Jaime lifted her palms. “Why pie?”
Mattie looked at her as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Because pie is Danny’s favorite dessert.”
The clock struck the hour, the quarter hour, the half hour.
Just then, Sol burst through the kitchen door. “Is he here?” His eyes met Mattie’s and his face fell.
Not a minute later, C.J. arrived. He looked at Sol and shook his head. “Did you see any sign of him?”
“No,” Sol said. “No sign at all.”
Mattie opened up the stove to let the two men warm their hands. She took their scarves and gloves and laid them on top of the stove to dry them. The two men stood in front of the stove, faces red and wind chapped, rubbing their hands in a heavy silence.
Jaime mixed up some cups of instant coffee and handed each man a mug. She wished the pies were ready for them, but Mattie had just slipped them into the oven.
C.J. took a sip of coffee, then turned to Sol. “Show me the map you made. Show me what area you’ve searched.”
Sol spread the map on the kitchen table. He pointed to the areas he had covered.
As the two men worked up another plan, Jaime could sense the change. This was getting serious. It was like a bad dream. Danny had been gone over three hours now. The chance of hypothermia was real.
Sol’s voice stayed low and calm, like C.J.’s. Mattie—she was silent. She made some sandwiches for the men and wrapped them carefully in wax paper to be taken out on the next search. What was going through her mind? Jaime had no idea.
Jaime thought this was probably the most frightening thing that had ever happened to Mattie and Sol. They weren’t used to accidents, to bad luck, to tragedy. They hadn’t lived with it, maybe, the way she had.
C.J. put on his scarf and his gloves to prepare to go out again. As Sol stood to join him, C.J. shook his head. “No, Sol. You’re not going out this time.”
“Why not?” Sol asked.
“Yes, why not?” Mattie echoed.
C.J. exchanged a glance with Jaime. She would know exactly why not and he was hoping she wouldn’t say.
This was standard operating procedure. If there was reasonable chance of a Deceased Find, family members must not be there. Must not. A parent’s reaction at discovering his child was deceased could create yet another dangerous situation. The worst story C.J. had ever heard had happened to Tom Flint, one of his SAR buddies. A sixteen-year-old boy had gone missing during a river rafting trip. The father insisted on joining the search. The father found his son first, drowned, caught between rocks. The father panicked and jumped into the water to get his son. The father drowned too. Then Tom nearly drowned, trying to retrieve both bodies.
Mattie and Sol were waiting for C.J. to answer them. Right now, with the storm kicking up and the temperature dropping like it was, the chance of finding Danny alive was growing dim. How could C.J. tell them that? The thought was hideous to him.
“I’ll go with you,” Jaime said. “You shouldn’t be alone out there.”
“He won’t be,” Sol said. “I’m going with him.”
C.J. cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Sol. Not this time.”
Sol took a few steps up to C.J. “Why not?” He grabbed C.J.’s jacket lapels. “Why not? What do you know that you’re not telling me?” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t know anything.” C.J. spoke calmly and slowly. Inside, though, he felt his heart going crazy. He had to get hold of himself; he did search and rescues like this all the time. But he didn’t know the victims, not like he knew Danny. He had seen anguish on parents’ faces before, he empathized, but he hadn’t felt the anguish, not like this.
“Then why don’t you want me going with you?” Sol asked, eyes narrowed. “I will not trust my son’s welfare . . . to an outsider!”
“Sol!” Mattie was horrified. “This man”—she pointed to C.J. and her voice quivered—“this man is doing everything he can do for our son’s welfare!”
C.J. looked at Mattie. The look in her eyes shook him to the core. So trusting, so hopeful. An idea took shape. “Sol, I think it’s best if you can get to a neighbor’s farm and see if you can collect some men to join in the search.”
Sol brightened. He loosened his hold on C.J.’s coat lapels. “We should have thought of that sooner.”
C.J. turned to Jaime. “Can you call the sheriff’s department to let them know we need help?”
Jaime reached into her pocket and pulled out her cellphone. “Voilà!”
Sol looked at her hopefully.
She dialed 911, listened, squinted at the face of the phone, dialed again. Then she snapped it shut. “Dead battery,” she said in a flat voice.
C.J. turned back to Sol. “Have someone contact the sheriff when you round up everyone. They need to bring lanterns and flashlights and dogs. I’ll be back at this house in one hour. Meet me here and we’ll send out people, two at a time.”
“C.J. is trained at this,” Jaime told Sol. “Listen to him. He will find Danny.”
C.J. looked over at her. He was grateful she didn’t promise he would find Danny alive. Where could that boy be? Where was Tucker? Had they been hurt? Why couldn’t he find any trace of them other than that collar?
Jaime threw two large sandwiches into a brown bag she found tucked in a kitchen cupboard. She poured the rest of the coffee into a thermos, closed the lid tight, and packed it all in a sack for C.J. She handed him the sack just as he was heading out the door. She grabbed her coat and followed him out on the porch. He stood for a moment, looking out at the falling snow, at the wind that blew it every which way. Too soon, it would be dark. She knew that could be disastrous for Danny and Tucker. Between the trees across the street, she could see where the sun lay low in the sky, hidden behind gray clouds.
“C.J., what do you know that you’re not telling them?”
He shifted his gaze down toward the pond. “Something had dragged off a fresh kill. I followed it as far as I could, but then I lost the tracks.”
“What kind of tracks?” She put a hand on his arm. “It could have been a fox catching a rabbit. Or a squirrel. It might have been nothing at all.”
He gave a slight shake of his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out Tucker’s collar. “Bobcat tracks.”
Tears sprang to Jaime’s eyes. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. Danny should be home by now! Tucker should be staring at her with those mournful brown eyes, hungry for his dinner. “Any other clues? Fabric or . . . dog hair?”
“A few tufts of Tucker’s fur. There was some kind of a tussle. If Tucker saw the bobcat going after a rabbit, I wouldn’t put it past him to get in the middle of it.”
Even Jaime knew that all the training in the world couldn’t change an animal’s natural instincts. Not Tucker’s, and certainly not the bobcat’s. Bobcats were solitary animals, unlikely to go after a large animal—or a little boy—but if it felt threatened . . .
“C.J.,” she said softly, “what if—?”
He turned to her and put a hand in the air to stop her from saying it. “Keep Mattie’s mind on other things than that.” His face was pale, still, but determined. He gave her a weak smile.
“I have been.” Jaime tried to find a smile of her own, but she was too ill at ease. No, scared was the word. She was plain scared.
He took her hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it. She felt the press of his lips on her knuckles and his breath warm on her skin. Then he gave her Tucker’s collar and vanished into the snow.
She thought about The Voice. If that was God, and if he had decided to start up a conversation, maybe she should respond. Isn’t that what prayer was supposed to be? She looked up at the sky. Are you listening, God? Do you really care? If you do, please, please, please bring that boy home safely. She put the collar into her coat pocket so Mattie and Sol wouldn’t see. And Tucker too. I’ll never ask you for anything else. But please bring them home safely.
Ja
ime stood on the porch for a moment, watching the sky, until she was so cold she couldn’t stand it any longer. She turned and caught sight of Sol and Mattie through the kitchen window. Jaime watched Sol move toward Mattie as if pulled by gravity. Mattie’s face lifted at the sight of him. He cupped her face lightly in his hands as they kissed, and then she raised her hand and their palms touched briefly, lightly, a gesture so intimate that Jaime looked away.
It was, quite possibly, the most heartbreaking embrace she had ever seen.
Although it seemed C. J. had been walking for a long time in a perpetual dusk, he sensed the hour was truly getting late. When night fell, it would be as dark as a cave and the chances of finding Danny and Tucker would grow even slimmer. He fought down swells of panic. Where could they be?
He was about to cut through a field when he heard a shout from the road. C.J. turned and saw a figure waving at him. The man started running toward C.J. He stopped when he was fifteen feet away.
The man cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Did you find Danny?”
Zach! It was Zach!
C.J. shook his head.
Zach waved his arm like a windmill. “Follow me! I think I know where he is!” He turned and ran back down to the road.
C.J. followed close behind, picking up speed. Zach hopped a fence and started running up the road. Puzzle pieces that were floating through C.J.’s mind started to find a place. If Danny had gone down along the road, that would explain why they couldn’t find any tracks. The horses, the cars, the snowplow would have erased any sign of a small boy and a dog.
Zach didn’t quit running. They’d gone half a mile up the road when he finally cut off and vaulted over another fence with easy grace. He stopped to wait for C.J. “We could keep on the road, but it’ll be faster if we cut through this field. Can you keep up?”
Could he keep up? What did this kid think, that he was an old geezer? Of course he could keep up! He gave Zach the thumbs-up and climbed over the fence—he had to take it in stages and hurried to keep up with him. Zach acted like an Indian scout following a faint trail. He seemed to know exactly where he was heading. There wasn’t as much snow on the ground under the thick canopy of the trees, but other than that, the conditions weren’t much more favorable. The wind still had a way of hitting them hard in the face.
They came to an open field—the same field where C.J. had found Tucker’s collar. Zach crossed the field, passing the traces of blood without even noticing them. As C.J. ran past the spot, he saw that the wind had covered the mess with fresh snow. If he didn’t recognize the stubby cornfield, he wouldn’t even be able to find that spot. Not without Tucker’s nose. The wind struck in volleys, driving the corn-hard pellets of snow into his face. He stumbled, went sprawling, and got mired up to his knees in a fresh drift. Scythes of snow slashed at his eyes. He slogged on, trying to keep up with Zach.
Zach kept up a brisk pace across the field. It was the same direction C.J. had been going until he lost the trail. Through another canopy of trees, they came to a bridge. Past that was an old cobhouse. Zach stopped.
“That’s it,” Zach said. “I bet my life on it. They’re in there.”
He pointed to the back of the cobhouse, to a large object partially covered in snow. It was growing dark, but even C.J. had no doubt what it was—Zach’s hidden car.
“Danny!” C.J. yelled. “Tucker!”
Zach started down the hill, but C.J. grabbed Zach and made him stop for a second, to listen for a response. Any sound.
Silence.
“Danny! Tucker!” he cried, and his voice echoed in the darkness.
A sound then, faint.
C.J. and Zach started to run down the hill toward the car. “Danny! Tucker!”
C.J. heard a muffled sound.
“Woof!” It came again. “Woof! Woof!”
Relief flooded C.J., replacing the fear that had shadowed him all afternoon. He and Zach pushed through the brushy copse and broke at last into the clearing.
“Danny! Tucker!”
They bolted toward the car, jumping through thick drifts.
Tucker’s large head appeared up on the dashboard. “Woof!”
C.J. reached the car first and pulled open the door. Tucker leaped out, practically tackling him. Zach pulled the back door open and reached in headfirst to find his cousin. Danny was curled into a ball in the corner of the backseat. He didn’t speak. His eyes flickered open and shut. His face was pale and his lips were blue—signs of hypothermia. But he was found. And he was alive!
“We have to get out of here, pal,” Zach gently told him. “We have to get you home.”
Mattie peered out the window, but she only saw darkness and the reflection of the kitchen’s lamp. Winter always had an ability to make a body feel insignificant before the awesome forces of nature. It had been dark a good half hour when she heard a strange noise. With the wind blowing hard enough to peel the bark off trees, Mattie thought it had peeled something loose off the house. Then the wind stilled a moment, as it did sometimes, as if sucking in its breath to blow even harder, and she heard it again. It was a definite human sound, floating up from the driveway. Was she imagining it?
No—Jaime heard it too.
They exchanged a look and froze where they were, craning to hear it. A great whoop split the air like the clang of a fire bell, followed by a brief, sharp noise.
Jaime jumped out of her seat. “It’s Tucker! That’s his bark!” She ran to the kitchen door and opened it wide. “Mattie! They’re back! They’ve got Danny!”
Lumbering up the driveway were two large figures, one of them holding a child in his arms. Tucker was running up and back, barking with excitement. Mattie ran down the porch steps and flew down the driveway, not even caring that it was snowing and bitter cold and that she didn’t have a coat on.
As soon as she reached them, C.J. held Danny out to her. “He’s okay, Mattie!”
She held her son close to her chest, feeling his small body against hers. He was as light as a feather to her as she ran with him back to the house. Once inside, she rushed to a chair near the woodstove, just like she had with Zach—was it only twenty-four hours ago? It felt like a lifetime.
She was barely aware of Jaime tenderly untying Danny’s shoes, pulling off his socks, his gloves, looking over his hands and feet for any signs of frostbite. C.J. had filled up some bowls of tepid water for Danny’s hands and feet.
“We need to warm him up slowly,” he said, hovering over Danny. He kept checking Danny’s eyes for dilation, he explained to Mattie. “He’s getting his color back. He did a smart thing, getting in that car. It kept him and Tucker out of the wind.”
“Why did he go to the car?” Jaime asked.
Zach crouched beside Danny. “My guess is because it’s close to the eagles’ nest. That’s how he discovered my car in the first place—he was poking around there just last week, spying on the eagles.”
C.J. slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “That’s what he meant by saying he thought he could help. He was going to take a picture of the eagles.” He looked at Jaime. “He wanted to make you feel better after that call from your father.”
“The camera,” Danny squeaked out in a raspy voice.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at him.
Danny gave a slight shrug to his shoulders. “I saw the bobcat go after a cottontail and Tucker started barking.” He stopped to swallow, as if it hurt his throat to talk.
Mattie stroked his hair. He was so cold! But his cheeks had lost that ghostly white look and his lips were pinking up.
“Tucker went after the bobcat and they got into a fight, so I ran to the car.”
“You did the right thing, Danny,” C.J. said. “You did just what Tucker wanted you to do. He was trying to protect you.”
“Then Tucker jumped on the car and I let him in,” Danny said slowly. “But I lost the camera.”
Slowly, C.J. placed Danny’s bare feet into the
bowls of tepid water. “You did a smart thing. You kept yourself safe and Tucker safe. Probably kept each other warm.”
Danny closed his eyes, then opened them wide. “Buster!” he squeaked out. “He needs a mouse! For dinner!”
Mattie was laughing, then crying. Danny was home and he was unharmed and everything was going to be all right.
Moments later, Sol burst through the kitchen door. Behind him was a covey of Amish men and boys, peering into the kitchen. Zach’s father, Eli, pushed his way through the group to get in the kitchen. Sol stopped abruptly at the sight of Mattie crying, holding Danny in her arms by the stove.
“Is he . . . ?” Sol asked.
Danny turned his face toward his father and reached out a hand.
Mattie nodded, too moved, too relieved, to speak. She still didn’t trust her voice to speak.
“Er ist okay?” Sol said. “Dank der Herr!” He is safe? Thank God! His eyes filled with tears. He crouched down beside Danny and stroked his head. Tears fell down his cheeks and he didn’t even wipe them away.
He stood to face C.J. He grasped C.J.’s hand with both of his and shook it. “Thank you, C.J. Thank you for finding my boy.”
“Don’t thank me,” C.J. said. He pointed to Zach. “It was Zach. He figured out where Danny had gone.”
Sol walked straight to Zach and grabbed him in a powerful, wordless hug.
Later that night, after dinner, Mattie tucked Danny into bed while Sol and Zach went out to the barn to check on the livestock. C.J. and Jaime made noises about leaving, but Sol wouldn’t let them. The storm was still raging, and besides, he told them, “We need to celebrate Christmas together! The best Christmas of all!” Mattie was so pleased when they agreed to stay.
She would never forget this weekend—a weekend of miracles. Danny was unharmed, protected by Zach’s car despite three hours in freezing temperatures. An hour after getting inside and getting warmed up, Danny was hungry and worried about Tucker’s cuts from the run-in with the bobcat. C.J. assured him Tucker was fine, that an injured, three-legged bobcat was probably in much worse shape than a big, strong dog. And that started Danny’s litany of questions about dogs. Mattie smiled, still unable to say much, her heart was so full of gratitude.
A Lancaster County Christmas Page 16
