John Hart - The Last Child

“I’m good,” Johnny told him. “You know. Hanging in.”

The cop looked at his watch, then at Johnny’s grubby clothes and wild, black hair. It was forty minutes after six on a school day. “Any word from your father?” he asked.

“No.” Johnny tried to hide the sudden shame. “No word.”

“I’m sorry.”

The moment stretched, but the cop did not move. The brown eyes remained steady, and up close he looked just as big and calm as the first time he’d come to Johnny’s house. But that was another memory, so Johnny stared at the man’s thick wrist, the clean, blunt nails. His voice cracked when he spoke. “My mother got a letter once. She said he was in Chicago, maybe going to California.” A pause, eyes moving from hand to floor. “He’ll come back.”

Johnny said it with conviction. The cop nodded once and turned his head away. Spencer Merrimon had left two weeks after his daughter was grabbed. Too much pain. Too much guilt. His wife never let him forget that he was supposed to pick the girl up, never let him forget that she would not have been walking down the road at dusk if he’d only done what he was supposed to do.

“It wasn’t his fault,” Johnny said.

“I never said it was.”

“He was working. He forgot the time. It wasn’t his fault.”

“We all make mistakes, son. Every last one of us. Your father is a good man. Don’t you ever doubt that.”

“I don’t.” Sudden resentment in Johnny’s voice.

“It’s okay.”

“I never would.” Johnny felt the color fall out of his face. He could not remember the last time he’d spoken so much to a grown-up, but there was something about the cop. He was old as hell, like forty, but he never rushed things, and there was a warmth to his face, a kindness that didn’t seem fake or put on to trick a kid into trusting him. His eyes were always very still, and some part of Johnny hoped that he was a good enough cop to make things right. But it had been a year, and his sister was still gone. Johnny had to worry about the now, and in the now this cop was no friend.

There was Social Services, which was just waiting for an excuse; and then there were the things that Johnny did, the places he went when he cut school, the risks he took when he snuck out after midnight. If the cop knew what Johnny was doing, he would be forced to take action. Foster homes. The courts.

He would stop Johnny if he could.

“How’s your mom?” the cop asked. His eyes were intent, hand still on the cart.

“Tired,” Johnny said. “Lupus, you know. She tires easily.”

The cop frowned for the first time. “Last time I found you here, you told me she had Lyme disease.”

He was right. “No. I said she had lupus.”

The cop’s face softened and he lifted his hand from the cart. “There are people who want to help. People who understand.”

Suddenly, Johnny was angry. No one understood, and no one offered to help. Not ever. “She’s just under the weather. Just run down.”

The cop looked away from the lie, but his face remained sad. Johnny watched his gaze fall to the aspirin bottle, the tomato juice. From the way his eyes lingered, it was obvious that he knew more than most about drunks and drug abusers. “You’re not the only one who’s hurting, Johnny. You’re not alone.”

“Alone enough.”

The cop sighed deeply. He took a card from his shirt pocket and wrote a number on the back of it. He handed it to the boy. “If you ever need anything.” He looked determined. “Day or night. I mean it.”

Johnny glanced at the card, slipped it into the pocket of his jeans. “We’re fine,” he said, and pushed the cart around him. The cop dropped a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“If he ever hits you again…”

Johnny tensed.

“Or your mother…”

Johnny shrugged the hand off. “We’re fine,” he repeated. “I’ve got it covered.”

He pushed past the cop, terrified that he would stop him, that he would ask more questions or call one of the hard-faced women from Social Services.

The cart scraped against the counter at the register, and a large woman on a worn stool dipped her nose. She was new to the store, and Johnny saw the question in her face. He was thirteen but looked years younger. He pulled the hundred from his pocket and put it faceup on the conveyor belt. “Can you hurry, please?”

She popped gum and frowned. “Easy, sugar. Here we go.”

The cop lingered ten feet behind, and Johnny felt him there, eyes on his back as the fat lady rang up the groceries. Johnny forced himself to breathe, and after a minute, the cop walked past. “Keep that card,” he said.

“Okay.” Johnny could not bear to meet his eyes.

The cop turned, and his smile was not an easy one. “It’s always good to see you, Johnny.”

He left the store, visible through the broad plate glass. He walked past the station wagon, then turned and lingered for a moment. He looked through the window, then circled to check out the plate. Apparently satisfied, he approached his sedan and opened the door. Slipping into the gloom, he sat.

He waited.

Johnny tried to slow his heart, then reached for the change in the cashier’s damp and meaty hand.

The cop’s name was Clyde Lafayette Hunt. Detective. It said so on his card. Johnny had a collection of them tucked into his top drawer, hidden under his socks and a picture of his dad. He thought, at times, of the number on the card; but then he thought of orphanages and foster homes. He thought of his disappeared sister and of the lead pipe he kept between his bed and the wall that leaked cold air. He thought that the cop probably meant what he said. He was probably a good guy. But Johnny could never look at him without remembering Alyssa, and that kind of thinking required concentration. He had to picture her alive and smiling, not in a dirt-floored cellar or in the back of some car. She was twelve the last time he’d seen her. Twelve, with black hair, cut like a boy’s. The guy who saw what happened said she walked right up to the car, smiling even as the car door opened.

Smiling right up until somebody grabbed her.

Johnny heard that word all the time. Smiling . Like it was stuck in his head, a one-word recording he couldn’t shake. But he saw her face when he slept. He saw her looking back as the houses grew small. He saw the worry bloom, and he saw her scream.

Johnny realized that the cashier was staring, that his hand was still out, money in it, groceries bagged. She had one eyebrow up, jaw still working a wad of gum.

“You need something else, sugar?”

Johnny shied. He wadded the bills and stuffed them into his pocket. “No,” he said. “I don’t need anything else.”

She looked past him, to the store manager who stood behind a low glass partition. He followed her gaze, then reached for the bags. She shrugged and he left, walked out under a sky that had blued out while he shopped. He kept his eyes on his mother’s car and tried to ignore Detective Hunt. The bags made rasping sounds as they rubbed together. The milk sloshed, heavy on the right side. He put the bags in the backseat and hesitated. The cop was watching him from a car that angled out, less than twenty feet away. He gestured when Johnny straightened.

“I know how to drive,” Johnny said.

“I don’t doubt it.” The answer surprised Johnny. It’s like he was smiling. “I know you’re tough,” he said, and the smile was gone. “I know you can handle most things, but the law is the law.” Johnny stood taller. “I can’t let you drive.”

“I can’t leave the car here,” Johnny said. “It’s the only one we have.”

“I’ll take you home.”

Johnny said nothing. He wondered if the house still smelled of bourbon. He wondered if he’d put all of the pill bottles away.