THE LAST BOY (45 page)

Inside the courthouse, he descended the marble steps to the basement where he found the records room. Neatly arranged on tiers of wooden shelves that ran from floor to ceiling sat the dusty and daunting ledgers that were the cumulative history of Jefferson County and its inhabitants. As he wrestled a large tome off the shelf, the county clerk appeared almost magically at his side.

“Can I help you?” asked Carol Ellis, her intelligent eyes twinkling behind a pair of thick lenses. She was extremely short, and had pudgy cheeks and an upturned nose that gave her an elf-like appearance.

Tripoli explained that he was looking for some information on a family who had lived in town around 1938.

“Well, if they were bonafide residents, we should certainly be able to uncover something. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear and got ready to write.“Now what's the name?”

“Roland,” he said, and saw a flash of recognition cross the woman's face.

“Roland?” she repeated, the pencil forgotten in her hand.“You mean
Matthew
Roland?”

“Why,
yes
,” answered Tripoli, who couldn’t hide his own surprise.“You know about him then?”

“To work in this job you’ve got to be a bit of a history buff. And Mary Roland and her son Matthew—well,” she waggled her head, “they created quite a sensation in their time.”

“What I was hoping to find,” said Tripoli eagerly, “is someone who might actually have known the boy personally.”

The woman studied Tripoli through her thick lenses. “Why are you so curious about Matthew?”

A man dressed in a pinstriped suit came down the aisle towards them carrying one of the volumes, and they stepped aside to let him pass.

“There's another boy like him,” said Tripoli in a lowered voice. “A boy who vanished and then came back.”

“Oh, heavens.” Her smile was gone. Suddenly she made the connection. “Yes. But of course! I read about him. In Ithaca, right?”

He nodded.

“You’re a policeman then?”

He nodded again. She was quick.

“Look, can you think of anyone…
anyone
who might remember Matthew? Maybe a neighbor or a friend of the family?”

“Hmmm…” She scratched her head with the point of the pencil. “Wait. Mrs. Francis!”

Tripoli tried to remember if he had read her name in the paper.

“Flossie Francis. She was Matthew's teacher. She taught in the old elementary school. She was an active member of our Historical Society. She was just starting out as a young teacher then and—”

“Is she alive?” interrupted Tripoli, who couldn’t wait for the clerk to get around to it.“Where is she?”

“She moved to Sarasota, Florida, about six years ago. Had enough of our winters,” she joked, but Tripoli was already heading for the door.

“I heard,” said Sandy, lowering her voice so it was barely audible
above the clatter in the copy room. The machine was flashing and spitting out pages at a blinding rate.

“Yeah, I’m supposed to train my own assassins,” said Molly.

“Oh, don’t be silly!” Sandy placed her hand on Molly's arm and leaned in close. “You don’t have anything to worry about. Larry needs you. We
all
do.”

“No one's irreplaceable,” said Molly, quoting Larry.

“Aww, that's just Larry making noises. You’ve got to understand. He's sitting there in that pressure cooker.”

“Sure I understand.”

“Good.” Sandy smiled.“Without you, this place would fall apart. Believe me.”

For the duration of the flight to Sarasota, Tripoli kept trying to envision his meeting with Flossie Francis. On the phone she had sounded suspicious. Who was he? Why did he want to know about Matthew Roland? Hadn’t enough gone on about that poor boy to last a lifetime? She was just plain heartsick about the whole affair and preferred to leave it alone.

“Look, could I come down and see you?”Tripoli had persisted. He was obviously getting nowhere on the phone.

“I don’t see how that can be worth your trouble. Or time. It's a long trip.”

“
Please
, it's important,” he had pleaded and she had reluctantly given in.

So here he was, flying over the heartland of Florida. As the plane continued its gradual descent, Tripoli could make out stretches of low-lying land still flooded from the hurricane, farm buildings half submerged, orchards leveled. The jet then banked, skimming a tropical landscape turned suburban—a meshwork of highways and shopping centers, little backyard pools of aquamarine embedded like fake jewels in an endless carpet of tract housing.

When Tripoli stepped out of the terminal to pick up his rental car, the afternoon hit him with a sweltering blast. Then, with his windows sealed and the air conditioning on high, he drove out along the palm-lined coast. Though the storm had skirted the city,
there were toppled signs along the highway and branches and coconuts still down on the ground.

Flossie Francis lived on the fifteenth floor of a sparkling white condominium that catered to the elderly. When she opened her door, Tripoli was expecting to find a hunched-over little eighty-year-old, but the woman who greeted him was tall and stately with a regal crown of silver hair.

“Mr. Tripoli,” she said with a smile that disarmed him.“Won’t you come in.” She was well spoken and had an air of elegance that shattered his hasty conclusion that Watertown was a hick town. Her apartment was simply but tastefully furnished in bright colors and white rugs. They went into a living room decorated with wall hangings that looked like those made by American Indians, woodcarvings from around the world, and shelves lined with books.

“I’m afraid I was being difficult with you,” she apologized, seating herself opposite him.“You see, this thing is still terribly distressing for me.” She gave a pained smile.“I normally don’t talk to people about it—and frankly don’t care to.”

Tripoli just nodded.

“And I don’t really understand what your interest in Matthew could be. Now, after all these years. My goodness, it must be—what is it?—about sixty years now since Matthew came back?”

“I’m a police officer with the Ithaca Police Department.”

“Yes, you told me that. But this is so long ago now.”

“Well, I’ve been working on a recent case—”

“Oh my!” Alarm registered on her face. “You know something about Matthew, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,”Tripoli admitted. She was watching him carefully, he noticed. Color had risen to her neck and face.

“You found him finally?”

He paused and said gently,“Yes.”

She read the look on Tripoli's face.“Oh Lord, he's dead.” It was a question that was asked and answered.

“I’m sorry.”

Flossie Francis's facade crumbled before him, and she started to weep. “Forgive me,” she kept apologizing, but couldn’t quite stem the flow of tears. Finally, she got up and left the room. Tripoli went to the large window and stared out at the hazy horizon lingering over the sea. Then she returned with a handkerchief, dabbing her eyes, somewhat more composed.

“I’m sorry to be the one to bring you the bad news,” he said, turning from the window.

“Oh, it's not your fault,” she said, and saw how Tripoli winced. She blew her nose.“So, Matthew was alive
all
this time?” Her smile returned.“Now that's good news to me. I was always worried about him. He was so innocent and sweet. Do you want to tell me what happened? How you found out about him?”

“I don’t quite know where to begin,” admitted Tripoli.

“Well,” she said, as if coaxing a child.“Why don’t we start at the beginning? When you first learned about him?”

He paused, glanced again at the Gulf, then turned back to her. “I didn’t at first learn about Matthew. You see, there's another little boy,” he said.

She pressed a slender, vein-lined hand to her mouth,“Oh no!” she exclaimed.“Another.”

Tripoli found himself opening up to the old school teacher in a way that surprised him. “You see, I blame myself for Matthew's death,” he said finally.

“But why? What happened?”

He explained about the raid.“I let things get out of control. But, look,” he said, “tell me about Matthew, Miss Francis.” He could never imagine calling her by her first name. “That's what I need to
know. If I can learn something about Matthew, maybe it’ll help me understand Daniel.”

“Now it's my turn to wonder about where to begin,” she said.

“When did you first get to know Matthew?”

“I had heard about him, of course. But I didn’t really come into contact with Matthew until September.”

“This is September of ’39?”

“Yes,” she nodded.“September of 1939. I was teaching the first grade in the elementary school. Of course, like everyone else in Watertown, I knew about Matthew. There were all these reporters coming to town. His mother, Mary Roland, was a simple woman, a widow, a very modest person. She just wanted Matthew to be a normal boy and go to school and fit into the world. That's what she always talked about. ‘Fitting in.’”

Cool air was blowing in through a vent above Tripoli's head; he could feel it on his damp skin.

“I’ll always remember that first day of school, right after Labor Day, it was. Some parents sent their children off on the bus. Others walked them to the school grounds, then left. But Mrs. Roland brought Matthew directly to me in the classroom and then plunked herself down right outside the door. She took a chair and just sat there for the
whole
school day. At first I thought she was maybe a little deranged from all that had happened. But it didn’t take me long to figure out why she was there.”

“What was the boy like?” prompted Tripoli.

“Oh, Matthew was brilliant—exceptional in every respect. He read just about anything he could get his hands on. And he seemed possessed of an innate understanding of people and the world around him—the natural world. He spoke about things like preserving the Earth, but back then no one knew what he was talking about. He was just far ahead of the times. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, What if he were around today? what with all the scary stuff
that's going on with the climate changes and…maybe people would finally understand, listen.”

For a moment she gazed wistfully off into the distance. Tripoli waited for her to return.

“But for all of his wonderful gifts, Matthew was a handful. He was.…But wait,” she stopped short. “I’ve got some photos. Would you like to—”

“Of course!” he said eagerly.

Miss Francis went to the closet and brought down a box from the top shelf. It was brimming with old pictures.

“Here,” she handed Tripoli a large print. It was a portrait with a couple of dozen young children lined up in stacked rows. Watertown Elementary School, first grade class, 1939, said the label at the bottom.

Tripoli instantly picked the boy out of the class. He was standing next to his young teacher, The old teacher handed Tripoli another picture. A snapshot. The young teacher was in a playground with a few of her students. She had both hands on Matthew's shoulder and his head was turned from the camera.

“It wasn’t easy getting him to pose,” she laughed.

Tripoli continued to stare at the second picture. “This spot here,” he said, pointing to the boy's neck.“What is it?”

She took a second look, furrowed her brow as she searched her memory.“If I remember right…he had a small birthmark.”

“What did it look like?”

She shrugged.“Sort of reddish.”

“You got a magnifying glass somewhere?” he asked anxiously.

A moment later she was back with a big lens.

“Oh,” said Miss Francis, leaning over Tripoli's shoulder.“Now I remember. It looked almost like a—”

“A star,” Tripoli uttered, completing her sentence, things finally beginning to jell.

“Got any other pictures?”

“I don’t believe so.” She rummaged through the box.“No, that's all.”

Tripoli went back to the second photo. “From the looks of things here it seems you’re trying to keep him from taking off?”

“To say the least,” agreed Miss Francis. “Every time I turned around he was gone. You couldn’t keep that boy in the classroom. From that first day, Matthew was like a caged animal. You could almost see him literally panting for air. Craving to get out. That's, of course, why his mother was sitting there. I’d turn my back, he’d be out the door, and she’d catch him and drag him right back in.

“But Mrs. Roland was a working woman. She couldn’t sit there forever. After a couple of weeks, she thought she would try to go back to the luncheonette. I even suggested it.”

“And then?”

“And then I was alone with Matthew. Thirty-one children and Matthew. It was an almost impossible situation to handle. I had to teach a class—not neglect the other children—and also attempt to deal with him.” Miss Francis bit her lip.

“Matthew tried everything. Even climbed out of windows. Going to the lunchroom, I’d have to hold his hand to make sure he didn’t break away. I certainly couldn’t let him go to the boys’ room unaccompanied. I used to have to call Mr. Carpenter, the gym teacher.”

“Where was he going?”

“Into the air. Outside.”

“Like Daniel,” remarked Tripoli, nodding to himself.

She took a long breath.“You have to understand. I was exceedingly young then. Fresh out of teachers’ college, where in those days they emphasized discipline in the classroom. I was beside myself. I had a conference with Matthew's mother in the principal's office. ‘Please,’ she begged us,‘don’t give up on my Matthew. If he doesn’t go to school, how's he
ever
going to make a life in this world?’”

“I kept him after school for hours—which, of course, only made matters worse.” Miss Francis began to pace the white carpet as she spoke.“I made him sit still right in front of me while I graded papers and prepared lesson plans. Mrs. Roland, at her wits’ end, resorted to spanking the poor child. Between us, we kept Matthew imprisoned—yes, that's what we did.” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Excuse me,” she said and blew her nose.

Flossie Francis took back the photo and stared at it for the longest moment, then turned to look back at her visitor.

“I remember the day he disappeared. The hour. He had just tried to crawl out of the window again, and I had caught him by the tail of his shirt and pulled him back into the classroom. The other children were laughing and I fed their laughter, asking them what kind of animals climb out of windows and up trees.‘Monkeys!’ they were all shouting.‘
Monkeys!
’” she raised her own voice, and Tripoli could almost hear the cries of the children.