by V. J. Banis
He put the last few ears into the basket. Done.
“Jessie!” he called, closing his fingers around the loop handles. When she didn’t answer he felt an unwelcome chill and stepped faster, making for the barn door. He emerged into daylight and set down his basket in time to see his granddaughter waving at him from the back seat of a station wagon with temporary tags.
“Bye, Pappy,” her mouth said through the glass.
She was laughing as a golden retriever pup lapped at her ear. A man and a woman wearing baseball caps and dark glasses sat in the front seat. The car took off. Stunned, Calvin stood there for what must have been thirty seconds before the impact of what had just happened hit him: Jessie was gone.
* * * *
Sheriff Wells made it out to the house in fifteen minutes, right after issuing an APB back at the station in town. Right now, he was the consummate professional. Ellie was on the phone with someone in the hotel where Cassidy and Rhonda were staying. Calvin could tell she wasn’t getting through to the person at the other end. He eased Brandon off of his lap and shooed him toward his grandmother, taking the phone from his wife. “That’s right. Cassidy and Rhonda Dumfries. D-u-m-f-r-i-e-s.”
Ellie wrapped her arms around her grandson so tightly it made him squirm.
“Where’d Jessie go, Grammy?” he said, looking at the Sheriff’s shiny badge and gun belt with round eyes. “Is she under arrest?”
“We don’t know where she is right now, Brandon, but she isn’t in trouble. We are doing the best we can to find her,” Sheriff Wells said, in his most soothing manner. He said to Calvin, “Don’t you worry, we’re on top of it. We’ve alerted every law enforcement agency in the tri-state area to be on the lookout for their car.”
Calvin blamed himself for not jotting down the tag number. He had not been able to tell them what make or model the car was, either. Cars all looked pretty much alike to him. He did know it was a late model, and dark in color, maybe navy blue or black.
Not reassured, Brandon started to sob, soon joined by his grandmother. The two of them rocked back and forth while Calvin finished his call. When he hung up, he signaled the sheriff to join him on the porch. “Tell me the truth, Mike. We ain’t never going to see our little angel again, are we?”
“Where there’s life, there’s hope, Calvin. It’s best we keep our spirits up until we know something more. Like I said, there are troopers on the lookout for a car like you described. We put roadblocks on the main arteries between here, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. If they’re from out of the area, we’ll nab them, and if they’re local, Jessie will turn up soon enough.”
Unless someone killed her or carried her off down the back roads, Pappy thought, finishing for him.
* * * *
The cold case area was in a cinderblock add-on in the back of the Sheriff’s Office. Calvin still came in once a month, but it had been almost twenty years since his Jessie disappeared, and it was mostly a ritual now, one shared with Skeeter Jones, the deputy assigned to watch over this sad little outpost of dwindled hope and quiet resignation. There had been only six unsolved murders in Morgan County since Jessie disappeared in 1987—not a large number, but every one a misery for those left to pick up the pieces.
Skeeter pushed the can of Skoal toward him across the Korean War issue government desk. Scratched, dented and painted a dispirited gray, it matched the mood of the place to a tee.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Calvin, who’d never smoked a cigarette in his strict Baptist life, took a pinch of the tobacco and placed it between cheek and gum, as he’d been doing since Skeeter first offered him some when he walked into this place so many years ago. “Dang stuff’s gonna kill me, a’one of these days, Dr. Patel says.”
“Doctors don’t know everything. My uncle lived to be ninety-nine and he smoked cigarettes and rubbed snuff. Old man ate bacon every single day too, and snuck whiskey out behind the shed. He was a cussed old coot. They found him dead on the porch with a pack of Luckys in his pocket and a snort of Jack Daniels at his elbow.”
But Calvin knew something Deputy Jones didn’t: he had developed a suspicious abscess on his lower gum, and was awaiting the results of a biopsy. Not that he cared much; at eighty-five years of age, and a widower the last three, he was fully prepared to meet his maker.
Sometimes he thought the only thing that kept him hanging on was the question of what had happened to his Jessie. The shrink Dr. Patel had recommended told him he might have to learn to live without “closure,” but he’d be damned if he was going to do that. Right up until he drew his last breath he would keep up the search. It was the only thing that kept him from losing his mind entirely.
Of course, it had come down to this, now, and the case had ended up here, with only Skeeter Jones and himself as its champions.
Years ago, after the search teams failed to locate anything, Calvin had broken down, and it was Skeeter had patted him on the back. “I ain’t even got no body to lay in the ground,” Calvin had sobbed. “How am I supposed to grieve proper?”
Skeeter and everyone else in town knew how Calvin eventually mourned. He went out one night and knocked the barn down with a ’dozer. He pushed the supports right out from under it and watched it collapse onto the ground, then doused it with gasoline and set the pile on fire.
In its place he erected an eight-foot marble statue of an angel with a sign that read, “Jessie Dumfries—Gone but Not Forgotten.” The next year he put up another sign, “Pappy’s Angel Garden,” and surrounded the statue with flowerbeds that grew larger and more elaborate every year. He always thought of it not only as a memorial, but as a kind of lighthouse. If Jessie ever happened by, it might jog her memory, and she might stop in and ask about it. Surely, she would still be blonde and beautiful, still have a smile that could break your heart and they would know her at once.
Every August, the pastor of the Freewill Baptist placed a wreath at the angel’s feet, and the members of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department came out, even the ones too young to remember the abduction. One or two told Pappy they decided to join the force after hearing about the tragedy from their parents, who had become much more vigilant afterward, more fierce and more loving.
“Don’t suppose you’ve got any news for me.”
The deputy looked at him with eyes that had begun to fade from age and long hours poring over partial evidence that almost always led to nothing but blank walls and disappointment. “Cal, you know I look forward to your visits, but if we’d heard anything, anything at all, you’d of been the first one we told.”
“I know, Skeeter, but I have to ask.”
“I wish we’d caught the bastards who took her, but wherever they went, they’re long gone.”
Calvin knew by now that thousands of children disappeared each year. Some were runaways, but there were more than a few taken from the supermarket, or their own neighborhood, snatched by pedophiles or people with a tormented desire to have a child of their own. No one seemed to know much about what happened to the adopted group, but the outcome was bleak for those abducted by pedophiles. They entered a twilight zone of slavery, if they lived.
Once he got to high school Brandon had used his extensive knowledge of the internet not only to research the phenomenon of child abduction, but to look into kiddie porn sites. What he saw there made Calvin physically ill, and he wandered the woods with his rifle for weeks, unsure who he wanted to shoot more: any child molester he might somehow come across, or himself. Eventually, the images had faded from his mind, and he was able to sleep again, more or less.
Brandon made up his mind to study law, and was now working for the County Prosecutor’s Office, with a special interest in child abuse and abduction cases.
None of it had brought Jessica back.
* * * *
Sunnyside Village was the damned stupidest name for a rest home that Calvin had ever heard. Here he was dying, and the sign outside his window read “Sunnyside,” in cheerful cursive sc
ript. He started to snort, but the pain was too intense, so he hit the morphine pump instead, glad for the hundredth time that he had refused his son’s invitation to live with him. If he hadn’t been able to protect Jessie, he’d be damned if he would bring any more misery into that house.
Death couldn’t come fast enough to suit him, now. Now that Brandon had moved into the old farmhouse, a well-respected and energetic young Turk on his way to larger things, Calvin was as content as he was ever going to be. Brandon would tend his grandmother’s grave and the memorial and keep meeting with whoever replaced Skeeter when the lawman retired next year. Skeeter was due to come by tomorrow, as he did every Sunday.
Today was Saturday, Calvin knew, because he marked the days off on his calendar, so the doctors in this place wouldn’t think he’d gone senile. It was hard to care, but he was determined to stay on top of whatever was left of his world, to the end.
It was four o’clock in the morning according to the digital clock on his nightstand. He had one of the half-dozen private rooms at Sunnyside, both by virtue of his terminal condition and the fact that his son paid a premium for it. Damned waste of money, he thought. Ought to be putting that money into the scholarship program they had started in Jessie’s name.
He adjusted his old bones in the bed, trying in vain to find a comfortable position. He didn’t want any more morphine, not yet. There was a balancing act he had to maintain, somewhere between a level of pain he could tolerate and losing the ability to relate to his surroundings. He’d leaned more in the direction of alertness, so far, but with the cancer advancing fast, he wasn’t sure how much longer that would last.
He looked into the hall through his open door. How much longer would it be until the night nurse popped her head in to check on him? He would like some water, but he was not about to press the call button and disturb her. He could wait; didn’t want to trouble anyone.
A shadow fell across his threshold just before the stranger came in.
“Mr. Dumfries?” she asked, tiptoeing closer to the bed. “Are you awake?”
“Sure am,” he answered. Who could she be? Even in the dark he could see she wasn’t wearing scrubs like the nursing assistants who were the mainstays of this place, and she sounded too young to be a doctor. She tapped his bedside lamp and it came on at its lowest level. He could see she was very pretty. He reached out a hand, careful not to dislodge the IV, and tapped the lamp again, twice, bringing the light up. He had been wrong about the woman: she wasn’t pretty, she was beautiful beyond belief.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I was just driving by on my way home, and thought I’d check in and see if anyone was awake.” She laughed. “I’ve discovered that quite a few people in here are early risers.”
“Lots of us were farmers, once, and have the habit of early rising. Old age only makes it worse. We’re out of synch with the rest of the world.” Calvin kept staring at the woman. She had a white plastic name tag: Hospice Volunteer, it said. Oh, so that was it. “You new with the Gateway Group?” he asked. Although most visitors tired him these days, he found himself energized by this one.
“Uh-huh.”
“You sure are up and about early yourself. Where did you say you worked?”
The young woman laughed again. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Rose, with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. I’ve been monitoring the habits of certain nocturnal critters. I don’t need much sleep, so my interest comes naturally.”
“Didn’t know the Fish and Wildlife people had an office out this way.”
“They didn’t. I started one because I’ve always felt drawn by rural life. I relocated from Morgantown earlier this year. Bought myself a farmette and put in a patch of corn and tomatoes. I needed more open space than I could afford up there. My dog needed room to run, too. We both love it here.”
“You don’t say.” Her hair gleamed. It looked for all the world like corn silk: pale, sleek and soft. She leaned across him to adjust the sheets where they’d become tangled under his ribs and he inhaled deeply as her hair brushed his face.
Dr. Patel was wrong; his sense of smell had not diminished with his disease, not at all. The veil of hair smelled of sunshine, and flowers and—could it be?—Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, the shampoo his Jessie had used.
Should he ask about it, or would she think he was being fresh? Nothing was so grotesque in his mind as the decrepit old geezers who kept flirting with the young females in the place. It was out of order, and lacked dignity.
“Ah, Miss Rose?” he began.
She turned her smile on him and he was momentarily dazzled. “What is it, Mr. Dumfries?”
“Would you mind raising me up a little, so I could sit up proper?”
“Not at all,” she said, adjusting the back of his bed and sitting down in the chair next to it. “I can’t stay long, because the nurses are afraid I’ll wake everyone and their call board will light up the night, even though it hasn’t happened yet.”
“How long have you been coming out here?”
“Not long, a few weeks.”
“How come I ain’t, I mean haven’t, seen you before?”
“I guess you don’t remember me, then?”
“Remember you? I wouldn’t forget an angel like you, honey.” Oh, dang it. Now he really was sounding like the rest of the reprobate males. If the girl had any sense she’d get out while the getting was good.
“I’ve been by before, and we talked some last week. You were just waking up on that occasion, so maybe you went back to sleep and thought you were dreaming. It happens sometimes.”
“You seem to know a great deal about us old folks. What got you started volunteering for hospice? Seems like grim duty for someone so young.”
“I don’t know why I started, to be honest. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Like I said, I’m pretty new at it.” He’d swear her smile had a light source all its own.
“Well, what brings you in to see me in particular?”
“I’m not sure about that, either. Maybe because I never had a grandpa?” The lovely creature looked sad. He wanted to put the smile back on her face; needed to.
“Grandpas can be overrated,” he said, trying to make a joke, but meaning it. If only she knew. “I had a granddaughter once, but I lost her.”
“What do you mean, lost her? Did she move away?”
He had to be cagey, here; didn’t want to sound maudlin. “One day—it was just about this time of year—she and her brother and I were working at our roadside stand,” he smiled wistfully, “and some people drove up and snatched her, just like that.”
“Oh, I am sorry. How old was she?” Rose asked, concern replacing the curiosity in her eyes.
Too late; he was crying now. Miserable old coot. He’d gone and made his beautiful night visitor sad. “Almost five. I called her my angel. After she disappeared I burnt the damn stand to the ground, put up a stone angel and planted some flowers. The whole mess is standing on the place to this very day.”
“Pappy’s Angel Garden?” she asked, astonishing him.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I drive by it every day on my way home. My place is just to the other side of Stony Creek. Your garden is a bit of a landmark. I’ve always wondered about it.”
“I put it there to remind everyone. Not that anyone who met Jessie could ever forget.” Calvin felt suddenly shy. “You look a little like her. Like what she might of turned out like, I mean, if I hadn’t been such a damn fool as to let her talk to those people all by herself. I should of known better.”
“Now, Mr. Dumfries, I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard anyone your age say.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, surprised. There was no question that he had been in the wrong.
“I mean, who in the world would have expected a child to be snatched away from a place like this? I’ll bet your granddaughter had talked to a hundred customers without a problem. No one
would have imagined that the hundred and first would be a kidnapper.”
“I can’t forgive myself. I can’t hardly stand to think about what might have happened to that child.”
“Now, you need to let that go. You’re torturing yourself and no good can come of that. The whole thing is in God’s hands now, and always was. We’re not expected to know everything, or even do everything right; just do the best we can. You don’t need me to tell you that, do you? I think you know that way down deep, Mr. Dumfries.”
And somehow, he realized, he did. Hearing it from the lips of this beautiful stranger made the truth of it come home to roost, the way it never had all the times the preacher, Sheriff Wells and even the members of his own family had said the same thing. He’d thought he’d seen reproach in their eyes, but there was nothing in this Rose’s eyes but tenderness.
She reached into her purse and took out a stylized angel pin of the kind hospice visitors often wore next to their nametags. “Here,” she said, patting him. “I know you can’t get out of this place to see Pappy’s Angel right now, but you can hold onto this to remind you, until you see some real ones, up in heaven. I’m sure they know it took a lot of love to put that statue up, and to keep that beautiful garden, too. They must be looking down and smiling, just like I do every time I drive by. Me, and a whole lot of other people you never even heard of.”
She pinned the angel onto his pajamas. He covered her hand and gave it a little squeeze, trying to convey what her words had meant to him. “I will,” he said, holding on tight. Rose kissed him on the cheek and looked into his eyes. Her eyes were like wonderful deep pools into which he could dive and be at peace.
* * * *
The Charge Nurse was giving change of shift report. “Calvin Dumfries passed at 4:33 AM.” She had discovered this on her way back from answering a call from Jimmy Randall in 215. The old man had signed a Do Not Resuscitate order, so no attempts had been made to revive him, in accordance with his stated wish. He had been pronounced shortly after that.