"the Voice of the Body"--a story (iv)

The news the next morning, Sunday morning.

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Sunday morning came as perfect as a storybook Easter. Ann stayed in bed and I brought her coffee, along with the front page of the Journal. I read all of the sports before Jeremy got up to grab the funnies and Sarah came down asking about Brad.

"He isn't in his room?" I said.

Ann must have heard Sarah's announcement.

"Maybe he stayed overnight someplace," Sarah said. Ann came up behind her and shrugged her shoulders.

When I went out back to the boat shed, I saw the Farmall was gone and I wondered how on earth he could start that thing without either of us hearing it. I saw the tracks through the pine needles out back, and watched the gouges run west down the lake road instead of east past the side of the house. He didn't want me along.

I walked out to the water and looked both ways along the shore. A single track ran north up the beach towards the park. A man in a brown hunting coat walked his collie my way, maybe fifty yards up, just past Vandiver's, so I waited.

"You didn't see a tractor, did you," I said, "Farmall, an old orange one?"

"Nobody out here but me and Pepper," he said.

A blue-green choppy mask broke into rippling waves just off shore, little waves, as if the hand of God were somewhere just beneath the whole lake rocking it gently.

"He's still looking?" Ann said when I got back to the house.

"Where is he?" Sarah said. "Is he fishing or what?"

In a way, I guess, he was.

* 

Church starts at ten, and he goes with us every Sunday whether or not he wants to. It's a rule we have. As long as he lives with us, he lives by our rules--and our rules include church. I'm a believer, always have been. Not that I don't have doubts, but so did King David sometimes.

We were all dressed up and ready by the time I heard the Farmall roll up the beach. I didn't say a thing when he came in the front door and left the tractor stand out front.

His face--his eyes--seemed vacant, and there was a hollowness in his voice. "I found it," he said. "It was only about a mile up from the park. Can you believe that?"

Ann looked at me from across the table as if he'd just said something really profane.

"You leave it there?" I said. It was a stupid question, but I didn't know what to say.

"I called from a cottage. It's already picked up--"

"What'd you find?" Sarah said out of nowhere.

I waited for him to answer that question because I wanted to know what he'd say. But he looked at me as if I were the only one with the voice.

"He found the body of the boy who drowned Friday," I told her, gently pushing the company tag down into the back of the neck of her summer dress.

"Wow," she said, and she pulled a hand up to her face.

It was Jeremy who said it, even though I wondered myself at that very moment, and I'm sure Ann did too.

"What'd it look like?" he said.

I've seen Brad speechless for the last four years, but I never saw him so robbed of words. He ripped open the clasps of his jacket and stripped it off his shoulders, all the while looking down at the want ads on the table.

"Was it all blue or what?" Jeremy said.

He's ten, and he's seen his share of TV death.

"Sometimes sand rubs off all the hair," Jeremy said to all of us, as if we really wanted to know.

I kept waiting for Brad.

He threw the coat over the love seat and looked right into his little brother's eyes. "He was dead," he said. "Nothing spectacular or nothing. He was just plain dead."

And then he looked at me, as if I had a sermon.

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Tomorrow: church.