Chapter One : Part 4

Here If You Need Me: A True Story
by Kate Braestrup

(Page 4 of 4)

I explain again how the warden service conducts a search and how seldom they fail to find what they are looking for, even in less-accessible terrain. Mr. Moore likes it when I refer to "statistical profiles of lost juveniles" and use initialisms like PLS (point last seen). He wants to hear about the search protocols, the reasons why the search is being concentrated in one area rather than another, why the search planes stopped flying at dusk, whether and how he and Marian should speak with the television news crews slated to appear at dawn. He takes up my suggestion about sipping water and reminds his wife to stay hydrated.

Marian breaks in at intervals: "Should I have followed her?" "Wouldn't a good mother have known something was wrong before her baby got so far away that even all these men with planes and dogs can't find her?"

"Aw, darlin'," Ralph says, stroking his wife's back.

"Why can't all these men with planes and dogs find Alison?" Marian asks me.

"It's surprisingly hard to find a small person. These woods are dense. You'd almost have to step right on her to find her."

"But wouldn't she hear us calling to her and answer?" Ralph asks.

Not if she's dead.

"She's asleep," I say.

"Why do you weep?" Jesus inquires of a bereaved crowd in Mark's gospel (5:39). "The child is not dead, but sleeping!"

"Little kids who get lost in the woods do something really smart," I tell Marian. "When they realize they're lost, they find a snug place - like under a bush - curl up, and go to sleep. Adults tend to keep moving; they keep trying to find their own way out. They think they have to solve the problem themselves. Little kids conk out and wait for the grown-ups to solve it. If Alison is under a bush asleep, she probably can't hear us hollering."

Alison's mother looks at me, at my clerical collar and my uniform. She believes me.

I want to be right. I try not to want this too much.

It's quarter past ten. The moon is up, a sliver in the sky with a pale yellow halo of high clouds.

The picnic, the dog scampering into the forest, Alison's blue-clad back disappearing between the trees - a sharpened image her mother fears she will carry forever as the last. The Moores are telling me the story again. They describe their initial attempts to find their daughter, the half-embarrassed cell-phone call to 911, the arrival of a sheriff's deputy and then a game warden who initiated the search that now proceeds outward from the PLS according to statistical best bets. The volunteers came and then the K-9 teams, and a Salvation Army van, and a chaplain with her God's honest truth.

Why do you weep? Your daughter is not dead, but sleeping!

"Jesus took the child by the hand and said to her, 'Talitha cum,' which means, 'Little girl, get up!' And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about" (Mark 5:41). That's how the gospel story goes.

That is the way the Moores' story will go when they get back to the city. It is a story to be filed away for graduations, for Alison's wedding rehearsal supper, and for her own children: "Once upon a time, Alison got lost . . ."

And this is how the Maine Warden Service found her: At about three o'clock in the morning, a few miles almost due west of the PLS, Warden Ron Dunham's K-9, Grace, found a little girl in an Elmo sweatshirt curled up under some brush.

Ron hunkered down and let the dog's cold nose awaken her. "Hey, honey," Ron said gently. "Do you want to go home?"

The girl sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Yes," she said calmly. She crawled out from her nesting place and got to her feet.

"Want me to carry you?"

"No, thank you," Alison said politely.

Alison's nice manners would be part of the story too, for Ron Dunham as well as for her parents. Gazing fondly at her and at each other, the Moores would tell the tale: "'No, thank you,' she said. Can you believe it?"

"Want me to hold your hand?" Ron asked.

The child considered for a moment. "Yes," she decided.

So Warden Dunham and Alison come walking out of the woods hand in hand, past the Salvation Army food wagon and into the parking lot, with K-9 Grace trotting proudly ahead. And my whole, lovely job at that moment was to bear witness to rejoicing and to join in the gladness of the coming day.

Copyright © 2007 by Kate Braestrup

About the Author

Braestrup's novel Onion was published by Viking in 1990, and she has since published a series of magazine articles in Mademoiselle, Ms., City Paper, Hope and Law and Order. She lives in Maine.