The Mind Thing

CHAPTER THREE

Charlotte Garner awoke, as suddenly and completely as a kitten awakens, completely oriented even before she opened her eyes. Her naked body felt uncomfortably cool and she shivered a little and then, opening her eyes, saw why the coolness had wakened her. She’d gone to sleep in warm sunlight, now she was in shadow. That meant the sun was low in the west, down behind the thick bushes at that end of the open space. Startled, she held up her wrist watch to read it—and was even more startled. They’d slept three full hours. Even leaving this minute and walking fast, they’d be half an hour late at their respective homes for dinner. Probably their folks, or hers anyway, were beginning to worry a little already.

Quickly she turned over to waken Tommy. Tommy wasn’t there. But his clothes were there, just past where he’d been lying. After a brief shock, she realized what had happened, the only thing that could have happened. Tommy must have wakened a minute or so before she had, and before dressing himself or wakening her, he had gone out of the clearing somewhere nearby to answer a call of nature. He wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, gone any farther than that, for that or for any other reason, without his clothes. He’d be back in a minute.

And since he didn’t carry or wear a watch he probably didn’t realize quite how late it was. But she did. She stood up and brushed off the little grass that stuck to her body and then dressed quickly; there were only four garments: panties, bra, skirt, and sweater—and it didn’t take her long to get them on. Then she sat down and strapped on the barefoot sandals, and stood up again.

Still no sign of Tommy; and while she wasn’t worried yet, she wanted him to hurry, so she called out his name, but there wasn’t any answer. He’d hardly have gone out of hearing distance—but probably he was already on his way back and for that reason hadn’t bothered to answer. She realized that there was likely some grass in her hair, so she went to Tommy’s clothes and got out the little pocket comb he kept clipped in his shirt pocket, ran it a few times through her short bobbed hair, and put it back.

Still no Tommy, and now she was getting a little worried. Not that she could think of anything that could have happened to him. She called out his name again, much more loudly this time, and then, “Answer me. Where are you?”

She listened hard, but there was only the faint rustle of leaves in a breeze that had just sprung up. Could Tommy be trying to frighten her? No, he wouldn’t do anything like that.

But what could have happened? He couldn’t have gone anywhere, naked except for those bright blue short socks he hadn’t taken off. Could he have fainted, or had an accident? Fainting seemed impossible; Tommy was in perfect health. And if an accident—well, it would have to be the kind of accident that would make him unconscious (she didn’t dare think the word dead). If he’d just turned an ankle or even broken a leg, he’d still have answered her. In fact, he’d have wakened her sooner by calling her. She was a light sleeper and would have heard him call her from any reasonable distance.

Really worried now, she went out of the clearing through the bushes and started to circle around it, looking everywhere, behind bushes and trees, even on the side toward the path, although he surely wouldn’t have gone that way; not for the purpose she’d originally thought of as his only reason for leaving her at all—and she still couldn’t think of any other.

From time to time she called his name, and she was shouting now. She spiraled out, and when she realized, half an hour later, that she was a hundred yards or so from her starting point and had thoroughly searched an area with a hundred-yard radius, she was really scared. He wouldn’t possibly have come this far.

She needed help, she realized. She hurried back to the path and started home, half walking, half running, keeping the fastest pace she thought she might possibly maintain for three miles. She’d have to tell them the truth, she realized, no matter what they thought about, or did about, Tommy and her jumping the gun and having premarital relations. No holding that back, since Tommy’s clothes would have to be the starting point of the search. But that didn’t matter now. Only finding Tommy mattered.

She was a tired, panting, disheveled girl when she stumbled into her parents’ living room. They were listening to the radio but her father turned it off quickly and glared at her. “Fine time! I was just about to—” Then he saw her face and said, “What’s wrong, Charl?”

She blurted it out. She was interrupted only once, by her mother’s shocked voice. “You mean you and Tommy have been—” But her father stopped that. “Worry about that later, Mom. Let her finish.”

Jed Garner stood up. “I’ll call Gus,” he said. “We’ll get out there right away. He can bring Buck.”

He went to the phone and called Gus Hoffman, who lived on the next farm, and started talking.

On the other end of the line, Gus Hoffman listened grimly. All he said when Garner had finished was, “Be right there.”

He hung up the phone and stood a moment thinking. Then he went to a hamper of dirty clothes and found a sock of Tommy’s, put it in his pocket. He’d want it to get Buck started on Tommy’s trail. Not that Buck didn’t already know Tommy’s scent, but he wouldn’t know he was supposed to follow it unless there was something of Tommy’s to hold in front of his nose while you said, “Find ’im, boy.”

He got Buck’s leash from its nail in the kitchen and put it in another pocket. Buck was a good dog on a trail but he had one fault. Once you started him tracking you had to put him on a leash and keep him on it. Otherwise, since at least part of the time he wouldn’t call back, he could get so far ahead you could lose him. Even following a trail, if it’s a fresh and hot one, a dog can sometimes go faster than a man can keep up with him.

He made sure that he had matches, got the lantern and checked that it was full, then went out the kitchen door.

Buck was sleeping not in but in front of the doghouse Tommy had built for him. Buck was a big liver-and-white-colored dog; he wasn’t all one breed, but he was all hound. He was seven years old, past his prime but still with a few good years in him.

“Come on, Buck,” Hoffman said, and the dog fell in behind him as he went around the house and cut across the fields to the Garner farmhouse. It was just dusk.

They’d seen him coming and came outside, the three of them. Jed Garner had a lantern too, and a shotgun under his other arm.

There weren’t any greetings. Hoffman asked Charlotte, “This path, it’s the one that turns off the road to the north just past the bridge?”

“Yes, Mr. Hoffman. But I’m going along. I’ll have to go to show you the place where we—where we went. Where his clothes are.”

“You’re not going, Charl,” her father said firmly. “If for no other reason than that you’re already so pooped out from practically running back the three miles that you’d slow us down.”

“Buck will take us to the clothes,” Hoffman said. “Then we’ll have him circle the spot and pick up the trail. You said three miles—and it’s about one to where the path starts. That’d make it about two miles back into the woods. Right?”

Charlotte nodded.

“Let’s get going then,” Hoffman said to Garner.

“Wait, Gus. Why don’t we take my car for the first mile, along the road? Save time.”

“You forget about Buck,” Hoffman said. “He ain’t gun-shy, but he’s car-shy. If we forced him into a car he’d keep trying to jump out, and anyway it’d make him so damn nervous he might not be any good to us. We’ll have to walk. Come on.”

The two men went out to the road and started along it. There was a bright moon; they weren’t going to need the lanterns until they were in among trees. And it wasn’t fully dark yet, anyway.

“Why the gun, Jed?” Hoffman asked. “Thinking of a shot-gun wedding?”

“Hell, no. Just that in the woods at night I feel better with one. Even though I know nothing’s likely to jump me.” After a minute he added, “I was just thinking, though. If we find Tommy—”

“We’ll find him.”

“All right, after we find him. If he’s all right, I don’t think we ought to make those kids wait another six months. If they’re playing house anyway, what the hell, let ’em make it legal. And you wouldn’t want your first grandchild born too soon after the wedding, would you? I wouldn’t.”

“All right,” Hoffman said.

They walked in silence for a while. Then they saw the headlights of a car coming toward them on the road and Hoffman turned quickly and got a grip on Buck’s collar, and pulled him off the side of the road. “Wait till it’s by,” he said to Garner. “Don’t want Buck to bolt, and he might.”

After the car was past them, they started walking again.

By the time they reached the start of the path it was fully dark except for the moonlight and they stopped and lighted their lanterns. From here on, part of the time they’d be under trees and need light.

They walked on. Garner asked, “Where the hell could Tommy have headed for, taking off stark naked that way?”

Hoffman grunted. “Let’s not wonder. Let’s find out.”

Again they walked in silence until Hoffman said, “I figger we’ve come about a mile since the road. How about you?”

“I guess about that,” Garner said. “Maybe a mite over.”

“Then we better let Buck take over. Your gal could be wrong about the distance, and we don’t want to overshoot.”

He put down his lantern and snapped the leash onto Buck’s collar, then held Tommy’s dirty sock to Buck’s nose, “Find ’im, boy.”

The dog sniffed the path and started off at once. They followed, Hoffman holding the leash in one hand and the lantern in the other, Garner bringing up the rear. Buck kept moving steadily but not too fast for them; there was no strain on the leash.

About a mile farther on (Charlotte’s judgment of the distance had been just about right) Buck wandered slightly off the path and sniffed something.

Hoffman bent over to look. “Dead field mouse. Squashed. Come on, Buck, back to business.” He pulled Buck back to the path.

Garner said, “Charl told me about that—while we were waiting for you to come over. Didn’t seem important, so I didn’t mention it. But it means we’re right close to the place. I mean to the place where they—went to sleep.”

“What did she tell you about a field mouse?”

Garner told him. And then said, “Damn funny thing, a field mouse acting like that. Say, what if the thing was rabid? It didn’t bite Charl, didn’t break her skin, I mean; but Tommy brushed it off his pants leg. What if his finger hit its teeth and one of ’em broke the skin a little without his realizing it; would that account for—?”

“Hell, Jed, you know better than that about rabies. If Tommy was infected, it wouldn’t affect him this soon, or that way. It takes days.” Hoffman rubbed his chin. “Just the same, when we find Tommy I’m going to check his hands. If there’s even a scratch, we’ll pick up that mouse on our way back, and have it checked. Come on, Buck, get going again.”

Only about thirty paces farther on Buck turned off the path again and this time he didn’t stop to sniff anything. He kept going. He led them back to where some clumps of bushes made a solid wall and started to push his way through them. Hoffman parted the bushes and held his lantern forward.

“This is it,” he said. “His clothes are still here.” He stepped through and Garner followed. They stood looking down.

“God damn,” Hoffman said. “I’d hoped—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He’d hoped the clothes would be gone, that Tommy would have returned here after Charlotte had left. He didn’t know what that would have meant—since Tommy hadn’t come home—but it seemed less dangerous than the alternative, Tommy being out there somewhere and still naked, whatever else might have happened to him. At any rate, he was more frightened now than when he had first heard the girl’s story. The clothes looked so—empty. Until now this had seemed like a bad dream; it was becoming nightmare.

Buck was sniffing eagerly at the clothes and then at the grass where Tommy had lain. Then, circling, he started for the bushes, at a different point this time.

Hoffman let him through and went through behind him. “Come on, Jed,” he said. “He’s got the trail again, the way Tommy left.”

Garner said, “Shall I bring the clothes?”

Hoffman hesitated. “All right,” he said. “When we find him, he’ll need ’em and no use our having to come back.”

He waited, holding Buck back, until Garner had made a bundle of the clothes and rejoined him with them.

Then he started following the pull of the leash. Back to the path first and then off it at a diagonal, toward the north-west.

Buck was straining hard at the leash now. Not only was the trail fresher, but a man wearing only socks leaves a stronger scent than one wearing shoes. Also, on the path, there had been other if fainter human scents. Now there were none.

“Easy, boy,” Hoffman said, as he and Garner followed the straining dog.