God’s Work

by Bernice L. McFadden

When Officer Fox dug into his trouser pocket for the soiled handkerchief he’d been swabbing his nose with since the start of his shift, his wilted pack of L&M Filters fell to the floor.

He’d only had two cigarettes since breakfast. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d had six or seven puffs of two cigarettes since breakfast.

He was currently fighting a cold, or maybe it was the flu because every time he lit up, his lungs exploded.

Fox stooped over, retrieved the pack, and stuffed it back into his empty pocket. “’Scuse me,” he muttered, turning away from the grieving woman to blow his nose. After that, he carefully folded the handkerchief into quarters and shoved it back into his pocket. Clearing his throat, he touched the back of his hand to his forehead to check for fever.

When he turned back to meet the tearing eyes of Gigi and the bowed head of her daughter, his lips were curled into a reassuring smile.

Her youngest daughter was the fifth child to go missing in a year.

Runaway?

Abducted?

Dead?

Nightly, the local news reported on the missing Kilduff and Mihalko girls.

Have you seen these girls?

They resembled each other so much they could have been sisters. Both were fair-complexioned with hair the color of corn silk, except the Kilduff girl had brown eyes and the Mihalko girl had eyes the color of wet sapphires.

Little girls with those particular features were highly desired and well sought-after on the black market.

Black market.

He didn’t like that term. He only used it because that’s the expression Father Mann used. But when the priest said it, it didn’t sound dirty.

* * *

The first girl who went missing was seven-year-old Maria Lopez. Three and a half months later, ten-year-old Chantrelle Washington vanished. Their disappearances hadn’t raised too much of a fuss among the residents of Annunciation. The families were upset of course, and to be fair, the local news had reported on it, although it was less of a report and more of a mention, a blip that was severed by a True Filter cigarette commercial. You know, the commercial with the male and female singing duo?

Ain’t it the truth when you smoke True, you get all of the flavor and the filter too . . .

Fox’s wife smoked those True cigarettes. She didn’t break out into song, but she seemed to like them just fine.

Anyway, it’s not that the people of Annunciation didn’t care about those first two little girls, it was just that they didn’t care about those first two little girls as much as they did the ones who followed. You see, the Mihalko and Kilduff girls were real, true blood members of the Annunciation community, a community of European immigrants stretching back two hundred years.

That said, the business owners did agree to post flyers of the missing Maria and Chantrelle in their storefront windows:

 

Have you seen Maria Lopez?

Have you seen Chantrelle Washington?

 

After seven days the flyers were replaced with what the proprietors felt was more relevant information.

When the families of Chantrelle and Maria saw that their flyers had been replaced with announcements about the church bake sale and the official crowning of the Spring Flower Queen—well, they felt as if their already missing daughters had gone missing for a second time.

But then Rose Mihalko didn’t come home after school, and, three days later, Laura Ann Kilduff’s mother walked into her daughter’s bedroom and found Laura Ann’s teddy bear in her bed, but not Laura Ann.

Flyers bearing photos of both Laura Ann and Rose were posted in windows of every business between Annunciation and Devonville. That covered a good eighty-seven miles.

Later, when the photos on those flyers faded and the edges curled, they were quickly replaced with crisp, bright new ones.

Initially, a search party had been dispatched. Residents scoured the surrounding woods, shouting the girls’ names. They kicked through piles of dead leaves, turned over logs; Josh McNamare even sent his twin hound dogs, Jake and Judd, into the cave at the base of Abbey Mountain.

The hunt went on for several days, often stretching into the night. Frightened children watched from porches and bedroom windows as long yellow cylinders from the flashlights sliced through the darkness like Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber.

They hadn’t done any of that for Chantrelle and Maria.

In the midst of searching for Laura Ann and Rose, a mysterious fire consumed Ike’s Ice Cream Shoppe. Some people thought it might be arson, some sort of retaliation from the parents of those “other” missing girls, because Ike had been the only business owner in Annunciation to flat out refuse to post a flyer of them.

No one was really surprised. I mean, Ike never tried to hide his thoughts and beliefs where the Negroes were concerned. Hell, he didn’t even sell chocolate ice cream! Ike said he didn’t believe in it, said it was an unnatural and inferior flavor.

That’s just how Ike was.

But then there was some talk that maybe Ike himself had burned down his business for the insurance money because he was flat broke on account of his wife having cleaned out his bank account.

Seems as though she’d met some man through the “Lonely Hearts Club” column in the local paper. Some Frenchman. At least that was the talk. People said that she’d emptied Ike’s bank account, bought a first-class ticket to Paris, and that was that.

Figures.

Fox never did like her. He thought she was a sidity type of woman—conceited. Stuck-up. Fox believed he could tell a person’s character by the type of cigarette they smoked. Ike’s wife smoked Djarum Black. Clove cigarettes?

Who in the world smoked cloves? Stuck-up sidity people smoked cloves, that’s who.

Anyway, with those flyers all around like they were, people seemed to see the missing girls everywhere. Someone thought they saw the Mihalko girl at the pizza parlor in Henderson, another claimed they’d spotted Laura Ann dressed like a boy in the back of a pickup truck cuddling a puppy in her lap. Fox followed up on each and every so-called sighting, but always came up empty.

A few weeks after Laura Ann disappeared, federal agents descended on Annunciation in a fleet of dark sedans. Outfitted in neat blue suits and shiny black shoes, the agents swarmed Annunciation like locusts. They questioned the parents of the missing girls as well as the residents, and then demanded from Fox every piece of evidence he had. Every piece. Abduction was a federal crime, one agent told Fox, as if Fox didn’t know the law. “And anyway,” the federal agent had added with a smirk, “you yahoos would probably just screw everything up.”

That comment had hurt Fox’s feelings.

The federal agent’s name was Donald L. Smiley. Funny thing was, the man was as stone-faced as a wall. Not once did Fox catch him smiling, not that missing girls were anything to grin about. But still, imagine having a last name like Smiley and not ever smiling? It’s weird, don’t you think? Now, that Agent Smiley rolled his own cigarettes. He kept his tobacco in a pricey-looking brown leather pouch with his initials embossed in gold on the hide.

Fox didn’t know what he thought about people who rolled and smoked their own cigarettes. Maybe they didn’t trust folk. Maybe they themselves were untrustworthy. It was one or both of those things.

Anyway, the feds dragged the lake; divers clad in scuba suits sank themselves into the water towers and long-abandoned wells.

They’d found some things—a rusted tricycle covered in moss, headless dolls, plenty of beer cans, and several onion sacks containing whole litters of kittens—well, the skeletal remains of kittens. They found all of those things but not those little girls.

Fox wondered about the heart and soul of a person who could drown one innocent animal, let alone six or seven at a time. He wondered what type of cigarettes the murderer of innocent animals smoked.

Father Mann had said that the world was full of monsters, and Annunciation was in the world, wasn’t it?

Not too long after the feds left town, a correspondent and crew from CNN arrived and set up cameras on the courthouse lawn and in front of McDougal’s Diner on Main Street. They ran down residents coming out of the hair salon and the hoagie shop, shoving microphones into their startled faces.

Did you know the girls?

Are you afraid for your own children?

Even when CNN reported on the disappearances, they didn’t mention Maria and Chantrelle.

So, if CNN didn’t mention Maria and Chantrelle and the feds didn’t come running when they went missing, then it was clear to Fox and anyone else paying attention that Maria and Chantrelle didn’t matter enough to count, right?

Anyway, the last time CNN had come to Annunciation was back in ’84 when Vera Singer picked up a jar of fruit preserves and saw the face of Christ etched into the fleshy half of a peach. Of course, you had to hold it to the light just the right way to see it. After that, people traveled to Annunciation from all over the country just so they could witness the miracle with their very own eyes.

Yes, they’d called it a miracle, and Fox didn’t doubt it. Annunciation was blessed and especially favored by God. Father Mann had always claimed it was, and that peach half was proof.

* * *

Fox glanced out the window. He could see the blue and yellow lights whirling silently in the glass cone atop his cruiser. Beyond that, Eddie Larson, his towhead deputy, was puffing on a cigarette as he shot the shit with the flip-flop-wearing, graphic-T-shirt-clad trailer-park trash.

Some of the people gawked and pointed at the trailer, while others stood a safe distance away as if the trailer itself were diseased or dangerous.

Now, that Eddie Larson was a Marlboro man. But he smoked Marlboro Lights, which in Fox’s opinion wasn’t as manly a cigarette as the full-flavored Marlboros in the red-and-white box. Fox believed Marlboro Lights were what women smoked, manly women, like Eileen Shepard who drove a tractor trailer and had three children, but no husband. Eileen Shepard wore her hair cut short like a military man.

And no one had ever seen her in a dress or heels. She never wore lipstick, but she did sport a pair of diamond stud earrings.

Fox thought that women acting like men smoked Marlboro Lights, but couldn’t figure out why a man would smoke Marlboro Lights, unless of course he was a man who liked men.

* * *

It was still bright outside, but already evening mist was gathering over the pine trees that dotted the mountains like pushpins.

Autumn was just around the corner. In a few more weeks, Abbey Mountain would start to sing.

Abbey Mountain was the second piece of evidence that Annunciation was blessed and favored.

A scientist had published an article in the Scientific American claiming that the elevation, the mineral content of the soil, and the spacing of the trees and power lines on Abbey Mountain all contributed to the chorus that sailed off of it when the seasonal winds came through.

Fox thought the scientist had gone to great lengths to disprove God’s existence. Sometime back, he’d watched a PBS special with yet another scientist who claimed to have disproved Moses’s burning bush. Apparently, the scientist had stated, there was a species of bush that could self-combust if the sun was hot enough. They showed a bush bursting into flames as evidence of their claim, but Fox seriously doubted it was real. Hollywood, after all, was known for creating magic. Movie magic.

For instance, Godzilla was just a man in a Godzilla suit. Just an average-sized man in a Godzilla suit, but on the screen that prehistoric terror looked taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago, and everyone knew that the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world.

If Hollywood could do that, then creating a bush that erupted into flames all on its own couldn’t have been too difficult a hoax to pull off. Fox supposed he could rig a bush to do the same if he had the time and the know-how. Those Hollywood folks were not to be trusted, they were charlatans the lot of ’em.

They probably smoked cloves like Ike’s cheating, thieving wife.

Anyway, Father Mann said that there were angels living in the Abbey Mountains. Singing angels.

“Why do you think they’re called the Abbey Mountains? There was once a community of monks who lived up in those mountains. Monks live in an abbey.

“It’s still up there,” Father Mann had added. “I imagine it’s in ruins, of course. The monks are all gone, gone off to heaven, but they visit every autumn as angels, and they sing the Lord’s praises loud enough for all of Annunciation to hear.”

Father Mann smoked a pipe. Wise men smoked pipes. Good, wise men smoked pipes. Fox’s grandfather had smoked a pipe and he was the nicest, kindest, and wisest man Fox had ever known. Fox remembered that Abraham Lincoln had smoked a pipe. He believed Lincoln had been a wise and kind man, too kind for his own good, so kind he’d ripped the country apart by ending slavery. Fox supposed no man was perfect.

* * *

He pulled the pack of L&M cigarettes from his pocket and stared at it. He really needed to have a smoke. Fuck this cold or this flu or whatever it was.

He had been a lifelong Lucky Strikes man before he switched to L&M Filters. He’d made the change at the behest of his doctor, who had claimed that L&M Filters were better for him. Healthier.

Days later, when he was in the body shop waiting for Jeffrey Maddox to buff scratches off the hood of his pickup truck, Fox had picked up a battered copy of Reader’s Digest and right there on the fifth page was an advertisement for L&M Filters. The ad had a photo of the Academy Award–winning actor Fredric March. Beneath the photo was March’s very own testimony about the health benefits of smoking L&M Filters.

Well, Fox couldn’t say why exactly, but it made him feel special that he and an Academy Award–winning actor both smoked the same brand.

* * *

He looked at GiGi. “Do you mind?” he asked.

GiGi shook her head. “No, go ’head.” And then she whispered, “Can I bum one?”

“Sure.” Fox handed her the near-empty pack.

He lit his own cigarette and sucked on the filter until the smoke clogged in his throat. “’Scuse me,” he gagged, turning and stumbling through the door. After a few racking coughs, Fox spat a glob of phlegm onto the ground. Cussing under his breath, he dropped the lit cigarette into the rheumy pool.

Yeah, he thought as he cleared his throat, it was the flu for sure.

Fox stepped back into the trailer just as GiGi pulled her stringy blond hair atop her head and wrangled it into a loose knot. With her face thoroughly exposed, her cheekbones stuck out more severely.

He gazed upon her used-to-be-pretty face and imagined that before life sunk its teeth into GiGi Stamford, single mother of two, she was probably as beautiful as her missing daughter.

What a shame, he thought, what a downright shame.

GiGi Stamford took one last pull on the filter and stubbed the cigarette out in a gold tin ashtray. When she did so, the glass nesting table wobbled on its uneven legs.

Fox figured she was saving the rest of the cigarette for later when he wouldn’t be there to give her another. He might just leave the rest of the pack with her, seeing as he was the one who had taken her daughter in the first place. Plus, his flu-like symptoms weren’t going to allow him to enjoy a decent smoke.

Fox sighed.

His eyes traveled around the trailer. It was untidy. The carpet on the floor was stained and bald in places. The walls needed a fresh coat of paint and perhaps some new screens on the windows. The ones that hung haphazardly in the metal frames had holes and gashes large enough for a child’s hand to push through. With openings that big, he couldn’t imagine why the trailer wasn’t filled with flies, especially with the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

Fox looked back at his notes. The remaining daughter was . . . Fox flipped through the pages of his notepad . . . twelve years old. “What’s your name again, sweetheart?”

“Elvia,” the young girl sitting alongside her mother mumbled down to the filthy carpet. She hadn’t raised her head the entire time he’d been there.

Fox scribbled: L-via.

GiGi patted the girl’s back.

“Mrs. Stamford—”

“Ms.,” GiGi corrected him. “I’m not married,” she whispered.

Fox already knew this, but it was important to pretend he didn’t.

She had two children by two different men, townies who cycled in and out of jail on minor offenses. They weren’t bad guys, just men who didn’t want to leave their childhoods behind.

Fox supposed if he hadn’t gone into the military for four years, he too might have ended up just like them. The military and Jesus Christ had saved his life, no doubt in his mind.

Now, those boys smoked Newport 100s. He was surprised by that because Newports were mostly smoked by Negroes, both the Negro men and the Negro women. In fact, the father of the Chantrelle girl smoked Newports. He remembered seeing the pack on the kitchen table when he went to talk to them about their missing daughter. Fox supposed that white boys smoked Newports because they thought it made them seem cool. Like soul-brother cool. Fox didn’t know why any white man would want to emulate a black man, but he also didn’t know why people put peanuts in their Coca-Cola. He supposed to each his own.

Elvia excused herself and disappeared into the back of the trailer.

Fox wrote: Single mother.

And then: Meth-head??

From what Fox had observed, GiGi had at least three missing teeth. The ones that remained were stained a shade of brown that suggested she was doing more than smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

Meth was a problem in Annunciation.

“Amanda, she’s, uhm . . . she’s special, you know?” GiGi sputtered.

Most mothers believed their children were special.

“Of course she is,” Fox said, his smile brightening a bit.

“No, no, not like that. She’s special to me, of course, but I mean she’s . . . she’s retarded.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

In the back of the trailer Elvia flushed the toilet.

He wrote on his pad: Retarded.

He hadn’t thought Amanda Stamford was retarded—maybe a little simple, very agreeable, trusting to a fault, but not retarded. Retarded, he decided, was too harsh a label. He struck two lines through the word.

Amanda had been an easy catch. No, correction—Amanda Stamford had been an easy lure. Fox had pulled up alongside her early that morning just as she rounded the bend in the road that was as blind as a blind spot in a trucker’s side-view mirror. He’d rolled down his window and said, “Hop in, Amanda, I’ll take you all the way to school.”

Amanda had climbed into his cruiser without hesitation because everyone in town knew Officer Fox.

Friendly Officer Fox. That very nice and helpful Officer Fox. That Officer Fox is such a nice policeman. What a good husband that Officer Fox is, and a fine Christian to boot!

“Can you turn on the siren?” she’d asked, blinking her pretty green eyes.

“Of course,” he’d said.

No one could accuse Fox of being a small man. He liked his strawberry pie, cheeseburgers, and beer, and it showed. Fox might not have been the tallest man in Annunciation, but he was a respectable five feet seven inches. So, he was caught off guard by the amount of fight the ten-year-old Amanda Stamford had in her when he brought the chloroform-soaked cloth over her face.

His eyes glided over the thin red scratches on the back of his hand. These acts of mercy were necessary; Father Mann had said so. He had assured Fox that they were sending the little girls to loving homes, to loving people who could not have children of their own. “Like you, Fox, like you and Janine.”

Fox blinked, and then wrote: Barren.

He and Janine had been married for eight years, and to tell the truth, they were happy; but a space had developed between them and it grew bigger each month when Janine’s period made an appearance.

The doctors had said they were both fine, both healthy. It was just going to take a little longer for them.

“How long?”

The doctor couldn’t predict that.

With what the priest was paying him for snatching the children, Fox would have enough money to grease the palms of those people who could bypass the bureaucratic crimson tape and deliver unto him, unto him and Janine, the baby they so desperately wanted. Or, maybe they could pay someone to carry a child for them. People were doing that too, he’d read.

The idea of having a child of his own was nice, but this wasn’t just about what he wanted. He wasn’t a selfish man, after all. He was saving lives. He was doing God’s work.

* * *

A year before Fox snatched the first child, Father Mann had invited him to the rectory for a Cuban cigar and a snifter of fine cognac.

Up until that day Fox had smoked only two cigars in his life, the first one at his wedding reception and the second in celebration of the birth of his brother’s first child.

Those cigars had been cheap White Owls that could be purchased at any convenience store. The Cuban, however, was as smooth as the cognac.

Fox remembered that it had felt spooky in the room because the rectory walls were covered in shadows. Father Mann preferred candlelight or lamplight. That night the room was awash in both.

“We would be saving them from themselves, you know,” said Father Mann in between sips of cognac and puffs on his cigar. “This is a fine town; not the best town, it has its problems, as you well know.” Father Mann had paused, his hazel eyes searching Fox’s face before he leaned in and lowered his voice to a whisper. “There’s no perfect place, Fox, but there are plenty of places better than here. Look at it like this: we’re giving these little girls a chance at a better life, with a better family.”

Fox had nodded in agreement before draining his glass.

“There are so many desperate people in this country, good, God-fearing desperate people who are able and willing to donate exorbitant amounts of money to make their dream of having a family a reality.”

Father Mann called them donations. Not payments, donations.

* * *

Fox was perspiring. In the far corner of the trailer, the standing fan was silent and still.

It was August, for Chrissakes, he raged in his mind, swiping at the sweat beading across his forehead. Who in the world just resigns themselves to this type of heat? It was torture.

He thought to ask GiGi Stamford to turn the fan on, but then he spied the clumps of gray dust clinging to the plastic grill and knew that as soon as the blades began to spin, the entire trailer would fill with flying bits of filth.

Elvia was back at her mother’s side. She seemed to be studying him. Well, not him, but the scratches on the back of his hand. When Fox saw her staring, the sympathetic look on his face cooled and Elvia quickly lowered her eyes.

Fox wrote on his pad: Nosy, busybody. Careful or you’ll be next . . .