A Question of Mercy (2 page)

The window of Mr. Strickland's office was open and a small breeze folded curtains back from the sill, letting in a frail morning light. The room smelled of peppermint.

In a moment Mr. Strickland came in carrying a cup of coffee, still steaming, and placed it on a stack of papers. His feet shuffled across the floor in this otherwise mute afternoon. He spoke to Edward Booker first, then turned toward Jess. “I want you to tell me whatever you remember about being with Adam Finney,” Strickland urged. “Nothing is too small.”

“Adam wanted to go to the river one more time. You know, before he had to go away.” Jess told him. “It was the end of April, but the river was cold. He had on his jacket.”

“Did he say he wanted to go
into
the river?” Strickland asked.

“Yes. I told him it'd be cold. He didn't want to be sent away. He hated the thought of going to that horrible place.” She couldn't say its name.

“The Cadwell Institution,” her father said. “Adam was leaving the very next day, but I'm not sure how much he actually understood about it.”

Jess turned toward the window where she heard a swarm of bees in a ligustrum bush. “But he
did
understand,” she said. One bee had squeezed under the screen and walked onto the windowsill. “He begged us not to take him there.” Her shoulders fell forward, her arms and face going loose. She thought she had forgotten how to cry.

Her father put his hand on her back. “That was Clementine's decision to make, Jess. Not yours.” He looked at James Strickland. “Adam's mother thought it was best that he be sent away. I married Clementine Finney a little over a year ago. Adam had never been quite right, you know.” He cleared his throat. “We loved him.”

“This is what I'm saying.” Strickland spoke slowly so that Jess and her father would understand. He told them that Clementine Finney had made accusations, and that Jess could be charged with negligence or manslaughter. He said something about the possibility of prison.

The room grew quiet and Jess became aware of her own breathing. Her father kept looking at his lap. “The fact that you ran away, Jess,” Strickland said. “It makes you look guilty. So what can you tell me about that?”

If she closed her eyes, Jess could see the way Adam had been found, the way the stranger had described it: the sloped riverbank, torn pants and muddy green shirt, deep cuts on his face, his whole body bloated like a sack of grain and dark round sockets for eyes.

“They found Adam's jacket by the river,” Strickland said. “And your sweater too. You had been with him. You were the last one to see him alive. Is that right?”

“Let me think a minute,” she said, or
thought
she had said. Her hands in her lap looked dead, gloved; and Jess turned again toward the bees. Another one had crawled under the screen. The swarm continued to sweep in and out of the ligustrum blooms. She couldn't stop looking at them. Even without closing her eyes, Jess could see Adam's jacket folded where he laid it on the grass. He had said, “You'll save this for me?”

She didn't know what to say to Mr. Strickland. Beyond the window a distant thunder threatened rain. She could smell it in the air. She wanted to speak, to say everything. She wanted her voice to break calm and measured with the truth. Church bells chimed the hour and Jess looked directly at Strickland. She could feel the heat of her father's presence beside her. “Listen,” she said, then let her eyes settle again on the windowsill. It was dirty and had streaks of rust. Bees thumped against the screen, and their humming sound tore at her mind like a tiny saw.

“Listen.” Both men turned toward the window. They thought she meant for them to listen to the bees. “Nothing about this is right.”

MISSING PERSONS

— 1 —

O
n the day Jess ran away from home, she stole forty dollars from her stepmother's purse. She had never stolen anything before that day, and it felt odd to be doing so now. When she came home from the river, her pants had been soaking wet and she squeezed out the water before opening the back door. She hoped no one would be in the house. In the dining room she stopped, listened. No cars in the driveway, though she saw one parked across the street. She felt hurried, but stopped at the refrigerator to pour a glass of milk, then ate a piece of raisin toast left over from breakfast. She was not hungry and the toast stuck in her throat.

She went upstairs, lifting her father's satchel from the hall table, and slipped on some dry pants, all the time stuffing the satchel with clothes, photos, a spoon, and a thermos of water. She knew she would leave, but did not know where to go. She tucked a pack of letters from Sam into a side pocket, and one picture he had sent with a soldier standing beside him—somewhere in the Korean landscape. The other soldier had his arm around a huge gun.

She passed Adam's room and looked in, as though she might find him there, then pulled a large raincoat from his closet. His bedside lamp, shaped like a baseball, was still on. The fact of the lamp brought tears to her eyes. Everything that had happened at the riverbank hovered over her like someone else's memory. She wanted to make the world go back to what it had been—before today. She was only seventeen and, already, it was too late.

The thought of leaving home left her heart in rags; and her mind struggled with the decision to leave. Her father would be home soon. What could she tell him? As she left the house, she snatched a loaf of bread and three pears from the kitchen table. She didn't know when she would be back, but she knew that darkness would close down in a few hours, and Jess hoped to put open miles between herself and Goshen, North Carolina.

At breakfast her father had reminded everyone that they would go to the picture show that night. She and her father, and Adam and her stepmother would sit in a row and eat popcorn. The show was one that Adam had chosen, and started at seven-thirty. It was four-thirty now. She lifted her father's satchel, put on her coat, and closed the door tight behind her.

She walked across the yard past their dog, Hap, who tried to come with her, and into the nearby woods. She looked toward their neighbor's yard, to see if Mr. MacDougal was outside, or if Emily was playing in the sandbox. Nobody. She felt strangely lucky. Across the street a car was parked, a man sitting in it. She thought he might be asleep. She lifted the satchel onto her shoulder and rushed into the woods. The air was chilly and she clutched the coat around her neck, then pulled the hood to cover her head. That one simple gesture, pulling up the hood, felt final; and when she heard a truck turn onto her street, she didn't look. She went toward the French Broad River that ran through town, heading toward Asheville. It was the end of April. The year was 1953.

After several hours of walking, Jess ate two slices of bread and a pear. She knew it must be almost nine o'clock. A gray spectral light was turning into such a sweeping dark that she could barely see her hand in front of her face. Her head felt swollen. By now, her father would have called the police. He and Clementine would be frantic. Angry. Maybe they would find her even before she woke.

Finally, she settled against a big tree and covered herself with Adam's raincoat. The woods, without starlight, seemed to have no end. Every sound on the ground was magnified by the dark, and Jess rocked back and forth to make the night less palpable. She pulled the raincoat tight around her and remembered when her father had bought it for Adam. The coat was long and Adam had liked the way it billowed behind him when he ran. He wore it everywhere—on some nights he even wore it to bed. She closed her eyes and hummed, until she entered a world where darkness knew its place.

The next morning Jess woke beside a stream. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was. She sat up. Sunlight straddled her body as the first rays shone through the trees. Her back felt sore from sleeping on the hard ground. She had awakened several times during the night, thinking that she heard footsteps and smelling the acidic odor of rotted leaves. Each time she woke she imagined going back home.

Across the stream a family of raccoons sipped water and scurried off. Water dripped from their mouths, and the largest one hissed fiercely. Jess walked to a shoal where she could bathe, but kept her eye on the family of raccoons. If they smelled her food they would steal it.

Her mind felt fractured. She could not stop remembering the sense of ease she felt at home—sitting at the kitchen table in the morning, making her bed, blinking against the dim light as she studied in her room. She was hungry and ate a whole pear and three more slices of bread, then moved slowly to the stream and sipped water. Already, she felt removed from her life.

The yellow porch light was not on when Edward got home that night. He wondered if it had burned out, but the fact that it was not on unaccountably disturbed him. He called out, to announce that he had come home early. Jess would be packed to go back to school and Adam ready for his new home at the Cadwell Institution—though he had begged every night not to be sent away. Edward wondered how Clementine would explain the trip to him.

The house was still. A half-glass of milk was on the kitchen counter. Edward called out again and the silence that came back sent a shiver down his spine. He heard Clementine's car pull into the driveway and looked out to see if Adam and Jess were with her, but she got out alone. She saw him at the window and waved.

“Where are Jess and Adam?” he yelled.

“I don't know. They're not home? I told them we were going out tonight. What time is it?”

“Just five-thirty.”

“Well.” She shrugged. “They probably went to the drugstore for ice cream.”

Upstairs, Adam's door was closed. They looked in to see his bed unmade and his closet door open. Jess's bedroom door lay open wide and, though her bed was made, she had strewn clothes around the room. Her bags were only partially packed.

Edward washed his hands in her bathroom, but didn't know why, then went back downstairs. “Something's wrong,” he said. “I feel like something's wrong.”

“You worry too much. Adam won't miss that cowboy movie tonight.”

“But he knows we're taking him away tomorrow.”

“Don't say that. ‘Taking him away.' It sounds heartless.”

“No. I don't mean that. I just mean … he cries every night.”

“I know. I know. Don't.” Clementine took a deep breath. Her legs grew wobbly. “We have to do this. It's for the best.” She had repeated that phrase many times over the past week.

“I wonder if he's run away.” Edward kept looking around as if he might see Adam at any moment.

“Where would he go?” Clementine grew very quiet. “You mean you wonder if
Jess
took him away?”

“They should be here, it's almost dark.”

Clementine called out the back door, then went to the front yard, still calling. Hap was barking.

“We could call the police,” Edward said. “That dog knows something.”

“Don't be silly,” Clementine said, but her face looked worried and she took Edward's hand. They stood in the yard listening for anything. Next door, Mr. MacDougal came out onto his porch.

“Are Jess and Adam over there?” Edward called.

“No. They haven't been here today,” then added, “I saw them going toward the river earlier.”

Edward and Clementine waited, separate as statues. The street and other houses bustled with suppertime, with people coming home, and kids in the yard. Their own house stood vacant and they could feel the emptiness of it behind them.

“We'll laugh about this later,” Edward said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“They'll be here soon,” Clementine's voice sounded like a thin line to nowhere. “Where are they?”

For days Jess kept close to the river, slogging through helms of marsh-weed. She hated marsh-weed. She hated sleeping on hard ground, and being afraid. She avoided the main roads, where she sometimes heard sirens racing toward an unidentified destination. Whenever she heard them, she cowered and slid out of sight. Yesterday she fell over a log, cut her leg and didn't notice the cut for hours. She never even felt it. Her body felt separate from her life.

After a week she couldn't remember the taste of good water, only the slaking that came when she drank water from a stream. River-water made her sick. She hoped to get a ride. She was aware of the highway close-by, and knew she was moving in the direction of Asheville, going south.

After ten days, Jess ate without discretion. One day she ate about a cup of grass. She did not know hunger could feel like this—a flat gnawing in her gut and the back of her throat. She knew that in these woods even small mistakes became large: the smell of food attracted animals, a tear in her jacket left her unprotected from the cold and rain—everything mattered. She began to carry a large stick and stay alert to the sudden appearance of coyotes or barking dogs.

Soon her clothes began to hang on her body, like big pajamas, and she wrapped her waist with a rope to hold up her pants. She had left the French Broad River, going on back roads until she could walk no more. She had asked directions a few times and knew she was covering many miles. She used daylight hours, since she was afraid to walk at night and, for two days, she walked through a cold rain. She was young, but if she kept up this pace, she'd be old in a year.

She sneaked through orchards and swampy marshes, drinking from a spigot behind a farmhouse. Her hair, usually lustrous and dark, grew knotted and grainy. She tried to interpret signs around her: the long look of a deer, the shape of a tree in the distance, scribbling on a stone. She wanted to read the signs. She wanted instructions. And though she was surprised at her superstition, what surprised her even more was the discovery of her own fortitude. Her main work lay in the effort to stay alert and hidden, dry.

She stole shirts and jeans from a backyard clothesline, and ate from a sack of raw potatoes left on someone's porch. After stealing forty dollars from her stepmother, these lesser crimes seemed as incidental as necessary. The order of her life was completely random. At night she found shelter in an abandoned car or an empty store, or slept under a tree with low branches.