by Ellen Larson
[Note: This story received second prize in the inaugural Stoneslide Story Contest and can be read in full in The Stoneslide Corrective No. 1. The 2015 contest is now open to submissions.]
A puff of wind blows a certain scent my way. Not really meaning to, I turn aside from my intended route and walk to the brook. Sure enough, there are hundreds of them little blue flowers with the yellow centers nestled in the grass along the bank. My mind paints up a picture of the day, a hot June day pretty much like this one, when you and me found this old pasture and first smelt that candy smell. You was six, Davy, so I musta been just turning ten. We lay on our backs in the sun, listening to the brook babble, breathing in through our noses. You said, I think I musta died and gone to heaven.
My throat seizes up and tears wet my eyes.
If you was here you’d be trying to cheer me up right about now. Telling me about something funny that happened over at the hotel the other night, or lying through your teeth about how we’d leave this place together and make a fresh start. You never could stand to see big sis cry. But I don’t mind the memories, Davy, honest. I’m glad I’ve got them. Sure, it burns pretty hot to recollect them days right now, but that’ll pass in time.
I better consult this map they give me at “Search Headquarters.” That’s what the “search coordinators” from Utica called it, but as far as I’m concerned that’s a mighty fancy name for a rickety card table set up under the retractable awning of a rusty old travel-trailer. They say they got experience organizing locals to help in a man hunt, but to me they looked like a pack of two-bit publicity hounds. But Sheriff Mason just eats that crap up. Likes to think he’s a hot-shot detective and not a fat old bull from the Adirondack backwoods who never found no evidence he didn’t plant.
There’s a red square drawn on the map, with an arrow marking the farm lane that runs up into the mountain. Not that I need a map to find my way around these hollers, or anywheres in this town. We practically lived out of doors in the bad old days, didn’t we, Davy? Still, I want to make some show of going where I’m supposed to. Mason didn’t want me searching at all, of course, but in the end he gave in, since so few searchers turned out to help this fine Thursday morning.
“Val!”
I about jump out of my sneaks. I turn and spy a skinny man dressed in a T-shirt and jeans scrambling over the stone wall at the back of the pasture. Damnation. Pastor Armstrong. I managed to avoid him at Search Headquarters, but here he is anyway. I lower my gaze and put on my invisible mask, like I generally do with most everybody that ain’t you, Davy. Here he comes.
“Hello, Val,” he says, all solemn and concerned. He’s got his search map in one hand and one of them walking sticks with a utility blade in the handle in the other.
I want to stare him down, Davy, show him I got no respect for him or his God after how he treated you, but I just can’t. Can’t let nobody see what boils inside me. Never could.
So I just say, “Thought I heard that Utica man say we’re supposed to keep a couple hundred yards apart.” Hoping he’ll take the hint.
“Yes, I heard that.” Pastor’s voice is gentle, like lullaby music. “But I wanted to speak with you, Val, before—” He turns to look into the woods, then back at me, understanding just oozing out of his face. “I stopped by your place last night, after the rain stopped.”
“Musta been out.”
“There was a light in the bedroom.”
“Musta leaved it on.” I wince when I hear myself. Leaved. Like I don’t know better than that. I often wish I wouldna dropped out of school so young. Educated people don’t give the time of day to somebody who talks like me. But I had to take a job so we could stay together after they took Ma away.
“Look, Val, I know you think I’m intruding. But this fire… Someone could have died. It’s time. He needs help.”
A bitter laugh squeezes out of my throat. “Seems like I said pretty much them exact same words to you once.”
His sympathy freezes up, like he ain’t got no earthly idea what I’m talking about. “Don’t you remember?” My voice sounds like vinegar tastes, like Ma’s voice always did right before she lost it. “Nine years ago? Fourth of July? When Mason threw him in jail for slashing that teacher’s tires and he went all crazy? I asked you to help him. To help me help him. But you thought being in jail would do him good.”
“I was wrong.” Pastor’s chin drops, sorrowful like. “But I was new in town. New at the job.”
I smirk. “Yeah, the world’s just full of teachers and policemen and doctors and pastors and social workers—all new at the job. Or else they’ve been at it so long they give up.” I struggle to look straight at him. “He tried to kill himself, Pastor. What good did that do?”
“None.” Pastor rests both hands on the walking stick. “You’re perfectly right. But I know better now. We won’t let him slip through the cracks again.”
Them famous cracks. They just ate you up, didn’t they, Davy? Sometimes it seems like the world is made of cracks.
I look beyond Pastor at the hillside. Good farmland gone all to brush. There ain’t been a cow or horse out here for years. Wasteland, peppered with rusty bits of machinery laying just where they broke down.
“If I could just talk to him, Val, I could try to convince him to commit himself.”
“Because them two years he just spent at the state hospital did so much good,” I sneer.
“Maybe not. But…” Pastor hesitates, and I know why.
“But what? But it’s either that or a jail cell?”
“You know I can’t guarantee anything,” he says, all sympathetic again. “But I can make a recommendation.”
“Like you recommended to the church missions not to help me out when I got behind on my mortgage that time?”
Pastor licks his lips, thinking about it. “You know why I did that. You wouldn’t have paid your mortgage with that money, Val. You would have given it—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Fury rises inside me, fury so bright I can’t hardly see. Damn him to hell and all the rest of them! I stick my hand in my jacket pocket and wrap my fingers around your old Colt Cobra revolver.
But his voice stays calm. How does he do that? “I’m sorry you lost your house, Val. So sorry for all you’ve been through. I know you’ve had more than your share of hard—”
“You don’t know nothing!”
“I know you love your brother very much.”
That about chokes me, Davy, hearing that. I’d handle it better if he’d struck me.
“Val.” His voice is real soft now. “If you’ll just tell me where he is…”
I’ll about explode if I stay one second longer, so I turn and walk fast toward the tree line, head down. I hear the grass swishing around my sneaks, and see the honeybees working the buttercups.
Pastor calls after me: “I’ll stand by him, Val! I promise!”
It’s cool among the trees, and dark, but I don’t slow down. You know how I like to walk when I got troubles. I manage to leave behind that feeling of panic, but I’m still jittery, thoughts running around in my head like mice in a cage. Slip through the cracks. I hate that expression. It’s the excuse people give when they’ve just let you down. First they say they understand. Such a good-looking boy, always smiling, always polite, so intelligent, such potential. He ain’t a bad kid, it’s the friends he keeps, the drugs he does, the lies he tells, the bad choices he makes, his upbringing, his schooling, his genes. I don’t know, maybe they did understand, but what good did it do? Nothing!
A month or two in jail here and there, six months who knew where, jobs that never lasted. That time you found God, then gambling. Your brief college career. Them years in your early twenties when all them fancy doctors studied you like a bug. You loved that. Oh, he’s so smart. He just needs some structure. We can study him. We can write him up in an article and get our names in the paper. We can cure him. We can keep him out of trouble. We can keep him out of jail. We can teach him coping skills. We can drug him—no, no he won’t get addicted—oh, well, no, maybe he will, sorry about that. We can make him happy. We can make him comfortable. We can make him stay.
I believed it all, one time or another. I got good at believing. Had to. Not believing would have killed me.
But they was all wrong. They couldn’t even make you stay. Budget cuts. Good behavior. No more room at the inn. I wasn’t surprised. Part of me was glad to see you back. You needed me. It was always my job to keep you safe, Davy. First from Ma, then from the world, and in the end from yourself.
The fire inside me is gone now. I’m glad. It scares me, Davy. It’s like having Ma living inside me. I’ve always been afraid I’d wake up one day and see her in the mirror. Don’t worry, you’re the sane one, they always tell me, you just had a difficult, eventful life. Maybe that’s true, but that don’t mean I ain’t been good and warped by them events.
I find myself on an open hilltop dotted with square boulders. I ain’t been here for a long while, but it looks just the same. We used to love this place as kids, didn’t we, Davy? We’d play that we was lords and ladies looking out over our realm and talk about all the wonderful things we’d do when we grew up. The view is that grand.
But today I don’t want to look.
I pull that search map out of my pocket and unfold it. On the back side is a picture of you, with your daydream eyes and sad smile. Trust you to smile for a mug shot. Over your chest is printed: David Corbin, AKA David Simms, AKA Peter Simpson. Last seen Monday, June 2, headed on foot into the woodlot north of Sky Valley Road wearing blue jeans and grey sweatshirt. Wanted for questioning by the Lewis County Sheriff’s Department. Approach with extreme caution.
This is an excerpt. Read the rest of “Forget Me Not” in The Stoneslide Corrective No. 1.
