The Body of Christopher Creed (27 page)

I have wished I could have talked to Digger Haines, at least once. I would have liked to ask him what he had hoped to find when he left Steepleton. I'm sure it was some sort of search for truth, based on my mother's comments about him. I wondered if he found it stifling to live in a place where people didn't really care what a truth was.

Here's the mother of all lies.

After the autopsy, Mrs. Creed got back on her soapbox about Chris being dead in the woods somewhere. A few days later, Justin Creed paid a visit to the principal of his middle school. The principal picked up the phone and dialed the new chief of police before Justin even had a chance to spew the whole thing. Justin told them that the night before Chris disappeared, Chris and his mom had had an argument. It was over his privileges, or the lack of any. Mrs. Creed was saying
she
would decide what privileges her children had, and that was the end of the story.

Justin swore that he heard Chris threatening to send a derogatory e-mail about her to Mr. Ames the following day. Mrs. Creed solved that by removing all the cables to Chris's computer system. While she was disassembling, Chris read calmly over her shoulder the letter he planned to send. Justin said from what he heard, it sounded exactly like the e-mail that Mr. Ames had received from Chris, the one sent from the library.

Mrs. Creed had blown a lot of shit around—that Chris could not have written that letter—and yet, there's the truth: Chris read the thing to her before he ever disappeared, and before the cops ever got it and showed it to her.

The horror is that
I
was in mental health, and Mrs. Creed was still cooking dinners, chauffeuring kids to and from school, and making speeches in church. I've come to think that she wasn't going to any great effort to cover up the letter when she gave her little "Why Would My Son Run Away?" spiel that Sunday. Maybe as far as she was concerned, she had never heard the letter. It didn't exist.

There is justice in an insanely cruel world. Despite the twos and threes I started getting after that night I discovered Bob Haines, I got one surefire ace. My fourth week in mental health, lyrics started passing through my head. First it happened in small breezes, then in waves, and tunes would roll right in underneath them. I'd spent years agonizing to make up even dumb songs, and all of a sudden, all I had to do was pick up a pen and kick back. Some were morbid:

Two torn aces on a stone,
Two torn aces burn to stone,
Two young men at the mill wheel grinding,
One left standing and the other went flying,
Gone, gone, gone, in the morning.

So I'm not Eric Clapton, but it's a step up from "A Song to the Blues."

Some lyrics got insanely hopeful:

On a mountain, somewhere over there,
Broken bones grow straight like arrows.
Broken hearts unfold to care.
I am strong. I'm an answer to a prayer.
I am hope. I'm a fountain.
I am someone. I am someone, over there.

Considering I didn't drop any acid to get my lyrics, I'm okay with them. I'm very grateful, and I feel like I owe something to Creed. Yet I don't play my songs for anybody. They're private. And I can't find Creed to give him a tape. Nobody in Steepleton has ever found so much as a hair from his head.

It gets me with almost a crushing sadness sometimes, because to me, he has become a hero and a legend. He was an innocent kid, a victim, and I still have the same feeling I had when I first saw my name in his note. Like I could have shared some part of myself with him—whatever part he was thinking of when he saw fit to put my name in his e-mail. So I feel like there's a part of me rotting on the vine sometimes, no matter how many songs I write and what other things I do.

I did get obsessed for a while with finding things to do. I was watching TV one night when I was still in the psychiatric hospital. I saw a documentary on these guys in Belfast who refused to cut their hair until some IRA guy got released from prison, and there were IRA sympathizers walking around all over Belfast with hair to their asses. I liked that story and decided I would not cut my hair until someone turned up information on Creed. By the start of senior year, I had a ponytail about six inches long, and fortunately they don't care much about hair length at Rothborne. I never told anyone in Steepleton why I was doing it, except Ali, because I was afraid some Renee Bowen sympathizer would accuse me of trying to prove my innocence.

My dad promised me a Dodge Durango for graduation if I did cut it. I refused on that count, too, but eventually decided that hair was a nonfunctional protest and I could probably find other ways to help my own cause.

The functional thing, which I've kept up until this day, is trying to find Creed through the Internet. I got the idea last summer, the last time I saw Dr. Fahdi. He mentioned Chris's love of the Internet.

"His very last words to the town were via e-mail. You should try to find him and send him your story," Dr. Fahdi suggested.

Dr. Fahdi had known me for a number of months at that point, and he knew I had not been part of any murder. And he also agreed with my stance that Creed was probably alive. I had returned to the same conclusion I had reached that night I stood on top of the three stones, before the one fell over on me. I had walked in Creed's shoes that night. The week previously, I had walked in little Greg's shoes, I had walked in Lyle Corsica's shoes, Ali's shoes. I still feel like I can walk in other people's shoes, and as for Creed, I decided that maybe he had "died" in the figurative sense. Maybe the psychic was right when she related him to death in the woods. Maybe I found death when I found that stupid treasure map, which stood as some sort of symbolic memorial to him. Maybe just after he sent his good-bye e-mail to Mr. Ames, he visited the woods, and there made the decision that Chris Creed—or at least those parts of himself that he wrote that he hated—would die.

The e-mail he sent said,
I wish that I was born somebody else.
I am convinced he actually left Steepleton, and his intention was to become somebody else. Not just anybody else, but a person with the traits he admired in each of the people he mentioned in his note. I don't know what all those traits are, but I know who those people are. And since I feel like I connected so well with Creed that night on the rocks, I'm banking on my own intuition.

I found a web site that you can join for a monthly fee, and it will look up any name you submit and send you the e-mail addresses that correspond with that name. I've looked up Torey Arrington. I tried Alex Healy. I tried Mike Adams. There were ten names in Creed's e-mail, and there's a hundred ways to mix them up before you start spelling them funky and stuff like that. It's like pulling needles out of a haystack. But I still send out one or two copies of this story a week. I'll pull some name combination like that out of my hat, check that name-search web site, and send the story to any e-mail address that corresponds with the name I dug up.

I have gotten a lot of replies. None of the signees ever claims to be Creed or to know Creed. It amazes me that some people actually read through the whole thing. I keep up my hope, though some weeks it feels like a habit.

I do get my up weeks. Then, if I'm not convinced I'll ever find him, I am convinced that the search is fun. During those weeks I'll even post some awards to my web site, which I call "In Search of Christopher Creed." I even scanned in his picture from the freshman high school yearbook, with mine alongside it.

Here are some of my awards:

1.—Most Flattering Reply to My Story about Chris Creed

Dear Torey,

Your writing is very sensuous and tenderly glazed with the passion of ocean breezes. If I had a candle and you, I would dance naked to "Titanic" while you read passages of this poetic journey from sweet youth to robust manhood. Open your sweet arms to me, my poet.

Love,
Torey J. Healy
(J. stands for Jane)

2. —Most Insulting Reply to My Story about Chris Creed

Dear Mr. Adams,

I am not the person for whom you are searching. You are not a man yet, though you may think you are by virtue of the fact that you actually wrote down a couple hundred pages of magnificent twaddle. The fact you failed to capture was the pain of the Creed mother and father, but being that you're just a boy, you could not understand the agony of parents who lose a child. Parents are not perfect, and perhaps when you mature, you will rewrite your piece to the effect that you understand the Creed family's grief. I, too, came from a poor background. I, too, was in the military. The military provided the first secure situation in my life. I, too, raise my children with structure and discipline and the spirit of the military. My children are very well adjusted and don't wear long hair, unlike you.

Signed,
Alex Healy

3. —Reply Most Likely to Be from Chris Creed in Disguise

Dear Torey:

While your story fairs somewhat intriguing, you have split over two hundred verbs from their modifiers and started as many sentences with a preposition. Use your spell-checker and/or stick to songwriting.

Michael Alex Adams

4.—Reply That Makes Me Believe Totally That Creed Is Alive

Dear Torey:

I must say you have not only chronicled a very honest account of an extremely painful issue but you have painted the details in such a way that I could not resist scrolling down, and I was utterly swept into the circumstances. I wish I could say I am the person for whom you search. But I can say that I, while not being a writer, am a great lover of mysteries. Also, I am studying to be a psychotherapist, and with this combination of analytical learning and love of the genre, I will take the liberty of making comment and perhaps helping you out on your search.

Your idea about Christopher Creed lying to himself about his life as a means to survive was very insightful. While seemingly very bizarre behavior, it actually prevents a child from having to cope with hopeless situations until such a time when he is old enough, or wise enough, to cope. Perhaps as your story makes its way around the world of the Internet, other youths will be touched by Chris. And when they cross paths with the child in school who seems different, who seems obnoxious and intolerable, perhaps they will remember Chris Creed and they will find their tolerance, their compassion.

You mentioned, but did not circle back to, your thought when you stood for the first time outside the school corridor with Ali McDermott, and the two of you were discussing Chris Creed. You said, "You're making it sound like it's more dangerous to have a slightly weird family than a totally weird family." Let me close upon that thought for you.

While radically negative families can, obviously, cause more overt trauma, a "slightly weird" family can have more lasting effects over a lifetime, effects that are harder to untangle because of their subtleties. A mother who beats her children can cause damage, but a mother who waltzes into her son's room while he's changing or chronically roots through his clothing can cause just as much damage. The difference is that it's much harder to prove this to the patient.

Enough said for psychology. I want to comment now on two points you failed to notice about your own story that may, eventually, lead you to Creed. I see very obviously that he is alive. You walk in people's shoes fairly well, Mr. Adams, but you're not as insightful with clues.

First, you never gave any credence to the treasure map found in the burial ground. Alex was very focused on Chris's choice of words, such as "I would venture to say" and "suffice it to say," and with Chris's seemingly inappropriate preservation of the map via lamination. Perhaps, had it not blown away from you so mysteriously (I don't even want to touch on your supernatural elements, for I'm not sure I believe), you would have had the visual aid to remind you later that the map is crucial.

Chris told Alex he had buried treasure there. The main thrust of his mother becoming convinced he hadn't run off was that none of the money in his bank account had been touched. Perhaps there was a treasure, perhaps it was replaced by the map from its many-year hiding place, and perhaps that treasure funded Chris's trip to places unknown. Perhaps it was nothing more than a hundred-dollar bill or some lost billfold.

But now, where did he go?

He was a sheltered boy and not capable of much on his own. You failed to notice the importance of Ali's statement to you concerning Mrs. Creed's family. The two of you were spying from her bedroom, and Ali said to you, "Mrs. Creed's two sisters hate her so much, they haven't spoken in years. If he turns up dead, she'll probably call them, but not before." Perhaps, if these women understood their sister's insanity so well, they would have sympathized with the boy. Perhaps he contacted them in another state, perhaps via the Internet. Perhaps their sympathy led them to agree to hide him, finish raising him. The fact that they were all once "boons" means his life would have been harder with them in some ways. But because of the strain under which he appeared to exist, I would say he probably would have found a life with them very accommodating.

However, I don't really think that tidbit will help you locate him tomorrow.

I would venture to say that the relatives are sworn to secrecy. You can hunt them down if you wish, but my feeling is that they will not talk until the young man gives the word. And psychologically speaking once again, I don't think that time is yet.