Papa said, “I’m gonna kill him.”
Momma tried to grab him, and he yanked his arm out of her hands. This was not what I’d expected. I hadn’t thought of how they would react or what might happen. Papa’s anger was big, bigger than my hurt maybe, because his face went slack so that he looked even less like himself than he had a few seconds ago. It was like the person inside of him, the person we knowed, was gone. He run inside their tent and when he come out with his shotgun, Momma’s hands templed in prayer, and she bowed her forehead to her fingertips. I grabbed at his shirtsleeve tight and he jerked his arm up hard, almost tearing off my fingernails.
I yelled, “Papa, please, don’t! Don’t hurt nobody!”
He wouldn’t even look at me when he said, “What did you think, Wallis Ann? Did you think I’d hear that and do nothing?” To Momma he said, “Go on and pray, but praying ain’t gonna help him now. That son of a bitch been coming around here and all he was doing was sniffing after her like a dog after a bone.”
Papa leaned down so his face was close to mine, the heat of rage coming off him like I was standing right inside an enormous blazing fire. I wanted to run, to get away from him.
“And what about you, Wallis Ann? Has he touched you too? Goddamn it, has he?”
“What? No, Papa! No!”
“Don’t you lie to me! You tell me now what he’s done!”
I shrank from him, thinking about the kissing, and desperately looked to Momma for help. She stared at me in horror, stunned.
I cried out, “He’s not done nothing to me!”
“How long you known about this?”
I dropped my gaze. I couldn’t look at him.
“Goddamn it, Wallis Ann. What the hell?”
I stumbled to Momma, and she held out a hand as if to ward me off, turning her head like the sight of me sickened her.
“Momma, I’m sorry!”
Her face was white, and she shook her head as if denying my apology. Angry words spilled from her mouth.
“I thought we’d raised you right. Weren’t you supposed to be looking after her? Dear sweet Jesus, I can’t believe you let this happen.”
She didn’t have to say, The way you was supposed to have looked after Seph. Without warning, everything I’d been holding in the past few months come out of me like Seph’s sickness had come out of his mouth.
“I’m always having to look after Laci! I’m always having to explain Laci! I can’t hardly have a minute to myself without having Laci stuck to me like a burr!”
Momma face went hard as the wall of granite rock over to Salt Gap. She kept staring at me, like she didn’t know me, her expression reminding me of the day she’d almost touched the body of a long, slick hellbender salamander while working near Stampers Creek. Disgusted. Shocked. Dismayed. I wished I’d never said nothing. I wished I’d confronted Clayton instead. I’d only been thinking out of spite.
Papa grabbed my arm and said, “Come on!”
I yanked away from him, and hollered, “NO!”
Papa said, “Wallis Ann. You get yourself on down that path, and now.”
“Momma!”
She turned away as Papa snatched my arm again, his grip so tight, later on I’d have a bruise. He hauled me towards Mr. Cooper’s tent. As Papa yanked me along, there stood Laci and Clayton only twenty feet in front of us, near the Ferris wheel, and I went ice cold.
Papa seen’em too, and he dropped my arm, and yelled, “Hey! Get the hell away from her!”
At the sight of Papa running straight for him, shotgun aimed, Clayton’s features shifted from smiling to openmouthed alarm. He took off, pulling Laci along behind him. She tripped, almost falling, and he caught her and resumed running. Papa barreled after them, and I was scared for what he might do.
I followed shouting, “Laci!”
It looked like she tried to twist around at the sound of my voice, except Clayton darted around the corner of a tent and they both vanished by the time we got to it. People scattered at the sight of Papa with his shotgun, charging like a black bear.
He yelled, “Stop him!” only everyone looked at him, confounded because they didn’t know who he meant or what he was doing.
Papa finally stopped running, and seconds later I caught up to him.
He said, “Come on!” and led me back the way we’d come.
Soon we was in an area where nobody had seen the commotion, although everyone still shied away from him, looking like he was. He stampeded Mr. Cooper’s tent and proceeded to chew on him about the caliber of some of people he was hiring.
Mr. Cooper held up his hands, and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, now, Mr. Stamper. What’s the problem?”
“That goddamn young buck you hired has disgraced my daughter! She was an innocent till he put his filthy hands on her! She don’t know any better!”
I shifted uncomfortably, refusing to look at Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Cooper said, “Well, hang on now. I seen them walk by here not more than five minutes ago, hand in hand. That seems pretty normal between two young people. It ain’t disgraceful to hold hands now, is it?”
“That ain’t what I’m talking about. Them walking around. I’m talking about something else.”
Papa spat on the ground while Mr. Cooper eyed his shotgun.
He said, “What you aiming to do with that?”
“I’m gonna shoot his ass, that’s what I’m gonna do. He’s gone and forced himself on her! He’ll pay for what he’s done! She’s not to blame for this!”
I remembered how Laci took off her clothes, and the thought made me shake my head.
Mr. Cooper said, “You disagree with your papa?”
Papa twisted around and said in a voice so different, if I’d closed my eyes I wouldn’t have known who was talking.
“Is there something else you need to tell me, Wallis Ann?”
His question flustered me, and I shook my head hard, as if emphasis would cover deceit. Papa’s anger was already burning out of control and I won’t about to stoke it. I sure didn’t want to get burned any more than I already had. Papa didn’t take his eyes off me, even when Mr. Cooper started talking again.
“He’s a big part of my show. I can’t be having my main folks getting shot up. Maybe this is all just a misunderstanding.”
Papa jerked his thumb at me and said, “It ain’t. She’ll tell you.”
A swarm of jagged, disconnected thoughts swirled in my head, like looking at oneself in a broken mirror and seeing fragments instead of as a whole.
Papa said, “Wallis Ann?”
I mashed my lips together.
“Wallis Ann.”
I swallowed and without looking at either of them, I whispered, “They been doing . . . things.”
Mr. Cooper said, “They. Sounds mutual, Mr. Stamper.”
Papa aimed the gun at Mr. Cooper. “Get that goddamn disgusting thought out of your head. Laci’s never been off on her own. She’s naïve, and she sure as hell ain’t here for his entertainment.”
Mr. Cooper sounded skeptical. “Uh-huh. Fine, then. Let’s go on see if we can’t find’em.”
He led the way from his tent, hollering out to some of the workers nearby. Papa breathed heavy, his fury seeming to build again at Mr. Cooper’s lack of alarm.
“Hey, boys! Come on! Got to get us a little search going on.”
Soon a small group had gathered up, and Mr. Cooper, without giving out any particulars, said they were to all go and look for Laci. He made no mention of Clayton at all.
“Find the girl. Y’all know what she looks like.”
He turned to Papa, and said, “So, we’ll find your girl and how about you leave young Clayton be?”
Papa shot a look at him. Mr. Cooper shifted his shoulders and turned away to direct the workers. They spread out, and people went to calling out “Laci!” Some went and got lanterns.
I said to Papa, “She likes the Friesians. She fed them apples.”
He looked at me, like he won’t sur
e if he should trust my word, but he motioned at me to follow him and we checked that area. Towards the woods, I noticed how the tiny flicker of lights from search lanterns dotted the blackness like fireflies, and I hoped Laci might see the lights and come towards them. We went back to where Mr. Cooper was giving directions to anyone new who joined. There was a few groups of two or three skirting around one area of woods.
Finally, in a low voice, I said to Papa, “I can show you where else they went. Maybe she’s there.”
He was some calmer by now, and he stared at the ground for a few seconds, and then nodded.
I said, “We got to go back towards our tents.”
He said, “Lead.”
There won’t nothing but the sound of our breathing, and hurried footsteps. When we got to our own tents, we stopped, and Papa told Momma what happened. She sank down onto the camp stool, like her legs couldn’t hold her up. I couldn’t speak at all. I couldn’t offer her a thing. We left her behind, and I led Papa along the path, then into the other section of woods different from where the others was looking. We ducked out of the way of tree branches, some of them scraping across my cheeks before I could grab them. I tripped a few times over some of the bigger stones I couldn’t see. I didn’t recollect having so much trouble when I’d followed Laci and Clayton, and Papa’s silence over my clumsiness made me uncomfortable, his usual concern overshadowed by his anger. We finally come to the edge of the tree line and stood facing the clearing.
“Here,” was all I said.
Papa started across the small meadow, looking around, and then searched the other side of the clearing. Laci won’t here. If she’d been here, we’d have spotted her easy enough.
Even so, I called out “Laci! It’s me, and Papa. Laci! Are you here . . . ?”
Papa walked around in a circle, looking at the flattened grass, kicking aside a stick or two.
I offered a suggestion. “I could wait. Maybe she’ll turn up.”
He stared towards the dusky woods and we could faintly hear the other men calling out from all the way across the carnival, “Hey, girlie, yoo-hoo!”
He handed me his shotgun and turned away. I thought he would leave without speaking. He hesitated, and faced me again, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coveralls.
He said, “You should a come to us. You should a known better. I’m right disappointed in you, Wallis Ann.”
He walked away without looking back. Them words was the worst thing he’d ever said, even worse than him questioning me. I’d rather he’d a whupped me. I waited until I couldn’t hear him no more.When I was sure he was gone, I could feel a few tears gathering in the corners of my eyes, threatening to roll down my cheeks, but it wouldn’t feel right, it would only feel like self-pity. I tilted my head back and studied the stars glittering in the night sky and tried to empty all thoughts, so my mind was a vacant vessel. I refused to ruminate on where Laci might be, or what might have happened. All of my earlier anger and jealousy had dissolved. I eventually left the clearing to wait along the rim line of trees. I leaned against one, and set the shotgun beside me. It got even chillier and I worried Laci might be as cold as I was. I settled down to wait the rest of the night, with plenty of time to think about what I’d done—or not done.
At dawn, I rose to my feet, took the time to look around once more, called to Laci, hoping against hope. The sound of birds starting their morning song was all I got in return, that and the scraping of squirrels looking for nuts. I picked up the shotgun, and made my way back, my feet crunching sticks, the sound seeming loud in the early morning air. Momma sat by the fire but Papa was still off with the others searching. When she seen me, she said nothing, her face as chilly as the morning. She handed me a cup of hot coffee, eyes gone dark as the liquid. I sat near the fire to thaw out. I swallowed hard, determined to be strong. A minute later, she reached out for my hand, and held on to it, and I gripped hers in return. I couldn’t be strong anymore, and tears of gratefulness slid down my face, and dripped into the hot coffee she’d handed me. I tilted the cup, and drank deep, as if I could swallow our sorrow.
Chapter 25
The second day passed. Desperate, Papa took off to Tucker’s Branch to report Laci missing to a sheriff with the last name of Baker. Sheriff Baker started coming every day, poked around, made notes, then left and, in Papa’s opinion, was about as helpful as a cat on a squirrel hunt. After a week passed with no sign at all, the search slowed. It was like everyone got discouraged. If we’d found a scrap of material, a shoe, anything, it would have been something to keep folks going. There won’t a single solitary thing found. Like Morty the Magician’s rabbit, they’d vanished. If it hadn’t been for her clothes, her beloved fiddle, the rumpled cover on her bed, I’d have wondered if she’d ever been here at all. Yet, when I closed my eyes, she was everywhere. I felt her hand in mine, heard her music in my head, caught the red gold of her hair in the setting winter sun.
I missed her more than I could explain.
I regretted everything.
Workers trickled back to work again, and performers drifted off to practice routines.
Bright and early one morning, a little over a week after their disappearance, Mr. Cooper come by looking uncomfortable.
“It’s high time for us to move on. Crowds thinned out considerably, what with the cold weather and the holiday season here.”
Papa offered no comment.
Mr. Cooper said, “We’re going down south to Florida, a place called Gibsonton, and winter there.”
Papa was stony faced, and Mr. Cooper, hands in his pockets, didn’t have much else to say.
He walked off, then turned back, and said, “No hard feelings, I hope, on how things was here?”
Papa watched a bird fly over.
Mr. Cooper cleared his throat. “Hey, look, keep them tents here. They’re yours to do with what you want.”
Papa conceded that one gesture. “Thank you.”
Mr. Cooper said, “Well.”
He glanced around, then took his leave. The noise of the tents, rides, and sideshows being dismantled, the shouts of men and clanging of tools echoed around the woods and beyond filling the air for the rest of the day. I watched from a distance for a little while, but when they went to take down the high dive platform, I hurried back to our tents. Papa was gone, off to Sheriff Baker’s yet again, and in the meantime Big Bertha was there and handing Momma more soap as a parting gift.
“It ain’t much, but everything else is packed, and I seem to recall you liked it.”
Momma said, “You don’t need to do this, but thank you. We do appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
Big Bertha said, “I sure hope your girl turns up. Can’t imagine what it’s like for all of you.”
Momma’s face was pale and set. She held the soap, appearing to not know how to respond. Meanwhile, Big Bertha won’t in any hurry. She settled in, chattering on like we didn’t have nothing to do but sit around and answer silly questions.
“Reckon your husband will have the sheriff look in Walhalla? Or one a them other towns? Reckon she might a gone that far? No tellin’ with them long legs a hers how far she could have got.”
Momma studied Big Bertha with an expression like she was talking in a foreign language. I stepped forward to spare her any more well-intentioned comments.
I said, “Thank you again, Miss Bertha. Momma and I was getting ready to . . .”
Big Bertha lumbered to her feet. “Yes, yes, shoot, look at the time, I got to finish getting my own stuff together.”
That worked to get Big Bertha on her way, only here come Trixie with Mr. M, barely missing Big Bertha’s exit by about five minutes.
Trixie said, “Hey, Mrs. Stamper.”
Momma said, “Hello, Trixie. You girls talk. I’m going to go lie down.”
Mr. M rode Trixie’s shoulder, and I stood next to her so he would crawl onto mine. I give him pieces of biscuit from breakfast, which he ate in delicate small bites, chewing in his
human like manner. Mr. M was more skittish than usual, and he went from my shoulder to hers, to mine again.
Trixie said, “He knows we’re getting ready to leave. He sees all the commotion, hears things banging, and I think it makes him feel unsettled, confused.”
“I know the feeling.”
Trixie said, “She’ll be fine. Laci is liable to turn up any day now, hungry perhaps, but fine.”
I appreciated Trixie’s words, but Laci had never been on her own before, without me, or someone in our family to watch out for her. She was likely afraid. She could be hurt. I couldn’t bring myself to think of anything worse.
She said, “Will you stay and keep looking?”
“That’s what Papa wants to do.”
She reached out to hug me, and Mr. M let out a screech of protest.
Trixie said, “I hope we all meet again someday, Wallis Ann.”
“Me too.”
Trixie give me a little hopeful smile, but I think we both had the sense once they left, we’d never see each other again. Towards evening, after Papa come from the trip to Sheriff Baker’s looking like he always did, Paulie appeared with a box of food. He’d brought the things what could be stored without spoiling. Salted pork, dried beans, rice, cornmeal, grits and taters. Coffee, flour, salt, sugar. Matches. He set the box down with a thump.
Momma peered into the box and said, “Thank you so much, Paulie.”
Paulie’s face was red, and he was a bit out of breath having carted the box all the way from across the other side of the carnival.
He managed to say, “Hope this’ll do for a while.”
Papa said, “This is too much. You’ve got a lot of folks to feed, and we don’t want to take from your supplies.”
He stood with his big hands folded in front, still wearing the dirty apron he always had on. “I ain’t worried about them buzzards. They get a plenty. All I hope is you find your girl.”
“We hope so too.”
“How long will y’all stay?”
“I can’t say. Till we find her.”
“I’ll keep hoping.”
“Thank you.”
The Road to Bittersweet Page 26
