Blossoms Meet the Vulture Lady (7 page)

In the wood floor of the cage were deep gashes, the results of ninety minutes of Mud’s digging. Mud was a good digger, and there was nothing he could not dig his way out of—nothing but this coyote trap. He had dug so long and so hard, his front paws were bloody.

Since the rain had begun, there had not been one single thing to give Mud hope—not the sound of a footstep, not the sound of a voice; there had been nothing but rain and thunder and lightning, three things Mud had dreaded since, as a puppy, he had cringed with his mother, Minnie, under the porch during storms.

Minnie’s shivers and shuddering sighs had taught Mud more than enough about thunderstorms.

About dark, Mud threw back his head and began to howl. He was a strong howler—he got that from his mom too—and tonight he was miserable enough to be in good voice.
Awhoooo-oo-ooooo! Awhoooooooooo-ooooo
!

But if anybody had heard him, they would have thought it was only the wind.

“Vern, we are going to have to turn back!” Vicki shouted over the noise of the storm.

Vern blinked the rain out of his eyes.

“We can’t even see where we’re going.”

“Mom, we have to keep looking!”

“We’re going around in circles.”

“Mom!”

For a while Vern and Vicki Blossom had been able to follow Mad Mary’s trail by her footprints and, especially, the marks of her cane. They seemed to be calling “Here’s one!” all the time. Since the rain had started, they hadn’t found anything.

“Mom, we can’t give up!”

Vern was wet, cold, hungry, and miserable. As he made his way through the woods, the one thing that kept him going was the memory of Mad Mary. Every time Vern had seen her, even if it was in a public place, like on a highway, a scared feeling had come over him. He didn’t understand it. It wasn’t just ordinary fear. He was afraid of a lot of people. This was more like dread, a sick dread, to be exact.

And now Mad Mary, the woman he himself dreaded so much—that woman had Junior.

“We can’t give up! We can’t.”

His mom put her arm around him. The lightning flashed, turned the world white. She hugged him harder than he could remember ever being hugged in his whole life. Then she said, “Come on, we’re going home.”

Tears began running down Vern’s cheeks, along with the rain. “You go on,” he said.

“We’re going home.”

Finally he allowed himself to be turned around. With his mom’s arm around his shoulders he started walking. Every time he slowed down, his mom’s arm would tighten around his shoulder.

There was another flash of lightning. A tree had been hit. Limbs crashed to the ground just behind them.

Vicki screamed. “Run!”

She dropped her arm from around him, and they both broke into a run for home.

“I knowed they wouldn’t do nothing.”

“They can’t do anything, Pap, in the storm.”

“They could. They just don’t want to get wet.”

“Oh, Pap.”

“They don’t,” Pap said stubbornly. “They have to pay for their own dry cleaning.”

This time Maggie’s answer was a sigh.

“What’s wrong with you?” Pap asked.

“I can’t stand to wait, Pap. For one solid hour we waited for the police, and now it’s been another hour waiting for Mom and Vern. I can’t stand to wait!”

“You get that from my side of the family,” Pap said mildly.

“I want to be part of every single thing that happens in the world, not waiting for it.”

“I never wanted to be part of every single thing,” Pap said carefully. “These days there’s lots you’re better off being out of.”

“I like action.”

“Maybe I’m just getting too old for action. Action ain’t what it used to be.”

Maggie and Pap were now sitting in the living room because the storm was blowing so hard. Sheets of rain were sweeping across the yard, and Pap had gone in the kitchen twice for pots to put under the leaks. Over the sound of the driving rain was the steady
kerplunk
of drips falling into cooking pots.

This time it was Pap who sighed, and Maggie who asked “What’s wrong?”

“Same old thing. I just want everybody to be home. We Blossoms sure have a time staying together.”

“That’s right,” Maggie said, “we sure do.”

Junior awoke at dawn. He had just had the worst nightmare of his life.

In the nightmare Junior was lost in a grocery store. Everybody in the store looked like his mom from the back, so he kept running up to these ladies and throwing his arms around their legs. These ladies were extremely tall.

Then these ladies would turn around, look down at him, and there, instead of his mom’s face, would be the terrible, real-life Halloween face of last night. Junior had only seen that face once, by the light of a kitchen match, but every terrifying feature was etched into his brain.

In the nightmare he would scream and run out of the dairy department and to another mom in frozen foods. There would be another desperate embrace, then the turn, the horrible face, the scream. He woke up running from one mom in pet supplies to another in fresh produce. And by this time the ladies weren’t waiting for him to hug them. They would turn and give him that terrifying grin while he was still running toward them!

At first Junior was glad to be awake, then he remembered where he was. Without opening his eyes, he knew he was back on the same ledge, on the same ragged blankets, covered with the same musty quilt, breathing the same chilly air. He shuddered.

A moan almost escaped his lips, but he held it back. He wanted to be asleep—at least to look asleep in case the witch was still there. As long as he was asleep—or looked asleep—the day could not start.

He lay there without moving for what seemed like hours. He was listening. He heard nothing. Finally he cracked one eye.

The light was dim and everything had a gray look. Nothing moved in the sooty distance. Junior opened his other eye. He leaned up on one elbow.

He was so astonished that he sat straight up. He was in a cave. This place was a cave! How could it be? He had fallen asleep in a trap and now … now …, his brain sputtered, now he was in a cave!

He got to his feet and began to walk around. He was too surprised not to. He paused. A rocking chair. There was a rocking chair in this cave.

There was no end to the surprises. He walked around, touching everything. All Junior’s life his family had tried to break him of the habit of touching other people’s things—he was so used to having them slap his hand in department stores that he hardly felt it anymore. Now there was nobody to stop him. He touched everything.

A pile of rags and old clothes over here had been covered with a blanket; it was a chair. Another pile of old clothes by the fire was a sort of stool. There were pots and pans and bottles of water lined up on a rock ledge.

Another rock ledge made a table, and there were old dishes on it. And at the back of the ledge there were shelves made out of boards and rocks. On these shelves was food, real grocery store stuff, the same kind of stuff the Blossoms had on their shelves—matches and flour and salt. Junior didn’t know witches used matches and flour and salt.

And there were jars of dried apples and strings of peppers and baskets of sprouting potatoes and shriveled carrots. Junior stepped back to see what he’d missed, and he bumped into the cave wall. Something brushed his head.

He looked up, startled. There were all kinds of weeds hanging on the walls. That was more like it. Witchweeds. Junior reached up and touched a bunch.

It was dried and some leaves crumbled in his fingers. He brushed his hand against his pants, and when he lifted his hand, his fingers had a spicy smell. Junior wiped his hand quickly on his pants again.

Junior kept walking. And over there, by the door, were boxes and boxes and more boxes. Junior had never seen so many boxes. He bent down to see the contents.

Books.

He threw back the lid on another box.

More books.

Junior’s mouth dropped open in amazement. There were more books in these boxes, in this cave, than in the whole school library.

To Junior these books were the most astonishing thing of all. He had never, ever known of a witch who liked to read.

The rest of the Blossoms were up at dawn too. They were in the kitchen, sitting around the table.

“Now, I know nobody’s hungry,” Vicki Blossom was saying, “but we all got to eat. It may be a long day.”

“I hope not,” Pap said. “I can’t take many more long days.”

“Then stay home.”

The sharpness of her tone made everybody look up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not sleep one wink last night and I am worried sick.” She reached for a big spoon and began to serve the oatmeal. She shook raisins on top, but she was so nervous, the raisins rained onto the table.

“I’ll do that, Mom.” Maggie took the raisin box and finished the job.

“I’m sorry. Please just let me alone. I’ll be all right in a minute.” She put one hand to her forehead. “Did I call the beauty shop and tell them I wouldn’t be in?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I can’t seem to remember anything.” She got up and stood with her back to them. She poured herself another cup of coffee and went to the window to drink it. “Well, one good thing,” she said, trying to sound as if she were in control of herself now, “the rain’s stopped. The search won’t be in the rain.”

“What time’s the search supposed to start?”

“Seven o’clock.”

“I hope there’s a lot of people,” Vern said. “I don’t know where Mad Mary lives, but I bet it’s a hundred miles from nowhere.”

“Will you please stop calling her that?” Vicki said without turning around.

“What?”

“Mad Mary.”

“Sure.”

A silence fell over the table then. Maggie was swinging her legs under the table, and she was the first to realize that Mud was not there. She never swung her legs without hitting Mud. Never. She leaned down and looked.

“Where’s Mud?”

Pap looked at Vicki’s tight, unyielding back and then at Vern. “Didn’t he go with you and your mom last night?”

“No.”

“I told him to.”

“I know, but he didn’t. I thought he followed you on back to the house.”

“No.” Pap sighed and dropped his spoon into his oatmeal. “Now we got two missing Blossoms.”

Vicki spun around. “A missing dog is not like a missing child.”

Again the fury in her face and voice startled Pap. He pulled back into his overalls to get out of her way. “I know that.”

“Well, you don’t act like it.”

Vicki Blossom threw her coffee mug in the sink. “I’m going out. People ought to be coming soon.”

“Mom’s really uptight,” Maggie said when they heard the screen door slam. She patted Pap’s arm. “Having Mud missing isn’t the same as having Junior missing. We all know that, but, Pap, Mud is just as much a Blossom as any of us.” She got up. “I’m going out too.”

Junior pulled back a laurel branch and peered outside. He gasped and stepped back. She was out there!

He flattened himself against the side of the cave and glanced around for somewhere to hide—under some rags maybe; but Junior knew he always trembled when he was scared, and so the rags would tremble too. Maybe behind one of the boxes of books. Maybe he could push two boxes together and—

Breaking off his thoughts, he held his breath and peered through the laurels again.

She was still there. The woman. THE woman. And he didn’t have to turn her around to see what her face was like. He had done that enough in his grocery store nightmare.

What was she doing? Why was she just standing there, looking down the hill? Did she see something? Could somebody be coming for him? He would give a hundred million dollars to see her wave, to hear her call “If you’re looking for a little boy, he’s up here.”

Instead she did the thing he most did not want her to do. She turned.

The turn happened so fast that Junior didn’t have time to duck back in the cave and dive for the books. He barely had time to cover his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see that terrible face again.

A voice said, “Well, come on out.”

Junior was too scared to disobey.

With his hands over his eyes, he took one step through the laurels and out into the misty July morning.

“This isn’t nearly as many people as we need, Pap,” Vicki Blossom said.

She and Pap were standing on the porch, looking at the people gathered on the wet lawn.

“I thought when the call went out on both the radio and the television, we’d have hundreds of people.”

“Well, we don’t,” Pap said.

“That is obvious,” she said. “Twenty-six people, total.”

“Some of them my age.”

“And some of them just kids. Look over there. And that boy with the little brothers—he limps worse that you.”

“Now, Vicki, that’s Ralphie, Junior’s friend. Remember, he was in the bed next to Junior when Junior was in the hospital? And ’course he limps. The boy’s got an artificial leg.”

“I’m too upset to remember anything.” She sighed deeply. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“I know, but him and his brothers were the first ones here this morning.”

“May I have your attention.” This was the policeman from the night before. He had on hiking clothes like the rest of them. “Now, our goal for today is to find out where Mary Cantrell lives. Most of you know her as Mad Mary, and most of you know she’s been living in these hills for years, but nobody knows where.

“It seems pretty obvious that yesterday she took the youngest Blossom boy—Junior; and it’s likely that she took him to wherever she lives. Now, if you find out where she is, you come to me or Pap Blossom.”

On the porch Pap raised his hand so everyone would know who he was.

“Both Mr. Blossom and I know Mad—Miss Cantrell, and would like to be the ones to approach her. The last thing we want to do is scare her. I don’t have to tell you that if she got a mind to take off and hide, we never would find her and the boy. She knows these woods a lot better than we do. Any questions?”