I nodded. "You should listen to your doctor. This medicine helps to keep you healthy," I told Danny.
"Still sucks."
"Do you mind if I stay during the, the interview?" she asked.
"Not at all. If it makes Danny more comfortable, I'd prefer it."
"Honey," she said, "do you mind if Mommy stays?"
"No, I don't mind if Mommy stays." "Mommy" came out with a slightly sarcastic bent. I smiled. I kind of liked
Danny Linwood.
Shelly, satisfied, nestled into a love seat, holding a lace throw pillow on her lap.
"So, Danny," I said, "how are things going here? Are you having a hard time adjusting?" He shrugged. "I need a little more than that, buddy."
"It's okay, I guess. I'm supposed to start school in two weeks, but I don't really want to."
"Why not?"
"I don't know anybody. They're all going to think I'm some sort of freak."
"They do know you, Daniel," Shelly interrupted. "You started out in grade school with most of them. Like Cliffy
Willis, remember Cliffy? Or Ashley Whitney?"
I listened.
"No, Mommy, I don't remember Cliffy. Or Ashley. I don't remember anyone."
"Mrs. Linwood?" I said. She looked at me. Nodded.
Got it. She held the pillow tighter.
"Danny, tell me about the day you came home. You came to this house, knocked on the door." Danny nodded.
"Can you tell me what happened right before that?"
Danny shifted in his chair. "I remember lying down, then suddenly waking up. I was on the ground, like I'd fallen asleep or something. I recognized where I was."
"And where was that?"
"Doubleday Field," Danny said. "I played peewee baseball there."
"What position?"
"Third base."
"Like A-Rod," I said.
"No, he's a shortstop for the Rangers."
I was about to disagree, when I remembered that in
Danny's mind, he was correct. The year Danny disappeared, Rodriguez hadn't yet become a Yankee, hadn't yet changed positions. I wondered how much else of
Danny Linwood's world had changed unbeknownst to him.
"What happened then?"
"I remember hearing a siren. Like a police car or an ambulance. And then I just started walking home."
"You knew how to get home?"
"Yeah, I used to walk home every day with…" Danny searched for the rest of his sentence.
"Cliffy Willis and his mother," Shelly offered quietly.
Danny looked at her angrily, then the reaction slipped away.
"Where did you walk?" I asked.
"Home," he said. "Past the corner store and that brick wall with the graffiti of the boy that got shot a long time ago. I got scared for a second when I saw the police car pull up at the field I just left, but I didn't think I did anything wrong so I just went home."
"Were you hurt?"
"No. Maybe a little tired, s'all. The doctors said they found something in my system, dia-something."
"Diazepam," I said. "It's a drug used to sedate. The police report said it was administered a few hours before you woke up. When you woke up, that's when it wore off." I said this as much to Shelly as Daniel. "I'm sorry, keep going."
"So, anyway, I walked home, knocked on the door. James opened it. I knew it was James, but he was, like, three feet taller than I remembered. And all of a sudden everyone is squishing the life out of me. Mom, Dad, Tasha, my brothers."
I saw Shelly smile, the pillow gripped tight in her arms.
"Brothers?" I said.
"James," he said, "my brother."
"Right," I continued. "Do you know how long you were gone?"
"Mom says almost five years."
"Does it feel like you've been gone a long time?"
"Not really," Danny said. "I mean, it's hard when I, like, go to do something and can't do it. Like there used to be a radiator in my room where I could turn up the heat, but now we have these electronic-control things. And I don't recognize anything on TV, which sucks. All of a sudden my brothers and sister are, like, old." I felt a strange mental tugging sensation. Something Danny had said triggered it, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
"Danny, I know the police have probably asked you these questions already, but did you have any enemies at school? On the team? Someone you were scared of?" He shook his head vehemently.
"I remember breaking up with my girlfriend once and she got mad and cried, that's it."
"You had a girlfriend?" Shelly said. "When was this?"
"Mom, come on," he said.
"What, you can tell the whole world but you can't tell me?"
Danny looked at me, his eyes pleading. I smiled at him.
Six-year-old Danny Linwood with a girlfriend. I wondered if she'd missed him, or even understood what had happened.
"Mrs. Linwood. Shelly," I said, looking at Danny from the corner of my eye. "I need to be able to talk to your son with his full concentration. I know this is hard and you have a lot to catch up on with Danny, but I need this to do my job."
"Your job." She sneered. "My job is my son."
"I know that. All I want to do is tell the truth about your boy. Trust me, I don't want to upset your family at all."
"Mom…" Danny said softly. This was likely the first chance Danny had had to talk about what happened, and it seemed to even be a bit cathartic for him.
"You're right. I'm sorry. Henry, please."
"Thank you," I said politely. "Danny, what was the last thing you remember before you woke up on that field?"
"I remember being at baseball practice," he said. "I don't know if that's the last thing that happened. But I remember Mike Bursaw got hit in the knee by a line drive and was crying, and Coach was going to send him to the nurse but Mike wouldn't let him. And I remember watching the Yankees on TV and my dad saying Jason
Giambi couldn't get a hit to save his life, which is weird because he used to be so good. I mean, I had his poster on my wall, and every night I'd tell it to go three-for-four with a home run. I noticed the poster wasn't on my wall anymore. My dad said he took it down but didn't tell me why."
I didn't have the heart to bring up the fact that Jason
Giambi had admitted using steroids, and his deteriorating performance was likely the result of his body breaking down. Danny Linwood was going to have enough prob-56
Jason Pinter lems reentering society; tearing down his boyhood heroes would happen eventually. Yet I understood his father's hesitance to wield the sledgehammer.
"Do you remember feeling pain?" I asked.
"No."
"Do you remember a face, someone unfamiliar, something frightening you?"
"Not really."
"Do you remember anything about the past few years?
Sights? Sounds? Memories?"
Daniel sat there for a few moments. He seemed almost to be in pain, searching his thoughts as hard as he could for something, straining to find what wasn't there.
"A room," he said. "Like mine, but…I don't know."
"How like yours?"
"I think there were toys, but I don't know."
"Okay…what was the first thing you thought when your mom came out the door that day? The day you came back?"
"I remember being kind of confused. She didn't hug me like that when I came back from school or practice usually, so I kind of knew something was different. I was a little scared, like something might have happened to James or
Tasha or my brothers. When my dad got home and started crying, that's when I started crying, too. Like maybe I was sick and didn't know it or something. All those TV shows where someone gets sick and then everyone is really nice to them, it's usually because they're going to die."
Again I got that feeling. There was more to what Danny
Linwood was saying than even he knew.
I noticed Shelly Linwood's lip trembling. She was aching to say something, gather her son up and hold him.