We Are Unprepared (6 page)

As I approached the door of the Blue Frog, I saw a large group of people five years younger than me laughing around a rustic wood table, and I became suddenly aware of my aloneness. Normally, I wouldn't mind having a beer on my own, but I wasn't up for it at that moment, so I kept walking. When I got to Polly's, the darker, sadder townie bar several doors down, I opened the door.

Polly's smelled like old cigarettes and my feet felt sticky on the worn carpet as I stepped to the bar. There was one other patron in the room—a large, red-faced man at the far end of the bar who was busy circling things in the classified newspaper pages before him.

“What can I getcha?” a petite, female bartender asked me as I took a stool. “We have draft Bud. Everything else is cans and bottles.”

She wore a tiny cropped shirt that appeared to be constructed of macramé over a denim miniskirt. It was distracting how much of her body I could see and I was grateful for the curtain of dark hair that hung behind her. How old could she have possibly been—twenty-two, maybe? I couldn't tell.

“Budweiser is fine, thanks,” I said. “Are you guys always this quiet on Tuesdays?” I couldn't think of anything more interesting to say than that.

“Yep, until the preppers let out. Then we get another wave.”

I tried to look casual in my curiosity. “Oh right, the preppers. So what's the deal with them anyway?”

She handed me my beer and started drying glass mugs, one hip gently leaning against the sink in front of her.

“They're freaks,” she said matter-of-factly. “I get some weirdos in here, you know? But these guys are, like, totally paranoid. And they never shut up about it. They come in here all fired up after their meetings and lecture me about how I need some kind of bunker for when the end of the world comes. I tell them, if the apocalypse comes, I'm not sticking around this shitty world anyhow.”

“Yeah, they sound really weird.” I nodded into my beer.

She stopped drying mugs for a moment and looked up at me. “So what's your deal? You're not our usual type. You hiding from a girlfriend or something?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“That's what I figured. Not like it's such a genius guess—most guys are doing that. But you're more of a Frog type,” she said, referring to my original destination. “I bet you guys live up the hill in an old house, and you've got a little organic garden and some nice wine in your basement. What's wrong with your life that you gotta hide? Sounds nice to me. Did you cheat?”

It was embarrassing and somehow emasculating to be summed up so neatly by this tough little girl.

“No, I didn't cheat. And we hardly have any nice wine at all!”

I smiled and she tossed her head back to laugh. This was the first time I had spoken with anyone other than Pia in days and the conversation was refreshing.

“I just needed some air, I guess,” I said, sipping my beer.

“That's what everyone says when things are going bad.”

“Oh, no, things aren't
bad
. I wouldn't say that. Just not good tonight.”

“Sounds like the same thing to me, but what the hell do I know?” she said. “I've been living in this town my whole life.”

“I love it here.”

“Sure, because you don't
have
to be here,” the bartender said as she dried one mug after another with great efficiency. “I wouldn't even care if I was in another shitty town, you know? It just wouldn't be the one I grew up in. That's the difference.”

I was sure that I didn't know what she meant, but I nodded my head like our problems were all about the same.

“Anyhow,” she went on, “I got a friend who runs a fancy bar on Martha's Vineyard, and as soon as I have enough savings, I'm going to meet her there. I figure it will be like a working vacation.”

She walked away to check on the other guy and I puzzled over the idea that someone could be stuck, financially marooned in our town. This was a side of Isole I hadn't experienced much of since moving there: the real locals. There are pockets of immense wealth and worldliness in northern Vermont, but the state wasn't built on those people; they're just interlopers in its history. At its core, Vermont is defined by tough, industrious people who live modestly and know the land intimately, even if they no longer make their living from it. They prize independence and privacy over any allegiance to a nation or political identity, and they resent the ceaseless push by outsiders to transform the state to a socialist utopia. (I knew such generalizations made me seem like a patronizing asshole, but the locals had their own generalizations for me, too; it was how we made sense of our cohabitation.) Pia's prepper meeting was a funny mix of the old and new Vermont, I realized, though it wasn't a flattering light for either camp.

The clock above the bar struck eight, so I paid and thanked the bartender for her wisdom, which sounded stupid as soon as I said it out loud. I just wanted to get out of there before the prepper meeting ended, and Pia and her new friends made their way to Polly's. It seemed important that this nameless bartender never find out that I had been at that meeting. Plus I was concerned about how angry Pia might be.

I walked back in the cool air and waited in the car as people streamed out of the Elks Club and said their goodbyes. Some were laughing as they emerged, but there was a seriousness to the whole enterprise. That was perhaps the part that bothered me the most. On its own, preparing for disaster was inarguably a wise thing to do. And if Pia hadn't dragged me to that meeting, I would probably have regarded those people as nonthreatening curiosities. But Pia was always searching for religion. When she was a vegan, she emptied our fridge of all my favorite foods; and when she was a performance artist, she announced that she needed to be surrounded exclusively by creative people; and when she was a political activist, she accused her parents of being fascists.

Then there was the time that she actually did find religion, when she decided that we should be Buddhists. It involved a lot of Tibetan prayer flags in our apartment and mercifully little else. Her zeal was always genuine, but she lacked the conviction to see any of it through. And, inevitably, her avocations failed to deliver on whatever promise she thought they held. I regarded all of these phases as the hobbies of a passionate artist seeking purpose. They gave her focus, briefly, and a frenzied sort of pleasure. It wasn't a placid existence, but it was interesting.

This particular hobby, though, seemed more morbid. Her new friends weren't the ethereal waifs she used to bring home from tantric yoga class. (Weirdos are always harder to spot when they're bendy and beautiful.) No, this was darker and stranger. And maybe I knew it appealed to something frightened inside her, a part of her that I never fully understood. I wanted to believe this was out of character, but somewhere in my brain I knew that wasn't true.

The passenger door opened violently.

“We can go now. Are you happy?” Pia said, dropping into her seat like a child.

I looked at her in disbelief. “No, I'm not happy at all, Pia. I'm annoyed and a little freaked-out about the meeting you just tricked me into. What was that about?”

She shook her head in disbelief. “It was about seeing
the truth
, Ash.”

And with that, our fight was under way. I didn't bother trying to reason or even argue; I just drove and let her fume. She pinned her hair up and took it down again, making the faintest huffing sounds to herself. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of an argument. My plan was to just get home, open a bottle of wine and, after she'd consumed most of it alone on the couch, feel her groggily fall into bed beside me. That was how it was supposed to go.

But when we got home, Pia wasn't interested in wine or the couch. She sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out her little book of lists and nonsense. The handwriting was wild—alternately big and sharp and then small and controlled. She was making notes in the margins in a tiny new cursive style.

“You can go to bed, or do whatever you do,” Pia said without looking up.

Whatever I did wasn't such a mystery, really. Unlike my wife, I was predictable, boring even. When it was warm outside, I would drink one or two Otter Creek Ales on the porch with a book until I got tired enough to pad upstairs to our bedroom. Pia would join me outside sometimes and we'd talk about all our plans for life in Vermont. And on the rare night of marital discord, we would just give each other space to ride out our anger privately. It was comforting to know that the parameters of our conflict had been set.

What I wanted to do at that moment was storm into another room and watch cable television loudly, but that wasn't an option. I missed ESPN and the foggy passivity that only mindless TV can enable. But Pia said that it would be “counterproductive” for us to get cable in our Vermont life. And, even though we had it in Brooklyn, thanks to a spliced wire from a neighbor, she felt that we didn't really
have it
have it. We didn't pay for it and, most important, we had an Argentinean tapestry draped over the shameful box when it wasn't in use—like it didn't exist at all! This always struck me as comically pretentious, but in truth, I'd adopted enough of these pretensions by then to go along with her. So the tapestry and its dirty secret followed us to Vermont, but our only option on that night was fuzzy network news.

I decided instead to sit on the porch with a wool blanket and a book about bird migrations of North America. The temperature had cooled to the low sixties, finally, but the sounds of summer weren't completely gone yet, which was disorienting. I could hear the unmistakable call of an American bullfrog—a rare treat anytime, but unheard of in late September. When we were little, my older sister and I used to go for walks down our dirt road in bare feet, collecting any living thing we could find in buckets. It was red salamanders mostly, sometimes dozens if we went out on the right day, but wood frogs and bullfrogs on occasion, too. They were hard to contain, so if one of us was lucky enough to capture a bullfrog, we'd stop everything to consult my pocket guide to amphibians before letting the terrified thing go again. I thought about digging around for that old book, but instead I rocked on the porch swing until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer.

FOUR

“ASH, OPEN UP!”
Bang, bang, bang.
“Are you in there, Ash?”

I pushed my laptop aside and jumped off the couch for the front door. When I opened it, the first thing I saw was August's mother standing before me. She wore a knitted red cap over long gray hair and a terrified look in her eyes. This was the closest I had ever been to her and I could smell something on her that reminded me of dorm-room incense.

“August is missing!” she said. “Do you know where he is?”

My stomach jumped as I worked to take in the scene before me. It was late afternoon on a cool, windy day. August's father stood a few steps behind the mother. I couldn't remember either of their names, so I wasn't sure how to address them. He was thinner and sadder, but they could have been siblings, they looked so much alike to me.

“No, I don't,” I sputtered. “How long has he been gone? Wait, let me get my shoes.”

I stepped outside again with sneakers and a light jacket. This time I noticed a short, round, middle-aged woman with a nice face standing in the driveway. Despite the cool air, she wore a large T-shirt with a picture of an amusement park on it. She was moving her cell phone around, trying to find a signal. I had a hard time focusing on the scene before me as panic took hold of my body. Pia had left early that morning, still angry about our fight the night before, and I wished that she was there with me.

“What's going on? What happened?” I asked the group.

The new lady put her phone in her pocket and stepped toward me. “August has been gone since last night. He does this—wanders off sometimes—but this is a long one, even for him.” She glanced to her left at August's parents and planted a lingering look of disapproval on each of them. “He goes into the woods. We need to get in there and fan out.”

“Have you called the cops?” I asked.

August's mother stiffened. She hated that idea.

My stomach turned over and over on itself.

“They're already in there,” the lady said, nodding at the woods behind me. “We have to get going, too.” She pointed at August's parents now. “You guys go to the east. I'll pair up with Ash and we can go to the west. Go on.”

August's parents walked away quickly and obediently. They didn't look confident in their ability to brave the woods alone, but this woman wanted to be alone with me for some reason.

“I'm Bev.” She put her hand out for a quick, joyless shake. “I'm the social worker. August says you're his friend, so let's talk.”

I nodded and we walked toward the woods with impatient strides.

“I don't understand what's going on,” I said.

“As you've probably figured out—” Bev was walking ahead of me and pumping her arms “—August's parents are not up to the job. His father has paralyzing depression, which leaves him near comatose most of the day. And his mother is so panicked about the father that she barely notices the poor kid. I shouldn't be telling you any of this, but I know he looks up to you and I need another set of eyes on him. They abuse prescription drugs in front of him and can't be bothered to keep a damn thing in the fridge. They're not monsters. They love him. But they're selfish and irresponsible and getting worse all the time. I first started coming around here a year ago when August's ‘treks' started. That's what he calls it when he goes off into the woods. He always has some important mission or something in mind and just takes off with a backpack. But it's usually just for four to maybe six hours. Once, it was eight. But he has never been out overnight and this is just... These goddamn people... I'm sorry. I'm mostly mad at myself. I should have removed him months ago.”

My toe caught on a root and I nearly fell over as I tried to wrap my head around what she was saying. “He's been out here overnight? What could have happened to him? What does he do out here? We'll find him, I'm sure.”

“I don't know. I think we will. August is a real adventurer, but he's not stupid. This is really bad, Ash.”

“Wait, you said ‘remove him.' Are you going to take him away from his parents?”

She shook her head, still walking quickly ahead of me, and said, “Forget that for now. Let's just find him. We have to just find him.”

My head was spinning now, on top of my churning stomach. August had been out there all night long. I tried to imagine him smiling, sitting at the base of a tree with a piece of beef jerky in hand, talking to a chipmunk. But I couldn't hold on to the cheerful image. Unwanted pictures kept flashing before me: August, shivering in the dark; August, injured and crying; August, facedown in the fall leaves. The feeling was unbearable, like no other concern I'd ever felt. That wasn't even the word for it:
concern
. It was heartsickness and desperation—and I had known August for only a few months. I wondered how his parents were feeling at that moment. Desperation mixed with guilt. Those motherfuckers. I felt guilty now, too, for not seeing it all sooner. All of a sudden, I wanted to find them and push them into the forest floor, make them stay there all night. Whatever happens to them will be deserved, I thought. But August, we have to find August. Stay focused.

“Ash? Ash!” Bev was right beside me, yelling to break through my nightmarish thoughts.

“What?”

“You look pale. Are you okay? I need you to stay with me here.”

I rubbed my face with my hands. “Yeah, I'm okay. Should we be shouting his name? Let's do that.”

“Yes, okay,” Bev said. She seemed at least as frightened as I was, but not as confused. Bev had seen families like this, cases like this, no doubt. She was probably fighting back her own images of what had become of August, but hers would be more vivid and plausible because she'd seen it all before, I imagined.

We watched our feet as we walked along the uneven forest floor, veering close to each other and then back out again. I shouted August's name, loud and hoarse. It hardly sounded like my own voice and I wondered if the boy would recognize me if he heard it from afar. As I walked, I had a strange realization that this was the longest I'd gone in weeks without thinking of The Storms. The weather seemed insignificant all of a sudden. And then it didn't.
What if the weather changed tomorrow, before we find August, and he's trapped out here without a coat? What if the cloud cover gets so bad that he can't use the sun for direction and time?
This was fear compounded by fear.

I wanted to ask Bev how this works. How long do we look and what clues can we search for and where were the police... But we just kept going. Step, step, shout. Step, step, shout. After an hour, I excused myself to pee behind a large tree and check my phone, hoping to see a message from Pia. I wanted to tell her what was going on and ask her to join me. This was too hard without her. She would be a help and a comfort. But she hadn't called. As far as she knew, this was still a normal day in which she could stay mad for hours and wander back when the feeling faded.

I sent her a text:
August is missing. Please come home. I'm sorry for everything.

Within seconds, she responded:
I can be there in twenty. That's horrible.

I felt a small, unsatisfying flash of relief as I pushed my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, but then I was back in reality, looking for my lost seven-year-old friend. He was my friend. That was the word, I suppose. Or was I his mentor? His surrogate big brother? It wasn't the sort of friendship I'd had before, but I wasn't a parent, so what else could I have been?

I looked up to find Bev talking to August's parents. I wasn't close enough to hear what they were saying, but she was moving her hands around, giving them instructions.

When I approached them, Bev said, “These guys are going to go back to the house in case August shows up there. The police are moving toward us from the far end of this forest. Ash, if you're up for it, you and I can just keep pressing forward until we meet the cops. Hopefully, one of us will find something before that happens.”

Find something.
It sounded like a compromise in expectations and it made my head hurt.

“Yes, of course. Let's keep going.”

I sent Pia one more text explaining that we were too deep into the woods for her to meet us and that I would be back when I could. I wanted to hear her voice, but the reception was too poor for anything more than that. I looked back up at Bev The Social Worker and nodded. Let's keep going.

We walked for another hour. More yelling his name, mixed with feet crunching on branches, but no talking. There was nothing to say. It was starting to get dark and we didn't want to acknowledge what that could mean. I was hungry, or I would have been if I could feel anything other than panic and sickness. We just had to keep going.

“Hello?” a deep man's voice called from somewhere to our left.

“It's Bev and Ash,” Bev yelled back.

“We've got him,” the voice said.

Bev and I broke into an awkward run toward the voice until a large police officer came into focus. At first, we couldn't see him, but then the officer turned to reveal a tired, dirty August clinging to him piggyback-style. The boy's too-short pant legs wrapped around his torso. A smaller cop stood next to them, holding August's blue backpack and a large water bottle.

When August saw us, he released his hold and dropped to the ground, landing on his feet and sprinting toward us. For a moment, I wasn't sure who he was running to, but it was me. He gave me one quick squeeze around the neck as I crouched down and I wrapped my arms around his little body so hard it made him squirm. He was happy to see me, but a little confused by all the adult dramatics. He seemed fine.

“I made a sweet fort, Ash! But then it got so dark and I lost my compass and I had to stay in one place. That's an important rule of ranger safety: stay in one place if you're lost.”

I smiled. “Yes! Good thinking, buddy. Are you okay? Were you scared?”

August shrugged. “Yeah, I was a little scared.”

And that was it. We would get more from him later about where and how he made it through the night, but none of that mattered at that moment. We walked back through the woods in a long line with the officers at the front, followed by Bev The Social Worker, then me with August on my back. It took over an hour and my legs ached, but I was so grateful for the weight of his body and the sound of his soft breath near my ear. I was surprised he let me carry him like that for so long. We had never before touched beyond the occasional high five, but this felt perfectly natural. August fell asleep like that for the final stretch and I wondered what his parents would think when they saw me deliver him to them, his body melting into mine, in all its trusting vulnerability. “Attachment issues” is what Pia once called it. She said August seemed to have some attachment issues with his parents, which may have explained some of his neediness with me. It made more sense now, though I'd thought she was overreacting at the time.

August awoke as we approached his house and I watched his parents run out to make a big show of hugging him in front of us all. They had been terrified, no doubt, and were so grateful to have him back, but I saw them in a new light now and felt them unworthy of his return.

“Let's talk,” Bev said, nodding at the path that led to my house.

We thanked the officers and walked back to my home, which was invitingly warm and bright as we stepped into the kitchen. I kissed Pia long and hard and introduced her to the social worker. She put a pot of water on for tea, but Bev said she wasn't staying long.

“I wanted you to know that I'm taking August away,” Bev said. “This is the last straw for those two. Strictly between us, the officers searched their home and found illegal pain pills in several places. They're probably high right now. Who knows how long he had been out there before they noticed. He can't stay in that home.”

“But where will he go?” I took the kitchen chair opposite Bev and Pia sat down beside me.

“Into the foster care system. We will find a temporary home for him.” Bev shook her head. “It's not an easy case. August's parents don't abuse him, but they aren't present either. Neglect is easy to overlook, but it can be life-threatening, particularly because August just keeps wandering off. And who can blame him? It's awful in that house with those two zombies.”

I tried to imagine August moving away, into a different family, a different house. It didn't seem right. He would hate to be away from these woods and me and his stupid parents. He loved his parents. But I wasn't sure how to talk about this. I didn't have the language to navigate this world of social workers and foster care.

“What if...” I started. “Can you just wait? Do we have to do this now? What if I kept an eye on him? I could check on him every day, do activities with him. I could even make sure he eats a healthy meal each day.”

Bev shook her head. “Ash, you can't look after him
all day
. August is desperate for attention and boundaries right now and he's going to keep pushing limits and taking risks until someone provides him with that. Right now, he needs constant attention. Now, if you wanted to be a formal caregiver, that would be another question...”

Pia's eyes opened wide. “You mean, be his foster family?”

Bev shrugged, leaving the possibility out there on the table.

I raised my eyebrows at Pia. It sounded crazy, but maybe it wasn't crazy. Maybe this could save August; wonderful, weird August. She stared back at me in shock. I knew that look. We needed to talk. Of course I wouldn't commit us to something so big without a lot of discussion between us.

Bev understood. “It's not as simple as this. Any potential foster family needs to be thoroughly vetted. And you would need to be 100 percent on board with this idea. There can be no uncertainty.”