She smiled — “Nerp” — and hip-swung around him.
With the balled bottom of his fist he thumped her on the arm, then jumped back. She strolled on, not even glancing at him. He dared again: thump, jump back. She was smiling and humming. “I hate you! I hate you!” he shrieked and hit her once more, this time not holding back because she was a girl, this time knuckles first.
She snickered. “That’s the hardest you can hit?” Snooty and grinny above him, she strolled on, whistling.
Only Children
36
They were walking on the land side of the tracks, under the stone bluffs. Above, they could see the occasional back end of a shingled building, broken windows, a fragment of fence. They walked in a world of cindery gray.
“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?” said David.
“We’re going to Philadelphia.”
“I know. I mean why.”
“Can’t say yet.”
David groaned under the pain of unanswered questions.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
David couldn’t believe it. Primrose? Afraid? “What of?”
She made a scrunchy, lemon-sucking kind of face. “I don’t know. Afraid to say it, I guess. Out loud. It sounds so goofy.”
“Just tell me. I won’t think it’s goofy.”
“Maybe later.”
David groaned. He was still groaning and complaining when suddenly Primrose yelled, “Look out!” and snatched him and lunged for the tracks as a pair of fat black plastic trash bags bumped down the bluff to the ground. On impact, they split open, spilling contents.
Primrose screamed to the bluff top: “Jerks!” She headed for the bags. She found a stick and began poking through the spillage. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned. “Who knows what germs those jerks have.” She yelled again, straight up: “Coulda killed us!”
“Prim, look,” said David. He pointed to a comic book, its back cover showing. “Can I pick it up?”
She worked the stick between the pages and lifted it. She inspected it. “Go ahead.”
David took the comic. “Phooey. It’s Veronica.”
“Veronica? I’ll take it.” She put it in her backpack. She found nothing else worth taking. She gave a parting yell: “Cheapskates!”
When she turned she found David sitting on a railroad tie. She snapped her fingers. “Let’s go, Moe.”
“I’m not going anywhere till I eat,” he said.
She took a deep breath. She looked up. The sky’s blue was now darker than that of the painted trim on her new house. Across the river, lights were on. “All right,” she said. “Might as well stop for the night anyway. Let’s look for a good place.”
They crossed the tracks to the river side. It wasn’t long before David realized he didn’t know what he was looking for. “What’s a good place?” he asked.
“A clear space,” she said, “not too big, just for the two of us, bushes all around.”
It took another ten minutes of walking and looking before Primrose decided on a place, midway between tracks and water.
“These bushes aren’t all around us,” David said.
Primrose set down her backpack. “They’re between us and the tracks. That’s what counts.”
“Why does that count?”
“So people can’t see us from the tracks.”
David stared at her. “What people?”
“Who knows? All kinds of weird people walk the tracks at night.”
David let out a fearful cry.
“Stop worrying,” said Primrose. “That’s what the bushes are for, so nobody sees us.”
David cringed. “I’m scared.”
Primrose inspected the ground for bugs and sat down. “Just pretend we’re fugitives. We escaped from jail and they’re out there looking for us, but they can’t find us because we’re in this great hideout.”
“I don’t want to pretend,” he whined.
Primrose took out the chocolate cupcake, broke it, and held out half. “Here, pretend you’re hungry.”
David snatched the cupcake and stuffed it into his mouth. He swallowed it nearly whole. Primrose stared, her empty hand still out. David plucked a crumb from it.
“That,” said Primrose, “was really stupid. You should make it last.”
With her front teeth she clipped a bit of chocolate icing from her half. She sucked on it and closed her eyes and went, “Mmmm.” Then she clipped another bite.
“I want more,” said David.
“Wait till I’m done eating my cupcake,” said Primrose.
It took her ten minutes.
“I want my drink,” said David.
“The drink comes last. We each have about two swigs, and that has to last till morning. So we do all our eating first, then we drink.”
David held out his hand. “Malt ball.”
She gave him one. A crunch of teeth, a swallow — gone.
Primrose chose. “One for me.” She smelled it, she kissed its smooth chocolate coating, she rolled it over her cheeks and up and down her nose. She placed it on her tongue and closed her mouth over it. She closed her eyes and went, “Mmm . . . mmm . . .” When it reappeared, displayed between her front teeth, it was slightly smaller and off-white, its chocolate jacket gone. Back into her mouth it went, where it tumbled and crunched until, with a satisfied “Ahh” she said, “That’s how to eat a malt ball.”
“How you eat,” said David. “How many are left?”
She counted. “Seven.”
“Give me” — he figured — “four.”
“Three. Owner gets the extra. She counted out three. “You sure you want them now?”
He held out his hand. She gave them to him. He shoved all three into his mouth and chewed like a cement truck till they were gone. He held out his hand. “Drink.”
Primrose got the bottle. She wagged her head. “Dumb . . . dumb . . .” She studied the remaining inch of Mango Madness. With a malt ball, she made a small chocolate mark at the halfway point.
David reached. “Oh no,” she said. “Keep your hands down. I’ll hold it. I’ll pour.”
David grumbled but complied. She set the bottle to his lips and tilted it. He swallowed, but mostly what he got was air, a trickle in a canyon.
“Hey,” he said.
“Sip,” she said.
They did it twice more. Primrose checked the bottle. “That’s it,” she announced. She showed him. The Mango Madness was down to the chocolate mark.
“I hardly tasted it,” he whined. “That didn’t even add up to a whole swallow. You cheated.”
Primrose capped the bottle and returned it to the backpack. “I probably tricked you, right?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Well, you’ll just have to pardon moi while I eat the rest of my dinner.” She sniffed another malt ball.
Like a dog at a kitchen table, David sat and stared, his eyes going from her hands to her face, as she took ten forevers to devour three malt balls. Most of the time she had her eyes shut. When she opened them for good with a final “Ahhh!” she rubbed her stomach and sighed. “That was one of the biggest meals I ever had. I am positively stuffed.”
She pushed herself grunting to her feet. She swayed, holding her stomach, bloating her cheeks. “Don’t know if I can walk.” She waddled past him, brushing bushes, groaning, “Oh, I’m stuffed . . . never again . . .”
The next time he heard her voice, it was different: “David.”
He rose, he turned, and at once he knew what had happened. They had been so busy fussing at each other that they hadn’t noticed. She was a shadow in a world of shadows. He went to her. Here, there, up and down the river, solitary lights nested in the dark. Somewhere a train whistle hooted, or was it something else?
He came closer. He clutched her shirt.
“Night’s here,” she said.
37
They talked.
They talked because it was night, and because w
eird people walk the tracks at night, and because there was nothing else to do, and because they could barely see each other, and because maybe the bushes were not enough.
The sound of their voices was a palisade against the dark.
At last Primrose told David why they were going to the city: “To see the waving man.”
He was stunned. “The one on TV? That waves at cars?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“Two reasons.”
“Yeah?”
“Number one, I want to see if it’s fake.”
“You think it’s a trick?”
“Not a trick exactly. Well, maybe. I don’t know. That’s the problem, I don’t know. I want to find out for sure. See it for myself.”
“What’s number two?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“I said.”
“I’m gonna ask him why he does it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If it’s real, I’m gonna ask him.”
“What do you think he’ll say?”
“How do I know? That’s why I’m asking.”
David said, “I have a question too.”
“Yeah? What?”
“I was thinking about it for a long time.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Do you have to be in a car for him to wave to you?”
Primrose did not know.
She said, “How long did you know about the picture?”
He said, “I don’t know. A pretty long time.”
“How did you find out?”
“At the flea market one day. Somebody was selling lots of them. They gave me one for free, but no frame. I showed it to my grandmother. She told me.”
“Your grandmother, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she laugh? Say I was stupid?”
“I didn’t tell her it was about you.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“You didn’t think I knew it wasn’t really my father.”
“No.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know.”
“But then you got mad at me.”
“Yeah.”
“And so you were going to tell me.”
“I was just kidding.”
“It was a just a threat, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you never have told me?”
“I don’t know.”
“As long as you lived?”
“I don’t know.”
“Prob’ly not, huh?”
“Prob’ly.”
David could not see her face, but he knew she was crying. He wondered why.
“Primrose?”
“Huh?”
“I know another secret.”
“About me?”
“No. Me.”
“You gonna tell me, or do I have to beg?”
“I won’t ever see the sun rise unless I’m with my mom.”
“Because you were going to see it with her, but then she fell and hit her head and died the day before. April twenty-ninth. Carolyn Sue Limpert. Slippery floor. Minnesota.”
“You know all that?”
“You only told me a million times. Me and Fridge.”
“I wish Refrigerator John was here.”
“We’re okay.”
Their words held hands in the night.
“Primrose?”
“Huh?”
“I have another secret, that you really don’t know about.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You want to hear it?”
“No.”
Silence.
She laughed. “Just kidding.”
“I’m afraid to tell it.”
“It’s about your mother.”
He gasped. “How did you know?”
“A totally wild guess.”
“It’s my most secretest secret there is.”
“You have till the count of three. One . . . two . . .”
“I believe that if I obey all the rules, my mother will come back.”
“Is that why you’re always picking up litter?”
“Yeah.”
“Why you never go in the Out at the supermarket?”
“Yeah.”
“You really believe it, huh?”
“Yeah. Why, you think it’s stupid?”
“Believe what you want. It’s a free country.”
David tore a weed from the cool earth. “What if it is stupid?”
“What’re you asking me for? What do I look like, a professor or something? I’m thirteen years old. I’m a kid.”
“Or what if I’m just not good enough? What if my mother’s waiting someplace, just waiting for me to be good enough so she can come back, but she can’t because I keep messing up.” He punched his leg with each word. “Messing up . . . messing up . . .”
He was crying.
Primrose said, “Hold out your hand.”
He felt her hand touch his, turn it palm up. Then he felt something smooth and round. “Malt ball?”
“The extra one. I saved it.”
“For me?”
“Eat it.”
He ate it.
“Hold out your hand.”
He did. Now it held a bottle.
“There’s just a sip left. You can’t eat a malt ball without drinking something afterward.” She snickered. “It’s a rule.”
He drank. She was right, it was just a sip, finished even as his mouth was reaching for more. But it was the most wonderful sip he had ever had.
And then, suddenly, he could see her.
She was looking up, pointing. “Moon’s out.”
Out it was, a little lopsided, like a deflated volleyball, unmoving among the smoky drift of clouds.
She reached into her backpack and came out with the Veronica comic. She wagged it in his face. “Quick,” she said, “read to me.”
“It’s dark,” he said.
“Use the moonlight. You can do it. C’mon, before it goes back in. Wait —” She pulled off her sneakers and socks. She flattened the socks and lay them neatly one atop the other on the ground. She lay herself down then, on her back with her head pillowed on the socks. “Okay, go.”
David opened the comic book. “I can’t. It’s too dark.”
“That’s what you get for not eating your carrots. Turn around, so the moon’s behind you.”
David did so. She was right. The moon, like a lamp over his shoulder, gave light enough to see the words.
“Wait!” Primrose pulled David’s legs out in front of him, flat to the ground, then swung herself around so that her head rested in his lap. “Okay, now, go, go.”
David began to read.
Primrose interrupted. “Read the ads too.”
David snapped, “O-kay. Now shut up.”
He read on. He read a story about Veronica’s birthday and the plan she came up with to make Archie buy her the present she wanted most. He didn’t understand all the words, but that was all right because all he had to do was pronounce them, and he was good at that. He was especially good at sound effects, such as “Krrr-rash!” and “Oof!” His favorite character turned out to be neither Veronica nor Archie, but Ms. Beazly, the wild-haired lunchroom lady. She was so crotchety to everybody, even the principal, she made David laugh.
When he finished the birthday story, he lifted the comic and looked down at Primrose. Her eyes were closed. There was a faint smile on her face, the same face he had brushed leaves from in the park. Her hands were folded over her chest, like his mother’s in the funeral parlor. He didn’t like that. He lifted one of her hands as gently as possible and moved it. And noticed something else too — ugly bruises on the moonwa
shed surface of her arm — where he had punched her. He whispered, “Primrose.” She did not move.
He read some more. He was partway through the next story, about Veronica’s job at an ice-cream shop, when the light went out. A cloud had covered the moon.
“David?”
Her voice was groggy, her eyes still closed.
“Huh?”
“What happened?”
“The moon went in. I thought you were asleep.”
“I was. You stopped.”
“It’s out again. Go back to sleep.”
She moved her head from his lap and lay on her side on the ground. The moon was not out again, but that was no matter. David knew now what to do. He raised the comic book. He began: “So, Veronica was supposed to make a banana split, but she couldn’t find any bananas, so . . .” Word by word he made up the story, turning the pages noisily as if he were reading. He made sure to have Ms. Beazly visit the ice-cream shop.
When he finished that story he made up another, about Veronica enlisting in the army and meeting Beetle Bailey.
Then he told the story of Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel named Mary Anne. He remembered every word as his mother had read it to him night after night.
He told the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And then he retold it as Beetle Bailey and the Three Bears. And then as Mike Mulligan and the Three Bears. And then as Ms. Beazly and the Three Stooges. That one gave him lots of oofs and krrr-rashes.
He had never known he had so many stories in him. Whenever the moonlight came back — a minute here, a minute there — he used it to look at her. She was as asleep as a person ever was. She was catching up on a lifetime without bedtime stories, and David was determined to give her a thousand nights’ worth.
The Little Engine That Could.
Jack and the Beanstalk.
The Little Beanstalk That Could.
A Steam Shovel Named Primrose.
And then, his own eyes drooping, he told his final story. It was called David and His Mother. It was about a boy who lost his mother. All because somebody made a dumb mistake and didn’t follow a rule. And so the boy decides to follow a thousand rules of his own. Maybe a million. And sooner or later that broken rule will be mended and his mother will come back. Then he meets this girl with ropey hair, a teenager, and she breaks every rule she runs into and moves out of her own house to get away from her mother — and it’s just all backwards, this story, because the kid who wants a mother doesn’t have one and the one who has one moves out. He wants to scream at the girl, “You don’t know how lucky you are!” but instead he goes to see her mother, who is a fortune-teller, and she tricks the boy into thinking she can bring his mother back but she can’t because she’s a crackpot. But she loves her daughter, David can tell, loves her the way David’s mother loved him, and sometimes David feels that same love he used to, except now it’s coming from other places, other people, and it’s a good thing the love is coming because he’s beginning to think there aren’t enough rules in the universe to bring his mother back.
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