Joyce Oates - Carthage

He took the water bottle. He drank.

Initially this morning they’d searched along the banks of the Nautauga River in the area in which the young corporal’s Jeep Wrangler had been parked. This was a stretch of river where fishermen came often, both marshy and rock-strewn; there were numerous footprints amid the rocks, overlaid upon one another, filled with water since a recent rain. Rescue dogs leapt forward barking excitedly having been given articles of the girl’s clothing to smell but soon lost the trail, if there was a trail, whimpered and drifted about clueless. Miles along the river curving and twisting through the rock-strewn land and then they’d decided to alter their strategy fanning out in more or less concentric circles from the Point. Some had searched for lost hikers and children previously in the Preserve and had their particular way of searching but Beechum County law enforcement strategy was to keep close together, only a few yards apart, though it was difficult where there was underbrush and masses of trees, yet the point was not to overlook what might have fallen to the ground, torn clothing in briars, scraped against a tree, any sign that the lost girl had passed this way, a crucial sign that might save her life.

The father listened to what was told to him, explained to him, with an air of calm. In any public gathering Zeno Mayfield presented himself as the most reasonable of men: a man you could trust.

He’d had a career as a man who addressed others, with unfailing intelligence, enthusiasm. But now, there was no opportunity for him to give orders to others. He felt a clutch of helplessness, in the Preserve. Tramping on foot, dependent upon his physical strength, not his more customary cunning.

But O God if his daughter was hurt. If his daughter had been hurt.

Not wanting to think if she’d fallen somewhere, if she’d broken a leg, if she lay unconscious, unable to hear them calling her, unable to respond. Trying not to think if she was nowhere within earshot, borne away in the fast-flowing river that was elevated after heavy rainstorms the previous week, thirty miles downstream to the west where the Nautauga River emptied into Lake Ontario.

Through the morning there were false alarms, false sightings. A female camper wearing a red shirt, staring at them as they approached her campsite. And her partner, another young woman, emerging from a tent, for a moment frightened, hostile.

Excuse us have you seen?

. . . girl of nineteen, looks younger. We think she is somewhere in the vicinity . . .

IN THE SEVENTH HOUR of the first-day’s search, early Sunday afternoon the father sighted his daughter ahead, less than one hundred yards away.

Jolted awake, shouting—“Cressida!”

A desperate run, a heedless run, down a steep incline as other searchers stopped in their tracks to stare.

Several saw what the father was seeing: on the farther bank of a narrow mountain stream where the girl had fallen or lain down exhausted to sleep.

Rivulets of sweat ran into the father’s eyes burning like acid. He was running clumsily downhill, sharp pains between his shoulder blades and in his legs. A great ungainly beast on its hind legs, staggering.

“Cressida!”

The daughter lay motionless on the farther side of the stream, part-hidden by underbrush. One of her limbs—a leg, or an arm—lay trailing into the stream. The father was shouting hoarsely—“Cressida!” He could not believe that his daughter was injured or broken but only just sleeping, waiting for him.

Others were approaching now, on the run. The father paid no heed to them, he was determined to reach his daughter first, to waken her, and lift her in his arms.

“Cressida! Honey! It’s me . . . ”

Zeno Mayfield was fifty-three years old. He had not run like this for years. Once he’d been an athlete—in high school a very long time ago. Now his heart was a massive fist in his chest. A sharp pain, a sequence of small sharp pains, struck between his shoulder blades. He ran on reckless, desperate, as if hoping to escape the sharp-darting pains. He was a tall deep-chested man with a broad muscled back; his hair was still thick, licorice-colored except where threaded with gray; his face that had been flushed from the exertion of hours in the Adirondack heat was now draining of blood, mottled and sickly; his heart was pounding so laboriously, it seemed to be drawing oxygen from his brain; at such a pace, he could not breathe; he could not think coherently: his thick clumsy legs could hardly keep him from falling. He was thinking She is all right. Of course, Cressida is all right. But when he reached the mountain stream he saw that the thing on the farther bank wasn’t his daughter but the carcass of a partly decomposed deer, a young doe, the still-beautiful head lacking antlers and a jagged bloody section of her chest torn away by scavengers.

The father cried out, in horror.

A choked animal-cry, as if he’d been kicked in the chest.

The father fell to his knees. All strength drained from his limbs.

He’d been searching for the daughter since ten o’clock that morning. And now he’d found his daughter asleep beside a little mountain stream like a girl in a child’s storybook and in front of his eyes his daughter had been transformed into a hideous decaying carcass.

Zeno Mayfield hadn’t wept since his mother’s death twelve years before. And then, he hadn’t wept like this. His body shook with sobs. A terrible pity for the killed and part-devoured doe overcame him.

His name was being called. Hands beneath his armpits, lifting.

Wanting to hide from them the obvious fact that he was having difficulty breathing. Pains between his shoulder blades had coalesced into a single piercing pain like cartoon zigzag lightning.

He’d insisted early that morning, he would join the search team in the Preserve. Of course, the father of the missing girl must search for her.

They had him on his feet now. The wounded beast swaying.

It is a terrible thing how swiftly a man’s strength can drain from him, like his pride.

These were young volunteers, Zeno didn’t know their names. But they knew his name: “Mr. Mayfield . . . ”

He pushed their hands from him. He was upright, and he was breathing normally again, or—almost.

Would’ve insisted upon returning to the search after a few minutes’ rest, lukewarm water out of the Evian bottle and a nervous splattering urination behind a lichen-pocked boulder but blackness rose inside his skull another time, to his shame he sighed and sank into it.

GOD TAKE ME instead of her. If you take anyone—take me.

TWO

Bride-to-Be

July 4, 2005

YES YOU KNOW. Know that I do. Of course—you know me.

How could you doubt me.

IT IS A SHOCK—of course. We are all—we are all very—sad . . .

No! Sad is what I said. We are all—everyone who loves you—and me—especially. We are sad.

NO, WAIT. We are very happy that you are alive, Brett, and returned to us of course.

We are not sad about that, we are very happy about that.

All those months we prayed. Prayed and prayed.

And now, you are returned home to us.

And now, you are returned to us.

I KNEW YOU would return of course—I never doubted.

Even when we were out of contact—when you were in combat—I did not doubt.

In that terrible place—how do you pronounce it—“Diyala” . . .

PLEASE BELIEVE ME, darling: I love you like always.

That is why I wanted us to be engaged before you left—in case there was something that happened . . . over there.

But you know me, I am . . . I am your girl.

I am your fiancée. Your bride-to-be.

That will not change.

EXCEPT NOW: there is so much for us to plan!