This is all true.  I changed the names of the kids because, well, they’re kids.

TRISTAN

Our day started yesterday with a neighbor kid calling Helen’s name from the street.  Helen wasn’t ready to go out, so she didn’t answer.  A few minutes later, there was a knock at the front door.  I answered.

Miss Anna was standing there, looking nervous.  Miss Anna is a woman in her 60s, squat and sweet.  She teaches Helen’s folklorico dance class and my first thought was that she needed Helen’s costume for something.

“Mr. Scott,” she said at last, “has Tristan been over here, maybe to play with Helen?”  Tears were filling her big eyes and I knew immediately that Tristan had run away.

For a few days, Tristan had been telling Helen and the other kids at school that he was going to run away.  His plan was to hop on a train to Alpine, get some “provisions” there, then get on a train to New York.  Helen came home and told me about it.

“Do you think he’ll really do it?” she asked me.

Of course I didn’t.  The trains don’t even stop here in Marathon – they streak past, fully demonstrating the Doppler effect four or five times a day.  Tristan’s dream was romantic, even cute.  He invited Helen to come with him.

“Why would I want to run away?” she replied. “My life is perfect.” (And did my heart swell hearing those words from my daughter.)  She teased Tristan after school.  “See you tomorrow!” she taunted.

Tristan is a sweet kid.  Beyond sweet.  If he asked me permission to take Helen’s hand in marriage, I would probably give it.  My only reservation would be that they are nine-year-olds.  This is a kid who likes to dance with Helen, a kid that once said to Dawn and me, “I like Helen – she’s smart.  She’s the smartest one in the class.”  Once, seeing me ride my bike to the school, Tristan said, “I like your bike.  Is it new?”  Another time, Helen came home and said, “Oh, Tristan says to say ‘hi.’”  What kind of nine-year-old boy says these things?

He is a polite kid, a cute kid.  Friendly and smiley and smart.

When Helen asked me, “Do you think he’ll really run away?” I told her no.

“Kids like to imagine things like that,” I said.  “They like to talk them out and think about them and imagine what it would be like.”  He wouldn’t really want to run away, I said.

Yet there was Miss Anna on my front step.

“He snuck out around five this morning,” she said.  Three hours.  “We thought maybe he came here to see Helen.  He likes her.”  (Small heart swell.  Even in this moment – a moment of sick fear – I can’t help but like the kid’s romantic notions.)

“Oh, Anna,” I said, choking on guilt.  “He told Helen he was going to run away.  He said he was going to jump on a train.”

“He told a lot of kids that.”  (Somewhat diminished heart swell.)

I promised to call her if I saw him and she left, on to the next house.

Helen was excited.

“He really did it,” she kept yelling as she got dressed.  “He said he was going to and he did.”

We went outside to join the search.  Already, neighbors were walking the blocks, looking behind bushes, in sheds.  I asked Helen where she thought he might be hiding.

“He said he was going to hide in the Gage Gardens until a train came,” she said.  “But I bet he’s on the way to Alpine by now.”

“I don’t see how he could get to Alpine, sweetie,” I said.  “He’s probably just scared and hiding somewhere.” She and a couple of neighbor kids ran over to search the Garden.

Dawn and I walked the streets near our house.  Tristan’s bike was found at the library, tilted under a picnic table.  The little Marathon Museum next to the library was found to be unlocked, but Tristan wasn’t hiding among the World War II uniforms or the Ladies Club Cookbooks.

More and more people took to the streets.  Sheriff’s department cars drove up and down.  By chance, the volunteer fire department was having a benefit cook-out in the community center, right next to the library.  Hefty men in boots, young guys smoking cigarettes, tall cowboys in denim jackets joined the search. Sheds were pried open.  Abandoned houses were peered into.

We all began to fear – if not the worst, then certainly not the best.  His sister said he climbed out the window at five am and it was now 11.  Maybe he had fallen.  Maybe he was stuck somewhere.  Maybe he had climbed into a tourist’s RV and was unwittingly on his way to Ohio.  And, of course, there were worse fears.

I began to feel guilt gnawing at my gut.  Tristan had told Helen.  Helen had told me.  I was supposed to be the responsible adult and I had done nothing.  I hadn’t told his teachers or his parents.  What if, I thought, he had actually tried to jump on a train?  They blow through Marathon at 40 miles an hour.  A grown man would be crushed, torn apart, if he got too close.  Tristan, sweet romantic Tristan.  I had known of his plans and I had done nothing.

I drove over to the railroad tracks.  A sheriff’s department helicopter was circling overhead.  Grey gravel and tar and stacks of ties.  Rusting cans.  A rotting trailer.  I picked along the edge of the tracks, looking in the scrub and the cactus, hoping to find Tristan hiding.  Hiding, not hidden.

There’s a concrete structure near the tracks, some remnant of when Marathon had a semblance of industry.  A crumbling structure that looks like a Greek ruin.  Inside its columns stands a rusted pump.  I was staring at the pump when my phone rang.

It was Carol, the hotel manager.  She was driving in from Alpine because of the chaos Tristan’s disappearance was causing.  Tristan’s father, Tony, works in the Gage restaurant.  Carol was calling to ask if Dawn and I could watch Tony’s daughter, Hailey, so Tony could join the search.

I was in the process of saying yes when Carol said, “Oh.  Here’s a little boy.  Oh.”  I heard the muffled fluffing sounds you hear when someone is putting down a phone.  Then I heard here say, “Hi, Tristan.  Do you need a ride?”  More muffled fluffing, then she said to me, “I got him.”

And that was it.  Carol had spotted him on Highway 90, about a mile west of Marathon.  Tristan had decided against hoping a boxcar and was, instead, walking to Alpine.  To get provisions and to find his way from there to New York.  Carol drove him through town, toward the library, when they passed Helen and the other kids returning from the Gardens.

Tristan rolled down his window.

“See, Helen?” he yelled out the window.  “I told you I would do it.”