Reunion at Red Paint Bay - By George Harrar Page 0,17
there might be some clue.
Simon looked around the room for clues, anything not right, and spotted Davey’s blue bandanna hanging over the bureau mirror. “This better not be one of his magic tricks or I’m going to—”
There was a sound downstairs, a door opening. The cellar door? Casper kicked out of Amy’s hands, claws bared, and darted under the bed, a blur of white. She wasn’t often spooked like this.
“Davey?” Amy called. There was no answer. Simon took a step, and Amy grabbed his arm. “Take his bat.”
He reached around the doorway into the bedroom and pulled out the Louisville Slugger. He moved quietly down the stairs, with Amy just behind him. At the bottom he turned and looked toward the kitchen. There was their son, earphones in, pulling apart an Oreo.
“Davey!” Simon yelled and ran into the kitchen. He took the boy by the shoulders. “Are you okay?” The cookie fell to the floor.
“God, Dad, what are you doing?” Davey bent down to retrieve the Oreo.
“Where were you? We told you you were grounded.”
The boy pulled out his earphones. “What?”
Amy turned her son around, her hands on his shoulders, her face level to his. “Where were you?”
“Up in the tree house. You didn’t say I had to stay in the house. Grounded means staying in your house or yard.”
“I’m not interested in technicalities,” Simon said, turning the boy back to him. “When we leave you in the house we expect to find you in the house.”
Davey started to lick the icing off the Oreo, but Amy took it from him and tossed it in the sink. “Listen to us,” she said. “We’ve been home an hour worried sick about where you were.”
“Wow,” the boy said, “and you called the police?”
“You mean you saw the police car and still didn’t come in?”
“I just saw it leaving like a minute ago, Mom. I didn’t know it was about me.” Davey reached into the cookie jar and brought out another Oreo. “Can I have this one?” Amy nodded. He twisted apart the cookie and handed the icingless side to her. “Did they catch him?”
“Catch who?” Simon asked.
“The man out front. That’s why I went up the tree house. You told me not to answer the door.”
“Somebody rang the doorbell?”
“He didn’t ring it, but he was standing there for like a long time.” Davey pointed down the hallway to the panel of fluted glass next to the front door. “So I sneaked out the back and climbed the tree and pulled up the ladder and listened to some tunes. That was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?”
It was horrible to imagine, a man at the front door, not ringing the bell, just waiting, with their son inside alone. “Yes,” Simon said, “that was the right thing to do.”
The streets of Red Paint feel familiar to him, a pattern indelibly implanted on his brain when it was a younger age. He remembers the shortcut from the inn to the Common, parks on the darker river side, then walks the winding bike path to the bandstand. He goes up the broad steps and stops for a moment, looking out on the green as if there is a crowd come just to hear him. What would he speak of, something topical, like divine intervention in the modern world? Miracles would surely be the talk of the town after the page-one headline in the Register—Virgin Appears in Red Paint Backyard? The question mark was necessary, of course, the proper journalistic skepticism. But if you believe in God, how could you not believe in miracles? An all-powerful God could clearly do what would seem improbable or impossible, the definition of a miracle. He could even defy the logic that He Himself created—go up and down at the same time. Appear and disappear. Kill and let live. Punish and forgive. Be God and not be God. And He could be everywhere at once, no need to send the Virgin or anyone else as an emissary. He might even descend to a bandstand like this, in a small town like this, to deliver His message, perhaps ten new commandments for the new millennium. He would require a proper introduction, of course, and who would get the honor? Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, put your hands together for the Creator of …
He sees something in the shadows of the bandstand floor, reaches out his foot to turn it over. A small face stares up at him, a brown teddy