God Save the Child

The second floor of the barn was unfinished. Exposed beams, subflooring. At one end a small room had been studded off and Sheetrock nailed up. Some carpenter tools lay on the floor near it, and a box of blue lathing nails had spilled on the floor It looked like a project Roger Bartlett was going to do in his spare time, and he didn’t have any spare time. There was scrap lumber and Sheetrock trimmings in a pile as if someone had swept them up and gone for a trash barrel and been waylaid. A number of four-by-eight plywood panels in a simulated wood-plank texture were leaning against a wall.

“In here,” Dolly said. And disappeared into the studded-off room. I followed. It was probably going to be a bathroom from the size and the rough openings that looked to be for plumbing. A makeshift partition had been constructed out of some paneling and two sawhorses. Behind it was a steamer trunk and a low canvas lawn chair. The steamer trunk was locked with a padlock. The floor was covered with a rug that appeared to be a remnant of wall-to-wall carpeting. The window looked out over the pool and the back of the house. The wiring was in, and a bare light bulb was screwed into a porcelain receptacle. A string hung from it.

“What’s in the trunk?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Kevin always kept it locked up. He never let me in here.”

“Do your mother and father know about this place?”

“I doubt it. My father hasn’t worked up here since last summer, and my mother’s never been up here. She says it should be fixed up so she can have it for a studio. But she hasn’t ever come up. Just me and Kevin, and Kevin always kicked me out when he came up here. He didn’t want anyone to know about his place.”

“How come you’re telling me?”

She shrugged. “You’re a detective.”

I nodded. I was glad she said that because I was beginning to have my doubts.

“You get along with Kevin?” I asked.

“He’s creepy,” she said, “but he’s okay sometimes.” She shrugged again. “He’s my brother. I’ve known him all my life.”

“Okay, Dolly, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to break into that trunk. Maybe it won’t have anything that will help, but maybe it will, and the only way to know is to look. I know it’s not mine, but maybe it will help us find Kevin, all right?”

“Kevin will be mad.”

“I won’t tell him about your being here.”

“Okay.”

I found a pinch bar among the tools on the floor and pried the hasp off the trunk. Inside the cover of the trunk an eight-by-ten glossy was attached with adhesive tape, a publicity still of Vic Harroway in a body-building pose. In the trunk itself was a collection of body-building magazines, a scrapbook, a pair of handsprings that you squeezed to build up your grip, and two thirty-pound dumbbells.

Dolly did an exaggerated shudder. “Gross,” she said.

“What?” I said.

“The guy in the picture. Ugh!”

“Do you know him?” I asked.

“No.”

I sat down in the lawn chair and picked up the first magazine in the pile. Dolly said, “Are you going to read that?”

I said, “I’m going to read them all.”

“Sick,” she said.

“They’re clues. That’s what I’m supposed to do — study clues and after studying enough of them I’m supposed to solve a mystery and...”

“Are you going to tell?” she said.

I knew what she meant. Kevin had hidden this stuff from his parents, for whatever reason.

“No,” I said. “Are you?”

“No.”

I opened a copy of Strength and Health. On the inside cover and spilling over onto page one there was an ad for high-protein health food and pictures of hugely muscled people who apparently ate it. There were badly laid-out ads for strength-training booklets, weight-lifting equipment, and choker bathing suits; and pictures of weight lifters and Mr. America contestants. On page 39 was a sepia-tone picture of Vic Harroway. He had on a white bikini and was posed on a beach in front of a low shelf of rock that kicked spray up as the sea hit it. His right arm was flexed to show the biceps. His left hand was clamped behind his neck, and he was flexed forward with his right knee bent and the toes of his left leg barely touching the ground. The sun glistened on his features, and his narrowed eyes were fixed on something high and distant and doubtless grand behind the camera. Beauty is its own excuse for being. The caption said, “Vic Harroway, Mr. Northeastern America, Combines Weight Lifting and Yoga.” I read the story. It said the same thing in supermasculine prose that made me want to run out and uproot a tree.

While I read, Dolly Bartlett sat down against the wall with her knees drawn up to her chest and listened to her radio.