Of all the tales of heartache, there is no sadder one than that of Tithonus. A prince of Troy, who long ago fell in love with a great goddess, Eos, the goddess of dawn.
Like the morning sunlight she produced, she shone down on Tithonus and together they began an unrelenting romance. But the joy of the romance was short lived, as the goddess Eos soon realized that Tithonus, a mortal man, would one day die, and she would remain to mourn forever.
In a hasty, and love blinded decision, Eos granted Tithonus with the gift of immortality. Never were two beings more happy with each other. Though, through the years, signs of worry appeared.
In her hastiness, Eos had granted her lover with eternal life, but not eternal youth. And things being what they are, Tithonus began to age. Wrinkles appeared across his brow, his back humped, and his muscles became weak. Gone was the beautiful head of hair that Eos loved.
It was not long before she could not bear to look at her lover. She placed his frail body in a room and locked the door. She neglected him for many years there. All the while, Tithonus continued to age.
His hands and feet curled as his bones grew soft and brittle. His back hunched and Tithonus was reduced to a weak ball of a man.
Through tears and sorrow, Eos finally decided that she must check on him after a century of being from his presence. As she unlocked and opened the door, what she saw horrified her.
Sitting on the floor just below the window was an old, brown, wrinkled shell of a man. She rushed across the room and dropped to her knees at his side. Gently, she placed her hand on him, only to have a crack appear.
She stepped back in awe as the crack widened and the shell split completely open. And from within, crawled a new creature. Fresh, born again. A cicada spread it's wings and escaped through the open window.
Still, to this day, on summer nights, when the power of Eos is at her greatest, you can hear Tithonus sing to her. The song of cicadas fill the Louisiana air.
*****
After a few moments, the beating coming from inside the refrigerator grew frantic and more violent. In one fluid motion, Campbell stood up from the chair, let it fly out from under him as the fridge door kicked open, and grabbed the person falling out by the back of the neck.
The fridge had been completely emptied out in a panic as the young man had apparently seen the sheriff approaching the house. He had slipped inside, shut the door, and hoped to not be found. Until, it was unplugged and any source of fresh air was cut off.
With his free hand, Campbell swept the kitchen table clear of everything that was sitting on top of it. Glass bottles shattered across the floor, and condiments and milk splattered against the wall. The uneven legs of the table wobbled slightly back and forth as Campbell drove the boy's head onto the surface and pressed it firmly so that he couldn't wriggle free. Through his pressed face he screamed.
"Ah! What dude?"
Through his screams he managed to squeak out the phrases, "warrant" and "probable cause." This made Campbell press down even harder.
"Warrant? You want to see a warrant?"
Campbell drove his fist into the side of the boy's face, with a loud thud. A loud groan escaped from his mouth and any resistance he was putting forth slowly came to a stop.
"Fuck! What do you want?!"
"Where's your girlfriend?"
He tried to jerk out from underneath Campbell again.
"I haven't seen her! Not since last night."
Campbell released the boy's neck and pointed sternly to the chair that had been kicked to the side. The boy picked it up from the floor and shakily bent at the waist to sit down, resting his forearms on his knees. A trickle of blood appeared from his nose and dripped out onto his jeans. He reached up, wiped it and discarded the moisture on the front of his shirt, leaving a red streak behind.
"You can't be doin' this kinda shit, man. Runnin' up in somebody's house like this."
"Your girlfriend's car was found abandoned out near Highway 120 this morning. No sign of her. What do you know about it?"
"She left here a quarter to one in the morning....one in the morning...something like that. I ain't heard from her since. I been asleep."
Campbell spat across the floor.
"Why would she be headin' out that way? Out there where we found her car is the opposite direction of her house. In between here and Zwolle."
The young man hung his head. He shook it in a disappointed manner.
"Ain't but one thing on that road that I know of. And I told her not to be goin' down there no more. Bout a mile and a half before you get to town, there's an old bar. She has a friend that works over there."
"I know the place. Why didn't you want her goin' over there?"
"Cuz that's where she met me at. I know the type of people that go there, people like me. And she don't need to be around that.
Most of us here, Sheriff, we're just souls waiting to expire. Only most of us. Every once and a while, one comes along that brings some color to the grey. A flash of hope to those of us just sucking down cigarettes and beer, trying to numb the thought of taking day by day steps toward a casket waiting on us. That was her. She was color.
I don't know about angels, but I do know I don't deserve her. You know it, too. Look at me. I couldn't get a job scrubbin' toilets in this town. So what else do I got?.......You know what I got, ya'll just got me for it last month. I got weed, pills, and anything else that can help me forget who I am. But not with her. She helped me remember who I used to be, and that's what I need.
So if you're here asking me if I did something to make her disappear......you got the wrong one."
"Are you a religious man, Brandon?"
"When I need to be."
"I believe the need has arrived. Now wipe your nose son."
************
By the next day, the small town was already buzzing with word of the missing girl. Every third person you spoke to had a different story about what happened to her. The little old ladies said it was drug related, her peers said it was the boyfriend who had done something with her. Others thought maybe the parents had killed her and hid the body. But when you got right down to it, no one really knew.
The local sheriff's department had turned down help from any outside agency, for fear of losing control of the situation. "You let people in from the state, and you'll never get them out," is what they said. And people seemed to accept that. Still, the newspaper was scheduled to print and they needed answers that would throw cold water on all of the speculation. One false story running wild, and that is all it would take to draw national attention, and that would only make things much more complicated.This was a local matter and Campbell wanted to keep it that way.
J.W. spent the rest of the afternoon fielding calls from so called "concerned citizens." The phones rang off the hook for the entire evening. You could hear him saying back to them, "Maam, we're just as concerned as you are. The sooner I get off this phone, the sooner I can get back to findin' her." Still, as this was his duty, he jotted down every bit of useless information that was given to him.
The last time he hung up the phone, there was a shadow darkening the doorway of his office. He was in his mid 30's, dark blonde hair that was cut neatly, with jeans and a flannel shirt. He stared expressionless at him. J.W. didnt have to ask what he wanted. He knew him all too well.
J.W. had been seperated from his wife for a little over a year now. She was a woman he had been sweethearts with all through high school. But as these things sometimes go, they "grew into different people." Atleast, that's what she said. He always said he didn't know it until she told him. But in all honesty, he felt the difference.
The man in his doorway was a police officer from just over the bridge in Texas. A little town called Joaquin. Not much bigger than Zwolle, they had a few officers. He'd been a deputy over there for a few years. J.W. liked him well enough. They saw each other at different police functions, dinners and such. He never had a problem with him. Not until he found out he had been screwing his wife. That's the kind of thing that can take a friendly acquaintance and turn it into something entirely different.
J.W. looked back down at the papers on his desk and pretended to be filling out a report of some kind. He hoped that Travis would get the hint or give up and leave, but he knew he wouldn't. Travis shuffled off of the door frame he was leaning on and took a step forward, his hands pushed down into his front pockets.
"J.W., how are you?"
"Travis." He never looked up from his desk. Just sat scribbling across the papers.
"I hear ya'll got a 207 out here. Find anything yet?"
"She's still gone. Did you bring her with you?"
Travis laughed.
"You know I ain't kidnapped nobody."
"I wasn't talkin' about the girl. I was talkin' about my wife."
Travis looked down at his shoes and shook his head.
"You know she ain't comin' out here."
"Then what the fuck do you want?"
"How many times do I gotta apologize to you J.W. This ain't something we set out to do, it just happened. I Just want things between me and you to be straight. Or as straight as we can get them."
"Get straight with God, not me."
"Trust me, I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' everyday, you ain't the only one struggling with this. Thing is, she sent me down here. I think you know why."
J.W. pulled a folder from his desk drawer and slung it out across the top.
"They ain't signed, if that's what you're after."
"It's what she wants."
"Well, I got some say in this thing, too. If she wants them signed, tell her to come down here and talk to me herself and quit sending her peckerwood boyfriend to do it."
Travis stepped forward with a menacing look.
"Now I came here to be cordial, but....."
A hand grabbed his shoulder. When he turned around he saw Campbell standing there in his beige cowboy hat, that had a sweat ring around it.
"Then let's leave that way. Come on, I'll walk you out."
J.W.'s hands trembled with anger as he sat his pen down on the desk.
