by Jane Bradley
She shook her head, said, “Whatever I take just runs right through me.”
Cub Scout motioned to me to bend close and said, “Patricia England is dead.” I looked at the old woman sipping her Coke, asked the cop, “Did she have a sister?”
He grinned all smart-ass at me, said, “It’s not like I have a obit here. Want me to pull out my crystal ball?” He pushed back from the desk, walked away. I called Bitsy. She had it all: Yes, Patricia England was dead. She had a daughter who’d died as a kid. And a son. A thief. Did some time. Last known residence 509 Wabash Street. Patricia England was buried, yes, at Calvary on Oleander Boulevard. My guess was that this woman had been a family friend. Maybe had lived there a while. Maybe the son took this woman to visit his mother’s grave and left her there.
Walker said to leave her and they’d call Social Services, and I knew what that meant. Nothing would happen for hours. It meant they would just dump her at the Magnolia Street shelter and leave her sitting around until someone figured something out.
I told him to work on getting her a bed somewhere and I’d take care of Patricia England. I told him I had a doctor friend who’d look her over, get her what she needed.
“That’s not procedure, and you know it,” he said, but he was grinning. He knew my ways, and he was enjoying the view down my tank top. I gave him my card and said, “Call me.”
“You bet,” he said, and he opened the door, followed us out to the truck. He helped the old woman up into the seat, steadied the crackers in her lap and the Coke in her hand. I gave him a little salute and got going.
I called my friend Dr. Bev to set up the exam for the old woman, and she of course said to come on. Bev is good that way; she’ll be on call around the clock and never charge a dime. I just had to make it up to her office in Castle Hayne, a farm town north of the city. So I settled in for the long drive. I was supposed to be meeting Billy Jenkins about Katy, and I needed to be calling Roy because this Billy had said Katy liked to spend time at Lake Waccamaw. Roy is sheriff in that county, and I was thinking I should get him on the Katy case, and I was thinking I had to make more calls about those Ohio kids, and I was thinking there were a hundred things I needed to be doing. She sat there looking out the window and nibbling a cracker like a little bird. But what can you do when a broken little old woman appears by the side of the road?
My cell phone buzzed. It was Bitsy at REV. She said the Ohio man had just charged a bunch of breakfasts at a McDonald’s up in Rocky Point, and I couldn’t help grinning, knowing he was just north of where I was heading, and most likely he was coming my way. I figured he was heading for the coast. Myrtle Beach, most likely; it’s a place where losers like to go. Or he was taking some kind of long way to Miami. I got Bitsy making calls to try to get volunteers at every rest stop and gas station between Rocky Point and Myrtle Beach. And I watched the highway ahead of me with what my daddy called hunter’s eyes. You go still somewhere in your brain and look out, eyes open to everything but seeing what you need to see, some movement, a color, a little flash of what you want out there. I called Bitsy to call Billy Jenkins and remind him that I wanted to see Katy’s momma when she hit town. The old woman was sleeping, her breath making a rattling sound, and I thought she had walking pneumonia or bronchitis. I pressed the engine harder to get her to Dr. Bev.
The phone buzzed, and I was happy to see it was Roy. Patricia England sat up and patted at the seat around her. “I’m sorry, so sorry,” she said. “I’ve had an accident here.” She tried to lift up and get away from the wetness on the seat but sank back into it and looked at me, all tearful.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll get you cleaned.” Out on the highway I saw nothing but gas stations and diners. I remembered there was a Walmart at the next exit.
She was bent over, making these little crying sounds. I kept telling her it’d be all right, that I’d get her clean things at the Walmart. Then she just kind of gave up and leaned against the door and tried to sit on the edge of the seat.
I parked at the far edge of the lot and told her I had baby wipes and dry towels in the back. She sat up, quiet, but I could see the tears running from her eyes. I was looking for my box of latex gloves in the back. I found the gloves, then heard her say with something like wonder, “Would you look at that? Look at those poor little babies, look at ’em crying like that. No babies should be as broken-hearted as that.” I figured she was talking about the invisible babies. I headed around front and opened the door to try to put some towels under her. She wasn’t looking in my backseat. She was staring straight ahead. “Look at ’em,” she said. “You need to go take care of those babies in the van over there.”
I looked, and there just in the next aisle was a blue van, Ohio plates, two kids staring from the back window.
I hurried around the truck to grab my Taser and my phone. The kids tracked me with their eyes. They matched the description: little brown-haired boy, about four, two-year-old girl. I figured they’d been warned not to call out for help. I dialed Bitsy. The driver was gone, doors locked. What the hell was he doing at Walmart? Bitsy read me the plate numbers on the missing van.
I said softly, “Sweet Jesus!” And the old woman said, “Amen.” I gave our location to Bitsy, knew she’d take care of the rest.
I went to the van. The kids backed away, crying. I stepped closer, peered in, saw a cooler, a sleeping bag, bags of clothes. “It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll get you back to home.” A guy walking by stopped, then a mother and her teenaged girl. I turned. “It’s all right,” I said. “Just some kids locked in. Cops are on the way.” They backed off, but not too far. I moved toward my truck. I looked to the old woman. She was sitting deeper in the seat. I figured she was asleep.
Then the man came out the doors and headed across the parking lot, just like he was supposed to: six foot, one seventy pounds or so. Skinny. Dark, curly hair, even wearing the same Guns n’ Roses t-shirt he’d been wearing when he’d left with the kids. He spotted me, stopped. “Cops are on the way,” I said. He dropped the bags and ran. But a running man can get only so far in a Walmart parking lot. Some big guy climbing out of a truck saw him taking off, gave me a look, made a lunge and a tackle, and the skinny dude was down. The big guy stood, his work boot planted on the man’s back, not pressing, just holding. He looked at me. “He do something to you?”
I told him no, that the man had stolen two kids in Ohio. He gave the guy a little kick in the side, said, “Keys, asshole.” The guy hollered, “I didn’t do nothing to those kids.” Big guy rolled him over, slapped him the way a man slaps a woman, and yelled again for the keys.
The guy on the ground was crying, shaking his head. He dug in his pocket, offered up the keys. He looked at me, said, “You don’t know their mom.” And that got me to thinking how behind every horror story there’s another horror story. I took the keys from big guy, who put his boot on the man’s chest. People were standing around, some applauding and some yelling to beat the hell out of the son of a bitch. And not a damn one of us knew what was really going on. Some followed me to the van. I unlocked it. The kids stayed hunched in the back.
I asked if they were all right, heard sirens coming our way. The boy came forward, and the baby girl sat making that dry sobbing sound like she was all out of tears. I asked the boy if he was Tim.
He nodded, pointed back to his sister, said, “That’s Jenny.” When I told him who I was, he asked if they were going to jail.
“Heavens, no,” I said. “Did that man hurt you or your sister?” He shook his head. I asked if he knew where they were going. He shrugged and stared out the door of the van to where the cops had the man cuffed, shoved against a car, and asked, “Is he a bad man?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you know this man who took you?” The boy nodded, said the man was his momma’s friend, that his momma gave them to him and told the man to sell them in another state. His face squinched up with tears. And he sat on the floor of the van. The s
ister crawled over and squeezed into him.
“Sell you,” I said like this was a normal thing.
The boy said, “She didn’t mean it. She was just sad.” Tears were running down his face. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
I looked back at the man. They all circled around him, barking questions the way cops do when they really want to knock hell out of you and all they’ve got is words. He looked like the bait dog with the pits moving in. He shook his head, kept saying, “You should see their mom.”
“He didn’t hurt us,” the boy said. “He just said we had to keep quiet. If we didn’t keep quiet, the cops would come put us in jail.” I looked at the ring of sweat and dirt around his neck and asked if he and his sister would like to come out of the van. I told him I was with the policemen. He took his sister’s hand and led her toward me.
Helping them out, I asked if they knew why the man had gone into the store.
The boy nodded and said they were running low on diapers and Dennis didn’t want Jenny to get a rash. And he needed oil for the van.
Once they had the man in the back of a cruiser and the kids sipping juice boxes, a cop came to me, shook his head. “Ol’ Dennis has got one hell of a story back there.”
I nodded, my eyes on those ragged kids, said, “So does the boy.”
The cop spit on the ground beside me—there ought to be a law against cops chewing and spitting on the job, but not in tobacco country, I guess. “He says that the mom told him to take the kids to Florida, and she gave him her credit card to use for gas.” I looked at his spit on the ground, gave him a look that told him what I was thinking, and said, “This is hardly the most direct route between Cincinnati and Florida.”
The cop shifted the chew in his mouth. “Dennis wasn’t taking them to Florida. He was taking them to Myrtle Beach. He wanted his momma to watch the kids until he figured something out. He didn’t want them in the system. He’s been in the system. Foster home to foster home; he didn’t want that for the kids.” I had to ask, “So he was taking them to his momma?”
The cop shrugged. “We’re checking it out. He says his mom got rehab, been clean for years now. Says he was only doing what he thought was best for the kids. And get this: The kids’ momma, after a while she gets straight and realizes she’s given him the kids and the credit card and thinks maybe that wasn’t a good idea. So she calls it in. Says her drug-dealing boyfriend stole her kids.”
I had no words for that. Heading back to the truck, I saw Patricia England, sunk deeper into the seat. When I got closer I saw that she was long past sleep. She was gone. I looked at her. She really did look peaceful, and there were much worse places she could have died. Like that sidewalk on Oleander Boulevard.
I got into the truck. Looked at the crowds gathered all around the cops. I saw the tow truck coming for the van. “You found them,” I said to Miss England. “The babies. Thanks to you, they’ll be all right.” But she just sat there, her eyes closed as if in a deep sleep. In some religions they say the spirits of the dead hang around a while, that spirits hover around to see what will be done with what is left. They say the dead call out to the grieving, try to offer some kind of comfort to the ones left behind. They say it’s very important to pray for their souls to move on to a good place so they won’t get caught up with wandering here. I closed my eyes, gave thanks to Patricia England. I told her to go on to live with Jesus and her babies since that’s what she believed. I heard the cars drive away, the people talking. I heard them walk by, felt them pause to look at me in my truck. Someone said something about the old woman, but they moved on. I guessed they figured we were praying. There was a rap on my window. I turned and saw him. Roy.
Tears stung my eyes. I rolled down the window. “Roy.”
“Shelby,” he said with that voice that says, License and registration, please. “Where do you think you’re taking her?” He leaned close, and for a cold second he felt more like a cop than the man I knew.
“I couldn’t just leave her here in a parking lot.” He backed away from me, said, “You know the coroner’s number.” I told him not in that county. He shook his head and dialed a number on his phone, walked away, and squinted back at me like he was trying to get me in focus.
I looked over at Miss England, which is the name I’ll always give her. I told her I’d take care of her, and I thought of countries where it is a loving thing, not a crime, to bury your own dead. I thought a woman who clung to the name of Patricia England deserved better than to be burned and packed, stored under some number. The way of all indigents. I hate that word. So there I was letting Roy do the work and talking to a dead woman, and the truck smelled of piss, and Roy was looking back at me like I’d really gone too far for the first time. My phone buzzed. I was happy to see it was Bitsy, who said what she always says when a search ends with the living and not the dead: “Look up and give thanks. It’s a good day to be here.” We say this at the center whenever there’s something good. We say it the way some people jump up and say, “Look at that rainbow,” or “There’s a shooting star,” something so natural and yet so amazing that your heart lifts and you just have to point and holler at the wonder and beauty of this world.
The Kindness of Strangers
The plane trembled, engines revving up enough power to rip free of the grip of gravity and lift them all above the miles of mountains so blue-green and beautiful, east past the mountains to the flatlands of the North Carolina coast, where solid ground gave way to swamp, then finally fell away to the rolling tides, pushing, pulling, always the line between what was solid and what was gone. Livy wondered why Katy had had to go so far away just to prove who she was, whoever she was these days. Livy knew she didn’t really know her daughter. A mother only liked to think she knew her child, but there was always a hidden side. She knew there was a Frank-Katy and a Billy-Katy—the wild and the safe. She liked to think the real Katy was the safe Katy, the one who wanted a brick house and a husband with a regular job. But she knew no one thing was true of anyone, not Katy, not Billy, not even herself.
Livy held the armrests, closed her eyes, and told herself that Katy was safe. She had just run off somewhere. She opened her eyes, looked out the window, saw the rolling green of farms, mountains, the shimmering blue of a lake. She wondered just where Katy was down there on the ground beneath them. She felt a little shudder of nausea at the thought of the words Katy and ground. “Stop it.” The lady across the aisle gave her a glance, edged a bit away as if she might be sitting next to a crazy woman. Livy hadn’t meant to say the words out loud. She ran once again through the options of where Katy could be: off with girlfriends, maybe another boyfriend, which wouldn’t be good, but at least she wasn’t with Frank. Livy had called him, but he hadn’t heard anything from Katy.
Maybe Billy wasn’t telling her everything. Maybe they’d had a big fight. But if Katy had left Billy, she would have called. If Katy had left Billy, the first thing she’d have done would have been to call Frank. Or Livy. Or somebody. Three days. Livy thought about how bad things come in threes. It had been three days, so today things would turn good again. She had called Billy before she’d left for the airport, just to be sure, still hoping Katy had come home. But no. Billy sounded high, hungover, and drunk. He sounded lost. And he was crying. He was counting on her to find Katy, make everything right.
“It will be all right,” she said out loud.
The attendant walking by leaned, whispered, “There’s no need to worry. The pilot’s flown this plane a hundred times. We’ll be fine.”
But you haven’t made this journey, Livy thought. You’re just a boy. She looked down, thought of the earth spinning, sliding away from them as they rose higher in the sky. Livy looked out and saw the slight curve of the horizon. The earth was round. She thought if she were dead, she’d circle and circle the earth, unable to let go, unable to say good-bye to the people she loved. She’d keep circling back. She wouldn’t want to go to heaven, wherever heaven was. If
heaven was.
She felt the air pressure shift, and she eased to the softening sound of the engines. The planed rocked with turbulence, and she grabbed the armrests. She hated flying, all the bumping and rattling against the air, never knowing when the plane could drop thirty feet, right itself, or keep on dropping. Lawrence had told her it was only air currents. “Just like waves on the lake,” he had said. “Think of it like a boat on a choppy lake, that’s all.” She tried to think of it like that, but still, what good was a life vest if you dropped from thirty thousand feet? The engines hummed softly now, no turbulence, just that comforting whir.
Livy knew takeoffs and landings were the most dangerous parts of a flight. Takeoffs were like breaking free from the bottom of a creek, like Suck Creek, which had that current that wanted to pull you down. You had to flap your arms hard to get momentum, kick, push, keep your eyes on the light above; you had to push until you broke free of the pull beneath you, and suddenly you shot to the surface, where you could relax and float on your back, and the water would hold you. She’d taught Katy how to float in Lake Chickamauga. She could see her skinny, long-legged Katy just learning to swim. She was nervous at first, wouldn’t put her face in the water, so Livy started by teaching her how to float on her back, Katy’s long legs and arms bobbing in the water while she kept her eyes on Livy’s face. Livy would support her back, then say she would let go and Katy would drop a little. “If you relax, the water holds you,” Livy promised. “Just lie on your back, wave your hands a bit, don’t clench, and keep your head up; you just relax, you’ll be fine.”
Livy realized she was scratching at the polish on her nails—one chipped spot, and she was flicking and flicking at it. She did this when she was nervous, scratched and picked at things. When she was a girl, she liked to pull at the split ends of her hair. Sometimes she chewed her hair, her nails. When something was tearing her up inside, she had to tear at something on the outside as if that could let it out. She sighed, folded her hands in her lap, told herself again, It will be all right; it will be all right. But she knew the phrase was as hollow as those little Hail Marys she used to say in church, fingertips clutching rosary bead after bead as if she could pinch her way toward salvation. She’d never believed in that rosary thing.
