Summer Of Fear

It’s summer. Summer—again.

I go out this morning to get the paper and although it is still early, barely eight o’clock, the sun is warm on my hair and on the back of my neck, promising the heat of the coming day.

I pick up the paper, roll off the rubber band, and begin leafing through, standing there in the front yard with the thin rays of the sun on my back and the dew on the grass already drying beneath my feet.

I find it at last on page seven of section C. Usually, if I look long enough, it is there, a story that fits. Sometimes it is only a few lines, one of those filler items they use when the, big stories aren’t long enough to reach the bottom of the page. Other times it is a real article with a photograph, as it is today.

A family—parents, their teenage daughter and an unidentified girl friend—are missing, believed lost in the San Andres Mountains west of Alamogordo. They went for a week’s camping trip and now, ten days later, they haven’t returned. There is a picture of the family—the couple, handsome, outdoorsy looking people about the age of my own parents, and the pretty, laughing daughter. It was evidently taken just before a hike for they are all wearing packs, and in the background there is a camper. Did the “girl friend” who accompanied them take the picture? It seems strange otherwise that she is not shown.

“We found the camera at a picnic area at the foot of the mountain,” a state trooper is quoted as saying. “We assume the family may have been camping there. However, there is no sign of the camper truck or of any of the other belongings. It’s very strange.”

It’s strange too, it seems to me, that the girl friend is “unidentified.” Why hasn’t her own family reported that she is missing? Might it be that she has no family, no place of belonging? Where did she come from and how does she fit into the lives of these beautiful people? Is she with them now, sharing their ordeal, or is she somewhere else, quite alone, thinking back upon them and smiling a little as she drives a camper truck along the highway? Why wasn’t she in the picture with the others?

Standing here on the lawn, I look at the photograph and read the article. I read it again. So often, when I pick up the paper on sweet summer mornings, I find an article such as this one, and I can’t help asking myself … who is this person? Could it be … ? Is it … ?

It has been four years now since that summer. I am not yet rid oŁ it. Perhaps I never will be. Thinking back, I can even place the beginning of it all, the very day. It was June second. School was just out and spring just over and the real summer not yet started.

On that morning of June second I lay in bed, watching the sun slant through between the slats in the Venetian blind, feeling lazy and a little guilty because the rest of them were up, and downstairs. I could hear them and I could smell the breakfast coffee. The odor of frying bacon drifted up the stairwell and seeped through the crack under the bedroom door.

If it had been a weekday my mother probably would have gotten me up even though it was summer. She liked to get breakfast over with and the kitchen clean so she could use the sink for rinsing her photographs. But on Saturdays she was easier going and if we were lucky we got to sleep.

I stretched and yawned and closed my eyes and opened them again, reveling in my laziness. Then the phone rang.

It rang twice more and became silent. Suddenly alert, I lay, waiting for the sound of footsteps on the stairs and somebody’s voice calling, “Rachel? It’s for you!”

When moments passed and the sounds didn’t come I yawned again and swung my legs over the side of the bed and got up.

My jeans were tossed across the back of a chair by the window. I put them on along with a halter top and, reaching over, pulled the cord that adjusted the blinds so I could look out at the yard below. The grass was soft and green, almost long enough to be mowed. Until this year the mowing had been Peter’s job, but now that he was eighteen and working it had been decided that the job would descend to Bobby. Bobby was eleven and small for his age. It was hard to imagine him pushing the rotary mower over the whole length of the yard.

Along the back fence the roses were beginning to bud, and on the far side of the fence I could see Mike Gallagher watering his mother’s vegetable garden. Leaning close to the screen, I pursed my lips and let out a long, shrill whistle. Mike started, lifted his eyes to focus upon the window, and raised a hand in a gesture of greeting. Then he pointed toward the sky, and I nodded vigorously, hoping he could see me. The pool at the Coronado Club had just opened for the summer and the day before we had discussed the possibility of going swimming if the weather was good. Now, in sign language, Mike was saying, “It looks perfect!” and I was answering, “Great! Let’s go!”

The Gallaghers had lived next door for as long as I could remember, but it was only during the past year that Mike and I had become aware of each other as more than casual neighbors. Now, gazing down at the blond head bent again to the watering, I found myself smiling.

He needs a haircut, I thought with a happy feeling of possessiveness. It wasn’t a criticism. I liked his hair shaggy.

Turning away from the window I paused before the mirror that hung over the bureau in order to run a comb through my own short tangle of reddish hair. It bounced back immediately into a mop of uncontrollable curls. In the era of long, smooth, straight hair, those curls were the bane of my existence. I wrinkled my nose in disgust and decided not to bother trying to improve myself further. What was the use of putting on makeup if you were going swimming?

I left the room and went downstairs to breakfast.

To my surprise, there was no one in the kitchen. They had been there recently I could tell, for the coffee was perking on the back of the stove and bacon lay draining on a paper towel on the counter top. Eggs and bread sat out in preparation for the usual Saturday meal of French toast, and the morning paper was spread open to the sports page on the kitchen table.

“Mother?” I called. “Dad?”

Then I became conscious of sounds from the living room, a soft, choking noise and my father’s voice, low and consoling. Hurrying through the kitchen, I shoved open the door that led into the next room.

They were there, the four of them. My parents were seated on the sofa, and Mother was crying, her hands over her face. Dad had his arm around her, and the two boys were standing awkwardly, looking down at them, as though not knowing what ought to be done or said.

“What is it?” I cried as panic hit me. I couldn’t remember ever having seen my mother cry.

It was Bobby who answered.

“It’s Aunt Marge and Uncle Ryan,” he said. “They’re dead.”

“Dead!” I caught my breath at the dreadful word. My stomach lurched, but it was more from shock than grief. I had seen my aunt and uncle only once when I was little and it was too long ago for me to remember. Since my early childhood they had lived in a series of strange places, and in recent years they had made their home in an isolated area of the Ozarks where Uncle Ryan wrote his novels and Aunt Marge worked at her painting.

“All these years,” Mother sobbed, “and we never visited! We should have insisted that they come last Christmas!”

“You can’t insist on something like that,” Dad said gently. “Ryan was tied up in his writing. You couldn’t have budged him from that mountain wilderness for anything, and Marge never wanted to be anyplace that he wasn’t. As for our going there—we weren’t invited.”

“We could have invited ourselves,” Mother said “We were family, the only family Marge had. It didn’t matter whether Ryan wanted us or not.”

“It did matter,” Dad said. “Ryan didn’t want people around when he was working, and Marge went along with him on everything. To have arrived on their doorstep uninvited would have been unthinkable. Besides, we expected to see them this summer.”

“What happened?” I asked, unable to withhold the question. “How were they killed?”

“In a car wreck,” Peter told me. He stood hunched forward, his hands in his pockets, and I could tell from the unaccustomed gruffness of his voice that he was shaken as I was by the suddenness of tragedy. “It happened yesterday, but the message didn’t come till this morning. They were driving the woman who worked for them back to her home in the village, and the car went off the side of a cliff. It burned.”

“How awful!” I gasped. I tried not to envision the scene, to let it be words in my mind instead of a picture, but this was impossible. A car burning at the base of a cliff—my aunt and uncle and another woman inside it—

“Awful,” I whispered and went to sit by Mother. “Did you say we were going to see them this summer?”

“We hoped to,” Dad said. “Marge wrote at Christmas that when Ryan’s new novel was completed they planned, as she put it, to ‘come back to civilization for a while.’ Marge wanted to have Julia with them for her senior year instead of off at boarding school.”

“Julia,” Mother said softly. “That poor child.” She lowered her hands from her face and turned to my father. “We’ll have to go get her immediately. Imagine her being there all alone through such a terrible time!”

“The sheriffs telegram said she was staying at the house,” Dad said, “and since they don’t have a phone I don’t suppose there’s any way to get in touch with her except with a return telegram. By the time that’s delivered we could be there ourselves.”

“She must just have gotten back from boarding school,” Mother said. “Marge was so looking forward to having her come home. She must have been lonely, living so far from everyone, with Ryan buried in his work.” Her voice shook, threatening to break again. “She had no one, you know. No one but me. We were the last of our side of the family.”

“How old is Julia now?” Dad asked. “Fifteen or sixteen?”

“A little older than that,” Mother said. “I remember when she was born Peter was just a toddler. She’s seventeen, two years older than Rachel.”

“You’re right about our needing to get her,” Dad said. “I’ll call the airport and see what sort of flight we can get and then write this Sheriff Martin to get a message to her. I suppose our best bet would be to get a plane to Springfield and rent a car there. Do you recall the name of the village nearest to where they lived?”

“Pine Crest,” Mother said. “That’s where they got their mail, but their house must be quite a way from there because Marge wrote once that they only drove down to pick up their letters once a week when they did their grocery shopping. Call now, Tom, please. There’s no time to waste.”

My father got to his feet and went into the hall where the wall phone hung. I reached over and patted Mother’s hand.

“Shall we all go?” I asked.

“No, dear. I think not.” Mother shook her head as though trying to focus her thoughts. “It will be an exhausting trip, especially if we have to drive from Springfield, and there will be so much to be done so quickly. It will work best if you’ll stay here and run the house for Peter and Bobby. You’ll have Mrs. Gallagher to turn to if there are any problems.” Her voice shook. “I can’t believe it! Margy—dead! We had a tree house once.”

I squeezed her hand. At least she wasn’t crying any longer.

Bobby said, “Are you going to bring that girl home with you?”

“Your cousin Julia? Yes, of course, if she’s willing to come. I can’t imagine where else she would go. There are no other relatives.”

“Should I remember her?” Peter asked. “I’ve got a feeling I saw her once.”

“You did. It was the year you started the first grade. Ryan was off somewhere getting interviews for some articles he was writing, and Marge came to us for a couple of weeks with Julia. She was a darling little thing, and as I remember, you teased her terribly. She had a toy rabbit, and you took it away from her and gave it to Rachel, and she chewed a hole in its ear.”

The memories kept coming, flashing across the screen of my mother’s mind, filling her voice with grief. We stayed there close to her, the boys and I, listening, for that was the only comfort we knew how to give.

At last Dad came back into the room.

“We can get a noon flight,” he said. “I don’t know how long we’ll need to stay so I just made reservations one way. Well arrange the return flight later.”

“I’d better go pack,” Mother said. “Bob, will you get my overnight bag down from the attic? Peter, you’d better leave for work; you’re already late.” She paused, refocusing her mind with effort. “Oh, dear, nobody’s had breakfast!”

“Don’t worry about that,” I told her. “We’re none of us hungry. If anyone wants anything, there’s dry cereal.”

Mother and Dad went upstairs and Peter left the house and Bobby went up to the attic. I went out to the kitchen and put away the eggs and bread and took the bacon, cold and dry on its greasy towel, and put it in the plastic food bowl for my dog Trickle. I poured coffee into two mugs and took them up to my parents who were in their room taking things out of the bureau. Then I went back downstairs and wandered from room to room, feeling useless because there was really nothing to be done.

Finally I went outside.

Mike was coming up the walk. He was wearing his swimming trunks and a T-shirt and had a towel tossed over his shoulder. He grinned, and I felt shocked for a moment until I remembered that he didn’t know.