Autumn Blue

by Karen Harter

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

An authentic tale of the bonds of family, faith, and trust. As single mother Sidney Walker struggles to save her troubled young son, she finds she is not as alone as she thinks when help comes from the most unexpected person.

Release date: June 27, 2009

Publisher: Center Street

Print pages: 272

Sample

IF HE CAME, it would be by the woods. It was always the woods. Even when it had been perfectly safe for him to lollygag along the street
in broad daylight, Ty had always preferred a floor of decaying leaves and fir needles and a ceiling of sky or green boughs.


The woodlands behind their house edged a gully formed by Sparrow Creek which meandered all the way to the edge of Ham Bone,
wrapping around the town’s east side. Tucked between stands of trees were houses and pastures, churches and schools, all snuggled
against the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Surely by now Ty knew every square foot of his territory as well as the wild
creatures that watched him come and go.


When her son was younger, he returned from his adventures with wildlife specimens: mud puppies, red-legged frogs, little tree
frogs with emerald skin as smooth and damp as avocado flesh. Ponds and streams held more treasure for him than fleets of Spanish
galleons. He spent countless hours combing his fingers through murky water and mud in search of baby catfish or wading through
lily pads, jeweled dragon flies circling above as his keen eyes scanned for bullfrog nostrils breaking the surface of the
water. Long ago, she had learned to let him go. Having the instincts of a wild creature, he was certainly safer in his beloved
woods than on the county roads. Sidney always knew her son was on his way home when the dog, panting and covered with burrs,
preceded him to the back door.


She stood at the kitchen sink, a cereal bowl in one yellow-gloved hand, the other submerged in gray soapy water with a scrub
brush. Through the window, her eyes skimmed over the dog run where the grass was as worn as the knees of Tyson’s old jeans,
searching—as she had for days—the edge of the trees behind the house.


The landlord had not bothered much with landscaping. He simply cleared the lot and plopped a used mobile home in the middle
of it with a For Rent sign in the front yard. Some grass just naturally filled in, seeded by overgrown pasture land on either
side of them, but had not flourished due to a long, dry summer. The only shrubs were clumps of jagged Oregon grape and leathery
salal spilling from the shade of cedar trees that formed the back boundary. The two dead azalea bushes in front didn’t count.



Vaguely she heard her daughters’ laughter from their bedroom. She felt the dog streak behind her and didn’t notice until the
girls ran past shrieking with delight that their brother’s German shepherd looked like the Big Bad Wolf disguised as a grandmother.
He came through again, shaking his head to rid it of a pink doll bonnet, limping every time he stepped on the shawl that had
slipped around his neck. They would never get away with that if Ty were home. He had a thing about that dog.


“Come here, Duke.” Sidney pulled the wool scarf over his head, snagging the bonnet along with it.

“Mom!” Sissy whined. “Why did you do that? He likes it. Don’t you, Duke?”

“Look at his tail, Sis. See how droopy it is? That’s how a dog says he’d rather be anywhere but here right now. Rebecca, put
him outside, please.”


“Should I put him on his dog run?”

Normally Sidney would have insisted on hooking the leash up to the long wire that ran between two posts out back. A dog should
not be roaming the neighborhood free, even outside town. Some cars still sped through pretty fast. Besides, it wasn’t fair
to the neighbors. Old Mr. Bradbury across the street would not be pleased to find his peonies trampled or, worse yet, a pile
of dog poop on his perfect lawn. “No. Just let him go.”


Rebecca giggled as she opened the back door. “Now look at him! He’s happy!” The dog’s bushy tail swung like a reaper’s scythe
as he slipped through the opening and bounded into the yard. The girls went back to their play.


Sidney lingered at the window. If Ty was watching the house from the woods, contemplating coming home for a warm bed and a
home-cooked meal, that dog would know it. They were normally as inseparable as twins. Duke bounded across the yard, sniffing
and peeing here and there along the wire-fenced edges. Once he stopped, his nose lifted high into the wind. Her hopes rose.
Then he turned and wandered off, not toward the woods, but on a haphazard trail with no apparent destination.


She had searched all morning, picking up where she left off the night before when darkness fell about a mile down the course
of Sparrow Creek. She wondered as she trudged along trails made by animals and children, thrashing through thick tangles of
huckleberry in less accessible spots, if she should have started upstream instead of down. Or if Ty had hidden himself far
away from the creek in the deep, mysterious woods of the foothills or beyond.


A thin branch had whipped her face. The sting of it was all it took to bring on a good cry, one that needed to come. She had
plopped herself down on a fallen cedar and let her sobs fill the woods. Birdsong fell silent as she rocked with her arms wrapped
around her ribs to keep her heart from exploding. It was a lonely thing to raise a fifteen-year-old boy alone.


She rinsed a plate and set it in the draining rack while her eyes swept the terrain outside her kitchen window, across the
rolling blue-green stands of evergreen trees to the east. Wherever Ty was, it was too far away. The tension she felt on that
invisible cord that every mother knows is not really severed at birth was a constant, almost unbearable pain.


It was harder to cope on a Saturday. At the office, her worries had been interrupted by phone calls, working up insurance
premium estimates, and the usual computer work. But today she just couldn’t quell her imagination. He didn’t even have his
jacket.


Ty had been missing now for just over a week. On her lunch hours she had cruised the streets of town, checking the library,
behind grocery stores, under bridges. The Winger County Sheriff’s Department was searching for him too and promised to call
her as soon as they had any information. She hoped to find him first. Her angry, rebellious boy. Was he safe? She had a need
to touch him, to apply her love like a salve to invisible wounds, to make everything all right. This need overwhelmed her
desire to bend him over her knee for a good old-fashioned spanking. It was too late for that; he had grown almost as tall
as she was.


She finished the breakfast dishes and then, without planning to, found herself cleaning out the fridge. She dumped the last
of the broccoli lasagna into the garbage disposal. Tyson’s favorite. Well, it wouldn’t keep forever.


“What’s for lunch, Mom?” Seven-year-old Sissy crawled onto a tall stool, plopping her pudgy forearms on the breakfast bar.
She peered through long brown hair, uncombed as usual. She was still wearing her T-shirt from yesterday with flannel pajama
pants that exposed her belly. It was not a fashion statement.


“Didn’t you just eat?” Sidney had left fruit and cereal out for the girls in case they woke up before she returned from her
search, which she had started just after dawn.


“That was a long time ago.” Rebecca joined her sister at the counter. Her lighter hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail,
a style she wore often since getting her ears pierced. All the other girls in the fourth grade had their ears pierced, according to Rebecca, and Sidney had finally succumbed. She was
learning to choose her battles wisely. Some things just didn’t matter in the long run.


“Okay.” Sidney began rummaging through the fridge. “How about egg sandwiches?”

“With tomato and avocado!” Sissy said.

“And onion,” Rebecca added.

Sidney felt like a short-order cook, but didn’t mind one bit. The only thing missing was the third face that should have been
lined up at the breakfast bar. It was their gathering place—the center of her family’s world, it seemed, where the day’s stories
and silly jokes were told, problems discussed, while Sidney sliced, chopped, sautéed, and stewed. Ty loved to taste-test her
concoctions, especially muffins straight from the oven and too hot to hold.


“Mom, don’t forget the fair tomorrow.”

Sidney wiped her hands on a towel. “Oh, Sis . . .”

“We have to go. Tomorrow is the last day! And you promised!”


“I did?”

“A long time ago. Don’t you remember?”

“But your brother might come home.” If he wasn’t home by then, she knew she had to be out combing his usual habitat, maybe
above the bridge next time.


Rebecca shrugged. “If he comes home, he can just let himself in and we’ll see him when we get home.”

“He probably followed a wild animal way up to the mountain,” Sissy suggested innocently. The girls didn’t know the true circumstances
of Ty’s disappearance or their serious implications. Sidney didn’t want to frighten them. “Don’t worry, Mama. He’s just having
an adventure. He always comes home.”


Sidney busied herself with frying eggs, slicing tomatoes, and toasting bread. She tried to banter with her daughters, but
every sentence fell flat. Would he come home today? Or slip into his bedroom during the night where she’d find him safely
curled beneath the covers of his own bed in the morning? She could only hope.


The girls chattered about the fair while they ate their sandwiches. Sidney couldn’t say yes, but then again she struggled
with saying no. She’d been neglecting them lately. When they finished lunch and scooted off to their room she felt relieved.



With a deep sigh, she blew a strand of blond-streaked hair from her eyes, dropping her head back as if hoping to see the answers
to all her questions through an open window to heaven. Instead she saw the dark crack that ran along the peak of the double-wide
mobile home’s ceiling. The house was coming apart at the seams—literally. And yet, she couldn’t complain. It was better than
their apartment in the old Victorian mansion in town on the corner of Elm and Prentice. At least here she had her own washer
and dryer and the kids had a big yard to play in. They owed the move to the dog. The decision was actually made by their former
landlord in response to complaints of a constant pounding—the sound of Duke’s heavy tail beating against the wall in Tyson’s
room.


Sidney had been thrilled to find this house. Miraculously, it didn’t cost that much more than the apartment and it was better
for all of them, only a couple of miles from town and with a new stretch of woods for Ty to explore right from their backyard.
The house itself would never grace the pages of Traditional Home despite Sidney’s talent for interior design. That was her intended major in college, before she got pregnant and dropped
out to have Ty. No, about all she could afford to do with this place was keep it clean and try to have matching towels out
for company when they came.


She should have married Jack Mellon when she had the chance. That might have changed everything. Surely it would have. Jack
and Ty had really hit it off, right from the start. Had it been two years since she broke up with Jack? He used to take her
son to baseball games and taught him to fly remote-control airplanes in the pasture across from the elementary school. There
were other boys Ty’s age there too, mostly with their dads, and they all met down at the Pizza Barn afterward. Jack was a
nice guy, a butcher. Looking back, Sidney realized there had been a sparkle in her son’s brown eyes that she couldn’t remember
seeing since.


The thought had been nagging at her for months now. So what if she hadn’t felt any chemistry with Jack? Was that a valid reason
for depriving her son of what he needed more desperately than protein or vitamin C or a good night’s sleep? What was it about
her that wouldn’t allow the chemistry to happen? Was she waiting for another bad boy to come along? A man like Dodge? Someone
who would keep her living on the edge? She shuddered. If she had it all to do over again, she’d marry Jack in a heartbeat.


She remembered Tyson as a small boy, the delightful sound of his giggles, the way he adored his baby sisters. He had been
content to play alone for hours. Even while other children played tag nearby, Ty seemed to prefer the cavelike hollow beneath
the big rhododendron outside their kitchen window, where she could hear the boy-sounds of rumbling truck engines while she
peeled potatoes for dinner. Once she had waited for him at the edge of a stand of trees while he followed a brown rabbit into
the underbrush. She heard him thrash through the dry leaves for some time and then a momentary silence before his tiny voice
wafted through the low branches. “Mommy, where are me?”


But Tyson was really lost this time. It was as if he had been swept out to sea beneath her very nose. It all happened so gradually
that she hadn’t noticed how dangerous the undercurrent really was. By the time she realized how far her son had drifted, there
seemed to be no lifeline long enough to reach him. He had slowly become a mere speck on the horizon—and then she couldn’t
see him at all.


MILLARD BRADBURY’S EYES opened at precisely 7:45 A.M., right on schedule and without the benefit—or the curse—of an alarm. He swung his feet to the
hardwood floor, where his leather slippers awaited, parked side by side like a couple of polished brown sedans nosed to a
curb.


At the bathroom sink he shaved the face of a stranger. Pouches had formed under the blue eyes, and lines arced away from the
corners and down his cheeks like streams from a fan sprinkler. The mouth sagged downward as if it might soon slide right off
his chin. He forced it up into a smile, searching the image in the mirror for any sign of the man he once knew. Gone. Not
even a glimmer of recognition in the old man’s eyes.


He dressed and made up the bed, fluffing the fat shammed pillows and leaning them against the headboard along with a smaller,
decorative one just like Molly used to do. His floor exercises were next: the back stretches his doctor had prescribed, some
leg lifts, and a few push-ups. After a cup of instant coffee (why brew a pot for just one person?) and a banana sliced onto
a bowl of crunchy Grape-Nuts (at least his teeth were still good) he retrieved the Winger County Herald from the front porch.


There was a slight nip in the air but the sky was blue. He leaned against the porch rail and dropped the paper to his side.
A red-winged blackbird emitted its liquid warble from the deep ditch at the edge of a vacant field on the west side of the
house. From the woods beyond, other bird voices twittered and sang. Molly could have identified each of them by their voices
alone. She would have made him stop to listen—if she were there. He scanned his lawn as he did every morning for any sign
of an invading dandelion having successfully parachuted over the picket fence into his territory while he slept. His grass
remained like carpet, the plush, expensive kind, with precision-cut edges curving along neatly landscaped borders where perennial
shrubs shaded broad-leafed hostas.


The winesap apple tree strained under the weight of its dappled-red fruit. Hah! He had been right about pruning it back to
only a small umbrella two seasons ago. Molly had wrung her hands and whined the whole time, warning that he was butchering
the poor thing. Gave it a good military haircut, he did, and it was better off for it. What he would do with all those apples
was a worry to him, though. His pantry shelves were still lined with jars of cinnamon applesauce and apple butter, his freezer
stuffed with zip-closed bags labeled Pie-Fixings in Molly’s flowing cursive hand.


A door slammed across the street. That lady from the trailer-house had emerged, arms full, bending at the knees while trying
to lock the house up as her two girls headed down the steps and got into the car. He had met her at the mailbox not long after
the family moved in and the For Rent sign was yanked out of the yard. She was a nice enough young lady, he guessed. No husband.
Not much meat on her bones, but she dressed neatly and wore her dark blond hair like she put some effort into it. Not at all
like her yard, which was a downright eyesore to the neighborhood with patches of grass and weeds growing down the middle of
the gravel driveway, a couple of scraggly half-dead azalea bushes clinging to the cementlike dirt, and a bent downspout hanging
off one corner of the double-wide house.


She had a boy, too, a boy old enough to be out there mowing those patches of grass and getting up on a ladder to secure that
downspout. But on rare sightings the kid had clattered down the blacktop road on a skateboard, baggy pants at half-mast, his
tufted hair, even from a distance, looking as mangy as their lawn. Millard blew out a disgusted sigh, remembering how he had
hoped the kid’s pants would slip down and hog-tie him. Why, when he was that age, every boy he knew had chores after school,
and there was no fishing or pasture baseball games until the chicken coops were clean, eggs gathered, firewood cut, fences
mended, and anything else that needed doing done. He shook his head, turning to go inside. Punk kids nowadays. Wouldn’t know
how to do an honest day’s work if their life hinged on it.


He shook the paper open, pulled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket, and sank into the worn blue recliner by the picture
window. First he perused the obituaries (seemed like the only contact he had with old peers anymore, their entire lives summed
up in a few neat paragraphs). He then worked the crossword until his daughter’s pale blue Chevy pulled into the drive. She
pushed through the front door with a grocery sack in each arm. “Hi, Dad. How are you feeling?” She bent to kiss the top of
his forehead. “You should be wearing a sweater. It’s not summer anymore. Where’s your gray cardigan?” She proceeded to the
kitchen to begin her weekly ritual. He heard cupboards opening and closing. “Nicole has her first cheerleader gig Friday night—first
football game of the season. I hope this weather holds. You know those girls are going to freeze their little tushies when
it gets colder. And they just hate to bundle up and cover their cute little outfits.”


“I need a six-letter word for ‘jump.’ Starts with a p.”


He heard the suction-release sound of the fridge opening. “Prance?”

“Pounce.” That’s right. Why hadn’t he thought of it? He penned the letters into the appropriate boxes.

“You haven’t even touched this squash, have you, Dad?” She sounded hurt that he had not appreciated her boiling and mashing
the disgusting gourd’s flesh into a stringy pulp. “You know you need the vitamin A, Dad. It’s good for your eyesight. What
are you going to do when you can’t see anymore? No crossword puzzles, no Wheel of Fortune. That won’t be any fun, will it?”


Nine across had him stumped. He gazed out the window. Seven letters with a d in the middle, meaning “inner substance.” “I just saw a starling drop a bomb on that shiny blue car out there,” he said.
The splat on Rita’s windshield was purple. It was a good year for blackberries. They hung like grapes from tangled vines on
the far side of the field next door. He might go out and pick another coffee can full if he felt like it that afternoon.


Rita came around the corner and peered out the front-room window as if she didn’t believe him. She clicked her tongue and
shook her head. “Nasty birds.


“Well, don’t take anything for granted,” she continued. “Not your eyesight or anything else. At your age every day of good
health is a gift.”


“Oh,” he said, “and everyone else’s is under specific warranty?”

“You need to take care of yourself, Dad. That’s all I’m saying.” Once Rita was on a certain track, she was not easily derailed.
She headed back to the kitchen and he heard her loading this week’s supply of frozen dinners—leftovers from her family’s meals
divided into sections in plastic containers—onto the freezer shelves. “Which reminds me, Dad. It’s time to get your prostate
checked again. What was your PSA count last time?”


He slapped his pen to the newspaper in his lap. So, his life had come to this. “I don’t remember.” Of course, he knew the
moment the words escaped that they were grounds for suspicion of the onset of Alzheimer’s. “I peed twice today so far. It
was as yellow as lemonade and I flushed both times. My bowels are regular, blood pressure maintaining at 125 over 80. Is there
anything else you’d like to know?”


Rita came out and stood over him, her arms crossed, her face pinched. His pretty little girl was beginning to look middle-aged.
Her throat had become minutely wrinkled like the pink crepe paper hung for her birthdays back when she was a child and he
was clearly an adult. Had it been so long since the feet she stomped wore little Mary Jane shoes? She tilted her head defiantly,
clamping her hands on her full hips. “I’m sorry, Dad.” She certainly was not. “But these things need to be discussed, whether
you’re comfortable with it or not. If Mom were here, she’d be the one asking, not me. But she’s not here and I’m all you’ve
got. This isn’t easy for me either, you know. I lost my mother, but I’m not sitting around moping and giving up on life. And
it’s not like I don’t have anything better to do. I’m in charge of the Girl Scouts craft projects this fall. I’ve got play
costumes to make, soccer practices, piano lessons, you name it.” She sighed, looking down at him like he was a hopeless cause.
It was the resigned, dutiful sigh of a martyr bravely accepting her fate.


Giving up on life. What was there to give up? “Then don’t worry about me,” he scowled. “I told you before that you don’t have
to dote on me. I can make my own suppers, for Pete’s sake.”


“But you won’t. You’d live on bologna sandwiches and corn dogs if I let you.” She sat on the edge of the sofa, leaning toward
him. “As long as you live here in this big old house all by yourself, I’m just going to worry about you, Dad. I wish you’d
reconsider about going to Haywood House. It’s a nice place. You get your own little apartment, so you’d have your treasured
privacy, but there are other people just like you there. You can get to know them in the dining room at mealtimes, maybe meet
some friends that like to play chess or put together jigsaw puzzles. And wouldn’t it be nice to know that there are doctors
and nurses right there on staff?”


It would take the self-imposed pressure off her, anyway. He wished she would go now. Leave him before the last hull of manhood
was shucked away, exposing only a withered pea, a nothing, with no higher purpose than to put together cardboard jigsaw puzzles
until he returned to the dust from which he came. He already knew this about himself, of course. But it was a truth better
left untouched, unexplored. It was best to keep to the rhythm of his daily routine, biding away the hours with pleasant distractions
and the self-imposed orders of the day. His battles were no longer fought against Soviet MiGs, but airborne dandelion seeds
that dared invade the airspace inside the perimeter of his picket fence. Gone were the glory days of coaching the wrestling
team at Silver Falls High School over in Dunbar—state champions six years out of ten. Not bad for a hick-town farm-boy team.
But now his greatest mission was to solve the before-and-after puzzle on Wheel of Fortune before anyone bought the last vowel.


He glanced at his watch and pushed up from his chair. “The mail should be here now.” He paused when he passed her to touch
Rita’s soft red hair. “I’ll be good,” he promised, “as long as you don’t make me eat any more of that baby-puke squash.”


SIDNEY AND HER FRIEND Micki steered their children through the crowded fairgrounds toward the livestock exhibits. Attending the Winger County Harvest
Fair was an annual tradition, one Sidney couldn’t deny her daughters, though her heart was not in it, to say the least.


Today her girls wore matching pink denim jackets that their grandmother had sent from Desert Hot Springs last Christmas. Sissy’s
had a gray streak across the front from rubbing it against the corral fence where they had watched a friend from school run
her pony through the barr. . .