Your Son Is Alive

by James Scott Bell

  It looked like that just might happen.

  Jayson Gillespie, the Cubs spitfire third baseman, got a clean single up the middle. That was followed by a grounder from Travis Millward that the Cardinal shortstop mishandled. Two men on, no outs.

  Dylan’s right leg started with the jimmies. Erin pressed her hand on his knee.

  “Don’t let him see you like this,” she said.

  She was right. But at least Kyle wasn’t looking at him. He was squirming, too. But then again, Kyle always squirmed. He wasn’t ADHD, so they’d been reassured. But he didn’t have the greatest attention span, either. Well, who did anymore? Even among adults. Heck, they had cameras in cell phones now, for crying out loud. Parents were taking digital pictures all over the place. Dylan was happy with his plain old flip phone, thank you very much.

  Sergio Varela hit one right back to the non-pitching pitcher, who threw to first instead of going for the force out at third.

  Two men on, one out, and two batters before Kyle.

  The littlest boy on the team, Neil Brooke, who as about as tall as his bat, came up for his swipes. Though diminutive, he always took a mighty cut. This time he connected, sending a sharp grounder to third base. Jayson Gillespie ran for home and the first really exciting play of the game happened at home plate when the third baseman made a perfect throw to the catcher.

  Jayson Gillespie stopped five feet from the plate and just stared.

  The Cardinal catcher stared too.

  The Cardinals coach screamed, “Tag him! Tag him!”

  The catcher started walking toward Jayson.

  Jayson turned and ran toward left field.

  The catcher ran after him.

  It was a race, but the catcher—who wore the gear, even though he never caught real pitches––was no match for the fleet Gillespie.

  As the entire bleacher section laughed its head off, the Cards’ manager and the lone umpire ran out waving their arms, yelling, until both boys stopped in center field.

  After consultation among the ump and two managers, it was determined that Jayson was out and Sergio Varela would stay on second.

  Two outs.

  As the hilarity died down, and with one more batter to go before Kyle, Dylan had to grip the bench to keep his body from shaking like a washing machine.

  He looked to see if Kyle was getting ready to hit.

  But he wasn’t.

  He was waving to Mike, the young assistant coach.

  Dylan wanted to shoot down there to see what was the matter. But Coach Mike was on the spot, bending over Kyle, listening. Then, with a knowing smile, Coach Mike looked up at Dylan and winked. Then he took Kyle by the hand and ran him down to the end of the bench and toward the outhouses.

  Oh the timing, the terrible timing! Was it the natural course of bladder events, or was Kyle scared before his first at-bat?

  Dylan decided it would be embarrassing for Kyle if he ran over to see how his bathroom break went. Erin put her hand on his arm.

  “He’ll be fine,” Erin said.

  “But will I be?” Dylan said.

  Brandon McNab was walking up to the tee. Dylan cast a nervous glance at the outhouses. What if Kyle didn’t get back in time? Dylan was prepared to go down to the field and appeal to the merciful umpire for a slight delay. Maybe there was some obscure rule about five-year-old tee-ball players who had to pee. If not, Dylan was ready to make one up on the spot and appeal to the crowd like some Roman senator.

  Then that crowd cheered as Brandon McNab laced a hit through the gap between third and short.

  Kyle’s turn!

  No Kyle.

  Manager Dave, coaching at first base, shouted, “Who’s up?”

  Jared Farmer’s mom, the scorekeeper, said, “Kyle.”

  “Well where is he?” Manager Dave said.

  “Slight emergency!” Dylan shouted.

  Some understanding giggles from other parents.

  Manager Dave looked at the ump, who looked at Manager Dave, and seemed like he was about to make ruling.

  “I’ll check!” Dylan said, and almost twisted his ankle jumping out of the stands. He limp-jogged to the outhouses. Three of them, facing away from the field toward the pathway at the edge of the park.

  As he came around to the front, Dylan expected Coach Mike to be standing there, tapping his foot.

  He saw no one.

  “Kyle?”

  No answer.

  “Mike?”

  Again, nothing.

  The first portable said Unoccupied on the knob.

  Also the second.

  “Hey, anybody?”

  A lizard skittered out from between two outhouses, and froze.

  When Dylan saw the third outhouse also said Unoccupied he opened its door.

  Coach Mike was on the pot. Fully clothed. Leaning against the side.

  But he wasn’t moving.

  Blood seeped from his head.

  Dylan’s thoughts split him in two.

  Find Kyle.

  Help Mike.

  As he quickly checked the other two outhouses, Dylan managed to get the phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, and thumbed 9-1-1.

  Facing the field now, he shouted, “Help! Over here!”

  The 9-1-1 dispatcher answered. A woman. “What is your emergency?”

  “Need an ambulance at Hinton Park. Man hurt––” speaking this as he waved at Erin and others, and now they were coming.

  “What is your name, sir?”

  “My son’s missing.”

  Erin reached him.

  “What is it?” Erin said.

  “Look for Kyle!”

  “Where?”

  “He’s not in the bathrooms. He might be hurt.”

  The dispatcher said something. Dylan said, “Hinton Park! Ambulance and police. I have to go.”

  He snapped his phone shut and said to Erin, “Look up the hiking trail!”

  She seemed to know everything then, did not hesitate. But the look on her face broke his heart into a million pieces. He willed his own to heart to hold together.

  Parents were gathering around now. Jayson Gillespie’s father was nearest to Dylan, asking what was wrong.

  “The last one,” Dylan said, pointing to the outhouse. “Coach Mike’s in there.”

  Then Dylan ran to the dirt path and went in the opposite direction from Erin. Toward the street.

  He heard his wife’s voice in the distance yelling, “Kyle!”

  Dylan stopped where path met sidewalk, looked up and down the street. Saw nothing but the normal traffic flow. His breathing got cold, hard, fast.

  A skinny teen––maybe sixteen––rolled up on his skateboard. Dylan up put his hand.

  The boy didn’t slow.

  Dylan grabbed the boy’s shoulder.

  The skateboard skittered off to the patch of grass by the curb.

  “Hey man!” the boy said.

  Dylan said. “I have to ask you––”

  “Let go!”

  “Did you see a boy?”

  “No—”

  “In a baseball uniform?”

  The skinny skater pushed Dylan in the chest, grabbed his skateboard and ran off.

  Once, when Dylan was in college, he’d gone backpacking with his girlfriend. He and Linda went deep into the Los Padres National Forest. They had a fight and Dylan stomped off to let Linda stew in her own juices. An hour later he went back to apologize, but she was gone. He called her name, got nothing back. And all sorts of imagined horrors filled his mind. Did she fall off a cliff? Into the river? Break her leg?

  Get kidnapped?

  He ran along the trail, shouting her name, not stopping until he was out of breath, unable to go on. Then he looked around, realized he was not on the trail they’d come on.

  He himself was lost.

  He had the same feeling now.

  Was Kyle safe?

  Parents and kids were swarming around the outhouses now. Dylan’s mind tried to comprehen
d the incomprehensible. Somebody had savagely attacked Coach Mike and taken Kyle.

  In broad daylight!

  Kyle had to be nearby.

  Distant sirens now.

  Dylan ran to the corner, where the parking lot was. When he got there the wind was completely out of him. His heart was pumping so fast, he thought it might break a rib.

  He doubled over, put his hands on his knees.

  The ground blurred under him.

  “Please God, please,” he said, though his relationship with the Almighty was distant at best.

  No voice answered him, only the sirens, blaring.

  Everybody pitched in to search.

  Manager Dave, the ex-Marine who led the Cubs, got some men together and said, “Cover everything from this side, through the trees, down to the street. Go!”

  It became a search-party free-for-all. Within his panic Dylan felt a warmth. This was what community was about. This was not a matter of debate, like the time he and Paul Fusali got into a brief shouting match over presidential politics. All that was insignificant now. It was about finding Kyle, a kid, a child, one of their own.

  The police arrived, one black-and-white unit. Then another.

  Dylan told one of the patrolmen, a big guy, as much as he could. It was probably a two-minute ramble, but it felt like an hour.

  It was interrupted by a voice shouting, “I got somebody!”

  It was Roger Millward, Travis’s dad. He was coming out of the trees with a confused-looking elderly man. He held the man by the arm, like a cop escorting a suspect to jail.

  Dylan and the big patrolman met Roger and the old man halfway.

  “He’s a witness,” Roger said. “Lives right across the street over there.” Roger motioned behind him with his thumb.

  “What can you tell us?” the patrolman asked.

  The old man was dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, a white T-shirt and yellow cardigan, unbuttoned. His white eyebrows needed a major trim. His sallow face needed sun.

  “Seen a guy get in a car,” the old man said.

  “Tell him what else,” Roger Millward said.

  “Had a big bag with him,” the old man said. “Threw the bag in the trunk.”

  “That it?” the patrolman said.

  “He told me it was a big bag,” Roger said. “Big enough for a young boy.”

  “What kind of bag is like that?” the patrolman said.

  “That kind,” the old man said. He pointed at a black equipment bag a few yards away.

  “That’s a bag for carrying bats and gloves,” the patrolman said.

  “But it’s big,” Roger said.

  “You think the bag had anything in it?” the patrolman said. “I mean, besides bats.”

  “Don’t know,” the old man said.

  “Tell him what else,” Roger said.

  “Well,” the old man said, “this fellow seemed like he was in a hurry.”

  “Can you describe the man?” the patrolman said.

  “He was wearing a baseball hat,” the old man said. “I think maybe he had on a uniform-type shirt.”

  “You think?” Dylan said.

  The patrolman put a hand on Dylan’s arm. “Let me do this.”

  “I wasn’t studyin’ ’im,” the old man said. “I just came out to water my lawn. I seen this guy across the street. In a baseball hat. Like everybody else around here.”

  “What kind of car was he driving?” the patrolman said.

  “Think it was silver.”

  “Do you know what make?”

  “Nah.”

  “Four doors or two doors?”

  “Not sure. Four I think.”

  “I suppose you didn’t get a license plate number,” the patrolman asked.

  The old man shook his head. “Why would I?”

  “But it’s a silver car,” Roger Millward said. “You can order stops, can’t you?”

  “For what?” the patrolman said. “It sounds like one of the coaches or fathers with a bat bag.”

  “Parked over there?” Roger said. “And not the parking lot?”

  “There’s no law says you have to park in a parking lot,” the patrolman said.

  “Time’s wasting!” Dylan said. “Can’t you do one of those Amber alerts?”

  “Not on this information, sir.”

  “Well, what can you do?”

  “We can look. And we will, sir, we will.”

  Three months later Dylan and Erin filed with The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They told their story on the local news and got a national pickup.

  They talked to the FBI.

  They hired a private investigator.

  They put off plans to have more children.

  They went to grief counseling.

  They began to drift apart.

  Kyle Reeve was never found.

  3

  “Oh, man,” Jaquez said.

  Dylan felt cold and drained, like he’d run a mile through a snowstorm.

  “I didn’t mean to go on like that,” he said.

  “S’okay,” Jaquez said.

  “It’s just that it all came back hard this morning.”

  “This morning?”

  “Somebody stuck a …”

  “A what?”

  Dylan, short of breath, sat on the therapeutic chair normally reserved for clients undergoing spinal rehab.

  “Come on now,” Jaquez said. “We’re this far along.”

  Dylan sighed. Then told Jaquez about the note.

  “Wow,” Jaquez said. “Think it might be true?”

  “I don’t see it,” Dylan said. “More like somebody trying to get at me for some reason.”

  “You tick anybody off lately?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Aw, man.” Jaquez put a hand the size of a bathroom mat on Dylan’s shoulder. “I know how you feel.”

  “Do you?” Dylan said, with more harsh skepticism than he intended.

  Jaquez said, “My dad got shot dead robbing a 7-Eleven when I was twelve. Kid at school started giving me grief about it. Kid was a bully. I tried to fight him once and he bloodied my nose. I swore I’d get even with him.”

  “Did you?”

  “Oh yeah. I shot up six inches and a hundred pounds in two years. All I had to do was give him the look and he’d run away.”

  Dylan said, “I wish I knew who to look at.”

  “Don’t let him work your head,” Jaquez said.

  “Kyle would be twenty now. Even if he was … I wouldn’t know him. He wouldn’t know me.”

  “You got a security camera at your house?”

  “I’ve been meaning to.”

  “Let me give you my guy,” Jaquez said. “I got security like you wouldn’t believe. Squirrel tries to get in my yard, boom, I got his picture.”

  “Squirrel?”

  “I gotta protect my nuts.”

  Dylan almost fell off his therapeutic chair. His laughter was a relief.

  Jaquez said, “My guy can fix you up with a hidden cam at your door. Catch the guy if he tries it again.”

  “Maybe,” Dylan said.

  “And it’s on me,” Jaquez said.

  “What?”

  “You made it possible for me to hit twenty-five foot fadeaways again.” Jaquez mimed his shooting motion. “Least I can do for you.”

  “Jaquez …”

  “No more about it.” He stood to his full, magnificent height. “I’m ready to lay some hurt on the Spurs tonight. I’ll dunk one for you.”

  “Thanks,” Dylan said.

  “And I’ll send a prayer upstairs,” Jaquez said. “He’s got angel armies, you know.”

  4

  Dylan left the office at 4:30. He pulled out of the parking garage, noting his vision was fuzzy. Or, rather, unfocused. In his chest, the two demon Gs were pounding at him anew.

  When he’d first gone to see Dr. Reimer, he was told to keep a journal, write down his thoughts and feelings and fears. It
was one prong of their multifaceted dealing with grief. That was one of the demon Gs, grief, and it quickly became apparent that while it was relentless, it was not the most cruel.

  The cruel demon was GUILT. And that was how Dylan always spelled it in the journal. All caps. Grief and GUILT, and the latter was the tormentor, the one that kept him up at night. Or, when he managed to get some sleep, it would wake him up, and he would hear himself wailing for a long and torturous minute.

  He had failed to protect his son.

  He had failed to bring him home.

  It was back now, GUILT, and Dylan did not want to rush to the shadows and silence of his own home. Maybe he could hit a sports bar and have dinner, see the first part of the Laker game. Maybe catch that Jaquez Rollins dunk. He’d be with people and surrounded by noise, and maybe that and a beer would start putting the note business out of his mind.

  But two minutes after leaving the parking garage, he found himself heading for Hollywood.

  Runyon Canyon was a bit of city parkland off Vista Street. Popular with day hikers and dog walkers, it offered a panoramic view of the cityscape between Hollywood and downtown. It was also the last place where Dylan had been with Kyle all by himself.

  He remembered every detail of that day. The feel of Kyle’s hand in his. His son’s joyous dance as he spotted an airplane gliding over the downtown skyline. His giggle at the friendly labrador who thought Kyle was a new toy to play with.

  They sat on the bench on the point at the eastern edge of the park.

  It was to that bench Dylan headed now, taking the dirt path instead of the paved one, even if it meant getting dusty. Kyle had preferred the dirt path for just that very reason.

  When Dylan reached the point, both benches were taken. But then the couple sitting on the furthest one, the one facing downtown, got up, laughing.

  Dylan took their place, not laughing.

  When Kyle was a toddler, Dylan and Erin had attended a local Methodist church for a while. Erin’s parents were good Methodists, still living in Indiana. But when the minister started preaching more about current events than biblical ones, Dylan stopped going. What was the point? He could hear that stuff on CNN.

  Now, looking at the downtown skyline, bathed in the soft glow of an orange sunset, Dylan heard himself say, “God, if he is alive, let him be safe and happy.”