Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  Tommye was something special—a quiet, pug-nosed, country girl with an accent that could melt butter and make old men forget their aches and pains. She made all As without really trying, was named all-state as pitcher on the girls’ softball team, played the leading role for three years running in the school drama production, and was elected homecoming queen her senior year. If her internal and private life seemed shrouded in secrecy, her public persona was touched. Few of my childhood memories don’t include her, and in truth, she was as much—if not more—Willee’s daughter than Jack’s.

  Sometime in high school it hit us that I was a foster child in her uncle’s home—so I moved into the apartment above the barn, and we quit living like brother and sister. It was never anything physical, just something that shifted in our heads—how we thought about each other. And the moment that happened, an odd distance, palpable as an anvil, wedged itself between us.

  She had all kinds of offers for our senior prom, yet, for reasons I never understood, she asked me. The girl I wanted to take was already going with somebody else, so why not?

  That’s when I realized how many looks Tommye got from other guys. Their eyes walked up and down her as if she were an interstate highway. And while she liked it, and to some extent fed off it, she had invited me for a reason. It’s a good thing I didn’t know much about fighting, because that night convinced me that a man’s eyes can hurt almost as much as his hands. We made an appearance, danced, and then left early and ate a sack full of Krystal burgers on the beach in our tux and evening gown.

  Chapter 7

  I parked Vicky, hopped into my canoe, and paddled the twenty-seven strokes from my landing to my boat. I tied up, unloaded a bag of groceries, and leaned against the mast, staring out across the marsh. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the shade was turning from dull gold to light root beer.

  One of the interesting things about living on a boat is that unless you live at a dock where power and phone lines are wired in, you have to think ahead. Like getting back and forth to shore. For carrying stuff, I use the canoe. It’s sturdy, stable, and minimizes the number of trips. For simple transit, I use the kayak. It’s quick and, given the drop-in rudder, maneuvers better in stronger currents—which occur every time the tide turns. On board, most everything runs off propane, so hot water and cooking are never really a problem. But anything electric—like cell phones and laptops—requires a generator if you don’t want to run down the battery. I cranked the generator and charged my phone while I checked my e-mail and researched a few ideas online. While my boat borders on the primitive, Red can’t stand the idea of my being totally unplugged, so he splurged and bought me a wireless broadband card.

  An hour later, I gave him a call. “It’s me.”

  “You been to see the kid today?”

  “I’m going now. Thought I’d call you first.”

  “What have you got so far?”

  “I called the Georgia Department of Family Services. Based on the appearance of chronic and prolonged physical abuse—and because they don’t know whom he belongs to—they’ve filed an Emergency Shelter Petition, which will put him in foster care as soon as his doctor releases him. It makes him a ward of the state, giving them full custody.”

  “When’s that happen?”

  “Any day. Depends on the kid.”

  “What else?” Red asked.

  “The DA’s office assigned one of its own to investigate, see if they can find out who this kid is and possibly look into terminating parental rights.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “Only if they find cause.”

  “One look at the kid’s back will give them cause.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m meeting her at the kid’s room in an hour.”

  “Her?”

  “The attorney.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  I stepped off the elevator and into the pediatric ward. The same guard sat outside the door, reading a Louis L’Amour novel. He looked up at me and moved his huge shoulders out of the doorway. “He’s in there. Scribbling.”

  I walked in and pulled up that stainless steel stool that doctors use to slide around in exam rooms. He stopped drawing long enough to adjust the new glasses on the end of his nose and look up just slightly. Not at my face, but maybe at my toes. He was still wearing Unc’s Braves cap. Before I went in, I’d decided to call him something other than Snoot, “the kid,” or “hey you.” Every kid ought to have a name. I rolled up next to him, careful not to get too close.

  “Hey, Sketch.”

  He paused, scanned the floor as if he was allowing the name to roll around the inside of his head, and then gave it permission to rest on him. He looked across the room and wrote in his book without looking either at me or the page. Then he turned the page toward me. It read HI.

  If my handwriting were half as legible as his, I might actually write letters to people. “The hat looks good on you. You like the Braves?”

  He shrugged without taking his eyes off his page.

  “Where did you learn to write so . . . so perfectly?”

  His hand began moving before his eyes ever looked at the page. He drew what looked like a hospital bed with an older woman lying in it. Her face was wrinkled, she had oxygen tubes in her nose and a pencil in one hand. On the other side of the bed sat a small kid. The kid was watching her draw. On the page in her hand, she’d written half the alphabet.

  I pointed. “That you?”

  He nodded. I noticed that his face was fuller, like maybe he’d gained a pound or two.

  I pointed again. “Who’s that?”

  Everything he wrote was in small block caps. MISS MYRLENE.

  “She related to you?”

  Just then, a late-twenties, brunette female wearing jeans, running shoes, and a white oxford button-down appeared in the door. I looked up while the kid looked through the tops of his glasses at her feet.

  I stood and held out my hand. “I’m Chase Walker.”

  “Mandy Parker.” She pulled up her shirttail and flashed the DA’s badge looped over the waist of her jeans but hidden from view.

  I stepped out of the way so she could get a look at the kid. She walked up, leaned over, quickly took in his bare back and arms, and then placed her hands on her knees and spoke softly. “Hi.”

  He had flipped to another page in his notebook and was shading in the wings on what looked like a male cardinal hanging from a bird-feeder. I looked out his window and saw the birdfeeder, but no bird. He didn’t look up, but stopped shading long enough to look out the corner of his eyes.

  She spied a chair in the corner. “Go ahead. I don’t want to interrupt you.”

  I scooted up next to the kid again just as he broke the tip of his pencil. On the nightstand behind him lay a package of new black No. 2 pencils and an electronic sharpener. He stuck the pencil in and worked it ’til he was satisfied with the point, then he began drawing detail around the cardinal’s beak and eyes.

  I pointed to the drawing supplies. “Somebody give you all this?”

  He nodded slowly, as if unsure whether I was baiting him just before I planned to snatch it off the table.

  “Somebody must like you.”

  He raised his head slightly, showing me the tops of the whites of his eyes. The look told me he thought I knew. He flipped to a clean page and quickly sketched the outline of Unc’s face and hat.

  “Uncle Willee brought you all that?”

  A quick nod.

  “When?”

  He drew a clock face, with the hour hand pointed at six and the minute hand on the one.

  I sat back and spoke to both him and me. “I thought he left a little early this morning.”

  The kid closed his notebook and looked over his shoulder at Mandy Parker.

  I pointed to her. “Oh, she’s an attorney.”

  He sketched the top of a pair of pants, two belt loops, and a leather-cased badge hanging over the belt between the two loops.

  I
studied the drawing and said, “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  He shrugged. I looked at the bald spots atop his head; a few of them were starting to show signs of hair.

  “She’s with the state. What they call the DA’s office.”

  He immediately crossed his arms, pulled his knees up into his chest, and clung to the notebook, turning his knuckles white.

  I read the body language. “But she’s one of the good guys.”

  He pulled his knees in tighter to his chest. He wasn’t buying it, and Mandy Parker saw it.

  She stood and said, “I’ll come back.” Then she pulled a DVD out of her back pocket and quietly set it on the bed. “It’s one of my favorites. Thought you might like it, too.” Then she looked at me. “Coffee sounds good. I’ll wait outside.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, give me just a minute.”

  I looked at the DVD. It was Disney’s Jungle Book. I handed it to him. “You seen this one?”

  He shook his head.

  “You want to?”

  He paused like I’d asked him a trick question. I slipped it into the DVD player below the television and pushed PLAY.

  The second the picture appeared, he dived beneath his bed and crawled as far underneath it as he could. The guard outside heard the ruckus and immediately appeared in the room. I don’t know who was more surprised—him, the kid, or me. I got on my knees and looked under the bed where the kid had balled himself into a fetal position, pulling his arms over his head.

  The guard looked at me and whispered, “He did that last night. Somebody down the hall flipped on a TV, and he wouldn’t come out for a couple hours.”

  Mandy stood outside the door, watching from across the hall.

  I crawled around to the head of the bed, so I’d be closer to his ears. I spoke softly. “I’m real sorry. I should’ve asked. You don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to.” I turned the TV off and laid the remote on the ground next to him. “Here. You control it, okay?”

  He looked through the hole between his underarm and chest and watched me set the remote on the ground.

  I backed up and said again, “I’m sorry. Okay?”

  The guard stepped aside and said, “You didn’t mean nothing. Just give him a little while.”

  It was little consolation. If I’d made any headway in two days, it was gone now. “Thanks.”

  I stepped out of the room and walked down to the coffee shop with Mandy Parker. In the elevator, I was the first to speak. “I’m not trained for this.”

  She watched the floor numbers change above our heads. “Kids who’ve experienced his type of abuse have triggers. We often don’t know what they are until we trip one.”

  We ordered coffee and sat down at an outdoor table, and the salty smell of the marsh washed over us.

  She smiled. “You from around here?”

  “Born and raised.” I paused. “Well, raised, actually. I was placed in foster care before I could remember much. I don’t really know where I was born. I think it must’ve been somewhere in the South, and probably near the ocean, but for all I know I might be from Seattle. You?”

  “Florida girl. Panhandle.” She changed the subject. “Your editor called me. Said he’d assigned you to write a story about the kid.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, and I’d be grateful for anything you could tell me.”

  “What do you know?”

  I told her everything I’d been able to deduce from his drawings, my interaction with him, and my conversations with the doctor and the guard. All together, it wasn’t much. We didn’t know his name, where he was from, who his family was, or how he got to the railroad track. I finished, “His memory is selective. Sometimes it’s photographic, at others it’s nonexistent.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been with the DA for five years. Worked with maybe a hundred kids. Some of the worst ones have memories like that. The trauma blocks it out.”

  “How do you get anywhere with them?”

  “That’s tricky. Takes time.”

  “You been able to find out anything?”

  “No. Our databases list plenty of abused kids in his age range and size, but none who show his level of abuse, and nothing describing a mute kid. And . . . given his skill with a pencil, I’d say he’s been silent awhile.”

  “What’s that tell you?”

  “That no one has reported him as missing.”

  “What will happen from here?”

  “Based on what I’ve seen, we’ll file an emergency petition to place him in foster care. And I’ll push the court to fast-track the termination of parental rights.” She paused. “The State of Georgia, like every other state, assumes that no one will care for a child as his or her parents will. The goal is notification and reunification. And in every case, including those involving severe abuse, the legal system is predicated on an individual’s ability to change. I agree with this . . . but there are exceptions.” She pointed up. “Like John Doe #117.”

  “Is that what you’re calling him?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s what the computer labels him when it spits out his folder. I hate it, but it’s the system, and I can only fight so many battles in a day.”

  I liked Mandy Parker; she spoke my language.

  “How long does that process take?”

  “Best case, a month—though that’s seldom seen. Notification is a legal process, and it takes time. We put classified ads in newspapers, get his story on the news, and get in touch with military services to make sure there’s not a soldier somewhere who’s unaware, whatever we can. Worst case, twelve to twenty-four months. Depends on lots of factors. If the parents mysteriously show up and want their child back, we’d start a Child Welfare Case plan, which outlines how they can get their child back. That takes twelve to eighteen months, and their progress is reviewed every six.”

  I was familiar with this process, though I didn’t tell her that. “Let’s suppose for a minute that his parents never show. What happens?”

  “We file an Affidavit of Diligent Search listing what we’ve done—in effect covering our tails, proving to the court that we did attempt to find his parents. If this is deemed acceptable, then the department gets him a social security number and gives him a name—or the child can choose his own name—and the judge puts it into order. At that point, he’s declared a true ward of the state, his parents have no more rights, and he’s placed in long-term foster care, possibly with the same family.”

  “So at that point, anyone can petition to get the kid?”

  She nodded.

  “And for now, you place him in short-term foster care?”

  “Yes. Well, the judge can . . . if an approved home is willing and available. Availability in Glynn County right now is a problem, and if that weren’t bad enough, most folks don’t want a kid with his issues.” She pulled a folder from her shoulder bag and opened it on the table. “You know this man?”

  I chuckled. “That’d be William Walker McFarland. Otherwise known as Uncle Willee.”

  She nodded. “He came to see me this morning, asked that he and his wife be considered as foster placement.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s led quite a life.”

  “You could say that.”

  “Does he ever talk about life before prison?”

  “Not really. And trust me, it’s not from a lack of prying.”

  She flipped through the chart. “From what I can uncover, it’s as if he’s led two totally different lives.”

  “I think when you bury your father, wife, and son all in the same six months, whatever prior life you led pretty much gets buried with them.”

  She nodded. “They passed the DCF home inspection and the initial interview.”

  “They’d already had all that.”

  “The state wants to move on this kid. Be proactive. He’s been through a lot. Also, with you covering the story . . .”

  “I see.”

  “As a result, the McFarlands’ file i
s pending.”

  “Pending what?”

  She smiled. “My conversation with you.” She flipped a few pages. “They’ve got some experience. Your home as a child must’ve had a revolving front door.”

  I nodded. “You can say that again.”

  “You turned eighteen a decade ago, yet you still have an apartment above the barn. How come?”

  I laughed. “Free rent. I don’t have it as much as they let me sleep there when I’m too tired to drive home.”

  She smiled, but waited just the same.

  “You’ve done your homework.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not hard. Computers do most of it, if you know where to look. And if you know how to phrase the right questions, the people on the other end of the phone do the rest.”

  “You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better pair than those two.” I wrote my number on a napkin, then stood and threw my cup in the waste can. “I better get back upstairs. Call me if anything comes up?”

  “Yes, provided you do the same.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Deal.”

  She walked off, out through the sliding doors, and into a convertible Volkswagen bug, one of the new ones with the flower shooting up out of the dashboard. I walked back upstairs and found the lights off and television on. Unc was sitting on my stool, his socked feet propped up on the bed. The kid sat on the bed, his eyes wide and glued to the screen. Both were eating popcorn. On the screen, Baloo was singing “The Bare Necessities.” When he uprooted the palm tree and began scratching his back, Unc laughed out loud. The kid looked at Unc, then me, then back at the screen.

  I tapped Unc on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

  He threw a piece of popcorn at me. “Fastest way to the heart is through the stomach.”

  I backed out of the room and waved at the kid, who regarded me without expression. Outside, I stepped into Vicky, turned my cap around backwards, and considered what Unc had said. I chewed on it all the way home, but something didn’t set right. I rolled into the barn and cut the engine. Was that true? Do you get to the heart through the stomach? Or is there some other portal? I left that hanging because there was one other question more timely, and it had to do with that kid: If you can’t speak, then how do you laugh? And if you can’t laugh, then how do you cry?