by Lewis Shiner
The next day she called him at work. She’d just seen a thing in the paper about a sand castle contest at Surfside Beach that coming Saturday. “Sure,” Jim said. “Why not?”
It was a two-hour drive to Surfside. Jim had been in a fender-bender midweek so they were in a rented Escort, courtesy of his insurance company. They got there around noon. They had to buy a beach parking permit, a little red sticker that cost six dollars and was good through the end of the year.
Jim was uncomfortable in baggy swim shorts and a T-shirt with a hole under one arm. He didn’t want to put the sticker on a rent car and not get the rest of the use out of it.
“Maybe you can peel it off when you get home,” Karla said.
“Maybe I can’t.”
“I’ll pay for the sticker, how’s that?”
“It’s not the money, it’s the principle.”
Karla sighed and folded her arms and leaned back into the farthest corner of the front seat.
“Okay,” Jim said. “Okay, for Christ’s sake, I’m putting it on.”
They turned left and drove down the beach. It was the first of June, indisputable summer. The sun blazed down on big cylinders of brown water that crashed and foamed right up to the edge of the road. The sand was a damp tan color and Jim worried about the car getting stuck, even though there was no sign of anyone else having trouble.
They drove for ten minutes with no sign of a sand castle. The beach was packed with red cars and little kids, college boys with coozie cups and white gimme caps, divorced mothers on green and yellow lawn chairs. Portable stereos played dance music cranked so high it sounded like no more than bursts of static. They drove under a pier with a sign that said, “Order Food Here,” only there was no sign of food or anybody to give the order to. The air smelled of creosote and decay and hot sunlight.
Finally Jim saw a two-story blue frame building. A van from a soft-rock radio station was playing oldies at deafening volume and there were colored pennants on strings. It was not the mob scene Jim expected. He parked the Escort on a hard-packed stretch of sand and they got out. The sea air felt like a hot cotton compress. A drop of sweat broke loose and rolled down Jim’s left side. He didn’t know if he should reach for Karla’s hand or not.
There were half a dozen sand sculptures inside the staked-out area. Jim looked up the beach and didn’t see anything but more cars and coolers and lawn chairs. “I guess this is it?” he said. Karla shrugged.
At the far end was a life-size shark with a diver’s head in its mouth. It had been spraypainted in black and gray and flesh tones, with a splatter of red around the shark’s mouth. Next to it a guy and three women were digging a moat. They all had long hair and skimpy bathing suits.
Jim stepped over the rope that separated them. “Is this it?” he said to the guy, half-shouting over the noise from the van.
“There’s the big contest over on Galveston. They got architects, you know. Kind of like the professionals, and we’re just the amateurs.”
“I thought there would be, I don’t know. More.”
“The Galveston contest is big. They got, like this giant ice cream cone with the earth spilling out of it, they got animals, they got a giant dollar bill made of sand. I mean, perfect.”
Jim looked back at Karla, still on the other side of the rope, and then said, “You do this every year?”
“Nah, this is my first time. I thought, what the hey. It’s free, anybody can do it. You should enter, you and the lady. They got buckets and shovels and stuff over to the van. Hell, they got twelve trophies and not near that many people. You’re sure to win something. There’s a good spot right here next to us.” He pointed to a stake with an entry number on it, stuck in a flat piece of ground.
“I don’t know.”
“You should at least go look at the trophies.”
Jim nodded and the guy went back to work. It was too early to tell what his was going to look like. Jim stepped back over the rope and he and Karla looked at the other entries. There was only one real castle, pretty nice, looking like it had grown out of the top of a low hill. There was a sea serpent with a long tail. The other two both seemed to be some kind of humanoid figures, slowly emerging from the sand.
“This is kind of a let down,” Jim said.
“I wonder what they do with them after,” Karla said. Jim could barely hear her over the music.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re too high up for the tide to wash them out. That’s what’s supposed to happen, right? Digging moats and everybody running around, trying to delay the inevitable?”
Jim shook his head. “Want a Coke or something?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to enter? Get a trophy?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on. It might be fun.”
Jim looked at the flat patch of sand, the stake. He couldn’t see it. “I’m going back to the car for a Coke. You want one or not?”
“I guess.”
He took his time, trying to shake his mood. Nothing was ever easy. Everything was a struggle, and usually an argument besides. He unlocked the trunk and got two Cokes out of the ice, which was mostly melted already. He popped one and took a long drink, then started back.
He couldn’t find Karla at first. He wandered around for a minute or so, then found her down near the water line. She’d taken a bucket and a garden trowel from the contest and built herself an elevated square of sand. On top of that she was dribbling watery mud from a bucket, making little twisty upside-down icicles. He watched her make five or six before she looked up.
She seemed to be blushing. “I used to do this when I was a kid,” she said. “I called it the Enchanted Forest.”
He squatted on his heels beside her.
She said, “You think this is really stupid, don’t you.” She took another handful of mud, made another tree.
“No,” he said. He looked from the Enchanted Forest to the Gulf and back again. Close to shore the water was brown and foaming, farther out it was a deep shade of blue. He felt something inside him melt and collapse and wash away.
“No,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
Prodigal Son
He wore the kind of cheap Nike knock-offs that you see at Target, faded jeans, and a Lone Star Beer T-shirt that was last year’s size. I made him to be about twelve years old, might even have guessed younger if his eyes hadn’t been so hard. He was tan and fit, and his hair was the shade of blond that women in Dallas and Houston begged their hairdressers for.
“I want you to find my parents,” he said.
I pointed to a chair and watched him sit in it, carefully, like it might move under him. “Now that’s a new one,” I said. “Don’t tell me they ran away from home?”
“It’s not a joke, Mr. Sloane. I got money.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. I got rid of my smile and straightened up in my chair. “Why don’t you go back to the beginning and tell me about it?”
“Not much to tell, I don’t guess. Just that I don’t know who my parents are, and I want you to find them for me.”
“You’re adopted, is that it?”
“No sir,” he said. “Kidnapped.”
Either the kid had the world’s best deadpan delivery or else he was serious. “Kidnapped?”
“That’s right.” He was looking at me like I’d left my mouth open, and I probably had.
“Go on,” I said, waving a hand at him. “Talk to me.”
“It was about ten years ago, here in Austin. Took me right out of a ... mister, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “Jesus Christ. This kind of thing happens to me every day. Shouldn’t we be calling the cops?”
The kid shook his head. “I don’t want to make trouble for nobody. Andy-that’s the guy that took me-he’s been real good to me. I know what he done was wrong, but I don’t want nothing to happen to him. Okay? Me taking off like I did is going to hurt him bad enough.”
“Ten years ago, you said?” Suddenly I could hear a buzzing in my head, and it wasn’t just the AquaFest speedboats a few blocks away on Town Lake.
“Yeah. He always called me Buddy. I don’t know if that was my real name or something he just came up with. He took me right out of a shopping cart outside some grocery store. It was raining, and...”
“Jesus Christ!” I said, and jumped out of my chair so hard that it slammed into the wall behind me. Buddy came out of his chair at the noise and put out one hand to make sure he knew where the door was.
I banged open the file cabinet and walked my fingers across the folders. “Burlenbach,” I said, and yanked one out.
The kid stared at the folder, started to reach out a hand toward it and then snapped it back. “Just like that?” he said.
“Man,” I told him, “if you knew how famous you were, you wouldn’t have to ask that. Now, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, and maybe it was some other shopping cart, but about ten years ago a guy named Burlenbach lost his son just that way. He was Councilman Burlenbach then, but he’s a state senator now.”
“State senator?” It was the kid’s turn to look stunned, and I couldn’t blame him. I had a feeling it was going to be a hell of a step up for him.
“He must have had half the PI’s in this town scrounging for something the cops had missed. Me included. I even got my name in the paper over it.”
“No shit,” he said, and then glanced up quickly. “Pardon me.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Listen, have you got anything that might identify you? A baby ring, or a locket or something?”
“There’s this,” he said, pulling a bag out of his back pocket. It was the kind of little paper sack that they put single beers in at a 7-Eleven. “I was supposed to be wearing this when he found me.”
Inside the bag was an infant’s T-shirt. It had blue and yellow stripes, and Mrs. Burlenbach’s description of it was on page 2 of the file.
The secretary didn’t want to put me through so I said, “Tell him it’s about his son.”
“Senator Burlenbach doesn’t have a—”
“Just tell him that, will you?”
A moment later a deep voice said, “This is Frank Burlenbach. Now what the hell is this bull crap about my son?” The voice had a lot more authority than it used to, but I recognized it just the same.
“This is Daniel Sloane,” I said. “I was one of the investigators looking into your son’s kidnapping ten years ago. Um, to be blunt, sir, he just turned up.”
“Now?” he said.
It wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “Pardon?”
“After ten years?” he asked. “He shows up now?”
“He’s just fine, sir,” I said to the phone, conscious of Buddy watching me from across the room. “Healthy, in good shape, a good-looking kid.”
“If this is some kind of stunt...”
“I’d like to bring him out to you, sir, if that would be possible.”
I seemed to have outlasted the bluster. “What did you say your name was?” he asked in a quieter voice.
“Sloane,” I said. “Daniel Sloane.”
“I remember you,” he said, as if such a thing were a minor miracle. “Are you sure about this? I mean really sure? Because I am not going to put Georgia through this all over again and have it be for nothing. Do you understand me?”
I remembered Georgia, his tall, stylish wife, alternately hysterical and hideously uncomfortable during the few hours I’d spent with her. “It’s no joke,” I said. “Believe me.”
He gave me his new address. It was in West Lake Hills, a big jump in equity from the one listed in the file. I told him we were on our way and hung up.
“Well?” the kid asked.
“We’re going over,” I said, not wanting to meet his eyes.
“He didn’t even care, did he?”
I felt ashamed for Burlenbach, ashamed even of my own tawdry little profit-oriented part in the exchange. “Look,” I said. “He went through a lot of pain over this ten years ago. He just wants to be sure, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” the kid said. “Sure he does.” He shifted his feet and made a face. “Before we go, I need to use the, uh, donniker.”
I hadn’t heard the expression before, but the meaning was obvious enough. I pointed him down the hall, and while he was gone I folded the tiny blue-and-yellow T-shirt into thirds and put it back in the paper bag.
The August heat didn’t seem to bother the kid much as we drove through downtown and crossed the river just below the Tom Miller Dam. He’d pulled back into himself after the phone call and I guessed he was working out the contingencies for himself.
The radio in my ancient Mustang told us that tonight was Czech night at AquaFest and there would be plenty of kolaches and bratwurst and cold Lone Star Beer on the Auditorium Shores. Not to mention the Golden State Carnival and a concert by Rusty Weir. I turned off on West Lake Drive and told Buddy to keep an eye out for the address.
The houses were almost invisible from the narrow, twisting road, most of them set well back and screened by mesquite and cedars. The odd glimpses, though, were enough to make the kid look back at me in disbelief. I found the driveway and eased down the graveled slope, steering around the BMW and the little sport Mercedes parked casually in the open.
It looked like the Burlenbachs had done pretty well for themselves in the last ten years, which was more than I could say for myself When I came to think of it, the five weeks I’d put in for them back then had been about the last steady work I’d had.
Frank Burlenbach answered the door himself, wearing pleated khaki pants and a white shirt that had obviously been hand-pressed with a lot of starch. His hair had gone completely white since the last time I’d seen him, giving him the worldly air of a talk-show host. His handshake left heavy cologne on my palm and I resisted the impulse to wipe it off on my pants.
“This is Buddy,” I said, having to reach back and pull him forward by his shoulder.
The two of them looked each other over like prizefighters, and then Burlenbach stepped aside to let us in. He didn’t offer to shake with the boy.
He led us into a living room done in red tile, wicker and bentwood. Lots of plants stood around in terracotta pots that matched the floor, and ceiling fans kept the air moving briskly. I couldn’t help but wonder if they laid down carpet and rolled in overstuffed chairs every winter.
Georgia Burlenbach huddled at one end of a long, low couch with white cushions. Her hair was short and not quite blonde, her clothes wrinkled the way only expensive linen wrinkles. She looked broken, somehow, as if carrying the weight of that abandoned shopping cart around with her had finally been too much. She wanted to stand up, but her eyes flashed first to her husband and she read something there that made her stay put.
“You might remember Mr. Sloane,” Burlenbach said, and she nodded. Her smile flickered on and off like it wasn’t hooked up properly.
I took Buddy’s shirt out of the paper bag and laid it on the coffee table in front of her. “He had this with him when he showed up at my office.”
The woman gasped and Burlenbach took half a step toward her. “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God, it’s Tommy.” She picked up the shirt and hugged it against her, as if she hadn’t yet connected it with the grown boy just across the room.
Buddy walked slowly over the her and held out his hands. “Mother?” he said.
That was all she needed to go over the edge. She jumped up and hugged him, sobbing loudly, the tears spilling onto the back of the boy’s T-shirt.
“I’d better be going,” I said to Burlenbach.
“What do we owe you?” He seemed abstracted, barely aware of me.
“Half a day’s pay,” I said, knowing I could have pushed for a lot more. “I’ll send you a bill.”
He barely heard me. “The boy—Tommy, or Buddy, or whatever—did he say anything to you?”
“Say anything?”
He licked his
lips. “About us.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I looked over at his wife, but she was oblivious.
“Nothing,” Burlenbach said. “Forget it. This is all just such a shock...We’d gotten used to the idea that we’d never see Tommy again, and now...well, I hardly know what to say.” His brain was spinning like a roulette wheel, and I saw where the ball needed to drop.
“If nothing else,” I said, “I imagine this will make for one hell of a newspaper story. Father and son reunited after all these years?”
“Hmmm? Yes, yes, I suppose it does at that.” He shook my hand again and for the first time he actually managed a smile.
By four o’clock the reporters tracked me to my house and I posed for a round of pictures and told them what I knew. After that I unplugged the phone and let my service take over. I needed the publicity badly enough, but I was starting to feel a little cheap. I’d really liked the kid and it bothered me to make a profit off of something I should have wanted to do for free.
All night long my mind kept coming back to him. I wondered what it would be like for him, coming out of a world of dime stores and bad grammar and moving into that carefully manicured house, no longer even sure he’d done the right thing. What would Georgia Burlenbach think when the kid didn’t know which fork to use or when she found him whizzing into the hedges?
I plugged the phone in before I went to bed and it woke me at six the next morning.
“Sloane?” Burlenbach sounded like the phone was cracking in his fist. “You’ve got thirty seconds to convince me not to call the police.”
“Go ahead and call them,” I said. “If you want to tell me why you’re calling them, that’s okay too.”
“Don’t get cute with me, Sloane. What’s the price tag? Let’s get that over with first and then we’ll take it from there.”
I yawned. “It’s six in the morning, Senator, and I just woke up, and I don’t have the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the boy, as you goddamned well know. Buddy, as you call him. He’s gone.”