Chapter Text
That winter, when our town was a layover spot for strangers and
the strange dead, I was writing the river. I liked to write true
things, things I could know: water and stones, brick and ground
and the whir of cars under the highway overpass. Most days,
walking home from work, I would stop in the center of the
Bradenton Bridge and watch the ice pile and crack, watch the
milky-green evening sky reflect in the still-open pool of water
beyond the legs of the bridge. That picture - the green-milk sky - is
a true thing about the river, and people who live near the river nod
when they read it, and say: "Oh yes, she knows how it is."
And though it's truth, the January evening water is just a piece of
the river. To tell the river's story whole and full I would have to
stand and watch the water for years, unmoving. And even then I
would not know the things beneath the surface, the eddies and
black things.
The story of people is like that. It's made of bits and shards of
things: a smell that sits in the air, the slide of a finger. We steal
what we can see and piece it together, mend the seams to make a
story.
***
I was in the coffee shop, late afternoon, mid-January. I liked to
work the afternoon shift, from 11 to 4:30, because no one came for
a bagel or a sandwich at 4:00; the most I had to do was brew
another pot of decaf, refresh the cream in the creamer. That gave
me time to sit in the big booth and write. I was working to save
money to start at college the next fall. Technically I was too old to
be a freshman - 21 - but it was time for me to get out of town. So,
I sat alone in the coffee shop with my books and my paper when
the door opened and the bell went off to alert me. A man stood
there in the slanting light. I couldn't really see him but heard his
voice: "I need some food."
I got up and moved behind the counter.
"We close in a half-hour," I said. "There's not much left. A couple
muffins and some beef barley."
"Soup?" the man asked, and I looked at him then because his voice
shook and his teeth chattered as he finished speaking. He was
slight, swallowed by the jacket he wore. His lined face was dirty or
bruised - I couldn't tell which - and his right coat sleeve was torn
from elbow to cuff. At first I thought he was drunk but then I saw a
drop of water run off the pull-cord of his hood and realized that he
was wet and cold.
"You OK?" I asked, wondering if I should be alone with him.
He looked at me, then pointed out the window, toward the hills.
"I was up there," he said. "I need some food."
"Your car break down?" I asked.
"No. I was up in the woods."
Up in the woods was nothing in summer and even less in winter.
Bare trees, cold ground, our little mountain and then another and
twenty minutes' drive on Route 60 to the next town.
"You were camping?" I asked. The man stared at me, his face
blank as though I'd been speaking a language he'd forgotten. I
pressed on. "Were you lost?"
"Lost," he said. "Yes."
"God," I said, and scalded myself pulling the ladle out of the soup
pot. I brought a bowl to the man, and he looked at it for a minute,
as if he'd forgotten how to eat, too, but then he picked up the bowl
- no spoon - and drank the broth down in a series of gulps. The
barley and celery he pushed into his mouth with the fingers of his
left hand. The fingers were shaking, still.
"Can I get another bowl?" he asked.
The smell of him hit me then. I knew it from hunting parties and
schools of fishermen, times when they'd come back from a trip to
the woods with no running water and no women. And I knew the
smell from trips to Boston, walking past the men on the street-
corners, the ones who rattled tin cans as I moved by. People who
are tied to normal life don't carry that smell.
I hurried another bowl of soup to the table. The man ignored me;
he was caught up in swallowing the food as fast as he could. I don't
know why I should have felt strange for calling the police, but still,
I dialed quickly and when Wayne Sampson answered the phone,
my voice was quiet like secret-telling.
"There's a guy here who says he was lost on the mountain," I said.
"Did you get any reports of missing campers?"
"No," Wayne said. "You think he's been drinking?"
"No. But he's acting strange."
"Don't worry, sweetheart. I'll be right over." Wayne had been my
father's friend, and he honored that by carrying a responsibility for
me.
I hung up the phone and pretended I was straightening things out
behind the counter. Wayne came a few minutes later, as the man
was finishing his second muffin and draining a cup of hot
chocolate. Wayne walked over, his chest pumped out just like a
sheriff in a movie or something, my protector and king of the town.
"Hey, buddy," he said, holding out his hand. "I'm Wayne Sampson.
I'm the chief of police in Bradenton. Wendy tells me you were lost
on the mountain."
The man looked from his cup to Wayne's outstretched hand,
looked hard at me for a moment.
"Yeah," he said, then went back to his food.
Wayne put down his hand. "You got a name?"
"Thomas Hopkins," the man said, then paused. "Thomas Hopkins."
"Do you have any identification, Mr. Hopkins?" Wayne asked.
This was funny to the man, somehow. He snorted bubbles into the
cocoa.
"No driver's license," he said. "No cards, no wallet. No money.
Plenty of identification, if you can read it." The man tipped his
head, lifted the hair off his neck and leaned in as if Wayne should
see something there: a stamp on his skin, maybe, that read, "Yes
sir, this is Thomas Hopkins."
Wayne gave me a knowing look and shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, listen, Mr. Hopkins. How about if I pay Wendy for the food
you ate, and you and I go have a little talk in my office."
Hopkins lifted his head again and nodded slowly. "You got warm
clothes there?" he asked. "Mine are wet through."
Wayne nodded and handed me a ten from his wallet. Then Hopkins
stood, and he and Wayne moved dripping across the linoleum and
out the door.
***
Sometime in the night they came: the State Police and the FBI and
two of the news crews from Boston, not just Manchester. They set
up a kind of encampment on the town green, between the coffee
shop and the police station. That next morning, as I came over the
bridge, I could see the cars and flashing lights. I didn't know until
they found me that they were here about the day before, about the
man Wayne had taken out of the coffee shop.
They all asked the same questions: "Did you see the man
approach? Was anyone with him? Was he dropped off outside the
coffee shop or did he walk up?" I stood there dumbly in the filming
lights, saying, "No, no, I don't know, no." How was I supposed to
know to watch for these details, when everything looked plain and
small and ordinary? A wet man coming in looking for a bowl of
beef barley soup was all I saw.
I wasn't working that day so I went to the library and hid in the
stacks. The FBI agents found me there. It is a strange thing to live
in a town where people know you so well and will tell your hiding
places to strangers.
The FBI people were a matched pair: well-dressed in dark grey
suits and smart, polished shoes that were useless in the snow and
ice. The man was tall, roughly handsome with a deep voice. The
woman was bird-tiny but wore heels; her red hair was cropped
close to her head, a little-boy cut, the kind that looks good on some
tiny women. They gave me their names and I tried to lay them on
top of the dozens of other names I'd been given that day, but they
slid down and away. So my brain catalogued them as the FBI
agents: big, dark-haired, handsome man and slight, red-haired
woman.
They sat me across from them at the big oak table in the front hall.
Mrs. Hays at the reference counter didn't even pretend to be
referring; she stopped work and stared at us.
"We're sorry to take up your time," the woman agent said.
"I don't think I'll be much help," I replied. "I mean, I would help,
but... I don't know anything."
The woman quizzed me on what I remembered, the same quiz the
State Police had given me: from which direction did Thomas
Hopkins approach, how did he look, was he alone? I shrugged and
shook my head and said "no" or "yes" or "I don't remember" at the
right times.
The male FBI agent listened, mostly, and watched his partner: her
fingers tapping mutely against the tabletop, her lips pursed, her one
eyebrow raised as she asked me questions and I could not answer
them.
"Who is this guy?" I finally asked. "What's the big deal?"
The woman exchanged a look with her partner and answered
quietly. "He's been missing," she said, "For a very long time. And
we're trying to find out where he's been."
***
My grandfather and I sat and watched the news at 5 that day. I was
on TV, with my hair a mess and no lipstick. My mother would be
rolling over in her grave. "Just a little pink," she would have said,
"To give you some color."
This is what Chet Curtis said on Channel 5: "A small town in New
Hampshire was the scene yesterday of the mysterious reappearance
of Thomas Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins disappeared in 1994 and has
been missing for more than eleven years. Long-running police and
federal investigations into his whereabouts had failed to turned up
any leads."
And there I was, pale lips and all, saying, "I didn't notice where he
came from. He just walked in the shop." Then Wayne was on
camera, puffing his chest just like he had in the coffee shop: "I
assessed Mr. Hopkins' condition and determined that he might be
suffering from hypothermia, at which point I called an ambulance."
Then Chet went on: "Mr. Hopkins was transported to Memorial
Hospital in Concord. Doctors there say that while he is disoriented,
he seems to have suffered no serious physical injuries. It is not
know where Hopkins has been for the past eleven years. His family
members have issued the following statement: 'We rejoice that
Tommy has been returned to us and we look forward to bringing
him home as soon as possible.' "
My grandfather kissed me on the head when the story was over. He
was proud of me, his TV star granddaughter.
I did an Internet search that night for "Thomas Hopkins." It was a
common name; I turned up 1,603 matches. I narrowed my search
with the words "missing person" and found just one page devoted
to the man I wanted: a site set up by his son, Geoffrey. There was a
photo of Hopkins on the front page, along with the words "STILL
MISSING." The picture of Hopkins showed a young man with a
thick neck and broad shoulders, his face unlined - so different
from the man I had seen. Underneath the image was a short
paragraph: "Tommy Hopkins left home on July 16, 1994, on his
way to the airport in Detroit, Michigan. His car was found,
undamaged, by the side of route 80 in Pennsylvania. He has not
been seen or heard from since. If you have any knowledge of
Tommy Hopkins' whereabouts, please contact us immediately."
I clicked a link marked "THE INVESTIGATION." It moved me to
a detailed timeline listing information gathered by investigators
since July 16, 1994. There was a photo of Hopkins' car -
undamaged, indeed, sitting with a full tank of gas by a busy
highway. There was a photo of Hopkins' family, his wife and sons.
There was a photo marked "federal investigators on the case." This
last picture was grainy, shot from a distance, harder to see. At first
my eyes skimmed past it, ignoring the movie-familiar shot of the
agents in grey suits and sunglasses. But something caught my
attention, and I scanned back, focused more closely. There among
the men in their sameness was a bird-tiny woman in heels. Her red
hair was longer in the photo - chin-length, softly curled away from
her face - but her stance, her body language was the same. She had
followed Thomas Hopkins from Pennsylvania in 1994 to
Bradenton in 2006.
***
I saw the FBI agents in the coffee shop the next morning. I wasn't
working until afternoon, but I had to get caffeine like everyone
else, and the coffee was good at the shop, and for me it was free.
So I slouched in the corner with my book and sipped and read and
watched the people. I watched the FBI people especially, because
they knew something about the story of Thomas Hopkins.
The male agent smiled at the woman as he passed her the cream;
she smiled back distractedly. Her attention was focused on a set of
files she had spread open on the table. Her feet - in the high shoes
- were bent under her seat, crossed at the ankle. Her partner's legs
sprawled into her space; his feet rested inches from hers, settled
there in a gentle fencing-in that she didn't know about.
I watched the man, saw the way his eyes did not leave the woman.
It was the same as it had been in the library. It was as if she were a
thing he was studying. I looked at his face and again at their feet in
a snow-melt puddle under the table, and wondered what lines ran
between them.
End of Part 1