Page 7 of The Forest of Lost Souls

They sit in silence for the better part of a minute, staring out at the meadow where, just above the blades of grass, midges ceaselessly agitate. From her uncle, Vida has learned to use silence as a tool for encouraging others to think about what they just said or to give them the opportunity to retract some error that they shouldn’t have put into words. The deputy uses silence, instead, as if it were a vise with which to squeeze his companion into a state of discomfort.

When that doesn’t work with Vida, Deacon is first to speak. “How many acres is this spread?”

“Never thought of it as a ‘spread.’ It was my uncle’s retreat, and now it’s mine.”

“Eighty acres.”

“If you knew, why ask?”

“For the most part surrounded by federal land. It’s a lonely place by any measure.”

“Not lonely,” she corrects. “It’s peaceful.”

“People wonder why a young woman such as you would hide herself away like this.”

“Am I hiding? I seem not to be hiding from you. What people would they be who wonder such things?”

“Townspeople.”

“They’re twenty miles away. I go into town just once a month. And they’re obsessed with me? How desperate are they for gossip?”

Relaxing in her rocker, Vida begins to arc it slowly back and forth, but Deacon remains rigid in his chair. “They understand a man like him, Ogden, being the way he was. But you—”

“A man like him?” she interrupts. “What is it they think they understand about him?”

She’s staring at Deacon now, and he knows it. He shifts his attention from the meadow to her. “Korea. The war. How he came back changed—stressed out and antisocial.”

“My uncle was kind and personable and more sociable than most people. He didn’t suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“If you say so. I’m glad to hear it.”

“My uncle also didn’t suffer fools easily. The way he saw it, there are too many of them out there, all hell-bent on making other people as unhappy as they are. Too many and more every year.”

The deputy attempts reconciliation. “Don’t forget my line of work. I know all that too well.”

“If you say so,” she replies. “I’m glad to hear it. By my uncle’s service, he earned some peace and happiness. He found it here. That’s all.”

Deacon’s silence now seems to have a new purpose, as if he’s casting around in his mind for a fresh approach that will assuage the offense she has taken and alleviate the ill will he has brought upon himself.

He’s incapable of that, and thus he resorts to an authoritarian tone and an implied threat. “We both know why I’m here.”

She smiles because the last thing he expects is for her to smile. “If you’re not here on official business, may I call you Nash? Good. Nash, you apparently mistake me for a mind reader or a criminalmastermind with great powers of deception. I’m gladyouknow why you’re here, but I’m really clueless.”

A moment earlier he had unsuccessfully sought a way to appease her. Now he reacts perversely to her smile and the concession she has made by using his first name. His god is power, and he doesn’t have the grace to mediate a more agreeable relationship than the one that he established when he arrived in the thunderous, supercharged Pontiac Trans Am and declared his need to talk with her. Previously cool and officious, his tone is now icy when he repeats, “We both know why I’m here,” as if blunt repetition identifies his statement as a dogma of the Church of Nash, which may not be challenged.

Vida waits without speaking.

She had waited for years until José Nochelobo came into her life and became her love, her lover, waited without knowing what his name would be or what he’d look like, but bided time with patience, certain that innocents and repenters receive the happiness that is the promise in the warp and weft of this woven world. Nearly a year ago, when José was taken from her after only ten months together, her grief was profound, but it didn’t destroy her. Hope is armor against despair, and as her uncle taught her, patience is a polish that keeps that armor bright. We can’t know the ultimate why of anything, although if we train ourselves to read the intricate fabric that time weaves, we see a pattern certain to console and inspire.

And so, since José Nochelobo’s death, Vida has waited patiently for all the good that is promised to come next, as she waits now in her rocking chair for Deputy Deacon to say something more.

Aiming a glare at her that is meant to be a blow, which lands with no more force than a shadow, he says, “Belden Bead.”

With puzzlement, she says, “Belt and bead?”

His hands have moved from the arms of his chair to his thighs, where they are now white-knuckled fists. “It took me a while to see what must’ve happened and a while longer to find evidence of it, but I know what I know, andyouknow what I know, and there’s no chance of you escaping the consequences.” He looks toward the part of the meadow that is second in significance only to the spot where Uncle Ogden is buried. “Would’ve been quite a job if you didn’t have that backhoe.”

“Belt and bead,” she says more to herself than to him, as if trying to make sense of those three words.

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