Make Believe

by Joanna Scott

  “That so?” the trooper said.

  Gran whispered something to Pop, and Pop kept quiet for a while, though he winked secretly at Bo while Gran told the trooper just how much she appreciated his help. The trooper didn’t reply, and they fell into a tense quiet.

  “That was before there were any Negro folk living in town,” Pop said out of the blue. “Way back when.”

  “Sam —”

  “Here we are.” The trooper drove into the lot of another gas station, this one with lights on inside and a man moving behind a desk. The man, like the woman back in the trailer, watched them through the window with an expression that said he wasn’t inclined to let them come inside. The trooper held open the car door for his passengers, and as Bo slid off his seat behind Gran he caught sight of the leather holster strap and wanted desperately to see the gun that it contained, to know the gun’s story, the robbers it had cut down, the people it had saved, the sound it made when it went off.

  “Boom!” Bo shrieked and fell down dead in the snow.

  “Ain’t he a little comedian,” Pop said, pulling himself out of the car. “Takes after his granddaddy.”

  “Get up, Kamon Junior,” Gran ordered.

  She hardly ever used his real name, and when she did, Bo wanted only to disappear. He didn’t like being called the name of someone who was really dead, even if that someone happened to be his own daddy, whoever he was — letters on a gravestone, dry bones, a face in an old photograph, a subject of grown-up conversation, an angel watching him and reporting to his mama everything Bo did wrong while his mama was sleeping.

  Bo rolled to his knees, hopped up, and skated through the snow toward the far side of the station. No one told him to come back, so he kept on going, glided around the corner, and pressed his back against the wall, waiting a minute to give Gran a chance to begin the chase, and then he’d pop out with a crackling boo and scare her plenty!

  But what was that? A few old cars frosted with snow, brokendown cars like the one he and his grandparents had left behind on the highway, cars just waiting for him to clamber into and practice his driving. He skipped in long strides, stirring up the snow as he went, and pulled at the handle of the driver’s door, balanced himself by pressing a knee against the side of the car, pulled at the door, which wouldn’t budge, and was nearly ready to give up when all of a sudden —

  What was that?

  A flash of color caught his eye. Beside the rear bumper of the car stood a strange animal playing statue, too big to be a cat, too cat-like to be a dog, the fur on its body the color of Bo’s own skin — reddish brown — with a blond mane framing its face and the black tip of its nose dabbed with snow. Bo didn’t recognize it as a fox, wasn’t even sure that what he saw existed in a reality outside his dream of this place — the snow, the abandoned cars, the silence…. He stared at the fox, asked it with his eyes, Who are you?

  In the animal’s eyes he saw the question thrown back at him: Who are you? A brazen strategy of evasion — animals were skilled at evasion, Bo knew in his own way, especially wild animals, so this creature must be wild.

  Don’t be afraid, Bo told himself and then directed the reassurance outward. Don’t be afraid, he told the fox.

  I’m not afraid.

  Are you cold?

  No.

  Are you hungry?

  Yes.

  I’d give you a cupcake, but I already ate it. Do you like cupcakes?

  Yes.

  And popcorn? I feed popcorn to the squirrels. I live in the city now. Where do you live?

  Up there, in the mountain.

  Can you show me your home?

  The fox leaned back slightly, reached forward with a fat paw as though it were going to approach Bo, then turned and darted off in the opposite direction. Bo ran alongside the car and into the clearing beyond. The fox sprang lightly off the ground with each stride, trotting forward so swiftly that it seemed to be flying, its belly grazing the smooth surface of the snow. Halfway across the clearing Bo stopped to catch his breath. The fox settled on its hind legs at the edge of the woods about twenty yards away and licked its shoulder as it waited. The tip of its tail and its legs were black. It stopped cleaning itself and stared at Bo. Bo stared back. How still everything was, and yet how alive. The gray cloud bed hung so low to the earth that some of the treetops were shrouded by mist. Bo had never experienced such a full silence before, and when his grandmother’s voice broke the serenity, calling his name, he pretended not to hear, though he could see that the fox was listening, pricking its ears forward, cocking its head to make sure it had heard correctly.

  Bo, the fox said.

  What is your name? Bo asked, but the fox refused to tell him, as Bo knew it would, since wild animals never give up their names. They stared at each other. Bo wondered about its life, its family, its grandparents and cousins, the games it played, the foods it ate, the stories it knew. The trail of paw prints formed a single wavering line across the snow.

  I wish I lived here, Bo said.

  Do you still want to see my home?

  Yeah.

  The fox, sitting back, raised a front paw and jerked its head to the sides, then stepped forward again, preparing to turn. Its tail flicked against the snow, and behind the powder swept into the air Bo saw the animal’s eyes narrow into a slant of suspicion, as though suddenly it had decided not to trust him and meant to flee. Before Bo could call out to it the animal crouched, preparing to spring, and then leaped off all fours, stopped in midair as though it had hit an invisible wall, and twisted around itself while a boom filled the air, a great boom that hurt Bo’s ears and hurled the fox back into the snow, where it just lay there with nothing more to say to anyone, nothing left to tell.

  Bo started to run toward the bloody mound but the trooper scooped him up from behind, grabbed him around the waist with a “No you don’t,” and carried him back to his grandma, who stood near the row of old cars holding her hand to her throat, trying to catch her breath and swallow away her terror.

  “You okay, lady?”

  She cleared her throat, tried to force her breath back to an even rhythm, insisted in a broken way that she was all right.

  “Rabid foxes around,” the trooper said as Sam appeared between the cars. And as he passed Bo over to Sam — “That wasn’t no kitty cat, son.”

  Pop wanted an explanation, Bo couldn’t stop crying, Gran was saying something about a fox, a rabid fox … the trooper … the gun … the crack of gunshot and Bo nowhere in sight … the gun … their baby … the fox.

  “Go away.” Bo sobbed, clutching the buttons of Pop’s shirt, pressing against his chest and feeling on the surface of his cheek the vibrations of his grandfather’s heart.

  The trooper offered to drive them to a local motel, a decent place with its own restaurant. They might as well sit back and enjoy the scenery, he suggested, maybe watch a little TV and warm up with a hot meal while their car was being repaired.

  Might as well, right? Right?

  “Right,” Pop whispered after a long silence. “That’ll be fine.”

  The Gilberts and their grandson stayed one night at the Grotton Peak Motel in the Endless Mountains. The next day they picked up their car with its new fuel pump and drove home slowly, through a freezing rain, having learned their lesson, as Erma would tell her daughter, Merry, who had been waiting by her phone for them to call — no use running. They settled back into the routine of their life, celebrated Bo’s fourth birthday on Tuesday, went out to eat on Friday, went to the movies on Saturday and to church on Sunday.

  Down in Hadleyville, Marge and Eddie Gantz were biding time, waiting for the phone to ring with news from their lawyers. The court-appointed evaluator had visited twice and as soon as she’d seen the Gilbert household a second time she’d draft her report. The hearing was set for the fifth of March, but the lawyers, Paul Krull and Wilson Krull, were keeping in close touch with their clients at every stage. If they won the custody case, Eddie had promised to h
ire their firm for the malpractice suit.

  Marge’s daughter, Ann, turned down a part-time clerical job in Gifferton because she wanted to be available to baby-sit for her nephew in the afternoons. She watched television after school, talked on the phone, and took to making up crossword puzzles when she was bored. Across-1: hamburger and fabrication. Down-1: Fish with peas.

  Marge, who had quit smoking three years earlier, found herself craving nicotine more than ever, so she busied herself in the kitchen, baking cookies for neighbors on North Lake Road whose basements had flooded during the January thaw.

  On the third Saturday in January Eddie helped his hunting buddy, Sheriff Joe Simmons, break up a tile floor in Joe’s house. While they were working they got to talking about the custody suit and Eddie’s concern about the care the child, Marge’s grandson, had received at the hospital. Joe remembered an acquaintance, an emergency medical technician named Jerry Cassada, who worked out of the city hospital.

  A few days later, Jerry and an emergency department nurse, now named Mercy, formerly Marianne, reborn in Christ’s almighty love, met for coffee in the hospital cafeteria. Jerry told her what he knew about the accident to spur her memory. Yes, she remembered the kid coming in from the motor vehicle accident on Route 62. A black boy wearing such sloppy clothes you had to feel sorry for him. She didn’t remember much more about the case other than that Dr. Platt up in surgery had been furious with the trauma team for missing — what was it? — a bleeding spleen. Tricky things, those spleens, especially in young children. But the child had recovered completely, praise God.

  “What child?” Bart Kowalski, the respirator technician, slid into the seat beside Mercy, spread out a napkin on the table, and set down a chocolate-covered donut as though it were a piece of jewelry he wanted to have appraised.

  “That kid with the spleen. Jerry, this is Bart. Bart, Jerry.”

  “Hobo.”

  “Hobo?”

  “The kid with the spleen — Hobo.”

  “You remember?”

  “Sure I remember. Almost died because of our stupidity. One of many. You hear about that guy doing an amputation down in Florida, cut off the wrong foot? praise God, that’s what I say.”

  “Bart, eat your donut.”

  At the same time Bart was taking the first bite from his donut, over on Sycamore Street Bo was watching TV puppets counting backward from ten to one. At Hadleyville High School, Ann Templin was closing her locker with a bang. Marge was at home painting her fingernails, and Eddie was turning on the lights inside Worthco Appliances.

  In the hospital cafeteria, Jerry Cassada asked Bart, “What happened? Can you tell me what went wrong, exactly?”

  As though anything could be recounted exactly. Bartholomew Kowalski, Mr. O2 Man, smiled to show his crooked front teeth between the scruff of his new beard, and told Jerry Cassada what he could remember, knowing all the while that by doing so he’d be pointing the fan toward the shit, as Gordon Metzger, emergency department resident, would say; spilling the beans, as Bart himself liked to say when he was handing out jelly beans to patients on the pediatric ward. Testifying as to the incompetence of said trauma team. With pleasure. Truth be told, he disliked Gordon Metzger, knew him to be a lousy doctor. Could Bart help it if someone wanted to follow the trail of incompetence from point C to point B to Gordon?

  Jerry Cassada jotted notes on yellow Post-its. He called Joe Simmons later that day, and Joe called Eddie Gantz. Eddie didn’t have much to say in response, only approving “yeps” as Joe ran through the information. After he hung up the phone Eddie wandered into the kitchen and asked Marge what she was baking.

  Gingersnaps for the neighbors. The smell of spice and melted butter filled the kitchen. The timer on the counter ticked off the remaining two minutes while the cookies browned in the oven and Marge rinsed off the dishes and arranged them in the dishwasher. They’d better hurry, Eddie reminded Marge, or they’d be late for bowling. Ding! Marge lifted out the cookie sheets, waited for the thin cookies to cool slightly, then lifted them with a spatula, one by one, onto the racks.

  Up in the city, while Erma spread peanut butter on pancakes, Miraja poured her milk into a saucer and showed Bo how to drink like a cat. Sam was watching the news on television. During the commercials he’d limp over to the front window and look around the edge of the curtain as though expecting to find someone standing at the bottom of the porch steps, watching his house.

  “Stop that!” Erma said loudly in the kitchen. She was talking to her granddaughter. “Clean up that mess now.”

  Over in the hospital, Dr. Platt replaced a critically ill baby’s shunt that had become spontaneously infected. The anesthesiologist reminded him that an hour and thirty minutes had passed. Down in the emergency department, Bart, who had nothing better to do, made a fresh pot of coffee for the staff and then spit in Gordon’s cup for the hell of it. Dr. Amy Ratigan filled out paperwork on an appendicitis case and wondered if she could really spend the rest of her working life in this department. Mercy’s voice could be heard in the background: “A quiet night, praise God.”

  On Douglas Street, Judge Wright, who would preside over the case of Gantz v. Gilbert in March, was reading a paperback novel, a thriller about a couple in Illinois named Chris and Peggy Hollister. In the opening chapters the Hollisters seem to be good, middleclass Baptists. They take in foster children, and at the beginning of the second chapter they report one of the children missing. The police focus on a neighbor, a former felon who served twenty-three years for murder and who has recently moved into a trailer down the road. The felon is fifty years old but looks eighty, with a long, lamb’s wool beard, sunken cheeks, and strange glassy skin smooth to the touch but visibly scored by tiny lines. His eyes are always squinting, and he rarely speaks above a whisper. He is the obvious suspect when the foster child, an eight-year-old boy, disappears.

  Too obvious, Judge Wright felt, easing himself back against the cushions of his sofa. The first suspect in a novel is sure to be innocent. As he read on, he began to focus on Peggy Hollister, the foster mother — though the writer didn’t admit it directly, there was something furtive about her, an insincere note in her expression of concern. And those dogs she raises — a kennel full of Dobermans. Seven foster children and a kennel full of Dobermans. What kind of life was that?

  Back at the hospital, Bart sat cross-legged on a bed inside an oxygen tent with a one-year-old pneumonic child, singing, “Three green speckled frogs…” while the mother wandered off to find a phone and call her husband. The child, a girl, gazed at Bart with her chin thrust forward, her head tilted, a bemused smile on her face.

  Gordon Metzger, sipping the coffee Bart had made, read a story in the paper about the Pope. Mercy restocked a cabinet with airways and thought about Jerry Cassada and the way his brown eyebrows merged on the bridge of his nose.

  Over on Sycamore Street, Erma watched the children eat their pancake supper. She heard Sam get up from his chair in the living room. “You expecting someone?” she called. He came into the kitchen, rested an elbow on the counter, picked up a fork, and thrust it at a piece of Miraja’s pancake.

  “Oh no you don’t, Gramps,” Miraja said, curling her arm around her plate to guard it from the predator.

  At the bowling alley in Athens, five miles south of Hadleyville, Eddie lifted Marge’s coat from her shoulders and went to hang it in on a hook. When he returned his wife was already standing at the end of the practice lane, extending her arm to mimic the motion of the release while Dorrie Jelilian called from the bench, “Stan’s way ahead already!”

  Alone in his house on Douglas Street, Judge Wright read greedily, eager to confirm his suspicion that the foster mother, Peggy Hollister of Granville, Illinois, had a hand in the child’s fate. But how and why? His mind wandered, even as he absorbed the unfolding story of the novel, to his own family. His wife had died ten years earlier. His son lived out in California. Shortly after his wife’s death he’d learned that she’
d carried on a twenty-year affair with a man in Syracuse. Judge Wright would never know for certain if he was his son’s natural father. He preferred to go to his grave without knowing for sure one way or the other. The trick was to convince himself that it didn’t make much difference.

  In the book that Judge Wright was reading, Peggy Hollister takes to drinking. One evening her husband smells whiskey on her breath but the argument that ensues leads nowhere. With forty pages left in the book, the felon dies in a fire set by friends of Peggy and Chris Hollister. Judge Wright couldn’t stop reading. He had to be at the courthouse at seven-thirty the following morning, but he read past midnight, helplessly engrossed in the book and enraged at it when the author disclosed the secret: that neither Peggy Hollister nor the felon was to blame for the child’s disappearance. In the last chapter the child is discovered living with his mother, a drug addict, in a filthy apartment in Mexico City.

  Judge Wright threw the book down in disgust.

  On Sycamore Street, Erma Gilbert, unable to sleep, wrapped herself around her husband’s sleeping body, closed her eyes, and tried to see into the future. Down the hall, Bo dreamed that he was walking a fox on a leash. Josie, asleep at the end of Bo’s bed, twitched, woke up, and settled back down inside the curl of her tail.