He pulled out one Chicago dog for Amy Lynn, one for me and two for himself.
“Only two for you?” I teased.
“Only two left,” he retorted. “I had my first one on the walk back. Good stuff.”
I grinned at him and Amy Lynn, who’d been watching our exchange with interest, laughed a little. She likes us. More than she thought she would.
This feeling was confirmed a few minutes later when Amy Lynn said, around a mouthful of hot dog, “I know we’re going to be up late tonight, talking and looking through these papers.” She waved her hand in the direction of the manila folder. “And then there’s the film reel we need to see in the morning. It’s silly for you two to leave here and stay at some motel. I don’t have a lot of space—” She glanced around her one-bedroom apartment. “But I do have the sofa, a sleeping bag and extra pillows and blankets. You could crash here tonight, if you’d like.”
A few conflicting emotions flashed across Donovan’s face. I wasn’t sure what they all meant, but one of them was appreciation. And rightly so. Amy Lynn was being very generous to us.
But a tight feeling of jealousy strangled me a bit when I suspected that another of Donovan’s emotions might be attraction. The pixie blonde was closer to his age than I was. And pretty, in a very delicate way. More worldly than the kind of women he ran into in Chameleon Lake. A woman who’d lived with a man before. Not an inexperienced teenager, like me.
If that was the case, though, Donovan didn’t seem to dwell on it. Instead, he said to her, “Are you sure?”
I, however, knew our hostess’s answer before she verbalized it. Amy Lynn had been watching the way Donovan and I had been interacting all evening and, to some degree, envying it. Her obvious relief at having unburdened herself of a dark, two-year secret must have buoyed her and made her want to continue our private party for longer.
So Donovan made one more trip downstairs—this time to check our parking space to make sure we could stay there until morning and, also, to retrieve our bags from the trunk of his Trans Am. Then the three of us got settled in for the night.
Amy Lynn was right about Treak’s notes—they did look like gobbledygook. I recognized some of the squiggly lines as shorthand symbols, but I couldn’t read them. I didn’t have the kind of knowledge about the dead reporter that I had about my brother, either, which was the only way I’d managed to decipher anything at all in Gideon’s journal—and that had been written in standard English.
Still, I laboriously traced the three half-sheets of paper that had belonged to Treak and were his only remaining clues to us. Amy Lynn gave me some thin typing paper for the task, encouraging us to keep a copy but to be careful with it. And finally, when I was finished, I asked again the question that had been haunting me since I first made the phone call to Amy Lynn that afternoon. God, was it only five hours ago?
“How did you know we were coming?” I murmured, unable to tolerate the suspense of this even a second longer. “On the phone you said Gideon had told you to expect us. H-How did he communicate with you? Has he called? Stopped by in person?”
It was at that moment, when Amy Lynn tilted her fair-haired head in confusion again, that I began to realize that, no matter how many questions Donovan and I had already asked, there were a billion more still unanswered.
Amy Lynn must have realized it, too, because she didn’t immediately reply. Instead, she went to a desk drawer and pulled out a couple pieces of mail.
She crossed back to me and held out two postcards that had been sent in envelopes. The first one had a picture of some weird cactus-like sculpture thing on the front and a Northern Arizona University “School of Art” logo. The smudged white envelope was sent to Amy Lynn at her friend Karen’s place and postmarked September 8, 1976, Flagstaff, Arizona. More than two months after the guys had disappeared. There was no return address.
On the back of the card, in Gideon’s distinctive script, were the words: “Much worse than I thought. Be careful. Will write again if it’s ever safe to share anything. G.”
I pressed my lips together tight, remembering the “funeral” services we’d had for the guys just a few months after this postcard had been sent. Hard to believe we may have all suffered through that day unnecessarily and, yet, I couldn’t help but hope that was the case.
Mutely, I handed the card to Donovan and I looked at the second one. The image on the front was of a row of painted Cadillacs, each stuck in the ground at about a forty-five degree angle. My brother was definitely going for “bizarre local attractions” as his correspondence theme.
This envelope was light beige, and the postmark stamped it as being from Amarillo, Texas, June 12, 1978. Dated less than a week ago! Again, no return address, but he’d sent it to Amy Lynn’s Chicago apartment. How had he known where she lived now? The phonebook?
I held my breath as I read the words on the card: “My sister will probably be passing through Chicago soon. Why not show her a movie? G.”
It, too, was in his handwriting, and it showcased both his sly sense of humor and his proclivity for enigmatic wording. Real proof that he was alive. (Hallelujah!) But, also, that he’d both planned this wild goose chase we were on and made sure it was being orchestrated in the way he’d expected.
Oh, Gideon, don’t you understand? This hurts. Where are you leading us, and why this crazy game? You seem so close, like we might run into you around any corner, but yet…
It was all getting to be too much for me. The hope mixed with the confusion. The ambiguities I had to hold in my head and in my heart.
Ever since I’d found my brother’s journal, I could feel my wall of pseudo-strength cracking. Piece by piece. The pain of him being gone had been so strong, so powerful, I’d forced it back...but I couldn’t keep doing that. Not if he might really be out there.
A sob that had been lodged deep in my windpipe rose up and pushed its way to my lips, gashing through my defenses and shattering the silence in the room. I heard the pain in my own cry and it made me sink to the floor.
Donovan knelt beside me. He gently put his hand on my shoulder, comforting me, and then slowly wedged the second postcard from my grip, scanning the words once. Then scanning them again.
If I was having a hard time dealing with the vagaries of our brothers’ behavior and the mysterious, hazardous situation they’d somehow found themselves in, I could only imagine what Donovan’s reaction to the second card would be.
I found out soon enough.
He shook his head. “It’s a lie,” he stated. “This can’t be real. And I’m gonna fucking kill whoever’s faking it.” Then he jumped up and stormed out of the room while I buried my face in my hands and wept for all of us.
***
It wasn’t until over an hour later that Donovan returned for the night. He mumbled an apology, first to Amy Lynn and then to me, but he didn’t offer any explanation of his whereabouts, nor did he want to discuss our brothers any more that evening. I could tell he’d reached his saturation point. Truth was, so had I.
All of us were exhausted anyway. During his absence, Amy Lynn and I had put together two makeshift beds—one for Donovan in a sleeping bag on the carpet, and one for me on the sofa. Tired as I was, though, I knew I wouldn’t be getting much sleep.
It was destined to be a restless night for Donovan, too. I closed my eyes, willing myself to relax, but he was only a few feet away, and I could see him flipping, shifting, attempting to get comfortable on the floor. When, finally, he did drift off, he was still in an uneasy state—wrestling, no doubt, with the demons that were Jeremy’s memory and his own latent guilt, and mumbling angry words directed, I sensed, at my brother. Something about Amarillo and that Cadillac Ranch.
In my case, my mind kept replaying the memorial service we’d had for our brothers when they still hadn’t returned after several months and everyone—particularly the police—had presumed them dead. There had been the loud sobbing of some family and friends. The utter silence of others.
Like me…and like Donovan. Our mutual grief stabbing invisible holes in the serene air of the church.
I remembered my parents holding hands, bracing each other for support. And I remembered Donovan’s mom and stepfather, with a palm’s span of light between them, the first noticeable fissure of what would eventually lead to their separation some months afterward.
I always knew I wouldn’t have stayed in Chameleon Lake had it not been for Gideon and Jeremy’s disappearance. But it occurred to me that I didn’t know what Donovan would have done differently if this tragedy hadn’t befallen our families. He’d left our hometown when he was eighteen. I seriously doubted he would have ever returned for more than a long weekend, even after he finished his stint in the service.
The chain of events sparked by our brothers’ disappearance led to both of us being in Chameleon Lake almost against our will. My future plans had been murky, but they’d involved going away to college and moving somewhere larger, more cosmopolitan.
For the first time, I wondered what Donovan’s dreams had been.
***
We arose the next morning, not well rested but grateful for the day to begin, tiptoeing gently around each other as we felt our way through an unfamiliar routine.
“May I use your shower?” Donovan asked.
“Of course,” Amy Lynn replied. “Let me get you a towel.” Then, to me, “Aurora, can I offer you some toast or cereal? Coffee, tea or cocoa?”
“Oh, thank you,” I said. “Just toast and coffee, please.”
Such politeness.
It was like that until Amy Lynn deemed it late enough to patter down the hallway to her landlord’s apartment. As good as her word, she asked to borrow his projector for the day and was soon spooling up a small, light-blue, plastic film reel with the word “Tribute” written in jaunty black permanent marker across the diameter. Jeremy’s handwriting this time.
I glanced at Donovan to see if he’d noticed. He had.
To help out, he and I strung up a white bed sheet across one wall, attaching our screen with a few strong tacks from Amy Lynn’s sewing drawer. But, as she turned on the machine and the film began threading its way through the projector, I couldn’t help but think back to the last film Donovan and I had watched, just two days before. There would be no singing in this picture. No poodle skirts. And I doubted much humor.
But I was wrong—at least about that latter point.
There was no sound, save for the clickety-clacking of the 8mm Kodachrome film as it snaked around the spools and fed into the empty white reel, but Donovan and I watched the grainy images come into focus in color on the bed sheet in front of us. The first of these was stunning. Our brothers, running around outside somewhere.
My breath caught as I saw them both on our flimsy fabric screen. Laughing. Taking turns being in the frame and, then, pushing the other one out of it.
In the two years since they’d been gone, I’d caught up to them in age. They were now timelessly eighteen. As young as we’d remembered or, perhaps, young in a way we didn’t quite remember…since our recollections were tinged with such heavy loss. We’d forgotten the rawness of their joy. Their shared streak of mischievousness. Their energy, which leaped into the room to dance with us.
Donovan cleared his throat. “You said Ben Rainwater—he was the one who filmed this?”
“Yes,” Amy Lynn replied. “There are a few different segments to it.”
We continued to watch as Gideon and Jeremy horsed around in the summer sunshine. I noticed their clothing. Both clad in old blue jeans, Gideon was wearing that distinctive red t-shirt of his with the white stripe slashing diagonally across the front. He loved that one. And Jeremy had on a sleeveless muscle shirt featuring a faded American flag and the words “Fort Monroe, U.S. Army” stamped above it.
I saw the softening in Donovan’s eyes as he got a closer look at his brother’s shirt, and I remembered how proudly Jeremy had worn this gift from his big brother. It’d been a birthday present, given to Jeremy after Donovan’s first year of his enlistment.
But it wasn’t until they’d set off the first firework that I realized Jeremy and Gideon’s patriotic colors weren’t unintentional. That the clothing was, in fact, a vital part of the message.
A few more seconds of goofing around followed and then, suddenly, it stopped. As if the “testing: one, two, three” stage had ended, and now the guys were going to get serious.
The camera turned its attention to a largish tag-board sign with the words, “In Honor of the Bicentennial…” written on it with the briskness of Jeremy’s block printing. Black marker on a crisp white surface.
Then a second firework was launched. And a third. Ben’s camera caught both of these explosions on film, capturing the powerful burst of sparkling light and smoke, if not the deafening sound.
Another tag-board message followed. This one read, “Happy 4th of July to our Military Heroes!” That board was removed and, in its place, Gideon stood with a smaller sign that said, “Dad.” Jeremy squished his way into the frame with his own sign—one that read, “And Donovan.”
Next to me, I heard Donovan make an involuntary, indistinct noise, but his eyes were fixed on our bed-sheet screen.
There were two more fireworks set off after that before we saw the final tag-board sign: “Our Country’s 200 Years of Freedom…is Thanks to Men Like You!” Then each of our brothers saluted and lit a series of more visual fireworks, ones that had a few aerial bursts and rivaled the display the Chameleon Lake police and fire department hosted every year.
I stole another glance at Donovan. His eyes were moist and he was rapidly blinking, clenching his jaw so hard I almost expected to hear a molar crack. Was this the “fun thing” Jeremy had spoken to him about?
Regardless, neither Donovan nor I could speak while watching it, and if Amy Lynn had anything to say, she was holding her tongue.
But then the screen went dark. And the scene changed.
The laughing, cheering pair of young men we’d loved so much weren’t in this shot. But their fireworks were. Buckets and buckets of them, labeled and carefully stashed on long shelves in what looked to be a backroom somewhere.
I shot Amy Lynn a questioning look.
“I don’t know where that is,” she said, sensing this was what I wanted to know. “But I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere near Crescent Cove.”
“It’s a kind of storage facility,” Donovan said and, then, the camera focused on a picture ID, which was face up on a small table by the entrance. “That’s Ronny Lee Wolf,” Donovan murmured.
There was no disputing it. “It is,” I said.
The eye of the camera took in more of the room, swinging in an arc—sector by sector—until we were given a full three hundred and sixty degree view. And what we saw was that the regular fireworks and firecrackers we recognized from Ronny’s store weren’t the half of it. Alongside the shelving with the buckets of M-80s, quarter sticks and cherry bombs, was a different brand of firework. One I hadn’t seen before. And, jeez, there was a lot of it. Enough to almost fill the rest of the room.
As the camera zoomed in on a box of them, I got a closer look. The casing was kind of like a tube—the type you might find at a hardware store for plumbing. A silvery color. Sturdy steel. Not quite…legal-looking. But I was hardly an expert.
Donovan was.
“Holy Jesus,” he hissed. “Those aren’t fireworks. They’re pipe bombs.”
The screen went to black again and, finally, spliced onto the end of the reel was the last segment of film with close-ups of a few remnants of those silver casings—blown apart into metal shards like shrapnel. Dirt and rubble lay all around.
Following this image, and zooming wider and upward, were exterior shots of a place I vaguely recognized but couldn’t, at first glance, pinpoint. Then I did.
“It’s Bonner Mill,” I whispered.
Donovan was already nodding. “I know.”
9:52 a.m.
CHAPTER TW
ELVE
Pasadena, California ~ Saturday, August 16, 2014
It had been almost twenty-four hours since I’d gotten that first distressing phone call from Gloria, and I’d been toying with the idea of contacting the police ever since.
I knew what was involved in filing a missing persons report—hardly surprising, given my background—but I was second-guessing myself. Worried I might be overreacting. Fearful I would cause embarrassment or a problem of some sort for my son. Scared that calling it in would make it real.
There was no waiting period to report someone missing in the state of California. Most people thought it was forty-eight hours for adults but, really, it could be done immediately. Even if no foul play was suspected. And, if a loved one really had disappeared, the police stood a much better chance of finding him within those first forty-eight to seventy-two hours. So, if Charlie was in serious danger somewhere, it would be much better if I did not wait.
When the boys reached school age, I’d fingerprinted each of them with a special kit I’d gotten from the Stranger Danger Cop who’d visited the kindergarten every year. I still had those slips of paper with their smudged kiddie prints on them.
I dug Charlie’s out of the box where I kept our important documents. His hands were so little then. Next, I flipped through some photos of the boys I’d printed last month after my birthday dinner, selecting a nice close-up shot of my youngest son to keep on hand for descriptions.
But I had very old, very complex feelings in regards to police officers. I knew no one at the department could possibly be as anxious to figure out my son’s whereabouts as I was, and I could already anticipate the kinds of questions they would ask: Did you talk to his friends? Visit his apartment? Call the hospitals? Check out his social media accounts?
Road and Beyond: The Expanded Book-Club Edition of The Road to You Page 15