The Price Of Silence

“Buy my computer and the other things I’ll need and get it up and working, teach me how to use it. I’m a good typist and that’s all I know how to do on a computer, treat it like an expensive typewriter. I hope it isn’t too much of an imposition.”

Todd grinned. “I had a long lonely weekend facing me,” she said. “This is much better. Let’s talk about what you’ll need, what you want to do, how much you’re willing to spend, if you’ll want the Internet, cable connection, DSL, or dial-up….”

Ruth Ann had a feeling that this all might take more than just a few days. They went to her sitting room and began.

When Todd left with Ruth Ann’s credit card, Ruth Ann told Maria they would invite her to dinner.

“With that table in such a mess?” Maria asked. She scowled first at Ruth Ann, then at the dining table.

Ruth Ann scowled back. “We’ll eat in the kitchen. Don’t be a scold.”

Maria was not appeased. She called Ruth Ann’s sitting room “creeping chaos,” and seemed to think that the chaos was in full gallop, threatening to run over the preacher-ready rooms. When Ruth Ann asked Thomas Bird to move a lamp stand to the table, Maria’s scowl grew fiercer.

It was after nine before Todd was ready to leave Ruth Ann’s house that night. She had done a lot with the new computer system, but more remained to be done. “Just don’t be afraid of it,” she said. “Play around, try this and that. Short of taking a hammer to it, there’s nothing you can do that I can’t undo.” She would put in a few hours at the office tomorrow and come by around one to finish installing things, she added at the door.

She hesitated, then asked, “When that mass of cold air comes in, do you feel it up here?”

Ruth Ann, sitting at the computer, became very still for a moment. “Yes. Was it terrible for you?”

“Pretty awful. I was freezing and I couldn’t get warm.”

“How about Barney? Did it affect him?”

“Some, just not the way it hit me. It’s…it’s weird.”

“Todd, no one has been able to explain it, and it’s been around all my life, just like last night. It doesn’t get worse, but it doesn’t stop, either. It appears that some of us are more affected by it than others, possibly we’re more sensitive to the sudden change. Usually outsiders hardly notice. Another sweater, or turn the thermostat up a notch and that takes care of it.”

More slowly then, she added, “Some people feel depressed, or have other emotional reactions.” She was watching Todd closely and saw her swift expression change, not to relief, exactly, but perhaps reassurance that she had not overreacted. “It used to distress me profoundly, but now I just get very cold until it passes. Don’t be alarmed, my dear. We seem to have a local phenomenon without an explanation. Like the Vortex Houses, something like that, I imagine.”

She knew she had gone too far when Todd’s expression changed again to one of polite disbelief that came and vanished quickly.

“Good enough,” Todd said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Ruth Ann sat without moving for a long time after Todd left. She thought of her as almost a child, she mused, although when she was twenty-eight she had believed herself to be highly sophisticated and smarter than most people she knew. Now twenty-eight seemed still in the development stage. But Todd had felt more than cold, she knew. Her expressions hid little of what she was feeling. Still malleable, impressionable. Susceptible. Why her, an outsider? She shook herself.

For a long time she had believed the cold to be supernatural, but she had abandoned that idea when it persisted through the years without changing, without doing anything. If it was supernatural, what was its point? she had demanded of herself one day, and almost immediately after that she had gotten rid of all the books she had collected on ghostly phenomena. The cold air in Brindle didn’t fit any of the patterns, and it didn’t do anything. It just was.

But her question kept repeating: why Todd? Why had Todd felt more than an Arctic chill in the air, the way she herself always did?

Walking to the Bolton Building the next morning, Todd saw a sheriff’s car parked in front of the police station down the block from the newspaper. She entered her own building. “What’s going on with the police?”

Lou Shinizer was at his desk reading a Bend newspaper. He always looked hungry, with prominent cheekbones, somewhat sunken eyes, but his undernourished appearance was contradicted by a paunch. With black hair worn Prince Valiant–style, and steeply arched eyebrows that she suspected he kept trimmed and shaped, he looked like a man past his prime who thought he qualified for a position as a rock star or a TV personality. He hardly glanced up at her that morning. “Nothing,” he said and continued reading.

“Jodie Schuster didn’t go to school yesterday and didn’t show up last night,” Mildred said. “Her mom called the sheriff and Ollie.”

Todd glared at Shinizer. “Why aren’t you over there finding out what’s going on?”

“Told you. It’s nothing. Kid’s staying out of sight a day or two. If there’s a story, they’ll tell us.”

She wheeled about and walked out, seething.

She had described Ollie Briscoe to Barney as the Pillsbury Doughboy done in shades of red-brown, and that morning he was more red than brown when she walked into the police station. He was at his desk, and a deputy sheriff was sitting across from it.

“Morning, Todd,” Ollie said. He turned to the deputy. “This is the new girl over at the newspaper,” he added, as the deputy stood up and nodded at her.

“What’s this about a missing girl?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Ollie said. “Kid had a hassle at school, boyfriend made eyes at another girl, or her mother gave her what-for over something. She’s at a pal’s house, or her aunt’s place. Happens. Sonny’s out asking around.”

“How old is the girl?”

“Now, Todd, let’s not make a big deal out of it. Kids do this. We ask around, they show up, get time out or something. Happens.”

“How old is she and when did she go missing?” Todd’s tone sharpened.

Ollie heaved a big sigh and stood up, came around his desk, and took her by the arm. “If anything turns up, we’ll give you a call. There’s nothing here for you. Now you run along. You’re doing a real fine job over at the paper. That was a nice piece about Louise Coombs.” He was propelling her toward the door. “You just go on about your business, and we’ll get on with ours.”

She stopped moving and twisted around to look at the deputy. Fortysomething, thick in the chest, very clean looking and fair, with an expression that told her nothing.

“Why did the mother call the sheriff’s office?” she asked him. “She must think there’s more to it than a kid off pouting.”

He shrugged. “She got excited, maybe. Mothers do that.”

Todd looked from him to Ollie, then shook off Ollie’s hand on her arm and walked out stiffly. They weren’t going to tell her a damn thing, she thought furiously.

When she entered her own building again, Ally looked up from her desk, held her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone; Mildred stopped whatever she had been doing, and Toni stopped key-stroking to look at her. From his desk, Shinizer said, “Hold the press! Our interpid girl reporter just came in with the scoop. Little green men snatch local—”

Todd kept walking toward her own office. Behind her, she heard Johnny say sharply, “Cut the crap, Shinny.” Todd entered her office with Johnny right behind her. He closed the door.

She walked to her desk and sat down. Johnny went to the window, looked out, glanced at the papers on her desk, at her monitor with a screen saver of the sphinx morphing to a pyramid, and finally took a seat opposite her desk.

“We have a new ad,” he said. “Germond’s furniture store in Bend. Advertising is on the upswing.”

She nodded, waiting for the real purpose of his visit.

“Look,” he said, “you’ve been here some weeks now. What’s there to do here for teenagers? Anything? It’s a great community for little kids, safe as heaven for them, but for teens? Nothing. They see TV, videos, movies, magazines. They know what’s out there and they want theirs.” He looked past her at the wall. “Ollie says about eighty thousand kids a year take off. Just take off. Pictures on milk cartons, all that. Some of them come from here. Ten, twelve over the past dozen years. Gone a few days, months, even longer, then most of them check in again. A phone call begging for money, a note or postcard, or the girls show up with a baby. Some get picked up here and there on vagrancy charges, drug charges, soliciting. Name it.”

He stopped, as if waiting for a response. She didn’t move, watching him.

He stood up. “Okay, my point is that there isn’t a story here. We get mixed up in it and sooner or later the girl is picked up and brought home, and there’s juvenile court, the children’s services agency, foster homes, a goddamn mess, and no one thanks you for butting in.”

“What if it’s more than that?” she asked when he paused again. “What if she didn’t just take off?”

Johnny shook his head. “They look for evidence. You know, blood, signs of a struggle, a menacing stranger hanging around, the usual suspects.” His grin was a feeble effort as he spoke. It came and went quickly. “Absent any sign like that, it’s a runaway, just like thousands of others. You can’t make a federal case of eighty thousand kids!”

He went to the door, where he stopped and said, “How long do you suppose any outsider would go unnoticed in Brindle on a school morning? People going to work, kids on the way to the school bus. They’ll find her in a girlfriend’s bedroom, or in someone’s rec room, a relative’s house. Bring her home, tears all around, no media circus, and life goes on. Or else in a week or two Mame will get a call or a card or something. She’ll be embarrassed, apologetic, or boiling mad. What are you going to do, chain kids to the water pipes?” He gave Todd a hard look, opened the door and said, “Just leave it alone unless something develops.”

Todd sat at her desk for several minutes after Johnny left. Leave it alone. Don’t rock the boat. Keep it in the family. Mum’s the word…. By next week when the newspaper came out the girl would be back home, back in school, all forgiven, forgotten. She pulled her notepad closer and jotted down two names: Jodie Schuster and Mame Schuster.

At last, she began to look over the papers on her desk—Shinizer’s school board meeting minutes, the water commission meeting, birth of twins to someone or other…. It was no use. Drivel, she thought, gathering the notes and items together and stuffing them into her computer case. Homework. She needed something to occupy the late hours while Barney was away, and with a weekly it didn’t matter where or when she did this kind of work as long as she had it ready by Wednesday. She decided to go to Ruth Ann’s house and do something that might take her mind off Jodie Schuster.

By late afternoon, she felt that Ruth Ann had mastered enough to be comfortable using the computer to write her history.

“I thought I knew the history pretty well,” Ruth Ann admitted, “but there are too many blanks. When exactly did Joe Warden arrive, for instance? No one ever said to my knowledge. How did the two men, Joe Warden and Mike Hilliard, become partners? Why? Another blank. We know Joe Warden had a son but nothing about the child’s mother.”

“How did Jane Hilliard die?” Todd asked, recalling the sad tombstone.

“That I do know,” Ruth Ann said. “She died in the fire when the original hotel burned to the ground.”

“She was so young,” Todd said. “Well, if you run into trouble, give me a call. And I’ll be around to do the scanning when you’re ready.”

“It may be a while,” Ruth Ann said, indicating the boxes. “I have just a bit of reading to do, and notes to make.”

“Just a bit,” Todd agreed, glad that she wasn’t the one to start plowing through all that old material.

Todd had talked to Barney and rewritten Shinny’s notes about meetings and a flu clinic that would be at Safeway in two weeks and then sat looking at the two names she had written earlier: Jodie Schuster, Mame Schuster. She knew about the bands of young people in Portland, hanging out at the malls, congregating downtown, forced to move on with nowhere to move on to. But ten or more runaways from a small community like Brindle? And no one was doing anything about it?

There really wasn’t anything in town for them, no swimming pool, no rec hall where they could get together and listen to music, dance, just fool around. No doubt the school held dances now and then, and there were team sports, maybe a drama group put on a play once or twice a year. But they needed more than that, a place of their own where they could get together regularly.

An editorial, she decided. She would write a series of editorials, research what other small towns did for their young people. Not until Jodie Schuster checked in, she thought, remembering Johnny’s words. Evidently the newspaper had run a story about a runaway, only to be subjected to a lot of criticism for it when the kid turned up again. Maybe, because Johnny had been stung, he had exaggerated about how many kids had run away from Brindle, trying to make it seem commonplace, not worthy of a story. Okay, she told herself. First research, information, then a series of editorials. And have something just a little more interesting than school board meetings and flu clinics in the newspaper.

She could not account for, or even identify, the tingle that passed through her as she picked up her pen to make a note about the missing children of Brindle.

Nine

On Saturday, Todd found many photographs aligned on the dining table. “I tried to put them in chronological order,” Ruth Ann said, “as much as possible, anyway. Most of them don’t have dates, of course. But that’s the original Warden’s Place in the early years, maybe at the start. There are several photos of it, some with him and Hilliard, one with Janey with them. They all lived in it.” The pictures were fanned out, and she spread them a bit so that each one was visible. She put the one with Janey aside. “I know I’ll want that one, but I haven’t decided which of the others I’ll use. The first church,” she said, pointing to the next set. “My grandfather was preacher there.”

She pointed to several other photographs, the first one-room school with a teacher in a rigid pose and six children who looked petrified. Four of them were barefoot. She put that one aside, also. “In,” she said.

“I’ll skim through the diaries and letters and try to get a clue about who all those people were,” Ruth Ann said, “and date them if I can. I want to use pictures with people as much as possible, but only if I can identify them.”

“They all look so grim,” Todd said. The children’s clothes looked either too big or too small, smock dresses on the girls, shapeless pants and shirts on the boys. Women were wearing high-neck dresses with long sleeves, aprons or shawls, and what seemed to be laced boots. So much for the glamorous west of moviedom, she thought.

“I suppose they were grim for much of the time,” Ruth Ann said. “It was a hard life. One of the diaries says that it was an all-day trip to Bend, another day to stock up on staples, then a whole day coming home again. No running water, no electricity, no plumbing. A hard life and a lonesome one.”

She had put aside four of the photographs for Todd to start working with, the others to be decided upon later. She went back to resume reading the diaries in her sitting room, and Todd went to work on the pictures.

She was so young, Todd was thinking a few minutes later, working on the photograph of Janey with Mike Hilliard and Joe Warden. Her hair was parted in the middle, drawn back, probably in a bun; her hands were clasped before her. Standing between the two men, she looked diminutive, frail and frightened. Todd remembered what Johnny had said about the runaways—what was there in Brindle for kids to do? What had there been for Janey? Sixteen, with an infant, in a wilderness, alone with two much older men who both looked stern and rough, staring at the camera as if it were the enemy.

Todd was working on the picture with the school children when Ruth Ann reappeared from her sitting room, yawning.

“I fell asleep,” she said. “Bad poetry put me to sleep. Todd, stop for the day. You’ve been at it for hours.”

“Let me show you what I have,” Todd said. “Here’s the photo of Janey with her husband and Warden.”

Ruth Ann studied the printout, then nodded. “I think she had a dimple,” she said.

“I think so, too. She was only a kid, almost a child herself.”

Ruth Ann put the printout down and shook her head. “From all accounts she was a prostitute,” she said. “They started a cathouse in Warden’s Place, and it seems she was a working girl there. It was rumored that she was carrying on with a customer when her daughter drowned in Brindle Creek.”

Todd stared at her, then at the printout. How could she have left a two-year-old child alone by that ice-cold water? “Is that what you’re going to write about?”

“Only if I can verify it. You young people don’t know what real censorship is these days. No one, to my knowledge, has ever openly talked about what really went on in the early years. Mothers whispered things to daughters or to each other. Not outright. Coded. They invented coded language. Men, no doubt, talked among themselves, told things to their sons perhaps. Whispers. Innuendos. Hints. Sex was the ultimate dirty word, one that no decent person uttered. I think it’s time this town learned the truth about Warden and the Hilliards.”

“Why?” Todd said. “It’s a hundred-year-old scandal. Why rake it through the ashes now?”

Ruth Ann’s expression had become as grim as those in the photographs. “Every few years someone brings up the idea of a monument to our founders,” she said. “Grace Rawleigh is pushing for it and this year, the year of the centennial, she intends to force it through. She can afford it, but she intends for the town to foot the bill. I intend to stop that. This town needs a lot of things, and a monument in the park to feed Grace’s ego isn’t one of them.”

“A youth center,” Todd said. “That’s what the town needs. Did you hear about Jodie Schuster? A runaway girl?”

“Yes. Maria told me.”

“Do you know anything about her? How old she is, when she took off? Anything?”

“She’s fourteen,” Ruth Ann said. “Her mother’s a nurse at the hospital in Bend. She left Jodie and her two little brothers at home when she went to work on Thursday morning at six-thirty. Jodie gets the boys off on their bikes at about seven-thirty, and then she walks down to catch the school bus. That morning she didn’t get on the bus, and no one has seen her since.”

Only fourteen! Todd thought in wonder and dismay. She hesitated a moment, then said, “Whose permission do I need to run a series of editorials about runaway children, youth centers, things of that sort? Yours or Johnny’s?”

“I’m still the publisher,” Ruth Ann said sharply. “Do it.” She started to gather the photographs together, then added, “Don’t count on any of the council members for cooperation, not Ollie Briscoe, and probably not Johnny. They all would cage the devil and put him on display if they thought it would bring in a tourist dollar.”

Todd walked home deep in thought. Seth, she decided. If she could talk him into helping her find local information, that would be step one. She couldn’t use only national statistics, she had to tie her editorials to the local community, to these people here and their runaway kids. She got her Acura out and drove to Safeway. It was five minutes before six and she knew that Jan got off at six on Saturdays.

She parked, then waited until a minute or two after six before leaving her car as Jan was coming out of the store.

“Too late,” Jan said as Todd approached. “We’re closed.”

“I was really looking for you,” Todd said. “I wanted to ask you and Seth to come to dinner tomorrow night.”

Jan’s smile vanished and she said in exasperation, “Wouldn’t you know it. Nothing happens all the time and when it does, it’s all at once. We have pals coming through tomorrow on their way to Vegas for a vacation. How about a rain check? And a cup of coffee with me right now? I’m heading for the Terrace Café for some coffee, or maybe a glass of wine, to wait for Seth. He’s still at the station. When he comes we’re off to Bend, have a bite to eat, and see a movie. Our big night on the town.”

Perfect, Todd thought in satisfaction. She couldn’t have arranged things better. They walked to the motel café with Jan chatting about her friends from Portland. They were both sipping chardonnay when Seth joined them.

The waitress was at his heels. He ordered a draft beer and sat next to Jan in the booth. “How are things?” he asked Todd.

“Pretty quiet,” she said. “Any news about Jodie Schuster?”

He shook his head. “The chief said I’m not to talk to you about that.”

“I know. He gave me the bum’s rush when I asked him about her. What do teenagers do around here for fun? You guys can take off to see a movie, but what about kids too young to drive? What do they do?”

“They drive,” Seth said. “Pile in one of their dad’s trucks, take shotguns out on the desert and shoot jack rabbits or coyotes. Sheriff business,” he added. He sounded bitter and defensive.

The waitress brought his beer and after she left, Jan said, “I’ve heard that years ago, when Lisa was home on a visit, she was full of ideas about building a theater here, to show first-run movies and have a film festival every summer. Like Sundance. I wish she’d done it. Going up to Bend to see a show is a drag, and like you said, the young kids can’t do it alone.”

Todd told them about her plan to try to raise interest in a youth center. “I’d need local stuff. You know, the kids who have taken off from here, their families. Like that,” she said. “Ollie won’t give me the time of day, but, Seth, you could help.”

His big open face took on a blank expression.

“What I want,” Todd said, “is a list of the runaway kids over the past ten to fifteen years. Names, how old they were, how the cases were resolved. I won’t use names, but I’d try to interview some of them who have come back, get their side of the story. Why they took off, things of that sort. It isn’t just about Jodie. It’s runaways in general.”

He shook his head. “No can do. Not without authority, which I have as much chance of getting as a snowball in you know where.”

“Yes, you can,” Jan said, leaning forward. “You’re alone in the station half the time. There’s a copy machine. Take out a file, make a copy, put it back. You don’t even have to hand anything over to Todd. I’d do that.”

“I can’t be forced to reveal any source of information,” Todd said. “Unwritten law of journalism. Confidentiality of sources. Holy writ or something.”

Even as Seth began to shake his head again, Jan said fiercely, “God, it’s a chance to shake up these zombies. It’s like being in a town of Stepford people, men and women, all Stepford zombies.”

“We could make a difference, Seth. Think about it.” As she spoke, Todd realized their waitress was hovering nearby. Todd finished her wine and pushed back her glass. Raising her voice slightly, she said, “Well, I’m off, shopping to do.”

The waitress began to move away as Todd pulled a five-dollar bill from her purse and stood up, saying, “Have fun at the movies.” She put the money on the table, nodded at the waitress and left.

Had the waitress been listening in? How much had she heard? Todd doubted that her own voice had carried, but Jan’s might have. And did it matter?

Ruth Ann’s eyes were tired that night. It was nearly eleven when she finished the last diary and put it back in its box. She had put several items aside for possible inclusion in her history, and now had only two packets of letters left to look through, and she would be finished with Louise’s box. Most of the material she had collected so far had been for human interest, nothing really newsworthy, except for some of the early photographs. She regarded the packets of letters with mounting impatience. Skip them and go on to bed, she told herself, but she wanted to be done with all this material. With a sigh she picked up the first of the letters.