“You?” I said. “But I thought—”
“Or the other time when you were sick and I watched you. Walked right in and up the stairs, nobody the wiser.”
“But I dreamed that!” I said, feeling my heart beat faster.
“Or the day those two boys came up here looking for you!”
“Me?”
He nodded. “I fixed them!” Full of pride, he burst out laughing.
I blushed a little, feeling uncomfortable and foolish. “Well, then, I guess you know everything,” I said a bit sharply. “Nothing I can tell you. Not one thing.”
I sat quietly and folded my hands in my lap. A bit of fear and worry crept into his face. He snorted, trying to cover it, then turned to the deer behind him, as if she’d just asked him a question. “Sister wants to know what you’re always reading and scribbling.”
I looked at the deer. Her ears twitched. Our combined attentions confused her, but otherwise her pink head seemed as empty as a gourd.
“I read and write stories mostly,” I said.
“We like stories, don’t we?” he said, looking back at the deer and then at me. He leaned toward me a little. “She’s not much for writing,” he whispered to me. “Doesn’t know how.”
“Maybe she’s hungry?” I ventured. “I brought sandwiches and fruit.”
The boy turned to inquire. Her pink nose twitched. “She could eat.”
I stood slowly to get the bag of sandwiches Harlan had set inside the trailer door, and slid the grocery bag toward the boy. He opened it, took out two sandwiches and two apples, and slid the bag back to me. He sliced the apples for Sister with his knife and fed her the slices one by one before he took one bite himself. “Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I told him. “And I thank you. Both of you.”
“For what?”
This time, I looked right at him when I spoke. “For keeping a sharp eye on things.”
He snorted and looked down at his hands and blushed a little under all that dirt.
“Would you like a story now?” I asked.
The boy looked at the deer, then turned to me and smiled. “So happens we would.”
While he ate both sandwiches, I told them the story of the Japanese boy who drew cats, or what I could remember. The wild boy ate, then whittled while he listened. He especially seemed to like the part where the priest tells the boy that one day he’ll be a great artist.
I pointed at the wood in the boy’s hands and said, “You’re an artist like the boy in the story.”
He snorted again, shook his head as if this was nonsense, his carvings nothing, but I thought he was pleased.
I was heading for the end of the story, where the Japanese boy hides in the cabinet from the evil goblin rat, when all of a sudden the wild boy stopped whittling, turned toward Henry’s, and froze to listen. A few seconds later I heard Harlan tromping up the path and mumbling some dissatisfaction to himself.
I’d never seen anything move so swiftly and silently as that boy and his deer. Calm and attentive one second, they rose, turned, and disappeared into the trees in the next three, all grace and speed, like spirits or smoke or birds on the wing. I heard a few leaves rustling, but only Harlan after that.
And I hadn’t even asked the boy’s name or thought to warn him about the price on his head.
The stranger stepped away from his car and spat.
The cat regarded him from the porch, recognized him as the one who’d come the summer before, ahead of the girl. As before, the stranger turned in a circle, surveying the place, taking in everything as if it belonged to him by right. He sized up the chimney, the roof, the porch, even the tires on the man’s truck, estimating, measuring, comparing. Then he turned to the field and regarded the man’s makings with a sneer.
The cat watched anxiously as the stranger came toward the porch. He caught sight of the cat, took a lurching step forward, and stomped on the ground. And the cat shot off the porch, across the field, into the trees, the stranger’s hateful laughter loud behind him.
16
I went home by way of Henry’s studio, thinking about the boy and torn if I should tell Henry I’d seen him or not. It seemed like my journal and I had brought trouble to him and Sister, and something told me he didn’t have a lot to fall back on. The more I thought about telling Henry, the more I worried he’d call Sheriff Bean. The sheriff would have to do his job. Hargrove and his cousin would lie like before to save their own skins, and it would be their word against the boy’s. I knew who would win that fight.
But the more powerful picture that rose in my mind was Henry charging down that bank toward me on Thanksgiving Day and the way he’d stood in the line of fire. I knew he wouldn’t always stand with me on everything—I had some wild hairs sometimes. But remembering us in Curtis’s sights, I thought maybe he’d listen to my side and help me figure things out.
The idea of trusting Henry felt strange, though, like weakness; or risky, like leaving open a door I’d always locked. I stepped into Henry’s workshop. He was welding a sculpture for Lillian’s show on New Year’s Eve, so wrapped up in it that he didn’t hear me come in. He bent intently over it, wearing his full costume—welding jacket, apron, and hood—and sparks poured from his welding torch like it was a magic wand.
While I waited for him to notice me, I grabbed a pair of goggles off a nail and studied the new piece. Almost
