by Cole Alpaugh
Bagg wiped his face with a napkin. As he went to toss it into the bag, Gracie plucked it from the air with her tongue and swallowed it.
“I don’t know. Maybe if I’d called the township cops they’d have put out an APB, or something, and they’d have found them in line at the airport. Or maybe some cop would have shown up and told me to call my lawyer on Monday. What did I expect out of him? ‘Your kid’s with her mother and here I am wasting time writing up a report’ was the attitude I got when I went to the station.”
Gracie nodded for the milkshake again, and Bagg tried to steady the cup. White goo and drool dripped from his hand, a puddle forming on the back floor mat. He tried wiping the bear’s mouth, but her tongue snared that one, too.
“They found her mother’s car in the economy lot at the airport two weeks later. It’s been over five years now. She was almost five, and now she’s almost ten. Each year I try to figure out what a kid looks like at that age. How big they are, I mean. I know she’s far away, but I’m always searching for her in crowds and things. Passing cars and grocery stores. Sometimes I think I see her, but I know better. She’s a million miles away.
“She was my whole world.” Bagg leaned back in the seat, and the bear arched forward and rested her chin on his right shoulder, foamy white lips making a warm wet spot on his shirt. Bagg absently rubbed her right ear. “I can’t go into her bedroom. I had wanted to make it a second home for her, you know? We picked out cool posters and I bought a bunch of Christmas light strands and tacked them all across her ceiling.”
“I put all those strands of lights up on a Friday afternoon, then picked her up and brought her back to our apartment. I told her I had a surprise, and she was all excited. I led her into her room, then snapped off her desk lamp and switched on the Christmas lights that lit up all over her ceiling.” Bagg stopped. Tears were trickling down his cheeks as Gracie listened quietly. He saw her yellow eyes follow the crooked trail the little clear drops were taking over his stubbly whiskers.
“I heard her gasp, like she was looking at something magical,” Bagg told the bear. “And that’s just what she said, ‘It’s magic, Daddy. You made magic!’”
“But a couple of weeks later her mom took her away and the magic was gone.”
Chapter 19
Jennifer, Morgan’s mother, had put a lot of time and effort in planning the escape to their new lives. When she did things, she did them right, which was a stark contrast to her half-assed ex-husband and the half-assed life they’d had together. She just hoped she hadn’t waited too long. It seemed like every time she turned around, Morgan became more and more like her father. Drifting through life, glassy-eyed and unmotivated, was loathsome and unacceptable. Lennon Bagg disgusted her, and she’d long ago come to wonder what it was about him that had originally caught her attention.
Jennifer cringed at the thought of her only child growing up an apathetic slug.
To this day, she relished the memory of Lennon’s face when she announced she was leaving him. “You make my skin crawl,” she’d hissed and had finally been rewarded with a reaction; the expression she caught on that normally dull, uninspired face before it turned away from her was crestfallen, humiliated.
But removing her daughter from her husband’s daily influence had backfired. Morgan had come home from weekend visits more like her father than ever. She had been insolent and brooding, which made Jennifer hate the man even more. She had to do something drastic, beyond what the court was willing to do; she had to fix the problem herself.
Escaping from Lennon Bagg was as easy as buying a plane ticket. He hadn’t bothered to hire a divorce attorney—not that he had any real assets to protect. They’d had maybe eleven thousand dollars in a money market fund, and it would be lucky if his 401k had another ten. With a kid, the house naturally went to her, with its modest equity. The idiot judge granted him joint custody and regular visitation, despite the fact that he’d be living in a shit-hole apartment. No, the problem wasn’t getting Morgan away from her father, but the risk of making a mistake and getting caught was enormous. Jennifer took nothing for granted just because Lennon Bagg was an incompetent laggard.
Jennifer hatched her plan, paying careful attention to the smallest details. Her daughter was too old for Jennifer to change her first name, but most anyone would understand the confusion a small child had about a change of surname. Wasn’t everyone divorced at least once? And borrowing the famous actor’s name would make any sort of Internet search useless, lost among hits for The Shawshank Redemption and Nurse Betty.
Even more than five years and eight hundred miles of blue-green ocean hadn’t done much to mitigate Lennon Bagg’s influence. The girl obsessively drew pictures of birds instead of doing her homework. Her room was littered with them, and her teachers sent home warning notes regarding her erratic behavior and lack of attention.
* * *
Morgan Freeman sat on her towel, alone on the beach except for the birds. At ten years old, the skinny little girl with pale skin and brown hair just touching her shoulders had already given up on a lot of things. Santa was the hardest to let go of, but there was also the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and all that junk about crossing your fingers for good luck and not stepping on cracks. All were gone for the fourth grader, who had also given up on finding any real friends on this stupid island.
“Are you my dad?” Morgan halfheartedly asked a seagull. The question was strictly out of habit, since she’d seen him around enough to know better.
The gull had snuck up next to her towel in the pink sand, but without food, Morgan was apparently not all that interesting. It watched her for a minute or two, refused to answer any questions, and then flew back in the direction of its flock’s usual dumpster hangout behind the church kitchen.
Morgan Bagg had been renamed Morgan Freeman, according to the passport and other documents her mother had spent several thousand dollars to have created.
“Oh, yes, little missus, like the famous actor!” the uniformed customs officer at Bermuda L.F. Wade International Airport had said, waving the two females on with a friendly smile.
Birds being dead people was a fact etched in stone; it was absolute truth and nonnegotiable. It was also the main reason other fourth graders called her Mental Morgan and Cuckoo Bird Girl.
“I don’t care what names they call me,” Morgan told a Sooty Shearwater that had hopped up to her, head cocked to one side to better eye the girl. “I know you, don’t I? Have we met? You look really familiar.”
The bird kept watching her from a safe distance. This big animal, it seemed to be thinking, wasn’t making any sudden moves and maybe had something to eat in its pockets.
“I’m looking for my dad,” Morgan told the curious, mud-colored bird. “My dad is a bird, too. His name is Lennon Bagg, and I miss him very much.”
Back when Jennifer Bagg, now Freeman, had hustled her daughter through the Philadelphia airport, Morgan had kept asking about Daddy. She was supposed to see Daddy that night and spend the weekend. Where were they going? Was Daddy coming on the airplane, she had cried as her mother handed the tall lady in a dark blue skirt their tickets.
“I don’t see Daddy anywhere, Mom.” Morgan peered around her mother as they walked single file toward their seats.
“Daddy said we were going to make a real pizza tonight,” Morgan told her mother. She refused to sit, blocking the aisle for the impatient, weary-looking passengers behind them.
Morgan had heard her mother and friend talking about an airplane and a place called Bermuda, whispering things about starting life over far away. Was this what all the secret talk had been about?
“Daddy’s going to be really, really sad, Mommy.” Morgan reluctantly scooted into her seat. “He can’t make pizza without me. I have to put on the tomato sauce and cheese. He’ll mess up.”
“We’re going to a very special place with beautiful beaches.”
“Will Daddy be there?”
“No, sweethe
art.”
“Then I don’t want to go! We have to get off the airplane right now!”
“Daddy can’t come,” Jennifer began, but she looked stuck to the little girl, like she was having a hard time telling the truth. It happened sometimes to Morgan when she broke something nice.
“If Daddy can’t come, then I’m staying!” She was teetering on the edge of panic. “I don’t care about beaches. Daddy can take me to the beach.”
“Daddy can’t come because he got very sick,” Jennifer said to the little girl, who was suddenly quiet, her face frozen by the words. “He’s very sick and you know how when people are sick they can be contagious? Do you understand what ‘contagious’ is?”
“You can make other people sick,” Morgan whispered.
“Yes, Daddy is very, very sick and he’s contagious.”
Morgan looked past her mother, out at the runway lights. The stewardess began explaining the emergency procedures as Jennifer buckled them both in tightly. All the fight had gone out of Morgan as the plane backed up and headed away from the terminal. It revved its engines and then coasted out toward the runway.
Morgan sat quietly, worrying about her father. Had she made him sick?
As the plane raced down the runway, Morgan watched her mother peering out the little window. It seemed like her mother didn’t care at all about Daddy. Why would they be flying away when Daddy was so sick, even if he was contagious?
“Is Daddy dead?” Morgan whispered to her mother, but Jennifer didn’t answered, didn’t even seem to hear the little girl’s question. “Is he, Mommy?”
The tears on Jennifer Bagg’s face seemed real as she turned and pulled her daughter into her arms as best she could with the seat belts still attached. “Yes, he is.”
“What happens when you die, Mommy?” Morgan asked into her mother’s silky, lightly perfumed blouse.
“You grow wings, Morgan. You grow wings and you fly up to Heaven.”
The little girl rocked in her mother’s arms, crying softly, thinking about the two boxes of pizza mix she and her dad had bought on their last trip to the grocery store.
“We’ll make one giant pizza,” Daddy had told her. “With anchovies!”
“Yuck!”
“With pickles!”
“Double yuck! I know you’re just teasing.”
Morgan fell asleep somewhere over the blackness of the Atlantic Ocean on her way to her new life. She dreamed about her father growing wings.
Chapter 20
The sun was an orange disc sliced in two by leftover jet engine contrails that were slowly breaking apart in the westerly breeze. The low sun always turned the sand a deeper shade of pink. Morgan had learned in science class that the pink color was due to the red skeletons of single-cell animals called Red Forams, tiny critters living beneath the coral reef. One of the boys from her class who boogie boarded on this beach had claimed it was whale blood from the great whale graveyards. Just like elephants, he had sworn, whales came to Bermuda to die.
“Look around.” The boy grabbed up his board after they shared the same small wave and were swept onto the beach. “Everything comes here to die. Dead crabs, dead jelly fish.”
“Even the seaweed comes here to die.” He scooped a big handful of dripping seaweed, whipping it ahead of them into the surf.
When the other kids saw that the boy was talking to the creepy little girl who talked to birds, he raised his voice. “And stay off my waves, Cuckoo Bird.”
Morgan hoisted her board by the coiled rubber leash and flopped down the beach in her swim fins. Most kids hated walking in flippers, but Morgan didn’t mind at all. She felt very bird-like and figured it was good practice for when she died, especially if she became a pelican. There were about twenty kids on boogie boards, and Morgan made her way to the far end of the lineup before turning and stepping back into the surf. She lunged forward, splashing down like a Red-breasted Merganser, which was a silly looking duck whose head reminded her of the Roadrunner cartoon. She’d seen two Merganser drakes on this beach, neither of which were her father.
Morgan and her mom were living in the same rental as when they arrived five years earlier on Somerset Island. The island accounted for a large portion of Sandys Parish, which was the westernmost of nine Bermuda parishes. She was just finishing up the fourth grade at Sandys Primary School, where she was one lone student among two hundred kids, ages four to eleven.
The only good thing about school was art class, which was the one place where she wasn’t given a hard time for drawing pictures of birds. Any hint of paint on her narrow bedroom walls was hidden by a gallery of her bird drawings, from the graceful Mute Swans—which really did talk—to a variety of black and white images of diving and darting Shearwaters.
Morgan’s collection also included a Brown Boobie, which she sometimes imagined she’d become when she died. The boobies she watched on the rocks at the south end of her regular beach were amazing fliers, but lousy at taking off. They would stumble forward, almost falling over their big webbed feet, trying to get themselves airborne. Morgan could definitely sympathize. A boobie needed a good strong wind and a high perch for an easy takeoff. The coolest thing about these birds with small wings and long tails was how they fished from the air. They spotted a flash of silver below and went into dive bomb mode, plunging into the ocean at incredible speeds. It took her breath away each time. She sometimes thought she’d like to do that to the kids who were mean to her, just dive bomb them from above.
The little blue house she shared with her mom was on No Name Lane. It was just a few blocks from the west—facing windward beach, where Morgan went after school every day until the sun dropped into the ocean. Her school was a ten minute walk in the opposite direction, away from the beach and most of the interesting birds. The whitewashed stone school was home to dozens of Laughing Gulls, obviously named for their high-pitched call that sounded like a person laughing. But it didn’t sound like a good kind of laugh to Morgan. It sounded more like the mocking laughter of the kids who picked on her.
Morgan paddled her boogie board out through the small swells, aiming directly at the big orange sun. It was getting late, but she didn’t want to go home yet. Here, far enough away from the other kids, she felt a little closer to her dad. Maybe he could find her better out here, away from the buildings and clutter. Morgan kicked in a slow circle with her swim fins, as she and her board lifted up and over the undulating sea. She was well beyond the place where you could catch even the outside breakers, but this was her favorite spot. And this was feeding time for the fish, so the littlest ones were jumping up out of the water to escape the bigger ones. Her mom didn’t like her in the water this time of day, but one of Morgan’s teachers had told them the only shark attacks happened on the eastern beaches, and those were very rare.
Morgan had seen a Galapagos shark once, but her teacher had already explained they were just bottom feeders that ate small fish and octopus. The shark’s big dorsal fin had broken the surface ten feet away and scared the bejeebers out of her at first. It had circled her boogie board twice, probably just to check out the bobbing girl, finally sweeping under the water like a diving submarine.
Even though Morgan didn’t want to be eaten by a shark, she wasn’t afraid to die. She’d decided it wasn’t going to be much different than her long afternoons and evenings out here beyond the breakers. Instead of wings, she had her swim fins. Instead of the breeze, she had the ocean to ride.
And anyway, she’d be able to find her dad much easier once she became a bird.
Chapter 21
Billy Wayne was on a mission as he sped up Great Bay Boulevard with Bill Cosby Jell-O Pudding commercials dancing in his head. He’d loved the television program about Cosby’s family, the smart and funny mother and father. Mr. Cosby could tease and tease, but it was never hurtful. And all those children, with big white smiles and bright clean clothes, running around that expensive house. It hurt Billy Wayne when his mother called the family t
he nastiest word possible.
Billy Wayne didn’t know what made the Haitian women outside the Laundromat so evil and menacing, even though he tried his best to ignore them, while the same color family on television were people he admired.
“Komon ou ye?” the women taunted, deep and guttural, each time he’d walk past on his way to the dollar store. They all spoke the words, one by one, some evil voodoo chant. Even if he’d known they were politely asking how he was, he wouldn’t have felt any less intimidated. The tone of their voices was what scared him the most. And those glowering white eyes.
Maybe if you sold pudding in commercials you weren’t capable of hurting people? Billy Wayne sensed that as a cult leader he should know these things, but his mother’s hatefulness confirmed how he felt when the women spoke their evil language as he walked past. Billy Wayne had been warned about their voodoo and knew to keep moving.
Bill Cosby wouldn’t believe in voodoo. No, sir, Bill understood what made the world a better place, so it was no surprise at all when Billy Wayne’s book mentioned vanilla pudding.
Step number forty-one from How to Become a Cult Leader in 50 Easy Steps: “Keep plenty of vanilla pudding in the cupboards. Comfort foods are called just that for a very good reason. Vanilla pudding is easy to whip up and a delight for all ages. Just a small cup of vanilla pudding for each to share after a difficult and trying day will create a sense of fellowship among even your most skeptical followers.”
Billy Wayne drove his Dart back to West Tuckerton, pulling right up to the same group of teenage boys who had previously sent him on the wild goose chase in search of the defunct sporting goods store. He hurried past them into the convenience store and scooped up every box of vanilla pudding they had. He dropped the armful on the counter and went back for a few boxes of chocolate. Billy Wayne decided chocolate was a clever touch and was proud of himself for going above and beyond what the good book said. He also just happened to prefer chocolate.