Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books)

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  Joyce said, “I still don’t know what the heck is going on,” and that dip Cindy chimed in, “Know about what, exactly?”

  Christ, what a crew. Alex watched the road for cop cars. Good thing Bobbie and Roberto hadn’t said anything to those girls.

  Joni’s radio crackled as she twiddled the dials. Miss Stern snapped, “For God’s sake, turn it down, will you?” You could see her thinking, biting her lip as she drove. Figure your way out of this one, Miss Know-it-all, Alex thought.

  Joni said, “I don’t want to miss anything, if they talk about Pinto Street.”

  Bobbie said, “You won’t get anything clear until we’re past the Algodones power station.”

  Jeff swiveled in the seat to look back at the Cantus. “What are you going to do, Roberto? Where are you going to go?”

  Bobbie reached over and shoved him. “Don’t ask that, dope! You want the cops to worm it out of you later on? There’s a plan, that’s all.”

  Suddenly the car was full of the news announcer’s voice and everybody saying “What? What’s he say?” and hushing each other.

  In shocked silence they listened to the tail end of the announcer’s summary. When he moved briskly on to sports scores, Joni clicked off the radio and said in a flat, tight voice, “Great. That man died, that man who was shot.”

  Alex’s stomach gave a lurch and he gritted his teeth. Why should it bother him? What did he care? He felt sweat run in tickling rivulets down his ribs.

  Miss Stern said, “What? Who died?”

  Roberto said, “Rudolfo Escobar. He owned a feed store on Fourth Street. He was at the party. The cops shot him.”

  Joni said, “The announcer said he was caught in the crossfire.”

  “There was no crossfire!” Roberto said. He hit the back of the seat in front of him with his fist.

  “That’s how they get you,” Alex said, trying to catch Roberto’s eye. I’m on your side, man. “Armed and dangerous,” the announcer had said, of Roberto and that older guy, Maestas. The cop was still in serious condition. “It’s how they justify shooting you down on sight.”

  “I’m stopping here,” Miss Stern said.

  Roberto said, “Just keep driving,” and Joyce wailed, “Oh, no, oh, shit!” and Alex looked back and saw the pistol in Roberto’s hand.

  “Oh, man,” he breathed, “where did you get that?”

  Joyce could not eat. Roberto hadn’t let them stop in Santa Fe. They had followed the highway north beyond the town to a roadside rest stop with shaded tables and two chemical toilets.

  Joni and Miss Stern had spread fruit and soda and sandwiches on one of the tables. The kids didn’t talk. Alex had taken his food back to the van, where Roberto and Blanca and Bobbie were eating.

  If one of us ran to the edge of the road and tried to flag a car down and get help, would Roberto really shoot? Joyce wondered. He’s a kid, like us. But he’s tough, he’s a valley kid. They shoot and knife each other all the time down there; they still have gang fights sometimes. Even Bobbie looked different, excited. And that girl, Blanca, she was creepy.

  Joyce looked at her sandwich. If I bite into this and taste real meat, I’ll know this is all real, she thought. She did not bite into it.

  Next to her Jeff ate wolfishly.

  To soon, the class began to clear up, prompted by Roberto’s command: “All right, let’s go.” Paper crackled; the lids of the trash cans rattled. Joyce could hear Blanca’s lively and excited voice from the van, describing the riot and how she had gotten hurt defending someone else from the brutal cops. That kid was flaunting her encased arm, boasting of her war wound to Alex. Joyce hated her. If she stopped hating, she’d start being really scared.

  An enormous bus swung off the highway and pulled up at the far end of the line of sheltered picnic tables. People got out: youngsters, some kind of church group with matching caps of bright yellow. Baptist canaries loud with release from the confines of their bus, they spread their white lunch boxes over several of the further tables.

  Joyce looked at them across what felt like miles of no-man’s-land. What would Miss Stern do now? Would she get them all killed, or save them?

  In her mind’s eye, she saw the teacher walk firmly over to speak to one of the adults with the canaries. Roberto would shoot. She saw Miss Stern punched down by a bullet from behind, like somebody in a tv news clip of some horrible guerilla war somewhere.

  That’s us, we’re stuck here in Roberto’s own guerilla war. She’s the teacher. Why doesn’t she save us?

  That little round lady from New York, save them? Never. Roberto was pointing fiercely into the van, and they all moved slowly toward the doors.

  Miss Stern stood there, looking past them, not at them. “Where’s Joni?” she said.

  Joyce said, “She went into the bathroom when I came out. I guess she’s still in there.”

  “Well, go and get her,” Roberto commanded, with a nervous glance at the bus people. “We’re leaving.”

  Joyce looked at Miss Stern, who nodded. Joyce went.

  The door was firmly locked. “Joni? We’re going,” Joyce said.

  Joni answered without opening the door. “I’m staying here. Tell them, when they’re gone I’ll come out and hitch a ride and go stay with a friend of mine. I won’t say anything. Go tell them that.”

  Joyce leaned against the plastic hutch, appalled. “But you can’t! Joni, they’ll kill you! He can shoot right through this plastic thing!” But would he, with the canaries there?

  “I’m not coming out.”

  Joyce ran back to the van. “She won’t come out,” she gasped. “She says she won’t tell anybody anything, but she won’t come out, we should go without her.”

  “That sneaky bitch!” Roberto said. He would have leaped out of the van, but Bobbie grabbed his sleeve. The Cantus conferred with their heads together, their voices low and strained.

  “Will they go drag her out?” Joyce whispered.

  “Not in front of all those people,” Miss Stern said. “They can’t take the chance.”

  “That’s right,” Jeff muttered, leaning out the van door beside them. “What if they have a CB in their bus and send for help? But he can wait them out, and then go get her.”

  Joyce began to whimper, she couldn’t help herself. If they started in on Joni, it wouldn’t stop there. Why did Joni provoke Roberto this way? Even if she was safe now, the rest of them would be at greater risk because of her.

  Everybody stared at the ugly plastic cabinet of the chemical toilet as if it were a magic fortress that only one could hide in. All scared, except for rotten Alex, who wore an expression of contempt.

  Roberto said, “Everybody in the van, we’re going! Hurry up, I said!”

  Miss Stern got in last. She sat at the wheel like a store dummy until Roberto snarled, “I said let’s go, God damn it!”

  The van lurched forward. They all looked back at the chemical toilet and the empty bus, the cheerful campers at their tables.

  I’ll never see my own room again, Joyce thought, I’ll never see the poster of the kittens or the quill pen Aunt Reenie gave me. But though she heard the words in her mind and she felt hollow with sorrow for herself, no tears came.

  I always knew something like this would happen to me, she thought. I always knew it.

  In the middle seat, Cindy was snuffling mournfully.

  7

  Dorothea thought Ricky should have water with him on his drive up to the commune this afternoon. She put the water-jug, freshly filled from the refrigerator bottle, into the cab of her truck.

  She heard an engine down at the foot of the drive. A dented van, crowded with passengers, rumbled into the yard. The art class wasn’t due until after lunch. Not the sort of error Mary Morgan, the soul of consideration, would make, but who knew about this Miss Stern from New York? Never mind, they were probably all pretty rattled by the problem of that girl. Mary had been nearly in tears this morning on the phone about it. Ricky could still slip a
way without any fuss. Mentally Dorothea checked what the pantry held to suit teen-age appetites as she shut the truck and turned to meet the new arrivals.

  A young woman in an embroidered Mexican shirt and wrinkled jeans climbed stiffly and slowly out of the driver’s seat. Clearly fatigued by a long stretch at the wheel, she stood a moment with her hand on the roof of the vehicle and her face turned away, the image of exhaustion. Thank God, Dorothea thought wryly, I didn’t listen to my mother and become a teacher.

  The big side door of the van slid back, but no youngsters came pouring out with radios blaring and bubble-gum popping, the sort of thing Dorothea had been mildly dreading since she had committed herself to this visit. Instead, out stepped a very young-looking girl with one arm hiked up in a cast like a gift borne formally aloft for presentation. Dorothea’s first thought was that they had sent her an elementary — rather than a high-school — class. This gave way at once to recognition that the person in the cast had been kept unnaturally young-looking by physical affliction: her proportions slightly wrong, the head too big. She must be older in years than her stunted size suggested.

  Poor kid. No mother of a daughter could look at her and not be sorry for her (and glad of the normality of one’s own child; Dorothea saw for a moment the lanky grace of dark-eyed Claire). The girl measured Dorothea with the direct look of the invalid who has come to terms with her situation and will use your own guilty thoughts against you. Good. That was surely better than cringing acceptance.

  Then Dorothea heard the teacher’s wavering voice, “Ms. Howard, I’m sorry —”

  A deep, cello-like note thrummed through her, a note of dread; she heard in her mind her own voice reciting a line from Claire’s favorite childhood bedtime-reading, Madeleine: “In the middle of the night, Miss Clavell turned on the light. She said, ‘Something is not right!’”

  Dismissing the image that came with this — the illustration, so sinister in its dark colors and the urgent slant of Miss Clavell’s figure rushing down the corridor to see what was “not right” with her convent class of twelve little girls — Dorothea looked more attentively at Miss Stern. This isn’t about tiredness or worry about the situation she’s left behind in Mary’s hands. This person has been drained by some ordeal; and she has brought her trouble to me.

  Now the others came out, silent young people: a vacant-looking girl with a tear-stained face, a gawky Anglo boy, two blonde girls who stood dazedly together, a short thin boy with a sneering mouth. They all lined up in front of the dusty vehicle. Ellie Stern leaned against the front fender like a limp doll.

  Last of all came two young Chicanos with identical expressions of truculent bravado. One of them had a gun in his hand, its muzzle raised. He was stocky and heavy-browed and clearly scared, like all of them. But he had the pistol.

  Dumb with shock, she thought flatly: you have been dreaming of violence. Here it is.

  “Stand right there,” the boy with the gun said loudly. “Any men around this place, lady?”

  No lies, she decided. She had always been a rotten liar. “Only my friend Mr. Maulders. He’s a guest in my house.”

  The other Chicano boy said, “Where’s he at?”

  “Probably in the smaller bedroom. He’s a sick man.”

  The girl in the cast said skeptically, “What’s the matter with him?”

  Disliking her intensely, Dorothea snapped, “He’s dying of cancer.”

  “Wow,” the girl said, round-eyed. Who was she, this small, golden Moor of a girl with a broken arm?

  “Shit,” muttered the armed boy in obvious dismay. “You got a phone here?”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced at the other Chicano. “Got your knife, Bobbie? Go find the phone wire and cut it.”

  Dorothea said quickly, “I think that might be a mistake. People know I’m alone with a sick guest. My friends keep in touch. Any problem with the phone will bring somebody around to make sure things are all right.”

  “If that was true,” the boy with the gun said triumphantly, “you’d want me to cut the wires, so somebody would come.”

  Calm, be calm, she thought, trembling inside with the effort to keep her voice reasonable. “The last thing I want is to bring any of my friends walking into this situation, whatever it is.” Jesus Christ, she thought, where is all my coolness coming from? Shock? How long before it’s gone and twitching hysteria takes over?

  The tall Anglo boy said, “Can we go inside? I need to use the bathroom.”

  Bobbie-with-the-knife said unhappily, “Roberto? Should I cut the wires or not?”

  Brillo came loping around the corner of the building, ears pricked up, and stopped. Dorothea saw the knuckles of the hand that held the pistol go pale.

  “Brillo, come; sit,” she said.

  Brillo came over and licked her hand, panting hotly on her fingers. He sat. There was a moment of strained silence. The weepy girl hung against the side of the van like a strand of spaghetti stuck to the side of the pot. The tall thin boy took a nervous step forward, speaking to Dorothea: “Look, I really have to go.” He blushed when the two blondes behind him giggled.

  “Not yet,” Roberto shouted. He was so nervous, so obviously making this all up as he went along, that against her will Dorothea felt sympathy for him. He might be a thug by nature, but he was not very practiced at it. Behind the gun, he was after all just a youngster. “Bobbie, go check out the house — where all the outside doors are, the phones, who’s in there. See if there’s any guns.”

  Bobbie went inside.

  Dorothea started forward before she could stop herself. It was a violation for that kid with the knife to enter her house like that, without her leave. He would take Ricky by surprise, and what would Ricky do or try to do?

  Roberto snarled a wordless sound at her and hunched over the pistol. She held herself back and waited.

  Brillo, sensing the slackening of Dorothea’s interest in him, trotted over to the visitors, tail wagging. The weepy girl sank on her knees beside him and hugged him round the neck, snuffling into his fur. The girl in the cast leaned on the van and kicked rhythmically with her heel at one of the tires. The two girlfriends whispered and nudged each other, subsiding instantly into vacuity whenever burly young Roberto glared at them.

  Guns, Dorothea thought, sinkingly. Living in the country you had guns as a matter of course, for snakes, for the odd threatening intruder (and here he was), for deer in the fall. She thought of this boy Roberto with Nathan’s old deer rifle in his hands, the pistol relegated to his friend Bobbie. Two weapons instead of one.

  Brillo got nervous, licked the girl’s ear, and trotted around excitedly until he found a stick, which he tried to induce one of the young people to throw for him.

  “Brillo, you idiot,” Dorothea said. Her voice wobbled.

  Brillo lay down in the shade of the yard fence and gnawed on the stick, still hopeful, watching them alertly.

  “That’s a nice dog,” the thin boy offered shyly.

  Dorothea nodded. “There’s another one, a Doberman.” She spoke loudly and clearly for Roberto to hear. “He’s not mean; he’s just as nice as Brillo here. Nobody should be worried about him when he shows up. His name is Mars.”

  “They don’t live in the house all the time, do they?” said the girl in the cast anxiously. “I’m not supposed to stay anywhere that there’s animal hair. It could give me an attack.”

  “She has asthma,” Ellie Stern said.

  Roberto shouted, “You shut up! It’s none of your business.”

  Dorothea said, “The dogs are country dogs. They spend most of their time outdoors. But I can’t guarantee that they haven’t left some dog-hair around inside.”

  The girl looked apprehensive but said nothing more.

  Roberto gets angry but he doesn’t shoot, Dorothea thought. Not so far. But unexpected things will keep happening, and he’ll keep getting angry, and eventually maybe he will shoot. While there’s still time I must think. But she couldn�
��t seem to. Her thoughts would not progress beyond that point.

  Ricky appeared in the doorway. He seemed to take it all in with one glance. He stepped out and crossed the yard to stand with Dorothea. Bobbie was behind him with the deer rifle in his hands.

  The girl in the cast looked at Ricky with critical interest. “You’re the one with cancer?”

  Ricky gazed down at her from his gaunt height and said coolly, “Who are you?”

  The girl blossomed into childish volubility. “I’ve got asthma. It almost killed me a couple of times when I was younger. I think it still could, if I was already sick with something else like flu, you know?”

  “To be sure,” he said remotely. “I do know.”

  “That’s enough talking!” Roberto commanded.

  “I’ll talk if I want to, Beto,” the girl flared, but then she subsided into sulky silence.

  Bobbie gave the rifle to Roberto to hold and squatted down to draw a diagram of the house in the dirt with a stick. They conferred, Roberto continually raising his head to glare at them all over the muzzles of the two weapons he now held.

  Dorothea heard Bobbie mention a shotgun, and her heart turned over. God damn it, she had forgotten the damned thing. It was disassembled on a work-bench in the garage. She’d meant to clean it up and give it to the fellow from the commune in exchange for work he had done on her windmill.

  Ammunition was always kept on the mantle, next to the deer rifle, so Bobbie had probably loaded that by now. A loaded twenty-two. Dangerous enough. And the rounds for the shotgun were there too. Nothing to be done.

  Roberto took possession of all the keys she and Ricky had between them and had Bobbie lock up every door in the house that locked and each of the vehicles in the yard. Roberto did this step by step, scowling and glaring and chewing his lip, clearly desperate not to overlook anything and make some fatal error. He sent the girl — Quita or Blanca her name seemed to be — inside with Bobbie to check out the dog-hair question. Everyone stood around, waiting for them to return. Dorothea saw in the sag of their shoulders the heaviness of her own. Tension drains you.