by Lisa Wingate
“He’s never had to move before,” I added.
She sucked in her cheeks, the action making her narrow face seem even thinner and more angular. “Oh, sure,” she breathed, one side of her mouth pulling downward in a sympathetic frown. “It’s rough, moving at that age. We relocated from Texas to upstate New York when I was in the eighth grade, and I just about went suicidal. The kids there thought I was some kind of alien from Howdy-Doodyville. Of course, it didn’t help that I was already five foot eight, skinny as a rail, and had a flatter chest than most of the boys. If the basketball coach up there hadn’t taken me under wing, I don’t know what I would’ve done. She saved my life, I think.”
I felt the inconvenient tug of shared emotion. I could relate to being the gawky, skinny, tall girl, and aside from that, I wanted to believe that someone here in Moses Lake would spot Dustin’s talents and take an interest in him. “I’m hoping it will work out that way for Dustin – that he’ll find some people at school he can relate to, I mean.”
Bonnie squinted toward the ceiling, seeming to comb her memory banks. “I think there’s a guy in my apartment complex who’s, like, a coach out there at Moses Lake. I’ll see if I can catch him and tell him about Dustin. It never hurts for someone to be on the lookout for you your first day, right?”
I had the urge to break all the rules of professional decorum and give Bonnie a great, big hug right there in the office hallway. “Thanks.”
“Oh, sure.” She batted a hand as if to say, What’s a little favor between girlfriends, hon? Then she fished a few printed papers off her stack and handed them to me. “Here. Notes from the morning meeting. I’m working on contacting the appointments you missed yesterday and doing reschedules. A lot of these CPS families don’t have phones, so all I can do is leave a message with a neighbor, or a relative, or whatever. I’ll try to get them – especially the family that got reported by the bus driver – scheduled as soon as I can. You never know from one day to the next who’ll be in the household and what the mood’s gonna be. I guess Taz told you that. They just change when the wind blows. If you give them too much time, they’ll come right back around to deciding they don’t need family counseling, and then their CPS caseworker has to start all over again, trying to get them to cooperate with us.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the morning meeting notes.“And thanks for offering to make a contact for Dustin.”
Bonnie smiled brightly. “Oh, it’s no big deal.The teenagers from the little church out at Moses Lake come over and do stuff with the youth group at my church, sometimes. I’ll find out when they’ve got something planned, and you could bring Dustin. He can get acquainted, and you and me can go … have a latte in the coffee shop. I’ll tell you all Taz’s secrets.”
My mind did a rapid rewind, racing backward. I hadn’t meant to get sucked into an invitation to Bonnie’s church. After having been ditched and gossiped about by so many friends and fellow church members during the divorce, I wasn’t ready to build any social networks. I just wanted to live a quiet life, find purpose in my work, make a difference to kids who needed help, and take care of my son. “I think we’ll be pretty busy until school starts. Thanks, though. Really.”
I continued on down the corridor to my windowless office in the back of the building. Taz had been apologetic when he’d shown it to me. My accommodations didn’t really matter, anyway. With so much fieldwork, I wouldn’t be spending much time in the office.
After I’d glanced over the morning meeting notes from Bonnie and gathered yet another load of CPS referrals via e-mail, I headed off for my first appointment, and the day limped by in a strange mishmash of trying to locate homes and apartments that even my Garmin couldn’t find, trips through creepy neighborhoods in various economically deprived little towns in the area, and awkward first meetings with families on my list of referrals. Compared to the two weeks of training, the actual job was a shock.
What Taz had referred to as A position contracting with Social Services, was really me driving around in my car, seeking out people whose reasons for being referred for counseling services were generally described to me in short, hurried descriptions dashed off by overburdened caseworkers. Complete addresses were a plus, but not a requirement. Names added another level of challenge. When faced with questions such as, “Was you lookin’ for Big Bo or Little Bo?” I had no choice but to admit that I had no idea. At one household, I spoke to four different generations of a family, and not one person admitted to being the individual whose name was on the referral form. When you don’t know whether you’re looking for a client who’s eight or forty-eight, it’s anybody’s guess. The referral e-mail simply read, Bo Brown: family issues, depression. Please counsel for anger management.
Late in the day, I finally visited with the family who’d been referred for fighting in the yard while the bus driver was running the summer-school route. We held a family counseling session on the front porch. The boyfriend who’d caused the commotion wasn’t present, but I talked with the children and then with the mother, Lonnie. Lonnie had a black eye that had turned yellow and brown. Her boyfriend hadn’t caused it, she insisted. The kids’ horse had butted her in the face while she was feeding it. In the muddy lot beside the house, the old, rawboned horse looked like it hadn’t seen oats in quite some time.
After getting Lonnie’s side of the story, I asked to talk to the children alone. Lonnie shrugged and said, “Suit yerself. They don’t got nothin’ to say, except that the bus driver scared them the other day when he wouldn’t let them off the bus. The kids on the school bus pick on my kids all the time, too. I want you to talk to the school about that. Tell them those kids’re pickin’ on my kids.” She stood up and went in the house.
The little boy, John, and his older sister, Audrey, shared the horse’s tired, dull-eyed look. While we talked, they sat on the porch floor, pressed against the railing, eyeballing me as if I were an alien invader. A half-grown cat wandered by, and the little boy, John, picked it up and began searching through its fur.
“That’s a nice kitten,” I said, scooting forward on the old sofa that served as porch furniture. Dampness from the cushions had soaked into my pants, and I was quickly realizing that I wasn’t properly attired for this job. My father’s car wasn’t the right vehicle for it, either. Right now it was parked out front, covered in mud and road goo.
“It’s my favorite,” John answered, then pinched something off the kitten’s skin and dropped it into the weeds below. “He gots ticks.”
A crawly feeling slid over my skin, and I wanted to get up and stand in one small spot, not touching anything. “Well, it’s a good thing he has you to look after him, then, huh?”
John peeked up at me with a sliver of interest. “Tamp says if the little turd gets ticks in the house, he’s gonna take ’im down and drown ’im in the lake. Tamp don’t like cats.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Lonnie stiffen behind the screen door and shake her head at the unflattering mention of the man of the house. “Tamp never said he was gonna drown no kitten, John. Don’t be makin’ up stories.”
I ignored her input and remained focused on John. “He’s a beautiful kitten. He’s your favorite?”
“Yup.” John brightened again. His sister reached across the space between them and scratched the kitten’s head. “Sissy had one, too, but Tamp run over hers with the truck.”
“Tamp didn’t run over no kitten,” Lonnie corrected from behind the screen door. “I told you, that was my fault. I forgot to look before we got in the truck.”
John slanted a sideways look at the door, then shrugged and began searching for ticks again.The timer on my cell phone vibrated in my pocket, which meant I was due to leave. I didn’t feel that I’d accomplished anything beyond, perhaps, the building of a smidge of rapport.
“I’ll bet that was sad,” I said. “Losing your kitten.”
Audrey nodded. “The coyotes or the bobcats got two. Or maybe a mountain lion. A mountain li
on jumped on one of them hikers in the park a couple months ago.” She looked up, her eyes a soft, golden brown in a frame of red hair. I wanted to lead her off the porch, put her in my car, and take her home.
“I hadn’t heard that. I’m sorry about your kittens, though. Losing a pet is like losing a person in your family, huh?”The cell phone vibrated again. Time to go.
“My daddy died,” John offered. “He liked cats.”
A lump rose in my throat. “That’s good. I like cats, too.”
The next thing I knew, the cat was in my lap, and John was sitting beside me on the sofa. I stroked the kitten, and it purred.
My cell phone vibrated again.
“How come your pocket’s buzzin’?” John asked.
I chuckled. “It’s time for me to go.”
“You gonna come back?” He tilted his chin up, his eyes meeting mine.
“Next week.”
For a moment, he studied me, seeming to wonder if I really meant it. Then he took the cat from my lap, tucked it under his chin, and returned to the other side of the porch.
I confirmed next week’s appointment with Lonnie, then left feeling useless and defeated. On the porch, the kids stood watching, their gazes tracking my movements, as if they were afraid for me to go, yet afraid for me to ask any more questions. Clearly, they knew what not to say. They’d already been in foster care five times in their short lives. All they really wanted to know from me was whether I was going to send them back.
I can’t help these people, I thought as I walked away. I don’t even know where to start. Counseling here was a world away from seeing clients at a church counseling center in Houston. Even at the crisis center, people had come in because they knew they were in desperate need, but here … How could you help someone who didn’t want help? Who only wanted to convince you to sign off on some form, so they could keep doing what they’d always been doing?
The sad thing was that my parents were right. This job was unpredictable, potentially dangerous, and I didn’t belong in it. If Tamp didn’t mind threatening school bus drivers, beating up his girlfriend, and drowning kittens, how safe was I? If I were working at the bank, short of a bank robbery, I’d be safe, but I’d never make enough money to provide a good life for Dustin and myself. We’d always be scraping by, taking help-money from my parents.
Aside from that, there was a nagging voice deep within me, warning that if I quit this job now, I’d never have the courage to do something like this again. My life in the future would be what my life had always been – a repetitive pattern of concentric circles, safely inside the box. I’d never become what I’d always dreamed of being – a woman like Aunt Lucy, who wasn’t afraid to take on the world and do the good that would have gone undone without her.
On the other hand, if I continued in this position, I’d have to figure out how to actually do the job.
Hard to say which option was more frightening. I contemplated my dilemma while seeing to my last visit of the day, a young mother who was struggling to care for a son with autism and three other kids, while her husband was deployed with the military. Her preteen daughter had run away from home, twice. They recognized the need for help, and even though lines of family communication were slow in forming, we did make progress. I gave them some family projects to complete before our next visit, and they sounded like they’d try.
I left the session and headed home with a renewed sense of energy about the day. Maybe I really could do this job. I just had to be bold and keep learning. A lot and quickly.
It wasn’t until I passed the Waterbird and spotted a game warden’s truck in front that I remembered I was supposed to answer the question of Dustin’s punishment before five o’clock today.
It was already five forty-five.
The bigger the fisherman, the bigger the tale.
– Anonymous
(Left by five old friends
on an annual fishing trip)
Chapter 8
Mart McClendon
“I’m telling you, Mart, there’s something going on. Daddy saw it… . Didn’t you, Daddy?” Sheila had been on a tear since the minute I strolled into the Waterbird to pick up a deli sandwich for supper. It was hard to figure why she was so hung up on poor old Len Barnes and the little girl she thought she’d spotted by the Big Boulders yesterday. It seemed to me like poor old Len had enough trouble already. Other than fish-and-game violations, he seemed harmless enough, but Shelia was on this like a dog on a bone.
She was shaking a finger toward the Big Boulders while she talked. “Len was over there running trotlines again this morning, and there was someone moving around in the bushes. Whoever it was didn’t come all the way to the shore this time, so I couldn’t get a good look, but someone was there. Someone small, like a child.”
“He’s got all those mutt dogs. That could’ve been what you saw in the brush,” Burt suggested. He and Nester were holed up at the corner table, nursing coffee and having a domino game because it was too hot to fish.“I saw him out at the Crossroads selling tomatoes, as usual, and he was all by himself, except he had a great big dog with him – pit bull, I’d say. Kind of whitish-colored with a brown snout. He’d tied it to his bumper and parked the truck up the ditch a ways, then brought all his vegetable crates down to the shoulder. Guess he figured he better keep that dog away from the customers. I was glad of it. That mutt flashed a little tooth when I stopped. I bought my tomatoes and got out of there. I didn’t want to trust my life to Len’s knot-tying skills.”
Nester glanced at me and winked to let me know he was about to put one over on Burt. “Mart, did you know I had a dog like that once? Big ol’ pit bull, but then I found him out in the yard one day, deader’n a post.”
“I didn’t know that, Nester,” I said, playing along with the joke, whatever it’d be. I leaned up against the counter, getting comfortable.
Burt hooked an elbow over the back of the booth. “Nester, what are you talking about? You didn’t have any pit bull dog.”
“You never saw ’im,” Nester insisted. “Thing died two days after I bought it. Was a high-dollar animal, too. Paid two hundred bucks for him, over to the swap meet. Once he died, I called that dog breeder over in Gun Barrel City, and I said, ‘Mister, you sold me a defective dog. He up and died.’
“Well, then that fella, he tried to tell me I was mistaken. ‘Ain’t no way that dog’s dead,’ he says to me. ‘You get me some proof he’s dead, well, I’ll give your money back.’ ”
Shaking her head, Sheila leaned across the counter and muttered, “Mart, you better run while you can.They’ll go on like this all night.” She poured a cup of coffee for me, and I picked it up and took a sip. Decaf, no doubt. I should’ve had Pop get my coffee.
Nester launched into the rest of a story that promised to be entertaining, if not strictly factual. “So I load that dog up in the truck, and I take him to the vet. Old Doc Brown, he thinks I’m a little crazy, but he says okay, he’ll check the dog over. So here in a minute, he brings in a little gray house cat. He puts that cat on the table, and the cat walks around my dog once, twice, three times, then he sits down on the floor and shakes its head, real solemnlike.
“The vet says to me, he says, ‘Yes, sir, yer dog’s dead.’
“So I tell him, ‘Doc, I gotta have more proof than the say-so of a house cat. There’s two hundred dollars on the line here.’
“The vet says to me, ‘All right, then.’ He goes out the door with the cat and comes back with a brown Labrador.The lab, he takes one look at the examination table, then sits down and shakes his head. Doc says, ‘Yep, your dog’s dead all right.’
“ ‘Listen, Doc,’ I say. ‘I got to have some real proof other than the say-so of a house cat and a Labrador.’
“Ol’ Doc, he just smiles and scribbles somethin’ on a piece of paper and hands it to me and says, ‘Fella, you just call up that man and tell him this dog’s sure enough dead, and you got the cat scan and the lab report to prove it!�
� ”
Nester reared back and slapped his knee, impressed that he’d sucked Burt into his joke. Burt pulled his hat down over his eyes and shook his head, Pop Dorsey hee-hawed so hard he knocked his wheelchair into the coffee counter, and Sheila groaned and rolled her eyes. I had to give Nester credit. I hadn’t heard that one before.
“That’s a good’un,” Pop said finally.
Nester grinned. “It’s all true.” He pointed to a fish-shaped sign on Pop’s wall of wisdom.“Just like that sign says, The bigger the fisherman, the bigger the tale.”
Sheila stepped out from behind the counter. “Well, you boys can swap jokes all you want, but I’m telling you, Len’s got a child with him. I’m not imagining things.”
“Nobody’s seen her but you,” Nester pointed out.
Sheila gave him a frustrated look. “Mart, didn’t you see anything over there on shore by the Big Boulders? Footprints or anything? That little girl must’ve left footprints when she came down to the shore yesterday, and she must’ve been with that old man. He was the only one around there, and then today, someone’s prowling around in the bushes near where he’s fishing? That doesn’t seem weird to you?”
The door chimed, but none of us turned to look right away. Everyone’s attention was fastened on me.
I took off my hat and scratched my head, sorry that the all-nighter with the gators had kept me from checking out the Big Boulders yesterday and settling the latest argument at the Waterbird. “By the time I went by there today, it’d rained. There weren’t any tracks. I didn’t come across Len, and I didn’t see any sign of a little girl. My guess is Burt’s right. What you saw was probably one of those mutts Len’s always carting around in that old truck of his.”
Sheila gave me a disgusted look. “I did not see a dog. There was somebody on that shore yesterday. A little dark-haired girl in a brown dress.” The look in Sheila’s eyes dared anybody to offer up the dog theory again. “You know, it’s up to citizens to keep an eye out, and law enforcement” – she gave me a pointed stare – “ought to respect that. What about that case that was on TV, where that man kidnapped a little girl and held her prisoner in his backyard for almost twenty years? Concerned citizens saw things going on at that house, but none of it was ever investigated. It’s just the kind of thing that happens.”
