Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,28
even she has trouble recalling what he looked like and the same must be true for Richard. She knows there is not a single soul on earth who could tell her the color of her son’s eyes.
At the zoo the next day, the woman in the admission booth gives Ruth a map, marking Dr. Timrod’s office with an X.
“You’ll have to go through part of the zoo, so here’s a pass,” the woman says, “just in case someone asks.”
Ruth accepts the pass but opens her pocketbook. “I may stay a while.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the woman says and waves her in.
Ruth follows the map past the black rhino and the elephants, past the lost-and-found booth where the Broad River flows only a few yards from the concrete path. She walks over a wooden bridge and finds the office, a brick building next to the aviary.
Ruth is twenty minutes early so sits down on a nearby bench, light-headed with fatigue though she hasn’t walked more than a quarter mile, all of it downhill. On the other side of the walkway a wire-mesh cage looms large as her living room. THE ANDEAN CONDOR IS THE LARGEST FLYING BIRD IN THE WORLD. LIKE ITS AMERICAN RELATIVES, VULTUR GRYPHUS IS VOICELESS, the sign on the cage says.
The condor perches on a blunt-limbed tree, its head and neck thick with wrinkles. When the bird spreads its wings, Ruth wonders how the cage can contain it. She lowers her gaze, watches instead the people who pass in front of her. Her stomach clenches, and she realizes she hasn’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday.
She is about to go find a refreshment stand when she sees the child. A woman dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt drags him along as if a prisoner, their wrists connected by a cord of white plastic. As they pass between her and the condor, Ruth stares intently at the blue eyes and blond hair, the pale unsmiling face. She estimates his height and weight as she fumbles with her pocketbook snap, sifts through the flyers till she finds the one she’s searching for. She looks and knows it is him. She snaps the pocketbook shut as the woman and child cross the wooden bridge.
Ruth rises to follow and the world suddenly blurs. The wire mesh of the condor’s cage wavers as if about to give way. She grips the bench with her free hand. In a few moments she regains her balance, but the woman and child are out of sight.
Ruth walks rapidly, then is running, the pocketbook slapping against her side, the flyer gripped in her hand like a sprinter’s baton. She crosses the wooden bridge and finally spots the woman and child in front of the black rhino’s enclosure.
“Call the police,” Ruth says to the teenager in the lost-and-found booth. “That child,” she says, gasping for breath as she points to the boy, “that child has been kidnapped. Hurry, they’re about to leave.”
The teenager looks at her incredulously, but he picks up the phone and asks for security. Ruth walks past the woman and child, putting herself between them and the park’s exit. She does not know what she will say or do, only that she will not let them pass by her.
But the woman and child do not try to leave, and soon Ruth sees the teenager with two gray-clad security guards, guns holstered on their hips, jogging toward her.
“There,” Ruth shouts, pointing as she walks toward the child. As Ruth and the security guards converge, the woman in the blue T-shirt and the child turn to face them.
“What is this?” the woman asks as the child clutches her leg.
“Look,” Ruth says, thrusting the flyer into the hands of the older of the two men. The security guard looks at it, then at the child.
“What is this? What are you doing?” the woman asks, her voice frantic now.
The child is whimpering, still holding the woman’s leg. The security guard looks up from the flyer.
“I don’t see the resemblance,” he says, looking at Ruth.
He hands the flyer to his partner.
“This child would be ten years old,” the younger man says.
“It’s him,” Ruth says. “I know it is.”
The older security guard looks at Ruth and then at the woman and child. He seems unsure what to do next.
“Ma’am,” he finally says to the woman, “if you could show me some ID for you and your child we can clear this up real quick.”
“You think this isn’t my child?” the woman asks,