The Boy on the Porch (12 page)

C
hildren came and children went. John and Marta built an addition on the farmhouse and added beds. The fewest children they ever had at any one time was two; the most was seven. Kids needed homes, and neither John nor Marta could say no when Mrs. Floyd called.

At the general store, Shep Martin said he was going to have to start a whole new store just to stock jelly beans. The manager of the shoe store in a nearby town gave them a permanent discount because they bought so many pairs of shoes.

John added shelves to the original one in their bedroom. There were now twenty-nine pairs of old shoes lined up. Before John and Marta went to sleep each night, they went down the rows of shoes and said the name of each child who had been with them. Many had acquired nicknames; all had left their marks.

“Jacob, Tyler, Zizi, Meggie-moo, Boyd, Sammy-salami, Shayna, Delaney, Bitsy-bo, Luke, Mike-a-like, Hunter, Laina-napalong, Mack, Shareka, Roy-boy, Harry, Jesse-messy, Karlee-darly, Nile, Lily, Oshen, Rosie-girl, Joey, Freddy, Ginny-jumper, Hank, Susanna, and Frank.”

Each one had come with a story and each one left a story behind.

“Remember when Mack fell asleep in the truck and we thought he'd run away?”

“Remember when little Bitsy-bo jumped out of the tree and landed on mama goat and mama goat took off and dumped her in the pond?”

“Remember when Lily sang you a song when you were sick?”

“Remember when Freddy and Ginny-jumper tried to make pancakes?”

Some of the children were there a few months, some of them a year or more. Soon after they arrived, they would notice the shelf of shoes and ask about them. Either John or Marta would tell them the story of Jacob, whose shoes were the first on the shelf.

Nearly every child after that wanted to know the story behind each pair of shoes.

“And those red ones, whose were those? And the sandals, whose were those?”

And so John and Marta told their stories: they told when each child came and what they were like and how long they were there.

Boyd, a serious nine-year-old, asked John, “And what will you say about me when I'm gone? What will my story be?”

“Well, now,” John said, “I'm not sure yet. I won't know until you're gone.”

Shareka, a wild-eyed, wild-haired twelve-year-old said, “Tell my story like this: Shareka came to us on a thundery day, and she didn't trust anybody, and she fell in love with a kitten, and she didn't want to leave, but she had to, but she'll come back. The end.”

Early one morning, they found Luke and Bitsy-bo on the front porch staring down the drive. Marta thought maybe they were hoping their mother would show up.

“Looking for somebody?” she asked them.

Bitsy-bo, who had green eyes and a perpetual worried brow, said, “Yep.”

“You want to say who that might be?”

Her brother, Luke, answered. “We're looking for that boy.”

“Boy? Which boy?”

“That boy you found on your porch. The boy that rode a cow.”

Bitsy-bo twisted a strand of hair round and round her finger. “He'll be back.”

“Oh,” Marta said. “You sound so sure.”

“Sure I'm sure.”

Later that day, Bitsy-bo climbed onto Marta's lap and said,
“I'll
come back.”

And she did. Bitsy-bo and Luke visited every summer; Lily, Oshen, and Rosie-girl returned each Thanksgiving. A few were in and out of foster care, reappearing to take up where they had left off.

Sometimes at night, John would say to Marta, “It's okay here, isn't it?” and she would say, “It's a nuthouse, but yes, it's okay here. Yes, it is.”

Often they thought of Jacob and often they imagined where he might be. Whenever they were in the barn, they liked to gaze on Jacob's paintings, still there, barely faded.

“Even if we never see him again,” Marta said one day, “we know he was here.”

“Remember when he used to lie on the porch with the dog? Remember that? Remember his tapping? Remember that music he made?”

“Sure, I do. That boy, that boy. What became of that boy?”

Even on the most difficult days, it brought them comfort to remember the boy who rode a cow.

E
arly one morning, Marta stepped out onto the front porch to breathe in the balmy air, to inhale a few minutes of quiet before all the children awoke. There were now six staying with them and they were an energetic group: Stefania, Jamie, Jock, Ruby, Harley, and Weezer.

The beagle, old now and half-deaf, was sniffing the porch floor eagerly, following his nose to a parcel sitting near the door.

“What's that? A package? For us?”

The dog whimpered pitifully.

“Oh, you, dog. You'll get some breakfast in a minute.”

It was a flat parcel, about a foot square, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. There was no name or address on it. Maybe one of the kids put it there, she thought. Maybe it was something for school.

She forgot about the parcel as she went about waking the children and preparing breakfast, but Stefania found it and brought it inside. No one seemed to know anything about it.

“Open it,” John suggested. “Must be for us.”

“Oh, I don't know—”

“Open it, open it!” the children chanted. “Open it! Open it!”

And so she did.

John stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. Both of them stared at the painting.

Finally, John said, “It's the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

“I know.”

It was an elegant painting of a boy riding a cow, with a beagle loping alongside.

T
hey were not art experts, John and Marta, but the painting looked as polished and professional as any they had ever seen. They would have known its artist was Jacob even if it weren't for the signature at the bottom.

They lay awake most of the night, speculating about how the boy had found them and when he might reappear.

“Maybe tomorrow—”

“—shouldn't get our hopes up—”

“—but maybe—”

“—surely—”

They were alert to every crunch of the gravel drive, every footstep on the porch.

Could that be him
?

As the days and weeks went by, however, with no sign of Jacob, John and Marta alternated between despair and hope.

“Is he gone again, so soon?”

“Will we never see him again?”

“But he remembered us.”

“He found us.”

“He will come back.”

“But . . . maybe not.”

Marta leaned against the cow, now old and thin. “You hang on, cow,” Marta whispered. “When Jacob comes back, he'll want to see you.”

The next time John made the rounds in town, he stopped in at the general store, as usual. He had been wondering how Jacob had found his way back to their place in order to leave the painting, and so he asked Shep if anyone had been looking for him.

“Not that I recall, but then, I'm not here every day anymore. I got my son-in-law working up here some days. He's half-worthless, but there you go.”

When John walked into the sheriff's office, Darlene, the receptionist, was on the phone. From habit, John scanned the bulletin board.

    
LOST
:
THAT OLD COONHOUND OF MINE
.
HE
'
S RUN OFF AGAIN
.
IF YOU SEE HIM
,
CALL VERNIE GOSSEM
, 555-7834.

    
ABSOLUTELY NO DUMPING IN THE CHURCH DUMPSTER
.
WE MEAN IT!

    
FOUND
:
FOUR KITTENS
,
CUTE THINGS
,
GOOD FOR MICE
.
ASK DARLENE
.

When the door opened behind him, John heard the sheriff's voice.

“Well, there, I hear you've got more kids at your place.”

“Yep, a real energetic group this time. Good kids, though.”

“Don't know how you have the patience.” The sheriff slid the back of his hand across his badge. “Still got that old beagle?”

“That's right. Don't suppose anyone's been in here looking for us, mm?”

“You expecting somebody to be looking for you?”

“Naw—sometimes kids need help finding their way back, that's all. Just wondering.”

Darlene interrupted her call and held the phone to her chest. “Somebody did.”

“That so?” the sheriff said. “Some kid or some bill collector? Ha-ha.”

John tried to appear casual. He leaned against the counter. “Somebody was looking for us?”

Darlene held up her finger. “I'll call you back, Flo. Bye, now.” Darlene tapped her fingers on the desk. “Howdy. You've got some more kids up there, I hear.”

“Yep.”

“It's like a revolving door up there, isn't it?”

“Yep.”

“Don't know how you have the energy.”

“Did you say somebody was looking for us?”

“Oh. Yeah, when was that? Can't hardly remember one day from the next around here.”

“Hey,” the sheriff said. “Did you ever hear from that boy again? That cow-riding boy?”

“What cow-riding boy?” Darlene said.

“They had a young boy dropped off at their place, years ago, remember that? And that boy used to ride a cow. A cow!”

“I don't remember anything about a cow-riding boy. I can't hardly remember my own name some days.”

“Did you say that somebody was looking for us?”

“Oh, yeah, a young college kid—couple of college kids, actually.”

“Was one of them a boy?”

“I can't hardly recollect, but I think there were maybe a couple boys and a girl, yeah, there was a girl with them, purty little thing. She did all the talking, asking about you and Marta.”

“College kids, eh? And one was a boy?”

“Like I said, yeah, I think so. That was a week ago. Maybe longer. Like I said, I can't hardly remember one day from the next around here.”

John returned to Shep's store and bought an extra sack of jelly beans.
Just for old time's sake
, he thought.

And that night John and Marta hung Jacob's painting—of the boy riding a cow—in their bedroom, above the shelves of shoes, where it would be the last thing they saw at night and the first thing they saw in the morning.

T
he old beagle had not been well for several days. He hadn't eaten, and when he was coaxed outside, he merely dragged himself to a nearby bush and lay beneath it, pawing at the dirt as if to make himself a bed. At night, John had to carry him back inside.

One of the children—Weezer—said, “Don't let him die, okay? Let's not let him die.”

To Marta, John said, “Don't think this old dog is long for this world. I hope those kids won't blame us if we can't keep him alive.”

Marta lifted the dog onto their bed. “It will be a sad, sad day when he's gone.”