Sleep Softly. Gwen Hunter

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СКАЧАТЬ that had something to do with the red sneaker. There had been nothing in the local Dawkins Herald or the Ford County paper about a special task force. I only read The State newspaper on weekends, but there had been nothing there either.

      Placing the food and water back into the tote, I studied the surrounding countryside. The farm was a bucolic setting in a rural county, though only half an hour from Columbia, the state capital, a sprawling city with big-city problems and big-city prices. Long, low rolling hills stretched out before me, pasture for Davenport Downs’s horse stock and acres sown with hay, alfalfa, soy beans. A few strategic acres were planted with mold-resistant sweet basil, parsley and other herbs, tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini. Most were only half-sprouted this early in the year. The smell of fresh-turned earth, pollen, horse and polecat; the sounds of birdsong; the far-off roar of a tractor carried on the wind—all were part of Chadwick Farms, my family home.

      I didn’t like the conclusions I was drawing about what a task force might mean when combined with this isolated location and a kid’s shoe. A hidden grave, perhaps tied in with other graves. But I couldn’t seem to stop putting two and three and maybe forty-six together and coming up with…This was bad. This was very, very bad.

      “Cheeks. Come,” I said, reeling the old dog in. “We have work to do.” I bent and searched the hound’s rheumy eyes. “Have you had enough time to get that polecat scent out of your nose yet?”

      Cheeks looked back at me with his usual mournful expression.

      “Let’s give it a try.” Leaving Mabel tied by her halter in the cool beneath the sycamore trees, her saddle loosened, her bridle pulled from her mouth and draped across her neck, I shouldered the evidence bag and held the sneaker-scented gloves out to Cheeks. He sniffed, black nostrils fluttering slowly. He looked up at me, his lower lids drooping, showing red rims. He sniffed twice more, securing the scent in his memory. “Find.”

      Cheeks meandered out into the pasture and circled back. Out and back. I let him sniff again, trying not to encourage him in any particular direction. Again he moved out, nose to the ground, lifted, back to the ground. Around and around in an ever-widening circle.

      Some hounds are air dogs, meaning they are so sensitive they can pick up a scent left on the air, carried on the breeze. Cheeks was a ground hound. Not a cadaver dog, either, one trained to find only dead bodies. But he’d searched for a little of everything in his years in law enforcement and I hoped he’d be able to find the scent again. Ten minutes of wandering away from the sycamores, he succeeded. His ruff bristled, his tail went tall and stiff and he pulled hard on the leash, his nose puffing at the earth.

      On foot, we crossed the pasture, a field of hay to my left, fenced pasture to the right, separated by the grassy verge between. Cheeks’s nose followed a convoluted path. On the other side of the field, we entered a darker, cooler place, earth-brown and loamy, mixed trees, oak, maple, scrub cedar, swamp hickory, tulip poplar with its yellow blooms still turned toward the April sun.

      Cheeks pulled me left into a slight depression and the earth changed beneath my feet, turning pale and sandy, the remains of the ancient river that once had flowed through the state and now was no more. I remembered the grit that fell out of the laces and the curled toe of the shoe. There had been yellow-white sand in the mix. No red mud, no yellow tallow—a poorly draining clay-like soil, which would be typical of the area—but grit and pale sand. I had recognized it but not placed it, not consciously, yet I had known that Cheeks would head in this direction when he found the scent again. Because of the sand.

      My breath came harsh and fast as the old dog’s pace increased. “Good boy, Cheeks,” I muttered, stumbling along behind him. “Good old dog.”

      He pulled me down a dip, past a lichen-covered grouping of boulders cluttered with rain-collected debris from a recent storm. Back up over a freshly downed tree, its bark ripped through by lightning, its spring leaves withered.

      We were surely near the edge of Chadwick Farms property by now, over near the original Chadwick homestead, close to the old Hilldale place. I could see open land through the trees off to one side and the tractor I had heard earlier sounded louder. Cheeks sped up again, his gait uneven as his degenerating hips fought the pace, and I broke into a sweat.

      And then I smelled it. The smell of old death.

      I reeled the leash back short, keeping Cheeks just ahead. The hair on his shoulders lifted higher and his breathing sped up, making little huffs of sound. His nose skimmed along the sandy soil. The old dog put off a strong scent of his own in his excitement.

      Rounding two old oaks, Cheeks quivered and stopped. He had found a scrap of cloth, his nose was planted in it. Just beyond was a patch of disturbed soil, the fresh sand bright all around, darkened in the center. More cloth protruded from the darkened space.

      “Oh, Jesus,” I whispered, pulling back on Cheeks to keep him close. “Oh, Jesus.” It was a prayer, the kind one says when there aren’t any real words, just horror and fear. Cheeks lunged toward the darkened spot in the sand, jerking me hard.

      “No!” I gripped the leash fiercely and pulled Cheeks away, back beyond the two oaks. With their protection between me and the grave, I stopped. Legs quivering, I dropped to the sand and clutched the old dog close. I was crying, tears scudding down my face. “Someone’s little girl. Someone’s little girl. Oh, Jesus.”

      Cheeks thrust his muzzle into my face, a high-pitched sound coming from deep in his throat, hurt and confused. I’d said no when he’d done what I wanted. Shouted when he had found what he’d been told to find.

      “I’m sorry, Cheeks.” I lay my head against his face and he licked my tears once, his huge tongue slathering my cheek into my hairline. My arms went around him, my body shaking with shock, fingers and feet numb. “Good Cheeks. Good old boy. You’re a hero, yes you are. Sweet dog. Sweet Cheeks.”

      I laughed, the sound shuddering. “Sweet Cheeks. Jas would tease me all week if she heard me call you that. But you are. A sweet, sweet dog.”

      The hound stopped whining and lay beside me, his front legs across my thigh. The pungent effluvium of tired dog and death wrapped around me. The quiet of the woods enveloped me. I breathed deeply, letting the calm of the place find me and take hold, not thinking about the death only feet away.

      After long minutes, the tingling in my hands and feet that indicated hyperventilation eased and I stood. I checked my compass, dug out the spray can of orange paint and marked both trees with two big Xs.

      “Okay, Cheeks. I hope you can get me back to Mabel. Home,” I commanded. “Let’s go home.” When Cheeks looked up at me with no comprehension at all, I held my jeans-clad leg to him so he could sniff the horse and said, “Find. Find.” He was a smart dog, and without a single false start led me back along the sandy riverbed. With the bright paint, I marked each turn and boulder and tree on the path, back into the sunlight and the pasture.

      3

      I shared more Fig Newtons with Cheeks—not the best food for a dog, but not the worst, either—took the animals to the creek for water, and used the quiet time to compose myself before moving horse and dog to the edge of the woods near the sandy depression. Once there, Cheeks and Mabel and I remained in the shade of the trees and waited for law enforcement.

      Cheeks had developed a bad limp and wouldn’t make it back to the barn on his own four feet. His medication was in the kitchen, too far away to do him any good, and I could tell he was in pain. Not much of a reward for a job well done. “There’s a price to be paid for every good deed, sweet Cheeks,” СКАЧАТЬ