The Borrower (21 page)

2. The Post-Dispatch article and all others we could find mentioned the Drake family’s involvement in
Olive Branch Evangelical Bible Chapel
, which is less of a chapel than a converted airplane hangar with movie screens and a whole lot o’ fire and brimstone. (Read Blake Andersen’s amazing article on megachurches and megachurch architecture
here
.) Loloblog intern Andrea D. called Olive Branch, posing as a young lesbian hoping to join the congregation. She was told by an unnamed representative that “All are welcome. Basically our belief is, love the sinner but hate the sin. And we have several counseling and recovery groups.” Ummm, okay . . .

Conclusion:
The Drake family’s beliefs would appear to be consistent with those of someone who would send their son to get un-gayed.

3. Ian is a fairly uncommon name among ten-year-olds. Bear with me here. The Social Security Administration
website
lists the name Ian as the 74th most popular for boys born ten years ago—and it consistently ranks in the mid-seventies throughout the 1990s (the presumed range of birth years for a “young sheep”). In other words, it’s a relatively uncommon name. Add to that the odds of the last initial being “D”; add to that the date of Lawson’s posting; add to that the geographical proximity.

Conclusion:
If we’re not talking about the same kid, it’s one hell of a co-inky-dink.

Admittedly, it’s a hike from Hannibal to St. Louis—
MapQuest
puts it at exactly two hours—but what’s a little two-hour drive to de-gayify your child?

Dr. Ken Washington, director of New York’s private Kohlman Children’s Mental Health Center, wrote to Loloblog in an email this morning that “in recent studies, up to 42% of all homeless teenagers identified themselves as gay, lesbian or transgender. Of America’s 1.6 million runaways, that’s a staggering number.”

While most of these cases involve kids kicked out of their parents’ homes, the Drake case is clearly not that. But Dr. Washington writes that “a desire to escape a hostile family environment and the mental abuse of sexual ‘reprogramming’ would certainly be consistent with the patterns of homelessness we’ve seen with young runaways, although typically we are looking at adolescents.”

The article went on to break down the history and philosophy of the Pastor Bob phenomenon, such programs in general, and the number of unreturned calls put in to Glad Heart Ministries over the previous twenty-four hours by hapless interns. It was eight pages long, and not much of the rest had to do with Ian.

I sat back in the desk chair and attempted to react. I wasn’t sure what to think, except that (1) this wouldn’t necessarily point any fingers in my direction; but (2) it would possibly raise some interest out there in the case, which wasn’t exactly good; and (3) if the Drakes had any sense and a good lawyer, they could easily sue the pants off Loloblog and Arthur Levitt in particular for all kinds of libel.

I went back to Anya’s room, tried to run a comb through my hair, and gave up.

Downstairs, Ian was sitting like a king at the Labaznikovs’ table. Marta stood at the stove, an actual apron around her waist, and Leo sprawled in a chair, drinking a bottle of beer and smoking a cigar, the smoke from which he was mercifully blowing away from Ian, turning his head every few seconds to puff it through the door to the dining room. Ian didn’t seem to mind. He looked positively gleeful. There was a platter of thick Canadian bacon on the table, a dish of eggs scrambled with onions and peppers, two whole salamis, a pot of coffee, a plate of bread slices, a brick of muenster cheese, jams, mustards, peanut butter, and three more unopened bottles of beer. Ian beamed up at me and put a forkload of eggs in his mouth. His hair stuck up in four separate Ferret-Glo cowlicks.

“I
love
Russian breakfast!” Ian said.

“This is not Russian breakfast!” Leo shouted. “This is how Russians eat in America!”

We ate better than we had since we left Hannibal. Leo forced two beers on me, after which I knew I couldn’t drive yet. And Ian didn’t want to leave. He went down to see the ferrets again, asked Marta if she had any pictures of Russia (why, yes, she did) and asked Leo to explain what, exactly, communism was. This took about an hour of monologue, but at least did not include my father’s joke about the cat and the mustard. I’d helped Marta with the dishes, Leo had smoked another cigar, and Marta had started putting out plates for lunch, but apart from Ian’s foray into the basement, we hadn’t even left the kitchen. I suddenly wondered if the shoebox was still there. I hadn’t noticed it on my way down.

Marta put a glass of milk in front of Ian, and he beamed up at her. This might well have been his idea of heaven. “There!” Leo said. “A glass for Glass!”

“What?” Ian said.

“A glass for
Glass
,” I repeated, willing him to hear the capital
G
.

“I don’t get it.”

I said, “Your last name. Is Glass.” But by this point, Marta and Leo were glancing at each other, amused.

I knew, though, that I didn’t need to worry. This was the thing about people who did favors for each other, who passed illicit shoeboxes in the night: they didn’t ask questions if you didn’t. And if anyone in a uniform ever came looking for you, they wouldn’t say, “My God, is she okay? I have an envelope with her last address!” They’d say, “We no speak good English. No, we never hear of such a young lady. We—how you say?—never met.”

It was two o’clock when we got up from the table. I reminded Ian that his grandmother was waiting for him and thanked the Labaznikovs for their hospitality. Back in the living room, I saw that the shoebox was gone.

Of course it was, I realized. It was nothing more than the cigars Leo was smoking at breakfast. Cuban cigars that my father must have picked up in Argentina, a thank-you gift to Leo for some favor, past or future. Then again, there was probably some money stuffed in there for padding, too, maybe a few illegitimate receipts. I didn’t have the energy to care anymore. Who was I to blame him for his cigars, his money laundering—I, who was laundering a child?

When we had our coats on and bags in our hands and were almost out the door, Marta said, “We have to take a picture!” She scurried upstairs for a camera, and for a moment I considered sprinting out the door with Ian before our presence could be immortalized. If Leo hadn’t been there, I might have. I tried to catch Ian’s eye, but he was systematically squeezing the leaves of all the plants in the Labaznikovs’ living room to see if they were real. Leo said to me, “Lucy, we will see if you remember. What is three Russians?”

“A revolution.”

“Very good! And here we are three Russians in this house!”

Marta appeared again with the camera and arranged us in a row, me and Ian and Leo, and backed up to snap the picture. Just as she said, “One, two, three!” Ian put his hands in front of his face and peeked through the slits of his fingers. The camera went off, and Marta said, “Oh, one more so we can see you!”

“I’m very self-conscious,” Ian said. Of the thirty or so pictures of the Winter Book Bash that were currently on the display board at the Hannibal Public Library, approximately twenty featured Ian Drake sticking his face in front of someone else’s and displaying a happy mouthful of orthodontia. “I’m afraid the camera will steal my soul.”

“He’s just shy,” I cut in before they could ask what they were teaching, anyway, in the schools these days. I thought what a strange photo this would seem in the newspapers, if we were ever caught.
Hull, Drake (behind hands), and unidentified Russian man at private home near Pittsburgh. Note suspicious cowlicks in hair of both kidnapper and victim
.

Marta let it go at that, and we got out the door with a series of smothering Russo-Italian hugs and a brown paper bag full of sandwiches. “What is the difference between a piano and a fish?” Leo shouted from the porch when we were halfway to the car.

“You can’t tune a fish!” Ian called back. He beamed at me. This was clearly the finest individual moment of his life.

“Poka!”
the Labaznikovs called.
“Udachi!”

As we backed out, I caught a look at myself in the rearview. My hair was even worse than I thought, greasy clumps jutting out from my head at odd angles. “We look pretty terrible,” I said.

“We’re the Ferret-Glo twins!” And he proceeded to make up a song about it.

I
t felt awful being back on the road. With every mile, our car was starting to feel more like a submarine, something we weren’t even allowed to emerge from. Outside our little capsule was a different element, a substance from which our lungs were not suited to extract oxygen. Inside, we were cramped and coated with grime and cracker crumbs. Our bodies had taken on the contours of the car seats.

I realized I had to bite the bullet and call Rocky when I knew he’d answer. He never worked Friday afternoons, even when we were short-staffed, even on those rare occasions when the children’s librarian vanished to commit a felony. Ian and I stopped for milkshakes at a McDonald’s with an outdoor playground, and I sat on a picnic bench to call while Ian swung from the monkey bars. He wasn’t able to pull himself across them, just swing from one bar until his arms gave out and he landed in the wood chips. Then he’d climb back up and do it again.

“Rocky!” I said when he answered.

“Yes?”

“It’s Lucy.” He never needed me to identify myself. Had he written me out of his world this quickly, or was he just mad that I hadn’t called yet?

“Oh. You sound hoarse. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just a little exhausted. Still in Chicago.” I told him again about my sick friend, even said her name was Janna Glass, and made it sound like a planned trip. An extended illness. I said I’d donated bone marrow yesterday, but left out anything about her son or driving east. I felt like I should be making a list of what I said to whom. “It hurt like all hell,” I said.

“Right.”

“Is everything okay downstairs?”

He was quiet, which was my opportunity to act surprised and concerned, but I didn’t have much air in me. I managed, “What’s wrong?”

“Look,” he said, “I have to ask you something. Okay, Ian Drake? The boy who hangs out downstairs all the time?”

“Sure.”

“He’s—no one exactly knows where he is.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s missing.”

“Do you mean the
library
doesn’t know, or his
parents
don’t know?”

“Neither. He’s, like, officially missing. Police and everything.”

“Shit. Did he run away?”

“Well, there’s some kind of note, but they’re not saying what it was.”

“So what did you need to ask me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You started by saying you had to ask me something.”

“Oh. I guess I meant tell you. Are you okay?”

“No. Not really. That’s pretty awful. How long has he been gone?”

“A few days. I think he vanished while you were still in town, even. Did you see him on Sunday?”

I tried to think, honestly. Monday was when I found him . . . He must have been there Sunday afternoon to hide, but Sarah-Ann was working at closing, not me. “No. He came in Friday, I think. He only returned books, which is really unusual for him. But the records would be in the computer.” They actually would, this time, since the books he returned were ones for his school report on the Cherokee. “Didn’t you look?”

“Yeah. I just thought you might have talked to him or something.”

“No. He was just in and out. If he were running away, you’d think he would have checked out some books. Have they—have the police, like, come into the library? Have you talked to them?”

“It was weird. They talked to Loraine for a couple minutes, and then they specifically asked to talk to Sarah-Ann. They said the mom wanted them to talk to her.”

“How bizarre. Did they?”

“For about two seconds. If I could’ve rolled downstairs to eavesdrop, I would have. My guess is they realized pretty fast how batty she is and just gave up. She was asking me later if Ian was the Asian kid with the crutches. Seriously, I would have paid cash money to see that police interview.”

I wanted to laugh, but I reminded myself I was supposed to be in shock. “Do they think he ran away?”

“I don’t know what they think.
I
think he ran away.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Didn’t you say they were so terrible to him? The parents? And there was that weird letter you found.”

I was silent for a while, which I figured was the best way not to talk myself into a corner.

“Lucy?”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you two are close.”

I said, “I have to go,” and hung up while I was still ahead.

Ian was navigating us in a straight line now, right along the interstate, where before he’d been taking loopy detours. He had the atlas open on his lap.

About forty miles later, when I thought my right foot would fall off, Ian started a game. “So, you know how a white horse is worth fifty points?”

“In what?”

“When you’re driving. It’s fifty points. That’s the most you can get. And a pink Cadillac is also fifty.”

“Okay,” I said, remembering this vaguely from my childhood.

“A car with one headlight is ten points. But these are all only if you see them
first
. You have to call it out.”

“Right.”

“Well, the way I play, there are a couple others. Any word you see that rhymes with either of our names, first or last, that’s worth thirty. And it’s forty-five points if you see our exact same car. But it has to be the
exact same
, not just the same color.”

He was talking so fast it was hard to understand him. “What’s wrong with you?” I said. “Why are you doing that?” He had his hands crossed over his chest, grabbing opposite shoulders.

“It’s just a little hard to breathe still,” he said. “I don’t think it was just the ferrets. I’m actually low on my puffer.”