River Angel

by A. Manette Ansay

  But the fact was that the law supported Mel’s way of thinking, and the millpond people, weekenders and summer folks both, supported Mel. They came to Ambient to experience country living—fresh air, quiet streets, maybe a little bit of fishing—and they brought their checkbooks with them. By God, they didn’t drive all that way to encounter town drunks and radio-blasting teens and mongrels that chased them, unneutered balls bouncing happily, if they tried jogging down a scenic country road. They didn’t want to see ramshackle houses, rusty cars; they didn’t want their pretty daughters seduced by local boys’ rough talk. The latest thing they’d done was restrict public access to the millpond itself. A public swimming area remained by the Killsnake Dam, but the parking lot accommodated less than a dozen cars, and all the little streets around the millpond itself were posted No Parking. The fine was one hundred dollars, and Mel enforced it like one of God’s commandments. He himself had bought one of the lots, built a fancy house with his new wife’s money.

  “These people are our bread and butter,” he said. “I’m not going to let the wildlife scare them off.”

  It was true that the millpond people brought in money, but to Stan’s way of thinking, they also brought drugs and bad tempers, clogged the roads with traffic, and caused taxes to go up and up. Their homes attracted burglars as well as vandals, and the alarms they installed to protect themselves were constantly triggered by wind or whim. On a record weeknight last August, police responded to thirteen calls—all of them false alarms. That same week, three people were arrested for possession of narcotics, two men for domestic violence, another man for attempted rape. Once, Stan would have recognized the name of each person involved, but these days everyone was a stranger. The world was getting more and more complex. Perhaps Mel was right and it was time for Stan to retire, to move over and out of the way. And yet Stan thought of Karl Vogelstern. He thought of his own mother, who’d hand-milked her last few remaining cows, mucked their stalls, and kept up with her quarter-acre garden until the day she died, at eighty-six. It seemed to him that folks were different than they used to be—not as tough, more inclined to take it easy, less inclined to help a neighbor or put in the extra hour it took to get a job done right. They were lonelier too. They didn’t rely on each other. They talked about stress. They didn’t have fun the way people used to.

  An idea that had occurred to him recently—kind of a compromise between retirement and work—was how nice it would be for him and Lorna to buy one of those mobile homes and travel around the country for a while. See a few things. Enjoy themselves. Sure, he’d have to get rid of his bees. And the T-bird. (He took another itsy sip of whiskey.) And Lorna was awfully attached to the house—each morning she drank her coffee looking out over the river—plus she had all those friends in the Circle of Faith. But the house was just too big for them, now the kids were gone, and they could have it sold in two weeks for more money than they’d ever dreamed of. Outside money. Maybe Mel was right. Maybe it was pointless to go against the times. Stan searched through his pockets for his Pepto-Bismol tablets, slid one from its plastic sheaf, and tucked it in his mouth. Crunching, he looked up to see Fred Carpenter, the telephone held in front of him like a platter of cocktail wienies.

  “It’s Mel,” Fred said, placing it on the bar. “Sounds important.” Stan figured it must be. Mel had never once called Stan about anything. At the police station, Stan would turn to do something and discover it had already been done. He’d pick up the phone to make a call and find out it had been made days earlier. Stan sometimes got the feeling that Mel would have been just as happy to see him spend all his duty time at Jeep’s and never come into the station at all. He put the receiver to one ear and stuffed his finger in the other.

  “We’ve got a problem.” Mel’s voice was uncharacteristically nervous. In the background, Stan could hear the slamming of car doors, the fading wail of a siren. “How fast can you assemble a search party?”

  “Got ’em,” Stan said, glancing around the bar. Instinctively, he reached into his pocket, grabbed his rabbit’s foot. “Where do you need ’em?”

  “At the highway bridge. Some high school kids were fooling around, and a younger boy fell in the river.”

  “Jesus,” Stan said—

  —and then his heart skipped a beat, the same way it had on that foggy Friday night, two years ago, when there’d been a six-car pileup on the Solomon strip—four injuries, one fatality. And the time the Tauscheck boy had been playing with his daddy’s pistol. And the time Tom Mader was killed on County O—Christ, that had been a tough one. Stan himself had been the one who’d notified Ruth. And it had been after Tom’s funeral that Ambient really started to change. Whoever had knocked Tom off the road was living right under everybody’s nose, waving hello and going to church and shopping for groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. You couldn’t believe in appearances the way you maybe once did. You couldn’t trust anyone completely. People pulled apart from each other; the new people sensed that, pulled away too. And then Mel came on board with his goddamn regulations….

  “How long has the kid been in the water?” Stan said.

  “Near as we can tell, since a little after nine.”

  It was almost ten o’clock.

  “You’re just telling me now?” Stan bellowed, and Mel said, “Now, Stan, I would have called earlier, but I didn’t want to bother you over nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Christ, oh, Christ. “What’s the kid’s name, do we have ID?”

  “Not yet. The high school kids, they just—you know—picked him up. They wanted to tease him a little,” Mel said, and now Stan began to understand why he sounded so peculiar.

  “The same group who grabbed Sammy Carlsen and the Walvoord girl?” Stan said. “The ones you said we shouldn’t bother the papers about? Christ, Mel, this is more than a prank! If you’d taken it seriously from the start—”

  “Look,” Mel said, his voice abruptly low and mean. “You wanna talk about the papers, then let’s talk about what the papers are going to say when they hear the chief of police was sitting cozy at his favorite watering hole while all this was going on. Now get your people together, sober if that’s possible, with flashlights if they got ’em. Take the River Road—we’ve coned off the J road from the bridge to County C. We’ll walk both sides of the river as soon as the chopper gets in from Madison.”

  Stan slammed down the phone so hard it slid off the counter, crashed to the floor. The warble of conversation, the thoughtful humming that had cocooned it, cut off like water from a tap. Jeep, who was joking with the pool players, spun around, and even mild Fred spilled the drink he was carrying. Within the silence, the jukebox went on playing.

  “Listen up,” he said, conscious of the way his voice was shaking. “Unidentified boy fell off the highway bridge. I need volunteers to search the banks, and before you say yes, think how much you’ve had to drink, and then think about how warm you’re dressed. It’s a cold night out there.”

  Every man in the bar plus half the women volunteered. The women these days, they wanted to be involved in everything, and they sure got mad if you left them out. So Stan picked Margo Johnson and Bess Luftig along with eight men, assigning Danny Hope and Bill Graf as drivers. His own squad car was parked smack in front, technically in a loading zone, the same spot where old Pops Carpenter left his tractor whenever he went inside for a toot. There was little Stan liked better than to see that old John Deere chug-chugging up Main on a Friday night, the impatient line of cars headed for the millpond choked up behind it—Illinois plate after Illinois plate, doctors and lawyers and corporates helplessly blowing their horns. When Mel brought it up at a staff meeting earlier in the month, Stan had said, “People want country living? Well, here it is.” The other officers chuckled at that, but Mel didn’t even smile.

  “His property is in violation, that tractor isn’t licensed for the road, and his kid costs taxpayers money each time he runs off.”

  “It’s his grandkid,” Stan ex
plained. “The boy’s being raised by Pops’ son and daughter-in-law.”

  “Well, clearly they’re not keeping up with him. Contact child protection, let them handle it.”

  “Oh, no, no,” Stan said quickly. “Look, Mel, I’ll go talk to them, see what I can do. Pops’ wife, God rest her, was Lorna’s second cousin—”

  “If there’s neglect, you notify the state,” Mel interrupted. “You file appropriate charges. I mean it, Stan. Take care of it. Next item?”

  Now Stan turned on the siren and swung around the rotary, Bill and Danny behind him with the rest of the volunteers, and they all headed south toward the highway bridge. The full moon floated in absolute darkness, illuminating the long, crooked spine of the river, heightening the hulking shapes of the new houses perched along the River Road, which ran parallel with the highway on the other side of the water. Snow rushed at the headlights, shaping swift pictures Stan could almost understand; he was still hoping that by the time they arrived, the kid would be found, already on his way to the hospital. No doubt he’d be airlifted to Madison. These days, doctors at the universities could do the most amazing things. Stan had seen on TV where they’d revived a man who’d been underwater two hours. Could it have been two hours? Well, anyway, the water had been cold, and cold water acted like a preservative. Ice water could even—

  —Stan’s heart skipped again. It was a strange feeling, those skipped heartbeats. It was a taste of what was coming—the silent, empty hive. He’d lost a whole colony once; he’d never figured out exactly why. But there was nothing worse than that silence, the dried-up husks of the bodies in the outer chambers, the bloated gray corpses trapped within the soured honeycomb. Now, as he wove past the orange warning cones, he steeled himself against whatever he was about to see.

  He parked on the bridge, with his headlights shining downstream; Bill and Danny did the same. Stan tapped on their windows, told them to wait while he appraised the situation. Then he approached the tight cluster of men—officers, he corrected himself—who were standing beside the guardrail. Five in all: Leroy Kulm, Pete Stahl, Buddy Lewis, Bart Todd, and the lady officer Mel had insisted they hire—Jean? June? Stan could never remember. He fingered his lucky rabbit’s foot. The set of their shoulders told him that they too expected the worst, and their expressions—hardened, silent, watchful—reminded Stan of his military years. Unlike Mel, he’d served his country with pride; he’d been twice decorated in the Second World War. Thirty years later, Mel had stayed home to burn flags and brassieres and God knows what else, yet now he was in his squad car, calling the shots as if it were his right to do so. In the old days, Stan thought with satisfaction, Mel would have been arrested. Mel would have occupied one of the very cells he loved to brag about at civic meetings.

  “Evening,” Stan said. “Who wants to fill me in?”

  Disrespectfulness and doubt clouded their thoughts like static; still, he was able to piece together the gist of what they were thinking. He was incompetent, out of touch. He was…it took a moment for the word to take shape; then it appeared, sudden as a knife. Lazy. Lazy? But he was always busy! He worked so hard that when he got home, he’d fall asleep smack in the middle of a conversation! Lazy. He stared at his officers, trying not to take it personally. After all, who knew what all Mel was saying behind his back? A wasp in the hive, Stan thought. But he knew what happened to wasps. The bees eventually wised up and destroyed them.

  Leroy Kulm finally cleared his throat and brought Stan up to date. Three teens had been involved. The girl had been taken to Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, suffering from alcohol poisoning and lacerations from a broken bottle. The boys were at the police station, and their story was that they hadn’t meant to hurt the kid, they’d just pulled over to talk to him, maybe offer him a ride (here Leroy rolled his eyes), but the kid started running and the boys jumped out and chased him down the J road, and when they caught up with him on the highway bridge, he panicked, slipped over the edge, or maybe he jumped—the kids weren’t sure; they couldn’t remember: Everything happened so fast and they’d been drinking. One boy stayed to search the riverbank, while the other ran back to the car, where he found the girl passed out on the road, half covered in blood, and he said he didn’t know how she got that way but he just threw her in the back seat and drove to the McDonald’s for help. The only thing any of the searchers had found so far was a Snoopy flashlight, on Ruthie Mader’s land, about a quarter of a mile downstream.

  “Those boys were drunk as skunks,” Buddy Lewis said. It was no secret that Mel had worked hard to put him on the City Council. “I got a buzz just talkin’ to ’em. They say they got the liquor ‘from some guy somewhere.’”

  “Don’t know his name, of course,” Leroy said. “Don’t know the missing kid’s name, either.”

  “So who are these boys?” Stan said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice, picturing hoodlums, young toughs, wannabe gang-bangers.

  “Paul Zuggenhagen and Randy Hale,” Leroy said. The officers shook their heads at those names, and Pete Stahl said, “Christ, that Hale kid can wrestle. I saw him last year at state finals.”

  “Zuggenhagen’s old man works at First Wisconsin,” Buddy said. “They moved here in ’85. Good people.”

  “All three kids have clean records,” said the lady officer. Jill? Jane? What was her name?

  “I just can’t believe it,” Stan said.

  “Well, it gets worse,” Leroy said. “The girl is Cherish Mader.”

  “Aw, no,” Stan said.

  Leroy made a regretful sound with his tongue. “They pumped her stomach, stitched her up. She ain’t gonna look like no Festival Queen after this, from what they say at Mercy.”

  “Zuggenhagen says the kid never hit the water. Says he was there and then he wasn’t. Poof,” Buddy said.

  “Alien abduction, maybe,” the lady officer said.

  The group guffawed unhappily. In the distance, a freight train blew its whistle; Stan tracked its bright approach, felt the rattle of the passing cars against the cold soles of his feet. He wadded up a piece of paper from his notepad, tossed it over the edge of the bridge to check the current. Not much. The moon stared down at them all, wide-eyed and infinitely patient.

  “Watch out Mel don’t write you a ticket for that,” Leroy said, deadpan, and with that, Mel got out of his squad car, approached the group at his no-nonsense pace.

  “Got probable ID,” he said. “Bethany Carpenter phoned in minutes ago. Says she got back from town, went next door to collect her kid from her father-in-law, but—surprise—no kid.”

  “Gabriel,” Stan said. “The boy’s name is Gabriel.”

  “Well, Gabriel matches the description the Hale kid gave us,” Mel said. “Jesus.” He tossed something at Stan; by some miracle, Stan caught it. It was the Snoopy flashlight, in a plastic bag. In the distance, cars were collecting on County C, flashers winking like fireflies, and several people had started cutting across the field toward the river. It occurred to Stan that announcing the incident at Jeep’s was a little like broadcasting it over WTMJ. “All right, everybody,” Mel said. “The aunt is on her way over. Stan’s gonna wait for her, see if she can ID Snoopy. And if she can, this time Stan’s gonna charge her with neglect and reckless endangerment of a child and anything else that’s appropriate—you get me, Stan? I don’t care how far you and somebody’s poor dead wife go back. That kid was left unsupervised. The rest of you, grab a couple of volunteers apiece and we’ll all fan out along the river. Ten paces apart, half the group on either side. Chopper will be here to light us up any minute.”

  “I don’t appreciate you telling me my job,” Stan said stiffly.

  “If you’d called child protection like I’d told you, none of this would have happened.”

  “Now wait a minute here,” Stan said, shaking the Snoopy flashlight angrily. “If you hadn’t hushed things up to keep your business buddies happy—” But at the sound of the approaching helicopter, Mel turned away from Stan to wa
ve the volunteers from their cars. A floodlight encircled them all, and as Stan watched from the guardrail, the officers and volunteers picked their way down either side of the icy embankment, black flecks against a brilliant white backdrop. The chopper pulled back, lifted high, higher still, then began to follow their slow progress downstream. As the individual lights of the searchers became visible, forming a widening horizon like ripples moving outward from a tossed stone, Stan realized he’d been left behind. He thought about going after them. He even walked to the edge of the guardrail and considered the rough trail cutting down the embankment. But somebody had to wait on Bethany, and the fact was that Stan’s toes were already aching from the cold, despite his lined boots. The footing along the river was treacherous, uncertain. His bum hip hurt just to think about it. He said Mel’s name aloud and spat, twice, the way his granddaddy used to do. Then he put the Snoopy flashlight in his pocket and went back to the squad car. As he held his hands up to the heat vents, he eyed the cell phone, fighting an immense longing to talk to Lorna. But Lorna had had some to-do at the Circle of Faith; most likely, she wasn’t even home yet. There was nothing to do but sit tight. Wait for Bethany. Wait for the boy to be found.

  The boy. Stan felt around in his pockets until he found his Pepto-Bismol tablets. He slipped three into his mouth, ground them to a creamy paste. The last time he’d seen Gabriel Carpenter was at the old farmhouse a few weeks earlier, a warrant from Mel folded up in his pocket. “By the book,” Mel had reminded Stan. But Gabriel had run off only—what?—five or six times, maybe. And he wasn’t exactly running off. He was out looking for the river angel; he’d tell anybody who asked. He’d gotten it into his head that the angel could make his daddy come back. It was no use explaining to Mel that this was just a phase, that eventually the boy would adjust and settle down. He’d be far worse off in a foster home, where he’d feel even more abandoned, where he’d miss his daddy even more.