Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady (5 page)

She watched Junior’s curled figure for a moment, shaking her head, making little clicking sounds with her mouth.
Tsk, tsk, tsk
. It was the sound she used to make a lot when she was living around people. She made it every time she saw an example of man’s cruelty to his fellow man. Since she had started living by herself, she had not had to make the sound one single time.

Junior lay on his side. His thumb was beneath his chin, as if it had just fallen out of his mouth. His eyes were red and swollen. When he breathed in and out, unspilled tears rattled in his throat.

Mad Mary reached out her freckled hand and unlocked one latch, then the other. She didn’t need a knife blade. Her fingernails were long, tough, and sharp. She could puncture a can of condensed milk with them.

She lifted the door silently and got it out of the way by tying it to the tree limb overhead. She knotted the fishing line with one hand, without looking up.

She brushed a bee aside as if it were a fly.

“Now let’s get you out of here before whoever done this to you comes back,” she said.

She leaned in the trap and, with surprising gentleness, pulled Junior toward her. He did not stir. She scooped him into her arms.

Junior was so worn out with trying to get free and with crying and with the pain of being a caged animal that he felt nothing. If this was what it was like to be in a trap—he had thought this at least a hundred times during the endless afternoon—if this was what it was like, he would never make another trap as long as he lived.

Mad Mary braced him against her knee for a moment and then lifted him. Years of living on her own in the woods had made her strong. Nothing bothered her. As she stood, Junior’s head rolled into a comfortable curve of her shoulder.

“There you go,” she said.

He moaned.

“You sleep,” she told him.

She adjusted him so she would have the use of her walking cane. She needed that. The cane poked into the dust, leaving a sharp indentation by her feet.

“When you wake up, all your bad dreams will be over. You’ll be safe. Nobody can get you in Mary’s cave. Nobody even knows where Mary’s cave is.”

With long mannish strides Mad Mary bore Junior away deeper into the forest.

“And that,” she said to the trees and the storm breeze and the darkening sky, “is a fact.”

Mud was running wildly through the trees. His long ears flared out behind him. Now he remembered Junior in the bushes. He remembered the hamburger. He knew exactly where they were going and why.

He turned, barked over his shoulder, and then ran back in a frenzy to make sure the Blossoms were following him. He barked again to speed them up and then ran deeper into the woods.

“Mud knows something,” Pap said, panting.

“Sure! He was with Junior!” Vern called over his shoulder.

“That’s right! He was, Pap!”

At that, Maggie began running faster. She caught up with Vern and they ran together like forest creatures, jumping over briar bushes, slipping through the narrow spaces between trees, sliding down banks.

Their mom tried to keep up with them for a while, but she had to fall back when she lost one of her Dr. Scholl’s sandals. She slid her foot in again and ran forward, calling, “We’re coming, Junior!”

Behind them, Pap could not keep up no matter how hard he tried. He was thrashing through the forest like a wounded moose. He was desperately trying to catch the others, but it was impossible. He watched them disappear, one by one, into the trees. His sense of frustration deepened.

The forest itself seemed to be fighting him. He pushed aside branches and they came back to slap him in the face. Briars caught his clothes and tore them. His shoelace got busted, and a loose stone turned his ankle onto its side.

“Wait for me!” he called, staggering to a stop. No one even heard him.

Pap tested his throbbing ankle by walking three steps to a tree. He held on to the tree as if it were his last friend. Then, as he leaned there, he suddenly felt old and useless. He put his weight on the tree.

Above his own ragged breathing he could hear Mud’s joyful barking in the distance. It seemed to be in one place now. Mud had found Junior.

Well, that was good. Pap imagined Vern and Maggie and Vicki catching up. He imagined them running into the clearing, hugging each other, being happy and young. He wished he could be there.

It’s terrible being old, he thought, terrible. His despair returned. He put his hand on his hip for support and bent his knees. He was going to sit down on a stone.

Suddenly in the distance he heard Vicki’s voice. She was calling him. “Pap!” she cried. It was the voice she used when something bad had happened, the voice she had used on the phone the night she’d called to tell him his son, Cotton, had been killed by a steer. He had heard that cry enough to know it in his sleep. Her saying his name in that way turned his blood cold every time.

Pap’s knees were bent so he could sit down, and it was hard for him to get his knees to realize they were going to have to straighten up instead and take him on through the forest.

He gave each knee a gentle nudge with his fist, and they popped back. He began his awkward push through the forest, favoring his bad ankle.

“I’m coming,” he called, hobbling toward them. “I’m coming.”

Pap came into the clearing with one hand over his pounding heart. “What?” he gasped. “What’s happened?”

Vicki pointed to the cage set back in the blackberry bushes. Pap stumbled forward. He squinted. His hand clutched the bib of his overalls.

“What?” he said again. He didn’t see anything, so he guessed he must not be looking in the right place. His head snapped this way and that. His neck bones creaked in protest.

“There, Pap,” Maggie said. She pointed too.

“I don’t see nothing.”

“Exactly!” Vicki Blossom’s voice wavered with tears. “Junior’s gone. There is the cage and Junior’s gone!”

Pap walked forward slowly. Now he could see the cage, the blackberry branches twined carefully into the hog wire, the trapdoor pulled up and tied to an overhead limb, the dirt pulled onto the wood floor to give the appearance of earth. The dirt had been scraped off in places as if something had been dragged through it.

Pap still couldn’t take it in. He stood, his body shaking beneath his worn overalls—the trembles, he called it. He got the trembles when he got cold or sick or when the world got to be too much for him.

“I don’t get it,” he said helplessly.

Vern was used to explaining things to Pap. “Pap, Junior set the trap, see, but something or somebody sprung it. See, I figured it out. The bait was right here between these can tops. The string was stuck inside. There, like that. And see”—he pointed overhead—“Junior never tied that knot. I know Junior’s knots. He would have worked it like this.”

Deftly Vern began to untie the fishing line. He restrung it, leaned in the trap, and reset it. “There. That’s the way Junior would have set it up. I know Junior’s work.” He faced the still-bewildered Pap.

Vicki Blossom snorted with impatience and turned her back on all of them.

“The main thing, Pap,” Vern went on patiently, “is that Junior would not have tied that knot and Junior would never, ever have left the wheelbarrow.” Vern pointed to the overturned wheelbarrow beside the trap.

“Well, could be he went home, could be we passed him in the woods.”

“Not with me calling him every step of the way,” Vicki said.

“And not without taking the wheelbarrow.” That, to Vern, was the scariest thing. “That’s your wheelbarrow, Pap, we gave it to you for Christmas. Junior would never have gone off and left it unless he couldn’t help himself.” They all knew this was true. Junior had chipped in hard-earned cash so his name could be on the card, and for that reason the wheelbarrow was especially valuable to him.

“Let me think a minute,” Pap said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his dusty brow.

“I’m tired of everybody standing around thinking. Thinking never got anybody anywhere. We need to do something.”

“I know that.”

“This is all we need to know. He came out here to set the trap, right? And somehow after he set it, he—” His mother turned her back again. She could not bring herself to say the word
disappeared
.

“Junior knows these woods,” Pap said, stubbornly refusing to admit the possibility of disaster. “He knew how to get here, didn’t he? We’ve come blackberry picking enough times—and so he knew how to get home. The boy ain’t dumb.”

“I know that, Pap, but accidents happen to people all the time, real smart people. You don’t have to be dumb to have something terrible—” Maggie broke off. “It could even be a kidnapping.” Tears came to her eyes at the thought. The grocery store where they bought milk had pictures of missing children on the cartons, and the thought of Junior’s face on one was too painful even to imagine.

Pap had the trembles so bad now, his whole body was shaking. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to tell us what to do!” Vicki said. Panic caused her voice to rise.

Thunder rumbled overhead now. Dark clouds covered the sky. The afternoon had been absolutely still, but now a storm breeze began to blow.

“Well, let’s do something even if it’s wrong.”

“All right, Pap, but what?”

“Let me think.” There was a long pause. Mud was at Pap’s feet, looking up at him.

For ten minutes Mud had been waiting for his praise, the words
Good dog
, but the words had not come. He had found the place—that’s obviously what they were looking for, this place—and yet no one had praised him. No one even seemed to know he was there.

He gave one faint bark, deep in his throat, to get Pap’s attention, but Pap did not look down. His body just kept shaking in a way that made Mud uneasy.

“Let’s go back to the house,” Pap said. He paused and swallowed. The next words were hard to say. “And call the police.”

Lightning was streaking the sky when Mad Mary started up the slope to her cave. The wind was whipping the trees, and the pale underside of the ash leaves flickered among the darker green of the firs.

“We’ll get there before the storm hits,” she told the exhausted, sleeping boy in her arms. “Don’t you worry about that.”

It had been a long walk, deep into the woods where nobody except an occasional hunter came. They had moved without stopping, over the long grassless stretch where nothing would grow, the old people said, because of Indian graves underneath. They had paused to rest at the old quarry by the pool of still green water. Junior never stirred. They crossed two creeks and waded through ferns high enough to brush Junior’s back. They rested again at the foot of Owl Hill in laurel so thick, it was like stepping into twilight. They rested again at the foot of Castle Rock.

All the while the sky overhead grew darker, and the rumble of thunder came closer. Lightning flashed more often in the leaden clouds.

Finally, at the foot of a craggy hill, Mad Mary paused. She was used to climbing this uneven hill, as most people are used to climbing their own stairways. Indeed the fallen limestone formed something like steps. But Mad Mary had never gone up with so heavy a burden as Junior.

She felt for her footing. She couldn’t see the ground because of Junior, but finally she felt a limestone rock she knew.

“Oh, we’ll be all right,” she said. She started up. She was surefooted now, and a crack of lightning lit up the path. She knew the storm was about to break.

Mad Mary lived almost at the top of Vulture Roost. It was an outcropping of rocks a flock of vultures had called home for as long as anyone could remember. In past years there had been thirty or more; now there were only six. And those six vultures were hidden in the high rocks, sheltered from the coming storm.

Beneath the limestone peaks was a cave. It wasn’t a cave with beautiful dripping rocks and interesting formations and passages. There was nothing to tempt explorers. It was just a big hollow comfortable space in the rocks. Nobody had come to this cave in years.

At the entrance was a ledge, and here the laurel grew so thick that from below, the cave couldn’t be seen at all. Mad Mary paused there on the ledge to get her breath. Junior sagged in her tired arms.

She turned and glanced at the sky. It was black as night now. “Rain, if you want to,” she told it. “Go ahead. I’m home. Rain!”

The wind blew. It picked up, whipping her skirts around her thin legs. And, as if on signal, the first drops of rain began to splatter against the limestone rocks. They left wet spots as big as quarters.

Mad Mary shouldered the laurel aside and ducked into the cave with Junior clutched tightly in her arms.

“Wait a minute.”

“What?”

Vern had dropped to his knees in the dust and was looking intently at the ground.

“What?” Vicki Blossom asked again. Her voice seemed more strained every time she spoke.

“Those aren’t Junior’s footprints.”

“Where?”

Vern pointed with the finger he had once blown half off with a stray dynamite cap. “Those are not Junior’s footprints!”

Together the Blossoms drew close to look at the broad-toed prints in the dust. Junior had piled the dust against the cage and also inside it to disguise it. He had patted the dust smooth. The faint print of his fingers was still there, around the deep footprints.

Maggie said, “Junior had on tennis shoes. These look like boots.”

“Man’s boots,” Vern said.

“Maybe,” Pap said.

There was something in the way Pap said that one word that got their attention. Vicki Blossom looked up, squinting. She was kneeling by the prints so she could see them better. “What do you mean, Pap? Do you know something?”

With his toe Pap pointed to another mark in the dust.

“What is that, Pap?”

She bent closer, her hair falling over her face. Maggie was on her knees, too, her braids sweeping the dust. Only Pap stood erect. If he got down, he’d never get up.

From his height he said, “Cane mark.”