Roseborough: A Novel

Chapter 3

45 Chapter Three 1 Mary Lou is in the loft of Mr. Roseborough’s barn by six, waiting for Echo. It had taken a week, but after moving around from one spot to another looking for the best place to watch for Echo, she found the right place. The only thing was if Mr. Roseborough had looked out when she was climbing up the ladder to his hayloft, he would have seen her plain as day. The whole place is full of signs: No Trespassing. Keep Out. Private Property. No Parking. Nothing On This Place Is Worth Your Life. She hopes he won’t shoot. She doesn’t think he means it. Even with all the mean signs around there is a red geranium in one of his windows, and some aluminum pie pans for feeding the birds are hanging in the sycamore trees in his front yard. Mr. Roseborough must be old and sad, just worn-out, like his place. She almost hopes he is sick, too sick to get out of bed. Then he couldn’t see her climbing up into the hayloft. She doesn’t hope that. Not really. Anyway she knows he isn’t sick. Someone feeds the cows and chickens, although the cows look awful. When she sees them moving slowly up to the barn to drink and eat, with their ribs sticking out, first on one side and then on the other, 46 Jane Roberts Wood they remind her of Echo. She can see her ribs, too, plain as day. Settling back she puts her binoculars to her eyes. Anne had thought up the binoculars the last time the single parenting class had talked about Echo. It isn’t quite time for Echo, but she looks toward the tree house anyway. She doesn’t know what to do about Echo. Everybody in the class believes she should make Echo come home. Her mother thinks so, too. “Don’t say a word about this to Tom Davis,” her mother had said when she told her Echo had moved to a tree house. “Don’t tell any of your neighbors about all this. They’ll think we’re crazy.” “Mama, I don’t care what the neighbors think. And especially Tom Davis. We’ve just got to let Echo alone for a while.” And she doesn’t care. Not in the least. All in the world she really cares about is knowing Echo is safe when the sun goes down. She will have to do something sooner or later, but Gundren had always been so sure. And suppose he was right, saying, “Let her alone!” Gundren was right a lot of the time. And besides that the weather has held. October is usually one of the best months in Texas, and this evening there is not a cloud in the sky. That has made it easier to just let things go. Carefully she focuses the binoculars on the woods where the tree house is. A soft late-season haze hangs over the cluster of scrub oaks. Most of them look terrible, their limbs hanging, broken and gray. Like they haven’t tried hard enough. Trash wood. But there! Right in the middle of the scrub oaks, that old live oak is growing, bold and green, making its way toward the sky. In the oak, almost hidden by its own leaves and by the bare limbs of the scrub oaks, is the tree house where Echo has set up housekeeping. Each day Echo adds to the house—plastic bottles for water, then, a blanket and two quilts, and one day, candles. Yesterday she had brought rope from the barn and tied it across the part of 47 Roseborough the railing that, like the scrub oaks that cradle the tree house, was hanging broken and swaying in the wind. Echo has her own money, and when she ran away she took all the money from all three piggy banks. Gundren had started the banks, filling up the first one before Echo was four. The last one, a pink unicorn with purple ears and mane, must have had well over a hundred dollars in it because on Echo’s twelfth birthday Gundren had taken to putting dollar bills in it. Nothing small. Echo has stopped going to school. Mary Lou hates that. But she knows what Gundren would say. “School can wait. It’ll be there. Echo knows what she’s doing. She’ll go back to school when...