• • •
Generally, when Peter gave her any sort of advice, she took it. And, she discovered, he had thoughts about most facets of her appearance and personality. She should wear dresses that covered her shoulders, because her shoulders weren’t her best feature. She should wear the highest heels she could, due to their difference in height. She should not shake hands with men when she met them, but incline her head in their direction. He felt to her as much like a coach as a husband: always seeking to teach her, better her, bring her up to his level. She did not fault him for it; prior to Peter, she had had little direction. She told herself to think of him as a mentor, in a way.
And so, before client dinners, Alice began to drink a glass of brandy at home. She did so in sight of Peter, who did not partake. And for a time it worked: she felt instantly more mature, more sophisticated, better able to return the conversational serves produced by the wives across the table from her, who were generally a decade or two older than she was, and looked at her with an expression that hovered between pity and contempt.
• • •
For several years, drinking was like this: a task she undertook when required to. She did not drink when off duty, when there was nothing social on her program.
At a certain point—she wasn’t sure when, or how—it began to evolve. And a new routine was established: one glass of wine at home in the evenings. Sometimes two. More than that when she went out. Martinis, Manhattans when they went out—or gimlets.
There, that was it, she thought; wine at home, cocktails out. Her favorite moment of each day was a glass of wine with her son close by: her love for him never felt more urgent.
This amount of drinking, she decided, she could live with. This felt reasonable and responsible. She’d rely on Peter to tell her when she had crossed a line.
• • •
She could have carried on with this amount of drinking, and everything would have been fine. It was George Barlow, in the end, who changed things.
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.
