Rude Awakening

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  ‘Six a.m.,’ the waitress said. ‘Little after that now, ’course, took you so long to get up.’ She laughed again and poured Mary Ellen a cup of coffee. ‘On the house.’

  Mary Ellen thanked her and brought the coffee up to her mouth. Oh, I’m in trouble, she thought. Mama’s gonna kill me. But, she had to admit, sitting there with her head propped up against the tile wall was the best sleep she’d had in Lord only knew how long. She sipped at her coffee and sighed. She needed to find Dalton, and she needed to head back home.

  MILT

  ‘Any word from your wife?’ I asked Rodney.

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice short. ‘If I hear from her, Sheriff, I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘just asking.’

  I could understand the man being peeved. His son was missing, his wife was missing, his brother-in-law was missing – and here I was asking him what must have seemed to him to be stupid questions.

  I sighed because of what I had to say next. ‘Mr Knight, I’m sorry, but I think we need to call your mother-in-law.’

  Rodney Knight jerked his head up from where he’d been changing the diaper of his son. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, Eli could be with her; or if not Eli, maybe your wife, or Dalton. If any of them are there, they need to be in on the search. And, well, Sir, your mother-in-law needs to be notified that the second one of her children is missing and one of her grandchildren.’

  ‘Let me call Hawke first,’ he said, referring to Dalton’s older brother. ‘Finish this, would you?’ he indicated his son’s dirty diaper and took himself and his cell phone into the other room.

  I stood there looking at Rodney, Jr, and his poop. It had been a short eighteen months since I’d had to change my own son, and this just didn’t seem fair. I’d done my duty – excuse the expression. Rodney, Jr looked up at me and giggled. He seemed to be enjoying my discomfort.

  I leaned down and grabbed a wipie and went to work. ‘Just remember,’ I told Rodney, Jr, ‘I might still be sheriff when you turn driving age. And, boy-hidy, watch out.’

  He seemed to find this amusing and laughed out loud. ‘I’m not kidding,’ I told him. ‘I’m dead serious here. Gonna throw your hiney in jail!’

  This, to my chagrin, seemed to be hysterically funny. ‘You’re not taking me seriously here, Rodney, Jr!’

  I finished, picked him up and placed his feet on the floor, just as his father came in from the dining room.

  ‘I talked to Hawke. He was at his mother’s this morning. No one was there but her. He didn’t know anything about Eli or Mary Ellen. Hawke’s gonna go see Chief Smith in town. See what he can do to help on that end. He didn’t know about Dalton, either, for that matter. Until Clovis told him. He says she’s still very upset about Dalton. Thinks it’s all your fault,’ he said, raising his head to look me dead in the eye, the look seeming to say, ‘Like everything else is your fault!’

  Hell, I knew losing that child was my fault. How in the hell I ended up letting a four-year-old walk out to the car by himself, I didn’t hardly know. It made me sick at my stomach that the child was gone, and made me sicker still knowing I was to blame. I looked at Eli’s little brother, now in his daddy’s arms, and wondered if this baby would ever know his big brother Eli.

  Oh, yeah. He’d know him all right. Time, I decided, to get my ass in gear.

  EMIL

  He’d heard her voice and it had all come rushing back. He’d remembered the facts, remembered everything from almost the moment he woke up. But now he also remembered the feelings she brought out in him. At first, it had just been the need to manipulate the cripple. Take advantage of the vulnerable. But Jean MacDonnell hadn’t been as vulnerable as he had thought. At first he was sure he was getting to her – his authority over her, his God-like control made her as vulnerable as any of his other interns. And the fact that she was older made the conquest of her all the more desirable. But she’d turned on him before he’d even had a go at her.

  How dare she treat him like that! He wasn’t ‘God-like’, damn it, he was God! Her God, all his interns’ God! The rest of them knew – why didn’t she? How dare she question him? How dare she go to the ‘authorities’ over him? No one had authority over him! He was Emil Hawthorne! He was the authority! He was God!

  Now she would know how it felt to have something wonderful and special taken from her. He had taken her son, just as she had taken his power. Stolen it away from him, betrayed him for some silly moral code! Thinking ethics and morals were of higher value than him. Well, she’ll find out, he thought. She’ll find out what ethical and moral codes she’ll break to get her son back!

  HOLLY

  Holly sat beside the little boy, holding his hand as he inhaled deeply from his ‘breathie’.

  ‘You feeling better?’ she asked.

  He nodded his head.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Holly smiled at him.

  ‘Eli,’ he answered.

  She held out her hand, ‘I’m Holly.’

  Eli shook her hand and said, ‘Nice to meet you.’

  Holly grinned. ‘Goodness, you are a polite young man.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Eli replied.

  Holly ruffled his hair and got up from the cot, walking over to where Mr Smith sat, staring at the camera equipment.

  ‘Eli’s feeling better,’ she told him.

  It took a beat, then Mr. Smith turned to her. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Eli,’ she gestured behind her to where Eli sat on the cot, his inhaler in hand.

  ‘His name’s John,’ Mr Smith said.

  ‘Huh?’ Holly started and then nodded her head. ‘Oh, right. In the story. Sorry, I didn’t know.’

  Mr Smith stood up and stared at her. ‘No, in life. His name is John.’

  Confused, Holly said, ‘Then Eli is his story name?’

  Mr Smith rushed over to the cot and grabbed the boy, lifting him up by both arms. ‘What’s your name?’ he yelled in the boy’s face.

  The boy began to cry and Holly pulled at Mr Smith’s arm, grabbing the boy away from him. ‘Stop that!’ she yelled at her benefactor.

  Holly sank down onto the cot with her arms around Eli, cradling him against her.

  Mr Smith breathed in deeply, counting to ten. Attempting a smile, he said to the boy, ‘I’m sorry. Could you tell me your name, please?’

  The little boy removed the thumb that had gone into his mouth, and said shyly, ‘Eli Thomas Knight.’

  Holly was mystified when Mr Smith fell to the floor, covered his face with both hands and began to weep.

  MILT

  ‘I didn’t let him know he had the wrong child,’ my wife said. ‘I thought it would be safer for Eli if this animal thought he had John.’

  Jean calls our boy ‘John’. I call him ‘Johnny Mac’. It probably confuses him, but it works for me and Jean. His whole name is John MacDonnell Kovak, but I think Johnny Mac Kovak has a certain ring to it. If he wants to be a doctor or a lawyer or a CPA when he grows up, John MacDonnell Kovak will look fine on his door; but if he wants to be just cool, what could be better than Johnny Mac Kovak? ‘And on guitar, Johnny Mac Kovak . . .’, ‘And playing right field, Johnny Mac Kovak . . .’ See how that works?

  ‘Probably the right call,’ I told her, putting my hand on her shoulder. ‘If Johnny Mac’s who he was going for, best he keep thinking that’s who he’s got.’

  ‘Sheriff, I want my son back!’ Rodney Knight suddenly announced, still holding his other son in his arms. The boy was squirming fit to beat the band, but Rodney, Sr wasn’t letting go.

  ‘Yes, Sir, I want him back, too. And we’re working toward that.’ To prove that point, I picked up my cell phone and called the office. Gladys answered the phone; she’d come in on her day off due to the missing child.

  ‘Sheriff’s office,’ she said.

  ‘Get any reports in?’

  ‘Don’t you think I’d call you if I heard anything?’ she said, all snippy like she gets.r />
  ‘Do I need to come down there?’ I asked her, my dander up.

  ‘What? You gonna put me in time out or spank me?’

  I grinned. ‘You know, I could put you up on charges for sexual harassment now?’

  I could practically hear her blushing over the phone once she figured out the implications of what she’d just said. Finally, she said, ‘That’s not what I meant!’

  ‘Where is everybody?’ I asked, basically ignoring her.

  ‘Emmett’s down in the south quadrant checking those old trailers down there, Anthony and some of Charlie Smith’s people are dividing up the Bishop area and I got another civilian search party being led by Lonnie doing the north-east quadrant.’

  Lonnie Sturgis was our weekend deputy who mainly just looked after the jail, but he was good at leading civilian search parties, as had been proven about a year ago when a couple from the old folks home disappeared. Lonnie and some of his volunteers found them after two days, still alive in their old car deep in a gully off a side road in the far east of the county. It had been a miracle, and Lonnie was a hero for a while after that. Every dog should have its day, I always say. Well, I think it sometimes, anyway.

  ‘OK,’ I told Gladys, ‘let’s call ’em back in. Seems we got a ransom demand. I think maybe the boy’s been kidnapped instead of just being lost.’

  ‘How in the world did that happen?’ Gladys demanded.

  Stiffening, as the guilty often do, I said, ‘Let’s just concentrate on getting the boy back, shall we?’

  HOLLY HUMPHRIES

  Holly felt scared watching Mr Smith cry. She wasn’t used to seeing older men cry. Young ones, sure. She had a boyfriend once who used to cry watching TV commercials, but an old guy, no, she wasn’t used to that. Holly wasn’t much of a crier herself. She figured with the life she’d had up to now, if she ever started crying, she might never stop.

  Holly had been five years old when her mother told her she wasn’t going to be able to keep her any more. ‘It’s just too hard,’ she had said, always one to be absolutely truthful with her small child whenever it suited her purpose. ‘I can’t save any money when I have to pay childcare. And it’s hard to buy food, what with the childcare, and you keep growing out of your clothes. It’s just a real expense, Holly, and I just don’t make that kind of money.’

  So Holly had gone with her mother to a big building in Tulsa, where she’d sat on a chair, her Hello Kitty bag next to her filled with socks and underwear and two outfits and four toys: all her mother said she could bring with her (‘I’ll give the rest of it to the poor children who don’t have anything,’ Holly’s mother had told her), and watched her mother sign her young life away.

  She’d spent that night, plus the next six, at a halfway house, where she lost all but one toy to the other children who’d grabbed them the minute she walked in. She kept her stuffed dog in her panties so that no one could get it. She peed on it once when she went to the bathroom, but she was very good about cleaning it thoroughly in the sink. It was cold and wet after that for quite a while, and it began to stink not long after.

  Her first actual placement was at a foster home with two ‘reals’ and four ‘fosters’. She’d been the youngest. The ‘mother’ was real nice, but the ‘father’ never did anything but yell. Most of the kids ignored her, except for the youngest ‘real’, who took an instant dislike to this usurper of the ‘baby’ position. She did things like flush stuff down the toilet and tell her mother that Holly had done it, cut up Holly’s only clothes and again blame it on Holly, saying Holly told her she was going to trick the ‘mother’ into buying her a whole new wardrobe. Holly’s punishment for that was wearing the same outfit every day for two weeks. It was her responsibility to wash it every night. Her preschool teacher called child welfare about that, and Holly was moved again.

  By the time she ‘aged out’ at eighteen, Holly had been in six foster homes and three halfway houses. She’d been molested by an older ‘brother’ when she was twelve, beaten up by an older ‘sister’ when she was fifteen, and ran away and ended up in juvie for two days when she was sixteen.

  Throughout all of this, Holly had kept an active fantasy life, shutting out much of what was actually happening to her. It was inevitable that she would navigate toward the theater, since theater had been her entire life. You want a little girl who smiles and says ‘Thank you’? You got it. You want a little girl who tells jokes and acts sassy? Got it right here. You want a little girl who sits on your lap and ignores the hard thing poking her leg? No problem. Holly was not a born actress, but a bred one. She just wanted to start getting paid for it.

  But in all those years, she’d never seen one of her foster fathers cry, nor one of the men at any of the halfway houses. She thought older men just didn’t cry, until Mr Smith started bawling his eyes out.

  But it was a lot scarier when Mr Smith stopped crying.

  Awkwardly, he got to his feet, his eyes never leaving the boy’s face. Holly didn’t like the way Mr Smith was looking at him. Her arms instinctively tightened around the child in her lap.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked the boy, his voice soft and more frightening still.

  The child clung to Holly. ‘Mr Smith,’ she said, ‘you’re scaring him.’

  ‘Where’s John Kovak?’ Mr Smith demanded.

  Eli looked up at Holly, confusion clouding his face, and then looked back at Mr Smith. ‘At his house?’ the boy answered.

  ‘I thought that’s where I got you,’ Mr Smith said. ‘At John Kovak’s house.’

  Eli nodded his head. ‘Yes, Sir,’ he said. ‘Me and John was gonna play,’ he said, then clouded up and began to cry again.

  ‘Stop that!’ Mr Smith roared, which only made the child cry harder.

  Holly picked up the boy in her arms and stood up, his head on her shoulder. ‘You leave him alone!’ she said, indignantly. ‘You’re not a very good director, Mr Smith!’

  Holly wasn’t sure whether it was before or after Mr Smith began to tie up her and the boy that she finally decided he wasn’t a movie director after all. She decided there was something not quite kosher about this whole experience. It was also around this time that Holly decided she needed to get herself and the child out of the barn. If not, they were both going to be in very deep shit.

  DALTON

  ‘Mary Ellen!’ Dalton said, relief pouring through him as he came out of the door that led from the cells to the real world. He saw his sister, all six feet of her, standing at the desk, hunched over as always, awaiting his release.

  Mary Ellen gave her little brother a finger wave. ‘Hey, Dalton,’ she said.

  Dalton came up and threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly. Mary Ellen just stood there, arms at her sides, as the hug continued.

  Backing away, Dalton grinned one of his huge grins. ‘Boy, am I glad to see you. And you can bet I’m ready to head home!’ He put his arm around his sister’s shoulders. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  It was proof of Dalton’s hard weekend that he didn’t notice his sister said nothing about his strange pants or lack of shoes, something the Mary Ellen of old would have jumped on in a New York minute.

  Mary Ellen led the way to her minivan and got behind the wheel. As she started up the van and headed out of the parking lot, Dalton reached for her cell phone, sitting on the bench seat between them. ‘I’m gonna call Mama—’ Dalton started, but Mary Ellen grabbed the cell phone and threw it out the window. The sound of the phone smashing to bits was music to her ears.

  ‘Gee, Mary Ellen, why’d you do that?’ Dalton asked, truly confused.

  ‘I’m not ready to go home yet,’ Mary Ellen said, still staring straight ahead.

  ‘Ah, I think my car’s parked back that way,’ Dalton said, pointing in the opposite direction from where they were headed.

  ‘Oh?’ Mary Ellen said. She shook her head. ‘Road trip!’

  MILT

  Charlie Smith, having an actual budget for his Longbranch Police
Department, was able to come over to my house with telephones and tracing equipment. We weren’t ready to call in the FBI, since we’d never actually gotten a ransom demand, per se. We were on our own, but Charlie and his department would be a big help.

  We set up all the equipment in the living room and sat Jean in front of the main phone.

  ‘Why don’t I answer the phone?’ Rodney Knight demanded. ‘It’s my son!’

  ‘But he thinks he has Johnny Mac,’ I reminded him. ‘And he said he wanted Jean. She needs to answer the phone.’

  Having been relieved of his two-year-old by one of the volunteers, he threw up his hands in exasperation and began pacing the living room.

  Charlie and I moved off into a corner. ‘Who you think this guy is?’ Charlie asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve got no earthly idea.’

  ‘Think Jean does?’

  I resented the implication, but looked over at my wife anyway. Damn it to hell if she didn’t look guilty of something. Of course, I was feeling all kinds of guilty letting the boy go out to the car by himself; maybe that’s the kind of guilt Jean was feeling. But looking at her, I sort of doubted it.

  ‘I’ll get back with you,’ I told Charlie. I left him standing there while I went to sit on the couch as close to my wife as I could get.

  ‘How you doing?’ I asked her.

  Jean nodded her head, then said, ‘OK, I guess. Tense.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘tense situation. Why do you think that guy said he wanted you? You got any idea why someone would want to take our child, honey?’

  Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly.

  PART II

  JEAN’S STORY

  SIX

  JEAN’S STORY

  Where do I start my story? When I first met him? Or why he wanted me in the first place? That goes back a ways – to when I was two years old. That’s when the Salk vaccine came out. My father, a biologist, had known Dr Salk briefly and disliked him intensely, which is the reason he refused my mother’s request to have her six children vaccinated. I was the youngest, and the only one to contract polio.