Desperately Seeking Daddy

FOR PRETTY LADY WITH 3 GOOD CHIDREN

WORKING TO MUCH

NICE SMART TIRD

CALL 555-1118

ASK FOR CODY

Some sensitive little person had been moved by a working mother’s exhaustion to advertise for aid in the form of a husband. Jack sensed a child in distress and a mother who was going to be very embarrassed.

Oddly disturbed, he took the “ad” from the bulletin board, slipped it into his grocery sack, pushed up to his full, considerable height and walked rapidly across the parking lot to deposit all in the back seat of his sensible, late-model sedan. He hoped for both child’s and mother’s sakes that no one else had bothered to investigate as closely as he had. He would hate for a child’s misguided attempt to help an overwhelmed parent to result in crank calls, derision, or—God forbid—even danger, and he felt himself to be in a unique position to head off disaster. It was, he felt, his duty, if not his responsibility.

After stopping briefly at his apartment to put away the groceries, Jack took the drawing and drove down the street to the sprawling blond brick building set high on a grassy knoll. Some neighborhood children were playing in the sand beneath the vacant swing set, and Jack made a mental note to ask the custodian to rehang the swings. They were always taken down at the end of the school year for routine repair and maintenance, but Jack knew from experience that the custodian would not rehang them until he was told to. Old Henley considered a fully equipped playground an open invitation to aggravation during the summer. Jack considered it a necessary service to a neighborhood lacking a decent city park.

Using his key and alarm code card, he let himself into the empty building and walked blindly down the darkened hall with ease. He knew every square inch of the school building inside and out, not from necessity but from sheer delight. He loved it here. He loved the building, the employees, the teaching, the organizing, even the problems, everything—but especially the children. He always missed them when they were gone, the humming, bubbling, laughing, shouting tumult of two hundred or so little bodies vying for space and attention and knowledge. This early in the summer vacation, the building was almost always empty, but soon the custodial staff would start to ready the building for resuming classes. Later the administrative staff would gradually begin planning and organizing until classroom assignments were again finalized and teachers themselves would return to begin sedately setting up their individual rooms and forming teaching plans. Every available resource would be divvied and balanced and parceled and traded until everyone had what was needed to educate, entertain, engage and otherwise meet the sundry needs of every student. Meanwhile he had the place to himself.

He unlocked the door to his secretary’s office, flipped on the overhead lights and booted up the computer that took up the entire side board of her desk. In short order he had pulled up the appropriate cross-referenced file on one Cody Swift Moore, eight years old, recently promoted to the third grade. Before going any further, Jack went to the file cabinet in the corner and looked up the sheet of photos that contained Cody Moore’s gap-toothed, grinning visage. Oh, yes. He remembered Cody well as a bright boy in clean, worn clothing, whose hair was sometimes not combed as neatly as usual and whose nose often ran relentlessly. He was one of those children on the cusp, an “at risk” child who somehow had thus far managed to have what he needed to thrive, but just barely.

Returning to the computer, Jack pulled up and printed out Cody Moore’s complete file, then carried both the printout and the portrait into his own office for perusal. Turning his chair at an angle, Jack lowered his six-foot-twoinch frame into its welcome embrace, leaned back and propped both feet on the corner of his desk. Idly massaging his left knee, he began to read.

It was just as he had suspected. Cody’s parents were divorced. He and a younger sister and a baby brother lived with their mother. No information was given on the father, but the mother’s name was listed as Hellen, a possible misspelling of a familiar but uncommon name in this day and time. No home phone number was listed, and the address given was a particular lot in Fairhaven Mobile Home Community. Jack knew it well.

One of the older such communities in the area, it lacked the modern amenities of the newer, tightly controlled parks that had sprung up along the interstate that connected Dallas and Fort Worth with what had once been “the country.” There were no swimming pools, meeting halls or game rooms in Fairhaven, no central post boxes, no newspaper kiosks, no picnic grounds, not even paved parking pads, or curbs and gutters for that matter. Yet he had always found the haphazard collection of older mobile homes inviting. Nestled beneath tall, stately shade trees, they were more homey than the fenced, cemented, landscaped, carbon-copy, postage stamp lots with their modern modular homes surrounded by sun decks, car ports, satellite dishes and storage sheds that resembled oversize doll houses.

Fairhaven looked like a place where a kid could play in the dirt with a spoon in some secret, shady bower that belonged to no one and everyone, building dreams and inventing games with easy freedom. It also looked like a place of last chances, where disaster was held off with one hand and survival clutched at with the other. The turnover in rentals was a sometime weekly thing. Odds were even money that the address was no longer valid.

Jack laid aside the papers and groomed his mustache with gentle strokes of his left index finger, thinking. He decided upon his approach, picked up the telephone receiver and punched in the digits written in crayon. A young woman’s voice greeted him at the other end of the line.

“Hello. My name is Jackson Tyler. Have I reached the Moore residence?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” He identified himself as the school principal and said that he was trying to update school files, which was perfectly true. “Are you by chance Cody Moore’s mother?”

She was not. She was the baby-sitter.

“Could you please tell me, then, how I can contact Mrs. Moore?”

“You mean, like, now?”

“Yes, please, if that’s all right.”

He was told that he would find Cody’s mother at the cashier’s counter of the Downtown Convenience Store. “But she don’t like to take phone calls down there.”

“I see. Well, thank you for being so helpful.”

“Sure. Want me to tell her you called?”

He considered. “It’s not necessary. I’ll get in touch.”

He hung up, logged off the computer in the other room and left the building.

Lake City was a small town on one of the most popular lakes in Texas. The recreation areas that serviced the town had been built by the Corps of Engineers. It was a short drive to the corner of Lake Street and Main—a prime location for a convenience store, given its gas pumps, lottery machines and drink coolers. It was without a doubt the busiest place in town, especially during summer.

Jack had to wait while a carload of swimsuited teenagers and a truck towing a pair of jet skis on a trailer got out of his way before he could even turn onto the lot. Vehicles were parked three deep at the curb, many of them linked to various types of water craft. Every gas pump was occupied, and a line had formed in front of the air compressor. Jack left the car well out of the gas pump lanes, locked it and walked across the hot pavement. He held the door open for a trio of women with a number of small children in hand, then slipped inside.

The cashier’s station was the hub of the store. It was a square of glass cases, polished chrome and Formica counters staffed by a single individual—a petite woman with a triangular face set with enormous, almond-shaped eyes and framed by a long, lush fall of light ash brown hair. Jack had little doubt that he was looking at Hellen Moore. Cody had captured his mother well—as well as possible with crayons and an untrained hand.

Jack saw at once that she was skilled at juggling half a dozen customers at any given time. Had she not been, she wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in this madhouse. Unfortunately this was neither the place nor the time for the discussion he had in mind. Nevertheless he was in no way deterred. He had come this far, after all. He got into a line of customers and patiently waited his turn, which was more than could be said for some others.

“Hey, move it up there!” yelled a shirtless young man with blond hair straggling about muscular shoulders. He shook his head and flexed his muscles with impatience, his bare feet shifting restlessly as he moved a six-pack of beer from one hand to the other.

“Keep your shorts on, pal,” came the smooth rejoinder, “since that’s all you’re wearing.” She’d delivered the line without even looking up, ignoring the chuckles it elicited while punching prices into the cash register with one hand and placing articles into a paper bag with the other. “That’ll be six sixty-eight. Out of ten. Six sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-five. Seven. Eight. Nine and ten. Thanks. Come again. Next.”

She turned to the line on the other side of the checkout and began punching in a new set of numbers, while the previous customer moved away from the counter and was replaced by a new arrival from the line.

“You got first aid supplies in here?” someone called out from across the room.

“In the corner next to the ice machine,” she shouted, then dropped her voice to a more moderate level. “You owe me six cents, ma’am. That’s all right, forget the penny. Just remember when you hit that next pothole that the state didn’t get their full share. I’ll be right with you, sir. Want your candy in a sack, hon? That’s one, two, three, four, five at three cents a piece. Exact change. A cashier’s angel! Suppose there’s a patron saint? Saint Quick Stop, maybe?”

And so it went for a solid quarter hour, nimble fingers flying, answers, comments and wisecracks tossed out with dry humor and quick wit. In the midst of the chaos, she kept her cool, refused to be pushed by those who had nothing more taxing to do than wait their turns and complain about it, and made every movement a study in efficiency.

Jackson found himself watching her with interest and growing pleasure. He liked that wealth of light ash brown hair. It hung almost to her waist, thick and shining, with what, upon closer examination, appeared to be a smattering of individual silver hairs. She wasn’t exactly beautiful. Her facial features would never be called classical. Yet to Jack it was an extremely interesting face, with a broad forehead and delicate, pointed chin; thin, tip-tilted nose; and a small but mobile, rose pink mouth. She couldn’t stand more than five feet and two or three inches, petite but not really dainty, with small hands and short, almost blunt fingers. Beneath the open, oversize, cotton smock, faded T-shirt and worn blue jeans was a solid, compact body with all the requisite curves—ample curves and in comfortable proportions. Moreover she carried herself with confidence and pride, standing with back straight, shoulders squared, legs spread slightly, as if ready to take on all comers and expecting to walk away a victor. All in all, a very interesting woman. Very interesting.

Business was relentless, but as always she stuck with it, handling several tasks at once, keeping every sense alert and ignoring the physical discomfort of sheer exhaustion. The latter was especially difficult, given that her feet felt as if the soles had been pounded by metal rods, her back ached unrelentingly and her hand was cramping. Worse, she needed to make a visit to the ladies’ room, despite having confined her fluid intake for the whole morning to a few sips of badly needed coffee.

She winced inwardly even as she wished a regular customer good luck on the lottery ticket he had just purchased and turned to quirk a brow at the big, good-looking fellow who’d been blatantly staring at her from the moment he’d entered the store. He smiled, holding her gaze, and she barely resisted the urge to thin her lips in a gesture of disdain. The last thing she needed just now was a flirt. She kept her manner brisk.

“What can I do for you?”

He leaned forward slightly as if fearing that she couldn’t hear him from that great height. “My name’s Jackson Tyler.”

As if she cared. With neither the time nor the inclination to chat, she turned her back on him and started ringing up cigarettes, sodas and snacks for three women and a mob of kids.

He cleared his throat and said from behind her, “I’m, uh, the elementary school principal.”

“That so?” She counted six sodas at sixty-five and one on sale at forty. Make that two. She jerked her head at one of the mothers. “The little one in back there is about to drop her drink.” The little girl screeched like a banshee when her anxious mother rescued it from her too-small hands. No one paid her the least mind. Anyone with experience with a kid that age knew that most of them were banshees.

“The thing is,” Jackson Tyler was saying in his deep voice, “I need a moment of your time.”

“Don’t have a moment,” she said over her shoulder, whipping open a sack and dropping packets of cigarettes and candy bars into it. “Is that everything, ladies?” Receiving a nod in the affirmative, she gave the women their total and continued sacking while a whispered conference took place, bills and coins trading back and forth.

“You are Hellen Moore, aren’t you?”

He was persistent, she’d give him that. “Hellen? No.” She shook out another brown paper bag and began carefully setting cold drinks inside.

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed and puzzled. “Well, do you happen to know where I might find her?”