ABC Amber LIT Converter (9 page)

MAY 31, 1993

TWO WEEKS BEFOREhis birthday, Clem began sleeping in his study. There was a love seat there, and he’d lie down with his long legs draped over one armrest, his head forced up at an unnatural angle by the other. When he woke up in the morning, he’d emerge from his new lair in the rough shape of a question mark, hobble his way to the kitchen, and make coffee. By the time he was into his second cup, he’d straightened up again.

“Why are you sleeping in the study?” Rhonda asked after it became clear that this was to be an ongoing arrangement.

“My snoring was keeping your mother awake,” he said.

“You snore, Daddy?”

He shrugged, turned the coffee mug in his hands.

Rhonda would watch him get ready for work (Clem was the boss at the sawmill those days—Dave Lancaster had retired) after one of his nights on the love seat, wondering what was really
going on. She heard bits and pieces of arguments through the walls. Hushed conversations. She never picked up enough to know what the fighting was about—only that her mother seemed very angry with her father. And Rhonda knew enough to realize it sure didn’t have anything to do with her father snoring.

She made up her mind to do something extra special for his birthday. She’d make him a drawing. A really nice one. She’d take her time and do a sketch of something he’d really love. But what? She made a mental list of the things her father loved: black coffee, unfiltered Camel cigarettes, German beer, and the Civil War. The war seemed like the best candidate for a good picture.

Her father spent nearly all his free time reading about it, studying battle plans and maps. One weekend a month, he got together with a group of other Civil War enthusiasts and planned reenactments. Clem had a scratchy wool costume and marched in parades with a musket, camped out at fairs, and reenacted battles all over the east coast. Rhonda didn’t get her father’s fascination, obsession even, with a war he’d had nothing to do with. She felt a little embarrassed for him when he dug his Union Army uniform out of storage and put it on, marching off to war in his Dodge pickup, Camel cigarettes and a cup of coffee by his side.

Maybe, Rhonda thought, she could do a drawing of one of the generals. She just needed to find a good photo to work from and she could draw just about anything. She resolved to sneak into his study when she got home from school, before he got out of work, and find a picture.

GRANT AND LEEstared up at her, along with endless photos of young men in uniform. None of them were right. She thought about trying to draw an old map depicting a battleground, but that seemed silly—a map is a drawing, anyway. Then, she found
it. There in the pages of one of her father’s books, her subject stared up at her: theHunley .

TheHunley was a Confederate-built submarine powered by eight men turning hand cranks. While it was not the first submarine, it was, Rhonda knew from her father’s Civil War rants, the first sub ever to sink a ship in battle. TheHunley itself sank in the waters near Charleston in 1864 after tearing a hole in the side of a Union ship. The Confederate camp nearby saw the blue light from theHunley signaling that they’d been successful in their mission and were returning to shore, but something went wrong along the way. The submarine, and the crew that went down with it, were never recovered. What happened to theHunley and its crew was, according to Clem, one of the greatest mysteries in United States history.

Rhonda spent the next hour studying old drawings of theHunley in Clem’s Civil War books, reading everything she could find about it, and decided to do a series of sketches—her own renditions of the submarine, a composite of all she had gleaned. The top drawing would show the outside of theHunley , and the middle would be a cutaway view of the inside, depicting the soldiers working the cranks while the captain manned the controls at the front of the machine. The image at the bottom would be the same cutaway view, but without the men. Instead, Rhonda would carefully print the names and explanations for all the mechanical features of the sub: the water ballast tanks, sea cocks, steering rods, propeller, rudder, mercury gauge for measuring depth, even the candle that illuminated the controls, and warned when air was running out.

She found the submarine pictures she would work from and was flipping through a book, looking for one that showed a close-up of a Confederate uniform, when a photograph that had been stuck between the pages fell out. Rhonda leaned down and picked
it up from the floor, assuming it would be some silly snapshot of her father and his Civil War dress-up pals.

It wasn’t. It was a wedding photo. The groom in a tux, looking young and tan, was her father. Beside him, the bride smiled out from cascade of white lace and clutched a heavy bouquet like a club. But it was not Rhonda’s mother looking out at her: it was Aggie.

He wishes this would never end. He imagines going away with her, living like this forever, being this happy. He wishes there was a real Rabbit Island, a place they could go and not be bothered. Where she could go on being his Birdie and he could be her Peter Rabbit forever.

But the rabbit understands the reality of the situation. He knows his days as a rabbit are numbered. But he doesn’t want her to forget him. Not ever. He doesn’t want her to be lonely. He gives her a gift: a fluffy stuffed rabbit. He puts a tag around its neck.FOR BIRDIE WITH LOVE FROM PETER , it says. He’s taking a chance giving her the gift, but she is a careful girl. She understands that everything that passes between them is a secret. The little girl squeezes the soft, white bunny to her chest, then turns and hugs Peter. If she could see beneath the mask, behind the mesh eyes, she’d know he was crying.

JUNE 12, 13 & 14, 2006

ONE WEEK AFTERthe kidnapping, Ernie had not been found, and Pike’s Crossing was in an uproar. Lakeview Lodge, The Inn and Out Motel, and the two bed-and-breakfasts in town were booked solid with out-of-state media and volunteers. The little café down the street from Pat’s did a booming business despite their lack of lattes. The streets, fields, and woods had been searched by dogs, helicopters, Boy Scouts, a group of National Guard volunteers, and citizens. The state police brought in divers and boats, and dragged Nickel Lake. Candlelight vigils were held at the Methodist church. And though people were worried that no trace of Ernie had been found, they recalled Ella Starkee: ten days in a hole with a tin can, worms, and beetles. Anything was possible.

Pat held another press conference, Trudy Florucci by her side, to say she’d enlisted the services of a woman who dowsed for lost
children and pets with a forked willow branch. She introduced Shirley Bowes, who was old enough to be Pat’s mother, and who looked, to Rhonda’s surprise, like a farm wife. She did not wear a turban or long, flowing dress hanging with bells. The only jewelry Shirley wore was a plain gold wedding band. She had permed white hair and wore sensible, old-lady clothes. Shirley scuffed her shoes on the floor and smiled shyly at the cameras.

“You might remember,” Pat went on, “last year Shirley found a toddler in an old dry well up in Swanton.”

Rhonda remembered. The little boy had fallen into the deep hole and stayed there overnight, for nearly twenty-four hours. Nothing like Ella Starkee, who lost track of time down in her hole. She measured her days with crinkly cellophane butterscotch wrappers. She sang every song she knew. When she ran out of songs, she began talking to God.

“And he talked back to me,” she told reporters later.

“What did he say?” the reporters asked.

Ella smiled bashfully. “He told elephant jokes.”

“Elephant jokes?”

“Like, how can you tell an elephant has been in your refrigerator? Look for footprints in the butter.”

Rhonda focused back on Pat’s conference.

“Ernie’s been gone too long and we’re at a dead end. We’ve got to seek out new leads wherever we can find them,” Pat said in her hearty voice. Pat the boss. Pat in her name tag that saidSTATION OWNER , to show who was in charge. Rhonda found an odd comfort in Pat’s enthusiasm.

It was only in her moments off camera, when Rhonda caught Pat pacing nervously or muttering to herself, that she sensed Pat might be losing her grip on the situation—preparing to admit the possibility of defeat. Rhonda cringed at the idea that Pat still thought of her as a suspect. She also hated to think that this might be the true reason behind all the time Warren had been spending
with her. And did he suspect her, too? Think she and Peter had conspired to steal the little girl?

“One more thing,” Pat told the reporters. “Bonnie Starkee, the mother of little Ella, called Trudy this morning.”

An excited murmur went through the room.

“What did Mrs. Starkee say?” asked one of the reporters.

“She said she’s praying for Ernie. She told Trudy she mustn’t lose hope. Now, there’s no time to waste. Let’s put Shirley to work!” Cameras clicked as Shirley stepped forward and asked, in a barely audible voice, to be given something that had belonged to Ernie. Trudy reached down into a wrinkled paper grocery bag at her feet and pulled out a stuffed bear with an embroidered heart on its chest. The dowser sat in the padded chair dragged from behind the register, clutching the pink teddy bear as cameras clicked and television stations shot footage for the evening news. At last, Shirley stood up, handed the bear back to Trudy, took out a map of the state, spread it on the counter, and dangled a clear quartz crystal on a thin silver chain over it. The pendulum hung still, not circling or swaying, a dead weight. When Shirley wasn’t able to get a reading on the Vermont map, she spread out a map of the whole country. Still nothing.

Maybe Ernie was in outer space, Rhonda thought. Like the cow that jumped over the moon. Maybe that’s where the rabbit took her in his submarine. Maybe Rabbit Island was up there somewhere, its own kind of heaven. Rhonda looked up, away from the pendulum and map, and tried to get her eyes to look right through the ceiling and roof—to look somehow beyond. She sensed Warren watching her and turned toward him. He looked unspeakably sad, defeated. Rhonda reached out to him, then pulled her hand back, hesitating. But wasn’t it her own hesitation that got her into this mess in the first place? Her inaction was the very reason Ernie was gone, so lost even the dowser couldn’t find her. For better or worse, she reached out and took
Warren’s hand. He squeezed her fingers tightly, encircling her hand with his own.

“I’LL SAY ONEthing,” Cecil Lowry mumbled as the press conference was breaking up. Cecil, the ex–fire chief, was a happily cranky old man who challenged everyone he met to guess how old he was, and, when people politely guessed a good ten years lower than they believed he was, would crow,Eighty-four! Can you believe it? Ha! They could believe it. “All this has put Pike’s Crossing on the map. Don’t tell nobody I said so, but in some ways, this kidnapping is the best thing that ever happened to Pike’s Crossing. And you can’t tell me all business owners who are raking it in don’t feel just the same.”

RHONDA’S HEAD WASfull of rabbits. She drew them on scraps of paper when she talked on the phone or puzzled over what little evidence they had. She scribbled out chains of rabbits, paws linked one through the other, and as she drew, she studied them for clues, thinking they might know the thing that all bunnies knew: the way to Rabbit Island. She stared down at her doodles like she half-expected the rabbits to dance off the page, doing the bunny hop all the way to Ernie Florucci. And maybe, if she was lucky enough, to Lizzy and Daniel too.

Among the rabbits, she scribbled notes on the few clues they had: Rabbit Island, Laura Lee’s car, the name Birdie. None of it made any sense. But the doodling calmed her.

False leads continued to pile up: a gold bug had been spotted at a motel in Lyndonville, someone’s bachelor uncle kept a rabbit suit in his closet, Ernie was seen buying a soda from a machine at a rest area in Massachusetts. Each time a new lead came in, a buzz of excitement swept through the Mini Mart, a jolt of hope.
The police followed every one, but they were all dead ends. When word filtered back down to the Mini Mart, a hush fell over everyone. Defeated glances were exchanged. There was nothing to do but wait for the phone to ring, for the next tip to come in that would start the cycle over again.

SHIRLEY BOWES HADa friend, Marsha, a psychic. Marsha, a woman about Trudy’s age, who’d recently moved from New York City, was called in, and held the stuffed bear. She closed her eyes and said, “I’m getting a picture.” This woman had artfully sculpted hair, beautiful clothes, expensive perfume.

“Oh, she’s alive,” Marsha said. To Rhonda, her Bronx accent sounded almost fake. “She’s in the woods. I see tall trees. Rocks. A cave. He’s got her in a cave. That’s where she sleeps at night.”

Shirley tried dowsing again, and this time her pendulum circled over the state forest not far from where Ernie was taken. The area, Rhonda knew, Peter said he was hiking in that day.

Pat called Crowley, and, although he did not believe in psychics or dowsers, he agreed to help organize a search party of cops, civilians, and park rangers to go through the forest the next day. A dozen TV news crews followed the search party, and all the local papers sent reporters. Pat called everyone she knew in town—which amounted to essentially everyone in Pike’s Crossing—to help comb the forest.

The rangers and guides insisted there were no caves in the park. But then Marsha the psychic said, “It might not be an actual cave, technically. Maybe a group of rocks that could give shelter—something a little girl might call a cave.”