Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery

by Charles Martin

  Oh yeah ... and what was the evidence that brought about the pardon, and where is it?

  Chapter 9

  showered and shaved in the dark, but it's hard to hide in my old apartment, and Tommye had always been a light sleeper. I finished shaving and splashed on some aftershave, and she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She looked pale.

  She stretched. "I love that smell."

  "Yeah." I smiled. "It's hard to beat Old Spice." I slapped my face again. "Nothing but the best for my face."

  She held a rubber band between her teeth, did that thing only girls can do with their hair to push it into a ponytail, then grabbed the rubber band and did the one hand flip, wrap, and flip. Halfawake, she hobbled out of bed, brushed her teeth, popped a handful of pills, and walked across the room where, with no warning whatsoever, she stripped down to absolutely nothing.

  I was not expecting that.

  I guess my mouth was pretty far open, because when she turned and began walking to the closet where I kept the ironing board, she saw me, and a look of confusion spread across her face. Two seconds later, she saw herself. She stopped short, closed her eyes, and said, "Sorry. Old habits-" She shook her head.

  I grabbed my keys, threw on my cap, and slipped into my flip-flops. Pulling the door behind me, I said, "The rain over the last couple of nights has probably raised the water level in the swamp. Thought maybe I'd go down to Gibson Island this afternoon and see if the warmouth have come in. You want to go?"

  I heard the pitter-patter of feet, then she stuck her head around the door. "Yeah, I'd like that."

  "Aunt Lorna and Unc'll probably go."

  "Even better."

  I smiled and pulled my cap down. "I don't know how they fish in L.A., but down here we cover up a bit. Keeps off the sun and the mosquitoes. Although I doubt the mosquitoes have ever seen anything like you either."

  She nodded and tried to rub the sleep off her face. "I suppose I had that coming. See you later."

  UnC and Aunt Lorna had one phone in their house. It hung in the kitchen, its dial worn and yellowed. It was not unusual for Unc to get calls from customers this early. I sat closest, so when it rang I answered it. In the background I heard someone being paged over an intercom, followed by a series of dings, and then somebody tapped the phone.

  I added powdered creamer to my coffee and asked again, "Hello?"

  More tapping. That's about when I woke up. "Sketch, is that you?"

  Several taps.

  That confused me. "Wait, wait. One is yes. Two is no."

  A second passed. One tap.

  I sipped and burnt my lips. "Are you okay?"

  One tap.

  "You want to talk with me?"

  One tap.

  "Can it wait a day?"

  Silence, followed by one tap.

  "I'll get there soon as I can."

  I hung the phone back in the receiver as the first hint of sunshine was breaking the treetops in the distance. One of Aunt Lorna's peacocks strutted across the shadows beneath the kitchen window. In the pasture out beneath the setting moon, several Brahman cows grazed quietly and three or four turkeys marched single file along the fencerow. Unc cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, bringing me back inside the house.

  "Oh," I said, pointing my mug toward the phone. "That was the kid. Said he wanted to talk with me." I shook my head. "Actually, he tapped the phone." I turned up my cup, rinsed it in the sink, and then headed for the door. I pushed it open, then turned. "I met a friend of yours yesterday."

  Unc raised his eyes but not his head. "Yeah."

  I smiled. "Mandy Parker ... she works with the DA's office." I waited for a reaction, but didn't get one. "She had an old picture of you." I paused, letting the effect set in. "The kind where your hair is messed up and there's that big ruler on the wall behind you." I smiled. "She said they'd be placing the kid in a day or so."

  Unc looked at Lorna, and then both looked up at me. He folded the paper. "That okay with you?"

  "You never needed my permission before. Why now?"

  "This one's different."

  "How so?"

  He sat back, tilted his hat, and stared out the same kitchen window. "Twenty-seven years, five months, and six days ago, my threeyear-old son faced a real similar thing ... He sat all alone with people he didn't know, waiting for somebody to rescue him from a world that scared him." He folded his napkin and wiped the corners of his mouth. "No kid should ever have to know that." The creases in his face showed, like they did whenever the sun got bright. "Lorna and I ... we just thought we'd sit in while all of you work to figure out that kid's story."

  Aunt Lorna reached across the table and held his hand. I shut the screen door and then looked back through the screen at a man who'd carried the weight of the world on his shoulders for most of his adult life. I once thought maybe that weight was a chip. As I got older and could see the forest for the trees, I saw that it was more like a yoke.

  "Yes sir. It's all right with me."

  I idled Vicky down the drive to the hard road, where the glisten off the train tracks caught my eye. For a moment I sat there like a man staring into a campfire-seeking the ghost of the Silver Meteor.

  I thought about young Tillman McFarland unloading here with nothing but a box of tools and hope. And thought of what he started. But it wasn't the sound of tires on gravel, the four wood ducks jetting overhead at nearly forty miles an hour, the train in the distance, or the lost sound of my father's voice that gave me pause. It was Tommye's laughter. There was no getting around it. Tommye was a pretty woman-some would say "drop-dead gorgeous," and they'd be right-but it was her laughter that was beautiful.

  Chapter 10

  n the hospital, the guard was gone, but his chair remained. Outside the door, a male nurse stood over a rolling cart filled with prescriptions. The newspaper was spread across the top of the cart, open to the sports page. I motioned to the paper. "Smoltz pitch last night?"

  He shook his head. "Some new guy. Gave up only two hits. Chipper hit a three-run dinger in the sixth. Braves won by five."

  "He's a shoo-in for Cooperstown."

  He nodded.

  "Something told me this would be a good day."

  I walked into the room, but it was empty. The bed was made and the kid was gone. I looked around for some sign that he was still here, then turned back to the nurse. "Where's the kid?"

  He shook his head. "They checked him out this morning."

  No wonder Sketch had called me. "Where'd he go?"

  He shrugged. "Don't know."

  "He leave anything?"

  "You might check with the doctor."

  "Thanks."

  I walked across to the nurses' station and spoke to a lady who seemed to vaguely recognize me. "The kid that was in that room ... where'd he go?"

  She pointed down the hall toward the elevator with her pen. "Doctor sent him home this morning."

  "Home?"

  She nodded.

  "Where's that?"

  "Are you related to the boy?"

  I shook my head. "No, I'm with the paper. We're trying to-"

  She held up her hand. "Can't help you."

  "Thanks."

  On the first floor, I called Mandy Parker. "Mandy, this is Chase Walker."

  "Thought you might be calling. You at the hospital?"

  "Yeah. Where's the kid?"

  "Glynn County Boys' Home."

  "Please don't tell me that. When?"

  "Early this morning."

  I took a deep breath. "Thanks. I'll be in touch."

  By the time I turned six, I'd lived in half a dozen foster or group homes. Seems like somebody was hell-bent on moving me around as much as possible. About the time I got my sheets warm, somebody came in, loaded me into a car, and drove me someplace else. Don't get me wrong, homes for children are needed, but it's a lot like purgatory. Why prolong the suffering; why not just get it over with?

  Your entire life is consumed with two opposing
ideas: On the one hand, you know you've been abandoned, rejected, thrown out on the street. Otherwise, you'd be with your parents. The flip side tells you that they could come to their senses, change their minds, and come barging through that door at any second. For that reason, you learn to sleep with one eye open. Because when they do, you want them to know that you've kept up the vigil. That you believed. That you hoped. Problem is that around the age of six, your eyelids grow heavy.

  I walked into the GCBH and signed in with the receptionist. "I'm here to see a little boy who was brought in this morning from Southeast Georgia Regional Medical Center. Goes by a John Doe name at the present."

  She checked what looked like a logbook, then pointed behind her. "Second hallway on the right, third door on the left."

  "Thanks."

  The door was cracked and a fluorescent light flickered on the other side, so I knocked lightly and pushed gently. The room was small, about the size of a broom closet. If it had been gray at one time, age had turned it an off-shade of mildew green. No books, no TV, no radio, and no window. The only color in the room was the red ink on the poster that gave escape instructions in case of a fire.

  I took a shallow breath as a host of memories flooded over me that I had no desire to recall. I shook them off.

  Sketch sat at a small desk opposite the bed. A single-bulb, greenshaded banker's light was on, and he sat huddled over his notebook. He was dressed in new jeans, a baggy T-shirt, and flip-flops. When I walked in, he looked up and showed absolutely no reaction whatsoever.

  "Hey, Sketch." I sat on the bed and looked around the room. "Looks like they moved you to a new place."

  He looked around as if the obvious was obvious to him too.

  "How you feeling?"

  Just then, a janitor pushing a dolly loaded with several cases of empty soda pop bottles passed in the hallway. Sketch saw the dolly pass, looked off into space, then slid from his chair and walked into the hall. He followed the janitor a ways, his little flip-flops smacking his heels, turned left, and stopped when the dolly stopped outside the men's bathroom. When the janitor walked inside, the boy knelt next to the empty bottles.

  Evidently, between the nurses and the antibiotics, his back had quit oozing and was no longer soaking through his shirt. And his glasses seemed to fit his face. He leaned in close, read a bottle, and then pointed. I leaned in and saw nothing but a swallow of backwash that remained in the bottle. He pointed again. I felt like we were playing charades.

  I held my hands wide like I was telling a fish story, then narrowed them to just a few inches apart. "Big or little word?"

  He shook his head like he didn't have time for all that foolishness and pointed again.

  I looked again, but still nothing caught my eye. I put one finger in the air. "First word. First letter. What's it start with?"

  He rolled his eyes and opened his sketchpad. In two seconds, he drew the outline of a shape and held it up for me. It looked like a soda bottle. I reached into my pocket and pulled out two quarters. "You want a soda?"

  He shook his head again, smacked the paper with pencil as if he were saying Pay attention!, and drew another picture. He held it up, and this time I saw a truck-the kind with roll-up doors on the side that delivers cases of beer or soda.

  This time I shook my head. "I don't understand."

  He looked into the men's bathroom, and when he didn't see the janitor, he slid the bottle from its blue plastic container and held it out, motioning me to look closer. He turned it slightly and pointed at the name of the bottler stamped into the glass.

  I read it aloud. `Jesup Brothers Bottlers." I looked at the kid, who was looking at me. I read it again. `Jesup Brothers Bottlers?"

  He nodded.

  I held the bottle. "Does this have something to do with you?"

  He pointed at the bottle, then opened his sketchpad and pointed at the picture showing the man from the waist up.

  I put two and two together. "Does Bo drive that truck?"

  He shook his head, flipped a page, and pointed to the hand holding the pliers.

  I picked up the bottle. "Does Bo work on those trucks?"

  He looked over each shoulder, then nodded quickly and darted back down the hall to his room.

  Jackpot.

  I followed him to his room, where he was trying to climb up onto the bed. His right foot was slipping on the double sheet, and all he was doing was pulling the sheet off the bed. I knelt down and held out two hands like you do to help somebody up on a horse. He hesitated.

  I nodded at my hands. "Go ahead. I've got some experience with this sort of thing."

  He put his feet in my hands as if they were a lion's mouth, and I gently lifted him up. I propped him up with some pillows and then pointed back out the door. "You want a soda?"

  He shook his head.

  "You sure?" I held out the quarters again. "My treat."

  He nodded.

  "Coke?"

  He shook his head and scribbled quickly without looking at the page. He held it up. MOUNTAIN DEW.

  I smiled. "A kid after my own heart."

  I bought a couple of Dews and two MoonPies. He sat on his bed and ate carefully, not spilling a crumb. I sat on the chair at his desk, spilling crumbs all across the floor. When we finished, I stood and headed for the door. When I did, he stopped chewing and watched me closely-which told me more than a smile would have.

  "I'm going to check in with the administrator here, and then I've got to get to work. You going to be okay?" I should've known better.

  He drank the last sip of Mountain Dew and set the bottle quietly on the table beside the bed. As he did, it struck me how much we both had in common with that bottle.

  I tried to smile. "I'll come back ... tomorrow. Maybe bring a game of checkers."

  He frowned.

  "You don't like checkers? How 'bout cards? We could play slapjack or 21."

  He flipped to a clean sheet. His hand flew across the page, then he held it up to show me what looked like matching king and queen chess pieces.

  "You play chess?"

  One quick nod.

  "You any good?"

  A second quick nod.

  "But I don't play chess."

  He thought for a moment, then both sides of his mouth turned up slightly. I read his face.

  "Okay, tomorrow. Chess it is."

  I turned to walk out, but he tapped the bottle with his pencil. When I turned around he was holding up his notebook. It read BYE, CHASE.

  "Bye "

  When I said that, his right hand came up, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and took the right side of his mouth up with them even farther. I walked out of the room and down the hall-my own flipflops slapping my heels. The echo of my gait brought to mind the picture of Sketch, his room, and this place. I looked around, read the signs for the office of the administrator, and shook my head. This whole thing had just gone from bad to worse. I had done the one thing you never do to a kid like that. I'd offered false hope. His face told me that. And false hope is worse than no hope at all.

  Mandy Parker picked up her office phone and sounded busy. "District Attorney's Office."

  "Mandy ... Chase Walker. I've got some information that might help you with our little friend. You got a minute?"

  "Yes. Let me drop some stuff off at the courthouse, and I'll meet you at Starbucks in fifteen minutes. I'm in desperate need of caffeine."

  I arrived early, ordered two double shot lattes, and didn't have to wait two minutes before she arrived. She wore a gray striped suit-the kind with a skirt-high heels, a white blouse, and nylons. When I stood up to offer her a seat, I had to look up. She was about an inch taller than me. "You been in court today?"

  "Yes ... a couple of different hearings."

  I told her about my visit to the boy's home and how we'd played ring around the Coke bottle until I figured out what Sketch was trying to tell me.

  She sipped her coffee and tried to read my face. "What're you goin
g to do?"

  "Thought I'd drive over to Jesup Brothers Bottlers and see if I can find anyone who knows Bo."

  'Want some company?"

  Chapter 11

  fter bouncing around the state from home to home, I landed in Augusta in a boys' home where the walls were lined with bunks, smelly socks, and too many pairs of the same kind of shoes. I remember waking up to the smell of cut grass and the sound of mowers. I could look out my window and watch those men in green suits and yellow earmuffs zip across the fairways on red machines. Between them and me stood a really tall chain-link fence.

  About twice a day I would imagine myself hopping that eight-foot containment fence and riding one of those mowers home. There were only two problems with this. First, the other boys told me I was too short to crank it, but I told them that if I could get across that fence, I'd figure a way. My second problem was a little harder to fix.

  It was a Tuesday morning when a man in denim signed me out and took me home. I studied him and thought he was just one more stop on the streetcar called my life. He was different from a lot of the men I'd been around. He was tall and skinny, his boots were dirty, and his jeans were faded and fraying at the ends. His sunglasses looked like the kind the baseball players wear that flip up and down. His baseball cap was old, and whenever he was inside he carried it in hands that were knotty and hard. He wore a gold ring on his left hand, a white T-shirt beneath his button-up, and his hair was cut real short around the sides and back-like you could see his skinand the top was cut just long enough to comb over. Unlike most of the other men I'd been around who were always telling me what to do, he didn't talk much, but always seemed to be pointing his ear at me. The first time he shook my hand, I thought he smelled like a horse.

  When we got in his truck he said, "You hungry?"

  I nodded.

  "You like Krystal?"

  I shrugged.

  "Well"-he flipped on his blinker and eased out of the parking lot-`we'll try Krystal, and if you don't like it, we'll go someplace else."

  I looked in the rearview mirror, saw a cloud of white smoke, and smelled what I would later learn was burning oil.