Mim ran up the stairs to the loft, but Hildie was not in her swing. “Hildie,” she called. She heard the creak of steps and stumbled downstairs crooning, “Hildie, Hildie,” but it was only John. “Hildie,” she screamed.
“Stop,” John said, catching at her shoulders as she ran for the door. “Think. Where would she think to go?”
“They took her,” Mim cried, fighting his arms. “You heard him say they plan to.”
John let go and Mim burst free and ran around the barn toward the sand pile.
John went into the house and called to Lassie. The old dog stood up and wagged her tail. “Go fetch Hildie,” John said, motioning to the door. “Where’s our Hildie, old girl?” Lassie wagged her tail sadly and flopped back down on her rug. John closed the door and leaned against it scanning the yard.
“Hildie?” he called and his voice fell flat on the encroaching night. He picked up the iron bar on its cord and struck the big rusted gong over and over again.
Mim ran up and stood breathless with him.
It was almost dark. The gong stopped sounding and there was nothing but the wind.
“You try the pond. I’ll try up yonder in the pasture,” John said.
Obediently Mim walked down the path toward the pond, her eyes yearning into the underbrush for the bright orange glow that would be her child. Instead, down near the gravel at the pond’s edge, she found Hildie’s wagon, half filled with gravel and topped by a split plastic pail and an old spoon with the silver worn off. “Hildie?” she called, but her voice wasn’t loud any more. She tried to remember whether she had seen the wagon around lately. The pond was a mottled shiny gray like granite polished for a gravestone. She could not see beyond its surface. “Hildie?” she said softly. The water made quiet rhythmic rushes at the shore. And that was all. She covered her mouth with both hands and stood listening. Moment by moment, the pond before her darkened toward night.
And then she heard the quick light laughter behind her and whirled to see Hildie running down the path toward her, her orange sweater spiked with broken bits of hay.
She clasped her in her arms, her head shaking with dry sobs against the child’s soft body.
Hildie pulled away confused. “I hid, Mama,” she said, “the way you said. Just the way you said. I hid even better than the way you said. I heard a car and hid. I stayed hid ever and ever so long. And then I heard our truck. I heard you callin’ and the gong.”
“Why didn’t you come?” Mim wept.
“I wanted you to see how good I was hid. You said to hide most careful of all if it was friends.” The child smiled and would have laughed if it hadn’t been for her sense that she had made a mistake. “I hid so good you couldn’t find me.”
“John?” Mim called, but her voice was small.
“I got so tired, Mama,” Hildie said and clasped Mim tightly. Then, sensing that she was safe from punishment, she pulled back and said, “Want to know where I hid?”
Mim nodded. She could hardly see Hildie’s face in the dark.
“Under the hay in the loft.” She giggled. “In the horse stall there’s hardly any hay. I’m too big for such a little hay.”
But Mim was pulling her by the hand up toward the house. “Oh but you did give us a wicked turn,” she said.
Mim pushed Hildie in the door of the kitchen so that Ma gasped with relief. Then she chased up the pasture running breathlessly in the near darkness, calling to John.
10
On Wednesday, John did not touch his breakfast, not even his cup of chicory. He sat on the bench still wearing his pajama tops underneath his shirt and brooded into the black wall of the kitchen range.
“When are we goin’?” Mim asked. Then louder, “When are we goin’?”
But John said nothing, weighting the kitchen with his silence.
Finally Mim slammed her palm down on the table next to him. “Will you tell me what to do?” she cried.
John lifted angry eyes to her. “Go to hell,” he said.
Ma stalked out of the room and slammed the door, closing herself into the front room.
“Like it was my fault!” shouted Mim.
Then her eyes lit on Hildie who was rocking from side to side in her corner sucking her thumb. “Hildie,” she said gently. “Poor Hildie. Come on.” And she coaxed the child into her jacket.
Hand in hand she and Hildie went out to the barn and looked around. Mim kicked at the boards under the stairs, then pulled out a couple at random and measured them against the truck. People turned pickup trucks into campers all the time.
She looked up and saw Ma watching her through the front window, her lips moving as if she were reporting Mim’s every move to John. She went into the barn, still trailed by Hildie, and searched for something she could use for a saw. When she came out, Ma was still watching. Mim walked around to the far side of the truck, where Ma couldn’t see her. She leaned against the door and gazed out over the still pond. Hildie jumped into her arms, and gradually she realized that the two of them could manage very well in the cab. They could share the seat. It simplified things, the realization that only she and Hildie would go. At least it simplified the building problem. She hauled the boards back to the barn and moved slowly up the path toward the kitchen door.
But, by Thursday, Mim had not brought herself to make any further move. The day was cold. Mim and John ate their oatmeal, then sat at the table drinking birch tea, almost as if the day were a normal one.
“Is it Thursday?” Hildie asked. “What will they take?”
“The tractor,” Mim answered. “That’s what.”
Perly led the way up the path, his big body sailing in on the Moores with that silent ease that characterized all his motions. He mused without blinking on the little family clustered behind the glass in the storm door watching his approach. He stopped on the granite stoop to wipe his work boots, then opened the storm door toward himself and half bowed to the Moores.
Ma stood a little behind John and Mim, but it was to her that he held out his hands. “How are you, Mrs. Moore?” he asked.
Behind him, even more florid than usual, Gore stood on the stoop, his right hand sticking close to his gun.
Ma lifted her head so that her small features stood out sharply. She looked Perly in the eye and said, “I am bad, since you ask. And it’s all your doin’. You a standin’ here with your manners. And him standin’ there with his gun. I was a few years younger, we’d a met you forehead to forehead from the start, ’stead of walkin’ round you all the while like this.” Ma had been struggling closer and closer to Perly until she stood directly in front of him.
Perly looked down on her, his face drawn together with concern.
He reached out slowly, and with his index finger, brushed Ma’s hair off her forehead.
Ma caught her breath and backed off, almost tripping over John. Then she turned and moved away across the kitchen, her canes banging angrily.
“Sorry to see her slipping,” Perly said to John.
John stood for a long space confronting Perly, then he turned with sudden force and threw the keys to the tractor at Gore. They hit him in the torso and he jumped back, reaching awkwardly for his gun. The keys bounced away and landed in the grass beside the stoop. Gore stood, gone pale, staring at John, his hand finally resting securely on the butt of his gun, the holster unsnapped.
“Some fall guy,” John said to Gore, but Gore still stood, his knuckles white where they grasped the gun.
“Keys to the tractor?” Perly said and cocked an eyebrow. “Must be. Hope it’s running good.” He hadn’t moved from the tight group in the doorway, not even to dodge when the keys flew by his nose. “Now don’t be anxious,” he said. “I just have to give my little friend here some loving.” Without effort, he leaned past Gore and past John until his face was close to Hildie where she sat in Mim’s arms.