Stones and Spark (18 page)

She hesitates. "They told me last month. In September."

"
What?!
" Rusty cries.

She whirls on him. "I couldn't say anything—in case it fell through."

"Or in case she ran away," he says.

"Hang on." Teddy exhales a cloud of smoke. "Let's have a show of hands. Who really thinks Drew ran away?"

The Levinsons both raise their hands. But DeMott, Teddy, and I don't. Officer Lande just looks at us, counting hands.

Teddy looks at me, giving me a signal to continue his point.

"Drew would argue first," I say. "She wouldn't run away, not right away." I look at Jayne. "Did she argue with you?"

Jayne just stands there awhile. The wind rustles the leaves. "Yes, she got mad."

"Of course she got mad," Teddy says.

"But did she point out the flawed logic?" I ask. "Did she tell you it made no rational sense to move to New York?"

"I don't remember."

But I know Drew. Her first line of attack would be to outwit her mother, get into a verbal battle, conquering through her IQ. That's why Jayne didn't tell her earlier. Knowingness goes through me. It's almost something I can touch--it's so real. Like the shoe I handed Officer Lande, now stashed in the police cruiser.

"She didn't run away," I insist. "And you know it too."

"This is a very big promotion," Jayne says, like anyone cares. "I can finally stop worrying about money."

"Great," Teddy blows smoke. "Now you get to worry about your daughter."

"But Raleigh's wrong!" Jayne says. "I told her about the move. Drew said, 'You'll be sorry.’”

Officer Lande asks, "When was that?"

"Thursday night."

"Interesting." Officer Lande again flips through her notebook. "You previously said you told her Friday. At breakfast."

Teddy mutters, "Why I like dirt. It doesn't lie."

"I don't remember the specifics," Jayne says, sounding defensive. "It's been so hectic. A lot of people wanted this position."

"Enjoy the climb," Rusty says, "because it doesn't end anywhere nice."

"
Nice
?" Jayne eyes are glistening with tears. "It's not supposed to be nice. It's called work."

"Are you saying I don't work?"

Officer Lande lifts her hands, calling the fight.

"Let's not go down that road," she says. "Let's focus on what Raleigh just turned up." We wait. The wind swirls. Rusty is breathing hard, but Jayne looks frozen. Except her eyes. They are melting.

Officer Lande's gaze lingers on Jayne.

"With or without your permission," she says. "I'm calling in a report. Just to be safe."

"What's that mean?" Rusty asks.

"It means your daughter Drew is officially missing."

Even though Teddy's cigar has burned out, that throat-coating stench lingers inside DeMott's truck.

But that's not the heaviest thing in here.

The silence is.

It's smothering. Choking. Dense.

As we drive away from Drew's house, my ears ring with it.

DeMott doesn't say anything until we're all the way down Grove Avenue.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

"I'm fine."

Teddy sighs. "I'm not. And I'm not pretending."

"I'm not pretending." I say.

"DeMott, is she pretending?"

DeMott nods.

Teddy leans back. Normally he'd be grinning right now, satisfied that somebody agreed with his accusation.

But when I look over, I don't see anything smug on his face.

We turn onto his road, heading for his worn-out house.

"I will never say this again," Teddy sighs. "So listen up."

I wait.

DeMott slows the truck to a crawl.

"Ask God for some help," Teddy says.

I study him a moment. "You told me you don't believe in God."

"I don't," he says. "But you do. And right now, that's what matters."

Except right now I want to tell him I might not believe. I mean, if God loves all the little children, what's up with giving Drew parents like Rusty and Jayne? They're supposed to love and take care of her, not act like their lives are way more important. And what about my mom? I could tell Teddy how often I've begged God to heal her—and that's not happening.

"You pick your hypothesis," I say, "and you gather the evidence, and if that evidence makes your hypothesis look wrong, you change your hypothesis. Right?"

"Right."

"I've been praying my brains out, I prayed in church this morning. And what did it get me? Her shoe. Buried in a quarry."

There is only more silence. So heavy DeMott cracks his window for fresh air. I feel the wind wash into the cab, and suddenly realize what this quiet feels like:
a
funeral.

It feels like we just attended a funeral, without a body.

DeMott pulls into Teddy's driveway. The neighbors are still toiling in their yards. The leaves are gathered into neat piles. Gathered so quickly the grass underneath is still green.
In
the fading sunlight, the whole thing looks like some bygone era where good and industrious citizens cheerfully completed their chores.

Teddy glares at them. They look away.

"You make up your own mind," he says. "But I'll give you one good reason why I don't believe in God. You want to hear it?"

Desperately.

So desperately I don't dare open my mouth.

"Every Sunday morning, all of these neighbors of mine go to church. Then they come home, eat supper, and work on their yards. At Christmas they light up the trees and on Easter they gussy up and strut around like hens. But not one of them has ever walked up to my door and asked if I needed help. Not one. These good Christian folks, you know what they do? They call the city and complain about my yard. Say I'm ruining their property values. Now you tell me, why would I want to have anything to do with the God these people follow?”

The three of us sit there, staring at the neighbors who continue to steal glances at DeMott's truck. But they never stop working.

The funeral feeling gets worse. So bad my heart aches inside my chest.

"You know what my dad says?" I ask. "He says, ‘If you think they're bad now, imagine if they weren't Christians.’"

"Huh." Teddy says. "Judge's got a point. But I think I got one too."

DeMott climbs heavily out of the truck and quietly closes his door. I stare straight ahead, at the hanging shutters. My heart feels so fragile right now, it's like if I turn my head, the whole thing will shatter. There's a long metal scrape in back as DeMott takes the wheelchair out of the truck.

"Right nice dude," Teddy says. "You like him."

"He belongs to Tinsley Teager."

"Ain't no way on God's green earth that's right—not that I believe in God."

The passenger door opens. Teddy turns to DeMott.

"Son, I feel as beat as the lead dog after the fox hunt. You mind liftin' me?"

There isn't one second of hesitation. DeMott reaches out, slipping his right arm under Teddy's limp legs. His left arm goes behind his back, and when his hand touches me by accident, a hot flash sears into me. My heart reacts like it got hit with those electric paddles they use to revive dead people.

DeMott lifts Teddy, sets him in the chair.

Just like that.

Like he's done it a million times.

I turn my head, glancing at the neighbors. Their heads are bowed over their duties, but they're stealing even more glances.

At the top of the wheelchair ramp, Teddy fishes in his pocket for a key. It takes him a long time. In all the time he's been my teacher, Teddy's never really seemed handicapped. He barrels through life, hollering, bellowing, greeting every day with so much gusto he intimidates everyone.

DeMott pushes the front door open. But when he comes back behind the chair, he pauses. I see him kneel down, looking up into Teddy's face. His voice, sliding through the truck's open window, sounds calm.

"I believe in God," he says. "Someday I hope you will too."

If Teddy replies, I don't hear it.

DeMott stands, and pushes the chair though the door.

I lean forward. I put my hand on my heart, trying to stop the pain. When I look up through the windshield, the sky is amethyst blue. The first whisper of dusk.

***

With the light that remains and the flyers printed in Drew's bedroom, DeMott and I cover the entire neighborhood around St. Catherine's. I hold the paper, and DeMott slams his palm into a stapler borrowed from Teddy.

Every telephone pole.

Every sidewalk tree.

Every bulletin board outside the cafes on Grove Avenue.

We even walk into the Country Club of Virginia, down the block from St. Catherine’s. The receptionist at the front desk smiles at DeMott.

"Hello, Mr. Fielding."

Mr.?

"Hi, Mary," DeMott says. He hands her a flyer.

She looks at it, then looks up. There is so much sadness on her tan face.

"I'll have to ask the manager," she says. "He'll be in tomorrow."

She sets the flyer aside. I stare down at the page. Drew grins up from it. She's pretty in a bookish way. Big brown eyes, so bright that it seems the headline reads like a joke: HAVE YOU SEEN HER?

I want to grab this woman Mary and scream, "Don't wait for management—hang the thing up!"

It's our last flyer.

But instead of screaming, I turn away, walking beside DeMott to the Country Club's parking lot.

"I've got a flashlight," he says. "We could print some more, go hang them."

Dusk is gone. The night is so chilly that his words ride on a silver cloud of condensation. I shake my head. Maybe I even shivered, because when I get in the truck he offers me his Carhart jacket. And I accept it. The rough material still smells like clean laundry. But there's another part, too. The sweaty boy part. And it smells fine.

"What time is it?" I ask.

"Close to seven."

"I need to get home."

There is more silence in the truck. But it's different now. Tense. Anxious. I'm thinking about tomorrow, and about what the chances are my mom will see one of those flyers. Maybe there's one good thing about her going into another episode: she won't leave the house. The voices in her head keep her inside, scared.

When I glance up, DeMott's driving around the Robert E. Lee rotary. Standing in the floodlights, the general and his horse Traveler shine.

"Raleigh."

I'm staring at our huge house. Through the magnolia leaves I can see lights inside. I am dreading going in there, dreading telling my dad this new development with Drew, dreading the maneuvers we'll have to devise to keep my mom from knowing.

Maybe this is why, as a kid, I never liked playing hide-and-seek. That never seemed like a game to me. It was my life.

“
Raleigh?”

He's stopped at the curb outside our front entrance. The grand entryway facing the even grander avenue.

Once again, it feels like I can't turn my head. My heart is hurting more. But I force myself.

The glow from his dashboard, the soft light of the streetlights, they make his features look even more like a sculptor's version of the perfect face for a young man.

"If you need anything," he says, "and I mean anything, don't hesitate."

I nod and open the truck's passenger door. The dome light comes on. His eyes, they're dark again. Like all this hard reality—evidence and police and missing-person flyers—settled into him.

A thought, a memory slips through my mind. Something my sister Helen once said. She was classmates with DeMott's older sister, Jillian. One day her art class toured the Fieldings' plantation house, Weyanoke. Helen came home and said, "Those Fieldings live completely insulated from reality."

Not anymore.

"Thanks," I tell him, wishing I could dredge up more warmth in my voice. But I can only maneuver out of his jacket, offer it back him.

He doesn't take it. "You want to get some dinner?"

"Now?"

"Or whenever," he adds quickly. "And we don't have to talk about . . . you know. Unless you want to."

I lay the jacket on the seat between us. When I grab the door, not opening it further and not closing it, I can feel the night air. It brushes into the warm cab and I wonder if maybe this moment will be
Before
. Before I hear something really awful from the police. And then everything will be
After
.
After life is never the same again. And what's even weirder is, I can feel this moment, another real
-but-
invisible thing, like what my dad tells me about an invisible stitching that holds the world together.