Frederick Busch: Girls

The teacher who sent for me, Randolph Strodemaster, was a big, noisy man who couldn’t decide whether to be a small-town local booster or a big-shot physics professor. He lived in a hamlet a few miles from school. It straddled a river and once supported a leatherworking industry. He knew its history and told it, he was a member of its volunteer fire department, he served bready meatballs and sticky spaghetti at their fund-raising dinners, and he was said to incorporate small-town lore into his lectures on quasars and quarks. He was supposed to be important for his work, at least in his department. He liked me, I figured, because I was as big as he was, and because I was local and because I didn’t know anything about his profession and because I was a campus cop. He was the kind of man who made it his business to know the deputies and EMTs and the men who hauled gravel from the bed to the construction site. He did his own masonry, and he had rented a backhoe and run it himself when he had to lay in a leach field for his waste-disposal system. He was famous in his town, I was told, for making a mess of his sewage.

“Randy,” I said at his door. He was in the new science building, which, as far as I could see, consisted of empty classrooms and small offices with expensive-looking furniture. It smelled of electricity.

“Jack, boy,” he said. “Thank you.”

“What’d I do?”

“You came up.”

“You sent for me.”

“Tell me you came because we’re friends.”

I said, “Randy, damned right.”

“Good man.” He stood, took a sport coat from an upholstered chair, moved the chair a quarter of an inch, and motioned me to sit in it. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that showed the bunchy muscles in his arms and shoulders. I should have known that he lifted. He probably worked out with the football team. His gold-rimmed glasses had slipped down his nose and as he sat he pushed them back up.

“I’m not just an asshole who teaches hard science, Jack.”

I waited.

“I’m a pretty good guy.”

Why not? I nodded.

“I live in a pretty good town.”

“I heard it was nice there.”

“Heaven on earth,” he chanted. “You know who else lives there?”

I shook my head.

“The Tanners,” he said.

“Who? Oh, the family. Of the—”

“The little girl, Janice. The one who’s missing,” he said. His big, hard face looked like a slab of light oak with a line of dark grain where the mouth should be. He looked like those movie heroes who swing through windows on a rope, gun firing, muscles jumping, the hard lines of the mouth showing how upset they are with evildoers. He had big hands with long fingers and thick, broad nails. They moved on each other, like he had a rash or like each hand gave the other one comfort. I didn’t know him well and I didn’t want to. I never trusted men who tried too hard to make me like them. I never knew why they would. And he looked as sad as anyone I’d seen since sunrise.

I said, “The state guys might find her. They’re good.”

“They’re good,” he said.

“You think she’s in trouble? You think she didn’t just run away?”

“They waited a week, Jack. They had the cops in two days, state the same night, they waited until a week was out, and then they did the posters up and started running ads — you know, they did what you can do. Meanwhile, the fuzz are doing what they can do. And it’s not enough. And they know their child. She’s one of those ‘go to church, join the cheerleaders, do your homework and help Mom with the chores’ kids. She wouldn’t run away. I know her. I really think they’re right. A lot of us do. The fuzz keep hoping she took off, so then they won’t have to run a search and try to find her and admit they can’t.”

It was when he said “fuzz” that I remembered. He’d been very active in the seventies, I’d heard, protesting against the war. I’d been told how he prided himself on getting arrested a couple of times for demonstrating against Richard Nixon. His glasses caught the light, his muscles moved heavily under the tight cotton shirt, and he smiled, like we shared a feeling.

“I guess that’s it,” I said. “Everybody’s doing whatever you can do when a kid disappears. She looks like a sweet kid in the posters.”

“She’s terrific. She’s like my own daughter, Jack. I’m wondering about one thing more. The pigs are grunting — no offense, all right? — and I think maybe they’ll get the FBI involved. After a while. But that’s mostly big-pigs stuff. And meanwhile, there’s this splendid family and their gorgeous little missing daughter, and the parents don’t understand law enforcement. They’re very simple people. Quite brilliant in certain ways. They’re religious, and I don’t understand religion, but I understand people. Teaching’s about people. Right? So’s your line of work, here on campus. We know about people, don’t we? You can imagine the agony they’re in.”

I wanted to say that I did, but I heard myself say, “I can?”

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Jack. I know what you did when you went after that kid who walked up into the woods, all coked out or whatever, and she nearly died and you got her down. Archie said what you were was tender. You mind being called that? You think it damages your reputation? You’re a man called tender by a man who ought to know.”

“My good friend Archie.”

“This shit matters, Jack. It’s a little girl. They’re so frightened. They’re so thrown by this.”

“The state guys are good,” I said. “They’re excellent.”

“Can you explain that to the Tanners?”

“Why do you need me to do that? Because I’m so tender?”

“Because of your history.”

I was standing then. “What’s that supposed to mean.”

“I know about the child. Your child.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? And who told you about our life?”

“Archie Halpern.”

“He wants me involved in this?”

“I talked to him before I talked to you.”

“So he could leak my life to you.”

“All he did was tell me a little about your service record and that you lost someone — a child. Because we need to help the Tanners find theirs. Now, given your history, and seeing your face now, I can understand your not wanting to get involved. You’re a human being, too, and it makes sense. You want to stay out, you stay out. You feel this way, I think you should. You sit it out because you need to, that’s what you do and you get my vote. All right? Hey. I’m your friend either way.”

“I thought you needed me, because I’m so terribly tender and an ex-MP, to tell them how the state cops will work very hard to try to find her.”

“Then that,” he said. “The point is, you can do that or not. You call it. What I don’t want is you hurting yourself over this. This is me and you, Jack.” He didn’t look like a smiling small-town Rotarian in training. He didn’t look like one of the goofier professors. He looked like a very serious man with a terrible headache and red-shot eyes and oily skin.

I said, “No.”

“You can say that and nobody respects you any the less.”

“And I really don’t give a goddamn about what you can do about my job. I get fired, I get fired. So get this completely straight. Don’t you talk about me and my wife and our — our — Don’t talk about us like we’re some kind of story to tell when you and your friends drink sherry. Understand me?”

“I hate sherry,” he said.

“Not cute. Don’t. And don’t ever talk to me about it. All right? Go do your life and leave me in mine, and we’re finished. No more after now, starting now. We’re done.”