Part 3 — Cals Long Way Home
The power bills were going to a small house in Spokane, and the name on the account was Ellen Burris. Deputy Sorensen read it off her tablet, folded her arms, and looked at the freezer for a long minute. Then she told Marty and me to sit on the garage step, because she had a feeling this story was going to be a very long one.
The wallet belonged to Calvin Burris, who drove hay for the farm next door, and who had been reported missing in October of 2016. Everyone in Lewis County believed he had moved to Montana, or worse. The deputy drove to Spokane that afternoon and sat across a kitchen table from his mother, an eighty-one-year-old woman with a hearing aid and a pot of tea.
Ellen did not wait to be asked. She said, My son is alive. He has been alive the whole time. She poured the tea with a shaking hand and told the story in order. In 2016, Cal was drowning in gambling debts. He owed money to people he was afraid of, and he saw only one way out, which was to disappear and let the world think the worst.
He asked his uncle Harold, the old man who owned that farm, to help him make it look real. Harold kept the wallet, the watch and the truck keys frozen in the wall of an old chest freezer, so they would be found someday, in good condition, if anyone looked. Cal sold his truck for cash, took a bus to Montana, and started over as a ranch hand. His mother paid the farms electric bill so the freezer would never go dark.
Cals wife had collected a small life insurance payout on the strength of the missing person report. She did not know he was alive. When she learned the truth, she was devastated, and furious, and then relieved all at once. She told the deputy that she had mourned a husband for eight years who had simply been too ashamed to come home.
A man can vanish for the best of reasons or the worst, and the people who love him pay the bills either way.
Ellen called her son that night. He had a mild heart scare the winter before, and he had been wanting to come back for years. He drove to Chehalis in a borrowed pickup the next morning and walked into the sheriffs office with his hat in his hand. The deputy said, Mr. Burris, I think you have been reported missing. He said, Yes, ma am. I would like to be found.
The prosecutor was fair. No one had been hurt, and the insurance company, after hearing everything, agreed to a repayment plan rather than a trial. Cal pleaded to a lesser charge of insurance fraud, received probation and community service, and promised to repay the payout in monthly installments. Gamblers Anonymous met in the church basement on Thursdays, and he never missed.
His wife did not take him back right away. She told him he could earn it, one honest day at a time. They sat across from each other in a family counselors office all spring, and by June he was fixing her porch steps. Marty and I attended the little backyard gathering where they renewed their promises, with Ellen in the front row.
As for me, I kept the oak barrel, which is a beauty. The sheriff hauled the freezer away and gave me an extra seventy-five dollars for my trouble, which I spent on hops. Deb says my first batch of barrel-aged stout is the best thing I have brewed. I named it Long Way Home, and the label has a little picture of a hay truck.
