“Pretty much. The road heads into the mountains, threads north to the trestle bridge. There’s a trail on the other side of Jonah Ridge that peters out in some bramble forests. Used to be sort of a lovers’ lane, a hundred forty or so years ago, before the war and the outbreak of yellow fever. They’d go courting and bring their whole families. There’s nice grasslands around in summer, wildflowers all over. Horse and buggies would head up toward the gorge and couples would picnic after church, quote scripture and sing gospels.”
His mother telling him,
Shad got that feeling again, that someone was focusing on him, calling up their forces and aiming their intent. He wavered on his feet and began to sweat. He saw nothing, but still sensed movement around him-flitting, dancing even. The back of his neck warmed and his ears were suddenly burning. He concentrated but couldn’t center himself. It took a minute for the November breeze to cool him.
Dave asked, “You okay?”
“Yes.”
Leaning back against his patrol car, Dave said, “Probably started getting its reputation right around the time of the Battle of Chickamauga. Some captured Union troops were corralled up there by the Rebs and tossed into the gorge.”
Shad hadn’t thought of that in a long time, but now that he heard it, he abruptly remembered the story. “I almost forgot about that.”
“It’s not the kind of Civil War moment people put plaques up about to commemorate. After that, the hollow had its share of epidemics. Yellow fever in 1885. Cholera in 1915. When the disease reached its worst they’d bring whole wagons of the sick into the hills and leave them there.”
“Jesus.”
Dave spoke with great clarity, completely without emotion. “Suicides would come up this way too.”
“That’s right.”
“The lonely, the elderly. They’d throw themselves off the precipice.”
Shad caught vague, fleeting impressions of Mags around him, and spotted her pale hand again. Reaching, trying to touch. It was time to get down to hearing whatever facts there were.
“What killed her?” he asked.
“The autopsy didn’t reveal any cause of death,” Dave told him.
That stopped Shad, made him turn and cock his head. “The hell’s that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“My father suspects she was murdered.”
“I know. He spreads his suspicions high and low around town. But officially her death is listed as ‘by misadventure.’”
Shad waited, counting the snap of his pulse to ten while Dave patiently influenced himself upon the world. “What?”
“Death by misadventure.”
It could get like this at the oddest times. He wished he had a cigarette-this was the kind of circumstance where a guy would take a drag, allow the seconds to roll by while he kept his lungs busy, then let the smoke out in a thin stream, everything cool and hip and effective.
He fought to make his voice casual. Never any show of consternation, especially with someone that much bigger than you. “Dave, are you going to keep making me say ‘what the goddamn’ all day long? Or will you just lay it out?”
“We don’t have any answers.”
“I got that much.”
“Misadventure means it’s an accident we can’t explain.”
“And that’s an
“Yes.”
“You guys really cover your asses.” No matter how hard you tried, you’d never figure out the carefully constructed mystification of the justice system. “If you can’t explain it, then you don’t know she was actually killed.”
“That’s right.”
“Her heart simply stopped.”
“That’s right.”
“For no reason.”
“That we can ascertain.”
“So why’s my father say she was murdered?”
Dave’s expression didn’t change but he settled back on his feet, and the slight adjustment in his body language let Shad know he felt a touch embarrassed. Not for himself, but for Pa. You had to have been around Dave Fox for most of your life in order to pick up on little things like that, and even then you wouldn’t know what it really meant.
“She had a scratch on her cheek,” Dave said. “He takes it to mean she was attacked.”
Shad searched the deputy’s face and came up empty. “And you do too?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t.” Dave made you fight for everything, but his silence still gave him away occasionally. It was one way he could stay true to himself and still let people know what was on his mind. “Doc never cared much for moon, he’s more of a Jack Daniel’s drinker. I’d come across him on the lower banks while I was hauling whiskey, out cold with his feet in the water.”
“He’s got bunions.”
“I’d stop and pick him up, drive him home before he floated off. His wife always tried to pay me forty dollars when I’d bring him inside. I’m not sure how she arrived at that price.”
Telling Dave pretty much what he thought of old Doc without having to come right out with it.
But Dave Fox would never talk out against someone in authority, not even against the sheriff, who everyone knew was on the take. He drew his line in the sand and kicked the shit out of everybody to one side and let everyone on the other side slide.
“Who found her?” Shad asked.
“I did. She was lying there, like I said, as if she were sleeping.”
“What made you think to look all the way out here?”
“I looked everywhere. I started when your father called at about ten o’clock or so, and discovered her at four- fifteen in the morning.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
“No.”
Shad thought about his sister so far from town, in the night, alone, surrounded by darkness. How different would it have played out if he’d been home? Maybe the same, except he would’ve been the one to find her.
He could imagine himself there beside her. Hear himself groaning, cradling her, kneeling in the dirt with her body in his arms. His breath hitched until he was almost snorting. His hands clasped into fists as if he were trying to grab hold of her, there on the ground, and pull her back toward him.
He started to walk up the road and Dave fell in line beside him. They worked their way toward high ground that was dense with oak and heavy underbrush. Farther off, near the ridge, the willows loomed and swayed in the crosswinds.
He’d missed too much in the two years he was gone, and it was hobbling him. There would’ve been more boys around, a part-time job, other activities. He didn’t know Megan well enough anymore, and nobody was filling him in.
“She was seventeen,” he said. “She wouldn’t have come up this way alone.”
“I talked to her friends, classmates, and the closest neighbors. They all said she wasn’t seeing anyone. Had no beau. Did she ever write you and say different?”
“No. She never wrote me. I told her not to.”
“Why?”
“It would’ve only made it harder.”
The closest neighbors were more than a mile off through the fields in any direction from Pa’s house. They
