My mother turned to her singers and raised her hands and held them poised a moment, then called out to Brandt, “Now, Emil.” The chorale began with Brandt doing a slow gallop of his fingers on the keyboard that gradually increased in tempo until it was a furious flight and the singers chimed in with the urgent cry, “To arms, to arms!” Ariel’s chorale covered the history of the nation from the Revolution through the Korean conflict and celebrated the pioneers and soldiers and visionaries who created a nation from, as Ariel had written for the chorus, the raw dirt of God’s imagination. My mother conducted with dramatic flourish and the music was electric and Brandt on the piano was inspired and the voices of the singers pouring from the white cup of that band shell made the whole thing intoxicating. It lasted twelve minutes and when it was finished the audience went crazy. They stood and applauded and added their cheers and whistles and the sound was like thunder off canyon walls. My mother signaled to Ariel who’d been standing with my father and Karl at the bottom step of the band shell. Ariel climbed the steps and took Emil Brandt’s hand to lead him to the center of the stage but he pulled back and remained seated at the piano with his smooth cheek to the audience and he spoke something into Ariel’s ear and she went on without him and stood with my mother and together they took their bows. That evening Ariel had worn a beautiful red dress. She wore a gold heart-shaped locket inset with mother-of-pearl and a mother-of-pearl barrette, both of which were heirlooms. She wore a gold watch that had been a graduation gift from my parents. And at that moment she wore a smile that could have been seen from the moon. I thought my sister must be the most special person on earth and I knew absolutely she was destined for greatness.
Warren Redstone touched my arm. “That girl’s name is Drum,” he said. “Any relation?”
“My sister,” I called above the din.
He looked at her keenly and nodded. “Pretty enough to be Sioux,” he said.
• • •
After the fireworks had ended we drifted home, Jake and I. All over New Bremen the celebration continued and the sky was alive with burning blooms of color and from the dark down the cross streets came the rattle of strings of firecrackers. Gus’s motorcycle was gone and I suspected he would finish celebrating Independence Day in a bar. The light in my father’s church office was on and his windows were closed and the sound of Tchaikovsky bled through the glass. The Packard was not in the garage and I knew that my mother was at a post-chorale celebration with Ariel and Brandt and the New Bremen Town Singers and would not be home until late.
We’d been instructed about our bedtime and we got into our pajamas and hit the sack at ten-thirty. Through the screen of our bedroom window I listened as the sounds died to an occasional distant pop or crackle and I heard my father return from the church and much later through the dim veil of sleep I dreamed the sound of the Packard crushing gravel in our drive and a car door slamming closed.
And even later I woke and heard my father on the telephone and my mother’s worried voice prompting him and the dark outside was thick as tar and not even the crickets chirred. I got up and found them downstairs with their faces pinched and tired. I asked what was wrong and my father said that Ariel had not yet returned and go back to bed.
Because of my father’s occupation I was used to late night urgencies and because I’d witnessed her comings and goings that summer I was used to Ariel sneaking off in the dark and returning safely before dawn and because I was little more than a child still wrapped in a soothing blanket of illusion I trusted that my mother and father together could handle anything and I went back to my bedroom and drifted selfishly into sleep listening to the distant distraught voices of my parents while they continued their telephone calls and waited anxiously for word of their daughter.
18
The next morning I woke to the threat of rain.
I found my parents downstairs in the kitchen with Karl Brandt and Sheriff Gregor and a deputy named Zollee Hauptmann. The sheriff was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved blue work shirt and his cheeks were red and shiny as if he’d just finished shaving. The deputy wore a uniform. They were drinking coffee at the table and Gregor had a small notebook in front of him, writing as my parents talked. I stood in the doorway to the dining room and they barely noticed me.
Ariel had been with Karl Brandt, I learned as I listened, and with other friends who’d gathered on the river at Sibley Park and built a bonfire on the same stretch of sand where Doyle had blown up the frog with an M-80. There’d been alcohol and everyone was drinking and somewhere along the way they’d lost track of Ariel and no one knew, not even Karl, when she’d gone or where. She’d simply vanished.
Gregor requested the names of the other friends and Karl gave him ten or twelve.
“Was Ariel drinking too?” Gregor asked.
Karl said, “Yes.”
“You took her there? To the river?”
“After the party,” he said.
“The party with the New Bremen Town Singers?”
“Yes, that one.”
“But you didn’t bring her home from the shindig at the river. Why not?”
“She wasn’t around when I was ready to go.”
“Did that concern you?”
“Yes. But I just figured she got a ride with someone else. I was pretty drunk by then.”
“You’re not old enough to be drinking,” Gregor said.
“Yeah, well kind of late to worry about that now.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t been drinking you’d know where Ariel is.”
Karl looked guilty and clammed up.
“Any of your friends that you also noticed gone?”
Karl thought, then shrugged. “People were coming and going all night.”
“And she said nothing to you before she left?”
“No,” Karl said. “Not about leaving anyway.”
“What time did you leave the party?”
“I don’t know exactly. Two, two-thirty.”
“Did you go straight home?”
“Yes.”
From his little notebook Gregor tore out the list he’d made of the names Karl had given him and he handed the sheet to Hauptmann. He said, “Start calling, Zollee.”
Hauptmann went outside through the screen door and I heard the engine of his cruiser turn over and he left. To my parents Gregor said, “Does your daughter have any special friends she might have stayed with last night?”
“Yes,” my mother said. “We’ve called them all. No one’s seen her.”
“Could you give me their names? I’d like to talk to them myself.”