Blue Menagerie Pt II

The manhunt drummed up for Zeb was nothing short of epic. Sallie’s father was a likeable guy with a lot of connections- and every single one of them showed up (with contacts of their own) to try to track down the wayward boy. Some of them showed up in helicopters, an event which would have been far more interesting to Sallie under other circumstances.

For the most part, Sallie felt sick to her stomach. Not just because Zeb was missing, but because she was pretty sure it was her fault. After all, she was the big sister- her mother had told her, time and again, it was her job to watch out for her little brother. In the past she had always done so, however begrudgingly. She had beat up that punk kid who threw rocks at Zeb (well, she’d threatened to beat him up, anyway, which had in turn sent him crying home to his mother), she had made sure nobody pushed Zeb out of the ice-cream truck line. Sometimes, when she was feeling extra generous, she even let him be the dog when she played house with her friends. She was always quick to point out to Mommy when he wasn’t eating his vegetables (in spite of her constant refrain that she would be the Mommy, Sallie was pretty sure her mother just didn’t notice some things). Sallie looked out for Zeb as much as an older sister could possibly be expected to.

But last night she had failed. Sound asleep in her top bunk, she stayed that way right through whatever had taken Zeb. And she felt certain that something had taken him, no matter what the grown-ups kept saying about sleep-walking or kids wandering off. Because she knew that Zeb would not have just gotten out of bed without her. He would have woken her up (as was his habit) and made her tell him a story, or play with him, or come sleep with him, or whatever- but he never, never would have gone off without waking her up first. Grown-ups just did not understand how little brother brains worked.

So it was her fault. And sooner or later, her parents would figure that out.

She and Mommy were at the house, waiting. Mommy was gripping the phone in one hand and Sallie’s hand in the other. Sallie noticed that her knuckles were white. Too, Mommy’s eyes kept flicking back and forth, as though she were hoping to uncover a hidden message in the fading sunlight coming through their window.

“Mommy,” Sallie asked, because it had been bugging her all day. “Why aren’t we out looking for Zeb?”

“Oh baby,” Mommy choked. Sallie wondered if she might cry- her face was screwed up funny. But Mommy didn’t cry- it wasn’t her way. “Baby, I want more than anything to go look for him, and I know you do, too. But someone has to be here, in case- in case he comes home. And Daddy and I talked about it, and we decided that that someone should be me. And you too, of course.”

“Because I’m the big sister,” Sallie whispered.

“Yes, sweetheart. Because you’re the big sister, and Zebbie might be- he might be frightened when he gets back and you can help make him feel better.”

Sallie was not dumb. She knew it was more than that. It was that Mommy and Daddy wanted to know exactly where she was, so they wouldn’t have to worry about both their children at once. But she didn’t bother to mention that. Instead she just climbed into her mother’s lap and laid her head against her soft chest.

“I hope he comes home soon,” she said, pretending to go along with the idea that Zeb had wandered off on his own.

“Me too, baby. Me too.”

***

Of course he did not come home soon. He did not come home at all. And as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months, Sallie’s life slowly drained of all color. It was as though sadness was a thin layer of dust that settled over her family, conforming itself to their shapes, dulling everything and making it difficult to breathe.

Her parents, of course, never gave up their searching. Sallie knew they had flyers and meetings and many more things than she could possibly understand. What they did not know, however, was that Sallie never gave up searching, either. She checked every corner, every hole, every tree, ever bush, every rock. She checked behind things, above things, under things, and in things. She checked the face of everyone she passed, of every person on television or in the movies. Sallie may have failed to protect her brother from whatever had taken him, but she would not fail to get him back. Her task was made difficult by the fact that neither Mommy nor Daddy was particularly eager to let her out of their site anymore, but she worked around it. And as the months turned into years, the habit of looking for her brother’s large-eyed face everywhere became so ingrained she hardly even noticed she was doing it, anymore.

She was ten years old when the menagerie came back to town.