by John Bloom
At Bible School, Marie Childs was taking care of the four- and five-year-olds that morning. After Candy’s parable, she had herded them into the old building and led a song to establish some semblance of order. She gave the lesson for the day: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Then, as she was finishing, she noticed Candy walking toward the parking lot and called to her. She wanted her to know that she had finished using Candy’s cassette recorder and would give it back later that day. Candy waved and said, “Fine, I’ll be back in a little bit. I’m just running down to Betty Gore’s and to Target.” Marie turned back to her daily story—the miracle of the fishes and loaves—and then got the kids started on the crafts period. Today the little ones were making bread and fish out of clay and construction paper. Then they started preparing their puppet show for the 11 A.M. assembly; all their mothers were invited to see their rendition of “Noah’s Ark,” complete with stick puppets of the animals marching two by two.
Ninety minutes later, the day’s second assembly went off as scheduled, with several mothers in attendance and the kids all boisterously involved in playing with their handmade puppets. Because the meal was being prepared at the same time, people were constantly bustling in and out of the sanctuary, increasing the general level of chaos, but no one really seemed to mind. When it came time for Ian Montgomery, Candy’s quiet little five-year-old, to do his part in the Noah story, Marie Childs scanned the audience and noticed that his mother wasn’t there. Candy Montgomery had been gone for at least an hour and a half.
The toe on Candy’s left foot was bleeding profusely. She stared at it and fished in her purse for the keys to the station wagon.
Now you’re in the car. You’re normal. The car is still here. Everything looks the same.
Her mind went blank, and in the few lost moments, she was vaguely aware of the car beginning to move.
Father’s Day cards. Puppet show. One step at a time, just do one thing at a time and it will be all right. Don’t think about the house … Father’s Day cards.
She stared down the main street of Wylie and imagined her car was not moving at all. Then the main street was gone. She stared at a stop sign. It scared her; she needed movement. She needed something to do.
You can’t lose control now. Nothing is changed.
The car turned left, onto a lonely farm road that leads due west, toward the Dallas suburb of Plano. The road jogged across a railroad track and opened into an expanse of empty farmland. Weeds grew right up to the shoulder.
Think of something.
She glanced down at her lap and felt a sudden chill in her legs. Her blue jeans were soaked through with water. Her nostrils flooded with the antiseptic smell of fabric softener, and for a moment she thought she would be sick.
Why am I wet? That smell. Can’t panic. Normal. Left, right … Father’s Day, left, Target … Why won’t the car go faster?
Candy’s toe began to throb.
Oh God it hurts … Cut it on the storm door, that’s what happened … How can I be wet?
The car coasted past an abandoned railroad coach and a row of trailer homes and slowed to a crawl for a flashing yellow light. Then it turned abruptly right, onto a little-used blacktop that cuts through the community of Murphy, and then northwest, away from Plano, away from Lucas Church, away from Wylie, into the emptiness of the open prairie.
You’re so dirty … Where is the church?… You love the church … oh God it hurts … No one will know … You couldn’t do it … No one will know.
Two miles north of Murphy, on the right side of the asphalt road, was a long winding drive leading to a white pillared mansion. The mansion was set in the midst of an immaculate pasture encircled by horse fence. Situated along the driveway and parked at odd angles beside the main road were a dozen cars and buses. Most of their occupants were milling around with cameras, shooting pictures of a high arched gate that read “Southfork Ranch.” They had come, that day as every day, to see the exterior set where a television series is filmed, a show populated with a family of exaggerated Texas stereotypes for whom the ranch has become a symbol of failed dreams. None of the tourists noticed the old white station wagon that sped by that day. Its driver had her eyes fixed firmly on the white line of the road.
Tina was only five, but she liked to play with the bigger girls down the street whenever they would let her. Especially Alisa Gore, who was seven and lived in the brick house with the white trim and had a little baby sister. Grandma was at Tina’s house today. She let Tina go outside for a while but told her not to go very far. Tina decided to go to Alisa’s. She knew Alisa was home because of that woman. She saw her. She had blonde curly hair and blue jeans and Tina saw her come out of Alisa’s and get in her station wagon. She was in a hurry, because she drove right by Tina and she never even looked. She just drove down to the end of the block and turned and went away.
That’s what made Tina think of Alisa. She looked both ways before crossing the street, and then she went up to the front door and rang the bell on Alisa’s door. She could hear Alisa’s little baby sister crying in the house. It was real loud crying. So Tina waited a while for Alisa to come. But the baby kept crying, real loud, and nobody came to the door and Tina rang the bell again and again.
After a while Tina quit ringing the bell, and then she knocked on the door, and then she went around to the back where Alisa’s mother and father parked the cars and saw that they were still there, and then Tina went home to tell her grandmother that Alisa’s little sister was crying but Alisa wasn’t home.
Tina never noticed the red droplets on Alisa Gore’s front porch.
No one must know.
The white station wagon wound through the Collin County back country. It pulled up to an intersection one-half mile from Lucas Church. To the right was the church. The car continued forward.
Dry and clean, you need to be dry and clean … calm now … no one must know.
The car angled up an empty, little-used road midway between the county’s two main highways. After a while it pulled back onto Farm-to-Market 1378, but far north of Lucas Church. It continued north past an old church and a red schoolhouse, across a narrow stone bridge, and up a hill. At the crest, it turned right onto a pitted gravel road that disappeared into a forest of oaks and hackberries.
On the left, across a ravine, was a large two-story Tudor home; that would be Mayor Haas’. He had a gas lamp with a wooden rabbit on it. Now the landscape was familiar again. Down a slight incline, left onto the gravel, and up the steeply inclined driveway. Only now could the house be seen from the car, sitting on a little knoll, shrouded by two or three red oaks, a contemporary cathedral-like structure in wood and glass, with the kind of stylishly unfinished look common in Colorado ski lodges. Around the expansive yard was a corral of white horse fence. The station wagon nosed into the double garage and stopped.
Nothing is changed. Out of these clothes and calm. Dry and clean. Normal.
God, the toe.
She unlocked the door leading from the garage into the house and quickly ran upstairs, stripping off her blouse and blue jeans as she entered the master bedroom. She fumbled through shelves in the bathroom but couldn’t find what she was looking for. So she went back downstairs and into the hall bathroom and grabbed a box of Band-Aids. She put her left foot up on the commode and lowered her head down close to the third toe. She wiped the blood away and wrapped the Band-Aid as tightly as she could. She flinched as she felt how deep it was.
I did it on the storm door. We never have fixed the storm door.
She retrieved her blouse and took it into the kitchen and placed it in the sink. She poured the detergent and turned on the water.
Oh no, the smell again.
She started to wretch but regained her composure quickly.
She left the blouse soaking in the sink and went upstairs to find a pair of blue jeans; she matched the shade against the ones she had just taken off and carried them into the bathroom. She to
ok a quick shower and washed her hair. As she did, she noticed an open cut at the hairline on the right side of her forehead. She dried her hair with a towel and then went to get another Band-Aid. But the bandage wouldn’t stick. No matter how she positioned it, the springy hair around the wound kept it from adhering to the skin. Finally she gave up, wrung out her blouse, put on the new blue jeans, threw the old ones in the washer, and waited while the dryer dried her blouse.
Thank goodness it was burgundy-colored.
The last thing she did was find a pair of blue tennis shoes in the upstairs closet. She traded those for the rubber sandals and laced them up tightly to keep pressure on the toe bandage. She picked up her purse. She was ready to go to church.
Betty Huffhines stood at the back of the sanctuary, watching as the last of the four puppet shows came to a close. Mothers began gathering up their purses and their children to leave. As they did, little seven-year-old Jenny Montgomery walked up to Betty with a perplexed expression.
“Do you know where my mom is?” she asked.
“No,” said Betty, “but you should go ask Mrs. Green.”
Barbara Green didn’t know either.
Betty started moving toward the door with the rest of the mothers, anxious to check on the lasagna she was preparing for the luncheon. As she did she happened to see Candy Montgomery’s station wagon as it pulled onto the parking lot. Candy jumped out of the car and met Barbara Green as Barbara was passing from the new sanctuary to the old.
“Oh Barbara,” said Candy breathlessly, “I went down to Betty’s and we just got to talking and then I looked at my watch and thought I had time to go to Target to get Father’s Day cards and I drove all the way to Plano. But then when I got to the parking lot, I realized my watch had stopped and I was late so I didn’t even go in. I’m so upset, because I wanted to see the program.”
“Jenny was just now asking about you,” said Barbara.
“Oh no, well I’ll just have to make it up to them.”
Candy and Barbara continued on into the old building and headed straight for the kitchen. As they entered, Betty Huffhines looked up and said, “So where have you been?”
“Oh, I’m so upset,” said Candy, “I went down to Betty’s and we just got to talking and then I thought I had time to go to buy Father’s Day cards at Target but I realized my watch had stopped when I got there and so I was late.”
As she was talking, Candy filled the glasses with ice and started pouring tea from a pitcher. Most of the women were only half listening to her rather complicated story.
“I had to get Alisa’s swimsuit from Betty or I wouldn’t have been late. My watch stopped.”
Someone handed Candy a plate and all the women filed into the open room of the old sanctuary. The women sat at one table, their children at another. Candy took a place between Rhonda Hensley and Connie Holmes and ladled a helping of lasagna onto her plate. Craig Huffhines and Jimmy Wright, the two teenagers, were doing their best to keep the kids entertained, but the room was noisy with children’s squeals and conversational chatter. Connie and Rhonda started talking about new movies.
“We’re taking Alisa with us tonight to see The Empire Strikes Back, “Candy said. “That reminds me, I’d better go check on the kids.”
Candy took her napkin as she got up and headed for one of the classrooms. Once there, she found a mirror and dabbed at the cut near her right hairline. She returned to the table but sat very still.
“Why are you so quiet today?” said Rhonda.
Candy cleared her throat. The back of her mouth was dry. Her toe throbbed painfully. She smiled. “Because I’m eating and it’s not nice to talk with your mouth full.”
Rhonda smiled. The conversation turned back to movies. Candy got up from the table again. The thought crossed her mind that she might be limping. She made a special effort to walk straight. She found another mirror and dabbed the blood again. Even when it was staunched, she could feel it running down her forehead, exposing her.
No one must know. Day like any other.
When Candy returned, the women had started clearing off the table. She stayed for a few minutes, helping to wash dishes and put things away, until Jenny came into the kitchen and tugged at her blouse.
“Mom, you have to take us to buy Father’s Day cards, remember?”
“Oh, I almost forgot. Okay, dear, almost ready.”
As Candy left the kitchen to find Ian and Alisa, Betty Huffhines happened to notice something odd. Candy Montgomery, who always wore rubber sandals in the summer, was wearing a pair of blue tennis shoes.
The afternoon passed in a fog. Candy bundled the three kids into the station wagon and headed for Allen, a town some five miles away, just large enough to have supermarkets and department stores. The four of them trooped into the Wal-Mart on Highway 5, but Candy couldn’t get them all to the card counter before they started getting sidetracked. Jenny started it when she noticed a candy rack; she knew what she wanted and the others encouraged her. “Nestle’s Crunches, Nestle’s Crunches, Mom, can we?”
Candy had a strict rule against buying any Nestle product. She was participating in a mother’s boycott against Nestle’s because of that company’s sale of a controversial baby formula in the Third World. Perhaps because the kids knew a Nestle’s Crunch was forbidden, they wanted one all the more. Today Candy didn’t feel like fighting, so she gave in.
“We’ll get one each when we leave,” she said.
At the card counter, the kids wanted to look at them all. Ian chose his first, a card with a funny man with a moustache and a straw hat on the front. When you opened it, his straw hat popped up out of the middle. The greeting read “HATS OFF for a wonderful Father’s Day.” Jenny wanted one with a poem. She settled on this one:
To wish you a
Happy Father’s Day
And then to tell you, too
There’s always lots of love and pride
In every thought of you.
Candy chose a joke card, as usual; she and Pat had exchanged them for as long as they had known each other. This one featured a cartoon drawing of a curly-haired wife with rouged cheeks. “Happy FATHER’S DAY Honey,” it read, “it really means a lot to have a husband like you!” The second page showed the same figure and said:
a lot of time
a lot of frustration
a lot of headaches
a lot of worry …
And then the third page:
… BUT A LOT OF FUN!
Pat would love it.
The kids were an odd kind of comfort; they kept her occupied, kept the dragons at bay.
When they got home, Candy gave Alisa her swimsuit and told her to get ready for her afternoon lesson. Then she checked the washer, wrung the water out of a pair of worn blue jeans, and transferred them to the dryer. Ian wandered out into the back yard while the girls were upstairs. Candy picked up the kitchen phone and dialed her husband at work.
“Pat, we just got home from Bible School and wanted to be sure you get enough money at the bank, because Alisa is going to the movie with us. The kids nagged about it after you left this morning, and so I promised them I’d ask Betty if Alisa could stay another night. But then I had to go to Betty’s to pick up Alisa’s swimsuit and we got to talking and I lost track of time, and then when I went to Target I noticed my watch had stopped and I missed the whole Bible School program.”
“Uh-huh,” said Pat. He had just returned from a Texas Instruments office picnic, and was anxious to get over to the North Building to make some computer runs. “So Betty’s letting Alisa go to the movie with us?”
“She never did say anything about the movie really,” said Candy, “but she said Alisa could spend the night again.”
“Listen, honey, that’s fine with me, I’m about to go to the bank now.”
“Pat, would you happen to know where Allan is working today?”
“Allan Gore? No. Why?”
“It’s not important. Okay, we’ll me
et you in the parking lot about fifteen of five.”
“Okay, fine.”
Pat hung up and thought, “What was that all about?”
At 410 Dogwood Street, the home of Allan and Betty Gore, their two children, and their two cocker spaniels, no one came or went on the afternoon of June 13, 1980. The phone rang intermittently but wasn’t answered. Around noon, a delivery man for a parcel service rang the doorbell but got no response. Around four, Allan Gore himself placed a call from the Dallas–Fort Worth Airport, where he was about to board a plane. After ten or eleven rings, he hung up. The only sign that the house was occupied at all was the muffled sound from within of a small baby, crying at the top of its lungs.
Behind the house, the two dogs skittered nervously around the yard, howling and whimpering by turns, as if they were confused, or perhaps simply frightened.
2 Candy and Pat
All her life she would remember the tidy little village on the west coast of France, the one where the peddler’s carts rattled down the cobblestone streets, firewood stacked precariously high. The Wheelers lived in a big stone house on the outskirts of town, where gently undulating farmland stretched for miles beyond the back door, gateway to the world’s richest wine-growing regions. There were other American families there, too, all waiting for the new Army base to be finished. Their young children roamed the shady lanes and the countryside, teasing the goats and scaring the chickens, climbing in forbidden trees, treating the strange, wondrous place as a perpetual amusement park created for their benefit. Candy Wheeler was tiny, blonde, cute as a button, and already showing signs of being the more high-strung of the Wheeler girls, but she was still too young to go far on her own. She rode the school bus each day to a room where a pale black woman would teach them how to count and say simple French phrases, but Candy seemed more interested in her classmates, especially the ones always referred to as “the two little Communist boys,” deposited in La Rochelle by some sad circumstance of the war.