Code Adam

[Jade]

She was jerked out of the memory of the night before by the quick click of the Payless heels on the tile. The woman pushes the heavily laden stroller closer to the counter, and the painted lips had just left the cell-phone. Her hand replaces a lock of hair. “Can you look up a book for me?” Mild irritation flickers across the cashier’s face.

 

With a quick tap on the keys the temporary lapse into honesty is gone, and the cashier asks pleasantly, “Do you know the title of the book?” The woman taps her nails on the counter and looks away. The toddler sat with a thump beneath the counter, beyond the view of the cashier. He presently starts pulling the contents from the stroller onto the floor. Louder, the cashier asks, “Do you know the title of the book.”

 

“Oh. No. I don’t. It’s got a green cover. It’s about a fisherman. He gets lost on a boat with his son. I saw it on TV.” She backs away from the counter and pulls a book off of a nearby table and flips through the pages looking for pictures. Replaces the book, upside down. The boy yawns and drifts away from the counter. The cashier looks down, and then back up. Her eyes move from the woman’s chin to her forehead.

 

“Do you know on which television program you saw it?” The woman looks irritated. “Oprah.” The cashier looks back at her screen, clicks through a series of pages. “Was it an Oprah book club book?” The woman squints at the back of the computer: “Just call a manager. I don’t have time for this.” The cashier slides her copy of the Tempest under a pile of sacks and picks up the phone. The cashier has not keyed into the phone when the music cuts out. The cashier replaces the phone and waits for her turn to call a manager.

 

The storewide intercom crackles. “Code Adam. Code Adam.” The cashier’s eyes dart to customer service, to the woman’s face, to the children’s section, to the phone. The woman was ambivalent. The woman did not know that the announcement was named for a child—Adam Walsh. The woman did not know that Adam Walsh disappeared from a department store, and his body was positively identified through dental records—sixteen days later. The woman did not know that her toddler was no longer pulling bags off of the stroller. The woman did not know that her husband had gone to customer service, panic-stricken, looking for a three-year old boy: brown hair, hazel eyes, 45 pounds, dressed in Bob-the-Builder pajamas.

 

The cashier looks back up at the woman, and looks her in the eyes, steadily. The cashier says, "I’m sorry, I won’t be able to call a manager for you.” The cashier picks up the phone, asks if the front door should be locked, moves from behind the register to the door, and turns the lock from black—unlocked, red—locked.

 

The woman stands at the counter, mouth slightly open, breathing audibly. The man, the husband, pages the woman. The woman picks up her bags with a huff and sets them in the stroller. Her body jerks, slightly: “Danny? Danny, come here, now. Daniel Michael. Answer me, now.” Her voice strains, slightly. “Where’s customer service?” The cashier looks at the woman, gently: “Head towards the mall entrance, it’s in the center of the store, under the…” The woman did not know where her little boy was. Neither did her husband. Neither did the store.

 

The woman’s pace quickens until her shoes mark the tile with a cadence of panic. The gates to the mall entrance closed with a final clink. The woman didn’t know.

Edited March 8, 2005 by Jade

[Quincunx]

I had come back to this thread to comment on the unclear role of the woman, as abductor or as distracted mother, but settled on the second interpretation, uneasily; the page from father to mother is the only detail which decided that. Was that what you had intended? The physical details of the story, and the image they form, are clear enough; it's the moral which fades in and out of focus and which should give this story its memorable character.

 

Left as is, with the details in precise chronological but imprecise descriptive order, this reads like a rough eyewitness account--except for the introspection. The core of the story could be refined: either faceted for greater unity of composition by juggling the order of details and sanding away a few excess adverbs, or polished for more realism by removing the introspection of "she didn't know" yet leaving the explanation of Code Adam intact.

 

I will continue to like the story no matter which direction it takes on either split path, but I can't recommend too much more without understanding your intent.