Lost Boy Found

by Kirsten Alexander

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The arrival of Gideon Wolf’s lawyer in Opelousas caused a lot of talk. The scruffy tramp who people—for or against—dismissed as poor and luckless had secured impressive legal counsel from out of state. His lawyer, a tall olive-skinned Italian man from California, was part of the powerful Gabino family, whose Bank of Italy had bought Fresno National and the People’s Savings Bank, a background which made him impressive and suspect. Both the lawyer and his assistant were expensively suited and impeccably coiffed.

  “It’s the brother,” Judge Roy explained to John Henry, making a whirlpool of his port as he swirled his glass. “He can’t have it. No good for his standing.”

  The two men had met once again for dinner at the Starry Lake Resort’s city club. John Henry looked around the room at the long straight line where polished floorboards met thick carpet, at the gilt frames around large landscape paintings, the fenestration, the Steinway. He crossed his legs, felt the rug sink under his heel. After years of wanting, he was where he ought to be. He belonged. And he did not. He caught glimpses of the gentlemen’s faces when he entered the room, and saw how they avoided his eyes.

  John Henry took a slow sip and became aware of a pleasing tinkle coming from the piano.

  “Beethoven played by a Negro. What next?” The judge belched and patted his stomach.

  He told John Henry that Gideon Wolf had a brother named Buck, from whom he’d been estranged for years. Buck had been an ambitious young man, the polar opposite of his brother, and had taken himself to California in search of a better life. Due to hard work and conniving, Buck had built a successful business making and selling oil rigging. He’d amassed a fortune, enough to attract and wed the daughter of oil baron Langston Adler. Buck’s new wife had heard about Gideon Wolf’s arrest—she’d followed the case of the missing boy, fancied herself an amateur sleuth—and, knowing her husband had a brother in the South, she asked if this might be the Gideon, his Gideon? Buck Wolf read the article she showed him and decided the man did indeed sound like his brother.

  “So Buck met with his father-in-law to discuss the possible damage to their respective reputations should Buck’s brother be found guilty. And Mr. Adler decided they needed to shut this whole thing down.” The judge caught the eye of a drinks waiter. “Neither of them wants the infamy of having a convicted childnapper in their family. Adler has sent the top lawyer from his company’s own firm to defend Wolf. I suspect he’ll have plenty of money at his disposal to do what needs to be done.” The judge lowered his voice. “Are you confident your man can argue a strong case for you? You’ve gone with Gomer Ellis, yes?”

  John Henry glanced around to check for eavesdroppers. “Yes. Do you have doubts?”

  “No. He’s good, he wins. But it needs to be convincing. I can’t have—John, it mustn’t appear as though I’ve been compromised. You get Ellis to run over his strategy with you, plug any holes.”

  “I’ll meet with him tomorrow. But I fear simple honesty won’t be strategy enough for us to win. We need to find a way to put this Grace Mill story to rest.”

  Judge Roy stood up. “I didn’t catch those last words. My hearing’s not what it was.” He walked across the room to talk to his good friend Mr. Collins.

  Mary had challenges of her own. The boy hadn’t warmed to her as she’d hoped, leaning away from her attempts to embrace him, refusing to try to speak. He was openly sad, and only seemed at ease with George and Paul. Which would have been fine, Mary thought, if their bonding was confined to playing hopscotch or tag together, collecting butterflies or sticks. But more and more often she found the three boys huddled around paper or slate, whispering, becoming silent when they saw her. The brotherly connection she’d long fostered had taken the form of a strange collusion she didn’t understand.

  She made deliberate efforts at spending time with them to counteract the secrecy. Today, while the boys sat either side of her on the sofa, Mary balanced a storybook on her lap and read.

  “The tigers were very, very angry, but still they would not let go of each other’s tails. And they were so angry that they ran round the tree, trying to eat each other up, and they ran faster and faster till they were whirling round so fast that you couldn’t see their legs at all. And they still ran faster and faster and faster, till they melted away, and then there was nothing left but a great big pool of melted butter.”

  George and Paul were transfixed but the boy, same as last time, let his eyes drift around the room. It was dispiriting, frustrating. She so wanted him to love her. And she wanted him to match her memory of him. After she’d read the last page, Mary slammed the book closed and rang the bell for Nanny Pru.

  Ned could tell the lady was annoyed. She went from happy to angry fast, and he wasn’t always sure what’d turned her. His ma wasn’t like that. She didn’t get mad about things like books, and she hugged without hurting him. When they did chores together, she kissed his cheek, sang the letters song, made up games. She could do pretty much every animal noise except buffalo, because what noise did they make anyway? He missed her smell of hay and cut onions, her eyes when they scrunched into a smile, and her voice. But he tried not to think about his ma too much because then he cried. Sometimes he couldn’t eat for how much he missed her. He didn’t miss the Cavetts, though, not one bit.

  His ma had wanted him to go away with Gideon, and for Gideon to bring him back. He’d heard her say that a lot of times. He figured once Gideon got out they’d go home to the farm. He liked George and Paul, and it was nice enough to be in a big house, with toys, lots of food and a warm bed. Sometimes it was irritating for people to call him by the wrong name and make him wear clothes that weren’t his, but it was just for a while. He was ready to leave now. His ma would sort things out.

  One Sunday, John Henry suggested an afternoon of kite-flying, a return to an activity they’d enjoyed as a family when the boys had been younger. He’d asked Mason to fetch the paper kite from the attic.

  “It’s been too long since we had an outing. It might bring Sonny out of his sullenness.”

  “Yes,” Mary said. “What a wonderful idea.”

  “You sound like a young girl.” Perhaps they could return to a life of simple joys after all.

  Rugged up in wool hats and thick scarves, the Davenports made their way to Golden Field. George and Paul walked down the street in parallel, each holding one pointed side of the large kite, with the boy following, making certain the ribbon tail and string spindle were carried high. Every now and then, Mary offered encouraging words about how near they were to the field. They didn’t need her to jolly them, though; George and Paul discussed their undertaking happily, arranging and rearranging their hold on the kite, instructing one another to slow down or speed up. Occasionally one of them would turn around and talk to the boy.

  “How high will it go?” Paul asked.

  “Very high,” George said. “This is a good wind for kite-flying, the right amount.”

  John Henry squeezed Mary’s hand.

  When they reached the field, John Henry led the family to a spot away from the old oaks, figs and elms. George and Paul placed the kite on the grass while John Henry explained how they would best get it up into the sky. The boy seemed incredulous this could happen.

  Mary pointed up to the sky, where two starlings swooped and looped. “See how the air holds them up?”

  “Kites don’t work like wings.”

  “George, speak politely to your mother. Kites do work differently, but like those birds, they use currents and gusts of wind to carry them where they want to go.” Reveling in the opportunity to educate, John Henry explained to his boys how a quadrilateral of paper, sticks, glue and string could fly as high as a bird.

  The kite could not be piloted by three boys at once, so John Henry told George he could have the first go, as the oldest. After some tussling with the spirited kite, George shouted for Paul’s help and, side by side, they held on to the wooden spindle and ran of
f. The other boy stayed next to John Henry, his head tipped up, mouth open in amazement. John Henry bent down. “You and I will fly the kite next.”

  Mary beamed in delight. How perfect to see her sons running across the field, the kite high above them, dipping and soaring; to see her husband standing next to Sonny, his hand resting on the boy’s shoulder. Her family, outdoors, on a crisp day, with no one else around. John Henry was right to think this was the cure they needed.

  Mary and John Henry shared a love of nature, but she recognized their inclinations were not the same. As a young man, her husband had wanted to be in the most rugged, untamed outdoors, clambering over rocks, hiking mountains, fording rivers, surviving nature, rejoicing in its power: this was the life he hoped to share with the boys when they were older, he’d said. But Mary found delight in the lines of a tree, the folds of an azalea bloom, the way cold water shivered around a dipped-in finger. And where John Henry worked diligently to know and control nature through an ax, knife, compass or map, Mary preferred to simply admire a blue sky, the curve of a polished stone, a crystal-clear river. She felt the same happiness when she stroked fur or listened to birdsong. Her joy was not a hearty, arm-swinging stride into the woods but a silent contemplation. Part of it, but apart. Sometimes she thought her husband put his love of nature into words to tamp down the feeling it gave rise to, to corral and shrink the emotion until it became manageable. Maybe that was wise.

  As the boys ran back, Mary heard the paper kite battling the wind, snapping, and George and Paul shouting instructions to one another. The long red ribbons trailed the kite, whipping around wildly. She watched the kite as it flew closer, closer. The boys panted to a stop a dozen feet from her. The kite hovered. George made minor tweaks to keep it in flight, none controversial enough to be commented upon by his brother. Paul removed one hand from the spindle, shook his wrist out. The kite fluttered, as though saying it was happy to rest where it was a while.

  Though they complained mightily, George and Paul finally passed the spindle to John Henry. As they did so, the kite dipped, lost altitude, and the family oohed in suspense.

  Now that it was their turn, John Henry held one end of the spindle and the boy the other.

  “And me too?” Mary ignored the boy’s frown.

  The wind picked up and the kite bucked, the paper rustling, quivering. Mary laughed each time the kite tugged them this way or that. “You’ll be extra strong for me, won’t you, darling?” she said to the boy. But she let go when John Henry said he and Sonny were going to run. George and Paul ran after them, yelling and waving their arms about.

  On the way home, the boys barreled ahead of the adults, leaving John Henry to carry the kite. “I don’t think we could keep up with them even if we tried,” John Henry confided to Mary. “That’s more running than I’ve done in years.”

  She rested against him as they walked. “I’ll talk to Cook this evening about Thanksgiving. We’ll serve a dessert of pumpkin pie, baked apple with cinnamon and cloves, gingerbread and cut oranges for the boys.”

  John Henry thought about whether to break the pleasantness of their outing by asking Mary the question that plagued him. But he needed to ask, out here where no one could listen in.

  “He is—” He paused. It wasn’t too late to stop. “He is ours, isn’t he? He is Sonny?”

  Mary stopped walking and let her arms drop to her sides. “Why would you ask such a thing? Why ruin our day?”

  “My memories seem…” He spoke in a rush. “Is he ours?”

  “Of course he is.” She scowled.

  “Yes, yes. It’s my failing, I know, and it eats at me. But I feel no recognition when I look at this child. I yearn for your certainty. Can I not see Sonny in this boy because he’s changed so much over the years?”

  “He’s changed, yes—how could he not? But he’s ours in essence, John. And that’s enough. It’s more than enough.”

  “In essence? What does ‘in essence’ mean?”

  “Mrs. Capaldi told me—”

  “Who?”

  “The spiritualist that Gladys—never mind, John. Mrs. Capaldi said he’s here to teach us something. Our son may not have returned to us in exact form, but this boy is ours in essence. He’s our reward for years of searching and suffering. He’s here to make us whole again.”

  John Henry felt his throat tighten, his stomach knot. “Mary, if this boy is not ours—If Gladys Heaton has pushed you toward some charlatan—” He paused. “My love, tell me plainly, is he ours? Not in essence, in reality?”

  She didn’t answer, and he could see from her glassy eyes and set lips that she’d shut him out. She’d taken in essence and, as though under siege, bustled to a safe room in her mind, closed the shutters and bolted the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  John Henry unlocked the door to his factory and stepped inside. He switched on the lights one by one and surveyed the cavernous room—spotless by the standards of any other factory. He liked his men to leave their workbenches in an orderly fashion at the end of the day: sawdust and shavings wiped onto the floor then swept up, tools aligned, pots of beeswax lidded, furniture-in-progress arranged ready for the next morning. Cleanliness was a mark of respect, he told his men, for yourselves, your craft and this company. The workers had seemed more receptive to him lately, he’d noticed, less standoffish than they’d been in months past.

  The Southern American Chair Manufacturing Company made, as the signage attested, “Many Desirable Chairs”: upholstered dining chairs, rocking chairs, bank and office chairs, and lounge-room furniture in solid oak with sprung seats. The chairs were of high quality and the factory, while preserving the reputation established by John Henry’s grandfather, was known for employing modern methods not used by less progressive chair manufacturing companies. John Henry gave Hank full credit for this. Where John Henry’s strengths lay in business growth, securing contracts and dealing with all things financial, Hank was passionate about developments in design and finish. Hank had introduced John Henry to the work of the Scot Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Austrians Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffman. Their designs were aesthetically disconcerting to John Henry, but he agreed with Hank that the new shapes heralded change. The world had enough Campeche chairs. Intrigued by the finishes coming out of the Cushman Manufacturing Company in Vermont, Hank was experimenting with sprayed shellac and varnishes. He’d also issued the Southern American Chair Manufacturing Company’s first catalog.

  While Hank kept them at the forefront of modern design, John Henry considered their next expansion. There’d been another worker rebellion at the Conroy mills, where the men were riled up about poor pay, long hours and a high rate of injury. Although the Conroys had a reputation for being skinflint and unreasonable, John Henry felt certain they’d sell their troublesome business for the right price. In which case, he could extend his reach from manufacturing all the way back to harvesting. He could sell lumber to his competitors (keeping it in the South), retain the premium wood for himself, cut out the market fees. There was potential there, definite potential.

  To think about the business’s future, to greet his men as they came through the door holding lunch tins and thermoses, to peruse the upholsterer’s latest samples and the catalog pages before they went to print—all of this was a relief from his home life. Mary’s admission that the boy was not Sonny but a simulacrum had been shocking; the one blessing was that she hadn’t shared Mrs. Capaldi’s deranged theory with anyone else. They’d argued ferociously, and John Henry had sworn to Mary he would not allow a stray into his family, no matter what twisted reasoning a mystic had dreamed up. His first impulse on arriving home from the park had been to contact Judge Roy, to confess and seek advice on how to shield his family from any legal ramifications. But that would be to choose allegiance to cold and inconvenient fact over his wife’s happiness. It was clear she’d come to the same sorry conclusion John Henry had, even if she’d never articulated it: if Sonny were alive, they would have fo
und him by now. And, if he was honest with himself, had he not known, in the Birds’ home, what Mary had done? Had he not allowed his wife to bring home the boy because in his heart he believed his son was in Heaven? He was, now, an equal partner in his wife’s admittedly imperfect solution. He needed to find a way to make it work.

  Even more than before, John Henry wanted his family out of the spotlight. But the court was taking an interminably long time to clear its backlog of cases; until their date was declared, the Davenport family had to wait. No one seemed to care about Gideon Wolf languishing in a cell—aside from Gideon Wolf, of course—nor did the delay make any practical difference to the Davenport boys’ day-to-day life. The three were kept to a routine of schoolwork, eating, outdoor time and bedtime, with no discussions about court cases or other mothers. The boy had remained silent and reserved, and John Henry suffered no delusion that his mood would lift at a jury’s pronouncement. Time, he thought, was the thing that would melt him into the Davenport fold. Time. The same thing that would permit John Henry to forgive what he and his wife had done.

  While John Henry was unlocking his factory door, Esmeralda was buttoning Mary into a blue pinstriped day dress. There were some tasks Mary still wouldn’t trust Sula to do, and corsets, baths and small buttons were on that list.

  “John Henry won’t let me bring one home, of course.”

  “Oh no, he would not like that.”

  The pearls or the locket for me today?

  Esmeralda paused in her buttoning to consider the two necklaces laid out on the wood. She held one up against the dress and then the other. “Pearls,” they said in unison.

  “But the boys will have such fun playing with them.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Hard not to be happy around a puppy.”