He and Ellard labored for what seemed all day to make a yard or two of progress, cutting into the leafy darkness until their shoulders ached. After a while James became so intent on his work that he stopped feeling anything. It was dim enough that he forgot about Ellard being there with him. He chopped on with single-minded purpose, blisters breaking open on his palms, locked in battle with the land he’d come to hate long before this day. He should have already been a hundred miles closer to Michigan. He and Annie Clyde and Gracie would have already stopped along the road to eat their dinner, biscuits and salt pork that Annie Clyde had wrapped in a dish towel. A brown bag of apples for Gracie. He should have already been shed of this godforsaken place. By the time he and Ellard had forged a half mile through the thicket he could hardly move his arms. At first he doubted his sight when he detected a shaft of light ahead, sun filtering into the claustrophobic shade. As he forced a path toward a gap in the laurel, he couldn’t help feeling hopeful. If Amos did have Gracie, if she was on the other side of this thicket, it would be over. When he reached the gap he slung the axe into the bushes and shouldered his way through, ripping aside branches until he stumbled out of the shrubbery.
James remembered Ellard only when the sheriff emerged from the laurel himself. He stepped in front of James, a scratch on his forehead. He brought a grim finger to his lips and James nodded. Dazed and out of breath, James followed Ellard on through a copse of poplars until he saw up ahead the clearing Beulah Kesterson had told Ellard about. He noticed Ellard’s hand hovering over the holster at his hip and wished for his own weapon. If he had been thinking straight he would have kept the axe. With each step closer to the clearing his daughter seemed more within his reach. He fought to bring his breathing under control, to walk with the same steadiness as the sheriff. Ellard searched the ground as they went for fresh-turned earth or perhaps footprints smaller than a man’s. After proceeding for several yards they entered what appeared to be a makeshift camp near the foot of a bluff draped in vines. There was a lantern hanging from a low bough, a lean-to fashioned from birch limbs and a tarp. James’s boots stuttered. Under the lean-to Amos was sitting on a milk crate, bent over a kettle and a smoldering cook fire. He lifted his face, looking up with bland expectation. He seemed unalarmed to have been discovered. James’s first urge was to run and take him by the throat but he saw lying not far from the kettle a rusted machete. He had to think. One mistake could cost him Gracie.
“Hello, Ellard,” Amos said, stirring the swill in his pot with a ladle. “I see you got here the hard way. But you wouldn’t have made it down the bluff in this rain. I nearly fell myself.”
“Hidee, Amos. I was hoping I wouldn’t be seeing you again.”
Amos smiled. “I didn’t mean for you to.”
“What are you doing out here?” Ellard asked.
“Nothing much,” Amos said.
“You know this place is fixing to be flooded?”
“That’s why I came back. I wanted to see it one more time before it’s gone.”
Ellard spat into the drifter’s fire. “You’re awful brave,” he said. “Or dumb.”
Amos blinked at Ellard in the dripping green shade. There was an almost preternatural stillness about him. “I appreciate it, but don’t concern yourself. I won’t let the water get me.”
“Somebody’s liable to get you for trespassing,” Ellard said.
Amos went back to tending his pot. “This land belongs to nobody now.”
“I guess the power company would disagree with you about that.”
Amos turned his attention to James. “Who did you bring with you?”
“This here’s James Dodson.”
“Do we know each other?” Amos asked.
James took the drifter in, his forearms where his shirtsleeves were rolled up crosshatched with cuts. Thin lashes, scabbing but fresh. “I’d say we know of each other,” he said.
Amos considered. “That’s a good way to put it. We all know of each other around here, don’t we?” He sipped from the battered ladle, sampling his dinner. “Are you men hungry?”
Ellard’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t come out here to eat.”
Amos stopped stirring. “What can I do for you then?”
“I came to have a talk with you. But I figure you won’t care if I take a look around first.” Ellard kept his eyes on Amos as he neared the fire and picked up a blown-down branch. He poked with the stick at the charred stones around the kettle, probably looking for signs of bone or tooth. The thought knotted James’s guts. When Ellard seemed satisfied there was nothing to be gleaned from the ashes he ducked under the plinking lean-to eave. After a moment James saw him prodding at a bundle tucked in one corner of the shelter with his foot, something wrapped in a piece of canvas. James held his breath. Ellard knelt and James heard the sheriff’s knees popping over the rain. He unwound the covering and let its contents fall out. It was the drifter’s bedroll, tied with a piece of twine. Ellard pulled the string to unbind it. Rolled inside were the implements a drifter carried. A tin plate, a cook pot, a frying pan. Ellard studied these provisions for a time then got up and walked back to the front of the lean-to with his hands on his hips.
Amos sat back on the milk crate. “What is it you want to talk about, Ellard?”
“James’s little girl is missing.”
Amos looked at James. “I heard something about that. I’m sorry for you and your wife.”
“You scared Annie Clyde yesterday,” James said.
Amos put down the ladle. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“Annie Clyde thinks you know where Gracie’s at,” Ellard interrupted, as Amos went on gazing at James without response. “You ain’t seen any missing children, have you?”
Amos seemed to mull it over. Then his one eye settled back on James. “Yes,” he said.
“You’ve seen one?”
“Yes.”
“A lost child?”
“A dead child.”
James gaped at him, stricken. For a second Ellard didn’t move or speak either. Rain tapped at the tarp roof of the shelter. “You saying you found a body?” Ellard asked at last.
“Yes.”
Ellard moved toward Amos. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”
“I generally try to avoid the law,” Amos said.
Sweat sprang out in beads on James’s brow. “Where is it?”
“I’d have to take you to it.”
“Then take me to it,” James said, his voice unfamiliar to his own ears.
“Wait a minute, James,” Ellard said. “I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.”
James’s hands tensed into fists. “I’m done waiting.”
Ellard cursed under his breath, touching his holster. “Watch your step,” he warned Amos.
The drifter took his hat from beside the milk crate and put it on his head. He stood up and regarded James as if to make sure of something. Then he nodded and glided past James on almost silent feet. James followed him numb and mindless across the clearing toward the bluff. Ellard came behind them, revolver drawn, but James ignored both of the other men. As he walked, he conjured Gracie’s face to hold before him in place of whatever he was about to see. He pictured her sleeping in her crib with her fingers curled under her chin, lips suckling as if she nursed in a dream. He didn’t know if a human being was made to withstand a thing like this. It seemed possible he wouldn’t survive. They walked a few yards to the rocky ledges, lush with a fall of white-flowered woodbine. At the bottom of the bluff it appeared as though Amos had hacked through the greenery with the rusted machete. He pulled the vines aside and looked up at James with his impassive face, waiting. Ellard stepped between them. “Let me do this,” he said.