I shut off the headlamp and waited for my pupils to expand. As I drew closer, the boulders gained gigantic proportions. They reminded me of ancient monoliths from the barrow downs of England. At their base, I could make out a boxy shadow wedged in the crack between the glacial erratics. The campfire light leaked out from between the planks, and a spiral of pine-flavored smoke-light gray against the darker gray of the evening-corkscrewed up into the sky.
Lucas was inside.
The question was how to pry him out. He had nowhere to run. The fort was pressed tightly into the vee formed by the leaning rocks. The structure seemed to be about the size of an ice-fishing shack, turned on its side and reinforced with plywood and Typar siding.
Then I remembered the backtracking footprints and the maze of deadfall, and I recalled something Jamie had told me about her son: “Lucas loves puzzles and riddles and secret codes.” On a hunch, I decided to creep around the boulders and have a look at them from behind.
In the nearly pitch-darkness, I almost speared my eye on a sharp branch. Every sound I made seemed amplified to my ears. I worried that my awkward movement through the snow might alert him to my presence.
After a while I came through the birch saplings and the hedge of cedars on the far side of the rise. As I had expected, there was a receding shadow between the boulders: the fort’s secret back door. I moved to one side of the opening and flattened myself against the cold granite.
I lifted my snowshoes gently off my shoulder and pressed them together in my left hand. Then, with all my strength, I hurled them up over the tops of the boulders. I heard the wood frames clatter off something-maybe the rock, maybe the fort-and then a hurried movement that reminded me of a squirrel in an attic.
Faster than I would have dreamed, a rifle emerged from the crack between the two boulders beside me. As soon as I saw it, I grabbed the barrel and gave it a yank, dragging the boy out from the hole. He sprawled forward, landing on his scrawny chest. His glasses fell into the snow and disappeared beneath the surface powder. Half blind, he flipped himself over, waving his arms and kicking out his legs and screaming something unintelligible. It might have been a plea for mercy.
“Relax, Lucas,” I said. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
But he kept screaming.
35
Once I had gotten him to stop howling, I unloaded the. 22 and put the cartridges in my pocket. Then I flicked on my headlamp and helped him dig for his Coke-bottle glasses. He rubbed the lenses with his thumbs before he put them on again. He blinked at me through the wet plastic, blinded by the halogen glow emanating from my forehead.
“Lucas, why did you run off like that?”
“That lady was going to confiscate me.”
Where did he come up with that word? I wondered. “She was just going to take care of you until your mom comes homes.”
“That lady told Tammi that Ma’s in jail.”
I considered my response. “That’s right. She is in jail.”
“What did she do?”
I felt very reluctant to offer him any information. It wasn’t just my usual uneasiness communicating with children; there were legal issues involved. I figured my best bet would be to hand him over to the DHHS woman before I said something that would get me into trouble in Augusta. “She drove a car when she shouldn’t have.”
“How long is she going to be there?”
“That’s for the judge to decide.”
I lifted the. 22 by the sling. It was attached to the barrel and screwed into the wooden stock. “You shouldn’t be playing with firearms, Lucas. You could have shot yourself-or me.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Have you taken a gun safety course?”
“No.”
“Well, you shouldn’t touch this rifle again until you’ve had some instruction in how to use it safely.”
“That’s my grandpa’s gun. I inherited it.”
The boy was dressed in a camo green sweatshirt and wet jeans. He wasn’t wearing a coat, gloves, or a hat. All at once he started to shiver.
“Where did you cut yourself?” I asked. “I saw blood on the snow.”
He pressed a hand to his hairline, beneath a long, loose bang. “It ain’t nothing.”
“Let me have a look.” I reached out my hand, but he recoiled from my touch. “Stand still.”
I lifted the flap of wet hair. There was a cut there, but it was nothing worse than the kind of scrape that kids got on the playground every day.
“Do I need stitches?” he asked.
“Just a Band-Aid. But I’m thinking a doctor should have a look at you anyway.”
He repositioned his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “What for?”
“Well, your feet are wet, so you might be getting frostbite in your toes.”
“Are they going to amputate?”
“I highly doubt it. Let’s get you back to the house and into some dry clothes.” The smell of smoke drifted past. “First, though, we need to put out that fire.”
We circled the two boulders. I made Lucas walk in front in case he decided to take off again, but in truth, he didn’t look like he had the energy. I found my snowshoes on the tar-paper roof of the fort. As I inspected the structure, I realized that it was indeed an old ice-fishing shack that someone had remodeled into a boy’s playhouse.
Smoke billowed out through the plywood door when I gave it a tug. Inside, there was a hibachi grill under a piece of PVC piping that angled through the side wall. Lucas had lighted a small fire in the grill out of broken twigs, birch bark, and wadded newspaper. I was surprised he hadn’t expired from carbon monoxide poisoning, but I decided that I had already given him enough lectures.
There were stacks of water-warped paperbacks in one corner-the Conan books and Stephen King-and a moldy sleeping bag. It reminded me of a fort I had built the year we’d lived in North Anson, before my mom and dad split up that last time. I decorated it with the skulls of animals-raccoons and crows-I’d scavenged from the leaf litter. Every night I’d begged my parents to let me sleep out, where I would read myself to sleep by candlelight, until finally the snow began to fall and my mother decided that I might freeze to death.
I found an empty Maxwell House coffee can and told Lucas to fill it with snow. When I dumped it on the fire, a puff of steam exploded into the air, followed by a sizzling sound. I used a stick to stir the coals until they were cold and damp enough to touch with my bare hand. Then I backed out of the sideways shack.
“Who built this fort?” I asked.
“Me.”
“It’s very impressive.”
“My grandpa helped a little.”
I bent down to strap on my showshoes again.
Lucas watched me with fascination. “How did you find me?” he asked.
“It’s my job to find people in the woods. You were challenging to track, though. It was very clever how you used the stream to disguise your direction, and you almost fooled me backtracking in your own footprints. You would have confused lots of people who aren’t professional trackers like me.”
He grinned, almost literally from ear to ear. The expression made him look even more than usual like a species of large-mouthed amphibian. “Thanks!”
“You’re welcome.” I straightened up and repositioned the sling across my chest. The leather pressed against my hidden ballistic vest.
“Are you sure you ain’t a ranger?” he asked.
