If one averages out the number of missing we find that about 2,300 a day are “unaccounted for”. I know my wife… that number had to play heavily on her mind when I drunkenly called her a week after Josh Herndon became “unaccounted for.”
“Hello, Ben.” Fortunately, neither Morticia nor Gomez had answered the phone first. There was no point to me trying to disguise my slurred speech, my drunken cadence. I said, “Hello, honey.”
Like I said, I know my wife… and she knows me all too well.
“Benjamin, drinking is not going to make anything better, or easier. You know I can’t come home if you are drowning yourself.”
“Jeanie, he’s taken another one.”
“Oh, Ben.” That tone of voice.
And that’s the real reason my wife and I can’t reconcile. She wants to “move on,” “accept.” She wants to “move forward;” “move into the light,” “learn to live,” or any of that other psychobabble they sell in those magazines down at the Whole Foods store. Don’t give me the psychology, okay? I taught psychology… don’t bull-shit an old bull-shitter, you know?
“Jeanie, I’m not making it up. I’m not extrapolating; it’s not transference, okay? There’s a real flesh-and-blood eight-year old that’s gone missing… has been taken, and it’s only thirty miles from Austin.”
Whether he’s a joker or not, God has blessed my wife with almost unlimited patience. Almost.
“Ben, how sure are you? Tell me… and don’t exaggerate anything.”
Exaggerate?
During the past week I went to the nearest Wal-Mart and purchased a large cork pegboard and pins. On it I have assembled and fastened everything I could get on the disappearance of Josh Herndon; photos, photos of the father, photos of the father’s estranged wife, news clippings; I even got a current school yearbook picture of Josh from the elementary school he attended near his mother, the custodial parent. Next to the smiling picture of Josh Herndon (activities: baseball, math) I placed the photo I always carry of Lucas from the time we went to the River Walk in San Antonio: his golden hair longer than I usually like (everybody wears it that way, dad. Geez!), black Spurs t-shirt and jeans and smiling with a full set of pearly whites, one week before he lost that one back tooth to what he laughingly called “old age.”
Exaggerate? I didn’t have to.
“They could be twins, Jeanie… same hair, same eyes, same everything.” All I could hear was a sharp intake of breath.
“I’m sorry, baby…” I said, “…but this animal is driven. He’s chasing some sick need, some sick image. The similarity between Lucas and… well, he’s identifying with something.”
There was a long pause, then a very, very soft, “All little boys look like that, Bennie.”
She only calls me “Bennie” when she wants something, or when she is patronizing me. I knew that now was not the time to be so dogmatic, so sure… so drunk. It would only make her discount what I had to say, but I couldn’t help myself. Down deep, I didn’t want to help myself.
I said, “Do I know my stuff, baby? Am I not the best? Can I shine a light on a problem and see it clearer than anyone?” I shouldn’t have said that. It sounded silly to my own ears.
My loving wife sighed and said, “Perhaps you should shine that light on yourself for a change.”
God. I had gone too far. She didn’t sound disgusted, more worried really, but anything else I said was bound to make all the tomorrows to come even harder. I needed to retreat.
My beautiful wife saved me by saying, “What will you do now?”
I admit it… a lie came to my lips but I cast it away before I could say it.
“I’m not going to stop, honey. I’m going to go slow, I’m going to be careful, but I’m going to look further. Will I hurt you more if I… go further?”
A long pause, then: “You’ll only hurt me more if you lose yourself. You won’t lose yourself, will you?”
Her voice was pleading but I took her words as the only small favor she could give me. I said, “Not as long as I still have you.”
She softly said, “Be careful,” and hung up. That was not what I wanted to hear.
Staring at the pictures of Lucas and Josh Herndon I fell back onto the motel bed and fell into an alcohol-infused sleep… and I dreamt. I dreamt the same dream I’ve been having since the day the phone rang in my office at the college annex and my panicked wife told me that my son had not come home from a day of playing on the jungle bars in the playground… the playground no more than 500 yards from the front door of our home.
Chapter Six
It is always exactly the same. The sounds, the colors, the very smell of the new-mown grass in the dream reminds me that yes, I had heard the early morning sound of mowers as I juggled a cup of coffee and tried to align my car keys with the lock on the door of the Volvo. My stupid Volvo with the stupid bumper sticker. I didn’t know it at the time but my inner mind had recorded that something as innocuous as the sound of day-laborers cutting the grass on a Sunday should mean something, should warn me of something. It should have brought me to the sudden realization that good mothers and fathers all up and down Pioneer Circle would be keeping their children from going to the Jackson Elementary playground because responsible parents know that new-mown lawns and early morning temperatures meant that little Bobby, or Johnny, or Suzy, would get all manner of wet clippings on their Sunday go-to-church shoes and stockings and there might be a dangerous, deranged, madman just waiting for one lone child to show up and ride the merry-go-round or swing the monkey-bars. In the dream I do realize that something is amiss… only I realize it too late. It is a Sunday and I don’t really have to be at school that day and it takes me till Crawford Street to realize that I should put off doing a little extra school work and instead sit in that rusty swing at the park while my son proves to the world and me that he can make it all the way through the bars without stopping. In the dream I am a good father; a good father who does feel the danger, who does forsake work, who does turn around and arrives just in time to see a black van, impossibly large and fast, turn a corner and disappear, taking my son to…
Of course, it’s just a dream… a nightmare. In reality Jeanie and I didn’t think twice. The playground was practically right around the corner and I could get a head start on grading the mid-terms and that might free up next weekend so we could all go visit Pee-Pa and honey, could you pick up a nice bottle of wine on the way back?
The dream is so real. In it I can smell the grass, feel the breeze, and hear the mowers… I can even taste the coffee I’m trying to sample as I pull out of the driveway. Some doctors that I’ve talked to try to tell me that the clarity of the dream is my conscious mind blaming my subconscious for not doing the right thing; for not smelling the grass, hearing the mowers, for not leaping to the forefront of my consciousness and scream “Get going buddy! Something’s wrong! There’s no way you could know it but there’s a killer in the playground!”
Don’t bullshit an ole’ bullshitter. I’m not punishing myself; the dream is nothing more than an unfulfilled wish for a second chance. Lots of parents could have let their kid go to the playground that morning. The killer could have stalked any one of them. He just happened to pick my Lucas. Looking at the pictures of Josh Herndon… I now knew why.
Why do I have the dream and Jeanie doesn’t? I do not have the strength, or the guts to examine that question. All I am left with is reality. The reality that I did go to the Annex, our son did go to the playground, and it wasn’t until her phone call and the looks on the two officer’s faces in our kitchen when I rushed home that I realized that evil does exist in my world and it’s not looking for that down-and-out druggie; that fallen priest, that lonely housewife that just-can’t-get-through-the-day-without-her-pill… no, it’s an equal-opportunity evil: it’ll take just about anybody. Even a sweet little boy who never did anything worse than fib about brushing his teeth.
Why do I have the dream and Jeanie doesn’t? I don’t real
ly have an answer to that question but the main source of our conflict with each other is that Jeanie does.
“It’s ghosts, Bennie,” she had said. Jeanie had taken my vocation and made it her own.
“You believe in them and I don’t. The ghost you’re haunted by, the ghost of our Lucas, comes from you. You made him up out of your subconscious and made him real – real for you. I don’t believe in ghosts – I think they come from inside, not from beyond. All that business about unfinished business and haunting the living, I don’t believe any of it. It’s the living – you Ben, that has the unfinished business, who can’t let go of the past. Until you do, there’s no room for anyone else.”
No room for me… she had meant.
I woke up in a fuzzy sweat, the anaemic morning light barely peeking through the slats of the blinds. I got up and braced myself to go outside and make the two-block trip to Jolene’s “Quik-Stop”, knowing that the morning coffee would bring an even sharper clarity to the night’s dream, and an all-too-clear remembrance of the way my wife’s voice sounded last night when she said “be careful.”
*
Like most small towns in Texas, all the action happens on one or two of the “main” streets. Residents might designate the most popular one the “chute” or the “drag”, but the layout of any small town has certain things that are constant: the cop shop is going to be downtown and the liquor store, the pawn shop, and the mini-mart where you can get gas, coffee, or a six-pack even if your I.D. looks a little “iffy,” well… they’re all going to be down at the end of town where the “Po-Po” doesn’t park overnight.
I shakily walked the two blocks, passing within spitting distance of Dewey’s and just the sight of the neon sign flashing “Karaoke Wednesdays” was enough to make me want to enter and crawl into a bottle and call this day a wash. Summoning all my willpower I made it to the front door of the Quik-Stop and held it open to assist a delivery guy who was struggling with a hand-truck piled high with cases of Bud. He gave me an appreciative nod and pushed the hand-truck down narrow aisles, gaining the beer coolers in the back without disturbing the rows of potato chips, lip balm, and candy bars. Obviously, this guy was an experienced pro and as I hit the coffee machine I told Jolene that observation.
“Freddie? Oh, he’s a regular Mario Andretti. He’s been my regular beer delivery for… well, ever since I got this place.” Hearing his name, Freddie waved a “howdy” and went back to massaging cases of beer into the racks of the cooler.
I’m the curious type. I said, “It always amazes me how a convenience store will wind up practically next door to a tavern.” I motioned towards Dewey’s, “You’d think the city planners or somebody would notice how easy it is to sneak a bottle from you into a place like next door.”
Jolene said, “I’m not going to complain. Hell, beer and cigarettes make up the bulk of my sales. If some guy coming out of Dewey’s wants a six-pack for the ride home – more-power-to-him.”
By this time, Freddie had made it to Jolene’s counter with papers to sign and he obviously overheard our conversation. He said, “As long as he makes it home without killing someone…” He rolled his eyes. Freddie was thinking a thought I’d heard more than one person express: someone had gotten drunk, struck the boy with his car, and now was holed up in his house with a gun to their head. Or worse.
At that comment we all went silent for a moment, clearly thinking of the boy that went missing barely a week ago. Jolene said, “Freddie, you see anything in the papers about that missing boy down your way?”
Tall and skinny with a short crop of red hair and a spray of freckles across his cheeks, Freddie looked like he favored comic books over the daily news. Freddie said, “Not since the first day. I always take that as a bad sign. You know they say on the cop shows on TV that if they don’t find someone within a day or two, the chances of finding a missing person go way down.”
I said, “What’s ‘down your way’? You’re not from Smithville?”
He chuckled. “Nope. I don’t think anybody delivering in Smithville comes from here… except maybe some of the produce guys. I think the ‘Dining Post’ gets their veggies local.”
Freddie looked me over. He said, “Austin. I’ve got the “corridor” route from Austin, and from the looks of you I’d say we might be neighbors.”
I wasn’t too sure what he meant by that. With blue shirt and chinos I thought I looked like any other hung-over coffee junkie from these parts but I said, “Guilty. I live in North Austin, but I didn’t get that. Corridor? What’s the corridor?”
“You know…‘29’. Highway 29. You never heard it called the “corridor” before? You had to have taken 29 to get here, unless you sneaked in from Dallas on the interstate.”
“Yeah, I came up 29.”
Freddie was wrestling with his hand-truck, trying to get it into a space that wouldn’t block the front door. A new customer had just squeezed in. Freddie said, “Well, there you have it. ‘29’ is the corridor, South Austin all the way up through Plum and Breakline. They just got to callin’ it that because that used to be the only way you could get to those places… back before the interstate, you know?”
I took my first hit of caffeine. “So let me get this straight: you live in Austin but you drive up 29 and hit those towns throughout the day?”
“Every Tuesday and Friday. Me and probably every delivery service you see. How’d you think you got your coffee? Juan Valdez?”
I felt stupid. I said, “I guess we all take these things for granted. I’m just like everybody else, cussing out the truck drivers on the road without thinking about what they’re carrying.”
Freddie was a tall, thin likeable guy, with a small gap-toothed grin that made him seem youngish though I had no idea of how old he was. When he shrugged I said, “Well, thank you for taking care of my most important needs: beer and coffee.”
He smiled, displaying the gap. “Believe me, folks on my route are a lot nicer than some of my neighbors. To me, Austin seems big-city and towns like Smithville and Plum seem a little more laid-back. That’s why it’s so weird to hear about the missing kid. You expect those kinds of things in the city but you figure it wouldn’t happen here. You live in Austin – aren’t you used to that sort of thing?”
I didn’t want to get into “what I was used to” with Freddie the beer-man so I shrugged and sipped coffee as Jolene rang up the new customer’s chewing tobacco. As she gave the chewer his change she said, “We’re getting more and more like Austin every day. Look at this missing boy – a horrible thing like that and they don’t say anything more about it in the paper at all. His parents must be going crazy. I know I keep my Rusty in after school – I’m not going to rest easy till they find him.”
Freddie said, “If they find him.” He woefully shook his head.
Jolene’s face darkened. She said, “I don’t like to think that way.” She turned a suspicious eye towards me.
“What do you think, mister? You were there, in the park. Did it seem like our ‘po-lice’ department was on the ball? Did they fill you with inspiration with their detective skills?”
Jolene pronounced “police” like she was a female Gomer Pyle and her sarcastic tone said that she and Rusty might consider a move to near-by anywhere soon. Not wanting to appear as the out-of-town smartass I said, “Gosh, I don’t know. I was kind of expecting them to call in the FBI or something by now. It’s been a week. There are plenty of people out hunting or camping around here. If nobody’s found a trace of the boy by now, you’d just kind of naturally assume the cops would bring in the Feds… to look out-of-town, I mean.”
Freddie thought that made sense. He said, “Damn straight. If that had happened to the Mayor’s kid or the chief of police or something, they’d be calling in the FBI and the CIA and every psychic in Hollywood. But no… it’s just old Jimmy Herndon, and you can bet Mr. Herndon doesn’t have the cash to bring in a private detective or whatever.”
Jolene and I were silent. Af
ter a minute, Freddie had important business in Breakline and he said, “I’ll see y’all on Saturday, Ms. Ferguson. If you need more than your usual on those wine coolers, give us a call and we’ll set you up.”
So… Jolene was Jolene Ferguson. Clanking his hand-truck through the narrow doors, Freddie gave a quick wave and made for his truck. Jolene, fussing with a display of cigarette lighters and air-freshener pine trees, looked pensively at me and said, “You thinkin’ of being in town long? I never did catch what you’re doing here; I mean, I never did catch if you’re a salesman or visiting relatives or something.”
Jolene Ferguson wasn’t saying so, but she was feeling the same thing that all the other residents of Smithville who had seen me were feeling: Who is he? Why is he here? He doesn’t belong here.
The coffee was helping a little. I said, “I was originally going to go fishing up there near Plum Lake, but I got a call from my wife… she’s with her mother in Seattle, and she wanted me to be close to a phone. Her mother took sick and we don’t know how she’s doing, one minute she’s better and the next she’s worse, so I’m just stuck here waiting for my wife to tell me to either go ahead and go fishing out in the boonies, or go home and get on an airplane.”
Jolene just shook her head with a smile, totally familiar with being the female in charge and in control of a man’s activities. Fortunately for me, she didn’t pause and think for a moment about what a total load of bullshit I had just laid on her and how Austin is only thirty miles away and nobody in their right mind would stay in Smithville for a whole week, fishing trip or no fishing trip.
I thanked Jolene for the coffee and warned her I was going to need more tomorrow morning. She seemed satisfied with my story but as I was going out of the Quik-Stop’s door, she said, “You’re not under-cover are you?”
I stopped mid-door and said, “What?”
“Undercover. You said we need the FBI up here… I mean; you’re not one of them, are you? Undercover-like?”
Candy from a Stranger Page 3