Considering the distance of the voices Amos was caught off guard when someone came weaving through the trees below him, shoes sliding through the leaf litter. A moment after the rustle of feet she came into sight, her head rising and falling with the uneven terrain. He knew before she got close enough for him to see her profile that it was Annie Clyde Dodson. She paused almost directly beneath him to rest against a poplar trunk. This time Amos didn’t make himself known to her as he had in the corn, though he could have knelt down and reached out to touch her shoulder. He wasn’t surprised to see her searching apart from the others. She was more like her aunt Silver than like her mother. Even among the people of this forgotten town, Annie Clyde Dodson and Amos were outsiders. They were not as different as she would want to believe. But she couldn’t see herself as he did now. Laid bare with her sodden dress showing the starved slats of her ribs, no more than a film on her tawny skin. It was common knowledge the Ledfords were Cherokees, the first to be run off this land. Maybe that loss, and not her father’s farm, was Annie Clyde Dodson’s inheritance. As Amos observed her from the thicket she lifted her chin. Though she hadn’t spotted him, he could see the rain beaded on her lips and on the fine hairs of her arms. He waited for her to sense his presence, to call him out or charge up to meet him, but she didn’t feel how close they were. “Gracie?” she shouted into the trees above her head. “Gracie!” Amos didn’t move, his breathing even. Then Annie Clyde’s eyes shifted. She turned back toward the way she’d come, hearing something. It was the other searchers, making a commotion somewhere near the river. Annie Clyde took off in that direction. Amos figured she would slow down once she realized she might not want to see what they had found in the water.
Amos had seen the drowned himself and chose not to picture Gracie Dodson that way. He thought of how she had looked in the cornfield instead, standing between the rows with seedpods in her curls like those he shook from his own hair after sleeping on the ground. If they found her alive they would likely take her up north, where no corn was growing. Many of the displaced were heading to the cities. Amos hated the smog, the heat shimmering off the streets. He hated the neighborhoods with neat bungalows lining the gaslit curbs, yapping dogs snapping at him through the pickets and gates of fenced yards. He liked knowing whether those inside did or not that he was trespassing where he wasn’t wanted. Sometimes he waited for them to part their window curtains and see him standing on their flagstone walks. He always left something behind for them to find in the morning, a cigarette butt floating in a birdbath or a heel print at the edge of a flower bed. He didn’t want to think of the little girl from the cornfield growing up somewhere like that. If they had her back they would just make her over in their own image, raise her up in their ways and marry her off to a man who gave orders from behind a desk. Amos thought it might be for the best if they never found her. Best if she was returned to the earth.
Amos knew there were ways to use this distraction to his advantage. It was bound to cause problems for the power company. But he put the notion aside for the time being. Annie Clyde Dodson was looking for her daughter. He was looking for something to break a lock. His mind turned back to the dam and the task at hand. He pushed on deeper into the hollow until he reached the clearing where Beulah’s cabin stood, approaching from the back of the lot. He would have followed the path his boots had worn to her door over the years and asked for a bite of breakfast, but he didn’t want to cause the old woman any trouble. Maybe there would be time to pay her a visit later. For now, he only needed to visit her shed. Hurrying for cover, he went past the ordered rows of the garden and the bagging wire of the goat pen. When he got to the shed he found the plank door open a crack and forced it the rest of the way. He stood in the weak light falling through the door and searched the shadows, cloying with mold and corroding tin. He and Beulah had built the shed for storing tools, seeds and grain. Over the years it had grown full and junk had accumulated out behind the cabin. Somewhere Beulah had a bolt cropper. He knew because he’d used it himself for cutting wire mesh when they built the henhouse. His eye scanned the boards of the wall where Beulah had hung her gardening shears, her mule bridles, her rusty machete. When he spied the long bolt cropper hanging from a tenpenny nail he slipped it down at his side. Then he stopped cold, still facing the wall. He could feel someone standing behind him. With sudden speed, he snatched the machete off the wall with his other hand and turned around. Beulah was there just inside the shed door, a head scarf tied under her chin against the weather. They regarded each other for a moment. She looked the same as ever, hair in a yellowed braid over her shoulder and the pouch on a string around her neck. After a while, she took off her pointed glasses to wipe the raindrops from the lenses. “Hidee, Amos,” she said.
“Hello, Beulah,” he said back.
“What are you looking for?”
Amos held up the machete. “Bluff’s too wet. I’ll have to cut through the thicket.”
Beulah put her glasses back on. “Your place might be flooded. You think of that?”
Amos smiled. “What are you doing out here?”
“Fixing to check my traps.”
He noticed the burlap sack she was holding. At first she’d seemed unchanged, but looking closer he saw a difference. Her hand was shaking, her eyes dull, her dress stained. It wasn’t just Yuneetah that had seen its last days. “Don’t look like you been catching anything,” he said.
She took a step closer, sizing him up. “You’re one to talk.”
Amos smiled again. “I’ve been eating.”
“What, pine needles? You can’t live on that. A man needs meat.”
“I get some every once in a while.”
“Well. I wish I could offer you some breakfast.”
“I know,” he said. “Another time.”
Beulah nodded. “You better clear out.”
“I will tomorrow.”
“Why not today?”
He didn’t answer.
“What do you need with them bolt croppers anyhow?”
After a pause he said, “I better not tell you.”
“Amos,” she said. “I got an awful feeling.”
He smirked. “Bones been talking to you?”
“I ain’t kidding. I believe there’s fixing to be bloodshed. I just don’t want it to be yourn.”