Free The Dark-Thirty by Patricia McKissack Page B

better.”
    “When you get settled, write us,” Germaine said with fatherly concern. “Take care.”
    Orchard City, situated in the mountains of eastern Tennessee, seemed an ideal spot to make a fresh start. Using some of her military survivor’s benefits, Leddy bought the old Lippincott place up on Orchard Mountain. What the new home lacked in modern conveniences, comfort, and style, it made up for in beauty and peace.
    The rural community received the outsider coolly at first, thinking she might be the advance of a hippie invasion. Leddy didn’t care. Nealy seemed to thrive in the new environment, and Leddy took joy in watching him romp and play freely in the solitude of their mountain home.
    But that peace was shattered when Nealy disappeared into the woods out behind the house one spring morning. Leddy charged into Sheriff Pete Martin’s office, on the verge of collapse.
    “My baby,” she cried, gasping for breath. “I—I was hanging out the wash. Nealy was beside me, but when I turned around, he was gone. He must have wandered into the woods. I looked and looked. Please come. I need help.”
    “Don’t get yourself in a stew,” the sheriff said calmly. “Nealy ain’t the first youngun who’s gone and got hisself lost in the woods. Usually we find ’em perched on a ledge too scared to move.” His words were meant to be kind, but Leddy was unconvinced.
    Sheriff Martin put together a search party and they combed Orchard Mountain from bottom to top and back down again. Nothing. Not a clue.
    When they hadn’t found Nealy by nightfall, an uneasiness settled over the searchers.
    “A two-year-old ain’t got much chance up here alone,” Leddy overheard one of the men say She knew it was true. Orchard Mountain challenged the best hikers and hunters, and some of them had to be brought out by helicopter.
    Finally Jay Wilson’s hounds tracked the boy’s trail to a ledge, where they found his brown teddy bear.
    “It’s Nealy’s favorite toy,” Leddy told the sheriff. Her lip quivered, but she refused to cry. “He—he called it Boo!”
    Sheriff Martin couldn’t hide the concern on his face. Leddy saw it and responded. “If he fell from that ledge,” she argued, “then where is his body?”
    “Wild animals …”
    The story preempted the Vietnam War news for three days running. A Boy Scout troop came from Knoxville to join in the search, and a motorcycle club also helped. Germaine and Sylvia even came to aid their friend but by the end of the week the media had withdrawn, and the volunteers had, one by one, given up hope and gone home. “I’d keep a-looking,” Sheriff Martin told Leddy, “but without leads, I don’t know where to start.”
    Germaine and Sylvia were the last to leave. When Leddy was alone, she let herself cry. “I’ll never stop looking for you, baby,” she sobbed. Then she dried her eyes and pulled herself tall. “I know you’re not dead. A mother knows such things.”
    Leddy refused to leave her mountain home for more than an hour at a time, hoping Nealy might come back. Day after day she went to the woods and called the boy’s name over and over.
    “Ain’t a bit natural,” the women said when they heard her pitiful cries. “Leddy needs to forget about that baby. He’s dead for sure, and holding on to hope when there ain’t no hope just ain’t natural.”
    Leddy knew what they were saying, but she stubbornly refused to despair. “My baby will be back,” she said. “I know it.”
    Leddy’s faith paid off. One year, two months, three days, and four hours after his disappearance, Nealy was found on the steps of the Mount Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church, naked as a jay and smelling like he’d tangled with a family of skunks. Except for a few scratches and a lot of chigger bites, he seemed none the worse.
    Reverend Clyde Anderson sent somebody to get Leddy Meanwhile, he declared Nealy’s return a miracle and Mother Jacobs sang “Amazing Grace.” There