JETHRO WENT TO FETCH more wood for the night, tend to a couple of new baby goats born recently, and to have a talk with his son about remembering to close the chicken coop door, which he hadn’t done the previous night.
“Son, be sure to latch the coop door tonight,” the father called out as he caught up with his boy out in the farmyard. “You left it open last night, and I’ve seen fox tracks around lately.”
“Sure will, Pa,” his boy responded. “Hey, Pa?” he continued. “When is that guy gonna leave?”
Jethro was surprised by his blunt question but decided to answer directly. “I suppose when he’s strong enough for us to either ride him out or for someone to pick him up. Don’t know which. Why?”
“I dunno. It’s just kinda creepy having him around. It’s like … he’s watching us all the time.”
“Well, yes, he’s different from us. But there’s nothing wrong with seeing how other people live and think once in a while. That’s one thing your mother and I have been concerned about with you kids out here, with so little contact with other people.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t think like us, does he? I mean, believe like us?”
“No, I don’t think he does, son. And I think he’s got some real anger inside him from somewhere. It’s hard for people to believe in or trust in things—or people—when they’re burning up on the inside.”
“Where do you think it came from, Pa?”
“Well, he keeps saying he’s ‘educated.’ Sometimes when people get a certain kind of education, it screws with the beliefs they were brought up with—if they were brought up with any in the first place. It makes ’em question everything, which is usually a good thing, like Socrates and all. But if you haven’t really thought through your beliefs before that, it can make you very uncomfortable … and cynical.”
Pausing, the father forked some hay into the feeder, then led a goat to the milking stand, luring her up the short incline with a small bucket of corn, and hitched her up.
“When I went to school, there were some professors who seemed to enjoy messing with kid’s beliefs. Every semester, new students were like fresh meat in their eyes. I think there are more like that today. Some kids survive. Others give up everything. And when they do, they get very angry, like they were tricked or like they had been deprived of something while growing up.”
“Well, I think I could survive,” the son said, sounding a bit boastful.
“Well, your mother and I raised you to.” Jethro walked the horse over to the watering trough as he watched his oldest daughter, Rebecca, round up a second goat for milking. “You know, son, believing in the Bible doesn’t mean you put your head on a shelf. In fact, it should add to your knowledge base. It should free you to be brave in your investigation of the world around you because you know who made it. And it should make you confident to face the people around you who think differently than you do because you know that we’re all sinners. No better. No worse. All broken in one way or another.” He paused again, caught his breath, and glanced at the house. “Come on, we need to finish up and get inside.”
* * *
With everyone back inside for the evening, the lamps were lit one by one as the darkness sucked the daylight out through the rippled-glass windows. Mary was mending some torn pants. It seemed her mending never ended. The sisters had settled with their books on a small table over in the corner next to the fire. The boy was carving some contraption out of some oak. Larry had long ago realized that Timothy was the woodworker in the family, going far beyond what Jethro had been able to teach him.
“And you be sure to sweep up those shavings before bed, Timothy,” Mary said. “Your sister got a splinter from stepping on one the other night in the dark, so it better not happen again, you hear?”
“Yeah, yeah … I’m gonna, Ma!” he said, frowning. He whittled faster.
Larry glanced up from the book he had borrowed off of Jethro’s shelf, inwardly gleeful to see that this little cottage in the mountains was not some perfect little slice of heaven on earth after all. They actually did bite once in a while.
He suddenly got brave—and nosy—and asked of no one in particular, “How did you folks end up out here?”
The room went silent for a few moments. He didn’t know whether he had surprised or embarrassed them with the question or whether they were each coming up with their own answer. He thought it might be interesting to hear all of their versions separately.
Then Ma piped up, “Pa, you want to answer that?”
“Well … I suppose. We’ve lived out here since our oldest was born—so … what, Ma? Sixteen years?”
“Yep” she confirmed. She, like every mother, was the official keeper of the family timeline.
“We had lived in the city since we were first married. I was at the university, and she was working in a law firm as an accountant.”
Jethro paused, glancing over at Mary. “Hon, you don’t mind me telling the hard part?”
The hard part? Larry wondered. What was he about to hear?
“Just don’t go into too much detail,” Mary said.
Jethro nodded. “Wasn’t planning on it. Anyway, she had to work late one night toward the end of tax season, and she was the only one at the bus stop. A man came up to her, pretending to be in need of bus fare. As my wife reached for her purse, his accomplices grabbed her from behind. They dragged her into a nearby alley.” He stopped right there.
Larry was beginning to squirm. He hadn’t expected such an account and wondered how or why the husband was able to tell the story with such calmness. What he’d told so far was already making Larry’s own blood pressure rise in anger.
“Anyway, we went through the usual routine with the police and the courts and such,” Jethro continued. “But when Mary found out she was pregnant …”
Larry’s mouth almost dropped open. He was hoping he wasn’t going to hear what he expected to hear next.
“… we decided to move out of the city,” Jethro went on without skipping a beat, “to a safer place to raise a family.”
“Wait, are you … telling me …?” Larry started, then stopped, feeling he had already overstepped.
“Yes, I think you’ve guessed correctly,” Jethro said, filling in the blank.
Larry’s eyes followed the father’s over to his son, who was humming a tune to himself and making wood chips fly in all directions. Larry had noticed that Timothy had a slightly different complexion than his sisters, his hair a different texture.
“He’s still my son,” Jethro said, “and I love him and couldn’t be prouder of the man he’s becoming.”
Larry couldn’t help a furtive glance over at the mother. A glint of wetness in her eyes reflected the firelight. Both she and her husband had apparently made peace with the situation, but Larry certainly didn’t want to hear any more.
* * *
That night Larry had more strange dreams. At one point he was standing tall and strong, with fish surrounding him, leaping, bowing, and murmuring praise to him in fish-like, bubbly voices. The next moment they rose up into a monstrous circling cylinder around him and then swept him from his feet. He found himself falling headlong toward certain death in a swirling maelstrom of light, color, and faces. Faces … Were they fish faces or human faces or some grotesque combination of the two? Some seemed recognizable as people he used to know, but most were only hideous caricatures. And they were all smiling, laughing, but not with joy and goodwill—with malevolence, superiority, and victory. They had conquered! He was being swept away to his death, to his doom. They were now in charge! Forever! Forever!
As he spun deeper into his nightmare, Larry jolted upright in his bed, banging his head on the wooden pull-up bar that Timothy had fashioned for him. He was drenched in sweat. His leg burned like it was being roasted on a spit. It took him several moments to remember where he was. His breath began to slow again. Then he noticed a small form approaching his bed out of the dark. At first he thought it was still part of his dream. Then he realized it wasn’t. It was the youngest daughter of the family, Hannah.
As she approached, she held out her small stuffed pony, offering it to him. He stared at her in continued confusion.
“Makes bad dreams go ’way,” Hannah whispered to him from behind her thumb. Then she padded back into the darkness.
* * *
The morning was long in coming, but when Larry awoke, he noticed that the little girl’s toy pony had fallen to the floor on the side of the bed. The mother glanced down at it briefly as she headed for the pump and drainboard on the other side of the cabin. Her look somehow communicated to him that she knew his condition, his frame of mind. Like some elven goddess, she seemed able to read his mind. What is it about these people? he wondered. They lead such a hard life, yet they seem so gentle, so understanding. He especially now wondered about Mary Benton … what she had been through before coming here. And then … bearing the child? Who could do that? He would have wanted to cast the thing away—as far as he could throw it. Larry decided that he would ask her more about it sometime … but, on second thought, maybe not very soon.
“You have to be up and around again,” Mary said over her shoulder at the sink. “We’ve got to keep up your circulation and strengthen that femur of yours, or else you’ll never have a hope of getting out of here and returning to your life.”
“Yes, I’d like that.” He gulped as if embarrassed by his thoughts. “I’d like to get outside, maybe see some of your farm or ranch or whatever you call it.”
She chuckled. “I’d hardly call it a ranch,” she said. “Maybe the easiest word would be homestead.”
“Okay,” he answered. “But I am curious about how you all get on out here in the … in these … woods, mountains.” He was going to say wilderness but thought that would sound a bit melodramatic.
“Not a lot to it. That’s what we like about it. Just hard work. It’s what we make of it.” she said. “It was mostly Jethro’s idea, especially after the courtroom scene …” She hesitated to continue.
“Yeah, it’s nice not to have people bossing you around all the time,” Larry said without registering her mention of a courtroom. “And taking the results of your hard work for themselves. It seems everybody gets rich but you!” he tried to joke.
“Uh, yeah, that’s how we feel sometimes too. Except maybe for the ‘getting rich’ part. And everyone tries to squeeze you into their mold. Just exactly how they want you to be.”
“Huh … yeah.” He nodded. “What gives them the right? Who died and made them king, right?”
She smiled over at him. He smiled back. She was easy to talk to. At first, he thought she might be the “nun” or “Amish” type that would turn up her nose at any man who tried to speak to her. But he was sensing otherwise. Perhaps he would bring up the hard topic he had planned not to.
“Your husband said you folks headed out here after you were, um … attacked.” He tried to choose his words carefully. “That must have been hard. Although I can’t say I blame you!”
“Yes, it wasn’t easy. But once we started considering it, it became much more reasonable. You might say the pluses quickly outweighed the minuses.”
“Hmmm. But I would still want to make sure the SOB—oops, sorry—the man who did it would fry first.”
“We did pursue justice. For the sake of other possible victims. But we tried to avoid a spirit of vengeance,” she said. “Though I have to admit it was a balancing act every day. Still is, in a way.”
“A spirit of vengeance? What do you mean by that? He raped you, for God’s sake. He should be strung up by the—” He suddenly felt his end of the conversation spinning out of control.
She winced slightly.
“I’m sorry, I tend to let my temper get control of my tongue,” he said.
“It’s not anything I … we … haven’t thought of ourselves. But with the help of God’s Spirit, we’ve worked through it … most of it … and can at least function.”
He eyed her. “God’s Spirit? Now you’re getting kinda spooky on me.”
“I know it sounds strange to someone who … hasn’t necessarily experienced it. Kind of like speaking another language.”
“Like most of the language in that old book your husband force-feeds us every night!” he said, smiling.
He thought for certain he had offended her on that one, but then Mary laughed along with him.
She is a very forgiving woman, he concluded.
* * *
Julia came in from the garage with bags full of groceries hanging from her wrists. She had stopped on her way home from her shift at the hospital.
The phone rang in her purse. The screen read, Carlotta Davis, her mother. “Hello, Julia, dear. Have you heard anything from Larry yet?”
“No, Mom.” She dropped the bags on the counter. “He’s just disappeared. No calls, no emails … Nothing. I’m at my wit’s end here.”
“This isn’t like him, not contacting anyone. Did anything happen between you two before he left for his trip?
“We’ve been distant. There’s been tension … I was so caught up in the garbage going on at work, I didn’t really notice he was planning this fishing getaway until he mentioned it.”
“Well, you know men sometimes need their space. But totally disappearing like this …. Have you tried calling the place he was staying at or maybe even his friends, someone who might know something?
“The cabin he rented didn’t have a phone. And, I’ve called the cabin rental company several times. They said he never checked out and that his belongings were still there. No one has seen him since. And his friends are clueless.”
“You need to report this to the authorities, Julia. If his belongings are still there and he isn’t, they need to start looking for him.”
“I’ve filed a missing person report already. They’re investigating, but it’s just waiting now. Waiting and worrying.”
“You’ve done what you can then. Maybe this trip really was his way of trying to find some peace of mind, but the unexplained delay … and the silence is troubling.”
“I just don’t get it, Mom. Why would he need to escape like this? From me? From his life?”
“We all handle stress in different ways. Maybe, he couldn’t find a way to tell you how he felt.”
“But to just not come back? It’s so … not like him.”
“I understand it’s hard, Julia. But look, you need to keep yourself together. Focus on your work and take care of yourself. This is a tough situation, but worrying yourself sick won’t help Larry.”
“I don’t know whether to feel angry … or guilty, Mom. Like I pushed him to this somehow.”
“Guilt won’t solve this. Once Larry is found, you can work through these feelings together. Maybe this will be a wake-up call for both of you.”
“What if something’s happened to him? What if he’s hurt, or worse?”
“Cross that bridge if we come to it. Until then, hold on to hope. Keep in touch with the authorities and maybe take a few days off to focus on this. I’ll be here if you need me, you’re not alone in this.”
“Thanks, Mom. I think I will take a few days off. And maybe spend some time thinking about us—about me and Larry. We might have things to fix when he’s back.”
“Good, sweetheart. And remember, sometimes these situations make us realize what’s truly important. Keep me posted on any news, okay?”
“Will do. Thank you, Mom. Talk to you soon.” Julia hurried to put the ice cream in the freezer. She thought she might need it later.
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