It was now October. Arthur did the arithmetic again. 7 months. Seven months of a child living the way Arthur had just learned this child had been living. He thought about the previous winter, the one that had taken the grandmother.
He thought about the spring that had followed when this boy had been 7 years old and sleeping. He did not yet know where. He thought about the summer when men like Arthur had complained about the heat from the windows of cars whose air conditioning had been set to the temperatures their wives preferred. He felt a thing move in his chest that he did not have a name for. He had felt it before in his life twice that he could remember clearly.
Once when he was 19 and had read a particular paragraph in a particular book. Once when he was 34 and had watched a woman he loved very much walk away from him for reasons that had turned out to be the right ones. He had not felt it in a long time. He had begun to think somewhere in the last decade that he might not feel it again. He was on the whole glad to find that he had been wrong.
Officer Ray was walking back. Arthur had perhaps twenty seconds. "Ren, when she comes back, she's going to ask you to come with her. She will be kind about it. She will not be unkind, but she will ask, and when she asks, the answer is going to be yes because you are 8 years old and the law does not give you any other answer to give.
"Do you understand?" ""Yes."" I am going to ask her something. I'm going to ask her to wait for one telephone call before any decisions are made. If she agrees and she may not, I'm going to make the telephone call in front of you. I'm going to call a woman named Estelle. Estelle is the closest thing I have to a sister.
She has spent 30 years of her life doing work that involves children in the situation you are now in. She will know what is possible and what is not possible. I'm not going to promise you anything that I cannot deliver. I'm only going to tell you what I am about to try. The boy looked at him for a long moment.
"Why?" "Because you pulled me out of the way of a tree." "That was not a big thing." "It was a thing the size of my life, Ren." To me, it was the largest thing that has happened on a Tuesday morning in 30 years.
The boy did not say anything to that. Arthur could see, however, that the boy was thinking about it. Officer Ray arrived. She did not crouch this time. She had Arthur understood moved into a different mode.
The mode in which the conversation was no longer with the child, but with the adults around the child. She looked at Arthur first. "Sir, may I speak with you for a moment over by the truck?" "Of course. Ren, stay here, please.
I will be back in two minutes." he stood. His knees were unsteadier than he had expected them to be, and he was reminded that he was 67 years old and that the body of a 67-year-old man does not absorb a near miss with a falling tree the way the body of a 30-year-old man does. He walked with Officer Ray to the side of the fire truck. "Sir," she said low, "there is no Aunt Bernadette." There is no apartment above the laundromat on Pearl.
The laundromat on Pearl was closed for renovation 8 months ago. The boy was reported missing from a state placement in March. He has been listed as a runaway since I have a duty here that I am about to perform. But before I do, I wanted to tell you because you were standing here when it mattered that he is not in any trouble for what he told me. He is eight.
"Officer Ray, my name is Arthur Mercer." "I would like to ask you for ten minutes." Officer Ray looked at him. She was, Arthur understood, doing a number of small calculations at considerable speed. She was assessing his coat, which was a good one.
She was assessing the way he had spoken his own name, which had been the way of a man who was used to his name being known in certain rooms, and was aware that it was probably not known in this one. She was assessing the boy on the step, who was still holding the unopened granola bar. She was assessing her own intuitions, which were, Arthur guessed, the most reliable instrument she had been issued by the department she worked for. ten minutes for what, Mr. Mercer? For one telephone call to a woman named Estelle Whitford. She has run a licensed therapeutic foster placement in this state for 31 years.
She is on the board of two organizations whose names you will recognize if I say them. I would like to call her in front of the boy on speakerphone if you prefer and ask her one question which is whether she can take a phone call from your department in the next hour and whether if the department finds it appropriate she would be willing to receive Ren as an emergency placement tonight. I'm not asking you to release him to me. I'm not asking you to bend any procedure. I'm asking you for ten minutes.
She did not answer right away. She looked at the boy on the step. She looked back at "Arthur." "Why?" "Because the boy ran from the last placement."
And because boys who run from placements run again from the next one if the next one is the same kind of place. And because the woman I am about to call is not that kind of place. She is the other kind. The kind people do not run from. I have known her for 40 years.
I have watched her do this work for 31 of those years. I am not a man who promises things lightly. Officer Ray, I am offering you a phone call. She was quiet for a moment longer. Then she said, ""Make the call.
Speaker." I want to hear it. If she says what you say, she will say, I will pass her contact to my supervisor, and the supervisor will make the next decision. That is the most I can promise you, Mr. Mercer. I cannot promise you the supervisor will agree.
I am not asking you to promise me anything the supervisor decides." ""Thank you."" He walked back to the step. He sat down beside the boy. Officer Ray stood at a respectful distance, close enough to hear far enough not to crowd. "Ren, I am going to make the call now." Estelle is going to answer on the second ring or the third.
She always does. She is a small woman with a loud voice. She's going to ask me questions and I am going to answer them honestly. You can listen. You can also not listen.