“It’s… it’s okay… okay, Carson. Come on, let’s… whew!… let’s get back to the car so I can sit down, all right?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know. Me, too.”
Ten years and several rest stops later we were finally back in the car. I leaned against the seat and waited for my chest to stop hurting. I’m still waiting, but eventually I was able to rally, turn the car around, and drive out. We had to wait to turn off Arboretum Road because the traffic was starting to get heavy. On my third attempt we were almost broadsided by the #48 express bus that ran between Cedar Hill, Buckeye Lake, and Columbus, but managed to get back on the road in one piece.
Carson looked behind us.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What bus was that?”
“The number forty-eight express. Why?”
He shrugged-a bit too nonchalantly, but that didn’t really register at the time. “I dunno.”
Back home that night there was no comic book reading. Carson demanded that I sit on the couch and watch TV and relax, he’d take care of me. I kept telling him that I was feeling much better, everything was okay-just make sure he never hit me again-but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was going to take care of me, even make dinner.
Dinner turned out to be grilled cheese sandwiches, underdone on one side, overdone on the other, but seeing how proud he was of his accomplishment, I ate two and told him they were the best grilled cheeses I’d ever had. The truth was, they were. His company did a lot to enhance their taste.
The rest of our week together was more subdued than usual. Except for a trip to a comic book store to see if they had the new Spider-Man (I knew damn well he was looking for a new Modoc, but didn’t say anything), nothing happened to remind me of the events at the truck stop and Audubon’s Graveyard. I am very good at denial.
I took Carson back to the group home the following Monday. He gave me a long, hard hug on the front steps before going back inside. I stood staring at the door after it closed behind him. The empty space where he’d stood a few moments before seemed to hum with his absence.
The next few weeks kept me very busy preparing for the opening of the Columbus store. Cheryl, the other employees, and I spent many long hours cataloging the inventory, moving displays, changing the locations of various areas (“I really think the prints should be over here…,” “Maybe the movies should be closer to the middle of the store than right up front…,” “Is there any way to have the CDs closer to the posters…?”), and generally making ourselves crazy.
The store opened. It was a big hit. I drove Cheryl home from the store one afternoon. We saw an old man chase his hat across the highway. Two black dogs watched everything. I came home to find a dying dog on my lawn. A woman whom I thought to be dead for the past twenty years sent me a package full of memories. And Carson disappeared from the group home.
A day in the life.
(Leaving a few things out there, aren’t you, pal?)
Shut. Up.
EIGHT
By the time I arrived at the group home, NPR was reporting that seventeen whales had beached themselves along the Maine coastline, and the local newsbreak reported that a group of hikers had seen what was described as a “dragon” near a wooded area at Buckeye Lake.
Okay, it wasn’t an elephant at the Twenty-first Street exit, but it was still funny. I’d have to make sure to tell Carson. After I finished being angry. And scared.
Suddenly so scared.
Cindy, one of the certified habilitation specialists who stayed at the group home, was waiting for me.
The neighborhood was amazingly quiet; no birds sang, no dogs barked, no cats yowled.
“I’m so sorry about this,” Cindy said as I joined her on the porch. “He complained about having a headache right after lunch and asked to be excused from afternoon workshop duties today. I sent him up to his room so he could lie down. I went up to give him your message after you called and-well, come on in, you can see for yourself.”
We went up to Carson’s room. Cindy showed me how he’d tied his bedsheets together and used them to shimmy down from his window onto the roof of the back porch. From there it was simple to grab one of the thick branches of the tree beside the house and climb down to the ground. I shook my head at the sight. Carson might have Down’s syndrome but it didn’t exclude him from possessing the same adventurous-sometimes even devious-imagination of a typical nine-year-old boy.
“I found this on his pillow.” Cindy offered me a folded slip of paper. I opened the note and read it, then became dizzy.
Carson’s spelling needed work, but the meaning was clear enough:
Longlost sayz the keeperz are comeing n he kneedz to talk to yoo.
Leaning on the windowsill and blinking the dizziness away, I saw a hand-sized cluster of what looked like small sticks lying near the roof gutter. If Cindy noticed them she gave no indication. But I knew damned well what they meant.
“I might have an idea where to find him.”
Cindy rubbed her eyes, her shoulders slumping in relief. “I was hoping you’d say something like that.”
“Have you called anyone else?”
She shook her head. “Only the sheriff. It’s standard procedure when one of the residents wanders off-not that it happens all that much but-”
I raised a hand, stopping her. “You don’t need to defend yourself to me, okay? I’m not upset and I won’t lodge any complaints with the AARC board.” My guess was she needed to hear that. The Association for the Advancement of Retarded Citizens sponsored this group home, which at any given time was staffed by two specialists and three trained volunteers, all of whom were expected to keep precise tabs on twelve residents. I couldn’t blame them. No one can be expected to keep track of twelve developmentally disabled human beings-ranging in age from thirteen to sixty-every second of every minute of every day.
I turned back and examined Carson’s room, which he shared with two other male residents.
“He took his comic books.”
Cindy looked over at the bookshelf that hung over the head of Carson’s bed. “I didn’t notice that before.” This said in the same tone of voice usually reserved for phrases such as “So what?”
“No reason you should have.” I glanced out the window once again at the cluster of sticks and saw the head of a black mastiff duck down from behind a hedge across the street.
I gave my own head a little shake.
No. No way.
I forced a smile onto my face and turned toward Cindy, then squeezed her shoulder in what must have seemed like a condescending gesture and said, “I’ll call you in about an hour or so and let you know if I found him.”
“If you think you know where he is, then we should let the sheriff-”
“No. If he’s where I think he is, the sheriff’d never find him. Give me ninety minutes. There’s no use bothering the sheriff if it turns out I’m wrong.”
Driving away, I hoped that Cindy wouldn’t notice the little cluster on the roof. The significance of the comic books was known only to Carson and myself, no problem there, but the bones on the roof might set some Gothic bells ringing.
I knew where he was. What I didn’t know was why.
I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the black mastiffs following me.
Whenever I slowed, they slowed.
One of them darted across the road into the path of an oncoming car that slammed on its brakes and laid on its horn.
Jesus.
I wasn’t imagining them.
I looked in the rearview mirror again and saw one of the mastiffs running toward me, its teeth bared, foamy spit jetting from its mouth. At the last moment it spun around, claws scraping the asphalt with such power they sliced grooves into the surface, and then it took off at an even faster run toward the car that had nearly hit it a moment ago, legs pumping, muscles rippling, foam spraying, howling and snarling as it pushed forward on its hind legs and leaped into the air, landing on the hood of the car and hurtling its mass through the windshield.