“The dogs have been barking,” Parker tells me when I reach the guard hut.
He finishes the last of his coffee then places it on the table. He looks like he got a haircut from one of the women in the community—the sides of his hair trimmed too close to the scalp, an honest but uneven effort. Some of the men in Pastoral call him the kid, and in recent months he’s tried to rid himself of the title by growing a mustache which is now just a few scattered blond wisps.
He stands up from the chair and edges past me to the open doorway, our routine well practiced. “Oh?” I ask. The sun has long set, and I shift the notebook I found the night before under my arm so he won’t see.
“It’s Henry’s dogs,” Parker says. “They won’t shut up.”
“What do you think’s got them worked up?”
He lifts his bony shoulders to his small ears. “Dogs can be stupid,” he says, but I can’t tell if he means it, or if something’s spooked him and he’s trying to shrug it off. “Or maybe they hear the trees splitting open at the border.”
“We lit the sage,” I say, sinking into the chair. “The smoke should push the sickness away.”
Parker makes a sound, turning in the doorway to peer down the road, a peculiar look of doubt cut into his face.
I glance at the notebook wedged between the arm of the chair and my leg, and a thought begins to jab at me—it’s an idea that’s started to gain substance since I discovered the truck and the photograph, and now this notebook that once belonged to Travis Wren. “Have you ever thought it’s strange that we guard the gate at all?” I ask Parker. “Since no one ever comes up the road anymore?”
His frown dips even deeper, showing the ash-blond stubble along his jawline. “We keep Pastoral safe,” he says, as if he repeats this phrase to himself every morning, a reminder of why he sits inside this little hut through the long, arctic cold of January winters, and the drowsy, unbearable heat of summer.
“Was there ever anyone who came up the road when you were working?” I ask. “A man maybe, someone named Travis Wren?”
Parker laughs and leans his shoulder blade against the doorframe, as if working out a knot from sitting all day. “Sure,” he says, thick with sarcasm. “I just forgot to mention it to you. But people have been strolling up the road all year.”
“Or a woman maybe?” I try.
He raises an eyebrow at me, starting to realize that I’m not joking. “What are you talking about?”
“A woman with short blond hair?”
The smirk falls from his lips. “I haven’t seen a man, a woman, or anyone walking up that road, ever. Blond hair or not. Did you sleep at all today? You need me to cover the night shift? You’re sounding a little sideways.”
I lean back in the chair and turn my gaze away from him, to the window. “I’m good. Just thinking about things, I guess.”
“No thinking required in this job,” he says. “That’s why I like it. Best job in the whole community. You start thinking too much and Levi will think you want his job.”
“I don’t want Levi’s job,” I answer flatly.
“Me neither. Crap thing, to be responsible for all this. For everyone. I’d rather sit out here where it’s quiet. Drink my coffee and read a book.”
Parker prefers the quiet solitude of his position. He has no interest in anything else, anything beyond this little guard hut. He’ll probably die right here in this chair.
And the next thought that lands in my mind, makes me wince: So will I.
“I’m gonna head home,” Parker says with an absent wave of his hand. “My mom made apple jam yesterday. I might eat the whole jar.”
Even at twenty-one, Parker still seems so young—sleeping in the same room he grew up in, inside his mother’s home. Just a kid, really. For a moment, my eyes survey his soft, freckled face, looking for something he might be hiding. If he did see Travis Wren walking up the road, would he have reason to lie about it? Would he go tell Levi but keep it from me? Would he be able to look at me with a straight face and say nothing? Maybe there’s more hidden behind his lazy blue eyes than I know.
But Parker turns in the doorway and disappears into the dark, heading up to Pastoral.
For some time, I stare through the dust-coated window, filaments of moonlight sliding across the road, making the landscape look wrinkled like an unwashed quilt. A familiar tingle prods at me just above my left ear, a pain that’s been growing in recent days.
I pour myself the last cup of coffee, and when I’m certain it’s late enough, when I know Parker is good and gone, I open the notebook and sit back in the chair. I need to read it again, thoroughly. I need to understand.
The first few pages are filled with dull, tedious notes about mile markers and hotels where Travis Wren spent the night. A few expenses are scribbled in the margins: breakfast at Salt Creek Motor Lodge, $14.78. Gas at Fairfax, $62.19. The notes are inconsistent, and some are more detailed than others. Several merely state the cost, but not what it’s for. He was sloppy, but he was hoping to be reimbursed.
He was on the hunt for Maggie St. James.
Her parents hired Travis to find her, and after his meeting with them, he wrote a single word on a page: Pastoral?
Eventually, he tracked her all the way here, following marks cut into the trees, carrying a small charm he mentions a few times: a charm shaped like a book with the number three etched into the surface.
And then, he arrived in Pastoral.
They fear something in the woods, the notebook reads. Herbs tied with string hang from the trees, marking the boundary they do not cross. I’m starting to question whether it was a mistake coming here without notifying someone.
I skim through the notes quickly to where they stop—only half the notebook filled. But there are also missing pages, ripped out near the end.
His last notation at the bottom of a page is carefully written, not in haste.
I found her. Maggie St. James is here.
CALLA