hill.

  “I see it!” Sam said, stamping on the brakes and grappling with the steering wheel to control the turn. The tires of Bonnor’s car squealed in protest and the tail end slid madly on the road, but Sam held on with a death grip and a second later they were headed south, toward Missouri—going much too fast to notice the empty squad car tucked away behind the Dairy Queen.

  “Oh God Oh God Oh God,” Edgar ground out through clenched teeth. The scent of lemons wafted over the front seat.

  The highway before them was blessedly straight and devoid of other travelers, permitting Sam a quick glance at Mary. “She said another ten miles after we get out of Mullwein, right?” he asked. “And then look for Highway 46?”

  Mary nodded. Dottie Buckley had told them she was only guessing where Pawnee might be found, and Mary knew Sam remembered everything Dottie had said as well as Mary herself did. The numbered roads and the distances between them were a kind of mantra for him, though, and she understood he was only repeating them to calm his nerves.

  “We’ll find it, Sam,” she said.

  “After that, though,” he continued, “I’m guessing we’ll probably have to stop and ask somebody who lives in the area for specifics.”

  “We’ll find it,” Mary repeated.

  Mary wasn’t just saying this to comfort Sam; she believed it to be true. If she had to, she would wake every farmer in the county until somebody told her what she needed to know. She was not about to get this close to her son, only to fail because the place they were looking for was apparently as elusive as El Dorado. Mary had grown up in farm country—though in the Deep South—and she knew what folks were like in such places: They stayed put forever, and they had long memories. With any luck at all, she and Sam wouldn’t need to knock on too many doors before they found somebody who knew exactly where Pawnee was. Or at least where it used to be.

  We’re coming, Elijah, she thought as Sam floored the accelerator and the speedometer crept over a hundred miles per hour. We’re coming just as fast as we can.

  Gabriel Dapper was driving even more recklessly than Samuel Hunter, but he was still five minutes behind Elijah Hunter’s parents and Edgar Reilly. Gabriel had no idea why Mary Hunter and the others were still so sure that Pawnee, Missouri, was where Elijah Hunter and Jon Tate were taking Julianna, yet he wasn’t about to lose track of the only hope he had of finding his mother.

  “I’m coming, Mom,” he murmured aloud in his Cadillac. “Just hang on a little longer.”

  The chase after the Hunters and Edgar Reilly had acted like an analeptic in Gabriel Dapper’s bloodstream. His fatigue was entirely gone; he felt like he could stay awake for eternity. The sound of his tires on the road’s surface changed pitch as the asphalt highway
gave way to concrete, and the Cadillac whipped past darkened houses and lonely streetlights. He paid no attention to his surroundings, however; he was too busy trying to make sense of the senseless.

  The depth of his ignorance appalled him. He didn’t understand why the two little shitheads who had kidnapped and raped his mother had now taken her with them yet again; he didn’t understand what these same two shitheads would have to gain by taking her back to her hometown. As the Cadillac blew through downtown Mullwein, rumbling like thunder over a two-block stretch of cobblestone, Gabriel asked himself the same questions over and over:

  Why Pawnee? What were the kidnappers up to? What did they know that he didn’t?

  He screeched around the sharp turn at the bottom of the hill by the Dairy Queen. The right rear tire of the Cadillac slammed into the curb with enough force to pop off its hubcap and send the bundle beside him on the passenger seat flying to the floor. Gabriel didn’t really notice the collision; he simply stamped on the accelerator again and resumed his pursuit, leaving two burned-rubber marks on the highway behind him.

  He’d never even heard the name of “Pawnee, Missouri,” until his mother got sick and started talking about it all the time. Why had she never said anything about it when she was sane? Why hadn’t he ever pushed her harder about her past? It was his past, too, by extension; surely he had a right to know more about it than he did.

  On his visits to the Maine State Mental Hospital in Bangor, Julianna had mentioned “Momma and Daddy” and two brothers named Seth and Michael, but that was the extent of what Gabriel knew about the people who were apparently his family, as well. He thought back to his own childhood, and to the few times he had attempted to ask Julianna about her parents and siblings. Her answers had always been either evasive or monosyllabic, but it seemed to him now there had also been something in her voice he had missed each time, an undercurrent of emotion he would have noticed right away if he’d only been paying closer attention. He’d heard the same undertone again when she was hallucinating in the hospital, but he was only now beginning to get a glimmer of what it might be:

  Enormous love, and an equally powerful grief. Perhaps the knowledge that the best part of her life was over, and things would never be as good again. The end of hope, the end of childhood, the end of faith in a just and moral universe. All of these and more, bound together and spun into a dark, haunting melody, a threnody of loss for anybody who knew how to listen for it.

  Gabriel was suddenly blinded by tears. There was no way he could possibly know what had happened to Julianna, yet something was telling him it was a wonder her mind had not broken decades before, split into a million pieces by memory and loss. And now she was apparently being dragged back to where her life had been ruined, the hostage of two criminals who had done unspeakable things to her and had some hidden purpose for taking her there.

  Gabriel glanced at the bundle on the floor of the passenger seat. Wrapped up in his suit coat were three souvenirs he’d brought home with him at the end of World War II. One was a Mauser pistol; the other two were German hand grenades (nicknamed “potato mashers” for their long wooden cylinders and brutal-looking metal caps). Until the previous day, all three weapons had been locked up in a trunk in his attic for nearly seventeen years; he had actually forgotten all about them before Edgar Reilly called to tell him that his mother had been kidnapped. Gabriel was not a violent man by nature, but the boys who had taken his mother were no doubt armed, and he would not be caught with his pants down. He would do whatever it took to get Julianna back; he would somehow find a way to make things right for her again, and give her some peace.

  “I’m coming, Mom,” Gabriel mourned, accidentally running over a rabbit on the road without feeling the bump.

  Julianna wandered in the moonlight through the foot-high rows of corn, looking for her home. To all outward appearances, she could have been out for a midnight stroll in the country, stopping every few steps to enjoy the play of shadows on the ground as a light breeze tugged this way and that at the cornstalks surrounding her.

  “Julianna?” Elijah was following her at a respectful distance, not wanting to intrude but too worried to stay silent any longer. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded her head, swaying from side to side like a little girl and breaking up a clod of dirt with the toe of her shoe.

  Julianna had stepped out of the Beetle a few minutes before, leaving it parked with its headlights pointing at the cornfield and its rear end jutting into the middle of the road. Elijah had chased after her at once, leaving Jon to park the car in a more conventional manner. Elijah heard Jon coming now through the field, walking as fast as his injuries would allow, and he half turned to wait for the older boy.

  “I tried to find a place to hide the Bug but there’s no place close by that will work,” Jon muttered to Elijah, catching up. “I couldn’t even put it in the cornfield because there’s no way it would make it through the ditch.”

  Elijah glanced back at the road, some fifteen yards behind them. The moonlight was bright enough for him to make out the Volkswagen’s rounded roof with no difficulty. “We’ll see anybody coming from up here a long time before they get here,” he said. “We can always make a run for it if we have to.”

  Jon nodded wearily. “What about the guns? You and Julianna left them in the car and I couldn’t decide if I should bring them or not. I thought Julianna might be weird about it.”

  Elijah blinked, surprised by Jon’s apparent willingness to follow whatever course he, Elijah, believed to be best. “I guess we can leave them for now,” he said, trying to sound more sure than he felt. “Like I said, no one can sneak up on us here.”

  Julianna turned around and motioned for them to join her. The boys obeyed at once, both feeling oddly diffident as they drew closer. She searched their faces when they drew even with her, then gestured at the ground by her feet. “The front porch was right about here,” she said matter-of-factly, sounding like a distracted tour guide at a museum. “Our barn was over there, and a little north of that was Daddy’s tool shed.” She smiled a little. “Seth and Michael always called it ‘The Mouse House.’ ”

  Elijah and Jon stared at her. Her voice gave them no clue as to her mental state; she was still speaking in the light manner they associated with her teenager persona, yet it was clear from what she was saying that she was no longer hallucinating, at least for the moment. She didn’t seem to need them to say anything; she simply kept looking around the hilltop.

  “Momma’s garden was just over there,” she continued, turning in a slow circle. “About ten feet away from where that fence is. We used to tease her that she loved her garden more than she loved us, because she spent so much time in it.” She bent down to finger a leaf on a cornstalk. “She’d be so mad if she knew they’d plowed it under.”

  Jon slapped at a mosquito on his bicep and the quick movement caused a twinge in his shoulder. That he’d been shot earlier that night still felt unreal to him. He kept staring at the bandage taped to the left side of his chest as if it had been put there by mistake, thinking about how easily the bullet had torn through his flesh.

  “What happened to your family, Julianna?” Elijah asked quietly, pulling Jon’s attention back to the hilltop. “Do you remember?”

  Julianna looked up at the stars in the sky, and then back at the earth. For an instant she thought she heard gunfire and screaming, and the roar of an enormous fire. Her knees began to buckle but then the night went mercifully still again.

  “Ben,” she whispered, looking at Elijah as if she were just noticing his presence. “I don’t feel very well.”

  Coincidence was setting the table for a lavish feast.

  Samuel Hunter pulled into the driveway of the first house he saw after Highway 46 changed from asphalt to gravel, to ask for better directions to Pawnee than a traumatized Dottie Buckley had been able to provide. The house was a small one-story home with a flat roof and a yard more dirt than grass; there was an
empty chicken coop on the property and an old Chevy Bel Air parked beside it.

  “Looks like they’re already asleep,” Sam said, reaching for his door handle. “I’ll go knock.”

  Mary shook her head and put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Seeing a black man on the porch at this hour may frighten the poor things to death. I’ll do it.” She turned her head to look at Edgar in the backseat. “It might be best if you come with me, Dr. Reilly. Some folks may not want to talk to me, either, but you’re not as likely to give them the willies.”

  The thought of waking potentially hostile strangers in the middle of the night on a deserted country road was not appealing to Edgar, but he nodded in agreement and cleared his throat nervously.

  “Whatever you think best, Mary,” he said.

  The two of them got out of the car and walked to the door together, listening to the sound of their shoes on the gravel and the hooting of an owl in a nearby tree. The headlights from Bonnor Tucker’s station wagon allowed Mary to note that the house was old and badly in need of a paint job, but there was a stunning flower garden circling the foundation—she saw poppies, mimosas, cockscombs, African lilies, Bells of Ireland, and several other blossoms she wasn’t familiar with—and she smiled to herself as she knocked on the door. In her experience, people who cared more about their flower gardens than the houses they lived in were not likely to be overly hostile.

  “Should we knock again?” Edgar asked, looking back with longing at the station wagon.

  Mary shook her head. “Somebody’s already coming.”

  The porch light flickered on over their heads a moment later, and Mary, who had not expected to see another dark-skinned face in this part of the world, blinked in surprise when the door opened and an elderly black woman in a pink bathrobe peered out at them. She appeared to be in her mid-seventies, with short white hair and a heavily lined face, but her shoulders were straight and her eyes were more curious than wary.