A man leaned against the fence. He was thin and pale, in baggy, faded clothes.
“Marta, stay in the truck with Jacob,” John said.
The thin man said what John and Marta had most dreaded.
“I’ve come for the boy.”
40
“I’m his father and I’ve come for him,” the man said.
John turned to Jacob. “Is this your father?”
Jacob nodded and then tentatively tapped at his father’s arm.
“No” was his father’s reply. “We’re going now.”
Jacob did not appear afraid of his father, but it was clear that he did not want to leave. He clung to Marta.
“But where will you take him?” Marta asked.
The man named a town three hundred miles away, where he’d found work and a place to live.
“We could keep the boy for you,” John offered.
“‘Keep’ him? What do you mean? He’s my boy, and I’ll do the keepin’.”
“I mean in case you need more time—or if it would be too hard for you to have the boy—or—”
“I can do just fine. I never said nothin’ about you keepin’ the boy. I never did.”
“You didn’t say much at all. We didn’t know who you were or when—or if—you might come back.”
“I said I was comin’ back.”
John pressed the man. “You said ‘we’. Why’d you say ‘we’? Who else—?”
“I didn’t know it’d be just me. His ma—she ran off.”
Jacob’s head bent to his chest.
“But why here? Why us?”
“You don’t remember me?” he asked John. “I worked up at Vernie Gossem’s for a time—when you was working on his place.”
“I—I—honestly, I don’t remember—”
“Vernie said you was a good man, that you had a good wife, too.”
“That’s all you knew about us? And you left your boy here?”
A second car pulled in the drive.
“What’s that sheriff doing here?” the man said. He crossed his arms and spit to one side.
For once, both Marta and John were relieved to see the sheriff’s car.
The sheriff slid slowly out of his seat, gave his badge a firm rub, and said, “Saw a strange car up here, out-of-state plates.” He eyed the man leaning against the old car.
“Says he’s the boy’s father,” John explained.
The sheriff rested one hand on the gun in his holster. “That so?”
The man did not flinch. “Yeah, that’s so. I’m his father and I’ve come to take him.”
The sheriff rubbed his chin. “And how do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“Wha—? Why, heck. Ask him. Ask the boy.”
“The boy doesn’t talk,” the sheriff said.
“He can nod. Ask him.”
So the sheriff asked Jacob if this was his father and Jacob nodded and then lowered his head again and tightened his grasp of Marta’s hand.
John stepped forward. “You got any proof? Any papers?”
“Yeah,” the sheriff agreed. “You got any papers?”
“Wha—?”
John said, “A real father wouldn’t want me releasing his boy to just anybody, not without some sort of proof.”
The man slapped the side of his car. “Proof? That’s ridiculous.” He kicked a tire, then spun around. “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute—”
The man unlocked the trunk, revealing a crammed jumble of clothes and boxes and bulging trash bags. He burrowed into the pile like a rat on a hunt.
The sheriff motioned for John, Marta, and the boy to step away.
“What are you looking for?” the sheriff demanded.
“Proof! I’ve got proof!”
“You better not be looking for any guns.”
The man mumbled something as he burrowed farther into the heap. “Lucky thing I’m moving and got all my stuff with me.”
The boy inched forward, curious. John and Marta exchanged a desperate look.
“Here!” the man said, backing out of the trunk with a tattered cardboard box in his hands. He fumbled through yellowed bits of paper. “There you go!” he said triumphantly, shoving a creased document toward the sheriff. “Proof enough?” He dug in his pocket. “And here’s some more.” He pulled out his driver’s license. “To prove I’m me.”
John and Marta joined the sheriff in examining the first document.
“Looks like a valid birth certificate for the boy,” the sheriff said.
Marta could not remain silent. “We’ve given him a good home. Jacob is happy here. We can care for him—feed him and clothe him and look after him the way he should be looked after.”
“Are you tellin’ me I don’t know how to look after my own boy? ’Cause I’m telling you it don’t matter what you think. He’s my boy.”
John whirled toward the sheriff. “What can we do?”
The sheriff studied the man, the boy, the papers in his hand. “Well, now, the way I see it, you don’t have much choice, sorry to say. The man is his father, and a father has a right to his boy, don’t he?”
“But—”
The sheriff returned to his own car. “Don’t he?” he repeated.
As Jacob trailed forlornly behind, Marta and John gathered his things. When the father saw the guitar and drums and box of paint supplies, he said, “He don’t need all that and I don’t have room for any of it.”
Jacob clutched the guitar, refusing to release it.
“Please let him take it,” Marta urged. “He’s so talented.”
The man snorted. “You making fun of my boy ’cause he cain’t talk?”
“No, no. I meant—his drawing, his music—”
“Lord Almighty, woman, that stuff ain’t going to do him any good in this world.”
“May we write to him? May we see him again?”
“Sure, sure,” the man said. “Sure. Look, he can take the guitar, okay? Probably won’t last a week, but sure . . .”
Jacob went with his father. His head was bowed, his shoulders slumped, his feet leaden. He did not cry.
Up in the pasture, the animals sensed the change in the air. The cows hung their heads, the goats muttered sadly, and the beagle wove in and out between their legs, passing along the news.
The boy is gone, the boy is gone.
41
The boy is gone, the boy is gone.
Each morning, they heard that refrain. Each afternoon, each evening, they heard that refrain. They heard it in the farmhouse, in the pasture, in the barn.
The boy is gone, the boy is gone.
Each morning, John woke early and slipped out to the porch, and always, always, he was disappointed to see the empty chair.
The boy is gone, the boy is gone.
Marta woke in the middle of the night and went to the empty bed.
The boy is gone . . .
The beagle sniffed the farmhouse and the yard relentlessly, curling against objects that the boy had touched.
The boy is gone . . .
John and Marta strained at the sound of cars passing on the road below. Would this one bring the boy back?
No vehicles turned into the drive.
The boy . . .
They sent cards and letters to the boy, and each day, they checked the mailbox at the end of the drive for a reply from the father, but no reply came, and after a few weeks, their own letters began coming back to them, stamped Unable to deliver and No such address.
The boy was gone.
42
At the sheriff’s office, John explained that the letters had been returned.
“Unable to deliver,” John said.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, and No such address.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes. He lied to us—that man lied to us.”
“Maybe he just got the address wrong. That happens, don’t it?”
“We’re worried about the boy. We
never should have let him—”
“You didn’t have much choice.”
“But we never, never should have let—”
“The boy wasn’t yours.”
John wanted to say to the sheriff, How do you go on with your days when the boy is gone? You wake up, your feet feel heavy, your arms feel heavy, your head is so heavy you can barely hold it up.
But then he knew what they had to do.
They had to find the boy.
43
And so they set off for the town the father had mentioned. As they feared, there was “no such address” as the one the father had given John and Marta. It was a straggly town with one filling station, a general store, and a diner. People looked at them blankly when John and Marta asked about the young boy and his father.
“Don’t know who you could be talkin’ about,” one waitress said. “People come in here from off the road, strangers, we don’t keep track. Maybe they were here, maybe they weren’t.”
They described Jacob more fully; they explained about the constant tapping.
“Lots of kids tap, don’t they? I got a kid who pounds on everything in sight.”
John and Marta went to the nearest post office, the hospital, the school.
Nothing.
They returned home. When the sheriff said he’d had no luck investigating the trailer, John and Marta visited the property again. They spoke to the owners of the land, who said that a man and woman had rented the trailer for a few months only. Yes, they had a young boy. The owners did not know where they had come from or where they went when they left.
“Skipped out on the rent. Left in the middle of the night.”
44
When the first snow fell, Marta and John boxed up the boy’s things—the paints and brushes and drums that the father would not let the boy take with him—and moved them to the barn. The room they had cleared out for the boy’s bed gradually returned to its former use as storage for odds and ends. The only visible daily reminders of the boy were the paintings on the barn walls.
“Maybe,” Marta said one day, “Jacob is painting a picture of our house and our barn and our animals and pasture.”
“Maybe,” John agreed, and it cheered him a little to think that the boy might be remembering them.
“And maybe he is making up a little tune right this minute—you know that way he did. Do you think so, John?”
“Maybe.”
Another day, Marta said, “Beagle hasn’t been the same since Jacob left. Look at him. All he does is lie there. He’s sad.”
“He’s a dog. He’s not sad.”
“Sure he is, John. Dogs can be sad. Just like people. Just like—”
“Maybe. Maybe so.”
Marta lay awake at night, trying to imagine what Jacob was doing. She made up scenes for him. There he is with his dog. I hope he has a dog. They’re running around the yard. I hope they have a yard. There he is sitting on his bed. I hope he has a bed. He’s playing his guitar. I hope he still has the guitar.
John worried while he was driving. Some people shouldn’t have kids. That father shouldn’t have dropped Jacob off here without knowing us—what if we were bad people? What if he drops Jacob off somewhere else, where people aren’t good to him? That last thought made John so agitated he had to pull over to the side of the road. He bent his head against the wheel.
45
One Saturday, they returned to the park where Jacob and Lucy had played together, and there was Lucy, swinging, and there was her mother, sitting on the bench, her face tilted toward the sun.
“Oh!” she said, when she saw Marta and John. “What a great surprise! We wondered what had happened to you. We were worried.”
Marta explained as best she could.
“Oh, dear. Oh, my. Oh, how very difficult. Oh, how could you bear it? There, there.”
The three adults sat for some time, watching Lucy swing. At last, Lucy’s mother said, “I know exactly what you should do next!”
46
On the way home, John said, “I don’t know the first thing about foster children.”
“Me either, but Lucy’s mom said those kids need good homes. I can’t bear the thought that there are kids out there who don’t have homes. Maybe we should talk to that Mrs. Floyd—that friend of Lucy’s mother.”
“She’s in charge of placement?”
“Yes. We’d have to be interviewed and approved.”
John scowled. “What if we don’t pass? I’m not good at being interviewed.”
“Me either. And what if we get a child who isn’t happy with us?”
“Or what if we don’t like the kid?”
“Of course we’ll like the child, John. How could we not like a child?”
“You never met my cousin’s kids.”
“Won’t it be hard if we just have the child for a few months and then he’s gone again? Won’t that be like losing Jacob?”
“That’s the part I’m worried about,” John admitted.
“Maybe they won’t have any children available anyway. We shouldn’t get our hopes up.”
When they met with Mrs. Floyd, however, they learned that there were twenty-seven children who needed temporary homes. John and Marta were interviewed and were visited at their home.
“How many can you take?” asked Mrs. Floyd.
“How many? Maybe we should start with just one—”
“How about two? I have a brother and sister who need a home like yours. It’s temporary, of course. Be sure you’re okay with that. Probably about six months.”
47
The brother and the sister who came to John and Marta’s were eight and ten years old. Tyler and Zizi were thin as rails and sullen, refusing to speak.
“Jacob wasn’t ever gloomy like that, was he?” John asked Marta the first night, after the children were in bed.
“No, never.”
“Are we ever going to look after a child who speaks?”
“Shh, they can speak—”
“To each other, maybe, but not to us. They won’t even look us in the eye, Marta.”
“They’re just scared.”
“When do you think they’ll stop being scared? Why are they scared? What should we be doing?”
“’Night, John.”
By the second week, John and Marta had learned that a pile of old lumber, a hammer, and some nails were a good outlet for the children’s aggression.
“What are they making, John?”
“I think it’s a fort.”
“They sure like to hammer things.”
“Jacob didn’t hammer. He made music out of everything.”
By the third week, Tyler and Zizi were speaking to John and Marta.
“Their language!” John said. “Did you hear what she called her teacher? Where did they learn words like that?”
“Now you want them to stop talking?”
“I was just used to Jacob, that’s all. I mean he was so . . . so different . . . from Tyler and Zizi.”
“I guess every kid is different.”
It was the goats that finally softened the children. The goats nuzzled Tyler and Zizi and chased them and butted into them. Round and round the pasture the children ran, shrieking with laughter. Early each morning before the school bus stopped at the end of the drive, Tyler and Zizi ran to the barn and fed the goats. Each afternoon, when they returned from school, they raced up to see the goats.
One night at dinner, Tyler said, “It’s okay here.”
“Yeah,” Zizi agreed. “It’s okay.”
John looked at Marta. “Is that a compliment, do you think?”
At the general store, Shep said, “I see you’re buying jelly beans again. That kid come back?”
John felt stabbing heartache. He’d thought maybe he would think about Jacob less with other kids around, but he was thinking about Jacob more. He remembered every little gesture, every touch, every look on Jacob’s face. When they took Tyler and Zizi to get new shoes
and clothes, he remembered taking Jacob to the same stores and how proud the boy had seemed with his new shoes.
“No,” he replied to Shep. “These jelly beans are for different kids. We’re fostering them.”
“Is that right?”
John spotted a roll of tar paper. That would be perfect for the kids’ fort, he thought. “I’ll trade you this here belt for that roll of tar paper,” he said.
“You’re going to run out of belts pretty soon, ain’t ya?”
John and Marta stood at the fence watching Zizi wrap her arms around a goat’s neck.
“You cutie,” Zizi sang to the goat. “You cutie dootie.”
“You hear that?” John said to Marta. “I think Zizi is turning soft.”
“Maybe,” Marta said. “Of course this morning, she stomped a caterpillar to bits and called it a creepy turd.”
“Oh.”
“She’s a funny kid, that Zizi is.”
They could hear Tyler hammering on the fort on the far side of the barn.
“Did you hear what Tyler called you last night, John? He called you Good Pa.”
“Is that what he said? I thought he called me Goo-bah. I thought it was an insult.”
“Who’d ever guess kids could make you laugh so much?”
“Jacob made us laugh.”
“Sure, he did, but I didn’t think all kids could make you laugh.”
“Marta, we haven’t seen all kids yet.”
Tyler and Zizi left one day in the late spring. They’d all known this day would come, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“You can visit us any time you want,” Marta reassured them.
“You can write to us, too. We’d like that,” John said. “And come visit the goats. They’ll miss you.”
“So will we,” Marta said.
That night, Marta said, “I guess I’m always going to cry when a child leaves.”
“Do you think we shouldn’t have any more kids here? Do you think we should think about this some more? Are we always going to feel so awful when they leave?”