The Ordways (24 page)

Meanwhile he grew more observant of children—with unhappy results. Where before he had never paid much attention to kids, now he looked closely at every one; and where before kids had all seemed to him more or less alike, now he was amazed to discover how different they could be. And in becoming more observant, he could not help remarking how many—alas, almost all of them, he did believe—were so much cuter, and how many so much quicker-looking than his boy.

Poor little fellow. It was not his fault that he was homely. No, indeed. Whose fault that was, said my grandfather to himself, was as plain as the nose on your face. And not only the nose.

What my grandfather could never understand was what the Vinsons had seen in Ned to make them do it. He would look at the photograph where it lay among the things emptied from his pocket on his nightstand, and he never ceased to wonder. Of course, being your own, you loved him—especially when, he thought, catching sight of himself in the washstand mirror, especially when he so plainly
was
your own. But sometimes he almost felt that he had cheated the Vinsons.

Some answered quickly and some answered slowly, but all answered no. Then it was turn around and go back to the last fork in the road and go down the other way. And maybe then go back to the fork before that and take the road not taken there. And so he almost went past without stopping to ask, and collect another no from, the bearded rheumy-eyed old-timer feeding cane to his sorghum mill by the roadside. He did stop, did ask, but did not listen to the reply, heard it only as it echoed afterwards in his mind. He stopped to watch the blindfolded mule hitched to the mill crank plodding round and round and around. Stopped to listen to the snap of the cane as it was fed into the jaws of the mill, the crunch as the millstone bit down on it. Stopped to savor the smell of the running juice. What was that? Said yas, believed he had seen some folks like them. They'd stopped the wagon to eat a bite of dinner. He'd been eating his on the other side of the fencerow. Two little boys, one of them that un there in the tintype, had come on him as they played.

He had become so attuned to disappointment that he was now suspicious of any encouragement, and his manner with this old man resembled that of a policeman grilling a suspect. Whereupon the old fellow supplied him with a description of Will Vinson which he committed to memory to serve him in future, wherever his quest should take him.

“Blink-eyed feller, sandy-haired, medium-complected, stood about five foot ten, pigeon-toed, old carbuncle scar just under his right ear here, had a slow grin and a real hardworking Adam's apple?” In five minutes this old man had noticed more about Will Vinson than he had noticed in five years.

But two days later—and just fifteen miles farther along, such was the character of the road the old man had sent him down—he had encountered not one further word of confirmation, was beginning to suspect that old boy of all sorts of things, including being in Will Vinson's pay to steer him wrong. He had gone through two settlements, two holes in the road, where his approach had been heralded by a squadron of bare-bottomed little sentinels who spied him from half a mile off and ran howling to their respective homes that mamma, mamma, somebody was a-comin—yet of the Vinsons nobody had seen hide nor hair. The third such place, which he vowed would be the last, being still farther back in the sticks, was even smaller than the first two. The men on the gallery of the general store, all chewing rhythmically like a ruminating herd, watched him descend from the wagon, listened to his story, spat as one, ran their tongues around their cheeks to collect the stray bits of tobacco, spat collectively again, and allowed as how they couldn't none of them recollect no such folks as that. The women rolled up their aprons and filled their lips with snuff, and the children all shook their heads just about off, and my grandfather was on the point of climbing aboard his wagon, turning around and going back, stopping only to curse the old devil who had sent him on this wild goose chase, when:

“I seen em.”

Who had spoken? No one.

“I seen em.” And from beneath the gallery, like the moon coming up, rose a saucer-shaped face belonging to a tousleheaded lad of perhaps fourteen. “I seen them folks,” he said.

A number of heads were meaningfully shaken in my grandfather's direction, and the man standing on his left whispered in his ear, “Not quite one hundred per cent. We all humor him.” The way he accented that “we” suggested that it would be taken as a very Christian thing if Mr. Ordway humored him too. So he swallowed down the hope that had gone sour in his mouth, assumed a smile, and one of the men, contriving to beam at the boy while shaking his head sadly at the crowd, said, “Tell us whereabouts you seen them, Lightnin.”

“Seen em rat here,” said the youth. “Early in the mornin. Ever'body asleep but me.”

“And I reckon that's true, too,” said one man with a hearty nod. “That boy is always out and doing 'fore anybody else is up.”

“Papa, mamma, and four younguns, just like the man there said,” said the youth, and the locals all nodded at my grandfather as if they were proud of him—of him, not the boy.

“And a dog. Just like the man said.” And again everybody gave my grandfather an encouraging nod.

“Not quite all there, you understand,” said my grandfather's neighbor. “But, Lord, it'll save him lots of heartache, won't it?”

“Boy's daddy, sir,” said my grandfather's neighbor on the other side, into the ear which he commanded. My grandfather hoped that the man intended was seated at some distance off, because that whisper had not been any too soft. However, it was not meant to be. It was an introduction, and following his neighbor's nod, my grandfather found himself saluted by the modest father. Meanwhile, raising his voice, the gentleman at his elbow continued, “Pet of the whole place, that boy. Never gives no trouble. Always comes when called. Eats anything you set before him. Don't know the meaning of sass.
There's
a boy that won't never grow up to bring shame on his family. There's
one
boy that'll never come to curse his poor old father, nor leave home to take up with some woman, will you, sonny? No, sir! There's a boy that'll never run off and join the Navy, will you, son? What I say is, the world'd be a lot better place to live in if we had more like that boy. I reckon you ain't much worried what'd become of that boy if anything was to ever happen to you, air you, Dub? Everybody knows which little feller gets the call whenever there's any pans to be licked here in south Saddleblanket!”

“Felix,” said the youth.

“How's that, son?” said my grandfather's neighbor.

“Felix. That's what the man called one of them little boys. I jist wusht I had a purty name like that—Felix—'stead of Hubert.”

Following that road my grandfather found himself, by a different approach, and three weeks after his first visit there, in Paris, the town through which Will Vinson had been too stupid and too countrified to realize lay his safest passage.

$125

REWARD

for information leading to the recovery of Edward (“Ned”) Ordway. 3 yrs old. Blond. Blue eyes. Slight. Stolen from home near Clarksville, Red River County, Tex., on May 7, this year, by WILL VINSON. About 35 yrs age. Medium build. Medium complexion. Farmer by trade. Fled west by wagon in company of wife Fern and 3 Vinson children—Felix (3 yrs) Perry (2 yrs) and Grace (9 mos). Also large collie dog named Rex. Samuel Ordway, father of the stolen child, will be at the Ben Milam Hotel, Paris, on Sat. Oct. 29. All communications held in strictest confidence.

“Something the matter with it?” asked my grandfather. “If you catch any mistakes I'd be much obliged to you for correcting them. I don't pretend …”

“No,” said the printer. “No, it's all spelled and punctuated right.”

“Then why are you shaking your head?”

“Well, first of all,” said the printer, “I can't help wondering at that figure. I mean, why one hundred and twenty-five exactly?”

That was just what my grandfather had been afraid he might say. Arriving at that figure had cost him quite a lot of thought, not to say distress, and he was still feeling far from sure about it. How much, in dollars, was it worth to a man to recover his lost child? Impossible to say. Offensive to try. What did you do when you had to try, had to say? It was complicated by other painful considerations too. He had started off by thinking of $100, mainly because it was just about the most he could think of putting out. It seemed to trumpet aloud his guilty conscience. His indifference to his boy, his six months' ignorance of Will Vinson's love for him, stood proclaimed by that display of atonement, that bid for public opinion. What was more, another reaction had to be foreseen. To anger people by an intimation that his child was worth more than theirs would not help his cause. And yet there would be others (there would even be some of those very same ones whom the offer of $100 would have offended as excessive) who would call him a tightwad and a bad father if he offered only $50. There really was no acceptable sum. The trouble with $75 was that it was neither $50 nor $100. It lacked the humility of the one, it fell short of the unreserved self-disclosure of the other. How painful it was, how humiliating, how terribly embarrassing even though one were all alone, to have to consider the matter in this way, to have to calculate one's effect and weight the public response; yet it had to be done. My grandfather had chosen to stand accused of having learned too late to value his child, and of overvaluing him now, rather than of stinting on the price of getting him back, and decided to post a reward of $100. It was the most he could afford. No sooner had he put it that way than he was forced to ask himself, had Will Vinson considered how much he could afford when he took his boy? Thus, because it was more than he could afford: $125.

“Well, never mind. Just wondered,” said the printer. “Anyhow, you spread it around that you're carrying that kind of money on you, you're just asking to get knocked on the head in some back alley one dark night. Furthermore, you got any more youngsters? Have? Well…”

And I was afraid he might say it was too little! said my grandfather to himself. “What would you think would be about the right amount?” he asked.

“Well, yours is the first case of a
stolen
boy we have had,” the printer said. “Get a good many calls for bills for
runaway
boys. Keep the form in the lock-up, in fact. Hard to say. You want to get out as light as you can, naturally; on the other hand you don't want to look chinchy—after all, it's your own flesh and blood. On runaway boys they generally offer ten dollars. The last man put up fifteen, but that was for a boy already working age—nearly twelve. But people like to turn in a runaway boy. They can put theirselves in the father's place. You don't have to offer much inducement. I reckon you will have more resistance to overcome. In your case I would think you might have to go as high as fifty. That ought to be a big enough sum to induce the average fellow to tell you if he knows anything.”

“Truth is,” said my grandfather, “anybody who gave me the information I'm after really wouldn't have anything to fear. I'm not just trying to save money in saying that—you've seen that I was ready to offer more than you suggest. But Will Vinson is actually a very mild-mannered fellow—last man on earth you would ever expect to steal his neighbor's child and run off. But I realize that other people don't know Will like I do, and would think they ought to be paid for the risk they would run in—”

“I've got a better out,” said the printer. “Don't offer nothing. That is, don't specify any sum. Just say, ‘Reward,' and let it go at that. That way nobody will think you're trying to get out cheap nor others that you're willing to pay just anything and try to hold you up. Who knows? When the time comes you may have to go as high as fifty—maybe higher. But as long as you haven't shown your hand, there's always a hope of getting out lighter. It's going to depend on who you have to deal with. You just may strike some rounder who'll be happy with five dollars to blow on hooch.”

“I begin to see there's an awful lot I hadn't taken into account,” said my grandfather, who as a matter of fact had once considered offering no reward, but for a very different reason: he had thought it just might be insulting to any prospective informant to suggest that he would expect pay for helping a father recover his lost child.

“This ain't a very full description,” said the printer. “I'm not just trying to run up your typesetting bill, but this ain't much to go on.”

“Here. Here's a picture of my boy,” said my grandfather. “Maybe you can describe him better than I can. You're a man of words. And you know, you never see your own clearly.”

The printer studied the photograph, and my grandfather studied him. He kept a straight face; still my grandfather could see that he found it hard to understand why anybody, much less a man with children of his own, should want to steal that boy. “Hmm,” he said, “I guess you have said about all there is to say. I suppose they all look pretty much alike at that age.” He passed back the picture. “What about the man? Wilson?”

“Vinson. I haven't got any picture of him. He seen to that. He took them all with him when he left.”

“Clever,” said the printer—a word which my grandfather had not previously thought of in connection with Will Vinson.

“So far as describing him is concerned, though,” said my grandfather, “I don't know that it would help much if we did have a picture. Like I say, to look at him Will was just the last fellow on earth you would ever expect—”

“No mustache? A gold crown? Sideburns? Tattoo?”

“Ho, no! Will certainly wasn't the kind ever to get himself tattooed! No, no, you're way off. Unnoticeable! Why, he had lived in and around Clarksville all his life, and yet after this all happened people would come up to me and say, ‘Will Vinson. Who is Will Vinson?' And Clarksville, you realize, ain't all that big a place.”