When the phone rings at a time like that, you ought to know the smart thing would be just to let it go to voice mail. I must’ve been a little addle-brained from the coon-and-curtain assault, because I grabbed a towel, followed the trail of watery coon prints across the house to the living room, snatched up the phone, and spotted the coon rubbing off on the stack of laundry I’d just picked up from the Wash Barrel in Moses Lake the day before. What had been fresh uniforms were now wadded-up piles of pants and shirts covered with hair, water, and what looked like damp pieces of Oreo cookie. Apparently, Bandito’d been having a snack before he came to hunt me down in the shower.
My eyeball started pounding in its socket, and I had murder on the brain when I flipped open the phone and answered it.
A moment like that is the exact wrong time to find your sergeant on the other end, and the last thing you want him to do is give you orders to go pick up your partner and head to another part of the state to help flood victims.
The worst thing about that kind of news is, the minute you hang up the phone, you realize that, some way or other, you’re gonna have to explain that shiner to the guys.
My heart is like a singing bird.
– Christina Rossetti
(Left by A. Bastrop, newly retired
from teaching middle school)
Andrea Henderson
When I arrived at the office Tuesday morning, Bonnie was unusually giddy. She met me in the hallway before I was three steps in the door. Eyes wide, she laid a hand on my arm, her fingers tightening around my wrist. “He was just here. Did you see him out in the parking lot?”
“
Who
was here?”
She had the awed look and fiery blush of a teenager at a rock concert. I couldn’t imagine what would spark that level of enthusiasm so early in the morning.
“I guess you just missed him.” She let go of my arm and fanned her face. “Whoa, he’s hot.”
“Who?” There must have been a FedEx delivery this morning. Bonnie had a thing for the FedEx man. Actually, she had a thing for the UPS man, too, and the food-service truck driver who delivered supplies to the doughnut shop next door. “You know, if you don’t stop ogling the FedEx guy, we’re going to end up with some kind of harassment complaint.”
“Pfff! Not him.The
game warden.
” Her eyes widened, her mouth spreading into a smile. “Holy mackerel, you didn’t tell me he was, like, hot to the third power.”
I blinked dumbly, my mind racing to assimilate information. Mart had shown up? Here? How did he even know where my office was, and why would he come all this way? Had something happened to Birdie? “Mart McClendon? What did he want?”
Stretching onto her toes, Bonnie craned to one side and scanned the front door, as if she were hoping that Mart would show up again. I found myself checking behind me with the fleeting thought that I wished I’d arrived at work a few minutes earlier.
Bonnie settled back into her shoes. “He came by to try to catch you before you headed out to appointments this morning. But finally he couldn’t wait any longer. He had leave town to rescue flood victims in southeast Texas.” Bonnie breathed the words
rescue flood victims
with reverence and awe. “He had on a uniform, a gun belt, and a cowboy hat – the whole deal. And he was, like, so . . . so . . .” She was momentarily at a loss for words, which must have meant the world was slightly off its axis. She finally finished with, “. . . rugged.”
Rugged . . .
I mused. I had the sudden urge to call Mart and tell him our administrative assistant thought he was
rugged
. He’d get a laugh out of that. “I hadn’t noticed.” That was completely untrue, of course, but it sounded convincing.
“You are so totally blind,” she complained. “He’s like, all man. He even had a teenie bit of a black eye. He probably got that while he was making an arrest – protecting little fuzzy animals or something.”
“He had a black eye?” Where had Mart been this morning? I hoped the black eye didn’t have anything to do with Birdie. Surely, it wasn’t from Len. “He was fine last night.”
Bonnie caught a breath. “So you
do
have a thing going with him.” With a flash of carefully curled lashes, she snaked a hand out and swat-tapped me on the arm. “I thought so. I knew I saw him looking around your office while he was writing you that note.”
“He wrote me a note?” Leave it to Bonnie to skip the important information in favor of ferreting out personal details. I started down the hall, and she followed, of course.
“And some papers in an envelope. He said he’d tried to call you a little while ago, but you didn’t answer.”
“My phone went dead last night. I forgot to turn it back on this morning.” A flutter of excitement caused the corners of my lips to twitch upward, and I averted my face to hide it. The last thing I needed was Bonnie knowing that Mart had actually kissed me on the dock in the moonlight. She’d make more of it than it was, and pretty soon my personal . . . whatever would be fodder for office conversation. My professional image would be out the window.
Peeking around the edges of my all-important professional image was another, completely random thought. It flitted by in bright colors I couldn’t ignore.
I was on his mind this morning. . . .
Bonnie caught him checking out my office. . . .
I thought of the kiss, and my cheeks flamed. As if she sensed what I was hiding, Bonnie followed me into my office, pushed the door partially closed, and stood with her hand on the knob, ready to shut it all the way if the dish was really good. “So what’s the note say?” Her eyes brightened with anticipation.
I quickly unfolded the piece of printer paper and scanned it. It was an update on Len and Birdie. Mart had asked Reverend Hay to catch Len on the lake this morning and explain to him that some people would probably be coming by his place soon to talk about Birdie, and Len should be cooperative. Mart apologized for the fact that he was being sent out of town and wouldn’t be available to help facilitate things. Reverend Hay had agreed to help make introductions, should a CPS investigator be sent out.
Inside the envelope, Mart had placed the information he’d gathered on Len and Birdie. There was also an e-mail containing some details on Len’s history. The e-mail addresses had been torn from the top of the paper, to keep Mart’s source confidential, I guessed.
“It’s business,” I said.
“What’s business?” When I looked up, Taz was standing in the doorway. I supposed it was as good a time as any to bring his expertise into the situation with Len and Birdie. I hoped I hadn’t crossed the line, getting involved without consulting Taz.
It was difficult to gauge his reaction as I shared the story. He listened patiently, stroking his chin, as I described our visit to Len’s house, the facts of the situation as we knew them, my first contact with CPS, which so far had failed to generate action, and Mart’s subsequent trips to Len’s house.
I left out the part of the story in which the rugged game warden and I stood on the dock in the moonlight. The memory and the sensations woven into the fabric of that scene played in my mind, though, and I felt my body quicken.
The next time he asks me to go for
a boat ride, I’ll say yes.
The impulse in my head surprised me, but even as I discounted it, I was scanning Mart’s note, trying to recall whether it said how long he’d be out of town. It didn’t, unfortunately.
“Mind if I take a look at that stuff?” Taz smacked his lips, tasting the details of the case, contemplating the possible ingredients.
I handed over my materials. “No, not at all.”
Muttering to himself, he scanned the puzzle pieces of information. “Your friend’s got some connections. Any idea why he didn’t just turn this over to the sheriff ’s department? This isn’t the sort of thing a game warden would normally dabble in.” A brow lifted in my direction, indicating more than a casual interest. I wondered if my boss thought I’d been playing vigilante.
“He hasn’t had the best cooperation from the sheriff ’s department.” A nervous sweat formed underneath my shirt and dripped down my spine. Maybe I’d really screwed up here. What if Mart had intended the contents of that envelope for my eyes only? What if I got him in trouble? What if I’d committed some major technical error by handling Birdie’s situation the way I had?
“Hmmm . . .” Taz muttered.
The muscles in my neck went stiff. I felt the need to explain my way out of trouble – just in case I was in some. “The grandfather, Len, is something of a recluse, and with his mental limitations . . . well, he’s leery of people he doesn’t know. He seems well-intentioned enough, but apparently someone warned him not to talk to Social Services. When it was mentioned, he became agitated. A heavy-handed approach here could make a difficult situation worse.”
“I see.” My boss’s expression neither softened, nor hardened. I couldn’t tell if I was about to get the axe or just a mild reprimand. “Neither of you felt that this . . . grandfather might be a danger to the child?”
Here it comes,
I thought. What in the world would I do if I lost my job? Maybe I could beg, and Taz would have mercy. “I don’t think he would be, intentionally. He seems to care about her, and I think he is providing for her to the best of his ability. My hesitation is that I don’t know how far that ability goes, and what happens when and if the mother shows up again. It’s clear from even a short assessment that this child has experienced a significant trauma, and right now her sense of security appears to lie with the grandfather. I question what will happen if that’s taken away from her, but at the same time, there’s no denying that she needs further evaluation and undoubtedly counseling, and that the grandfather would require support services, caregiver training, probably assistance completing the forms to enroll her in school, and so forth. Then there’s the issue of the biological mother and guardianship.”
The phone rang on Bonnie’s desk, and she turned sideways to slide through the portion of the doorway that wasn’t filled by my boss.
“Complicated,” Taz observed, scanning Mart’s notes again.
“Yes, it is.”
“What do you think should happen next?” Heavy folds of skin drooped beneath pale gray eyes, but the look in them was acute, measured. That question had the feel of a test about it. Without his overtly telling me so, I knew a lot was riding on my response.
“I’d like to secure a CPS referral and get back up there. The sooner we figure out where that little girl has been and what’s happened to her, the sooner we can try to create a viable, developmentally healthy situation for her.”
Still holding the information from Mart, my boss took a step backward into the hall. “Let me see what I can do with it. I know a few people at CPS.” He grinned and winked in a way that said,
Hey, I own the place.
“Oh . . . uhhh . . . all right.” I felt my professional confidence tumbling Humpty-Dumpty style, shattering into a gooey mass of shell and yoke on the office floor. Apparently, I wasn’t being fired, but Taz was taking over the case, which meant he didn’t think I could be trusted with it. The amount of letdown I felt was startling. I’d never anticipated that I would have so quickly become invested in this job. I wanted to be good at it. I wanted the pain and upheaval of the past year to count for something, to lead to something. I wanted to believe that, despite my clumsy way of fumbling through this life change, there was a plan, and I was on the path to it. I wanted to believe that Birdie was part of the plan, that all the trial and betrayal and humiliation of the past year had taught me about people – given me a sixth sense, an understanding of the clients I was serving.
Years ago I heard a missionary say that, until you could feel the pain of the people you were serving, you were only an actor, acting a part.
Shame does not lie in suffering,
he’d asserted,
but in wasted suffering.
Suffering must produce revelation.
I wanted to believe this past year had been a shaping process, turning me into something more than an actor.
Watching Taz walk away with my file made me feel like a farce.
Pausing in the hall, he glanced over his shoulder, as if he knew I was watching. “I think I can get you that referral without causing too much brouhaha,” he said, then winked before shuffling away, leaving a final assessment floating in the air behind him. “Good work, Henderson. In this business, you either think on your feet or sink on your feet. You’ve got what it takes.”
As his loafers squeaked out of earshot, I reveled in the very first triumph of my new life. I had what it took. And that opinion came from someone who knew this job inside and out.
With a tiny and properly controlled cheer, I sat down at my desk, clicked on my computer, and pulled up the morning schedule, eager to get on with the day. Suddenly the appointments ahead seemed like opportunities, a chance to affect lives. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to make a difference in all of them, but I could make a difference in some.
A summer storm system blew through later that morning. For the rest of the week, water, wind, and random tornado warnings caused travel to be unpredictable at best and completely out of the question in some rural areas. On the far side of the lake, the roads became a boggy maze of flooded low-water crossings, with mudholes deep enough to sink a Humvee, washouts, and downed tree branches that made it almost impossible for me to navigate to some of my appointments. Travel to Len’s place, either via land or water, quickly became out of the question. Even though Taz had successfully arranged for a low-key visit to Len’s house by a CPS investigator, who could then arrange a referral for me, the weather had closed in before anything could take place. I could only hope that, whatever was happening at Len’s farm, Birdie was safe. Now I was more determined than ever to push through Birdie’s referral, so that I could begin working with her and, hopefully, coax clues to her past from her.