Читать книгу Longleaf - Roger Reid - Страница 15

I woke up thinking about what my dad had said, “A couple of drunks who couldn’t find their own tent.” Maybe I did hear voices. Real voices. That morning I was hearing real voices. My mom’s, my dad’s and another voice that sounded familiar. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. Our tent was on a slight slope that dropped off toward Open Pond. Down close to the water’s edge was a picnic table, and the morning sun was reflecting off of the water so that all I could see were the silhouettes of three people sitting at the table. I could tell from the voices and the shapes that one of them was my mother, one my dad, and the other was . . . Deputy Shirley Pickens. That shape, that voice. Yep, it was the deputy.

I slipped back into the tent and decked myself out for a day in the forest: heavy nylon olive green pants with zip-off legs, a sandy-colored nylon shirt, synthetic wool hiking socks and waterproof leather boots. Then I joined the group at the table. They were all drinking coffee. They didn’t offer me any.

“I guess you’re right, Professor,” Deputy Shirley Pickens was saying to my dad, “probably some drunks who couldn’t find their way back to their own tent.”

“So, we did hear voices last night?” I said.

“Your mother didn’t, but I did,” said Dad. “Sounded like the Three Stooges coming through the campgrounds. I thought they were about to get into the tent with us.”

I looked around the campgrounds. I counted twenty-five motor homes. I counted one tent.

“Do you notice anything?” I asked.

And then I answered my own question, “There is one tent out here, and it’s ours.”

Mom, Dad and Deputy Pickens looked around to confirm my claim.

“Lot of tents on the other side of the lake,” said the deputy. “The unimproved tent sites are on the other side of the lake.”

“We had to set up our base camp here at the RV sites,” said my mom. “Had to have electricity for my PowerBook.”

“You think those Three Stooges were on the wrong side of the lake?” Dad asked the deputy.

“Yeah,” he answered, “if you ain’t used to the longleaf you can get out there in the forest and it all looks the same, ’specially at night. Come in at night and you wouldn’t know which side of this lake you on.”

Deputy Pickens stood up, finished off his coffee and set the cup on the table. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said to my parents.

He turned to me. “Young man,” he said, “I told your folks that so far I ain’t turned up nothin’, but I’m still lookin’.”

I nodded. “Thanks for letting us know,” I said.

“You think of anything else, you let me know,” he said. “See you folks later.”

Deputy Pickens tipped his hat and walked away. His patrol car was parked on the road up the slope and past our tent. I watched as he paused just above our tent and seemed to study the sandy ground. He squatted down for a closer look. When he stood back up, he took a glimpse back toward me. I don’t know if he could see my face with the sun behind me like it was. I waved. He made a slight wave back and then took his foot and shuffled up the ground where he had been looking.

“Orange juice?” said my dad.

He startled me. I spun around to see him rummaging through the cooler.

I glanced back over my shoulder to catch another peek of Deputy Pickens. He had reached his car and paused to stare out into the longleaf pine forest. As he was turning to look back toward me again, I twisted around to my dad.

“Orange juice would be good,” I said.