by G. M. Ford
Danny Leery had about half the curly brown hair he’d started out with. He stood about six feet tall, a lean guy with the look of an athlete. Excess nose and a pair of eyes set too far apart wouldn’t allow him to be considered outright handsome, but he was good-looking all the same, and probably would have looked better without her lipstick spread all over his face.
“He’s not mad,” Alma announced.
“So I see.”
Danny Leery stuck out his hand and introduced himself. Randy took the hand and moved it up and down. The palm was callused; the grip was strong. Whatever Danny did in his spare time was something way more active than shuffling county paperwork.
“When’s the wedding?” Randy asked with a wry smile. The minute it left his mouth he regretted saying it. Their faces went blank. Randy winced. He held up a hand and opened his mouth to apologize.
“We’re gonna take it slow this time,” Danny Leery said.
Randy closed his mouth.
“Get to know each other again,” Alma added.
“You’re off to a pretty good start,” Randy said. The three of them burst out laughing. The pair threw arms around each other and held on tight.
“We’ve got presents for you,” Alma said.
“What’s that?”
“Come on,” said Danny, leading him across the worn vinyl floor. He pointed to a piece of tape on the floor. “Put your toes on the line.”
Randy did as he was told. When he looked up, Danny Leery had his eyes pressed up against a set of camera lenses at the end of an articulated arm. He moved the focal point up and then moved in closer. “Give us a smile now.”
Randy did the best he could. He stood where he was and watched as the other man pressed a few buttons, stepped back from the apparatus, and sat down at the nearest desk and began to type.
“What’s your date of birth?” he asked.
Randy held up a finger, fished the wallet out of his hip pocket, and read the appropriate information. Danny typed it into the system. A minute passed.
“You really don’t have a license.” He looked over at Alma and grinned. “That sure makes things a lot easier.”
He pushed a final button and got to his feet. “Alma says you can drive, that’s good enough for me,” he said. “I don’t do road tests these days. Most of the kids around here been driving farm machinery since they could reach the pedals.” His eyes twinkled. “Besides, the state’s closing this office for good next Tuesday, finally moving everything over to Hadleyville.”
“What are you going to do?” Randy asked.
“If I want, I can move with the office, but I expect I’ll just move over to full-time farming, like most everybody else around these parts.”
The machine whirred and spit out a piece of plastic. Danny looked it over and then handed it to Randy. “Here you go, buddy.”
Randy thanked him. “Now all I need is something to drive.”
They passed a furtive look. “That’s my part of the present,” Alma said. “You can have the VW. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” She and Danny exchanged toothy grins.
Randy wouldn’t hear of it. Took five minutes of hemming and hawing before he reached in his pocket and gave her back the fifteen hundred bucks she’d paid for the car.
She ran outside, grabbed the title, and signed it over to Randy. Deal complete.
They left Danny to close up shop. He was going to run home and then be over at the Harris house in about an hour.
Outside in the car, she bubbled over. “It was like it was yesterday, like we’d never been apart. Like the conversation just took up where we left it off.” She looked his way. “You know what I mean?” she enthused. “You know…like we’d never been apart.”
“No…” he said truthfully, “but I’m hoping.”
She turned out onto School Street. A white van passed them going the other way.
“You know what he told me?”
“What?”
“He told me he knew I’d be back. That it was just a matter of time.”
They stopped at the Main Street stop sign. “He said…”
Her jaw muscles rippled as an immaculate eighteen-wheeler rolled by, big chrome grill and bumper glinting in the sunlight, chrome bulldog leaning his pugnacious mug into the wind, shiny chrome pipes belching diesel smoke. JB HARRIS HAULING read the fancy paint job on the door.
“Holy Jesus,” she whispered.
“Is that…” Randy began.
“That’s my papa,” she said.
20
The raindrops were huge. Bob watched as they drummed the hoods of cars and exploded on the pavement. He chose his moment with care, waiting for a break in the solid line of traffic before stepping into the street. He crossed two lanes before a yellow cab was forced to slide to a stop in order to avoid hitting him. The horn blared. The Sikh screamed at him through the window. The roar of the rain pounding on sheet metal drowned the words. He crossed another lane, waited for a Washington Post delivery van to pass, then hustled to the far curb, where he turned and scanned the intersection for any sign of pursuit.
He didn’t dawdle but instead moved quickly down the wide stone stairway and into the city park below, where he turned hard right twice and then sidled off into the sodden shrubbery. He placed his feet carefully, avoiding several piles of watery dog shit as he moved along. The overhanging trees shattered the rain to mist as he leaned against the balustrade and waited, sipping his coffee through a hole in the plastic lid and fretting about what could possibly call for a clandestine meeting on a day like this.
Two more sips and suddenly he wasn’t alone. Ron Jacobson appeared from the maze of trees and bushes on his right. His raincoat was wet all over. The brim of his hat had begun to sag, allowing a steady stream of water to run onto his shoulder.
“What’s up?” he asked, trying to sound breezy. “This is as woodsy as I’ve been in years.”
‘We’ve had two more hits on the name,” Jacobson said.
“He’s dead. Remember?”
“Apparently, somebody doesn’t know that.”
“Somebody who?”
“One is that woman from the group home.”
“She a problem?”
“Not as I see it.”
Horns blared. Engines raced. The hiss of traffic swirled around their heads. The temptation was to talk louder. Instead, the two men moved closer together and lowered their voices.
“And the other?”
“Northern Alabama.”
The words stopped his breathing. “Really?” he said.
“Thurston. I’ve got people on the way.”
“This Wesley Howard thing has gotten pretty far afield.”
“Too far.”
“I don’t like it,” Bob said.
“If more could be done, I’d be doing it.”
He considered the news. The coffee was tepid. He removed the lid and dumped it onto the ground. He pushed the plastic lid down into the cup and dropped it also. Immediately, he regretted littering. He’d started to retrieve it when Jacobson spoke.
“I had a thought,” Jacobson said.
Bob straightened up. “Oh?”
“Walter Hybridge died last year.”
Bob frowned at the segue. “I hadn’t heard,” he said.
“Prostate cancer.”
Bob winced. In the past six months, much to his wife’s chagrin, he’d canceled three appointments for a checkup.
“As you know Walter was in a position to…”
“Much like ourselves.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s no longer around to defend himself.”
“And Walter was a careful man.”
“Very quiet and very careful,” Bob agreed.
“Not the type to leave anything one way or the other in his personal papers.”
“Not the type at all.”
“His papers went to Georgetown. I doubt they’ve created much of a stir.” He shrugged and a small storm ra
n from his coat. “Probably more of a tax deduction than anything else.”
“And?”
“And there’s no telling what might be in there.”
He considered Jacobson’s words. “You’re not a nice man.”
“It’s how we got to where we are today.”
“Could be very hard on his family.”
“Sacrifices sometimes have to be made.”
“Ugly.”
“Better him than us.”
“Amen.”
“I have a man in mind.”
Bob ground the cup into the loam with his shoe. “Are you crazy?…We can’t—”
“He’s got a weekly column in the Post and a daughter with nasty habits.”
“But—”
“Very nasty habits.”
Bob rocked back and forth on his heels. He asked himself how far he would go to protect one of his children and felt marginally better about Jacobson’s suggestion.
“What have you got in mind?” Bob asked.
“My friend with the Post column goes through Walter’s papers.”
“And finds what?”
“Something damaging.” Jacobson threw a nonchalant hand into the air. “Something suggesting Walter may have compromised himself.”
“Like you said…better him than us.”
The sound of voices pulled Bob’s attention out toward the park. When he turned back, Jacobson was gone. He bent to retrieve his coffee cup. It was gone, too.
“WHO?” KIRSTEN KANE listened carefully as the security guard read the names again. “You sure it’s me they want to see?”
She listened as he posed the question.
“That’s what they say.”
“Ask them what it concerns.”
She dropped the phone onto her shoulder and waited. The guard came back on the line. “Something to do with Harmony House.”
“Ah…” she said. “I’ve got it. Yeah, all right…go ahead, send them up.”
By the time she got her desk into some semblance of order, they were standing in her doorway. They made an interesting pair, she thought. Couple of months in the gym and she would have been a middle-aged stunner. He looked like the last of the samurai, all stiff-necked and haughty in an outdated suit. They stood shoulder to shoulder as if leaning on each other for support. Kirsten wondered if they were sleeping together. They certainly were comfortable in each other’s space; that much was certain. The rest of it she wasn’t so sure about. Her instincts said “probably not.” She motioned them in.
“Good morning,” she said. She gestured toward the pair of chairs flanking her desk. They seated themselves and then looked to each other as if to ask who was going first. The Willis woman took the lead.
“We were hoping…” she began. “We were hoping you could help us with something.”
Kirsten spread her hands. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.
“Paul…Paul Hardy is still missing.”
Kirsten raised an eyebrow. “One would think a seriously disabled man would have turned up somewhere in the system by now.”
Ken and Helen passed a telling glance. “Tell her,” Ken said.
Helen looked around the room as if seeking a way out. She looked over at Ken, who gave her a curt nod.
“He’s not disabled anymore,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
Helen straightened herself in the chair, took a deep breath, and then told her everything, starting with Paul getting run over by the Lexus and ending with him saying his name wasn’t Paul.
“That’s quite a story.”
“I’m worried about him,” Helen said.
Kirsten shifted her gaze to Ken Suzuki. “What about you, Mr. Suzuki? Are you worried about him too?”
“I’m with her,” he said with a smile.
Kirsten laced her fingers behind her head and rocked back in her chair. “He’s over twenty-one. He’s not, as far as we know, wanted for anything. As far as I can see, Mr. Hardy is entitled to be wherever he chooses to be.”
“He’s a ward of the state,” Helen said quickly.
The younger woman thought it over. “Interesting,” she said finally. “As the person in charge of Mr. Hardy, you would, of course, be ‘in loco parentis.’ As such, it would not only be your right to know of Mr. Hardy’s whereabouts, it would be your legal obligation to do so.” She unlaced her fingers and rocked forward in the chair. “We can declare him a missing person…the police will—”
“That’s not what we want.” Helen said it in a voice she’d never heard before. Like she had another being in her chest somewhere. Little Miss Assertive.
Kirsten stifled a sigh. “What did you have in mind?” she asked.
“We want to know if a person named Wesley Allen Howard was reported missing anywhere between…” And she ran a pair of dates by her.
Kirsten asked Helen to repeat the dates. She wrote them down on a small blue notepad.
“Nationally,” Ken added.
Helen watched as the younger woman began to doodle on the page, drawing deep dark squares around the dates, sending arrows this way and that. Her pencil work lasted long enough to be awkward. “Why not?” she asked nobody in particular. “It’s a bit outside our normal sphere of influence, but I think I can get it done discreetly.”
“And this,” Helen Willis said, offering up a brown paper sack.
“What’s…”
“It’s a water glass. It’s got Paul’s fingerprints all over it. Can you run this through…you know, that national database thing?”
“IAFIS is an FBI operation.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Does that mean you can’t do it?” Helen asked.
Kirsten made a face. “In case you haven’t noticed, Ms. Willis, the feds are not the easiest people in the world to do business with.”
“Can’t you just…”
“When we need this kind of information, we go through the police department.”
“Can’t we leave them out of this?”
“Maybe,” Kirsten said. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”
Another awkward moment passed before they both took the hint and got to their feet. They shook hands all around. Kirsten Kane watched them walk off together.
After they’d been out of sight for a while, she picked the paper bag up by the edge, carried it across the room using only her fingernails, and deposited it in the bottommost drawer of the nearest file cabinet, after which she used the toe of her shoe to slide the drawer closed. Her phone began to buzz.
21
His given name was Junior. Not something or other Junior, like the name was handed down or anything, because it wasn’t…just Junior Blaine Harris of Airhart, Alabama. Thin as a rake and brown as a berry, he’d taken one look at his prodigal daughter standing on the front lawn and his eyes had filled with tears, as he’d swept her into his arms and twirled her round and round like they used to do so long ago, back in the days when she used to dance with her daddy, her tiny feet riding the tops of his boots as they’d listened to the steel guitar crying into the night while they cut waltzing circles in the rug.
For Randy, the tearful reunion felt as if it might rend him asunder. On one hand, he was glad to have been proved right, glad the love for a daughter had reigned over ancient animosities. Happy to have been part of last night’s festivities, as the family had gathered to welcome home one of their own. Grateful for the pork chops and gravy, for the green beans and the mashed potatoes and the cherry pie. Grateful and better for all of it.
On the other hand, he was overwhelmed by a sense of being alone in the universe, of drifting through the darkest realms of space, without direction or motive, merely following the dictates of gravity and motion. His chest felt as if a solid block of ice was at his center. For the first time since throwing himself into the car, he was forced to make his own decisions as to where he was going and when. Problem was, he didn’t have a clue.
Randy watched a squad
ron of crows feeding in the nearest field. Inside the house, Alma and her mother were chattering away, doing the breakfast dishes together. The squeak of the screen door pulled his eyes from the squabbling crows to the back stairs. Junior Harris had traded his jeans for a pair of battered coveralls, his cowboy hat for a green cap.
He sat down on the top step and pushed his John Deere back on his head. “You’re welcome to stay for a spell,” he said. “We can always use…”
Randy thanked him for the thought. “Time for me to move on,” he said.
They went silent then, basking in the morning sun, listening to the squawk and rustle of the birds. Junior broke the spell.
“Alma was talkin’ about you this morning,” he said. “Said you was out lookin’ for your people.” He paused and fixed his gaze on Randy. “That so?”
“That’s about right.”
“She said all you got is these little chunks of memory. Like nothing ain’t connected to nothing else.”
“That’s about right, too,” Randy admitted.
“Tell me what you remember.”
Randy eyed him warily. “Why?” he asked.
“I been deliverin’ chickens and such to this part of the country for thirty-four years,” he said. “Ain’t many places I ain’t gotten to or roads I ain’t been down.” He pulled his cap all the way off and ran a hand over his bald head. “Last night when Alma was tellin’ us about the things you remember…” He paused.
“Yeah?”
“Well…I thought maybe I had me an idea.”
“About what?”
“About where you might start lookin’ for your folks.”
“Where’s that?”
“In your dream.”
“Yeah.”
“What color’s the sand?”
Randy closed his eyes. “Yellow,” he said. “Kind of thick and grainy to the feet.”
“Gotta be Florida, then. Probably the east coast of Florida. Only place with palm trees and sand like that.”