Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  I pointed at the name. “Bo did this?”

  The kid didn’t respond, letting the picture speak for him.

  “Does Bo have a last name?”

  Still no response.

  “Is Bo your dad?”

  The kid picked up his pencil, turned the notebook, and pressing hard on the paper wrote NO.

  “Did your mom live there too?”

  He used the tip of his pencil to point to the word.

  I pointed to the Impala on the first page. “Did your mom live in that car?”

  He pointed again.

  Unc reached slowly across, flipped the page to the sketch of the train intersecting the Impala and pointed to the woman behind the steering wheel. He spoke slowly. “Was that your mom?”

  The kid looked back and forth between our feet five or six times like windshield wipers set on intermittent. Finally he circled the word.

  I sat back, rubbed my chin, and scratched my head. Too many things weren’t adding up. Without thinking, I patted the kid on the knee—which made him flinch. “You like pizza?”

  The kid looked around the room, behind him, then began bobbing forward and back. He eyed the man in the suit on the other side of the door and wrote slowly in the notebook YES.

  “Pepperoni?”

  He pointed.

  “Extra cheese?”

  He circled it twice.

  “Be right back.”

  I dialed Nate’s Pizza—my late-night writer’s addiction. While the phone rang it struck me that, in all of our conversation, the kid had never uttered a word, and I had yet to see the color of his eyes. I told Nate what I needed, and he promised me fifteen minutes, which meant thirty. Then I dialed Red, who flipped open his cell phone on the fifth ring.

  “You at the hospital?”

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  “That’s your job. The paper has decided it is in that kid’s best interests—”

  “You mean ‘the paper’s.’”

  “Right . . . to discover that kid’s identity, where he’s from, and what sick mutant of a human has been beating the hell out of him.”

  I hung up, slid the phone into my pocket, and stood in the hall considering. I needed to talk with anyone who had contact with this kid: paramedics, firemen, nurses, his doctor. I pulled a small black notebook out of my back pocket and began making notes.

  Just then a doctor, maybe thirty, appeared at the door and began reading the chart. I tapped him on the shoulder and extended my hand. “Chase Walker. I’m with the paper.”

  He nodded and sidestepped away from the door, causing his stetho-scope to sway like dreadlocks.

  “Yes . . . Paul Johnson. I’ve read your stuff. You do good work. The drug story on the shrimp boats was fascinating.”

  Two years ago, I began researching a rumor that the shrimp boats located out of Brunswick were being used to run ecstasy from Miami to Myrtle Beach. Because money follows drugs, it wasn’t hard to uncover. I took some late-night video, showed it to the police. They staged a sting, and Red printed my story on the front page.

  “Thanks for coming.” Dr. Johnson looked up and down the hall, eyeing the nurses, techs, and other doctors working there. “We thought it might help to get some media coverage. Find out who this kid is.”

  “What happens from here?”

  “Well, as soon as I clear him, the state will come pick him up and assign him to either a boys’ home or foster home. We don’t have too many registered foster parents in Glynn County, and from what the DA and CFS tell me, those we do have are either top-heavy or not interested in taking in a . . . a kid like that.”

  The doctor turned, and Unc stuck out his hand.

  “I’m Willee McFarland.” He pointed at me. “I’m with him.”

  The doctor shook his hand and continued. “I think he likes the ice cream, and he really seems to like the quiet and . . . the guy with the gun guarding the door. If he’s asked to see that gun once, he’s asked to see it fifteen times. Well—he points, mostly.” He turned to me. “Have you gotten him to say anything?”

  “No. You?”

  “He won’t talk.”

  Unc piped in, “Won’t . . . or can’t?”

  The doctor nodded in agreement. “You picked up on that?”

  “Just because a chicken has wings doesn’t mean it can fly.”

  The doctor looked confused. I tried to help him out. “Appearances can be deceptive.”

  He nodded in agreement and flipped the chart open. “Yesterday we took some pictures, and as best we can figure he suffered some tracheal trauma somewhere in the past. Damaged his voice box. It might work, might not. I don’t have much experience with kids like him, but I’ve read in the journals where kids with a history of abuse—especially his kind—suffer permanent memory loss—and sometimes stop talking.”

  I flipped open my black book and probed. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a defense mechanism. Their minds block it out—sort of like an intelligent hard drive in which the most horrific files have been deleted in an automatic response to protect the whole drive.”

  “So, he can draw like Michelangelo, but might not know his own name?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And his voice?”

  “Another mechanism. Not speaking brings less attention to them-selves, meaning they are noticed less and, they hope, beaten less. They’re usually told to shut up whenever they do speak. Add to that the physical damage to the voice box, and you’ve got a kid that for all practical purposes is mute.”

  “You think he’ll ever speak again?”

  The doctor shook his head. “Don’t know. In time, if his vocal cords and voice box can repair themselves, but the rest is up to him. But that’s jumping the gun. I’m no psychologist, but in order for that to happen he’s got to understand there are people in this world who want to hear him. Thus far, that’s not his experience, so we’re rowing against the current.”

  “That explains his notebook.”

  He nodded and closed the chart. “Remarkable. I’ve never seen anything like it. He’s got the speed of a cartoonist and the talent of Norman Rockwell.”

  Unc nodded. “How old do you think he is?”

  Doctor Johnson squinted one eye and tilted his head. “Maybe nine. Not ten. He’s still prepubescent.”

  We small-talked a few minutes, and I noted everything I could remember and wrote down questions to research later. About that time, I started smelling pizza.

  I paid the delivery boy, and then the three of us took the pizza into the kid’s room, where Unc served four plates. I was three bites into my slice before the kid lifted his to his mouth. He smelled it, studied the edges, and then looked at the door and the man wearing the suit. The guard sat half in the doorway in a folding chair, reading a Clive Cussler paperback. The kid slid off his chair, and I noticed how skinny he was. Every one of his ribs showed, and his hips looked hollow. Walking slowly and humpbacked like an old lady, he carried his plate to the door and offered it to the guard.

  The guard—four, maybe five, times larger than the boy—looked at the top of the boy’s head, then at the pizza. He held out a plate-sized hand. “No, thanks. I’m trying to quit.”

  As if bolted to a lazy Susan, the kid turned, paused, then turned back again and slid the plate below the open book and onto the man’s lap.

  The guard sat back, set down his book, and said, “Well . . . if you insist. Thank you.”

  Unc served the kid another piece, and he began to eat. He chewed slowly, swallowed as if it required effort, and looked at the box. Over the next forty-five minutes he ate four pieces and drank three small cartons of milk. When he’d polished off the last of his milk, he turned his head toward my plate and the two uneaten pieces of crust.

  “You can have it.” I tilted the plate toward him. “I’m done.”

  When I was working on the shrimp boat story, I got to know a mangy dog that used to show up not long after the
boat guys had clocked out and gone home. After three months of baiting him with dog biscuits, he still would not let me pet him. He only came close enough to smell whether or not I had food. And if I did, he’d wait until I set it down and walked off. He had no collar, his hair was matted and tangled with cockleburs, and he lived beneath a warehouse porch three blocks away. One day I made the mistake of picking up my tripod to reposition my camera. It was a few days before I saw him again. Looking at the kid, I was reminded of that dog.

  I set the plate down, and the kid slowly took the crust, pulling it back to his plate only after he’d looked over his shoulder. He ate and I jotted notes—those that only I could read and would make no sense whatsoever to anyone else. Based on what I saw, his skin-and-bones presentation was not a function of small appetite. The kid was a vacuum cleaner.

  I set my card on top of the notebook. “You need anything, you have somebody call me. Okay?”

  He slipped the card inside the accordion pocket in the rear of his notebook, but made no other movement. For all I knew, he had a hundred others just like it in the same place. His cooperation at the moment did not suggest compliance in the future.

  As we walked out, I heard his pajamas sliding along the floor behind us. He stood behind Unc and tugged on his back pocket. Eye-level with Unc, the kid opened his notebook, tore out a page, and handed it up without looking at him.

  Uncle Willee studied the picture for several minutes while his front teeth chewed on the inside of his right cheek. Finally, he took off his baseball cap and set it gently on the boy’s head. It teeter-tottered from the center, hung well out over his ears, and dwarfed his face. Unused to receiving gifts, he looked confused. Unc read the kid’s posture and then gently reached over the top, adjusting the Velcro to fit his head. “There, how’s that?”

  The kid’s mouth showed no expression, but when he looked into the wall-length mirror, his chin lifted ever so slightly.

  As we walked down the hall, my flip-flops smacking my heels, Dr. Johnson stopped us.

  “Sir?”

  We turned, hanging our thumbs in our jeans—a habit of association.

  “Did you say your name was Willee McFarland?”

  Unc took a deep breath, slid his glasses off his nose, and let them hang over his neck. “Yes.”

  The doctor looked down at the floor, then back at us. He pointed west out the window—toward the Zuta. “You any relation to those two brothers?”

  Unc slipped his glasses back up on his nose. “Yep.”

  The doctor nodded, raising both eyebrows. “Wow. Well . . . okay.”

  I shook my head because I knew what was coming.

  “Uh . . .” He had to ask. “Which one are you?”

  Unc smiled and pushed the glasses halfway down his nose, looking over the tops. “I’m the one that went to prison.”

  “Oh.”

  Unc turned, then pointed toward the kid’s room. “Why haven’t y’all gotten him some new glasses?”

  The doctor looked toward the kid. “Didn’t know he wore glasses.”

  Unc nodded. “The crown of his nose will tell you that he did.”

  We stepped into Vicky and within a few minutes were shifting into fourth. We crossed under I-95, beyond the truck stop, and passed the ten thousand rows of planted pines—parallel, equidistant, and angling toward the road. Driving through the dusk of a falling sun, each stand of pines looked like a giant hallway to some Celtic cathedral. I drove, lost in the picture of that kid.

  Unc read my face and put his hand on my shoulder, something he started doing twenty years ago and something that has told me more about myself than any report card, paycheck, or job title. Despite my unanswered questions, where I came from and who I am, that hand on my shoulder spoke to a part of me few words ever reached. And to be honest, when my demons rose out of the past and reminded me that I’d been left on some street corner and that I wasn’t good enough even for my own parents, that hand told me otherwise.

  “Yes sir?”

  He turned back to face the windshield and rested his foot up on the side of the door. “Kids are like a spring, or a Stretch Armstrong. No matter how many times they’re passed around, passed off, and passed on . . . they snap back.” He spit through his window. “Hope . . . it’s the fuel that feeds them.” He shook his head and spit something off the end of his tongue. “God forbid the day they stop eating it.”

  When Unc and Aunt Lorna first brought me home to their house, they sat me down and said something I’ll never forget.

  “Chase . . . our home is what the state calls a foster home. That means you can stay here and live with us until your parents come get you.” He patted the bed. “That means, until then, this is your room.”

  I looked around, my feet dangling a foot above the floor.

  “But we probably ought to decide what you should call us. So . . .” He took Lorna’s hand and swallowed hard. “Why don’t you call my wife Aunt Lorna, and you can call me . . . you can call me Uncle Willee . . . or . . . Unc . . . if you like.” He was quiet several seconds. “That way . . . when your folks show up, you’ll have room in your head for names like Mom and Dad.”

  The words “when your folks show up” sent shock waves through me that echo still. Uncle Willee did something no other adult had ever done. He gave credibility to the thought I’d had for as long as I could remember. He silently agreed with the simple notion They might . . .

  Unc was right. Kids hope.

  All they need is a reason.

  Moments passed before I said anything. “When do they quit?”

  He leaned his head back against the seats. “That depends . . . that depends.”

  Chapter 4

  The story of the McFarland brothers has nearly grown to mythical status around Zuta, Georgia. And after a generation of embellishment, it changes like a chameleon in the sun. It’s the cause of endless speculation, volumes of courtroom proceedings, several federal investigations, and three murders—and is the reason I spent last week in jail. It’s also the reason I became a journalist.

  I first heard whispers of the trouble between William McFarland and his brother in my early teens. I had felt something funny, kind of like an electric charge in the air, a few months after Unc and Aunt Lorna brought me into their house at the age of six, but they did a good job of keeping it from me and every other kid who passed through their house. Living with Unc painted one picture, while the rumors painted another. When the two didn’t add up, I started digging, and pretty soon my bedroom walls were tacked with a collage made from bits and pieces of the truth.

  Getting through my senior year of college was predicated on writing a passing thesis. All journalism students rowed in the same boat. In the beginning of our junior year, they sat us down and gave us the game rules. The requirements were simple: Pick a national, news-worthy story or issue that has not been solved by the gathering of information or has been put to bed by disinterest, then investigate it and contribute new information to the discussion that the previous news networks have not. Do not summarize existing material. Put your talent to work and dig up something new. This was to be an in-depth piece, and bonus points were given for finding and using primary sources. Three keys stood out: national, newsworthy, and new. Many of the students spent months agonizing over a story topic that they would then spend the next ten to twelve months investigating. For me it was never really an issue.

  The story I’m about to tell you comes from local papers, court documents, interviews, hearsay, gossip, carvings found on old swamp trees, and local legend. Knowing all this, Red—while he shares my passion for the story—has never let me print a single word of it.

  Tillman Ellsworth McFarland was born in 1896. But that’s a bad place to start, so let’s back up. A lot.

  No one’s really sure how the Golden Isles of Georgia got their name. Some credit the Spanish, others claim the English, who were promoting their seventeenth-century settlement. Regardless, Sea Island is the richest zip
code in the country today; richer than Beverly Hills or Aspen during the ski season. Tolerable winters, breezy summers, and expansive beaches make up the isles, the westernmost shore on the East Coast. The location makes it a low-risk storm area because it’s so far removed from the hurricane highway, aka the Gulf Stream. From the three-hundred-year-old oaks draped in Spanish moss swimming with chiggers and red bugs, to the white sandy beaches glittering with sharks’ teeth and sand dollars, the entire region is cradled in the palms of an ecosystem we like to call the marsh. It’s a no-man’s-land made up of soft mud flats crested by jagged oyster beds and knife-edged wire grass that changes colors hourly and bathes twice daily in the rising tide. But the most inescapable aspect of the marsh is the smell. While tourists drive across the causeway, get their first whiff, and turn up their noses, locals wake up, walk outside, stretch their arms, inhale, and fill their fingertips. From dead and rotting organisms to new life bubbling up through the muck, the marsh—like its history—is a daily continuum of death and resurrection.

  The Creek Indians settled here first. Other than a few trash and burial mounds, the only remnants of their existence are found in the words they left: names like Satilla and Altamaha. In 1540, they greeted Spanish conqueror Hernando DeSoto and his troops with curiosity. DeSoto set one foot on the beach, claimed the coast for Spain, and returned the greeting with musket balls and disease. If that bugs you, don’t worry. His achievement was short-lived, as he died in a return journey in 1542.

  But with limited success the Spanish returned to St. Augustine, giving the French the opportunity to brave the mosquitoes and start their own colony. Unflinching, Spanish King Phillip II sent in a party of Jesuits, who were promptly hacked to pieces by the remaining Indians. By 1570, most of the Jesuits had tired of the warfare and moved to Mexico, making room for the Franciscans in 1573.

  Now fast-forward a hundred years and hop back across the ocean to the motherland. Following years of war, debtor prisons in England were overflowing with often well-respected citizens who had overextended their credit in an attempt to pay their taxes. Looking at indefinite incarceration complete with filth, damp cells, starvation, and the beginnings of a smallpox epidemic, they jumped at the chance to settle Georgia under King George II’s mandate to establish a colony between South Carolina and Florida. For God and country . . . and the absolution of all debts.