The Returned

Something about having Jacob back—still young and vibrant—made Harold Hargrave realize his age.

Lucille, just as old and gray as her husband, only looked away as he spoke, only watched her eight-year-old son sit at the kitchen table eating a slice of pecan pie as if, just now, it were 1966 again and nothing was wrong and nothing would ever be wrong again. Sometimes she would clear a silver strand of hair from her face, but if she caught sight of her thin, liver-spotted hands, they did not seem to bother her.

They were a pair of thin, wiry birds, Harold and Lucille. She outgrew him in these later years. Or, rather, he shrank faster than she so that, now, he had to look up at her when they argued. And Lucille also had the benefit of not wasting away quite as much as he had—something she blamed upon his years of cigarette smoking. Her dresses still fit her. Her thin, long arms were nimble and articulate where his, hidden beneath the puffiness of shirts that fit him too loosely, made him look a bit more vulnerable than he used to. Which was giving her an edge these days.

Lucille took pride in that, and did not feel quite so guilty about it, even though she sometimes thought she should.

Agent Bellamy wrote until his hand cramped and then he wrote more. He’d had the forethought to record the interview, but he still found it good policy to write things down, as well. People seemed offended if they met with a government man and nothing was written down. This worked for Agent Bellamy. His brain was the type that preferred to see things rather than hear them. If he didn’t write it all down now he’d just be stuck doing it later.

Bellamy wrote from the time the birthday party began that day in 1966. He wrote through the recounting of Lucille’s weeping and guilt—she’d been the last one to see Jacob alive; she only remembered a brief image of one of his pale arms as he darted around a corner, chasing one of the other children. Bellamy wrote that there were almost more people at the funeral than the church could hold.

But there were parts of the interview that he did not write. Details that, out of respect, he committed only to memory rather than to bureaucratic documentation.

Harold and Lucille had survived the boy’s death, but only just. The next fifty-odd years became infected with a peculiar type of loneliness, a tactless loneliness that showed up unbidden and began inappropriate conversations over Sunday dinner. It was a loneliness they never named and seldom talked about. They only shuffled around it with their breaths held, day in and day out, as if it were an atom smasher—reduced in scale but not in complexity or splendor—suddenly shown up in the center of the living room and dead set on affirming all the most ominous and far-fetched speculations of the harsh way the universe genuinely worked.

In its own way, that was a truth of sorts.

Over the years they not only became accustomed to hiding from their loneliness, they became skilled at it. It was a game, almost: don’t talk about the Strawberry Festival, because he had loved it; don’t stare too long at buildings you admire because they will remind you of the time you said he would grow into an architect one day; ignore the children in whose face you see him.

When Jacob’s birthday came around each year they would spend the day being somber and having difficulty making conversation. Lucille might take to weeping with no explanation, or Harold might smoke a little more that day than he had the day before.

But that was only in the beginning. Only in those first, sad years.

They grew older.

Doors closed.

Harold and Lucille had become so far removed from the tragedy of Jacob’s death that when the boy reappeared at their front door—smiling, still perfectly assembled and unaged, still their blessed son, still only eight years old—all of it was so far away that Harold had forgotten the boy’s name.

* * *

Then Harold and Lucille were done talking and there was silence. But despite its solemnity, it was short-lived. Because there was the sound of Jacob sitting at the kitchen table raking his fork across his plate, gulping down his lemonade and burping with great satisfaction. “Excuse me,” the boy yelled to his parents.

Lucille smiled.

“Forgive me for asking this,” Agent Bellamy began. “And please, don’t take this as any type of accusation. It’s simply something we have to ask in order to better understand these...unique circumstances.”

“Here it comes,” Harold said. His hands had finally stopped foraging for phantom cigarettes and settled into his pockets. Lucille waved her hand dismissively.

“What were things like between you and Jacob before?” Agent Bellamy asked.

Harold snorted. His body finally decided his right leg would better hold his weight than his left. He looked at Lucille. “This is the part where we’re supposed to say we drove him off or something. Like they do on TV. We’re supposed to say that we’d had a fight with him, denied him supper, or some kind of abuse like you see on TV. Something like that.” Harold walked over to a small table that stood in the hallway facing the front door. In the top drawer was a fresh pack of cigarettes.

Before he’d even made his way back to the living room Lucille opened fire. “You will not!”

Harold opened the wrapper with mechanical precision, as if his hands were not his own. He placed a cigarette, unlit, between his lips and scratched his wrinkled face and exhaled, long and slow. “That’s all I needed,” he said. “That’s all.”

Agent Bellamy spoke softly. “I’m not trying to say that you or anyone else caused your son’s...well, I’m running out of euphemisms.” He smiled. “I’m only asking. The Bureau is trying hard to make heads or tails of this, just like everyone else. We might be in charge of helping to connect people up with one another, but that doesn’t mean we have any inside knowledge into how any of this is working. Or why it’s happening.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The big questions are still big, still untouchable. But our hope is that by finding out everything we can, by asking the questions that everyone might not necessarily be comfortable answering, we can touch some of these big questions. Get a handle on them, before they get out of hand.”

Lucille leaned forward on the old couch. “And how might they get out of hand? Are things getting out of hand?”

“They will,” Harold said. “Bet your Bible on that.”

Agent Bellamy only shook his head in an even, professional manner and returned to his original question. “What were things like between you and Jacob before he left?”

Lucille could feel Harold coming up with an answer, so she answered to keep him silent. “Things were fine,” she said. “Just fine. Nothing strange whatsoever. He was our boy and we loved him just like any parent should. And he loved us back. And that’s all that it was. That’s all it still is. We love him and he loves us and now, by the grace of God, we’re back together again.” She rubbed her neck and lifted her hands. “It’s a miracle,” she said.

Martin Bellamy took notes.

“And you?” he asked Harold.

Harold only took his unlit cigarette from his mouth and rubbed his head and nodded. “She said it all.”

More note-taking.

“I’m going to ask a silly question now, but are either of you very religious?”

“Yes!” Lucille said, sitting suddenly erect. “Fan and friend of Jesus! And proud of it. Amen.” She nodded in Harold’s direction. “That one there, he’s the heathen. Dependent wholly on the grace of God. I keep telling him to repent, but he’s stubborn as a mule.”

Harold chuckled like an old lawn mower. “We take religion in turns,” he said. “Fifty-some years later, it’s still not my turn, thankfully.”

Lucille waved her hands.

“Denomination?” Agent Bellamy asked, writing.

“Baptist,” Lucille answered.

“For how long?”

“All my life.”

Notes.

“Well, that ain’t exactly right,” Lucille added.

Agent Bellamy paused.

“For a while there I was a Methodist. But me and the pastor couldn’t see eye to eye on certain points in the Word. I tried one of them Holiness churches, too, but I just couldn’t keep up with them. Too much hollering and singing and dancing. Felt like I was at a party first and in the house of the Lord second. And that ain’t no way for a Christian to be.” Lucille leaned to see that Jacob was still where he was supposed to be—he was half nodding at the table, just as he had always been apt to—then she continued. “And then there was a while when I tried being—”

“The man doesn’t need all of this,” Harold interrupted.

“You hush up! He asked me! Ain’t that right, Martin Bellamy?”

The agent nodded. “Yes, ma’am, you’re right. All of this may prove very important. In my experience, it’s the little details that matter. Especially with something this big.”

“Just how big is it?” Lucille asked quickly, as if she had been waiting for the opening.

“Do you mean how many?” Bellamy asked.

Lucille nodded.

“Not terribly many,” Bellamy said in a measured voice. “I’m not allowed to give any specific numbers, but it’s only a small phenomenon, a modest number.”

“Hundreds?” Lucille pressed. “Thousands? What’s ‘modest’?”

“Not enough to be concerned about, Mrs. Hargrave,” Bellamy replied, shaking his head. “Only enough to remain miraculous.”

Harold chuckled. “He’s got your number,” he said.

Lucille only smiled.

* * *

By the time the details were all handed over to Agent Bellamy the sun had sighed into the darkness of the earth and there were crickets singing outside the window and Jacob lay quietly in the middle of Harold and Lucille’s bed. Lucille had taken great pleasure in lifting the boy from the kitchen table and carrying him up to the bedroom. She never would have believed that, at her age, with her hip the way it was, that she had the strength to carry him by herself.

But when the time came, when she bent quietly at the table and placed her arms beneath the boy and called her body into action, Jacob rose, almost weightlessly, to meet her. It was as if she were in her twenties again. Young and nimble. It was as if time and pain were but rumors.

She carried him uneventfully up the stairs and, when she had tucked him beneath the covers, she settled onto the bed beside him and hummed gently the way she used to. He did not fall asleep just then, but that was okay, she felt.

He had slept long enough.

Lucille sat for a while only watching him, watching his chest rise and fall, afraid to take her eyes away, afraid that the magic—or the miracle—might suddenly end. But it did not, and she thanked the Lord.

When she came back into the living room Harold and Agent Bellamy were entangled in an awkward silence. Harold stood in the doorway, taking sharp puffs of a lit cigarette and throwing the smoke through the screen door into the night. Agent Bellamy stood next to the chair where he’d been sitting. He looked thirsty and tired all of a sudden. Lucille realized then that she hadn’t offered him a drink since he’d arrived, and that made her hurt in an unusual way. But, from Harold and Agent Bellamy’s behavior, she knew, somehow, that they were about to hurt her in a different way.

“He’s got something to ask you, Lucille,” Harold said. His hand trembled as he put the cigarette to his mouth. Because of this she made the decision to let him smoke unharassed.

“What is it?”

“Maybe you’ll want to sit down,” Agent Bellamy said, making a motion to come and help her sit.

Lucille took a step back. “What is it?”

“It’s a sensitive question.”

“I can tell. But it can’t be as bad as all that, now can it?”

Harold gave her his back and puffed silently on his cigarette with his head hung.

“For everyone,” Agent Bellamy began, “this is a question that can seem simple at first but, believe me, it is a very complex and serious matter. And I hope that you would take a moment to consider it thoroughly before you answer. Which isn’t to say that you only have one chance to answer. But only to say that I just want you to be sure that you’ve given the question its proper consideration before you make a decision. It’ll be difficult but, if possible, try not to let your emotions get the better of you.”

Lucille went red. “Why, Mr. Martin Bellamy! I never would have figured you for one of those sexist types. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m going to go all to pieces.”

“Dammit, Lucille,” Harold barked, though his voice seemed to have trouble finding its legs. “Just listen to the man.” He coughed then. Or perhaps he sobbed.

Lucille sat.

Martin Bellamy sat, as well. He brushed some invisible something from the front of his pants and examined his hands for a moment.

“Well,” Lucille said, “get on with it. All this buildup is killing me.”

“This is the last question I’ll be asking you this evening. And it’s not necessarily a question you have to answer just now, but the sooner you answer it, the better. It just makes things less complicated when the answer comes quickly.”

“What is it?” Lucille pleaded.

Martin Bellamy inhaled. “Do you want to keep Jacob?”

* * *

That was two weeks ago.

Jacob was home now. Irrevocably. The spare room had been converted back into his bedroom and the boy had settled into his life as if it had never ended to begin with. He was young. He had a mother. He had a father. His universe ended there.

* * *

Harold, for reasons he could not quite put together in his head, had been painfully unsettled since the boy’s return. He’d taken to smoking like a chimney. So much so that he spent most of his time outside on the porch, hiding from Lucille’s lectures about his dirty habit.

Everything had changed so quickly. How could he not take up a bad habit or two?

“They’re devils!” Harold heard Lucille’s voice repeat inside his head.

The rain was spilling down. The day was old. Just behind the trees, darkness was coming on. The house had quieted. Just above the sound of the rain was the light huffing of an old woman who’d spent too much time chasing a child. She came through the screen door, dabbing sweat from her brow, and crumpled into her rocking chair.

“Lord!” Lucille said. “That child’s gonna run me to death.”

Harold put out his cigarette and cleared his throat—which he always did before trying to get Lucille’s goat. “You mean that devil?”

She waved her hand at him. “Shush!” she said. “Don’t you call him that!”

“You called him that. You said that’s what they all were, remember?”

She was still short of breath from chasing the boy. Her words came staggered. “That was before,” she huffed. “I was wrong. I see that now.” She smiled and leaned back in exhaustion. “They’re a blessing. A blessing from the Lord. That’s what they are. A second chance!”

They sat for a while in silence, listening to Lucille’s breath find itself. She was an old woman now, in spite of being a mother of an eight-year-old. She tired easily.

“And you should spend more time with him,” Lucille said. “He knows you’re keeping your distance. He can tell it. He knows you’re treating him differently than you used to. When he was here before.” She smiled, liking that description.

Harold shook his head. “And what will you do when he leaves?”

Lucille’s face tightened. “Hush up!” she said. “‘Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.’ Psalm 34:13.”

“Don’t you Psalm at me. You know what they’ve been saying, Lucille. You know just as well as I do. How sometimes they just up and leave and nobody ever hears from them again, like the other side finally called them back.”

Lucille shook her head. “I don’t have time for such nonsense,” she said, standing in spite of the heaviness of fatigue that hung in her limbs like sacks of flour. “Just rumors and nonsense. I’m going to start dinner. Don’t you sit out here and catch pneumonia. This rain will kill you.”

“I’ll just come back,” Harold said.

“Psalm 34:13!”

She closed and locked the screen door behind her.

* * *

From the kitchen came the clattering of pots and pans. Cabinet doors opening, closing. The scent of meat, flour, spices, all of it drenched in the perfume of May and rain. Harold was almost asleep when he heard the boy’s voice. “Can I come outside, Daddy?” Harold shook off the drowsiness. “What?” He had heard the question perfectly well.

“Can I come outside? Please?”

For all the gaps in Harold’s old memory, he remembered how defenseless he’d always been when “Please” was laid out just so before him.

“Your mama’ll have a fit,” he said.

“Just a little one, though.”

Harold swallowed to keep from laughing.

He fumbled for a cigarette and failed—he’d sworn he’d had at least one more. He groped his pockets. In his pocket, where there was no cigarette, he found a small, silver cross—a gift from someone, though the place in his mind where the details of that particular memory should have been stored was empty. He hardly even remembered carrying it, but couldn’t help looking down at it as if it were a murder weapon.

The words God Loves You, once, had been etched in the place where Christ belonged. But now the words were all but gone. Only an O and half a Y remained. He stared at the cross, then, as if his hand belonged to someone else, his thumb began rubbing back and forth at the crux.

Jacob stood in the kitchen behind the screen door. He leaned against the door frame with his hands behind his back and his legs crossed, looking contemplative. His eyes scanned back and forth over the horizon, watching the rain and the wind and, then, his father. He exhaled heavily. Then he cleared his throat. “Sure would be nice to come outside,” he said with flourish and drama.

Harold chuckled.

In the kitchen something was frying. Lucille was humming.

“Come on out,” Harold said.

Jacob came and sat at Harold’s feet and, as if in reply, the rain became angry. Rather than falling from the sky, it leaped to the earth. It whipped over the porch railing, splashing them both, not that they paid it any heed. For a very long time the old man and the once-dead boy sat looking at each other. The boy was sandy-haired and freckled, his face as round and smooth as it always had been. His arms were unusually long, just as they had been, as his body was beginning its shift into an adolescence denied him fifty years ago. He looked healthy, Harold suddenly thought.

Harold licked his lips compulsively, his thumb working the center of the cross. The boy did not move at all. If he hadn’t blinked now and again, he might as well have been dead.

* * *

“Do you want to keep him?”

It was Agent Bellamy’s voice inside Harold’s head this time.

“It’s not my decision,” Harold said. “It’s Lucille’s. You’ll have to ask her. Whatever she says, I’ll abide by.”

Agent Bellamy nodded. “I can understand that, Mr. Hargrave. But I still have to ask you. I have to know your answer. It will stay between us, just you and me. I can even turn off the recorder if you want. But I have to have your answer. I have to know what you want. I have to know if you want to keep him.”

“No,” Harold said. “Not for all the world. But what choice do I have?”

Lewis and Suzanne Holt

He awoke in Ontario; she outside Phoenix. He had been an accountant. She taught piano.

The world was different, but still the same. Cars were quieter. Buildings were taller and seemed to glimmer in the night more than they used to. Everyone seemed busier. But that was all. And it did not matter.

He went south, hopping trains in a way that had not been done in years. He kept clear of the Bureau only by fortune or fate. She had started northeast—nothing more than a notion she felt possessed to follow—but it was not long before she was picked up and moved to just outside Salt Lake City, to what was quickly becoming a major processing facility for the region. Not long after that he was picked up somewhere along the border of Nebraska and Wyoming.

Ninety years after their deaths, they were together again.

She had not changed at all. He had grown a shade thinner than he had been, but only on account of his long journey. Behind fencing and uncertainty, they were not as afraid as others.

There is a music that forms sometimes, from the pairing of two people. An inescapable cadence that continues on.

Three

THE TOWN OF Arcadia was situated along the countryside in that way that many small, Southern towns were. It began with small, one-story wooden houses asleep in the middle of wide, flat yards along the sides of a two-lane blacktop that winded among dense pines, cedars and white oaks. Here and there, fields of corn or soybeans were found in the spring and summer. Only bare earth in the winter.

After a couple of miles the fields became smaller, the houses more frequent. Once one entered the town proper they found only two streetlights, a clunky organization of roads and streets and dead ends cluttered with old, exhausted homes. The only new houses in Arcadia were those that had been rebuilt after hurricanes. They glimmered in fresh paint and new wood and made a person imagine that, perhaps, something new could actually happen in this old town.

But new things did not come to this town. Not until the Returned.

The streets were not many and neither were the houses. In the center of town stood the school: an old, brick affair with small windows and small doors and retrofitted air-conditioning that did not work.

Off to the north, atop a small hill just beyond the limits of town, stood the church. It was built from wood and clapboard and sat like a lighthouse, reminding the people of Arcadia that there was always someone above them.

Not since ’72 when the Sainted Soul Stirrers of Solomon—that traveling gospel band with the Jewish bassist from Arkansas—came to town had the church been so full. Just people atop people. Cars and trucks scattered about the church lawn. Someone’s rust-covered pickup loaded down with lumber was parked against the crucifix in the center of the lawn, as if Jesus had gotten down off the cross and decided to make a run to the hardware store. A cluster of taillights covered up the small sign on the church lawn that read Jesus Loves You—Fish Fry May 31. Cars were stacked along the shoulder of the highway the way they had been that time back in ’63—or was it ’64?—at the funeral of those three Benson boys who’d all died in one horrible car crash and were mourned over the course of one long, dark day of lamentation.

“You need to come with us,” Lucille said as Harold parked the old truck on the shoulder of the road and pawed his shirt pocket for his cigarettes. “What are folks going to think when you’re not there?” She unfastened Jacob’s seat belt and straightened his hair.

“They’ll think, ‘Harold Hargrave won’t come in the church? Glory be! In these times of madness at least something is as it always has been!’”

“It’s not like there’s a service going on, you heathen. It’s just a town meeting. No reason why you shouldn’t come in.”

Lucille stepped out of the truck and straightened her dress. It was her favorite dress, the one she wore to important things, the one that picked up dirt from every surface imaginable—a cotton/polyester blend colored in a pastel shade of green with small flowers stitched along the collar and patterned around the end of the thin sleeves. “I don’t know why I bother sometimes. I hate this truck,” she said, wiping the back of her dress.

“You’ve hated every truck I’ve ever owned.”

“But still you keep buying them.”

“Can I stay here?” Jacob asked, fiddling with a button on the collar of his shirt. Buttons exercised a mysterious hold over the boy. “Daddy and me could—”

“Daddy and I could,” Lucille corrected.

“No,” Harold said, almost laughing. “You go with your mama.” He put a cigarette to his lips and stroked his chin. “Smoke’s bad for you. Gives you wrinkles and bad breath and makes you hairy.”