The Road That Was Missing
Eddie packed twice.
The first time, he put in too many tools.
The second, he removed a shirt to make room for them.
Silas watched from the bedroom doorway with an apple in his hand.
“You planning to mend the whole country?”
“Only what breaks while I’m there.”
“That ought to leave time for sleep.”
Eddie examined the small wrench, then laid it beside the larger one. He could make do with either. He knew that. Both had already gone into the bag once, and he had taken them out only because the leather strained when he drew the straps together.
He chose the smaller one.
Silas stepped inside.
For a while, he watched his brother roll the spare shirt around the razor and shaving mug. Morning light fell across the bed. Outside, someone was moving buckets near the well.
“Where is it?”
Eddie stopped packing.
“Which place?”
“The one you’re going to.”
“Hollow Church first.”
“And after?”
“Depends what we find.”
Silas turned the apple between his hands.
“That’s a poor answer.”
“Yes.”
He had given it to his mother too.
It had not improved in the night.
Eddie folded the shirt more tightly and put it into the bag. Beside it lay clean bandages, a little tin of salve, and the letters he had copied for Calder and Mary Jane.
He would leave one at the next reliable post office.
A route, as far as he knew it.
A promise to write again.
He had learned the difference between promising to return and making it possible for someone to find him.
Silas set the apple on the table.
“Take that too.”
Eddie looked up.
“You’ve bitten it.”
“Only on one side.”
For a moment, neither smiled.
Then Eddie took the apple and wrapped it in the corner of a cloth.
***
Elias had spread three maps across the kitchen table.
None showed the same road.
One marked a wagon track running east from a watering place. Another showed the track continuing north beneath a ridge. The third, newer than the others, ended it at a dry spring.
Thomas Vale’s survey lay on top.
A straight pencil line crossed ground where none of the maps showed a route.
At its edge:
*Ask at Hollow Church.*
Mara stood beside the stove.
“You said you knew where to begin.”
Elias did not look up.
“I do.”
“That wasn’t the same as saying you knew where it was.”
“No.”
She set a plate beside him with more force than necessary.
Eddie sat.
His mother placed another before him, then returned to the stove for the coffee.
No one touched the maps until she had finished.
Elias folded the oldest one.
“There was a carrier’s stop near the western approach. We’ll ask there.”
“Was?” Mara said.
“It may still be there.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“We’ll have water enough to return.”
She looked toward the bags beside the door.
“Do you?”
Elias met her eyes.
“Yes.”
For several seconds, she held him there.
Then she sat across from Eddie.
“Tell me the route.”
He did.
The first watering place. The station beyond it. The road Elias remembered. Where they intended to leave word if they had to turn back.
She listened without interrupting.
When he finished, she looked at her brother.
“Come back if it ends.”
Elias folded Vale’s survey into its oilcloth.
“I will.”
Eddie heard the care in the answer.
His mother did too.
***
They left after breakfast.
Silas helped lead the pack animal through the gate while Elias checked the saddle straps one last time. Jack stood quietly beneath Eddie, ears shifting toward the house.
Mara came down the path carrying a small cloth parcel.
“Food.”
“We have some.”
“Now you have more.”
Eddie took it.
Her hand remained on the edge of the saddlebag while he tucked it away.
Up close, he could see that she had not slept much.
He wanted to tell her that the door was shut.
That there had been no knocking.
That he could feel his heart working steadily beneath his shirt.
She knew those things.
None told her what the road ahead would cost.
He bent and kissed her cheek.
“I’ll write.”
“Do.”
Elias brought his horse alongside.
Mara looked at him next.
For a moment, they were children together in a way Eddie had never seen: brother and sister standing inside an old quarrel neither could settle.
Then she reached up and straightened Elias’s collar.
“Mind your shoulder.”
“It’s been years.”
“It still bothers you when it rains.”
He submitted without answering.
They rode through the gate.
Eddie looked back once.
Silas stood with one hand on the post. Mara had not moved from the path.
He lifted his hand.
They lifted theirs.
Then the road curved beyond the trees, and home passed from sight.
***
Elias rode with his left arm held slightly away from his body.
Eddie noticed it after the first hour.
An old habit.
Something easier to see now that his mother had named it.
“What happened to your shoulder?”
His uncle glanced over.
“Fell.”
“Where?”
“On a journey.”
Eddie waited.
The horses continued at a walk.
At last, Elias said, “You’re allowed to ask a second time.”
“Would the answer improve?”
“Probably.”
“Where did you fall?”
His uncle looked toward the low country ahead.
“Near the church.”
Eddie felt himself sit straighter.
“You’ve been there.”
“Yes.”
“How long ago?”
“Long enough that I hoped the roof had finished falling.”
He had heard something like that before, in the workshop.
This time, he would not let it pass.
“Did you find a road through?”
Elias shortened one rein.
His horse turned around a patch of broken ground.
“I found a way farther than I ought to have gone alone.”
“Into Dead End?”
“No.”
The answer came clearly.
Eddie looked at him.
“I reached a crossing,” Elias said. “Or the approach to one. I never established which.”
“What stopped you?”
His uncle flexed the fingers of his left hand.
“Someone helped me leave.”
“Who?”
“I never learned her name.”
Eddie tried to imagine Elias younger, frightened, relying on a stranger to find his way back.
It was easier than it would have been before Calder.
He looked at the shoulder again.
“Was she the reason you fell?”
“No,” Elias said. “She was the reason I got up.”
***
They rested at noon.
The horses drank from a shallow stone trough beneath the remains of a shade roof. Elias checked the water before letting them near it, then walked a little way down the channel to look for anything fouling the source.
Eddie unpacked the food.
Bread.
Cold meat.
Two boiled eggs wrapped separately.
At the bottom lay a folded cloth his mother had used to line the parcel.
He knew its pattern.
It had covered the table on winter evenings when the family played cards.
He folded it carefully and put it back.
Elias returned.
“Water’s good.”
Eddie handed him an egg.
They ate beneath the roof’s broken shadow.
For a while, the only conversation concerned the horses.
Then Eddie took out Thomas Vale’s notebook.
His uncle watched him open it.
“What are you looking for?”
“Anything he wrote about getting home.”
The later pages were crowded.
Some entries described distances in ordinary terms. Miles. Hours. A day’s walk.
Others used landmarks Eddie could not understand.
*Past the house with the second shadow.*
*Do not take the bridge while the lamps are burning.*
He turned back to a sketch of the lantern.
“Do you think he’s alive?”
Elias peeled away a fragment of shell.
“Thomas?”
“And your father.”
His uncle sat with the egg untouched between his hands.
“I think someone sent those messages.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“No.”
Elias looked toward the trough.
“I have wanted my father alive for so long that I no longer trust wanting as evidence.”
Eddie closed the notebook.
The answer hurt.
It also made him more willing to follow.
***
The carrier’s stop still stood.
Its roof had been repaired with sheets of tin, and the old loading platform had become a porch. A woman sat beneath it sewing a leather strap while a little brown dog slept beside her boots.
She looked up when the horses entered the yard.
“Water’s around back.”
Elias dismounted.
“We’d like feed as well.”
“Then you’ll want the man in the stable. If he tells you we’re short, ask him why he keeps buying another horse.”
Her needle went through the strap.
Eddie climbed down.
The dog opened one eye, judged him, and returned to sleep.
While Elias went for feed, Eddie loosened Jack’s cinch.
On the wall beside the porch hung a slate.
Freight expected.
A note about a broken culvert.
Three names of men wanted for unpaid accounts.
Below them, pinned beneath a strip of wood, was a notice bearing Harrow’s name.
Eddie stopped.
The paper had been folded several times before reaching the station.
At the top stood a description.
**GIDEON RUSK.**
His age.
His height.
An injury to the right leg.
Eddie read the next line twice.
*Missing from lawful custody during the night.*
The woman watched him from her chair.
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
“Friend?”
“No.”
She nodded toward the notice.
“Officer came through asking. Quiet sort. Looked as if he’d rather be angry.”
“When?”
“Two days ago.”
“Was he hurt?”
“Who?”
“The officer.”
“Not that I saw.”
Eddie stepped closer to the paper.
No report of broken locks.
No accomplice named.
No explanation.
Elias returned carrying a measure of feed.
He saw Eddie’s face before he saw the notice.
“What is it?”
Eddie pointed.
His uncle read in silence.
***
Harrow had left a note.
The woman remembered it after Elias gave their names.
“MacRae. Yes. Said you might come through if you were following old roads.”
She went inside and returned with an envelope marked in the deputy’s hand.
Eddie opened it beneath the porch.
*Bone,*
*Rusk is missing. I have no evidence that he forced the lock or received assistance from the guard. His restraints were found secured beside the bed. The room was watched.*
Eddie felt the scar beneath his breastbone tighten.
He kept reading.
*No horse was taken from the station.*
*If you encounter him, send word. Do not approach him alone.*
A final sentence stood beneath the rest.
*Before he disappeared, he asked whether Mercer had been given a room.*
Eddie lowered the paper.
The woman looked between them.
“Something I ought to know?”
Elias folded the notice back against the wall where the wind had lifted it.
“If a man with that injury comes here, keep others near you and send for the law.”
She examined his face.
Then nodded.
“I can manage that.”
Eddie put Harrow’s note inside his coat.
For a moment, the road home appeared in his mind with terrible clarity.
The same track.
The same watering place.
His mother at the kitchen table.
He could still take it.
Elias waited until they were alone beside the horses.
“We can send word and turn back.”
Eddie looked toward the notice.
“Would that keep him there?”
“No.”
“Would it keep whatever took him from finding us?”
His uncle did not answer.
Eddie rested a hand against Jack’s neck.
“Then we find the church.”
***
The woman knew the old road.
She called it the church track, though she said no one had held a service there in her lifetime.
“Take the west fork after the split rock. You’ll see a low ridge with white stone along the top. Follow beneath it.”
Elias listened carefully.
“The spring?”
“Dry.”
“The burial ground?”
“Still there.”
“Anybody living nearby?”
Her needle stopped.
“There’s a place beyond the church.”
“What sort?”
“House. Or was.”
“Occupied?”
She looked toward the road.
“Depends who tells it.”
Eddie had heard enough of uncertain answers.
“Have you seen anyone there?”
“No.”
The woman met his eyes.
“But I’ve seen smoke.”
“When?”
“Last week.”
Elias thanked her.
They bought another measure of feed and filled every water container they carried.
Before Eddie mounted, the woman called him back.
She held out a pencil.
“Harrow said you might leave a reply.”
Eddie took it.
He wrote that they had received the warning, that they had not seen Rusk, and that they were going by Hollow Church before continuing.
He gave the page to her.
For the first time that day, the decision to keep going felt like something other than slipping out of sight.
***
They reached the split rock late in the afternoon.
Beyond it, the road divided around a stand of dry brush.
The eastern track bore recent wagon marks.
The western one was scarcely visible.
Elias studied the ridge.
“Here.”
They turned.
Jack picked his way carefully between stones.
The pack animal followed, bells making a soft, uneven music behind them.
As the sun lowered, the white seam appeared along the ridge above.
Eddie watched it.
At intervals, upright stones stood beside the old track.
Most had fallen.
One remained straight.
He stopped beside it.
A mark had been cut into its face.
Three lines.
A fourth across them.
The cuts were worn, almost hidden beneath lichen.
Elias drew up alongside.
“Leave it.”
“I wasn’t going to touch it.”
“I know.”
His uncle looked past the stone toward the darkening hollow.
“I was reminding myself.”
***
The church had no bell.
A little tower stood above the entrance, but its opening was empty. Wind moved through it with a thin sound that rose and fell as they approached.
The roof had partly collapsed.
One wall leaned beneath the weight of an old vine.
Behind the building, the burial ground climbed a low slope. Markers stood at uneven angles among the grass.
Eddie counted several small ones before making himself stop.
A well waited beside the road.
Its cover was shut.
Beyond the church stood a house.
A narrow thread of smoke rose from the chimney.
They halted outside the broken gate.
For a while, neither spoke.
Then Elias dismounted.
“Keep the horses saddled.”
Eddie got down beside him.
His boots met soft earth.
He smelled woodsmoke.
Bread.
Something cooking in fat.
Ordinary smells.
He had learned not to mistake ordinary for safe.
They led the horses through the gate.
Before they reached the well, the house door opened.
A woman stood beneath the lintel.
She wore a dark skirt and a man’s wool coat, the cuffs turned back above her wrists. Her hair was braided and pinned close to her head.
Eddie could not judge her age.
She looked at Elias.
For a moment, her expression remained still.
Then she said, “You took your time.”
***
His uncle stopped beside the well.
The woman stepped onto the path.
Her eyes moved over his face, then settled on his left shoulder.
“Still?”
“When it rains.”
“I told you it would.”
Eddie looked between them.
The woman saw.
“You’ve brought company.”
“My nephew.”
“I can see that.”
She approached no closer.
Jack lifted his head and drew the air through his nostrils.
The woman looked at him with mild approval.
“Good animal.”
Eddie kept one hand on the reins.
Elias said her name carefully.
“Agnes.”
She smiled a little.
“So you did remember.”
“I didn’t know it when I left.”
“You weren’t in much condition to ask.”
His uncle’s hand tightened around the saddle strap.
For the first time since leaving home, Eddie saw him hesitate over what to do next.
Agnes spared him.
“Water’s sound. Stable’s behind the house. There’s room for the three.”
“The well is covered,” Eddie said.
“Yes.”
He waited.
She looked at him.
“Best left that way after dark. Pump’s in the yard.”
***
They tended the animals before entering.
Elias checked the stable himself.
Eddie watched him examine the stalls, the back wall, the small door opening onto the slope behind the house.
He found nothing he wished to name.
Inside, the kitchen was warm.
Four places had been set.
Eddie saw them before he saw the food.
Agnes carried a pot from the stove.
She noticed his glance.
“One’s mine.”
“That leaves one.”
She set down the pot.
“Someone else may arrive.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Eddie remained near the door.
Agnes looked at Elias.
“He asks sooner than you did.”
“He has reason.”
“So did you.”
For a moment, the only sound was the pot settling against its wooden stand.
Then Elias took off his coat.
“We’re looking for a road.”
Agnes nodded.
“Most people are.”
“To Dead End,” Eddie said.
She looked directly at him.
The warmth of the room seemed suddenly insufficient.
“Sit,” she said.
***
She fed them before answering.
Eddie ate because he had promised to.
The bread was fresh.
The stew had carrots in it.
Through the window, the empty bell tower stood against the last light.
Agnes asked nothing about Ash Springs.
Nothing about Rusk.
That troubled Eddie more than questions would have.
At last, Elias set down his spoon.
“Is the crossing still open?”
Agnes folded her hands.
“Sometimes.”
“Can you take us?”
“To it.”
“And beyond?”
“That depends on what meets you.”
Eddie looked toward the fourth place.
“What usually meets people?”
She followed his gaze.
“Eat what’s in your bowl.”
He did not move.
Agnes regarded him for a long moment.
Then she leaned back.
“Your uncle came here once because he thought wanting someone badly enough would make him careful.”
Elias looked down.
“It didn’t.”
Eddie waited.
“He went through alone. Lost the road. I found him because he had enough sense left to stop moving.”
“You brought him back.”
“Yes.”
“What did he see?”
“That is his to tell.”
Eddie turned toward his uncle.
Elias’s eyes were on the window.
The daylight had gone.
***
A sound came from the church.
Not a bell.
A door opening.
Eddie looked toward the kitchen entrance.
Agnes rose.
She took the lamp from the shelf and adjusted the wick.
Elias put down his cup.
“Already?”
“You came late.”
She opened a drawer and brought out a small book.
Its cover was worn at the corners.
“Both of you will leave your names.”
Eddie stood.
“Why?”
“So there is a record of who crossed.”
“And who came back?”
Agnes looked at him.
“Yes.”
She laid the book on the table.
Elias reached for the pencil first.
His hand remained steady.
Eddie took it after him and wrote beneath his uncle’s name.
**Edward Bone.**
The page was nearly full.
Older names crowded the lines above theirs.
As he set down the pencil, he noticed one near the top.
The handwriting belonged to Harrow.
No.
He leaned closer.
The letters were similar, but more cramped.
Beside the name stood a date.
Two nights earlier.
**Gideon Rusk.**
Eddie looked up.
Agnes held the lamp beside the door.
“He came through here.”
It was not a question.
She nodded.
“You let him.”
“I showed him the road.”
“Did you know what he’d done?”
Her expression changed.
“I knew he was frightened.”
“He killed a man.”
Agnes glanced at Elias, then back at Eddie.
“Then he’ll have carried that with him.”
Outside, the church door moved again.
Slowly.
Waiting in the dark.
Eddie looked down at the book once more.
Rusk had not traveled alone.
Another name stood beneath his, written in a precise, narrow hand.
Where the other travelers had given a destination, this one had written only two words.
**Collecting Edward.**
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