Suffer the Children

by John Saul

  “Let’s talk to her,” Rose said desperately. “Let’s at least try to talk to her before we do anything.”

  “What good’ll it do?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose said. “But we can at least try, can’t we?” Her eyes were beseeching him, and finally Jack stood up.

  “All right,” he said. “Shall I go get her?”

  “No!” Rose said immediately. “I’ll get her. You wait here.”

  While she was gone, Jack mixed himself a drink. The hell with the meeting, he thought.

  A few minutes later Rose was back, leading Sarah by the hand. She followed along docilely, almost as if she were unaware of what was happening. She wasn’t resisting, but she didn’t seem to be actively involved, either.

  Rose sat the child down, then knelt beside her. Sarah sat quietly on the sofa, staring vacantly into the air in front of her face. After a minute or two her right hand went up and her thumb disappeared into her mouth.

  “Sarah,” Rose said quietly.

  Sarah continued to sit, sucking her thumb, apparently not hearing her mother’s voice.

  “Sarah,” Rose repeated, a little louder. “Do you hear me?”

  Sarah’s head turned, and she peered blankly at her mother. Rose made a distinct effort not to turn away.

  “Sarah!” Jack said sharply. The child’s head swung around, and her gaze fell on her father. Jack met her eyes for a moment, but he was not as strong as Rose. He broke the eye contact, and sipped his drink.

  “Sarah,” Rose said again. “Were you playing with Jimmy Tyler yesterday?”

  No response.

  “We need to know,” Rose said. “Can’t you at least nod your head? Were you playing with Jimmy Tyler yesterday? Jimmy Tyler!” she repeated, more loudly, as if her child were hard of hearing. Her frustration rose as her daughter continued to stare vacantly into her eyes. Her hand moved to her forehead and brushed back a nonexistent stray hair.

  “Sarah,” she began again. “We know you were playing with Jimmy Tyler in the field yesterday. It’s all right All we need to know is if you went into the woods. Did you go into the woods?”

  No response.

  “For God’s sake, Sarah,” Rose pleaded. “It’s terribly important. Please, please, try to understand. He went home, didn’t he? Jimmy Tyler went home?”

  Sarah continued to stare at her mother. The silence hung heavy in the room. And then, very slowly, Sarah shook her head.

  The meeting in town was chaotic, and Jack was sorry he had agreed to take Carl Stevens with him. Jack was embarrassed for the town, and he knew he had not been good company. All he could see, first on the way to Ray Norton’s house and then as they drove into Port Arbello, was a vision of Sarah staring darkly into the distance and slowly shaking her head. Over and over again Jack tried to tell himself that it was a good sign, that Sarah finally had responded to something. But over and over he would remember what she had responded to, the question Rose had asked, and despair would close in on him again. Jimmy Tyler had not gone home. Sarah knew that Jimmy Tyler had not gone home. The time was getting very near when all of them—he and his wife and Elizabeth and Mrs. Goodrich—were going to have to accept the fact that Sarah would no longer be with them. But not yet.

  The faces of the people of Port Arbello loomed around him, and Jack found himself unable to meet some of the eyes that he imagined were staring at him accusingly. Marilyn Burton greeted him warmly, but he was sure he heard a false note in her voice. Lenore Tyler smiled and waved, and Jack wondered why she hadn’t spoken. Had she guessed?

  Although Marty Forager had claimed that there was to be no chairman at the meeting, he did his best to run it his way.

  “There’s something going on in this town,” he shouted, “and it’s going on out at Conger’s Point.”

  Suddenly all the eyes in the packed auditorium were turned on Jack, and he realized he would have to say something.

  He stood up and faced the town. Suddenly they were no longer his old friends; suddenly he was no longer Mr. Conger of Conger’s Point Road. Suddenly Conger’s Point was something to be afraid of, not respected. And he was the man who lived there.

  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he began, and a murmur ran through the crowd, a murmur that Jack was afraid could turn the crowd into a mob. He’d have to do better than that He listened to his own words and wondered where they came from.

  “My daughter saw Jimmy Tyler yesterday afternoon.”

  “How did she tell you that? Sign language?” a mocking voice shouted from the rear. Jack flinched and fought to contain his sudden rage.

  “Elizabeth saw Jimmy Tyler,” he heard himself say. “Down by the old quarry. She talked to him. She told him to go home. She told him it was a dangerous place to play, but he didn’t pay any attention to her. She told me that when she came home, just before dark, he was still there. That’s all.”

  Jack sat down, and felt the eyes of the town staring curiously at him. He wondered if they knew he was lying, and tried to convince himself that he had lied only because of the way the meeting was going, because of the feeling he had gotten of a mob on the verge of rampage. But he knew that that wasn’t true either. He had lied to protect his daughter. His baby daughter.

  Then they formed a posse. They called it a search party, but Jack knew it was a posse. Ray Norton tried to stop them, but there was nothing he could do. Perhaps it Marilyn Burton hadn’t been there, or Lenore and Bill Tyler had stayed away, Norton could have controlled the situation. But the fact was that they were there, and their very presence, combined with the rantings of Martin Forager, aroused in them the desire to do something. Anything.

  And so they went out to the old quarry. Ray Norton made sure that he was in the lead, and found a spot to park his car that effectively blocked the road. If there was anything there, Ray Norton wanted to make sure it stayed there. He didn’t want any evidence obliterated by fifteen cars driving over the soft ground. Norton organized them as best he could, and the men of Port Arbello spread out to search the area. It was ironic that the only person to find anything was Martin Forager.

  What he found was tire tracks. They were fresh, and they were of an odd sort As the men gathered to examine them, Jack Conger smiled to himself. The tracks would strengthen his story.

  They were preparing to leave the quarry when Ray Norton drew him aside.

  “Well,” Jack said when they were sitting alone in Norton’s car, “at least you have something to work on.”

  “Yeah,” Norton said, but he didn’t look too hopeful. “I just wonder what those tracks will lead to. If you ask me, well never even find the car that left them. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Jack looked at the police chief questioningly. Norton looked uncomfortable, as if he weren’t quite sure how to begin. He decided that the best way was the most direct way.

  “Look, Jack,” he said. “I know what I’m about to say sounds silly, but I have to say it anyway. Or, rather, ask. How much do you know about the old legend about your family?”

  Jack tried to smile, but underneath the smile he felt chilled.

  “I know there is one,” he said carefully. “What’s it got to do with all of this?”

  “Nothing, probably,” Norton said. “If I remember right, there was supposed to be a cave involved, wasn’t there?”

  Jack nodded. “Yup. The old lady claimed it was somewhere in the embankment But of course she never claimed to have seen it, except in her so-called vision.”

  “Well, what about it?”

  Jack looked at the policeman blankly. “What about it?”

  “Does it exist?”

  “The cave?” Jack said incredulously. “Are you serious? My God, Ray, the cave was never anything but the figment of an old lady’s imagination. If someone told the same story today they’d say she was senile. And they’d be right.”

  “But didn’t anyone ever look for it?” the police chief persisted.

&nbs
p; “Sure,” Jack said. “My grandfather did. And it cost him his life. That embankment is a dangerous place. It’s steep and slippery and treacherous. Fortunately, we’ve had the legend to keep all the kids away from the place.”

  “And none of them ever went to find out if there was anything there?” Norton said curiously. “You know, when I was a kid the one thing I always wanted to do was go look for that cave. But I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?” Jack asked. “The embankment was there.”

  “Ah, but it was on the Congers’ property. Don’t forget, when I was a kid your family was almost royalty around here. We may nave wandered all over everybody else’s land, but not the Congers’.”

  Jack chuckled, remembering. It had almost been like that when he had been a boy. “Well, let me set your mind at rest,” he said. “Of course I went to look for the cave. And I imagine my father did too. But I didn’t find it, probably because it simply isn’t there. If it was, I’d have found it.”

  “Okay,” Norton said. “I was almost hoping you’d never looked, and that we could torn the damned thing up. I can’t turn the whole town out searching for it, not when all I have to go cm is an old tale of a senile woman’s visions. We’d probably lose three men in the looking. So I guess it’s back to the quarry. I hope you won’t have any objections to my sending out a crew to drag it?”

  “Of course not,” Jack said. “Any time you want. But, God, I hope they don’t find anything.”

  “So do I,” Norton agreed. “So do I.”

  An hour later Jack Conger was home. He went upstairs to say good night to his daughters, and it seemed to Rose that he was staying much too long with Elizabeth. She was on the verge of going up to see what was keeping him when he came down. When he entered the study he looked tired but he was smiling.

  “Well,” he said, fixing himself a nightcap. “If nothing else, at least I’ve bought us some time.”

  19

  Neither Rose nor Jack slept that night, but they were quiet, each of them with their own thoughts, each of them wanting to postpone the time when they would have to make decisions.

  They tried to avoid their thoughts as they lay in bed, side by side, separated by their fears. Jack kept repeating the story be had told to the town meeting, over and over, until even he began to believe it. Before the blackness of night began fading into a gray dawn, he had almost convinced himself that Sarah had not been playing in the field with Jimmy Tyler, that instead Elizabeth had seen Jimmy at the quarry and instructed him to go home. But with the dawn the truth came back at him, and reality reentered his life along with the sun.

  As if by mutual consent, they began talking about it at breakfast They had risen early, since neither of them had slept, and they sat in the silent house, sipping coffee and trying to figure out what they should do.

  “I suppose we should call Dr. Belter,” Rose said.

  “No. Not yet” Jack knew she was right, but somehow calling Dr. Belter symbolized defeat for him, and he wasn’t ready for that yet “I mean, what could we tell him?” he went on, and he knew he was rationalizing as much for himself as for his wife. “Because Elizabeth saw Sarah and Jimmy playing together is no reason for us to jump to conclusions.”

  “No,” Rose agreed. “It isn’t But it seems to me we have a duty that goes beyond our own family. If Sarah has anything to do with this, even if she only has something to do with Jimmy Tyler, I think we have to tell somebody. And Dr. Belter seems the logical person to tell. And, of course, there’s Sarah to be considered.”

  “Sarah?”

  Rose wore a pained expression, and Jack knew it was difficult for her to say the things she was saying. He wondered if it was as difficult for her to speak as it was for him to listen.

  “What about her?” Rose said. “If she is doing something, and I’m not saying she is, she isn’t responsible. She needs help. How can she get the help she needs if we aren’t even willing to talk about what she’s doing?” She stopped talking for a moment and stirred her coffee fitfully. “Maybe we ought to search the woods,” she said. “If something did happen, it must have happened there. Unless they got as far as the embankment.” She smiled, but there was no warmth in it “At least we know there’s no cave, so we don’t have to look for that.”

  “I don’t know whether there’s a cave or not,” Jack said quietly. Rose looked at him sharply.

  “What do you mean? Didn’t you tell Ray Norton last night that you’d spent most of your boyhood looking for it and it doesn’t exist?”

  “Yes,” Jack said uncomfortably. “That’s what I told him. But it wasn’t any truer than anything else I told anybody last night.”

  Rose set her cup down and stared at him. “You mean you lied about the cave, too?” she said incredulously.

  He nodded miserably, and it struck Rose that he looked very much like a small child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. For some reason it made her want to laugh, though she felt anything but mirthful.

  “Why on earth did you lie about that?” she asked him when her laughter died. Her voice was mocking, and it made Jack flush.

  “Because I didn’t want them poking around the woods and the embankment, that’s why”, he said vehemently.

  “But they’ll poke around the woods anyway,” Rose said, taking on the voice of a teacher with a recalcitrant pupil. “Besides, they’ve already searched the woods. They did that when they were looking for Kathy Burton.”

  Then a thought came to her, and she searched Jack’s face carefully, looking for the answer to the question that had come into her mind. It was there, in his hangdog expression, in the defensive light that glimmered in his eye.

  “You believe it, don’t you?” she said. “You believe in the legend. Is there a cave there?”

  “I don’t know,” Jack said softly. “I never looked.”

  “Why not?” Rose demanded. “Are you going to sit there and tell me that, with a wonderful legend like that, you never once, you and your friends, never once went looking for that cave?” Her eyes widened in astonishment as he shook his head. “Well, for heaven’s sake. That legend actually worked.” Now her laughter came in gales, partly at the idea of her husband putting enough faith in the legend never to investigate it, but mostly as a simple release. A release of the stress she had been carrying. It was not pleasant laughter, and it did not make the house ring. Instead it echoed dully through the room, and then came back to hang heavily between them.

  “I think,” Rose said finally, “that it’s time we had a look at that embankment. If there is a cave there, I think we should know about it. I think the whole town should know about it.”

  “You look if you want,” Jack said softly. “Frankly, I’d rather not know.”

  Jack Conger arrived In his office early that morning, before any of the staff had gotten in. When they arrived, at eight thirty, they found his office door closed and the red light above it lit. All of the staff except Sylvia Bannister respected the warning light.

  Sylvia ignored it.

  She walked into the inner office without knocking. Jack looked up but did not speak.

  “Bad night?” Sylvia said sympathetically.

  Jack put down his pencil and leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “It depends on what you call a bad night If you call lying to the whole town, lying to the chief of police, asking your oldest daughter to lie too, getting no sleep, and then topping the whole thing off with making yourself look like a fool to your wife—if you call that a bad night, then I suppose I had a bad night Otherwise it was fine.”

  Sylvia sat down. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “No,” Jack said irritably, “I don’t. I want to be left alone, to try to get my head straightened out. If that’s all right with you.”

  He was already staring again at the piece of paper on the desk in front of him, and chewing on the end of the pencil, so he couldn’t see the look of hurt that came into Sylvia’s face. She stood up and smoothed her skirt.


  “Of course,” she said coolly. “I’m sorry I bothered you.” She left the room, and when Jack heard the door close he looked up again, looked helplessly at the door through which the woman had just passed. He wanted to call her back. He didn’t.

  He worked for an hour, writing and rewriting, and when he was finished he read what he had written. Then he crumpled the pages and threw them into the wastebasket.

  It had been an editorial, and when he had finished writing it and reread it he realized that it could as easily have been written by Martin Forager as himself. He had attacked the police chief, even suggested that perhaps it was time Ray Norton was replaced. He had demanded some answers about what had really happened to Anne Forager. And he had suggested, but in terms that denied then: own content, that it was time for the citizens of Port Arbello to form a lynch mob. He had not, of course, used that term. He had called instead for a “protective association,” but it amounted to the same thing. In short, he had written a hypocritical, self-serving editorial, designed to undermine the police chief and at the same time entrench Jack Conger as a concerned citizen. Jack Conger realized that he was trying to throw Ray Norton off a trail that Ray Norton didn’t even know he was on. A trail that could lead only to Sarah, who couldn’t possibly be considered responsible for anything she might have done. He retrieved the editorial from the wastebasket and read it once more. He decided, objectively, that the editorial had served its purpose very well.

  He burned it in the wastebasket and picked up the telephone. It was time to talk to Charles Belter.

  Dr. Charles Belter listened carefully to everything Jack Conger told him. It took more than three hours for Jack to put it all together for the doctor, and several times he had to backtrack, going over a point several times, filling in background or amplifying. Dr. Belter listened patiently, interrupting as little as possible; he felt it was important to listen not only to what was being said but also to how it was being said, and in what order. The mind tended to attach priorities to things, Dr. Belter knew, and often much could be learned not from the points being made, but from the order of the points and their relative importance to the person making them. When Jack finished Dr. Belter leaned back, his hands folded comfortably over his ample stomach.