The Summer of the Swans (6 page)

“What’s the hurry?” she called.

“Charlie’s missing. I’m going to see if he’s down at the lake.”

“I’ll go with you.” She came down the steps, calling over her shoulder, “Mom, I’m going to help Sara look for Charlie.”

“Not in those curlers you’re not.”

“Mom, I’ve got on a scarf. Nobody can even tell it’s rolled.”

“Yeah, everyone will just think you have real bumpy hair,” Sara said.

“Oh, hush. Now what’s all this about Charlie?”

“We couldn’t find him this morning and I think he might have got up during the night and gone to see the swans. He acted awful when we had to leave.”

“I know. I saw you dragging him up the street last night.”

“I had to. It was the only way I could get him home. It was black dark. You couldn’t even see the swans and he still wouldn’t come home.”

“I hope he’s all right.”

“He’s probably sitting down there looking at the swans, holding onto the grass, and I’m going to have to drag him up the hill screaming all over again. He’s strong when he wants to be, you know that?”

“Hey, you’ve got your shoes on.”

“Yeah, but they’re still wet.”

“You’ll probably have puce feet before the day’s over.

“That’s all I need.”

They turned and crossed the field at the bottom of the hill.

“Let’s hurry because Aunt Willie is at this moment getting ready to call the police.”

“Really?”

“She’s sitting by the phone now. She’s got her little card out with all her emergency numbers on it and her finger is pointing right to
POLICE.”

“Remember that time the old man got lost in the woods? What was his name?”

“Uncle somebody.”

“And they organized a posse of college boys and the Red Cross brought coffee and everything, and then they found the old man asleep in his house the next morning. He was on a picnic and had got bored and just went home.”

“Don’t remind me. Probably as soon as Aunt Willie calls the police we’ll find Charlie in the bathroom or somewhere.”

They came through the trees and into the clearing around the lake. Neither spoke.

“Yesterday he was sitting right here,” Sara said finally. “Charlie! Charlie!”

There was no answer, but the swans turned abruptly and began to glide to the other side of the lake. Sara felt her shoulders sag and she rammed her hands into her back pockets.

“Something really has happened to him,” she said. “I know it now.”

“Probably not, Sara.”

“I
know
it now. Sometimes you just know terrible things. I get a feeling in my neck, like my shoulders have come unhinged or something, when an awful thing happens.

Mary put one hand on her arm. “Maybe he’s hiding somewhere.”

“He can’t even do that right. If he’s playing hide-and-seek, as soon as he’s hidden he starts looking out to see how the game’s going. He just can’t—”

“Maybe he’s at the store or up at the Dairy Queen. I could run up to the drugstore.”

“No, something’s happened to him.”

They stood at the edge of the water. Sara looked at the swans without seeing them.

Mary called, “Charlie! Charlie!” Her kerchief slipped off and she retied it over her rollers. “Charlie!”

“I was so sure he’d be here,” Sara said. “I wasn’t even worried because I knew he would be sitting right here. Now I don’t know what to do.”

“Let’s go back to the house. Maybe he’s there now.”

“I know he won’t be.”

“Well, don’t get discouraged until we see.” She took Sara by the arm and started walking through the trees. “You know who you sound like? Remember when Mary Louise was up for class president and she kept saying, ‘I know I won’t get it. I know I won’t get it.’ For three days that was all she said.”

“And she didn’t get it.”

“Well, I just meant you sounded like her, your voice or something,” Mary explained quickly. “Now, come on.”

W
hen Sara entered the house with Mary, Aunt Willie was still sitting at the telephone. She was saying, “And there’s not a trace of him.” She paused in her conversation to ask, “Did you find him?” and when Sara shook her head, she said into the telephone, “I’m hanging up now, Midge, so I can call the police. Sara just came in and he wasn’t at the lake.”

She hung up, took her card of emergency phone numbers and began to dial.

There was something final about calling the police and Sara said, “Aunt Willie, don’t call yet. Maybe—”

“I’m calling. A hundred elephants couldn’t stop me.

“Maybe he’s at somebody’s house,” Mary said. “One time my brother went in the Hutchinsons’ to watch TV and we—”

“Hello, is this the police department? I want to report a missing child.”

She looked up at Sara, started to say something, then turned back to her telephone conversation. “Yes, a missing child, a boy, ten, Charlie Godfrey. G-o-d-f-r-e-y.” Pause. “Eighteen-oh-eight Cass Street. This is Willamina Godfrey, his aunt. I’m in charge.” She paused, then said, “Yes, since last night.” She listened again. “No, I don’t know what time. We woke up this morning, he was gone. That’s all.” She listened and as she answered again her voice began to rise with concern and anger. “No, I could not ask his friends about him because he doesn’t have any friends. His brain was injured when he was three years old and that is why I am so concerned. This is not a ten-year-old boy who can go out and come home when he feels like it. This is not a boy who’s going to run out and break street lights and spend the night in some garage, if that’s what you’re thinking. This is a boy, I’m telling you, who can be lost and afraid three blocks from home and cannot speak one word to ask for help. Now are you going to come out here or aren’t you?”

She paused, said, “Yes, yes,” then grudgingly, “And thank you.” She hung up the receiver and looked at Sara. “They’re coming.”

“What did they say?”

“They said they’re coming. That’s all.” She rose in agitation and began to walk into the living room. “Oh, why don’t they hurry!”

“Aunt Willie, they just hung up the telephone.”

“I know.” She went to the front door and then came back, nervously slapping her hands together. “Where can he
be
?”

“My brother was always getting lost when he was little,” Mary said.

“I stood right in this house, in that room,” Aunt Willie interrupted. She pointed toward the front bedroom. “And I promised your mother, Sara, that I would look after Charlie all my life. I promised your mother nothing would ever happen to Charlie as long as there was breath in my body, and now look. Look! Where is this boy I’m taking such good care of?” She threw her hands into the air. “Vanished without a trace, that’s where.”

“Aunt Willie, you can’t watch him every minute.”

“Why not? Why can’t I? What have I got more important in my life than looking after that boy? Only one thing more important than Charlie. Only one thing—that devil television there.”

“Aunt Willie—”

“Oh, yes, that devil television. I was sitting right in that chair last night and he wanted me to sew on one button for him but I was too busy with the television. I’ll tell you what I should have told your mother six years ago. I should have told her, ‘Sure, I’ll be glad to look after Charlie except when there’s something good on television. I’ll be glad to watch him in my spare time.’ My tongue should fall out on the floor for promising to look after your brother and not doing it.”

She went back to the doorway. “There are a hundred things that could have happened to him. He could have fallen into one of those ravines in the woods. He could be lost up at the old mine. He could be at the bottom of the lake. He could be kidnaped.” Sara and Mary stood in silence as she named the tragedies that could have befallen Charlie.

Sara said, “Well, he could not have been kidnaped, because anybody would know we don’t have any money for ransom.”

“That wouldn’t stop some people. Where are those policemen?”

Sara looked down at the table beside the television and saw a picture Charlie had drawn of himself on tablet paper. The head and body were circles of the same size, the ears and eyes overlapping smaller circles, the arms and legs were elongated balloons. He had started printing his name below the picture, but had completed only two letters before he had gone out to make the tent. The C was backward.

Wanda had bought him the tablet and crayons two days ago and he had done this one picture with the brown crayon. It gave Sara a sick feeling to see it because something about the picture, the smallness, the unfinished quality, made it look somehow very much like Charlie.

Aunt Willie said, “When you want the police they are always a hundred miles away bothering criminals.”

“They’re on their way. They said so,” Mary said.

“All right then, where are they?”

Mary blinked her eyes at this question to which she had no answer, and settled the rollers beneath her scarf.

“I still can’t get it out of my head that Charlie went back to see the swans,” Sara said.

“He really was upset about having to go home. I can testify to that,” Mary said.

Aunt Willie left the room abruptly. When she came back she was holding a picture of Charlie in one hand. It was a snapshot of him taken in March, sitting on the steps with Boysie in front of the house.

“The police always want a photograph,” she said. She held it out so Mary and Sara could see it. “Mrs. Hutchinson took that with her Polaroid.”

“It’s a real good picture of him,” Mary said.

Sara looked at the picture without speaking. Somehow the awkward, unfinished crayon drawing on the table looked more like Charlie than the snapshot.

“It was his birthday,” Aunt Willie said mournfully, “and look how proud he was of that watch Wanda bought him, holding his little arm straight out in the picture so everyone would notice it. I fussed so much about Wanda getting him a watch because he couldn’t tell time, and then he was so proud just to be wearing it. Everyone would ask him on the street, ‘What time is it, Charlie? Have you got the time, Charlie?’ just to see how proud he was to show them.”

“And then those boys stole it. I think that was the meanest thing,” Mary said.

“The watch was lost,” Aunt Willie said. “The watch just got lost.”

“Stolen,” Sara snapped, “by that crook Joe Melby.”

“I am the quickest person to accuse somebody, you know that. You saw me, I hope, when I noticed those boys making off with the Hutchinsons’ porch chairs last Halloween; but that watch just got lost. Then Joe Melby found it and, to his credit, brought it back.”

“Huh! ”

“There was no stealing involved.”

Mary said, giggling, “Aunt Willie, did Sara ever tell you what she did to Joe?”

“Hush, Mary,” Sara said.

“What did she do?”

“She made a little sign that said FINK and stuck it on Joe’s back in the hall at school and he went around for two periods without knowing it was there.”

“It doesn’t matter what I did. Nobody’s going to pick on my brother and I mean it. That fink stole Charlie’s watch and then got scared and told that big lie about finding it on the floor of the school bus.”

“You want revenge too much.”

“When somebody deserves revenge, then—”

“I take my revenge same as anybody,” Aunt Willie said, “only I never was one to keep after somebody and keep after somebody the way you do. You take after your Uncle Bert in that.”

“I hope I always do.”

“No, your Uncle Bert was no good in that way. He would never let a grudge leave him. When he lay dying in the hospital, he was telling us who we weren’t to speak to and who we weren’t to do business with. His dying words were against Jeep Johnson at the used-car lot.”

“Good for Uncle Bert.”

“And that nice little Gretchen Wyant who you turned the hose on, and her wearing a silk dress her brother had sent her from Taiwan!”

“That nice little Gretchen Wyant was lucky all she got was water on her silk dress.”

“Sara!”

“Well, do you know what that nice little Gretchen Wyant did? I was standing in the bushes by the spigot, turning off the hose, and this nice little Gretchen Wyant didn’t see me—all she saw was Charlie at the fence—and she said, ‘How’s the retard today?” only she made it sound even uglier, ’How’s the
reeeeetard,’
like that. Nothing ever made me so mad. The best sight of my whole life was nice little Gretchen Wyant standing there in her wet Taiwan silk dress with her mouth hanging open.”

“Here come the police,” Mary said quickly. “But they’re stopping next door.”

“Signal to them,” Aunt Willie said.

Before Mary could move to the door, Aunt Willie was past her and out on the porch. “Here we are. This is the house.” She turned and said over her shoulder to Sara, “Now, God willing, we’ll get some action.”

S
ara sat in the living room wearing her cut-off blue jeans, an old shirt with Property of State Prison stamped on the back which Wanda had brought her from the beach, and her puce tennis shoes. She was sitting in the doorway, leaning back against the door with her arms wrapped around her knees, listening to Aunt Willie, who was making a telephone call in the hall.

“It’s no use calling,” Sara said against her knees. This was the first summer her knees had not been skinned a dozen times, but she could still see the white scars from other summers. Since Aunt Willie did not answer, she said again, “It’s no use calling. He won’t come.”

“You don’t know your father,” Aunt Willie said.

“That is the truth.”

“Not like I do. When he hears that Charlie is missing, he will ...” Her voice trailed off as she prepared to dial the telephone.

Sara had a strange feeling when she thought of her father. It was the way she felt about people she didn’t know well, like the time Miss Marshall, her English teacher, had given her a ride home from school, and Sara had felt uneasy the whole way home, even though she saw Miss Marshall every day.