American Boy. Larry Watson
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Huston’s shack; we just followed the tracks made by other vehicles in the fresh snow.
Deputy Greiner and his search party were back at the site as well, ten men walking in slow, ever-widening circles, searching for any trace of a trail that would lead them to the victim. We climbed out of the Chrysler, but before we could get started, Tiny Goetz drove up in his old Chevy truck and loudly announced from the driver’s seat that footprints, and perhaps blood as well, had been found along the road on the other side of the woods. With that news, the group immediately redirected their search. But Johnny and I declined to join them. We’d already decided to focus on the terrain most familiar to us—the overgrown paths and twisting trails of Frenchman’s Forest.
Before the deputy and his men climbed into their cars, Johnny said, “Wait—shouldn’t you give us a description of the woman?”
Deputy Greiner, a lean, perpetually sour-faced man who wore the same greasy fedora no matter the season, replied caustically: “I’ll tell you what: if you come across a woman and she ain’t been shot—you got the wrong woman.”
Johnny thanked the deputy, but I knew that if Dr. Dunbar had been there, Greiner never would have spoken to him like that.
Also among the searchers was Ed Fields, my fifth-grade Sunday school teacher, and I asked him where the blood had been discovered. He pointed to a break in the woods near a fallen tree, and then he drove off with the deputy and the other men, their vehicles bumping along the snowy ruts of the unpaved road.
Even without Mr. Fields’s direction, Johnny and I could have found the blood simply by going to the spot where the snow was packed down. We stood where the searchers had, looking down at two or three smears, the blood’s crimson diluted in the snow. By then it was apparent that we wouldn’t be able to follow the Lindahl woman’s actual footsteps, because the other searchers had tracked up the snow completely.
Johnny and I entered Frenchman’s Forest slowly, looking not for footprints, but rather another red stain in the snow. In the woods there was less snow but more debris—fallen branches and leaves and undergrowth—and these made for slow going.
Not having discussed a strategy, we each began to search in our own way. Johnny moved rapidly through the woods, hopping over branches and zigzagging through the brush in an effort to cover as much territory as possible. I kept my head down and determinedly trod through the leaves, deadfall, and thorny stalks of weeds.
Only nineteen days separated Johnny and me in age, but I often felt like his older brother, his worldly, rougheredged older brother. I might have had access to the privileged world of the Dunbars, but at the end of the day I returned to the gloomy little two-bedroom box where I lived with my mother. We weren’t exactly poor, but poverty was always within view. We often ate as well as the Dunbars, but only because my mother brought leftovers home from work. And I seldom sat down to one of our warmed-over meals without wondering about its origins. Had Judge Barron sent that steak back because it was too well done? Was this baked potato originally placed in front of Doris Crum, the wife of Dr. Crum, the dentist? Did George Dummett, owner of Dummett’s Hardware, touch this piece of chicken before pushing his plate aside?
But Johnny Dunbar wasn’t only sheltered by his family’s means; he was like a child in no hurry to grow up. Every initiation, every marker of adulthood that I couldn’t wait for—smoking, drinking, driving, earning money, having sex, being independent—Johnny seemed in no hurry to reach. And what interest he had could often be satisfied vicariously by hearing of my exploits or efforts. If I was occasionally less than forthcoming about what Debbie McCarren and I were doing in her basement, or in the backseat of my mother’s DeSoto, it was because Johnny’s probing questions could be invasive. And if I indulged in a cigar or a six-pack of Hamm’s, I didn’t necessarily want to explain every sensation to him. After Randy Wadnor and I got into a scuffle at a football game, to take one example, I wanted to put the incident behind me as quickly as possible. Johnny, on the other hand, wanted to know every detail of the altercation. We both enjoyed sports, but Johnny was not competitive—he only wanted to play. And we were both good students, but while I studied to improve my future prospects, his success in school was the result of the wide-eyed curiosity he brought to any subject.
Johnny even looked like a little brother. He had his father’s curls, but he couldn’t tame them. They frizzed and coiled in every direction, often making him look as if he’d just climbed out of bed. I could have grown a full beard at that age, while Johnny’s cheeks produced nothing but down. The muscles of his slender body were smooth and undefined as well, and he had a childish habit of bouncing and squirming if he had to sit in one place for long. If anyone in town did believe we were brothers, they likely would have assumed that Johnny took after our delicate mother.
Johnny stopped abruptly ten yards ahead of me in the woods, and when I looked questioningly in his direction, he smiled and pointed up at the low branch of a tilting oak tree.
Many of the boys in our town—and even a few of the girls—grew up in these woods. We built forts, played hideand-seek, climbed trees, and hunted, first with slingshots and BB guns, then with .22s. We formed clubs that had their headquarters in the forest, and we took refuge here when we needed to be alone with our sadness, confusion, or anger. Among these trees we hid from bullies and parents and authorities. We also went to Frenchman’s Forest when we wanted to smoke cigarettes or drink the liquor we had stolen. A few of us had our first sexual experiences in here as well, and though that wasn’t true for Johnny or for me, we both received a rudimentary sexual education in the forest years earlier, when Lannie Corbis straddled the branch of the very oak tree Johnny was standing under now, solemnly holding forth on the mechanics of sex to an eager but skeptical audience of five younger boys. Eventually we’d learn that Lannie was mistaken about some of the ways men and women fit together, but even the corrected record could not alter for me the association of sex with the smell of tree sap and the hum of insects.
“Lannie?” I said.
Johnny nodded, smiling.
Yes, if Louisa Lindahl was in these woods, we were the ones to find her. And it was not hard to imagine that someone fleeing a man with murderous intent would head for Frenchman’s Forest.
We walked on, down through the treeless depression we called the Boulders, past the spot where Russell Marsh blasted an owl out of a hollow tree with a twelve-gauge, leaving nothing of the bird but a blizzard of feathers, and through the stand of willows whose wandlike limbs we used to swing from. As we searched for Louisa Lindahl, Johnny and I were the source of most of the noise in the forest—twigs snapping, leaves crunching, and clumps of snow falling, brushed from branches and shrubs.
Then I heard something, and I shushed Johnny. We both stopped and stood unmoving, our heads raised as if, like hounds, we could detect scents in the chilly air. We stood there for a moment, breathless.
After a long silence, Johnny whispered, “What was it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“She could be hiding. For all she knows Lester Huston is out here looking for her.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I’d assumed she would want to be found.
Johnny asked, “Should we call out or something?”
Before I could form a judgment, Johnny cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “We’re here to help you! Is anyone out there?”
When no response came, he tried again. “Hello! There’s no need to be afraid!”
After the sound of Johnny’s voice died away, the forest’s silence seemed amplified, a snowy day’s version of an echo.
“That’s just what someone who’s after her would say,” I offered with a smile. “‘There’s no need to be afraid.’”
“What should I say—‘Ollie, Ollie, in-free? Come out, come out, wherever you are?’”
Once we stood there motionless for a couple minutes, the cold was able to wrap itself around us. I clapped my gloved hands together and stamped my feet. “Jesus. If she’s hiding