At first she paid little attention to the family who had walked from the street onto the park grounds and sat down at a table by the pond. The man had a dark tan and black hair and wore denims and work shoes. His wife had the round face of a peasant and wore a cheap blue scarf on her head and carried a calico cat on her shoulder, a harness and leash on its neck. She had no makeup on her face and seemed to be seeing the park for the first time. It was the child who caught Gretchen’s eye. His hair was blond, his smile unrelenting, his cheeks blooming with color. When he tried to walk, he kept falling down, laughing at his own ineptitude, then getting up and toddling down the slope and falling again.
The family had brought their lunch in a paper bag. The woman placed a jar of sun tea and three peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches on a piece of newspaper and cut two of them in half and quartered the third for the child. She had smeared jelly on her hands, and she tried to wipe them clean on the paper bag, then gave it up and said something to her husband. She walked through the live oaks toward the restroom, the leaves gusting out of the coulee in the shade. The husband yawned and rested his head on one hand and stared vacantly at the ball diamond, his eyes half lidded. In under a minute, he had put his head down and was asleep. Gretchen looked at her watch. It was eight minutes until noon.
She finished her lunch and looked at the university campus on the far side of the curving two-lane road that separated it from the park. A marching band was thundering out a martial song on a practice field. The sun was as bright as a yellow diamond through the oak trees, and its refraction inside the branches almost blinded her. She looked back at the table by the pond where the man and his little boy had been sitting. The child was gone.
She stood up from the bench. The mother had not returned from the restroom, and the husband was sound asleep. The wind was cold and blowing hard, the surface of the pond wimpling in the sunlight like needles that could penetrate the eye. The ducks were in the reeds along the bank, engorged with bread scraps, their feathers ruffling, surrounded by a floating necklace of froth and Styrofoam containers and paper cups. Beyond the plank table where the husband was sitting, Gretchen saw the little boy toddling down the slope toward the water’s edge. She began running just as he fell.
He tumbled end over end down the embankment, his zippered one-piece outfit caking with mud, his face filled with shock. Gretchen charged down the embankment after him, trying to keep her balance, her feet slipping from under her. She was running so fast, she splashed into the water ahead of the little boy and grabbed him up in both arms before he could roll into the shallows. She hefted him against her shoulder and walked back up the embankment and looked into the horrified face of the mother and the blank stare of the father, who had just lifted up his head from the table.
“Oh my God, I fell asleep,” he said. He looked at his wife. “I fell asleep. I ain’t meant to.”
The woman took the child from Gretchen’s arms. “T’ank you,” she said.
“It’s all right,” Gretchen said.
The mother bounced the baby up and down on her chest. “Come play wit’ your cat,” she said. “Don’t be crying, you. You’re okay now. But you was bad. You shouldn’t be walking down by the water, no.”
“He wasn’t bad,” Gretchen said.
“He knows what I mean. It’s bad for him to be by the water ’cause it can hurt him,” the mother said. “That’s what I was saying to him. His father ain’t had no sleep.”
“Why not?” Gretchen said.
“’Cause he works at a boatyard and he ain’t had no work since the oil spill,” the mother said. “He cain’t sleep at night. He worries all the time. He’s that way ’cause he’s a good man.”
“Drink some tea, you,” the husband said. There were carpenter’s bruises on his nails, purple and deep, all the way to the cuticle. “If it ain’t been for you, I cain’t t’ink about what might have happened.”
“It didn’t. That’s what counts,” Gretchen said.
He looked into space, his eyes hollow, as though he were watching an event for which there would have been no form of forgiveness if he had let it occur. “How long I been asleep?”
“Not long. Don’t blame yourself,” Gretchen said. “Your little boy is fine.”
“He’s our only child. My wife cain’t have no more kids.”
“Where’s your car?” Gretchen said.
“We sold it. We rode the bus here,” the mother said.
“Tell you what,” Gretchen said. “I’d like to take your picture on my video camera. Will you let me do that? I make movies.”
The mother gave her a coy look, as though someone were playing a joke on her. “Like in Hollywood or somet’ing?”
“I’m making a documentary on the 1940s musical revue in New Iberia.” She could tell neither of them understood what she was talking about. “Let me get my camera. After you eat, I’ll drive you home.”
“You ain’t got to do that,” the man said.
It was two minutes to noon. The feelings Gretchen had had all morning were gone, but their disappearance was not related to the time of day. She got her video camera from the pickup and focused the lens on the man and woman and child, then showed them the footage. “See? You all are a wonderful family,” she said.
“I ain’t dressed to be on that,” the woman said.
“I think all of you are beautiful,” Gretchen said.
The man and woman seemed embarrassed and looked at each other. “T’ank you for what you done,” the man said.
There was an emotion inside Gretchen that she could not understand. She did not know the name of the family, yet she did not want to ask it. “That’s such a cute little boy,” she said.
“Yeah, he’s gonna be somet’ing special one day, you gonna see,” the mother said.