"Why not hang up some kudzu . . . or maybe some bagworms."

"Please?"

"Novalee, that tree's forty feet tall."

"It is not! Thirty, maybe."

"I didn't even climb trees when I was a kid."

"What's wrong, Forney? You too old?"

She had him then. Grumbling, he jumped, grabbed a branch above his head, then pulled himself up with a strength that surprised her.

She had never asked him his age. Hadn't even guessed. But sometimes when she was reading, she'd look up, unexpectedly, and 178 find him watching her. And in that second just before he would look away to pretend he hadn't seen her, he would look boyish . . .

embarra.s.sed and shy. At other times, in the shadows of the library, when sharp sounds from upstairs caused him to look up, lines cutting across his forehead, something dark behind his eyes, he would look suddenly weary and old . . . older than Novalee wanted him to be.

A branch cracked and pieces of bark showered down on Novalee.

"Forney, be careful!"

"I used to have nightmares about this kind of thing. I'd be stuck at the top of a skysc.r.a.per or a mountain-or in a fifty-foot oak tree."

"That tree's growing, isn't it?"

Forney was halfway up, moving cautiously, staying close to the trunk.

"Hey," Novalee called, "there's a dead branch right over your left shoulder. Looks like crown gall got it. Why don't you pull that down."

"Novalee, tree surgeon was not one of my career choices."

"What was?"

"Ventriloquist. Shepherd."

"Librarian."

"I never wanted to be a librarian."

"Really?"

"I wanted to be a teacher." Forney snapped the dead branch off, then looked down to make sure it would fall clear of Novalee. "History teacher. But I never finished college."

"Why not?"

"Well, when my father died, I came back home. By then, my sister was . . . too sick, so I stayed."

"Forney, what happened to your sister?"

"Oh, I'm not sure. She was twenty when I was born, so I was just a kid when she . . . when she started drinking. I was ten, I guess, when Where the Heart Is 179.

my father sent her away the first time. To a sanatorium somewhere in the East . . ."

Forney was close enough to the mistletoe that, by stretching, he could almost reach it.

"Then, just after I went off to school, he sent her away again, a place in Illinois. By then, I knew she was an alcoholic, but we never used that term in our house. My sister had 'an indelicate condition.'"

Forney tore loose a handful of mistletoe and let it fall.

"Anyway, when my father died, my sister asked me never to send her away again."

"Forney, will she ever . . . do you think . . ."

"Here comes the last of it," he said as he yanked the rest of the mistletoe from the top of the tree and flung it to the ground.

They stopped for lunch when they reached the bridge. Novalee had fixed bologna sandwiches and a jar of Kool-Aid, but she'd forgotten the paper cups, so they shared the jar.

"Hope you like mustard. We were out of mayonnaise."

"Anything to keep up my strength." Forney rubbed at a sore knee. "This quest of yours for the perfect tree might kill me."

"We'll find it. Just be patient."

"Patient?" Forney looked at his watch. "You know how long we've been at this?"

"We just haven't seen it yet."

"I thought that spruce looked nice. The one with-"

"The one with a bare spot halfway up the trunk?"

"Well, the cedar . . ."

"Too short."

"Novalee, what is it about this tree? Tell me."

"I never had a real tree before."

180.

"What do you mean 'a real tree'?"

"Real. Living. Not dead, not plastic, not cardboard."

Forney smiled then at an old memory. "When I was in grade school, third, maybe fourth grade, we made Christmas trees out of egg cartons.

Ugliest things. I cried because my father wouldn't let me put one on our mantel."

"One year when I was in the McMinn County Home, we made a tree out of coat hangers and aluminum foil."

"It's a wonder you weren't struck by lightning."

Novalee said, "I'll tell you about the funniest tree I ever had." She took a drink from the Kool-Aid jar, then handed it to Forney. "I was eight, living with Grandma Burgess, and-"

"You've never mentioned your grandmother before."

"Oh, she wasn't my real grandma. I don't know if I ever had a real grandma. Anyway, the way I came to live with her was that right after Momma Nell went away, I stayed with a family there in the trailer park-three girls about my age, and Virgie, their mother. She'd been real nice to me, let me stay for supper a few times and took me with them to a movie once. So when Momma Nell left, I lived with them for the rest of the school year.

"But then, Virgie got transferred to Memphis, so she moved me in with her grandmother, Grandma Burgess. She had a little silver trailer out on the edge of town. Kept chickens and a cow, had a garden. Sort of like a farm."

Novalee reached into the picnic sack and pulled out another sandwich. "I brought you two."

"Thanks." Forney took the sandwich, then handed Novalee the Kool-Aid jar. "So how long were you with her?"

"Couple of years. It wasn't a bad place to live, and Grandma Burgess was a sweet old woman, but she had spells, so-"

181.

"Spells? What do you mean?"

"Well, she just didn't always know what was going on. Like, she'd take off all her clothes, then go out to milk the cow. Sometimes, she'd eat chicken feed, stuff like that."

Forney shook his head.

"She got a check of some kind every month, but once in a while, she'd have one of her spells-cash her check, then give the money away . . . or she'd buy something crazy. Once she bought a trampoline . . . just all kinds of weird things. A trumpet. A wedding dress. She'd hate it later, when she came to her senses, but . . .

"Anyway, when Christmas came, that first year we were together, we made all kinds of plans. She was going to buy me a bicycle and I was going to get her a heating pad. But right after she got her December check, she had one of her spells and ended up spending all the money on a forklift. An old Clark Clipper."

Forney, mesmerized by Novalee's story, put his sandwich on the ground.

"By the time Christmas came, we were living on milk and eggs and we'd killed two of her chickens. And there wasn't a bicycle or a heating pad or a tree. Grandma Burgess felt awful about spending all the money. So, you know what she did?"

Forney shook his head.

"She got some green paint she had out in a shed and she painted a Christmas tree on the living room wall. A big tree!" Novalee stood up and stretched her hand over her head. "From the floor to the ceiling. We made some decorations and taped them on." She shrugged. "That was our tree."

"My G.o.d. And you were eight? An eight-year-old kid expecting a bicycle and-"

182.

"Well, I got something better than a bicycle." She smiled. "She gave me the forklift."

Novalee rummaged in the sack. "You want some peanut b.u.t.ter cookies?"

They had, by Forney's account, walked eight miles along the mill road . . . over fences, across cattle guards, up the landfill, along the creek, and it was late afternoon when Novalee suddenly stopped.

"That's it, Forney," she said. She pointed to a stand of half-dead pecan trees-but at their edge was a blue spruce, a spruce with a straight trunk, full boughs, and "a tip made for an angel."

"It's perfect," Novalee said.

And Forney knew she was right.

By the time he dug up the spruce, carried it back and loaded it into the pickup, the light was fading. When they got back to town and Novalee turned down Evergreen, it was dark, but the street was bright with color.

Henry and Leona had strung lights around the eaves of their duplex-green ones on his side, red on hers. Dixie Mullins' yard, bathed in an iridescent glow from sack candles that lined her sidewalk, looked shimmery, like silver. The nativity scene on the front porch of the Ortiz trailer was lit by a spotlight Mr. Ortiz had rigged up in an oak tree at the edge of the street.

There were more lights at the end of the block, bright swirling lights flashing red and blue like neon in the street in front of Sister Husband's trailer.

Novalee's mouth went dry and her legs began to tremble. She mashed on the gas and the Toyota shot across the rock garden at the edge of Dixie's drive, then bounced across the gully that ran beside the Ortiz sidewalk.

183.

"Novalee," Forney called, but she had already thrown the door open and tumbled out, then was up, running . . . jumping across the rose garden and stumbling into the branches of the buckeye . . .

racing past the police cars parked in the driveway, their red and blue lights making clicking sounds as they turned, splashing Novalee's face with color.

She was flying up the steps when Sister rushed out the door, her face pulled into hard lines of hurt.

"Darlin', I don't know how-"

"Sister, what's-"

"No more than turned around-"

"But how could-"

"Gone, Novalee."

"Oh, G.o.d-"

"Gone."

"No!"

"Americus is gone."

Chapter Nineteen.

T HE POLICEMAN who asked the questions had seen Novalee before. He had been on duty the night Americus was born, had been the first one to arrive at Wal-Mart after the alarm was called in. HE POLICEMAN who asked the questions had seen Novalee before. He had been on duty the night Americus was born, had been the first one to arrive at Wal-Mart after the alarm was called in.

"And the front door was unlocked?" he asked.