Dead Silence

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  He squints at the undergrowth. Is that a person lurking in the tangle of vines and branches?

  “Here you go. Drink up.” Rob is back, handing him three bottles of cold water. Barnes glances again at the yard, confirms that there is no human silhouette, and focuses on gulping the water. He finishes one bottle and half of the second, then wipes his mouth and emits a quenched “Aaah.”

  “Better?” Rob asks.

  “Much. How was your mountain climbing?”

  Rob tells him about it, showing him several scenic photos he’d snapped on his phone, then asks about Barnes’s adventures in Baracoa.

  “I didn’t get beyond the paladar. I met your friend Miguel.”

  “Yeah? He’s a good guy.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Why? Didn’t he treat you right?”

  “No, he did. He brought me a beer on the house before he even knew I was your friend, actually. Offered me a cigarette, too. I didn’t take it,” he adds, at Rob’s look. “He was smoking himself, drinking a beer . . . he sat down with me and we talked.”

  “So it wasn’t busy?”

  “No, it was.”

  “And Miguel sat and had a conversation with you? Wait, are you talking about the son?”

  “No, the father. The owner.”

  “Huh. What’d you talk about?”

  Barnes considers telling him that a missing person he’d chased in New York years ago had turned up here in Baracoa. He wouldn’t have to mention Wayland’s name.

  But then Rob would ask questions, might figure out who Barnes was talking about, might mention it in front of Kurtis. In a future rum-fueled moment, Barnes might even feel the need to unburden his own guilty secret, the money and Stef, and then what?

  Rob is a father. Maybe he’d understand, wouldn’t judge, wouldn’t tell . . .

  But he’d know. Things would change between them. The shame and regret Barnes feels toward himself . . .

  Could he bear to see it reflected in his friend’s eyes?

  Could he bear to hear Rob ask how the hell Barnes has lived with himself for all these years?

  Same way you get through any day on the job, encountering good people in their lowest moments, and bad people at their worst. Compartmentalization. You lock away the things you can’t face, and you hope they won’t seep out until you’ve figured out how to resolve them and let them go.

  In this case, it will be never, because every bad decision he’d made that fateful October has come back to haunt him now in a way he’d never expected.

  “Barnes? What’d you talk about with Miguel?”

  He clears his throat. “You know . . . just small talk.”

  “Small talk? That’s surprising.”

  “How so?”

  “He has his hands full with that place. He’s friendly, but all business.”

  “Then how did you get to know him? He mentioned Kurtis, so you must have—”

  “After hours,” Rob says. “I’d hang out at the paladar at night to check email and take care of some work stuff because it’s near a Wi-Fi hotspot. He’d come and sit with me after closing, tell me stories about the old days in Baracoa. You were home long before closing, though, and I can’t imagine him taking a leisurely smoke break while he was working. So I guess you charmed him.”

  “Guess I did.” Barnes rubs his morning chin stubble, staring into the shadowy yard.

  Jessie bolts from bed, maternal instinct and adrenaline propelling her into the hall even before she’s cognizant of who is screaming, and where. She rushes to Petty’s room, flipping the light as she bursts through the door. Blinded, she squeezes her eyes shut, hearing commotion behind her. Billy is coming, and Mimi, and now Theodore is shouting from his room and Billy is telling him that it’s all right . . .

  Why is that the first thing people—parents—say at times like this? Why is it what she says to a child who’s been through God knows what and is all alone in the world?

  It’s not all right.

  Forcing her eyes to open again in the glare, she sees the shape of a child in bed, swathed in blankets and the lavender robe. A terrifying thought threads needle pricks of dread into her brain.

  Then she spies a ripple of movement and exhales. He’s alive under there. Alive, and shaking like crazy.

  She sits beside him, resisting the urge to tear off the covers and haul him into a ferocious, Theodore-style embrace. “It’s Jessie, honey. Did you have a nightmare?”

  To her shock, she hears a reply. A single word, one that is muffled by the fabric and probably his thumb and makes no sense, but coherence doesn’t matter.

  “Was that him?” Mimi asks from the doorway.

  “Yes. He said something!”

  The word comes again—Coke?—and this time is followed by a whimpered, “No, no!”

  Jessie’s smile fades.

  Out in the hallway, a fresh commotion erupts—father and son exchanging shouts. “Theodore, are you kidding me?”

  “I was afraid he’d be kidnapped!”

  “I told you he wouldn’t be!”

  “But you wouldn’t get a padlock!”

  Mimi peers back down the hall. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh, what?” Jessie asks.

  “I think there might be a rooster in Theodore’s room.”

  A squawk, beating wings, a crash. There is most definitely a rooster in Theodore’s room, and it seems to have knocked over a lamp. Billy commands Theodore to take Espinoza back out to the coop. He grudgingly obeys, stomping down the back stairway.

  Jessie turns back to the child in the bed. She gently pulls the silky bathrobe away from his face, just enough so that he can see her, the light, and that he’s safe.

  He shudders, eyes scrunched tightly, shielded by four small fingers, the thumb in his mouth.

  “It’s all r—” No, it isn’t. She clears her throat, searching for a truth that isn’t terrifying. “You’re safe, sweetheart. I know this is a crazy house, but I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Eyes still closed, he whimpers another word, this one unmistakable to her ears. “Mama.”

  Does he believe that she’s his mother?

  But when his eyes open, they register no surprise. He was, she realizes, simply calling for his mother the way children do in the night, or when they’re injured or afraid.

  “I know,” she says softly. “I know you’re missing your mom.”

  “And we’re going to help you find her.” Billy is in the doorway behind Mimi, his expression revealing what he would never say aloud.

  Or find out what happened to her.

  For a long time, the room is silent.

  Outside, Espinoza crows again.

  The child flinches, but he doesn’t scream. This time, the sound is more distant, didn’t startle him from sleep, and he’s not alone in the dark.

  He removes his thumb from his mouth, regards them all for a moment, and speaks. “Coke.”

  “What are you trying to tell us?” Jessie asks him.

  “Are you asking for Coke?” Billy suggests. “Are you thirsty? Do you want a Coke?”

  The child echoes the word, and it doesn’t quite sound the same.

  “Or maybe he’s hungry,” Mimi suggests. “Is he saying cook?”

  “Cook?” Jessie repeats to him. “Do you want me to cook? Noodles? Do you want noodles?”

  He seems to hesitate, then repeats the word yet again as the back door squeaks loudly. Theodore clatters into the house and up the stairs.

  Jessie sighs inwardly. Just when they were making progress.

  Her son appears in the hallway, launching another tirade.

  Billy cuts him off. “Theodore, give us a minute here. We’re trying to figure out what he’s trying to tell us!”

  “Is it cook?” Jessie asks the boy. “Coke?”

  He shakes his head. At least they’re communicating.

  “Coke! Coke!”

  No, it isn’t quite cook, but it isn’t quite Coke,
either.

  “Espinoza!”

  Jessie turns to Theodore, summoning the patience to address his needs and rooster obsession in the midst of Little Boy Blue’s breakthrough moment.

  Her son is sleep rumpled, and he seems younger, more vulnerable, without his glasses. His expression is unexpectedly benign. Maybe he’s progressed toward a breakthrough of his own—almost in the same room with the foster child he resents, interrupting, yes, but not causing a scene.

  Billy glares at him. “Theodore, we’re not talking about the rooster right now!”

  “But that’s what it is!”

  “That’s what what is?”

  “The word he’s saying.” He points at the child. “Not cook, and not Coke. He’s talking about Espinoza.”

  Billy is exasperated. “He didn’t say Espinoza! He said ‘Coke’!”

  “No, he didn’t! Espinoza crowed, and it woke him up, and he’s French!” He palm-thumps the door frame. Like his father, he’s rapidly losing patience.

  Jessie musters what remains of her own. “What do you mean, Theodore?”

  “Coq,” he says in precisely the same accent and inflection the boy had used. “It means ‘rooster’ in French.”

  At Theodore’s pronunciation, something shifts within the boy. He sits up. “Oui! Coq!”

  “See? I told you.” Theodore shrugs and turns to leave.

  The child unleashes a full-blown sentence in French.

  “Theodore, wait. What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. I stink at French. I’m tired. It’s Saturday, and I don’t have to get up. I’m going back to—”

  “We need you, son.” Billy stops him with a firm hand on his back. “He’s trying to tell us something, and you’re the only one who can understand what it might be.”

  He turns back, a bit grudgingly. “I only know some words and he talks too fast, like Madame Worst.”

  “Ask him to repeat what he said more slowly,” Jessie suggests.

  He yawns deeply. “I will later. I have to—”

  “Now!” Billy commands in precisely the tone that will send their son into stubborn retreat.

  Sure enough, he stomps off down the hall, saying, “I don’t know how to ask him that.”

  “That’s too bad,” Mimi calls after him. “Because if you did, you and Espinoza would have been the heroes.”

  His footsteps pause. “What do you mean?”

  “This child is lost, and he’s stuck here with all of you because your mom and dad can’t find his family if he won’t talk to them. But I guess he likes roosters, just like you do, because Espinoza made him start talking. But since you’re the only one who speaks French, you’re the only one who can find out where he lives so that he can go home.”

  “I know how to ask him that,” Theodore says, after a moment.

  “Then maybe you should.”

  Seeing Billy open his mouth to chime in, Jessie cuts him off with a gentle, “Theodore, we’re counting on you. Can you please help him?”

  The footsteps return, slowly, and Theodore reappears. This time, he crosses the threshold into the room, bows his head to think for a moment, and then looks at the child. “Ou habites tu?”

  “Je ne sais pas.” The boy shakes his head, and adds, “Avec Maman.”

  “He just says he lives with his mother,” Theodore relates.

  “Ask him where she is,” Jessie instructs, and her son obliges.

  Again, the child replies that he doesn’t know, and seems distressed.

  “It’s all right,” she tells him, giving his shoulder a soothing pat. “Can you tell us your name?”

  Without prompting, Theodore poses the question in French.

  “Prewitt!” the child tells him, and returns, “Quel est votre nom?”

  Theodore turns to Jessie. “He just repeated the question, but he didn’t answer it.”

  “No, I think he did—it’s Pru-wheat, something like that. And now he’s asking you what your name is, so go ahead, tell him your name.”

  “Okay, but . . .” He shakes his head. “Je m’appelle Theodore.”

  “Thee . . . oh . . . door,” the child echoes, smiling faintly and pointing at him. “Theodore.”

  “Oui. Mais quel est votre nom?”

  “Je m’appelle Prewitt.”

  “Prewitt?” He shakes his head and presses a yawn. “I never heard of that name. Oh, well. Mom, now can I—”

  “Theodore! Theodore!” The child reaches out, tugs his long sleeve, and says something else in French, distressed about whatever it is. Jessie recognizes only the last word—“mama,” or something close. She looks at her son, who shrugs.

  “Wait, what? Hey, Prewitt, slow down. Uh . . . Ralentissez. Slow down.”

  Again, the boy speaks, this time more slowly.

  Theodore frowns. “I think he said something about being in the dirt, and a rooster, and his mother, and . . . it sounded like on-de—something, or omm . . . wait, homme?”

  “Oui! Homme!” A vigorous nod, and he repeats homme, along with another word that starts with a d.

  Theodore’s eyes widen in triumph. “I got it! Homme dangereux. It means ‘dangerous man.’”

  Chapter Thirteen

  How convenient for the Angler that the crates Levi Stoltzfus had been loading into his buggy were clearly labeled.

  He’d been bound for the Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival.

  The Angler is headed there, too, westbound, following the highway signs. Maybe he’ll find someone who knows the boy’s whereabouts and share it for a price—or to save their own life.

  “Imbecile!” he’d bellowed at Levi Stoltzfus when he’d knelt there, arms outstretched, praying softly, like he was ready to die, like he wanted to die . . .

  Unnerved, he’d given the man one last chance to tell him where to find the boy. He wouldn’t tell, so he had to die.

  What a waste.

  The Angler had dragged his corpse a little ways back, behind the stand, so that he wouldn’t be visible from the road. He’d been planning to drive away in the buggy and abandon it elsewhere, but the horse had reared and kicked at him.

  “N’aie pas peur. Il ne te fera pas de mal,” Uncle Hugo had whispered back over the years. He’d wanted so badly for his nephew to learn to ride that summer on his farm.

  Don’t be afraid. He won’t hurt you.

  He’d been wrong. The horse had bitten the Angler’s hand when he’d attempted to feed him an apple.

  Disappointed by his refusal to try again, Hugo had agreed to leave the biting to the fish for the remainder of the summer, and the Angler had never gotten over his distaste for horses.

  Distaste, not fear.

  No matter what his father had said about the matter when he’d heard, calling him a sissy, a coward.

  “T’es une poule mouillée!”

  “Now who’s the coward?” he bites out as if his father’s ghost is tagging along for the ride.

  The rising sun glares in the rearview mirror, but he prefers to focus on what lies ahead, and not behind him. The road is rural, forest and field broken every so often by a gas station mini-mart, a smattering of farms, or a crossroads community with a cluster of houses, a school, a church, a bank.

  The car, a midsized maroon Toyota, is not his own. He’d left it back in Canada at an all-night supermarket near the border bridge, garbage bag still in the trunk, the stench of French cheese soon to mingle with rotting human flesh. The slender brunette in the trunk had looked a little like Cecile. But his wife would never have approached a strange man who called to her in a dark, deserted parking lot, his car hood propped open as if he’d needed a jump.

  Crossing the border in a stolen car had been risky; leaving the corpse and evidence in his own car foolhardy. But simmering rage had clouded his judgment as he’d sped through the night toward the US, and it’s hissing to a rapid boil.

  Destroy the boy . . . destroy the boy . . .

  Amelia sits at the kitchen table clutching a hot mug
of coffee in her cold hands. It’s her third, or maybe her fourth. Jessie had brewed a second pot after Billy had poured the last of the first into a travel mug, on his way to share the new information with the Thompkins County sheriff’s office. They’re the ones working Little Boy Blue’s case.

  Prewitt’s case.

  Turns out the name is a fairly common French one, and its meaning had brought tears to Amelia’s eyes.

  Small and brave.

  It certainly fits.

  He seems okay in this moment, after devouring two helpings of the pancakes Jessie had made for him, drenched in butter and warm maple syrup and studded with chocolate chip smiles.

  Multitasking as usual, she’s frying another batch now while on the phone with the Wi-Fi repairman.

  Earlier, she’d called social services, telling the child’s caseworker what they’ve discovered, and that he’d started talking.

  Started . . . and stopped, after Theodore had left the room.

  The agency is working on getting an interpreter over here as soon as possible. Amelia has a foreign language translation app on her phone, but their attempts to question him in stilted French yielded no new information. He’d asked a question of his own: “Ou est Theodore?” Jessie had clasped flattened palms against her cheek, eyes closed, to indicate that her son was sleeping.

  Hanging up the phone, she lets out a frustrated growl.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re going to try to get a repair crew here today. Try. No promises.” She looks at her cell phone. “And I just drained my stupid battery again. Remind me to charge it after we eat.”

  She grabs a spatula and transfers the steaming pancakes from the griddle to a platter.

  “Let me do that,” Amelia says. “Or give me your phone and I’ll go plug it in.”

  “No, it’s fine. These are only good when they’re hot. I’m just frustrated. Someone has to be here all day just in case they show up, so there goes our Apple Festival plan. I thought it might be nice to take Prewitt down there for a bit.”

  “Let me wait here for the repairman while you two go.”

  “No, I’ll stay with him. It’s fine. You wanted to get your Concord grapes.”