Authors: Jonathan Gash
“What’s with the stolen kid?”
As usual, Tietze was loafing, feet on anybody’s desk except his own. Officer Jim Stazio heaved his bulk to what soon would no longer be his chair.
Police Precinct Central O-One hummed, elevator doors crashing, occasional shouts making nobody turn, phones shrilling, officers wanting the world to leave them the fuck alone.
“You made two calls already.”
“It’s my job.” Jim Stazio grimaced apology, then admitted, “I had to talk, tell the guy I’m
forcibly
retired. I chickened.”
“Couldn’t, hmmm?”
“That’s right, Sam.” Daily Diner did a great burger but it was hell of a bloater. Sam Tietze could eat like a hog, stayed thin as a pole. “I’m going to thin down, forty pounds.”
“Staying in town after, Jim?” Sam Tietze asked, inquisitive because it would happen to him in another five years. “Stay local. Retirees don’t do bad.”
Somebody at the far end threw the phone and slammed
out the door. Two officers by the water cooler shrugged and followed.
“Maybe.” Jim looked at his handset. “A funny guy. Grampa, back home.”
“Broke down, right? Yelled we were useless fuckers, all that shit?”
“No.” Jim thought over the words. “Know what he said? Calm as you like, said,
Thank you, Mr Stazio. May I ask what the chances are, if I came over?
He meant finding the boy himself. I told him zilch.”
“How’d he take it?”
Jim de-capped a bottle of water, starting his slimming plan. “Like asking,
Where do I start looking?
”
“Loony tunes, Jim,” Sam said. “They all say that. Learn the hard way. Needle in a haystack? I wish!”
“The guy just said thanks. But I got this feeling.”
“It’s retirement blues, Jim,” Sam Tietze told him. “Don’t drink water. Fish fuck in it.”
“W.C. Fields said that.”
Jim Stazio pulled out the file on abducted minors and flipped it, C for Charleston. He knew the data by heart, but read it all the same.
The third week, Geoff and Shirley came home. Bray used up seven priceless days and nights in braving routine. It was hard, but had to be done.
Bray travelled to and from work mechanically. This was every commuter’s art, to journey without registering the details. Sometimes on the train he read or dozed. He recognised people, never spoke. A woman used to say “Good morning”. Now Bray avoided catching her eye, and sat farther down the compartment. He was sure she’d
identified him from a grainy local newspaper shot. Questions would be unwelcome. She seemed to understand, and was already checking over a typescript when he boarded.
Listening to the desultory conversations all around was the entertainment he liked – used to like, before the horror. Shirley, his son Geoffrey’s wife, always argued that Bray ought to be more gregarious. She was a great one for trying to make Bray “join
in
!” Competitions, flower shows, garden parties, Shirley raised teams to win mantelpiece trophies. Invariably Bray declined. Too busy in his workshed, adapting and reinventing ancient woodworking tools, making carvings while Davey invented stories. Now, Shirley was silent, Geoffrey frantic, both tortured.
At Liverpool Street Station, going home of an evening, Bray found a seat in the third compartment. Not too crowded tonight. Formerly he would have hurried, making sure he caught the express that tore out of the capital into the countryside, and so win Davey for a little extra time. No longer.
The train filled. A whistle blew. It slowly drew out heading east.
Not seeing the cluttered streets of London’s East End, Bray thought of tenses. The present tense had become the past, the continuous into past pluperfect. Shirley
had been
a great one for competitions. She
used
to get up teams. Bray
had
assumed that tomorrow would come with somebody small and laughing, bouncing on the bed to awaken him.
Davey had shown astonishing traits.
Davey usually sat in the shed and watched Grampa. They played games, drew maps, carved creatures. Davey
knew the names of most tools, extraordinarily bright for six. They argued! Bray almost caught himself smiling, angrily quelled the response and stared out into rain because, correction, they
had
argued; Davey
used
to know the names of woodcarving tools. Now?
The train rocked through Romford.
Commuters read newspapers, talked of tax, work, motor cars, engaged in life’s absurd deception. They trusted chronology with certainty about the coming hours, went from hour to day, season to year, exactly as laughing children crossed stepping stones daring each other to get their shoes wet, yet knowing they would safely reach home. The presumption of permanence was the human sleight-of-mind.
He had been the same, once. The woman in the seat opposite, papers on her lap, met Bray’s eyes and looked away.
Bray remembered waking when the phone rang.
Geoff spoke words that failed to penetrate: lost, police, investigation. Other words came: crowds, search. Security officer this, agent that. And “sighting”, like for birds.
Most terrible of all, “The search is being extended further afield.” Then, terribly, “It’s no good you coming, Dad. People are doing everything they can.”
His heart bled for his son, his daughter-in-law. Twenty minutes to three a.m.
Bray came to, surprised to be on the train still. Or was it a different day, and he’d been home, and it had become tomorrow?
The train slowed. Normally he would nod off and be woken by the changing fiddle-de-dee, fiddle-de-daa, of the
wheels on the station approach. Had he slept? He wanted proof of distress, making sure his anguish would never leave. He had no right to doze. Anything less than constant pain would be treachery to Davey.
Bray rose and stood swaying as the train drew in. He thought, with a curious satisfaction,
I’m on course
. He’d endured sixty miles and never once allowed Davey’s two game words in, that only Davey and Grampa Bray knew.
“Night,” somebody said as he clambered over briefcases.
“Night,” Bray replied mechanically. It was the manuscript woman.
He alighted and shut the door on the fug. Conversation was forbidden him. It might be allowed back into existence tomorrow, when it conceivably might have a function. Until then, silence was his first ally. You didn’t trick an ally. Tomorrow he might silently think Davey’s two words, and make a start.
How, he did not know.
The village bus was four minutes late, not bad at this hour. When it came, he sat alone. He didn’t see the dark fields go past, the chain of headlights linking the A12. Most passengers alighted at the village shop.
Among them, a stout woman betrayed him, as that stupid Karen had, saying to her companion as the bus doors hissed shut, “Wasn’t that David’s grandad, y’know, who —?”
Rage could make killers of us all.
Bray struggled to control the fury he felt. Was?
Is
, you stupid cow,
is
Davey’s grandad.
Present
tense, not past, you idiot bitch.
He’d driven his emotions back beyond consciousness by the Kings Head pub pond. He became an automaton. The same instinct had driven him back to work and endure
the faltering expressions of commiseration everybody came out with. And ignore inane Karen’s attempt to press him for details until Mr Winsarls drew her away while she went, “What? What?” Stupidity was always indignant.
He walked down the familiar lane trying to quieten his footfalls to protect more silence.
Lights were on in Geoff’s and Shirley’s adjoining dwelling, but his own semi-detached house was dark. Tea would be tinned vegetable soup and unbuttered bread. Odd, but Bray found he’d abruptly gone off cheese. Like meat, ham, and stews.
Television was a lesion in time. It showed some comedian drawing the Lottery, then a cops-and-robbers. He dowsed the sound and put an Albinoni piece on. Hard to look at the silent flickering screen and synchronise thoughts. He gave three knocks on the wall to show he was home, and heard a couple of thumps in reply from Geoffrey. He set about his evening rites, Buster before anything. He crossed the road to Christine Lumley’s house and knocked. She was immediately there, smiling, Buster leaping for joy. Bray wondered if she watched behind the curtains.
“Hello, Bray!” She spoke with determined brightness, handing him the lead. “He’s been as good as gold, haven’t you, Buzzie?” And swiftly corrected herself, for Buzzie was Davey’s name. “Haven’t you, Buster?”
He stood there. “Thank you, Christine.”
“I’ve left his tin and packet in your back porch, Bray.” She added awkwardly, as if he’d made a lengthy apology, “No, really. He’s no trouble.”
He returned, unlocked the door and released Buster. “Tea. Then a walk, eh?”
His kitchen door opened into the garden. His workshed
stood there by the hedge and the tall rear fence. Buster ran expectantly about sniffing the grass, and scratched at the shed door. One paw raised, he stared at Geoffrey’s house before doing a laconic patrol about the garden, stopping to listen at intervals. Bray made his tea and got Buster’s dish ready. The ritual would have to be preserved until he learned otherwise.
The outside light on, he got the kettle on the go. Buster gave him a new riotous greeting outside.
“Wotcher, pal. Another hello, is it?”
Bray endured the daft leaps, grumbling he’d be covered in hairs. He threw a stick for the dog to chase before bringing Buster’s bowl, a mess from a tin and some dry biscuity stuff. He never got the hang of Buster’s food. The tinned stuff was repellent. Shirley laughed at Bray’s fastidiousness;
used
to laugh.
This was a new ritual. Buster was Davey’s dog. The two adjoining gardens were not separated, so Davey and Buster had the run of both.
Bray’s sure instinct was not to mention Davey when with the dog. He walked Buster to Avery Fields, down by the river path then back past the herbarium, his plastic bag and scoop at the ready. Usually he’d speak, about work, wood, of the countryside years before. Now, he spoke to Buster but filled up, the retriever staring into Bray’s face to see what was wrong. Closing his own mind, Bray kidded Buster into normality.
Almost.
For Buster would glance doubtfully from the house to Bray’s shed, from there to Bray. Or, he’d listen on his walk, halt, stare again, then listlessly move on.
“Time for my grub, Buzz lad,” Bray told him, and went inside.
Buster knew not to follow. Shirley’s orders, dog in the kennel. Okay, it was insulated, dry, and had a thermal blanket. Bray admitted Buster to his own downstairs. Who now would care?
In another pretence, Bray checked on the answer phone. No blinking red light, no news. The phone’s red light had glowed since Davey was stolen. Two weeks ago last Tuesday, at twenty minutes to three in the morning.
Which made it what time in the United States of America, land of the free?
He sat at an imposing mahogany desk on which stood a sign, SILENCE! in nacre on ebony. He was Doctor, the expert, proprietor of
Rehabilitation Par Excellence, Inc.
“You are Pop,” he told his client. “Your wife is Mom, and only Mom.”
Doctor had an eagle stare, and now used it on the businessman.
“Got it.”
“I am Doctor. No abbreviations. The situation we have right here is that women generate convictions, and we men acquire purpose. It runs civilisation.”
Pop had often thought this and reached the same conclusion. He watched the other’s compelling gestures.
Doctor semaphored, to demonstrate his profundity. His clients were compliant audiences. They had to be. Statistically, women owned America’s wealth. A man was simpler, honed and arrow-like. Pretty simile, no?
To Pop it was more bitter than pleasant.
Women had whole lexicons expressing every grade of fault, dubiety and expectation for men. Because of their semantic cosmology the male was redundant except as a
meal ticket. The laws of good old U S of A made men mere bystanders forced to watch females compete. The women in a Reproductivity Superbowl, the spectators silent men.
And Law made man blameworthy, when a wife somehow failed in that sorority of combat,
failed
to match her own self-generated image of mother, where fecundity was the sole criterion of triumph.
Lucky, Pop thought with bitterness, that he had the money to buy the boy. His wealth would convert his wife from a mere Hey-You to Mom. And himself Pop from a Him. Why not ask straight out, now he’d come this far?
“The boy, Doctor,” Pop said. “Get to the boy.”
Pop saw Doctor’s face cloud with annoyance, but shit, he was paying big dollar. The USA stood for private enterprise in everything, children included.
Pay, you got the goods. Doctor’s crap philosophy he could do without. Doctor’s enterprise had stolen the boy and brought him to the point of delivery. Cut the corny existentialist gunge, it came down to goods bought and received.
“The boy is physically fine. No need to worry.”
Doctor steepled his fingers. Pop was not exactly overcome with awe. Chrissakes, he’d shovelled gelt into this clinic like it grew on those fucking Florida palms waving in the costly breeze out there.
“Mentally,” Doctor intoned, “it’ll take time before Clint is readjusted.”
Pop put the biggie, the question Mom was pestering him with night and day.
“When do we get him?”
Doctor’s only problem was disguising his contempt.
Being sterile – Doctor liked the Bible’s “barren” better
– they had to buy. So they came to him cap in hand, wallets bulging.
He smiled reassuringly. “You have him now, Pop. You’re already a complete family. Your own apartment here. You can attend the boy’s psychiatric conversion at every stage.”
“Those I paid for,” Pop said bluntly, unmoved by Doctor’s litany. “Give me a time frame.”
“A few weeks. Then the domiciliary phase.”
“Taking how long?”
“Five months to Clint’s final phase. We call it re-entry. Clint will be your son. His mind will know no other parents, remember no other life. He’ll attend a school of your choosing. That’s the only true test.”
Pop went for his nagging doubt. “Except for memory.”
“Something troubling you, Pop? Spit it out.”
“How much of his previous life will Clint really remember?”
Sadly Doctor shook his head at such lack of faith. “Clint will remember only what I let him remember. His language, of course. But American English, not English English. His past I shall delete. The process has already begun. You, Pop and Mom, will create the boy as surely as if Mom delivered him in the obstetric unit.”
Pop had a gesture of his own, the aggressive pointing finger.
“Will the boy be normal?”
Doctor felt intimidated for only an instant, quickly recovering behind his shield of expertise.
“One hundred per cent.”
Doctor sounded a truly dedicated professional in the service of suffering humanity, far above sordid greed as he said with dignity, “Certainly.”
This client had had assurances from other experts, and
would not let go.
“Do you ever fail?”
Seriouser and seriouser! Doctor felt nothing but contempt for these rich inadequates. They made him laugh – in the privacy of his own secluded apartment, of course.
Having committed the ultimate federal crime – buying a stolen child – they wanted guarantees plastered on the label. How on earth did these people become millionaires?
“Never. Look, Pop, 350,000 children are abducted annually from legitimate marriages! My clinic is a drop in that ocean. I provide wholesome children, ready to take up a decent moral life with wealthy families. It’s that simple.”
“I’d have thought a girl would have been easier.”
Doctor smiled at the lamebrain. “Mom asked for a boy. You paid for a boy. I get you a boy!” Sensing trouble, he went for generalities. “Girls are more facile and can be programmed into a new life right up to the age of ten. Boys are more trouble. We can tune them into a new existence before eight, maximum. A few prove recalcitrant, sure, need extra handling. But I never fail.”
“There are grades?”
With dispassion Doctor appraised Pop.
The client was a man who, like himself, dealt in absolutes. The one benefit of Doctor’s business was its immunity from law. (Slight correction: from litigation.) Nobody could sue him or his clinic. Wariness however always paid when some rich fat-gutted oaf like this one quibbled.
Doctor composed his features into humility. Galling, to play the serf to such a man, but financial transactions must be smooth.
“Yes, Pop,” he said comfortably, registering real pleasure at the other’s sudden alarm. “Everything isn’t always plain
sailing. Every child is different.”
Doctor knew he had got round the awkwardness, for now. Marvellous what fear did to these rich contemptibles.
“Case complexity is my problem, Pop, not yours. I always win in the end. And you are the beneficiary of a complete, ready-made son!”
“Thank you.”
Humility now? Doctor felt his lip curl in disdain.
“The boy is hundred per cent yours for ever.”
He injected a twinkle into his eyes. Nurses had loved it, during his hell year as intern.
“Ours!” Pop now spoke with wonder. “Our son!”
Doctor was disgusted to see tears fill the client’s eyes. He felt his power. This was how God felt on a good day.
With an endless supply of children, he was omnipotent. He’d proved his invincibility scores of times. Nothing could stop him.
“Clint,” he intoned, smiley, “is a routine case.”