Page 6 of The Forest of Lost Souls

The grassy clearing she seeks is half a mile from her house and smaller than her meadow, but the treasure here can’t be found nearer home.Morchella conicaare common in spring and among the tastiest of mushrooms. She visits here every few days during the season to harvest the best specimens, which mature with surprising quickness. They’re best when not yet fully grown.

These mushrooms have tall light-brown caps with intersecting vertical and lateral ridges. She cuts them at the base of the stem and puts them in brown paper bags that she buys by the boxfulfor this purpose; there are edible mushrooms of other varieties to be gathered in the summer and early fall.

In 1953, a year after Ogden came home from the Korean War, he was, among other things, taught about mushrooms by a Native American friend, a Cheyenne, who gathered fungi with gratitude to Nature. Personally rather than because of any tribal custom, the same friend declined to violate the earth to rob it of its jewelry, but guided Ogden to the placer mine and thus gave him his future.

As Vida works, a hawk glides in its gyre. Abruptly it plunges to the meadow, ten yards from her. The prey—perhaps a field mouse—lives long enough to issue a miserable squeal as it is torn from the land and perishes in the ascent. Like Vida, the hawk is on the hunt, and though she pities the mouse, she makes no case against the bird.

At home once more, with three bags full, she cleans the morels and sets aside a portion to have with dinner. The remainder she submerges in a special vinegar flavored with a subtle herb bouquet; she seals them in three mason jars to be stored in the cellar.

After a light lunch of salad and chicken breast, as she puts away the washed dishes and utensils, she hears an approaching vehicle. Visitors are rare; these days, she never invites anyone.

Whatever is about to unfold, it won’t involve sudden violence. If that were the watcher’s intention, she wouldn’t have been subjected to three days of observation before this moment.

11

HE KNOWS NOT WHO SHE IS

When Vida steps onto the front porch, a vintage Pontiac Trans Am—from the late 1980s—comes to a stop, having raised a thick plume of dust to wither in its wake. The elephantine pulse of the idling engine dies, and the subsequent quiet, though only what it had been, seems funereal. The driver steps out and closes the door. Exiting the car, he holds his cowboy hat in hand, but he pauses to set it on his head just so before he approaches.

Vida has seen countless such hats, but she can’t say if this is by Stetson or Resistol or some minor maker, because she doesn’t care about such things. Judging by the precision with which her visitor places his hat and adjusts it, and considering the way he carries himself with a subtle swagger, she judges him to be a vain and calculating individual, possibly a narcissist.

If she were a gambler, she would bet a hundred dollars to a dime that this is the watcher in the woods, at last come forth to advance whatever scheme he’s taken so much time to develop.

Thirtysomething, tall, lean but muscular, he’s wearing brown leather boots, tailored khakis, and a tan shirt. A department patch on the right sleeve and a badge with nameplate where a shirt pocket otherwise would be do not surprise Vida. Not much does.

He halts at the foot of the porch steps. “Ma’am, I’m Deputy Nash Deacon, with the county sheriff. I’ve a need to talk with you.”

He’s neither handsome nor unattractive, plain enough that only his mother or his wife would recognize him under any circumstances, if he has a wife. He has no memorable feature other than his brown-black eyes, in which she sees a rapacity perhaps akin to what the field mouse saw if it met the gaze of the predator that snatched it from the meadow as Vida had been gathering mushrooms.

“That’s a most unusual patrol car,” she says.

“My own wheels. I’m a deputy, but I’m not here as a deputy.”

“The uniform seems to say otherwise.”

“I just got off duty, didn’t take time to change.”

“Do you have more ID than what you’re wearing?”

He climbs one step, flips open an ID wallet, and holds it out to her. As far as she can tell, it’s the real thing, with a photo. Also real is the light fragrance of marijuana.

“What’s this about?” she asks.

“It’s best if we sit a spell and chat.”

“Last I heard, I can have an attorney present when I talk to an officer of the law.”

“Like I said, ma’am, I’m not here in that capacity. And I’d rather not be.”

“You’d rather not be. Yet that’s how you introduced yourself.”

He is quick to take offense at her restive response to his informal assertion of authority, but he’s professional enough to bite back his exasperation. “Sorry if I got off on the wrong foot.”

She needs to hear him out and learn his game as much as he needs to say his piece, so she moves back from the steps.

Although her beloved uncle has been gone for ten years, she keeps two rockers on the porch, with a small table between them.

Deacon is only the second person to sit in Ogden’s chair in a decade. This is more a violation than a desecration, but Vida finds that she is clenching her teeth.

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