Webster Daily's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Webster sat in his car with the stolen page on his knee. The badge caught the light through the windshield. Thief, in red, across a face he had never seen. He thought of the woman on her porch, still waving, still waiting for a son who would not come back. She did not know what name her boy carried in the records. She did not know what Sherrie had written over him. Webster folded the page and slid it into his coat. He had to decide, and soon, whether to put this in her hands before someone else did. He started the engine. Two blocks on, a battered jeep rolled past him, mud-splashed and slow, two men inside scanning porches. He knew the look. Sherrie's people were already moving. Webster cut down a side lane and drove the long way to the woman's street, his hands tight on the wheel. She was on the porch. He climbed the steps, pulled the badge from his coat, and set it in her palm. Her fingers closed over the red stamp. She read the word. She did not cry. She looked up at Webster and said her son's name, plain and clear, like she was returning it to the air. Behind him, an engine slowed at the curb. Webster did not turn. The thing he came to do was done. The woman stepped past him down the steps with the badge held flat in her hand. She walked to the curb where the jeep had stopped and held the stamped face up to the window. The driver did not speak. She did not lower her arm. Webster stood on the porch and watched her give the word back to the people who wrote it. He had the rest of the page in his coat, and his notebook in the car, and a story now that someone besides him had touched. The jeep pulled away slow. The woman walked back up the steps and sat down. Webster sat with her. He took out a pen.