“You imp! You little ingrate! How dare you frighten us so! Look at you! And look at those hands! March that little butt of yours up those steps, right now! And don’t stop until you get to the bathroom. Oh, the likes of it! I should flail you with a switch!”
I scampered up the stairs and fled to the bathroom. “Wash yourself!” she commanded from below. “And go straight to bed!”
In the morning, I rushed down the stairs to learn of the night’s search results.
“Gone! The little thing’s gone!” Pearl muttered. “They never found a thing. Just a little shoe. I got it upstairs, in my room.”
“He dragged her up in some tree,” my grandmother hypothesized. “Or some cave. There’s a thousand caves back in there. Old mica mines, iron mines, salt mines. The Lord alone knows where she is.”
“Mama, Earl asked you to pray, not prophesy her funeral,” my mother commented.
“Oh, she’s dead all right, Shaula. You can mark my words on that. Many a night my father would have to sleep out in the cold during the lambing season, for, if weren’t dogs, a panther would kill a ewe, or carry off a lamb. They bite their little throats, cutting off the air to their windpipes; then drag them deep into the woods. And what they don’t eat, they bury under leaves. Those dogs of Earl’s brothers are coon dogs. Not bloodhounds, or real hounds. They probably got distracted and ran off after coons. Earl claimed as much. That’s why they came back.”
The entire morning past, and still no one found the child, or any sign of the child, or the predator that had stalked and killed her, no doubt. I was playing in the front yard, near the purple lilac bushes, when Uncle Everett drove up in his pickup truck. Two portable dog cages wobbled back and forth in its bed. As soon as he stopped, you could hear the hounds clawing to get out. I ran to his truck and climbed up on the bed.
“Careful,” he said. “These rascals are big and hungry and the first thing I want them to smell is something of that little girl’s.”
“Pearl’s got a shoe inside. I saw it yesterday. It’s just a rag, covered with blood.”
“Run get Pearl and tell her to bring the shoe.”
While I scampered toward the back porch, my mother and grandmother came around from the front of the house to greet Uncle Everett. Pearl had already overheard Uncle Everett and was halfway out the screen door. “Where’s the dogs?” she asked. “I heard what he said.”
We hurried together to the truck.
“Don’t let them smell it yet,” warned Uncle Everett. “I want to saddle up Sally, or old Fred, then turn them loose on her trail. Mama, Shaula, what happened?”
“They found the cat’s tracks up in the orchard,” my mother pointed. “The men either lost the trail, or the dogs never got the scent.”
“I couldn’t tell them a thing,” my grandmother protested. “Just hardheaded tenants,” she shook her head with sadness. “The poor little darling! Probably never had a chance.”
I weaseled in as close to Uncle Everett as I could. “Not this time, boy,” he smiled. “But you can hop in and ride up to the barn.”
“Don’t you let him go!” my grandmother pointed her finger at her son. “Don’t you dare let him on your horse.”
“I won’t, Mama! I’ve got more sense than that. But the boy loves adventure, and he needs to be free of your skirts far more than you let him.”
“Well, not this time! One missing child is enough. Anything could happen. Tommy, you hear that, don’t you? You come back as soon as Everett saddles up and releases those dogs. I’ll not permit a second of perfidy!”
“Yes, ma’am! I’ll come right back.”
“Pearl, you go with him and drag him back if you have to, but he’s not, I repeat, ‘not going.’ And that’s final.”
“Mama, nothing’s ever final, except death,” said Uncle Everett. I climbed up in the bed and peered in at his huge hounds. They whined and wanted to lick my fingers, but I knew I couldn’t let them, without spoiling their scent for Ouida.
At the barn, I remained in the truck until Uncle Everett had saddled up Fred—an old but sure-footed horse. Pearl handed him Ouida’s little shoe, as he led the horse by its bridle around the truck. He held the little shoe in front of the caged dogs. They yelped and bayed with excitement. “OK,” he said. “Go find her!” With that, he released their kennel doors and out they burst.
Off they lunged, sniffing the air and weaving in circles. Suddenly, Roy, the larger of the two, stopped, sniffed something ominous in the wind, and, letting out a loud bark, began whining and running toward the orchard. Dixie, his sister, picked up the scent, and off she raced, yelping and whining to keep up.
“Adios, amigos!” Uncle Everett called. He swung into his saddle, and Fred trotted down the road.
“Wait!” I shouted. I ran behind him. “The gate! Let me get the gate!” I ran ahead of the horse, as Uncle Everett slowed its pace. I opened the orchard gate and looked up at him.
He smiled as he passed through. “Now get on back! A promise is a promise. I promised your mother and grandmother. There’ll be other times for us. Now run on. If I find her, I’ll take you there someday and show you myself.”
“Yes, sir!” I groaned, as I stepped up and closed the gate and watched him gallop off, after the dogs.
He did not return until late that evening. Across the saddle, a tiny body lay draped against his waist and legs. He had covered it with a burlap sack. The dogs panted beside him, their tongues long and distended. They all but jumped into the horses’ trough for water. Froth and lather dripped from old Fred. Uncle Everett handed the body to Pearl. A fetid stench accompanied the transfer. She clutched the sack in both hands and wept. Once Earl’s brother and sister-in law came down, they wept, too. Leena, Ouida’s mother, moaned and pulled at her hair. Jessie just stood there, looking down at his feet. His overalls were stained with mud and chaff; his beard was black and grizzly. He took the bundle in his arms. As he cradled the child, he too let out a whimper, like the sound of a sob under a pillow. He and Leena walked off together toward their cabin. I helped Uncle Everett re-kennel his dogs. Without smiling, or saying anything, he climbed in his truck and drove away.
No one ever found the cat, or the panther. “It probably ran off across the Holston,” Uncle Everett surmised. “One day we’ll get it, Tommy. By jingles, next year, I’m taking you with me—promise or no promise—and will get the so and so! Whatta you say?”
“Yes, sir! We’ll get the son-of-a bitch!”
“Whoa, Lord! Watch that tongue, or we’ll both be in trouble!” he feigned a frightful grimace.
I understood what he meant.
Chapter Five
One afternoon in early May, while I was playing in the loft of the old slave quarters, I thought I saw a movement near the apple house. I peered out the side window of the log building for a better view. The apple house was constructed of the same stone as Quilly Hall. It had a deep basement, walled with wooden racks for storing apples and pears. Shelves lined its walls, each laden with heavy blue gallon-sized jars, stuffed with sausages, pork loin, corn, beans, tomatoes, squash, and whole berries, including cherries, blackberries and strawberries. As late as the 1940s, my grandmother’s farm was still a subsistence operation, although it turned a profit in terms of wheat, corn, hams, wool, and tobacco. No farmhands went hungry, but all bordered on poverty.
As I peered out the window, a man appeared briefly at its door. A cigarette glowed in his hands. Suddenly, he slipped away and disappeared under the limbs of a weeping