Little Boy Lost

by Trafford, J. D.

  I walked back to my toy room. I turned on the lights, walked over to the worktable, sat down, and removed an empty sketch pad from the drawer.

  This was the first time I had ever used the room for anything besides solitude. The toy room now had to become a place I worked and made decisions.

  I turned to a blank page and began to write. It was a list of all the things that I needed to do to help Sammy find a new school. Dealing with the parents of the bullies was secondary. Then I started writing a list of everything I needed to do for work; a list of thoughts, ideas, and facts about Tanisha Walker’s brother and the other Lost Boys; and finally a structure to make a decision for my father and about my future.

  I wasn’t going to run away. I was going to run toward it, whatever it may be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  It was shortly before noon when Sammy finally emerged and came downstairs. She had eaten a short stack of pancakes, three scrambled eggs, and four sausages in her room. “Didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

  “Well,” I said, picking up her dirty plate and starting to the sink with it, “you didn’t really eat much yesterday.” I saw her begin to retreat, and so I tried to keep her engaged. “Talked with my mom and the Judge last night. They’d like you to come over there and hang out, maybe watch a movie. I’m going to the office real quick, just to check on some things, and then I’ll be back.”

  “That’s fine, Dad.” Sammy sighed. “You don’t need to babysit me.”

  I walked back over to her, pulled out the kitchen chair, and sat down. “I know I don’t need to babysit you.” I touched her knee. “But I want to be with you, and we do need to talk.”

  Sammy wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I didn’t start the fight.” A tear rolled down her cheek.

  I wasn’t going to push it, and I wouldn’t tell her about the video, Schmitty’s visit, or the crazy parents. “It’s just important that we talk about what happened and then about what’s going to happen.”

  “You’re sending me back there?” Sammy’s sadness flipped to anger. “I’m not going back there.”

  I held her gaze. “Let me be clear,” I said. Worries about money and debt were gone. They had to be. Sammy was smart enough to pick up on doubt. She needed strength. “You are not going back to that school ever again. Understood?”

  I saw her body relax and she nodded. “Understood.”

  “Trust me,” I said. “We’ll take our time and find a new school for you. Don’t worry. There are lots of places to go to school.”

  As I crossed the highway over to the Northside, there was a group of about twenty protesters congregated near the top of the exit ramp. They were chanting and holding signs. How many more Lost Boys were out there? Why hadn’t they found the killer? They wanted to hold the police accountable. They wanted answers.

  That’s how it begins. The initial shock was gone, and now people were getting angry.

  I kept driving to my office, wondering how many would be waiting for me there, but there wasn’t a line. Two women were smoking outside my office door. I resisted the urge to drive past and parked directly in front of my office. I turned off the old car’s engine and, when it had rattled to a stop, forced myself to get out and walk toward my office.

  The old me would have blasted past the mothers without so much as a nod when they looked my way, but that day I started taking control and even channeling some of my brother’s charm.

  “Good morning, ladies.” I forced a smile and moved ahead. “I’m Justin Glass and I appreciate you coming here, filling out the screening forms, and speaking with my paralegal.” I checked my watch. “But I have a meeting now, so I need to get inside and get to work.” I reached out and touched one of the women’s shoulder. “Thank you for coming here.”

  Then I stepped past and into the office, still forcing the smile. Three adults and three kids were crammed in the reception area. “Good afternoon, everybody.” I smiled and greeted them, then continued walking to my office. “Emma, can I see you?”

  She was already standing. “Of course.” She picked up a manila folder, a notebook, and a pen and followed me inside, saying to the people waiting, “It’ll be a moment.” She closed the office door behind her. “Pretty smooth, Mr. Glass.”

  I slouched down into my seat. “It’s exhausting being nice.”

  Emma pulled the extra chair away from the wall and moved it closer, then sat down across from me. “Preference as to where we begin?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “How about Mr. Bates?”

  “Cecil Bates.” I smiled. “Perfect.”

  “He’s coming in for a meeting next week, Monday. I think you have to be there for that.”

  “OK. Morning or afternoon?”

  “Early afternoon.” Emma laughed. “In the morning he’d be hung over and by late afternoon he’d be drunk, so scheduling it was a tough call.”

  “Hard decision,” I deadpanned. There was a pause, and then I started to laugh, too. It wasn’t even that funny, but I needed to laugh. It just came up and out. To the people waiting outside, I probably sounded like a madman. Then I shook my head, got control of myself. “Figure out something to do for him, Emma. I don’t know. Anything. If he wants me to fight, I’ll fight.”

  “OK.” Emma wrote the instruction down. “I also got a bunch of interviews with families set up.” Her face turned sour. “But there’s no money in them. We lose on every one.”

  “I know.” I thought about Schmitty and the chief and keeping the community together and Sammy, and then, ultimately, Tanisha and all the families that came to me, the ones who chose me. “We have to do it,” I said. “It’ll die down, eventually.”

  “Maybe.” She nodded. “I’ll call you if there’s something interesting.”

  “And the Poles research?”

  Emma handed me the manila folder that she had brought from her desk. “Definitely questionable.”

  I opened the folder and flipped through the various reports, spreadsheets, and screenshots taken from websites. “Where’d you get all this?”

  “Nikolas helped out.”

  I looked up at her. “All public information?”

  Emma didn’t answer. Her silence was its own confession.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I pity most of them, although I’d likely be among the last people they’d want pity from. The racists on the edge of society were so fragile. The assumptions and lessons they’d been taught for generations now under attack from all directions, they had to feel what little they had was in danger of being taken away. Racism had become the last defense of a way of life that’d been dead for over a century.

  But Jimmy Poles was different. I had no pity for him. He wasn’t on the edge. He wasn’t fragile. He had a good-paying and stable government job. He graduated high school and finished college at Mizzou. He wasn’t living in a trailer park on the fringe of the Ozarks, isolated. He lived in a rambler in the suburbs.

  There was no argument that he was being left behind by the modern world, but there he was with an AK-47, a Confederate flag, and a picture of Hillary Clinton riddled with bullet holes.

  His Facebook page was a stream of racist pictures and videos. One was a collage containing portraits of every president—but at the end of the list, instead of an official portrait, Barack Obama was portrayed as two cartoonish white eyes peering from a black background. There were images of Michelle Obama as a monkey and then hundreds of racist comments about newspaper articles and current events.

  It turned my stomach.

  Perhaps the worst part was that I knew exactly how Jimmy Poles would respond when confronted about his online and off-line activities. He’d smirk and dismiss me as politically correct. He’d talk about his right to free speech. He’d talk about defending the Constitution from both foreign and domestic threats—people who looked like me, of course, being the domestic threat.

  But was somebody like that a killer?

  “He’s single.
Doesn’t appear to be dating anybody.” Emma leaned over and pointed to a printout of a chat room set up for fans of a local country music radio station. “Then there’s this.”

  Poles had posted a long statement about the Lost Boys. It was entitled “A Different Point of View.”

  JPOLE18361: I work with these thugs every day. And I think we should all give him a round of applause. Shake his hand. We should lift him up as a great leader. For the cost of a few ounces of lead, he saved the taxpayers millions of dollars. Everybody knows where these kids were headed. The liberals will never admit it. But it is fact. He saved us all a lot of work. The guy put a lot of sick dogs to sleep.

  After work, I went home and dropped my briefcase off in the carriage house, then walked through the garden and up the short path to the main house. I was only outside the comfort of air conditioning for less than a minute, but the brief time outdoors resulted in a nice coat of sweat.

  My mind was still on Poles when I opened the back door. My mother was in the kitchen. Dinner was already done, simmering in a pot on the stove. She was now baking cookies, but from the look on her face I knew that the cookies were just a pretext. She was actually waiting for me, wanting to intercept me before I got too far inside.

  “Justin.” She forced her face to soften, and then her eyes glanced back to the other room. “How was the office?”

  “OK.” I walked over to her and gave her a quick hug. “How’s Sammy?”

  “Fine.” My mother scooped some dough onto a cookie sheet. “Watching a movie upstairs, eating popcorn. Not saying much.”

  “I’ll go check on her.”

  “Wait.”

  I knew it was coming. “OK.” I stopped, curious. “What’s going on?”

  My mother looked around, making sure that we were alone. “Annie and Lincoln are here.”

  “Both of them?”

  My mother didn’t respond at first, then added, “Buster, too.”

  “Buster.” It came out louder than I expected. “After everything, Lincoln brought that snake.” My mood had flashed from blue to red. “Gonna pop that—”

  “Justin.” My mother held out her hands. “Think of Sammy. Calm down a minute before you go in.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Your father’s coming into town this weekend.” My mother’s voice got quieter. “I think you know what they want.”

  “Get him out of here.” I pointed at Buster, who was standing on the far side of the parlor with Lincoln. “Can’t hardly look at him. Can’t believe you brought him here.”

  Buster stood up a little taller. The wrestler’s hands had turned into fists. He was ready to fight, if necessary, but Lincoln patted him on the back and guided him toward the door.

  Annie watched from a chair in the corner. I couldn’t figure why she’d conspire with two people who were ready and willing to destroy her career. I looked at her with disgust. “You invite him?”

  “Of course not.” She looked at Lincoln and then back at me. “I’m here because your mother called me this morning. She was worried about you.” She looked over at Lincoln. “She was worried about what you were going to do to your brother.”

  “My mom’s a smart lady.” I watched as Lincoln leaned out the doorway, whispered something to Buster, and shut the parlor door. To him, I said, “A phone call would have been nice.” I turned away, shaking my head. “When is an ambush ever a good idea?”

  I stared at the large painting on the main wall of the downstairs parlor, a dramatic image of a farm on a hill by Saint Louis artist Joe Jones from 1936. It was as if the land were lifting the farmstead up to the gods as a sacrifice, just as a storm rolled in.

  I lost myself in the painting, allowing myself to calm down.

  Lincoln and Annie waited me out, until finally I said to Lincoln, “I guess I have to listen to you now.” I kept staring at the painting. “But I’m only doing it for Mom and Dad.”

  “You gonna sit down with me or what?”

  I took a breath and turned around.

  Lincoln was now on the couch. Annie was still in her corner chair.

  “Suppose I will.” I walked over and sat in the chair across from Lincoln, still cold to the situation. “You called the meeting.”

  Lincoln looked at Annie and then back at me. “Brother, we gotta—”

  I held up my hand. “You gonna brother me right out the gate? That’s your approach? Where have you been for the past month? Sending Buster out to follow me—probably him in the alley. Blackmailing Annie. How about you start with an apology?” I pointed at him. “Apologize.”

  “Ain’t nobody send Buster out to follow you, OK?” Lincoln looked at Annie. “OK?” When neither of us said anything back, he sighed. “I apologize.” He waited a moment, checking on my response. “How’s that?” Lincoln waited another beat and then backtracked. “But I didn’t tell Buster to do anything.” I started to interrupt, but Lincoln talked over me. “That’s why I brought him. That’s why he was here, and you can call him later if you want. He’ll tell you.”

  I dismissed it, even if it was true. I wasn’t going to let my brother go that easy. “He’ll say whatever you want him to say. You’re unbelievable.”

  Lincoln rolled his eyes. “You want to talk or not?” He held out his hands in surrender. “I’m here in good faith. Here to work this through. You want to yell at me, go for it. Get it all out. I got all night.” He looked at Annie again for confirmation, but she remained silent. “But we gotta work this out now.”

  “Everything’s on your schedule, huh?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s on Dad’s schedule. He set it, not me.” Lincoln waited for me to disagree. When I didn’t, he continued. “Here’s the deal, brother—straight talk.” Lincoln edged closer, becoming a bit more aggressive. “You two ain’t no secret.” He looked at Annie and then back at me. “You think the mayor doesn’t get noticed in this town? You think you two can have an intimate conversation at a bar or a lovely dinner together on The Hill and nobody’s going to notice?” He looked at us like we were two teenagers that had been sneaking out at night. “People know. With or without Buster doing or telling anybody, people know.” He nodded. “That’s the truth, and it’s a problem.”

  To Annie, Lincoln said, “It ain’t gonna be broke in the traditional media, but they’re waiting. Come election time, a blog will do something and then the newspapers and television will cover it through the back door. The story will purportedly be about the blog post and the identity of the anonymous blogger, but it’ll really be about you. First woman mayor is an adulterer. The end. You’re done.”

  Lincoln turned to me. “And you don’t get much more of a pass, big brother. You can play the lonely widower card, but I don’t think there’s gonna be much sympathy. They’re building you up now, so there’s a bigger fall. Folks are already sniffing around Sammy’s school. We got truancy issues, and now there’s that fight.”

  With that I stood up. “Leave her out of it.”

  Lincoln stood up, too, matching me. “It ain’t me.” We went chest to chest; Lincoln looked to Annie for confirmation and then back. “This is politics. It’s blood sport now. There’s no control. There’s no privacy. People are out there destroying politicians for fun. Anybody with a computer and Internet access can write whatever they want for the world to see.” Lincoln closed his eyes and shook his head, calming himself down. “You and Dad haven’t been in the trenches like me. You’re up in your ivory towers, but those big save-the-world ideas got nothing to do with the way things are now. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s real. Sorry to be the messenger.”

  Lincoln sat back down, allowing the exhaustion with the situation to roll over him. “You two laugh and scoff at me, thinking that I’m some huckster out there selling the Glass name. But what you don’t understand is that all that stuff I do is meant to protect us, and you’re fooling yourselves if you don’t think we need it. Dad came up in a different era. He hasn’t had a real challe
nger in thirty years, but we’re different. We’re vulnerable. Maybe we win. Maybe we lose. But there are people out there who want to hurt us, marginalize us. It’s not my imagination. Ain’t paranoia.”

  I turned and walked back over to the painting. When I tilted my head to the side, I felt my spine crack. Everything my brother was saying to me was true, but I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted the world to be different . . . better.

  Finally I said, “I know, Lincoln.” I swallowed hard. “I’ve been thinking about it. Thought real hard about it this morning, and I know I can’t do it.” I took a deep breath. “I know I don’t have the stomach for it, the fund-raising and the back-room deals.” I shook my head. “But it’s nice to pretend there’s an answer. It’s nice to be asked.”

  I walked back over to my chair and sat down. “Sammy’s in trouble. I’m in trouble.” I looked my brother in the eye. “For a moment, I thought maybe a fresh start in DC might be the answer to everything.” A soft laugh. “Ideas of grandeur didn’t hurt my ego none, neither.” I looked at Annie and then back at him. “But I’m out. Maybe known it for a long time, maybe from the beginning, but now I’m telling you . . . I’m out.”

  Then I turned to Annie. “What do you think?”

  She shook her head, sad. “I don’t think much of anything.” Then she looked down at her feet. “Maybe I should quit, too.”

  “Hold on.” I pointed at Lincoln. “We have a world-class fixer in the room. He’s probably got a half dozen plans ready to go.” I looked at Lincoln. “Am I right?”

  Lincoln smiled, grateful. Then he nodded his head. “Things just have to be handled, that’s all. We have to think them through . . . together.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Lincoln and Annie didn’t stay for dinner. Buster had been waiting outside, and they left as soon as I agreed to Lincoln’s master plan. The rest of us ate, and when we were done, Sammy snuck off to the library with the Judge, as usual, while my mother and I did the dishes.