Free The Inverted Forest by John Dalton Page B

seizure.
    “Find the campers on your list,” Linda Rucker called out. “Check with the attendants. But you must make sure you have the right person. Don’t just ask the camper. Check the clothing tags, if you have to. That’s right, yes, step up behind them, peel back their shirt collars or the hems of their pants, and look for their names.”
    An awkward practice, this looking into strangers’ shirt collars. Some of the men whose clothing Wyatt looked inside reacted with a dazed and dreamy regard. They craned their heads around to look at him. What rich expressions they had—wide-eyed, addled, incredulous.
    But others jumped at the violation of his fingers and turned on him, shrieking, gnashing their crooked teeth, ready to lash out.

    What else could Wyatt do but press on with the search? He squeezed through throngs of sweaty men and women. Those who squatted down on the grass or those who lay clutching their duffel bags and bedclothes, he stepped over.
    “Can anyone help me find Jerry Johnston?” Wyatt called out. “Does anyone know Leonard Peirpont?”
    Several of the attendants merely waved him off. But when he called Leonard Peirpont’s name, he caught the attention of a stout and ferocious-looking woman in a nurse’s uniform. She carried hermammoth bosom low on her stomach, clutched her purse while stomping toward him across the meadow.
    “Leonard,” she repeated, as if she’d been startled out of a gloomy daydream. She glared at Wyatt. “Who told you to ask for Leonard Peirpont?”
    “He’s on my list.”
    She wanted to see this list. But even after she’d read the names of Wyatt’s campers, she didn’t appear to approve. More so, she seemed to begrudge him for some personal failing, perhaps the whiff of inexperience he gave off. She said, “When you’re talking to me, you look me in the eye and say, ‘Yes, Nurse Dunbar’ or ‘No, Nurse Dunbar’ or ‘Leonard is on my list, Nurse Dunbar.’”
    He raised his gaze to her.
    She said, “You as dumb as you look?”
    “No, ma’am,” he said. “No, Nurse Dunbar.”
    “ Christ, I hope not.” She pointed to the mess hall porch. “Leonard’s up there, in the shade, where I left him. The one with the glasses and checkered shirt. See him?”
    “Yes, I do . . . Nurse Dunbar.”
    “You hold him by the elbow, understand? Wherever you go. You hold Leonard’s elbow and walk beside him.”
    “Yes, Nurse Dunbar.”
    “And you make sure that, when you’re not walking beside him, you got him parked next to something sturdy he can hold on to.”
    “I will, Nurse Dunbar.” Then, thankfully, she was through with him, had turned her broad back and was treading a few heavy paces to the nearest white bus. Up the steps she went, hoisting herself and her dangling white purse. She slumped into the first bench, where she sat waiting, glumly, for the attendants to finish and the bus to whisk her away.
    Wyatt set a course for the mess hall porch. The person she’d pointed to was an odd-looking man—but weren’t they all odd-looking?—whogripped a porch column and swayed to and fro atop his stiff little legs. He was middle-aged with woolly sideburns, but his startled, blinking eyes, windowed behind sharp-cornered glasses, made him look newly hatched.
    “Leonard Peirpont?” Wyatt asked.
    The man set his squinting gaze on Wyatt. “I’m not supposed to cross this early in the year,” he said.
    “Yes? Not supposed to cross what?”
    “Not supposed to cross till July or August. Depends on the weather.”
    Wyatt placed a hand on the man’s shoulder, peeled back his shirt. L. P EIRPONT . “All right then. I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Wyatt Huddy.”
    “Weren’t you one of them boys that got the call to come up . . .” Whatever came next seemed to elude Leonard Peirpont. He closed his eyes and concentrated, pursed and unpursed his lips, as if he were taking tiny, toothless bites of an imaginary fruit.
    “Come up?” Wyatt