She took her first steps into the woods, where the land began to roll, and she stopped to rest before trudging to the crest of the hill.
At first she thought she was hearing the wind as it rose and fell and then rose again with an eerie noise of breath and complaint. Then she came to understand that what she heard coming from somewhere deeper in the woods was a noise from a living thing — a grunting, snuffling sound that froze her and made her strain to listen more closely, trying to determine if what she heard came from a person or an animal.
She was afraid to find out, but she knew she couldn’t just walk away. She moved on, feeling the strain in her calves and hamstrings as she climbed the hill.
Once Brandi had gone, and it was just Laverne Ott and Ronnie in the hallway of the school, Cynda Stout went to fetch the principal and then excused herself to slip into the bathroom to clean up those watercolor brushes.
The principal, Mrs. Piper, was a woman Laverne knew from the days when she’d taught Ronnie and Della and Missy and so many others at Victory School out in the country. A two-room school-house, before all the country schools consolidated and the kids rode the bus into Goldengate.
Irene Piper had taught in those country schools too, before becoming the principal at Goldengate. She was a woman from Laverne’s generation — a tall, white-haired woman in a navy blue suit and an ivory blouse with a ruffled bodice.
“Laverne,” she said, “is there something I can do for you?”
“I need a room,” Laverne said. “Somewhere I can have a private conversation.”
Irene nodded. “You can use my office.” She smiled. “By this time of day, I’m sick of it anyway.”
“I shouldn’t be long. Then maybe you and I can have a chat?”
“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere. It’s the fourth-grade class play tonight. I’ll be eating a sandwich for supper.”
“My daughter is in that play.” Ronnie’s voice was hoarse with emotion. Laverne could imagine the day he’d had. “Sarah Black. She’s the bridge. I’d forgotten the play was tonight.”
Irene touched him lightly on his arm. “She’s a good girl, your Sarah.”
“Forgetful,” he said. “Good thing her head’s attached.”
“Well,” said Irene. “Most kids her age are a little scatterbrained.” She nodded down the hallway to the open door of her office. “Go on,” she said to Laverne. “Have your talk. I’ll be down in the cafeteria. Just come look for me when you’re done.”
“She’s been working on her part,” Ronnie said, his voice growing louder now. “Sarah. I’ve heard her around the house.”
“I’m sure she’ll do fine,” Irene said. She glanced at Laverne and lifted her eyebrows in concern.
“Yes,” said Laverne, putting her hand on Ronnie’s shoulder as if to nudge him down the hallway. “Sarah will make us all proud.”
“I love her,” Ronnie said, and his lip was trembling now. “I love all my girls. I wouldn’t do a thing to hurt them. Really, Miss Ott, I swear.”
From the crest of the hill, Missy looked down to the bottom of the slope. A gully cut through the floor of the woods, and there at the lip of that gully, where the land gave out and fell away, Shooter Rowe was on his knees. His back was to Missy, and she could see his shoulders convulsing with his sobs.
The goat — it was the old billy goat, Methuselah — was on the ground a few feet from Shooter, looking as if it had lain down for a sleep, but Missy could see the blood on his chest and blood on the snow, and she knew he was dead.
Shooter’s back straightened, and he got to his feet. That’s when Missy saw that he still held the shotgun. He had the butt end resting on the ground, and he used it for a crutch as he pushed himself up. Then, with a cry that came from somewhere deep in his chest, a cry barely human, he threw the shotgun down into the gully.
The wind had suddenly died down, and the crows were back, coming to perch on the bare limbs of the trees. Their calls split the air.
Shooter turned to the goat, and though Missy knew she’d happened upon something so private she should have turned away and left Shooter Rowe to finish what he’d come into the woods to do, she couldn’t. She called out his name. She let him know she was there, watching.
_________
Laverne and Ronnie sat in the chairs in front of Irene Piper’s desk, the chairs students took when teachers sent them to the principal’s office, or parents who came to have a chat about their children. La-verne purposely chose not to sit behind the desk with Ronnie across from her because she didn’t want that space between them. She wanted to put him at ease so she could talk to him about the night of the fire and whether he’d meant to threaten Brandi with that knife. She meant to ask him what dark thoughts might be in his heart, and she wanted him to feel comfortable enough to tell her the truth.
“Ronnie, I’ve known you a good long while. Ever since you were a boy in my class.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s right.”
He’d always been a polite boy. Always a little bit smaller than the other boys, a little slower with his lessons, just a few ticks behind his whole life. Maybe that’s why he always seemed to be barreling ahead — whether running on the playground, or later driving fast in his Firebird, or walking out on Della for a life with Brandi Tate — like he knew he had to catch up, so intent on getting somewhere that he failed to see that he was about to crash into something.
Now there was this business about the fire and what he might have done, and what more he might be capable of doing. “I understand there’s a matter of this knife,” she said. “Your pocketknife.”
Ronnie sat, bent over with his elbows on his legs and his hands, fingers and thumbs pressed together as if in prayer, pointing down to the floor. It seemed so long ago to Laverne that he was her student and also a member of her Sunday School class, and she taught him how to do “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple” with his fingers. So long, and not so long at the same time. She could tell he was afraid, the way he’d been all those years ago when she’d had to give him a talking to about something or the other. She could see that little boy inside his man’s body, but now she had to ask him these questions.
“I never meant any harm to Brandi.” He lifted his face to look at Laverne Ott, his mouth twisted into a grimace, his eyes narrowed. “I know Angel told you about finding my knife out at the trailer. I know Brandi’s talked to you, too.”
On the wall behind Ronnie was a poster of a quote from Dr. Seuss. Laverne remembered that it came from Horton Hears a Who. White letters on a pale blue background: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” She had to keep asking Ronnie questions. She had to determine whether he was a threat to his children, whether there was cause to remove them from his care.
“Ronnie, I’m going to ask you straight out. Were you at the trailer the night it burned?”
He answered right away, his voice a whisper. “I’m not denying that.”
“Why were you out there?”
Her tone changed then to the severe voice she’d always used with students when she wanted to make sure they understood that they needed to tell the truth.
“Miss Ott, don’t you know me well enough?”
She wouldn’t answer because it was her job to get the facts straight. Her opinion of what kind of man someone was didn’t matter. One thing she’d learned over the years was that all sorts of people, no matter how upright they seemed, were capable of all sorts of things.