Evidence of Things Not Seen
Page 5
Yeah, I was there for every search. Actually it seemed like it was one big search for four days. I went out there a lot. The whole town was out there, walking side by side. I didn’t think we’d find him. Like I said, I don’t think he’s dead.
Finding Tommy is going to be random. He was a random guy. That pull-out is a random place. I mean, it’s a dirt patch on the side of the road but it’s been there forever. People call it the Stillwell pull-out because it’s been there as long the ranch. Maybe longer. Someone started stopping there a long time ago and it kept happening. Why? Because the tectonic plates shifted in such a way that there was a hill on one side of the road and a field on the other? Because of the way the road curved around the hill and still left a big stretch of dirt? Because a couple of trees grew up around that dirt so people could stop to pee in privacy? Who knows? People started stopping there. To sleep. To sell shit. All kinds of people stop there. Tommy could have been snatched. He could have willingly gotten into someone’s car because they asked him to. He’s out there. Somewhere. We haven’t figured where to look.
MAY 16 . TWELVE DAYS MISSING
THE SMYTHES
Mrs. Smythe: Sheriff Caldwell! What are you doing here? Tom, the sheriff’s here. Have you found Tommy? Have you heard something? Tom, hurry! He won’t talk to me until you get here.
Well, at least you aren’t interrogating us separately like you did before. That was awful, Sheriff. As if we did something to hurt our Tommy. I don’t care if it’s policy. You should apologize. Thank you.
Tom, what are you doing? Sheriff, can’t you talk to me? He’s up to his elbows in grease trying to fix an irrigation pump. He’ll be in shortly.
Tell me, Sheriff. Has something happened?
You want to search his room again? What for? You have his computer. You’ve taken all his schoolbooks. There’s nothing else in his room except his clothes. Did you want to take those?
Of course he had a library card. We could hardly keep him in books. Tommy was a very bright boy. Why do you need to see what he checked out of the library? This is ridiculous. How will that help you find him? How is looking at all the books he checked out of the library a possible lead?
Notes in the margin? Physics experiments he was interested in? What are you thinking? That Tommy did some physics experiment and disappeared? I can’t believe you’re listening to those kids.
Sheriff, you may look in every book in this house and in every library in Texas. But this so-called lead tells me you have no idea where he is. That’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t it? To tell us there’s no place else to look. That you’re done.
Of course I’m crying. Our son is missing. If you give up, how are we going to find Tommy?
I know you don’t have the resources to keep doing on-the-ground searches. I know the horseback search teams walked along Highway 281 for twenty-eight miles. I know we had over six hundred volunteers searching Hallie’s ranch for four straight days. But, Sheriff, Tommy’s still missing. We have to keep looking.
What about using dogs to search the ranch?
What about the FBI? Have they found anything?
What about—?
This is all our fault. We didn’t contact you soon enough. We should have called on Friday afternoon. We should have made Tommy come right home after school every day. But, Sheriff, Tom said he needed his freedom. He said, “Tommy’s sixteen. We need to loosen the reins.” But we waited too long. I wanted to call at dinnertime when he wasn’t home. But Tom thought maybe he was out with Rachel. He wanted to believe that Tommy was out having fun on Friday night. But Tommy didn’t have a social life. He was shy. Awkward.
We should have called right away. I shouldn’t have had a glass of wine at dinner. But Tom kept saying that Tommy would be away at college soon and we needed to get used to being a couple again. We never drink wine but we did that night. Tom cooked some steak and we had a nice dinner. I tried not to think about Tommy so I think I drank more wine than I should have. That’s why I fell asleep. That why we didn’t call that night. That’s why we can’t find him now. We were too late.
But calling you at eight a.m. on Saturday morning is twelve hours after I should have called you. It’s all our fault.
Do you realize we wouldn’t even know where to start looking if that Travers boy hadn’t found his motorbike in the pull-out that morning? At least we know he was there on Friday afternoon after school. But there’s been nothing else. Nothing from the Amber Alert. Nothing from the highway patrol. Nothing. All we’ve found on Hallie’s land is a dump and a Mexican girl with a toddler.
It’s not your fault, Eugene. It’s ours, isn’t it, Tom? Of course you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for leads. We called you too late. You can search whatever you want in our house. Excuse me. I need to get some water. Would you like some?
Mr. Smythe: I think you understand, Sheriff, Tommy is our only son. Between the worry and guilt, it’s more pain than she can bear.
So you really don’t have any more leads? Did you check with the Gladney home in Dallas? And Tommy hasn’t contacted them? I was hoping that would lead to something. It didn’t seem like finding his biological parents was a burning desire but he was curious about it. Tommy could definitely be insistent if he wanted to know something.
Well, we didn’t hide the adoption from him, if that’s what you mean. Matilde wanted to wait until he was older. She was more sensitive than I was about not being able to have kids. She worried Tommy would want to run off and be with his biological parents if we told him too soon. Or that he’d run off to find them the first time we told him he couldn’t do something. It was silly stuff but I kept quiet like she wanted me to.
It was a few years ago. As soon as he took that genetics elective in middle school, I knew it wouldn’t be long. Sure enough. One Thanksgiving dinner with relatives from both sides of the family sitting there, Tommy figured it out. Mattie was bringing out the pie when he asked the whole table. “Am I adopted?” Dead silence. Mattie nearly dropped the pie. I said, “Yes, son. We met you when you were three hours old and if we could’ve gotten there sooner, we would have.”
Well, you know that joke when the little boy asks his momma where do I come from and she thinks he’s asking about the sex act so she’s hemming and hawing about how to answer, and little boy says, “Johnny says he’s from Ohio so I was wondering where I came from.” I could see Matilde tearing up over the pie as if Tommy might walk away from the dinner table because he was adopted and never come back. No one was saying a word. Then Tommy says, “I thought so because I’m the first Smythe to have blue eyes or a cleft chin. Those are both recessive gene traits.” That was that.
Afterwards, we talked about the adoption some. Me and Tommy. Mattie didn’t like talking about it. Tommy was curious about who his biological parents might be. But not in the way he could usually get about wanting to know something. He knew he had to wait until next year when he turned eighteen. He seemed fine about that. Ask Matilde.
Mrs. Smythe: Here’s some water for you, Sheriff. Tom’s right. I was the one who was the most sensitive about the adoption. Tommy was curious but not in the usual the way he could be curious about things. He could get a little obsessed.
You know I called the Gladney Center for Adoption and told them what had happened. They said they hadn’t been contacted by Tommy. They were very nice. They always treat adoptive parents like they are the real parents. They said Tommy’s disappearance may not have anything to do with his being adopted.
Tom, the sheriff is here to tell us he has run out of leads and now he wants to look in the margins of books for Tommy.
I understand. Every time I walk outside, I look for Tommy. But instead of finding him, I feel like the world gets bigger. Like the possibilities of where he might be seem to grow and grow until I can’t take another step.
A couple of days ago, I had an idea that maybe he walked out into Hallie’s field and then he got hungry so he went cross-country over t
o the Whip In. So I did that exact walk. When I didn’t find him, I wanted to turn around and try again but start in a different place and turn in a different place. But I could be one hundred feet off every try.
That’s why we have to keep looking. Because he’s somewhere out there and the world is a very big place. I know he’s there. He’s lost. He’s hurt. But he’s out there. You know when someone you love dies.
When my mother died a few years ago, I could feel it. She was in a nursing home in Fredericksburg. I was home. I was going to go visit her. It was after lunch, I remember, because I got up from the kitchen table and all I wanted to do was lie down. So I sat down in Tom’s chair. I swear I could hardly keep my eyes open. I fell sound asleep for five minutes. When I opened my eyes, I knew she was gone. The phone rang and it was the nursing home, telling me she had died. But I knew before I picked up that phone. I felt it.
I don’t feel the same way about Tommy. He’s still here. Somewhere.
Please tell me you won’t give up, Sheriff. Please tell me we can keep organizing searches on Hallie’s land. He has to be out there. He’d go out there all the time. Even before we bought him that motorbike. He wasn’t trying to run away. He was exploring. Hallie said she saw him out there a lot. Looking at things. Tommy could sit and look at things for a long time. After he got the bike, Hallie said he could still go out there as long as he didn’t ride it into the field and scare the livestock.
He has to be out there. He stopped in that pull-out and went out to look at something. I know it. He took the key to the bike for heaven’s sake. He was coming back. Only something happened. Something happened and he can’t get back to us.
I’m sorry, Sheriff. I know it doesn’t help to cry but sometimes I just can’t—I think I need to go lie down, Tom.
Mr. Smythe: It’s been like this for twelve days. She doesn’t sleep. She drives up and down 281. She was up for hours on Tommy’s computer until you took it. Now she goes to the library and uses the computer there. She says she’s looking for clues but I think she’s lost. Searching and lost at the same time.
She doesn’t want to take any medicine. She doesn’t want to go to sleep. She wants to find her boy. I can’t say I blame her. Sometimes when I fall asleep, I forget it happened. It takes a minute or two to remember that Tommy’s missing. I have to go through the shock and pain and worry all over again. Just to get to where I was before I fell asleep: hoping that we’ll find him, hoping that someone will call, hoping that he’s alive and safe.
I know. I know. Even Mattie knows. Tommy could have left the bike in the pull-out and someone picked him up there. He could be in Canada or Alaska. He could be long gone. But I think we would have gotten a hint about his wanting to run away. A map. Catching him on the phone with someone. E-mails. Heck, if he’d been running away, he would have taken his computer and some clothes. All he had was his school backpack. That’s all. He wasn’t running away. He wasn’t—
But who would kidnap a boy and not call us or ask us for money or something? I can’t think that people are mean enough to take a boy. I can’t believe there’s someone who wouldn’t think he belonged to someone, someone who loved him and cared about him. I can’t.
Mattie and I don’t talk about it. Sometimes I’ll look at her and I’ll see this current between us. It’s white hot and it’s like we’re seeing the worst possible thing that could happen to Tommy at the very same moment. It’s like we’re being electrified with fear. One of us will blink or the phone will ring and the current is broken. I swear I feel limp afterwards. Like I’ve been struck by lightning.
I never told Tommy that bad things could happen to him. I never lied to him. But I never told him about mean or sick people. Maybe I did him a disservice. It didn’t seem like he could process that information.
Yes, I know Tommy’s an unusual kid. The Smythes are simple folk and Tommy was pretty different. But what would a test tell us? If we had him tested and the test gave him a diagnosis like ADHD or autism or something else, what would we do different? He’d still be our really smart boy who didn’t quite know how to hold a normal conversation. Matilde and I felt like every family has an eccentric cousin. Why not accept him the way he is and try to help him to get along in the world? Only I don’t think I did. Sometimes I think about how Tommy annoyed so many people with his questions and literal answers. If someone didn’t know him, they might get really angry with him. They might think he was being rude. I should have told him about the mean things in this world.
I heard Hallie Stillwell says she’s thinking about taking that Mexican girl and her little boy into her home and I wonder if she should be that kind. I used to think that kindness saved the day but she could be inviting a whole cartel of trouble into her home. You don’t know. I should have put more fear into Tommy. He was too trusting. Not cautious or scared enough.
You’re welcome to take all the books in his room. The librarians in Johnson City and Fredericksburg were always getting books sent over from the university. What do you do when your son wants to talk with you about particle physics? Or string theory? One time he asked if I thought it was possible to get to another dimension without dying. I didn’t know what to tell him. I don’t know half the stuff he knows. I mean, I’ve heard of the big bang and black holes. Mostly from science-fiction books I read as a kid. Not from an AP physics class or books I checked out from the library. People around here, well, that kind of thinking is blasphemous.
Mattie and I are big on the truth. If someone asks a question, that means they’re ready to hear the truth. But what do you say when someone asks you about possibilities, about things that aren’t proven, that barely exist?
I told him what I thought was the truth. I told him that if you can imagine something, then it might possibly exist.
Now I wonder what he was imagining. I wonder what he was trying to find out.
MAY 22 . EIGHTEEN DAYS MISSING
HYPOTHESIS
“Ooops, hang on, Alex.” Izzy brakes hard and turns her beat-up Toyota off the highway into the pull-out. The car drops off the lip of the highway and clunks onto the dirt and caliche. Izzy yanks the steering wheel left and right, trying to avoid the potholes, but with each turn the headlamps catch another hole right before the tire rolls into it.
“Whoa, Izzy. Slow down.” Alex grabs the dashboard as the car rocks back and forth.
Izzy careens to a stop in front of a cluster of cedar and mesquite trees. A rusty old trash can stands in the way. She thinks about jumping out and moving it or knocking it over with her fender. Instead, she squeezes the car in between the can and the trees and parks as close as possible to the trees. The cedar branches scrape one side of her car. No biggie. She noses the car under the branches and looks in her rearview mirror. Perfect. Tucked under these trees with the trash can behind them, she hopes no cars passing by will spot them.
She turns to Alex. “Let’s get out.”
Alex doesn’t move. “What the hell are we doing out here, Iz?”
“I want to talk.”
“Why here?”
“Because I don’t want to be in the library or your front porch where we usually talk.”
“About what?”
Alex barely said a word the whole ride out here. Usually he likes hanging out and talking with her. Now he seems irritated.
“Come on, Al, let’s get out of the car.”
Alex doesn’t say anything. He opens his door and stands beside it like he is obeying her order. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“Geez, Alex. What’d I do to piss you off so bad?”
“As usual, you have no clue, do you, Iz?”
“What?” Izzy says, drawling the word into as many syllables as it took for her to toss her hair back and bat her eyes, trying imitate a dimmer version of herself. She is hoping she’d get a laugh but, truth be told, she’s a little mystified about why Alex is mad. It’s not like he was doing anything except obsessing over typeface and font size.
“Oh.” Izzy ducks under the trees and walks around to the front of the car. The heat from the car’s engine seems to exhale onto her bare legs under her skirt. One of the things she loves about her longtime friendship with Alex is how he doesn’t hold back when something bugs him; he tells her straight out. It makes it easy for her to cop to any mistakes. “You’re totally right, Alex. I’m sorry. I had this idea and I wanted to tell you about it. You know, see what you thought. And I couldn’t explain it while I was driving.”
“Let me guess. Another hypothesis?”
Izzy can’t see Alex’s face very well but it sounds like he’s smiling. “Yeah. Busted.” She jumps onto the hood of the car and slides back toward the windshield. Izzy pats the hood, offering a seat to Alex, but trying not to order him around.
Alex climbs up next to her. “Okay, so what is it this time?”
At least he doesn’t sound mad anymore. Still, she wishes she hadn’t jumped on the hood of the car so quickly. The way she’d pictured the experiment, they’d be sitting in the field on the other side of the pull-out where it was more private. If anyone stops here, which was a huge possibility since Tommy has only been missing two and a half weeks, they could be seen. But if she suggests moving, however unbossy, Alex might get annoyed all over again. She stares up at the twisted branches of the mesquite trees and into the black space beyond them. The sky is clear, with only a sliver of a moon hanging above the tree line. She reaches into her skirt pocket to make sure the small square packet is there. So the experiment won’t be perfect. That’s okay. She can still test her theory. Scientists are nothing if not adaptable.