Long lost

9

Petey and Jason were cutting the lawn when I got home. The power mower was awkward for Jason, so Petey was walking beside him, helping him make the turns.

"Hey, look at me, Dad!" Jason yelled to be heard above the motor's roar.

I raised my thumb enthusiastically.

They stopped beside me.

"Can you control it, Jace?" Petey asked.

"I'm pretty sure."

"Then it's all yours. I'll be over here talking to your dad."

Jason nodded, concentrating on keeping the mower in a straight line. Its roar diminished as he navigated among trees toward the far side of the yard.

Petey motioned me toward the porch steps, where he picked up a bottle of beer. "I might've created a monster. If he gets any better at this, you're going to have to raise his allowance."

"It's the first time he's shown an interest. Could be you've hit on something," I said. "Normally, a lawn service does this for me, but it'd be good for him to help a little and learn some responsibility."

"Can't be too young to learn responsibility." Petey took a drink of his beer.

"Listen, I appreciate the effort, but you didn't have to mow the grass," I said.

"No big deal. It looked a little long. I want to do my share."

"Honestly, it isn't necessary. I'm just glad to have you here. Anyway, since you'll be working next week, take it easy for now."

Petey cocked his head. "Working next week?"

"Yeah, I made some calls. I got you a job."

"You did? Great!"

"On a building I designed."

"Couldn't be better."

"Uncle Peter!" Jason yelled in panic. At the end of a row, the boy struggled to turn the mower. It veered toward a shrub.

"Hang on!" Petey ran to help him.

10

"No need to help with the dishes," Kate said.

"It's the least I can do." Petey dried another pot. "I can't remember when I had a tastier beef stew."

"We don't normally eat this much red meat," she said. "I'm trying to put some weight on you."

"The lemon pie was spectacular."

Jason eyed a second piece. "Yeah, we hardly ever get desserts in the middle of the week."

"Well, you worked hard mowing the lawn," Kate said. "You deserve a treat."

Sitting at the end of the table, I couldn't help smiling. The reality that Petey was actually over there by the sink, reaching to dry another pot, still overwhelmed me.

"Anyway," he said, returning to an earlier topic, "it doesn't surprise me that you moved here to Denver."

"Oh?"

"That camping trip you and I and Dad went on. Remember?" Petey asked.

"I sure do."

"Out here to Colorado. What a good time. Of course, the long drive from Ohio was a pain. If it hadn't been for the comic books Dad kept buying us along the highway… Once we got here, the effort sure was worth it. Camping, hiking, rock climbing, and fishing, Dad showing us what to do."

"The first fish you ever caught, you were so excited that you reeled in before you hooked it good," I said. "It jumped back into the lake."

"You remember that much?"

"I thought about that trip a lot over the years. A month after we got back, school started, and…" I couldn't make myself refer to Petey's disappearance. "For a lot of years, it was the last good summer of my life."

"Mine, too." Petey looked down. A long second later, he shrugged off his regret and picked up the last pot. "Anyway, what I'm getting at is, maybe you came out here because in the back of your mind you wanted to return to that summer."

"Camping?" Jason broke the somber mood.

We looked at him. He'd been silent for a while, eating his second piece of pie.

"Dad promised to take me, but we never did," Jason said.

I felt embarrassed. "We went on plenty of hikes."

"But we never used tents."

"Are you telling me you've never actually gone camping?" Petey asked.

Jason nodded, then corrected himself. "Except, I once slept in a tent in Tom Burbick's backyard."

"Doesn't count," Petey said. "You've gotta be where you hear the lions and tigers and bears."

"Lions and tigers?" Jason frowned, looking vulnerable behind his glasses.

"It's a joke." Kate rumpled his hair.

She left some soapsuds. He swatted at them. "Mom!"

"But that might not be a bad idea." She looked at Petey and me. "A camping trip. The two of you can pick up where you left off. Jump over the years. I know it's been hard for you, Peter, but now the good times are starting again."

"I think you're right, Kate," Petey said. "I can feel them."

"What about me?" Jason asked. "Can't I come?"

"We'll all go," Petey said.

"Sorry. Not me, gentlemen." Kate held up her hands. "Saturday, I'm scheduled to give a seminar." Kate was a stress-management counselor; her specialty was advising corporations whose employees were burned out because of downsizing. "Besides, sleeping in the woods isn't high on my list."

"Just like Mom." Petey turned to me. "Remember?"

"Yeah, just like Mom."

"Except your mother," Kate said, "was afraid of bees, whereas in my case it's a matter of natural selection."

"Natural selection?" I asked, puzzled.

"You guys are a lot better equipped to crawl out of a tent at night and pee in the woods."

11

"I've been meaning to ask you something."

Petey quit studying the map and looked at me. "About what?"

It was almost eleven o'clock: a radiant Saturday morning. My Ford Expedition was loaded with all kinds of camping equipment. We'd followed Interstate 70 west out of Denver and were now well into the mountains, although Jason wasn't appreciating their snowcaps. He was dozing in a sleeping bag on the backseat.

"After you…" I had trouble continuing. "It suddenly occurs to me that you might not want to talk about it."

"There's only one way to find out."

"After you got away from…"

"Say it. The sick bastards who kidnapped me. It's a fact. You don't need to tap-dance around the subject."

"You were sixteen when you escaped. You've talked about roaming the country, working on construction jobs or whatever. But you never mentioned anything about school. When you disappeared, you were in the fourth grade, but you've obviously had more education than that. Who taught you?"

"Oh, I had plenty of education in politeness," Petey said bitterly. "The man and woman who kept me in that underground room insisted on a lot of 'Yes, sir, yes, ma'am, please and thank you.' If I ever forgot, they punched my face to remind me." The sinews in his neck tightened into ropes.

"I'm sorry. I wish I hadn't raised the subject," I said.

"It's fine. There's no point in hiding from the past. It'll only catch up in other ways." Petey's gaze hardened. He took a deep breath, subduing his emotions. "Anyhow, in terms of education, I have better memories. As I wandered from town to town, I learned that an easy way to get a free meal was to show up at church socials after Sunday-morning services. Of course, I had to sit through the services in order to get the free meals. But most times, I didn't mind-the services were peaceful. After so many years of not reading, I'd sort of forgotten how to do it. When members of this or that congregation realized that I couldn't read the Bible, they took steps to make sure I learned my ABC's and, more important, the Good Book. There were always teachers in the congregations. After work some evenings, I'd get private classes at a church in whatever town I happened to be in. There are a lot of decent folks out there."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Hear what, Dad?" Jason asked sleepily from the backseat, where he'd woken up.

"Just that there are decent people in the world."

"Didn't you know that?"

"Sometimes I wondered. You and your uncle better concentrate on the map. Our turnoff isn't far ahead."