Page 3 of Disappeared

“You’re his mamm?” I ask in Deitsch.

“Ja. I’m B—Bonnie.” Her face screws up and she presses a hand over her mouth as if to smother a cry. I guess her to be in her late teens. “It’s Little Joe! We have to find him. It’s cold, and he isn’t wearing his coat. He’s so little. All this rain…”

She starts toward us, but staggers, thrusts out her arms to break an impending fall. Erma and I rush to her, grasp her arms on either side. The young woman is cold to the touch, vibrating from head to foot, and beginning to hyperventilate.

“Let’s get you into a chair,” I say.

Erma and I help her to the kitchen table. She slumps into a chair, then tries to rise, but her mother presses her back.

“You just settle down,” the older woman tells her. “I’ll get you some water.”

I don’t tell them we may not have a minute to burn.

Instead, I move around the chair so I’m facing her, set my hand on her shoulder and squeeze gently. “When’s the last time you saw Little Joe?”

“I put him to bed around eight thirty last night. I got up once, around two A.M., and he was fine, sound asleep in the bassinet.”

“When did you notice him missing?” I ask.

“I got up to feed the cows at four and he wasn’t there.” A fresh round of tears streams from her eyes. “At first, I figured he’d crawled into bed with Mamm and Datt or maybe one of my sisters, but I checked right away and he wasn’t there.”

“Has he ever done anything like this before?” I ask.

“Never.”

Erma hands her a glass of water, shoves it into her hands. “Take a nice long sip now, you hear?”

The young woman obeys, then sets the glass on the table. “I can’t bear the thought of him out there all alone,” she whispers.

“We’re going to find him,” I assure her. “There are a lot of people out there looking. The sheriff’s department is on the way.”

She nods, but her eyes are chasms of a terror she can’t contain. At some point her teeth have begun to chatter. She’s crying and swipes repeatedly at the tears with shaking hands.

I divide my attention between the two women. “Can you give me a quick description of the boy? His size. What was he wearing?”

“He was in his sleep shirt,” Bonnie tells me. “It’s white flannel. Gray socks.” She gives his approximate height and weight, then emits a sob, catches herself, struggles to regain her composure. “He’s afraid of thunder.”

I quickly jot the description in my notepad, keep going. “You’ve searched the house and barn?”

“Twice,” says the older woman.

“Any other outbuildings?”

“Just that old chicken house,” she tells me. “We’ve looked there, too.”

“How many people are out there searching for him now?” I ask.

“My husband, Joseph, is on foot,” Erma tells me. “Our neighbor is in his buggy, on that two-track between our farms. Our oldest son saddled our buggy horse to search the field in the back.”

“Datt and I searched the barn,” Bonnie adds. “Even the loft.” Her face screws up. “It’s like he just disappeared.”

An ominous rumble of thunder punctuates the statement.

There are more questions to be asked, information to be confirmed, but with a two-year-old unaccounted for and a creek about to breach its banks, the rest can wait.

“I’m going to look for him,” I tell them.

“Me, too.” Bonnie tries to get to her feet.