The mayor had upped his reward for Wil’s capture to ten thousand dollars. Sheriff Bean told the mayor that he’d better prepare to explain his decision to bring a shotgun to search for Bessie, a gun that had gone off and might have killed any one of the searchers nearby. The mayor countered that the gun had been for protection from delinquents with bows and arrows and that the gun’s firing had been my fault—claims, the sheriff said, he’d let the district attorney wrestle with. The sheriff doubted that the mayor’s allegations would stick if Wil was found. He had saved Bessie’s life, and winging Hargrove, who was drunk and trespassing, had been his first offense. But because Wil was a nobody migrant boy, he wouldn’t have options or a moment’s peace with everybody trying to catch him and cash in. If he was caught, the sheriff thought, he’d likely be sent to a state home. His best hope was to move on, disappear.
My heart was heavy thinking about Wil and Bessie as I climbed the stairs, but what I found when I switched on my light about made me shout with joy. I stood in my doorway and stared. The whole room—the floor, the window seat, the dresser, the bedside table, the bookcase—was covered with Wil’s prized possessions: birds’ nests and eggs, beautiful rocks, a turtle shell, pinecones, animal bones, lichen-covered twigs, and dozens of feathers in every color of bird.
On my bedside table was Wil’s cigar box, the one I’d found in the cabin when I was first there, and Wil lay fast asleep in my bed.
He woke and smiled a little as I came in, but I saw how exhausted he was. I shut the door so Henry wouldn’t hear us, switched off the light, and lay down facing him on the bed.
He ran his fingers over the cast on my arm. “That was a dumb thing to do,” he said, looking pleased I’d done it.
“You should talk,” I said. “They’re all looking for you. Two-thirds of them want to give us medals and the other third want to lock us up. How’s Sister?”
“Safe for now. That lady was right.”
“What lady?”
“The one I found. She said I should put Sister somewhere safe and get as far away from here as I could. Gave me two hundred dollars. Said the mayor’s a dog with a bone. That sooner or later he’ll see Sister dead and me in jail.”
“Where will you go? You got family?”
He shook his head. “I’ll move with the pickers, like always. It’s no big thing.”
I could tell that last part was a huge lie, that his heart was hurting at the very thought. “Well, it’s a big thing to me.”
Wil smiled.
“Won’t you let the sheriff, Fred, and Uncle Henry see if they can help you?” I asked. “Finding Bessie made you a hero to most. Won’t you let them try?”
“Dog with a bone,” he repeated. “That lady’s smart.”
I looked into his weary eyes. Deep down, I knew he and Bessie were right. “Will you write and let me know where you are?” I asked him.
“Don’t read or write.”
“Well, you better learn,” I told him and he grinned.
I reached for his hand then, and he let me take it. We lay together quietly after that for the half-minute it took us to fall asleep.
Wil was gone when Henry woke me the next morning, like I knew he would be.
He’d left every one of his treasures, though, exactly as they had been the night before. They were even more beautiful with the sun streaming in like honey through my windows. Henry took them in, not at all surprised by the news of Wil’s visit—though I didn’t let on he’d stayed the whole night.
I took the cigar box off my night table and lifted the lid. Inside, in a bed of dry leaves, were the six carved animals: otter and squirrel, possum and mouse, raccoon and deer. I showed them to Henry one by one, and then showed him the carving of Mr. C’mere and the second one of Sister. Henry turned each one in the light and marveled, saying how lifelike they were and how gifted Wil was. Underneath them, the face of the boy’s mama peered up at me, the photograph I’d seen the first day at the cabin. I handed it to Henry and read him the single word scrawled on the back. “That’s Wil’s mama,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
Henry nodded sadly and handed the picture back to me. I started to set it and the little animals back in the box, but caught sight of something else in the bottom under the leaves, a second photograph that wasn’t there before. I brushed it off and held it to the light so Henry and I could look at it together. It was a wedding picture, but a sorry one, made sorrier by the bent corners and creases, like Wil had carried it in his pocket. The bride was the same woman as in the first photograph, Wil’s mama. Her dress and veil weren’t white or new, though they looked clean and pressed. This time, though, she seemed happy with the man she loved beside her, and she smiled into a skimpy bouquet of wilted roadside flowers.
The man was different. His face was turned away like he was looking over his shoulder to see what fearsome thing was gaining on him. You couldn’t see but the far right side of his face, just a cheek, the tail of an eyebrow, a sideburn, a misshapen ear.
