his chair.
Maggie crouched in front of the man and while speaking very softly, she asked if she could remove the hat. Before quite getting permission she pulled it gently off his head to reveal wispy white hair surrounding a bald dome. She gently ran her fingers around his scalp in search of a bump or contusion. Then she pulled him to his feet and ran her hands around his torso and waist. “You must’ve rolled around in the dirt, sir,” she said. “I bet you’re ready for a shower.” He didn’t respond. “Sir? Anything hurt?” she asked him. He just shook his head. “Can you smile for me? Big, wide, smile?” she asked, checking for the kind of paralysis caused by a stroke.
“Where’d you escape from, young man?” Sully asked him. “Where’s your home?”
“Wakefield, Illinois,” he said. “You know it?”
“Can’t say I do,” Sully said. “But I bet it’s beautiful. More beautiful than Lejeune, for sure.”
“Can I have cream?” he asked, holding out his cup.
Enid took it. “Of course you can, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll bring it right back.”
In a moment the gentleman sat with his coffee with cream, shivering under a blanket while Sully called Stan Bronoski. There were a number of people Sully could have reached out to—a local ranger, state police aka highway patrol, even fire and rescue. But Stan was the son of a local rancher and was the police chief in Timberlake, just twenty miles south and near the interchange. It was a small department with a clever deputy who worked the internet like a pro, Officer Paul Castor.
Beau gave the old man a good sniffing, then moved down the stairs to Cal who automatically began petting him.
Sully handed the phone to Maggie. “Stan wants to talk to you.”
“He sounds like someone who wandered off,” Stan said to Maggie. “But I don’t have any missing persons from nearby. I’ll get Castor looking into it. I’m on my way. Does he have any ID on him?”
“We haven’t really checked yet,” Maggie said into the phone. “Why don’t I do that while you drive. Here’s Sully.”
Maggie handed the phone back to her dad and said, “Pass the time with Stan while I chat with this gentleman.”
Maggie asked the man to stand again and deftly slid a thin wallet out of his back pocket. She urged him to sit, and opened it up. “Well, now,” she said. “Mr. Gunderson? Roy Gunderson?”
“Hmm?” he said, his eyes lighting up a bit.
Sully repeated the name into the phone to Stan.
“And so, Roy, did you hurt anything when you fell?” Maggie asked.
He shook his head and sipped his coffee. “I fell?” he finally asked.
Maggie looked at Sully, lifting a questioning brow. “A Mr. Gunderson from Park City, Utah,” Sully said. “Wandered off from his home a few days ago. On foot.”
“He must’ve gotten a ride or something,” Cal said.
“His driver’s license, which was supposed to be renewed ten years ago, says his address is in Illinois.”
“Stan says he’ll probably have more information by the time he gets here, but this must be him. Dementia, he says.”
“You can say that again,” Maggie observed. “I can’t imagine what the last few days have been like for him. He must have been terrified.”
“He look terrified to you?” Frank asked. “He might as well be on a cruise ship.”
“Tell Stan we’ll take care of him till he gets here.”
Maggie went about the business of caring for Mr. Gunderson, getting water and a little soup into him while the camper, Cal, chatted with Sully and Frank, apparently well-known to them. When this situation was resolved she meant to find out more about him, like how long he’d been here.
She took off Roy’s shoes and socks and looked at his feet—no injuries or frostbite but some serious swelling and bruised toenails. She wondered where he had been and how he’d gotten the backpack. He certainly hadn’t brought it from home or packed it himself. That would be too complicated for a man in his condition. It was a miracle he could carry it!
Two hours later, the sun lowering in the sky, an ambulance had arrived for Roy Gunderson. He didn’t appear to be seriously injured or ill but he was definitely unstable and Stan wasn’t inclined to transport him alone. He could bolt, try to get out of a moving car or interfere with the driver, although Stan had a divider cage in his police car.
What Maggie and Sully had learned, no thanks to Roy himself, was that he’d been cared for at home by his wife, wandered off without his GPS bracelet, walked around a while before coming upon a rather old Chevy sedan with the keys in the ignition, so he must have helped himself. The car was reported stolen from near his house, but had no tracking device installed. And since Mr. Gunderson hadn’t driven in years, no one put him with the borrowed motor vehicle for a couple of days. The car was found abandoned near Salt Lake City with Roy’s jacket in it. From there the old man had probably hitched a ride. His condition was too good to have walked for days. Roy was likely left near a rest stop or campgrounds where he helped himself to a backpack. Where he’d been, what he’d done, how he’d survived was unknown.
The EMTs were just about to load Mr. Gunderson into the back of the ambulance when Sully sat down on the porch steps with a loud huff.
“Dad?” Maggie asked.
Sully was grabbing the front of his chest. Over his heart. He was pale as snow, sweaty, his eyes glassy, his breathing shallow and ragged.
“Dad!” Maggie shouted.
If you tell the truth you don’t have
to remember anything.
—Mark Twain
It’s different when it’s your father, when your father is Sully, the most beloved general-store owner in a hundred square miles. Maggie felt a rising panic that she hoped didn’t show. First, she gave him an aspirin. Then she rattled off medication orders to the EMT, though she wasn’t the physician in charge and it would have to be approved via radio. Poor Mr. Gunderson ended up in the back of Stan’s squad car and Sully was put on the gurney. The emergency tech immediately started an EKG, slapping electrodes onto his chest, getting an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.
Maggie was in the ambulance immediately, reading the EKG as it was feeding out. Beau was barking and jumping outside the ambulance door, trying to get inside.
“Beau!” Maggie yelled. “No, Beau! Stay!”
She heard a whistle, then a disappointed whine, then the door to the ambulance closed and they pulled away.
“Maggie,” Sully said, pulling the mask away. “See he didn’t follow. I don’t leave him very much.”
Maggie peeked out the back window.
