by Mark Dunn
“And you say we’re the ones the world is passing by!” proclaimed Julia, her palms up and open in the universal gesture for “so there!”
Eileen began to butter her dinner roll with hard strokes. “I thought one of the reasons for this trip was to get you kids out and interacting with other young people. Why, just last night there was a big weenie roast on the beach, and none of you seemed the least bit interested.”
“It wasn’t groovy enough for us,” replied Donna with gentle sarcasm. “Are you ashamed of us, Grandma? It sounds like you’re ashamed of us.”
“Of course I’m not! I just wish—oh, pooh. Forget I brought it up. I know my place in this family. As soon as we get back to the motel room, I’m going to pull out my new Miss Marple, and you won’t hear another peep out of me.” Eileen took a bite of her roll and then began chewing while staring sulkily at the ceiling.
“We didn’t mean to upset you, Grandma,” said Julia as she placed a conciliatory hand on her grandmother’s arm.
Michael Junior’s expression now turned solemn. “The old that is strong does not wither. Deep roots are not reached by frost.” Michael Junior enjoyed quoting J.R.R. Tolkien whenever a relevant opportunity presented itself.
“How are the hush puppies, sport?” asked Michael Senior, plucking a puppy off his son’s plate. “Yum,” he said, answering his own question.
The Cameron family did not return to the Seahorse Motel. They strolled to the end of a nearby pier and gazed down upon the reflection of the moon on the water. They waited for feelings to come to them that did not derive from the pages of books.
The Camerons weren’t alone; a man and woman were there as well. Perhaps they were in their twenties. Perhaps they were on their honeymoon. The woman was sitting on the flat top of the wooden railing, in front of her boyfriend—or husband—who was holding her loosely around the waist from behind. The couple had greeted the Camerons with polite smiles and then returned to their close-contact moonlit cooing.
A moment or so later the woman cried out in pain. “Something’s biting me! Something’s biting me!” She slapped at her left thigh. Then she jumped to one side so that the clinch with the young man was broken. Then the woman cried, “Ooh! Ooh!” and began jerking and wriggling as if the thing biting her was intensifying its attack. In the midst of all the jumping and squirming the woman lost her balance upon the railing and toppled from the pier.
She fell, screaming all the way down, and hit the dark, swishing water below with an audible smack. Her young companion peered over the rail and then turned and looked at the middle-aged man and the three adolescent children and the mature woman who comprised the Michael Cameron family of Lexington, Kentucky, each member appearing to the distressed man just as horrified by what they had just witnessed as he appeared to them. “She can’t swim!” he announced in a terrified voice. “And neither can I!”
A moment later, all of the Camerons, with the exception of Eileen, who though strong and unwithered did not find herself so motivated, sprang into action. In fast succession they slipped off their shoes and leapt from the pier—one, two, three, four—from the opposite side, each allowing sufficient space between them so as to avoid landing upon a fellow family member and inviting additional complications. It was Michael Senior who hit the water closest to the drowning young woman and who employed the lifesaving technique he had read about as a teenager in The Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety Manual. He received encouragement and support from his three children, who tossed sloshy words of counsel to the young woman along the lines of “You’re okay,” “Calm down,” and “Stop struggling, he’s got you,” and the literary, though somewhat incongruous, “All’s well that ends well.”
With the young woman dragged to shore and laid out upon the wet sand, Julia cleared the water from the victim’s lungs in a manner she was familiar with from having read about such near-drowning episodes in at least three different novels, one of which led its characters—a lifeguard and office receptionist on holiday—into a serious, long-term Harlequin romance. The operation was so successful that it wasn’t even necessary to take the woman to the hospital. It remained a mystery what had bitten her on the thigh, although Michael Junior surmised that it was probably an insomniac sandfly, which he had read about in a book entitled Predators of the Littoral Regions of North America.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” said the woman’s boyfriend—or husband—who shook the hands of all the Camerons, including that of the morally supportive grandmother. Eileen felt a burst of family pride that put a long-lived smile upon her face. The young woman was grateful as well, though shaken up and distracted by the itch of the causal bites.
The Camerons returned to their motel room after a long walk on the beach and a lively group recap of their thrilling accomplishment—a team effort, a family activity that diminished all others by comparison.
This was much better than a weenie roast.
After hot showers and the donning of robes and bedclothes, each of the children and their father curled up or spread out—such as the case was—with a book. Michael Senior put down The New Centurions and picked up The Underground Man, the latest of Ross Macdonald’s hardboiled Lew Archer detective novels. Julia returned to The Other, while her sister Donna, with fresh groans and assorted expressions of distaste and disgust, revisited the Satan-sanctioned assaults upon the dignity of fathers Merrin and Karras. Michael Junior renewed his affiliation with Frodo Baggins; Frodo’s cousins Pip and Merry; the wizard Gandalf; and Legolas, son of King Thranduil.
Eileen, wearing her nightgown and drinking Postum, because it usually made her sleepy, sat at the table in the room’s corner kitchenette with the volume on her radio turned low, listening to Louis Armstrong sing “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans,” and then, perhaps because the DJ wanted to lighten the funereal mood, “Jeepers Creepers.” Halfway through the song, she happened to look over at her son. He was holding apart the lids and lower folds of skin beneath his eyes to give himself a goggly look in comical reference to the “peepers” part of the song.
Eileen laughed and waved at him to stop. Michael returned to his book.
A sea-scented breeze ruffled the curtain of the open window next to her as night quietly settled in.
1972
PRECIPITATE IN ILLINOIS
Elsie had never seen so much rain in all of her fifty-eight years. It was as if a great spigot had been opened up over Waukegan and nobody knew how to turn it off. Elsie had almost talked herself out of driving to the mall that afternoon because of the weather, but had finally decided to make the two-mile trip because if she hadn’t, she was quite certain she would soon find herself climbing the walls of her new apartment like some caged primate at the zoo.
It had been three weeks since Elsie Thompson’s arrival in Waukegan. Her son had talked her into selling her house in Muncie—the house she had owned with her husband until his untimely death six months earlier—talked her into leaving her friends and her church and the familiarity of the town where she had spent all of her adult years. Her son thought she would benefit from living near her only child and her only two grandchildren. So he found Elsie a clean and quiet apartment in this town of industry and cool lake breezes and a great big enclosed mall for her shopping convenience. The Lakehurst. The one with the seagull on the sign.
Elsie didn’t need much convincing. She did want to be near her son, who designed pinball machines in Waukegan, and her daughter-in-law, who taught school in nearby Gurnee, and her two granddaughters, who, at eight and eleven, were just the right ages to appreciate having a loving and doting grandmother close by. Hers was the familiar story of a woman set adrift by sudden widowhood and finding comfort in those loving family members who also remained behind—comfort that was sometimes coupled with sheer, stultifying boredom.
That night on Eyewitness News, the weatherman would report that four inches had fallen on Waukegan, Illinois, that day—a record. Four inches of rain, wh
ich collected into myriad puddles and opportunistic ponds in the middle of traffic intersections—shallow lakes, really, so large that Elsie was given to wonder, as her car skidded and splashed and pontooned through them, if nearby Lake Michigan was expanding its shoreline one block of Waukegan at a time.
As Elsie pulled into the large parking lot that encircled the mall (except for one soggy empty field on the south side where, it was hoped, a Sears or Montgomery Ward would eventually go), she was disappointed to discover that thousands of others had also ventured out on this waterlogged Tuesday. In 1972, enclosed shopping malls were still things of relative novelty and innovation. To think that one could now go to a place protected from all the elements and shop for as long as one’s heart desired (or at least for as long as one’s legs held out)—whatever would these enterprising retailers think of next?
Elsie shook the rain from her umbrella and sought out an unoccupied bench where she could shrug off her raincoat and remove her galoshes to her big plastic carrying bag. Once properly prepared for her afternoon of shopping, she began her exploration of this bright, shiny, modern mall, dry and comfortable and in the perfect frame of mind.
Elsie wandered without purpose. She window-shopped and aisle-browsed. Betty’s of Winnetka was having a sale on beachwear, and Chas A. Stevens bragged in big, bold letters about its large inventory of summer sandals, and there were brand new futuristic microwave ovens in the appliance section of Wiebolts for only six hundred dollars. Elsie had a scoop of chocolate mint ice cream at Bresler’s, chocolate mint being one of the chain’s thirty-three advertised flavors. She tried on a pair of white crinkle-vinyl knee-high boots at Thom McAn and couldn’t keep herself from giggling when the salesman sang a couple of lines from “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” She even found the courage to steal into the clanging, pinging semi-dark interior of Aladdin’s Castle to see one of the pinball machines her son had designed. She identified “Haunted Cemetery” immediately.
Elsie eventually found herself in Carson Pirie Scott & Company, one of the mall’s three anchor department stores. She had once visited Carson’s flagship store on State Street in Chicago, and wondered if the suburban version would feel as elegant. She was struck by the large contemporary light display above the escalators—great concentric circles of exposed bulbs throwing off muted luminosity in all directions.
As Elsie moved through the store, her interest in the merchandise that surrounded her receded and she began to study the people instead: mothers with preschool children, girlfriends perhaps enjoying a companionable weekly shopping excursion, teenagers lolling away their summer vacation. There were only a few men in the department store, and they were mostly fastidious, nattily suited salesmen. One of the exceptions was a man who looked to be in his early forties. His trench coat was partially unbuttoned and still wet from the rain. The man was slightly overweight. His face was flushed and a little bloated, his hairline retreating. Elsie wondered if he was there on his lunch hour. Perhaps he was picking up an anniversary gift for his wife, since both Elsie and the man were situated in one of the store’s women’s departments. He did seem, after all, to be looking for something…or someone.
Nearby was a little girl. Perhaps she was four. Elsie looked about for the mother. Where was she? Behind that clothing rack? On the other side of that display? Elsie would never have allowed her son out of her sight in a public place at that age.
The man was near the girl. He was looking at her now. Now he was moving toward her. In a brief moment he was crouching down to say something to her. Was it her father? Or her grandfather? If so, why had he left her, even for a minute or two? How could people be so irresponsible?
The man was saying something and the little girl was nodding. The man pulled a bag from his coat. He offered the bag to the little girl.
What was in the bag? Elsie couldn’t tell.
She felt intrusive, staring at the man and little girl like this. Yet something didn’t seem right: the way he was looking around, as if attempting to detect if he was being watched. Had he stolen what was in the little bag? Was he a shoplifter? Elsie turned away. She didn’t want the man to see her looking at him. When she turned back around, the man and the little girl were gone.
She thought about what she had seen. She walked over to where the man had crouched down in front of the little girl. Just when she thought she had lost them, Elsie caught sight of the man’s head bobbing above a rack of sundresses. Elsie picked up her pace. As the man moved out into one of the wider aisles, she noticed the little girl walking next to him. He was holding her hand. The little girl was smiling, all of her attention on pulling something from the bag and putting it into her mouth. She was preoccupied with the act of eating the candy, or whatever it was, and did not seem to be concerned much with who was walking next to her and holding her hand.
Elsie thought she would approach the man to set her mind at ease. Yet what would she say? If he were her father or grandfather, he would not take kindly to her suspicions that he was someone else—someone who had no business taking the little girl by the hand and leading her away.
Elsie didn’t know what to do, except to follow—to keep her distance, but to trail the man and the little girl. This she did for a minute or so, until the man and girl left the store and moved out onto the mall concourse.
Now Elsie thought that perhaps the best thing to do to assuage her fears was to go back to the spot in the store where the little girl had been and see if there was someone in the vicinity who was looking for a lost girl.
Yet this was supposing the worst. It was supposing something Elsie could scarcely bring herself to think. And there was a problem with this course of action: if the child was—she would make herself think it because the gravity of the situation required her courage—if the child was, in fact, being abducted by the man in the wet trench coat, though it was all well and good that the mother should be informed, what a terrible risk she would be taking in allowing the man and the girl out of her sight. Would she be able to catch up with them? What if they disappeared into the crowd of rainy-day shoppers and couldn’t be found again?
Elsie decided that she must continue to follow. She would follow. She would watch to see where the man went. She would seek out someone who could help her. She wished she wasn’t new to this town. At the shopping center she frequented in Muncie she was always bumping into people she knew. Perhaps she would get lucky and chance upon a security guard. There had to be security guards in a mall like this.
The man and little girl passed a gift shop, then a men’s clothing store. The man didn’t look at the display windows. He didn’t look at any of the passing shoppers. He walked briskly, and the little girl had to trot to keep up with him. She dropped her bag of candy. He stopped and picked it up for her. Elsie hadn’t had a chance to study the girl’s face until now, and with the face now turned slightly in her direction, she saw something that greatly disturbed her. The little girl looked frightened. She looked confused. The little girl held tight to her rescued bag of candy with her right hand; her left remained within the tight clasp of the stranger’s hand. Elsie’s heart skipped a beat. The little girl was being kidnapped. Elsie was sure of it now. Something inside her made her want to point and shout to enlist the assistance of everyone around her to stop him. But how would she make her accusation? What words would she use? Elsie was paralyzed even as her feet kept moving.
A moment later she caught sight of a pay phone out of the corner of her eye. It was affixed to a wall down a small corridor off the concourse. She could call the police. This is what Elsie could do. She would have to take her eyes off the man and the girl for a brief moment. It would be risky; there was the chance she might lose sight of them. And how would the police, once they arrived, find the man and the girl? The mall was large, the parking lot even larger, and the lot was now dark under a cover of heavy rain, its mercury vapor lamps doing little but casting an eerie glow over the great expanse of empty, parked cars. Even if she da
red to make the call, there was a teenaged girl on the phone. How long would it take to convince this girl of the magnitude of her emergency? How much time would Elsie lose in wresting the phone from the chatty girl? Elsie abandoned this idea.
The three were approaching the mall’s center court now. There was a circular fountain there. Hanging from the ceiling was a large silver-colored revolving mobile. The man and girl moved quickly through the center court, headed toward the nearest exit. Elsie felt the words rising in her throat: “Stop that man!” She felt the words fly from her mouth: “That man! Don’t let that man get away!” She pointed at the man just as he was passing a group of adolescents splashing each other at the fountain. Those who noticed observed a troubled woman pointing in the direction of clowning, misbehaving teenagers. Was she warning them against the possibility of falling in? Was she scolding them for their bad behavior? One could only guess, because the words of her desperate plea were swallowed up in the acoustics of the large space, their clarity erased by the echoic hum and thrum of the song playing over the mall’s loud speakers: “The Candy Man,” sung by Sammy Davis Jr., recipient of nearly constant airplay that month.
Elsie couldn’t hear the song’s words. She couldn’t even hear her own voice, although there was someone who did: the candy man. He stopped. He turned and gave her a hard stare—stared at the woman who was not in fact dressing down the playful kids at the fountain—the woman who had the audacity to try to call attention to him.