Carolina Skeletons Page 3

“I said no.…”

  Smirky shit, Stoker thought. Mouth always set in a sneer …

  “Well, they’re missing. Or lost. Young girls. Their daddies work at the mill. Ellerby and Clark. Always together. Went pickin’ flowers this afternoon after school and ain’t been seen since.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

  “You do that.”

  “That it?”

  The sneering quality in T.J.’s voice angered Stoker no end. It didn’t matter that the sheriff knew T.J. was masking a basic cowardice; it still angered him.

  “Something else, T.J. There’s a law on the county books against treating animals bad. Lest you think this is a bluff, and it surely isn’t, you best be gentler to them horses. I like horses. Like some better than people, truth to tell. Got that?”

  “Sure, Sheriff.” A sneer in the dark.

  “And you know what else, T.J.? When I was growing up around here, a guy who behaved like you was known as a shitass.”

  Driving on, the sheriff became thoroughly angry. There was something in T.J. that he couldn’t put his finger on, something that made him pissed off and uncomfortable at the same time. Seemed like a person ought to feel sorry for T.J., almost. All those damn pimple scars on his neck, front and back … Parents up and died on him young … Still, T.J. was damn lucky—more lucky than most people around Clarendon—that his uncle owned the mill. Hell, Tyler wasn’t the warmest guy, and he made T.J. keep some long hours, but so what? T.J. had a job, a foreman’s job, and he’d be well off someday because his uncle owned the mill.

  Oh, the hell with it.

  Up ahead were the lights of the Clark house. As soon as Stoker saw them, he knew the girls hadn’t come home. There were too many lights on, for one thing. Extra people in the house, come there just to worry with each other, moving from room to room with their fretting, leaving lights on. More than that: The house itself, spilling its light through windows onto glistening night grass, seemed to be lying low with pain.

  The sheriff knocked twice and entered through the kitchen door without waiting for it to be opened.

  “Howdy,” he said, trying to make his greeting friendly and low-key but not too jovial.

  He could read the pain and fear in the faces. There were the girls’ parents, Wilbur and Catherine Clark, and Jason and Wilma Ellerby. The four of them were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. In the other room, worn-out furniture and sagging floors groaned slightly as several men and women and a few children—relatives, friends, siblings, the sheriff knew at once—got up to look into the kitchen.

  Jesus, look at the faces, the sheriff thought. Looking at me like I can make things better for them. “Howdy, folks.”

  “Sheriff, I was out looking for ’em,” Wilbur Clark said. “Figured after a while my place was here, with Catherine.”

  “Same with me, Sheriff,” Jason Ellerby said.

  “You did right, both of you,” the sheriff said. “Did all you could, I know.” He had seen worry get the better of people before. He felt sorry for Clark and Ellerby for thinking they had to explain. They were simple, physical men, sawmill workers. He wondered how they would deal with—

  “Coffee, Sheriff?”

  Someone handed him a cup. “Thanks, but it’s probably too good for me. I’m used to the paint thinner my deputy brews.”

  Laughter. The sheriff welcomed it. He had seen people so torn apart that they couldn’t talk straight.

  “So,” Stoker began, his face serious now. “I sure don’t want to make light of your worrying, not at all. But the chances are the girls are someplace safe. I seen so many cases like this, the years I been doin’ this job, that I can say that honest-like. You folks already checked with all their friends? Every one?”

  Several voices replied at once, but Stoker let them talk. Their message was simple enough—they had checked everyone they could think of—and he knew it made the parents feel better to tell what they had done.

  “And you checked down past the colored church? Somebody?”

  “We did,” Wilbur Clark said. “Catherine hollered real loud. Scared us not to get an answer. Happened before that they’d go down that way, explorin’ like. Sure, sometimes they’d lose track what time it was, we’d have to go holler for ’em. Ain’t that far away that they went; they’d always hear and holler back …”

  “And right smart, they would,” Catherine Clark broke in. “They’d be scared, whenever we had to go and fetch ’em.”

  “Bet they would,” the sheriff said. “My Bob, he was always runnin’ off, more’n my other son. Get into scrapes, come home late, his clothes all tore and stuck with burrs. Used to worry as much about him then as I do now that he’s off in the war—”

  The sheriff stopped abruptly; he didn’t want his listeners to think he was minimizing their concern. And he sure as hell didn’t want to get himself thinking about his son Bob.

  “Now, here’s what’s what,” Stoker began again. “Them tykes could still walk in here two minutes from now. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit. But assuming they don’t: I’m gonna call my deputy. Then I’ll get in touch with the highway patrol, have them watch—”

  “Somebody might have taken them away in a car?” Catherine Clark said, voice pitch rising with each word.

  “Hold on, now,” Stoker said. “Didn’t say that at all. Ain’t likely. Can’t remember the last time we had a kidnapping in these parts. Ain’t enough money to make it worthwhile. What we need is some more manpower. Get the state to send us some bodies. Then I’ll head over to Darryl Lee’s place and get him to bring out his hounds. I’ll need a piece of clothing from each girl.”

  A starry Carolina night, a blue-black sky dotted with silver. Incessant thrumming from legions of frogs in the swamp, and now and then a splash from God-only-knows-what.

  “Got any notions?” Deputy Dexter Cody asked the sheriff. They were sitting in the sheriff’s car, taking a break from searching, trying to dry their pant cuffs and sipping coffee from a Thermos.

  “A few,” the sheriff said. “None pretty.”

  Theirs was one of three cars parked in a clearing a hundred yards from the rear of the lumber mill, which squatted black and silent now. Another car belonged to the highway patrol, which had sent four men. The third, its rear seat ripped out to make a wagon-like interior for farm chores, belonged to Darryl Lee. The car had brought four good tracking hounds, whose wondrous voices could be heard a few hundred yards away. Directly behind them was the mill; off to their left was the colored church and beyond that, far enough away so that there were hardly any sounds, the colored shacks. If the sheriff turned on his headlights (which he just might do, and honk his horn to signal that the search was over for the night), they would shine down the tracks leading away from the mill. It was down there, the parents had said, that the girls had said they were going.

  The sheriff felt comfortable with his deputy. Dexter Cody was tall and bony, but strong. He was in his early thirties and lived with his widowed mother, whose health was very poor. Dexter was celibate, near as the sheriff could tell. Taking care of his mother didn’t leave him a lot of time to do much courting. And he wasn’t a whole lot to look at, truth to tell.

  Dexter worked hard, and he was loyal. He didn’t want to be sheriff himself (Jesus, who would want that?), which meant Hiram Stoker could trust him. Dexter was so plain, so without guile, it seemed to the sheriff. Dexter could be scary, too, especially to the coloreds. If they had one who was, say, making a fuss in his cell, Dexter would tell him—once, that’s all—that if he didn’t shut up, he’d have a cracked head and an empty belly. Worked every time.

  If Dexter had any fault, it was that he was too hard on the colored sometimes. The sheriff had cautioned him on that a few times, but … well, that’s how Dex was. And mostly he was a damn good deputy. Not much imagination, just plain horse sense. Which in the present situation was more valuable anyhow.

  “Dex, what do you think?”

  “If they’s
alive, they ain’t out there, not along them tracks or in the woods. Makes no sense.”

  “No, it don’t.”

  Damn. The coffee had helped to string out his nerves, and the chill of the early spring night was coming into the car. Two sets of parents were tearing their hearts out with worry this very moment.

  Time to decide. The sheriff could let the search go on through the night, knowing one of the searchers could drown in a creek in the pitch dark. He could call it off for the night, though that would give the message to the parents that their little girls just might not be coming home. And if he acted now—right now, not a half-hour later—he could get authorization for a National Guard company to be on the scene by first light, or shortly thereafter. If he did that, and it turned out that the girls were safe and snug somewhere all along, some people would hold it against him.

  Goddamn.

  “This job don’t get no easier, Dex. And I don’t get no younger.”

  The sheriff turned on his headlights, blinked them repeatedly, and leaned on his horn. The search was over for the night. He would call the highway patrol watch commander, who would call the nearest National Guard officer.

  The light in the kitchen of the sheriff’s house was still on—an answered prayer. It meant his wife, Effie, was not only still up but probably making something for him.

  “How you spoil a man,” he said, smelling the warmed-over stew and muffins as he hung his gun belt over a chair.

  “I married the sheriff.”

  He hugged the plain, round-faced woman with clear blue eyes and hoped she knew how much he loved her.

  Then the sheriff sat down to eat and found that he was ravenous. He ate, she poured him some milk, and they talked a while.

  Before long, he was bone-tired and ready for bed. He thought for a moment of his son Bob (must be dawn in England, he’s probably having breakfast right now), then he thought again of the girls. Two things bothered him. One was the way the dogs had seemed to pick up the scent along the tracks, then nothing; the other was his wife’s casual remark that if the girls had been planning some all-night mischief, they would have changed out of their school clothes.

  4

  Middle of a Carolina morning in spring, the sun sucking mist up from the trees. If one could have hovered up there in the mist, one would have seen the National Guard troops poking slowly through the woods, would have seen a dozen or so men in highway patrol uniforms mixed in with the troops, now and then telling a soldier to poke this way or that, kick under this or that bush. And in a group by themselves, their voices unmistakably different, a score or more colored mill workers hacked and poked their way through the grass, pines, and brush. Minute by minute, the sun got brighter and the mist thinner, so that if one were hovering, magically, above the entire scene, he would have seen the railroad tracks shining like silver. And if one’s eyes had happened to pause for a moment on a water-filled ditch, he would have seen something (ah! part of a bicycle pedal) protruding from the water.

  Hovering magically above, and staring for several minutes at the ditch, one would have seen reflections of cloud wisps on the water surface, would have seen, now and then, brief images of pine tops, then the gentlest of ripples, then back to almost perfect stillness, with just the cloud wisps and the sun on the water. Or was there more? If one had had that magic vantage point and stared at the ditch, by and by he would have seen a trace of yellow beneath the surface, just barely visible when the surface was still and the light shone a certain way. Yellow from a schoolgirl’s dress.

  Private Luke Reddy paused, leaning on his pole as he took deep breaths and pulled his canteen from its holster. He was thirsty and his feet were tired and there were scratches on the backs of his hands. Still, it was not a bad feeling; it was sort of like the feeling after a day of hunting. He would be damn glad when the chow truck came out with the midday meal (assuming they were still searching by then, which looked like a sure thing).

  Reddy was sure that if he ever got into combat (and God, he wanted that so, to be there and know what it was like and be able to know it all the rest of his life!), he would find the little things—the sweat running down his ass, the scratches on his hands, the bug bites—as bad or worse than being shot at. He wouldn’t be able to choose when to hit the ground, either. Enemy bullets start flying your way, you get down. Dive into the mud if you gotta. Hell, dive into cow flops; better that than get killed.

  He had been searching as conscientiously as he knew how. Part of it was pride: He knew he wasn’t a bad woodsman, and if he was a good rabbit and quail hunter, knowing more times than not when to approach a particular bush quietly, when to stop dead in his tracks, then start up again, all the while getting the shotgun half into position so he was ready to fire as soon as the rabbit or bird was flushed—why, if he was that good, he would sure as hell do a good job this morning. No one would ever say he had walked right over where the girls lay and he had not seen them.

  Damn. Wonder what the hell happened to them. Some of the niggers behind him were laughing it up like they were on a fucking picnic.

  A thought filled Reddy with a killing rage. The thought of two little girls, probably tied up, clothes ripped off, being held prisoner in some nigger shack was more than he could stand. Fingers the color of rotten bananas roaming all over them, dick like a big lump of coal.…

  The way to deal with something like that—the only way!—was a rope around a black neck, tighter, tighter, tighter.… Or cutting. Niggers loved to cut, loved what a razor could do. How about what a bayonet could do, especially in the right place, where a nigger’s soul lived.…

  He stuffed his canteen back into its canvas container on his belt and tried to stuff the murderous thoughts into a corner of his brain. Wasn’t anything worse than being near crazy, you were so pissed off, and not being able to take it out on somebody. That was one of the things that pissed him off the worst about the Guard, getting pissed off at some sergeant and having to swallow it.

  “You, you boys there! Easy lookin’ along the tracks. Back into the woods where you can do some good.”

  Reddy smiled as the state trooper shouted at the gaggle of niggers to quit moping along the tracks (it was true, anybody could look along the tracks, not have to get scratches or burrs). Just plain no-fucking-good, lazy-ass bunch of niggers.

  Well, he was sure as hell entitled to a little easier terrain. He had been stomping through the rough stuff all morning. Time for him to get out in the open a bit, get his pant legs dry. And what the hell, there was a clear patch of grass and flowers up ahead, right by the tracks, where somebody had to look.

  He walked up to the tracks and stood on a rail, stretching his legs to make himself as tall as he could to see as far as he could down the straightaway. It was a game he had done since he was a child.

  He left the tracks and walked across the little flower-adorned clearing, swinging his pole gently at the yellow and blue petals. Reddy stopped at the ditch. Wide, maybe a few feet of water, considering all the rain …

  Here and there a lily pad, over there part of a rotted stump … and something there was no accounting for. The black of the bike pedal sticking up caught his eye. He stood at the edge of the ditch and extended the pole. He tapped the end of the pedal; it turned easily.

  Reddy could hear the birds, now joyous and gentle, now raucous and scornful, in the trees above. He prodded beneath the surface of the water, just around the pedal. The hard “ting” feeling of the bicycle fender was unmistakable; so was the feeling when the end of the pole jammed between spokes. It was hard work with the pole, at once pushing down and trying to pull the bicycle toward him. His hands and wrists ached. Finally, he could feel the bicycle come free, the pole still wedged in the spokes, the bicycle coming to him more easily now, sinking slowly now that it had been pulled loose from whatever it had snagged on. The momentum from the sinking plus what he could generate with the pole brought the bicycle toward the edge.

  He had it now, one wh
eel resting in the muck near his feet, the rest lying in shallow water. He bent down to look, and it was then that he noticed the flap of yellow fabric on the surface. Knees trembling, hands and wrists aching, Reddy poked at the yellow cloth.

  Not so many months later, Private Luke Reddy would get his wish. He would indeed go into combat, on a couple of tropical Pacific islands with names he had never heard of. He would sweat and get diarrhea and malaria, see men’s intestines lying next to them, see flies crawling on purple corpses. He would hear men scream in pain, their agony heard over the exploding shells, and he would smell burnt flesh. He would remember those things and not want to talk about them. But what he would remember more than any of that—what he would dream about years later—was the face of Cindy Lou Ellerby bobbing up out of the water.

  “Found ’em,” Dexter Cody told Sheriff Hiram Stoker, who swallowed the last of his coffee and nodded. The deputy hadn’t said the word “dead,” but there was no need.

  The sheriff sighed, took a deep breath and swallowed hard, mentally steeling himself for what he was about to see. At least there would be no decomposition, not with their just being dead a day or so and out in the cool night. The coroner, he had a trick to keep from puking around rotting corpses. Just swallowed his tobacco plug; it did the trick every time.

  The sheriff didn’t chew tobacco. Besides, he wasn’t worried about his stomach; he was worried that what he was about to see would do something to his spirit, take something out of him that could never be put back. He had seen enough bodies to be almost used to death, except when the dead were children. White or black, dead children still bothered him. Come upon a bad fire or a wreck (worst of all, maybe, had been the time that tyke on the Folsoms’ farm had got run over by the tractor) and, well, it took something from you.…

  “Okay, Dex. Now we do our job, I guess.”

  A couple dozen Guardsmen and state troopers had formed a circle on the grass clearing. As he approached, the sheriff could see flashes of color—the girls’ dresses—between the shifting legs of the onlookers. Stoker was dimly aware of birds singing in the trees, of the word “sheriff” being whispered as he drew near, of the men parting to let him through. Just inside the circle stood a Guard sergeant with the name “Hansen” on his chest and, next to him, a private.