CHAPTER 1

A-six-year-old girl has wandered off from a family picnic nearMasquinongy Pond, and she remains missing after a long day of waiting. The MaineWarden Service has mounted a search. There are dozens of people combing thewoods near the picnic grounds. Some are local guys, volunteers from thecommunity, but most of them are game wardens in green uniforms. Handlers fromthe warden service K-9 unit have brought dogs trained to find people, anddogs—those braced in the bows of boats drifting over the surface of thepond's marshy edge—trained to alert to the signature scent of a cadaver.

The parents may or may not know about the cadaver dogs. They may or may notrealize that when Chief Warden Pilot Charlie Later's plane buzzes overhead, heis scanning the brown bed of the pond for a small, pale human shape beneath thewater.

The parents do know this much: they love their child, and their child wanders inan inhospitable environment. They know the dark is coming on. They have beentold that the Maine Warden Service chaplain has been called. What else couldthis be about but death?

Around three in the afternoon, as my kids are trooping into the kitchen, dumpingtheir backpacks in the mudroom, describing their school days, the telephonerings.

"Your Holiness!" Lieutenant Trisdale roars. "We've got a situation up here byMasquinongy Pond we could use your help with."

So by four, I am waiting by Chickawaukee Lake. Lieutenant Trisdale has sent aseaplane to fetch me. The lake is a ten-minute drive from my house, so I hadtime to eat a bowlful of supper's chicken stew and to swallow a Dramamine. Ihave heard that Charlie Later takes a dim view of wardens who puke in hisairplane, and I don't want to test his tolerance.

My car is parked in the little lot adjoining what passes for a beach, a mud bankthat the city of Rockland improves in summertime with sand and a lifeguard. Ifthis were summer, there would be children paddling in the shallows, canoes andkayaks on the water, and—increasingly—"personal watercraft," or jetskis, zooming around.

But it is late October. The lake, abandoned save for a small flock of migratingmallards, is a placid gray mirror for the autumn afternoon. The sky boasts anarchipelago of clouds so perfect in their imitation of islands that in the leeof the largest one, I can make out an inlet where a boat might find secureanchorage.

I blow on my hands and tuck them into the scratchy woolen armpits of my uniformjacket. I've forgotten my gloves.

People hear warden service and assume I am a prison chaplain. Theypicture me at the Supermax, counseling rapists and accompanying the Dead ManWalking to the electric chair. "Maine doesn't have the death penalty," Iexplain, and in any case, I work with game wardens, not prison wardens. Gamewardens are law enforcement officers who work under the Maine Department ofInland Fisheries and Wildlife. Finding a lost child in the woods is among themany useful things these folks know how to do.

How old a child? "A little girl," the lieutenant had said. Unavoidably, theimage of my youngest daughter, age eight, comes to me. Her name is Anne, but hernickname is Woolie, with manifold familial variations (Woolie-Bully, Wooglet,Woo), and her cheek was warm and soft against my mouth when I kissed her good-bye.

I dial my house to hear my children's voices. There are four altogether. Zacharyis the eldest, at fourteen, and the rest follow in reasonably tidy, two-yearintervals: Peter is twelve, Ellie is ten, Woolie is eight. "I know. You wouldthink we'd planned them," their father would say, deadpan, when othersexpressed surprise (or was it dismay?) at the monotonous regularity with whichhe and I had reproduced.

Woolie answers the telephone with a complaint prepared: Peter has gone off withthe electric pencil sharpener. He won't give it back, and he called Woolie abastard. Such language is insulting and morally wrong. In addition, it'sinaccurate, and I wonder whether this should be an aggravating factor in myadjudication.

"All right, Woogie-Piggie, I'll talk to him.

"Peter, share the pencil sharpener," I tell him when he comes on the line. "Andno cursing."

"Okay," says Peter cheerfully. I can hear Woolie shrieking insults in thebackground. "Peace, Mom-Dude."

It's early in the search. There's hope—real hope, not the faint hope thatfamilies cling to as days drag on.

By now I know not to bother anticipating or planning for these calls. Hope andgrief make a habit of presenting themselves in novel ways every time, and whatis required in the way of a tender and appropriate response changes every timeas well. It does an anxious family no good at all to have the chaplain arriveworn out with worry or projecting her own parental feelings onto a loss thatdoes not belong to her.

"Incidents can be rated on a scale of one to ten," a Denver, Colorado, policedetective once told me. "Sometime during your career, you might get one or twoincidents worth a ten. A bad murder, maybe a young victim, or you shootsomebody, or maybe go through the death of a friend and fellow officer. Thoseare tens. Most incidents are going to be way down on the scale, like maybe a twoor a three. But you know what? I think it's all those little twos, threes, andfours that add up over time. I think those are the ones that get you in theend."

By my lights, a one is when they find the lost person alive. Ones are good. Aten is—well, a ten is a dead warden, I suppose. Still, line-of-duty deathsare rare, if not quite rare enough. (The Maine Warden Service has the highestnumber of line-of-duty deaths of any agency in the state, a total of fourteen inthe 125 years of the service's existence.)

Where is the Masquinongy Pond search going to fall on that Colorado detective'sscale of one to ten? If the child is dead, it's going to be up there aroundseven or eight for all the wardens as well as for me.

Peace.

My children are all alive and well, if not well behaved. I can count on a solidlittle hit of adrenaline to clear my head when I arrive on scene. So I kick idlyat the gravel, take some deep breaths, blow on my hands, wonder whether Peterand Woolie's issues merit intervention by a shrink, fantasize idly about sailingto the islands in the sky.

Those ducks had better get a wiggle on; winter is definitely on its way. Thereare ice crystals forming around the woody stems of the cattails. Turtles, theirmetabolisms slowed to geologic speed, have hunkered down in the mud for sixmonths of cold coma. It won't be long before the surface of the lake freezesinto a solid pane of ice, and anyone who wants to walk on water can. By Januaryit will be thick enough to drive a truck onto, in theory at least. (Every fewyears, the dive team is called out to retrieve the body of a driver whoseestimate of the ice's thickness proved tragically inaccurate.) When the ice isthat thick, I'll be willing to let my children skate, maybe.

Right now, my four children are sitting at the kitchen table, eating the cookiesthey were supposed to save for after supper, doubtless still arguing over thepencil sharpener or, if they've finished with that, arguing over which videothey will watch tonight if Mom is still away and unable to enforce the "novideos on school nights" rule.

"It would be nice if this little girl turns out to be alive," I suggest outloud.

Barely audible at first, above the...