THE LAST BOY (19 page)

“What kind of milk is it?” he asked.

Molly did a double take and then burst out in laughter.“Did you hear that?” she said to Tripoli, then turned to Danny. “Cow's milk, silly!” she exclaimed.“What else?”

“Oh, yeah,” he smiled and thirstily gulped down half the glass. “Mmmmm,” he said, smacking his lips. “Cow's milk. It's cold and good. Not very creamy, though.”

Molly rolled her eyes heavenward for Tripoli's benefit and handed Danny a cookie. He took it, turned it over in his hand examining it with interest. It was as if he had never seen one before.

“Go on,” urged Molly.

The boy took a small, tentative bite, chewed. “Mmmmm,” he marveled, “Yes, it's very sweet.”

“It's Chips Ahoy,” she said, showing him the package. “Your absolute favorite. Don’t you remember, Honey? “

Danny wrinkled his brow in thought. “Yes…I sort of remember.” Tripoli could see he didn’t really, that he was trying to please her. Danny popped the rest in his mouth, and then giggled, crumbs spilling out. Molly laughed and ruffled his hair. Then she kissed him again.

“Come on, drink up,” she said.“You must be starving. And take another cookie.”

He hungrily dug into the bag and then polished off three in a row.

Though Tripoli had never seen the boy before, there was something remarkable about him, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Perhaps it was the boy's poise, his air of calm self-assurance. Then he noticed the small gray sweater lying crumpled in a corner, and went over and picked it up. It was made of coarse fibers and obviously hand knitted, like one of those sweaters you could find in the Peruvian store on the Commons, but even more primitive.

“What's this?” he asked quietly, dangling it aloft by two fingers.

“Danny was carrying it when he came back.” Molly's voice was still heightened with tension, high and loud. The boy seemed to wince slightly when she spoke.“Weren’t you, Honey?”

Danny nodded. His eyes darted for a moment toward the windows. They were open, Tripoli noticed, and the sound of many voices drifted in on the wind that was fragrant with lilacs and spring greenery.

Tripoli brought the sweater to his nose. The wool was scratchy and smelled of livestock. It had fine seeds and tiny pieces of burdock embedded in the fibers. It looked like something straight off the back of a sheep.“Okay,” he said finally to Molly,“So where was he? And how did he get back?”

“Like I told you, Trip, he just came walking right up the road, didn’t you, Angel?” she hugged and kissed him again. The boy laughed, a happy, carefree laugh that sounded like stones tumbling in a stream.“Hey, Trip, didn’t I tell you he was okay?”

“Well, you were right,”Tripoli nodded. His eyes, however, were still on the boy,“How’d you find your way back here, son?” he asked.

Danny looked at him. His smile seemed to fade.

“Well?”Tripoli persisted.

Danny shrugged and turned to look up at his mother. “This is where I live,” said Danny.

“Of course!” exclaimed Molly.

“Did someone bring you back here?”

“I walked.”

Tripoli slowly advanced towards the boy.“Okay,” he said calmly, “but from where?”

The boy's face clouded and he shifted back toward Molly, looking up at her beseechingly. Tripoli edged delicately closer. Danny searched his mother's eyes, but when he saw how she stood there waiting for his response, he finally turned back to Tripoli, his gaze meeting Tripoli's again without wavering. It was, he realized, not the look of a child.

“This is Trip, Danny,” said Molly, interceding to break the silence.“He's a good friend of mine. He's also a policeman.”

“I can tell that,” said the boy, his smile suddenly returning. Danny extended his hand.“Hello, Mr. Trip.”

The gesture caught Tripoli off guard. Taking Danny's hand, he suddenly found himself smiling, too—thinking to himself that you couldn’t help liking the kid straight away. For a little guy he certainly had a way of disarming people.

“This sweater?” he asked, holding it out to the boy.

“Nice isn’t it. And it's very warm in the winter,” said Danny with a sincere nod.

“I’ll bet it is.”Tripoli squatted down in front of Danny, bringing himself eye to eye with the boy. He was still grasping the sweater. “It's a very interesting sweater,” he said softly, going through the motions of examining it for the boy's benefit. “Unusual. Not the kind of thing you could buy in any store, is it?”

“Yeah,” agreed the boy.

“Where did it come from?”

“From sheep, of course!” said Danny, and giggled loudly as if it were a foolish question.

Tripoli smiled. “Well, I suppose that's obvious, too. But from which sheep?”

“Oh, just regular sheep.”

Molly, who was quietly listening, suppressed a laugh.

“Who made it?”

“Someone.”

“Who?”

Danny looked away. First up at Molly who was staring down at him questioningly, then quickly his eyes roved around the room.

Still crouched, Tripoli could feel the strain building in his haunches as he waited. Faces were peeking in at the kitchen window, and he tried to ignore them. “Look, Danny,” he said gripping the boy's hand to capture his attention,“everybody would really like to know where you’ve been.”

Danny looked at him.“But it's just like I said,” explained the boy, with a toss of his head.

“No, you haven’t really said anything.”

“Can we
please
already talk about something else now?” His eyes turned to Molly. “And could I maybe have another of those sweet cookies?”

Molly started to move off, and Tripoli signaled her with a raised finger to stop. “You can have a cookie, but first we want to know where you’ve been all these months? You know your Mommy and I were terribly worried about you.”

“You didn’t need to worry,” Danny shook his head. “Because I was perfectly okay.” He looked up at Molly and smiled. Tripoli saw that she seemed to melt under his gaze. Her short memory irritated him.

Two patrol cars had pulled up outside the trailer. Tripoli heard their sirens dying down, the crunch of tires on the driveway, then
the familiar voices of officers ordering the people to stand back.“We can see that you’re okay,” he persevered as gently as he could.“But, son, you were gone for months. Seven
whole
months. So you had to be somewhere. With someone.”

“Oh, I was around,” said Danny. He moved away from Tripoli and walked over to the bookshelf. He stood there with his back turned to them, running his fingers over the spines of the books.

“Around where, Honey?” asked Molly, going over and resting her hands on his shoulders. She bent over and kissed his head.

“Just around,” he said, shuffling his feet and squirming impatiently under her touch.

“Here in town?” Tripoli asked, moving over to where Danny stood. He crouched down again and, positioning himself face to face with the boy, held both of the child's hands in his so he couldn’t turn away. Danny squirmed, tried to turn, then finally looked at him wide-eyed. There was something so innocent and pure about the boy's look that it was difficult to be severe with him. “Maybe a far away place?”Tripoli suggested.

“No,” said Danny.

“Close by?”

“Depends,” Danny responded.

“Depends on what?”

“What you think is close.”

Tripoli had to finally laugh and shake his head in resignation. “This kid sounds like he's going to be a criminal lawyer,” he said turning to look up at Molly. “Maybe he was in law school for the last seven months?”

Molly laughed.“My little lawyer,” she said coming over and giving Danny a wet kiss on his cheek. When Danny glanced away, she slipped Tripoli a grazing kiss. “I’m the happiest human being on earth,” she whispered in his ear.

There was a knock on the door and, when Tripoli opened it,
framed in the doorway stood two uniforms, Richie Pellegrino and Jerry Sisler. When they spotted the boy, their jaws went slack and their mouths flopped open.

“Jesus H. Christ,” muttered Sisler.

“You’d better close your mouths before some flies swoop in,” said Tripoli.

“Flies in your mouth!” Danny thought it funny and doubled over in laughter. Then he watched as Tripoli quietly huddled with the two cops, then handed them the sweater, and mumbled something as he escorted them outside.

When he returned, Tripoli tried to pull Molly aside, but the boy clung to her.

“We’re taking him up to the hospital,” he whispered.

“
Hospital?
” she said loudly, turning to her boy. “He's the picture of health. Just look at him. Aren’t you fine, Danny?”

The boy nodded emphatically.“Better than fine.”

“I don’t know that,” explained Tripoli, trying to exclude the boy. “I want him checked over. And then questioned.”

Suddenly Molly looked frightened.“I mean, come on Trip, what difference does it make now? He's back and that's all that really matters.”

Tripoli managed to break Molly free.“You wait here,” he pulled Danny away from his mother, then led Molly back to the bedroom and shut the door. “Maybe to you right this minute that's all that matters,” he said in a low, stern voice. Danny's toys sat on his shelf as they had since the fall, the boy's bed still undisturbed.“But he's been somewhere with somebody—and been there without legal sanction—and I want to know where and who and how he got there. And what, if anything, they did to him. I want a doctor to go over him with a fine-tooth comb.”

“But…”

“If he hadn’t come back, would you have been quite so forgiving?”

“I’m not forgiving. Trip, I just can’t take all this in so fast. I—”

“If we found his body instead—”

“Please! Don’t—”

“Look,” he shifted tack, “there's been at least one crime committed, and it's my job to uphold the law, to follow it to its prosecution. We’re not going to casually walk away from this. What do you think the D. A.'s going to say? Forget it?”

“No. No. I understand. I just need some time to—”

“Don’t you want a doctor to check him out? Make sure he's healthy?”

“Of course. I just thought we could tomorrow, or—”

“No way,” he said firmly.

“Now you’re just being a cop.”

“You got it,” he said. “Imagine this happening again. To somebody else's kid.”

She raised her hands in surrender.“Okay. Okay.” she said.

When Tripoli opened the door he noticed that Danny had crept close to the bedroom and was trying to eavesdrop. The corners of his mouth were turned down. “Hey, come here,” he said and, reaching out, gently lifted him up. The boy was light and rested easily on his hip. He held him for a moment and could feel the child's body melding into his. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, son,” he said soothingly as the boy fixed him with his big doe eyes. “Your mother and I are the best of friends, and we wouldn’t do anything in the world to hurt you. In fact, we’d do anything we could to help you. To make you happy. I want you to know that. Okay?”

The boy's eyes twinkled and he smiled.“Sure,” he chirped, putting his arm around Tripoli's neck.“I know that!”

The boy snuggled yet closer. When Tripoli nuzzled him, he smelled of milk and leaves and wood smoke, and there was something in his touch that all but made Tripoli dissolve. Maybe that was
what it was like, he thought, having a little kid of your own.“Come on, Molly,” he said.“Let's get going.”

“Okay,” she agreed reluctantly. “He goes for the checkup. But I’m coming along. I’m not letting Danny out of my sight for a second!”

Tripoli phoned ahead to the hospital to alert the physician on call. Then he had Molly carefully undress Danny. She took off his shirt and dropped it into a plastic evidence bag that Tripoli held open for her. Then he sealed and tagged it.

“We’re going to need everything,” he explained as he continued the bagging and tagging.“Socks. Shoes. Even underwear.” Especially the underwear, he thought. He took each piece, put it into an evidence bag, marked the bag, and then carefully sealed its contents. When he had it all, he handed the bundle out the door to a waiting patrolman who drove it directly to the station.

When he turned, Molly was headed to the bathroom to give Danny a quick bath.

“No, no,” he said, cutting her off.

“Huh? I just wanted to—”

“Just take him as he is. You can wash him up later. After.”

So she dressed Danny in a pair of shorts and a polo shirt and let him wear flip-flops. None of his old shoes seemed to fit him.

“Oh, these feel really good,” said Danny, wiggling his bare toes. “And they’re light, too.” He jumped around in them, shaking the trailer. Tripoli noticed there was mud between his toes. “Hey, how did you make them?”

“Make them?”repeated Molly.“We bought them when we went up to Syracuse. Carousel Mall. Don’t you remember, Honey?”

Danny scrunched up his face in thought.“Yeah, I sort of do.”

Molly changed out of her shorts, slipping on a light cotton shift. She strapped on a pair of sandals while Tripoli stood waiting at the door. He couldn’t help but watch and admire.

Outside, there was now a crowd of people, maybe a hundred or more herded behind the police lines. Some were folks Molly recognized from the trailer park, others she was sure she had never seen before. There were two crews from the local TV stations and several photographers positioned on both sides of her door. Molly now realized that the story of Danny's return had to be big news: there was no way that any journalist was going to let a story like this get away.

When the people saw Danny emerge from the trailer, they started loudly clapping and whistling, and a volley of flashes went off on all sides.

“Hey, Danny!” folks shouted all at once. “Welcome home! Where’ve you been?”

“He's back,” Molly shouted to the crowd straining at the cordon of police who had locked arms. “My little boy is back!” Taking Danny's hand, she lifted it triumphantly. Danny laughed, all the people cheered, and at that instant she felt like jumping up on the roof of her trailer and crowing out her joy, or throwing herself into the crowd and kissing every man, woman, and child who was there.

Danny seemed amused by all the attention, and Tripoli hustled him and Molly into the back seat of his car. As he drove off, he noticed a television van was right on their tail, following them. They kept up for almost a mile, then Tripoli ran a series of red lights and lost them. As they curved down the highway descending into the valley, Tripoli stole glances at Danny, whose head kept pivoting from side to side as if the boy were trying to remember where he was, where he had lived. They sped through the city where spring flowers adorning the houses gushed in colorful profusion. The magnolias in
front of the court house were out in full, dazzling bloom, and Danny, who had managed to slip from his seat belt and open the window, was already leaning halfway out when Molly caught hold of him. “Be careful!” she said, pulling him back. She tried to close the window, but he took her hand away.