Looking for a Friend by Ben Seabolt

Looking for a Friend | Ben Seabolt

“This is the end of the road.” Mr. Sharpeton pulls the red Tacoma to the side of 421 and parks in a pool of moonlight. 

“Are you fucking kidding?” Sam Humbert asks.

“This is the end of the road, for me.” The sign to exit into Yadkinville, North Carolina sits about 70 yards ahead of them. 

Sam pulls on his cigarette and blows the smoke across the dashboard. His scraggly brown hair falls into his eyes but he does not flinch to move it. “Not even halfway, huh?” 

“I’m done. I think if I keep going I’ll go crazy.” Mr. Sharpeton sits straight, his well-ironed flannel shirt and oiled beard collecting remnants of Sam’s last exhale. His eyes follow the few cars passing by. 

“You know what, old man? You’re already crazy. You’ve got your priorities turned all the way around.” 

“He’s your friend, Sam.”

“He’s your son, Jack.” The informal first name falls between them like a ship washed onto shore. Neither can row it back out. 

“Why don’t you just get out of the car, Sam?”

Sam opens the car door and leaves it ajar. He stands dangerously close to the right lane. “I don’t know what to take from this. You don’t care or you have no hope?” His gaze settles onto Mr. Sharpeton’s flickering eyelashes, now aimed towards a gold pendant of the Mother Mary swinging from the rearview mirror. “Or, no, hold on, I know: You’re hoping this time he really is gone. Your hands are washed from it and now you can soak in the celebrity of a humble, mourning father. I’m sure Mrs. Sharpeton would love to share that spotlight with you. Maybe you can even get your photo taken in the Watauga Democrat.” 

Sam continues to gaze into Mr. Sharpeton’s face. For the first time in a week, he can read the sadness etched into the crevices, between the wrinkles accumulated in the mountain wind and the dimples in his forehead formed by a lifetime of bewilderment. Mr. Sharpeton is silent, still looking forward, but oncoming headlights catch the tears rolling down his cheeks. Sam closes the door and walks on down the road to a Motel 6, briefcase jumping against his leg, his heart carved out and left for the foxes and deer along the highway. 

* * *

In the motel room, Sam sets his briefcase on the desk. His hands shake. Sweat seeping from his palms runs down along his fingers, wetting the paper of a Marlboro Menthol as he lights it. The fingers of his left hand trace the figures of fat-bellied, stout-faced little angels, like those found in Renaissance oil paintings, carved along the edges of the briefcase’s leather. He looks out into the empty parking lot and watches the summer condensation fog across the window. Across the street, a blinking neon bar sign advertises bottomless beer, and Sam feels the desolation settling into his bones. 

Of course, this is all inevitable. A week at the Sharpeton’s farm in the West Jefferson hills, scouring letters, text messages, Tweets, bank statements, and pure intuition to locate their son, David, and all Sam got was a whirlwind of distraction. Mr. Sharpeton ran in circles putting Sam to work on the land and Mrs. Sharpeton laughed and watched and called him ‘our favorite donkey’ like they’re some backwater 19th century homestead and not the quiet recluse of wealthy retirees. He knows this family, has been through this exact scenario with them before. It all led, like blood channeled to an open wound, to tonight’s abandonment. There wasn’t anywhere else it could have gone. 

Starting almost a decade ago in his early twenties, David Sharpeton has disappeared five times, cell phone tossed along some interstate, whatever apartment he’s living in ran through for supplies, robbed by its tenant. Sam has found him each time, in New Mexico slouched over a slots game in a casino chair, in an Illinois motel among endless rows of corn, in a West Virginia parking lot between disused smoke stacks, in a New Jersey club under strobing lights, and in a tent by a creek about ten miles from his parents’ North Carolina farm. Alone or surrounded by strangers with leering faces, Sam found David with his own face unrecognizably stretched, his high cheekbones more prominent, his speech pulled into long, dreamy ramblings that seemed to mimic the distances he traveled. “Come home. Your parents think you’re dead,” Sam pleaded, to which David obliged, every time, with a signature smirk under bright eyes searching the horizon and its promises. 

“Okay, buddy. It’s time for my resurrection,” David would say.

Each search started around the Sharpeton dinner table, clues piling up in printed out text messages and scribbled notes of conversations passed over weeks before, Sam at the helm like some degraded captain. Mr. Sharpeton at Sam’s right hand side, Mrs. Sharpeton scurrying about with biscuits and coffee. On the wall, at the dining room’s center, a printed photograph of a sun-flecked cloud bursting through with what Mrs. Sharpeton swears is the image of a pregnant Mother Mary walking the desert. Mr. Sharpeton and Sam would talk through their clues, Sam’s Raleigh Police Department badge, Detective #4679, buried in his luggage upstairs. He came to their table as a friend and a friend only. Mrs. Sharpeton would nod along, her eyes darting from the photograph and back to the table as if trapped sunlight burst from the photo’s surface and guided the three of them from clue to clue. 

And at each investigation’s conclusion, with a decision made on where to begin the search for David, Mr. Sharpeton would unlock the liquor cabinet at their feet, pour three glasses of whiskey, hand them around, and wait for his wife’s closing statement. And Mrs. Sharpeton would commence, draining her glass of whiskey and beginning in a whisper: “Oh Lord, our son is lost in this world. There’s a job to do here, in these hills, and he’s lost in this world.” And her voice would rise: “It is important to be rooted. To find your piece of Earth that grounds your journey to Heaven. We’ve kept him close. We’ve checked on him, helped him with money when he runs out. We’ve turned away people who have come to our door looking for him, these strangers looking to take something from him. These same people he runs off with. Beggars, opportunists who use people because they have nothing of their own to offer. And when you have nothing to offer you have nowhere to be. You’re unrooted because you’re rootless. Wild-eyed people. But Sam, you’re David’s oldest friend, the only one that’s stuck around through it all. You see straight. You’re good police and good people. I know you can bring him home. Show him he’s still worth something in this world.” 

And she would finish, and Sam would drain his glass of whiskey, his head fuzzing with the familiar lick of calm preceding chaos. He would take Mrs. Sharpeton’s hand and imagine David marching along some interstate, maybe blasted drunk, maybe limping from some heroic leap from a moving freight train car, and yet maybe altogether weightless and unburdened. And he would gather the clues compiled around the table into a folder and prepare to head out on the search. 

This time, however, there were no real clues, save for one, hidden in Sam’s briefcase, unnamed and unmentioned. A letter, sent by David right before his latest disappearance, sealed with a wax emblem of a coffin, the envelope scrawled across with the words He not busy being born is busy dying. Sam kept this letter from them. He read it, hid it away, and simply waited for the Sharpeton’s call that David had run off again, which they usually discovered through a landlord asking them where their son was and why he had not paid the month’s rent. Other than that, David had been silent for months.

This time, as Mr. Sharpeton concluded their deliberation in the dim evening light around the dinner table, Sam found it impossible to look into his eyes: “What we know: his car is still here. Okay. My guess, he must have hopped the freight trains to Raleigh and then taken the Amtrak to Baltimore. He’s got some friends up there in Maryland. Yeah, I’ve heard him mention Maryland.” 

There is a finality to Mr. Sharpeton’s words, always tinged with command. Sam was to take the Amtrak from Raleigh to Baltimore and ask around with the workers if they had seen David within the past week and a half. If not, the search was to begin in Baltimore. So, Mrs. Sharpeton kissed both of them goodbye in her nightgown and Sam and Mr. Sharpeton started the drive to Raleigh, about three hours east into the downward Piedmont hills. Sam’s visit lasted exactly a week, too clean and perfect to be an organic period of decision-making. As Mrs. Sharpeton said goodbye in the buzzing darkness of the driveway, she laughed and clutched Sam’s wrist as if to say You know David is just crazy. He’ll be back.

And yet, the show of giving up 130 miles from the Amtrak station and turning around to sit on the porch and sulk? Like it’s smeared into their DNA, this cycle of disappearance and miraculous reappearance? The Sharpetons hadn’t given up on David, they had given in. 

Sam unlatches his briefcase atop the motel desk and checks the contents. Four wool shirts, two pair of slacks, seven pair of underwear (only three beginning to rip), four pair of wool socks (only two beginning to rip), a copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping marked in sloppy red ink, a polaroid photograph of David squinting and pointing his tongue out over a bonfire, David’s letter screaming its silent scream. And tucked inside a zipper compartment, Sam’s detective badge and cell phone. His cellphone is awash in missed calls from the precinct and his partner, Detective Sonia Gonzalez. 

He closes his briefcase, returns his motel key, and heads out onto the dark highway. At about three a.m., a young woman picks him up along a soybean farm and takes him the rest of the way to the Raleigh train station. He sleeps intermittently on the drive, dreaming, or just floating in pools of memory, of David and him pitching a tent under a great grey oak tree on the night of their college graduation, huddled together against the screaming wind. In the dream, Sam wakes up in the morning and finds David standing shirtless in the clearing beyond the tent, his back opening in gashes under his shoulder blades. Wings, beautiful blue wings, feathers brushing out along the bottom, in the earliest stages of development, poke out. The light through the spring leaves makes them look spotted. In the car, Sam just sleeps and grumbles with his head leaning against the window. The young woman glances over at him and pulls his jacket to blanket his arms, soft with pity. 

* * *

Raleigh Union Station is all glass brimming in the morning light. Crowds murmur about the landing doors and wait in rows of brown, leather-stitched chairs like schoolchildren. Sam adjusts his wire-rimmed glasses and straightens his jacket’s corduroy collar before the ticket attendant. He flashes his badge.

The attendant is young, college-aged and baggy-eyed, headphones hanging from her shirt collar, but lacks all the pliance of youth.

“What is this?” she asks.

“Raleigh Police Department. I’m conducting an investigation into the whereabouts of a missing person. If you could look up to see if their identification was logged in the system within the past ten days.”

The attendant is calm, smirking and glancing at the waiting bodies in line behind Sam. “You have a warrant?”

“I have reason to believe this person came through Union Station and bought a ticket.” Sam shuffles on his feet. 

“I have reason to believe I can’t help you.”

“Is there a supervisor I can speak to? I -” Sam’s phone rings. Gonzalez is calling. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he mutters as he steps out of line with a smile to the attendant. He picks up the call.

“Sam, where the hell are you?” Her words sputter out at once.

“Sonia, I told you, I’m helping a friend.”

“Well, you’re losing one here.”

“It’s only been a week, Sonia.”

“There was a fucking body found in the Neuse River on Thursday, wrists and arms all bruised up. An old man.” Sam can see her feet wedged into the carpet and her right hand hovering above the white cactus she keeps on her desk. The photograph she keeps of her and her ex-husband sweating under the Outer Banks sun is face-down, still not removed. 

“And they’ve got the best investigator in the Carolinas on the case.” 

“You can’t just leave. The lieutenants are all over me about this. The god damn mayor came to my office – my office! – to ask me if you’re emotional, if you’re drinking. Like a fucking toddler. You know what they would do to me if I tried this? ” She pauses for an endless breath. “I am not going to be here to clean this up for you anymore. I am not your mother.”

“Sonia, it’s David again.”

The other end of the line is quiet with a body releasing its anger. 

“Something tells me this time he’s gone for good,” Sam breathes, almost in relief.

“Where are you following him to this time?” 

“I’m heading to Baltimore on the Amtrak.”

“Baltimore? Why not drive?” Sam sees her leaning over her mahogany oak desk, her voice dimming into worry.

“I just spent a week getting nowhere with his parents. His father suggested this.”

“And?”

“And I need to make good on a promise.” Sam looks up from the floor and checks the departure times. 

Sonia laughs and clucks her tongue. Sam can feel the hot breath through the icy glass of the phone. “When will you realize you don’t owe them anymore? Never did.”

Sam is silent, watching the rows of chairs empty.

“You’ll find him, Sam,” Sonia says.

* * *

Sam settles into a window seat and watches oak, pine, and hickory forests blur into a dank stew. The air conditioner drones and the windows spray with rain, refracting the passing forests in centerless dots of green and gray. A house falling in on itself appears to be opening its  eyes to the bleak sky. A couple behind him argues about loyalty, accusing one another of heinous misunderstandings, of watching life fall down around them and doing nothing. There are businessmen in their smart suits, families with small children climbing about the seats, and those as alone as he is, shooting across the Earth’s curved edge into some unknowable oblivion. 

Sam orders a vodka tonic at the bar and shakes as the liquid pours down his throat. He asks every passing train worker about David, showing pictures of him beaming under blue eyes and curly hair pulled back in a headband. The workers shake their heads and say “No, I’m sorry,” but they really mean he passed through going somewhere unreachable. He orders more vodka tonics. One. Three. Five. Six. His brain soaks, his chest opens, and his vision warbles around the edges. He begins asking fellow travelers in the car about David, and then moving about to other cars, searching, searching endlessly for a single set of eyes to glaze him over with recognition. Families huddle about each other and a businessman wearing a straight face warns to leave him alone, throwing his hand up as Sam approaches. 

Sam returns to his seat and slumps into the leather. The rain hits harder against the glass. The train drones along the tracks. Somewhere in central Virginia, it comes to a halt above a river thick with mud. The passengers murmur and the intercom cuts in with a reassuring voice: “We are experiencing some difficulties with the track. Our conductors are working on it now and the journey should resume within the hour. Please remain seated and let our Amtrak staff know if there is anything you need.” 

The windows fill with faces peering around the edge to see the problem, but it remains out of sight. Sam unlatches his briefcase and retrieves David’s letter, smirking at the loose handwriting scrawled across the envelope in frenzied impatience. His breath catches as he opens it:

Sam, my brother,

There is so much to tell you, to ease your worry. But I know you will come looking for me, that my parents will set you on the task. But I want you to remember something. Do you remember? That night on King’s Mountain. We left the saloon, all those people looking to me for the next action, all of our friends. We set out under the moon, just us two, and climbed the hill until we found an empty vacation cabin. It was quiet, there were astrid gardens and spruce trees lining the front of the house, hiding it. But nothing can hide from us. Do you remember? You picked the lock. Don’t pretend you weren’t a willing adventurer that night. It was fall, but inside it was warm, as if the owners had just left that night. We lit the fireplace and huddled around, casting our hopes for the future into the flames. You wanted to be a detective and I couldn’t believe it. My best friend, a cop, like a badge and a gun could cover over what you really are? You said you wanted to help people, to find those who have gone missing. You said the world is full of energy that pulls each of us into our own oblivion, and that if you could just access that energy, anyone can be pulled out, back into the world of daylight again. And I just couldn’t believe it. My best friend, a cop? And you asked me what I wanted to do or be, and I said nothing. I didn’t have an answer and I still don’t.

We drank bottles of wine left in the cabin pantry. It was tart – expensive, I bet. We raved and raved until the black hills around seemed to move about with us. Do you remember? There was so much hope. You were going to graduate and move to Raleigh a man – a man in this world! I clapped for you, carried you about the room on my back until we fell laughing into the floor, where we didn’t wake until a woman with a crooked nose stood over us, pouring wine on our heads. Her husband stood there with a gun, itching to use it. “You’re not leaving unless it’s in a police car,” they told us. You didn’t like that idea. So we ran. We jumped off the back porch and crashed down the mountain through brambles, the early fallen leaves sliding underfoot. You broke an arm, I broke an ankle, and we sat in silence at the base of the mountain throbbing with shock. And do you remember what you said to me, squinting against the morning sun, the hopeful new day? You told me you were done with me. It was time to grow up. What do you want to be, David? You asked me this and I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t. That was ten years ago, now, Sam, and I still don’t have an answer. 

I’ve been working. On a goat farm about an hour from my Mom and Dad’s place. I rise each morning with the milking and talk to the goats like old friends. I rake the land and fix the fence when it needs fixing. The couple that hired me pays fair, and I sleep in a lofted room above their house. But it’s not enough. My parents come to me with news of Jesus. I am the one they can save, their Fall to be redeemed. They don’t understand that being saved is not enough when there is nothing to save. My mother cries when she sees me. She says every time I reappear my eyes are more crooked. That I can’t even see the path to salvation now. You’ve said the same, in your own way.

I’ve seen the news, Sam. You’re a damn hero. My parents have printed out the headlines of the missing children and wandering old folks you’ve found in Raleigh. They pasted them up in the garage, as a reminder that when they leave each day there is always hope of coming home. But my best friend, a cop? You know we don’t like cops, Sam. Their wielding of death as an instrument over the rest of us. Don’t you remember? For every life saved, another destroyed completely. Every time you’ve found me in some musty motel room or rusted out car, just know there were friends there with me who have had everything taken from them. But you’re doing your part, I suppose. I think it’s time I do the same.

There is a nation of wanderers out there, and I intend to join them. I’m leaving today. I know my folks will call you in again, and set you into the game we’ve been playing for years. But I know they’ve let go. It is just a sense of guilt that they are working out. Help them, eat with them, sit with them, work with them. Go wherever my father sends you. But know it’s for them, not for me. Return to them knowing you need to let go, too.

The signature trails off into incomplete letters, slashed across as if in anger.

Sam’s head pulsates at the base of the skull. He grips the seat’s edge to steady himself. He rises from the letter and tears it into pieces that carry away in the stampede of bodies flowing past to the head of the halted train car. He closes his briefcase and joins the crowd, craning over an old woman gasping for a view. “Are those – are those people on the tracks?” she groans. 

Sam peeks over the crowd and sees a small group standing at the tip of the bridge. Rain wearies their faces, their nylon coats catching and folding like limbs. Five people, standing around the conductor in her flat-topped cap, their eyes mad with pleaing. 

Sam breaks through the other passengers, opens the door at the end of the car, and falls into the mud lining the tracks above the river. The wind sings around his ears with angel’s falsettos. The rain washes cold against his scalp. A tent, curled into itself and running with mud, leaking cookware and blankets, flows down the river and catches on a branch leaning into the water. Laying in the mud, Sam watches the tent twitch in the current. Then, he gets up and lopes to the end of the bridge, where he sees bulldozers and shovels picking away at a mudpatch pooled over the railway. “Get back in the train. There’s been a mudslide. Get back in the train!” a uniformed man yells at the stranger in the mist, his voice carried away by the pulsing water below.

Sam walks on, searching the faces before him. “David?” he says. “I’m looking for my friend, David. Have any of you seen him? Have you heard his voice?” The railroad workers look at him with open mouths and still eyes. The bulldozer motors hum along and no one says a word. All there is is silence, merciless silence blanketing the land around, the underpasses and gas stations, the hills and valleys and strip malls, the coasts east and west crashing in as if someday they’ll meet, and it will all be over then. 

Bonus audio of Ben reading David’s letter to Sam…

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