They Never Came Home

  “Mrs. Drayfus is resting right now,” Joan said. “This is her daughter. May I help you?”

  “Well, maybe you can,” the man said. “It’s about your brother. I read in the paper about the tragedy. How he was drowned up in the Mogollons. A sad thing, a terrible thing. You have my sympathy.”

  “Thank you,” Joan said. She paused and then asked, “Who is this? Were you a friend of Larry’s?”

  “Well, sort of. Not exactly. You might say I’m a—a business associate.” The voice changed as the veil of formal sympathy dropped from it. “As a matter of fact, Larry’s death affects me in a business way. He died with some money—my money—in his possession. I thought I’d call and see about collecting it.”

  “Larry had money of yours?” Joan repeated the words in astonishment.

  “I’m afraid he did. I’m sure he intended to repay it immediately, but under the circumstances …” He did not continue.

  “I don’t understand,” Joan said. “I didn’t know Larry was involved in any business. Exactly how much money did he owe you?”

  “Quite a bit,” the man’s cool voice told her. “Like, would you believe, upwards of fifty grand?”

  THREE

  FINALS WERE HELD THE last week in May. Frank Cotwell knew before he took them that he would do poorly. He had been out of school for a week during the time he was with the search party, and when he did at last return to class it was impossible for him to keep his mind on studying. He could, he found, sit for hours, staring at an open book, without completing a page. The words swam before his eyes, blurred and meaningless, while his mind went back again and again, reliving that last day when Dan had tossed his pack into the back seat of his car and said, “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  In that last instant, Frank had almost relented. The weekend stretched ahead of him, unplanned and empty. The house was always lifeless when Dan wasn’t in it. It was crazy really because there were still four of them there to fill it. There was still the same amount of noise and busyness, but there was something about the presence of Dan that seemed to solidify the family, to give each member his place. It was hard to put your finger on it, but whatever it was, it was there.

  Then, just as he was reconsidering, Larry Drayfus had turned in the front seat and glanced back at him.

  “Sure, Frank,” he had said. “Come on along.”

  The words had been right, but there had been something—some quick flash of expression, a darkening of the green eyes—that had let Frank know with no room for doubt that the words held no meaning. Larry did not want him.

  And Dan—well, Dan was being nice. Maybe he felt a little guilty about taking Larry along on what was usually kind of an occasion, the first overnight of the season.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Frank had said shortly, and turned and went into the house.

  Where was Dan now? While he sat at the school desk, staring at the examination questions, his mind went without him, trudging along footpaths, over boulders, crossing rivers, gazing down through trees into crevices. Somewhere, somewhere, Dan Cotwell existed still. People did not just vanish from the face of the earth. Alive or dead, Dan was somewhere. Dead? It was an incredible word to attach to someone as alert, as alive, as his brother. Everything within him fought against acceptance, and yet …

  It had been a full month now. The sunlight sliding through the window to fall golden across the desk was heavy and warm, not the thin pale sun of April. At home, outside the window of the bedroom he shared with Eddie, birds were already nesting in the branches of the elm tree. Up and down the street, people were fertilizing their lawns and sprinklers were throwing high bright rainbows against the sky, and spring was deepening into the edge of summer.

  A whole month gone—and no word—no sign.

  “Five minutes,” Miss Fitzgerald said warningly.

  With an effort, Frank forced his mind to focus on the questions before him. Silas Marner—Enoch Arden; he had read them. Sometime during the last semester he had read and digested them, but it seemed so long ago. The names, the events—there seemed no importance to them; they were fictional characters from a storybook land of unreality.

  One of them had gone away on a voyage and not returned. Which one was it? And he had eventually, hadn’t he? Years and years later? And his wife had remarried, had made a life with someone else in the meantime?

  Abruptly, his mind flashed to Joan Drayfus. It was not a flight he had willed it to take. He had never paid much attention to the girls his brother dated, and Joan was certainly one of the least impressive of them. In his own opinion, girls should be little and dainty, like Marcie Summers, for instance, who was in his math class, and whom he had never managed to speak to, but whom he had watched all year, tossing her long blond hair back over her slim shoulders and biting delicately at the end of her pencil.

  Joan’s lack of prettiness, while it should reasonably have made him more at ease with her, had never been enough to overcome his nervous awareness that she was a girl. In the maleness of the Cotwell household, a girl was like a creature from another planet. Dan had brought her over to the house a few times for one reason or another, to study or to watch television, and once she had come for dinner. She hadn’t talked much, as Frank recalled; she had sat there quietly, eating his mother’s savory pot roast, turning every once in a while to smile at Dan, seemingly a little awed by the noise and confusion of the family dinner table. Her presence had put things into a different perspective, and suddenly Frank himself had seen things as loud and riotous. He had become momentarily embarrassed, and then, ashamed of his reaction, had plunged into the conversation more violently than ever.

  Joan was just another girl, he assured himself. Dan would drop her eventually, just as he had dropped a dozen other girls in the past. But it had been a long time since he could remember Dan’s dating anyone else. They certainly spent a lot of time together. On week nights they studied. On weekends they were always off somewhere doing something, a party or a movie or bowling—he didn’t know exactly what all they did do when they were together.

  “They kiss each other!” Eddie had declared once. “Mush—sqush—all that kind of stuff, like in the movies!

  “You’re nuts,” Frank had said, surprised at the violence of his own reaction.

  “Then why does he get lipstick all over his shirts? I saw one in the laundry basket.”

  “Well, cripes, maybe he lent it to her or something.”

  Of course, Dan did kiss her. Even though it gave him an odd feeling to think about it, Frank had to acknowledge the fact squarely. His brother was eighteen years old and had been dating girls since he was much younger than Frank was now. He had been going with Joan Drayfus for over a year now; they had started dating a year ago Christmas, to be exact. He could remember because it was at a formal. Dan had asked Anne Tonjes, but she had already had a date with somebody, and then he had called another girl, and finally he had called Anne’s friend Joan.

  “It’s what I get for waiting so long,” he had said lightly.

  At that time, he had said such things. He had not pretended then that Joan was pretty or exciting or somebody to be cherished. She had been, quite simply, a pleasant, not particularly attractive girl who was usually free for a date when you were late getting your bid in and the more popular girls were already taken.

  Where had it changed? Frank was not sure. He had not been interested enough to notice. Still, it had happened. It was no light feeling that had brought the cold steel into his brother’s eyes and the quick outburst that night before the camping trip:

  “I don’t want to hear any slam stuff about Joanie!”

  Miss Fitzgerald’s voice broke into his consciousness.

  “Time! Will you pass your papers to the front, please?”

  Well, that’s an F, Frank thought with resignation.

  Six weeks ago the thought of flunking a final would have filled him with horror. Now, it hardly
seemed to matter. What was a grade but a mark on a sheet of paper? Dan had been an all-A student. He had won a scholarship to the university for the coming fall. Did it matter now?

  Bitterly, Frank handed his paper forward along with the others and got to his feet to join the line of students filing out of the classroom.

  Outside in the hall, Roger Ruvolo and a couple of the other guys were waiting for him.

  “That wasn’t as bad as I expected,” Roger said, falling into step beside him. “That’s my last final. What’ll we do to celebrate?”

  “I promised Mom I’d get the lawn fertilized,” Frank said.

  Without looking he could feel the exchange of glances that passed across him.

  “Come on, Frankie.” Scott Kimball’s voice was a little too bright to be casual. “You’ve got the whole rest of the day for that. Hell, you’ve got the whole rest of the summer! The public pool opened last weekend. Why don’t we go out there and get cooled off?”

  “Great idea,” Roger said enthusiastically. “If we hurry we can make the twelve-thirty bus or—say, Frank, can’t you get the Chevy?”

  “That’s Dan’s,” Frank said shortly.

  “Sure. I know that. I just thought—I mean, it’s just sitting there …”

  Roger’s voice faded off in embarrassment.

  “I told you, I’ve got to get the yard done.” Frank thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets. “I’ll see you around.”

  “Sure. Yeah. See you around, Frank.”

  He was conscious of their eyes upon him as he broke away and turned through the east door out into the golden sunlight.

  The scent of spring broke upon him, fresh and sweet. The air was light with laughter as groups of students hurried past him, giddy with release, chattering like sparrows.

  Bits of conversations swirled at him from all sides:

  “… was the most unfair question I ever saw! We didn’t even study that period of history …”

  “… party at Cathy Beahm’s tonight….”

  “… go fishing at Navajo Lake the first of June. My uncle went last weekend and he says they’re biting like mad …”

  Determinedly, Frank cut across the grass and crossed the street. The voices, the laughter, the gay discussions of vacations and parties fell away behind him as he hurried his footsteps until he was almost running.

  Dopey stuff, he thought. Dopey kid stuff. He’d never been comfortable at parties. And vacations … well, last year the whole family had driven to the lake at Elephant Butte and it had been pretty great. They had taken a cabin for a couple of weeks, and Eddie had learned to swim, and he and Dan had rented a canoe, but this year … well, it was different. Just the word “vacation” was enough to cause a stab of pain. What kind of vacation could they have now, his parents and Eddie and himself, with the shadow of Dan there among them, the terrible hole gaping in the family?

  He bit down hard on his lower lip to keep it from trembling. It was like this lately. Everything he heard, everything he thought carried him back to Dan and the realization of how close, how very close, they had been, and all the time he hadn’t realized it, had taken it so completely for granted. …

  “Frank?”

  The girl had been walking ahead of him. He had been aware of her without seeing her, without actually raising his eyes and looking. She was alone, and she had been walking about three yards ahead, and now she had stopped and turned and was standing, waiting for him to catch up with her.

  “Frank—hi.”

  “Oh, hi, Joan.” There was no escaping it, for now he had caught up with her, and she had begun to walk again, beside him.

  “I heard your footsteps behind me,” she said. “It’s funny—the sound of your footsteps. For a moment there, before I turned around, it sounded like Dan.”

  “Yeah. People have always said that. We walk alike. It’s having long legs.”

  “I guess so. I mean, that sounds like a reasonable reason.”

  She sounded tired. Despite himself, Frank raised his eyes and turned his head to glance sideways at her. She didn’t look good. Although she had never been glamorous, she had always had something—a kind of glow about her—a warm, healthy look. She didn’t have that now. She had lost weight, and with her height she could not afford to. Her cheeks had a sunken look, and her eyes were shadowed, and there was a pale dullness to her skin.

  She looks about the way I feel, Frank thought.

  Aloud he said, “Well, school’s about out.” It was a stupid thing to say, but at least it broke the silence.

  “Yes. Graduation is this weekend.”

  “That’s right. I’d forgotten. You’re graduating this year, aren’t you?”

  Dan was to have graduated too. The announcements had been ordered and they had arrived two weeks ago. The box was at home on the hall table. His mother had opened them; he was not sure just why. She hadn’t addressed them though.

  “Fifty announcements!” Dan had exclaimed when she ordered them. “Geeze, Mom, you’d think I was graduating from Harvard or something! This is just high school, remember?”

  “When your oldest son graduates from high school, that’s important enough for announcing,” his mother had said firmly. “All the relatives will want announcements, and the men Dad works with.”

  There would have been a big group of Cotwells at the graduation exercises, that was for sure—aunts and uncles and cousins and assorted in-laws. The Cotwells always had a turnout for any family event.

  Now, of course, there was no reason for attending. He had almost forgotten that Joan would be graduating.

  “Anne Tonjes is valedictorian,” Joan said. “She has the highest grades in the class, except for Dan’s. His average was two points higher.”

  “You mean, Dan would have been—that?”

  Joan nodded. “The principal announced it at the senior class meeting.”

  “Cool.”

  Like the scholarship, it didn’t matter now, but it would be something, Frank thought, to tell his mother. It would mean something to her, the fact that Dan would have been valedictorian of his graduating class.

  “Dan had the brains in the family,” he said. “I’ll be doing great if I even pass this year. I know I just flunked the English exam. It’s hard—I can’t keep my mind on things.”

  “I know.”

  There was such understanding in her voice that he realized that she did know. Suddenly, he felt a deep rush of sympathy for the girl walking beside him. It transcended all previous feelings, his resentment of Joan for taking such an important place in his brother’s life, his discomfort with girls in general.

  With a gesture completely foreign to himself, he reached over and patted her shoulder.

  The touch, light as it was, brought an unexpected reaction. Abruptly, Joan raised her hands to cover her face.

  “Frank,” she said in a muffled voice, “Frank, I don’t know what to do.”

  They had reached the corner that marked the breaking point on the way to their different houses. Now, standing there on the sunny sidewalk, Frank had the frightened feeling that the girl beside him was, herself, breaking. The tight control seemed suddenly to have snapped. She stood very still, with her hands pressed to her face.

  “Joan,” he said uncertainly. “Please, don’t. You know you can’t do anything. Everybody’s already done everything they can. The search was thorough. I know—I was there. They couldn’t keep it going month after month. They had to call an end somewhere.”

  “I know. That’s not what I mean.” She lowered her hands. Her face was very white, but to his surprise he saw that she was not crying.

  “It’s something else,” she said. “Frank, can I talk to you? I have to talk to somebody. I can’t go to my parents, not in the state they’re in now.”

  “Sure. Talk about anything you want to.” Frank nodded at the little green island across the street. “Let’s go over to the park. We can sit there for a while if you want to.”

  ??
?Thanks.” She tried to smile, but it looked more like a grimace, her mouth straining to turn up at the corners while her eyes remained empty.

  “Come on.”

  He took her arm and steered her across the street without even realizing that it was the first time he had ever made such a gesture. The look of her face frightened him, and he knew somehow that it was caused by something other than grief.

  When they reached the park, he led her down a path to a bench. The midday sun was warm, and the park was empty except for some children tossing a ball back and forth a distance away.

  “Okay,” Frank said as they sat down, “Shoot. What’s happened?”

  “It was a phone call.” Joan brought the words out in a rush, as though in relief at finally being able to speak them. “It wasn’t for me, at least, it wasn’t meant to be. The man wanted to speak to Mother. I answered and told him she was resting and asked what he wanted. He—he wanted money.”

  “Money?” Frank did not know what he had expected her to tell him, but it was certainly not this. “Why?”

  “He said Larry owed it to him. A lot of money, Frank. Fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars! Frank echoed the words incredulously. “How could Larry owe anybody that amount? Who was this guy anyway?”

  “He said his name was Brown. John Brown. The way he said it, I don’t think he meant for me to believe him. He said that he and Larry had been in a—a business deal together—and that Larry was holding the money. Now, with Larry—gone—he wants it paid to him.”

  “What kind of business deal?” Frank asked. “Larry was only seventeen, just a year older than I am. How could he be involved in business deals where he would be handling that kind of cash?”

  “I don’t know. Mr. Brown wouldn’t say. What he implied was that Larry’s part in whatever it is wasn’t quite on the up-and-up. He said he didn’t want to hurt Larry’s reputation by having any publicity about it if he could help it. All he wanted was for the money to be located and turned over to him.”

  “What did your parents say?” Frank asked. “You did tell them about it, didn’t you?”