Vanished

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “Don’t get scared. Just figure it out,” he spoke softly to himself as he left the cabin and crossed the driveway. “Don’t get scared.… Just go one step at a time.…”

  “What’d you say, Pops?” It was Huller coming down the steps from the house. A can of beer hung from his fingertips. In the corner of his mouth was a cigarette. Its red glow moved up and down as he spoke. “She send you over? She was flipped.”

  “No,” Wallace said. “I just wanted Canny over. For the night. For the last night.”

  Huller came off the step and with his tongue lifted the cigarette stub from the corner of his mouth, then spat it onto the ground at Wallace’s feet. “Let her have a good night’s sleep, Pops. She’s gonna need it. It’s best for her, Pops. Okay?”

  Wallace just stood there. He didn’t know what else to say. Canny had come to the door. Her forehead was pressed to the screen and her chin rested on the head of a fuzzy earless bear. “Poppy!” she called, and started to open the door.

  “Stay there,” ordered Huller. “Inside!”

  As the door fell shut, a chill swept through Wallace. Huller’s arm yoked his shoulder.

  “Trust me,” Huller said, walking alongside, steering him back to the cabin. “Don’t worry about a thing. I got everything under control. Bird’s gonna get his kid back and you’re gonna come out of this looking like one hell of a hero. I mean, the way you took care of the kid, the way you care. Bird’s gonna be so grateful, he’ll …”

  “But Alma don’t want her in the house … not with bugs, she don’t …,” Wallace blurted. He had finally thought of another reason for Canny to sleep in the cabin.

  “What the hell’re y …”

  “She can sleep over here,” he said excitedly. “She got ’em bad, ya know. They’s so bad her head’s all cut and I never seen so many nits. They’s probably all gonna hatch tonight. Probably hatching right now.” His eyes were bright on Huller’s. “Probably looking for people to bite right now even.”

  “Slow down! Take it easy, Pops. Those’re more words than you said in a month. Canny’ll be sleeping downstairs w …”

  “She’ll be scared,” interrupted Wallace.

  “Not with me down there,” Huller said, with a hard pat of Wallace’s shoulder. “No bogeyman’ll get by me.”

  The two of them stood over her bed. Dotty’s eyes were open, staring, the hardness of her face cold and set. She might have been blind or dead. Wallace heard the catch in her throat and then a sob, so thin and sudden and yearningly, sorrowfully wild, that it seemed to pierce his flesh.

  “I’m sorry … oh … I’m so sorry,” she wept. “Oh God.”

  Huller had sunk to one knee; his head was close to hers and his voice was gentler than Wallace had ever heard in a man. He almost sounded like a woman as he tried to comfort her.

  “It’s okay … it’s okay … I lost my cool.…”

  “Oh Jig,” she wailed. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I’m so fucked up.…”

  “Hey, take it …”

  “No, no, listen to me,” she said, raising herself up on one elbow. “I shouldn’t’ve argued with you. Whatever you do’s okay. Even if …”

  “Hey!” Huller said, standing suddenly. “We’re all on edge. Even Pops here, he’s all jeeped up, talking a blue streak.…”

  She blinked then and peered up at Wallace through filmy, distorted eyes.

  “This’ll help you down,” Huller was saying as he took something from his pocket and tucked it next to her cheek. “Here, Pops, you oughta take one too. Here.” He held out his palm. “Take it!”

  The minute the pill touched his hand it began to melt, so feverish was his flesh now, so sickened were his insides. She’s gonna do it, he thought. She’s gonna let him kill Canny and then she’ll kill me. And she won’t even care, he thought, hearing her sobs pitch suddenly and unaccountably into a burst of girlish laughter. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus … Aubie’ll be so strung out. I can’t believe it.…”

  She’ll laugh, he thought. Even if she does care, she’ll still laugh, just so she won’t have to. Dotty don’t like to care, he thought.

  “Here!” Huller had turned on the light. He looked closely at a long yellow pill that was wrapped in cellophane, the two ends tightly twisted. “This one’s the kid’s,” Huller was saying. “She’ll take it a half hour before we go. It’ll knock her out just enough so we can move her easy.… What’s the look for, Pops? It’s a sleeping pill, that’s all. So she won’t get scared.”

  “He’s afraid it’ll hurt her,” Dotty said, laying back against the pillow, her fishy eyes closed now, her speech thick and weary. “Make her sick or something.” She kept licking the split red flesh in her lip. In the hard glare of the light, her jarred, wounded face made him think of spoiled fruit.

  “Oh no!” Huller said. “This won’t make her sick. Tell him, Dot.”

  “Won’t make her sick, Aubie.” She licked her lip and started to smile. “It’ll make her rich … make us all rich … that one pill’s gonna make us all rich.” Blood leaked from the wound of her smile.

  18

  If there was one quality Aubrey Wallace possessed beyond all others, it was patience. Enough so that his father could have said, “You just wait. It won’t be long. Just do what you’re told and I’ll be back. It won’t be long.”

  And he had waited; had done as he was told, had neither complained nor questioned, but had waited, as indifferent to calamity and doubt as the ice coated trees outside his window that first long winter in the Home. “Wait your turn,” was the Home’s prime rule with so many wild boys to manage. In time the words would bestow the numbing inculcation of prayer: wait your turn; wait your turn; just wait your turn.

  He waited now. He waited for Dotty to sleep soundly, for the lights to go out in the house, for the dog to cease its sporadic barking. Once, he checked the car, then walked close by the house, under the window where Canny would be asleep on the couch. The television was still on. Its bluish light shimmered on the sagging sheet that curtained the window. The smell of cigarettes came from the same window. The dog barked and Huller swore. Wallace hurried back to the cabin and sat in the dark while Dotty slept heavily, her bubbly snore steady and deep as he waited.

  Outside, the night teemed with firefly sparks and the dry ignition of cricket song, and across the bruised sky flashed the quick tremble of heat lightning, and every now and again there came, faintly, the rumble of long-ago storms.

  All this time he had been thinking. The muddle had begun to clear. These were his facts like mileposts along a dangerous road: that come morning, Huller would turn him in for the extra reward. Dotty would go along with it and Canny might get hurt in the process. Or worse—and he remembered Huller saying all he needed was a bone, a handful of her hair, or just some teeth. Even if Huller planned on running away with Ellie, Dotty wouldn’t believe him until it was too late. It’s all changed, he thought. He would have to bring Canny back himself and then he would go home to Hyacinth. His eyes widened in the darkness. He sensed the orderliness in this plan, the Tightness. All would be as it was before, long ago. He would say, “I went and it wasn’t my fault and now I am back,” and all that came between he would forget, and it would not matter. They would go their own ways again, all of them, him, Dotty, Canny, as once they had before, each as separate and apart and unknown to the other as planets in their orbits.

  That it could be so simple astonished him. The certainty of what he had to do was like the clearest, brightest glass that, he knew, once tilted just a hair this way or that to the light could blind him. And so he sat, silent and still, not daring to move.

  Because it seemed almost too simple, he sensed the need of a charm, an amulet; some complication to make it worthy of success, to shield them from harm; a mission like the knight’s errant journey through hostile kingdoms of deadly dragons and barbed hedgerows. An explanation was needed, some way of telling his side of it and why it had happened; his acknowledgment that this sens
eless act had indeed been without plan, that no harm had been intended. He sensed that this might be enough, this ordering of the universe, this telling, this tale that seemed to begin, not with Canny as he had first thought, but with that day on the country road; no, not even there. It was more than that, wasn’t it? It went beyond mere facts and dates. It was Mr. Bird, the voice in his ear, asking why. Why? Because the tailpipe had begun to rattle, because Dotty had been hungry, because they had no money, because a gate had been unlatched, a door unlocked; because at that moment a telephone had been ringing and whoever picked it up to say hello had not the slightest idea that two lives like blindly falling stars were moving closer, closer … the footsteps soft, the child watching; upstairs, the phone to an ear, perhaps even laughter … and closer, aligning themselves in that instant, in that convergence, that explosion that shatters, then makes a universe, that blindness that only later is pieced together, but can never be made whole or understood … upstairs, unseen, unheard, “Hello, I’m fine,” while downstairs, in the room of light and mirrors, the baby, the unmet child, demanded a greeting back to its own, demanded it of the wild-eyed girl with dried blood under her nails.

  And in that moment of impact, who were they but strangers who would never be strangers again, whether they met or never met, or never even knew the other’s name, because as Canny was all of her family, so was he every Wallace and Herebonde and Kluggs (whereas in truth, in blood, he had not been, but in that moment of collision, of violation, became so—for all time) just as Dotty was all he had ever known of mystery and dreams and wildness and chance.

  None of this could he understand, but, sensing its intricacy and its mystery, he was filled with the same wonder as one who, through the bright underside of stars, believes he can perceive the workings of all the night beyond.

  In the cabin, he sat on the edge of the bed. Dotty lay with her back to the light and the pillow over her head. He stared at the pad of paper on the wooden chair. His brow furrowed and his mouth thinned as he read the first sentence he had written. It made no sense. He balled up the paper and stuck it in his pocket, then began again, slowly, painfully. “Dammit,” he muttered. He forced the pencil to move. It was like trying to splice two wires together. He knew what he wanted to say, but the connection between his brain and his hand just wouldn’t work right.

  An hour later, he had finally printed:

  YOU DON’T KNOW ME. BUT THIS HERES YOUR LONG LOST LITTEL GIRL I HAVE BRUNG BAK AFTER ALL THIS TIME. SHE IS YOUR REEL BABY THAT A PERSON I NOW TOOK TO LOVE AND NEVER MENT TO HERT.

  I DONT NOW YOU SO I WOOD LIEK TO SEE THINGS LEF THE WAY THEY ARE LIKE THAT BECUS I NEVER DID NO WRONG. AXCEP BY NOT STOPIN THAT PERSON THAT WAS THE ONE TO REELY TAKE HER.

  His fingers were cramped and locked on the pencil. Sweat filled his baseball cap. His head ached and a lump hardened in his throat.

  He wrote:

  NOT ME. I DID NOT TAKE HER. I HAV GILT THOU BY NOT DOIN ANY THIN. BUT I AM MAKING IT UP BY GETTING HER BAK SAF AND SOND AND BY MY OWN PERSON THAT HAS TO COUNT FOR SOMTHIN.

  I HOPE YOU HAV GOOD LUK WITH HER. REMBER SHE IS YOUR REEL DOTER SO YOUSHOOD IF YOU WATE. SHE IS A REEL GOOD GIRL. I LIEK HER ALLOT. SOMETIMS I EVEN LOVE HER.

  I WOOD APPRESIT YOU NOT SENTING COPS ON ME BECUS I PROMIS NEVER TO DO A BAD THING AND REELY WHEN YOU STOP AND THING I NEVER REELY DID.

  PS I AM SORY FOR ALL THIS TRUBEL. TELL HER I WILL MISS HER.

  He held up the paper and his face flushed. “Lookit that,” he whispered in wonder. It was the first letter he had ever written.

  He turned out the light and stood by the door. Across the way, the house lay in darkness. He tiptoed down the steps to the car. With one hand on the wheel and his shoulder braced to the frame, he began to push. The car creaked and then he pushed with all his might, and pushed, butting his head to the frame, grunting softly, until, finally, it began to roll. He got the car to the mouth of the driveway, then turned it onto the road. He kept pushing until he had gotten a good mile, and then he made his way back. His every footstep seemed to thunder through the moonless night.

  He stood outside the window. A breeze lifted the torn sheet and it billowed in, then fell against the screen. Behind it, he could hear Canny’s ragged little snore.

  “Canny!” he whispered, and scratched his fingers down the screen. “Canny, wake up!” He pressed his ear to the screen and listened. Just then, the sheet lifted and the dog’s cold wet snout poked against the screen into his cheek. He sank to his knees and the dog growled. From inside, a child’s sleepy voice scolded, “Cut that! You bad dog.…”

  “Canny!” he hissed. “Put the screen up. Quick!”

  And as she did, his eyes froze on Huller’s wide back hunched over the table in the kitchen, sound asleep, his head on his arms.

  “Take your second left to 495. And just watch the exit signs. Stonefield’s about fourteen miles,” the gas station attendant said.

  “Where we going?” Canny asked when he got back in the car. He glanced at her. “I got to tell you something. You see, once, a long time ago, there was this little girl. She was a year old then.”

  “What was her name?” interrupted Canny.

  “That ain’t important. Jest listen,” he said. He couldn’t remember the name in the article and he didn’t want to have to stop and take off his shoe to find out. “Anyways, she was little.…”

  “Make up a name.”

  “Huh?”

  “I like stories that all the people have names,” she said.

  “But this ain’t a story, Canny.” He looked at her. “It’s a story, but it ain’t.”

  “But you said, ‘Once upon … once.…’”

  “Damn, Canny, you’re getting me all mixed up. You see, she was jest a baby. Not even two and this lady come along … well, she waren’t a lady then. She was a girl, I guess you’d call her.…”

  “Where’s Momma?” Canny yawned.

  “Sleepin’.”

  “She know we left?”

  “Nope. Anyways, she …”

  “How come?” Canny pestered. “This a surprise? Like that time we picked all them cans in the middle of the night?”

  “Yup. So anyways …”

  “’Member that, Poppy?” she sighed. “We musta picked a thousand, huh?”

  “Well … a lot.”

  “Can I lay down?” She yawned again.

  “Sure,” he said as she laid her head against his leg. “Anyways, she was just a girl. And the truck started clunking on accounta the tailpipe. And the guy in the truck says, ‘The tailpipe’s coming off.’ And the girl, she says, ‘So.’ And she laughs.” He grinned. “She was all the time laughing. Laughing no matter what.” Wallace frowned. “Dammit, what’s next? Oh yah, the tailpipe. So the guy says, “The tailpipe’s coming off.’ He says he ain’t got a dime and how he’s lost and how back at home his wife don’t know where he is.” Wallace sighed. “I looked at her then and I told her, ‘We’re heading back. Soon as I get the tailpipe wired.’”

  His eyes glistened over the wheel. “And I’m working on the tailpipe and all of a sudden she jumps outta the truck and takes off down the street and I said to myself, ‘Go! Now’s your chance!’ So I get back in the truck, but the keys was gone. She took ’em.

  “And I’m sitting there scared as all get out, thinking now what do I do. When I see her running back like a bat outta hell. And she’s got this little baby girl in her arms.…”

  The sound of his voice through the darkness pleased him. As he told it, he could see it all as it had been that day. “And then next thing I knew we was outside Washington, the capital, and she’s already got you calling her momma and me poppy; and she says, ‘Two more days. Jest let’s keep her two more days!’ And we kept going and two more days’d be up and she’d tease, ‘A coupla days more’ … and then it was a week. ‘Okay!’ I’d say, ‘A week. A month, okay.’ And before I knew it, she thought she was your real momma and I was your poppy and after a time, you didn’t know no
better.”

  He glanced down at her, then back at the road. “After that, come winter and then summer and winter again and we just got in the swing of things, moving around. Taking care of you. Course, by that time, Momma started finding out the hard work taking care of a kid is. And she kept wanting good times, being so young. And all the moving and the being so scared started getting to her and I tried to do the best I could, taking care of you so she wouldn’t have to, and taking care of her too. By that time I was jest so scared she’d take off on the two of us and then what would we do? You know what I mean, Canny?”

  His hand groped over her face. “Canny? You sleepin’, Canny? Ain’t you heard a word?”

  He veered sharply into the right-hand lane. Ahead, the sign said STONEFIELD, NEXT EXIT.

  “Wake up, Canny! Wake up!”

  To the east, the black sky was rimmed by a pale strip of silvery light. Canny sat soberly against the seat. She kept yawning.

  “Was a right turn,” he muttered, heading back toward the center of town. “We was on the main drag and we took a right.” Now he was back on Main Street. He slowed to a crawl, creeping past the fire station, the library, through blinking red lights, past the post office and a string of fancy stores, and then he turned.

  “We lost, Poppy?”

  “I dunno,” he said, driving slowly down the narrow tree-tented street. “Mebbe not … looks different in the dark.” His eyes widened. Across the street, on the opposite corner, was the same white house he remembered. “Right here,” he said, pulling in against the curb.

  “But it’s too early, Poppy! You can’t haul junk when they’re all sleeping.”

  He took the letter from his pocket. Canny yawned and scratched at her head with both hands.

  “Don’t,” he said, looking at her, and he took away her hands. “You don’t want them people thinking you got bugs still.”

  Her chin jerked up. “Maybe if they think I got bugs, they’ll give us more stuff so we’ll go.” She laughed.