The Returned. Jason Mott
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there was the sound of Jacob sitting at the kitchen table raking his fork across his plate, gulping down his lemonade and burping with great satisfaction. “Excuse me,” the boy yelled to his parents.
Lucille smiled.
“Forgive me for asking this,” Agent Bellamy began. “And please, don’t take this as any type of accusation. It’s simply something we have to ask in order to better understand these...unique circumstances.”
“Here it comes,” Harold said. His hands had finally stopped foraging for phantom cigarettes and settled into his pockets. Lucille waved her hand dismissively.
“What were things like between you and Jacob before?” Agent Bellamy asked.
Harold snorted. His body finally decided his right leg would better hold his weight than his left. He looked at Lucille. “This is the part where we’re supposed to say we drove him off or something. Like they do on TV. We’re supposed to say that we’d had a fight with him, denied him supper, or some kind of abuse like you see on TV. Something like that.” Harold walked over to a small table that stood in the hallway facing the front door. In the top drawer was a fresh pack of cigarettes.
Before he’d even made his way back to the living room Lucille opened fire. “You will not!”
Harold opened the wrapper with mechanical precision, as if his hands were not his own. He placed a cigarette, unlit, between his lips and scratched his wrinkled face and exhaled, long and slow. “That’s all I needed,” he said. “That’s all.”
Agent Bellamy spoke softly. “I’m not trying to say that you or anyone else caused your son’s...well, I’m running out of euphemisms.” He smiled. “I’m only asking. The Bureau is trying hard to make heads or tails of this, just like everyone else. We might be in charge of helping to connect people up with one another, but that doesn’t mean we have any inside knowledge into how any of this is working. Or why it’s happening.” He shrugged his shoulders. “The big questions are still big, still untouchable. But our hope is that by finding out everything we can, by asking the questions that everyone might not necessarily be comfortable answering, we can touch some of these big questions. Get a handle on them, before they get out of hand.”
Lucille leaned forward on the old couch. “And how might they get out of hand? Are things getting out of hand?”
“They will,” Harold said. “Bet your Bible on that.”
Agent Bellamy only shook his head in an even, professional manner and returned to his original question. “What were things like between you and Jacob before he left?”
Lucille could feel Harold coming up with an answer, so she answered to keep him silent. “Things were fine,” she said. “Just fine. Nothing strange whatsoever. He was our boy and we loved him just like any parent should. And he loved us back. And that’s all that it was. That’s all it still is. We love him and he loves us and now, by the grace of God, we’re back together again.” She rubbed her neck and lifted her hands. “It’s a miracle,” she said.
Martin Bellamy took notes.
“And you?” he asked Harold.
Harold only took his unlit cigarette from his mouth and rubbed his head and nodded. “She said it all.”
More note-taking.
“I’m going to ask a silly question now, but are either of you very religious?”
“Yes!” Lucille said, sitting suddenly erect. “Fan and friend of Jesus! And proud of it. Amen.” She nodded in Harold’s direction. “That one there, he’s the heathen. Dependent wholly on the grace of God. I keep telling him to repent, but he’s stubborn as a mule.”
Harold chuckled like an old lawn mower. “We take religion in turns,” he said. “Fifty-some years later, it’s still not my turn, thankfully.”
Lucille waved her hands.
“Denomination?” Agent Bellamy asked, writing.
“Baptist,” Lucille answered.
“For how long?”
“All my life.”
Notes.
“Well, that ain’t exactly right,” Lucille added.
Agent Bellamy paused.
“For a while there I was a Methodist. But me and the pastor couldn’t see eye to eye on certain points in the Word. I tried one of them Holiness churches, too, but I just couldn’t keep up with them. Too much hollering and singing and dancing. Felt like I was at a party first and in the house of the Lord second. And that ain’t no way for a Christian to be.” Lucille leaned to see that Jacob was still where he was supposed to be—he was half nodding at the table, just as he had always been apt to—then she continued. “And then there was a while when I tried being—”
“The man doesn’t need all of this,” Harold interrupted.
“You hush up! He asked me! Ain’t that right, Martin Bellamy?”
The agent nodded. “Yes, ma’am, you’re right. All of this may prove very important. In my experience, it’s the little details that matter. Especially with something this big.”
“Just how big is it?” Lucille asked quickly, as if she had been waiting for the opening.
“Do you mean how many?” Bellamy asked.
Lucille nodded.
“Not terribly many,” Bellamy said in a measured voice. “I’m not allowed to give any specific numbers, but it’s only a small phenomenon, a modest number.”
“Hundreds?” Lucille pressed. “Thousands? What’s ‘modest’?”
“Not enough to be concerned about, Mrs. Hargrave,” Bellamy replied, shaking his head. “Only enough to remain miraculous.”
Harold chuckled. “He’s got your number,” he said.
Lucille only smiled.
* * *
By the time the details were all handed over to Agent Bellamy the sun had sighed into the darkness of the earth and there were crickets singing outside the window and Jacob lay quietly in the middle of Harold and Lucille’s bed. Lucille had taken great pleasure in lifting the boy from the kitchen table and carrying him up to the bedroom. She never would have believed that, at her age, with her hip the way it was, that she had the strength to carry him by herself.
But when the time came, when she bent quietly at the table and placed her arms beneath the boy and called her body into action, Jacob rose, almost weightlessly, to meet her. It was as if she were in her twenties again. Young and nimble. It was as if time and pain were but rumors.
She carried him uneventfully up the stairs and, when she had tucked him beneath the covers, she settled onto the bed beside him and hummed gently the way she used to. He did not fall asleep just then, but that was okay, she felt.
He had slept long enough.
Lucille sat for a while only watching him, watching his chest rise and fall, afraid to take her eyes away, afraid that the magic—or the miracle—might suddenly end. But it did not, and she thanked the Lord.
When she came back into the living room Harold and Agent Bellamy were entangled in an awkward silence. Harold stood in the doorway, taking sharp puffs of a lit cigarette and throwing the smoke through the screen door into the night. Agent Bellamy stood next to the chair where he’d been sitting. He looked thirsty and tired all of a sudden. Lucille realized then that she hadn’t offered him a drink since he’d arrived, and that made her hurt in an unusual way. But, from Harold and Agent Bellamy’s behavior, she knew, somehow, that they were about to hurt her in a different way.
“He’s got something to ask you, Lucille,” Harold said. His hand trembled as he put the cigarette to his mouth. Because of this she made the decision to