Death, Snow, and Mistletoe

The two women were talking as I left to continue my ride up the side of the mountain, only now I traveled alone on the narrow road. The moon in the cloudless sky was only a few days short of being full, and it brightly lit the twisted way before me.

As I completed a corkscrew turn, I nearly drove into an acre of heaped bedsprings, old recliners, and cracked toilet bowls… the junkyard Luscious had mentioned. A little past this charming landmark stood a crooked sign, punctured with bullet holes, telling me the unpaved, deeply-rutted drive to my left was the entrance to the Iron Ore Mansions Trailer Park.

Inside were rows of trailers, with only inches of space between them. Many of them looked as if they had been salvaged from the neighboring junk heap. Light streamed from every window, and although I saw no one, I heard children's voices.

As I turned in, the undercarriage of Garnet's truck scraped on something, and the screech made my teeth tingle. Almost at once, the door of the nearest trailer flew open. The man who stepped out onto the porch wore only jeans-no shirt or shoes-and his shotgun was pointed right at me. I mouthed the prayer I'd often said as a child, “Dear God, if you get me out of this mess, I'll be a good girl… and I mean it this time… a really good girl.”

First, I glanced at the lock buttons on the door to make sure they were all depressed, then I rolled the window down about an inch. “I'm a reporter from the Chronicle,” I yelled, “looking for the Poffenbergers.”

He lowered the gun. Thanks for listening, God. “The ones what got a lost kid? Fifth house on the right. Can't miss it-it's the one with the tires.”

I didn't have long to wonder what he meant about the tires. They were stacked, six high, all around the trailer, making an odd-looking but effective fence. In the small yard there was a lone tree with a truck-tire swing dangling on a rope from a bare branch. Car tires, standing upright, bordered both sides of a cement walk. Others, lying on the brown grass, were filled with dirt and held withered plants.

Reluctantly, I left the safety of my truck and entered the yard. The stench of rubber turned my stomach, and I wondered how anybody could live with it. For that matter, how could anybody live in a place as depressing as the inappropriately-named Iron Ore Mansions? Next to this place, my apartment building in Hell's Kitchen looked like Club Med.

The woman who opened the door in response to my knock was small and shriveled, with a swollen red nose and bloodshot eyes. I explained I was a reporter and needed to ask a few questions about Kevin.

“Come in,” she said, and I saw she was missing several teeth. She clutched at the front of her overly large gray-green sweater with one hand and held a wad of pink Kleenex in the other.

“Karl,” she called over her shoulder. “It's a reporter. You want a beer?”

It took me a second to realize she was offering a drink to me and not her husband. “No, thanks. I won't take much of your time. I know how upset you must be.” I sat on the orange-and-brown plaid sofa, which smelled almost as bad as the front yard but in a different way, and groped in my bag for my notebook.

A man who I assumed was Karl swaggered into the living room carrying an odoriferous infant wrapped in a spotted yellow blanket. “Kara's dirty,” he said, handing the child to her mother.

“Sorry. Be right back.” She scuttled sideways out of the room.

“Beer?” He picked up a bottle from the coffee table, drained it, and carried the empty bottle into the kitchen area. He brought back two and put one in front of me. His fingernails couldn't have gotten that black in one lifetime… no way would I touch that beer.

The front door burst open, and the room was suddenly full of children, some barely toddling, all with silvery- blond hair. “My kids: Kirsten, Kathy, Ken, Kim, Karol, Klark, Klaire. All with a K-makes 'em easy to remember. Them other two is my brother's brats. You'uns sit down and shut up,” he shouted-at them, not me. “This cute little gal's from the TV, and she's gonna put us on the news.”

I stopped writing down the names of all the little Pof-fenbergers “with a K” and explained to them I had nothing to do with TV. Their small round faces showed obvious disappointment. There would be no TV stars discovered in the Poffenberger mansion tonight.

After Mrs. Poffenberger came back without the baby, I asked my questions-beginning with the usual human- interest ones about the boy: age? did he go to kindergarten? what games did he like to play? As I wrote down the answers given to me by the child's mother, I realized how little the average child of five has to show for his years on earth; it is the loss of everything that is still to come that makes the death of a child so tragic.

I had to keep raising my voice because the little Ks and their cousins were arguing over a TV show. Karl Poffenberger, nearly prone in a blue velour recliner, had downed his beer, my beer, and another fetched by his wife, and was taking offense to just about everything she said to me.

“Has he wandered off like this before?” I asked the mother, thinking it was time to be on my way.

“Never,” began Mrs. Poffenberger.

Mr. Poffenberger belched softly. “That's enough yak-king, woman,” he said to his wife. “You ain't yet said what you're paying.” This was directed to me.

“Mr. Poffenberger, newspaper reporters don't pay for interviews.”

“Then get the hell outta here. You'uns got some nerve barging in when we'uns is all upset about Ken's being lost.” His eyes drooped shut, and a soft snore erupted from his nose.

“Sorry,” Mrs. Poffenberger whispered to me at the door. “He's real upset.”

“I can tell. So upset, he forgot his son's name is Kevin.”

“He's waiting for someone to call back 'bout a made-for-TV movie. You know, like the one they did about that little girl in Texas what fell in the well. We sure could use the money.”

“I understand.”

“I can't watch the little ones all the time, not with nine of 'em underfoot, you know.”

I nodded. I felt real pity for the woman. Neither she nor those nine kids had much of a life, nor much chance of it getting any better.

“It's time to get to bed,” she said to the waist-high towheads crowded around us. “Pearl and Peter, you'uns go home now. Good night, miss.” She closed the door, leaving me on the stoop with the two children, who followed me to my car.

“Were you guys with Kevin when he got lost?” I asked them.

They shuffled their feet in the dirt, shared sideways glances, and poked each other with their shabby elbows.

“Can't either of you speak?”

The girl stepped forward. From her height, I assumed she was the oldest. “I guess so,” she said.

“You guess? Don't you know? What's your name? How old are you?”

“Pearl Poffenberger.” Her green eyes glinted with something I hadn't seen much of at the Poffenberger home this evening-a hint of intelligence. “I'm near twelve.”

“I know you weren't alone. Who else was with you?”

Reluctantly, it seemed, she said, “My brother, Peter.”

The other child stepped forward. “I'm eleven,” he said.

“Anybody else with you?”

The shiny heads shook their denial.

“Aren't you two a little old to be playing with a five-year-old?”

“He always tags along,” Peter said.

“What happened up there?”

Pearl, who seemed to be the leader, answered. “Kevin got tired of playing. Said he wanted to go home.”

“We wasn't ready,” Peter said. “He was blubbering, so we told him to go home by hisself.”

“We didn't know he was lost till we got home 'bout an hour later,” Pearl put in.

I had to express my incredulity. “You mean, you just let a five-year-old boy go off by himself in the woods?”

“Sure, why not? He done it all the time. Didn't he, Pearl?”

She nodded vigorously. “All the time.”

“If you guys think of anything you haven't told the police, call me at the paper. You won't get into any trouble.” I handed Pearl a Chronicle business card with my name handwritten on the back. Peter extended his hand, and I gave him one, too.