Free Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf Page B

her weight so that she was on her knees. The deer startled and took several steps backward and then stopped. Again they observed one another,both long-limbed and knobby-kneed, alone. Stepping tentatively toward Calli, the deer sniffed the air around her experimentally. Calli dared to pull herself out of the fallen boughs and the deer stutter-stepped back in hesitation. Yet again they stood placidly, each scrutinizing the other, until the fawn took two bold steps to Calli. Surprised, Calli stepped backward, bumping into a birch tree, its white, paperlike bark peeling in her hands as she tried to steady herself. Once recovered, Calli moved toward the deer, one grubby hand outstretched. And on it went. A soundless, tender waltz, under a dome of shimmering shades of green, a carpet of soil under them, lost for a moment, together, each in their own quiet room, saying nothing, but whispering to each other in their odd little dance.

D EPUTY S HERIFF L OUIS
    At my desk, cluttered with the horrible reminder of two missing girls, I wait for the agent from the state. I have just asked Meg, our dispatcher, to send one of our reservists, David Glass, a pharmacist, to be our point man at the homes. He will park our oldest, dented squad car at a point between the two homes. All the information gathered during the investigation will be relayed to David.
    The picture of Calli that has been passed out to all police officers stares up at me. She looks so like her mother, the same chestnut hair and brown eyes, the same messy ponytail that Toni had when she was young.
    Toni and I met when we were seven, in the winter of our first-grade year. My mother, my sister, brother and I had just moved to tiny Willow Creek from Chicago. My father had died unexpectedly the year before of a heart attack and through a friend, my mom got a job at the college. The quiet and vastness of land made me lonely for the sound of trafficand the familiar sound of neighbors laughing and arguing. I remember lying in my new bed, in my very own room, missing the sound of my little brother’s soft snores and not being able to sleep for the calm of the country. Our neighbors were acres away. The only sounds were that of a dog barking or the wind blowing. After so many sleepless nights, my mother finally bought me a small radio to place beside my bed to fill the silence that kept me awake.
    I started my first day at Willow Creek Elementary School reluctantly and pretended to be sick; my mother sat on the edge of my bed and looked me in the eye. “Loras Michael Louis,” she began gravely, “I, of all people, know that it is not easy to leave what you know and begin something new. Your father is not around to help now. You are the oldest and everyone is looking to see what you do. If you lie in bed moping, so will they. If you get up cheerful and ready to tackle the world, so will they.”
    “Mom, Katie is three months old, she ain’t tackling anybody,” I sassed.
    “Well, you’re the oldest male figure she has to go by now. How you act is what she will grow up thinking what a man should be like. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, mister! Get up.”
    “Sheesh, Mom, okay.”
    I crawled out of bed, got dressed and prayed that someone in this godforsaken town would know how to play a good game of stick ball come spring.
    On that first day of school my mother drove us. The sky was robin’s egg–blue and the ground was covered in snow so brilliantly white it hurt my eyes to look at it. It was very coldand we could see our breath even though my mother had the heat turned to high in the rusty blue Plymouth Arrow she drove. The school was a large, aged, red-bricked, two-story set on the edge of town. It was actually bigger than my old school in Chicago, which was a small private elementary school, but they looked much alike, and that was comforting to me. The next thing I noticed was that students of all ages were running to the back of the school, clutching red plastic