“Y’all’s money’s no good here,” the man said and ushered them through.
Inside the gates, Justin said, “Now, that’s more like it.”
They wove through clusters of people and the gauntlet of food vendors and game booths. The four of them glanced furtively at Justin. They couldn’t help it. He hadn’t been in a crowd like this yet, and they needed to make sure he wasn’t overwhelmed, to make sure he didn’t vanish when they weren’t watching. Cecil bought a basket of fried shrimp to share, and Griff kept a lookout for Fiona and the rubber duck race. Kids ran willy-nilly and adults stopped walking without notice to sample food—frog legs and oysters and deep-fried Snickers bars. People knocked into each other. They sloshed frothy beer and dropped sticks of cotton candy. The ground was still soggy from the storm, and puddled in places; Eric’s shined boots were already scuffed with mud. Game booths were bright with stuffed animals, loud with carneys barking at the crowds. There were shooting games and ring tosses, and a carousel where you sat on sea creatures instead of horses—dolphins and sharks and killer whales, shrimp and trout and catfish, mermaids and seahorses. Griff wondered if he’d overlooked the rubber duck race, if they’d passed it without his noticing. The Ferris wheel loomed by the water and he realized he’d been hoping to ride it with Fiona. He wanted to look down and see the bay and Southport and maybe his own house, and he wanted everyone to see him with Fiona. He looked around but couldn’t find her. The petting zoo was nearby, the odor of goats and ponies and manure, and the sweet sticky scent of alfalfa hay. The Tejano band finished its set. The audience clapped and whistled.
Laura and Eric and the boys made their way to the back of the stage, where they were due to meet Tracy Robichaud for instructions. Cecil wasn’t part of the event, so he went to find the best spot to record everything with Griff’s video camera. In the ticket line, Griff had told him what button to push and how to zoom, but Cecil was still thinking about what Eric had whispered in his ear, so he wasn’t sure he’d remember what to do with the camera. He positioned himself in front of center stage behind a plywood barricade. There were no chairs or benches. He stood in the tamped-down grass and rested his elbows on the barricade and felt the sun bearing down on the back of his neck. He wasn’t surprised to hear about Dwight Buford. What he felt was more akin to contentedness, as if there was one less thing he needed to do now. He hoped it would lighten Justin’s load, too, and his family’s, and he hoped there wouldn’t be much fanfare when the news broke. His mouth kept curling into a smile. After the Shrimporee, he’d head out to the cemetery and tend to Connie’s grave. He’d tell her what he could.
“Are you psyched for the mosh pit?” someone asked from beside him. When he turned, he saw Fiona. “I bet it’ll get wild when the Campbell Family Band hits the stage.”
“I don’t expect any shortage of applause, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said.
“And I bet those old birds over there who keep checking you out will be the loudest,” she said.
Cecil turned to his left and saw the small, hunched Wilcox sisters, Ruth and Bev. They met his eyes and though Bev looked away, Ruth raised her tiny hand to wave. They made Cecil wish he’d worn a hat he could tip at them.
The audience had started to fill in. A uniformed Refugio patrol officer and a pregnant woman ate pan dulce, and a large woman in a floral frock fanned herself with a rolled-up newspaper. Ivan was drinking a beer, talking with a gaggle of women in sunglasses. There were customers from the pawnshop all around, and a dozen or more teenagers. Joseph Anzaldúa, who owned the dry cleaner’s, was talking on his cell phone while teachers from Eric’s school and waitresses from the Castaway were mingling, trading stories. Ronnie Dawes and his mother stood off to the side; Ronnie held a homemade poster with a vivid red heart on it. A contingent of folks who’d volunteered in the searches was scattered around, donning their old search shirts with Justin’s image on it. On each of them, the word MISSING had been replaced with HOME. Cecil wanted to remember to shoot video of them once they saw Justin. He craned his neck to look for redheaded Marcy, but he couldn’t find her. The crowd was deep, though, and already large enough to fan out away from the stage, so maybe she was there somewhere. A part of him hoped so.
Fiona was still talking about the Wilcox sisters. She had a sweet and bawdy manner, like an actress in a play, and it was easy to see how Griff would fall for her. She said, “Piece of advice? Go for Bev, the one who didn’t wave. That’s the kind of minx that’ll keep you guessing.”
“Do you know how to work this?” Cecil held up the video camera.
“Push that red button to start recording and push it again to stop,” she said. Then, in mock exasperation, she took the camera and said, “On second thought, you’ll probably get all weepy, so I’ll film. The last thing those boys need is to hear their grandpa blubbering like a girl. Don’t blame me if there are a lot of shots of Griff’s cute butt.”
Cecil smiled. He could feel the crowd expanding behind him. He said, “Is Griff doing okay?”
“After last night, I’d hope he’s doing a bit better than okay.”
“I worry he gets lost in the middle of all this. I don’t want him to feel out to sea.”
“I’m watching him,” she said, her voice tender, real. “I’ve been watching him for longer than he knows and I’m not stopping anytime soon.”
“That sounds mighty good,” Cecil said. Then, after a moment, he added, “Make sure you get a shot of the audience, all those people in their Justin shirts are a sight to see.”
Backstage, as he and his family approached Tracy and Kent Robichaud, Eric’s stomach coiled into knots. He worried about how he’d left things with Tracy yesterday, worried about her or her husband coming unglued, worried about what they’d say to Laura. He was also still trying to process Dwight Buford’s death. That the man no longer occupied the physical world hadn’t yet registered in Eric’s mind. Maybe the reality would set in once they shared the news with Justin; or maybe the problem was not knowing how Justin would react, the fear that he’d feel anything except relief.
Kent Robichaud had a soft handshake but calloused fingers, which Eric thought might come with being a surgeon. He wore a shirt with a starched collar and smelled of cologne and had an easy smile. When Tracy introduced him, he turned to Justin and said, “Justin, she’s been trying to get me to the Shrimporee for years, but you’re the only reason I’d come.”
Everyone smiled, laughed a little. People used the opportunity to look him over. If he caught someone staring, he smiled. He lifted his hand in a small wave. When Tracy asked if he was nervous, he shook his head no but said yes, and the laughter started up again.
Laura thought she remembered Justin making that same joke years ago, but wasn’t sure. Or maybe Griff had and Justin copped it from him? Either way, she wanted to steal it and use it herself in the next few days. She thought Justin would appreciate such humor. His demeanor floored her. She liked watching him, liked watching people watch him. The admiration in their eyes, the respect in the way they approached him, as if he were royalty. And with everyone lavishing their attention on him, Laura could see how healthy Justin looked, the gained weight and the shine in his sweet, shaggy hair and the burgeoning confidence in his posture. It was as if he’d come to accept that people would want to study him and with that acceptance he had gained an undeniable poise.
Then, without anyone noticing, it was suddenly very crowded in the shade behind the stage. The mayor was there, and a news crew, and a reporter and photographer from the paper, and a man with a radio headset giving Tracy instructions. Eric watched her nod and push locks of hair behind her ears. The mayor was talking with Laura and Griff and Justin, stepping this way and that to let people pass on their way to the stage, and Eric was in awe of the moment, struck by the impossibility of what he was seeing. Flat blades of light cut through the stage rigging. It was loud outside—a cacophony of voices and music and machines. The Shrimporee was likely at full capac
ity. Earlier, after they got off the phone with Garcia, Laura had come to find him in the bedroom and she took his face in her hands, searched his eyes with hers, and said, “Starting right now, we’re a family again. Going forward, it’s just the four of us and we’re going to be okay.” Now, watching as she listened to the mayor saying something to their sons, Eric heard her words as a kind of beautiful threat.
Then Tracy was pulling Laura and the boys away from the mayor, and she was waving Eric over. He thought something was wrong. Thought the event was being canceled because news of Buford had been leaked or Mayne was there or the weather was about to turn. For an excruciating moment, he felt positive that the body found in the ship channel had been incorrectly identified and Buford was still in the world, making his way toward Justin at that moment. But Tracy was smiling. A woman stood beside her, a woman who’d been backstage the whole time, but Eric had assumed she worked for the Shrimporee. She was shorter than Griff and had thin silver hair longer than Laura’s. The woman looked skittish, squirrelly. Eric wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d bolted away. She kept smacking her lips, as if she were missing her teeth. She held a small white paper bag with both hands. Seeing her, Justin said, “Oh, wow.”
“You remember,” the woman said, and smiled. It was as if she’d won a prize.
“Wow,” he said again. “You came.”
Laura looked from Justin to the woman to Eric, who was equally clueless, and then back to Justin. People were taking notice now. The energy backstage was being drawn inexorably to Justin.
“I was going to introduce everyone onstage,” Tracy said, “but Mrs. Sheppard didn’t want to wait.”
Justin looked at his feet, then back at Mrs. Sheppard, then leaned forward and took her in his arms. He was taller than she was, so he had to stoop to bury his face in her shoulder and hair. Laura glanced at Eric again, thinking his face would betray something, but it didn’t. They glanced at Griff, who could only shrug. Tracy wiped tears from her eyes. Her husband came over to her, pulling a maroon handkerchief from his pocket, and she folded herself into his arms. Then a photographer was crouching and snapping rapid pictures. The cameraman from the news ignited his light and started circling, moving in closer and closer.
After a moment, Justin stepped back. The camera light stayed bright. The photographer clicked away.
Then Griff understood. He met Mrs. Sheppard’s eyes and said, “You’re the one who sold him the mice. You’re the one who found him.”
Laura’s hands flew to her mouth and she couldn’t decide where to look and then she couldn’t stop herself from grabbing the woman and wrapping her arms around her. Then she was reaching for Eric and Griff and Justin, and they were huddling together, laughing and starting to cry. Mrs. Sheppard smelled of cedar shavings. Laura was lost in everyone’s embrace. She couldn’t tell where her own body stopped and where others began, couldn’t tell who was touching whom where, or how many people were involved. Someone was saying “Thank you.” Someone was saying it over and over, or they were all saying it at different times.
The man with the headset returned to tell Tracy the stage was ready. It was time. The mayor ascended the stairs and disappeared into the sunlight—there was a smattering of applause—and the reporters followed. The photographer and cameraman positioned themselves at the top of the stairs, their backs to the crowd, their lenses trained on whoever would next climb toward them. Tracy’s husband kissed her cheek and looked her over and said her makeup was fine; then he jogged through the rigging to make it to the front of the stage as she went up the stairs. The cameramen ignored her, which pricked Eric. At the top, she turned to look at him. She smiled and he knew she was telling him to hurry his family along, but she also wanted to see what he thought of her having found Mrs. Sheppard. Her face was open and full and beautiful, and to thank her, for everything, and to apologize, for everything, he held her gaze and then lidded his eyes. When he opened them, she nodded once with a small, subdued smile, and moved onto the stage out of his vision.
“Here,” Mrs. Sheppard said, handing Justin the small white bag. “I thought your snake was probably getting hungry. I brought you a couple of feeder mice.”
“Sick,” he said. “She’s about to shed.”
“Then she’ll be twice as hungry once she’s done.”
Laura said, “I will spend the rest of my life trying to make this up to you. I wish the reward was bigger, but I hope it will—”
“I told Mrs. Robichaud not to fuss with the reward. I don’t need no money. We’ve got our apartment and a car that runs and I do okay selling critters at the flea market. You could come buy mice every so often if you had a mind to.”
Then the headset man returned and guided them toward the stairs. Eric let Laura go first, then Griff, then Justin. As they stepped onto the stage, the cameramen crab-walked beside them, squinting and clicking, and the audience applauded. When Justin emerged, there was a roar. It was thundering, as if the town had been silent all these years, holding its breath, and only now was it crying out in joy. Eric started to choke up, just as he sometimes did when he attended school graduations. It was how he felt now, as if the world were momentarily balanced on an ending and a beginning, and soon it would tip forward and send everyone in a new direction and the life they were meant to have would commence. As he followed his family onstage and into the bright sunlight—he hadn’t realized how his eyes had adjusted to the dark down below—he couldn’t believe the luck of his life. He couldn’t believe it at all.
Epilogue
IMAGINE KILLING A MAN. THE COMMITMENT. THE IRREVERSIBLE and unspeakable isolation in its wake. How you’d have to relinquish yourself, the entirety of the life that had come before and the dreamed-for future, knowing that nothing and no one would remain the same afterward. How, by killing him, you’d also be killing yourself, and what would follow would be a hollow two-planed existence. Both true. Both false. You would have come to see the world as an animal does, without judgment or hope or mercy, and believe that nothing—not grace or history, not consequence or shame or God—mattered more than what you longed to protect. Imagine how it would feel like surrender, like a narrative without end, like a homecoming aborted.
This was what Eric was doing in the moments after they dropped Cecil off and Laura lowered herself into the passenger seat. He couldn’t help it. The thoughts mounted like broken promises, and he was defenseless, acutely vulnerable to their luminous and incessant logic. What if, he couldn’t stop himself from wondering, his father had gotten to Dwight Buford after all? Maybe he went to his house or found him at the marina without Eric. Maybe that had been his plan all along. Maybe, atop the Harbor Bridge, Cecil had held the pistol to the back of Buford’s neck, in the soft pocket beneath the skull. Maybe they were both surprised by how perfectly the barrel of the .44 fit there, how it seemed to have been made for exactly that purpose, exactly that place. Maybe that’s why Buford jumped.
Then, unexpectedly, he thought of Laura. He knew he had to be wrong, knew how impossible the notion would seem to everyone else, but then again, how impossible was anything? Hadn’t this very night seemed impossible just months before? Hadn’t Justin’s return itself seemed a kind of impossible resurrection? Eric drove slowly, waiting for the spell of doubt to subside. The last of the evening light remained in the trees, and stars were firing bright and low in the sky. Despite everything that had happened, the urge to make his way to the Buford house persisted. He’d never been over there after dark, something he realized only now, and with that thought came the late understanding of what Dwight Buford had been doing all those hours when Eric had been waiting for him to show himself: He had, like Justin, been sleeping. How long, Eric wondered, might Laura have understood that? How long might she have seen what he’d missed?
In the car, she was talking with the boys. Justin had promised not to feed the new mice to Sasha, which led Griff to suggest setting up the cage for them in his room. The boys wanted Laura to name them. Griff
asked if anyone had seen the booth with the rubber duck race, and both Laura and Justin said yes but couldn’t remember exactly where. Then the conversation turned to Alice the dolphin and Laura volunteering tonight. Eric hadn’t heard everything, but the gist was that Rudy Treviño, the cop she’d introduced them to when they came off the Shrimporee stage, had been scheduled to volunteer later that night, but his pregnant wife wasn’t feeling well after so much time in the heat, so Laura agreed to cover his shift. She expected it to be an easy, uneventful night. Eric thought she seemed proud, and serene, as if she’d relieved herself of a burden. His knowing wife, a woman who would never tell him she’d gone to the pawnshop to save him from himself. Listening to her now, something inside him braced.
How many of the nights when she claimed to be at Marine Lab could she have gone to the Buford house instead? Maybe she would have seen light pouring out of the living room windows, or maybe the whole house would have been dark except for a small room in the back where the unmistakable glow of a television flickered. At night, she could have parked far closer than Eric could in the daylight. Maybe she’d even pulled into his driveway. Maybe she’d seen Buford step out onto the porch. Maybe she’d watched him inhale the night’s thick air or wipe crusty sleep from his eyes. Maybe when the morning paper arrived, he waved to the person throwing the route. Maybe he flipped the porch light on and read it outside. Maybe Laura was close enough to see him pausing over the pictures of Justin.
Or maybe Dwight Buford was as paranoid as they were, and getting him out of the house required more conviction. Maybe she would honk her horn from the driveway, or run up and ring the doorbell, or kick over the metal garbage cans, and because Buford didn’t want anything to disturb his dying mother, he’d venture outside. Or maybe Laura would have to find someone else to ring the doorbell, someone who would leave Dwight Buford no choice but to open the door. Eric’s first thought was Justin, but he knew better. Laura wouldn’t put her son through such distress. Then his mind went back to Cecil—maybe that was why he’d called everything off this morning, because they’d already handled it—and then he thought of a sheriff or a policeman, and finally, incrementally, like clouds converging before a storm, he again started to see Rudy Treviño. A man who seemed so at ease with Laura, a man she’d never once mentioned to Eric. So after Buford opened the door, maybe Rudy said there’d been complaints or, better, a threat against Buford’s own life, so his bail was being revoked for his safety. Maybe Buford ducked into the cruiser willingly, gratefully. Or maybe he started to piece things together, just as Eric was doing now. Maybe when Buford caught sight of Laura in the passenger seat, he tried to run. Imagine Rudy taking him down, cuffing him, covering his mouth with a shirt Laura had taken from the cleaner’s.
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