Gray baby: a novel

by Scott Loring Sanders

  Swamper smiled and pointed upstream. "You can't see it now because of all the leaves, but in the winter and spring when the trees are still bare, you can see the Palisades from here."

  Clifton strained his eyes and moved his head from side to side to try to locate the cliffs, but he saw nothing.

  "Well, take my word for it. Right here from this porch I've got a perfect view. So I was sitting here one day when I saw you tossing things into the water. Or at least I thought it was you, but from this distance I couldn't be sure. Either way, I wanted to see what somebody was throwing into the river. But I was pretty sure it was you. You have to remember, you might not have known that I existed, but I've always known that you did. You might say I've kept tabs on you over the years. When

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  your daddy died, I was this close," he said, pinching his finger and thumb together, "to introducing myself to you. It wasn't right the way your daddy got killed. I wanted to reach out to you. Wanted you to know that I was hurting for you. I even called your mama to talk with her about it, but she didn't want nothing to do with me. Anyway, when I saw you throwing things into the water, I decided to go down to the dock to see what it was all about. When I saw several bottles floating on the water like fishing bobbers, I used my long-handled net and scooped one out. By the way, it took me forever to get the note out of that damn bottle. I ended up having to smash it against a rock.

  "But anyway, after I read your note, I knew that it was time. It was a sign that you and me finally needed to get acquainted. I realized that you needed me. And that maybe I needed you. I realized I needed to finally reach out to you, and I prayed that it wasn't too late. So that's how it happened. You have no idea how difficult it's been for me to not be able to talk to my own grandson. Especially when he's only lived a few miles away for the past sixteen years. Millie died shortly after you were born, and with Sabrina refusing to talk to me, it was a horrible time. Ever since I finally met you, I've been busting at the seams to say something, Clifton. But I was scared. Afraid that if your mother found out then she might prevent us from seeing each other anymore. I've wanted nothing more

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  than to be able to talk with you. To spend time with you. To go fishing together. This last month has been the best month of my life."

  "Wow," said Clifton, trying to fathom what Swamper had gone through. "But now it looks like things are going to be okay. Mom's getting help and I'm staying here. We had a good talk on the way over. She had only good things to say about you."

  Swamper turned his head and looked sideways at Clifton as if he didn't believe him.

  "I'm serious. She said you were a good man. She said you and her had had your differences over the years, but she thought things were going to be okay now."

  Swamper rocked slowly as he seemed to weigh Clifton's words. "You know what it's been like for me not being able to talk with you? You know what it's been like to see you as a little boy in town and not even be able to say hello? I'll tell you what it's been like. Let me give you another one of my famous examples," he said, smiling. "Like I told you, I've been doing a lot of thinking since last night."

  Clifton recognized the sly grin on Swamper's face. The playful glimmer in his eye. He was about to go in some crazy direction to make his point.

  "You ever been in a restaurant or some other public place

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  and had to hit the head really bad? I'm not talking about taking a piss. Which, by the way, never did make no sense to me. Why would anyone wanna take a piss? But anyway, I'm talking about having to take a smash so powerful that it could crack the hull of a battleship. Where your gut is boiling and if you don't go right then, it might end up in your shorts. I'm talking about the way your stomach gets after eating a couple dozen fried oysters. You know what I mean?"

  Clifton smiled and nodded despite having no idea where Swamper was going. He replied, "That's what it felt like not being able to talk with me?"

  "No, not that. Hold on, I'm getting there. What it was like is this. So after you go and do your business, then you have to wipe. And this is what I'm getting to. This is my point right here. After taking a crap like that, then you realize that there's no toilet paper in the bathroom. No paper towels. No napkins. No nothing. The feeling that I got from not being able to talk to you was just like that. It was horrible."

  Clifton could tell that Swamper, in his own unique way, was actually being serious, but he couldn't help himself. He started cracking up. "You've got to be kidding me. That's the weirdest, strangest, most disgusting analogy I've ever heard. So you're saying that not being able to talk to your grandson was the same thing as not being able to wipe your ass?"

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  "Yep. Identical."

  "Well, here I am. You're talking to me now, so what does that mean?"

  Swamper rubbed the scruff over his Adam's apple as he contemplated his answer. After a moment of thought he said, "Well, I reckon you're like the lost roll of toilet paper."

  "I'm the toilet paper?" said Clifton. "How do you figure?"

  "You search every cabinet, every drawer in the bathroom. Behind the mirror of the medicine cabinet if there is one. Every nook and cranny as you shuffle around with your pants and shorts bunched at your ankles, trying not to trip. After you've searched everywhere for something to wipe with, you start to get panicky. You start to sweat. You don't know what you're going to do. And then, hidden behind the toilet, sitting on the tile of the floor, you catch a glimpse of something. It's a half-used roll that someone stashed away in case of an emergency. Imagine the feeling you have at that very instant. Right when you thought your life couldn't get any worse, suddenly you realize everything is going to be okay. Go ahead and get that picture in your head for a second. You got it?"

  Clifton chuckled as he closed his eyes and imagined the ridiculous scene in his mind. "Yeah, okay I got it."

  "That feeling, that amazing sense of relief, that's the feeling I had when I saw you show up on the railroad tracks that day. Standing there with your fishing rod and bucket. I knew right

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  then and there that everything was going to be okay. You were the toilet paper."

  Clifton opened his eyes and got ready to make a wisecrack, but he saw that Swamper's face was taut and serious as he looked straight ahead. It almost seemed like he might cry. Clifton quickly closed his eyes again so Swamper wouldn't know he'd seen him, letting the silence of the afternoon do the rest of the talking instead.

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  ***

  Chapter 12

  Over the course of the next week , things between Clifton and Swamper returned to the way they had been before. There was nothing awkward or uneasy about their relationship. But in the town of Crocket's Mill, things were far from normal. Neither Maria nor the yellow Lincoln had been found. The newscasters reported that the police had several leads and were looking for a "person of interest" but they wouldn't release a name. All they gave was the description of the man. Rumors were flying around town that the "person of interest" was the same man who'd been released from prison on that first day when Clifton had met Swamper. The same man Old Henry had complained about in the store. Since that man had originally been from Alabama, there was a lot of speculation that he had probably left town already, with or without Maria, and was long gone. But whether he was still

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  around or not didn't make most of the people in Crocket's Mill feel any better.

  It didn't make Clifton feel any better either. But as every day passed, his anxiety about the ice cream man dissipated a little more. That guy was on the run. He had to have more important things to worry about than coming after Clifton. He rationalized, and Swamper had concurred, that the man had simply made an empty threat that day to scare him. At this point, there was no reason for him to search out Clifton unless he was totally crazy.

  Nevertheless, since Clifton had arrived for good at Swamper's, he'd left the premises only a handful of times. Mostly h
e'd stayed close to home, checking and baiting trot lines, doing chores around the house, helping Swamper clean, and he even went swimming a couple of times. They'd become roommates of sorts, sharing in the responsibilities. He took the skiff down to Old Henry's one day for a few groceries, and he made two trips to his house to get the mail, but other than that, he'd mostly stayed close by. They'd also played a lot of chess, and so far, much to Swamper's chagrin, Clifton was still undefeated.

  After his second trip back from getting the mail, Clifton had returned with Bosco. This time for good. He and Swamper had discussed it and decided that Bosco was their dog now. That he wouldn't be going back. They joked that

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  they hadn't stolen him, they were just borrowing him permanently. Swamper even conceded to let the dog come into the house after Clifton spent a full day giving him a dozen flea baths. Overall, considering the circumstances, things had been going pretty well.

  During that first week after Maria disappeared, there had been two things that Clifton had wanted to do that he didn't end up doing. For one, he'd entertained the idea of going to Charlie's funeral out at the black Baptist church, which was located about five miles from Swamper's place. Or as Swamper said, "About five miles as the fly crows." But since the kidnapper was still on the loose, and Clifton would have had to walk, they decided it might not be such a good idea. Secretly, he wasn't overly disappointed anyway, since the road to get there would have taken him directly past the spot where his father had been killed.

  The other thing he'd thought about doing was volunteering to be a part of one of the search teams that had been organized to scour the rural outlying areas of Crocket's Mill. The police were welcoming any and all volunteers to walk certain sections of the surrounding hillside. In fact, one morning while Clifton and Swamper sat on the porch finishing their breakfast, they saw a team down below working each side of the railroad tracks. One part of Clifton had wanted to help, mainly for Julie's sake, but another part of him said,

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  You were probably the last person to see Maria alive. You sure you want to take a chance on being the first person to find her dead? In the end, he decided against it.

  The day after he'd seen the search team, three days since Maria had been abducted, he was sitting on the dock in the early morning sunshine cleaning a couple of catfish when a boat came chugging from upstream. It was a larger boat than he was used to seeing on the river, and it created a large wake as it motored along. The wake wasn't created because the boat was going too fast, but more because the stern seemed to be weighted down--as if it was dragging something. But when the boat passed, Clifton didn't observe anything being pulled behind it. He waved to the several men onboard, but none of them waved back. They seemed serious about whatever it was they were doing, and he got the impression that they didn't have time to bother waving to some kid on a dock.

  When the waves rolled up a minute later, with some of the water spilling onto the deck and wetting his bare feet, he noticed that the water was muddy. He also saw a dirty trail following behind the boat, as if chocolate milk were leaking from the stern.

  He gathered his gutted fish, dropped them into Ziplocs, and then crossed the train tracks since he wasn't expecting Tricky Bob for another twenty minutes. When he got to the porch, he asked Swamper what the boat was for. Swamper sat

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  in his rocking chair, smoking a hand-rolled. "That's a dredge boat. It's looking for the little girl."

  Clifton was confused, and it must've shown on his face because Swamper continued. "It's dragging a set of grappling hooks behind it. Those hooks'll grab just about anything that's sitting around on the bottom."

  The thought that conjured in Clifton's mind unnerved him. To think of that cute little girl's body rolling around on the bottom of the river, as aimless as the dregs in a cup of tea, was bad enough to imagine. But then to think that she might get impaled on a cold, unforgiving dredge hook, well, that only darkened the picture.

  But as it turned out, the dredge boat came up empty, which was both a good and bad thing. It was good because it gave hope to the town, and most important to Julie and her parents, that Maria might still be alive. At the same time, it was bad because that feeling of the unknown still hovered above the town like a heavy cloud of poisonous gas. Like a noxious miasma that made everyone sick. They wanted answers. They wanted the girl to be found safe and sound. They wanted Charlie's murderer to be caught. Whether he was found dead or alive, no one seemed to care.

  But after a week, there hadn't been any significant break. The news reports and articles in the paper used all of the same clichés that cropped up anytime there was a missing persons

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  case. The police are staying tight-lipped because they don't want to hamper the investigation ... The most critical window is within the first twenty four hours of the disappearance ... It is still being treated as a search and rescue at this time. It is not a recovery mission as of yet... The police are asking anyone who might have seen anything--anything at all--to please come forward. Sometimes what you might consider insignificant can be extremely valuable to detectives ... The tiniest strand of evidence could break this case... If you see anyone acting suspicious, do not approach them. Instead, please contact the authorities immediately ... Investigators say they've had a lot of promising leads, but so far they've been unable to apprehend a suspect.

  ***

  Exactly a week after Maria disappeared, Clifton went down extra early to check the trot line while Swamper stayed inside to cook breakfast. Tricky Bob would be coming by in the next hour to pay them. It had been a slow week--at least a slow week as far as catfishing was concerned--and they hadn't caught much.

  It was still dark as Clifton began pulling in the line. On the black surface of the water, a faint sprinkling of stars bounced along in a condensed cluster. Behind him, a rooster crowed from some distant farm nestled in a mountain hollow. Far

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  across the river, on the horizon over Samford, the sun had barely started to show. The antennas on the tallest buildings still slowly flashed their red lights, warning low-flying planes to beware. But from where Clifton now stood, he could hardly see his hands as they worked the wet, weightless line; he suspected he hadn't caught a thing.

  Since his first experience with the trot line, he'd rapidly become something of an expert. He now played a game with himself every morning, trying to predict how many pounds of fish were on the line just by giving it an initial tug. He could usually guess correctly within four or five pounds. This morning, unfortunately, his guess was zero and he was just about right. Out of the twenty hooks on the line, there was only one fish, and he wasn't even two pounds. Clifton backed out the barbed hook from the fish's lip with exasperation and dropped him into the water.

  Since he didn't have any fish to clean, he decided he'd grab a quick bite of breakfast and then get an early start over to the house. He hadn't checked the mail in a couple of days, and also he wanted to drop off his most recent letter to his mother.

  "I'm gonna head over to the house," said Clifton as he shoveled the last bite of scrambled eggs into his mouth. "Unless you want me to wait until after Tricky Bob comes by."

  "No, go ahead. I'll deal with him."

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  "You want me to get anything at the store? I can come back through town if we need something."

  Swamper stood at the sink, scrubbing a dish in soapy water. "We're low on milk. Could use some bacon too, I reckon."

  "Okay, I won't be gone long." Clifton got up and set his dish on the counter next to the sink. Swamper grabbed it and let it disappear into the suds.

  "You got the twenty-two?"

  Clifton hesitated. "I don't like carrying that thing. Makes me feel uncomfortable."

  "You'll find out what uncomfortable is if you run into that fella and don't have nothing to protect yourself. You know Bosco can't go, so take the damn gun. I ain't generally like this, but right now
I'm not asking you. I'm telling you."

  Clifton nodded as he left the kitchen. He stuffed the letter into the front pocket of his cutoffs and grabbed the gun from the lockbox by Swamper's desk. He stuck the gun in his waistband and then pulled down on his shirt to make sure it was concealed.

  From the kitchen, Swamper yelled, "You need a flashlight?"

  "No, sun'll be up in a few minutes."

  Clifton opened the screen door quickly and then shut it behind him, preventing Bosco from escaping. The dog wagged

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  his tail, eager to follow. A moist imprint formed in the dusty mesh where his nose had pushed against it. "You can't come, boy. Unless you want to take a chance on going back to prison."

  The morning was still and the temperature perfect. Cardinals twittered back and forth to one another in the branches overhead as Clifton left the house, and behind him, the caw caw of a crow sounded near the river. When he got to the dirt road, the sky had lightened enough to where he could vaguely see, but as soon as he stepped over the barbed wire and entered the woods again, the darkness closed in once more.

  He'd walked only fifty feet and was just getting ready to make the ascent toward the Killing Pit when he heard something coming toward him. Far up the hill, a branch snapped and some leaves shuffled around. His first instinct was that it was a rummaging squirrel. He'd always been amazed by how much noise one little squirrel could make on a quiet morning in the woods. But squirrels didn't snap branches. Deer? Maybe, but despite their size compared to a squirrel, they were generally far quieter in the woods. And Clifton also noticed that the birds had quit singing ahead of him. Since he hadn't yet made a sound on the beaten trail, he figured the sudden silence of the birds meant that whatever he'd heard up ahead was probably another human. That familiar panic started beating in his chest as he halted his steps and