Фэнни Флэгг - The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop

It had been ten minutes. Should she go ahead and just call Mr. Merris? Or wait for him to call back? Oh Lord…she looked at the clock again. “What’s taking him so long?”

What had happened? And what authorities was Mr. Merris talking to?

The more time she had to think about it, the more she was convinced it must have been some kind of accident. A few years ago, a resident at the Manor had walked through a crosswalk without looking, and a truck had backed up and hit him. The poor man was so deaf he hadn’t heard the beeping. But that couldn’t have been the case with her daddy. He could hear, and he could see perfectly fine. He had just had his cataract operation a few years earlier. He’d had a new hip put in four years ago, and a top-of-the-line hearing aid. He’d been patched up as well as one could be at almost eighty-four. And it couldn’t have been a heart attack; they had just put in a pacemaker. Besides, Miss Poole had just said that whatever happened, had happened under “unusual” circumstances. What did she mean by unusual? He must have fallen. But falling wasn’t that unusual for people in their eighties. He fell all the time. Maybe this time he fell and hit his head on something. Oh no. She hoped he hadn’t suffered.

She looked up at the clock again.

Why hadn’t she gone out to see him last Wednesday? Why did she go to that stupid beauty makeover that day? Oh God, as usual, no matter how much you’d done for the person when they were alive, you’d forget the good, and the regrets would start marching in.

What should she do next, she wondered. Thank heavens he had written down his life history for her. She would make copies of it and give it to the kids. At least they would have that….Poor Daddy. He was so good. She had hoped to have more time with him.

There were so many more things she wished she’d asked him. Now it was too late.

MR. MERRIS STOOD out on the sidewalk wringing his hands, his dark brown toupee listing a little more toward his left eye than usual.

He and a few members of his staff were talking to a police officer, who was busy asking questions and taking down notes.

“Can you tell me what he was wearing when last seen?”

Mr. Merris turned to the bus driver. “Jerome, you saw him last. Do you remember?”

“Uh…khaki pants, and some sort of old tweed or plaid wool jacket. Red or green tie, maybe?”

As the policeman wrote down the description, a breathless young woman ran out of the building and handed him a photograph.

“This is the most recent one we have on file.”

The policeman took it and looked at it for a moment, then casually attached it to the top of his clipboard.

Mr. Merris, who was growing more frantic by the moment said, “Listen, officer…couldn’t you just go and find him? Do we really need to waste all this time filling out a report? I mean, how long does someone have to be missing before they are declared missing? As you can see, he’s a very old man, and I’m extremely concerned about his welfare.”

The officer looked at the photograph once again. “You say he has an arm missing?”

Mr. Merris nodded. “Yes…Well, sometimes.”

The officer looked up at him quizzically.

“He has a prosthesis.”

“A what?” asked the officer.

“An artificial arm.”

“Ahh…I see. Left or right?”

“Pardon?”

“Left or right arm?”

“Oh.”

Mr. Merris was unsure and turned to the nurse, who answered “Left.”

Mr. Merris repeated, “Left. Only sometimes he doesn’t wear it.”

The nurse added, “He always wears it on special occasions, though.”

The officer wrote on his report May or may not have a left arm. “So…would you say he is in ill health? Frail?”

“No, no. Not frail,” Mr. Merris said. “But he’s still an at-risk senior, missing for over six hours now. Not to mention that Mr. Threadgoode is also a member of a very prominent family.”

The officer looked up from his pad unfazed. “Is he an Alzheimer’s patient?”

Mr. Merris shook his head. “No, a little dementia perhaps.” The nurse nodded in agreement. “Maybe, just a little, but he’s certainly able to function.”

“Has he been depressed lately…any threats of suicide?”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” said Mr. Merris. “Mr. Threadgoode is more”—he turned to the activities director for help—“what would you say, Hattie? Upbeat?”

“Yes, he’s kind of a jokester, really. He’s very funny. Just last week he—”

Mr. Merris interrupted, “I just don’t understand how this could have happened, Officer. All the shuttle bus drivers at Briarwood are highly trained. They have strict rules to never, ever leave the parking lot until all the residents on the bus have been accounted for. But as I said before, the minute we realized Mr. Threadgoode was missing, Jerome immediately turned around and drove back to the church, but he was gone.”

Jerome confirmed. “I looked everywhere…checked the bathrooms and everything.”

The policeman flipped his pad shut and said, “Okeydokey, I think I have enough, so I’ll go ahead and issue a BOLO on him.”

“A what?” asked Mr. Merris, somewhat alarmed.

“Be on the Lookout alert.”

“Oh…well, good….And then what?”

“Then we hope we find him.”

RUTHIE LOOKED AT the clock. It had been over twenty-five minutes. Why wasn’t he calling? Should she just get in the car and go over there? What should she do? She felt so helpless. She had assumed that when this day did come, Brooks would be there by her side helping her, taking care of everything like he always did. Then it suddenly hit her. Now that Brooks and Daddy were both gone, she didn’t have anybody to turn to for help. She’d never felt so alone in her life.

A few years ago, the family lawyer had said that all of her father’s papers were in order, but she didn’t know any of the particulars. The only thing her father had told her was that when he passed away, she had a surprise coming. Lord only knows what it was. He was so silly. Always doing silly things, just to make you laugh.

At this point, she wasn’t sure how much money her father had left. She knew before her parents moved to Briarwood, he had spent a fortune on doctors and caregivers for her mother. But she really didn’t care. It was his to do with whatever he liked. He had worked hard all his life and had earned every penny.

She looked at the clock again.

Oh God. If she had it to do over, after her mother died, she would have insisted that he move in with her where she could have kept an eye on him. But on the other hand, he’d seemed to like it at the Manor. And he had made a lot of friends. If she had moved him in with her, her mother-in-law wouldn’t have been very nice to him.

She looked at the clock again. Why wasn’t Mr. Merris calling?

She dreaded telling the kids. She knew they would both be upset. She wondered if she should plan some service, or something.

She did know that he wanted to be buried in Whistle Stop in the Threadgoode family plot. She knew that. But she didn’t really know where the Whistle Stop cemetery was, or if it was even still there anymore. Then something else occurred to her. With Daddy gone, she was the last living Threadgoode.

BUD THREADGOODE HAD had a hunch the new bus driver was not very sharp. And since he was now seven miles away from Briarwood Manor, sitting in the Waffle House across the street from the Atlanta train station, he figured his assessment had been correct.

Earlier that morning, after the small white bus with BRIARWOOD MANOR DISTINCTIVE SENIOR LIVING written on the side pulled out of the Baptist church parking lot, Bud had come out of the church bathroom where he had been hiding. He’d looked out and saw that the bus was not coming back looking for him, and hightailed it over to the big Catholic church a few blocks away. He needed to find someone who would call a cab to pick him up and take him to the train station. Ruthie had just bought him a new Jitterbug cellphone, and Bud’s one big slipup was that he had been in such a hurry this morning, he’d left it on his dresser. But luckily, when he got there, people were still milling around the Catholic church parking lot. He asked a nice Mexican family who were just leaving if they would call him a cab, and the father said they would be happy to drive him. When they let him out across the street from the train station, he tried to pay them for the ride, but they wouldn’t take it. Instead, the tiny little grandmother in the back seat handed him an “Our Lady of Guadalupe” holy card, and he was glad to have it. With what he had planned to do, he needed all the help he could get.