Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

It crossed her mind that he was having an affair. They hadn’t been physical in months, but that was never high on their to-do list. They were spooners. And besides, her husband was cuddlier than ever. She knew in her heart that unfaithfulness wasn’t a possibility.

What she couldn’t have known was that Tim had actually died months ago and the reason he made those day trips was to find the person who had murdered the child he’d joined forces with. Battle Creek and Lansing were false starts—in private conversation, Annie assured him that things sometimes took a moment to “geographically come together”—and he finally found his man in Flint. The killer was about thirty-five, on parole for exposing himself to a child. As he strangled him, the boy José receded while the brute strength of Tim Norris, enhanced by what felt like superpowers, took over. (Tim looked into the man’s eyes the entire time.) As the life went out of him, José the child could finally remember what had happened.

Ten years ago, in Kissimmee, Florida, a man outside a convenience store waved him over. He was dressed like a policeman, sort of, but his car was a regular one with a dent in the door and duct tape holding a headlight in place. He told José that something happened to his dad and he was there to take him to the police station. He wasn’t an aggressive kid and when the man’s tone became forceful, José got in. They traveled on dirt roads for an hour before pulling over. The man took him to a barn and said, “We’re going to do some things that you’re probably not going to enjoy—but that’s life. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t enjoy.” At five in the morning, José died from internal hemorrhaging. He was buried in a swamp.

All of the details flashed before Tim’s and José’s eyes as they strangled him. Tim saw the faces of two other children the man had killed too—one in Louisiana, one in Kansas—and felt their release, prompting the engineer-landlord, not the child-tenant, to offer a simple prayer: May you rest in peace. When he loosened his hold on the murderer, he was flooded with emotions belonging to José; for the first time since melding with Tim Norris, the boy yearned for his Kissimmee home. How he missed his parents! Tim and José cried for the hour it took to get back to Detroit and sang the popular song, José’s papi ’s favorite, that his family used to sing on weekend road trips:

Drawing on Tim’s more developed sense of regret, José felt a pang of guilt. Why hadn’t he bothered to contact his mother and father, his sisters? To see what they looked like now, where they lived, and if they were in good health? It didn’t seem “natural,” it was so selfish, so mean, even though Annie had already addressed the topic. She reminded all of them how the Guide informed them that those who returned wouldn’t give the parents and siblings they’d left behind much thought, and while that seemed callous, it was “as it should be.” Spying on the family one lost would only be a distraction, an encumbrance to effecting the moment of balance .

That day, they drove directly to the Meeting from Flint so that José could take his birthday cake. The Porter knew at a glance that José had fulfilled his purpose.

When he saw Annie, he was distraught, blurting out how he wanted to see mi papi y mi mama and what should he do? In her experience, the urge to visit family was nothing new—she encountered it in 90 percent of her children after their moment of balance. She took his hands in hers, noticing that he’d lost his blueness, which was expected when a mission was complete.

“I’m afraid there isn’t time for that, José,” she said gently. He bowed his head in sadness. “But your family will always be with you and I think you know that. They’re with you now.” José nodded and she knew the landlord Tim was helping the child to make sense of her words. “When you take your cake, don’t forget to thank Tim. And Tim—when you get home, don’t forget to thank José as well! Make sure. Sit in the driveway before you go in and thank him. It’s so important to thank those who’ve helped us in this world. In any world.”

José grew stronger during the Meeting, no longer preoccupied by the family he had lost. He sat listening to everyone with a smile on his face, and all of them could see that he had been released. When he blew out the candles, he thanked the landlord-tenants for their fellowship, and then he thanked Tim, saving Annie for last. He spoke to her in Spanish. The others became emotional, even though they couldn’t understand his words.

The Meeting ended with a raucous “Macarena” and the song stuck in their heads for more than a few days .

1.

Willow went through a thousand head trips about all the ways he was going to maneuver his neighbor into bed, then bam —there they were under the sheets, moaning and grinding away.

Nurse Dixie outmaneuvered him.

And he felt alive again, no shit.

—take that , Miranda!

She was almost thirty years younger, and it wasn’t just the freshness of her body that excited him. (Not that it wouldn’t have been enough.) No, it was the pure psychology behind her attraction, or his interpretation of it, anyway: that she likely had a thing for older men. Something about that theory was as hot as it was self-serving. And it wasn’t just the daddy thing that turned him on. It was the boldness of a youngster who said fuck it , who grabbed the old bull by the horns and took the perilous leap into AARP World. She wasn’t a knockout, but Jesus—the sly twist of her mouth, more pronounced than Adelaide’s, sent him over the edge.

The staying power of the things he loved in women always amazed him. The hair on their arms, the way they laughed or got shy when he looked in their eyes as they fucked, the sounds they made in bed while transported to another place. Women were a wild and messy feast. He loved the way they talked, the words they chose, hell, he loved the way they farted . The staying power of lovemaking itself amazed. By all rights, fornication was a foul, dumbly repetitive, crazy-stupid act, and that it managed to consistently transcend dropped the detective’s jaw. The way it could heal, the joy it brought, the intense spirituality of it—that fleeting fusion with all humanity. Willow got all misty and mystical just thinking about its divine puzzle.

“So how long you been a cop?”

“Longer than you’ve been on the planet.”

In the short while they’d known each other, they hadn’t really spoken all that much. Getting into bed hadn’t required the usual investment of time-consuming nonsense, which only spiked his crush. And now, just talking with the lady was one more aphrodisiac.

“Are you retired?”

“Not really,” he said. “I kind of have a new job”—he said it like that because he still couldn’t believe it—“that’s why I’m here in Macomb.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing Fast and Furious ?” she said, with a crooked smile.

“Those guys aren’t cops. But you tell me,” he said, referring to recent events.

“Well… you were pretty furious—and not too fast, I’ll give you that.”

She winked, cuddling up. They made out a while.

I could fall in love with this woman …

He got up to pee and then Dixie did the same as he went to the kitchen for Diet Dr Peppers. She came into the living room and sprawled on the couch, fishing a roach from her purse.