by J. S. Bailey
“It doesn’t happen too often. Most people who hear him at least listen patiently, even if they don’t agree with anything he says.”
“But still.”
Carly drained her cup of coffee and set it in the sink before shouldering her purse. “It doesn’t bother him. He knows he’s doing God’s work, and it makes him happy. It’s just fun to tease him about it. The next time you see him, mention the word ‘Portland’ and see what happens.”
“Portland. Got it.”
Bobby followed her to the door. “Remember what I said, Bobby,” she said when she put her hand on the knob.
“About what?”
“What will you do with your pain?”
I want to put a fist through a wall, he thought, but he said, “I’ll figure it out later.”
She smiled. “That’s a start.”
Bobby waited until her car departed from the driveway before storming back into the kitchen. “Is this all some kind of joke?” he said to the ceiling. “Because I don’t think it’s very funny.” And to think he’d devoted most of the previous day to tracking down “Mystery Woman” when he could have been doing something important like…
Like what?
Like going to the gym and lifting weights like Phil wanted him to start doing. He had to be physically fit in order to be the Servant since driving out demons amounted to something like a small battle.
Or he could have tried to jog around the block a few times. Or he could have gone someplace like Walmart or McDonald’s or Autumn Ridge Safari Adventure Golf in search of another demoniac to freak him out so he could run home crying like a kid again.
Had Randy and the others gone through anything like this when they first became Servants?
He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask.
Even though he didn’t want to, he picked up Adrian’s picture. Now that he thought about it, he did look a bit like her. Since his father had been overweight for as long as Bobby could remember, he’d often wondered why he always stayed so skinny regardless of whatever he shoveled into his mouth, and here was the answer.
Charlotte was about the same size as the woman in the picture but well-muscled because she worked out pretty much from the instant she got home from the daycare where she worked until she went to bed.
She began her vigorous exercise regimen shortly after Ken’s death. It was interesting how the passing of a loved one could so alter one’s own existence. Charlotte became more conscious of her health, and Bobby became afflicted with premonitions of tragedy that haunted him day and night.
He gritted his teeth. Charlotte. Adrian must have slunk back to Eleanor, Ohio for God knew what reason and talked to Charlotte, who had then directed her to Oregon.
Bobby retrieved his phone and dialed Charlotte’s number.
His fifteen-year-old brother Jonas answered. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he said. It always startled Bobby to hear his brother’s voice on the phone. Jonas had only been thirteen when Bobby left home. His voice had deepened since then, and it was almost like the young man on the phone was a stranger now. “Is Charlotte there?”
“She’s out weeding the garden. How’s Oregon?”
Bobby didn’t know how to respond. Just how was Oregon? “It’s interesting,” he said, and that was true enough.
“Before you moved out there, I didn’t know anyone even lived in Oregon. I mean, what do you do out there? Are there any girls?”
“Some.”
“I have a girlfriend now. Remember Candy Wallace? We’ve been dating two weeks.”
If Bobby remembered correctly, Candy was some little pigtailed girl in Jonas’s class, but he supposed she wouldn’t be so little anymore. “It isn’t a date if neither of you are old enough to drive.”
“Ha, ha, ha, I’m laughing so hard. I bet you still haven’t worked up the guts to ask a chick out.”
“Can you please put Charlotte on?”
Jonas sounded triumphant when he next spoke. “I knew it!”
In the background Bobby heard a door open and close. “Jonas,” he said, “I would really love to speak to your mother right now.”
“Hey, take it easy. You know I’m just messing around. Here she is.”
Muffled sounds indicated that the phone was being passed from one hand into another. Then, “Bobby?”
A lump rose in Bobby’s throat at the sound of his stepmother’s voice. “Hey, Charlotte.”
Charlotte’s voice was full of relief. “Bobby, I’m so glad you called. We’ve all missed you so much.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t say that! You’re a grown man who wants to find his own way in the world, and nobody should stop you from doing that.” Bobby heard her hesitate for a moment. “But I would like it if you called more often. I want to know what my boy’s been up to.”
“He’s been up to his neck in deep crap,” he blurted.
Charlotte’s tone changed in an instant. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” he said too fast. “I mean, something has.” He swallowed and counted off a few beats. “Charlotte, did you tell someone where I am?”
A long silence. Then, “I take it you talked to her?”
“No.”
More silence. “I don’t understand.”
“She’s in trouble,” Bobby said. “Bad trouble.”
“That’s terrible!”
“I want to know what you said to her.”
It sounded like Charlotte let out a long breath through pursed lips. “She showed up here out of the blue two, maybe three weeks ago.”
“What was she driving?”
“This little teal thing. Might have been a Ford Escort. It looked like if you poked it too hard it would fall apart. I was out front watering the flowers when it pulled in, and she just sat there behind the wheel for a minute not doing anything, so I came around to her window to see what was going on. I asked if I could help her, and she asked me if Ken still lived here. I just about broke down then. She must have known what happened without me saying because she broke down, too.” Charlotte sniffled. “I told her I was sorry and asked if she was an old friend of Ken’s, and she said no, they were together for a couple years about twenty years ago, and that’s when I realized who she was. I hadn’t seen her in so long I didn’t even recognize her.”
Bobby’s hands were shaking. “You grew up on the same street as her, right?”
“Right, but we didn’t know each other well. She was a few years behind me in school. We went into the house and I poured her some tea and we sat and talked for hours. First we mostly talked about your father, but then we started talking about you. She was…upset when I told her you’d moved away.”
“She didn’t seem too upset about leaving me and Dad.”
“People change, Bobby. She was a mess. She cried so long, I don’t know how she didn’t run out of tears. She kept going on about how stupid she’d been and how she wished she could put everything right.”
So Adrian thought she was stupid for running away? She must have developed a little self-awareness in the past twenty years. “It’s too late to put everything right,” he said.
“Bobby, you have every right in the world to be angry at that woman, but don’t be too hard on her. You probably don’t want to hear this, but look at the good things that came out of what she did. I met your father. We fell in love. We had Jonas.” Charlotte’s voice became choked. “I loved your father more deeply than I’ve ever loved another human being. I thought about killing myself after he died. I’d shut myself in the bathroom, thinking how easy it would be to end it all so I could see Ken again, and then I heard you talking to Jonas out in the hallway and I knew I could never be so selfish as to end my own life even though it hurt so bad to keep on living. You boys needed me. And I needed you.”
Bobby blotted his damp eyes on the back of his hand. “What does this have to do with Adrian?”
“She screwed up, Bobby. Screwed up big-time. But God likes to take
all the broken pieces that other people leave behind and put them back together in a new way.”
Bobby had the idea that Carly would form a fast bond with Charlotte if they ever met. “Why did she come back?”
“She said she had some kind of rude awakening and that she wanted to see each of her other childr—”
Charlotte broke off awkwardly, and a cold chill filled Bobby’s veins as he pieced together what she’d been about to say. “Children?”
Silence stretched for a brief eternity before Charlotte said, “I’m sorry, Bobby. You have three siblings you’ve never met. Adrian said she wanted to find each of you and tell you she was sorry. You were the last one she had to meet. She said she isn’t asking for forgiveness.”
“Then what in the world does she want?”
“I’m afraid she’ll have to tell you, herself. I really do hope she’s okay.”
“Yeah,” Bobby found himself saying, though the words tasted bitter on his tongue. “Me too.”
BOBBY GOT off the phone and started pacing. Charlotte’s words had stirred up a sea of emotions that no amount of sulking was going to settle.
So Adrian felt bad about leaving Ken and Bobby behind? Good. She deserved to feel that way.
Unless her sorrow and regret were just an act. Maybe Adrian was broke and wanted some money. Would she really trek all the way across North America to find him just to beg for some cash?
Probably not. But Bobby didn’t know her, so he couldn’t know what crazy thoughts went through her head.
“What am I going to do?”
The Spirit surprised him by saying, Go outside. Now.
Gritting his teeth, he walked barefoot onto the porch, which felt warm beneath his feet in the growing heat of the late July morning.
“Okay,” he said. “Now what?”
Most of the houses on the opposite side of the street had two floors. One of the neighbors over there had a ladder propped against the front of his house and was busy blasting a second-floor window with a hose he’d carried up with him. The only other person in sight was a woman with a ratty ponytail squatting in the flowerbed of the next house yanking out weeds and tossing them into the grass behind her.
Was one of them in some kind of danger? He didn’t feel any of the urgency he associated with a premonition.
The sound of an approaching vehicle made Bobby turn his head as a white work van emblazoned with the logo of the Trautmann Electric Company turned onto his street.
His heart gave a flutter as the van slowed and pulled into the driveway of the house where the woman was weeding the flowerbed. She stood up, brushed off her hands, and went to the van’s window.
Bobby caught snatches of conversation between gusts of wind: “…fixture’s gone bad…Pete says he wants…check wiring in the basement…”
The driver, a thirtyish man in a white shirt and jeans, got out and opened the doors in the back of the van, withdrawing some kind of work kit. He and the woman disappeared into the house.
Bobby’s mind buzzed. Someone driving that same type of van had kidnapped Adrian and taken her away to places unknown. Randy said that Bill Trautmann, the company owner, had been friends with Graham. Could Bill, like Graham, have a penchant for hurting others? Perhaps they were partners in crime, and if Bill had been introduced to Jack, then they might have formed a fast friendship as well.
Thing was, Bobby couldn’t imagine why anyone would be so stupid as to use their own company van to conduct a kidnapping.
Bobby followed the sidewalk and stopped three houses down from his, eyeing the company phone number stenciled on the side of the van and committing it to memory.
Then he walked home, put on some fresh clothes, and picked up the phone.
THE TRAUTMANN Electric Company sat on Autumn Ridge’s southern edge on a quiet street lined with trees so old their stumps could have been used as dinner tables. On the phone, Bill Trautmann explained that he and his wife lived behind the company headquarters and to come right on in if Bobby wanted to chat.
Bobby passed a parking lot filled with more work vans as well as a squat, brown building with a sign jutting from the grass proclaiming “Trautmann Electric Company. Always Reliable. Always On Time.” The driveway Bill indicated on the phone appeared on the right just past the office, and Bobby turned.
The side of the blacktopped lane not facing the office was lined with tall evergreens that had dumped needles all over the pavement. An old-fashioned two-story house with indigo siding and cream-colored trim appeared on the right behind the office. Bobby pulled up beside a silver Lexus that had a vanity plate reading “FISHMAN” and got out.
He eyed the house with trepidation. Bill sounded friendly enough over the phone, but Graham had been friendly to him, too.
White wicker furniture with indigo cushions matching the siding sat on the wide porch. Pink flowers of a variety Bobby didn’t recognize waved their heads at him from a ceramic pot perched on the porch railing. Not exactly the kind of place he’d expected an electrician to call home.
For some reason, the tidy appearance of the dwelling put him even more on edge. Bobby strode up to the door anyway and pushed the doorbell. He’s going to have a demon, he thought. He’s going to have a demon, and he’ll kill me.
The door swung open. A trim black man with patches of gray hair around his ears stood in the opening.
“Bill?” Bobby ventured.
“That’s me!” the man said, holding out a hand, which Bobby shook. Bill was in his early seventies and wore an orange Izod polo tucked neatly into his slacks.
He didn’t have an aura.
But apparently neither had Graham.
“I’m sorry if it seems like I’m intruding,” Bobby said. “I just didn’t know who else to talk to.”
“Oh, don’t you go apologizing to me. Your reason for coming is perfectly understandable. Now come on in.”
Is it understandable? Bobby wondered as Bill led him through an entryway into a spacious study that looked out onto a flower garden in full bloom. When Bobby had called the electric company, the woman who’d answered patched him through to Bill, and Bobby had to come up with a decent reason for calling. At Bobby’s first mention of Graham, Bill had invited him right on over.
“Nice place you’ve got,” Bobby said when Bill seated himself behind a giant polished desk and Bobby sat in a chair facing him.
Bill beamed at him. “What you see here is the result of decades of hard work. When I was a boy in Tennessee all I ever heard was how a black man could never amount to anything, and it made me so mad I vowed to make something decent of myself if it was the last thing I did. I moved here, learned the electrician’s trade, saved every dime I could, and eventually started this company.” He laughed. “Regina and I were so poor those first few years we were in business, we had to sell our furniture to pay the bills and ate off the ironing board instead; and now I have forty employees and a fleet of twelve vans, and life’s never been better. But I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to an old man tell you his life story.”
Bobby tried to figure out how he could steer the conversation to the missing work van without being too obvious about it but decided he would just go with the flow. “I don’t mind. It’s cool that your business got so big.”
“It’s all about how you treat other people. All my men and women know they have to be polite with our clients and do the best job possible. I get one complaint about an employee, they get a warning; two and they’re fired. I have a very low tolerance for poor conduct.”
But do you have a low tolerance for abduction, too? “No offense, but I think I might be afraid to work for you.”
Bill threw his head back and let out a hearty laugh. “I’ve only had to can two people in the last ten years, and I can’t say I enjoyed it either time. But if you want your company to keep a decent reputation, you have to cut off any part that deviates from it.”
Bobby found himself nodding. “So I was wondering about Graham.�
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Some of the cheer evaporated from Bill’s expression. “Right. I’m sorry you ended up as one of his tenants. If I’d known where he was…” He stared past Bobby’s shoulder, and a shadow crossed over his face. “If someone had told me what he’d end up becoming, I’d have said they were crazy. Graham was one of my best buddies for years.”
It was interesting hearing about Graham from someone who hadn’t previously been a Servant. “How did you meet him?”
Bill took a moment to clear his throat. “We had booths next to each other in the commercial building at the county fair about thirty-five, forty years ago. He was promoting his drug store and I was promoting my company, and we got to talking about how we both got started, and first thing you know we were going out for drinks every so often and then our wives met each other and would go out shopping, and then we’d invite each other over for parties and things, and the rest is history.”
“He seemed like a nice guy to me. You know, when he was my landlord.”
“He was nice, on the outside at least. When I heard he’d shot that boy he took in like a grandson, I was sure it had been a mistake. You might say I was in denial. But then I thought, what did I really know about Graham, after all? I don’t know what sort of things were festering deep inside that head of his.” Bill’s mouth formed an unhappy line. “For all I know, each and every one of us has a little crazy inside. It’s just a matter of making sure nobody lets it out.”
Bobby thought about what Phil learned from Graham’s notebook. “Apparently the crazy didn’t start until about six years ago.”
Bill’s eyebrows rose. “Six years, huh?”
“Did something happen to him six years ago aside from Randy moving into his house?”
Bill shifted his weight and set his chin on his hand. “Let me think.” His forehead creased. “That would have been 2009. Hmm.”
When Bill lapsed into silence, Bobby pondered what he’d learned so far. It seemed unlikely that Bill had been the one to pluck Adrian off the side of the street. But who, then? Who had taken the van and spirited Adrian away?
