Carl

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975

It was seven in the evening already when the phone rang in the fire hall, jolting Carl Stoddard awake. He had fallen asleep on a cot after a long day in the sun. On ring two, he rose and blinked. By the third ring, he was in action, lifting the receiver with the same trepidation he always felt when answering. He disliked speaking in general; speaking into a telephone was worse.

“Carl Stoddard?” said a voice on the other end. This was Marcy Thibault, the local operator, whose years of experience had given her the uncanny ability to recognize voices.

“What’s the bad news,” said Carl—his standard response. A scripted line.

“I’ve got someone on the line for you from the Van Laar Preserve,” said Marcy.

“Oh?” said Carl.

This was strange. Never in his life had Carl—a gardener at the Preserve—been contacted directly by his employers.

Maybe he’d left something there. Or maybe he’d done something wrong. Peter Van Laar was a man of strong opinions, and the landscaping was a special concern of his. Every year, the Van Laars threw a weeklong fling in July—the Blackfly Good-by, they called it, in celebration of the seasonal change that saw the pest’s departure from the area—and Mr. V wanted everything just so.

“How’d they find me at the hall?” asked Carl. His heartbeat was quickening. He was a tall, blond-bearded, burly person, forty years old that summer, a football player in his youth—but he was timid, sensitive to changes in the weather and to the emotions of others, and he disliked conflict. Always had. Gardening was a vocation that suited him well.

“They didn’t,” said Marcy. “They don’t know it’s you there.”

•   •   •

There were four of them that year in Shattuck Township’s volunteer fire brigade. Aside from Carl, there was Dick Shattuck, the grocer; Bob Alcott, a history teacher at the central school nearby; and Bob Lewis, largely unemployed.

Together, a decade prior, they’d built the team from scratch, learning their trade from firefighting enterprises in neighboring towns, raising money for equipment at donation stands they set up at Christmastime and the Fourth of July. Once they got fire boots, they collected money in those.

They rented out an old garage and converted it to a fire hall with a bed and kitchen on-site. They had Dick’s wife Georgette, whose artistic talent annually gilded the grocery store’s front windows, paint a sign.

It took them four years to get a proper vehicle—but by July of 1961, they had the whole operation up and running. A truck and hoses and, in town, four hydrants a stone’s throw from Shattuck’s only intersection with a stoplight. The volunteers were well trained. Each one of them, except Bob Lewis, was considered to have a positive attitude.

•   •   •

The night of July 10, 1961, it was no coincidence that Carl was on duty: he liked it at the fire hall. Signed up for night shifts as frequently as he could. It was the only place, aside from his car, where Carl ever felt truly alone. Here at the hall, he had nothing to do but read, or daydream, or sometimes fall asleep, and only very occasionally answer calls.

It took several seconds for Marcy Thibault to transfer him. And when a voice came through the wires, it wasn’t a member of the staff, but Peter Van Laar himself—to whom Carl nodded each time they crossed paths at the Preserve, but to whom he had actually spoken maybe twice in his life. Van Laar was known by his employees and business associates as a stern, intolerant man, quieter than his wife but more vicious. He seemed to have no interest in conversation with anyone who worked for him, except at the highest levels; even to those at the top of the staff’s hierarchy—groundskeeper, housekeeper—he spoke only briskly. He had a wolfish look about him, a leanness that signified hunger.

“Hello? Fire department?” said Van Laar, after being connected. The tone of his voice made Carl sit up straight, place his hand on the table.

“Yes,” said Carl, “this is Carl Stoddard of the Shattuck Volunteer Fire Brigade.” For a moment, he considered reminding Mr. V of the connection between the two of them. But the quiet urgency in the man’s voice dissuaded him.

There was silence on the line. Then came a clicking that Carl determined, after a moment, to be the sound of Van Laar swallowing repeatedly.

“Mr. Van Laar?” said Carl. “Is everything all right there?”

“It seems my son is missing,” said Van Laar, at last.

“Bear?” said Carl, reflexively. He closed his eyes. Raised a fist to his forehead. It was too complicated to explain how and why he knew the nickname of the Van Laar boy. But he did; they all did, everyone who worked on the grounds. They’d known him since he was a tiny thing. Each May he returned to the Preserve taller, more talkative. He was eight years old that summer: always smiling, always whistling, patrolling the grounds like a watchman, friendly with the staff: the opposite of his stormy father. A good little woodsman, interested in the same things Carl had been interested in as a boy. Bushcraft, survival, that sort of thing. That summer, especially, they had been close: it was only last week that Carl had taught the kid how to recognize which wood was good for a fire. Loose and light and dry, Carl had said. Floppy, almost. And he demonstrated what he meant, slipping a small knife down the length of a cedar plank. Sticking his thumbnail into it.

Just before Carl had left for the day, in fact, he’d seen Bear: he was tying his shoes at the base of the front door to Self-Reliance. He’d stood up and waved as Carl passed him in his pickup, and Carl had returned the gesture.

If Van Laar was curious about how Carl knew his son, he didn’t ask. Instead, to Carl’s dismay, he let out a wail, unguarded and wild, and in it Carl—a parent himself, a father of three who had once been a father of four—recognized a feeling he had the misfortune to know well.

“Don’t worry,” said Carl. “Don’t worry, Mr. V. We’ll find him.”

Within five minutes, he had the other three volunteers on the line.

Within twenty, they were in the truck, speeding through the gathering darkness, making their way to the Preserve.

Carl

1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975

It was nearly dark when the four volunteers arrived. Their vehicle—an International Harvester brush fire truck that they’d gotten cheap, just before Schenectady retired it—was having an issue that month with its muffler, and it roared as they came up the drive.

Before they’d departed, Carl had filled the others in on what he knew—which was limited, actually. The conversation with Mr. Van Laar had been brief.

“The Van Laar boy’s missing,” Carl told them. “This afternoon he left for a hike up the mountain with his grandfather. Turned back around on the path to the trailhead, because he forgot his pocketknife in his room. Never rejoined the old man.”

“How far from the house was he when he turned around?” said Bob Lewis.

“Don’t know,” said Carl.

“How long did Van Laar wait there,” asked Bob Alcott, “before he went looking?”

“Don’t know.”

“What’d the kid want with his pocketknife?” asked Dick Shattuck.

“Don’t know,” said Carl, limply. “I guess we’ll hear more when we get there.”

It was then that a memory sprang forcefully to the front of his mind: something the boy had said once about his grandfather, in passing, that Carl had brushed aside.

•   •   •

The truck came to a stop at the top of the drive. Dick Shattuck killed the engine.

Then there was silence. All over the Preserve: a great quiet.

Carl, who was riding in the back, didn’t know what he had expected to hear—footsteps, maybe, or hollers, or crying; the pet name of the boy, Bear, called over and over—but it wasn’t this.

He hoisted himself painfully onto his feet. Jumped down from the truck bed with a thud. He’d gained sixty pounds in the past several years, and it slowed him down. His wife was concerned.

Behind him, his three companions were descending from the cab.

Ahead of them, a shape on the lawn shifted. It was a human, Carl saw; he saw next that it was Vic Hewitt, the groundskeeper. Carl’s boss.

Vic was silhouetted by the low light cast out from the inside. He was tall and broad and had the odd habit of standing with his arms straight down at his sides, strangely formal, a soldier at attention.