David Wiltse - The Edge of Sleep

The nurse stepped in front of him as he reached the lop of the hill. She appeared so suddenly that Jack wasn’t sure where she had come from unless she had been standing behind a tree. He did not remember having seen a nurse in a uniform at the camp before. Her’starched white dress and stockings and gleaming shoes seemed an intrusion into the rustic world of the camp.

“Your mother has been in an accident. I’ll take you to her,” the nurse said sternly. She turned immediately and walked toward the parking lot, which was just visible past Jack’s cabin.

Jack hesitated. He thought he knew the nurse, felt he had seen her somewhere before, but he didn’t know where. He looked around for a counselor to ask guidance. Was he allowed to leave the camp? Where was his mother? How hurt was she? It must be very serious for a nurse to come for him.

The nurse was well in front of him, walking quickly as if in a hurry. She turned once, looked at him, her face grim. It must be very, very serious.

“Come along now,” she said sharply before turning once more on her heel and striding determinedly toward the parking lot.

Jack looked once more for someone to tell where he was going, but there was no one so he hurried after the nurse. She walked as if she was going to leave without him if he fell behind, as if there was no time whatsoever to lose. She did not look back at him again.

At first Dee didn’t know if Tommy was following her or not, but she could not allow herself to worry about it. If they came, they came, and if not then she could always try again another time. Sometimes they wouldn’t follow because they didn’t understand, but she could not risk stopping to explain. She would usually sweep past the tail end of a group, brushing them at a tangent, already on her path out of the mall and into the safety of the car. If she knocked her boy away from the group with her message and into the gravity of her own orbit, then she succeeded, but if she did not, she did not loiter to be noticed. She did not argue or discuss with them, and she did not stay close to them. Let them follow her. She would not walk with them, she would not hold their hands. She would not delay so they could seek advice or tell their teachers or siblings or guardians. They would come because they responded to crisis and command-or they would not. Often enough, they did. Because they were the right age to understand the summons of authority, because they were the right age to dare to trust their own judgment in following her without further approval, because they were the right age to love their mothers enough to be foolish for them. But most of all. Dee was convinced, they came because she wanted them. Because she needed them. Because, after all, they really belonged to her and in their hearts they knew it. They longed to be with her as she longed to be with them. If they followed, then they were meant for each other. By the time she reached the parking lot. Dee knew that Jack was meant for her, too. She opened the back door of the car for him, still without looking back, and slid herself behind the wheel. There was no one else in the parking lot. No one else in sight anywhere. She could hear singing rising up from farther down the mountain.

The engine was started before Jack reached the car. When Dee heard the back door slam shut, she set the car in motion. In her rearview mirror she saw the blanket rise suddenly and then descend, like the wing of a giant bird.

Becker was washing his solitary dinner dish when the phone rang. He had fried a chicken sausage and given some thought to adding a green pepper to the skillet and making a sauce. The plan had been to create a sausage and pepper submarine sandwich of the type he could buy at a pizza restaurant. In the end, however, it had seemed like entirely too much trouble to go to for only himself and he had ended up by eating the sausage by itself and calling it a meal. The dish wasn’t even dirty since he had nibbled at the sausage while holding it over the skillet, but he washed it reflexively anyway. The idea of returning it unused to the cabinet was too depressing.

“It’s Malva,” said the voice on the phone and for a moment Becker thought excitedly that Karen was calling him. “Karen’s son has disappeared.”

Becker was still waiting for her to say that Deputy Assistant Director Crist wished to speak to him and at first the words made no sense. “What?”

“Director Crist’s son has disappeared from camp,” she said.

“Jack?” he asked stupidly.

“They noticed his absence about two hours ago. So far they’re considering it just a local matter. They think he might have gotten lost in the woods.”

“The lake,” Becker said, voicing his first thought. He remembered Jack battling the water so bravely. So ineptly. “Well… He probably just wandered off.”

“Of course.”

“Children do that,” Malva said.

“That’s probably it,” Becker agreed, trying to convince himself. He thought of Jack, his fear of the dark, his ambivalence about adventure. Just wandered off? Into the woods? “I don’t know that much about kids,” he said.

“They do it all the time, I believe,” Malva said. Becker could not remember if Malva had children of her own. Jack, wandering off by himself, gone for two hours so far? He could not make the connection with the act and the boy he knew.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“On her way to the camp.”

“Did they think it was necessary for her to go to the camp?”

“I believe she thought it was necessary,” Malva said. “Of course. How can I help?”

“I think she needs somebody,” Malva said.

“The closest task forces are in Albany and Boston,” Becker said. “It would take at least a day…”

“I don’t mean help in finding him,” Malva interrupted. “I don’t know exactly what the status of your relationship is, but… I think she could use someone now.”

“I’m on my way right now,” he said. “And Malva-thank you.”

“She’s a very special lady,” Malva said.

“I know.”

“… But not always as brave as she pretends to be. She’s still a woman.”

“Malva,” Becker said, “none of us are as brave as we pretend to be.”

He reached Wasaknee after the search had been halted because of darkness. Karen was installed in the camp office where a cot had been placed in a corner to serve as her bed for the night. When Becker stepped into the room she was conferring with the camp administrator, a middle-aged man who looked mildly ridiculous in his ragged jean shorts and camp T-shirt, and two local policemen who looked like brothers although they wore different name tags, both of them rail thin with faces that seemed to come to a point. All four of them listened attentively to Karen, who was issuing orders. Becker noticed that she was wearing her FBI insignia on the outside of her jacket. He wondered at what point she had changed from worried mother to search coordinator. She glanced at Becker when he entered but did not miss a beat in her instructions. Her eyes showed no recognition of him; he was as routinely observed as if he were another counselor stepping in to listen.

The two cops checked him out more thoroughly, but they were clearly taking their lead from Karen now, and if his presence didn’t bother her, it didn’t bother them, either.

Speaking calmly but with authority, Karen laid out the morning’s search procedures for the three men. She explained the principles of grid exploration, defined the methods of communication, established the manners of coordination. The administrator nervously nodded agreement with every sentence she uttered and the cops appeared awed by the lovely young woman with the commanding presence and the impressive badge.

Becker had to admire the performance himself. To an uninformed observer there would be no indication that this detached executive was the mother of the missing boy. Except for the eyes, he thought. They looked as if they had sunk deep within her face, as if she had not slept for weeks. They were haggard eyes, and frantic, and revealed the price she was paying for her outward calm. Becker wanted to take her in his arms and kiss the eyes until he healed them, but instead he sat on the edge of one of the three desks in the office and watched.