Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery Page 7

  "Hey, Sketch."

  He paused, scanned the floor as if he was allowing the name to roll around the inside of his head, and then gave it permission to rest on him. He looked across the room and wrote in his book without looking either at me or the page. Then he turned the page toward me. It read Hi.

  If my handwriting were half as legible as his, I might actually write letters to people. "The hat looks good on you. You like the Braves?"

  He shrugged without taking his eyes off his page.

  "Where did you learn to write so ... so perfectly?"

  His hand began moving before his eyes ever looked at the page. He drew what looked like a hospital bed with an older woman lying in it. Her face was wrinkled, she had oxygen tubes in her nose and a pencil in one hand. On the other side of the bed sat a small kid. The kid was watching her draw. On the page in her hand, she'd written half the alphabet.

  I pointed. "That you?"

  He nodded. I noticed that his face was fuller, like maybe he'd gained a pound or two.

  I pointed again. "Who's that?"

  Everything he wrote was in small block caps. MISS MYRLENE.

  "She related to you?"

  Just then, a late-twenties, brunette female wearing jeans, running shoes, and a white oxford button-down appeared in the door. I looked up while the kid looked through the tops of his glasses at her feet.

  I stood and held out my hand. "I'm Chase Walker."

  "Mandy Parker." She pulled up her shirttail and flashed the DA's badge looped over the waist of her jeans but hidden from view.

  I stepped out of the way so she could get a look at the kid. She walked up, leaned over, quickly took in his bare back and arms, and then placed her hands on her knees and spoke softly. "Hi."

  He had flipped to another page in his notebook and was shading in the wings on what looked like a male cardinal hanging from a birdfeeder. I looked out his window and saw the birdfeeder, but no bird. He didn't look up, but stopped shading long enough to look out the corner of his eyes.

  She spied a chair in the corner. "Go ahead. I don't want to interrupt you."

  I scooted up next to the kid again just as he broke the tip of his pencil. On the nightstand behind him lay a package of new black No. 2 pencils and an electronic sharpener. He stuck the pencil in and worked it 'til he was satisfied with the point, then he began drawing detail around the cardinal's beak and eyes.

  I pointed to the drawing supplies. "Somebody give you all this?"

  He nodded slowly, as if unsure whether I was baiting him just before I planned to snatch it off the table.

  "Somebody must like you."

  He raised his head slightly, showing me the tops of the whites of his eyes. The look told me he thought I knew. He flipped to a clean page and quickly sketched the outline of Unc's face and hat.

  "Uncle Willee brought you all that?"

  A quick nod.

  "When?"

  He drew a clock face, with the hour hand pointed at six and the minute hand on the one.

  I sat back and spoke to both him and me. "I thought he left a little early this morning."

  The kid closed his notebook and looked over his shoulder at Mandy Parker.

  I pointed to her. "Oh, she's an attorney."

  He sketched the top of a pair of pants, two belt loops, and a leather-cased badge hanging over the belt between the two loops.

  I studied the drawing and said, "You don't miss much, do you?"

  He shrugged. I looked at the bald spots atop his head; a few of them were starting to show signs of hair.

  "She's with the state. What they call the DA's office."

  He immediately crossed his arms, pulled his knees up into his chest, and clung to the notebook, turning his knuckles white.

  I read the body language. "But she's one of the good guys."

  He pulled his knees in tighter to his chest. He wasn't buying it, and Mandy Parker saw it.

  She stood and said, "I'll come back." Then she pulled a DVD out of her back pocket and quietly set it on the bed. "It's one of my favorites. Thought you might like it, too." Then she looked at me. "Coffee sounds good. I'll wait outside."

  I nodded. "Yeah, give me just a minute."

  I looked at the DVD. It was Disney's Jungle Book. I handed it to him. "You seen this one?"

  He shook his head.

  "You want to?"

  He paused like I'd asked him a trick question. I slipped it into the DVD player below the television and pushed PLAY.

  The second the picture appeared, he dived beneath his bed and crawled as far underneath it as he could. The guard outside heard the ruckus and immediately appeared in the room. I don't know who was more surprised-him, the kid, or me. I got on my knees and looked under the bed where the kid had balled himself into a fetal position, pulling his arms over his head.

  The guard looked at me and whispered, "He did that last night. Somebody down the hall flipped on a TV, and he wouldn't come out for a couple hours."

  Mandy stood outside the door, watching from across the hall.

  I crawled around to the head of the bed, so I'd be closer to his ears. I spoke softly. "I'm real sorry. I should've asked. You don't have to watch it if you don't want to." I turned the TV off and laid the remote on the ground next to him. "Here. You control it, okay?"

  He looked through the hole between his underarm and chest and watched me set the remote on the ground.

  I backed up and said again, "I'm sorry. Okay?"

  The guard stepped aside and said, "You didn't mean nothing. Just give him a little while."

  It was little consolation. If I'd made any headway in two days, it was gone now. "Thanks."

  I stepped out of the room and walked down to the coffee shop with Mandy Parker. In the elevator, I was the first to speak. "I'm not trained for this."

  She watched the floor numbers change above our heads. "Kids who've experienced his type of abuse have triggers. We often don't know what they are until we trip one."

  We ordered coffee and sat down at an outdoor table, and the salty smell of the marsh washed over us.

  She smiled. "You from around here?"

  "Born and raised." I paused. "Well, raised, actually. I was placed in foster care before I could remember much. I don't really know where I was born. I think it must've been somewhere in the South, and probably near the ocean, but for all I know I might be from Seattle. You?"

  "Florida girl. Panhandle." She changed the subject. "Your editor called me. Said he'd assigned you to write a story about the kid."

  I nodded. "Yeah, and I'd be grateful for anything you could tell me."

  "What do you know?"

  I told her everything I'd been able to deduce from his drawings, my interaction with him, and my conversations with the doctor and the guard. All together, it wasn't much. We didn't know his name, where he was from, who his family was, or how he got to the railroad track. I finished, "His memory is selective. Sometimes it's photographic, at others it's nonexistent."

  She nodded. "I've been with the DA for five years. Worked with maybe a hundred kids. Some of the worst ones have memories like that. The trauma blocks it out."

  "How do you get anywhere with them?"

  "That's tricky. Takes time."

  "You been able to find out anything?"

  "No. Our databases list plenty of abused kids in his age range and size, but none who show his level of abuse, and nothing describing a mute kid. And ... given his skill with a pencil, I'd say he's been silent awhile."

  "What's that tell you?"

  "That no one has reported him as missing."

  "What will happen from here?"

  "Based on what I've seen, we'll file an emergency petition to place him in foster care. And I'll push the court to fast-track the termination of parental rights." She paused. "The State of Georgia, like every other state, assumes that no one will care for a child as his or her parents will. The goal is notification and reunification. And in every case, including those
involving severe abuse, the legal system is predicated on an individual's ability to change. I agree with this ... but there are exceptions." She pointed up. "Like John Doe #117."

  "Is that what you're calling him?"

  She shook her head. "No, it's what the computer labels him when it spits out his folder. I hate it, but it's the system, and I can only fight so many battles in a day."

  I liked Mandy Parker; she spoke my language.

  "How long does that process take?"

  "Best case, a month-though that's seldom seen. Notification is a legal process, and it takes time. We put classified ads in newspapers, get his story on the news, and get in touch with military services to make sure there's not a soldier somewhere who's unaware, whatever we can. Worst case, twelve to twenty-four months. Depends on lots of factors. If the parents mysteriously show up and want their child back, we'd start a Child Welfare Case plan, which outlines how they can get their child back. That takes twelve to eighteen months, and their progress is reviewed every six."

  I was familiar with this process, though I didn't tell her that. "Let's suppose for a minute that his parents never show. What happens?"

  'We file an Affidavit of Diligent Search listing what we've donein effect covering our tails, proving to the court that we did attempt to find his parents. If this is deemed acceptable, then the department gets him a social security number and gives him a name-or the child can choose his own name-and the judge puts it into order. At that point, he's declared a true ward of the state, his parents have no more rights, and he's placed in long-term foster care, possibly with the same family."

  "So at that point, anyone can petition to get the kid?"

  She nodded.

  "And for now, you place him in short-term foster care?"

  "Yes. Well, the judge can ... if an approved home is willing and available. Availability in Glynn County right now is a problem, and if that weren't bad enough, most folks don't want a kid with his issues." She pulled a folder from her shoulder bag and opened it on the table. "You know this man?"

  I chuckled. "That'd be William Walker McFarland. Otherwise known as Uncle Willee."

  She nodded. "He came to see me this morning, asked that he and his wife be considered as foster placement."

  "Well?"

  "He's led quite a life."

  "You could say that."

  "Does he ever talk about life before prison?"

  "Not really. And trust me, it's not from a lack of prying."

  She flipped through the chart. "From what I can uncover, it's as if he's led two totally different lives."

  "I think when you bury your father, wife, and son all in the same six months, whatever prior life you led pretty much gets buried with them."

  She nodded. "They passed the DCF home inspection and the initial interview."

  "They'd already had all that."

  "The state wants to move on this kid. Be proactive. He's been through a lot. Also, with you covering the story ..."

  "I see."

  "As a result, the McFarlands' file is pending."

  "Pending what?"

  She smiled. "My conversation with you." She flipped a few pages. "They've got some experience. Your home as a child must've had a revolving front door."

  I nodded. "You can say that again."

  "You turned eighteen a decade ago, yet you still have an apartment above the barn. How come?"

  I laughed. "Free rent. I don't have it as much as they let me sleep there when I'm too tired to drive home."

  She smiled, but waited just the same.

  "You've done your homework."

  She shrugged. "It's not hard. Computers do most of it, if you know where to look. And if you know how to phrase the right questions, the people on the other end of the phone do the rest."

  "You'll be hard-pressed to find a better pair than those two." I wrote my number on a napkin, then stood and threw my cup in the waste can. "I better get back upstairs. Call me if anything comes up?"

  "Yes, provided you do the same."

  I stuck out my hand. "Deal."

  She walked off, out through the sliding doors, and into a convertible Volkswagen bug, one of the new ones with the flower shooting up out of the dashboard. I walked back upstairs and found the lights off and television on. Unc was sitting on my stool, his socked feet propped up on the bed. The kid sat on the bed, his eyes wide and glued to the screen. Both were eating popcorn. On the screen, Baloo was singing "The Bare Necessities." When he uprooted the palm tree and began scratching his back, Unc laughed out loud. The kid looked at Unc, then me, then back at the screen.

  I tapped Unc on the shoulder. "Thank you."

  He threw a piece of popcorn at me. "Fastest way to the heart is through the stomach."

  I backed out of the room and waved at the kid, who regarded me without expression. Outside, I stepped into Vicky, turned my cap around backwards, and considered what Unc had said. I chewed on it all the way home, but something didn't set right. I rolled into the barn and cut the engine. Was that true? Do you get to the heart through the stomach? Or is there some other portal? I left that hanging because there was one other question more timely, and it had to do with that kid: If you can't speak, then how do you laugh? And if you can't laugh, then how do you cry?

  I had a story to write.

  Chapter 8

  llsworth McFarland raised his sons to know the value of a dol- Ilar. If they wanted one, they had to earn it. Only difference was that while Jack spent, Liam saved. But there was one benefit to Jack's gambling habit. He learned the power of leverage. Which meant he was continually making deals and continually in debt. Mostly to Liam. This does not suggest that Jack was dumb or foolish. Quite the contrary. The boy was brilliant.

  The brothers spent their summers working as tellers at the bank. In each boy's senior year, Ellsworth made him a junior loan officer, so by the time they graduated high school a year apart, the boys knew more about the community banking business than most of their business professors at the University of Georgia. They studied SAE, pledged Business, and thanked God for the red and black. After graduation they married within a year of each other and joined their dad at the bank. Then came the storm of 1979.

  While geography sets Brunswick out of the path of hurricanes, it has little effect on tornadoes and thunderstorms in July. At 3:00 PM the space behind Ellsworth's desk got too cramped, so he left the bank in his boys' hands and drove home for an Arturo Fuente cigar and a walk around the Zuta on his horse, Big Bubba, followed by dinner with his attorney. At seventy-five years of age, Ellsworth found that some things had become so simple. His legacy was intact. By 6:30 PM the tellers had balanced and clocked out, leaving his sons to lock the vault and turn out the lights-a nightly routine.

  The door of the vault had been marred by three different robbery attempts-one with dynamite, one with various tools including a sledgehammer, and a third that included both plus a tractor blade. None was even remotely successful, and the marred door had been left in open sight for all the bank customers to see. It was a steel badge of safety. One local billboard even showed a photograph of just the vault door. The caption read The only place in town where your money is safe.

  Earlier that year, regulators had valued the bank at $57,000,000- making it a community bank with regional power. Also during this time, an interesting event occurred in history. Despite the fact that Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer from Georgia, his financial policy had become a disaster, and the interest rates reflected this. By the spring of 1979, prime had reached 15 percent. Two years later it would peak at 20.5 percent. Hence, Carter became a one-term wonder. Searching for secure investments, folks all around the South had invested in bearer bonds. Second only to cash, they were sold with a fixed interest rate paid twice yearly. The bearer of the bond would clip off the coupon, send it in, and receive an interest payment that ranged from 6 to 8 percent.

  There was just one problem. Unlike a stock certificate, they were issued to "Beare
r." No name appeared on the bond. This meant that, if stolen, there was no way to reclaim it. No way to cancel it. It was like losing a $100 bill. Or a $100,000 bill. This explains why the government halted the issuance of bearer bonds in 1982. But, given that Ellsworth's vault was robbery proof, folks came from all across Georgia for two reasons. The first was simple safekeeping. Twice a year they'd show up, show a note, clip their own coupon, and mail it in for their interest payment. But then the interest rates went to 20 percent, and opportunity knocked. Bondholders approached the ZB&T, secured a loan, usually at 90 percent of bond value, then took the loan amount and placed it with a Savings and Loan where they could usually get a point or two better than prime on their money. That meant 16 percent. That eight-to-ten point spread was clean profit. And in 1979 this practice was running wild. This meant that on the night of the storm, the ZB&T held more than $6,000,000 in bearer bonds as collateral for loans. These bonds were kept in a file cabinet in the back of the vault.

  Bottom line, folks just didn't trust the government-not with double-digit interest and American boys still missing in Vietnam. H-e-double-hockey-stick no. Folks in South Georgia were waving the Confederate flag, pointing toward D.C., hailing Ronald Reagan, and screaming stuff I can't write.

  The risk was this-while the FDIC insured people's deposits, they did not insure collateral on loans. Nor did they insure "safekeeping." But given the visible and well-advertised scars on the vault door, folks from Florida to Alabama to North Carolina knew their money was safer in Ellsworth's safe than tucked under a mattress. So, to put people at ease, Ellsworth insured the vault contents. It was a no-brainer.

  There was just one problem.

  The brothers were locking the vault and the doors when thunderclouds appeared on the horizon above the Zuta. Liam and Jack climbed to the third-story roof and watched the lightning lick the earth.