SEVENTEEN

Noah knew there were men at Taylor’s store who had been in the war. He knew by the way they gathered to make plans to search for Howard Reynolds’s grandson. The men from war leaned into the talk a certain soldier’s way, listened with a certain soldier’s look on their faces, and he could have guessed who had been field officers and who had been privates—the officers giving opinions, the privates offering nods of agreement. What they were about to do was the kind of thing they had done in war—look for someone, hoping they would not find trouble along the way.

The gathering was brief, with give and take about the search, with the land area divided mentally among the men, starting-off points made by landmarks all of them knew. They would follow the run of the river, going first to the places that seemed most likely from what Howard could tell them of the boy’s knowledge. Howard and Taylor and Noah would go back to the place of the fishing.

“If he’s gone to the river, that’s where he’d likely be,” Howard said.

“He have a fishing pole with him?” asked Moody.

Howard did not know the answer, said he hadn’t thought to look, but it was possible. At the boy’s last birthday, Howard had given him a rod and reel, and had worked to show the boy how to make a cast.

“Hard for him to do,” Howard said softly, and the men around him made nodding motions, knowing the boy’s problems.

Peavo offered encouragement: “He’s all right, Howard. Maybe he just wandered off playing and got turned around. We’ll find him, and it don’t matter how long it takes.”

The men muttered agreement, and then they left. At sunset they would meet at Howard’s home.

“He may even be back by himself by then,” Taylor said, and he tried to ease the worry Howard carried as heavily as his weight. “I remember running off one time when I was little, but I didn’t know that’s what it was. I just got to walking and kept on going, chasing after some dog that showed up, I think. It took my mama and daddy half the afternoon to find me.”

Noah could see Howard’s good eye blink, and he knew the blink dismissed Taylor’s story. There was a painful difference between Taylor and his grandson.

There were times when memories came to Noah without reason, like unannounced, drop-by visitors, making him wonder if something, or someone, far removed from him had control of what entered his thinking. He could be pondering something, having it clearly fixed in his mind, and suddenly it would vanish, as though snatched away, and there would be a memory taking its place. Sometimes the memories were like eye blinks the quick way they came and left. Still, they came, and he would find himself wondering about them later, letting his mind make a full picture of what had been nothing but a blur.