68 standing next to him. He’d only seen pictures of Andy Connor, with his straight brown hair, square jaw and blue eyes, but decided then that it must have been this woman who decided to break the engagement off. “He always went on these short trips,” Alice went on. “Not walking but driving his truck to some remote spot. He used to say that he felt alive in the woods, when nobody else was around. I don’t know how he stood being cooped up in the mill all those hours. “Anyway, I know I’m just rambling but maybe he finally decided to follow his heart.” Detective Brown turned away from the river and looked at Alice Major another time. His wife always said that Brown had a good sense of intuition about him. Brown thought about that, as he looked at this woman and decided that she had never really stopped loving Andy Connor. The following afternoon, a search party was formed, mostly of the men and women Andy Connor had worked with in the mill, who were now unemployed. The sheriff’s office provided the searchers with several German Shepherd rescue dogs. One of the handlers named Mike Fisk let the lead dog Buddy smell Connor’s sweatshirt and then proceeded to walk along the bank. At times, Buddy strained against the leash and Mike and the other searchers close to him thought they might be onto something. But the dog soon relaxed and the search continued. The next week, the teams went out past the riverbank, to search the trails leading into the woods close to town. Each day ended without a shred of evidence about what had become of Andy Connor. The rains finally let up as usual in mid-July, and the bright warm days arrived. Talk at the Logger Tavern had taken a new turn. A Chinese company was preparing to close the deal on buying the shuttered paper mill. The owner of the Logger Tavern, Bill Hines, had heard from the town’s mayor, Bud Hathaway, that the mill would soon reopen. Another part of the rumor Hines chose not to pass on. When the mill reopened, wages and benefits would be half of what they’d been, under the previous management. The announcement was made on the hottest day of the season. That afternoon, temperatures throughout the state reached record highs. Standing in front of the silent plant were three Chinese men, sweating in dark suits, white shirts and blue ties. In an uncharacteristic move, Alice Major showed
CIRQUE up at the Logger Tavern for the celebration. She was dressed in a pale gray tank top with thin straps and a short white cotton skirt. Detective Brown, who spotted Alice the minute she walked in, got up from his stool at the bar and headed over. “Hi, Alice,” he said, when he was standing in front of her. “Oh, hello Scott.” Brown couldn’t help noticing how thin the cotton appeared in that top. He also couldn’t take his eyes off Alice’s breasts. In the air-conditioned bar, Alice’s nipples had started to poke at the material. Brown could tell that Alice wasn’t wearing anything underneath and it excited him more than he cared to consider. The trees along the riverbank were shades of gold and red the afternoon Andy Connor came back. He had a thick dark beard covering his cheeks and chin. His hair, greased and combed away from his forehead, covered his neck in back and brushed his shoulders. A month before, the search for Andy Connor had been abruptly halted. Connor, who by this time had made it all the way to and from Montana, where the state tapped the Canadian border, didn’t mind. If the men and women leaving the mill at four o’clock that afternoon noticed a bearded man sitting on the opposite bank, they didn’t say. It was nearly dusk and the light had faded. Someone did notice the man’s dark silhouette, after the sun dropped behind the plant’s blue metal roof. That was Alice Major. She knew, without looking closely or even walking over to the bank, that Andy Connor had come back. The next morning, on the way to open her shop, Alice walked over to the riverbank. She stopped a few feet from where the man had been the previous night and stared at boot prints he’d left behind in the dirt. She sat down on the spot where she’d seen him and looked across the river. From the roof of the mill, white smoke belched out. For the first time in years, Alice remembered the night Andy brought her here to sit by the river. He held her hand tightly, as they leaned back to take in the wonder of the sky. Without letting go of her hand and in a calm, steady voice, Andy said to Alice, “If you marry me, one day we’ll fly up there to the stars.”