Page 93 of The Bone Code
“I’m always cautious.”
“This asswipe’s going to wish he’d never been born.”
Vislosky still hadn’t phoned by nine. I wondered if she’d been sidetracked by the capno situation. Or if she’d hit a wall tracking cousin Digger.
I worked my laptop, searching for mention of a missing kid with the surname France. Found nothing.
Antsy and unable to relax, I decided to construct a kinship chart based on the info Vislosky had obtained during her interview. Using circles for females, squares for males, and solid lines to indicate blood relationships, I started with Aubrey Sullivan Huger, then moved back a generation to his parents, J. S. Huger and Cheryl Leigh Hinkes, then further back to Cheryl Leigh’s mother. Moving sideways to CherylLeigh’s mother’s sister, who’d apparently married a man named France, I then worked downward to Digger.
When finished, I studied my crude diagram, puzzled. If Digger had a daughter, as Huger thought, she’d be too old to be the girl in the container. If he had a granddaughter, would she be a second cousin to Huger? Third? Something once removed?
I gave up in frustration, hating the exercise as much as I had when forced to take ethnology classes in grad school.
Ryan reappeared at ten thirty to say he was turning in. I joined him but sat propped against the bed pillows, iPhone in hand, wasting time with social media.
By eleven, I was resigned to the fact that Vislosky wouldn’t call that night. After turning off the lamp, I pulled the covers to my chin and snuggled against Ryan. Did I mention that he keeps the bedroom thermostat on the polar ice cap setting?
My brain was a maelstrom of visuals. Suppurating lesions. Algae-coated bones. Blinding headlights. Blue polypropylene sheeting. A child’s plastic ring.
A half hour of tossing and turning, then I gave up. I quietly closed the bedroom door behind me, went to the kitchen, and made myself a cup of chamomile tea. Again seated at the dining-room table, I opened my Mac and entered the name Digger France.
The Digger France Band came right up. Active from the ’sixties into the ’nineties, the group performed mostly Christian country and cover renditions of classic C&W and bluegrass songs. Digger France played guitar and was the lead singer throughout the group’s existence. Otherwise, membership fluctuated. The sole female vocalist changed often. One named Joy Sparrow seemed to have lasted the longest.
The band’s single recording was with MCA Records. I found a link and listened to the first cut on the album, called “All I Need Is the Lord and My Refried Jeans,” one of the titles that had so delighted Vislosky. Lots of banjo, harmonica, washboard, and multipart vocal harmony. A style I could only describe as twangy.
The images I found were fuzzy and dated. Some were promo shots. Others were candids snapped during live performances, most of which seemed to have taken place in bars. Digger always wore a T-shirt, jeans, boots, and round wire-rimmed shades. His hair and beard were long and auburn, the former ponytailed, the latter cinched with bright elastic binders at two levels.
By midnight, my tea was cold, and a headache was tickling my frontal lobe. I was about to call it quits when I stumbled onto a shot of the Digger France Band playing in a place called Shady Sam’s. A banner behind the stage announced that the night’s show was part of a reunion tour and gave the year as 2015.
Folks hadn’t aged well. Digger and his beard were thinner. No more binders. His hair, faded to salmon, appeared to be losing ground to male-pattern baldness.
Patrons sat below the crude stage, their faces obscured by poor lighting and the rear-facing camera angle. What caught my interest was a small form at a front-row table. A girl with short, spiky hair dyed cotton-candy pink.
I tried zooming in. The scene went blurry.
Could the pink-haired kid be Digger France’s granddaughter? Is that why the child was taken to a saloon? To see Gramps play?
A person sat to the kid’s right, but only one arm and shoulder were visible. The limb looked fairly slim but not definitively so. Was her companion a woman? Her mother?
Reenergized, I plunged back into the game, this time using keyword combos related to the reunion tour and to Shady Sam’s. Minutes later, I found the girl again, this time perched on a stool offstage at a place called the Dirty Rabbit.
The camera, focused on the band, had caught the kid in profile. She sat with chin on knuckles, elbows on knees. Her nose was long and straight, her eyes mere shadows. Her hair sparked like rosy dandelion froth in the cast-off glow of the stage lights.
The girl looked about thirteen years old. I ran the numbers. That tracked.
Like Digger, the kid was wearing a tee. Zooming in, I was able to read the lettering:Amity House. Underneath those words was a stylized graphic of people holding hands. Below the graphic, a smaller font looped in a semicircle:Harmony. Hugs. Help.
A quick search revealed that Amity House was a youth shelter in Nashville. I navigated to its website.
Operating since 1979, Amity House described itself as a crisis center providing support for homeless and runaway children ages seven to seventeen. The facility was able to house twelve kids. Youth could stay as long as three weeks while they and their families worked on resolving issues. Residents were expected to take care of the shelter and one another. Additional services included a twenty-four-hour crisis hotline and walk-in crisis support.
I linked back to the photo taken in the Dirty Rabbit. Studied the girl in the wings, pulse humming.
Did I finally have a lead? Had the kid with the candy-floss hair stayed at Amity House? Called their hotline? Was she a volunteer at the shelter? Would they have her name?
Was she Digger France’s granddaughter?
Sullie Huger’s distant cousin?
