Silver Bells

by Luanne Rice

  Where would Danny be? During the year Christy had been in contact with Officer Rip Collins, the cop who’d arrested him last year. Rip had put him in touch with DHS, the New York City Department of Homeless Services, where he’d found out that half the city’s thirty-eight thousand homeless were children. They had no record of Danny in their shelter system. They wouldn’t—Christy knew that his son wouldn’t go to a shelter.

  Christy didn’t know where to start. In spite of all the years he’d been selling his trees here, he barely knew New York at all. He came here to do his work, make money, and then go home to Canada as soon as possible.

  He tried to get into Danny’s mind. Gutting out a living from the land was hard work. Christy had known the burden he was putting on the boy—his own father had done the same to him. Many nights young Christy had lain in bed, dreaming of a life in Halifax or Fredericton, an easier city life, where friends would be many, and girls would abound, and you didn’t live or die by whether the nor’easter hit head-on or ten miles to the south.

  “I’m going to go to university, Pa,” Danny had said the last day of seventh grade, when he’d brought home all A’s on his report card. “Mr. Burton said I have what it takes.”

  “Of course you’ve got what it takes,” Mary had said. “You’re as bright as they come.”

  “Universities cost thousands and thousands,” Christy said. “More than we’ll ever make. Besides, you already know nearly enough to take over from me now. If I died tomorrow—”

  “Stop, Pa,” Danny had replied. “You know you won’t.”

  And Christy had nodded, proud because his son was brave and accepting of their way of life. But he’d seen the shadow in Danny’s eyes.

  Maybe Danny had been thinking of the landslide that had nearly washed Christy away the month before, during the harvest. How the torrent of water and mud had slammed him into a dam of boulders and fallen logs. And how Danny had pulled him out.

  What kid wouldn’t want to escape that life? Christy thought of times when he’d seen his own father pinned by nature—the hurricanes and gales that had blown through, once breaking his father’s leg with a falling tree. Christy had thought, what kid wouldn’t long to go away to school? And with a boy as bright as Danny, wasn’t Christy a miser and a spoiler to not encourage it?

  He cringed from the memory of Danny’s face in the schoolroom door. The boy had overheard it all: Mrs. Harwood’s praise, Christy’s response, and how the teacher’s reasoning had turned to pleading. Christy knew Danny had heard, and they had never once discussed it.

  Christy knew that university would take Danny away from the farm. Not just for the four years of study, but forever. Because Danny would get a taste of what the world had to offer beyond their rocky coastline and green hillside and acres of pine. Halifax, Fredericton, other Canadian cities would beckon—and he would surely follow.

  Little had Christy dreamed that the city would be New York.

  Christy’s first night here this year—two nights ago—he’d taken the subway down to Battery Park. He’d chosen it because it was just about the biggest patch of green on a map of Lower Manhattan, and because it was near the Brooklyn Bridge—Danny’s postcard.

  Waiting for the subway train, Christy had walked up and down the cold and cavernous platform, peering into the darkness. Could Danny be hiding in a subway tunnel? But then a train came roaring out, and Christy knew the answer was no—not because of the danger or the darkness, but because Danny would have to be outside, where he could feel the air, taste the snow, see whatever stars a person could see in this city’s too-bright night sky.

  Christy had emerged from the subway at the very tip of Manhattan. The Staten Island Ferry terminal lay just ahead of him, and he felt salt air gusting in his face. New York Harbor was dark and choppy in the winter wind howling off the Atlantic. Ferries ablaze with light plied the waterways. The Statue of Liberty stood just offshore, holding her torch aloft, as if she wanted to light his way to his son. Being so near the sea made Christy feel like home, as it would Danny, and he started his search feeling braced and hopeful.

  Battery Park was nearly deserted. The few people he saw walked with their heads down low, against the wind. Christy’s cheeks stung as he looked for people huddled on benches, stretched out in the lee of Castle Clinton. No one was there. He circled up to Trinity Church, its gothic spire black against the halogen brightness. An old man wrapped in blankets sat on the steps.

  “Good evening,” Christy said to him.

  “Evening,” the man replied.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Christy said, pulling a photo from his pocket. “My son, Daniel Byrne. He’s just turned seventeen, about six two. Have you seen him?”

  “Tall,” the man said.

  “Yes—have you seen him?”

  “No,” the man said.

  “Please, take a closer look—”

  But the man just pulled his head into the blankets, like a bear retreating into his cave, and refused to say more. Christy continued on his way.

  He covered Wall Street, South Street, the Seaport with its fancy shops and eating establishments, the wharves with old sailing ships tied up, just like up in Lunenburg—use the past to entice money out of tourists, Christy thought. He walked faster, because the only people he saw were well dressed, well fed, straight from fancy meals or preholiday parties in the brightly lit restaurants and boats.

  When he hit Fulton Street down to Pier 17 and saw stalls and the cobblestones glistening with fish scales, he knew he had stumbled upon the famous fish market. It was just before midnight, and the selling hadn’t really gotten under way. Crates of cod, flounder, halibut, and hake glistened as he rushed past.

  Down the street he saw a fire burning in a trash can—and he started to run. Rip Collins had told him about how the homeless built fires under bridges to stay warm. Shadows danced on the massive stanchions, and people clustered around were silhouetted by the flames. As he drew closer, he saw a motley crew—and his heart tore apart to think of Danny being among them.

  When he drew near, he saw five men, two of them not much older than Danny. They all looked up at his approach. Their eyes looked untamed and wary—like the wolves that hunted his hillside, constantly hungry—glinting like metal in the firelight. Christy pulled Danny’s picture from his pocket. He showed it but didn’t want to let any of them touch the photo.

  “Have you seen my son?” he asked.

  “No, no, no,” they all said.

  “Are you sure? Could you look again?”

  They didn’t reply but went back to warming their hands. Christy’s stomach dropped; he wasn’t sure whether to be glad or relieved that these grimy denizens didn’t know his boy. He looked up at the stone towers rising above them. Walking away, he looked back and upward, and saw what he hadn’t seen before; he’d been too focused on the fire and the men and the hope of finding Danny.

  The tower was the western support of a huge, beautiful bridge. Christy saw the garland of lights stretching across the East River. He noticed the steel cables radiating down from gothic piers and felt his stomach lurch to see the bridge up close—was it possible Danny had bought his postcard at a shop nearby? If Christy returned to the area tomorrow, he might find the person who had sold it to him.

  Convinced—more than ever—that he was on the right track, he ran to a pay phone and dialed the direct line to the Tenth Precinct in Chelsea. Someone answered, and when Christy asked to speak to Rip, he was told he wasn’t on duty.

  Now, standing on snowy Ninth Avenue the next morning, it was all Christy could do to try to stay by his stand. He wanted only to search the warren of streets downtown, going into souvenir and tourist shops that sold postcards of the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to find someone who’d seen Danny.

  Liz walked out of Moonstruck with the shy woman. Christy watched them speak for a moment, then hug and break apart. As Liz approached her shop, he gave her his best cocky three-cornered hard-sell smile. He was al
l set to foist off a tree on her, for her window—suggesting that she display her hats on it, instead of normal decorations—when a patrol car cruised up and the window rolled down.

  “How’s it going, Christy? Good to see you back here,” Officer Rip Collins said, leaning out the window and giving Liz an appreciative glance that she flirtatiously ignored.

  “Same to you,” Christy said, forgetting all about selling a tree to Liz, digging into his pocket for the postcard. “Listen, I—”

  “The desk sergeant told me you called last night. I’m on days right now—sorry I wasn’t there. What’s up?”

  “I think I’ve got a clue about Danny,” Christy said. “This postcard—” He handed it through the open window, watched Rip read it, turn it over, look at the picture. Christy’s heart swelled, just imagining how he’d feel when they found Danny.

  “Right,” Rip said. “You told me about this over the phone, when you first received it, back in the summer.”

  “I’m thinking,” Christy said. “We’ve got to check the souvenir shops. Down by the Brooklyn Bridge, you know? I went down there last night, almost by chance, and it came to me then. I’d be down there myself right now, only I’ve got to put in my time here with the trees—”

  “The souvenir shops?” Rip asked. Christy was leaning down to look into the squad car’s open window, and he saw Rip’s partner trying to hold back a laugh.

  “I don’t mean to tell you two how to do your job,” Christy said, not wanting to offend Rip or his partner. “But my son must have been walking around down there, by the bridge, and come upon a postcard to send us. Look at it now—see, it’s of the bridge at night! The lights like stars, is what Danny must’ve thought. He misses the night skies of home, I’m sure of that. So, will you check the postcard and souvenir stores down by the Brooklyn Bridge? Show his picture to the owners?”

  “Christy, they sell postcards of the bridge all over town. You can buy them right here in Chelsea.”

  Christy froze up.

  “It’s like if you go to Ireland—you can buy postcards of the Blarney Stone in Dublin, and postcards of Dublin in Galway. That’s just how it is. Go inside that pharmacy right there, and you’ll find postcards of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center—even the Bronx Zoo.”

  Rip’s partner laughed.

  “But there’s a lost kid out there. Y’know? It’s not funny!”

  “We know that,” Rip said, shooting his partner a look.

  “I thought,” Christy began, then trailed away as the hope leaked out of him.

  “Christy, we’re still looking for him. But it’s hard, in a city with this many people, lots of runaway kids, you know? I’m not going to give up, though.”

  Numb, Christy nodded as the two cops shook his hand, then rolled up the window and drove away. He stood on the sidewalk, enveloped by the scent of pine. He wished he could walk away, straight into a deep forest. That’s what he always did at home, when missing Danny got unbearable.

  Where could Danny be? Where did his son go, when the pain of missing home got tough for him? Because it did, Christy was sure. It had to. His son loved nature more than anything. He climbed trees, jumped from limb to limb, imitated birdcalls, hid under bushes at nightfall and watched the “fly out,” when owls would leave their nests for a night of hunting. Danny was better at tracking owls than anyone Christy knew.

  And weather—Danny craved the wind in his face. He needed to pore over weather charts, tell his father what to expect in terms of high pressure systems, and low fronts, and heat waves, and the jet stream. If only Christy had listened more. If only he had given Danny the respect he’d deserved—helping Christy predict the weather, so they could run the farm better. Danny needed to feel the extremes of Cape Breton heat and cold.

  How could a boy like that survive in New York City?

  So shaken was he by Rip’s report about the postcards, he barely even noticed Liz, the hat lady, standing just outside her shop, keys in hand, watching the whole thing. He just pulled a New York map from his back pocket and started staring at the green—the wooded places in the city, where his son was likely to go.

  4

  Catherine could barely concentrate at work that day. The sheet of paper was burning a hole in her pocket. Every time someone walked into the library, she felt that she was about to commit a criminal act against the Rheinbeck Corporation—again.

  The Rheinbecks were one of Manhattan’s oldest families, dating back to the days of the Dutch West India Company. Sylvester Rheinbeck, the patriarch, still owned property up the Hudson that one of his ancestors had received as a land grant before Peter Stuyvesant’s surrender. His family had gotten wealthy in the banking, oil, and real estate industries, retaining a love for New York City and its people, sponsoring research and programs intended to benefit others and make life easier for everyone.

  The Rheinbeck family had always been good to Catherine. She had gone to the College of New Rochelle and majored in English, then gotten a Masters of Library Science from Columbia. While most of her classmates had taken jobs at universities and public libraries, Catherine had been hired by Rheinbeck to oversee the wonderful private library on the fifty-fourth floor.

  The day ticked by. With the days getting shorter, the sun set at about four-thirty. She watched it go down behind the towers of Central Park West and the Jersey Palisades beyond, a broth of thin, orange light spreading across the snowy expanse of Central Park, then trickling into darkness. Soon the building would be empty, and she would “open the door.”

  Her desk was piled high with reference books, and she flagged every page that showed pictures of angels in Manhattan architecture. Sylvester Rheinbeck had instituted the Look-Up Project. He intended to locate every single stone angel, demon, lion, serpent, and winged gryphon in the borough of Manhattan.

  Although he liked creatures best, he was also interested in medallions, wreaths, keys, staffs, ships, Celtic crosses, and other symbols and curiosities carved into stone buildings and bridges. He had long intended to compile a guidebook that included architectural details of buildings, silhouettes of birds observable flying over New York City, cloud formations, and star charts of the night sky that he would hand out in city schools and on street corners—so people would get interested in looking up.

  Sylvester limped into the library just after five o’clock, leaning on his cane. Catherine nearly jumped out of her chair—she had expected him to be gone by now. His face was long and wrinkled, like a basset hound’s. He wore tiny gold spectacles on the end of his nose. His suit had been custom made on Savile Row—twenty years ago. It was frayed at the cuffs and elbows. Sylvester considered clothing a waste of time. He was eighty-two years old and realized that time was short. He wanted to pay attention only to what he considered important things.

  “What have you found today?” he asked, leaning over Catherine’s desk.

  “This cherub’s head,” she said, pointing to a black-and-white photo in one of the books, “located just over the doorway at a stationer’s on Madison Avenue.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “Have you ascertained that it is still there? That it hasn’t been knocked down by greedy, short-sighted developers like—” He stopped short, but Catherine was sure he’d been about to say “my son.”

  “Not yet,” she said, her heart beating faster as she glanced at the clock—five-twenty.

  “Developers want to block the light,” he said. “They want to build towers into the sky, covering every inch of blue. My grandfather himself cared not a whit for the shadow this building would cast on Central Park—and the sky it would obliterate.”

  “You’re trying to make up for it, Mr. Rheinbeck,” Catherine said. “I know.”

  “If only my son saw it the same way. My father’s ways seem to have skipped a generation. But how are city children supposed to dream, if they can’t watch clouds on spring days? If they can’t go into the park on cool summer nights and lie on their backs and
gaze up at the stars?”

  “I don’t know,” Catherine said, glancing over at the service door.

  “People need to look up,” he said. “Even in the concrete canyons of New York City. I don’t care whether it’s bird watching, or angel watching, or sky gazing that gets them to do it. As long as they do it.”

  “We’re making good progress,” she said, gesturing at her files, the stacks of books on her desk.

  He shook his head. “Time is slipping away,” he said. “I’ll be dead before we’re finished. Catherine, with everything Rheinbeck stands for—the banking divisions, and brokerage departments, and all the energy work we do, and all the buildings my son seems intent upon putting up—nothing makes me prouder than what you’re doing here in this office. I just came to say, keep up the good work.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked away.

  Catherine’s eyes filled with tears. She heard his cane clomping all the way to the elevator. She felt guilty for taking advantage of her boss. She had done it all through the last year, and she was about to do it again: this was how she repaid him. To top matters off, unlike Sylvester Rheinbeck, she didn’t even believe in her work. Would people really look up, as a result of their project? And would their lives improve if they did?

  Making sure the elevator had gone down, she went to the service door. It gave onto an interior staircase, used primarily by the janitor for collecting garbage once a week, on Fridays. Catherine’s heart was beating fast. Nearly a year ago she had opened this door for the first time. Now it was a fairly regular thing.

  Turning the knob, she pulled the door open.

  Danny Byrne stood there, tall and ruddy, wearing a jacket Lizzie had scrounged from the goodwill bin at St. Lucy’s. His hair was long, curling over his collar. He was still too young to have to shave every day, but his beard was starting to come in, scruffy in patches. His eyes looked strange, wounded—the expression oddly flat, just as his father’s had looked that morning—as if he’d been through more than he could handle.