LOST SOULS

Bradley Bravard

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© 2023 Bradley Bravard

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

www.thecreativelifeadventure.com

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ISBN: 978-1-7377245-4-4

1

There’s a boy. Maybe four, five years old. Runt of a kid, dirt on his face, shaggy blond hair, and dressed in rags. His hands are rough with callouses. No shoes ‘cause the old man said the boy’d need to earn them, never specifying how that would ever happen.

The stable of gray, splintering boards leans at every angle, as run-down as the kid but for different reasons. He holds reins on three horses. They only left the stable peaceful-like out of dumb luck. The same luck the kid prays for every day. Never been to church, but something inside him yearns for benevolence in the universe. He wants to plead with the horses but he's too afraid to speak, never knowing what might set them off. This kid’s like a dog that knows he’ll get kicked, only the timing’s undecided.

Hot day. No clouds. Heat distortion swirls around the land. He's never been as far as the horizon. Never known anything but this small, angry world inside the rotting split-rail fence. The poor excuse of a house, the withering produce garden, and the weather-beaten stable stocked with horses no one else wanted. The ferry carries folks back and forth across the river, but the far shore might as well be the moon for all he's ever seen of it. Trees won't even grow in this mangy patch of land, brown and sandy, packed down by the endless steps of man and beast, like God missed a spot when he parceled out the farmland.

The animals are brawny draft horses for pulling the ferry and whatever other labor the old man can hire them out for. They jerk up, rattling the buckles on the reins. They dance their feet around, reminding the kid who's boss. Sounds like the old man's yelling at him to “Get those damn stalls cleaned,” but the boy can't hear much outside the fear that whooshes like a waterfall in his head. A noise from the ferry spooks the horses, not the brightest bunch to begin with. They rear up on their hind legs, raising up like storm clouds and kicking out their feet like lightning bolts. They snort and neigh and feed off each other. Their legs are thicker than the kid's neck. The black hooves with metal shoes look like locomotive grills.

In a blink the horses are all around him. They jump and kick. He's got a vague idea of people gathering to the side but who among them cares to step in? Tears streak the dirt on his face now, crying for the help he should have got all along. His face scrunches up at the acute endpoint of life. Crying to get one honest break to be a boy instead of a slave to fear.

The boy's not conscious of this while the horses lash into him from every direction. He understands something’s wrong but could never spell it out. And that's why he cries and doesn't struggle against the end. Helpless is all he's ever known.

Soon enough, the boy’s a bloody mess to be cleaned up. The horses scatter for someone else to round up. And the bystanders idle around – more of them now, drawn by the commotion but still faceless. Not so much heartbroken about the boy but shocked by the suddenness of it. His few years were too short a time to remember and not even known by any outside his family. Even those that witnessed his death won’t carry the memories for long, not once they’ve crossed the river and gone their way to people and places they care about. Nothing to show he ever existed.

Only a shallow grave.

*****

DEPUTY GLENN HASKELL about jumped out of his skin. He banged his palms down against the wood desk.

“Lord, Glenn,” Helen said. “It's just me.”

Glenn rubbed his eyes. He looked around the office and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. There was only the phone, a lamp, and a few papers on the desk. They never generated a lot of paperwork around the office. A stop-drop-and-roll poster was taped to one wall from a statewide fire safety campaign about eight years back.

“Sorry, Helen,” he said. “Must have dozed off.”

“Well, you tell me how you sleep with your eyes wide open,” Helen said. “That's a trick I wouldn't mind for myself.”

“Eyes open?” Hadn't he been dreaming? He was grateful to wake up, either way. He'd felt like those horseshoes were digging into his own flesh.

“Don't you lose your grip on things, Glenn,” Helen said. “We can't have you and the sheriff both being indisposed.”

“No,” he said. “I'm fine.” Not altogether. His insides still rattled. He'd seen the stableboy and looked out from his eyes at the same time. The world had gone dark in his own dream at the same time he watched life turn a cold shoulder to the kid. Glenn had woken from his share of nightmares over the years. Never one while he was already awake, though.  “What can I do for you?”

Helen put on her half-framed reading glasses worn on a chain around her neck, and frowned over her own handwritten notes. Helen was well into her sixties and allowed her dark hair to show a little more gray every year. Efficiency was never part of her reputation. What with no real need for efficiency in the office and her loyalty to the sheriff, you might say she had a lock on the office assistant job.

“The lumberyard called. Bill McCutcheon works out there, he’s been there for years.”

“I remember Bill. He was a few years after me in school.”

“He never showed up yesterday. Or today. They haven't heard a word from him. His wife's his emergency contact. But they been calling out to the house and no one answers. They think she helps out part-time at the school. Kind of a teacher's aide a few hours a week.”

“Any calls from the school?”

“Schools’ll be letting out for the summer soon enough, maybe the teacher’s aides are already done for the year? I did call their house, Stanley give me the number. All I got was their answering machine. They just live further on down Grand Avenue, at Walnut.”

Glenn rolled his shoulders. Squeezed his eyes shut and took a breath.

“What's our rule on missing persons?” he asked. He stood up in slow motion, still extracting his mind from the dream. “It's three days, isn't it?”

“I'm sure I don't know,” Helen said. “I'll look it up. Have we ever had a real missing persons case? I can pull the forms, they’ll be in the filing cabinet somewhere.”

“Maybe they were in an accident. You hear anything on the scanner?”

She shook her head.

Glenn walked into the lobby. The brick building, one of the few in town, dated to the late 1800s and still had the high ceiling and most of the original wood trim. They built it as a jail until a lot of local jails were consolidated into the state prison system. Tall, skinny windows on either side of the broad wood door with warped views of the street because the glass was original. A house plant Helen had brought in years ago sagged against a corner. She swore it was supposed to be some variety of palm tree. The plant had grown taller than Glenn but never looked sincere in the effort. Helen's desk was in the middle of the office facing the door. Filing cabinets stood at ease against one wall. The county commission had talked about getting a computer system for the office, but the sheriff said they had a good five to ten years before anyone got past the thinking stage and by then the technology would have changed so much, they would have to start over. A water cooler and snack table sat in the short hallway between Glenn's office and the sheriff's. A pecan coffee cake, something Helen made extra on the weekends when she was baking for her church, showed up every Monday and diminished as the week went on. Helen made a big batch of seven-layer bars every Christmas and, every July 4th, about the best cornbread anyone had ever tasted, but it was her coffee cake that sustained the congregation and the sheriff’s office. Glenn could usually figure the day of the week by how much coffee cake was left.

“How is he?” Glenn asked over his shoulder.

“He's all right,” Helen whispered. “You can talk to him.”

Glenn tapped on the open door to the sheriff's office. “Sheriff? You got a minute?”

“Glenn, my boy, come in,” the sheriff looked up. “How are you this fine morning?”

Helen had been the sheriff’s assistant so long, Glenn could never remember which one had been in the department longer. Marvin Howard was a heavyset man with wispy hair, thick hands and features, and a complexion even paler than Glenn’s. Glenn couldn't recall meeting a more gentle man.

Helen followed Glenn into the office. It was a duplicate of Glenn's except for some state-required paperwork on one wall and a tired-looking brown sofa leaning against another.

“Care for some ice water?” the sheriff had a softer voice than folks expected for that size of amplifier. He nodded to a nearly full pitcher of clear liquid that dripped condensation on his desk. Glenn made note of the half-empty glass alongside it. If Helen's coffee cake was the office calendar, the sheriff's sobriety was the clock. Still early enough now that tomorrow the sheriff would remember their talk. Howard pulled a second glass out of a desk drawer and filled it for Glenn.

“Sheriff, you know the McCutcheon family?” Glenn sniffed at the glass. He rolled it in his hands, cold moisture against his skin. “Bill McCutcheon, works out at the lumberyard.”

“Yes, I remember Billy.” The sheriff leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his belly in that way that always made Glenn think of Oliver Hardy. He looked every bit of his sixty years. Up close, his eyes were often bloodshot and tiny veins curved around his pale cheeks. “He’s married to Missy, as I recall?”

Helen nodded.

“And they have a son, don’t they?”

“Henry,” Helen looked back to her notes. “Hank is what Stanley at the lumberyard called him.”

“How are the McCutcheons?” the sheriff asked.

“I was fixing to head over to their house and find out,” Glenn said. “Sounds like Bill hasn't shown up for work the last couple days. Helen called their home and didn’t get any answer.”

“That does seem odd,” the sheriff frowned. “I haven't seen Bill in a while, but he's real reliable as I recall. Have you called the school to see if their son is absent?”

“I'll do that next,” Helen said.

“I'll drop by their house,” Glenn turned to leave. “Let you know what I find.”

“Maybe they’re under the weather and forgot to call in.” The sheriff nodded with a thoughtful look. “I'm sure they'll turn up.”

The office phone rang and Helen went to her desk to answer. Glenn ducked in his office to get his hat and straighten his uniform. Waiting for Helen to finish on the phone, he took the glass filled with what Glenn guessed was gin, and dumped it into the palm tree’s terracotta flowerpot.

Helen hung up the phone. “No need to call the school. That was them, notifying us that Henry hasn't been in school the last two days. Missy, neither. They can't get any answer at home, either.”

Glenn stood quiet for a moment. He'd have gathered his thoughts if he'd known what to think.

“You want to make some calls?” he asked. “Check with the state police, some of the hospitals.”

“All right.”

Glenn put on his hat and left.

*****

THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE was on Grand Avenue, a block off Main Street. Glenn kept his cruiser, with the Sommersville Sheriff's Office logo on both sides, parked in front. The sheriff had his own squad car, but it was parked out back and most days he was unfit to drive by midday. There was never any traffic worth speaking of; even Main Street never got that busy. On a cooler day, Glenn could have comfortably walked to the McCutcheons’.

He always kept the radio turned to an AM station at low volume; he was alone often enough and the talk radio was better company than ghosts.

“A Hoosier constituent of mine recently asked, why is the Congress spending so much time on the Iran-Contra Affair when there are so many other important things to do.”

Even Glenn, no student of politics, recognized Lee Hamilton's voice, Congressman from Indiana, though he couldn't recall which district.

“...in the course of the conduct of the nation's business, something went wrong, seriously wrong. If something goes wrong in our system, we want to bring it out into the open, examine it, learn from it, and, if possible, correct it.”

He'd heard here and there in the news about soldiers and drugs and weapons all changing hands down in Central America. Arms deals in Iran and a Nicaraguan dictator. It all sounded like some kind of movie.

“This excessive secrecy led policy astray. A small number of officials made policy outside the democratic process. Secret policies, different from stated policies, cast doubt on our political process and our credibility in the eyes of Americans...”

The McCutcheon house was seven blocks down Grand on a corner lot. He parked on the street in front. It was a simple, white, wood-frame house with maroon-colored shutters attached to the windows. An L-shaped porch wrapped around the front and one side. An oak and a sycamore cast shade over the front yard and the house. A kid-sized plastic basketball hoop stood in the concrete drive. He could see a piece of the backyard surrounded by a chain-link fence. A handful of busybodies huddled on the street corner.

Glenn stepped across the lawn, still wet with dew, to the onlookers, mostly a few elderly folks. One man who looked about eighty stepped up when Glenn approached. He had little patches of white hair around his head, and his hands shook when he pointed, which seemed to be something he did quite regular.

“About time you got here,” the old man said. “I was fixin' to take my shotgun to that dog.”

“Oh, Lord.” An elderly woman behind him, next to another man Glenn took to be her husband, shook her head. “You calm down and let this man do his job.” To Glenn, she said, “We live just next door. We haven’t heard anything out of the ordinary. Except for the dog, that is.”

“Was there a break-in?” Glenn took off his hat and looked at the house. Morning sun couldn't reach it under the trees.

“Break-in?” The old man pointed to the house. “It's that damn fool dog. Been barking all night. Never done that before.”

Glenn had barely noticed the steady barking of a dog but now it was about all he could hear.

“All night,” the woman behind him said. Her husband nodded but kept quiet. Her eyes opened wide at the word “break-in.” “Did something happen to the McCutcheons?”

“Oh, I imagine they're fine.” There would be enough gossip without Glenn adding to it. “Any of you folks speak to the McCutcheons lately? You remember the last time you saw them?”

“I just saw their little boy out playing at that basketball hoop over the weekend,” the woman said. Her husband nodded some more.

“They were out in their driveway Sunday morning.” the first old man pointed. “Fixing up their boat, looked like.”

“What kind of boat is it?” Glenn asked.

“Plain old fishing boat,” the old man said. “Fifteen foot, maybe.”

Glenn scanned across the yard to the driveway. No car. No boat.

“Well, they're most likely out on a fishing trip then,” Glenn said. “I'm just checking in, making sure the house is all right.”

“You fixin' to take care of that dog?” the old man pointed again.

“I'll look into it.” Glenn avoided the wet grass; he walked back around the corner and up the driveway. From this angle the house shielded him from the barking sound and made room for other noises to crowd in: a driver revving their engine on Main Street, birds fluttering in the trees, his boots scraping on the concrete. He stepped up onto the porch and rang the doorbell; waited a few seconds and rang again; opened the screen and rapped on the door.

The door was unlocked. That wouldn't surprise anyone who knew the neighborhood. He opened the door enough to call through the opening. “Anyone home? Sheriff's office. Mr. and Mrs. McCutcheon?”

He walked inside. All the drapes were closed. A carpeted living room led to the kitchen with linoleum floor. The furniture all looked to be higher-end discount store merchandise. Framed family photos hung here and there on the walls. A maple hutch along one wall was covered with hundreds of little birds, geese or swans or some such, made of plastic and wood and metal, each one only a few inches tall. Sunlight filtered through the drapes and lit up dust specks so it looked like cobwebs growing in the room.

“Hello?” he said again, trying to keep his voice strong. “Anyone home?”

He walked through the kitchen. Other than a few dishes in the sink, it was all clean. A mix of apples and pears were stacked in a bowl on the kitchen counter. A handful of photographs lay on a two-person breakfast table against a wall. He gave a start when the refrigerator clicked on. The noise made him think to look inside. Cheese, lunch meat, orange juice, and opened jars of condiments, jelly, olives, and various other things. It all looked fresh. A half-full gallon of milk was still inside the expiration date.

A hallway off the kitchen took him to a bathroom and two bedrooms. He tapped on doors and called their names as he went. The beds were made. The house was empty.

He stood in the living room and felt the quiet expand around him. The dog outside could have been a million miles away. He’d once seen a movie on late night TV called The Incredible Shrinking Man. An astronaut got himself doused with cosmic rays and started shrinking, smaller and smaller, till he just up and disappeared. That was how Glenn felt, smaller every second while the dead silent house grew larger.

Sinking into that absence while it took over the world was the moment Glenn had a feeling no one would ever see the McCutcheon family again.

*****

HE FORCED HIMSELF out of the quiet and through a kitchen side door into the backyard. He felt near suffocating and took in deep breaths. The backyard was enclosed by the chain-link fence. A pair of plastic chairs and a charcoal grill were arranged on a concrete pad next to the house. A wood shed, painted barn red with white trim, stood in a far corner of the yard. A sycamore bigger than the one out front covered half the yard, including a six-foot tall metal jungle gym. The dog was all he could hear now. A muscular black Lab, must have been sixty or seventy pounds, pulled against a chain tied to a post at the back of the yard, a measure that seemed unnecessary with the fence. The dog barked and growled and flashed its teeth. Two wide metal bowls lay next to the post. One was empty, and the other looked to have about an inch of water left in it. The dog charged forward, hit an invisible wall at the end of the chain that jerked its body up and back, then charged again. Every time the dog raised up, Glenn thought of the way those horses towered over the little boy in his dream.

Glenn inched along the edge of the yard, out of the dog's reach. The neighbors watched from the street but the dog's jaws kept him focused. He put his hands behind him to feel his way along the fence while he kept his eyes on the dog.

Thankfully the shed was unlocked. He pounded on the door on the off chance. He grabbed the handle and pulled the door open. The smell of gasoline and stale grass spilled out. He could make out the shadow of a lawnmower. The doorway and dusty windows didn't let in enough light to see the thing he was looking for. Glenn ducked his head into the darkness. Soon as he did, he heard a crack and the dog went quiet.

He stumbled away from the shed; raised his arms in front of his body, as if that would do any good. The rest of him froze up and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. That dog shot across the yard so fast you'd have thought it was levitating. It took flight a good ten feet before it hit Glenn. The deputy let out a shout. The dog landed square on his chest and they both fell over.

Glenn was too petrified to think of reaching for his gun but the weight of the dog would have complicated that anyhow. It took a few seconds to realize the dog wasn't looking to inflict pain. It slobbered all over his face with that big Lab tongue.

“All right,” Glenn groaned. “All right.” He pushed at the dog's side and rolled sideways to get the animal off him. The dog's tail flicked back and forth; she hopped around a bit then ran in circles in the yard.

Glenn stood, dusted himself off, and leaned against the fence while he got his wits back about him. He pulled back when the dog charged at him a few times but it looked to be playing.

He looked in the shed again. This time the dog joined him and pointed him right at what he was looking for. Glenn pulled the lid off a metal bin filled with dry dog food and a plastic scoop. He scooped up a measure of food and flung the pieces in the grass. The dog's tail stayed in the air while it slid its nose around the ground and chewed up the food. Glenn filled the water bowl from a spigot on the side of the house. He went back in the house while the dog was still distracted. He debated putting the dog inside, but on second thought that would contaminate a possible crime scene, not to mention having to answer for damages if the family came back and found their furniture eat up.

Inside, the same shrinking feeling from earlier compressed him. He stirred himself enough to check the answering machine, next to the phone on the hutch with the birds. Two messages from the school, looking for Henry. Three messages from the lumberyard that worked their way from irritation to anger to honest worry. Glenn lost his gaze in the flock of tiny, artificial birds that never stopped struggling to take flight in a space too airless to offer any lift.

He tried to be optimistic and turned on the overhead light in the kitchen before he left.

Outside, the world went back to normal proportions again. The nosy neighbors still watched from the street.

“Nothing to worry about.” He waved at them. His shaky voice didn't convince himself, so it didn't seem likely the others would buy it. “Everything's fine.”

The dog came to a corner of the yard where it could see Glenn. It wagged its tail, grinned, and yapped a couple of times. Glenn tried to roust himself from that depressed feeling enough to consider the steps he needed to take.

He got in his car and hightailed it back to the station.

*****

“I DO HOPE they're all right,” the sheriff fussed in his office. He'd reached a point where he could get weepy any minute, clear-headed enough for conversation but more deliberate in choosing his words. “You'll need to check with the state police. They can put an all-points out for the vehicle. And contact hospitals, too, of course.”

“Helen's making the calls now,” Glenn said.

“If they haven't turned up seventy-two hours after the initial report, we can identify them as missing persons. Let's hope that doesn't happen, but if it does, I’m afraid you'll need to canvas the neighborhood. See if Josh can help. The overtime won't be a problem. Maybe the state can spare a few troopers to help. A search will stir people up, but if the family is really missing we can't waste time.”

Glenn could imagine the fun the state troopers would have with that, a local yokel sheriff's office losing a whole family.

The sheriff let out a gin-soaked belch Glenn could smell across the office.

“See if they have any relatives in the area. And interview employees at the lumberyard, of course.”

The sheriff filled his empty glass from the pitcher that was growing empty itself. The chair squeaked under him as he moved.

“Anything else I ought to do right now?” Glenn asked.

The sheriff lifted himself in slow motion and eased onto the sofa. He stretched his legs across the floor and lay his head back.

“No, my boy. Let's hope for the best.”

Glenn turned to leave but couldn't help asking.

“Sheriff...?”

“I know what you're thinking, Glenn.” His eyes were closed. “We don't get missing persons in Sommersville. As I said, let's hope for the best.”

Helen made calls from her desk, as she'd been doing all morning. A Bible lay on her desk next to a copy of Reader's Digest with an inside page folded over to mark her place. Glenn remembered his mom reading those when he was a kid. When he glanced through them the Drama in Real Life stories always frightened him. Folks back then got themselves into all sorts of dangerous situations without even trying. Glenn had got so he was nervous leaving the house, afraid he'd get caught in a coal mine collapse or boating disaster or some other catastrophe. Growing up in a state that suffered tornadoes on a regular basis didn't help. He never asked his folks what he could do to avoid those jams, they would have more than likely laughed at him and moved on.

“Give Josh a call,” Glenn told Helen in between phone conversations. Josh Avery was their night-shift deputy who helped out with day-shift work the rare times they needed it. “If the McCutcheons don't turn up by...I guess Friday, we'll need him to put in some overtime to help with a search. And...looks like we’re going to need those missing persons forms.”

*****

GLENN SPENT most of the afternoon up to the lumberyard, off State Road 24 a few miles outside town, interviewing everyone he could. The air all around smelled of saw dust. Trucks loaded with boards rumbled in and out across the gravel parking lot, saws screamed with blades as tall as a man, and the men (they were all men, other than the receptionist) worked harder in a few hours than Glenn did in a typical month.

“Bill's a good guy,” Stanley, the yard manager, said. A burly fellow with a buzz cut, he wore a whistle around his neck so he could get folks’ attention straight away. “Works better than some, not as good as others. He never missed like this, not without a call. He all right?”

They all asked. Is Bill all right? Is the family okay? They answered their own questions by answering Glenn's. Bill hadn't said anything about travel plans. His work history was reliable. He looked healthy the last time they saw him, just this Friday last. No one had any reason to think about drug or alcohol use, no more than a few beers now and then, at any rate. They hadn't heard talk of any family problems. Most of them never much saw family members, but a few of the families got together for pizza now and then, and Missy and little Hank behaved normal last time, even though no one was sure about the dates.

By the time Glenn wrapped it up and went back to town, they all had a sense the world didn't look all right for the McCutcheon family.

He checked in at the station and said good night to Helen. The sheriff was asleep on his sofa, where he ended up as often as not. He had a small house on Hawthorn Street, past Main from the office, and on those nights he was able to go home, he was generally late coming in the next morning.

On his way home, Glenn parked his car on Main Street and stepped into Hopewell's Groceries-Deli-Hardware. Townsfolk went to Kokomo or Logansport for more substantial grocery-buying, and made a day trip to Indianapolis for serious shopping, but Hopewell's got most residents through most days. It wasn't changed much since the days his mom dragged herself through the grocery aisles or Glenn followed the Old Man up and down the hardware aisles. Constructed like an enormous garage seated on concrete with industrial-strength fans blowing flies off the produce in summer and jackets near mandatory in the winter. The name ran across the front windows in peeling yellow paint with the profile of a Native American's head like on the old Buffalo nickels. They used to have a slogan under the name, “We're no Indian givers!” but some activists came along in the 1970s and convinced the owner to give that up. The owner, a beer-bellied man with hair the color of black shoe polish, grandson of the store's founder, mostly strolled the produce aisles boasting about the tomatoes and trying to flirt with housewives.

Glenn stood in line at the deli section near the front of the store. Most evenings he didn't have much appetite unless he picked up dinner at the deli; the smells of salads, meats, and poultry, perked up the taste buds. Two women in aprons and hairnets scooped up food into plastic containers, weighed them, wrote prices on the lids with felt markers, and rang up the sales; this was the deli's busiest time of day, about as busy as anything ever got in Sommersville. A TV screwed to the wall over the deli cash register broadcast the same Congressional hearings he'd heard over the radio earlier. A man talking, identified on the screen as a U.S. Congressman, said, “We are here about the truth; we are here about accountability; we are here in these hearings about the use of zeal and power to accomplish, as a result, a laudable purpose in the cries of some.”

“Crazy, huh?” a tall, lanky man with thin light brown hair stood next to Glenn in line. An elastic band held rimless eyeglasses tight to his head and he wore long cargo shorts and hiking boots. He jerked his head toward the TV. “Try to help out those poor folks in Central America and a bunch of politicians lose their minds over it.”

“Can't say I been following it,” Glenn shrugged. “Most of it's over my head.”

The man gave his order to one of the women behind the counter. He turned back and stuck a hand out to Glenn. “Walter Joyce. I'm a field engineer. Free agent, so I work for all kinds of companies.”

Glenn introduced himself and shook Joyce's hand. “Field engineer...like minerals, that kind of thing?”

“Among other things. I scout out areas that look promising for development. Forestry, natural gas, you name it. If I come across a place I think has potential, I report it back to the home office and they send out experts in whatever field.”

A stranger at Hopewell's was sure to be noticed. A stranger talking about forestry and mining guaranteed anyone within earshot tuned in to the conversation.

“I like to make acquaintance with local law enforcement,” Joyce said. “Folks sometimes get a lot of emotions stirred up when they hear the kind of work I do. A stranger wandering around taking notes might look suspicious. I like to know who I can turn to if things get uncomfortable.” He held up his hands, palms toward Glenn. “Not that that happens often. You just never know.”

“I'm surprised your company sends you out alone,” Glenn said. “Sounds like important work. They could give you some backup.”

“As I said, I don't work for a company,” Joyce said. “Sometimes I’m directed and others I just go where the mood strikes.”

A plump high school girl named Rhonda, behind the counter, handed Joyce a plastic bag with several foam containers of food. “Thank you, Miss,” he said. To both of them, he said, “I'm so happy when I find good local cuisine, instead of one more fast food burger joint.” Joyce angled himself to talk to Glenn again. “Almost as good as mom used to make, right?”

“Better, I hope,” Glenn frowned.

“Anyway, I'm a contractor. It's a liability thing.” He gave Glenn a collaborative elbow nudge. “Lets everyone off the hook legally. I can blame any one of a number of companies. The company can say I'm independent and they had no idea what I was up to. Ends up with everyone pointing their fingers every which way. There's not much a jury can do with that.”

Joyce stepped over to the register to pay for his food. Glenn told one of the deli workers what he wanted. No need for pleasantries; everyone at Hopewell's was a regular, except this Joyce fellow. Customers mostly ignored the televised hearings as the latest talking head shared his thoughts.

“The national preoccupation with this matter hangs like a dark cloud over our government, diluting its effectiveness in dealing with domestic problems and weakening our position in the world arena. Our responsibility now is to see that the facts are laid out clearly and completely for the American people. They are capable of arriving at their own judgments about the wisdom of the policies that spawned this tragic affair. Let the chips fall where they may...”

Glenn took his food and settled up with Susan at the register, with her gravel voice and brown hair turning gray. She took his cash and jerked her head in the direction of Joyce, who had stepped out and stood on the sidewalk in front of the store.

“Did he say natural gas companies are looking around?” she asked.

Glenn shook his head. The last thing the town needed was more speculation over thin air. “Sounds like he's just passing through.”

He carried his dinner out to the sidewalk where Walter Joyce waited. “Another benefit of me being a contractor, Deputy. If a company finds something based on one of my leads, I get a percentage. If somebody helped me out, or made my job easier,” he spread his hands wide, sharing the imaginary wealth, “I make sure everyone gets taken care of.”

He handed Glenn a business card with Walter Joyce, Field Agent and Coolidge Mining and a phone number. “Field agent, free agent, it’s all the same,” he said. “I’ve got a dozen cards, depending on who’s paying the bills this week. Phone number just goes to my pager.” He tapped the device secured to his belt. “Appreciate making contact with you, Deputy.”

Unsure what to say, Glenn settled for, “Good luck to you.”

Joyce shook Glenn's hand and climbed into his own vehicle, a black soft-top Jeep with splatters of dried mud on the sides.

Glenn had one last chore before he went home. He drove by the McCutcheon house and parked in the driveway this time. In the fading sunlight he could see a window bright with the light he had turned on earlier. Standing in the driveway, he looked around the neighborhood, all quiet except for the dog barking from the backyard. Across the street, a silhouette with tense shoulders peered through parted drapes; probably the man who had threatened shotgun action that morning.

Glenn stayed out of the house, he couldn't imagine that empty feeling amplified by pending nightfall. He paused at the gate to the backyard. The dog jumped around, barked, and wagged its tail. It's white teeth grinned through the approaching night. He saw it had dug up a bed of petunias alongside the house and that explained why it had been chained.

It was the first time Glenn had smiled all day.

He worked his way across the yard while the dog ran circles around him. “All right, now,” he said. “Settle down.” He opened the shed, took a heaping scoop of dog food out of the bin, and tossed it in the dog’s bowl this time. He stood for a moment and breathed in the night air while the dog sniffed out the bits of food. All he heard was a few crickets and a TV next to someone's open window a few houses down. Sommersville was a quiet town but there was such a thing as too much quiet. He looked at the pee-wee basketball hoop in the driveway. Recalled the family photos on the walls inside. This home was meant for the sounds of a family.

While the dog worked on the food, Glenn went to his car and drove off. He hunched over the steering wheel and watched in the rear view mirror, just to make sure no evil spirits were on his tail.

*****

GLENN POURED a glass of water from the tap and laid his dinner out on the coffee table in the living room: chicken salad sandwich, potato salad, coleslaw, macaroni and cheese. He usually waited to eat after the TV news was over; it only depressed him. Most nights the independent station out of Indianapolis kept him company with an old horror or science-fiction movie. Tonight they showed Assignment: Outer Space, about a pushy reporter sent to study up on some astronauts on a space station while they got into some fantastical situations. The cardboard sets and effects made for a universe where courage was easy to muster. Movies like this kept his mind off his own life and off the world outside of town, with its vast wonders and ancient terrors. He’d tried the conventional horror movies and found them too lifelike. No Drama in Real Life for him.

He ate from the bowl of mac and cheese and stood at the sliding door while the characters carried out their adventures. The house had no air conditioning, so the glass door and most of the windows were opened to the screens. The door led to a concrete patio and the backyard. His house on the far corner of Windsor Estates, southeast of town, could have been the edge of the world. The last streetlight stood just before his driveway, and past the backyard was pasture and farms. A chain-link fence stretched around the weedy back yard. A tired wood shed, eight foot to a side with peeling white paint, sat in a far corner of the yard.

Developers across Indiana referred to the neighborhood as Windfall Estates, built in the 1950s when Chevy stirred up talk of raising up a factory, and everyone got the idea they were finally going to hit the jackpot once the post-war boom bestowed its blessings on all the small towns. The Old Man thought he was smart, buying in for a double lot, a big production for a two-bedroom, one-bath house, a bit over a thousand square feet worth of average. The Chevy rumors dried up about the time construction was finished and the loan papers signed. The forest and farmland around them hadn't been disturbed any further; one windfall development was all anyone figured they would get out of a town the size of Sommersville.

What with his mother gone all these years and the Old Man where he was, Glenn staying in the house made sense, financially and otherwise. Neighbors were nice enough, though they would always be wary around Glenn because they hadn’t forgotten his father constantly hitting them up for odd jobs or loans, with the nerve to try and show off his intelligence all the while. Glenn hadn't changed much inside the house, including most of the furniture. Sheriff's deputies in small towns didn't get paid a lot, and whether he liked the decor or not, he doubted he had the sense to pick anything better.

He heard a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood. He thought again of the McCutcheons. Like the sheriff said, We don't get missing persons. Small town folks don't just up and disappear. He had goose bumps thinking about the emptiness in that house sucking all the life out of the world. That brought him back to the dream about the boy and the horses. Nights like this, with crickets and frogs singing a hymn to early summer, he might as well be the last man on earth. He finished his dinner about the time the movie ended, when the reporter who was supposed to be in the way ended up saving the day.

He fell asleep on the couch, the old sofa with a busy geometric pattern in a hundred shades of black and gold that must have looked fashionable in one decade or another. The screen turned to static when the TV station stopped broadcasting, laying out shaky light across the room. That barking dog kept him tossing and turning. At some point he figured no one in Windsor Estates even owned a dog that sounded like that, and certainly wouldn't leave it out to bark all night. Glenn figured maybe it was all in his head.

2

The phone rang. Glenn stretched his body, achy from the sofa. He'd fallen asleep with a cardboard potato salad container on his chest. He dropped it on the coffee table and stumbled into the kitchen to answer the phone on the wall by the fridge.

“Glenn? Hey, it's Josh. Sorry to wake you so early, man.” Josh Avery, the night-shift deputy. Young and still filled with too much future to fret about the past. Glenn shook his head and looked around to gauge the light coming in the windows. There wasn't any. Not even sunrise yet. “I figured I'd better call somebody. And the sheriff...well...”

“Yeah, it's all right.” His own voice sounded foggy. “Something happen?”

“I got a call from a guy who lives out by the McCutcheons. I saw the file, about them missing and everything. Anyway, he's an older guy, he said he was outside cause he heard their dog barking all night and wanted to know what we were going to do about it.”

Glenn sighed. “I got a good idea who it is. Did he say anything about a shotgun?”

“Yeah... Yeah, I don't think he was serious, though.”

“He's not. I'll go check on the dog once it's daylight. Might have to turn it into the pound if they don't turn up soon.”

“The dog's not the problem. The old guy said he went out to yell at it and saw the front door was wide open. Sounds like there was a break-in.”

*****

THE SUN was nearly up by the time Glenn pulled into the McCutcheons' drive. He left his hat in the cruiser. The dog barked from behind the chain-link fence. A dozen people loitered in the street today. Against his better judgment, he went to them. One of them was a woman Glenn's age with mousy brown hair and dressed in a brown-and-white convenience store uniform. He’d forgot she lived out this way.

“Damn fool dog ain't worth spit,” the old man from the day before spoke up. “Barks all the time, how are we supposed to know the place is being robbed?”

“Do you know it was robbed?” Glenn asked. “Did you see anyone? Any suspicious activity?”

“The door's open,” the old man pointed to the house. “They ain’t home. You reckon that's suspicious?”

“Something happen to the McCutcheons?” a teenage boy with a backpack, on his way to school, asked.

“They went missing,” the older woman from yesterday said, her silent husband bobbing his head alongside her.

“We don't know that,” Glenn held up his hands. “Could be, they're just traveling and forgot to let anyone know. You know how long the door's been open, by any chance?”

“You were there yesterday,” the first old man said. His voice got whinier the longer he talked. “You didn't leave it open, did you?”

Glenn paused too long to be convincing. “No, I closed it.”

While the others whispered gossip, the angry man said, “Maybe it’s gang activity.” He didn’t look to be joking. “I’m reading things in the paper all the time about these gangs, they look to be taking over half the country. Seems it’s a matter of time before they get to us smaller towns.”

“You see any signs of gangs in town, you give the office a call right away.” Glenn wasn’t even sure what gang activity would look like and expected the old-timer didn’t, either. He turned to the blond in the retail getup. A small button pinned to her front said I can't drive fifty-five. “Hey, Angie.”

“Hey, Glenn.” She nodded toward the house, took a last drag on a cigarette and flipped it onto the asphalt. “Did something really happen to them? I saw them out walking just last week.”

“We're just trying to locate them. Being safe.”

“You didn't leave the door open, did you?” she smirked.

“No.” He tried to be angry. “How you been?”

“I'm all right. Benji's out for the summer next week, starting fourth grade in the fall. And, Randall, 'course,” she grinned. Some folks questioned if Randall really was Benji's biological father. Not to his face, of course, what with him being a state trooper who’d spent more time lifting weights than he’d ever spent in school. “He's doing real good. Everyone's saying he's going to get promoted to sergeant and take command of a district. We'll finally get out of this stupid town. How about you? You ever going to make any big plans?”

Glenn sighed and looked everywhere but in her smart aleck face.

“I don't figure to.”

“You never changed since high school,” she said. She raised a hand to fluff her hair and Glenn noticed the high school class ring she wore, a silver band with a turquoise stone. Glenn had wanted his own class ring at the time but there hadn’t been money for it. He didn’t miss it. “I still don't know what I ever saw in you.”

She'd been telling him that since they broke up all those years ago. He was pretty sure she’d said it the very day she dumped him. He said the first thing he could think of that might remind her they came from the same town. “How's things at the Junction Mart?” The gas station/convenience store out west of town on SR 24.

She shrugged and didn't take the bait. “It's a paycheck. Once Randall moves up, we'll get us a place in a real city. I'll stay home with Benji after that. Might even have another kid.” She turned her chin up, defiant at the question he hadn't even thought of. “Thirty-five's not too old. There's still time yet.”

“Well...” Glenn saw the gossip-mongers getting restless. A missing family wasn't something you could sit on too long in a small town. If they didn't turn up soon, half a dozen versions of the truth would run wild. He addressed the group. “Any of you know the dog's name?”

No one did.

He walked across the front lawn.

“You go get ‘em, Glenn,” Angie laughed. “Can't be that hard to find, a town this small.”

He rapped on the wide-open front door. “Hello? Sheriff's office. Anyone home?”

Morning light was improving and he saw bits of dried mud inside the doorway. He didn't remember it from yesterday and wondered how he'd done such a half-assed job. Should've brought the camera and then dusted for prints. Including the ones he'd already deposited.

​