The Summer We Lost Alice (10 page)

"What
’s he doing here?" I say, nodding toward the sheriff.

"He's a client, receiving a treatment. I'm a kind of nurse, you see."

A witch, you mean.

"If he makes you afraid
, I'll ask him to leave. Sheriff—"

"
I don't trust that dog," he says.

"It'll be all right," Mrs. Nichols says, "won't it, Ethan? The dog won't hurt anyone, will he?"

"I still don't trust it," the sheriff says.

"The poor boy's nose is bleeding. Get him a wet cloth, won't you, Sam?"

The sheriff says he'll be right back.

The rain beats against the window. Lightning flashes behind the branches of the tree. Water is coming in and collecting on the window sill and getting the floor wet, but Mrs. Nichols doesn't care. She and I glare at one another. She grabs a chair and moves it between me and the door. She sits down with a sigh. She puts on that look that grownups use when they're trying to talk you into something.

"What are you doing here, Ethan?" she says. Her voice is old and crackly.

"I came for Alice. I saw her. You made her old."

"Oh, Ethan. I'm afraid your imagination is playing tricks on you."

"It isn't. You're a witch."

"You don't understand. And Ethan, there's no way I can explain it to you. I can't explain it to you or anyone else." She looks sad, but I know it's a trick.

Mrs. Nichols and I stare at one another for a long time. At least, it seems like a long time. Mrs. Nichols shakes her head.

"It doesn't matter," she says wearily. "Whatever you tell them, they won't believe you."

I know she's right. She's a witch and I'm just a crazy kid. She'll eat me for a midnight snack if she wants to. I feel like sitting down and bawling my eyes out, but then I think about Alice all alone in the room
. I have to do something, even if it's pointless. Even if it means Mrs. Nichols catches me and throws me in the oven, I have to try. I have to get out of there and tell somebody that I found Alice.

I pretend to look down at my feet, but I'm really eyeing the statue. I shuffle about half a step, bringing myself closer to it. I don't know why it's important. It isn't gold, it's just wood. It isn't beautiful, even I can see that. It's crude. I can see that it's old, the wood worn smooth and black from handling. Maybe that's why it's valuable. Old things that look like junk are sometimes worth a lot of money. All I know is
, Mrs. Nichols thinks it's important, and I can use that to get away.

I yell out, "Boo!" and drop down and grab the statue. Instantly Boo is on alert. "Fetch, Boo! Fetch!" I say
. I toss the statue toward the door. It falls on the floor and skids to a stop.

Mrs. Nichols curses. She leans out of the chair to grab the statue, but Boo is up and running. He snatches the statue in his teeth. I yell, "Run, Boo!" and I can almost hear the circuit in his doggy head click. I know there's going to be no stopping him now.

Mrs. Nichols reaches for him. She grabs his tail, but Boo is strong and he keeps running. Mrs. Nichols all but falls to the floor as she tries to hang on. Boo's claws grip the floor and he gets free. Mrs. Nichols is left holding nothing but dog hair. I start running, too. I shove my way past Mrs. Nichols. Together Boo and I head for the stairs.

We meet the sheriff in the hallway. He carries a wet cloth in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Boo rushes past him
. The sheriff flattens himself against the wall. He drops the cloth and grabs me with one hand as I try to pass him. I ball my fist and ram it into his groin as hard as I can like I've seen on TV. He cries out and lets me go.

"Run, Boo!" I yell as we hit the stairs. We reach the bottom and Boo skids around the corner, going back the way he came in. The nurse sees Boo and screams. She jumps back as Boo barrels along
. I follow him as best I can.

We hit the kitchen. Boo plows into the back door. I open it and we run through. Mrs. Nichols is hard on our heels
. The sheriff is close behind her, running kind of doubled-up.

Boo's running through the graveyard. I'm not too far behind him when I hear the explosion of the shotgun behind me. Boo
lets out a yelp and goes down. He drops the statue. I scream his name and Boo scrambles to his feet. He picks up the statue and takes off running again, on three legs, one back leg held up and barely touching the ground. He's running for the hills, a dog on a mission. I'm running behind him, the distance between us getting bigger. I'm yelling, "Go, Boo! Run, boy! Run!" I hear another blast from the shotgun. It misses just barely and blows up some weeds under Boo's feet.

It's
dark and raining like crazy. The woods swallow us up. For a while I can hear Boo thrashing and crashing through the brush, but after a few seconds I can't even hear that much. He's gone. He's taking the statue to his secret place. He may be taking himself there, too.
He's going there to die,
I think.

I hear Mrs. Nichols yelling my name. Then the storm hits in full fury
. It's all I can do to see my own feet, it's so dark and it's raining so hard. I wander around the woods looking for someplace dry to hole up. Finally I scrunch up under a tree where the rain is falling a little less hard. I crouch there and hope that Mrs. Nichols can't find me from my smell or the pounding of my heart. I stay there with the rain falling and dripping from the branches overhead for what seems like hours.

As I sit shivering in the cold rain, my head begins to swim. I close my eyes and lean against the tree. I've heard about people who get so cold, they fall asleep and never wake up. I think maybe that's what's happening to me. It doesn't seem so bad. But I can't die, not until they find Alice.

I leave my place under the tree and start walking around. I walk in no particular direction, shivering and lost. I'm cold and wet and afraid. I touch the dried blood on my nose. In my head I see Boo limping away, into the woods, and I know that he's dead.

I'm not going anyplace. I'm just walking. One direction is as good as any other. I want to keep moving because if I don't, I'll freeze. Rain is cold, even in summer, and it's sucking the warmth right out of my body.

Far away, someone is yelling. The words have no meaning. The voice doesn't even register as a voice. It might as well be the wind.

I look in that direction and
see lights through the rain. Flashlights sweep in arcs that light up the raindrops. My brain begins to work. I recognize my name. They're calling my name. Somebody's looking for me. It's the happiest thought I've ever had in my life.

I try to speak but my chin shakes and I don't have enough breath to yell. "H-h-h—" I say. I'm shaking so hard I can't even talk. I take a deep breath and try again. "H-h-h-here," I say. I try again, louder. The air rushing in and out
stings my lungs. I fill my chest and yell as loud as I can.

"Here! I'm over h-here!"

A babble of voices answers.

"I heard something!"

"Me, too! He's over in this direction!"

"Ethan! Ethan!"

"I'm over here!" I say. I stumble toward the flashlights.

Uncle Billy sees me and rushes up and puts his arms around me. He sees how my teeth are chattering as he picks me up. Somebody wraps a jacket around me and says, "Get him in a hot bath, Bill, or he'll catch pneumonia for sure."

People are yelling, "We've found him!" and "He's okay!" They seem really glad to have found me, the dumb kid who ran off and got himself lost in the woods. I don't understand why they're so happy. I thought they'd be mad at me for running out at night. Then I figure it out.

They thought I was kidnapped. They'd lost three kids already and they had me pegged for
another one. It's like they were lost in the woods, too, with their kids disappearing and them not being able to do anything about it. But they found me. Maybe the cycle has been broken. Maybe kids are through disappearing and they won't feel lost and helpless anymore. Maybe they can start to breathe again.

Uncle Billy carries me to his car parked at the nursing home. He puts me in the backseat. He says to lie down on the seat and he lays a blanket over me.

I try to tell him about Alice, but my teeth are chattering and nothing I say makes any sense. Uncle Billy tells me to hush, that I need to save my strength. When I play the words in my mind, I don't even believe myself. I quit trying to speak.

I start to cry, not because I'm cold, not because I'm grateful to be found.

I cry because, for the second time, I've lost Alice.

THE FBI MEN
are talking to me. My nose is bandaged. The bandage seems small to me for something that bled so much, but the doctor assured Aunt Flo that it was all that could be done.

It's the next morning and we've just gotten back from the doctor's. My parents will be picking me up and taking me away from
Meddersville in a couple of hours. The FBI man named Pete stands there with his arms crossed while the other one, Wallace, talks to me about last night. I sit on the porch swing, going back and forth, back and forth.

"Why'd you go back to the nursing home, Ethan?" Wallace says. "We already searched it."

"I told you," I say. I did tell them. I told them about seeing Alice, only she was a hundred years old, but I knew it was her. I told them about how she curled her hair around her finger. I told them everything I could remember, but I told it all wrong, I know. I sounded like I was making it up. I don't blame them for not believing me.

"The old woman, Ethan, the one you saw—her name is Ellie Sanders. She was admitted to the nursing home a year or so ago."

"But she knew Boo."

"Yes, Ellie knew Boo. She was a friend of your Aunt Flo's. She knew Boo very well."

I curl a bit of my hair in my finger, like Alice did.

"She did this, like Alice," I say.

"A lot of people do that. It's a common mannerism."

"What about that old man—Martin?
Is he somebody else, too?"

"His name is Martin
Haversham. He lived in the western part of the state where he was a druggist. He came to the home before Martin Dale disappeared."

Wallace strokes his chin. He looks up at Aunt Flo who's watching us like a hawk. She told Wallace she didn't want him upsetting me. "What happened to Boo, Ethan? Did you see what happened to him?"

I shrug. I'm sorry, but Boo doesn't matter. He's just a crazy, smelly old dog and now he's dead. I miss him. If it was only him I'd lost, I'd bawl my eyes out over him. But in the flood of loss that is my loss of Alice, Boo is nothing. He's a raindrop in a thunderstorm. I'm mad at him, too, because he didn't kill the witch. He just ran like he always does. He ran off to the hills, to his secret place. If he'd cared, he'd have ripped the witch's throat out.                                                     

"He goes away sometimes," I say. "He'll be back."

Aunt Flo kneels down and takes my hands, both of them, in hers.

"Ethan," she says, "Boo didn't come home this morning. He always comes back for breakfast, but he wasn't here this morning. You know
Boo, it isn't like him to miss a meal." She tries to smile. I think she'd rather cry, which is strange because she doesn't like Boo. I wouldn't think she'd care one way or the other if Boo never came back.

"You don't remember anything happening to Boo?" she says.

"He shot him."

"Who shot him?" Wallace leans forward, like he really wants to know. I know it's stupid to say anything. It won't do any good and it'll just get me into more trouble. But if I can trust anybody, I think
it's Wallace.

"The sheriff.
He's one of them. He's with the witch."

Pete rolls his eyes
. Wallace gives him some kind of special look and Pete goes off to smoke a cigarette. Wallace walks over to the porch steps and sits down. He motions me to sit next to him.

"Ethan, we had a long talk with Sheriff Morse. He was there last night, just as you said. He shot at Boo, like you said. He says that Boo attacked Mrs. Nichols. Is that right?"

I shrug.

"You know, if a dog attacks somebody, they have to be stopped. It means he might
... he might be sick."

"He didn't attack her. Not really."

"No, probably not. But Sheriff Morse, he doesn't know Boo like you do. He couldn't take the chance. Do you see that? If Boo was sick—if he was dangerous—the sheriff had to stop him. To protect other people."

"He isn't sick!"

"He couldn't know, Ethan. Sometimes people have to do things before they have all the facts. It's what we call a 'moral imperative.'"

That makes me think of Alice. She would li
ke to know a phrase like that.
Moral imperative.
I say it to myself over and over to try to remember it.

"Ethan?" Wallace says. He can tell I'm ignoring him. The more I talk, the stupider I sound, even to myself. I turn my head away. I'm through talking to the FBI. I don't have anything more to tell Wallace or anybody.

Wallace reaches into his pocket and pulls out a business card. He hands it to me.

"This card has my telephone number on it," he says. "I want your mom or dad to call me if you remember anything more. Sometimes things come back to you later that you've forgotten. So if that happens, you have them call me. When they get through, have them put you on the phone so you can tell me yourself. You don't even have to tell them what you want to say. Just tell them to call me and we'll talk. Okay?"

"Okay."

They send me out to the backyard to play, which is stupid because there's nothing to do out there without Boo and I don't feel like playing anyway. I sit
in the living room and listen to what they're saying on the porch. They're talking about me.

"You never know with kids," Wallace says. "What's real, fantasy—it's all the same to them. The truth may resurface, probably in bits and pieces over time. Keep me informed if you hear anything, won't you?"

"Of course," Aunt Flo says.

"Of course," says Uncle Billy.

"How long—" Aunt Flo says.

"There's no telling. It could take years. It might take therapy. This isn't over for him, not by a long shot."

"Do you think ... does this have anything to do with Alice?"

"I don't know. I think, most likely, no. If any of this had anything to do with what really happened to Alice—" His voice trails off.

I know what he's saying.

If it did, I wouldn't be here. I'd be gone like the others.

* * *

I'm sitting on the front porch, waiting, when Mom and Dad drive up in our station wagon.

Mom rushes out of the car almost before it comes to a stop. She runs toward me. She kneels down and holds me so tight it hurts. She's crying and saying "Thank God" over and over. She kisses my cheeks. I wish she wouldn't make such a fuss.

Aunt Flo comes to the door. Mom gets up and walks toward her with both hands outstretched. She takes Aunt Flo's hands in hers and says, "I'm so sorry!" They hug.

Dad walks up to me. He bends down and picks me up and cradles one arm under my bottom. He holds me tight. His voice breaks as he says, "Son."

I hear the screen door slam. Pretty soon Uncle Billy is there, apologizing to my father.

"I'm sorry, Frank," Uncle Billy says. "I should have kept a closer eye on him. I never thought that, after what happened to Alice, he'd—"

"
It's okay, Billy," Dad says. "It wasn't your fault. I'm awful sorry about Alice. It's a horrible thing. A damned horrible thing."

"Come in and have a beer," Uncle Billy says. "Did you bring your pipe?"

My father pats his coat pocket. He's wearing a suit coat, which he never does in Wichita.

"We'll have ourselves a beer and a smoke, then," Uncle Billy says, "and let the women talk."

Dad and Uncle Billy sit on the front porch. I sit there, too, drinking a lemonade and swinging mindlessly. Mom and Aunt Flo are in the kitchen, talking and crying. I'd rather sit out here. Dad and Uncle Billy don't say much. They smoke their pipes and sometimes one of them will say a little something. Dad asks if the FBI has any leads. Uncle Billy says, "No, not really."

"I can't imagine somebody doing such a thing," Dad says. "Especially not here. What kind of a sick—" He doesn't finish his sentence. He takes a puff on his pipe. No smoke comes out
. He scowls at it. He takes a wooden match and strikes it on his shoe. "I just can't understand a person like that," he says.

"
There's all kinds," Uncle Billy says. "I expect you met a few in the war."

"Um," Dad says. He
lights his pipe and puffs on it.

Aunt Flo calls us in to lunch. She's put out some cold cuts and bread and some potato chips. We're eating our sandwiches when Mom asks about Catherine.

"She's making herself pretty scarce these days," Aunt Flo says. "Spending a lot of time with the sheriff's boy."

"Serious?" Mom says.

"I'm afraid so. I just hope they wait until Catherine's finished school. That's all I ask. 'Finish high school,' I tell her, 'and then you can do anything you want. Get married, have a dozen kids, run off to Hollywood. But first you finish high school.' I don't think she listens, but you never know. Of course, I hope she stays around. Not many do, though. Not many of the young people."

We eat in silence with the image hanging in the air of Aunt Flo and Uncle Billy living alone in this house with no kids
. Alice's disappearance will make the place seem even emptier. Mom reaches out and pats Aunt Flo's hand. Then Aunt Flo goes out to the kitchen to get more ham, even though there's plenty still on the table.

After lunch we put my suitcases in the car. We say our good
-byes. Mom tells Aunt Flo to call if she needs anything, anything at all, even just to talk. Uncle Billy asks Dad if he has the card the FBI man gave me. Dad pats his coat pocket. I ask Dad if I can ride in the way-back, and he says, "Sure."

I'm lying on my stomach in the back of the station wagon. I clutch a wadded-up pillow to my chest and look out the back window as we pull away from Aunt Flo and Uncle Billy's house. They wave good
-bye and I wave back. It seems strange not to have Alice standing there waving with them. Something else is missing, too, though it takes me a few seconds to figure out what it is.

It's Boo. He should be chasing after the car as we drive away.

I feel hollow and tears start to come. I lay my head on the pillow and listen to the tires kicking gravel into the wheel wells. The sound dies out when we reach the asphalt of the streets. Dad drives slowly through Meddersville. He hits the accelerator when he reaches the highway.

I go to sleep to the rocking of the car and the hum of the tires. When I wake up,
Meddersville will be a million miles behind me.

IT'S BEEN TWENTY
years since that summer. My parents and I returned to Meddersville a few times, never staying long. A pall of sadness fell over the town that never fully lifted. Nowhere was that pall felt more heavily than among our family, where it seemed to muffle every song that anyone might have been tempted to sing.

Uncle Billy was, on the surface, as jovial as ever, but sometimes I would catch him staring out a window with his hands clasped behind his back, or sitting in a chair, just sitting, a newspaper lying in his lap like a blanket. He would smile when he saw me and tell me how, if we had more time, we'd go fishing.

"Next time," I'd say. We both knew it was lie.

Aunt Flo seemed more determined than ever to soldier on. She seemed to treat Alice's disappearance as another in an endless series of trials she was put on earth to endure. I never thought of Aunt Flo as containing a spark until it was extinguished, but now that it was gone, I could see it plainly. I saw it in the painfulness of her movements, as if every action came at a great cost of energy and will.

Catherine and Sammy ran away to Kansas City briefly, but they came back, not as a couple. After a time, Catherine found someone else, married, had two kids, separated, divorced. She still lives in Meddersville. When Uncle Billy passed away, Catherine and the kids moved in with Flo in the family house.

They never saw Boo again. I imagine his corpse is out there in the hills somewhere, in his secret place with Alice's
Skeeter Barnes baseball and all of his other treasures, including the statue with the grimacing face.

The disappearances—the murders—were never solved. No more children vanished, maybe due to heightened vigilance on the part of parents, or maybe because the killer moved away or died. Mrs. Nichols did both. She moved to Florida to be with her sister and soon thereafter died of cancer. Her daughter
Lilian took over the nursing home. Or so they say.

My childish scenario holds water. Mrs. Nichols was a witch who stole the youth of my cousin and
Perla Ingram and Martin Dale. Then she made herself young and returned masquerading as her own daughter. Simple fingerprints would prove or disprove my theory if anyone took it seriously enough to check, which no one ever has.

Looking back, I can't completely swallow it myself. I was a weird kid, and even normal kids have a problem distinguishing fact from fantasy. I can't entirely shake it, though, even today.

Once I went away to college and left Kansas for Los Angeles, I never returned to Meddersville. I had opportunities, such as Uncle Billy's funeral, but I always found reasons to stay away. The real reason, of course, was that Alice wouldn't be there. She made an impression on me, that's for sure. It's still hard to believe that we had only a few weeks together. How can anyone, especially a nine-year-old boy, fall so intransigently in love with someone in so short a time? Yet, there it is.