Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

HE CAUGHT a streetcar home with the last seven cents in his pocket, and when he walked in at ten o’clock his wife sat him down in the kitchen and began to warm some meatless potato stew, moving quietly so as not to wake the baby. He summarized the events of the past few days, and she touched his forehead and kissed him there.

“You found her,” she said, her breath a current in his hair. “It’s finally over.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“We can go back to like we were before, Sam.”

She was as thin as a pretty ghost. He wasn’t at all sure that the months of searching could be ignored and written off, that time would gradually diminish everything like a sad town passed through on a speeding train, the glimpse of it fading into insignificance. “That would be nice,” he said.

She brought him his plate and put her arms around him where he sat. “I can’t believe it.”

The next day he got up with Christopher, changed him, and held him in his lap for a long time. They ate breakfast together, his son sitting on his legs and grabbing at everything. At eight o’clock he said to the baby, “Time to go start making some money so I can feed that hungry mouth.” He put on his good suit and took a quarter from his wife’s purse and rode the car down to Canal Street. Inside Krine’s main entrance, he stopped dead and looked around at the ceilings and plasterwork, smelled the dye in the new clothes and the light, polished smell of the glossy counters, inhaling it all like medicine. He waved at Gladys over in the men’s department and took the elevator up to the main office.

A new receptionist was in Krine’s anteroom. She greeted Sam with a neutral expression and asked him to take a seat while she went in to announce him. He sat there patiently, ready for the main floor.

The receptionist motioned him into the inner office and closed the door.

The owner was behind his desk, leaning back in his chair, one hand fisted on a stack of papers. “Hello, Mr. Simoneaux.”

“Mr. Krine.” Sam waited to be asked to sit down. After a long moment, it was obvious that he wouldn’t be asked to.

“It’s been a while. I’m surprised to see you, in fact.”

“I just came by to say I found the little girl and returned her to her mother.”

Krine looked at him but said nothing. They both seemed to be listening to the regulator clock on the wall next to the window. “I’m glad for her,” he finally said.

Sam grinned. “I was wondering if I could get my old job back.” He thought it odd that he had to explain what he wanted. They had an agreement.

Krine didn’t blink, and that frightened him.

“You’ve taken your own sweet time solving this problem. I thought you might take a month, at most. When you didn’t come back, I hired a good man to take your place. As a matter of fact I hired two, and they’ve worked out very well for us.”

Sam swallowed several times, feeling a chill in the center of his chest. “I thought we had a deal,” he said faintly.

“You know, I found out recently that that child’s father was killed as a result of trying to rescue her. Is that right?”

He looked at the clock, wondering how many minutes he had left in the office. A drop of sweat ran down from behind an ear. “More or less.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And I’m sorry to say we don’t need you as a floorwalker.”

He swallowed again and looked at the carpet, trying to make sense of the design. “Do you have any positions at all?”

“The big stores in town are cutting back a little. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing?” He held out a hand, palm up.

Krine picked up a folder of paperwork and stood. “Nothing,” he said, like a shot, and the meeting was over. “We have your number. If we ever need a floorwalker, we’ll call you.”

He took the elevator down and walked around the first floor as if he were shopping, touching the bright ties, the glossy shoes. He was tempted to straighten a rack of shoe-polish tins but pulled his hand back at the last moment. Across the store, one of the new floorwalkers was chatting with a well-dressed woman who’d come out of the café. Sam wanted a cup of the wonderful coffee the café brewed, but it was free only for employees. He turned around once in an aisle, taking a last look, then headed for the main doors. On the street he felt vaguely like an exile, glanced back once at the store’s Italianate façade, and began walking home. Three blocks off Canal Street, he remembered the Ambassador was leaving port in two days, and he changed direction down to the ferry landing. He wouldn’t play piano in a gangster’s bar or carry a gun for a bank or the city, so second mate, if he could get it, would suit him fine.

HIS WIFE’S FACE fell, and she sat down hard on the sagging mahogany settee in the front room. “You’ll be gone months at a time. I need you here.”

“You need the rent paid. The grocery bill.”

“I can get a little from Mom.”

“Hey, sometimes the boat lays over and I can take a train home for a couple days. Lots of the schedule’s down South.”

“And you’ll eat up your salary on train tickets and meals. Lucky, why can’t you just play music in town?”

He looked at the bright spot against the wall where his piano had been, a fine, booming instrument he’d bought with his mustering out pay. “I can’t get a good piano spot. This is New Orleans, darling. Everybody plays better than I do.”

She turned away, then leaned back against him. “What’ll they pay?”

“More than the last trip.”

“Put your arms around me.”

He kissed her nape, the backs of her pale ears.

“Lucky, when I walk up the street I see these nice houses with porches and big backyards. Sometimes I ask myself how anybody can afford to own a house, you know? To keep it up? Everybody I know rents.”

He took in a slow breath. “There’s a lot of businessmen in town, I guess. Store owners. Superintendents.” Out on the sidewalk someone passed by bouncing a basketball, the pneumatic pings rising for a time and then diminishing up the street. “I thought I could work my way up at Krine’s,” he said absently.

“This kidnapping dragged us down, baby.”

“I know.”

“I thought it would be over, but it isn’t.”

“I know that, too.”

She took in a sudden breath. “When do you leave?”

“Probably day after tomorrow.”

“Do you still have your nice Hamilton watch? The one Uncle Claude gave you for a wedding present?”

“Sure.”

She turned to face him. He thought she might want a kiss, but when she gave him a sad, complicated smile instead, he knew what she would say, and he looked away. “You have to sell it.”

THE AMBASSADOR wasn’t ready to steam for a week. The day before he was to leave, Sam received a call from a New Orleans assistant district attorney summoning him downtown to be deposed for an upcoming trial of the Whites in Kentucky. In an office of the federal building he met a slim young lawyer who asked him to write out a statement. He labored over four pages for an hour, signed off on them, and waited for the lawyer to step back into the room. Trying to imagine what would happen to the Whites was beyond him, but he had a dim notion that such people never saw the inside of a jail. He hoped, however, they could be fined enough to keep them away from anyone else’s children.

The glass in a mahogany door rattled, and the lawyer came in and reached for the deposition as he walked by.

Sam looked up at him. “Has the boy been in yet?”

“We took his statement yesterday. How’s the little girl doing?”