“No,” I said, angrily. “That night.”
Del picked up the muffin and set it back on her plate.
“His eyes were closed.”
“Did you feel for a pulse?”
“Of course I wouldn’t touch him! There was blood, around his head. What are you saying?” Del stood. She pulled Randy’s shirt tight around her.
Perhaps I had lost the plot. Alive? Dead? I could no longer tell the difference.
Del moved over to one of the wing chairs and fell into it. “He couldn’t have gotten out of there. We had his phone,” she said.
“It might not even be him,” I said. I tried to keep my voice calm. “Lots of people have odd hats. Even you.” I laughed, and reminded her of the day she’d been trying on the hats. I sat down in the chair across from her. “Why don’t you finish your breakfast.”
“It was him,” Del said. She picked at the tapestried upholstery, pulling threads loose.
I waited for her to insist she wasn’t crazy, but she did not. She decided we should visit Sybil Townsend in the encampment. Partly to appease her, and partly because I felt in need of guidance and lacked anyone else to offer it, I agreed. I warned Del she couldn’t tell Sybil the truth. “We can’t really trust her,” I said.
We walked the same route we’d taken the night of the snowstorm with William. Now, window boxes of pansies decorated the houses’ front porches.
“What do we ask her?” Del kept so close beside me, she bumped my shoulder.
“Let me talk.” I had no idea what I would say. Could Del see William as I did? I had considered that possibility when she’d gotten sick as a teenager. Could she have been following the dead around town? Conversing with them? This seemed unbelievable, and I told myself it was wishful thinking—but maybe she couldn’t accept the voices she heard and the people she saw who asked her to follow. Maybe her breakdown had been a result.
The encampment path was muddy. The brook had swelled its banks, and the rank mud smell was almost overpowering. Under the pine shade patches of snow remained, the tarps stained and faded in comparison. Daylight revealed the camp for what it was—harsh, dirty. Without the cover of darkness and the enchantment of the strung twinkling lights, the place lost any aspect of magic. No one glanced up to spot us or wave hello. The people moved between tents, or traversed the narrow paths, bundled in grubby winter clothes. I hesitated, but Del tugged on my arm and we set off farther down the path, farther into the smoke from the fires, the odor of rotting garbage. Some of the inhabitants, wrapped in blankets, came out of their tents. They stood in front of the entrance flaps, stern and protective. A man approached us and shouted at us, demanding to know what we wanted.
“We’re looking for Sybil Townsend,” Del said.
The man, older, wearing mismatched gloves, marched in place in the mud, the mud squelching around his shoes.
“What do you want with her?” he asked, like a sentinel. His breath was foul, tainted by whiskey and coffee and bad teeth.
“I want to talk with her,” Del said.
The old man gave us a strange look with his head to the side. He was blind in one eye, the color a vague and milky blue. With the good eye he was looking us up and down. I didn’t know why Del believed she would be recognized.
“She knows me,” Del said.
I smelled something cooking, a heavy scent of fatty broth.
“She’s not here,” the man said, roughly. He turned from us and walked away down the path, his shoes sinking into the mud. Del began to follow him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted into the air ahead of him. He seemed astounded.
People put their heads out from under the tarps. Tent flaps opened, and I glimpsed the insides, the piles of bedding, the low-lit lamps. From one tent came the spicy scent of Constant Comment tea. “You’re insufferably persistent,” the man said, continuing to tromp away from us.
Once, he may have lectured children this way as a severe parent or a schoolteacher.
“Can you tell us where she’s gone, then?” Del begged.
The man stopped. He was waiting for us to go. Neither of us moved. And then his shoulders seemed to relax, and Sybil Townsend approached, picking her way along the path toward us, chuckling.
“Oh, I can’t hide from you two,” she said.
Del hugged Sybil. In the daylight she was younger than I’d thought. She was missing a tooth. I regretted agreeing to come. What could she possibly relay? Still, I let her lead us down the path to a tarp stretched over wooden posts, and we sat beneath it at a small table, the legs of the chairs sinking into the earth, Sybil in her layer of brightly colored shawls.
“I had a shop once,” she told me. “I sold books, and incense, and that sort of thing.” The breeze buffeted the tarp like a parachute. A distant radio played jazz. “I was chased out by the townspeople,” she said, her laugh deep and rheumy.