B003UYURTC EBOK (9 page)

“I think you’re just getting paranoid. Why would he be so stupid? Who takes someone from the house next door?”

“Exactly. It’s the perfect plan: kidnap the next-door neighbor. No one would ever be so dumb as to put themselves so close to the crime scene. And no one would ever suspect the neighbor, either. That’s why he did it. He’s sitting over there right now, doing God knows what.” Lucas shivered.

“You’ve got to calm down.”

“No. I can’t. Let’s go over there.”

“What? No.”

“Yes. Come on.”

Lucas Cader stormed down my hallway and out the front door. His long, serious stride let me know quickly that he had the full intention of going into Fulton’s house. I ran after him.

“Lucas, this is ridiculous.”

“No. I have to do this.”

He rang the doorbell.

Ding-dong.

He rang the doorbell again.

Ding-dong.

And again without pause.

Ding-dong.

The door opened slowly, the way it would in a horror movie. Shirley Dumas stood before us.

“Can I help you boys?”

“Have you seen Gabriel Witter, ma’am?” Lucas asked without any hesitation.

“No. Is he back?”

“No. Is he here?” Lucas was not letting up.

“What are you talking about, boy?” she asked, confused.

“Is your son here, ma’am?” Lucas asked, stepping into the house and walking past her. I stood on the porch, eyes and mouth wide open.

“Yes, can I
help
you, Lucas?” She was beginning to get agitated. I stayed on the porch.

“Fulton!” Lucas shouted, and began to walk down the hallway to Fulton’s bedroom.

“Well, go on with him, I guess,” Shirley said, waving me past.

In Fulton’s room I became fully aware of why I had never dared to set foot into that house before. His bed was covered by a G.I. Joe blanket, and on top of it sat what had to have been some forty or fifty stuffed animals. The walls couldn’t be seen for the many posters that had been tacked and taped and glued up. The posters were of things like kittens and monkeys and bears. Fulton was sitting at his computer with a pair of headphones on. He was singing an eighties song out loud when we entered.

“FULTON!” Lucas shouted, tapping him on the shoulder.

He turned around quickly and took off the headphones. He looked up at Lucas and over at me. He looked at Lucas again, and then back at me. He did this two more times before Lucas began.

“Fulton Dumas, do you know where Gabriel Witter is?”

“No,” he said, his expression changing suddenly from surprised embarrassment to sadness.

“Are you sure?” Lucas asked.

“Why would I know where he is?”

“I don’t know, Fulton. Why do you need a thousand stuffed bears? Have you seen Gabriel Witter?”

“NO!” Fulton stood up. He was getting angry now as Lucas continued his interrogation. I didn’t try to stop him because I couldn’t think of anything to say. Also, after seeing the room, I figured I’d give Lucas a chance to prove me wrong. I couldn’t watch, though, so I turned around and pretended to admire one of Fulton’s many posters.

“Were you in love with Gabriel Witter?”

“Lucas, come on,” I had to interrupt, still too uncomfortable to watch.

“Shut up, Cullen. Were you, Fulton?”

“NO!”

Suddenly the room was quiet, and someone was grabbing my shoulders from behind. It was Fulton. He turned me around and looked me dead in the eyes.

“Cullen,” he began, “I am so, so sorry that your brother is gone. He was a good one. Very nice and very forgiving and very much like you.” With that said, and then whispered back under his breath, he wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tightly. I looked at Lucas, whose anger had turned to remorse as he witnessed Fulton Dumas beginning to cry with his head buried into my shoulder blade.

“It’s okay, Fulton,” Lucas said.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine. He’ll turn up,” I added.

“I was just messin’ around, really,” Lucas said.

Fulton let go and walked out of the room. We walked down
the hall and out of the house in silence. In the front yard I looked over at Lucas, and he was chewing on his bottom lip. He was doing that look that he did when he was overthinking something.

“It wasn’t Fulton. I was wrong,” he said.

“You think?” I joked.

“It was John Barling,” he said confidently as he walked into my house.

The Lazarus woodpecker was last seen in a forest in North Louisiana known as the Singer Tract. Despite pleas from the National Audubon Society and a collection of southern governors, the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company, which held sole logging rights to the area, clear-cut the forest in 1944. It was then that the last known Lazarus woodpecker, a female nicknamed Gertrude, was officially not-to-be-found. The Lazarus was the world’s largest woodpecker, beating out the imperial woodpecker by just one inch in length. John Barling claimed to have had a gut feeling that if he left his job at the University of Oregon and moved to Lily, Arkansas, he would be able to rediscover the Lazarus and prove that it was never extinct at all. In doing so, he left behind two children, a wife who had no college degree or work experience, and a mortgage. These are the things that Fulton Dumas had discovered about him. One day, some months after he had moved to Lily and bedded Fulton’s mom, John Barling went canoeing for the umpteenth time down a small stretch of the White River that flows right on
the edge of town. On his canoe trip that afternoon, John Barling claimed that he saw a Lazarus woodpecker fly quickly over his head and land on a huge oak tree. He quietly took out a camera but hesitated, knowing that the sound would scare the bird away. He opted instead to record the bird as it knocked its long bill repeatedly into the tree. He then got just what he needed: The bird let out a loud call that, according to the National Ornithological Institute, is unique to that particular species. So, with just a small digital recording in hand, John Barling contacted the NOI, and soon my hometown was filled with people who had devoted their lives to the study and viewing of birds.

On the fourth week after my brother had gone missing, there was still no sign of him to be found. During that same week, there was still not one single picture of that damn woodpecker. Yet my town was overrun with more people than it could manage. Every bed-and-breakfast was full for the first time in nearly a decade, and the Lily Motel changed its name to the Lazarus Motel, which made me angry as I passed it one particular afternoon on my way to work.

Aside from tourists and birdwatchers, all of whom I refused to talk to, most of the people who came into the store that day were truck drivers who needed to stock up on energy drinks and use the bathroom for longer than I felt was necessary for any human. As I was spraying the bathroom key down with Lysol, a tall man walked in (
ding-ding
) wearing khaki from head to toe. It was John Barling, the damn bird guy. He walked around the store, whistling, hands in pockets, stupid safari-style hat on his fat head, and I wondered what it would be like to sit in a college
class with him as the professor. He picked up a candy bar. He put it back down. He picked it up again, read the back, and put it down again. He did the same thing with about three other candy bars until he finally just grabbed a random one from the shelf, walked up, and set it on the counter.

“What’s my damage?” he asked in a sad I-desperately-wish-I-could-pull-off-this-southern-charm-thing kind of way.

“Eighty-seven cents,” I said without energy.

“Aren’t you my neighbor?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.” I did not want to talk to John Barling anymore.

“Yeah, you are. Hey, did they ever find your brother?”

“No. Haven’t seen him around by any chance, have you?” I asked almost as seriously as I was sarcastic.

“Can’t say that I have. What a shame. Maybe he’ll turn up soon. I hope so anyway.”

“I hope that bird turns up soon too,” I said, not able to help myself.

John Barling didn’t say anything else as he walked out the door (
ding-ding
) with a puzzled look on his face.

Book Title #78:
It Is Not a Sin to Kill a Woodpecker.

           That August, as Benton stepped into his dormitory at the University of Atlanta, he breathed deeply, closed his eyes, and fell backward onto his new bed. He then heard the flushing of a toilet from the bathroom and, as the door swung open, sat up to see who was there. Before him stood a tall, lean, and muscular boy around his age with neatly combed brown hair, piercing eyes, and a serious look about him.

“You Benton Sage?” the boy said.

“Yeah,” Benton said, standing up and extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Cabot Searcy. Nice to meet you, too, Benton,” he said, his serious look melting away.

“You been here long?” Benton asked.

“Just long enough to get lost a few times,” he joked, dropping down onto his bed.

The two laughed and talked for a while before deciding to walk around the hall to meet some of their new neighbors. Within ten minutes they had met a French major named Lucy, a journalism student named Thomas, and two sorority girls with undeclared majors. Back in their room, the two began unpacking and, before long, found themselves settled in and ready for bed.

“Busy day tomorrow,” Cabot said from his bed, the room completely dark.

“Yeah. I hear this orientation thing lasts forever,” Benton added.

“Hey, you never told me what you’re gonna do with your English degree,” Cabot said.

“Oh. I’m gonna be a writer,” Benton said for the first time ever.

“Cool. I’m studying philosophy ’cause, well, I’m gonna change the world.”

Benton Sage found college to be less interesting than high school only because the girls there seemed even ditzier and more drunken and the guys all seemed a bit too preoccupied with their own bodies, always lifting weights or talking about lifting weights or secretly staring down at their own biceps in the middle of a history lecture.

“I’ve got no need for muscles,” Benton told Cabot Searcy one day at lunch.

“Why’s that?”

“Because writers never have to beat anyone up or lift anything heavy. At least I don’t think they do,” he joked.

“I guess you’re right. Just don’t piss anyone off with any of your books,” Cabot said, laughing.

Cabot Searcy had the kind of confidence that made it difficult for whoever was around him to pay anyone else any attention at all. When Cabot Searcy began to speak, the entire room centered on him. When he laughed, the entire room began to laugh. When he seemed angry, the entire room scowled and frowned. And girls, well, they practically lined up outside of Cabot and Benton’s room, waiting their turns to be touched by greatness. Benton, on the other hand, had yet to ask even one girl out and spent much of his time in the school library or coffee shop, always reading. One particular night, as Cabot Searcy was coming in late from a date, he looked over at Benton, who was reading some thick novel, and began to talk. Benton, of course, immediately listened.

“You don’t like girls,” Cabot said in a serious manner.

“What?” Benton asked.

“If you’re gay, it’s fine. My cousin’s gay. Doesn’t bother me.”

“I’m not gay,” Benton said, sitting up in bed.

“No, really. It’s fine. Just fess up already.”

“Cabot, shut up.”

“Fine. All right. So why do you sit in this room every night reading instead of coming out and having fun?”

“I just never feel like going anywhere. I just wanna sit here and study.”

“It’s got to get old,” Cabot said, shaking his head, almost sounding truly concerned.

“It doesn’t. Maybe you should study more yourself,” Benton said, turning out his bedside lamp and lying back down.

It was not Benton Sage who was bothered by the conversation that night. Cabot Searcy, staring at the ceiling and struggling to fall asleep, could not help but think about how many times he had fallen asleep in class that semester or how many people he had hired to write research papers for him. He couldn’t help but remember the two classes he had already dropped out of or the midterm in geology that he’d flunked. And so, in an English class the next day, Cabot Searcy sat straight up in his seat, his eyes glued to the chalkboard, his ears tuned to the lecture, his finger scanning the book for details. He highlighted every important line. He bookmarked every referenced page. He scribbled notes in the margins. Cabot Searcy began to care about learning not for the sake of making good grades, but because he still wanted to change the world.

“I passed. Can you believe that?” Cabot asked Benton on the last day of the semester.

“Really?” Benton asked.

“Yeah. My parents are gonna flip. All that studying pay off?”

“No. I have to retake two classes,” Benton answered.

“Oh,” Cabot said, for lack of anything else to say.

While most everyone else was home visiting family for Christmas break, Benton Sage opted to stay behind and begin
work on what would be his first novel. Cabot Searcy, gathering his things, told Benton that he was welcome to come to Vidalia with him for the week, but Benton said he could use the quiet time to work on some things and get his head straight. Benton Sage, having written only one page in four days, celebrated Christmas morning by watching a rerun of
The Wonder Years
and eating a candy bar. When he called home to talk to his mother, no one answered. When he thought of how his sisters always sang “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve, he teared up. Benton Sage no longer believed in Christmas, because he felt that God had misled him. He had tried to help the world, but the world wouldn’t let him. That night, just as the church bells began to ring midnight at the First Baptist on Washington Street, Benton was walking up the stairwell of the bell tower. When the twelfth bell had rung, Benton felt air rush against his face, his arms outstretched on both sides. He heard the quiet singing of Christmas carols. His lungs breathed in one final cold breath as his body became part of the earth.