Nowheresville

 

*Can you take a hint Chief Dan?*

        I went to school there. We all went to school there. The place was starting to really have that built in the eighties patina of shabby. White kids and Indian kids all mixed together. It had not always been peaceful in the valley.
        You’re supposed to check in with the school office when visiting at a school these days, for obvious reasons. So, I did. I told them I needed to talk to Miss Cyndy Brown, the kindergarten teacher for just a moment. The office ladies knew me anyhow. I’m sure they knew if Taylor had been at school or not, but I wanted to see Miss Brown in any case. I knew where the kindergarten room was. Nothing had been remodeled around there since I went to school there myself.
        Miss Brown, indeed. She looked about sixteen years old. Thin and short, and dressed like a child herself I thought. A brightly colored long sleeved t-shirt, jeans and a ponytail hairdo. Our Miss Brown. Surely a terror to no child. Not a tribal member.
        I waved to her from outside the classroom and she stepped over to the door, leaving the afternoon class of about twelve, to stare in our direction. I removed my shades, to appear less intimidating.
        It was the worst possible news. Taylor had not come to school that morning, nor had they called her mother. Sometimes these people drop a stitch. If the mother did not call in to say the child wasn’t coming, they should have called her. In older grades they probably just wait for a parental note the next day, but in kindergarten, what happened amounted to a child lost for several hours.
        Next, out in my truck, I called in to emergency dispatch. All my guys would show up at the station, so I headed over there. It’s just a plain little concrete block building around the other side of the bay. By the time I got there several of the hot-shots were already arriving. One of my guys is a lady.
        “What’s up, Dan,” she said, heading from her parked car in my direction. The call had gone out as a lost child incident. But that’s all they got when the alert came to them via their phones.
        “Hey, Suzy. You know Judy Fowler? Doesn’t matter. She has a five year old girl, Taylor, who didn’t show up at school this morning, and that fact slipped through the cracks somehow. Now, she has been missing all morning and into afternoon. While we are waiting for the county to organize a formal search, I still have to call them, I want you guys to go over in the area of Alder Lane and turn the world inside out. If there is a space a little girl could fit into I want you to look there and maybe even if it doesn’t look possible. They live at 324 by the way.”
        Suzy started talking into her phone, sending a text to the rest of the members so they didn’t have to come here, but just go to the location and start looking. That’s the kind of girl she is. Power mom. Nice lady. In her early fifties. Five kids of her own.
        Now, so far, I had been playing this by the book. But sometimes my life gets played by some other book I guess. I was starting to get an odd, crawly feeling about this case. I felt like a gear had shifted somewhere. Some other space was opened. I try to stay aware of those feelings. My thoughts drifted, I was picturing the little girl in her red hoodie, where was she? I was staying open to any kind of impression that might come to me. I felt strongly that she was alive. I guess I just knew that. But where are you Taylor? “Tell me!” I thought.
        Then I called the sheriff’s office and explained the details of the case as I knew them and started them working on a formal lost child search for first thing in the morning, if Taylor didn’t show up before then.
        Then I got Lloyd in the loop. He’s not involved with the fire dept. He’s law only. I wanted him to come with me to talk to Judy for the second time that day. I knew she was gong to be terrified. Lloyd is her grampa, you see. He wasn’t going to be a happy grampa today. I knew that. But they needed each other. Judy didn’t have any other relatives in the area.
        Lloyd Fowler and I stood together on the porch waiting for Judy to come to the door. He was silent and sober. A small, intense full blood Native, waiting to see his very frightened granddaughter.
        “Judy,” I said, when the door opened, “we need to fill you in on what’s happening now.” We had to break the news to her that Taylor had not gone to school in the morning, that she had gone missing first thing before school. It was not a happy meeting. I left Lloyd there with her. She just had to stay there and wait. She looked stunned.
        Back out in my truck, I tried to forget about missing lunch. I put my head back and closed my eyes. I was trying to get online with the Creator. I guess that’s praying. Sometimes I’m just meditating. This time I was asking for help. We all needed divine help this time for sure. After some time, I began to feel as if help would be forthcoming. I opened my eyes and looked all around. I closely examined the little green cabin, the surrounding grounds, and the trees behind it. I was just looking for any sort of a hint. “Taylor, where are you?”
        That crazy raven flew onto the hood of my pickup and dropped something there. It was a small red object. I got out of the cab to pick it up and get a better look. The raven flew up to the roof of the cabin watching me. The object that she, I was pretty sure the raven was a she, had brought me was a small red plastic doll, just a cheap little piece of children’s detritus. I looked up at her, and once more she flew off to the northeast.
        I am not the brightest man ever born, but I can take a hint.
        I started up the engine and drove. I drove up out of Alder Lane, onto 3rd, and then up to the highway that goes north and south through the heart of the res. When I got to the main east west intersection something said, “here, turn east here,” so I did.

All of it so far...