Among the Missing

by Dan Chaon

  “Yeah,” Hollis says. And they both drift into separate imaginings.

  When Wayne wanted to analyze Hollis, he would say that Hollis was a dreamer, not a doer. “You don’t seem to have any plans for your life,” Wayne said in a thoughtful voice that was meant to be constructive criticism. “You just seem to drift from one thing to the next.” And Hollis sat there, nodding, as Wayne talked about making up a Five-Year Plan, setting some goals.

  This was after Hollis quit the job he’d taken on with the fire department, and Wayne was disappointed. Wayne had liked the idea of Hollis’s job, and Hollis had, too, at first. But then he’d actually started going to accident sites with the emergency crew and he changed his mind. He had thought about telling Wayne this, but then didn’t. He didn’t want to talk about it.

  There was one accident that he remembered. This was about midnight on a Thursday night, and he had been working for a month by then. It was a collision: This kid had rear-ended the back of a stalled semi out on the highway, and the kid’s truck had burst into flames on impact. The kid was about twenty or so, he found out later, and must have been going around seventy miles per hour when he crashed. That was it for him, of course. “A boom and a flash,” said one of the firemen, Larry. “The fat lady sings.” By the time they arrived, there wasn’t much left, and even Larry said it was bad, very bad. He and Larry had tried to get the kid’s corpse out of the truck and onto the stretcher, but the body just fell apart, “like a chicken that got burned up on the barbecue,” Larry said later: cinders, ash, cooked meat. Hollis began to have nightmares, after that, and finally he went to see a therapist that the fire department had hired, whom the firemen could talk to, for free.

  “You know,” the therapist said. “You show signs of being susceptible to posttraumatic stress disorder.” The man had a slow, affectless voice, as if he’d recently smoked marijuana. “If you’d gone to Vietnam, you’d probably have become a schizophrenic. Of course, no one can predict. You may become inured to it, after this. It’s hard to tell.”

  Shortly after, he’d resigned. The other men at the fire station had known the reason, and he thought they respected the decision. He hadn’t explained the whole thing to Wayne, which was why Wayne became annoyed. But he didn’t know if he could make Wayne understand. He hadn’t even written about it in his journal.

  Beyond the tent where he and F.D. are eating nachos, he can hear the voice of the operator of the Hammerhead, a tinny voice through a microphone, giving the ride a hard sell. “Passengers, remain calm,” he says ominously, as if he is a pilot announcing an engine failure. “Hold tight to your loved ones. Prepare yourself. Try not to scream.”

  “This guy’s good,” Hollis said to F.D.

  “What guy?”

  And Hollis waved his hand, pointing to the air so F.D. would know to listen.

  “This is what it feels like to be in a plane that is going down,” the operator of the Hammerhead crows. “Do you dare to experience it? Can you take it? Can you take this trip without screaming in horror?”

  He grins at F.D., and F.D. grins back: They’re not going on the Hammerhead, they agree, in a brief exchange of glances.

  Someday, Hollis thinks, he will tell F.D. about the kid’s body that fell apart when he tried to lift it. F.D. would understand. “Passengers, remain calm,” the man calls in the distance, and Hollis feels for a moment as if he has half glimpsed a secret, some hidden aspect of the world, something he didn’t want to know. He can hear Wayne saying, “It’s not the world. It’s you. “He can hear Jill saying, “You’re a nice guy, Hollis.” He looks over to where F.D. is sitting, munching tortilla chips. His heart aches.

  To a certain extent, he has a life of his own. He now has a job in a factory that makes paper tube products, and it pays pretty well. He has friends his own age, with whom he goes out to bars and such. He has girlfriends, too, though he has noticed that date number three always seems like the end, that things almost always peter out after that.

  But the truth is, he had always felt most comfortable with Wayne and Jill and F.D.—just hanging out, as if he were somehow one of them, as if that was where he really belonged. He has the image of the four of them, sitting in the living room, watching TV. Wayne and Jill are on the couch and he is in the recliner and F.D. is in his pajamas, tucked into a sleeping bag on the floor. They are watching a comedy movie, something he’s seen before, but he’s enjoying it anyway. He likes to listen to them laugh. He feels safe and welcome: happy. It’s awful, because he now feels certain that this moment isn’t true.

  There is a line at the bathroom and they wait quietly, shuffling slowly toward a single blue Port-O-Potty. They are both silent and, after a time, Hollis smiles down at F.D. “What are you thinking, buddy?”

  F.D. shrugs. “Nothing,” he says. He is thoughtful, and he hesitates for a moment. “Uncle Hollis,” he says at last. “Have you ever seen the movie Alien?”

  “I think so,” Hollis says. “I don’t remember.”

  “I’ve been wanting to see it for my whole life,” says F.D. “But Mom thinks it’s too scary. And I was thinking that maybe we could rent it and watch it at your house sometime. I promise I wouldn’t tell Mom. I wouldn’t get scared, either.”

  “Well,” Hollis says. “I don’t know. That sounds kind of sneaky.”

  F.D. shrugs. “Not bad sneaky,” he says. “It wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “I don’t know,” Hollis says. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Okay,” F.D. says. His eyes rest on Hollis seriously, a long, searching, hopeful look. After a minute, F.D. says, “I wish I lived with you.”

  Hollis doesn’t say anything. He thinks it would be okay to say, “So do I, buddy,” but he’s not sure. It might also be wrong.

  They walk along a row of game booths, toward the rides. Out of the corner of his eye, Hollis can see a tent with a sign that says PSYCHIC READINGS. A lady is sitting there at a card table, with her hands folded, waiting—a woman in her late forties, with a long, solemn face, stoically wearing a shiny turban, as if it is an affront to her dignity. He hopes that she doesn’t notice him.

  He has always had a dread of fortune-tellers, and palm readers, and such. He has always imagined that they would tell him something he didn’t want to know—that something terrible was going to happen, that he was going to die soon, that his life would be full of sadness. Maybe it wouldn’t be something bad at all. But the idea of it scared him, nevertheless.

  Perhaps the woman can sense this, because she calls out to him as he walks past. “Your future, your fortune!” she shrills, and he smiles, shaking his head briskly: “No thanks!”

  “Only five dollars!” the woman says. “I have important information for you!”

  F.D. has stopped, and is looking from the turbaned woman to Hollis, and back, hopefully.

  “No, sorry,” Hollis says to the woman. He smiles apologetically. “Sorry!”

  She smiles broadly. “Your son thinks you should,” she says, and addresses F.D. “Don’t you think your father should know his fortune?”

  Hollis laughs. “You’re no psychic!” he says. “He’s not my son!” And then he regrets saying this: The woman looks nonplussed, and F.D. seems to flinch a little. It would have been fun, Hollis thinks, to pretend that he was F.D.’s father. The woman looks at him stonily, then turns her attention to a group of teenage girls. “Your future!” she calls to them. “I have important information for you!” The girls hesitate, giggling, and Hollis and F.D. move on.

  Here is the beautiful carousel. The horses are all brightly colored, posed in forms of agitation. They lift their red mouths as if calling out, their legs curved into gallops, their manes whipping in an imaginary wind. The calliope plays a tune he recognizes but cannot place, something like “A Bicycle Built for Two,” but not. The ride was built in the 1890s, according to the sign, and is the oldest carousel still in existence. As they get on, he sees the little girl from the Reptile Petting Zoo, her hand and f
orearm bandaged, sitting a few horses in front of them. A woman—her mother, probably—stands stoically beside the little girl’s horse. He and F.D. are astride their steeds, side by side.

  “There’s the little girl who almost got eaten by the snake,” Hollis says. He gestures with his chin, and F.D. looks over and nods contemplatively.

  “The snake couldn’t have actually ate her,” F.D. explains. “She was way too big.” He frowns, then smiles when he realizes that Hollis has been making a joke. “Oh,” he says. “I get it.” He beams at Hollis for a moment.

  “Do you think it would hurt,” Hollis says. “To be swallowed?”

  “Oh, yeah,” F.D. says. “Big time. The snake’s muscles contract and it crushes and suffocates you with its coils. Every time you try to breathe, it tightens its coils, so finally your lungs can’t expand.”

  “You know a lot about snakes,” Hollis says, and F.D. gazes at him seriously.

  “I know,” F.D. says. He has told Hollis before that he wants to be a scientist when he grows up—a herpetologist, which is a word Hollis hadn’t even heard of before, but which means a person who studies reptiles. Looking at F.D. now, Hollis can see the scientist in his face. There is a kind of dignified intensity that Hollis admires. “Uncle Hollis,” F.D. says after a pause. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, kiddo. Anything.”

  “Is my dad really coming home?”

  Hollis waits a moment. The boy’s scrutiny is hard to lie to. “I don’t really know, F.D.,” Hollis says. He hesitates. The carousel has begun to move, and their horses dip and rise in time to the calliope music. He waits, feeling the steady, insistent velocity as they move in their circle. He thinks of Wayne—out there, somewhere, driving, sleeping in the passenger seat of his car at some rest stop along the interstate, a Wayne he knows and yet doesn’t know. He’s never coming back, Hollis thinks.

  When they get off the carousel, F.D. is quiet, lost in thought, and Hollis thinks that it might be best to backtrack, to take back the doubt he has planted, to reassure the boy. But he’s not sure of the right thing to say. After a moment, he reaches over and brushes his hand over the back of F.D.’s neck.

  They sit there for a time, near the carousel, watching people pass, children awash in the urgency of having fun, parents following behind with indulgent, sleepwalking expressions. He knows that they cannot sense the dull panic that has begun to throb around him, beating time to the distant churn of the calliope. But it seems as if it must be visible, like a rash on his skin.

  In his journal he would write: Here is F.D. sitting in the grass. He is quiet, petting his stuffed snake. He won the snake at the carnival, by throwing a dart at the balloon. He looks at the snake as if he is going to talk to it, but he doesn’t say a word.

  In high school he had a teacher who thought he was a good writer. “You have a good eye,” the teacher said, “but you editorialize too much. Let the detail speak for itself.” The teacher had given him a story by Hemingway to read, which he hadn’t understood, but he thought he understood what the teacher was saying. It made sense.

  Once, when he was in ninth grade and Wayne was a junior in college, he had come into his room and found Wayne reading his journal. Wayne was home from college for Christmas, and Jill was already pregnant with F.D., though they didn’t know it at the time. Wayne would soon drop out, though they didn’t know that either. At that moment, they were just brothers, and Hollis stood there in the doorway, horribly embarrassed as Wayne looked up, smiling that knowing, half-adult smile, holding the journal loosely in his hand.

  “Hey,” Wayne said. “This is pretty good!”

  “Yeah, well,” Hollis said, and flushed a bit at the flattery, despite himself. “It’s also kind of private.”

  “Why?” Wayne said. “You don’t have anything to be shy about. This is really nice stuff. I’m impressed. I think it would be better if you tied things together more, though.”

  The thought of impressing Wayne so thrilled him that the sense of invasion and humiliation was quelled, momentarily. But he was cautious, thinking it might only be an elaborate mockery. Once, when Hollis was ten, Wayne had convinced him that he was adopted. And though Wayne had eventually been forced to recant, Hollis still had doubts. He has doubts, even now.

  “It’s just for me,” Hollis said. “I don’t want anyone else to read it. I don’t want anyone else to know what I think.”

  Wayne had smiled. Wayne still thought, then, that he was going to become a famous lawyer, and he hadn’t yet envisioned a life with Jill and F.D., working for the county as a clerk in the courthouse. Wayne couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not want others to know what he thought. “Hollis,” he said, combing his fingers through his bangs. “That’s stupid. Why would you write stuff down if nobody’s going to read it?”

  “I read it,” Hollis said. “That’s all. Just me.”

  And Wayne shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I see what you mean,” Hollis had said. But afterward, he started hiding the thing; he still hides it, at the bottom of his sock drawer, even though he lives alone. Years later, when they were sitting out in the garage, Wayne had asked him if he still wrote in a journal.

  “No,” Hollis said, though he seldom lied. “I just lost interest.”

  “Hollis used to be a really good writer,” Wayne told Jill.

  “I believe it,” Jill said, and Hollis was sure then that they really loved him. It was one of those moments he would come back to—Wayne and Jill smiling at him kindly, their love for each other extending and encompassing him. Wayne rested a hand on one of Hollis’s knees, and Jill rested her hand on the other, and they all leaned close. Now he wonders if this meant anything to them, if they even remembered it.

  “F.D.…” he says. He has been sitting there silent for a while, thinking, mulling things over, and he knows that F.D. wants him to explain things. “You know, the truth is,” he says. “The truth is, I really don’t know what’s going on with your dad. Nobody has told me anything.”

  “Where is he?” F.D. says.

  Hollis swallows, thinks. “I don’t know,” he says.

  F.D. says nothing, and Hollis feels sorry. He would like to be a real uncle, someone who could explain the world to F.D., someone who could make sense of it.

  “He ran away from home, didn’t he?” F.D. says.

  “Yes,” Hollis says.

  “I knew that,” F.D. says. He sighs heavily, and Hollis puts his hand on F.D.’s neck, letting it rest there, warm and—he hopes—comforting.

  “I’ll always be here, though,” Hollis says. “I won’t leave you.” He means it. But he is also nervous. What has he done? He hasn’t thought out the consequences clearly, and now a gray uncertainty begins to glide through him. He thinks to say, “Don’t tell your mom you know,” but he knows that it would be wrong. Then he realizes what he should have said in the first place: Ask your mother.

  “You should talk to your mom about it,” he says. “If you … well, if you don’t mention that I told you, that might be best. I mean, maybe she wouldn’t have wanted me to be the first one to say something.…” He hesitates because he can’t read what’s behind F.D.’s heavy expression. “I’m not saying you should lie or anything. You shouldn’t lie to your mom.”

  “Well,” F.D. says, “she lied to me.” He looked at Hollis sharply. “She lies all the time.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Hollis says, but not insistently. He is trying to imagine how Jill will react. He is aware now that he has betrayed her, thoughtlessly, that he has trod into a place where he doesn’t belong at all. He has always tried to think carefully about right and wrong, but often the gray areas other people see are invisible to him. He wonders if she will be angry. He imagines her saying, “How dare you tell F.D. such a thing. How dare you make me look like a liar! What makes you think you know anything about it!” He cringes. And then he thinks, What if Wayne really does come back? Then he will have done a
truly awful thing. Then he will have damaged Wayne’s relationship with F.D. No matter what happens, Hollis thinks, he has permanently altered things between them, and he feels a slow undertow of dread. Everyone is going to be disgusted with him, furious. He can imagine doors closing permanently, his excursions with F.D. ending, becoming unwelcome at Wayne and Jill’s house. He and F.D. look at each other, and he sees that F.D. is quavering on the edge of tears.

  “Oh, F.D.,” he says. “Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

  And F.D. doesn’t. They get up and begin to walk, and he feels humble and clumsy in the wake of F.D.’s churning thoughts. Terrible, terrible, terrible, he thinks. He wants to slap himself.

  “F.D.,” he says after a while. “I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m thinking that I shouldn’t have told you what I told you.”

  “I know,” F.D. says. He is grim, though they are walking through a row of bright booths, through the hawkers’ promises of prizes and fun. He shakes his head heavily.

  “How do you know?”

  F.D. shrugs. “I just do. Mom wouldn’t have wanted you to tell me. She’ll be mad, won’t she?”

  “She should be mad,” Hollis said. “I did something that was really wrong.”

  “Oh,” F.D. says. He seems to consider this for a moment. “Why were you wrong?”

  “Because your mom trusted me not to say anything. And I let her down.” He thinks for a moment, trying to explain it clearly. “It’s like that little girl and the snake. She’ll never trust that snake again. You see?”

  “Oh,” F.D. says. “Yeah.” And Hollis realizes after a moment that the analogy is unclear; it doesn’t make a lot of sense. He lapses again into thought, looking ahead to a group of people beginning to gather around where the motorcycle sits on a stage. The stage is festooned with scalloped ribbons and Chinese lanterns; tiny disco balls fracture the light into spangles that glimmer brilliantly on the motorcycle’s chrome, and their faces.