“Does anyone else know that?”
“I’m not certain. I think Vic Hewitt probably does. The boy hung around Vic, too.”
And then, catching himself: “Hangs.”
“I overheard them talking,” said Maryanne. “They’re curious about it. They’d like to find the person who carved it. The police were saying this, and the news spread. It was all we came up with at the end of a full day’s search. The hounds are useless because of the rain. There’s nothing. They’ll keep searching, but.”
She trailed off. And then, abruptly, she turned from the threshold of Scotty’s room and walked to the kitchen, began to open cabinets. Searching them for some kind of dinner.
“Want help?” Carl asked.
“No,” said Maryanne. “You go back to bed. Shouldn’t be down here to begin with.”
She thought for a moment, and then: “Why do you think he had it with him?”
“Not sure,” said Carl. “Must have liked it.”
“And why do you think he dropped it?”
“Not sure.”
• • •
Carl took the stairs one at a time, resting for several seconds in between. In his peripheral vision he noticed his girls regarding him silently from the dining room table, where they were meant to be studying. He waved at them. Back to your schoolwork.
On the upstairs landing, he allowed himself to acknowledge why he’d used the past tense when speaking about Bear Van Laar. The truth was: he’d been thinking of Scotty. The two boys were becoming closer in his mind.
Carl
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
Maryanne went back to search the next day, and the next. Each evening she reported on the day’s events: as word spread, there were more and more people in the field. A hundred the second day. Five hundred the third. The whole town of Shattuck had paused in its daily operations to contribute to the cause: every adult older than school age, and some children as well. For two whole days, the grocery store was closed while the Shattucks and their employees searched for Bear, meaning that anyone who’d run out of milk or bread or toilet paper had to drive half an hour to get some.
Vic Hewitt, said Maryanne, had been in charge of operations so far; each day he sent small groups farther and farther afield in every direction. Still, there was no sign of Bear.
What Vic shouted at the group each morning was formal and hopeful, meant as much for the ears of the parents as for the searchers themselves.
What Maryanne learned in whispers from the other wives was less so.
The hounds, they said, had lost the boy’s scent quickly on the first day. Ron Shattuck’s Jennie had been the one to sniff out the carving of the bear, halfway between the house and the trailhead; after that she had not pointed for the rest of the day.
The problem had been the downpour on the day of the boy’s disappearance. If not for the rain, they said—but no one would finish the sentence.
“Vic’s losing hope,” said Maryanne, the evening of the third day. “You can tell. His posture’s different.”
Carl nodded. It was difficult to imagine a boy of Bear’s age surviving in the wilderness much beyond this point. Even one with his know-how.
“Are people speculating?” Carl asked.
Maryanne hesitated for a moment before responding.
“They are,” she said, carefully. “There’s a lot of folks who think the boy just wandered off. Out of curiosity or anger, no one’s sure. No telling how far a boy his age and size could have gotten before realizing he was lost. After that,” she said, “well, if he were down with an injury, he might have succumbed to the cold overnight.”
Carl nodded. This was his theory too—the main one, anyway. He hated to say it, to even think it, but this sounded like the most probable theory. Except—
Maryanne continued. “But Carl,” she said, “people have another thought too.”
He knew what it was before she said it.
“The carving,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Not that.”
“Then what?” Carl said.
Maryanne hesitated. “There’s a rumor,” she said. “It’s that you were the last person to see Bear alive.”
Carl paused. Nodded.
“That’s true. I saw him just as I was leaving. He was sitting on the front steps of Self-Reliance. Tying his shoes.”
She looked at him, blinking. “Why on earth did you not tell me that?”
“I have to tell you something else,” said Carl.
Maryanne put her face in her hands.
“No, Maryanne,” said Carl. “Nothing like that. My God.”
