I happened to look down at my side. Mr. Waldrip’s boot was still upright there at the edge of the escarpment. It was full up to the ankle with rainwater. I was then mighty pleased that I had bought him those good alligator-skin boots, being that alligators are waterproof. I knelt down and got that boot and gulped the water until it was gone. I ought to have sipped it and saved some in the toe, but you do not think that way when you are thirsty.
I went back to the airplane. It was cooler than it had been, so I had decided I was going to take the big wool coat Terry wore. If Mr. Waldrip had been there with me he would have done the same thing. I imagine he would have been disappointed with me if I had not salvaged everything I could both from the airplane and from Terry’s person.
I inched closer to him but kept my eyes on the ground. He smelled like a dead horse. I grabbed for him and felt for the seatbelt and unbuckled it. He slid out of his seat and toppled to the rocks with a heavy thud and an upwelling of many flies such as dust beaten from an old cushion. I turned him on his side and worked one arm free from his coat. His joints popped. I told myself I was only loosening up the stiff leg on the old card table we used for bridge night at First Methodist. I rolled him and did the other arm. He ended up on his back, and I was stood over him with his coat. It was a gray color and was patterned with blood and looked now a little like red damask. I had the thought that I had robbed him. I looked him full in the face or what else there remained of it. It had been gnawed away and there was no blood nor flesh to it, only such as would be left on a watermelon rind after a picnic.
I turned out his hip pockets and was careful not to disturb his dignity. The stench was powerful and I held my breath. I found his billfold and a book of matches from a gentlemen’s club called the Polecat printed with a multicolored cartoon of a masculine and muscled dancing skunk. I have never known a man to frequent one of these establishments, although I have been told that many do. I wager I have met quite a few of them and did not even know it. I ought to mention here I do not include the description of the matches as a comment on Terry’s character. Men and women alike lead common secret lives that necessitate common secret places. I pass no judgment on them.
I put the book of matches in the coat’s breast pocket. I opened his billfold and looked through the photographs he kept. There was a photograph of an attractive blond man fishing and another of a young girl holding balloons next to a waterfall. I found the one of Mrs. Squime he had shown us on the airplane. I replaced it and laid the billfold over his heart. It is fortunate that I had worn my good walking shoes, so that I did not need to take his boots. They would not have fit me, and I believe there is an old caution about wearing a dead man’s boots.
A funny thing occurred to me while searching Terry’s body. When I put my hands on another man who was not Mr. Waldrip, even one deceased and bodily abused, something stirred in me and I recalled a boy named Garland Pryle. Garland grew up down the road from me on a little ole alfalfa ranch. Our mothers sat next to each other in the old Methodist church house. He was four years my junior and played war games in the pasture with my brother, looking everywhere for sticks that were shaped the most like firearms. Garland was a mighty handsome, green-eyed boy, and his chin was the finest chin I have ever seen. I will soon tell what there is to tell about Garland Pryle, for I will not cower from the truth as I recall it. But for now all I will say is that while the years can sure put a memory in its place, some memories are darn ornery and like to return at inconvenient occasions.
I put on Terry’s big coat and was very small in it. I crawled back into the fuselage, and under Terry’s seat I found a plastic sack containing a small black hatchet and an old blue umbrella. I was sure happy to find these. There was also a tennis ball with the word stress written on it in marker and a flashlight that would not turn on so I left it where it was. I rolled up the issue of Time magazine and the tore-up map and put these in my purse. I climbed out of the fuselage and did not once look back at the little airplane. In hindsight, I ought to have left a note telling anyone that might come along where I had gone.
At the edge of the escarpment I picked up Mr. Waldrip’s boot and stuffed it toe-first into my purse as far as it would go. After scouting around I found a suitable enough slope with soft dirt and loose rocks. I dug in the heels of my shoes and carefully climbed down to the floor of the woods below. I had not been in the dirt like that since I was a little girl. After I had caught my breath I pushed on through the trees.
I had not gone far when I spotted Mr. Waldrip’s glasses on the ground. I looked up. Mr. Waldrip was hung above me in the spruce. His arms were out wide as if to greet me in a way he had never done before. His head sat mauve and swollen on his shoulders at a funny angle. There were no cuts nor blood to his face. The expression on him was one I had seen when someone talked to him about a drought. That dab of jalapeño jelly was still on his chin.
I recall wanting to bawl, but I did not. I suppose some things are just too sad that tears cannot do them justice.
When Mr. Waldrip and I were a young couple, we would argue about small infractions just as young couples do. I recall one summer night in the backyard of our new home under the water tower when the cicadas were very loud and I was as mad as a wet hen and we had raised our voices at each other. About what I do not now remember. But while I was still hollering and pointing up and pointing down and going red in the face he had calmed. He smiled. He reached out and brushed away my hair and said, No matter how angry you get, Clory, I always know you still got your kind little ears.
Standing under his body then, I wished to be the woman I was when he had loved me the most. Mr. Waldrip always said I was the most whip-smart woman or man he had ever met and that I could outword a dictionary. I thought that if I could manage to be that woman for just minutes at a time, maybe I just might survive this ordeal. Perhaps I had a way out of this immense and terrible place. So I fixed my hair around my ears best I could, knelt down, and picked up Mr. Waldrip’s glasses. I stowed them in the breast pocket of Terry’s coat and set out through the trees in the direction of the smoke.
Tuesday morning Lewis sat at her desk before the wide window and watched with bagged eyes the light change on a page of the Missoulian. She had come into the station again before sunrise and by the time Claude and Pete arrived she had already drunk two cups of coffee and a mugful of merlot from a bottle she kept under her desk. She had read twice the front-page story on the disappearance of a ten-year-old girl, vanished from her bed in the middle of the night. She flipped back to the newsprint photograph. The girl wore a deely bobber and smiled crookedly before a painted canyon landscape.
You read this about the missin girl? Lewis said. The Hovett girl? Sarah Hovett?
Claude was hunched over the narrow desk at the west wall, touching ointment to the blue end of his nose. I did, he said. He laid a hand on the head of the old dog snoring at his feet. I’d hate to know what happened to her.
I sure do appreciate y’all havin me in your place of work, Pete said from the kitchenette. He steadied the video camera on the counter and put an eye to the viewfinder, recording the percolator drip. I appreciate the company durin these tryin times.
We know you do, Claude said. Don’t use up all the tape on pictures of coffee.
Lewis folded the newspaper