 
One

Child

Left

Behind
One

Child

Left

Behind

# An Old Horse Mystery

Elskan Triumph
One Child Left Behind by Elskan Triumph

### Published by BeachChair Press

### www.middleschoolpoetry180.wordpress.com

### Copyright © 2018 Elskan Triumph

### All right reserved.

### Al places, persons, events are all works of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places or events past or present are coincidental.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

**Chapter** **One**

Thirty-two segments make up the sidewalk ribbon that runs beside Finch Street. Each segment is five feet square and two inches deep, all concrete. Although it had been poured as one long slab, the sidewalk is scored with cross-lying strain relief grooves—thirty one scores creating thirty-two segments, each score designed to allow for the flexing of the earth through the seasons. In theory, if not already cracked from wear, when the skidder lifts the end with the teeth on the bucket the nearest segment will snap from the next.

They should make short work of it, he thinks.

If the snap is clean.

In theory, when things go smoothly. _No surprises._

For thirty years, tons of concrete have kept those little bones quiet beneath. That is the surprise that awaits them.

Lurching off the flatbed trailer, the yellow Case skidder rattles into position so that the steel extended bucket, scraped and caked in dirt from other projects, is at the end of the long, beaten sidewalk. Thirty-two segments waiting to be removed and replaced by the end of the week. Now, the planning—the theory—plays out in the real world.

Old Horse stands behind where the skidder positioned. From this vantage point, he can see the entire ribbon—a long, gray, worn slab of concrete. There are pockmarks on the sidewalk's surface from wear and weather and no one slate is even with the next; roots from the maple trees that line the road and the seasonal frost heaves have done their work. The selectboard is right—the sidewalk needs to be replaced. _It is a danger._ Few of the segments, now unattached slabs of their own, match up with the next.

Ice floes on a running river, Horse imagines. Like in _Uncle Tom's Cabin_.

Then, darker thoughts enter his head; thoughts that put people under the slabs, having slipped below while trying to traverse the concrete floes. Eliza, not Loker. Innocent faces looking up from below the ice, hands positioned and pressing against the ice from below, but no longer able to.

"More coffee," he mutters, shaking his head to rid himself of the image. Only he would think of ice floes on such a warm August morning ending a searing summer break.

Something feels wrong about the morning—the job in general. He woke up with that feeling, and cannot not shake it. That is unusual. A teacher during the school year, he is used to expecting doom—preparing for it. Perhaps, he thinks, this should be his last sidewalk; turn the work over to someone else. He wonders if it is a premonition of disaster—a rupturing water pipe, perhaps. Every time you dig, he knows, you risk an unmarked pipe or wire or....

For thirty years, he had been lucky.

He did not have time this year for problems. Unlike past summers, the job has started late. A trip to London. For the entire month of July, he had rented an apartment, drank in pubs at night and saw museums in the day. Now. Labor Day looms—the start of school, his real job: Teacher.

His eyes again slide down the length of the sidewalk.

"It looks like something wants to get out from underneath," he whispers under his breath, looking at where two slabs rise up and, horribly askew, fail to connect.

As Larry works the teeth of the extended bucket under the first slab, Sarah and Steve lean on their shovels and drink coffee. That had been the first hour—Larry getting the skidder ready while the other two bought coffee take-out from the local café. Boredom takes over. With an upward motion Sarah now taps the bottom of Steve's cup hard with the top of her own cup. His hot coffee rises against his lid, and spits out of the mouth hole and onto his blue _Microsoft_ t-shirt, and a bit onto his blue jeans.

" _Shit!"_ he cries in a high yelp, jumping back in surprise. She laughs.

Then Steve tries to splash his coffee onto her green UVM long-sleeved t-shirt. Flicking his wrist, the effort causes the lid to pop off and half of his cup empties in a stream towards Sarah. She dodges it and laughs again. His right hand is dripping with coffee, as some of it had only dribbled over the edge. It had gone into his work glove. Shaking it off, he curses while Sarah keeps her distance—still laughing.

No sound comes from Horse, as his instinct is for him to snap at them. Too often, he uses his voice like a whip. Or he bores them with rants. Every summer he hires different former students to lay sidewalk for him, and every summer they act like children. He wonders if his hiring them is charity or exploited labor. Every year, his instinct is to bark at them, his workers. " _Don't smile until Christmas_ ," his old professor had advised him. The morning had started with his chastising Steve for being late—that had been a tired rant.

No time for this, he thinks.

Lifting that first slab, Larry then lets it hang in the air, waiting for the two kids to put down their coffees and fill the bucket with debris.

"Get to it," Horse barks.

They obey, making quick work of it. Steve, a long, thin slacker, uses his shovel because bending down seems like work, while Sarah tosses rubble into the scoop with her gloved hands. While they work, Larry is able to enjoy a sip of his coffee, which had been resting in the skidder's cup holder. After receiving the thumbs-up signal, Larry dumps it in the aged truck Horse has parked a dozen yards down Fitch Street.

Soon, the skidder takes on the second slab and then a third as the sun rises higher in the sky.

Scanning down the walk a bit, Horse notes the water valve for the first house on that side of the street. A small disk shaped valve, rusty and about the size of the lid for a jar of peanut butter, it is level with the grass, between the sidewalk and the street, and about a foot from the tenth slab. Larry and he had walked the work site the week before, and reviewed it the night before. There is a water line somewhere below, they both know.

Horse hopes it is deep.

Trying to think of other things, he decides it would be best if he works a bit at home. Rationally, he knows his only purpose for staying is a compulsive need to control things. _Unhealthy_ , he thinks. He will drive everyone nuts, he knows. Even as something tugs at him, Horse heads for his car, hoping not to return to a flooded street. The night before, he had shown Larry the water valve key he had fabricated, the design copied from the official one the DPW had. It sits in the passenger compartment of the truck—and Larry knows how to use it. What could go wrong, he thinks. Without a word, he eases into first gear and leaves the three to keep working.

"Break?" Steve asks the other two, hopefully, while watching the back of Horse's car disappear.

But the skidder is already in position and is soon working at the ninth slate. The teeth on the front lip of the bucket dig below while the skidder's engine roars and its back knobby tires dig and spin and dig again into the gravel and bedding left from where the previous eight segments of the sidewalk had been. Underneath it at last, the hydraulic motor lifts the slab a yard into the air. Tilting the scoop back a few degrees, Larry positions it for Sarah and Steve to begin shoveling the remaining debris. Steve pokes at the ground with the tip of his shovel. Sarah wrestles with a few chunks too large for a spade.

Bent forward, she sees it.

A bone.

A bone is sticking out of the earth where the sidewalk had just been.

" _Shit_ ," she mutters.

But Larry and Steve carry on; no one hears her murmur over the idling engine.

The bone is brown and white and worn and mixed in with the earth and gravel. Anything else—a beer can, iron bar or plastic from an old toy—Sarah might not have noticed it. This bone, though, triggers something in her brain—something instinctual—that causes her to pause. She knows immediately that it is not a stick.

And that it is human.

Sarah looks around the newly exposed earth and sees another bone.

Then, a third.

"STOP!" she cries. " _Stop, stop, stop_ ...."

Turning to the others, she waves her arms like opposable windshield wipers in a heavy rain.

Larry is the first to see that something is wrong. He fears he had run over her foot, or perhaps Steve. "Steve," he mutters. Seeing her coming around the side of the digger, and Steve leaning on his shovel, he relaxes a bit as Sarah yells over the engine. _It's only a water pipe_ , he thinks. It would not have been the first time Larry had dug up a pipe or electrical wire.

" _Shut it down!"_

"Why?" he shouts back.

" _Bones!"_

Which means nothing to Larry, but he shuts the engine down anyway.

Jumping off of the seat, he comes around to where the ninth slab had just been. Short, stocky and powerfully built, Larry is weakened by what he sees. Of the idea. There, in the cool dirt, lay three bones.

Small.

The bones of a child.

Reflexively, Steve steps forward to poke them, as if only touching them would make them real.

"Stop," Larry whispers, putting his bare left arm out so that it lightly blocks Steve's advance.

Then the three look at each other and wonder what to do next.
Chapter Two

After a few minutes of poking at the earth—Steve needed some tactile confirmation of what they were looking at and had gotten it while Larry stepped back—Larry calls the police on his phone.

Then they wait, for the officials or Horse to return.

"Should someone get lunch?" Steve asks, fidgeting.

The other two are not listening.

Sarah looks distressed. Her right hand, still gloved, is on her chin, the shovel laid in the grass. With her jaw slack and mouth slightly open, the disarray of bottom teeth are on parade. She looks down.

No one should leave, she thinks.

Nothing should change at the crime scene.

_Crime scene_ , she understands.

She becomes more distressed.

"No," she mutters, shaking her head.

She squats, waiting. Her shovel partner, Steve sits in the grass next to her, studying the exposed earth and bones and thinking.

"Three times three," Steve thinks out loud.

"Shut-up _,"_ Sarah snaps.

"No," he goes on. "It is the ninth slab. _Three-times-three._ Remember, in Horse's class on symbolism, three's a symbolic number. Trinity, trilogies, the Three Bears and all of that. Nine is three times three. Maybe there's something there. Maybe, it's a clue."

_Crime scene_ , they all think.

But Sarah is too upset for clues.

" _Shut-up!"_ Sarah spits.

When will the police arrive? She thinks. Or Horse.

The reality of having poked at the remains of a body—that there is a body—begins to sink deeper in to her consciousness.

Bones.

A body.

Someone has been under there for longer than she has been alive. She knows this sidewalk. She has used this sidewalk. Mrs. Pelz had taken care of her as a child and lived a bit down Fitch Street. _Had she drawn chalk drawings over this body?_ she wondered. Memories of learning to ride her bike here—of eating candy after going to town—all bubbled up. _Hopscotch._ Stepping over the dead. Every happy recollection she held is now in doubt because of the bones.

Sarah gets up to leave, but stops when Larry makes a move.

"You okay?" he asks.

She nods, right gloved hand now held over her mouth.

Looking at her face—it is fallen, the jaw hangs, the muscles relaxed from disbelief—Larry decides to take care of his own fragile psyche. He cannot imagine how he looks; he only knows how he feels; like a towel being wrung dry. There is nothing he can do for her. Larry, he knows, needs to take care of Larry. He moves away from them, and onto someone's lawn thirty feet away.

" _Call the police_ ," he had said upon seeing them.

The other two had been dithering, so he had made the phone call.

It is not that he is squeamish. He had cared for his grandfather, watching him waste away over six months, needing to be bathed and fed. The intimacy with that declining body never bothered him. When the old man had passed in his sleep, Larry had called his priest and the police, in that order. Although he is one to typically brush against authority, the established protocols of society kept it humming. He knows that. He believes that. It is a belief that allows him to retreat, emotionally, after they place the call.

The dispatcher promises a swift response.

It is a tie; the trooper and Horse arrive at the scene at the same time.

"What's going on?" Old Horse asks, an edge in his voice, seeing the three sitting, Larry apart from the other two.

"We found bones," Steve replies, his voice filled with excitement at sharing news, of death and discovery and mystery.

No longer sitting, he is unable to sit still, his hands still grasping the shovel.

"Thank God," Horse replies, not really believing that what they had found are bones at all. "I thought you'd ruptured the water main."

Those who believe are surprised by his seaming callousness, but the old teacher does not notice. He never does.

Letting out his breath, it comes with a heavy load of woe—and the realization that it is time to retire from this sideline of employment. He is a teacher, not a contractor. That feeling sits in him. For three decades he has supplemented his income by replacing local sidewalks. These past few years, it has all felt like work. This job, now only a few hours in, feels like a horrible weight.

Now we have bones, he thinks.

With it, his eye slides towards the state trooper's car, and the tall uniformed man stepping out.

"Trooper Danielson," Horse sings in a sort-of-greeting before the trooper can speak. Still disbelieving they have bones, much less human bones, he lets the official come to him because he cannot be bothered to dignify the interruption of work.

"I got a call about a body." The troopers voice is all business; he does not think much of the possibility of there being human bones, either.

"A bone," Steve clarifies enthusiastically.

"Bones," Sarah adds, with more foreboding. "Three."

"Where?" Trooper Danielson asks, putting his hands up and cutting short any stories.

The man fits his uniform well and has little desire to waste the morning. He, too, is doubtful they have uncovered bones—or, at least, human bones—having been called out many times to deal with the remains of bears and dogs. Bear skeletons looked particularly human, especially after a few seasons in the dirt.

The two kids lead him and Horse over to where the ninth slab had been. They walk around the skidder, which froze the slab at waist height and contains a scoop full of rubble. Danielson takes in the scene, noting the bone and that it looks human.

"I'm not an expert," he tells the group. His voice does not betray that he, too, is surprised at its seeming authenticity. "But I'm going to call one in."

Then he motions to the skidder. "That may be evidence," Danielson adds.

The subtext is clear: Work is stopped indefinitely, even as Horse continues to pay rent on the skidder. Having heard this pronouncement, the old teacher walks away, settling next to Larry.

"You okay?"

Larry does not look okay.

Since he had been one of Horse's students seven years prior, Larry had always looked calm and in control. Some kids with absentee and dysfunctional parents, Horse has noticed, are either hyper-mature or a mess of bad drama. Larry sits in the healthy middle of that spectrum. For the most part, Larry has raised himself, and done a good job where it mattered. He had taught himself how to operate a digger, starting when he is eight, and has only built up more expertise since. Since leaving Horse's seventh grade classroom, he has earned a steady paycheck and growing responsibility. Having just graduated and with a great local reputation, Horse felt lucky the boy had been available for this dinky job.

There, sitting on the lawn, Larry sat deflated and twitchy.

"I've just dug up a body."

"Bones."

"Is there a difference?"

"Apparently, not to you."

"No."

It had been a beautiful summer day, but now clouds threatened. A week of gentle rain had just wrapped up and the spring seeding has created a lush lawn. As the morning slips away from them, the air heats up. Over by the site, Steve keeps poking at the ground with his toe as he explains how they—how Sarah—had found the bones. Trooper Danielson calmly tries asking Steve to stop contaminating the scene any more than it is. Neither Larry nor Horse can hear them, but the latter is familiar enough with his former student to sympathize with the trooper.

"How long's this sidewalk been here?" Larry asks.

"Thirty years."

"How long is a sidewalk supposed to last?"

"In northern Vermont," Horse begins, looking up at the sky as if that is an answer. He thinks about the acid rain that had once been such a plague, the deep snows and thaws and frosts. Looking at the row of maple trees whose roots pushed from below, his mouth grows tight. Taking off his Red Sox cap, he wipes the sweat that has formed on his scalp, and puts the cap back on. "About thirty years."

"Do you think whoever put the body there knew that?"

"Knew that the body would be buried in concrete for thirty years?"

"Yeah."

Horse shrugs. Then adds, "I suppose they figured it would be awhile."

"But eventually it would be uncovered."

"Eventually."

The two sit in silence. Horse rests his forearms on his knees and looks at the long line of slabs yet to be removed. He begins calculating in his head—time, payroll, equipment rental....

"Why not dig a hole? No one would find it."

"Lazy?" Horse offers as an explanation. He turns to Larry. "Under the concrete, there is no fear of an animal digging it up. Or anyone else. Until now."

"I don't think someone with a dead child thinks with a thirty year horizon."

"Why do you think it's a child?"

"Did you notice the size of the bones?" Larry asks. "They just seem.... small."

"Thirty years ago," Horse mutters, remembering something. He rubs his chin.

The two sit and watch Danielson interviewing an animated Steve. A few clouds moved in front of the sun, which had made a brief appearance, and then Larry feels a drop of rain. _Delay_ , he thinks. Horse has already assumed the site will be shut down for a week.

"Who laid the sidewalk?" the Larry asks.

"I did."
Chapter Three

"So, do I need to call you a lawyer?"

"No," the old teacher replies.

"I've heard rumors."

"It's only been an hour." Only an hour, he thinks, and already the gossip circuit has been run.

"So they're true."

"What are the rumors?"

"Police. Body. In the village."

"And you thought me?"

Horse is speaking with John Wells, the one person, if asked, Horse would call a friend. Wells is also his boss—the principal at Grace Haven Elementary, where Horse works as a seventh grade teacher when he is not laying sidewalk—and their personal relationship is often strained. Not today, though. It is summer. As school is out, Horse is not his problem, only a friend—for the school principal, this is as close to vacation as he gets. Unfortunately, being his friend opens a whole new set of burdens.

Police.

Body.

In the village.

While Wells sits in his air conditioned office, Horse sits on the hood of his Festiva, sweating. A hot August afternoon, even with the rain, the site is shut down, perhaps for a week—maybe more. Danielson is not sure when forensics can get there and do a thorough investigation. Horse's crew is not allowed to run the nearly full dump truck to the landfill because the entire load needs to be inspected. As the two speak on the phone, the state trooper completes the paperwork in his cruiser while he waits for someone on the forensics team to arrive.

The sidewalk workers sit idle.

Horse cannot.

He did not like idle, so he had called Wells. The phone to his ear, his brain ticks through what little they know of the three bones—there were three, Larry thought them a child's, and they had laid below the sidewalk for thirty years—as he also reconfigures his construction time table and other elements of his business. While he considers all of this, Wells is talking about some new protocol that the state is pushing; and Horse is ignoring him. Getting up, pacing a bit and then sitting back down, the teacher listens with little and then less patience. They return to the topic of the body.

And town gossip.

Police. Body. In the village. And you thought me.

"I thought you might have inserted yourself in there, somehow," Wells clarifies.

"It has nothing to do with Ms. Binnis being married to the fire chief and him calling her whenever the radio crackles with details of any gossip that has nothing to do with her?"

"No. Marie is innocent this time. A parent came in."

Wells makes some unintelligible mumble. Horse can tell his friend is speaking to someone handing him papers, the headset resting on the principal's shoulder, making him sound like he is in a fishbowl under a towel. Looking at the idle skidder, he thinks, _At least someone is getting work done_.

"The parent said there is a cruiser and that you were talking to a state trooper."

Frustrated by how the day is playing out, Horse holds his typically sour reply in check and says nothing. He leans on Wells a lot, and does not want to take out his frustrations on him.

"Of course," he friend adds, "Mr. Bennis did call in to say that forensics had been called in."

Walking the width of the street, Horse distractedly looks at where the bones lay. Having only coffee for breakfast, he knows lunch is in order.

"To answer your original question," Horse mutters, letting out a sigh, "No, I don't need you to call me a lawyer."

"Then what do you need?" Wells asks in his usual, calm voice.

He wants to say "coffee." Loath to reveal how much more addicted he has become since June—if such a thing is possible—Horse focuses on how distracted Wells seems. Others are in the office, now—not just Ms. Bennis. In the background he can hear the air rush out of the leather couch cushions. People are trying unsuccessfully to whisper. The table in his office knocks against the wall. Knowing the layout of Grace Haven Elementary's administrative suite, he figures someone with a loud voice is in the hallway, calling to someone by the front desk. A male voice. _A meeting commencing?_ His friend sounds relaxed, so Horse concludes it is a meeting that has nothing to do with him or his program—administrative chatter that he hates and ignores, but for which Wells seems to seek as a kind of refuge from the daily lives of their students. He wonders what male voice would be in the building in July—the superintendent is on vacation. _How many male coordinators, advisors and consultants are in the supervisory union?_

Wells can afford to be calm, Horse thinks. His office is air conditioned, there is no trooper waiting for forensics and his coffee is fresh and plentiful.

Horse replies, "I need to know if any children disappeared about thirty years ago."

"About thirty?"

"Okay, exactly."

Wells sucks in his breath.

"Age?" he asks.

"I don't know."

"I suppose you don't know gender or anything that might prove helpful?"

"No."

"How do you know it's a child?"

"That's what Larry thinks."

"Larry Sullivan?"

That worries Wells. The two—Wells and Horse—have different views on the kid.

"You had mentioned the other night that you'd hired him to run your digger. I thought he is in prison."

"College," Horse replies. "I often confuse the two, too."

The principal remembers the boy as dangerously curious; always taking things apart to see how they worked, but not as good at remembering to put them together. He could do it, but often lost interest—a result, Wells thinks, of an undiagnosed attention deficit. Other kids sometimes got hurt from his experiments. Seven years ago, Larry had been placed in Horse's class by Wells and the problems receded—the old teacher loves challenges like this. Sitting in his office, Wells sighs. He knows that Horse's call is the first step towards him getting involved in something that does not concern him; using Larry Sullivan as one's first signpost in this journey is not a good sign.

"But he thinks it's a child?"

"Small bones."

"Are you sure it isn't just a dog?"

Horse does not reply.

"So, why are you calling me?" the principal asks.

"Missing child. Is it one of ours?"

"Right."

Then, silence. Horse can hear the clicks and clatter of a computer in the background and wonders if Wells is even paying attention to him.

"Is that computer tapping sounds you looking things up for me?" he asks, knowing the answer.

"No. You remember these things much better than my random hunting around the files would find out," Wells mumbles, absentmindedly.

The subtext: _Horse is on his own._

"Were you going to tell me you wouldn't help me?" Horse growls. "Or just let me stand here listening to your work?"

"I think you know the answer to that."

His boss moves on to other stuff, talking about other projects the various administrators are working on that summer. Nothing of interest. Horse knows he would have to return to school in the summer, something he is loathe to ever do.

Horse ends the call without a word.

As he puts down the phone, Wells knows Horse will return, too. Glancing at the clock, the principal figures he had a good thirty minutes of quality work time before his friend bursts through the door. Those male voices Horse had heard in the background were IT guys, feeding wires into the crawlspaces above. One had stood on his couch, causing the cushion to sound as Horse had heard. The principal looks around. On every surface are papers and files—his summer organization project. His only hope, he knows, is for the state trooper to arrest Horse before he leaves the scene.

His day is going to be Horse.

Grace Haven Elementary is a small, squat building that takes students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. Made of brick, it is a single story structure with a pitched blue metal roof and a glass atrium in front. It is not the one-room schoolhouse of Vermont lore, but a bustling hive of positive energy that houses a score of classrooms. Besides the town of Grace Haven, the school serves several of the smaller villages that surrounded it, which can create a bit of tension—but is considered local tension, and no one else's business. Around the building are two soccer friends, a worn softball diamond suffering from erosion and a playground heavy on slides and climbing walls, but without swings. Throughout the year the campus is active from sunrise to late into the night.

Except at noon in the summer.

Today, the place is, if not dead, placid. Even the town's men's basketball league refrains from using the gym in August.

As Horse approaches, he notes that Wells' car is the only one in the faculty parking lot. He passes it and pulls in front of the school, where, during the school year, busses came and went and dropped off students. The bus loops sits empty. His Festiva joins three other cars parked in front of the _Bus Drop Off: No Parking_ sign. Front door propped open with a homemade wooden doorstop, the entrance to the main office is surrounded by dozens of large packages from varying school supply companies, stacked as if by a child trying to make a fortress.

The main office door is closed.

Pushing in the door, Horse is hit with a cold blast of air conditioning when he opens it.

"So, it takes a dead body to get you into the building in the summer?" Ms. Binnis, the school secretary, chirps as he walks in.

"The body doesn't have to be dead."

During the school year a rogues gallery of troubled parents and students in distress sit in the office's dark grey seats, facing Ms. Binnis. People waiting are often loud, rude or needy. Few sit in those seats for good reasons. To keep order, Ms. Binnis rarely turns her back on those chairs. Unnaturally thin, she keeps nearly everyone in check with little more than a stare over the rims of her glasses. As she returns to stuffing envelopes, Horse feels those eyes on him as he walks down to Wells' office.

"I'm looking for a dedicated educator," he bellows, looming in the doorway.

"When you find one, let me know."

Wells is still surrounded by files; he had not bothered to straighten up after the call—a Sisyphusian task, he knows. Should he do it, one day, it will be a Pyrrhic victory—he knows that, too. His way of making systemic decisions is to shuffle piles of paper around until an organizational structure makes itself known. It is a system that has worked for thirty years—Grace Haven is one of the top schools in standardized tests. Most of the files that go through his hands are problems; at least, that is how the principal views them— _problems_. Discipline challenges, budget issues, room allocation and struggling children all needing to be dealt with. _Problems to be solved._ Each has a file. The files are grouped and regrouped and moved. Philosophically, Wells believes in long-term fixes and the summer is the time to create such a system. If he could set up a system, he believes, everything that happens throughout the year will follow a protocol towards an eventual solution. _Order_. Most often, this works. He is good at making systems. He had slated this week to create one that would hold up.

Then, Horse.

Unexpectedly—at least until thirty minutes ago—Horse is now here; Wells had counted on the sidewalk project to give him a two weeks break from his friend. Had— _past tense_.

"Between the heavy work and the possibility of sun stroke, I didn't think I'd see you until in-service."

"What happened to the paperless office?" his friend probes, standing in the doorway and seeing the piles. Not really caring about the answer.

"It never took. But people can now print out three times as much paper." Wells taps a file containing budget forecasts, including outrageous numbers for paper and toner ink.

Not seeing a paper-free place to sit, Horse pushes a small pile of white and manila to the side and sits in his usual place on the couch. That couch is infamous for its depth, trapping visitors like a Venus Fly Trap. It is as worn as the principal, mostly covered in black leather except for the replacement brown cushion on the far end he had salvaged from the dump. Horse always sits on the brown cushion. Wells once suspected it is habit, but upon more investigation he recognized it is the one place in the room that people passing in the hallway could not see. Now, House's large frame pushes air from the cushion, his bottom slowly settling in.

"You can recycle those," Wells tells him, nodding towards the stack Horse has pushed aside.

Ignoring the request, he leans back and sinks deeper into the cushions.

"I don't suppose any of these files are regarding what I asked for."

"No. They aren't."

"Can I look?"

"At the files?"

"Yes."

Having gained permission, Horse loses interest. Wells turns towards the table that holds the bulk of it—stacks of files that required decisions. The quiet lasts, for a bit. As his mind slips into this project, Horse's presence is declared with a cough.

"If we have anything...." Wells pauses for a moment and looks up, file in hand. "You'll have to talk to Marie."

Marie is Ms. Binnis.

"Do I have to?"

"What, are you six?" Wells rises, grabs the discarded pile on the end of the couch with a snap and tosses all of it into the recycling himself. "Marie not only has the key to all of the confidential files in the confidential file room, but she might know how to find a thirty year old file."

He adds, "She's very good."

"You don't know every child who passed through here?" Horse grows long, a mocking face. "You're the principal."

"I wasn't an administrator thirty years ago."

"Twenty-nine, then."

"Thirty years ago I is across the hall from you." The principal leans back in his chair. "Teaching."

"Oh, you remember the _classroom_?" he mocks.

"The files," Horse requests, returning to the main topic. "It is, as you say, all confidential. And Marie is the town busybody."

"I'm too busy. And she's selective about what she shares with the public."

"And you're okay with that?"

"If I held either of you to the letter of the _Faculty and Staff Handbook_ not only would I have a massive lawsuit on my hands, but I'd lose you both. You both are my right and left hands."

"Which is which?"

Wells turns back to his piles of paper.

"You're in a trite mood today," he notes.

"That's who I am every day."

"If you really want it, you'll work with her."

Turning away, Wells sorts again. The discussion is done.

"Oh, and Jones is gone," he mentions at the end, burying the lead.

Jones is the other seventh grade teacher.

Had been, anyway.

Horse did not have much respect for Jones, but a second teacher gave parents who hated Horse a place to send their children for seventh grade placement. The two disagreed about everything.

"Better job?"

"I don't know. I think he's leaving teaching."

"When's the interview committee meeting?" He asks. Getting no answer, he adds, "You know, the one that I won't be on?"

"I've already hired his replacement."

Peeking at a file absentmindedly, Horse waits silently for the doom that always follows.

"She's a former student."

' _She_ ,' he thinks. Now he is the only male in the building, other than Wells and the maintenance director.

"Do I know her?"

"No. She wasn't your student. She only knows you by reputation. I asked about working with you. If that is going to be a problem. She doesn't really remember you. That's why she is willing to work here."

Unable to ply any more information from his friend and boss, Horse walks out of the office and to Ms. Binnis' desk. She has her back to him, still stuffing envelopes.

"Is this a protest against me?" Horse jokes about her position.

A parent is now sitting in one of the chairs, waiting to meet with Wells. She stands and approaches Horse.

"You're going to be my son's teacher this year."

"Okay." His voice has a touch of irritation. He does not know what else to say.

Okay.

Undaunted, she pushes forward.

"Do you have any suggestions for him?"

"Read a book."

"He hates to read."

"Read it to him."

"He's not a baby."

Now the parent is cross.

Ask a stupid question, he thinks, but knows enough to keep it to himself.

"Anyway, I don't have time."

"Then what do you want from me?" he barks.

The parent storms down the hallway, Wells meeting her and guiding her towards the less cluttered conference room.

When the door closes, Ms. Bennis says, "She is here to transfer her kid out of your class."

Horse grunts in response.

"Are you looking for the file for those bones you dug up?" she asks, still without turning around.

"I see the gossip line is up in the summer, too."

"It goes both ways."

"What does _that_ mean?"

"You're pretty loose with the information you have about our students."

"Didn't you sign a confidentiality agreement?"

"The same one as you."

Not reassuring, Horse thinks.

"So, where can I find the files?" he asks, looking towards the door to the permanent file room. It is always locked, he knows, and Ms. Binnis literally holds the key.

"Don't you think you should wait until the police look at the bones? Then they'll request them and.... It doesn't have anything to do with you." Ms. Binnis turns around. "And, you won't screw it up for them if you say out of it."

"I'm on a mission for your boss."

Ms. Binnis laughs.

"Where can I find the files?"

"When a student transfers, we ship the file to their new school along with everything else we might have on them."

"This child clearly never transferred."

"If they disappear, we send the files to central office."

"Do a lot of students disappear?"

"You'd be surprised."

"Do they store the files?"

"Do I look like central office?"

This, Horse knew, meant that if they were to be found, he would find the files there.
Chapter Four

But Horse did not go to central office right away.

When he returns to the site, the three are gone.

Trooper Danielson waits for him, though.

"Leaving the scene of a crime," Horse got as a greeting.

"I think the crime is thirty years old."

"And where were you that night?"

The trooper points to the coffee cups left on the patch of lawn where Larry and Horse had sat. "You didn't tell me you were going," Danielson says. "But when you disappear like that I have to wait and wonder where you are. I have forms to fill out, and I can't do them alone."

Horse motions at the man from forensics poking at the soil where the ninth slab had been. "You'd be here anyway."

"That's not the point."

One advantage to being a teacher in a small town for thirty years is that many of your former students grow up and become productive (and not-so-productive) members of that town. Because of this legacy, his coffee at the local café is ready for him before he gets to the counter, and he often gets charged for a small when he orders a large. Unfortunately, at the local MobileMart, that same legacy moves him to pour his own. Nearly every grocery item, gift purchase, restaurant meal or trip to the hardware store is, at this point in his long career, handled by someone he taught.

Including, today, the body found under his sidewalk.

Trooper Danielson had been Horse's.

"What would you say to a student who gave that reply to you?" Danielson asks.

Horse looks for a hint of a smirk. The boy—that is how Horse still thinks of all of his former students, as twelve year old boys and girls—is usually good-humored. Today, though, his face is indecipherable.

"I'm not your student."

"No." The trooper looks towards the forensics workers, a serious frown remaining on his face. "But should it matter?"

"What is this?" Horse asks. It feels as if Danielson has something to say, long brewing, and this body turning up is giving him cause to express it. He would rather be told straight out if there is something more needing to be said.

Instead, the trooper shrugs.

Then he tells Horse about what his employees had told him.

Sarah had been the first to be interviewed; the trooper wanted to know more about the discovery, but there is not much to tell.

She had looked down.

She saw a bone.

She looked again.

She saw two more.

She screamed.

That is all she said, other than their calling the police and her feeling nauseous.

Most of what Trooper Danielson had wanted to know from Larry is about how to operate the skidder, and if he would help the forensics guys if needed ("I will, but I'd rather not").

Steve just would not leave. At one point Danielson had to threaten him, because he kept coming close to contaminating the scene even more than he already had. Once he tripped and nearly fell onto the bones (instead, he banged his head on the pavement stone still suspended by the fork on the front of the loader).

"You can use force, if you feel it's necessary," Horse tells the trooper.

"The head wound calmed him down."

"Anything more?" Horse asks Danielson.

"Nope. Just waiting for forensics to finish."

A man stoops over, taking photographs where the ninth slate had been.

From twenty feet away the old teacher tries to figure out something about the bones. One is large, and not a rib (he thought). A leg bone? Arm? He tries to recall his high school anatomy class.

"At the moment, we don't even know if they're human," Danielson says.

"What else could they be?"

"Dog?"  
"Really?"

"Maybe a bear."

"How does a bear get under a sidewalk?"

"How does a human?"

"Could it really be an animal?"

"Yes, but no." Danielson looks back at where the slab had been. "I think they're human."  
"Small," Horse confirms.

"Larry is right: They're probably a kid's."

"He has an alibi."

"Do you?"

Danielson is joking—his face relaxes and makes that clear—but it hits something in Horse. Thirty years of teaching, and being accused of everything _but_ murder. For all his bluster and logic, Horse is never bothered by the larger accusations made against his profession—incompetence, excessive salaries and benefits, days off. Instead, he spends evenings obsessing over the smallest comments and slights. A yeller, concerns about "tone of voice" keep him up nights. Already, he has begun to think about where he is when the sidewalk is first laid.

"You know," he begins, "I laid this sidewalk."

Danielson gets interested, taking out his notebook.

"When?"

"Thirty years ago."

Then Horse tells his story about how he had gotten into the sidewalk business.

Although it pays more than many jobs in Vermont, teaching still has a small starting salary. Thirty years prior, this is even more the case. Teaching is not something to start a family on, but Horse is single and had few expenses. Having finished his first year, he had wavered on the decision to continue for a number of reasons, the central of which is his not wanting to be stuck in the rural environments of Grace Haven, Vermont. He is not from Vermont and little held him there—a budding friendship with the teacher across the hall, who had just been promoted to assistant principal, and a guaranteed paycheck. For a week the contract sat, unsigned, on the door-and-sawhorses that served as the dining room table of his small, bachelor apartment.

And then, at town meeting, he met a woman.

Petra.

Petra encouraged him to sign.

She, too, is young. Both were smart and both were dreamers. Together they made plans that required a house. And, as if through destiny—we often thought in such terms, Horse tells Danielson—the perfect home became available in the village of Grace Haven. On Fitch Street. "It is perfect," she had said when they saw the listing, again when they saw the house, and again when he told her they could not afford it.

"We have to have it," she told him at last.

A social worker, she made even less than Horse, without the summers off. Like a teacher, she brought her work home with her. Evenings were the two of them bent over papers. Unable to take a second shift job, they both felt stuck. Neither had a nest egg, and so he pledged to work over the summer to earn the down payment.

Several teachers painted houses in the summer. They worked for themselves. Being the sole authority nine months of the year, many teachers found it hard to work for anyone but themselves. A few at the high school had banded together, even, to start their own painting business—only teachers could stand each other's company, it seemed. Horse, too critical of the work habits of others, is not much of a joiner. And he hated house painting. It is hot, sweaty labor. The tedium of scraping gnawed at Horse, even as he tried to think of it in terms of a kind of Zen meditation. Long hours were spent on a ladder, and a parent, who is a roofer, had complained at his child's conference that spring about his arches collapsing after two weeks of standing on rungs.

"It's horrible," another teacher who painted told him at the hardware store. "You've got clapboards with dry rot, or molding that covers major structural faults. Customers don't want to hear about it because they think you're ripping them off by suggesting extra work, but they expect the finished job to look like new. Then it rains, screwing up your schedule." The guy went on about even more horrors of painting—he, too, mentioned the fallen arches of his feet—before mentioning the bees. "Wasps," the man said, correcting himself. "There's always a nest. It's just a matter of finding it. And when." The conversation ended with the fellow teacher recommending another line of contracting, or at least focusing on indoor painting. "No wasps," he added, walking off with three cans of Shoo Fly Wasp and Hornet Spray.

When adding up the hours and the pay, Horse looked for a better proposition.

Having decided to stay, he began subscribing to the weekly _Mountain News_ —a local source of those earning Scouting badges and a listing of 12 step programs happening in the area. Flipping through the classifieds, Horse got to the back where local towns, villages and other public entities placed their warnings and bids. He normally did not read that deep into the paper, but he is lingering especially long over a Sunday coffee. There is a request for bids to maintain the Grace Haven Cemetery and another to buy Eden's old road grader from their Department of Public Works. March's town meetings had resulted in the budgets being approved, along with various village improvement projects. This made his mind whirl, and he briefly wondered if he could buy and flip Eden's grader for a tidy profit. But what caught his eye—because he had never thought of it being done before—was the bid to replace the sidewalk on Fitch Street.

His dream house—their dream house—was on Fitch Street.

"This is fate," Petra had said.

Serendipity.

Kismit.

"Because you aren't doing the work," he had replied.

"You'll figure it out," she said, ending the discussion.

And he did.

Only a few days later, Horse is at an education conference in Burlington and stuck in the traffic heading up and out of the city. Three guys in orange vests were leaning on shovels while a fourth guy checked the steel forms used to lay sidewalk up Main Street, on the stretch between Winooski Street and the University of Vermont green. Because the line of cars is not moving at all, he had plenty of time to check out the method they used, from the level bed to the gravel and finally the forms. It seemed easy, he thought. Labor intensive, but technically easy. When he got to the top of Main Street, he turned his car and found parking close to the university's Baily/Howe Library. Four hours he spent researching sidewalks, concrete and construction techniques.

By dinner time, he knew enough.

Over the next week, having gotten a few quotes for equipment, concrete and labor, Horse put together a bid that included those costs, plus the amount for a down payment on the house.

Plus ten percent for surprises.

He won the bid.

Nothing went according to plan—it rained a lot, and things fell apart from there—but by late August Fitch Street had a new sidewalk and Horse had put down a down payment on his new house.

When Petra left him a few years later, he continued to take bids and do work. It filled the summers. When his seniority lead to larger paychecks and his mortgage is paid off, he continued to put in bids. His crew is responsible for most of the sidewalks in Grace Haven and the surrounding towns. Every summer he found local kids who needed money. Thirty years later, he is bidding on the first sidewalk he had laid: Fitch Street.

"I'm getting old," he had told himself as he sealed the envelope of the bid the previous spring. "This is my last one."

"Is it?" Trooper Danielson asks.

Danielson had been a student of Horse's, many years ago. They had been in contact a year before, when the Johnson boy's father had gone missing. Looking at Horse now, the former student notes how old and tired his old teacher appears.

"It's got to be hard," the trooper says. He is trying to share empathy with a man who rarely shows any emotion other than petulance and indifference. Danielson wonders if protective sarcasm is an emotion.

"What has to be hard?"

But Danielson is not sure what he means by it. It is just something people say, he guesses. _Why did I say it?_ Perhaps, he thinks, Horse has lost a step? It is a thought that would have been unimaginable a year before.

He changes the subject.

To be safe, he tells his old teacher, the entire sidewalk is a crime scene. They cannot work the other end, as Horse requests. Horse asks about the bones, but Danielson knows little and says even less. The two chat about the forensic team, and how long the process might take. Old bones, Danielson theorizes, would not take a lot of time.

"Do you really know that?" Horse asks.

"Is it?" Danielson asks instead. "Is it your last sidewalk?"

The question makes the old teacher feel... old.

It is hot—the rain has stopped, but now the humidity is thick. He is loath to admit it is affecting him any. He has to sit down, but there is only the ground and he is unsure if he would get up again. Looking at the bones laying in the dirt, Horse knows it will be his last sidewalk.

But he is not done with it yet.
Chapter Five

Early the next morning, Horse drives to the supervisory union offices. It is raining a steady summer shower. A cold front has moved in from the west and stalled when it hit the Green Mountain range, dropping the temperature by ten degrees. The offices are two towns away from Grace Haven, which keeps the superintendent from visiting often. Wells is left to do his job, Horse thinks. On the way, he stops by his work site. It is clean of personnel and all evidence of it being a crime scene—no tape or other notices, while the drizzle has turned the site to mud—but Danielson has yet to give him permission to continue. Had he been given the go-ahead, Horse is unsure if he could track down his workers. Or if they would work in the rain.

At the supervisory union offices, Horse stands in the rain, waiting for the front door to be unlocked.

A few minutes after nine, someone does.

"I'm sorry," the man says, blinking. "I thought someone had unlocked this door already." He is Horse's age, wearing a blue tie and short sleeves. "We've been open since eight. We come in the back door, by the employee parking lot. Someone usually unlocks it, but with summer and vacations I guess no one thought about it."

Without even a grunt, Horse makes his way to the supervisory union offices on the third floor. It had once been a woolen mill, since renovated and outfitted with modern steel and glass. Inside were that town's offices, a few state extension services and the supervisory union's main staff. The architects had been careful to keep all of the original exposed brick, as well as wooden doors and molding. At the front desk of the supervisory union, they had even mounted an old slate chalk board salvaged from a school demolition. Someone had written _Welcome_ on it with chalk. All of it looked nicer than any of the schools the office oversaw.

"Do you have the name of the student?"

Molly Berlin had taken the job as administrative assistant at central office the same year Horse had signed his first contract at Grace Haven. They were the same age—fifty-five. Both have weathered nomadic curriculum coordinators, soured superintendents, misguided-but-well-meaning initiatives and a parade of administrators. They have outlasted fads and seen them cycle through again, often with new names that hardly covered the stench left by the old one. Both remember and have even used mimeograph machines. Like Horse, she wears this long journey in her face and hands. Molly is tall—nearly as tall as Horse. And she wears heels, even in summer, when others are more casual. It is, she told him once, professional. But the height also gives her power, when she chooses to stand and exercise it.

To Horse, though, they see eye to eye.

"I do not," the teacher says. "I don't know the name."

"You're wet."

"Yes." He is not sure what else to say, and does not want to explain the business with the locked front door.

Molly is a gatekeeper. Through her experienced hands go Horse's paperwork; letters for his files, evaluations, praises and various complaints and grievances from parents, peers and other members of the community. While she cannot recall specifics (or chooses not to) Molly knows his personnel file is thick. To her, this is not necessarily a bad thing—but someone to keep an eye on.

What can she do for him, she wonders? What is she willing to do?

Many times he had sat in these same office seats, waiting for an audience with the superintendent. The administrators called him in when the parent complaints and letters were too many for Wells to control. He is often made to sit, a union rep at his side, about once every two years. There were other visits, too. Nothing much ever came of it—a letter in a file, perhaps—and then a new administrator came in and he is given a clean slate. They were fellow travelers on a long road, he thought.

Horse knew he had no right to the files. But he had to have them.

"Do you have any specifics?"

"A student who is in sixth grade thirty years ago. _About_."

" _About?"_ she said, and smiled.

Horse knew he is in.

"About."

"That is about the first year you and I started here."

"I don't remember. You, I remember. Students.... That's why I need the file."

"Not because of the bones?"

Now he smiled.

"Word travels fast."

"Marie called yesterday, when you left her office."

"Then she must have said I is sent by Wells."

"No," Molly replied. "She... neglected to mention that."

"Well, I'm relaying the message."

"Should I call?"

"Do we really want to sit here and call each other's bluff?"

"Oh," Molly replied. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. "Do I have a bluff you can call?"

"Look..." Horse began, but Molly put her hand up.

"Yes," she said, finishing his thought. "We have worked together a long time."

"Yes, we have."

"How often do we see each other?"

Silence.

Then, Molly answered her own question.

"You have to admit it," he said. "I am called in a lot."

"Not enough."

"Perhaps."

"We do have the old files," Molly continued. "I hope you have a shovel. You'll have to dig."

They call the building The Annex.

The room he needs is in that building, sitting next door to the main offices. This is where the supervisory union main offices had been, before the superintendent had moved his immediate staff to the office suite in the renovated mill. It had once been the town high school, before the union high school made it obsolete. Built of heavy red brick, it is Gothic revival style; the windows squinting eyes and the entrance stairs a grimace. Physically small, it is built for a small town that had not anticipated much growth. Today, it houses those positions listed on the fiscal budget line items as "temporary." On the second floor, this includes a Macintosh technician, UNIX specialist, SAP counselor, five people on a grant (read: temporary), and two data entry temps whose provisional assignment has lasted six years.

A wide staircase, lined with cardboard file storage boxes, leads to the second floor. Beyond a few offices that are not labeled is the room. Horse nods to a few as he finds his way to the door; it takes asking two of them to finally find the chamber.

Horse does not need a shovel, as Molly had suggested, although the dark, windowless room where the files are kept reminds him of a mine. To say the files are even in a "room" implies space, Horse thinks. It is an old storage room crammed with too many filing cabinets. At first, it is too dark to proceed. Failing to find a switch after a few minutes of groping, he swats at the darkness in desperation until he feels a string. Pulling, the tug seems to stretch the breaking point of the string before it clicks. The fluorescent bulb sputters on. It is a single line of florescent bulbs, the only lighting in the room. The plastic covers are filled with the bodies of dead flies.

Unlike the renovated main offices, this building has no air conditioning. On walking up to the room, Horse had noted the number of fans running. Still, the building is hot in general. This room is where the heat settles. It is immune from the cold front or the rain cooling the black tarred roof.

Lowing his gaze from the lights, he sees dozens of unmarked boxes stacked on top of filing cabinets. Having been stacked and unstacked many times, the structural integrity of each box—not to mention the stacks of boxes of which they are comprised—is in doubt. There are too many to move into the hallway, so Horse lets them be.

He looks at the cabinets. They are a collection of older, fire-safe cabinets, twenty in all—ten on a side. They create an alley that stretches below the feeble light fixture. Three are a dull, dark green, but most are a color described in the catalog as oatmeal. One is blue. Clearly hand-me-downs, Horse thinks. He approves of the frugality, even as he stands and begins to sweat in the heat. Less than a yard of space stands between them. If he pulls out two opposing drawers at the same time, he estimates, they would touch. Some of the drawers have letters on the front, but many do not. A few are mislabeled, remnants from a prior use. Three of the drawers are missing handles. On the face of one is a sticker for a ski shop long gone, and a magnet for a pizza take-out place that has changed its name three times.

Pulling out the first drawer, he quickly flips through the files to get a sense of them—to establish order in his mind.

Weakly, he had held hope that they were chronological so that he could focus only on the older files. Such a system would not have made much sense, but with changing administrations, systems, office workers and interest he had hoped for a break in logic, towards something that would have worked for him. Instead, they held to tradition. Mostly. Everything is in a modified alphabetical order—the files restart with "A" in the fifth and ninth cabinets.

Horse knows he needs to triage the files.

His file, he knows, is about thirty years old. At first he hopes the age, wear or style of the folders themselves will give away their age. Unfortunately, manila folders only age when used, so any file thumbed a few times through have the look of age, while children mostly ignored by the system look pristine. And, he finds, the style has not changed—manila is manila.

Then, Horse figures thickness would matter—a younger child should have a thin file compared to a high school student. Instead, he holds a second grader's file which is an inch thick.

Abandoning that idea, he decides he will sort by the device used on the paperwork—typewriter, dot matrix printer, ink jet. Many recent files have tabs that were produced on a typewriter—he later learns from a secretary that the old machines are kept around just for typing up tabs. There is a surprising number of hand written notes and forms, too. Unfortunately, the office machines, schools and preferences of individual secretaries varied so much that this, too, is a pointless filter.

Finally, he realizes, it all just needs to be grunted out.

Pulling out the first file, he quickly scans the date and puts it back in.

The second file is a girl. She has only been missing for a decade.

The third file's name is smeared, but the date is too old.

On the tab of the fourth file is the name "Sam", which turns out to be a girl's name. Horse wishes he at least knew the gender of the body.

And so it goes.

In the third drawer he comes across Simon Platt. Pulling out the file, Horse recalls back seventeen years to when the kid had been in his class. Bright enough, kind enough, social enough the boy sat down the first day with a cue ball clean head. Horse had wondered if it is the style. Of course, he had been told the real reason, but had failed to listen to the sixth grade teacher prattle on about the students she is giving him. ("I don't like to be biased on the first day," he has told Wells many times).

No, Simon had cancer.

The prognosis is bad. As soon as the parents said they were going to Boston for an experimental procedure, Horse knew.

Terminal.

Simon knew, too.

But while kids complained about having to rake leaves, shovel snow or pick up their own clothes and get them into the hamper, this kid is driven to Boston once a week for a kick in the guts that knocked him out for the weekend. Through it all, he did his school work. Knocked silly by another round of cure, he'd scratch out his weekly essay. Why the hell should he care about the six syllable types, Horse thought, correcting his grammar quiz.

Horse probed his dedication a bit. Once Simon had turned in a paper without a name, and Horse had docked him five points.

No complaints.

For a time, he wondered if Simon's parents were doing the work, or at least scribing. The teacher had the student redo an essay during recess. It became clear that Simon did his own work. Soon, he found that his parents couldn't help. When Simon's mother came for his student conference—rail thin and six feet tall—it came out that she couldn't read. She had told him this herself. The father is dead from a work accident. "Simon," she'd said, "is going to be the first one in the family to go to college."

Usually contemptuous of complaining students, Horse's tolerance thinned. There had been snappish remarks.

"You're taking it out on the students," Wells had remarked.

"Perhaps they deserve it."

"It doesn't do any good."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"I can't imagine complaining when this kid...."

"You can," Wells replied, gently. "You have."

It had been a long talk over many beers.

A month later, Simon did not come back.

Horse had driven out to his home to drop off the latest assignments. "The work," he would say, "is our lives." He still says this. Simon knew this. The family lived north of Grace Haven, in a small cluster of poverty known as Baileys Bend. His mother, Jean, had met him at the door and politely invited him into the kitchen. She had a glass of whiskey in hand and Horse did not blame her. Next time, he thought, he would bring a bottle to share. An open layout to the living room, Horse could see Simon asleep on the couch.

"He's not doing that well," Jean had said.

"Well," Horse had replied, "I thought he'd want the week's work."

"He'll appreciate it."

After a moment of awkward silence, Horse asked if they needed anything, excused himself and left. Simon never came back to school. Horse only saw him again in a casket. Sitting in the back at the funeral, Horse noted to Wells that the boy had completed those last assignments.

"His mother gave them to me yesterday."

"He is quite a kid," Wells replied.

"The work is rubbish," the teacher said, the least emotional response he could muster, turning back to the speaker at the front, an uncle who had gone to Grace Haven a few years before Horse had arrived.

_Idiot_ , he thought of the man. It only contrasted, to him, the unfairness of the situation.

Sitting on the floor of the file room, Horse lets himself think about Simon for another moment. Then, he jams the file back into the drawer and returns to his digging. Memory lane is going to just drag this out, he thinks.

Third file, first drawer, in the second cabinet, is where he finds what he is looking for.

Flipping through the drawer, half a liter of tonic water already drank—his personal poison besides coffee—Horse pulls the file of Pauline Dennis. Fifth grader. Thirty years ago. Smart enough (according to the test scores) but nothing out of the ordinary.

A thin file for an ordinary little girl.

Chapter Six

Pauline Dennis.

"Do you remember her?" Horse asks Ms. Saxon.

"When is she a student?"

I'll take that as a "no", he thinks.

He is holding Pauline's file. Thin. No photo. State law requires a current photo of students to be on file. Most schools, like Grace Haven, use the school photos that are also a minor fundraiser—the demand by grandparents for wallet photos of precious grandchildren helps pay for the school's copy. But that is not the case thirty years prior. Not in their district.

Ms Saxon has to rely on memory.

"Thirty years ago."

On her knees, the fifth grade teacher is weeding her garden. On her head sits a big straw hat. Wearing a worn Planned Parenthood of New England t-shirt and denim shorts, she has no shoes. Bare feet are her preference, in the classroom but especially in the garden. The woman hates shoes, and issue that came up a few years ago--professionalism. Mud from the day and the two nights of rain cake on her palms, knees and feet. She has been in the garden all morning, and is quite productive until Horse walked into her backyard.

Looking up, she asks, "How old do you think I am?"

"You've been at Grace Haven a long time." Horse glances at the sun. "Can I get you a drink?"

"That would be nice."

Heading for the house, he leaves the file on the ground hoping that she would take a look.

Ms. Saxon lives in the hills, about fifteen miles from work, but the drive is longer than it appears on any map. Dirt road branching off of dirt road, Horse tries to imagine what the commute is like in winter. An old Toyota 4x4 sits in the driveway. Under a tree sits a rusty yellow plot blade, but no vehicle to mount it on—he assumes it to be for her husband's truck, and he has taken that to work. Her husband and she have carved a large area out of the woods for their home and tamed it. The back yard, about an acre of lawn and partially shaded by large, old maples, have a dozen apple trees along the north side and a collection of raised bed gardens at the far end. Ms. Saxon has mixed Daisies and Black Eyes Susans and other wildflowers with her vegetables. It is something the French did, she tells Horse.

"The atmosphere at the table is as important as the food you grow to put on it," she said to him when he had first arrived. "When I pick my dinner, I'll have a centerpiece, too."

"More weeding," he replied.

Walking away, Horse lets himself into the small cottage. It is blood red with white trim; a cute clapboard saltbox that is all windows on the south wall. There are solar panels on the south facing slope, with more on the barn roof. Two stories, the downstairs is an open floor plan consisting of a living room and kitchen. Pastels color the walls, while the floor is a blonde four inch maple. Turning the cold spigot of the sink, he easily finds a pint sized glass in the cabinet and fills it. Shunning ice cubes, he pokes around the living room before heading back outside. Ms. Saxon has filled her walls with family photos. He looks closely; one has her kneeling next to a nice buck, rifle in hand. Other photos have children, now grown. There are few books, but a large flat screen television has a looming presence on the far wall. Through a small window off of the kitchen, he can see a satellite dish poking upwards.

Returning, he hands her the glass.

Tilting her head, she squints her right eye to protect it from the sun, looking at him with her left.

"I is expecting a beer," she says.

He laughs. Taking a sip from the glass, he turns and gets her a cold bottle of Trout River Scottish Ale. There are several in the refrigerator, he had noticed.

Returning, he holds two bottles in his right hand.

"I didn't think you were one to drink from a glass," he tells her.

"You were wrong, but I'll live."

With a bottle opener he pulls from his pocket, Horse takes off one of the caps. It falls into the grass and disappears. Ms. Saxon gives a brief thought of how she will find it with the bottom of her foot later, and then takes the bottle from him. She notices the second bottle.

"Inviting yourself to my beers?"

"I thought you'd want a second one. I'm just holding it."

"You might as well drink it before it gets warm."

Then she wipes the mouth of the bottle with her shirt. Taking a long draw in silence, she sits down on the edge of one of her raised beds, next to the dented red wheelbarrow filled with strong, green weeds.

"I never thought of you as a beer drinker," he says to her.

"Vodka?" Her stare makes it clear she is asking about him.

"Vodka martini. Dry. Beer, too."

"You should go to the faculty Christmas parties."

"I do."

"Why don't I remember you?"

"I hide in the kitchen."

"Where does that get you?"

She smiles and takes another long drink before placing the half-empty bottle in the corner of the bed. Instead of offering up a lame response, he shrugs and takes a long drink from his bottle.

She does not know Pauline Dennis.

They drink their beers, which is a relief on the hot, humid summer day. With the front moving on, the temperature has risen nearly twenty degrees. Horse thinks that this is how he should be spending his summer, instead of chasing bones that are none of his business. He looks at the back yard, which meets a bit of untamed field and then the edge of the forest. It is nice. The smell of soil and beer and grass relaxes him. The summer is coming to a close, he knows. There will be only be so many days like this.

Ms. Saxon thinks about who might have had her. Although the Grace Haven staff tends to skew towards experience, teaching over thirty years is a lot of experience. Horse is one of the old ones—the ancients, a young third grade teacher calls them—and still he would not have known the girl.

"They had a buy-out of the contract a few years ago," Ms. Saxon notes. "I'm trying to think who took it and retired."

"I remember the offer from the school board."

"You didn't take it."

"What else would I do with my days?"

"That's why others did take it," she replies, reminding Horse that he needs more in his life than this job. He protests, only for her to note that he is tracking down a student from thirty years ago during his summer break.

"You need to take care of yourself."

"This is what that looks like."

"I don't believe you." Then she adds, "I worry about you."

That makes him feel uncomfortable, so he refocuses the discussion.

"So, who do we know that doesn't have anyone else to live for?"

"Wells?"

True, Horse thinks.

Instead, he says, "He taught middle school with me. Never would have had her."

"Ms. Bennis?"

"No." Although the secretary knows everything about every student who passes through the halls, Ms. Bennis would never tell House that his own pants were on fire, much less something he wants to know. He also knows she does not know. Had she, Danielson would have that information by now. Horse had to sign out the file, and Molly would have floated the name Pauline Dennis within the hour. Had it struck a chord, Ms. Bennis would have called the police. Danielson would have woken Horse up, looking for the file now in his possession.

"You two don't get along, do you?"

"I don't ask her because I don't want to imply that she's that old," he lies.

"Such a gentleman," Ms. Saxon jokes in response.

He smiles.

"Let me think."

In the end, she comes up with a few retired teachers that she thinks still lives in the area.

"Which are the gossips?" Horse wants to know.

"Not many." Ms. Saxon drains her bottle and sets it down in the grass. "I find the gossips never retire. Like you, what else would they do?"

"Surely, one must like a good tale."

Ms. Saxon thinks.

Then, she sputters out a name. _Ms. Blane._
Chapter Seven

Pulling into the small white farmhouse home at the end of a short gravel drive, Horse tries to frame Ms. Blane in his memory.

Nothing comes to him.

His tires angrily crunch as he slowly turns the wheel into the drive. The car comes to stop next to a clean, silver Buick. He cannot recall the car, but he rarely notices the vast majority of flavorless automobile choices—green Subaru wagon, grey Honda sedan, grey Toyota sedan, light blue generic mini-van—that litter the teachers' parking lot. The neighbors, he notice, have the same model of Buick in the driveway, but in red. Ms. Blane's blends in with the gravel next to Horse's Festiva.

Located on a paved secondary road leading north out of Grace Haven, the one story home is surrounded by crabgrass that abruptly stops at the neighbor's lawn. Calling it a farmhouse is generous, Horse thinks, in that it inspired none of the romance that the word evokes today. A box would be more descriptive. _A non-descript box._ Dandelions ready to puff dot the property, an infestation held at bay only by the compact nature of the soil. There is no landscaping, unless a person considers "flat and empty" to be a style. No porch or bushes, the foundation is exposed cinderblock. In all, it looks meticulous to the point of sterile. A power line went from a telephone pole in the street to the corner of the house, with a telephone wire running alongside it. On the corner of the building Horse notices a satellite dish.

He walks a narrow gravel path from the driveway to the house, the stone ground so deep into the earth that it nearly discernable from pavement. It has no border, with the grass barely kept at bay. The lack of trees make mowing easy, Horse thinks. Whoever is responsible for that chore had shorn it close to the dirt; the grass blades a weak green mixed with brown.

Horse wonders if it is a rental property.

The clapboard has been covered with faded aluminum siding; not plastic, which is more common these days. Aluminum, with its dents and requiring a sure hand and special tools to cut replacement pieces, is no longer in vogue. Sturdy. Functional. Not worth replacing with something better. He can see a bit of the worn cedar siding where a few rows of aluminum have fallen from the side.

There seems to be no personal touch to the home. Utilitarian is the word that comes to mind.

This fate, he thinks, is why he is afraid to retire.

The old teacher climbs the concrete steps to the front door.

Pushing the bell, he notes that the neighbor has bushes and a scattering of maple trees.

At conferences, there is always gossip about teachers like this. Cut loose. Their purpose—their job—gone, they shrink and disappear. Some have loveless marriages, or are alone, with no children willing to visit. A void exists that they are unable to fill once they step into retirement. No hobbies. No longer children and lesson plans and correcting—the work—to fill the hole. It is the downside of retirement no one talks about as they tuck money into their retirement accounts. People do not imagine themselves like this.

Horse wonders how far he is from this situation. He has only one friend and no hobbies other than reading comic books and teaching. For thirty years, he's been laying sidewalks for no reason other than habit. If his trip to London is any indication of what retirement would be like, he needed to rethink what he wanted.

With a sigh, he rings the bell again.

No answer.

"Hello?" he calls out.

On the faded white aluminum storm door, the kick plate eaten by salt, he raps. A loud bag of his fist, with a rattle of the door in its frame backing it up.

Nothing. No answer.

Trying to door, it swings in without much of a push.

"Hello?" he asks again. _Loud._

A few tentative steps in, he notes how still the room is. The air has not been breathed, it seems; the room sealed until now. Fresh air rushes in around him. Next to the door is a boot tray, clean of dirt. On it sits one pair of black rubber boots and a pair of blue leather shoes, open toe.

From the size of the house on the outside there could only be a few rooms, he thinks. He is standing in the living room. Walled with wood paneling, the room is without charm.

A step past clean.

The couch and chair are a matching plaid, so neat and stiff that Horse cannot imagine anyone having sat on them. Or anyone wanting to. Whatever worn they have is from the breeze of an open window slowly wearing down their wool fabric, except he sees no proof the windows are ever opened. The two pieces sit in front of a glass coffee table, on which are laid two seemingly unread magazines. Two mediocre painting hang on the wall. They are hung low; Horse assumes she is a short woman. Under it all lies a large aqua throw rug.

He is surprised there is no television.

In the kitchen he finds more life.

On the table are bills and junk mail, waiting to be sorted. Next to that is a black leather purse, its flat bottom and stiff handles standing at attention, ready to go. Both the mail and the purse sit on a half-finished puzzle, a landscape . The edges have been completed, as has the part of the river that contains a waterwheel. The clouds, from what he can see, are puffy. _A dull scene._ A bored woman, Horse thinks, doing a boring puzzle. He does not immediately see the box. Is she is challenging herself by doing it blind, he wonders.

There are older, metal appliances that have seen years of use yet are meticulously cared for. The toaster, blender and mixer all shine, sitting as they are on clean counters. In the corner the refrigerator hums next to a gas stove. Opening the door, he finds basic items—milk, eggs, bread, butter—and a number of ready-made meals in neat sealed plastic containers. Tall, he easily looks on top of the refrigerator. Dust. His height often gives him views of forgotten dust and dirt, the downside of height. He also finds the box for the puzzle there, also dusty.

She has been working on it for a while, he concludes.

Next to it is a dusty radio, softly playing classical music. Having already surmised she is short, Horse figures the radio is never turned off, and the station is always the same.

With surprise, he realizes there is no microwave.

Or phone.

In the bedroom he finds the television. And a body.

"Ms. Blane," he mutters.

She lies on the bed, dressed. Her eyes open, her feet are on the floor as if she had been sitting when something final had happened.

The bed is made and the room void of anything that might indicate someone lives there. Everything has its place, and is put away. Next to the bed sits a wastepaper basket, which has used tissues at the bottom. Shoes on her feet, Horse wonders if she is heading out the door. Looking around for house slippers—an indication that she would only have put on shoes if she had intends to leave—he thinks about the purse on the kitchen table.

Then he notices that one shoe is untied.

'She had been putting them on,' he thinks. _Then, something must have happened to her._

Death.

Expelling his next breath, Horse goes into the bathroom, which is as non-descript as the rest of the house. He counts a few bottles of medicine, plus a number of over the counter products.

Taking out his phone he tries to call the police.

No signal.

Her landline phone is next to the bed. Picking up the beige handset he calls the authorities.

"That's Mrs. Robert," the older woman said to him in a smoker's bark.

An ambulance is next to Horse's car, while a state trooper's sedan and a red Mazda hatchback is parked on the lawn near the road. The trooper writes down the name.

"She's old," the woman continues. "Heart attack?" she asks.

The trooper nods. That is the guess of the EMT first on the scene.

"I'll bet her diabetes killed her. Killed her heart."

"How long since you saw her?"

"Two weeks," the woman guesses.

"Did she have any visitors?"

"I don't know." But it is clear she does know. "Some. A relative. For food."

"Do you know who?"

"Oh," she begins. For five more minutes she lays out the dead woman's entire sad story. It is as Horse had thought, but she had not been a teacher. Mrs. Robert is a tenant; the widow of an old worker from the lumberyard. Ms. Blane is the landlord, and she is bending the trooper's ear now.

"I think I've got it," the trooper teller her.

"What about her stuff?" Ms. Blane asks.

"Next of kin?"

"I'll check the rental agreement."

It is clear to both Horse and the trooper that the landlord knows who to call. Even though Ms. Blane asks, it is also clear she also knows she can rent out the house just as soon as someone is ready to move in. Some forms signed and the ambulance gone, the trooper leaves.

The old woman turns to Horse.

"Looking for me?" Ms. Blane inquires, a knowing tone in her voice.

His first impression of Ms. Blane is that of a troll. Standing at five feet, she has to look up at him, but insists on standing very close. Fat, it sits well on her; walking around the property, Horse notes that she is quite agile for all of her huffing and puffing. Low center of gravity, he wonders. But that is not the reason Horse thought of a troll. She is wanting payment—money or gossip—and is generally untrustworthy. Dressed in blue sweatpants and a matching top with two white stripes up the sides, she turns and speeds up the steps, her white sneakers quickly disappearing into the dark interior of the house.

"I don't know," Horse calls in. "Are you Mrs. Blane?"

Stopping in the middle of the living room, she turns to him. "You don't remember me?"

Then she puts on a mock surprised look.

A wry smile comes over her face, and she turns and plops her girth down on the couch.

"No," Horse finally answers.

"I remember you."

"I have that kind of face."

"Not that," she spits, picking up a magazine.

"No?"

"You made fun of me." Her smile disappears. "In a faculty meeting."

"You seem to have been holding onto that grudge quite a while. Waiting for this day?"

"No," she replies. "I'd told you then if I'd cared."

"When is that? That I made fun of you ...."

"You were a young pup," she said. "Still with that woman."

"Petra."

"Whoever. When you had hope."

"I never had that," he replies, hoping she catches his rye tone.

"Well, happiness." She waves her hand, dismissing the difference as if it were smoke. "Now, what do you want? Not to apologize, I'm sure."

"For something I don't remember, no."

He decides to change tactics.

_Tactics_ , he thinks. Is that what this is?

Taking a seat in the chair he asks, "How is your retirement?"

"Great."

"Other than the occasional dead body?"

"Occupational hazard."

"You're a landlord?"

"Let me tell you about retirement," she says, leaning forward. "The pension sucks. I couldn't keep a dog alive on it. If you don't own your house, you'll be sharing an apartment with some Johnson State College kids. If you do own a house, it'll barely cover the property tax. Damn Act 60."

"Act 68."

"Whatever." She leans back. "Takes money out of here and sends it...."

Every discussion in Vermont eventually comes back to property taxes. After the state supreme court's Brigham decision people connect property taxes and school funding to every ill imaginable. Ms. Blane goes on for a good five minutes, Horse indulging her so that he can get in the information he wants.

"We're a receiving town," he replies. That means that Grace Haven gets more money from the state than it pays to the state in property taxes.

She waves the topic away.

"Every teacher I know who retired and is happy had a plan," she continues. "Some move to Florida, or Maryland. Did you know Maryland has almost no property taxes? Or they have something to supplement the pension."

"Like renting out this place?"

"I have eight properties, not including my own."

"That's quite a second career."

"I collect checks. Beats laying sidewalks."

Narrowing her eyes for a moment, she laughs at her own joke.

A chortle.

She is a gossip, he thinks. If anyone knows the fate of Pauline Dennis, it is this woman.

"Mrs. Roberts...."

"Nice woman. Paid on time." Waving her hand around at the walls, she adds, "Kept the place clean."

"Lonely?"

"What do I care?"

Sitting in silence, Horse thinks about how this curt, seemingly heartless woman could have been a teacher. Then again, people often wonder that about him. She does have determination, he thinks.

"I'm here about...."  
"Pauline Dennis. Yeah, I know. Ms. Saxon called me. Said you'd asked about the girl, and she gave you this address. I haven't lived her for twenty years."

"Is that when you retired?"

"When I started spending more time at home, I moved to a house I could stand." She turns her head and looks around, as if to indicate that it is not much.

"Is it lonely out here?"

"What's with you and asking about loneliness?"

She gives him a knowing look.

"Did you know Pauline?"

"Let me think," she says, although Horse knows that she had done all of her thinking even before she put the phone down on Ms. Saxon. "Pauline. Paul, she is called. Paul.... Yes. I taught her."

Horse waits.

"Nice girl. Smart enough. Lived with her father... perhaps a mother. I don't recall that. Maybe."

Sitting on the couch, Ms. Blane thinks a moment more. Her mouth tightens, as if recalling memory is a physical task. The sound of her tortured breathing makes its way from her fat body and exits through a tiny nose, echoing around the room. Finally, it is clear nothing more is coming, although Horse is sure there is a lot more information to be had.

"What happened to her?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, her file indicates she just disappeared."

The gossip smiles.

"What else does the file say?"

"Nothing much. Average girl."

"I had her in third grade and she could read and write, I think. I don't know for sure. To be honest, I don't much care. I'd probably remember if she is stupid. It's the outliers you remember. The really mean kids, or those that are just plain thick. I mean, I did my job for those who could do it. Let's face facts, not every kid has what it takes to go to college."

Ms. Blane leans back, getting ready for a speech she had made hundreds of times before; a speech that offends, by design. She clearly likes to see the offense on people's faces. In addition to investing in property, the old woman has been saving up platitudes and opinions for retirement. Now, her own boss, without fear of being fired or reprimanded, she is glad to be spending them. And when confronted, she will hide behind the twin masks of being an experienced educator ("I is in the trenches") and an old person who tells it like it is.

She is, Horse concludes, a horrible person.

"And the world needs janitors and men to swing hammers" she continues. "For some of them, it's enough if they don't get pregnant to the wrong man. I guess someone has to have their kids, though. I'm not ashamed that a whole lot of the kids who make this town go are former students of mine."

She pauses, then looks Horse in the eye and says, "And yours?"

"You did your job," is all Horse would say to her challenge.

"It's funny," Ms. Blane continues, "you don't really remember the smart kids. I mean, they're all so smart in the same way. Never a problem. They just pass through and you forget them. Some of the cleverer kids, with the mayhem they create, you remember. The pranks."

She chuckles to herself.

"No," the woman mutters, returning to Pauline. "She's not the body under the sidewalk."

"But then why didn't the file transfer to the new school?"

Ms. Blane chuckles and answers, "She homeschooled. During her sixth grade year her father found religion. He decides public school is not appropriate for his kid. Not as she reaches puberty, anyway. So, he pulled her."

"So, she's alive."

"Alive? You could have looked her up in the phone book. She's right here in Grace Haven."

"Really?"

"I should know," Ms. Blaine replies. "She lives in one of my rentals. On Elm."

The woman looks around, realizing it is time to start moving if she is going to get anything done that day.

Still, she is slow to leave a chance to gossip and tear others down.

Horse looks down at Ms. Blaine and exhales.

Sitting and looking up at him, she holds her arm out and waves it about. Horse is supposed to pull her out of her seat, he knows. Not that she needs the help. For all of her girth, smoker's cough and apparent sloth, it is clear she could wrestle Horse to the ground.

He knows this, and they look at each other for a moment.

Then, he accommodates her.

Now standing, she has a small glint in her eye. Horse braces himself for a jab, and he is not disappointed.

"She has a boy coming into seventh grade this year. Not you. The mom requested the other one. The new girl coming in to replace Mr. James." Horse wonders if everyone in the village knows about James leaving, and who his replacement is.

Before he considers this much further, she adds, "Now there are two generations of the Dennis family not wanting you to teach their kid."

Chapter Eight

"A day wasted," he thinks the next morning.

After leaving Ms. Blane, he had looks at his watch and determins it is too late to visit the file room.

He goes home.

On the way he passes the sidewalk site. It irritates him like a scab on his shin—needing to pick at it. No new developments. No message on his phone. The police have allowed him to take his dump truck home—Larry has driven it up to the landfill and emptied it for forensics, checking to make sure no other bones are mixed with the rubble. Horse leaves the site with few hopes of starting up the project soon.

The rain begins again.

Rubbing his thumb and forefinger of the right hand over his closed eyes, he stands on the curb and mentally organizes the rest of his week.

Watching the evening news later, he catches a snippet in which the bones are mentioned. Nothing new. Horse lies on his couch, looking at the view of a large maple tree in his back yard, spread out against an overcast sky. At the foot of the couch is an NEA coffee mug filled with a luke warm martini made of cheap vodka. This is not a day for ice, he thinks.

He takes no comfort that Pauline Dennis is still alive.

Someone is dead, he thinks.

Who?

Bored, he reads a book and falls asleep on the couch with Vermont Public Radio babbling in the background. Overnight it seamlessly turns to Morning Edition. The "Eye in the Sky" weather calls for more rain. Three empty bottles of Long Trail are knocked over when he swings his feet onto the floor; empties from days before. Joints stiff in the morning, he stretches. Into the unwashed NEA mug he pours fresh coffee from his French press. Then he makes more, refilling his now empty mug and a travel mug before collecting his wallet and keys. At loose ends, he figures he might as well return to the file room.

Horse has an organized brain. It is the key to his success as a teacher. Children cannot divert him from what he has decided on a lesson, nor can the thousand distractions that occur during the average school week drive his plans. So controlling is Horse that he has a former student, now a volunteer firefighter, warn him about upcoming fire drills so he can plan around them. At heart, he is a planner.

He manages in a typical school because his non-negotiables tend to be broad. While details matter, Horse teaches with a code. He has standards that do not bend. At a conference the metaphor of having a "10,000 foot in the air" view of the situation summed it up nicely. Attention to detail, then, comes from how it affects the whole. Just as individual citizens make up the nation in Thomas Hobbes's seminal work _Leviathan_ , so do the hundreds of details necessary to create a program in which students learn. It is not that he is stuck—he can deviate if he chose, zig instead of zag.

Circumstances tend to push those decisions.

And he rolls with it.

Having carved two weeks out of the late summer to replace the sidewalk, his brain is in work mode. The idea of taking a hike or simply relaxing, as Wells suggests, is unthinkable; whatever he does his mind will be thinking about the sidewalk. _Bones._ His compulsion to find out the identity of the bones is, in part, to allow him to get back to work.

Solve the problem; move on.

Unfortunately, police work does not follow that philosophy.

Rain spits onto his windshield. As he passed the site on his way to the file room he notes the mud. At the corner of Fitch and Main is a large white Congregational church that tourists take pictures of. He parks in front, crosses the street, and meets Wells at Long Trail Coffee. The café is where tourists stop for coffee and pastries. It is also the only place within twenty miles where he can get a genuine espresso. Unfortunately, the price is encounters with those sets of parents who do not punch a clock—and think of themselves as junior administrators. Bypassing the glass case displaying artisan baked goods and the line for orders, Horse finds his friend and a waiting cup of dark coffee.

"No one is there this morning," he states, referring to forensics.

Taking a seat, he expresses none of the pleasantries most people took for granted—even a thank-you for the coffee.

Wells looks at his watch. "It's just after seven."

"This is the body of a child."

"Are you're expecting arc lights and a crack forensic team in bunny suits doing DNA analysis?" Wells laughs. "It's been thirty years. I'm sure the priority of this case is pretty low."

"Still, they should do something."

"They think they found all of the bones that are there."

"Who told you this?"  
"Danielson."

"He told you and not me?"

"He told me to tell you." Wells takes a sip of his coffee. "And I have."

"The whole skeleton?"

"They won't know, but they think so."

Horse nods, understanding.

Looking at Horse's clothes, Wells remarks, "Those are work clothes, aren't they?"

Wearing a grime stained Vermont Coffee Company t-shirt and a pair of khaki cut-off shorts—once his more formal khaki teaching pants—Horse puts down his coffee.

"Yes."

Horse stares it him, challenging him to say what is on his mind.

"You are a creature of habit," he chuckles. "You can't even wear clothes different from what you had planned a week ago, when you thought you'd been tearing up a sidewalk?"

"I could," Horse lies.

"With a reason."

"With a _compelling_ reason," Horse qualifies.

Leaving with a take-away cup, Horse makes a mental note to talk with Danielson and get a timeline on the whole operation. Distracted, he steps in a puddle that leaks into his shoes. Later, when he tries to put his coffee in the cup holder of his car, he sees the travel mug. He had forgotten. Two cups, he thinks, anticipating drinking both, for a total of five before eight in the morning.

Then he looks over at the work site.

"Time is money," he mutters over the noise of the engine, which revves as it climbed the hill out of Grace Haven. In his head, he breaks down the file room and crosses out those drawers he had already checked. Calculating the amount of time spent already, he quickly figures out an average per-drawer time estimate. Thinking about the remaining drawers, he knows how much more time will be needed to finish the job.

With frustration, he breathes out a sigh.

Vermont Public Radio gives the weather. The heat will continue. And rain.

He peers at the overcast sky—the drops had stopped falling, and it is still really hot—and then at the lone bottle of tonic water laying in the back seat. I'll need more, he thinks. Next to coffee, tonic water is his poison. Literally. Taste aside, the old teacher is unsure how great it is for his body. A few concerned parents have given him articles about quinine poisoning; although he dismisses this as catastrophizing, the thought haunts him at times. Typically, he limits his intake to a single liter bottle a day, just to be on the safe side. Today is different—his compulsion around these bones has only fed his coffee and tonic water addictions.

Silently, he curses his weakness. _The body. The coffee. The tonic water._

He does not want to spend the day flipping through files. Gears shifting, the Festiva turns into the Mobile Mart.

There is a small child staring at him.

Having already begun sweating off his cups of morning coffee, Horse is buying more tonic water. For years, it had been only liquor stores that old it, giving the local gossips something to wag their tongues over as he often left with a large, nondescript brown paper bags each week. It had even been noted at a school board meeting. Now, tonic water is stocked nearly everywhere—even the Mobile Mart carries it. Six liters are now in his basket. He decides to pick up lunch, too.

Looking at a package of Boca Chik'n patties, he turns to find a small boy staring at him, a look of fear spreading over his tiny face. The kid is eight years old, Horse gauges, and wearing ratty sneakers and cheap shorts meant to look like they are for soccer. Low quality. His Red Sox shirt is an overly washed version of those for sale at the front of the store—but with a former baseball hero's name on the back over a number that has since been recycled. Second hand, Horse thinks.

Ignoring him, Horse turns back to the freezer and compares prices between the two imitation chicken patty products—Boca Chik'n and Morningstar Farms Chik patties. While he tries to think of any taste difference between the two (he cannot) the boy continues to stare.

He can feel it—eyes boring into his back.

When he turns around, the mother is standing where the boy had been.

"Hello," she says, tentatively.

"Hi," is Horse's reply, in a tone that clearly states his disinterest in carrying on any kind of conversation. _Especially one with a parent_ , he thinks.

"Can I ask you a question?" she asks.

He holds up the Boca and Morningstar Farms boxes in response.

"Only if you can tell me the difference between these two products."

She seriously considers both before stating, thoughtfully and with puzzled eyes, "No... I don't know."

Not hearing an answer that he can use, Horse turns back to the freezer and looks at the prices—the final arbiter. It is the parents, he thinks sullenly. "Always the parents," he often mutters to Wells. Parents are the idiots always driveling on about inane topics that anyone in their right mind would know are not appropriate for a supermarket aisle. Private matters are for private meetings. But her figure is reflected in the class door in front of Horse.

She is not going anywhere, he knows.

"I wanted to ask you about teachers," she announces to his back.

In response, he grabs one of the boxes, turns and heads to the register. Undaunted, she follows. "Joey, here is entering the third grade ( _eight; I am right_ , he thinks). What teacher do you think he should get?"

Inside, Horse groans.

Placement.

More effort and hand-wringing is spent on placing students in classrooms than any other, even as study after study shows that matching teaching style with learning style has little correlation. He has told anyone who would listen that. No one listens. Parents, teachers and students all second guess the decision that is more over-engineered and over-thought than decisions about reading programs or math scores. The process continues to cause much hand wringing, despite the data that says it matters little.

What a time waste, Horse thinks to himself.

Every March, grade level teachers at Grace Haven begin the placement process, consisting of nearly two months of weekly meetings and thousands of sticky notes tracking the talents and idiosyncrasies of the population. Each meeting ended with a careful removal of the sticky notes from the board "to maintain the confidentiality of the process." At the start of the next meeting, the sticky notes are put back, the list meticulously recreated. "I don't know how we did this before sticky notes," Horse once quipped. "Alphabetical," Wells replied at the time. The process always includes all of the relevant stakeholders—teachers, administrators, guidance, special education. In June, the list is revealed. Then the parents flood the office with complaints, undoing much of the effort. Horse has to admire that, facing angry parents, Wells is always the last person standing.

The process repeats itself each year.

Horse is much more efficient. He rolls dice. There are only two eighth grade classrooms for a student to be placed in. For each student, he rolls a twelve-sided die left over from a Dungeons and Dragons unit he had once taught. Odd numbered students go into one classroom, evens in the other. After checking for a numeric balance (as per probability theory, they are always close) and the most egregious flaws are iron out. (He had once had a student whose father had an affair with the mother of a second student, which had ruined two marriages six months before, in the same class, but that is the only time the system had let him down). He shows it to anyone who cares, gets approval and types it up—an hour's time, at most.

Standing at the Mobile Mart register, the mother having trailed him, Horse asks, "What teacher does he have assigned to him now?" There is clear aggravation in his voice.

She tells him.

"Not her," he advises, swiping his Union Bank debit card. "You don't want her for your son."

"Why not?"

"If you're going to begin the year questioning placement and whatever teacher is _lucky_ enough to have your son put in her class..." He has stressed the word lucky, and pauses for effect. "And asking strangers in the Mobile Mart to rate teachers for a kid he doesn't even know (pause), it's probably best for the kid and his teacher that you pull him now and start fresh."

"That's best for Joey?"

"It's best for the teacher to be away from you."

Because you are crazy, he thinks. A thought he often has when talking with parents.

Pulling out of the Mobile Mart's chaotic parking lot, Horse's mind turns to the problem of the files as he waits for a break in the traffic. At times like this, Horse often thinks of shortcuts in processes. Innovation, he believes, is a product of laziness. Find a shortcut, do less work.

His tape player jams.

When he had bought the car, it is extremely used and came with an old cassette tape player. A Sanyo, it had been installed aftermarket—very much after market, Horse thought at the time, as it is jerry-rigged into a space where the original radio had been hastily removed. Kicked out, the previous owner had said. Horse had a lot of old cassette tapes, some mixed tapes that preceded his teaching career, and they now keep him company when the news grew repetitive. From discarded boxes left on the roadside, he finds countless more—both mixed and professional. The floor of the passenger seat is littered with old tapes and cracked cases that had been worth listening to once and now wait for the trash.

Hitting the players with the heel of his right hand, on the third rap the cassette pops out. Not all of the tape inside the case comes with it, instead unspooling onto his shift gear. It is an old mixed tape, given to him by the mother of a child who did not want to be in his class. There had been meetings, as there are every year, and no real resolution. The parent's thought is that, if Horse listened to the mix tape, he would understand the child better. Surprisingly, he listened. More surprising, to him, is that it worked. Horse held onto the tape.

Looking at the thin, twisted unspooled tape Horse concludes it is ruined. He thinks about the battle over placement, and wonders where that child is now. _In college?_

Then, inspiration hits.

_Placement_ , he thinks.

Unlike today, he had once taken the task of student placement seriously. He had listened when the sixth grade teachers had told him about the upcoming seventh graders. He even took notes. Somewhere in his personal files are a few pages ripped from a yellow legal pad, and on them he might find the name that went with the bones. The answer sits in a filing cabinet in his classroom. Changing direction, he heads back to town and Grace Haven Elementary.

Then, fifty yards from his k-turn, his car breaks down.

Loath to call a mechanic, he wiggles wires for a while. It begins to rain a little harder, and Horse leans forward to get his head and torso under the hood. Just as he is about the give up he determines the fusible link has burned out just near where it clips onto one side of the fuse box. It is a chance discovery. With effort, he is able to cram the burnt end of the wire into the female clip, bringing the car back to life. Soon after, he pulls into the Grace Haven Elementary parking lot.

"Back twice in the same week?" Ms. Binnis greets him as they pass in the entrance hallway.

"I missed you," he sneers back, walking past her.

Heading towards his classroom, a line of five tall orange cones blocks him from entering his wing of the school.

The hallways are being waxed.

Now done, no one can walk that way for twenty-four hours while the wax dries. Before leaving, he contemplates doing it anyway. That action would ruin a day of work, requiring it all to be stripped and rewaxed just as projects pile up before the students return. His sympathies lie with the maintenance staff. He leaves through the front door—noting Ms. Binnis' smirk through the office door—and circles around the building. Fortunately, with the janitors airing out the rooms from various painting and cleaning projects, the security of the building is a bit lax. He finds his room and an open window. Carefully, he works his way through the window and into his classroom. On the way in, his shirt catches on the latch and rips. He hit his knee, hard, on the floor, too.

Standing at the edge of his room, he surveys the damage. His floor had been waxed earlier, and every desk, table and chair is now piled by the wall that holds his whiteboard. They also serve as a barricade for his filing cabinets.

"Why am I here?" he asks himself. His porch, Adirondack chair and refrigerator cooling a few beers come to mind.

His compulsions depress him when he thinks about them for too long, so he begins moving stacks of chairs—trying hard not to scratch his newly waxed floor. After ten minutes, the drawer he needs is free.

In another five, he has the list.

Before he leaves, he swings by the main office.

No Ms. Binnis at her desk behind the counter.

No Wells in his office.

As Horse turns, he nearly runs the secretary down.

"Sorry," he says with surprise.

"You should be," Ms. Binnis replies curtly, attempting to be more professional than judgmental.

"Where's the big man?"

"Wells?" She makes her way around him and her counter to settle in her seat. "He's out. There's some big meeting at the superintendent's office."

The superintendent is supposed to be on vacation, he thought. Who is meeting?

She won't tell me, he thinks.

He turns to leave when she stops him.

"Because I'm a nice soul," she says sarcastically. "I'll save you the trip. The Annex is closed. The file room will be locked up."

Turning back, he saysr, "Thanks." He holds up the yellow sheets torn long ago from a legal pad.

"It's summer," she replies, as if that explains everything.
Chapter Nine

"Any word from the forensic anthropologist?"

"Because they would call me if they had news," Wells replies sarcastically.

"They might," Horse mutters. "Danielson is telling you everything, it seems."

"Don't tell me you're jealous?"

The two sit on Horse's front porch.

His porch sweeps the entire front of the small house. When he bought the house, his partner at the time had hoped to be more social, even if it meant dragging Horse along with the plan. The porch lacked a railing, exposing it to the sidewalk that ran up Fitch. Being in the village, they faced every soul who walked by. It would be, Petra thought, their invitation to the community.

She had left before he had invited a single visitor.

At her request there had been a porch swing, but neglect through eighteen winters had shattered it; the remains burnt in a backyard fire. Only the hooks screwed into the porch roof beams remain. Although he has had few visitors in the intervening thirty years, the porch has two chairs in moderately good condition. Both are Adirondack deck chairs, sporting wide arms suitable for drinks in large glasses. One is a peeling blue, the other a faded yellow. Made of pine, they had been cut and assembled by students eager to avoid reading _Shane_ , then required reading for the district.

"Alternative education," Horse had said at the time.

No one had asked the connection to the book, or what it is an alternative to.

On this day, Horse is drinking a warm vodka martini out of an old artist coffee mug that came from making a pledge to Vermont Public Radio; Wells a Long Trail Ale from the bottle.

"They think it's a boy," Horse says, as an aside.

"Think?"

"Well, they use the pelvis and skull to identify gender. Unfortunately, a teen just starting puberty is a pelvis in transition."

"So they really don't know."

"No. But the teeth show the body is just entering middle school."

"So he might have been one of ours."

"Probably."

Both men finish their drinks.

Just as quickly, Horse gets up for another round.

"There's more," Wells says. "Why don't you just tell me, instead of drawing your news out."

"What makes you think that?" Horse asks. He takes more than a sip from his mug, closes his eyes and let the taste settle in.

"You got another round."

"So?"

"So, you want to tell me something more, so you got another round so we could talk and drink."

"Perhaps I like your company."

"If that were true, you'd have started talking as soon as you handed me my drink."

"Perhaps I wanted to give you the floor." Horse smiles.

"We can talk about how you stole my VPR mug," Wells says.

Throughout Vermont, people who relent to pledge drives in support of Vermont Public Radio are rewarded with a mug. Every year the work of a local artist adorned the side. Vermont cupboards are teeming with them.

"Wrong," Horse replies to the accusation. He takes a sip. "It's mine."

"You don't give to charities," Wells notes.

"I pay for what I use."

"Anonymously. And, without compensation." Wells smiles. "In fact, you've ranted several times about people having to be bribed to do a good deed."

The two have very different ideas about the practice. Horse thinks the inducement a form of moral corruption. Wells sees it as a thank-you. As an educational leader, he also knows that little trinkets—the right trinket—bind people to a cause. Wells had hundreds of Grace Elementary School mugs made up, and he prudently awards them to volunteers, parents and community members in recognition of great work. It is a Machiavellian play of the community—one he borrowed from the superintendent—but it works. "At less than two dollars a mug," he had told Horse once, "I get at least a hundred hours of work. And, an emotional binding to the school."

Horse admires the strategy, but on the porch he says nothing .

It is Wells' mug. He had walked out of Wells' house with it last winter, but he is not going to admit it. Not then.

Then, neither say a word.

So Horse takes another sip.

"I know," he says, finally, "who the kid is."

Surprised, Wells asks for the name.

"Thomas Brooks."

After thirty years and being responsible for thousands of kids, the old principal is still able to pull an image of the kid from his mind. It is one of his tricks—and endears him to the community. This kid had been in sixth grade, and Wells is still teaching seventh—he is not yet principal. His exposure to Brooks is limited. Yet, he summons up him instantly.

As he recalls him, Thomas Brooks is thin, but on the tall side. Big for his age, if that is possible while still looking malnurished. Dark hair. Bad teeth; crooked. Wells is unsure if he is too young for braces, or too poor. Struggled with reading. Never had a book bag and even sometimes did not have a coat. No behavioral issues. Desire to do well. Hopelessly disorganized and a bit immature for his age. Always tired. And hungry. But happy. Wore a red Star Wars t-shirt. Nearly every day he wore it. At the time, he had wondered if he even had other shirts.

None of this he tells Horse, yet.

"The sixth grade teacher said she thought he needed glasses," Horse reports, breaking the principal's thoughts.

"Where did he live?" Wells asks.

With many families, the principal attempts to make contact with a parent. Often, he gets in his car and drives to the home—that visit often yields more information than he wants, the crushing poverty overwhelming his ability to help. Wells knows every house in the area.

"I don't know," Horse replies. "Yet."

The principal looks at him curiously. Horse would not have mentioned the boy's name if he had not collected every possible fact.

"I didn't get to central office in time to pull the file," Horse replies to the look. "I told you because...."

"I'm your friend?"

"I thought you might remember the kid."

"I do."

"And?"

"He liked Star Wars."

Horse raises his head, interested in that fact. He, too, likes Star Wars and sees other fans as one of a tribe.

"Why do you say that?"

Wells tells him the memory of the shirt.

"Perhaps he didn't wear it because he is a fan," Horse theorizes. "Chances are, he only had a few shirts. If that's true, I suspect that shirt came to him, but is not chosen by him."

"Perhaps."

"Look at that Mill kid last year."

"The New York Jets fan."

"He's a Patriots fan. If you look at his tag it's got the name Johnson on it."

"Yard sale," Wells concludes.

"Lost and found."

"How do you know."

"I asked Johnson." Horse smiles. "He lost his shirt at some point during soccer season."

"We don't have a Johnson."

"We did."

"Three years ago." Wells turns and looks at Horse, beginning to understand what this meant. "How did Mill get the shirt?"

"I asked his mom."

"Asked?" Wells is surprised.

"Asked her to confirm," Horse concedes.

"And?"

"And, she goes to lost and found and finds as many clothing items as she can for her kid."

"And no one notices?"

"She only chooses things that are a few sizes too big...."

"...So that a kid who lost his shirt on Monday won't see it on Tuesday."

"Exactly."

"So you think Brooks might not be a Star Wars fan."

"If poverty can make a Patriots fan wear a Jet's jersey, we can't assume anything."

"I took care of the problem with the Mills kid," Horse mentions as an aside.

"You bought him a Patriots shirt."

"Although," Horse adds, thinking of Brooks and taking a sip of his drink, "one could do worse than Star Wars."
Chapter Ten

Returning to central office the next morning—Wells assured him The Annex would be open, even as the superintendent is leaving for yet another conference—Horse finds the file with little difficulty. The room is still hot, and cramped, but the loose alphabetical nature of the organization leads him to the second B filing cabinet. Not that it is labeled correctly, but Horse soon picks up on the internal logic that goes with the room. Dead records tend to be more discarded than filed, but often discarded in the same way.

Looking for the file, he makes another discovery: Coffee mugs. The boxes on top of the filing cabinets, closed away in The Annex, are all filled with mugs.

"Mugs," Horse mutters. "The bane of teaching."

" _How many do you have?"_ Wells had once asked him.

"How many Christmases have I endured unimaginative gifting from students?"

"Okay, how many from school functions?"

"I'm not going to count the ones from conferences and other 'professional development' events."

"You don't go to 'professional development' events."

"Not ones with mugs." At the time, Horse is imaging the drying tray in the faculty room, which is overflowing with such mugs. Then he tells Wells, "When the superintendent first arrived I got my _Change a Mind, Change the World_ mug."

"One?"

"I now have three. One blue. Two red."

"I thought he only gave them to new teachers?"

"I have one red mug for every five years of service. But only the years of service the superintendant has been here for."

"Three, total."

Horse had nodded.

"I imagine a closet somewhere that served only to store these mugs," Horse had said at the time. "The guy's so cheap."

"Thrifty," Wells had replied with a cough. "Not a bad trait in an administrator."

Horse ignored that defense. "He probably bought them in bulk the week he is hired and he'll give the last one out the day he quits."

Wells said nothing at the time, because he knew Horse is mostly right—except that the last mug the superintendent is saving is for himself.

Standing in that storage room, Horse smiles. File in hand, he brushes the shards with his foot into a crack between two cabinets and leaves. He hardly notices that it is pouring rain as he walks out to his car.

Returning to Grace Haven, Horse makes an unplanned stop. Just as he is about to pass the Clutter Barn, his car begins to stutter and lose power. Yanking at the wheel, the car veers sharply into the left most parking spot. It is not a safe turn, as the rain made the visibility poor on an ordinarily fast curve.

Still, no time like the present, he thinks.

It is not a barn. Mostly clad in sheet metal, it lingers like a guest long after the party ends. The color is someone's failed attempt at capturing the look of mold, now long faded, because Horse cannot image anyone purposely putting that color on the side of building for any other reason. A light coat of yellow pollen, complimented with black water stains, adds to its neglected look. The metal is punctuated with dents, most from the fallen pine branches that follow severe ice storms. There are odd, small windows that had made sense in some past endeavor but that now look randomly placed. In a few, Horse can see the edges of the pages of several books; Gutman, the owner, has built a bookshelf right over the window. There are two large garage bay doors, but they have not been opened since forever. Stepping out of the car, his feet crunch on the gravel as he strides to the entrance, an old, heavy, once-white door with a cheap gold door knob and a kick plate made of rust.

Horse can remember when it had been a garage, although the name of the business, or even the specific nature of their work, he could not recall. Every town in rural Vermont has such buildings—that sit on the outskirts of town, anonymously, for decades, escaping the notice of everyone except those who interact with it directly. Now, he stands before Grace Haven's. It has been converted to a second hand store. Except for the modest sign announcing "antiques and knick-knacks" the bay doors and dirty appearance give little indication of being anything but a garage.

Having no gutters, the rain runs off of the roof. The drops drill a small ditch along the foundation.

The door is stuck. With no awning over it, the rain drop, drop, drops into his shoulders and back.

Horse puts his shoulder, gingerly, to it and the door opens with a snap. He notices the _OPEN_ sign, faded by sunlight, behind the glass of the door's faux Colonial window. _Welcome_ , another faded sign greets.

Nothing is welcoming about the room.

Entering, he notes a flag, this one blue, white and red, proclaiming the same _OPEN_ message. The fabric is worn from years in the elements; Gutman, the owner, rarely takes it in at night, much less in bad weather. Horse wonders if he lives here, and thus never officially closes.

Inside, the layout does not match the spirit of the titular word "clutter". Clutter, Horse argues, implied some whimsy.

This is a dump.

Walking into the interior, he passes rows of gray steel industrial shelving lit with rows of old, long industrial florescent lights. Above the lights hang a still darkness clogged with dust. And grime. Shelves eight feet high, the old teacher notes that there are seven rows, all told. In their arrangement, Horse is reminded of the labyrinth Daedalus had designed to hold the Minotaur. In case of fire, no one gets out alive. It is all breathing dust and smelling stale oil. A large industrial fan, attached to a vent that connects to the outside, turns slowly in the corner, moving the hot air around but not sending it far.

The sound of the rain pounding the metal roof echoes everywhere.

Horse is sweating.

He picks up a rusted hatchet with a large nick on the blade.

Covering the shelves is every bit of knickknack imaginable; too much for Horse to take in. People often state, "That guy's got everything." Thinking about other antique stores in the area, Horse can see how Gutman is different. The Clutter Barn does not have much that most people would want. It is a place of last resort. Horse himself had once found a replacement carburetor for his Festiva—he is not sure it is even the right one for his car—but it fits and the old car on the road. _Well, until today_ , he thinks. When he found it, though, the old teacher had been looking for an old pair of glasses that he could put new frames in (he never found those).

He puts down the hatchet; it is there last month when he visited.

"Can I help you?" comes a raspy voice Horse cannot see.

"No, thanks," Horse replies into the dark.

Gutman himself—Ray Gutman—is in his forties and looks as if he has not seen sunlight in months. Students tell him that he is hiding from someone. The mob, goes the latest theory. Horse has to admit that Gutman does give off the idea of purposely living in the dark. His hair is dark and he has a face that seems to be perpetually in the shadows. Smudges cover his face and arms and clothing. The man has a nice head of hair—thick, but unwashed—and he constantly moves his fingers through it as a comb. Sometimes he wears glasses—but not today.

Whenever Horse visits, the man is bent over his table with a collection of tin soldiers. Gutman paints them—crafts them so that each is an individual—and sells them on the internet. "It keeps the place afloat," Gutman told Horse once. He has soft hands, the teacher has noted when taking change from him, because he often wears latex gloves while he works on his pieces. Not one for chatter, the proprietor still opens up a bit to Horse. The reclusive shopkeeper is a native of Grace Haven, although he had moved onto the high school by the time Horse started teaching. The other old hands had stories about the boy. _Confident. A ladies' man._ Those in the village who remember that boy wonder what happened; now he sits in the dark of his store and makes tin soldiers. "Pour them myself," he told the teacher. "Been doing it since I is a kid."

"That's great," Horse replied at the time. "I'm just going to look around."

_He should think about better ventilation_ , he had thought, walking away.

It is his love of making tin soldiers that brought the young Gutman to the shop. He is not the shop's originator, but bought it from an overwhelmed housewife who is trying to make a go of an antique business. Both the building and the stock worked against the original enterprise, as that old owner tried to put a hat on a white elephant. Gutman, the locals tell, simply allowed it to become what it had wanted to be—a junk shop that enables him to make his little toys.

Gutman's stock comes, in part, from the town dump. A regular after it closes for the day, he uses a key to the gate that had been given to him during a stint as a volunteer fireman (no one had yet taken it back). This late night access allows him to pick from the metal scrap pile for the good parts of bad lawnmowers, tractors, and industrial power tools. A good number of antiques find themselves on the pile, too—Vermonters rarely know the value of the contents of their own barns. All of that is supplemented with the remains of yard sales. After the regular customers stop coming, boxes of items are often placed by the curb with a FREE sign propped up against them. At night, Gutman forages through them. What sales he makes helps support his hobby, which in turn helps pay the mortgage and allows him to resupply the place.

What Horse finds on a shelving unit by the door are a number of bottles. He has never understood bottle collecting—the motivation. His mother had taken bottles she thought interesting and balanced them on top of window sashes. She liked how the light shined through them, she had said. _Dust_ , he thought.

"What's this?" he mutters to himself, pulling a bottle from the collection.

It is half filled with a brown liquid. No label. Unscrewing the cap, he smells it. Scotch. Cheap scotch, he qualifies. Looking at the side for the expiration date, Horse notes that it is recent.

"Ah," Gutman says from his perch. "That's where I put it."

He rises and creaks his way over to where Horse is standing. Although he is younger than Horse by a few years, he walks with a stoop from years at the bench. He wears denim cutoffs and a navy blue short-sleeve Dickie button down work shirt. They are dirty from the soldiers, and he has small wisps of paint from the file brushes used for the detail work. In the stuffy room, he is sweating. Again, he runs his fingers through his hair as he approaches. His hands are stained, the gloves not preventing it all from getting on him. Grabbing the bottle by the neck, he twists off the cap and takes a sip.

"Are you putting on a show for me?" Horse asks.

"What do you mean?"

"That." Horse makes a motion towards the bottle.

"A highly functioning alcoholic. Hide in plain sight," Gutman replies with a smile.

"Exactly," Horse confirms.

"Can I offer you a wee bit?"

"Not after you slobbered into the bottle."

"Oh, you worry too much."

Horse looks him up and down and decides he worried just right. Maybe he is an alcoholic. Why would he put on a show? _To keep people away? To create a quirky local character to get tongues wagging?'_

Gutman looks at him, hard.

"You wonder about the bottle?" he asks. "If you don't give people a story, they fill in the blanks themselves. I'm giving them something pretty stock-and-barrel."

"You could always be something more positive?"

"Oh, you're going to give me advice on how to win friends and influence people?"

Horse shrugs.

"Looking for more comic books?" Gutman says as he walks back to the counter.

"No," Horse lies. He is always keeping his eyes open for comic books. "Do you have any new ones?"

"For the students, right?"

"Of course," he lies for the second time.

"Yes." Gutman motions to a shelf by the door, behind where the bottles lie. A few stacks of magazines and comic books mingle together. "Some new. Some old."

"Thanks."

Gutman goes back to his work. The one window in the place that lets in a fair amount of natural light is by his workspace. A large picture window besides him, it is streaked with grime.

On the sill stand hundreds of tin soldiers.

Before the counter now stands a customer who had slipped in during the scotch conversation. Peering over his shoulder, Horse figures from his clothing that he is from out-of-state.

"Lead soldiers," Gutman tells the man in response to a question Horse has not heard.

"Surely, they don't use lead anymore," the man says.

"No," Gutman admits. He sits down and looks up at the man. "A tin, lead, cadmium and bismuth alloy. I'm not sure anymore—I used to get it sent to me, but now I use whatever I can melt down."

"That can't be safe."

Gutman's eyes narrow and he barks, "It's art, not a toy!"

His eyes sweeping the army on the sill, the man asks about the cost of a single one.

Those eyes widen when Gutman gives him the answer.

"The internet can't be wrong, right?" Gutman chuckles, with a hint of distain mixed in.

"I heard you were good."

Gutman gives the customer a second look.

"Let's get down to business, then."

Horse hears them both chuckle as the man makes his way around the counter and up to the window.

His attention returns to the stash of comic books before him. All are forgettable. Old as he feels, these books are in worse condition. Covers worn and faded from normal use, they are not the stash of a collector but the occasional buyer—from twenty years ago.

A mother cleaned out her attic, he thinks.

Without much care he separates the magazines from the comic books, the resulting stack being a few inches high. Mixed in are a bunch of Aquaman, a few Daredevils, and a stack of titles not worth mentioning. He does find two issues of Uncle Scrooge, his favorite. Flipping through the box, Horse thinks about how some heroes come in and then go out of fashion.

Scooping up the entire pile, he makes his way to the counter. The man in the leather shoes and collared shirt is concluding his transaction. Under his arm is a shoebox and on his face is a smile. The old teacher drops the pile on the counter, announcing his readiness to buy.

"You can't resist," Gutman says bluntly.

"I can." Horse looks down at the small stack. "Five bucks."

"For comic books?" Leaning on the counter, he tells the teacher, "They're collectors."

"Then put them on eBay."

"No time."

"Then they're worth what you can get for them."

"Which is more than five."

"Who'll know you have them?"

"Tourists."

"They're taking up valuable shelf space."

Gutman laughs.

The man likes Horse; knows of him by reputation. He remembers when the teacher came to Grace Haven, and since then his reputation has only grown. Much like himself. The shopkeeper has few friends, but people talk while browsing the aisles. He likes what he has heard. Still, he will not let the teacher make the rules in his own store.

After making a show of looking around his dark hole, Gutman tells Horse, "Does it look as if I have any valuable shelf space? Or if I really care?"

"I concede the point."

"Twenty."

"Ten."

They haggle down to twelve.

"Can I write a check?"

"I'd rather you didn't."

Of course he does not take credit cards.

"Leave it," Gutman mutters, indicating the counter. The bargaining done, he now is fully engaged in his painting.

"I need change," Horse replies, two ten dollar bills in hand.

"Then the price is ten."

Horse put a bill on the counter.

Then he looks at his hand.

It is covered with light grey dust, which he wipes on his pants. As the door closes, the slight breeze it makes ruffles the edges of the ten dollar bill left behind on the counter, dirty with a grey thumbprint on Alexander Hamilton's face.
Chapter Eleven

"It's kind of creepy," Steve mutters to Sarah as the two sit for their break.

The sidewalk job is back on.

"I keep expecting another body to be under each slab."

"You didn't even find the one," Sarah replies.

"It still gives me the creeps."

"You watch too many horror movies," she says, feeling a bit creeped out herself. "Most crimes are mundane."

"The kid is buried under the sidewalk."

To this, Sarah shrugs—she does not want to think about it.

Grace Haven has dried out over the past few days, enough so that the skidder will not sink into the grass and earth. Forensics has gotten all it could from the site, but asked everyone to be vigilant as they proceed. The warning causes Sarah to shiver. Unlike Steve, who has been idle and waiting for the call, Larry's skills have been scooped up by a local contractor. Through some negotiation Horse is able to borrow the kid back for a week.

"You're pushing it a bit close," Larry says to Horse as the two drink their coffees. They are sitting on the edge of the scoop.

"Did I have a choice?"

"You could hire someone else."

"Could," the old teacher coughs out.

But didn't.

It is hot, but the two still enjoye their second cup of the day. Larry is dirty, having wrestled five slabs from the ground that morning. The boss looks dirty because he is wearing clothes needing a wash. His dirt comes from failed attempts at fixing his car—crawling in and out from underneath, mostly.

"What did you do before you hired me?"

"There's always a new kid."

"Is that what you said to the last kid?"

"Didn't have to." Horse turns towards him. "He graduated and left."

"Where to?"

"No idea."

"Do you want to know?"

"I want to get this sidewalk done," Horse spits, looking away.

"I'm surprised Laporte let me take the time off for this."

Laporte runs the local contracting business, which builds nearly every major construction project in the county. For northern Vermont, his small army of diggers and trucks are employed on projects large and small. Its owner also has a reputation for being unscrupulous when it comes to bits and competition. Horse has reason to suspect he sidelines in selling drugs, too. For years Laporte has been trying to win the bids for local sidewalks, to no avail. The job is too small for Laporte to make much of an effort, and the teacher's legacy for quality sidewalks and low bids gives local towns little reason to jump to a contractor many people personally loathe. Horse is not surprised to hear Laporte has hired Larry—for all the man's faults, he can spot talented, conscientious and hardworking employees and hold on to them. The teacher, though, is surprised Laporte has made the kid available.

"He's a generous man." Horse says with sarcasm.

"No, really," Larry wants to know, "how'd you do it?"

Larry is a smart one, Horse thinks. He can see Laporte for who he is—a man does favors to gain an advantage.

"It's worth his while."

Horse recalls the previous year, when he tripped over Laporte's loose ends and sketchy side pursuits while trying to find the parent of a student. No threats were made—Horse does not care much about the contractor's dealings and knows blackmail never ends well for anyone involved—but if he can push some advantage to make the man do the human thing, so be it. His standing in Laporte's office is enough to wedge a week out of Larry's schedule.

"Is he going to take over the sidewalk contracts?" Larry asks.

"Something like that."

To be honest, Horse has not thought about who would take the contracts if he, indeed, stops putting in low bids on them. Laporte will certainly be a natural winning bidder, he thinks, sipping the last dregs of his cup. The old teacher is not sure how he feels about that; the guy is an ass. Horse knows Laporte does not like a teacher having something on him. To bid or not? Horse thinks—at the very least, he likes outbidding him each year.

"Work time," he mutters as he throws his empty cup into the scoop.

"Up!" he yells to Steve and Sarah. "Time to earn your pay."

With a grunt they rise.

The digger comes to life and soon reveals another square of earth, free of human remains.

The visit with Laporte had been interesting for another reason—the contractor had known Thomas Brooks' mother.

"You're old enough," Horse had said, before telling him her name.

"What," the old contractor had replied, "you think I know every person in the county?

"You might."

He told Laporte the name. By coincidence, he did know her.

"She is friends with my secretary at the time." He smiled, lost in thought. "The girl came to one of our Christmas parties."

Christmas parties at Laporte Contracting are infamous. They began at two, when a couple of Laporte's senior men would return with a pickup truck full of spirits—two dozen bottles of Jack Daniels and a few cases of cheap rum and vodka—all packed in snow. In the tailgate would be two kegs of inexpensive beer. As the rest of Laporte's workers returned from their jobsites, the boss would walk to his own truck where, in the bed, sat several boxes of blue thermal coffee mugs with the LAPORTE CONTRACTING on the side. Everyone in the county knew the name and the logo as it is written in the same, simple, bold font on the side of dozens of blue trucks and pieces of heavy machinery. You couldn't drive far around Grace Haven without being stuck behind one. He made sure that when every worker had their morning coffee they would remember who they worked for.

It is tradition.

And Christmas is where they earned one. Laporte's tradition included every thermal mug being stuffed with cash—a holiday bonus. Old hands watched and hid smirks as new hires gave a slight sneer at the cheap "present" from the boss, not knowing yet what is inside. Looking down as they poured, they would then see Ben Franklin looking up at them, floating on their drink. Monday morning saw a number of whiskey smelling bills being deposited at the local branch of Union Bank.

"Do you remember her?"

"Only that her kid got into the shed and nearly killed himself falling off a digger."

After that party Laporte had decided to start watering down the booze—and limit the party to close relatives. _Too much liability._

"That must have killed the mood, a kid nearly dying."

"The whole party came to a screeching halt. Blood does not make a merry time. The kid is screaming and that echoed around the shed. He wouldn't shut up."

"Kids," Horse mocked.

"Then there is the ambulance." Laporte smirked and shook his head, remembering the boy and the gushing head and the lights. For a moment, they both are silent.

"Bad?"

"Concussion." He paused. "Edge of the bucket opened a gash. Some stiches."

"Drunk?"

"I think he is ten," Laporte snorted.

"That answers liability, not the question." Horse added, "And I don't care either way, culpability-wise."

"Why do you care?"

"I'm a teacher. I care about students."

He laughed. "That kid's, what, forty now? Even you don't care that much."

"No, I don't. Just answer the question: is the kid drunk?"

"No." Laporte chuckled at the memory. "I think his mother is sober, too."

"Did it cost you?"

"No, she had insurance through the state and a closed mouth."

"And that is it."

"No police. No insurance problems. No lawsuit."

"But you remember her."

"Oh, yeah."

He did not ask why, after thirty years, she still stuck in his mind. Horse could think of a few reasons, most having to do with the camp cot he kept in the room behind his office. Discrete as he was, the teacher had caught him the year before entertaining the wife of a business colleague.

They talked a bit about the sidewalk business, and how Laporte had heard the old teacher is walking away from the business.

"You've held those bids for a long time," Laporte observed.

"Small potatoes for you, I'd guess."

"Small potatoes grow if you tend to them right." Laporte looked out into the distance, lost a bit in thought. Then he added, "It's nice to have a few small projects for cash flow reasons."

"You should lower your bid."

"A potato that small isn't going to grow no matter how much you tend to it." The contractor kicked at the ground a bit. "If this is your last year, I think I could meet the town half way. Especially if I folded it in with a few other jobs that I know are coming up."

"Well, it would be nice if this last job went smoothly."

"Yeah, you've already run into a few unexpected delays." He smiled and said, "It would be a shame if more popped up."

"Like losing my operator?"

"Or not being able to rent a digger."

"Well," Horse began, rubbing his chin. "I hate to go out on a bad note. If this year doesn't go well, I might have to bid on the Pine Street project coming up."

When he left, Horse had a little more information about the Brooks, plus a week of Larry and the cheap rental of a digger.

But Laporte had something more valuable, which Old Horse could not have anticipated.

Chapter Twelve

"Is there a reason I shouldn't be developing there?" Leporte asks Gutman.

"Nostalgia."

The two sit at a bar outside of Morrisville, at Laporte's invitation. The Sap Bucket, the sign says in the parking lot. In the evenings, patrons can buy a six pack of domestic bottles in an old tin sap bucket, all packed in ice. This week's special is Corona Light. Most of the time it is Miller High Life. The bar is founded on this gimmick. Five years prior, with the liquor license awarded, the theme is embraced and quickly abandoned. The bar is at the end of stripmall—metal siding and looking nothing like a sugarhouse—with a Chinese restaurant at the other end. Now, only dusty blue tubing strung around the walls of the room and wall sconces with sap bucket shades remain as a reminder of the theme. In March, the bar hosts a "sugar on snow" event, but with snowcones flavored with rum instead of maple syrup.

Laporte drinks a local draft that is not very good but that tourists like. Gutman takes a long drink from a can of Budweiser. They both look at the other's reflection in the mirror behind the liquor, talking without talking. Although Laporte has at least fifteen years on him, Gutman looks near death. His skin is grey, fingers knotty. Sitting in silence, the bartender goes to another room—it is early, the bar empty and he has just gotten a delivery that needs to be put away. Laporte has used the bar for other meetings, and the bartender knows his participation is not desired.

"I've been sitting on this property for quite a while."

"And it doesn't bring in a profit?"

"It doesn't lose money. But the tax laws keep changing. And, I don't know how I feel being a slumlord."

"Does anyone know you own it?"

"Not many."

"Then what's the problem? You don't seem to be someone who worries about his reputation"

Laporte takes a deep breath in. This is bullshit, he thinks. He's not in business to take orders from others—especially a loser like this.

The property north of Grace Haven that he owns is causing him nothing but grief.

Baileys Bend.

It has been a problem since he bought it a few decades before. A few run-down rental properties—the remnants of an old farm—but he has long held hopes to develop it. When the economy dipped a decade prior the demand for new housing dropped further. He sits on it, now, letting those who live there remain and pay a nominal rent. That pays the taxes, plus nets him a tidy profit during difficult times. Problems began when his side ventures overlapped with some of the tenants. Northern Vermont is small, and rumors run strong. Throughout the decade, he has walked a fine line.

Then the economy improved.

And more trouble. Sending a few surveyors to map out the property, Gutman is in his office the next day making threats.

"We have to resolve this," Laporte says, taking another mouthful of beer. His face tightens.

Looking down at the bar lies a coaster, torn apart by Gutman.

"There's nothing to resolve."

"You are not giving me much reason not to move forward."

"You know enough not to."

This is a threat, thinks Laporte. He knows threats—makes them. When circumstances move beyond a rationale point of negotiation, threats are put on the table. Always. Fight or flight, he thinks. He has got a weak hand. But he will not walk away. Inside, Laporte smiles. Anyone who shreds their coaster, peels labels off of their bottle or bites their nails does not have the disposition to carry a deal through rough waters. He looks at the mirror to see if he has a smile on his face, too, to match the one inside. He does.

_I've put up with this for too long_ , he concludes.

The antique dealer looks for the bartender.

"I'd like to know your reason."

"Guess," Gutman says.

"Drugs."

"No."

Laporte believes him. He had sent a few men over to inspect the property—not surveyors or building inspectors; more unofficial and reporting straight to Laporte. These are guys who can be trusted to carry a message. And they know things; keep their ear to the ground of the community. They returned and reported. Had turned up nothing but mild users. Buyers. No dealing. Plenty of alcoholics.

"Guess again."

"I have no idea."

Gutman turns to face Laporte. "Love," he says.

At his house, Horse sits with a beer—the bottle empty, resting on the file for Thomas Brooks that sits on the end table.

Tomorrow, he will have to hand it over to the state police.

Before that, he will copy it.

Tomorrow is also the first day of school.

No students for another week. Inservice. A light day. When teachers begin to gather their wits and plans and turn their thoughts towards the coming school year. Everyone will shake off the summer, listen to Wells make remarks about the upcoming year and move the furniture in their rooms back from where the maintenance workers had put it when they waxed the floors.

The work on the sidewalk is progressing. All of the slabs have been removed. Larry is going to level the strip. Steve and Sarah are going to try their hand at putting up forms.

Looking at the file, Horse feels stuck.

How, he wonders, could a small child wind up under his sidewalk?
Chapter Thirteen

"Penny."

She holds out a young, bony hand that gives Horse the impression of a nervous child now grown up. A potato with four toothpicks sticking out, but with a lot of energy under the surface, her body is stocky, like a large spring from a car strut sitting on stick legs with stick arms protruding. It is as if her adult body has yet to decide whether to be thin or fat and so has created this unmelodiousness compromise that can contain all of her nerves. On her feet are cheap running shoes over peach socks. The dark blue soccer shorts and light yellow t-shirt are appropriate for summer inservice days, but not quite right with her body. Penny has the deportment of a serious someone, closer to retirement than getting their first teaching assignment. On top is a harsh pixie cut of black hair and blonde roots.

"Is that short for Penelope?"

"It's short for Penny."

On the surface of her voice lies a warning. Horse is intrigued.

Names are a topic that teachers talk about quite often. It is a safe topic, where they can judge students without doing so directly. That judgment also falls primarily on the parents. The origin of a student's name tells a lot about where they come from.

Penelope.

Penny.

That says many things about her upbringing, but to Horse it means poverty. In rural Vermont, children with nicknames on their birth certificates come from parents who do not know their choice is a nickname. Penny's parents probably had not known the name Penelope, Horse thinks.

Spelling is another tell. Who spells Mary _M-A-R-E-E_? He is thinking of a student he had two years prior. "It's from the French," Horse is told. Spelling raises interesting questions about origins. _Creative or ignorant?_ Popular movie characters, songs or the children of celebrities all lend inspiration to parents. Many, Horse is sure, seem like a good idea at the time, but by seventh grade the names are momentary flashbacks to a trivial past. Anakin. Lebron. Heavy. Frodo. _Poverty,_ Horse thinks. Or, at least working class.

"Family name?" Horse asks.

" _Penny for your thoughts_ ," she sneers.

It had been what her father said to her mother. As her mother had told it, she sat at the dining room table of the small studio apartment they had rented, worried about the news she had to share with him. She is eighteen and pregnant. Coming in young and good-humored—it is what had attracted her to him, she had told her daughter one night while drunk (which is every night)—the father had looked at her mother for a moment before popping that question: " _Penny for your thoughts?"_ Her response had been that she is with child. He had denied everything. Soon after, he had left. Her mother never even mentioned his name; she did not know who her father was. As a cruel joke the name stuck in her mother's head. It is put on the birth certificate. Not the father's name, mind you, but that stupid question of his. Throughout her life she heard the phrase.

Penny for your thoughts?

Ha, ha.

A laugh riot, it is not. Every encounter is a reminder of her squalid creation into the world. She knew it is not meant as an offense— _they did not know_ —but that is cold comfort. They never knew. No one understands what it means to be poor. To have an alcoholic for a mom. To be a mistake, live in a shithole and be reminded of it all whenever anyone says your name. _No offense._ In middle school she had flirted with using Penelope, but the community is small and it never stuck. It is as if they wanted to remind her of who she was. By college she no longer cared.

She said none of this. The story went through her head in a flash every time she is asked, but she never said it out loud. No one's business.

Horse did not ask.

"You look familiar," is what he says instead.

"Penny went to Grace Haven," Wells replies for her. He had saddled up beside her, fearing she might need rescuing.

"A local success story, then."

Both Horse and Penny smile, but do not really mean it.

"Not so much," she replies. "If I is a real success, I'd have left this town."

Then she laughs with a snort, which gets Horse's attention all over again—just as he had been getting bored with her.

"Oh," he says, "don't talk like that. You'll upset Wells."

He gives a nod towards the principal.

"Hardwick," Well says with a smile. The principal is a local boy who had left Hardwick and returned to the area, making it as far as Grace Haven.

"I didn't mean anything by it," Penny says.

"Grace Haven's not that bad." Horse takes a sip of coffee. "Tourists pay a pretty penny to visit. Some buy second homes."

"They don't buy second homes where I grew up," she replies.

_Not yet,_ she thinks.

Then neither say a thing, letting that last statement hang there—she baiting him to ask more, and him goading her to fill the silence.

No one says a thing.

She had eyed him when he said "pretty penny."

A bit of flinch, he had thought.

For her part, she wondered if he had said it on purpose. Other people might have added, "No pun intended... ha, ha" but he did not. is it an accident?

Perhaps I'm just sensitive, she thinks.

New job.

Horse as a colleague.

Standing with a cup of coffee in one hand and a half-eaten croissant in the other, Wells continues to talk about Grace Haven's middle school program. But both Penny and Horse find it difficult to concentrate, mainly because both want to talk to the other. To ask questions that cannot be addressed then and there.

Horse looks over at her. As he takes her in he cannot decide what makes her. The bad dye job could be the work of someone who does not know what a higher quality hair salon job might look like, or simply a rebellious what-do-I-care show to the world. Horse knows plenty of rich kids who dress like beggars for attention. Or, perhaps it is the fashion, he thinks. The pixie cut itself both draws attention away from her body, but also makes her head look small. Like a marble on a balloon. Her scrawny limbs have the tell-tale markings of malnutrition. _Perhaps premature birth._ Yet, her weight, when he really studies her, is all muscle. The tense, sinewy muscle that comes from being high strung. Anger, held into a tight ball, but released through disciplined exercise.

But he keeps coming back to her eyes.

They are brown; nothing special about that. Except, _they have intelligence_. While she laughs when it is polite to do so, he can tell that she is taking in everything.

Everyone.

Him.

For her part, she knows Horse is taking her inventory.

Well, she thinks, that's not exactly fair. Everyone is taking my inventory.

Carefully, but discretely, Horse passes his eyes over her to determine her merit, she knows. If she asks him too many questions, even out of polite colleagueship, she will appear unprepared, uncreative and incompetent, but asking none opens him to question everything she does. After Wells had interviewed Penny, he had asked about her relationship with Horse. About her years at Grace Haven, with Horse as the other teacher. "I don't have a relationship," she had replied. But, she is clearly aware enough to know who she is going to work with.

"I grew up with an impossible asshole," she finally had told the principal.

I can handle Horse.

End of meeting. He shook her hand and offered her the job.

Now, as Wells continues to welcome the staff back, working the room, Penny screws up her courage a bit. She turns to Old Horse. In a whisper she asks, "What do you want to know?" Having planned that opening move all week, she had thought he would be off guard.

"Why are you here?" he replies in barely a whisper.

"It's a job."

Both of them know that is not the whole truth.

"Why weren't you on the interview committee?" Penny asks Horse at the end of their first inservice day.

No, she shouts it at him.

While she runs across the parking lot, trying to catch up to him before he ducks into his Fiesta and scoots off, she shouts the question a second time. Accosts him with the question.

"I tend to prejudge people," he says, looking up at her from the driver's seat.

"Are you wrong?"

"Rarely."

"How do you judge me?"

"It is Wells' call."

He does not mention that while at central office, in addition to Thomas Brooks' file, he had also pulled hers.

"Is that good enough for you?"

Horse shifts his body so that he can look at her squarely.

"I don't want his job. Because he's willing to do the work, I defer to him. Too many teachers think they can solve all of the problems of the school. They complain. They complain about the schedule and who and who should not be hired or fired or moved to another position. Nothing, they think, is handled right. Nothing. They won't do their job right or focus on doing it right, but they want to tell him how to do his. No one wants the job. No one wants Wells' job, just to tell him how to do it. If he's willing to do it, I let him do it."

"Is that different than any other job?" Penny asks. "Complaining. Armchair quarterback. Thinking you can do the job."

"If you want to be an administrator," Horse growls to no one, "than be an administrator. If you're going to be a teacher, then focus on your classroom and shut up."

He slams his door shut. The window is already down, though, so she continues talking and, unless he drives away (which he is planning to do), he has to listen.

"Don't you complain a lot?" she asks.

"Not about how others do their job."

"That's not true."

"But I don't expect them to change."

She makes a face, her jaw jutting to the side, giving the impact of an eye roll, without rolling her eyes.

"But you tell Wells how to do his."

"You know a lot for the first day on the job."

"I've already been taken out for drinks three times by various new colleagues, each with the intent of warning me about you."

"I'm flattered." He starts the car. "And, while I do tell Wells how to do his job, I do it as a friend and not his employee."

"What's the difference?"

"Location." Horse smiles. "And alcohol's often involved."

"Does that matter?"

"And he doesn't listen," he says with a short laugh. "I count on that. Thirty years experience taught me that."

"So what question do you want to know?" she asks him.

"Patriots or Red Sox?"

"Giants. I'm from an old Vermont family. Now my turn: What did you ask that got you kicked off of the interview committee?"

He grins.

"It's winter," he begins. "You have two pillows: One fleece, the other cotton. Do you put your head on the fleece pillow and cuddle the cotton one, or put your head on the cotton and cuddle the fleece pillow?"

"Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't."

"Or it does."

"Hiring is not just about competence, but being the right fit. Faculties are wonderful balanced—imagine a whole school of people like me."

"I shudder at the thought."

"Nothing would get done. Everyone can't be a loose cannon for the organization to work."

"Still, you need a few," Penny teases, but without forgiveness or warmth.

"We come in different forms," Horse replies. "What would your answer be to the question?"

"Do I have flannel sheets, too?"

"See," Horse answers. "That answer-with-a-question tells me I'm going to like working with you."

"Why'd that get you bounced off the committee?"

"Inappropriateness. Charges of sexual harassment were being floated around."

"Really? Because of that question?"

Horse nods.

"How is that sexual?"

Horse shrugs his shoulders, but he knows how it could be taken that way.

"What happened?" Penny asks.

"She's one of our second grade teachers now."

"Lawsuit avoided, I guess."

**  
**

Chapter Fourteen

Like many Vermont towns, the Town Hall in Grace Haven is just that—a very large room, or hall, built for the entire town to gather together. The building is white clapboard and a sealed metal roof, and those from elsewhere who drive through town can be forgiven if they mistake it for a church. Its design is the same, save for the missing steeple and a slightly more squat appearance. Grace Haven's town elders had replaced the slate roof with a deep blue standing seam one after the ice storm of 1997, after a bit of debate, which causes the building to stand out of the landscape a bit more than it once did. Blue or black had been the big discussion, not keeping the slate. In the end, the town went with the bolder choice. Looking up, Horse notes that it sheds the rain just fine.

Like many Vermont towns, it is built when the town is much smaller. Had the inhabitants of Grace Haven all gotten together today, they would not fit. There are more male residents than the fire code allows. Fortunately, from this perspective, the decline in participatory democracy has been a blessing. Only about ten percent of eligible votes let their voices be heard. On Town Meeting Day, the hall appears full; the failure of active citizens allows for the continued use of the hall. Horse thinks of Normal Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech" and shakes his head. What might the old painter think of his homage to the tradition of town meetings had he seen this group?

Standing in the main hall, he looks at the white walls that stretch up to the ornate tin ceiling, painted the same green as the state's license plate. It being late, the light from the long, tall windows casts the ceiling as black. Wind whips rain against the large panes of glass, but the replacement windows muffle the sound. Under his feet lay well-worn maple floorboards. They have been refinished many times—Horse had thought to bid on that job ten years prior—and buffed every six months.

The main hall sits above the Grace Haven town offices. Once a basement, the space has been retrofitted for the archives, a small conference room and six offices, plus the counter where the town clerk smiles as she notes that you dog license is two months late. It is where much of the action happens; most meetings of the select board are so under attended that they meet in the small conference room to avoid heating the main hall. That hall is left for various functions, including, recently, a traveling wrestling show and the Cub Scouts' Pinewood Derby.

Tonight is a different agenda.

An impromptu meeting has been called to address the found body. A folding table with an artificial wooden top protects the speakers from the audience, who sit among thirty blue plastic folding chairs. Most of them are empty, but a small knot of concerned parents are ready with questions. At the front of the room sits Wells and Trooper Danielson. Reluctant to be included himself, the local school board head implored him to come. As a compromise, Wells has decided on the Town Hall as a venue to distance the body of the child from the school. This is a town concern. The meeting is informal in tone, dress and procedure. A video camera sits in the back, recording the proceedings that will be broadcast to the town later that night.

"Are our children safe?" a mother asks.

Sitting in the back, Horse watches the fifteen or so parents lean forward, eyes alternating between Wells and Trooper Danielson. Two of the participants are knitters, he notes. A good meeting always has a few knitters.

"We believe so," replies Danielson.

"Yes," Wells adds, firmly.

"Let's remember," the trooper says, "that this happened thirty years ago. There has been no report of anything since."

"No _report_ ," grumbles one parent.

She is thin, and bent like the branch of an apple tree.

"How could a child go missing for thirty years and no one notice?" a parent asks.

"No report," Danielson replies.

"The school didn't notice?"

Wells clears his throat. "Every year, a number of families simply leave without notice. We call disconnected numbers, and even send someone around to the last known address. If the receiving school does not ask for files, they effectively disappear."

"But someone should look into that!"

Horse watches as Wells fields it deftly.

"Yes," is his boiled down answer.

Silently, the door to the room opens and Laporte comes in. A few of the regulars nod in welcome. Being a contractor, he is a regular at various town meetings. Horse wonders what town he lives in, because he knows it is not Grace Haven. Still, his presence at any board meeting is not completely unexpected. Having laid sidewalks for thirty years, the old teacher does know that every job requires a visit or two to the select board or planning committee or both, if not a different committee, too. For government bids, you get used to meetings. What, he wonders, is his interest here, though?

Lost in thought—not paying attention—Horse's name came up.

"You laid the original sidewalk," Ms. Brown says to him, repeating her question.

"Yes." How, Horse wonders, did she know that? Did she remember that meeting? The old teacher doubts she has looked it up herself. He glances over at Laporte, who is smiling.

"How could you have not noticed bones in the bed as you were laying them?"

At this, Danielson coughs.

They all look at him.

"Forensics believes that someone poured a bit of concrete over the bones to hide them." He straightens himself in his seat. "When his crew came the next day, it would have looked like old concrete waste from the day before."

"And that's that?" Ms. Brown asks, wanting more. She peers hard at Danielson.

"What more do you want?" asks Wells.

"He's a teacher," is all she says. That, apparently, is that.

Others in the audience nod in agreement.

"Am I being accused of murdering a child?" Horse asks.

Ms. Brown will not answer, but her face shows distaste for him. She is convinced, he knows, that something is wrong with him. If he does not kill innocent children, Horse is, she is sure, damaged in some other, moral way. Horse is not sure he disagrees.

The old teacher's question hangs in the air.

No one will touch it.

"You said it," Ms. Brown finally snorts.

The discussion moves on to safety procedures at the elementary school.

Finally, the meeting does end. Turning towards the back corner, Horse finds Laporte's seat empty. He has slipped out. The meeting is officially closed and everyone gets up and does not leave. Chatting away, Wells attempts to smooth over some of the hard feelings his non-answers gave. Slowly, after conversations turn away from dead bodies, people stagger out in singles and pairs until the room is empty other than the two speakers and Horse. Danielson begs off Wells' invitation for a drink, leaving the two educators to lock the door to the main hall.

Dusk falls on the small lot, dark from the overcast sky and empty save for two cars. Small puddles dot the gravel.

"We can take my car," Wells tells Horse.

Even in the din, both Wells and Horse can see that the front tire of the Festiva have been slashed. He stands in the rain and feels slightly flattened. The hatred sent his way tire him.

The school year, he thinks, has yet to begin.

"Brown?" the teacher asks.

"Could be."

"Sadly, I bought several R12 tires last year anticipating the need."
Chapter Fifteen

On Labor Day weekend they finish the sidewalk.

Steve and Sarah and Larry had tried to beg off. It is a weekend of returning to college, and a lot of drinking. Instead, they sweat. No rain. Heat and humidity. Their fear of Horse, six years after having had him as a teacher, is enough to get them out of bed and on site within half-an-hour of the start time.

"I could be drinking a beer right now," Steve whines.

"At nine in the morning?" Larry asks.

"I think you'd have a hangover," Sarah said snidely.

"You can't drink," Horse says flatly. "You're underage."

No one can tell if he is joking. And no one asks.

Instead, they poke at the gravel bed.

Days before, Larry had overseen the three of them hammering down the molds and spreading the gravel bed. Laporte has been helpful in getting the trucks there efficiently, but it has been hard work nevertheless.

Spreading concrete near where tile nine had been, all three go silent.

"Spooky," is all Steve says.

No one replies. They are thinking about the rest of the bones—there is the rest of the body missing.

Now cement trucks are arriving.

Horse is there for that.

The trucks arrive, their mixers spinning slowly. Each pulls a bit further up Finch Street, the driver getting out and conversing with Larry before swinging the arm to where the next round of cement needs to be dropped. Horse notes that the one driver has a ring of tattoos up his left arm, but his right arm is clean—he is curious about why, but the man climbs back into his cab and pulls the truck a few yards forward. Then, Steve and Sarah stop leaning on their shovels and begin to spread the concrete.

And so the day goes, slab by slab.

After a long Saturday, all of the cement is poured.

On Sunday, they fuss over it, spraying it with water and doing other small tasks. These small details, Horse knows, are what make a sidewalk last. Reflecting on his thirty years of pouring sidewalks, he wonders if he could consider himself an expert. He knows one thing about concrete and construction—sidewalks. If he poured a foundation, he would be starting from knowledge scratch. At some point he had gotten on a construction mailing list, and a half-dozen concrete-related magazines come to him. Their titles change, but they are all basically the same. He is fascinated by the tiny advances in concrete technology over the years. It is like teaching, he realizes, in that someone is always trying to improve on a vocation that is thousands of years old.

"You look hot," Laporte says to him from his truck. "Why not come have a seat. A good contractor watches his employees work from a position of comfort."

"You don't lead from the front?" Horse asks, climbing into the passenger seat.

"You're doing a quality job," Laporte says to Horse.

The contractor has swung by on Sunday in his infamous blue truck to see the final product. The three former students walk up and down the length of the job and appraise their own work. Although they would not admit it, they are unsure what to look for. Horse does, as does Laporte. The three students tap and fuss and make noises as though they had done such a job before.

Horse is hesitant to thank Laporte—both for the compliment and his help in getting them cement on a long weekend. He does not like the guy.

Instead, he says, "I'm sure you'd do the same."

"Quality doesn't pay," Laporte says. "You build something that lasts and you never get the replacement contract in twenty years."

Horse cannot tell if he is joking.

So he asks.

Laporte only offers a wry smile.

"I can have some of my boys take the molds off next week and backfill the dirt."

"I don't want to put you out."

"Oh, no problem." Laporte looks down at the ground. "I've got a lot of men between jobs. It'll take them an hour or so."

"That's very generous, but I don't want to give Steve's college money to you."

"No charge," Laporte replies.

Then he pauses.

"Well," the contractor begins. "I'd like to keep the sidewalk molds. For next year."

Sitting silently, Horse looks straight out at the horizon. Finally, he says, "Let me think about it."

Horse touches his nose. It is bleeding.

Looking around the cab, Laporte directs him, "In the glove compartment."

When Horse opens it he finds a medium sized leather portfolio, a box of wet wipes and a gun. After wiping his nose and discarding the bloody wet wipe on the floor, he takes out the 9mm Glock.

"Also a contractor's prerogative?"

"Personal security."

"A contractor needs to be ready for everything?"

"It can be a rough business."

Then Laporte leans to the left and deftly pulls out a twelve inch pry bar that had been wedged under his seat.

"In case you can't reach the glove compartment?" Horse asks.

"Something like that," Laporte replies.

"Anything else I need to worry about in here?"

"Leaving a bloody rag," he says, nodding towards the floor. "In case I get swept up in some police business."

Then they smile and watch everyone else work.
Chapter Sixteen

"You want to know about the Thomas Brooks' case?"

Trooper Danielson and his old teacher sit in a Hardwick coffee shop clad and containing a lot of wood. Chairs and tables, but also the floor, are of a worn blonde stock, the walls a white washed plaster holding up a tin ceiling painted night blue. The owner is a sculptor, and a few shelves hold the work he creates when not spitting out espressos. Otherwise, the place is bare. The mugs are from an old defunct diner (the name Manny's Place written in red script on each one) and white processed sugar is dispensed freely—Horse assumes those dispensers came from Manny's, too. More important, the beans are of a higher quality than they had a right to be—a fact Horse chalks this up to the transcending awareness that comes from an owner who creates art. For this, the thirty minute drive is worth it for the three hours of school work he gets done there, fueled by five delicious coffees.

Officer Danielson takes a sip of coffee, big and black, and he looks at Horse with a mocking expectant face, eyebrows arching. The old teacher says nothing, but only sips.

"Is it," he finally ventures, "Thomas Brooks?"

"We don't know."

"But the assumption is that it is."

"Never assume."

The old teacher loses himself in thought. Danielson checks his phone for messages. The trooper is on duty, wearing the uniform, but he lets himself take a break. Coffee. On the table are piles of student data—print outs of scores and information about the future members of his class. On one of them rests Horse's coffee, while the closed Brooks' file covers another.

These meetings are mixed bags for Danielson, emotionally. It is Saturday, and talks with Horse amuse him more than they bring up old childhood nerves. How, he wonders, can you respect someone so much and still feel like nervous mush? This morning, the coffee tips the scales, if only because his old teacher is slightly more relaxed and offers a tad less sarcasm when the coffee is good and plentiful.

"You respect him because he holds you to your best," his father had told him.

When he is twelve his father had found him sitting on the edge of his bed, crying. Report cards had come out and Danielson had missed the honor roll because of English.

Horse.

The boy held it up to his father and walked out of the room, leaving his old man to figure out the problem. When his father found him again, the kid is moping on a swing in the backyard.

It is cold. The leaves were off of the tree.

"Is it fair?" the father had asked, raising the report card.

The boy nodded.

"You only have to measure up against yourself."

Easily said, Danielson thinks. He knows that Horse is like the mobile roadside speedometer that displays the car's speed to warn drivers they are going too fast. You cannot blame the measurement device if it's accurate. Most people slow down. That cold measurement—accurate measurement—is why Danielson still feels nervous.

That final quarter Danielson had made high honor roll. Because grades were finalized in the summer, there is no community ceremony—no formal recognition. When the report card came only his father and he knew what he had accomplished. Earned. Except, a week later, a certificate came in the mail. _High Honors_ , it read. It is signed by Principal Wells and Horse. When Danielson had checked with his peers, none of them had gotten a certificate.

Only him.

He smiles at the memory, hiding it behind his mug. It is why, now, he is breaking all kinds of rules to give Horse the information that is itching his curiosity.

" _What about the mother?"_ Horse's voice snaps him out of it.

"Disappeared."

"When?"

"No records of anything for thirty years."

"I don't think we would have missed any other bones when we did the sidewalk."

"You think it's a double murder?"

Horse says nothing to this. Instead, "How easy is it to disappear thirty years ago?"

"Not impossible."

"Who would kill an eleven year old boy?"

"I have no idea."

"Not the mother."

"No?"

"Perhaps."

"We have her listed as a suspect."

Danielson looks out the window at the town. It is a small, intimate town. People know details about their neighbors, but also are quite ignorant when asked about those same neighbors. They keep to themselves. People know each other's cars, but sometimes not their names. Quirks and eccentricities are accepted. Forgiven. Forgotten.

Much like Grace Haven.

The trooper had asked his father about the Brooks'. "No memory," his old man had repllied. He could vaguely place the face. The boy. No reason to know her, the mother.

"I spoke to Laporte." Horse thinks back to that conversation.

"Anything?"

"He remembers her."

"And?"

_Nothing._ Horse waves his hand, dismissively. Danielson smirks, having gotten the same results from his interviews. He, too, has interviewed Laporte.

"We're not sure where she lived," Danielson relays. "Who she knew. From our interviews, she kept to herself."

"So, she could be alive."

"It's possible."

"She might have killed her son."

"Again, possible."

But Horse cannot contemplate a mother doing that. He also cannot not dismiss it. So, like the police, he puts her on his list—an index card kept in his pocket. The list also includes a few items needed at the grocery store and his lesson plans for Monday.

"Hello," a female voice speaks over Horse's shoulder.

He turns and finds himself looking up at Penny.

"Ah, Ms. Doesnothing," Horse says as way of an introduction to Danielson.

"That's _Deuveneu," she corrects. "It's French. You, though, can call me Penny."_

_Abruptly, she extends her boney hand out to the trooper. He takes it and smiles._

_" Daniel."_

_" Daniel Danielson," Horse adds._

_" So," she continues, ignoring her elder colleague, "has the law finally caught up with Old Horse?"_

_" No. We're just catching up—teacher and student."_

_" Yes," Horse shoots in, "there's nothing I enjoy more than keeping up with old students."_

_" The sarcasm doesn't go away with age, does it?' Danielson adds._

_All three smile the same wry smile._

_Danielson turns and says to Penny, "You look familiar."_

_" Do I?"_

_" She's a fine Grace Haven product," Horse says. "Like you."_

_They look at each other. Right off it is clear their ages are quite apart; she is just out of college while he is in his thirties._

_And then a second before he got it, she remembers: Trooper Danielson had taken her mother into custody for being drunk and disorderly two summers ago. Penny had been home for that summer—home is all she could afford, other than a tent squatting in the woods or pretending to like a boy from school so she could share his apartment. She had seriously considered both options before going home because her mother is such a disgraceful mess._ _Drinking. Abuse._ _But having a reliable job waiting tables at a local restaurant, Penny needed to stay somewhere._ _For the money._ _Her boss let her have as many shifts as she wanted while most of the tips went unreported—keeping her financial aid package strong. She could not pass it up._

_But the drinking. The abuse._

_Can after can of Keystone Light, from breakfast until her evening of television, went down her mother's flabby throat. No job. Never a doctor. That summer, she had fevered her way through the flu and coughed up mugs full of mucus (literally) without seeing a professional. The woman knew what they'd tell her: Stop drinking. But this is bad. Every evening, after work—after the bars closed, after her friends went home—she would come home to find her mother killing herself slowly._

_Her mother's mouth is rotting out and it hurt her with every breath. Penny had tried to get her to go to the dentist but the mother wouldn't listen._ _Fear._ _She claimed no money, but Penny had checked and she still had insurance from the state. Her mother had a fever. The gums were infected. Penny imagined her mother having her infected face cut away on the week school is supposed to resume._

_Her father, of what she had heard, had been a drunk, too. Her mother said he had visited a few times—but that is all, and Penny did not really believe her mom is telling her the whole truth. He spent his days a bit away in Morrisville and had nothing to do with them. She did not know if he remembered he had a kid. The mythical man never sought them out. Certainly, she did not know what he looked like, although she thought she saw a man walking towards her that had her nose and eyes when she went to the Bijou for a matinée, but she'd been told she had a lot of relatives in Lamoille county,_ _so who knew?_ _All of this had made getting financial aid difficult. With the help of a saint-like guidance counselor they worked things out with the university—a lot of legal stuff that involved child services and which pissed her mother off for weeks—and the money eventually came._

_But this time, after her junior year, on a hot day in July, her mother lost it._ _Mental._ _Throwing stuff and yelling and standing on the lawn, howling in pain and delirious with fever and just full of vile from her pitiful existence._

_Spitting blood._

_It seeped from her gums and her inability to stand still or spit far speckled red on her face and already stained sweatshirt. On her t-shirt is an Advil, stuck with spittle because the woman is in too much pain to swallow it properly._

_Penny is done with it. No sympathy._

_Neighbors called the police. A trooper arrived._

_Danielson._

_Her mother wouldn't calm down._

_Her breath is horrible. Rot. The mother smelled; this is what Penny remembered the most. is the most ashamed of. A slow stench came from the woman, who had not bathed in such a long time that Penny couldn't imagine what lay under her clothing. She had soiled herself. At times, Penny had thought about the bathroom and wondered if the water still ran; Penny worked out at Johnson State College over the summers and used their showers. She preferred the clean toilet of the restaurant and never went at home, so the water may have been off._

_None of it mattered as the police officer climbed out of his car._

_No sympathy is left in Penny, no pity even, only embarrassment._

_The mother tried to hit him._

_Out of her mind_ _, Penny thought_ _._

_From the barracks to the hospital to the morgue, all within a week._

_Her body just gave out._

_You didn't even charge her_ , Penny's eyes said to Danielson, in thanks. Her name stayed out of the paper—a simple _Trooper responded to neighbor complaint_. Later, _Police assist woman to hospital._ There is no death announcement as Penny did not want the attention. Her plan is to survive until Labor Day and return to college.

_Look to the future_ , had been her motto throughout high school.

After July's rent wound down, she stayed there anyway, waiting for the landlord to come calling for August's rent or an eviction notice. No one came. Slowly, she began sorting her mother's things. Her mother had squirrelled things away. More accurately, she is a hoarder. Spending her free time searching, Penny had gathered most of her mother's legal papers and put them in an old suitcase. Those, she thought, she might need one day. The rest were sorted into what she could sell and what could be burned.

A week before Labor Day she had a lawn sale, getting rid of most of her mother's things. The money raised went to textbooks and pocket money.

Other things she burned. Photos. Childhood toys. Penny is left with a single box of possessions—books and posters and the like; belongings that she had bought with her own money. Those items of her childhood she left behind. Digging through after her mother's death, she found the old stuffed animals, unicorns, pink hair clips and an old My Little Pony lunchbox. As she outgrew outfits, her mother had boxed them up and stored them. In late August, her mother cremated, she burned all of those things that carried the memories she wanted to obliterate.

Instead of being sentimental for the past, Penny burned it.

And now she is back, having coffee with the man who had taken her mother away.

On the day Danielson came for her mother, Penny had made a memorable scene. Her mother going crazy, the cruiser parked on the dirt drive, and in the background the daughter is crying and screaming and pleading for it to end. _Catharsis_ , Aristotle had called it. Enough. Hitting bottom. The old woman is spitting blood and screaming and angry and Penny had no sympathy but just screamed and spat because she did not care enough to think what the nice, young trooper might think. Enough. Done. And she remembered the trooper wondering which person to deal with first because everything she is doing—but she couldn't help it—everything she is doing is preventing the trooper from ending it. Because of the blood, he tried to help her first.

And then her mother swung at him.

He cuffed her.

Later, he had asked about the possibilities of disease. There is a protocol for dealing with bleeding people, especially those who spat. He had not worn gloves or eye protection because he is not expecting what he had found. But Penny realized, standing in the coffee shop that Saturday morning, he would remember her, if only as the daughter of her crazy, disgusting mother.

"You've returned to Grace Haven," Danielson says, repeating what Horse had just told him.

"I don't know why," she replies. "It's a job, I guess."

"I don't suppose you're in Bailey's Bend, still?"

Penny glances down at Horse, knowing he is taking all of this in.

"No. I'll never go back there again."

Chapter Seventeen

Horse is slow to get going that morning.

Coffee in his right hand, he holds his brown leather schoolbag in the other and makes his way to the car. The mornings still have the taste of summer in them, which does not invigorate him as much as they did when he is younger. Three decades does that. These types of mornings once mixed with the idealistic hope of a new school year. Indian summers had acted as a second wind that propelled his classes to Halloween, where the sight of Thanksgiving and, later, Christmas pushed him and his students to do an amazing amount of learning in the six hours they had each day.

Now, Old Horse waits for the cold. It settles kids down and he does not have to get surly with them as much—a loving surly, but bitter as cold coffee nonetheless. Every year when national education scores are published, Wells notes that most of the high achieving states are the coldest. Horse counters that many are also known for their puritanical religious roots—Calvinists, Lutherans and Methodists. "Perhaps," Wells posits, "dour religion goes with the cold?"

That day, it is warm. There had been a brief cold snap—August in northern Vermont got quite cold, requiring a sweater before nine and offered a peak at one's breath before seven. But this week the cold has disappeared. Looking at the cup as he places it on the roof of the car, he wonders why he has even bothered with the hot beverage.

Habit?

Oh, he thinks, the obvious: You're an addict.

Addicts are oblivious to the weather.

It is the first day of school; he needs that coffee.

Is it time? he wonders. Not the day to contemplate retirement, he knows.

He tosses his bag into the passenger seat, his own bottom hitting the driver's. Swinging his feet in, he reaches up and lets his left hand feel blindly for the cup of coffee on the roof, which he deftly retrieves, rotating his wrist in such a way that the cup remains upright as it comes down to his lap. Safely in a cup holder, he fishes the keys from his pocket. Roughly, the car starts and be backs into the street.

On the radio there is a report: Body found in Grace Haven River.

No details.

Horse scans the dial hoping to find a more, but the radio keeps stopping on country.

Zipping down the main road Horse spies three large cardboard boxes, one of which is spilling over with smaller, colorful boxes. Putting on the breaks and pulling over to the side, he thinks he had recognized a bit of Monet on one of the boxes. The motor idling, he carefully opens his door and walks back.

At the end of a long driveway, he riffles through with great interest. Consolidating what he wants into one of the boxes, he leaves the other two. Throwing it into the back of the Fiesta, he pulls away from the curve and looks into his rearview mirror. No coming traffic.

But he does see an old Buick slow down and check out what he had left behind.

"I have a surprise for you all," he announces to his class.

It is the first day of school.

Everyone is excited to get into the room, find their seats (which Horse had neglected to assign) and begin a day of name-games.

Instead, Horse has them standing near the door. His hands are raised. On his face, a smile that no one believes. Kids look around and wonder if they can drop their bags. They want to catch up, even if they stayed up late all night texting each other.

The old man blocks them.

On his desk is the box of boxes, the Monet one still peaking out.

No one says a word.

Sensing their urge to find a place to be, and with no reason outweighing their desire, he lets them pass. They mill around the room, and when they realize that their new teacher had no seating plan chaos begins.

Some drop their backpacks onto the classroom tables.

Others keep them on.

A group of boys begin horse-playing in the corner, while a few kids find seats.

The volume rises.

Finally, "What?" A voice from the back. _Loud._

"Puzzles."

Groan.

But then the room grows silent.

"Stamina," he says. "A Habit of Mind."

Groan.

Persistence, he thinks. It is the first on the official list they'd gotten at some inservice seminar.

"Please break into groups of your choosing...."

They begin to look around and move. Some have smiles on their faces as they connect with friends. A few have shadows of doom on their brows, knowing they will be left out. _Alone._ The furniture begins to rustle when Horse finishes his sentence. Backpacks get tossed into corners.

"...But."

They stop.

"Choose wisely."

They listen.

Horse always has rules. Not rules, really, but advice. It is the first day of school—the first minutes—and they already know this because it is what everyone said when they were sixth graders.

_He'll get in your head_ , former students tell future ones.

"Each morning, you will tackle your group's puzzle first thing. You will do it until it's done."

"Aren't we going to do some name games or something?" a boy asks.

"Do you want to play name games all day?"

"No, not really," the boy concedes.

"You don't know each other's name?" Horse asks.

"We do, but..."

"Then why waste the time."

And then the substitute comes and releases him from duty.

"Any idea who it is?" Horse asks, walking up to a cruiser parked where the twisting road meets a bend in the Grace Haven River.

"A man," Danielson replies.

"Anyone we know?"

"I don't know who you know."

"Anyone you know?"

"No." He looks back.

An unmarked police car is parked beyond his own. Near the river's edge a plain clothed officer pokes along the bank.

"Is the body still here?"

"Gone." Danielson looks from the river to Horse. "Long ago."

"Hospital?"

"Morgue."

"You aren't going to give me anything, are you?"

"I don't have anything to give."

But then Danielson pulls out a tablet and shows his old teacher some crime scene photos. Flipping through quickly with Horse hunched over, blocking the sun from reflecting on the screen with his body, the trooper looks back at his colleague working the shore.

"It goes without saying..." he begins.

"Then why say anything?"

He puts the device in his cruiser. As they both stare blankly at the river, Wells arrives in his Volvo. He strides up to them, furious. Danielson steps away, and towards the river.

"Do you know how hard it is to find a substitute on the first day of school?"

"I would think it pretty easy," Horse replies. "No other teachers are calling in, are they? It is the first day, and that would be unprofessional."

"Your students are done with the puzzles."

"That is fast," he says, his eyes keeping to the river's edge.

"No, not completed." Wells pauses and looks at Horse, his face serious. "Done."

Rolling his eyes, Horse walks over to his car and turns the key. The starter cranks, but it will not start. Spark, he thinks. _Carburetor?_ The car is old enough to still have a carburetor. As the battery begins to show signs of being drained, he returns the key to off and pulls it from the lock.

Then he follows Danielson, who is poking along the river.

"What did he die of?" Horse asks.

"What do you think?"

"I would think drowning, but the two of you are poking around here looking for something."

"It's unclear."

"But not a gunshot?"

"Unclear."

Danielson continues to comb the weeds, shuffling away from his old teacher. Horse walks back to the road.

"Can I catch a ride?"

"You could teach the second half of the day."

"Have I been docked a sick day?"

"Yes. But you have over one hundred banked."

"I'll think about it."

"Then I'll think about giving you a ride."

Although Horse gets into the car, it is unclear to Wells if he will return to work. Regardless, that is where he is driving. After a few miles, Wells breaks the silence.

"You know that people hate you."

"People?"

"Parents."

"Okay," Horse says, looking out the passenger window. "Not the same thing."

"Your tires were slashed just the other night, and you didn't even say or do anything."

Horse shrugs.

"They don't understand you."

"What's to understand?"

"The first question would be why, on the first day of school, their child is being made to do a jigsaw puzzle."

Horse begins to answer, but Wells cuts him off.

"And then that teacher leaves school."

Knowing there is no answer to that, no reply that will satisfy, Horse sits and listens to the engine as the car fights the momentum of the hill they are descending.

"Why are you getting involved in this?" Wells asks. "I understand the Brooks kid—he is under the sidewalk you were working on. This is a random story on the radio. A man drowned—not your problem."

The old teacher will not look at his friend, but instead watches the road ahead. He has a compulsion for grand gestures—a murder is more interesting than helping a child organize their binder for the start of the school year. Saving the world is his compulsion for becoming a teacher, but organizing binders and other small acts is how that is done. It makes a difference—more than understanding a drowning might—but it never feels important in the moment.

After thirty years, it does not feel important at all.

Once, he had read a story about the start of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. Ben Cohen, apparently, has anosmia. When Jerry Greenfield used him as his taste-tester, Ben kept demanding greater sized bits to satisfy his need for texture. When done, their recipes overpowered the senses—and unlike any other ice cream sold at the time. In many ways, Horse is patient with his teaching. But inside, he wants to put more flavor into every school day.

But, lately, he feels he cannot not. Too many limitations.

"Do you ever feel this is all a wasted effort?" Horse asks Wells as they approached the village.

"What do you mean?"

"What's the best we can hope for?" He thinks about the students he had met that morning, only to run out on them. "Some, we might keep out of jail. Many will go to college, but not a great college."

"You never know," Wells replies.

"That's your educational philosophy?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Look at Danielson."

"Is that all we can hope for?"

"I can think of worse results for a kid than becoming a cop."

His eyes never leaving the road, Wells thinks that he knows what Horse means—even as he disagrees with it. And murder, he knows, will never fill the void he is seeking to be filled. If anything, it will only hasten his descent.

_Descent into...._ Wells would rather not think about it.

In the silence that sits between them, Horse thinks about the photos Danielson had shown him. The corpse had a ring of tattoos around his arm—only his left arm.

He walks up and down the aisles as he speaks, looking at different kids.

"Your puzzle will have about one hundred pieces for every member of your group. If you have ten people, you'll have a large puzzle. Three people, and a smaller puzzle."

"Can we have groups of one?" a quiet girl in the back, Eliza, asks.

"Yes."

He had returned with Wells and relieved the substitute. The students seem unsure if they want him back. One sneezes into her hands.

"Make sure you wash your hands," he tells the girl.

"I don't wash up after I got to the bathroom," she replies. "This is nothing."

He can see the type of year it is going to be.

"You do now," he says, and she gets up and washes.

"We can have groups of ten," a boy asks. His name is Ben and his reputation proceeds him.

"Yes," the old teacher answers, with a bit of warning in his voice.

Ben and his friends ignore the advice. Horse knows this is the first choice in a pattern that will repeat itself all year. He is a good looking boy, blonde, who leads a pod of underachievers that are never quite where they are supposed to be at the time they are supposed to be there. Now Ben is misleading those friends towards folly. They'll learn, Horse thinks, although he is not sure he believes it.

"Find a place at the outer tables. When you have your group, I'll come around and give you your puzzles."

Around the outer walls of the classroom are work tables. The room is a mesh of two workspaces—desks facing front for lectures, and tables for projects. Their individual desks are surrounded on all sides by the tables. As the year is fresh, the tops are clear. Still, some kids set up on the floor. Ben and his group are one of the groups who do this. The boy waves at Old Horse, indicating they are ready for their puzzle.

"You'd be better off on a table," the teacher tells them.

"We like the floor," one of the group replies. Although it is the first day of the school year, Horse recognizes him as a follower who will pipe up from time-to-time to assert his individuality. Every year he has one. Mentally, he makes it a goal to get this kid to be more independent by June.

"Plus," Ben adds, "when it's time to break we can push it under the table so it won't get stepped on."

"Out of the way," Ben's sidekick mutters.

Horse walks away.

The group has eleven kids in it, so he gives them a box with 1,300 pieces. It is a Renoir painting of a garden party. Tough.

"Hey, that's two hundred more pieces than we should get," Ben complains.

"Less than twenty pieces each."

Suck it up, he thinks.

He strides up to Eliza, who has hooked up with two other kids that had been left out of other groups. He gives them a puzzle with five hundred pieces. They take it from him gravely. From the top of the box Winnie the Pooh smiles at them.

Around the room, they take off the box tops and look at the pieces.

Then, nothing.

"Go on," Old Horse prods.

The students poke and stir up the pieces in the box. While, given a strange electronic device, they would figure out the controls rather quickly, here they have no idea how to do a jigsaw puzzle. Most just stare at the open box, afraid to start.

This is going to be a long project, the teacher thinks as he returns to his coffee. Let's see who solves their puzzle first.

After the busses pull away, taking all of the students home after their first day, Horse leaves the building. Since the sixth through eighth grade wing is off to the east side of the building, its teachers usually leave through a small fire door at the end of the hallway. Today, he is first out. Mentally exhausted, Horse slips out and thinks of the beer waiting in his refrigerator.

" _Hey!"_ a male voice yells at him, sharp and backed with muscle.

Turning, he is confronted by a large man in shorts cut from grey sweatpants and a blue Red Sox t-shirt, both covered in black dust that did not look lik echimney soot. On his feet he wears steel-toed Red Wing work boots and on his head is a ratty baseball cap sporting a DeWalt logo. Straightening his back, Horse finds himself six inches from the man. They stands eye-to-eye, the man matching the teacher's six foot four inch frame.

"My son says you keep bothering him."

"And how would you know? The school day is just ending?"

"He texted me."

"Phones are against school policy."

"Yeah, well I gave him permission."

"Still..."

Suddenly, the man pushes Horse's chest—hard—with two hands.

"I guess you're as big of an asshole as people said when I got the letter telling me he is in your class."

"They put that I is an asshole in the letter?"

The man takes a swing at him.

Horse dodges the punch, barely. The momentum of the swing carries the father forward, though, causing him to lose his balance. Fall forward, the man's right shoulder drives into the teacher's chest. The two fall against the building, where Horse's back grinds into the red brick. Caught on the rough surface, the shirt stays while he falls. A loud rip sounds as both bodies hit the gravel that lines the building for drainage; Horse on his back and the father onto Horse. The teacher finds himself pinned between the father and the school building.

Just as the man raises his fist, Horse slips a foot away from the wall. The weight of the man shifts. With the push of his right leg and hip, the teacher manages to push the man towards the brick wall. He rolls him off of himself. His right arm, now free, gives the move more momentum—he can hear the lungs of the man empty, slightly, as his back hits square.

Then a voice yells for them to stop.

It is Penny.

"Get up!" she shouts at the two of them.

Reluctantly, the man does. Horse remains on the ground.

He looks old, Penny thinks, standing above and looking down at him.

"He's picking on my son," the man spurts out.

"You just leveled an old man!"

"And a teacher," Horse adds, unhelpfully.

"Who is your son?" Penny asks.

"Ben. Ben Bishop."

Penny looks down at Horse, expecting a response. She gets none.

"My son texted me that he is being singled out."

"Your son has decided, on the first day, that doing nothing is a good way to waste the year."

"He's a bright kid," the man spits out at him, looming over as Horse remains on the ground.

"If this is true," Horse replies, pausing to catch his breath. "Then I would think you would support his being pushed."

It is hard to listen, as the man's emotions come out confused—although anger bubbles at the top and continues to roil as he looms over Horse with clenched fists. Every muscle is tight. Violence emits from his pores. The man breathes heavily, not sure where to put his rage but knowing that he is already guilty of assault. This thought—a small, rational part of his brain—is all that controls him.

Never caring enough to read others, Horse takes this silence as an opportunity to continue.

"What do you think of a person who, given reasonable guidance on how to succeed, instead texts his father?"

"Go," Penny tells the man. Her voice is gentle, but imploring—for his own sake. This is no time for a rational discussion, she knows, much less whatever bull Horse is about to unleash to prove a point. The old might deserve a stomping—she only knows him by reputation. Now is not the time. She suspects Ben needs his father not being interviewed by the police.

"I'm doing it for Ben," the man spits.

"Then leave for Ben's sake," Penny replies.

"I'm going to be watching," the man threatens, backing away.

"Talk to the principal," Horse replies, making it sound like a taunt.

Ten feet away, the man turns and heads towards the parking lot.

Penny looks down at her mentor. No blood, the face of annoyance the only thing on Horse's face.

"Are you okay?"

"I played rugby for years," he says, beginning to get up. Penny holds out a hand, which he ignores. "In college."

"So, a long time ago."

"Second row," he continues, ignoring her. "They're the engine of the scrum. I got that type of pounding all game, every week, but with five other guys stepping on me with one-inch metal cleats."

"People hate you, don't they?"

"You have no idea."

"Does this happen often?"

"More than I'd like." He is standing now. He stretches his back. Then, he brushing himself off, he smiles. "It's usually at a bar. Mostly verbal, though. Or my tires get slashed."

"Just you?"

"Yeah." He straightens his leather messenger bag. "This does not happen to other Grace Haven teachers. If that's what worries you."

"Good." She begins to walk away, but adds, "Remember, only one hundred and seventy-nine days left."
Chapter Eighteen

Looking for answers takes you to improbable places, he thinks to himself.

Then he spits on the ground.

It takes him a bit of time to find her office, but eventually he does. Parking the car at the University of Vermont's Visitor Lot is a stop-and-go dull horror that turns him around, followed by a long wander as he seeks maps and listens to the poor directions of slack jawed undergraduates. This is why I never go anywhere near Burlington, he thinks. It is a bother and there is little outside of Grace Haven that is worth that bother. In this task, though, there is no choice—the parking will be the highlight.

Finally, he finds the right building.

It is one of the new ones—not the newest ones, but recently renovated—that had been part of a prior capital campaign. All concrete and glass. He is greeted by a work study student behind a desk, but the girl only smiles at him. "No I.D. required, I guess," he says, pointing out her lax security while not bothering to stop. The water fountains include a spigot asking people to use it when refilling their water bottles—all part of an environmental resources campaign. Around the corner is a vending machine selling bottled water. Taking a detour, Horse notes that the urinals do not flush; again, for the environment. After zipping up he finds an elevator to the third floor. He notes how the environmental choice—the stairs—seems to be hidden behind an ill marked fire door. No sign for that environmental option, he thinks—but plenty of handicap signs around the elevator.

Petra has a small office down an inconspicuous hallway that allows one an odd sense of privacy in a space that is, realistically, a public thoroughfare. The blue industrial carpeting hushes his steps. Around the corner is a lounge (an alcove, really) littered with professional periodicals, two recently vacuumed couches, a generic indestructible wooden coffee table and an electric teapot, but her office is far enough away so that any conversation there will not be noticed when her door is closed. Not that Petra is the cloistering type, but Horse knew she liked to disappear by choice.

At least she did, eighteen years before.

Like many of the instructors and professors with offices on the hallway, she has a few _New Yorker_ cartoons taped to her door, next to more editorial cartoons and a bumper sticker beside them. His finger runs down the listing of office hours, written on an index card in careful blue ink. The times do not match what she has posted online. If the card is to be believed, he has missed her by six hours and a day.

He looks right and left. Flanking her office are those of two professors that have not updated their door decorating political cartoons in ten years. The department head's office is four doors down the other way. The whole suite is empty, causing the potential energy of his just standing there reverberate down the hallway. He listens, hearing something inside stirring.

With hesitation, he knocks.

"Come in."

Her voice has not changed in eighteen years, even muffled through a heavy door.

Had it been that long? he wonders.

He knows the answer.

Hand on the lever knob, he turns it and pushes the door.

And breathes in.

Surprise is on Petra's face. _Briefly._

"You could have called," she says.

"Petra...."

"This is a shock," she admits, while her voice betrays nothing of the sort.

Uncharacteristically, he says nothing.

Instead, he just stands in the doorway. The expression on his face lets her know that he would leave if she asks. If anyone from his present life saw him now, they would be surprised to see a submissive side to his features. Standing in natural fit jeans and a black watch flannel shirt, he breaks off eye contact to look around her office. Instantly, he inventories her shelves of books and knickknacks. They, and the act of inventorying, ground him. Letting out a breath, he waits and looks at her feet.

Haflinger felt clogs. Blue.

"Sit," she tells him, not unkindly.

He does.

"I don't know what to say."

"You look good," he says.

And she does. Petra is a woman who has aged well. Natural looking in the face and body, she has a pair of dark brown leather boots that are, technically, cowboy boots but do not seem quite as regional as that. (The clogs, Horse concludes, are for around the office.) Her northern dark hair is up and it frames her round face. A sweater a size too big wraps her torso, while her khaki skirt is more form fitting. Bare legs and no make-up, she is not ready to smile. All of her feelings are in her eyes—a stare that Horse does not return because he is too submissive at the moment to look at them.

"Just because I don't know what to say doesn't mean you should say anything."

He smiles at that, but she does not quite return it.

"I suppose you came for a good reason."

A host of them runs through her mind. None of them revolve around the reasons she had left him eighteen years prior. Part of her thinks about their past relationship, but that is so far in the past that she dismisses the thought immediately. Horse is not the sentimental sort. Practical. It is not as if Grace Haven is so far from Burlington, and their colleagues and seminars and such occasionally overlap. If he is still smitten she knows she would have heard from him before now. He is stubborn, but eighteen years is a long grudge, even for him.

_No, something else,_ she thinks _._

That leaves his students or his health.

Cancer? she thinks, for a moment stricken. A flash of shame, at her selfishness at being petty upon seeing him, comes and leaves. He does not look sick enough. Breathing with relief, she turns her mind towards his students. Her brow furrows.

Horse continues his silence.

Waiting. For her to be ready.

Petra is an instructor in the University of Vermont's School of Social Work. Until eighteen years ago, she had been a social worker in Lamoille County. Including Grace Haven.

And living with Horse.

Engaged.

That had been a long time ago. Petra begins to seriously wonder what he is doing here, in this office. It overcomes her trepidation of speaking with him again. Once she lets him speak, she knows, everything will be as it was—his controlling the conversation, the agenda. When he gets what he wants, he will disappear. She knows it. It is a reason to stop him from opening his mouth.

She had left him for a reason.

Even then, eighteen years prior, she knew this day would come. She is not sure if this is better than reading about his engagement in the paper, or his death. Again with the death, she thinks. But here he is, nearly two decades after they left things unfinished and unsaid. What surprises her is how long the wait has been.

"It's not cancer," he says.

Instead of relief, she finds herself irritated at his arrogance—that he could read her so well.

"How can I help you?" she asks.

"I need you to remember when we first moved to Grace Haven."

"When I is young and hopeful?"

"Yes. I is looking for something more specific."

"And in love?"

"I don't want to muddy the waters," he says.

To her surprise, he shifts uncomfortably.

"This is serious," she says, noting his uneasiness.

"I wouldn't be here otherwise."

"No," she agrees. "Can I get you some tea?"

"That would be nice."

"Wow," she says with a laugh. "Tea? Not coffee. You do want something important."

"Listen...."

"I know." Her face breaks with sympathy. "Do you want to go somewhere and get a coffee?"

"If you wish, later." He looks around her office, cataloging everything a second time.

Judging, she knows. _He cannot not help it_ —she knows that, too.

"Tea, then?"

"Yes."

A minute after she gets up with her electric kettle she returns from the bathroom with it full of water. While it warms up, he begins.

"Do you remember when we first moved to Grace Haven?"

"Of course I do."

"I'm wondering if you ever worked with the Brooks family?"

"Brooks?"

"Thomas Brooks."

"I suspect you have a file."

"Yes."

"And you know it's confidential and you can't show it to me."

"Haven't you taken some sort of oath?"

"You mean have I signed a confidentiality agreement? Yes." She looks over at the electric kettle. "Just like you did."

"So, we can both look at the file."

"Or neither of us can."

"Wells says that we can."

"I doubt that."

"Let's assume we can."

"I have no reason to."

"Okay, fine." He reaches into his satchel and pulls out a thin manila folder. "Thomas Brooks. Finished sixth grade. Moved or did not come back. Mother's name...."

"You need to stop...."

"Lucy."

"You can stop."

He does. About the file.

"I can't break any confidentiality from my job."

"Even after twenty years?"

"No. It doesn't work like that."

"But you did see her in your capacity as a social worker?"

"No comment."

The kettle rolls to a boil and makes a light whistle. Petra breaks away and pulls a mug from the shelf. Opening a wooden box that had once held index cards, she withdraws two orange spice teabags; one for her mug, the other for Horse. He is surprisingly silent throughout.

They says nothing while it steeps, neither sure where to look.

In the end, Horse looks down as his mug as the tea colors the water.

"Aren't you going to ask if I take milk?" he asks.

"You won't drink it so I'm not going to waste my milk on you."

"Why would I ask for it if I wasn't going to drink it?"

"Politeness?"

"Ah, you think I've changed."

"No," she replies with a sigh. "I guess not."

He puts the tea down on the small table by the door to let it steep longer. Looking at it, she knows it will go cold before he touches it again. In the end, she will pick it up and pour the cold tea down the drain, leaving her to wash out the mug for another visitor.

"I knew you wouldn't break confidentiality." He smiles with memories.

"Then why did you come here."

"Because I am sure you have heard all of the gossip around this family."

"Grace Haven is a small town," she agrees.

"Still is."

"But no one remembers?"

"No one has a steel trap of a mind like you do."

"So, no one will talk to you."

"As I said..." He taps his own head while looking straight at her.

"Lucy Brooks." She thinks.

Looking for something to do, he turns towards his tea. Reluctantly, he picks it up.

Horse has always wanted to be a tea drinker but can never bring himself to do it.

Tea. Full of ceremony and history.

Coffee is so crude, from the coarse bean trading floors to the men who drink it. Celebrated in literature and film for all of the wrong reasons it is one step above tobacco. But, he loves it. Tea does not fire him up. His day needs to begin with the clear starting line that his first cup in the morning brings.

After a moment, he puts the mug back down without having taken a sip.

Petra thinks this sums him up, perfectly. She had asked him to quit, which he did, until he did not. To him, it is trivial. A small vice. "You are born with a certain number of vices," he'd told her at the time. "If it's not this, it could be something worse."

He looks into the cup. A tea bag, mostly hidden by the rim.

No future here, he thinks.

"Lucy Brooks," Petra mutters again. "Single mother."

"She's listed as living on Berman Street."

"Perhaps once. No, she is last at Bailey's Bend." She takes a long sip, letting the aroma fill her nose. She lives for tea—for the flavors. They create moods. In her mind, coffee creates only one mood—bitterness.

A mood Horse exemplifies.

"You know that patchwork of buildings?"

"A last hurrah."

"Yes," she exhales, blowing the rising steam from her mug. "For some."

"I know it."

"I'm surprised it's still standing."

"Are you?"

"No," she admits. "I've seen much worse."

"Did anyone mention where she got off to?"

"Oh, people said a lot of things."

Horse slouches in his seat. Picking up his tea, again, he places the mug on his belly. Tell me more, he pleads silently with her. Then, smirks at the game they were playing. After eighteen years they have resumed the game where they had left off.

She smirks back.

"Drink the tea," she tells him.

"Why?"

"Torture."

"It's not coffee."

With a chuckle she says, "Perhaps you'll see something in the leaves."

Horse looks back into the mug. "It's a bag."

"Well, there you go."

Nonsense, he thinks. She is ribbing him.

Having him for a laugh.

And he deserves it. More of it. Only harsher.

"The rumor is that she had an affair."

"The father wasn't around?"

"No. And the other man is a boy."

"A boy?"

"Teenager. Old enough."

"She is thirty."

"Young enough."

"Do you know who the boy was?"

"After thirty years?"

He waits.

"No," she finally tell him. "I is never given that name." She moves a few things on her desk. "I never thought to ask."

"Gossip."

"I guess once in thirty years gossip becomes important to listen to."

"Okay," he says, ready to sum up what he knows. "Thomas Brooks is an eleven year old boy. He is last seen, as far as we know, on the last day of sixth grade. His mother is a single mother. No father, that we know of. Rumor has it she lived at Bailey's Bend..."

"She did..." She gets lost in thought for a second, which she wears on her face. Snapping out of it, she adds, "...live at Bailey's Bend."

"Fact?"

Reluctantly, she nods.

Horse knows she has made a concession by revealing something confidential.

"She lived at Bailey's Bend. Fact. She is rumored to have had a relationship with a teenager." Horse stops. "A boy?"

Petra smiles. "That's the rumor."

"I'm sure it would have been more memorable had he been a she."

"You'd be surprised what goes on in the rural bits of the county."

"No idea where she went?"

"No. She just left. Disappeared. With the kid."

"Or not."

"What do you know?"

He tells her about the sidewalk, and the body. Petra looks out her small window as she thinks about it. Horse puts his tea, now cold, down on the table.

"And they know it's Thomas'?"

"No."

"But you do."

"Yes."

"Because you're always right."

"Is that a question or statement?"

"Oh, I don't think it's a question in your mind."

No, he thinks. It is a feeling, based on logic. It all fits. Neatly. Thinking that, he has a doubt....

"I want to know who is buried under my sidewalk," he tells her at last.

"So do I." She thinks about all of the cases she worked on during her years as a social worker in Lamoille, Franklin and Essex counties. All of the mothers, fathers and... children. Lots of children. They were why she stayed. And left. Between Horse bringing his work home with him and her caseload....

Then this position opened up and she took it. To get away.

"This may be awkward..."

"Was she a client?" she asks for him.

"Yes," he says, confirming the question he has.

"No." She smiles a tense smile meant to cover other things. "She wasn't a client of mine."

"So, there's no file."

"There might be, but not with my name in it."

"Good mother."

"Or off the radar. No complaints. No application for WIC. No record. No file. The kid would be forty-one, if he's alive. She's in her sixties."

"But you don't know."

She stares at him, hard. "I'm not going to go rooting around for you. No."

And there hangs everything they had not said eighteen years ago.

Horse looks into his mug, again. The tea bag is slumped to the side, half floating and half... sad. I know how you feel, he thinks.

He looks up at her.

"So, about heading off for a cup of coffee?" he says.

Still sitting, she turns her shoulder to him—the chair will not allow her to turn her back. But that treatment does not last long. They wind up at Henderson's Café where she has her first cup of coffee in years. It tastes horrible.

"How were the bathrooms?" Petra asks.

"Wonderful." He is only being a bit sarcastic.

"I thought you'd appreciate them."

"You scouted them for me? Considerate as always."

"I thought of you," she clarifies. "When they remodeled the building. Most people avoid public restrooms."

"I don't see why."

Horse finds public restrooms relaxing. Unlike most others, he does not dwell on the cleanliness or possibility or germs, but likes the variety that comes with a new location. Restrooms need to be empty, or very busy, for him to feel a sense of privacy—which he prefers. He is especially fond of larger bathrooms spaces, and always choses the handicap stall. A good bathroom, he feels, has a sturdy lock, a hook for his coat and bag, plus a flat surface for a book or tablet computer to rest on while he makes himself ready to sit or leave.

"Unfortunately, the top of the toilet paper dispenser pitches forward from the wall."

"No place for your reading material?" she asks, nodding towards his notebook.

"Pretty much."

He sits.

"Still consulting?" Horse asks.

"As long as people are willing to listen."

"Oh, that's the education industry, isn't it?"

Sitting in this café outside of the UVM bookstore, Horse feels old. He does not usually feel old. Did he usually care? he wonders to himself. Is it being with Petra that makes him feel self-conscious about his age? Sitting before him is a reminder of eighteen years passed. She looks older—healthy and attractive—and he wonders how much worse he has aged.

Does he care about such things?

Perhaps, he only goes to places where he does not have to care, and avoids everywhere else.

" _Your happy little rut,"_ Petra had said with a sneer near the end of their relationship.

Leaning forward awkwardly in the cold metal chair of the café, Horse could not argue. _He had been happy._ Eighteen years later, he is still happy.

Albeit, slightly alone.

"This chair..." he mutters.

It has been designed to be uncomfortable for long term sitting so that lounging students will move on and let paying customers claim the seat. But they are young and, after a dozen years in school chairs, do not seem to mind the discomfort. Laptops open, they click away around him with half-filled cold cups of java until told to leave. Horse wishes they were still in her office.

Even the coffee is horrid.

"What would you advise teachers?" she asks him.

"To not show up at events that feature consultants."

"I'm serious," Petra protests.

"So am I."

He smiles. She does not.

"Okay," he says, softening. "I'd teach them to say 'No'."

"Teachers say 'no' all of the time."

"No they don't." He smells his coffee for a moment, then puts the cup down. "They avoid tasks or blow them off, and they always complain, but they never say the word itself."

"And you think they should?"

"If you asked someone to do something, would you rather they did a poor job of it or told you 'no' straight out?"

"The latter, I guess," she admits reluctantly. Petra raises her mug of tea with a slight smile. "So, what would your presentation look like?"

"Oh, you don't want to go into it."

_Trust me,_ his stare says to her.

She drops it.

Sipping their drinks, a silence covers them like a light snowfall—a bit cold and slightly muffling the sounds around them. They have nothing to say, and everything. They remain sipping.

It is Petra who breaks the silence.

"How bad do you want the file?" she asks.

He does not like her smile. It is one he knew too well, and had been unable to say "No" to. Horse doubts he could say it now.

"I could take it or leave it," he feints.

"I'll bet you could," she replies, smiling wide on one side of her face.

She doesn't believe me, he thinks. He knows.

"Sure," he says to her, cautiously. "I'd love a peek at it."

"If there is one," she qualifies.

"If." And then Horse waits for what he knows is coming.

"For a favor."

His response is an expectant smile. "Yes?"

"You give a presentation on saying 'No' for me at a conference next month."

"No."

"Is that you practicing, or trying to be funny?"

Instead of answering, he says, "If there is no file, then I have no obligation."

"No deal."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Sure it does." Lifting her cup to her mouth, she lets his mind predict what she might say. "It will take time to go through channels...."

"How much?" he protests.

"But," she begins again, holding up a hand to stop him from interrupting. "I am calling in favors. It is an unusual request, and I'm using my contacts to do something that is, kind of, illegal."

"Kind of," he replies, with a light sneer.

"Enough to lose my license. Or at least get it suspended."

"Then why do it?"

"Oh, I could never say 'no' to you."

"That isn't true."

"Sure it is."

"I thought that would have changed after all these years."

"No," she replies, narrowing her eyes. "I've just learned to negotiate a better 'yes'."

Chapter Nineteen

"How are the puzzles going?" the principal laughs with the words as he holds the door.

"Slowly," Old Horse replies.

"Innovative."

"It touches on all of those Habits of Mind that were the fashion, once."

"At least those in-service days weren't wasted."

The teacher grunts in response. They walk in silence down the corridor to Horse's classroom. Unlocking his door, he slides inside, leaving Wells to his own thoughts and problems. With a scan, he inspects the state of the puzzles over the rim of his coffee mug. A few are going well, but most have barely been taken from the boxes.

In fact, at the end of the first session, one group has simply wiped them all back into the box.

"You don't want to save your work?" he had asked them after the first day.

"We'll just start again next time." The speaker then shrugged his shoulders to emphasize his indifference.

One student, Max, held a piece in his hand and scanned the entire box for its match. Not finding it, he put it back in the box. Then, the boy grabbed another piece and did the same thing.

Muttering to himself, he has not noticed Penny standing in the doorway.

"You look puzzled," she says.

"Nobody appreciates a good pun anymore."

Walking to his desk he says, "Puzzle solving is clearly not instinctual."

"I suspect not. Another thing you need to teach them."

"Another," he says under his breath.

He glances at the clock.

"Can I ask you a question?" she ventures.

"You just did."

"I'll assume the answer, then, is yes and push forward. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do now."

"That's not a question," he replies. "But honest."

"Do you have a response?"

"I always have a response." He glances at the clock a second time. Students will be coming into the classrooms in a few minutes. "Can you make it through today?"

"Yes."

"Then you can buy me coffee after school."

With that sentiment uttered, the first throng of kids crush through the door. One kid's backpack, slung lazily over his left shoulder, snags on the doorknob and yanks him and the bag backwards, knocking aside three other eager learners.

The day begins.

As per Horse's morning protocol, they read the question on the board, write an appropriate response and then began working on their puzzles. Within ten minutes, all but three students are unproductively fumbling their pieces.

"You know Ben..." Horse begins. Going from group to group, he is taking the lunch count while commenting on their puzzle solving technique. "Have you thought of putting the puzzle on a table?"

"That's what you said when we started last week," Ben replies, a sharp tone in his response.

"And how is it going?"

"Fine."

It does not look fine.

With eleven boys in the group—two who had yet to arrive at school—they have barely gotten a hundred pieces solved. Six of the boys stand around doing nothing.

"Let me break it down for you," the teacher says.

"We have a hard puzzle," one of the other boys interjects, before Old Horse can begin his list of 'solutions'.

"First, you have two students who never arrive in time to help."

"They're late because they don't think this is worth coming in for," blurts out Timmy, an impulsive kid who says honest things before he realized that, perhaps, he should keep his mouth shut.

Impulse control, Horse thinks. Another habit of mind needing to be explored. When will we get to spelling?

"Plus, their parents drive them in and this is when it's convenient for them," Ben adds, scowling at Timmy.

Timmy looks at his shoes.

"Leaving you guys to do their work for them."

"We can't control their parents," one of the boys answers.

"They can take the bus."

Ben snorts. "Some kids don't like the bus."

"Why?"

"Have you taken it?"

"No."

"It's boring."

"Get called names. Hit."

Timmy mutters, "Their parents get them coffee on the way."

Stopping for a moment, he looked around the room. Over half of the students are doing a horrible job at their puzzles. When the two tardy members of his group showed up, he ended the session and began the academic day.

"You're from Baileys Bend," Horse says to her.

The two sit at the bar half way to Richford. A single room in a manufactured building, they are the only two in the place. On the walls hang posters promoting the domestic and Canadian beers on tap, and a worn pool table sits in the corner. In front of them sit two pints of a local microbrew neither of them have heard of before. No music plays, for which Horse is thankful.

"You said coffee," she reminds him.

"I said that in front of the kids." He takes a drink from his pint. "So, Baileys Bend?"

"Is there a good way to lose control?" Penny asks, ignoring his question.

"Sure."

Horse has been fussing with his beer. To her, he seems preoccupied.

"Let's just say that there are many paths to the same destination," he adds.

"I feel the class is out of control."

The old man is distracted.

"Any bullshit time?"

"What do you mean?"

"Kids off task." His eyes scan the room and he lifts his pint. "Screwing around."

"No."

"Don't worry about it."

"Really?"

"I don't know."

"But you're my mentor teacher." At Grace Haven, new teachers to the school are assigned a mentor, who shows them the ropes throughout their first year. Some new teachers need to know which parents to handle carefully, while others simply cannot figure out how the copy machine works. A few pairs never meet, while other mentors endure days of tears. "You are supposed to have the answers."

"Who told you I is your mentor?"

"Wells."

"That might explain the extra pay in my paycheck."

"You didn't ask when you noticed it?"

"Nope."

"Well, you can give me advice or you can buy the drinks with the paycheck you're not earning."

The mentor considers this.

"I did."

"I must have missed it."

Then he takes a sip and puts down an empty pint glass. With his hand, he motions for another to the bartender, who is stocking the coolers and does not see the call. Looking down at her own half-filled glass, she no longer has a taste for what remains.

"So tell me about Bailys Bend," the mentor says.

"Not much to tell."

"Still..."

"My family lived there for a decade..."

"You mean your mother and you?"

"And some boyfriends."

"Is that typical?"

"Boyfriends? No, actually. She is too afraid to get out and meet people. Agoraphobic, I think. She self-medicated. And, too selfish to share what little she had."

"I see."  
"Look," she says, leaning forward with a threatening air, "if you want to know about me, ask."

"I was," Horse replies. "Actually, I want to know about Bailys Bend."

"A dump."

"A dump that is your home."

"A home of last resort."

"Did you know the Brooks' family?"

She laughs. "The bones you dug up?"

"Perhaps."

"No." The bartender brings over two pints. I guess he did see me, Horse thinks, even though he had only asked for his to be refilled. Penny takes it, though, and drinks deep. "People cycle through places like that."

"Except your family."

"My mom. And a few other families. But the Brooks, that would have been something like ten generations between us and them."

"Still..."

"I saw three people get shot. Three." She holds up three fingers.

"It made you tough."

"Perhaps."

"That's your answer."

"What is the question?"

"Your class." He takes a deep sip. "You are tough enough for them."

Chapter Twenty

Baileys Bend is famous for two things: Its poverty and the fight over its name.

Consisting of twelve buildings clustered together where the stream forces the road to bend, the poverty in Baileys Bend is evident to anyone who drives by it on the uncommonly used road. Seven of the buildings are remnant outbuildings from the old Bailey Farm: two small barns, a smoke house, three bunkhouses and a converted sugar shack. Each has been converted into something habitable before it degenerated into something less so. Peeling whitewash reveales older red paint that reveales bare, dry clapboard. Windows have been retrofitted into place, covered with cheap aluminum storm windows. Because the land is all stones and uneven, water creates frost heaves that drop and raise and buck foundations until not a single right angle can be found.

On other small scattered lots sit a few mobile homes that have been moved a few times over the years. They are now too worn for most parks, but the uneven pocked ground of Baileys Bend accepts them without questions. Their sides are rusted and some of the windows are covered with plywood and between all twelve of the buildings rutted dirt drives connect them together like wet tendrils of hair snared in the shower drain. A few sun-faded green hoses run from those trailers to hidden spigots.

Even the land is impoverished. So rocky and pitched no crop could be cultivated, it is not even deemed a place suitable for grazing. For that reason the farm it had once belonged to had sold it decades before. The entire cluster sits on an uneven hill. While a few of the houses shear their crabgrass—if it is grass—down to the nub, most of the hill has been reclaimed by copses of maples that grow between rocks and large stones and rusted barbed wire. Old foundations hang behind the first line of trees. Interspersed throughout are bits of old, rusted farm machinery, dragged into the woods before the land turned from farming to residential use.

For anyone who wonders why the residents of Baileys Bend do not improve their land—and some in town wondered it openly, at selectboard meetings—it is because they do not own it. They have little stake. Some of the residents are transitional while others have nowhere else to go, but each sees their stop in Baileys Bend as short and temporary. The current owners ask for no references, only a large security deposit and rent. The inhabitants are varied, but generally do not think of Baileys Bend as home. It is a way station for people hoping to soon move up or who are quickly going down.

Still, that cluster of houses on the bend in the road is old enough and prominent enough to warrant its own designation by the state. At some point, someone had petitioned for it to exist on a map. Baileys Bend has a small green rectangular sign with white letters that you pass as you drive down the road. With recognition from the state comes a small dot just north of Grace Haven on the USGS maps, as well as _The Vermont Gazetteer_ , the commercial road atlas of note for the state.

This is where the fight over its name began.

After getting lost on the road one afternoon, an English teacher at the local union high school noticed the sign and grew furious at the lack of an apostrophe. Already sensitive to the fluctuating nature of the native county tongue, the disintegration of the American language had come to her attention after a long week of creative grammar by her students. It should have an apostrophe, she thought as she took the turn a bit too fast, skidding in the gravel and nearly losing her muffler to a pothole. After stewing for a weekend over the state of the region's writing mechanics, she had her students compose letters to their state representative demanding the map be changed. Two drafts later, with her close revisions reluctantly followed, those letters who agreed with her were sent off to Montpelier.

To the representative, supporting the change on the map seemed an uncontroversial way to promote education at little cost to the state's bottom line. Also, as a photo-op bit of legislation, it would appeal to the older, persnickety voters that thought that, these days, kids did not know anything and the schools no longer cared. It is a feel-good measure that would get his face in the local papers—perhaps even the _Burlington Free Press_ —and offend no one.

He had not counted on the local historical society.

Grace Haven is blessed by nine elders who think all of American history can be understood without leaving the town. In half of a converted one-room schoolhouse at the end of the village the "Historic Nine" puts up displays that generally go unnoticed. They pour over old maps, collect and transcribe oral histories, and reconstruct stone walls in an attempt to maintain the historic roots of the town. As unattended as their work has been, they are an anchor greatly appreciated by the town. Their presence is a comforting underlay in a busy and changing world. People see them as the klaxon horn against unfettered development. If, as the Grace Haven Historical Society argues, every bit of land has historic value, then every encroachment from the outside world requires judicial review in the court of public opinion. They are the canary in the coal mind keeping the town authentic.

In short, no one messes with the Historic Nine.

When word got around that their state representative is putting an apostrophe into Baileys Bend the Nine went to work. Files were unearthed along with long unread documents inside. Surveyor's maps and deeds from the town clerk's office saw the light of day, some for the first time since being filed a century before. One of the Nine is dispatched to Montpelier; the first in when offices opened and the last to leave when they closed. After a week of research and talk, they had assembled a timeline of documentation establishing that Baileys Bend had never been a possessive.

It belonged to no one.

Their argument is novel: In the state of Vermont rivers and streams are state property. A bend in the stream, therefore, does not belong to the Baileys or the Bailey Farm. It just is Baileys Bend. It always had been.

"Doesn't the bend refer to the road?" the teacher had asked in a public forum.

This meeting had been held in the large upstairs room of the town hall. It attracted nearly as many people as the annual town meeting, but more people came for blood. On the stage sat the Nine, the moderator of the select board, the town clerk and the English teacher. They sat in stiff, wooden chairs. The weight of the panel leaned one way—towards the Nine.

"Not that we can tell," one of the Nine had answered.

"Anyway," says another. "It's the stream that causes the bend in the road, so the same rule applies."

"Does it?" the teacher had asked.

The Nine nodded in unison.

They also had three hundred pages of precedent.

It is good enough for the state rep, as many of those older persnickety voters were more aligned by the local historians than an English teacher trying to tell locals how to do things. With the _Free Press_ photographer looking on, he dropped the bill and the name remained Baileys Bend.

A few years later, the teacher left for a job closer to civilization, in Chittenden County.

Horse is looking through the drizzle for the thirteenth building.

Another overcast day, he finds a pull-off where one of the drives meets the main road. Stepping from his car, he looks at the houses on the hillside while pulling on his orange Columbia rain jacket. Originally left by a visiting soccer coach too angry at a loss to retrieve it, the jacket is marked with black grease stains Horse has picked up by working on his car during its occasional breakdowns. On his head sits a blue Red Sox cap discretely displaying the two sox logo on the peak. It does little to protect him from the weather, but the brim keeps the wind from blowing rain into his face. Plus, he likes the hat.

There are a few cars parked further up the hill, but most of the residents, he expects, are still at work. Quite possibly, he considers, those cars do not even run; a future project that will disintegrate over time, like many aspects of their lives. Then he chastises himself for trading in stereotypes of the poor—at best, it is unproductive. He looks at his own aged Festiva that needs to be nursed each day to get where he is going.

The buildings are small, like freestanding one or two bedroom apartments, but crummy. It is easy to tell the living areas from the bedrooms; the former have televisions flickering in them or an empty blackness, while the latter's windows are covered. For shades, some of the windows have sheets or towels tacked up inside. Two have American flags. One, adorned with a Batman print, moves as he steps from his car. Someone is watching him. His destination is a house he hopes had once housed the Brooks.

Looking past these structures his eyes scan the edge of the woods. Finding what he hopes might still be there, he heads for the peeling red building, partially collapsed, away from the other twelve and half hidden by a cluster of maples. Parallel indents in the grass let it be known that a car had once driven to the building on a regular basis. Maturing shoots of maple trees let it also be known that it has been awhile. Wearing his old black muck boots, he walks in the left rut.

Unlike the other habitable buildings this one has a porch. It reminds him of the porch he imagined Jenny Crawford telling her story from in Hurston's _Their Eyes Were Watching God_. Perhaps smaller, he considers. Small enough for two chairs, Horse stands on it and looks down at his car and the stream beyond. From there Tabitha could have seen everyone coming and going. It surprises him that it holds his weight, as much of the building suffered from dry rot. He is further surprised that the door is locked—a rusted Yale lock hanging from a latch—and that his shoulder cannot easily force it.

"Because it's important that this building is secure," he mutters, rubbing his shoulder

Fortunately, half of the back wall of the building is missing.

Although small, the building is a two bedroom house. Horse ducks under a supporting beam and enters the main room from outside. The living part of the home is twelve by fifteen with a small kitchen in the corner. On the south side is the room's lone window. The glass is gone; smashed, with shards on the floor. There is a tiny water closet, a toilet behind an empty doorframe; the sink and tub are in the kitchen. No pictures adorn the walls, but there is a lot of peeling paint and wallpaper on crumbling plaster and laths. He finds no furniture or personal items, only a dish rack by the sink. Seemingly, the last person who had lived here took their stuff with them.

"No water," he says, turning the faucet. Then he looks under the sink and sees that someone has taken the copper pipes to sell as scrap.

The kitchen has no cabinets, only empty shelves. An outlet by an empty space, the floor discolored by lack of foot traffic, indicates a refrigerator had once been there. Looking into the corner he can tell where a wood stove had once been; a hearth of dry laid bricks lay on the floor and the walls around it are dark with soot. Near the ceiling above hangs a stove pipe that disappears on its way to the roof.

With each step not giving way, Horse grows more confident. The floor is planks; it would have been called a subfloor in a proper home but Horse is confident a finish layer of tongue-and-groove maple had never been planned. The boards are painted, with paths worn where the doors had once scraped as they swelled in the summer. Now the inner doors are gone—someone must have removed the doors by pulling the pins from the hinges, leaving the rusted half-hinges still screwed into the jams. No closets, he sees a curtain rod running across a small cubby in the corner of each room. And coat hooks. The smaller room has four, while the larger six. Returning to the main room, he counts two rows of five hooks by the front door.

Someone has a lot of things to hang, he thinks.

He tries to imagine a family padding around. He touches the walls lightly with his hand as he makes himself around, as if they would tell him something. Instead, his fingers and palm just get covered with dust and flecks of paint while his mind remains without ideas. Entering each bedroom, there is not much to see. More chipped paint and bare walls. Unsure of what he is looking for, he doubled and tripled back, looking at the same thing and hoping to see something he has missed.

Nothing.

Rain. The roof leaks in several places. He looks up and can see patches of sky.

It is then that two things happen.

First, Horse's right foot falls through the floor.

One moment, he is walking from the front bedroom to the back and the next he is up to his right knee in splinters. The wood is dry and the splinters long. They catches his khaki pants as the foot plummets into the crawlspace below, exposing his bare calf to more shards that scrape from the top of his boot to the knee. Carefully, he works to withdraw his leg from the hole. His boot falls off, into the crawlspace. Leaning in any direction only causes the splinters to pierce deeper into his calf. With some success his weight is distributed over his hands, enabling him to push straight up. Nevertheless, the splinters that had been pushed downward as he fell now dig in deep as he struggles to withdraw. Counter intuitively, he lets the leg go in slightly more so that he can rest his full weight on his thigh and buttocks.

Sitting, he realizes he had left his phone in his bag. That sits in the trunk of his car, down the hill, parked by the road.

Taking a breath in, the second important thing happens.

Looking up he has a clear view of the backyard through the missing back wall. Even with the trees and undergrowth, the hill that the house backs up on suffers from erosion. Absorbing the pain as he sits on the splintered floor, he sees the remnants of what appears to be a stone wall, except it does not really go anywhere. It is, he realizes, more of a stone pile. Growing over it are vines and scrub and plants that look to him like poison ivy—he has always been unable to identify poison ivy with any accuracy—but also something else lies among the debris. From this distance he cannot be sure.

Perhaps it is a stone. But it looks like something less expected.

Around the pile of stones—Horse is sure now it is an intentionally laid pile of stones—some of the soil has washed down the slope. Frost heaves have taken their toll, so that now the ground around the pile no longer supports it. The stones have settled. In doing so, a few had toppled, while other movement opens gaps between them.

His leg trapped in the floorboard and pain waiting to trump the adrenalin he now feels, Horse is looking at a bone poking out from below one of the stones in the pile.

Chapter Twenty-one

"Fences make good neighbors," Wells says as a greeting.

Having managed to free himself from the Punji pit trap that is the floor of the house, Horse had limped back to his car. His pant right leg is pushed up above the knee, splinters of the dry rotted floor deep into his legs. From the trunk, he retrieved his bag and his phone and called Wells. His leg hurt. Real pain. Lowering himself into his passenger seat, he stretched his leg out and looked at the damage. Scrapes ran from just above his ankle to the knee. They were spotted with mud; the rain had softened up the ground in the time he had been there. He is bleeding, the top of his socks absorbing much of it.

His friend arrived with tweezers, hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, cotton pads and gauze wrap, all pinched from the nurse's office. He looked at the leg, and made a face.

"That good?" Horse says.

With some rubbing alcohol he sterilized the tweezers and made to remove the first over a dozen splinters. Horse stopped him.

"Can you do me a favor and see if it is, indeed, a bone?" he asked.

"What bone?"

Horse winced, pointed at the pile of stones. He had mentioned something about a stone wall when he had called for medical help, but had not gone into specifics. Now, he told him what had happened—what he had seen.

"Well, confirm it." Horse leaned back in his car seat. "I looked after calling."

"What did it look like?"

"Like a hand."

"As in a hand you'd see in an old horror movie?"

"When you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous."

Then Horse winced in pain.

Already dressed for the weather—he figured if Horse only wanted his wounds dressed he would have met him somewhere that served alcohol—Wells put the cap back on the hydrogen peroxide and tossed the first aid supplies onto the Festiva's floor. He pulled down his cap. Making his way up the slope, Wells now put on the rubber gloves he had forgotten to use when cleaning Horse's wounds. Horse watched from the roadside. Poking his way closer at an every slower pace, the principal finally reached the pile of stones.

"What do you think?" Horse yelled to him from the car, his voice being cancelled out by the rain beating against the principal's jacket.

Wells waived the question away, confident he knew what his friend had asked even as he did could not hear its content. Bending down for a closer look, he called back that he is looking. With the drizzle, even as it grew lighter, yelling only sounded muffled. He did not like Horse to rush him. It is growing darker and Wells had left his flashlight in his car, but he could see well enough. After a time, he came back.

"Well?"

"I didn't want to disturb a possible crime scene."

Wells' face is drained as he looked at the other twelve houses on the hill.

"So you think it might be a body?"

"Or a cow bone. I don't want to call in the police and be told it's a cow."

"A cow with fingers?"

"I know that people find bear paw skeletons and call the police. They look surprisingly similar."

"I guess once the fur is gone...."

Wells wiped his dripping nose on a cotton handkerchief he always kept in his pocket. He made them himself out of old t-shirts, a detail that endeared him to Horse whenever he saw him use it. "I don't know...."

"What do you think the chances that a cow bone, or bear paw, wound up under a pile of stones?"

"Very little," Wells admitted.

"What are our options?"

"Call the police."

"Or dig it up ourselves."

Only Horse considered that last idea a real option.

Because he is still wearing rubber gloves, Horse had Wells remove the first few stones of the pile.

"Be careful," he says.

Wells gave his friend a look that told him to be quiet.

"Would you like to do it?" he added.

In walking to the pile they had discussed how to examine it. Wells advocated for a more conservative approach of observation. Horse had a more aggressive plan in mind. The compromise is to start at the opposite end of the pile from the exposed bones. If it is indeed a human body, they figured, bones would be found there, too.

Not able to do much because of his wounds, Horse directed. Wells had cleaned and bandaged him leg, and is sure he had gotten most of the splinters out. His advice had been to go to the hospital, but the old teacher wanted to see if his discovery is what he thought it was. Grunting, the principal pulled at a rock.

"You're out of shape."

On closer examination, the pile had clearly been there a while. In the shade and under growth, moss covered some of the surface. Base stones had settled into the dirt, with the weight of the other stones driving them half way underground. These were stones from a wall, ranging in size from a softball to a basketball. Searching the area before picking at the site, they found the source of the stones; a wall that ran through the line of trees separating the houses from the frields. New England is full of such walls, the product of turning rocky soil in an inhospitable region. This wall is a trail of stones, dumped simply to clear the field and mark a now forgotten border. From what they could see it is only a stone or three high and it ran off into the maples each way. There were rusted bits of barbed wire tacked to the older trees nearby, the fence running along the route of the stones. Missing not far from the pile were some fifteen feet of stone.

From years of settling the pile had collapsed into a tight mass. Extracting the first stone proved difficult, and Horse had to restrain himself from helping—contamination is a concern. The wounds he suffered from the shattered floorboards were beginning to hurt in earnest. The teacher walked away, finding a seat on a larger stone ten feet away. The principal crouched down, feet in the mud, and lifted a second stone using too much of his back. Although it is small, moving it hurt.

"Don't hurt yourself," Horse says after the third stone is moved.

Wells handed him the gloves.

Chapter Twenty-two

"Is this where you scold us for contaminating a crime scene?" Horse asks.

The sheriff's eyes go from Horse to Wells and back to Horse. He and the principal have a long working relationship, but Horse he only knows because everyone knows each other in Grace Haven eventually, if only by reputation.

"Which one of you moved the stones?"

Raising his hand, Wells begins, "I is asked to confirm that these were, indeed, bones before we wasted anyone's time."

"Could have been a dog," Horse adds.

"Or a bear," Wells says.

Giving him a look that tells him his comments are not helping, the sheriff says, "I don't suppose you could mess up a thirty year old crime scene that badly."

"Thirty years old?" Horse asks. "How did you come to that age?"

"You think its Brook's mother, right?" Smiling, the sheriff adds, "It's a small town."

Trooper Danielson had alerted the sheriff that Horse might be sniffing around Baileys Bend. And, as he thinks this, he notices Danielson's cruiser pull alongside his own.

"Cavalry's here," he says to the educators.

"Did you call in the boys?" Danielson asks as a salutation.

"On their way."

"These two?" He jerks his thumb at Wells and Horse.

"I've got statements."

"I'll bet I could tell you what they said."

Turning to Wells he adds, "But I'm surprised to see you here."

"Are you?" Wells replies. Looking at Danielson, he still sees the man as a third grader; a time he is most vulnerable. That is what sticks in the principal's mind.

"No," the trooper admits. "I guess not."

"Choose your friends wisely," the sheriff chuckles, slapping the trooper on the shoulder.

Walking up to the pile of stones, Danielson tries to think of what to do with Old Horse.

Crouching down, he pokes at the rocks without any affect. He cannot move the stones—contaminating the crime scene—so he is not really sure why he is touching them with the end of his pencil. Wait for the forensics guys, he thinks to himself.

But something is bugging him.

A feeling.

Trust science more than hunches, he thinks. Still, he knows that when the rocks are removed they will reveal something interesting.

He stays a few minutes in this crouch, pretending to examine the pile while he thinks.

"Do you want to wait for forensics," he shouts out to the sheriff. "Or me?

To Danielson it is clear the body had been moved.

The time is late. Because the body had been there so long, there is no rush on the part of forensics. With the sheriff's help, Danielson has taped off the area and made sure Horse stays by his car. As the darkness falls, the trooper wonders if it would not be until the next day before anyone looks at the body. No one from the main office will return his calls. Curious, he wants to know more, but moving the rocks will only destroy potential evidence.

He has his theories, though.

But what he says to Horse that night at Bailys Bend is, "Don't you have somewhere you need to be?"

"I'm a witness," he replies.

"I've taken your statement." The trooper takes a look around. "Where'd Wells go?"

"Home."

"And he didn't take you with him?" Danielson says with a bit more attitude than he had meant.

"So," he asks, "What are we looking at?"

"I'll lock you up if you tamper with the site."

Danielson's glare shows that he means business.

In the glove compartment Horse keeps stashed emergency reading materials: _Cassell's Latin Dictionary._ Flipping through the pages, the old teacher brushes up on Latin root words. It passes the time.

Soon after, forensics come. They poke around a bit, set up lights, and begin taking a lot of photographs. The spectators—Horse and Danielson—stand in silence. Each glances at their watch. No answers are revealed, and eventually Horse realizes he needs to teach the next day. At home, he opens a beer, does not drink it and falls asleep on the couch.

Chapter Twenty-three

"Did I once see you out with that Hanson kid?" Wells asks. "The one who is here when you were here."

"Once," Penny replies, her face turning red.

"Twice?"

"Two years."

Well laughs.

"You know, we had a problem with him pissing in the sinks when he is here."

"He peed in the sink?"

She looks at her coffee mug, sensing a phantom urine smell.

"Yeah." Wells smiles at the memory of the Hanson boy. "It took us awhile to figure out why the bathrooms smelled of urine and just as long to figure out who it was."

"Why would he do that?"

Penny leans forward, curious about her ex-.

"You took an adolescent psychology class to get certified?"

"Yes."

"Middle school is the age where pre-teens begin to make connections. They begin to think abstractly."

"Yeah."

"Hanson realized that the sink and the toilet drains were connected. It must have blown his mind."

"I can imagine."

"He began to wonder why he shouldn't pee in the sink."

"So he did."

"The natural next step," Wells concedes.

"Okay."

"Then he got obsessed."

There is a silence, eventually broken by Penny.

"It explains some things," she says.

"Does he still do it?"

"He did when we were dating," she replies. Then adds, "I think."

"His father is very passive-aggressive."

"I never noticed."

"Once, the father went out of his way to build a raised garden bed at his wife's request. Their dog is digging in the garden, and he figured if it were two feet high the dog would stay out."

"Okay..." she says, suddenly feeling badly for her ex-boyfriend.

"At night, after everyone went to bed, he went out and trained the dog to jump up onto the garden bed."

"Why?"

"The rumor is that he wanted to annoy his wife for making him make the bed in the first place."

"But wasn't it his idea?"

"Yes. That's the passive part of passive-aggressive."

"How did you hear that story?"

"It is in the divorce proceedings."

Wells leans back in his seat and sticks the sharpened end of a pencil between his teeth. Penny bristles at the thought of the lead between the gap in his front teeth.

The two are sitting in Wells' office, the new teacher sunk into the deep leather couch. Seeing his door open, Penny had knocked on the door jam and, at his invitation, dropped into the couch.

"Is the story about the pipes true?" she asks.

"About our coach being tossed from a game for having a pipe, which is against school rules?" Wells smiles at the memory. "Yes. In his defense, he only chewed on it out of habit—never lit it. He had kicked the habit, at the behest of daughter, eight years prior. It helped with the stress of coaching, so I allowed it."

"I'm thinking about the other half—about Horse going to that school's production of a Sherlock Holmes play and demanding the lead be suspended for smoking a calabash on stage. As a kind of revenge."

"Urban legends," Wells replies. "Do you know the other school?"

"The story changes."

The principal smiles over his mug.

"What made you ask about that?" Wells asks Penny.

Pulling at her green denim skirt, which falls too short as her bottom sinks a bit further into the couch, she replies, "Old Horse and I are supposed to talk about reshuffling our classes."

Looking at her watch, she realizes that Horse and she are to meet in five minutes.

"You should take that as a compliment. He doesn't share his students much."

"No?"

"No. He hates others people." He pauses a moment. "Do you want to work with him?"

"I don't know."

He laughs.

"Good. Keep innocent. It's your best hope of lasting with him."

With some difficulty, Penny manages to extricate herself from the couch. There is nothing hard on the couch to really push herself up from. The cushions are too soft and the front of the frame is too difficult to reach when that hard edge is truly needed. The arm is hard, but useless. Unless a person plops down so that their hip digs into the right arm of the couch, the distance is too far to get real leverage from pushing off of it. Many visitors to Wells' office sit near the middle of the couch, leaving them with no graceful exit.

"One bit of advice," Wells says when she is standing. "Don't worry about being fair in splitting up the kids. Give Horse all of the kids you don't want, if you want to."

"Can we not like kids?" she asks in earnest.

Wells only gives her look that conveyed his answer: _Yes._

Standing up and straightening her skirt, but not managing to regain any of the dignity she felt she had lost in her extraction, Penny leaves for Old Horse's classroom.

"Ah," Horse says in greeting, "are you ready to trade?"

In her hand is a thin file containing her student's names and some basic assessments. Earlier, she had made some quick notes and highlighted a few numbers in yellow. Old Horse sits on the other side of a table with a single sheet of paper in front of him.

He also has a pile of popsicle sticks.

"What're we doing?" Penny asks.

"Student draft," he replies with a smile.

As he explains it, Old Horse wants the two of them to create their ideal "teams."

"Like in football?"

"Sure," the senior teacher replies. "If you like." They will write each of the students' names on a popsicle stick, he explains. Then, they will trade sticks. In the end, each will have their team.

"For how long to we have them?"

"Forever."

"Didn't you already do placement last spring?"

"Well, someone did placement. Not you."

"Wells?"

Reluctantly, Old Horse admits that it had been Wells. He neglects to mention the parent preference forms, notes, phone calls and threats of legal action should some of Penny's students be placed in Old Horse's class. As Ben Bishop's father showed, not everyone appreciates his way with children.

But Penny is savvy. "What will the parents' say?"

"Let's draft and see where we are."

She is not comfortable with rating students in this way. Her philosophy, taught to her at UVM, is one of balance—for every smart kid in a class, there is someone who struggled. "Stupid, you mean," Old Horse had said to this thought when she expressed it earlier. When she protested, Old Horse had clarified. "Oh, I'll grant you that everyone can learn, but learns differently. But when someone talks balance, they are really speaking about someone who thrives in the system and someone who doesn't." She looked at him. "Or, do you really mean 'stupid?'" he added. She dropped her concerns for the time being.

Now she is here.

After fifteen minutes of work with the Sharpie, she has her present team laid out in front of her.

"Let the draft begin," Horse says. "You have first pick."

"This isn't really a draft. It's really trading."

"Yes, we're trading."

"Because the season's started." She stares at Old Horse without a smile. "I could just hold onto my team and let the trading deadline pass."

"You'd lose."

"This isn't a sport."

"No?" Horse smiles. "You've been teaching for five whole days. Don't be so sure."

But this is only her opening salvo, leading to her first offer.

"I want Brent," she says. Brent is a high achieving student, the dream of any classroom teacher.

"That's a high profile pick." Old Horse glances at the popsicle sticks laid out in front of her. "What are you willing to give."

"Butler and Smith."

"Both are pains in the ass. Brent is a dream."

"Not for you. His mother has already called you twice. He'll drive you to distraction." She taps on Butler's stick. "Foster home. No call. You'll get push from him, but then get respect for holding him accountable."

"And Smith?"

"The parents don't care."

"What about Smith himself?"

She shrugs, although she knows he has be bugged by the work load. The kid does not like to do anything.

"Why do you want Brent?"

"I'm lazy."

No you're not, he thinks. His eyes narrow, briefly, but he does not reveal much else.

"Okay, but you take Carson, too," he says.

"He's disruptive."

"He'll be gone by Thanksgiving."

"Is that a promise?"

"That's the rumor."

"Will you take him back if he's still here?"

"No."

"No deal. Brent for Butler and Smith."

"I want books thrown in."

"Books?"

"Fifty dollars worth from your shelves."

"Done."

The popsicle sticks slide across the table.

"I'll trade Carson."

"I don't want him."

"He'll be gone..."

"By Thanksgiving." She leans back. "You say."

"If he doesn't, you get another pick. To be named later."

"A student to be named later," she mutters. "Give you someone, or get someone?"

"First draft next year."

"Give you someone, or get someone?" she repeats.

"Give me someone in December, or get first pick in placement for next year." His face is as serious as it can get.

"How about last placement?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means, right before we put the list in stone, I can move one student."

"No," he says, with more anger in his voice than he had intended. "First pick."

"Can I name them in December?"

"Except Carson."

"Protected status?"

She thinks a moment. "Let's table that."

A few lateral moves are made, mainly to break up existing cliques that are spiraling into daily social drama—even in the first full week, it is clear which students cannot be together. After half an hour, they take a short break so that Old Horse can grab a diet tonic water from his car.

Sitting at the table alone, Penny begins grouping her popsicles. A few kids stand out; she loves them, but they need something else to thrive. At the same time, she spies three kids on Old Horse's side of the table who would fit in nicely with her program. When Old Horse returns, cracking the cap on his liter bottle, she proposes the trade.

"What's in it for me?"

"I'll go along with this crazy, disrespectful system."

"So far, you're winning here."

She looks at him in the eye. Her gaze says, "You set this up. You want something. I'll walk away."

Old Horse does want something. For the first time in years he feels that sending kids to the other seventh grade teacher would not doom them to a wasted year. One colleague, a few years back, had been so bad that Old Horse had proposed to Wells that he teach all fifty-three seventh grade students. It is not arrogance (mostly) but data: Old Horse is a great teacher. But he also knew that different learners required different teachers, if that other teacher is good.

Penny, he knows, is good.

He pushes a few kids at her that he knows would succeed under her tutelage. And he takes a few that need a firm hand, and an intellectual knock to the head. Old Horse moves a few popsicle sticks without asking. Penny watches in silence.

"How's that?"

"For the next week." She looks at the table. "We'll call it an experiment. A trial. A beta test. Send a vague letter home." Looking at him, she adding, "And wait for the fallout."

"If there is any."

"If there is any," she agrees.

They leave planning to start their new teams the next day.

"Hey," she says before she leaves. Wearing her coat and a leather bag over her shoulder, she has popped her head into his room. He sits, reading a book.

"Yes?"

For a moment she is taken aback. He is reading an old copy of John Knowles' _A Separate Peace_.

"I wanted to ask," she begins, regaining her footing. "I wanted to ask what happened with you and Wells?"

"You mean yesterday?"

"Yeah."

Right leg on top of his desk, leaning back in his chair, his wrist lets the book fall to his chest. He looks at her.

"We went up to Baileys Bend. I found a skeleton."

"Human?"

"Yup."

"You have a knack."

"Yup." After a pause, he asks, "Do you know anything?"

"About a skeleton?"

"You lived there. In Baileys Bend."

"I moved there when I is ten."

"Still. People hear things."

"Nope. Nothing."

"You might have played on those rocks. In the old ruin of a house."

"Anything unusual about it?" she says, ignoring him and not wanting to think about that time in her life.

"Yeah." He takes his leg off of the desk. "It is buried under a pile of stones. And when they took the stones off of it they found a noose of old nylon rope around its neck."

"Why would someone bury someone who had committed suicide?"

"Good question," he replies. "You should become a detective."

Then he returns to Gene, Phineas and the tree hanging over the Devon River.

Chapter Twenty-Four

"So what do we have?" Horse asks Danielson over the phone.

It is two days later, after he found the skeleton.

"Where are you?"

Horse is in his classroom. His students are reading silently and the teacher has taken this opportunity to check in with the authorities about the body. Out the window it is raining a steady drizzle.

"Man or woman?"

"Woman. They think."

"Anything interesting?"

"She hung herself."

"She is hanged."

"Right."

"What is the noose made from?"

"Rope."

"Not an electrical cord?"

An electrical cord might indicate a crime of passion—someone else had strangled her and then made it look like a suicide. Or, if self-inflicted, panic. Impulse. Odd, Horse is thinking—although with no reason to think it odd or otherwise.

Rope. But it is rope.

Rope indicates a bit of planning. Although rope is pretty commonly used for such things, few people have rope lying around their house—most of rope we have is in use. That leans towards planning, which means suicide.

Definitely suicide.

A woman.

Rope.

"Nylon or natural?"

"Nylon."

"So, it held up over time."

Danielson says nothing.

Horse asks, "What type of nylon?"

"What do you mean?"

"That cheap yellow stuff? is it thick, like they use for playground tire swings?"

"No."

"Or, perhaps, the type they use for waterski tow ropes."

"What do they use?"

"It's often blue and white."

"No." His voice changes as he becomes irritated. "Why would someone use a tow rope?"

"I don't know. Perhaps she died in a waterskiing accident on Lake Eden. Or the Green River Resivoir?"

"Do people water ski there?"

"I don't know. But if they weren't supposed to, and she got hurt, it might explain why they buried the body themselves."

He thinks. There is silence on the phone.

"Was she wearing a bathing suit?"

Danielson shakes his head, even though Horse has no way of knowing he is doing that.

Still, the young trooper admits that he has not thought much about the rope itself. After pulling a long shift, he is tired. While he tries to recall the color of the rope, the old teacher moves on to his next line of thought.

"What it a noose knot?"

"With knot tied in a hangman's knot?"

"No."

"Slip knot?"

"It slips, but it looks haphazard."

"I'm going to assume," Horse begins. Then he pauses, to begin again. "I'm going to assume that the rope is cut near the knot, a few inches from the neck."

"Eight inches from the knot."

"So, someone cut her down."

Suicide, they both think together. Then they both take sips of their coffee on their respective ends of the phone. Even as they are twenty miles away.

"Someone found her and didn't call the police," Horse begins theorizing. "Why?"

"Let's let the lab see what they can find."

Not wanting to wait for a low priority case, Horse snorts at the thought that he would wait for their results to push on alone.

Two bodies.

Three, including the man in the river.

Grace Haven is getting interesting.

"They're still working on the child," he points out, underscoring his belief that the lab will be a long wait.

"No," Danielson corrects. "They're done."

"And?"

"Nothing unusual. Except...."

But Horse does not bite. True, he wants to know, but he knows Danielson will spit it out after this juvenile dramatic pause.

"Lead."

"Lead?"

"In the bones. Large amounts of lead."

"Thirty years. Old paint? Poor kid of a poor mom living in an apartment that has no upkeep because the price is low, or illegal, so the paint is old and chipping. The kid ate paint."

Danielson takes another sip from his mug; the sound resonates through the phone line. "That's what the lab thought, too."

"That still doesn't explain what the body is doing under my sidewalk."

"If the kid got sick and died because of negligence, it might be in the parent's interest to dispose of the body."

"That seems a bit pat."

"Most crimes are," Danielson says to end the conversation.

But then he does not end it.

"Oh, the man in the river."

"Yes," Horse replies, having forgotten about him.

"Head trauma."

"Accident?"

"An indent on the forehead. Curved."

"Like a pipe?"

"Except two inches long. Then it stops."

"What could that be?"

"I don't know." Danielson takes another deep drink. "Find the instrument and you find the killer. Let me know what you figure it out."

Horse says he will.

Which just leaves the woman left with a noose around her neck.

Chapter Twenty-five

"So, you're entering the lucrative educational consulting circuit," Wells says to Horse.

It is the end of the day. On top of the tables are chairs and benches, but Old Horse has not even thought to leave yet. A pile of papers sit on his desk, but he is instead reading the _New York Times_ on his tablet. The sound of rain whipping against the classroom windows punctuates the background.

"Where'd you hear that?" he asks, not looking up.

"Email."

"Oh, Petra's in touch with you, now?"

"We've always been in touch."

At this, the teacher looks up. "Weren't you supposed to choose sides at the divorce?"

"You were never married."

Rolling his eyes, Horse says, "It's about allegiances."

"Because that's what our relationship is based on."

Looking around for somewhere to sit, Wells hops onto a clear bit of table near the window. Horse lets his comment drop, allowing Wells to poke him a bit harder.

"But the email wasn't from her. I got a notice from the Vermont Principal's Association. Apparently, you'll be addressing all of the administrators at the conference in November."

To which Horse breaks the _World's Greatest Teacher_ mug he had borrowed from Ms. Saxon the previous year.

"No," he says into the phone.

"You promised," she replies.

Of course she has gone forward with his promise—it is what he would have done. All of the reasons for their difficulties flooded his mind. " _In the end_ ," she'd said all of those years prior, " _I'm too much like you in the ways that drive everyone crazy."_ It is what stood between them.

"I haven't got the file yet," is what he says out loud.

"I told you I'd look at it."

"Results," he spits. "I expect results."

"Oh, you'll get results."

He says nothing.

"When can we meet?" she says, finally.

"Can you come here?"

"I'd rather not."

That meant "No."

They arrange to have dinner at the Parkway Diner in South Burlington.

_Neutral territory._ And no history.

" _Waddaya got?"_ Old Horse mockingly sneers as he swings his bottom into the seat across the booth from her.

On the table sits a yellow legal pad scribbled with her notes, which he has always found illegible. It is not the handwriting, but the unique organizational structure that flummoxes him. Laying across it is a cheap, blue Bic ballpoint pen topped with a chewed cap.

"Coffee?" Petra asks as a reply, waving the order to the waitress before he can bother to respond.

He is wearing a pair of worn jeans, old leather Sperrys and a green wool sweater that is too small for his body—it had been dried improperly. Another week of rain and the first full week of school complete, Horse is taking his cold weather wardrobe from storage and figuring out what still fits and what is ready to become a dog bed. A Saturday, he does not have even the usual mild regard for his wardrobe. Petra's concerns about the trajectory of his emotional growth of the past eighteen years—of lack of growth—are confirmed.

"You assume," he says in a low voice as the waitress places the mug on the table.

"Are you going to tell me that you've changed?"

"A lot happens in nineteen years."

"Yeah, you entrench further into your bad habits."

Through his nose, he takes in deep breaths.

She wears a similar outfit as him, but hers fits. The jeans are tasteful for an older professional out on a Saturday, and her wool sweater, red, is loose enough to convey a sense of comfort, but slightly tight to highlight her curves. On her feet are wood soled leather clogs—and extension of her insisting on taking her shoes at the door. "One of those people," Horse says of her, who also makes everyone else follow suit. As such, she had insisted when they had been together, that Horse have quality, well maintained socks. After nineteen years alone he has not shaken that habit. As she had nineteen years prior, she knits her own socks—he buys Darn Tough brand at the outlet store.

But they do not talk about socks.

"And," she says, breaking him from his thoughts, "you had coffee when we met at my office."

"This is fun," he says, faking a wide smile.

"What is?"

Taking a sip, he says, "Catching up."

"I almost believe you."

Then they both smile, genuinely.

"So...."he says before the moment can pass.

"I've got some information."

"Spill."

And she does.

Her entire cup of tea topples over, its contents all over the legal pad, causing her notes to run. Spreading across the page, what is not absorbed—most of it—rolls towards the edge of the table. Panicked, she swings her legs to the side. Petra's seat puddles with tea and milk.

"What is that?" he shouts.

Reaching over to the counter, he grabs a dishtowel the waitress had left and begins mopping up the table.

She mutters something, and then drops to the floor.

"Are you okay?" he barks at her, not meaning to sound as harsh as it comes out.

Then, he is up, looking down on her.

Her face makes it clear she is aware of her surroundings, but Petra does not respond to Horse's questions about her current state.

The old teacher picks her up off of the floor, touching her for the first time in nearly two decades. Even though she is the same weight, he struggles— _when did we get so old_ , he thinks. There is not much room in the diner. In a moment, she is in the booth next to where they had been, her head resting against the back of it.

With a deep breath, Petra allows Old Horse to attend to the table.

Nothing, she knows, will move forward until he has cleaned up the table and everything is in its place.

And she wants to move forward.

_Too much fuss_ , she thinks.

In a short time, he returns with a fresh cup of tea for each of them. Her legal pad is now useless, and she shakes her head when he offers it to her.

"I'll wing it," she says in a soft voice that is her first; which he is glad to hear.

"What...." he begins, but she waves off the question.

Looking at the table, he realizes that he still has his original cup of coffee. Now he has that and the tea, which he hates.

"It is Baileys Bend."

"Which we knew...."

"Let me continue," she barks. _Angry._

_Why am I angry_ , she wonders. She knows, and hates herself for being emotional over this. _Stupid_ , she thinks of it all. _Just being here._

Stupid.

Taking a deep breath, she continues.

"Lucy Brooks is a single mother, her son being Thomas Brooks. The boy is healthy and attended Grace Haven Elementary his entire academic career. He is in EEE and qualified for your free breakfast and lunch program."

"I know about his schooling," Horse cuts in. "I have the file."

She shoots him a look.

"If you want my information," she says curtly, "you'll have to allow me to report out as a social worker might." Looking down at the milky cup of tea Horse has gotten for her she says, "Are you in a hurry? Somewhere to go?"

His saying nothing is a sign for her to continue.

"She had a job as a condo cleaner at Smuggler's Notch, but it is seasonal—first fired, which she did little to change. Her car situation is sporadic."

"She didn't have one?"

"It didn't run. She had a few near the end of their life. Not registered. At this time the state's DOT started cracking down on inspection stations. Rust. Hangers holding up mufflers. Duct tape and liquid wood over rust holes. Red tape over broken tail lights. When they pulled over these cars, they went after the garages that inspected them. Garages stopped passing obvious failures. Folks like Lucy stopped being able to afford a legal car."

"So she stopped having it inspected."

"Even if it runs, cars are expensive. A new used car, even a cheap one, is still two weeks of wages. Plus sales tax and registration. Gas."

"What did she do?"

"Picked up a few tickets. Drove without insurance. Invalid registration. Didn't go to work. Didn't pay her tickets until she had to."

"Drugs?"

"No. Nothing in the file."

"Outside of the file?"

"Some of the older women have long memories."

"And you spoke with them?"

"One."

He waits. She takes a long sip of tea, making him wait longer.

"She is bored."

"Lucy."

"Yes." Petra looks out the window. Rain is coming. More of it.

"And?"

"She is sleeping with a neighbor."

"Is that it?"

"He is a teenager."

"How do you know that?"

"Because my source is a caseworker for another woman in Baileys Bend, and that mother is worried about her teenage son getting into trouble."

"Sex."

"Yes. And she is an older woman. And had a kid. It is a mess waiting to happen."

"Who is the kid?"

"I don't know."

"She didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Did you ask?"

"Not exactly."

"Can I ask why not?"

"You can ask."

Horse let out a breath of air in exacerbation. "Why not?"

"And what would you do with the name?"

"Find him."

"Exactly."

With impatience, Horse looks at her. He knows the conversation they would have, about confidentiality and the reasons behind it. Petra believes that the rules that govern the larger picture—the rules about confidentiality—are meant to be upheld, and for good reason. Many of the fights they had years ago were over Horse's lax confidentiality protocol. She had no way of knowing if he had changed.

Sitting in the booth across from him, she can see the gears turning in his head and she knows exactly what is turning around in there.

"Does it even have to do anything with the child?" she asks, finally, with sympathy.

"I don't know," he admits.

"But you want to draw it out, anyway," she says, softly.

"I want to be complete."

"Complete in the graphic organizer you've created in your mind." She takes another sip of tea while he sits, silent. "How much of a slave to your organizer are you? How is that truth?"

Knowing the topic is a dead end, he pushes forward about the mother.

"Anything else?"

"No drugs."

"And the child?"

"Loving mother. A bit of a loser."

"Is that a technical term?"

"That's what she said. Slow. Dull. Those are the words my friend used to describe Lucy. Gallows' humor, I think."

"I'm sure Lucy would appreciate the appraisal."

Looking cross, Petra replies, "At least she doesn't call them that to their face, like some teachers I know."

"All in loving kindness."

"Exactly," she says.

"I'm not that person anymore."

Unsure if she should believe him, she says nothing. She would like to. Believe him.

"Anything else?" he asks.

"You better be a good presenter."

"I'm a professional educator."

"Don't," she begins, sternly, "embarrass me."

"Anything else?"

"You're paying."

He frowns, although he has intended to pay all along.

"Anything else?"

"Low blood sugar," she says as she gets up the leave. "It can make the hand shake."

Chapter Twenty-six

"I already spoke with the police," the old woman grumbles behind the pane of glass in the door. She is missing teeth—or does not have them in—and has no interest it talking.

Standing in the rain, Old Horse looks around.

Baileys Bend.

The police having pulled out of the crime scene, he has returned to see if any residents know anything missed. The building he stands in front of is a converted out building from the old Bailey Farm. Paint peeling over barn board, old aluminum windows sit tightly in decaying sills. It sits on a concrete slab, where decades of snow have caused the bottom of the outer sheathing to rot. The surrounding buildings are not much different, but this one had a light on. Now, he stands in the rain at the door of someone he does not really want to meet.

"Please," he grunts, banging again on the frame.

"I already spoke to the police," she repeats.

"I'm not the police."

"Who are you?" she asks, with a cough.

"A teacher."

To his surprise, the door opens.

"What do you want?" she blurts out, no more friendly than before. But the door is open.

Still standing in the rain, he begins to ask her about what the police found on the hill.

She cuts him off.

"Are you a reporter?"

"No," he replies. "I'm a teacher. At Grace Haven Elementary."

"What's your name?" she asks, suspiciously.

"They call me Horse."

Eyeing him up and down, she spits, "You had my Danny."

He shrugs—his memory of student names is nonexistent, even if she had told him Danny's last name.

"How is Danny?" he feigns.

"In jail."

"Not my fault." He laughs.

She does not.

"I wouldn't be surprised," she says. "Everyone failed him." Then, Danny's mother talks about the schools, the police, the neighbors and everyone who does not help the likes of her boy. Many of the things she says contradict each other, but she is not alone in that logic. _Frustrated_ , Horse thinks, and lets her get it out, waiting for her to wind down.

There is a standoff after that, which Horse eventually breaks.

"How long have you lived here?"

"Since Danny is born."

"And that would be...."

"Long enough to call it home." This statement causes Horse to look around, something the woman takes as a slight. "I'm not going to die here," she adds, "if that's what you're worried about."

"No?"

"I got plans. Florida."

"Great."

"Been saving." She turns and picks up something from the kitchen counter, which Horse takes as an invitation to come in—if only to stand in the doorway, dry.

Inside it is musty, with a foundation of stale cigarette smoke. Her living room set matches, but is worn and dated. There is little on the walls, but she has small tables and shelving littered with knick-knacks needing to be dusted. In the corner sits a small television; Horse had noticed a dish outside. No curtains. I've seen worse, he thinks.

"When Danny gets out, we'll move to Florida."

"It's nice to have a plan." He smiles, falsely.

"But you're not here for that," she replies. Turning around and narrowing her eyes at him, she mutters, "Are you?"

"No."

"As I told the police, I didn't live here when anyone lived there." She points at the empty remains of the Brooks house.

"Did you know a kid—a teenage boy, or maybe older—who might have known some of the adult women."

The old woman chuckles to herself.

"Oh, I know a few boys back then."  
"Let me guess: Danny's father...."

She laughs, but not in a nice way. "No."

He asks a few other questions, but the answers do not result in much. Then, he mentions the Brooks' name.

"I did know her husband."

"Husband?"

"Well. I don't know if they were married. I mean, it's kind of hard to know. Legal. Common law. People fight. You know." Then, she waves her right hand in the air—as if that filled in all of the gaps.

"Did you know Mr. Brooks?"

"No. Not really." Then she falls deep into thought.

"But he existed?"

"Oh, yeah." She breaks out of her memory. "Nearly killed me."

Then she says nothing.

"Really?"

"Oh, yeah." The woman rubs her face with the palm of his right hand. "I had some of his stuff. He came loaded up, looking for it. A few boxes in the back."

With her thumb, she indicates a back room Horse did not even want to contemplate.

"A few boxes," she continues. "He came ripping in at ten at night. Loaded. Screaming. Demanding stuff, like I is going to steal it."

"How'd you come across his stuff?"

"Oh," she replies, "left at their place." She nods towards the home Lucy Brooks used to live in.

"And you kept it?"

"For safe keepings," she replies.

"What is in it?"

"I don't know."

Horse gives her a searching look. Finally, she confesses.

"Hunting stuff." Again, she rubs her face.

A nervous tic, he thinks.

"He made his own bullets. There is some other stuff in there. Some tools."

"How many boxes?"

"I don't know."

But she does.

He waits.

"Three," she admits.

"And he is Thomas' father?"

She shrugs.

"He said it is his stuff. That he'd lived there. He is crazy. I've seen that before in Danny's father. I've been hit enough times; it's why we moved out to this dump, to get away from the bastard." She looks around for a minute. "It's a trade off, but, at the time, worth it. Now...."

She shrugs.

"So, the boxes?"

"I gave it to him."

"How long ago?"

She chuckles.

"When I first moved in."

They make small talk.

After a few more questions about the rumored teenage Lothario, the old teacher grunts and lets himself out.

Who, he wonders, might know more about the ins-and-outs of Baileys Bend from thirty years prior?

Chapter Twenty-seven

"The father?" Danielson replies.

"You said there is lead in the bones."

As is often the case, the two sit over coffee. Danielson is of a younger breed, aware of how his actions are perceived by the general public. His watchword is professionalism, and so he does not drink alcohol much in public. And never in uniform. Thus, Horse satisfies his other vice, coffee, when he needs to speak to the trooper—even at night.

"Yes."

"The father made his own bullets."

"With lead."

"A kid eats a bullet? And gets lead poisoning."

"I hear doubt in your voice."

"That's because it's there."

It is not unheard of for a small child to get lead poisoning from bullets. Kids will put anything in their mouth, and while many Vermonters keep their guns locked in the gun cabinet, the ammunition often sits in an unlocked drawer. In the traditional oak cabinet with the glass case, the drawer sits at the bottom. Having crawled across the carpet, a baby or toddler can easily open the drawer and pacify themselves on a shiny .38. Caught in the act, many parents fear choking and breath a sign of relief when they dig it out of the cheek. No one thinks of the lead the child might have ingested.

"That's a toddler. This kid is in sixth grade."

"So, he's not bright."

"No. You told me he is bright."

"Book smart...."

"A kid like that is a survivor. You don't get that far by eating bullets."

"Perhaps he is just sucking on it as a nervous habit."

"Like a pencil."

"Exactly."

"Hmmmm."

Danielson takes a sip of coffee.

"Why wouldn't it just be paint chips from the house? They were all over."

"What sixth grader would eat paint chips?" Horse counters in a dismissive tone.

"Ah," the trooper mocks, drawing out the word. "Logic."

"It puts the father in the frame."

"Frame?" Danielson snorts. "What, are you a British copper now?"

In fact, unable to sleep the night before, Horse had watched five different British mystery programs. They were not very good, and the solutions to the murders did not come from the lines of inquiry leading to the climax. Like the fans of the shows, he enjoyed the banter and the actors who played the leads. When he woke from what little sleep he had had, he found his brain pulling up the programs' stilted British vocabulary and banter.

"What about the teenage boyfriend?"

"Did she really have one?"

Horse shrugs.

"The father seems like a good bet," he says.

"I'm glad," Danielson begins, "that we have you. Otherwise, I'd be catching heroin addicts in today's Vermont instead of solving a murder from thirty years ago. Unfortunately, we don't know who the father is."

Horse admits as much.

And he has found nothing out about the teenage boyfriend, either.

"Anything about the guy in the river?"

"We've identified the body."

"Good."

After giving his old teacher the same information he could have read in a newspaper, Danielson adds, "I don't think he's the father."

"Could he be the boyfriend?"

"Who just happens to be killed right after the boy is discovered?"

"It would make sense."

"How?"

Old Horse shrugs. He does not know, but asking such questions tends to make others think of connections he cannot see.

"Plus," Danielson adds, "that would make her boyfriend five when he fathered the Brooks kid. No, four—it takes nine months."

The man in the river is thirty-five years old.

Although Danielson has not said it—and it has not been reported on the news—Horse knows he had worked for Laporte.

And, as he pays the check, Horse did not bother to tell him.

In the street, his car does not start.

"Perhaps it's the rain?" Danielson suggests, sidling up next to him.

Looking at the instrument panel, Horse is at a loss. No click. Nothing.

While the trooper stands in front of the car, staring into the open engine compartment that appeared to be dry, Horse continues to turn the key from the off position and into start. The fusable link is intact. Reaching forward, Danielson twists the clamp on the hot battery cable to the left. It digs into the soft lead of the post, tightening.

The car starts.

"Thanks," Horse mutters.

On the way out of town, the old teacher pulls into the Clutter Barn. He should, he knows, just go home in case the car will not start again, but he has little desire to knock around his empty house.

Gutman is in the aisle with a box, putting items onto shelves.

"Anything good?"

Gutman shrugs.

"I saw you," Horse says.

"Yeah?"

"I is picking up a box of puzzles that had been left in front of someone's house. You pulled up as I is leaving."

"How do you think I get all of this junk?" He laughs lightly, mostly to himself. Horse continues to browse the shelves while Gutman goes about with his box of items. "I never take puzzles, though."

"Why not?"

"No one buys them." From the box, he removes an alarm clock. "Puzzles. Stuffed animals. No one wants them. I did try and burn puzzles once—for heat—but they don't burn well. Neither do books—too much clay content. They leave ashes, so that you have to clean the stove out hourly."

"A reason not to burn books," Horse says, turning over a machete in his hand.

"Or puzzles."

"You don't see a lot of protests," Horse adds, "against puzzle burning."

"No."

The two continue their activity—Gutman placing items on the shelves, Horse browsing—when the owner of the Clutter Barn pulls out a twelve inch pry bar. A solid piece of metal, it is flat piece of steel two inches wide. Where it bends into the claw head, it has a nicely rounded corner. That corner—which acts as a fulcrum—is round, like the side of a one inch diameter pipe might be. The pry bar is mostly black, with scratches around the head revealing the steel below the paint. The claw ends are painted yellow, now worn. And it shined, as if someone had rubbed it clean.

"Can I see that?" Horse asks.

"I can give you a good deal," Gutman replies.

"A new one costs ten bucks."

Holding it with the tips of his fingers, Horse is sure he knows where he has seen it before. And he knows why Danielson might be interested in it.

"Where'd you find it?"

"Not your business."

"Two dollars."

"Five."

"Fine," Horse agrees.

"That is easy," the owner snorts.

Then, Gutman grabs it, his large hand closing in on half of the shaft, smearing any prints that might have been on it.
Chapter Twenty-eight.

"So, you own Baileys Bend?"

"Yeah," Laporte chuckles. "I own a lot of things."

The contractor sits in his truck in the washed out gravel parking lot in front of his office. At the moment, the lot is empty—most of the equipment is on-sight and many of his workers drive straight there—leaving the gravel to look pushed below the earth, without the earth having yet risen and covered the gravel. On the door of Laporte's truck is painted the distinctive LAPORTE CONTRACTING in large, white block letters, with the phone number below. Like his other company vehicles, the truck is blue. He has the window rolled down, a cup of coffee in a travel mug in his hand which also announces the company name and phone number.

Horse leans against his small Ford Festiva. Laporte found him waiting as he pulled in.

"That thing still legal?" Laporte asks, still with a chuckle; a bit of wary threat woven into it.

"What's legal?" the teacher replies with a shrug.

"Now you're thinking like me." Again, a smile and a laugh.

When Horse does not laugh, Laporte adds, "It is a joke. It's what you think, right?"

"Yes."

"And I've heard stories about your classroom, too. I'm sure if Wells is not the principal, you'd be applying for a job here."

"Would you hire me?"

"Sure." Laporte takes a drink from his coffee. "Hell, I'd make you a foreman."

"It's good to know I have a back-up job to see me through retirement."

"If Wells retires."

"We'll go out together, I suspect."

"By your choice?"

Horse simply shrugs.

The gap between the Festiva and Laporte's truck is about ten feet. The truck's driver's side door is to Horse, the conversation happening through the contractor's lowered window.

"Listen," Laporte begins. "Is this going to take a lot of time? If so, I'm inviting you inside so we can both sit and I'll even offer you coffee."

"Truck seat getting to you?"

"I'm a professional contractor. I can sit in my truck all day."

Again, the laugh.

It's brief, and he looks around.

"No, I just don't like doing business in the parking lot."

"Yeah," Horse replies. It is his turn to chuckle. "I wouldn't want anyone to think anything unseemly is being discussed."

With a smile, the contractor nods and gets out. From the passenger seat he takes a jacket, then grabs his coffee and closes the driver's side door. Before he does, Horse looks into the cab—he cannot see the pry bar Laporte had shown him before.

It may have slipped under the seat, he thinks.

Climbing inside, they go inside. Already, his secretary is barking directions to the men heading out to jobs.

"Hey," Laporte begins, loudly, in front of the four others in the room. "Aren't you supposed to be teaching right now?"

He looks at Horse squarely, "I mean, taxpayers have a certain expectation."

When he had entered, Horse had noted that one of the workers is a parent of one of his students. Word would get back that he had been at Laporte's instead of in the classroom, he thinks. Now, Laporte has made sure of that.

"Wells has my back," he replies, equally loud and clear. "You know what it means when someone understands when the rules can be bent."

In fact, his class is having a mandated lesson on how to keep their teeth clean. They do not need him. Every year the students receive the same lessons, which ends with everyone receiving free toothbrushes, toothpaste and a small dental floss dispenser. When informally polled the day before, eight students in his class believed that you are supposed to change your toothbrush once a year, because that is when they get them. He had shaken his head at the parenting this revealed, and sought relief in that fact that the other two-thirds of the class knew the real interval.

Thank god for public schools, he thinks nearly every day. "The great equalizer," he often says to board members when they insist on pigeon holing him in the back of assemblies. It is, he believes, the one hope for the American ideal.

Following the dental presentation, their guidance counselor is to give a talk about sexual predators. This program is also state mandated. Grace Haven's guidance counselor is very good, and very different from Horse in temperament. Best leave it to her, he had thought.

So he came to visit Laporte.

It is the stray comment from Danielson that had made him wonder about the ownership of Baileys Bend. A quick call to the town clerk brought him here.

And, the discovery of the pry bar.

Now, they settle into worn seats—Laporte behind his desk and Horse in a folding chair against the far wall. Horse has purposely left the chair against the wall, instead of moving it closer, allowing for plenty of room between him and Laporte; there is no desire for a close chat. Sitting, the teacher crosses his legs. The door closes silently, the secretary knowing how every element of the office worked—including when to tune out and close the door.

"So, you run Baileys Bend?" Horse repeats.

"Own it," Laporte replies. "I have an interest in it."

"Only an interest?"

"I own the land."

"And the buildings."

"Yes."

"A slum lord."

"No one is forcing anyone to live there."

"But with all of this equipment and idle workforce you could certainly shore up a few of the buildings."

"I could do wonders with the materials I could skim from other jobsites. Is that what you want to know?"

"Why don't you?"

"Why should I?"

Laporte leans back and breathes out, as if the back of his chair has created a slow leak in a balloon. This is not a day he wants to discuss the American Dream with Horse. He does not want to discuss anything with Horse. Yet, he thinks, staring at this thorn in his side, he has invited him into his office instead of simply blowing him off in the parking lot.

"Listen," the contractor begins. "Baileys Bend is a piece of land I'm holding for better things. Those buildings help pay the taxes until then. Have you met the people who live there?"

Horse tells him a little bit about his conversations.

"Danny's mom," Laporte says with a harsh laugh.

"Yeah."

"Danny's a screw-up and he gets it from his parents. The dad's a screw-up, too. Genetic, I think. She still planning to move to Florida?"

"That's what she said."

"I'll buy her the ticket, because I don't think she'll ever do it."

"When Danny gets out of prison."

"Sure." Laporte shifts in his seat. "Look, without Baileys Bend no one would rent to these people. You certainly don't want them on Fitch, I'm sure. Who would? Danny running dirt bikes and his mufflerless Pontiac in the goddamn street all the time." The contractor leans back. "Really, the kid doesn't argue with his mother in the privacy of their own kitchen like normal folks. He stands on the lawn and shouts. And she hangs out the door and shouts back."

"It would certainly add color to my neighborhood."

"Sure. Crap left on the lawn. Did she tell you about the three fires they've had in the past two years? Cigarettes and grease."

"So, you're really a charity."

"I live and let live. Look, she's not a bad girl, but messed up. Harmless."

"Other than the three fires."

"No drugs," Laporte continues, ignoring Horse's crack. "So, she stays there. I leave her be, and she doesn't complain unless there's something serious."

"Like a fire?"

"Or the cable's out." As usual, Laporte laughs at his own joke.

Waiting him out, Horse finally asks the question he came to ask.

"Lucy Brooks?"

"Jeeze," Laporte exhales. "This again? Before my time."

"But you had hired her."

"But I didn't own Baileys Bend back then."

"Less diversified?"

"Shortly after she left, things went well for me. There were plenty of state projects we won bids for, plus the need for housing boomed. You remember? People suddenly realized they could have a nice house and a yard if they were willing to commute Route 15 past Underhill."

"The sprawl."

"To those who already lived here. For those who were stuck in expensive rentals and dreaming of a home of their own, the country life began in Cambridge, over the Wrong-Way Bridge."

"So Lucy is before your time?"

"I'm afraid so." Laporte takes a sip of coffee, and then adds, "I don't rent to my employees, and I don't employ from my properties."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't work out. I can't fire someone and then evict them when they can't find another job."

"A heart of gold."

"You like to shit on me," Laporte says, bluntly. His face turns red, as he gets angry. Leaning forward, he says, "I'm part of this community, you know. I know how the teachers think they're doing some sort of 'White Man's Burden' in educating the great unwashed of rural Vermont, but you guys are a blip on the radar for most of these kids. When they get a hammer in their hands, they find their souls. I put food in mouths and roofs over heads. Those kids you make a difference with—they leave. I take care of the ones you fail with."

There is nothing for Horse to say. He agrees with Laporte, although he is not the greatest of men. But his belief in being the pillar of the community has given him a mental pass, allowing him to dabble in too many illegal undertakings with the false justification of good citizenship. Padding a housing estimate and running a slum are one end of the spectrum, but Horse knows he peddles drugs and skims materials from public jobs.

The teacher looks around the room. Only the page of the calendar has changed from his visit last spring. And their clothing. In the corner is the cot where Laporte sometimes sleeps, and occasionally brings a mistress. It is stripped, the mattress covered with piles of papers that sit in some sort of order—in that way, he is like Wells. In the corner are some coffee urns and a couple of cardboard boxes, opened. Eying them, Horse thinks through his next question.

But Laporte gets to him first.

"Want a t-shirt?"

"A Laporte Contracting one?"

"Of course. Although I don't know if blue is your color."

"No, it's not."

Getting up from his chair, Laporte thrusts his hand into one of the boxes without looking. Pulling out a shirt, he looks at the tag.

"Large?"

"Extra large, I think."

It is not that Horse is bulky—most describe him as lanky—but tall. Most of his shirts are special ordered for tall, as his torso makes the distance from his shoulder to his waist a bit longer than others.

Laporte throws the shirt at him. X Large.

"Do you know anything about Lucy?" Horse asks, ignoring the crack about his size.

"As I said the last time...."  
"Anything new?"

Laporte shakes his head, but does not return to his seat. Back against the wall, he tries to indicate the interview is drawing to a close.

The old teacher does not budge.

"How about a young teenage man?"

"How young?"

"Old enough to have sex with the mothers who lived there, but not old enough to live alone."

The contractor thinks. "I'm intrigued, but not off the top of my head."

"Think about it?" Horse asks, rising from his seat. It is a concession, and he hopes that Laporte will honestly give his memory a twice-over in return. The contractor says nothing, but he does not say 'No' either.

"You know, not every kid around here moves out when they turn eighteen. The teenager you're looking for might be in his twenties."

"You think?"

"I said so, right?" Laporte picks up a half drained, cold cup of coffee. Looking into the mouth of it, he puts it back down. "A number move out for six months, realized that the real world costs money, and come home to build up a nest egg. Or not. Just drink and exist."

"You think it might be an older kid?"

"Existing is boring. Having a fling with a neighbor livens the day up."

"And you speak from experience?"

Laporte snorts. "I've been working since I is ten. You and me, we see opportunity. We're workers. Doers. Don't mind the others who punch a clock, but we've been adults a lot longer than our age indicates."

The shirt draped over his left shoulder, Old Horse lets himself out. The outer room is busier than when he went in; the foreman gone, but five suppliers and subcontractors need to talk to the boss. Without a word, he leaves the building and crosses the parking lot.

Before getting into his own car, he opens up Laporte's cab and looks around for the pry bar he had been shown before. There is a sheath on the side of the driver's seat, which Horse had not noticed before. It is empty, and can easily hold the pry bar bought at the Clutter Barn. Horse assumes that is where Laporte usually keeps his. Checking under the seat, the old teacher stretches until he feels confident the black pry bar is not lost against the black interior of the cab.

"Missing something?"

Behind him stands Laporte.

"I lost my favorite pen," Horse replies. "I last saw it when we spoke while pouring concrete."

"Pens do have a way of disappearing."

The two stand in silence, until the old teacher steps aside and the contractor lifts himself into the cab. Laporte notices Horse eyeing his empty sheath.

"Yeah, I lost the pry bar."

"I can see losing a pen," the teacher replies. "How do you lose a pry bar?"

"Some people think nothing of borrowing my stuff."

Then the old contractor shrugs, indicating that he could rattle off half-a-dozen reasons why the tool is missing from his truck.

The two look at each other in silence. Then, Laporte closes his door and drives away.

Sitting in his Festiva, Horse dismisses the man found floating in the river and thinks only of Thomas Brooks. There are a lot of ends that simply peter out, he thinks.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Saturday night, and Horse's car will not start.

Standing in the rain, his first assumption is that the wires are wet.

After ten minutes of wriggling them, checking fuses and poking about, Horse determines it has something to do with the carburetor. A mechanical relic, the Fiesta is old enough to still have a carburetor, even as other cars the same age had been outfitted with fuel injection. While American design at that time had been cutting edge for its midsize and luxury cars, Ford had leaned heavily on stripped down Asian designs to fill in its subcompact needs. Taking off the air filter, he fiddles with the butterfly valve and lets the engine sputter for air.

In the garage is a bottle of carburetor cleaner. Spraying it liberally down the throat, Horse works the valve until it is clear the gummy joints are not the problem. Knocking it with a hammer, lightly, he declares it dead with a mutter and looks at his watch. The local NAPA is closed, as are the auto shops in Morrisville.

Not that he knows what to buy.

Going into his house, he opens a can of Narragansett and wonders how he can revive her.

And has a thought.

Beer in hand and another hanging loose in his chino pocket alongside his wallet, Horse walks the main road out of town. In his rain coat pocket is a third can—if he is going to be wet, he thinks, he should be happier. Or numb. He has a fourth can for the walk home. Just as the buildings in town peter out, he turns towards the Clutter Barn entrance. The store is theoretically closed—the sign has not been turned saying otherwise since his last visit months before—but the door is unlocked.

"Hello," he calls out.

No response.

A lone light comes from the desk area, the rest of the room dark in comparison. The shelving throws an ominous shadow that makes the contents of the room murkier still. Standing at the door, he cannot tell if anyone is at the desk. By the door sits a row of industrial light switches, which Horse flips. Flickering on, the fluorescents cast more shadows than light. He begins scanning for parts.

"Do you really think you'll find anything?" a voice asks.

His hand still on the switches, Horse drops it and steps further into the room.

Ray Gutman stands in the dark behind his counter. A low, small light sits on the counter, illuminating a line of paints, making everything above his waist dark in contrast. The man's face is black.

"My car is dead."

"Again?"

"Same issue. The carburetor."

There is a stillness that, even in the shadows, Horse can tell is him thinking. Finally, Gutman breaks the silence. "You think you'll find something here?"

"I found the last carburetor here."

"No refunds."

"How about second chances?"

The man does not move. Nor reply.

"Do you recycle?" the old teacher asks, holding his empty can towards Gutman.

Reluctantly, the owner takes the empty from Horse and tosses it into a box next to the desk. It is nearly overflowing with Diet Coke cans, sorted from another recycling bin that holds everything else.

Not being asked to leave, Horse moves along the shelves looking for odd mechanical parts that might be a carburetor. There are a surprising number. The way the lighting falls, though it is hard to tell if any would work for him until he holds it up to the light. With each carburetor, he has to saddle into the aisle to be directly below the fixtures.

Even to someone well practiced in ignoring the needs and wants of others, he can feel that Gutman is still watching. Wanting to say something.

"Did I catch you in the middle of painting?" Horse finally asks, calling out from the back of the room. His voice bounces around the grey metal shelving.

"Yes."

"You have quite a business, I hear. With the figurines, I mean. I wonder if you need to have this shop at all."

"One helps pay for the other."

"I see."

Having pawed through most of the far corners, Horse is forced to work his way closer to the counter—and Gutman. He notes the man is working on a civil war piece. Union blue. A rifleman, on one knee with rifle drawing a bead on the enemy. This is a foot soldier of the great conflict, and it will be maneuvered by a basement general born a century and a few score too late.

Moving from shelf to shelf, Horse asks, "How long have you been doing this?"

"You know," Gutman replies, meaning that he has not thought about it at all.

The shop owner shrugs.

"I've counted up the men I must have made," he continues. "Poured. Sculpted. Painted." He rubs his chin in the darkness. "If I could get them back, I'd have enough to stage Gettysburg."

"Impressive."

"Only when they're all together." Gutman picks up the rifleman he is working on, holding it in the darkness. "Alone, it doesn't seem like much."

"I think, alone, it shows the craftsmanship." Horse stops scanning the shelves, and looks at Gutman. "I think we too often are distracted by volume."

The man remains standing behind his desk.

Silent.

Finally, "Perhaps."

Looking at the remaining shelves, Horse finds nothing that will help him. Taking a second Narragansett from his pocket, he cracks it open. Its opening, and subsequent overflow of foam, echoes throughout the room. He raises it to his mouth, trying to suck up the foam before even more of it slops onto the floor.

Suddenly Gutman is standing besides him, holding a rag.

"Here," he says.

Old Horse takes the cloth and drops it onto the concrete floor. With his toe, he maneuvers it over the spill.

"Okay?" he asks the owner.

"If your student had done that—spilled and just dropped the cloth on the ground and toed it around—would you be satisfied?"

"No," the teacher replies, without hesitation.

"So...."

Walking over to the desk, Horse picks up the spray bottle. On the floor where the desk meets the wall, he notices an old rifle.

"Is that your gun," the old teacher asks, motioning with his head towards the rifle, "or do you deal?"

"Are you looking?"

"No. I don't believe in guns."

"They exist." Gutman stares at Horse with the force of an exclamation point, daring to be contradicted.

"I don't believe in the use of guns," Horse clarifies.

"Guns don't kill people..." the shopkeeper begins.

"I could live in a world where just knives kill people."

"That would be better?"

"More personal."

"This is why I don't traffic in such things."

"Why?"

"I don't need the debate."

"You'd probably just get gun lovers."

"Have you spoken to them?" Gutman looks down at his figurine. "The figurine collectors are bad enough to talk to. Gun owners...."

He waves his hand to dismiss the subject.

"So, the rifle is yours?"

"I'm surprised you can identify a rifle."

"We're in Vermont."

"But you're not from here."

"Over thirty years."

"Still...."

"I know how to use a gun," Horse says. "I just don't believe in their use."

"What kind?" Gutman asks, curious now and less antagonistic.

"9mm. Pistol. I don't know what kind. German, I think."

"You still have it?"

"No. I took a weekend course to see what the fuss is all about. Pistols. Assault rifles. Offensive techniques. Somewhere in Franklin. By the end, I is okay."

"So you didn't own the gun?"

"Sometimes I wonder if I should have one, for the zombie apocalypse. But then I figure I'd rather die fast when someone loots my stores."

The shopkeeper thinks for a moment, but does not reply.

"Is the rifle for self defense?" the old teacher asks, refocusing the subject back on Gutman.

"I'm going to kill myself with it."

He does not laugh.

"You pour your own bullets?" Horse asks.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Why bother. There's no art in it. It's fine for those who want to do their own thing—knitting for men—but I have other things to do."

"Knitting can get quite intricate."

"Okay, making bread."

"Bread...."

Gutman stops him with a look.

Turning to clean up his spill, the old teacher pauses and turns back to Gutman.

"Do you know anyone who does?"

"A few."

"Anyone that's really into it?"

"Jenkins."

"Who?"

"That's all I know of his name. He's made his bullets forever."

"Where can I find him?"

"Rougier Ridge. He lives in an old converted sugar house off of the access road."

"Converted?"

"The boiler's gone. It has a bed."

"You've been there?"

"I sold him the bed."

"Rougier Ridge."

He turns and returns to the spill. He gets down on one knee and cleans it up properly.

"Okay?" he calls down the aisle. Gutman has wandered away.

"What the hell do I care for? It's all just junk."

As he walks further away, Horse is left looking at his back. He does care, the teacher thinks. A guy like that, he keeps everything in its place.

Sunday morning, the walk up to the sugar shack is slightly better than the drive up the access road along Rougier Ridge. Earlier, after his car failed to start, Horse had borrowed Wells' keys. The principal assumed that his friend is simply driving to Morrisville to get a needed part. Horse had a tinge of guilt every time the car bottomed out on the drive up, but when he parked the exhaust system is still attached. Parking next to an old Harley motorcycle that had seen better days, the old teacher assumed he had arrived.

On the shaded side of the mountain, the land is wet. And cold. Here, because of the latitude and the weeks of rain, the leaves are bursting with color. With much noise, the old teacher makes his way up a worn, muddy path—he does not want to surprise Jenkins, a man who makes his own bullets. Thinking about that, Horse realizes that is all he knows. Instinctually, he slows down.

Then, echoing through the trees, he hears an ax.

Then he hears it again.

It is the last season to split firewood and expect some drying time, so people do so with great intensity. A true mountain man cuts and chops wood all year—winter is not the time to be out of fuel, if only because the wood needs a bit of drying time. In the fall, many chop and stack an extra few cords "just in case."

"So," he mutters to himself, "I'm going to confront a man with an ax."

Soon, the teacher is upon him.

"Hello," Horse calls out, timing his greeting for the silent moment found between swings of the ax.

The man looks up.

Jenkins has a haggard face and stoop, but that did not guarantee age. Outdoor living is an elixir of youth for some, and agent of aging to others. White hair, short-yet-unruly, adorns his head. His torso is covered with a light red-and-black wool shirt that sports the Johnson Woolen Mills' pattern. His pants are Dickies brand, grey and stained with pitch and sawdust. On a log sits an old, orange Husqvarna chainsaw and a red plastic jug of fuel.

"Yup," the man mutters.

With a light swing, he drives the ax into a stump.

"I'm looking for someone named Jenkins."

"Yup."

"I is told by Gutman, at the Clutter Barn, that you made your own bullets."

This time, the man spits in reply.

Neither say a word to that.

"Gutman."

"He sold me my bed."

There is nothing else to be said.

As the man looks ready to return to his ax, Horse asks, "I is wondering if you lived in Baileys Bend thirty years ago?"

"Is this about that kid?"

Grabbing the handle, Jenkins pulls the ax from the stump. With his left hand he picks up a log and deftly places it on the chopping block. Then, he splits it in one fluid move.

"Yeah, the kid."

"Shame."

"So, you remember the kid dying?"

Jenkins does not stop splitting wood. His motion is smooth.

"No, heard it on the radio a week ago."

"Did you live in Baileys Bend?"

"Seems like everyone lived at Baileys Bend at one time or another."

"Seems like."

"I don't remember the boy."

"Do you remember the mother?"

"No." He pauses for a moment. "You don't notice things when you're in and out of a place like Bailey's Bend."

"Nothing?"

"Everything. Nothing." He spits, casually. "You notice things that you need to notice. People that might cause trouble. For you. I always check out all of the angles."

"You don't seem to like neighbors," Horse notes, giving a slow glance at the surroundings—all trees.

Jenkins grunts.

And returns to chopping.

"Were you there long?"

"A few months. Had a girlfriend. She had a place."

"Bad ending?"

"No. The landlord kicked me out."

"And then you broke up?"

Jenkins smiles for the first time. Perfect teeth, stained with tobacco.

"Something like that," he answers.

For another five minutes the two say nothing.

Looking around, Horse wonders how far he is from being this man. Alone. Reasonably happy. Living by his own rules. Horse's retirement is closer than his rookie year, and with no children and a teacher's salary, his investments are fat enough and getting fatter.

"You want to see my bullets?" the man asks, planting the ax head deep into the stump.

"Sure."

"It's why you came, right?"

"One of the reasons."

Wiping his hands on his pants, he extends the right one to Horse.

They shake.

As they are walking in, Jenkins mentions Gutman.

"Strange kid," he begins. "The entire time he lived at Baileys, he had a sadness about him."

"You knew him then?"

"Sure. Lived alone in that house."

Horse thinks a moment but says nothing.

The inside of the sugar shack is surprisingly well lit. The side of the structure facing away from Horse's approach is mostly glass. From its mix-matched nature the windows are clearly salvaged. On one wall is an iron framed bed—Horse notes it is probably the one Gutman sold him—while a woodstove sits on the opposite. There is a trunk, open, that holds clothes, as well as few pegs on the wall. By the door are steel industrial shelves, spilling with books, pots and miscellaneous other items. In the middle is a wooden handmade table. An old bolt action rifle lies on it, breach open.

"What season is it?" Horse asks.

"I don't know. Not deer. I eat a lot of smaller animals."

The season for other, smaller animals is much of the year, Horse knows.

Jenkins makes his way over to the rifle.

"You hunt?"

"No."

"Afraid?"

"Of guns?"

Old Horse looks down at the rifle, now in Jenkins' hands. The hermit picks up a cartridge and slips it into the breach.

"Yes, I'm a bit cautious about guns."

"They don't bite."

"Okay, I'm afraid of gun owners."

"Damn straight."

Then, Jenkins laughs.

"Let me show you my tools."

He opens the breach and takes out the round. Putting both the rifle and the round on the table, a tattered Union Savings Bank canvas tote bag soon appears with everything necessary for making bullets. Piece by piece, Jenkins lays it all out.

"He didn't live with him mother?" Horse asks, eyeing each element.

"He had, but she left."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't ask?"

"None of my business."

For the next hour, Horse learned about the process of making one's own bullets. But not much else.
Chapter Thirty

The drive down the mountain turns out to be a little worse for the Volvo wagon. Still, nothing cosmetic happens that Wells will notice, the growl in the exhaust being only an occasional flare-up. Eventually, the dirt turns to pavement, and then Horse turns the car south, back to Grace Haven.

Watching the creek on his left disappear, he decides that another visit to Baileys Bend is in order. At the next right he turns. Another dirt road.

"What do you want this time?" the old woman barks at him.

Danny's mom.

Horse wonders how old she really is. Salt white hair at the roots—roots that are an inch long before they meet the poorly done cinnamon dye job—the woman has strong looking teeth. She must have found the bridge, Horse thinks. Danny is in his twenties, he begins to calculate, which means she is between forty and seventy.

"I is talking to a man named Jenkins...."

"Yeah. I know him."

"He said he lived here a few decades ago."

"Yes."

"Was he Mr. Brooks?"

For a moment, she pauses. The old teacher can tell he is being sized up—he has been to enough parent conferences to know when someone is going to take a conversation to a more personal level. _Can she trust him?_ She is making a decision.

"No."

"Was he Danny's father?"

To this, she smiles.

"Are we going to play Twenty Questions or can I go back to my computer?"

"What are you working on?" he asks.

"Watching shows. I can't afford a television, but Danny got me a laptop before he left and I can tap into the neighbor's wifi when they aren't home."

"Only when they aren't home?"

She gives him a grin.

"I'm surprised they don't have it password protected."

"They do. But they aren't very original."

"Did Danny crack the code?"

"How'd you know?"

"I'm just surprised he got caught and sentenced."

And with that, Horse knows he has lost any goodwill he had gained over the previous five minutes.

"I have to go...."

"Jenkins."

"Yeah."

She stands in the doorway, arms crossed, leaving only two feet between the door jamb and the door. He has one shot at answers.

"He wasn't Thomas Brooks' father?"

"No."

"You know that?"

"I know Jenkins."

The door opens more as she readies the force in which she is going to declare what she will say next. Then, Horse knows, she will close the door and that will be that.

"I know he is not the man who picked up those boxes when I first moved here. I also know that, when Jenkins had lived here those years ago, he had just moved from New Hampshire."

"He's not from here?"

"No. Fits in well enough."

"His stay at Baileys Bend is when he moved here?"

"Met his girlfriend at the big motorcycle rally there."

"Laconia?"

"I don't know." Her body relaxes. "She brought him back, or he came after her. For a few months they lived here. Then they fought. Well, they fought often enough, but one time it is too much and he moved out."

"And you're sure this is the first time he'd been in Vermont."

"Sure. He used to say how much he'd wanted to move here, and she had been his chance."

"So he never left...."

"No," the old woman replies. The discussion is over. She creeps into the darkness of her hovel, and when slowly closing the door mutters, "but the man lives like an animal, in an old sugar shack."

Chapter Thirty-one

When he goes back to his place Wells is waiting for him, sitting in an Adirondack with a beer.

"Got one for me?" Horse asks.

"In the fridge."

The teacher frowns; they will be drinking his beers all night.

"You're generous with my supplies," he mutters.

"How do you know I didn't stock it?"

"Did you?"

"Do you ever stock my fridge?"

Going in the front door, he returns with a bottle in hand. Instead of his usual seat, he sits on the railing. It is wet, but after it soaks through his pants he ceases noticing the discomfort.

"Okay?" the friend asks, concerned.

"You mean your car?"

"No, you."

"Sure."

"What are you thinking about?" Wells asks, now wondering why Horse focused on the condition of his car.

"Ted and Gully," he replies. His eyes scan the lawn, which needs to be cut after all of the rain.

Wells laughs. "Those guys?!"

Ted and Gully are two former students; energetic boys who had been looking forward to the tech program. By seventh grade they already been working after school for a few years, clearing brush and stacking wood, and Horse knew they would be successful, filling their hours with job after job so that they could buy more trucks, four wheelers, snow machines and the like. _No rest,_ had been their motto. For them, life is for living.

For some academic reason long forgotten, Horse had shown the class the Disney's original 1982 _Tron_ movie. It is about a man who has been brought inside of a computer and is forced to play video games, but, now being in the machine, the results have deadly consequences. In one scene, the hero and the bad guys play a game where they ride motorcycles, cutting each other in an attempt to make the other crash. All of the lines they drive are on an X-Y axis. Very visual on screen, with a blue bike battling the red, the two boys are captivated.

So they began playing it with lawnmowers.

The two had cut lawns in the warmer months, working together with push mowers to cut acres of grass each day. After seeing _Tron_ , Ted painted his green John Deere mower blue. Gully's is already a red, a Briggs and Stratton 1.5 base model. At the start of a job, the two would rush around, on an imagined X-Y axis, trying to cut the other off. When one of them crashed into the others already cut path, that person lost. The loser finished the job.

After a few months of that, they moved up to riding mowers.

"Why were you thinking of Ted and Gully?"

"Creative kids."

"And?"

"They really liked science fiction."

"They liked Tron."

"I is thinking that if I ran a behavioral or alternative program, I'd base it around fantasy novels."

"I'm sure that would solve a lot of problems."

Rolling his eyes, Wells finishes his beer.

"No, I'm serious."

As if to emphasize it, Old Horse hands his boss the other beer he has brought out. Wells looks at it, opens it, and listens.

"Look, you got weapons and action. Everyone loves that."

"True."

"And you've got moral codes. Chivalry. That's a good behavioral foundation."

"Think of the discussions," Wells chortles.

"Seriously."

"I am." He is not. But he listens.

"They are stories of action, survival.... The complexity of the plot lines will intrigue all of the bored, intelligent psychopaths."

"And the dysfunctional families in a lot of these epics—royal and otherwise—will provide a springboard for discussions of their own life."

A frown covers Horse's face. He does look old, right then, Wells thinks. In his eyes, he seems to drift elsewhere.

"You know I'm giving you guff, right?" Wells ventures. "I didn't come over here to talk about school." Old Horse says nothing. He sits in his chair and plays with his mostly empty beer bottle. "You know that you told me this idea before," Wells adds.

"Several times."

"Why again?"

But Old Horse is not sure.

And then he remembers Gutman's detailed figures and how fascinated boys get with such imaginary games.

Chapter Thirty-two

"So, the kid is poisoned by your little figures," Horse accuses.

"No."

"No?" This question is also an accusation.

"No." But Gutman does not say what did cause the lead poisoning.

"Then what did?"

The two stand in the large metal shed—that is what it is, a shed; a large, corrugated tin shed that had once been a warehouse or garage of some sort before Gutman had acquired it and filed it with junk. In the shadows and fluorescent lights the two stand, stubbornly.

The bell rings as someone opens the door.

It is one of those bells on the end of a long metal strip, and it would have just jangled forever had Gutman not cut the length down so that it stopped after five or so rings.

She is older, the customer. From elsewhere, probably out of state. From Horse's perspective, she has stopped on a whim hoping to find something that would never be found in here. Depression era glass, he thinks. People from elsewhere seem preoccupied with Depression era glass.

Gutman uses the interruption as an excuse to clean up his table.

"Can I ask," the woman chimes in. "Can I ask if you have bowls?"

"What type?" the owner replies.

"Mixing bowls?"

Thinking a minute, Gutman escapes into the stacks. From a high shelf he produces a set of mixing bowls that are missing the third largest bowl of a four bowl set.

"Oh?" she exclaimes, but Horse can detect a bit of disappointment in her voice.

"That one broke," Gutman replies to the question that has not been spoken. "Before it came here," he adds.

"Oh."

She turns each over in her hand. The sense she gives is one of being polite.

Watching her, Horse is not sure if she is a collector looking for fifties era kitchenware or just an old woman in need of some mixing bowls. They have a charm for a kitchen needing a bit of personality. One by one, she looks closely for cracks.

Gutman is unusually attentive.

Horse stays put.

"Yes," she begins, muttering to herself. "These might do."

Turning to Gutman, she asks, "Do you have others?"

He thinks.

Then, shakes his head. "No."

"Shame."

They speak about the price, and haggle a bit—she haggles to nowhere as Gutman does not budge.

"Alright," she finally agrees. "Also, I need something for brownies tonight."

"Metal or Pyrex?" Horse asks.

"I prefer Pyrex."

Gutman shakes his head. They does not have either metal or Pyrex. "You can get aluminum pans and some cooking spray at the supermarket," he adds, with not a hint of helpfulness in his voice.

"I'm afraid of aluminum," the woman replies. "Alzheimer's."

With a finger, she taps her head.

"I thought they disproved that link?"

"I don't trust that."

The woman seems certain any recanting of the original study is unreliable.

"And yet you accept the original study?" Horse notes.

"I'll find something," she says, avoiding Horse's comment.

After the door closes behind her, Horse returns to pushing his theory of what had happened to Thomas Brooks.

"You did live at Baileys Bend?"

"A lot of people did."

"About thirty years ago."

"As I said...."

Then, silence.

"Look," Horse mutters, "a kid comes over and plays with your stuff. Poisons himself."

Gutman shoots him a look.

"What do you care?" the shop owner asks, a threatening edge in his voice.

"His body is found under my sidewalk."

"So?"

Good question, Horse thinks.

He had never taught Thomas Brooks. Did not know him. The police do not much care about the case. From Danielson, the old teacher gets the impression they would like to tidy up the unknown, but a half dozen heroin and OxyCotin dealers between Johnson and Newport have a greater priority.

"What about the other body they found?"

"You mean, you. You found the body."

"Someone would have found her, eventually."

"Yeah," Gutman replies, slowly. "Laporte is going to dig it all up. One of his men..."

"I knew Laporte owned Baileys Bend, but not that he is going to develop it."

Turning his back to Horse, Gutman straightens up his table a bit before saying more. "He's been saying it for decades. When the market dictates."

"Did he say it when you lived there?"

"Baileys Bend has been temporary since people replaced the cows in the buildings," he says. "Now, it's just older and more rundown."

"Was it ever not in bad shape."

Gutman laughs. "Everything's relative."

"Any idea whose skeleton they found?"

To this he gets no reply, but the feeling Horse receives is not one of deception—He gets no feeling at all.

Finally, "Why dig this all up."

"The body...."

"...under the sidewalk."

Turning to the back wall, Gutman picks up the rifle that lay on the floor.

"Did you visit Jenkins?"

The old teacher eyes the rifle. Gutman holds it casually, but the end of the barrel is aiming in Horse's general direction. The breach, he notes, is closed.

"Yes," he replies, cautiously, "I did."

"What'd you think?"

"Nice enough guy."

"Not dangerous?"

"No."

"Did he show you how to make bullets?"

"Yes, he did."

"Let me tell you this...." Gutman stops for a moment. "That's the type of lead poisoning people need to worry about."

The shop's proprietor swings the rifle around, slowly, until the end of the barrel is under his own chin. The butt of the rifle is pressed against the floor. Looking at the man behind the counter, Horse can only see that he is tired—tired after a long life of unsettled nights. Gutman, Horse recognizes, is ready for a long, long rest.

Then the man smiles.

And lowers the rifle.

It does not feel, though, like a joke.

Sensing that this line of questioning is leading nowhere productive, Horse makes a few comments about people he needs to call and leaves.

Getting into his car, Horse felt there is something he forgot to mention that is important.

Chapter Thirty-three

Monday morning.

By taking off the air filter and sticking a Phillips head screwdriver down the throat of the carburetor, Horse is able to get it to turn over. When it warms up, he removes the screwdriver and puts the engine back together. The damp morning does not help, but it is running and, for now, the rain is held at bay by a front that pushes the clouds against the mountains. Cup of coffee in the cup holder, he drives down Fitch, where he notices a wreath of flowers propped up next to the ninth slab of the sidewalk. Pulling over, he lets the car idle—afraid that it will never turn over again, glancing at the yellow and black handled screwdriver laying on the worn passenger seat—and sets the parking break.

Waiting for a Honda to pass, he then swings his door open.

No note.

No, _Little Tommy_ message or tear stained card. No confessional. Perhaps someone who just wants to honor a life lost, he thinks. He quickly dismisses the notion— _someone is feeling guilty_. Horse looks around a bit, thinking a note may have fluttered off in the breeze.

Faint, but definitely there, a heart is carved into the sidewalk. Although he had been careful to post Steve by the slabs as the concrete had dried—Horse hated vandalism, even by little children trying to find their voice and a bit of immortality in a sidewalk—there is a mark.

Someone must have come by in the evening and worked it in, he concludes.

A small heart.

Then he is distracted by the sputtering, and then dying, sound of his engine. The car just sits there, looking heavy. Tired.

Turning back to the wreath, he examines the petals. Fresh. The arrangement has been there for less than a day.

"Someone who knows the boy," he mutters to himself. "Someone who still lives in the area."

Of course, he knows no such thing. _Conjecture. Fantasy._

But a place to start.

With no other clues, the old teacher begins thinking of the flower shops in the area that might have produced the wreath as he crossed back to his car. Settling into the driver's seat, he turns to key to a choking car.

It will not turn over.

He goes through the motions—unscrews the air filter, drops in the screwdriver to hold open the butterfly valve, and.... Nothing. Three times he tries before giving up. Tossing the air filter and the screwdriver into the footwell of the passenger seat, he debates leaving the keys in the ignition. In the end, he slides them under the driver's seat.

Coffee in hand, bag over his shoulder, Horse walks to the main road where he hopes to catch a fellow teacher willing to give him a ride.

Or a school bus.

Wells is there to greet him at the entrance.

Each morning, the principal meets the children as they got off of the buses. He greets them with names and a smile. In the winter he doffs a hat a former student had knitted him, and in the late spring his collar will create the first trickle of sweat as the morning sun heats up the sidewalk in front of the entrance. It is an image every student has of the man.

It is the image every student has of the school.

As Wells grows older, he seems ancient to the youth that inhabit the school. When he attends conferences students will ask if he is okay, as if his advanced age is, in their minds, pushing death.

And everyone knows the hat. _And comments on it._ Some talk about collecting funds for a new one, but it—Grace Haven Elementary blue and lopsided and sticking up unnaturally like he had a six inch point to his head—seems hallowed. If the idea of "school" is a Platonic ideal, then Wells and that hat are its closest incarnation.

And the man, without the hat, greets Horse when he steps off the bus.

"No fluids on the bus," the principal tells him, looking at his friend's coffee.

"So, don't let me ride."

"Then I'll be ferrying you around."

"Such a dedicated administrator."

"I didn't say I'd do it."

After greeting a few of the kindergarteners who have to work their way around Horse's immovable bulk, he adds, "I won't be lending you my car again."

After school, Horse finds a huge dent in the side of his car.

As if hit by a dump truck.

Laporte, he thinks.

Turning the key, nothing happens.

Except that the battery has died.

Click, click, click goes the starter—there is not enough juice to even crank the engine.

Abandoning it for the evening, Horse walks the rest of the way home.

Chapter Thirty-four

He gets to school on his bicycle.

A green Raleigh Sherwood three speed touring bike, it has the step-through frame that is often called a "girl's bike" in his youth. It had been his mother's. Growing up, he had had a similar one, but with a diamond frame, or "men's bike." He hated it. Having to swing his leg high over the seat—the British touring bikes had such high seats that were too high for his lanky fifth grade body—was unnecessarily awkward, especially with a backpack loaded with school books. The only difference between the two is the horizontal bar going from the base of the seat to the base of the handlebars on the diamond frame, but that bar rose its status to one of masculinity.

As a youth, he had put up with that bike because riding a girl's bike is just not done, for social reasons—Horse had not fit in with his peers as it was. For this reason, his father would not let him ride his mother's bike, even as it is more practical. While other kids rode around on Schwinn Sting-Rays, with their banana seats, Huffy bikes that imitated BMX and dirt bikes and, later, kids got ten-speeders with SS handlebars, a young Horse had been given a new 26 inch framed Sherwood three speed touring bike for his birthday; the exact model of his mother and father. Even the color had been the same. _Moss green._ It went fast, but none of the kids in the neighborhood cared. Ten-speeds went fast, too. The bike is large and looked like something a parent would ride. _Uncool._ And nothing would make it cool—even after his mother taught him to pin old playing cards so that when they were flapped by the spokes that sounded like a motorcycle.

Long ago, Horse had stopped caring about the trends held dear by others. Mountain bike design had made the horizontal bar disappear in most popular bicycles, and retro eventually became hep. His fifty year old bike is now cool. It is even authentic, unlike many of the throwback designs that seem to populate the streets of Burlington. He has all three bicycles in the outbuilding next to his house, still—both parents' as well as his own—but prefers his mother's. With it, he no longer needs to swing his old leg high and wide of the seat.

Having arrived surprisingly early for that day's school, Horse finds he needs supplies.

Looking for glue sticks, Horse walks into Penny's classroom and where she is slouched in front of her computer, lost in unimportant thoughts.

"I need some glue sticks," he says, snapping her out of her haze.

"What for?"

"I thought I'd do a project that didn't require a lot of thought. That means glue sticks and glitter." He begins poking through a cabinet that he knows holds supplies. "They get distracted by shiny things. And tackiness."

"And why do you think I'd have such frivolous supplies?"

He does not bother to respond.

Instead, he asks, "What are you wasting brain cells watching?"

"I is watching Wells' 'Drowning' speech," Penny replies.

He comes around and stands behind her. On the screen is a frozen picture of Wells standing behind the podium in the high school gymnasium. The principal had given an impassioned speech at inservice three weeks prior, recognizing the tenuous nature of public school teachers in their attempts at helping children. Horse had thought it trite, but someone had posted it and it went viral. The number of times it has been viewed is in the hundreds of thousands.

"That'll just feed the crucifixion complex most teachers have, and pacify them at the table when it comes time to renegotiate the contract."

"Perhaps."

"The attention he got made the superintendent jealous."

"It makes me happy," Penny replies.

And then Horse has a thought.

Without a word or the necessary glue sticks, he leaves Penny's classroom.

There is already a sick kid laying on the couch of the nurse's office, and the busses have not even pulled in yet.

Goldbricking before the day even starts.

"What's wrong with him?" Horse asks, nodding at the boy.

The kid looks about eight, but Horse has trouble putting ages to kids younger than fourteen and older than twenty. Dull, brown hair in need of a wash. The face is unfamiliar, but he wears a generic football jersey—blue with white numbers, which might imply his being a Giants fan, but as the number matches that of the Patriots' starting quarterback the kid might lean towards New England.

"Patriots?" he asks the kid.

"Colts."

"Of course."

Whoever he roots for, the kid does not look happy. The downturn squint of his eyes gives him the look of a child who has so convinced himself that he is sick that he feels sick, even though he is not.

"John," the nurse snaps. "Tell, this gentleman what's wrong with you."

But the boy says nothing.

Nurse Jan has been at Grace Haven for a decade, but her solitary sullen demeanor gives her an air of greater permanence. Dark hair fighting against the grey, she seems older than the building. Often, when Horse passes her office in the hallway, her sitting leadened in her chair, he swears she is smoking a cigarette. He always does a double-take to make sure her hand is free. It always is, but the health professional gives off the cough of a life-long smoker. Her mouth rarely moves, but the eyes shift behind the wire frames of her glasses.

"Tummy," the nurse says, filling the silence.

"Is that the technical diagnosis?"

"About as technical as it needs to be."

"He's early."

"I've already had two in for temperature checks. And gave out meds to three others."

From the pocket of her large, heavy grey sweatshirt she pulls a cough drop. Handing it to John, he takes it as someone who knows well the drill. Unwrapping it, he begins grinding his teeth on it as he rises up.

"Does he have a cough?"

"Are you a doctor?"

The boy looks from one to the other, gets up from the couch and leaves the room.

"What?" Nurse Jan asks curtly.

"I never ask you for anything...." he begins.

"You make me do eye exams on every one of your students," she replies, cutting him off.

"Which is required, anyway."

"Difficult to fit them in. I'm busy."

"You caught five kids who needed glasses."

For many years, Horse had struggled to make his students lifelong readers. It is one of his most important goals. Over the first decade, he had discovered kids who were disgraphic, dyslexic, or suffered from other visual processing issues that made reading a simple text a struggle. For the next decade, he found another pocket who just did not read because they got headaches. _Glasses._ They needed glasses. Now, the first week of school, Horse forces his students into the nurse's office for a thorough eye exam.

She shrugs, turns and looks at her computer screen.

"Four of them struggled with reading because they hadn't realized they couldn't see the page."

"They would have been caught a few months later."

"What's a few months?" he replies, trying to keep his sarcastic tone at a minimum. "My battle now is convincing kids that wearing glasses isn't a bad thing."

"Girls," Nurse Jan mutters.

"But I didn't come here for that." Having stood by the door until then, he now sits. "I want to know how to cure lead poisoning."

"Go to a hospital. Quick."

"Seriously."

"Serious. Chelation therapy." She leans back, relaxing a bit as they talk about something other than runny noses and ADHD medication. "It's a chemical process. With Chelation therapy ions bind with the lead and you piss it out."

"Does it work?"

"As much as anything would. If it's really bad, they use something called EDTA." She looks at her hands; the nails are bitten, Horse notes. She hides them. "We had a kid who needed that a few years ago. Old house."

"Who?"

She tells him. A recent student of his, he wonders if the intervention had made a difference.

"Do people know this?" he asks.

"About the kid?"

"No, the cure."

"As much as people know about anything. I still get parents arguing with me that cigarettes aren't bad for them, much less their kid."

"Idiots."

"And that's your job to fix."

Chapter Thirty-five

Walking his bike up the hill towards the Clutter Barn, Horse is nearly run over by Gutman's rusted Buick. There is a glance, where the proprietor realizes that the man with the bike is a customer who is getting a bit too close to his personal demons.

Then the car is gone.

With a glance for oncoming traffic, the old teacher turns the bicycle around and glides down the hill. Arriving at the bottom, he is in time to see the tail of the car turn north.

_Jenkins_ , he thinks.

He looks at the road going north and how the turn disappears around a bend, snaking up a long hill. Eyes looking at his handlebars, he weighs in his mind the time spent finding Wells versus that of pumping his Raleigh Sherwood up the side of a mountain.

A minute later he is in the store of the gas station calling Grace Haven Elementary.

"Do me a favor?" Horse asks, sitting cautiously in the passenger seat while Wells drives up the dirt road to Jenkins' converted sugar house.

"Depends."

"Wait for me."

"So we can both be killed?"

"You should be safe in the car."

Then, the two sit in that silence.

"You're right," the principal says. "If we both went up, who would give the press conference about our deaths?"

Eventually, the Volvo pulls in behind the rusted Buick, tailpipe still intact. Cautiously, Horse opens his door and places a foot on the ground.

Then, he hears a shot.

Wearing brown corduroys and a green sweater, Horse blends into the turning leaves as he scrambled up the hill towards the sugar house—and the shot.

Wells wrestles with his seatbelt and forces open the door. Checking his cell phone, he notes that he there is no signal.

Cautiously, he stalks Horse up that hill—the promise to remain behind forgotten.

Another shot echoes.

Wells crouches down, even though he knows nothing about where the shots are coming from. He tries to remember if black powder season has begun—at one time he had been quite aware of the various hunting seasons, as the first day of each caused large absences— _perhaps it has nothing to do with Gutman._ As he reaches the crest, he realizes how loud his steps are as he runs through the fallen leaves.

He can see the sugar house.

No one is about.

Then he hears swearing.

An old voice.

Jenkins?

And then whispering.

Having lived an entire life in Vermont, Wells has tried most everything to a substantial degree. His father had been a hunter, and when the principal was a teenager he had bagged his share of trophies. In his thirties, he had taken a few tracking courses because... he did not know why, other than boyish curiosity. Now, he glides over to the building without thought—instinct.

He breathes.

And listens.

Looking around the corner of the building, he sees Horse bent over a body.

Closer, the old teacher is trying to stop the bleeding.

Two shots to the chest.

Horse has the man's coat open and the dark stain is quite large. Blood pools on the ground.

Sensing his presence, the teacher turns.

"He's bleeding quite badly."

"Yes," with a slight nod.

Then he adds, "We have no reception up here."

The old man—Jenkins—is not quite out. He mutters something they miss.

"Let me," Wells says.

Taking the shirt, he tears open the front. Then, he rolls the old man on his side.

"No holes."

"Is that good?"

"I don't know."

It is something the principal has seen in several war films, but nothing he has thought to learn about in case of a real situation.

"Less holes means the blood had nowhere to go," Horse says.

"Fewer."

Horse looks at him.

"Fewer holes. You must be stressed," Wells pants. "You're grammar is slipping."

"Grace under pressure."

"Hemingway?"

Old Horse only nods.

Wells runs into the sugar house and comes out with a few t-shirts, which he folds into compress bandages. It is unclear to him if he is too late. Regardless, he places them on the wounds and put his full weight on them.

"Go in," he instructs. "Find blankets."

Shock.

With his leg, the principal manages to hook a log near Jenkins' feet. Releasing pressure for a moment, he lifts the man's feet and puts the log under them, his legs now higher than the man's heart. Then, he reapplies pressure.

"Don't go on me," Wells says with confidence to the down man.

Jenkins smiles.

Old Horse returns with the blankets.

"Now we need to make a decision," Wells begins.

"Save the man, or catch the criminal."

"Yes."

"I believe Gutman is a harm to himself."

"I can live with that."

Wells looks down at the wounds.

"Is he still a harm to us?"

There is silence. The two look down at Jenkins for a response.

Horse scans the woods.

"I don't know."

"I recommend getting help."

Then, Jenkins speaks.

"Save the boy," he mutters.

Expecting blood coming up with his words—that is a sign of internal bleeding in the movies he had seen—Wells is relieved that only bile and spit follow.

As dictated by a relationship forged over twenty years, Horse looks at Wells.

The principal nods.

Horse runs off in the direction he thinks Gutman has fled.

He really has no idea where he is running to.

Knowing that Gutman has not run back towards his car, it means he either ran up or down. Horse choses the easier of the two.

Down.

Scrambling down the hill like water, Horse tries to remember what Gutman had been wearing when his car had flashed back.

Blue?

He looks for movement more than color.

Down the gully, Horse avoids trees and tries to see the rocks hidden by the fallen leaves.

At a time, ten years earlier, he had participated in the state orienteering circuit. For competition, the organizers of the event give participants a topographical map and send them out to find five or six points on a map. After a staggered start, each contestant makes their way through the woods trying to find those points in the field. Each participant then makes their way to the finish line. A natural at map-and-compass work, Horse's weakness is always the running. Faster runners who are directionless come just after him, and sometimes a bit before. As much as he works on technique, he had never gained the edge he seeks.

But Horse knows Gutman is in worse shape than he is.

He follows gravity, he thinks.

Still, he cannot see any sight of him. The old teacher begins to have his doubts.

"You know," Jenkins manages to get out, with great strain and in a whisper. "My phone in the cabin has reception."

"You might have mentioned that while Horse is here."

The principal's face is a scold.

"I did."

"I didn't hear you," Wells mutters, feeling foolish at scolding a dying man.

He looks down at his red hands, holding down the blood stained t-shirts that acted as a compression bandage. The choice now is to hold his wound and let him slowly bleed out or take a chance and call for help.

"Where is it?"

Jenkins does not respond.

Wells is going to explain his thought process, instead of just leaving him. But, with a shrug, he lifts a nearby flat rock and puts it on the bandages he had been holding. Then, he runs into the cabin.

There, on the table, is a phone.

"Come on," Wells says under his breath, frustrated at Horse. "You didn't notice this when you got the blankets?"

The phone is off, but by the time he has returned to Jenkins it has activated. He pushes off the rock. Quickly, Wells takes another t-shirt and replaces the bloody one. With his knee, he puts pressure on the wound, leaving his hands free for dialing. On the screen, a faint signal is shown.

"Come on," he whispers, waiting.

Jenkins says nothing.

But he breathes in. Then out.

All of this Wells tells the response operator.

The reply is that help is on its way.

He stops.

And sees movement.

Down where the hill begins to flatten out, a flash of blue shows behind a tree.

"So he got it from your hobby?" Horse says tonelessly.

Loudly.

"No," comes back a strong reply.

"No?" the old teacher repeats, surprised.

"She still had all of the father's shit from before he left."

From behind the tree, Gutman steps. In his right hand is his rifle.

"Just a box of shit—a few flannel shirts and some cowboy paperbacks. There was also his bullet making stuff in there."

"He made his own bullets," Horse says, confirming.

Neither move closer to the other.

The teacher keeps his eyes on the boy. Not a boy—that was thirty years ago—but Jenkins saw him as such.

The boy's eyes never waver.

He is ready to run.

Horse knows Gutman is dangerous, but it is unclear if both of them would wind up bleeding out on the forest floor or just the boy.

"Yeah."

Gutman now looks out at nothing. It is clear he had thought about that box and what had happened too many times to count.

"So, Thomas got lead from that?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure."

The maker of tin soldiers turns to Horse and says in a steady voice, "I knew these things were poison. It's not a kid's hobby. I never let that kid do more than play with one of my men after it is painted, and safe."

"And supervised, I'm sure."

It is clear to Horse that Gutman has asked himself this very question over and over between then and now.

"Yes."

Nothing is said for a while.

"Is that why you shot Jenkins?"

"He is the boyfriend."

"I don't think so."

The teacher can see the boy thinking. Checking his logic.

Then, his face clears.

He looks as tired as Horse feels. His face sags.

"I came over," Gutman begins. "Lead is all over the floor. She had the kid in his bed. His hands were covered. His face, around the mouth...."

"What did she do?"

"She got him to vomit."

"But...."

"Nothing." This time he takes a long pause.

Thinking.

"She decided to dilute the lead with water. Made him drink glass after glass."

"Why not go to the hospital?"

"She is afraid he'd be taken away from her. The damage is done—if she could fix him everything would be fine."

"But she couldn't."

"No."

They both stand and say nothing.

"Hyponatremia," Horse says, breaking the silence. "It's a mix of Greek and Latin meaning 'insufficent salt in the blood.' She overloaded the kidneys and they couldn't process the water fast enough. That waters down the salt in the body, and eventually the extra water enters the cells."

Horse looks hard at Gutman and allows his voice to snap his attention: "Did the kid swell up."

"Yes," he replies, reluctantly.

"When that happens in the head, the brain swells against the skull. Seizures. Coma. Death."

"So it wasn't the lead," Gutman says after a long time.

"Probably not."

"Painful?" the boy asks, sorrow in his voice.

Horse just shrugs.

"He was dead that morning."

"Did you put the body under my sidewalk?"

Gutman shakes his head, finally adding, "No."

It had been his idea, though.

"She was in a panic," he explains. "Crazy. I didn't think anything good would come from it. The boy was dead."

"So you told her to do it."

"She wanted to know what to do." His voice holds a trace of panic in it as he relives that day. "I told her she could go to the police, and what might happen. She couldn't think of what else to do, and I suggested the sidewalk."

"Why that?"

"I had passed it coming from town."

"How'd my workers not notice the body?"

"That was me."

Having woken up in the night, he visited Lucy only to find her gone. On instinct, he drove down to the sidewalk site and found her there. The boy was buried in the ground next to where they had stopped pouring sideway the day before, but not well enough that it would not be found the next day by workers when they were ready to pour. Gutman had known the basics of the sidewalk process from seeing others in the neighborhood replaced, and knew they would be probing the soil to lay a solid, level bed.

"Lucy was sure she wanted it this way. So, I mixed some concrete the owners of Baileys Bend had left around for some project and gave Thomas a resting place."

"I didn't notice."

"I made it look half-poured, like the drippings from the sluice of the cement mixer. It covered the body well enough. You poured the rest of the form right over it."

"Still...."

"I was counting on your doing a rookie job."

"I guess I did"

"Laporte would have, too. But that's because he's always in a hurry. And cheap—a badly done job just need replacement sooner, which means another contract."

"And the mom?"

"She couldn't live with it. Hung herself."

"And you found her?"

He says nothing, at first.

Then, finally, he whispers, "Yup."

Horse sees the lips move. He nods to indicate he has heard.

Gutman opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Finally, "She tried to live with it, but never could. Made it six months, but she was a zombie the whole time."

"Drugs?"

"No. Just morose."

"I can imagine."

He stiffens, looking to Horse. "No, you can't."

Then he tells about how he had found her and cut her down. To make it easier—he did not explain what easier meant—he just put her in the yard and covered her with stones. "I'd seen that done in a western, once."

"To keep out the animals," Horse mutters.

"I wasn't thinking," Gutman replies. "I don't know why I just didn't call the police."

When Horse looks back up the hill, thinking about Wells holding Jenkins together, the boy runs.

Chapter Thirty-five

Trooper Danielson is the first to arrive.

He sees Wells' car at the base of the hill and surmises that they are up the trail. The information left with the emergency response operator is thin.

When he arrives at the bluff he sees why the principal had not spent the time to leave a detailed description.

There is the body—that is most evident.

He strides towards it, taking in everything he can.

Surrounding it are some rags—Danielson makes out that they are t-shirts stained in blood. Over the man kneels Wells. He is putting pressure over the source of the blood.

The man is pale.

"He's still breathing," Wells mutters, as if were cold comfort.

Turning around, Danielson scans back towards the trail for the EMTs. They have just pulled up behind his cruiser, and he scuttles down the hill to leads them up and helps with their supplies.

One thing Horse has going for him is his sense of place.

He has always been good with maps, but his ability to discern space and direction has especially served him well. From walking around a town briefly, he is able to craft a bird's eye view and make his way anyplace he has already been. As a child, he rarely got lost. Looking at a map, he can chart a course from any fixed point. It is a gift less appreciated in these days of GPS.

His other advantage over Gutman are his students' projects. Each year, Horse has his students draw out a map of Grace Haven and the surrounding communities. Plotting out the local churches, volunteer fire station, gas station and other attractions, he remembers the vast emptiness of this part of the region.

There be monsters here.

Not quite, and he knows some key features that are coming up—a river, a sharp rise, a Class 3 road-- but he is still unsure of what else lays in front of them both.

Now, he can picture the major features around them. In his head is a map, if a bit vague.

The Brown Creek is a body of water that winds through Grace Haven.

Awkwardly making his way down the uneven hill, Horse wonders why so many rivers in Vermont carry the title "creek". He had had his students try and define the difference between a stream and a river (their answer: you can jump across a stream), a road and a street (their answer: a road connects two specific destinations, such as two towns) and if a creek is any different than a stream or river (their answer: not really).

At last he comes to Brown Creek—and Gutman.

The water is unusually high—all of the rain and extended downpours. It reaches Gutman's knees, until he takes a step that pitches him forward. With great difficulty, he gets up. Standing, he is now up to his waist.

Worse, for him, is the current. Surrounded by several rocks, and a current pitching this way and that, standing is difficult. Gutman raises his rifle above his head, keeping it dry, but the effort makes balancing near impossible.

He leaps towards the far bank.

The current smashes him into a rock, his back hitting it flat, knocking the wind out of him.

"Stay there," Horse shouts.

Gutman looks as if done.

Tired.

Laying against the rock, water to his waist keeping him pinned, he has just enough energy left to stare with defiance at the old teacher.

He raises his rifle.

Then he lets go a shot high above Horse's head.

"Leave me," he shouts.

Both Wells and Danielson hear the shot.

Jenkins, they are told just before, will live.

It is unclear if he will be living in his sugar shack this winter, though. The technicians put plenty of things in Jenkins to stabilize him for the move to Copely Hospital.

Then, the shot rings out.

Because of the shape of the hills and its echo, both have trouble deciding which direction the original sound has come from. Knowing that Horse had taken off down the hill, they have a pretty good idea when they leave the EMTs to their job. Others have arrived.

The two take off in pursuit.

Still pinned against the rock, Gutman unbuttons his shirt's breast pocket with his right hand and removes a round. The brass stands out against the blue of his shirt and the grey of the rocks and water. Pulling the bolt back, he swiftly reloads.

"Leave me," he repeats.

It is clear to Horse that the earlier shot had been a deliberate miss. He senses that Gutman will not shoot him. He has never meant for any of the deaths he has carried for so many years.

"It's not your fault," Horse hollers over the water's urgency.

Standing in the rush, Gutman shakes his head.

"Water under the bridge," he shouts back, followed by a laugh.

This worries Horse more than anything that has happened.

Briefly, the old teacher lays out the events and how Gutman—then just a boy—had done nothing wrong. He is responsible for none of their lives.

"He didn't even die of lead poisoning," Gutman shouts back, repeating what Horse had just told him. "Too much water."

Holding the gun in his right hand, he looks around at the water.

"It's not your fault."

"It doesn't matter," Gutman replies. "I've been carrying it too long."

"Exactly. Let it go."

Which he does.

Turning the rifle around deftly, he places the barrel under his chin and pulls the trigger.

The bullet misses his brain and major arteries. His jaw shatters, as does the left side of his skull where the bullet leaves. His body quickly goes into shock, and Gutman begins losing a lot of blood.

Unable to hold his own weight, he is swept down the Brown Creek.

Being submerged in water, his blood continues to flow from his body quickly. The cold of the water, combined with the shock caused by the gun's trauma, shuts down the core. Gutman soon bleeds out, his body succumbing to a combination of things that lead to him filling his lungs up with water and drawing. The end is painful, but quick.

But Horse only sees the shot, and then the body drop into the water.

The blue clad body is swept about thirty feet before getting caught on a large rock in the center. Horse makes his way in and is able to get hold of the shirt. Fighting the current, he makes his way to the far side—it is closer. Still, it all takes time. The teacher is aware of every second. When he layes the body on the shore, it is clear Gutman is dead.

His wounds are clean, but slowly begin running red again.

There is not much left to run.

Coming to a halt at the bottom of the hill, Wells and Danielson stop to see Horse looking down at the body.

No one says a thing.

After a moment, Danielson calls into the radio for help.

Chapter Thirty-six

When Horse comes out of the front of the school he finds a surprise.

In the bicycle rack stands Horse's Raleigh Sherwood bicycle.

Except that it is no longer green.

Well, not the original green.

"We fixed it," Ben says.

"For you," Jordan adds. Both of them have the green paint on their hands and shoes.

Eyes scanning up and down, he notes that they had not done a bad job.

_A double negative is as positive as I can be_ , he thinks to himself.

Unfortunately, they have not gone a great job, either.

Penny can read his thoughts.

"It looks good," she chirps in, unhelpfully. "Should I get the principal?"

"No," Horse replies. "That's okay."

"As long as you think you can control your joy."

Then he turns to the two students, but before he can say anything five more come out of the front of the school. Each of them, he notices, has a bit of paint on some part of their clothing or body.

"The others had to take the bus home," Ben says.

"But everyone helped," Jordan adds.

Taking an inventory of all of his students and their weak abilities with tools and fine motor skills, he offers a weak smile.

"How'd you do it?" he asks. He then adds, calmly, "Without me getting wise?"

"First thing in the morning," Ben answers.

"Which is why you were late," Horse finishes.

"Yes."

Standing before the bicycle, various children take him through the process of transforming it. After bringing it to the utility room—Ms. Binnis had helped them find a good place for the surprise—they had disassembled it down to the frame. Taking sandpaper to the original paint (at this, Horse lets out a groan) and rust, they carefully painted it a green that almost matched the original.

"As close as we could find," Katie says.

"Pretty close," Horse confirms. And it was, except that the original gold text from the Raleigh plant is gone. "Did you use spray paint?"

"No," Jordan replies. "But we cut the paint with thinner. With a light coat and a fine sanding between coats there's no brush marks."

"How'd you do multiple coats in one day?" he asks, becoming more interested in the process.

"Heat lamps."

"From the greenhouse," Ben adds.

Horse thinks of the quality that comes from rushed jobs, imagining the chemical process going on at that very moment—the paint not really sticking to the metal.

"And were able to do three coats by the end of the day."

The old teacher's eye runs long the rims and chrome parts. No paint.

"Well... thanks," he finally says.

Everyone sort of stands there, unsure of where to put their hands or what to do next. Horse thinks about taking it for a ride around the parking lot, to show his support.

As if reading this thought, James blurts out, "Oh, the paint's wet."

"You gotta let it dry," Ben instructs.

"I wouldn't ride it," Katie says. "Not today."

"No," Horse replies. "Of course."

He wonders about the adjustment of the gears and brakes.

Reading his face, Penny makes small talk with the kids and manages to end the surprise on a positive note. With smiles on their face they go back into the school for afterschool activities.

"I'll give you a ride home," Penny tells him after they are gone.

"Thanks," he mutters in response.

"You know they say that students reflect their teacher."

He gives her a tired look.

Then, Old Horse looks at his bicycle.

" _Helping_ ," he mutters.

"You've never had kids, had you?" Penny says to him.

"They're all my kids."

"That sounds a bit trite," she says with a snort.

"Everything positive sounds trite."

"No," she says with a bit more seriousness. "Not 'thank you'."

"No?"

"Well, from you it just sounds sarcastic."
Chapter Thirty-seven

The two sit at a bar outside of Morrisville, at Horse's invitation. He drinks a cheap domestic beer that is on special. Laporte takes a long drink from a local draft that is not very good but that tourists like. It is on special. They both look at the other's reflection in the mirror behind the liquor, talking without talking. Sitting in silence, the bartender goes to another room—it is early, the bar is empty and he has just gotten a delivery that needs to be put away. Laporte has used the bar for other meetings, and the bartender knows his participation is not desired.

"So what did you want to see me about?" Laporte asks.

"I may have found your pry bar."

"And we had to meet over a beer so you could give it back?"

The contractor looks at Horse's drink. "I is going to say that these drinks are worth more than the pry bar, but looking at your choice I would say I is wrong."

He laughs at his own joke.

"Interesting thing about it," Horse says. "The curve, where the lever of the bar bends to create a pivot, fits exactly the death wound of the kid who is found floating in that lake a few weeks ago."

"That kid is thirty five."

"Seems like a kid," Horse says. "You know how some people struggle a long time to become an adult? He is working it, but he is still a kid when he died."

"So, the wound on a bloated corpse fit the curve a generic pry bar you could buy at any hardware story?" Laporte says, not seeming very interested.

"Well, that's what the medical examiner said."

"I see." With a deep breath, Laporte asks, "So, you aren't going to return my pry bar to me?"

"No," Horse replies. "Not just yet."

The two sit in silence for a bit. The postal deliverer comes in, drops an inch thick stack of mail on the bar and leaves again. Light streams in when the door opens—entry and exit.

"That boy is a tweaker," Laporte says.

"No. Clean. That's what the autopsy said."

"Not many of those in construction."

Laporte makes as if he is smoking a joint. Then, he smiles.

"His girlfriend said he had taken the pledge."

Horse rolls up his left sleeve. With his pointer and middle finger out, he makes his right hand look like a cocked gun. Then, he makes motions with the tip, swirling around and around the bare left arm.

"The tattoo," he says. "He got it as some sort of purity mark. For his new lifestyle."

"What the hell is a swirl supposed to mean?" Laporte spits.

"I don't know."

"Kids." Laporte lowers his shoulders, leaning on the bar. "Idiots."

Horse takes a long sip of his beer, then places it on the mat. He begins to adjust the mat so that it is parallel with the edge of the bar. Finally, he centers the beer on the mat.

"So," Laporte begins again, turning to Horse. "You think my missing pry bar killed him?"

"Did it?"

Laporte shrugs, but he has a glimpse of a smile on his face. The man is not one to shrink from someone calling him out.

"Why would I hit some kid with a pry bar?"

"That's why I'm here."

"So, you're not going to give my pry bar back?"

"No. Not today. I didn't bring it."

Laporte nods, understanding.

"Where did you find it?"

"At the Clutter Barn."

"Really?"

"I got it for a steal."

"Gutman could be a heck of a haggler, if he wants to be."

"I got the feeling he wanted me to have this."

"Self-confession?"

Horse smiles. He drains his glass. The bartender is coming in and out of the room with cases of bottled beer—coming with the new deliveries, and leaving with empties. Catching his eye, Horse gets his refilled.

"You want to slow down," Laporte sayes, motioning towards the parking lot; implying that he has a reputation and a DUI would not help it.

"On this?" Horse replies, holding up the pale drink.

_Water_ , he seems to say.

He takes a sip and asks Laporte, "What do you mean by self-confession?"

"He killed the kid." Laporte cannot help but let out a short laugh. "The older one. Then he gave you the murder weapon because he knew you'd put two-and-two together and he'd be caught."

"Why kill him?"

"The boy had something on him."

"Like the bodies?"

"Exactly." Laporte adjusts his perch on the stool. "The boy confronts Gutman. Gutman kills the boy. He dumps the body and gets rid of the evidence."

"Why not throw the evidence into the water?"

"Guilt?" Laporte turns, but keeps watching Horse in the mirror behind the bar. "Perhaps he is in shock at what he did. Hand tight. Nerves. Never let go of the pry bar. The shock. Maybe he did it in his store, dropped the pry bar, took care of the body and only realized he had the weapon when he returned."

The old teacher smiles. "That's one theory."

"What's yours?" Laporte asks in a gravely voice.

"I don't know why he would given it to me."

Laporte smiles. Horse can see it in the mirror, and then he hears the chuckle of someone who thinks they have the whole world figured out.

"He's an idiot. What makes someone an idiot is that they think they are goddamn clever, and they aren't. So, they do something they think is clever and it blows up in their face."

"So," Horse confirms, "his giving me the pry bar is not self-confession, as you originally thought, but him being clever?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"How so?"

"Instead of just tossing it in the Lamoille River, he gives it to you. You connect it to me, and I become a suspect." He turns to Horse. "And, look. Here you are."

"So, pretty clever, actually."

"Except, he's dead. And I'm enjoying your company and a beer." Then, after a pause, he adds, "A beer, at least."

"Why would he set you up?"

Laporte ignores the question. Instead, he says, "I would have tossed the pry bar in the Lamoille."

"You're smarter than he is." Horse says it as a fact.

"I'm sitting here, aren't I?"

"Which proves you didn't do it, because if you had you would not have been caught?"

"The guy has made some poor choices already. Body under a sidewalk. Body under a stack of rocks. Shooting Jenkins. Idiot...."

"I have a theory," Horse begins.

"Of course you do."

Laporte forces himself not to look away.

"My theory," Horse says, "is that the kid knew what happened thirty years ago. My theory is that the kid had lived in Baileys Bend thirty years ago. When the papers got filled with the body and identification, the kid remembered something."

"And blackmailed Gutman?"

Laporte smirks, which Horse cannot read.

"How old is the kid when he lived there?" Laporte asks.

"Five."

"And he lived there?"

"I have a source that says he did."

"And he would have known what a sixth grader is doing? Or a teen age boy?"

"Until sixth grade, kids play with anyone. In places like Baileys Bend, kids run in packs with minimal supervision. I have no doubt believing the boy knew the Brooks kid. He'd have seen something, perhaps."

"And waited thirty years to confront Gutman?"

"He forgot it. Kids, they forget stuff. People move. You grow up."

"Well, there's your motive for Gutman."

Laporte drains his glass. The bartender enters, but the contractor waives him off.

"Why your pry bar?" Horse asks, staring into his half-filled glass.

"It wasn't mine..."

"Let's pretend that it was."

"Bullshit..."

"The boy works for you." Horse turns towards Laporte. "The boy remembers this, and comes to you."

"Why me?"

"You're his boss. The kid is rootless. Knows no authority figure but you...."

"Why would I kill him?"

"You have a thing with Gutman."

"A thing?"

"It is the right time to develop Baileys Bend. Gutman is involved. The kid came to you..." Horse answers.

"Look," Laporte says. "It's not easy to kill someone. Not at close range. A bar or pipe or knife is a personal thing. Savage."

"Which is why I think you did it, not Gutman."

"So, let me get this straight." Laporte is standing now, his full height. Horse looks up from his stool. "I am missing a pry bar. You bought a pry bar from Gutman. A man is killed from a blow to the head. That kid happened to work for me."

"That's it."

"Did the police find anything on the pry bar?"

"Oh, I haven't given them the pry bar."

Laporte laughs.

"Which is good, because I happened to find mine."

"You did?" Horse asks, not believing him.

"Sure," Laporte answers. "Like I said, someone borrowed it out of my truck. They do that."

Laporte is blustery, his face red and breathing heavy.

Horse looks at him, up and down.

Taking a long drink, he smiles. Put down the glass.

"I'm sure that will be true by the time you get back to the office."

