Joyce Oates - Carthage

In the front seat of the young man’s Jeep Wrangler there were said to be bloodstains. A smear of blood on the inside of the windshield on the passenger’s side, as if a bleeding face, or head, had been struck against it with some force.

Stray hairs, and a single clump of hair, dark in color as the hair of the missing girl, had been collected from the passenger’s seat and from the young man’s shirt.

Outside the vehicle there were no footprints—the shoulder of Sandhill Road was grassy, and then rocky, declining steeply to the fast-rushing Nautauga River.

The father didn’t (yet) know details. He knew that the young corporal had been taken into police custody having been found in a semiconscious alcoholic state inside his vehicle, haphazardly parked on a narrow unpaved road just inside the Nautauga Preserve, at about 8 A.M. of Sunday, July 10, 2005.

Allegedly, the young corporal, Brett Kincaid, was the last person to have seen Cressida Mayfield before her “disappearance.”

Kincaid was a friend of the Mayfield family, or had been. Until the previous week he’d been engaged to the missing girl’s older sister.

The father had tried to see him: just to speak to him!

To look the young corporal in the eye. To see how the young corporal looked at him.

The father had been refused. For the time being.

The young corporal was in custody. As news reports took care to note No arrests have yet been made.

How disorienting all this was!—the father who’d long prided himself on being smart, shrewd, just a little quicker and a little more informed than anyone else was likely to be in his vicinity, could not comprehend what seemed to be set out before him like cards dealt by a sinister dealer.

His life—his life of routine complex as the workings of an expensive watch, yet unfailingly in his control—had been so abruptly altered. Not just the surprise—the shock—of his daughter’s “disappearance” but the circumstances of the “disappearance.”

It was not possible that Cressida had lied to him and to her mother—and yet, obviously, it seemed that Cressida had lied.

At any rate, she’d told them less than the truth about where she’d planned to go the previous night.

How out of character this was! Cressida had always scorned lying as moral weakness. It was cowardice to care so much of others’ opinions, one would stoop to lie.

And that she’d met up with her sister’s ex-fiancé, at a lakeside inn—that was even more astonishing.

The Mayfields had to tell police officers—they’d had to tell them all that they knew. It wasn’t police procedure to search for an adult who has been missing for such a relatively short period of time unless “foul play” is suspected.

The father had to insist that he was concerned that his daughter was “lost” in the Nautauga Preserve even as he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the possibility that she’d been “hurt.”

Or, if “hurt”—“seriously hurt.”

Not wanting to think sexually abused, raped.

Not wanting to think And worse . . .

Cressida was nineteen but a very young nineteen. Small-boned, childlike in her demeanor, with the body of a young boy—lithe, narrow-hipped, flat-chested. The father had seen men—(not boys: men)—staring at Cressida, especially in summer when she wore baggy T-shirts, jeans or cutoffs, her striking face pale without makeup; staring at Cressida in a kind of baffled yearning as if trying to determine if she was a young girl or a young boy; and why, though they stared so avidly at her, she remained oblivious of them.

So far as her parents knew, Cressida was inexperienced with boys or men.

She had the puritan ferocity of one who scorns not so much sexual experience as any sort of shared and intimate physical experience.

As her sister Juliet had said Oh I am sure that Cressida has never been—you know—with anyone . . . I mean . . . I’m sure that she’s a . . .

Too sensitive of her sister’s feelings to say virgin.

THE FATHER WAS VERY EXCITED. Adrenaline ran in his veins, his heart beat with an unnatural urgency. Telling himself This is the excitement of the search. Knowing that Cressida is near.

He felt this, his daughter’s nearness. This man who never listened with any sort of sympathy to talk of such “mystical crap” as extrasensory perception had a conviction now, tramping through the Nautauga Preserve, that he could sense his daughter somewhere nearby. He could sense her thinking of him.

Even as with a part of his mind he understood that, if she’d been anywhere near the entrance to the Preserve, anywhere near Sandhill Road and Sandhill Point, someone would have found her by now.

For he was trained in the law, and he had by nature the lawyer’s temperament—doubt, questioning, more questioning.

For he was trained to respond Yes, but—?

The father thought how ironic, the daughter had never liked camping or hiking. Wilderness was boring to her, she’d said.

Meaning wilderness frightened her. Wilderness did not care for her.

He’d known other people like that, and all of them, perhaps by chance, women. The female is most secure in a confined space, a clearly designated space in which one’s identity is mirrored in others’ eyes: in such a place, one cannot become easily lost.

The rapacity of nature, Zeno thought. You never think of it when you’re in control. And when you’re no longer in control, it’s too late.

The father glanced upward, anxiously. High overhead, just visible through the dense pine boughs, a hawk—two hawks—red-shouldered hawks hunting together in long swooping arcs.

Vivid against the sky then suddenly plummeting, gone.

He’d seen owls swoop to the kill. An owl is a feathery killing machine and silent at such times when the only outcry is the cry of the prey.

Underfoot as he pushed through briars were scuttling things—rabbits, pack rats—a family of skunks—snakes. From somewhere close by the liquidy-gobbling cries of wild turkeys.

Wilderness too vast for the girl, the younger daughter. Zeno had not liked that in her: giving up too easily. Claiming she was bored, wanted to go home to her books and “art.”

Needing to squeeze all that she could into her brain. And you can’t squeeze three hundred thousand acres into a brain.

Cressida don’t do this to us! If you are somewhere close by let us know.

The father had grown hoarse calling the daughter’s name. It was a foolish waste of energy, he knew—none of the other volunteer searchers was calling the girl’s name.

From remarks made to him, and within his hearing, the father gathered that other, younger searchers were impressed with him, so far: a man of his age, much older than they, apparently an experienced hiker, in reasonably good physical condition.

At the start of the search this seemed so, at least.

“Mr. Mayfield? Here.”

He’d drunk his water too quickly. Breathing through his mouth which isn’t recommended for a serious hiker.

“Thanks, I’m OK. You’ll need it for yourself.”

“Mr. Mayfield, take it. I’ve got another bottle.”

The young man, sleek-muscled, lean, like a greyhound or a whippet—one of the Beechum County deputies, in T-shirt, shorts, hiking boots. The father wondered if the deputy was someone who knew his daughter—either of his daughters. He wondered if the deputy knew more about what might have happened to Cressida than he, the father, had yet been allowed to know.

The father was the kind of man more comfortable overseeing others, pressing favors upon others, than accepting favors himself. The father was a man who prided himself on being strong, protective.

Still, it isn’t a good idea to become dehydrated. Light-headed. Random rushes of adrenaline leave you depleted, exhausted.