THE SHERIFF ARRIVED at their house at ten-forty-five. He was middle-aged, a politician of sorts, ambitiously dressed in a suit. Acy held a thirteen-thousand-dollar mortgage against his new house, so he took off his fedora, came in politely, and listened politely. Then he told them that Vessy probably took the girl off and would have a good explanation come morning. Just to be sure, he’d drop by the train station and the wharf boat and ask if anyone had seen something they all should know about.

Acy started to tell him about the horses, but something-perhaps his most fearful suspicion-made him hold back. “In the morning, then.”

HE LAY AWAKE all night, thinking about the girl, while his wife roamed the house from bed to bed, finally settling on the divan downstairs. Before the sheriff drove up in the morning, Acy had already told Willa what he thought. “The Skadlocks have taken her back. That’s the only thing I can figure.”

They were seated at the kitchen table drinking tap water. Willa looked at him, incredulous. “Why? We paid them what they asked, and it was a lot of money.”

They both were quiet for a long time before the sheriff came, hat in hand. He stood in the dining room, studying the china cabinet, and said he’d searched Vessy’s cabin and found nothing out of the ordinary. Her few clothes seemed to be there and not a thing had been moved out that he could see, but then, the furniture came with the place, even the cheap enamel pots and the rusty knives and forks. She owned almost nothing.

“When are you going to start looking for my child?” Willa said, glancing at her husband.

The sheriff explained what he could do and left as quickly as he could.

Acy stared through the front window as his Ford chattered away down the hill. “I can’t even leave to look for her,” he said. “Not right away. I couldn’t explain my absence.”

“If Skadlock does have her, you can’t lead the sheriff to him.”

He continued watching the lawman’s departure, as though envious of his motion and freedom. “But where’s Vessy? That’s the part I don’t understand.”

“Maybe he bought her off and she left for the mountains.”

He looked long at the bare dining-room table, the empty chairs. “I don’t have any idea.”

“Are you going in to work?” She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands.

“I don’t think it would look right.” His stomach rumbled and he glanced at the kitchen door. Looking down, he saw that his shirt was wrinkled, but there was no one to iron it. Most days he felt his life was on schedule like a crack passenger train, but not today. Now all he could do was wonder where his little girl might be.

Chapter Twenty-six

GRAYSONER WAS ON a branch line, the track so buckled that Sam fought off seasickness in the rocking coach. He checked into a hotel near the river, washed the cinders off his neck, and walked back down to the desk, where he found that the Wellers hadn’t come in yet. About five o’clock that afternoon he heard the Ambassador’s whistle upriver and walked over to the wharf, striding along a line of spindly Ford trucks and mule-drawn coal wagons awaiting the boat’s arrival. He was already red-faced, not from the heat of the day but from his shame.

The boat came in bearing the soot of her last season, and a coal gang came off and set planks from the fuel galley to the wharf. After a minute Elsie and August appeared on the main deck and crossed onto the dock as soon as the main stage had been set down. Neither would look at him as they approached; instead, they looked beyond him, studying the town they now had to go against. She was thinner, her face without color. August had grown taller in the intervening months and was as thick as a man. When they stood next to him, August dropped his suitcase and wheeled. Sam felt the percussion of an open-handed slap that nearly knocked him over. His mother grabbed the boy’s arm and stepped in front, pushing him back.

“I’m not going to hit him again,” August said. “But I wanted him to know what I think of him.”

Sam staggered in a circle and blinked at the fire dancing in the left side of his face. “I thought I was doing the right thing when I did it,” he said, holding a hand to his cheek.

Elsie dropped her arms and looked at him. “You decided we weren’t good enough for our own little girl.” Her voice was without anger, yet without the least of kindness. “I know what you did and why you did it, and it makes me feel like trash.” Her accusing eyes drilled into him. “Do you think people down on their luck don’t deserve their own children, Sam?”

He stepped back and looked down at the tarred wharf. “I wrote you that I was ashamed.”

She bent down to her suitcase and August did the same. “You wrote a letter.”

The way she said this sounded as if she had practiced it for days, and the color rose in his face again.

August switched hands on his suitcase. “You can tell people you’re sorry all you want. But what’s that compared to what you did, what you’re sorry about.”

The hotel sign was visible up the hill, and the Wellers started toward it, Sam following and anxious to get the whole day over with. It could only get worse, he thought, considering what they had to do next.

HE TALKED to the middle-aged hotel clerk and discovered that Graysoner, though a small place, was the county seat. He got the location of the sheriff’s office, and at eleven o’clock the three of them walked into the courthouse through a rattling twelve-foot-high door made of carved and varnished hardwood. Up two flights of curving stairs, they found a deputy who told them the sheriff was out on an investigation and would probably be back at one o’clock. Sam stopped Elsie when she began to tell why they were in town.

“We’ll come back then,” he said, taking her arm.

Once on the street, she asked him why he’d cut her off.

“You don’t play much poker, do you?” He guided them into a café across the street where they sat in a booth and ate breakfast. At the end of the meal Elsie looked across the table at him and said, “Do you think we’ll need to get a lawyer involved in this? I’d hate to have to pay one.”

“I don’t know. We’re in another man’s henhouse here. Nobody knows who we are.”

“I’ll have to trust you to handle the talking.”

He shook his head. “I’ll do my best.”

August made a disapproving noise in his throat.

“Son, you’ve bulked up some since I’ve seen you. Been lifting weights?”

“I found a job loading wagons with sacks of stove coal.”

“You can’t get away from that soot, can you?”

The boy said nothing to this.

THE SHERIFF was late, so they waited in his echoing outer office in hard chairs until they heard a door open somewhere inside, then the deputy motioned them to come forward.

The sheriff, his hair neatly combed and parted in the middle, gave them a brief introductory smile, showing his straight rank of teeth. His scan of evaluation raised the hair on Sam’s neck. “What can I do for you people?”

“It’s a long story, but this woman and her son are my friends, and this lady’s baby daughter was stolen from her in New Orleans.”

The sheriff leaned back in his spring-loaded chair. “A stolen baby girl,” he said airily. “So why aren’t you looking in New Orleans?”

“I’ve seen her here in town.”

The sheriff did not seem surprised. “You have? And when was that?”

Sam looked at August and swallowed, then explained how long it had been.