But then that first week of Burdette’s disappearance turned into a second week. And then gradually the jokes in the bakery and the pool halls and the tavern began to grow stale and there began to be other people in Holt, besides Ralph Bird and Lloyd Foster, who were growing doubtful that Burdette was ever going to return. No one had any idea where he was and there wasn’t anyone in the county who could imagine what was keeping him away.
It was the middle of January then. It was late on a Friday afternoon and it was at this time that Jessie Burdette came into the office of the Holt Mercury. During the afternoon it had been snowing and now it was very cold outside. There was little traffic on Main Street and the wind was blowing the dry wisps of snow along the sidewalk. Above the storefronts it was beginning to turn dark.
Jessie Burdette came into the Mercury just before five o’clock. She had the two little boys with her. TJ was almost four years old then and Bobby was almost three. They came in bundled up in their winter clothes, the boys in matching snowsuits and Jessie in a navy blue wool coat which was still loose enough that she could button it over her stomach; for, although we didn’t know it yet, she was pregnant again; she was already in her fourth month. Inside the office she sat TJ and Bobby down together on a wooden chair against the wall. The little boys looked handsome as ever and red-cheeked. She unzipped their snowsuits and smoothed the hair back from their foreheads. “Now sit still, please,” she told them. Then she stepped up to the counter and waited for Mrs. Walsh.
Mrs. Walsh was the office receptionist. My father had hired her to work in the office twenty years earlier as copy editor, and she had stayed on all those years although my father himself had retired in 1970 and had left the daily management of the paper to me. Now she stood up from her desk and approached the counter. From across the room I watched her talking to Jessie Burdette.
“Yes?” Mrs. Walsh said. “Can I help you?”
“I want to print something in the paper.”
“Is it an ad?”
“No. It’s not an ad.”
“Ads are fifty cents per line.”
“It’s not an ad, though.”
“What is it, then? Do you have it with you?”
I watched Jessie reach into her coat pocket and draw out a sheet of yellow tablet paper. She began to unfold it on the counter. When it was completely unfolded she pushed it across the counter toward Mrs. Walsh.
Mrs. Walsh picked it up and held it close to her face under the light. Immediately she put the paper down again. She stood up very straight. “Why,” she said, “we can’t print this. This is … We can’t print this.”
“I intend to pay for it,” Jessie said. “Is that the problem?”
“No that is not the problem.”
“What is the problem, then? Why can’t you print it?”
“It’s simply unprintable.”
Jessie looked past Mrs. Walsh, looking across the room at Betty Lucas who was typing at her desk, and then at me. “Is there someone else I can talk to?” she said.
“What?”
“I’d like to talk to someone else, please.”
“But they’ll just tell you the same thing I have.”
“What about Mr. Arbuckle? He’s the editor, isn’t he?”
“Mr. Arbuckle is busy.”
“I’d like to talk to him.”
“But I’ve just told you. He’s busy.”
“Yes, but would you ask him to come over here?”
I stood up from my desk and walked across the room to the counter. Mrs. Walsh had begun to shake. The dark veins at the side of her head stood out beneath her white hair. “Is there something wrong, Mrs. Walsh?”
“This young woman thinks we will publish this in the paper.”
“What is it?”
“Here,” she said. “You read it. I refuse to.” She handed the tablet paper to me.
“Thank you, Mrs. Walsh,” I said. “Maybe you can begin closing up now.”
She turned and sat down at her desk. I could hear her behind me. She was upset. She had begun to whisper in the direction of Betty Lucas.
I read what was on the paper. It was a brief notice. It had been written in pencil and the paper it had been written on had been folded many times, into small squares, and at the edges it was frayed and ragged as though she had been carrying it around in her pocket for a week waiting for the right moment to bring it in. Then I looked at Jessie. Her eyes were very brown and her cheeks were still red from having been outside in the cold. I thought she looked very beautiful. There were bits of dry snow on the shoulders of her blue coat.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard your husband was gone. I suppose we’ve all heard that much. But I take it you haven’t heard from him yet either. Is that what this is about?”
“No. I haven’t heard from him.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t any idea where Jack Burdette is.”
“You’ve notified the police, though?”
“Yes. But yesterday there was a bill in the mail.”
“A bill?”
“For some clothes he charged,” Jessie said. “So I called them back and told them they could stop looking for him. He isn’t lost.”
“I see,” I said. “I think I do, anyway.” Because it seemed obvious to me now, having read what she’d written on the piece of tablet paper, that she had come to a thorough understanding about the charges Burdette had made on Main Street and also about what those charges indicated about his disappearance. She hadn’t had to be present for the jokes and the talk in the bakery, or later to be there to hear the growing alarm people felt. She seemed to understand all too well what those things would mean to her as his wife in Holt.
I looked outside for a moment. On Main Street it was fully dark now. The streetlights had come on and it was snowing again. Behind me Mrs. Walsh and Betty Lucas had begun to put their coats on, preparing to go home for the evening. I waited until they had gone out through the back room into the alley. Then I turned back to Jessie.
“I wonder, Mrs. Burdette,” I said, “I wonder if you don’t think this is a little bit drastic? After all he might come back. Don’t you think? Maybe he’s just taking a vacation.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think that. I’ve stopped thinking that. It’s been two weeks.”
“Yes. But two weeks aren’t a lifetime.”
“They’re long enough.”
“And so you still want me to print this in the paper? You do want that?”
She began to open her purse. “How much is it?”
“But wait a minute,” I said. “I haven’t said I will yet.”
She looked at me. Her eyes were very large and dark. I picked up the penciled notice once more, reading it again while she turned to see that the two little boys were still seated quietly on the chair behind her. They were watching her like little birds.
Finally I said: “Very well, then. I’ll agree to print this. Although I don’t think it will do you any good. In fact I’m afraid it will do you a great deal of harm in town.”
She still wanted it printed. So I took out a form from a shelf under the counter. I copied her note onto the form as she had written it and afterward she paid for it.
She began to prepare TJ and Bobby to go outside again. They sat solemnly in front of her while she knelt to zip up their snowsuits; she helped them pull their mittens on.