The Search
On Sunday morning they brought a German shepherd over from Fulton. Hovering over a red sweater held by gloved hands, the dog paused for only seconds before turning and straining at his leash. The distant thumping of a helicopter seemed to increase the urgency of the hushed chaos in the parking lot. Paul inhaled and wondered if the others felt it – a shift in the air, a whisper that there was still hope.
“Thanks for coming out today. I know a lot of you were here yesterday, and we appreciate it.” The police chief divided up the search teams, reminding them to check tool sheds, parked cars, and anywhere else a child could be hiding. Paul was assigned to a group led by a fireman from town. Two other men and a woman made up their search party of five. They were told to start on the far side of the park and then follow the course of the Strather River through the woods. Paul put his backpack with his lunch and water bottle on his shoulder and followed the group across the soccer fields toward the woods.
That morning when he’d mentioned that search parties were going out again, Julie responded, “You were there all day yesterday. You’re not going again, are you?”
And although he hadn’t planned to go back, he found himself saying, “Yeah, actually, I am. I think it’s a little more important than mowing the lawn, or whatever else you had planned for me.”
The day before, their neighbor Stan had called to ask Paul if he wanted to help with the search. Paul had also heard about Hillary Saller, the nine-year-old autistic girl who disappeared from the playground on Friday. But after he hung up, Paul realized that before Stan’s call, it hadn’t occurred to him to offer to help. Now, following the group down a narrow dirt path into the woods, Paul wondered what they’d find when they got to the river, which despite its name was really a stream. Maybe Hillary had slipped and they’d find her draped across a rock at the water’s edge, bleeding and unconscious, or worse. He imagined her floating face down in the black water, her blond hair that he’d seen on the news, floating on the surface.
When they got to the river, there was no sign of anyone. Paul scanned the shallow water below, noticing the stillness of the forest and the gentle splashing of water against the rocks. Fifteen feet away, the banking rose steeply on the other side. Buck, the fireman in charge, said that they’d split up. He and the two other men would find a spot to cross the river and search on the other side. Pointing to Paul and the woman, he said they should continue along this side of the riverbank, and in two miles or so when they all reached Route 17, they’d walk back to the park on the road, checking in yards as they went.
As the others moved away, the woman held out her hand to Paul.
“I’m Amy. Shall we get started?”
Paul introduced himself and they shook hands in a brief, businesslike manner; then Amy turned and started to make her way along the top of the banking. As they walked, Paul considered asking her about her connection with Hillary, but as she stepped quickly over fallen logs and pushed branches out of her way, he kept silent. He wondered what Julie was doing. She’d started going to church back in the spring, and usually got home about this time. She had asked him if he wanted to come with her the first few times, and then stopped asking. Once when Paul asked her about her new interest in church, she’d said simply, “I like to go there to pray and to think.”
Her words had struck him as clear evidence of how, despite their years together, he apparently didn’t really know her at all. Ever since, he’d wondered what she prayed for. Was it for the family, the baby he’d told her for years he didn’t want?
Paul switched his backpack to his other shoulder, and his steps became more deliberate as they climbed a small hill. At the top Amy stopped, and in the quiet Paul reached for his water bottle. He suddenly remembered why they were there, and he glanced back to make sure he hadn’t missed anything among the trees.
“Do you know her?” Amy asked, her gaze focused on some distant point in the woods.
Paul hesitated before realizing what she meant.
“Uh, no. I saw the story on the news, and my neighbor asked if I wanted to help out yesterday. And…I decided to come back today.”
Watching her profile, Paul asked, “Do you? Know her, that is?”
“Yes, well, no, not really. My sister owns the daycare she used to go to. I help out there once in a while. Hillary’s a sweet kid. She’s got her challenges, but she’s got a good heart.”
Amy paused. “You have kids?”
Paul shook his head, Amy nodded, and they started walking again.
A good heart, Paul thought. That’s what Julie said on Friday night when they heard on the news that dozens of people were out looking for Hillary. Someone who helped without being asked must have “a good heart,” she’d said. But why didn’t she think it applied to him? Paul pictured himself arriving at work on Monday, checking in at the office before loading his truck, casually mentioning as he sipped his coffee that he’d spent the weekend on the search team. Impatiently he pushed the picture from his mind.
Earlier that summer, on the way home from a Fourth of July picnic, Julie had brought up the subject of having a baby again saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a little boy like your sister?” Paul had angrily told her to stop bugging him. Why did she have to keep bringing it up? He’d told her again and again that he didn’t want kids. He’d always said that, and nothing had changed. She, he reminded her, was the one who had changed.
That night, Julie had explained that she kept bringing up the subject of a baby because she couldn’t help it; it was like breathing. Although he didn’t want to hear any more, he couldn’t help himself from asking impatiently, “What do you mean ‘it’s like breathing’?”
Julie looked up from where she sat on the edge of the bed, her face wet with tears.
“I mean it’s like when you think about breathing. The moment you do, your mind takes over and you consciously breathe. No matter how hard you try, you can’t let your body breathe on its own, unconscious rhythm, you can’t.”
She wiped her eyes with a tissue. “And that’s how it is with having a baby. The moment I think of it, I can’t let it go. If I see a mother pushing a stroller, or hear a baby crying in the supermarket, I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t push it away like I used to.”
Paul and Amy paused when they heard barking in the distance. Paul held his breath while he waited to hear three blasts on the air horn, the signal that Hillary had been found. When the barking faded into the silence of the woods, they glanced at each other and started walking again. Hillary had been at the playground on Friday with some of the neighborhood kids and one of the mothers. After swinging for a while, she joined in a game of hide and seek. Hillary went to hide and hadn’t been seen since. That was what they said on the 11:00 news that night. They had also shown her parents, looking pale and serious, and the neighbor who’d been watching the kids at the playground. She’d burst into tears and was unable to finish the interview.
Who needed that? Paul thought. Hillary’s parents hadn’t asked to be put in the spotlight, forced to go home without their daughter, wondering where she was. And they hadn’t asked for her to be autistic either. The police chief had explained again this morning that because she was autistic Hillary’s ability to communicate was limited. She was also afraid of strangers and loud sounds, and she might be hiding. Paul had thought how stupid it was that they were using a helicopter to try to find her. Its noise was deafening, and he couldn’t imagine anything that would make her hide faster. But today, the reality of her being gone for two days made Paul realize that obviously it had been considered, and that like everything else having to do with the search, someone had to decide whether it was worth the risk.
“Paul! Look.” Amy stopped and pointed at something next to a tree. It was small and blue. They looked at each other and starting running at the same time. She’s asleep…it’s a piece of her clothing, Paul thought as he ran. But when they arrived at the base of the oak tree, they saw that it was a piece of an old blue blanket covered with leaves. Amy reached down to pick it up, and Paul kicked around in the leaves, to be sure there wasn’t anything they were overlooking.
Amy looked at him, her lips tightly pressed together.
“Maybe we should take this with us, just in case it’s hers.”
Paul nodded, although as he looked at the dirty blue fabric, he knew it didn’t belong to the little girl.
Paul wasn’t even sure what “autistic” meant. There was a kid on a TV show a long time ago that he thought was autistic, but that boy was in a wheelchair and Hillary wasn’t. Irritated, he thought, I couldn’t be a parent. I don’t know any of the words, the terms, the diseases. I don’t even know what autism is, let alone how to deal with it. When he’d woken up that morning, the first thing Paul had thought of was that maybe someone had taken Hillary. Some sicko could have driven by the park and lured her into his car. She’d been gone since Friday afternoon. It was Sunday. She could be anywhere, anything could have happened. It was a thought he couldn’t shake. How do parents do it? Paul wondered. How do they send their kids out in the world even if they’re healthy, normal kids? School buses crash, bullets are fired, and lightning strikes. Even if you spent every moment trying to think of everything that could possibly go wrong, you’d probably never see it coming—the one disaster you hadn’t anticipated. Suddenly Paul wanted Julie, to talk with her, to be with her. What would she say?
As they continued walking, Paul glanced up at the sky through the bare spots on the branches of the tall trees. Closing his eyes for a moment, Paul let himself think about the stack of empty boxes in the garage. Although he hadn’t said anything about them to Julie, he knew why they were there. Now, standing in the woods, he realized that when she was gone his biggest sadness would not be that he had lost her, but that he had disappointed her.
Staring ahead, lost in his thoughts, he suddenly said, “Amy, what’s that?”
He pointed to the other side of the river and before she’d answered, he began running. He slid down the muddy banking and ran through the shallow water, running until he reached the small form, curled up at the base of a tree. Paul knelt down and to his surprise the girl raised her head. Calmly her brown eyes watched him.
“Hillary,” Paul said softly. Her eyes widened.
He realized that Amy was yelling, and he could hear Buck running through the woods toward them. A moment later they were both standing next to Paul panting.
“Okay, right. We should be there in about fifteen minutes,” Buck said into the radio. “We need to bring her down to Route 17, they’ll meet us there,” he said to Amy and Paul.
Without thinking, Paul knelt down and picked Hillary up. Standing, he adjusted her slightly, and he felt her relax against his chest, her legs hanging loosely over his arm. He brushed the hair off her face with his chin and started walking; only then did he remember the others. He looked back and saw Amy pick up his backpack from the ground.
After a few minutes, Paul could hear the distant sound of sirens. He felt Hillary stiffen and so he started talking, telling her how glad they were to find her. But when he noticed she seemed to be listening, he slowed his voice and started to talk about the woods. He told her about the squirrels that lived there, and the magical sunlight jewels they chased on the ground. He whispered about the jewels’ secret powers and how they protected the animals in the forest.
By the time they emerged from the woods, the sirens had been shut off. Two police cars and an ambulance waited on the side of the road, their spinning red and blue lights betraying their urgency. As Paul walked toward the cars, a man and a woman began running toward him. Crying, the woman reached out, and Paul could feel Hillary being lifted from his arms. Paul watched them carry her over to the ambulance, everyone hugging and crying. Paul stood still, dazed. Amy handed him his backpack and gave him a hug. She said something and Paul nodded, but as she walked away he wasn’t sure what she’d said. A van pulled up behind the ambulance, and a woman got out, talked briefly to a police officer, and then came up to Paul.
“Hi, Sara Shaw, Channel 6 News. I understand you just found the little girl.”
She turned and motioned to a man walking toward them with a TV camera. “Can I interview you?” she asked as she flipped through a small notebook.
Paul looked past her to where the family was gathered at the back of the ambulance. Smiling, they had their arms around each other. How do they do it? Paul wondered. Hillary is safe now, but what about next week or next year?
Paul remembered Julie pausing at the kitchen sink last week as she rinsed their dinner dishes. They had eaten yet another meal in the heavy silence that had settled over their house. She rested her wet hands on the edge of the sink.
“Paul, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can go on like this.”
Paul had sighed. Exhausted by what was coming, but knowing he was helpless against the inevitable.
“So what do you say? We’ll make you famous,” the newscaster said as she slipped in her earpiece and held out the microphone to Paul.
Paul shook his head, not registering her words. He was focusing on the picture in his mind of Julie at home kneeling on the floor, putting her possessions in boxes. Turning, he started to run.
• • •
Kim Venkataraman grew up in Maine and her short stories have been published in Redivider, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The MacGuffin and other journals. She recently completed Enough, a novel based on her grandfather’s experience of being orphaned at the start of the Depression.