“Okay.” She bit into the sandwich ravenously.
I got one of the sleeping bags from the trunk and spread it on the rear floor, and as soon as she was through with the sandwich I arranged her with the black blanket over her. It was as if she had become invisible, the effect was so good. I nodded at her. “What’s your name?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What do the children call you?”
“Nothing. They don’t like me.”
“Okay. We’ll think of a name for you.” She would fall asleep, I thought, and I would have to remember to check on her to make certain she hadn’t worked her way out from under the cover, but as long as she stayed where she was, it would take a very close look to spot her.
I got behind the wheel again and put Joey’s driver’s license and his credit card in my wallet and removed everything that had my name. I owe you, Joey, I thought, when I started to drive again. I wouldn’t try to leave the island until the traffic jam was gone; I didn’t want to be in a stopped car under the garish lights of the streets leading to the causeway. Instead, I drove the length of the island, poking along, and when I got back it was a little past midnight and the gridlock had vanished. There was still heavy traffic, but manageable now, and I got in it after glancing at the child to make sure she was hidden. She was sound asleep, out of sight.
They stopped me, glanced inside the car, looked in the trunk, called me Mr. Marcos after looking at the driver’s license, and then waved me on. I didn’t relax until I reached the first toll booth and was stopped a second time and waved through. I turned west, heading for Wilmington and points west and south. No one looked inside the car again, or asked for ID. Along about three in the morning, when I was afraid of falling asleep at the wheel I pulled off the road into a driveway, and opened the thermos. Steaming hot black coffee. I laughed when I sipped it. Joey had spiked it liberally with bourbon.
* * *
I slept for nearly three hours, woke up freezing and stiff, and finished the coffee. The child was sleeping sweetly, nice and warm under the blanket. I had wanted to be through Frederick, heading south on 340 by morning, but it looked as if I couldn’t make it. I had stayed off the freeways, the interstates, the toll roads, and the roads I had chosen instead had slowed me down. I began to drive again. In a short while she yawned and said she had to go to the bathroom, and she was hungry and thirsty. We stopped at the side of the road and I told her to go into the bushes. She balked, but finally she did, and then we ate the last of the sandwiches, and she started on an apple. I looked at her in dismay. She needed her face washed, her hair combed, clean clothes.…
“Why were you hiding?” I asked her then.
“I don’t know,” she said with her mouth full.
Fair enough, I thought tiredly. If she asked me why I was hiding her, that would be my answer. “Do you know who is looking for you?”
She shook her head. “Do I have to stay on the floor again?”
I knew it would not be as effective during daylight hours. “No. But stay in the back seat. You know that people are looking for you, don’t you?” She nodded solemnly. “Okay, if we have to stop, get down there again. We’ll be getting to a town pretty soon, and when the stores open, I’ll get you some other clothes and a hairbrush. And you’ll have to wait in the car for me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
When I started to drive again, she sat on the edge of the back seat with her chin on the passenger seat. “Where did you sleep when you were hiding?” I asked.
“Places. In a car once. And I saw a dog go in a house and I went in after him. He had his own little door. He was my friend.”
A dog door? I got as much from her as she could remember or wanted to tell me; it was hard to say which. She remembered there was a plane wreck, she said, and she saw a lot of people by cars talking and she opened a car door and got in. But she hadn’t liked those people much; she had been afraid they would hurt her ears, and she left when they all went to sleep. Then she followed the dog into his house and ate cereal there. She went in another house but people came back and locked the doors and she hid in a closet all night and slept and when they went away the next day she crawled out a window.
“Why did you ask me to buy you ice cream?”
“I was hungry.”
As she talked I was overcome by rage and outrage, but now I felt only a great sadness, a stomach-wrenching sickness. I looked at her in the rear-view mirror; she was watching the scenery intently. Everything was new to her, I realized; she was discovering her world, and her lessons had included the most basic lessons in survival. She had learned them well.
We were getting near Frederick; traffic was picking up, and there were malls finally. I shopped for her and made her change her clothes in the back seat, and then pulled into a gas station where she went into the rest room and washed up and brushed her hair. When she came back I told her to sit up front; it would look more suspicious to have her in back, I thought. Other parents didn’t seem to do that. We stopped at a strip mall and I bought her a few more things, and a new worry presented itself. She looked too different from the other kids we saw; everything she had on except her shoes was brand new. Shoes, I thought with dismay. She would need a bigger size.
And I needed to call her something, I also realized. “When we’re around other people,” I said in the car, “you should call me Daddy. Will you do that?”
“Don’t you know your name, either?”
“I know it, but little kids don’t use names for their parents. They call them Mommy and Daddy. And we need a name for me to call you. What name do you like?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“What did you call yourself if the other kids wanted to know your name?”
“They didn’t. Once I said my name was Kid and a girl hit me and I ran away.” She gave me a sidelong look, and asked, “Oprah? Can that be my name?”
“No. It’s already taken. How about Sarah? Or Jennifer? Or Michelle? Rachel?”
She pursed her lips and said positively, “Today my name is Dolly.”
The sick feeling returned. She didn’t know any names. “Dolly,” I said. “But just for today.” Ahead, I saw a Good Will outlet, and headed for it. Good, serviceable clothes, used clothes, worn clothes, kids’ clothes. Maybe even shoes.
We did better in the Good Will store than we had done before, and I even bought a few things for her “older sister.” She looked at me hard for a second, started to speak, then looked past me. “Can I have a book?”
There was a used-book section that had a shelf of children’s books. She passed over the simple ones, though, and began to page through a book that appeared to me to be for third- or fourth-grade kids. When had she had time to learn to read? She chose four books and we left. She was skipping at my side, smiling. I hadn’t seen her smile very often; I liked it.
Driving again, I asked her who had taught her to read.
“I don’t know.”
“Sesame Street maybe,” I suggested.
She brightened and said yes. She had seen Sesame Street, and she went back to the book she was reading.
I bought ice for the cooler, added milk and juice and more fruit, and continued southward. Home free, I thought, not with any great elation, however. At first I had been completely preoccupied with how, and had given no thought to what next. I had not really expected it to work, I had to admit. Her instincts had told her to hide, and mine had told me to help her. Now what? My instincts had deserted me. I could drive around with her for the next few days and then what? I couldn’t take her home, obviously, and I couldn’t stay on the road forever.
I glanced at her; she was sounding out a new word silently, pursing her lips, a slight frown wrinkling her forehead. She had asked me for help a few times with new words—doubtful, reluctant, wholesome, joyous.… What are you? I wanted to demand. Who are you? A sport, a mutant? Will the accelerated process of maturation continue? Is it an illness?
I understood why Kersh had been frightened. He had given me a clue when he said she would stand out like a dinosaur on the beach if she went out alone at night. A dinosaur on the beach. Not her, but maybe the rest of us? Were there others like her? Would she have children who would be born weighing a few ounces, and reach maturity in a couple of years? Too many questions, no answers. I knew I should stop at a phone and call Kersh, tell him to come get her, let the scientists have a go at the riddle. And I knew I wouldn’t do that. I felt as if my instincts had forced me to jump off a cliff, and then had deserted me; below, the chasm yawned, and I was airborne.
She closed the book and sighed.
“No good?”
“It’s dumb,” she said.
“Next town with a mall we’ll stop and go to a real bookstore and I’ll pick out a few things for you.” She flashed me a smile and opened another book. Winnie the Pooh, I thought, The Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland.…
* * *
Late in the afternoon I made what I planned to be the last stop of the day before we hit a motel. Another mall, this one with a bookstore. I picked out the few books that I wanted her to have, and she was browsing when some teenage boys entered and began talking to a teenage girl behind the counter.
“Roadblocks, the state cops, Chiefie, and his crew, and a bunch more. Escaped convicts, that’s what Clarence is saying, over at the Arco station.”
“They stopped Brother McNirney and made him open the trunk of his car,” another boy said, and they all laughed.
“Come on,” I said to the kid. I took her hand and we walked to the counter to pay for the books. Her hand was shaking.
In the wide aisle of the mall I began to think about the car with stuff strewn about every which way. Paper bags from Good Will with her clothes, department store bags, my shaving stuff in a bag, things she had outgrown.… I veered toward a Sears where I bought a suitcase, and then I saw a line of kids and parents at one of those four-in-one theaters. A Disney film was showing.
“Listen,” I said to her, “I’ll take you to the movie and you stay there until it’s over. When you come out, I’ll be right here waiting. Okay?”
Her hand tightened in mine and she looked at me for what seemed too long a time before she nodded.
“I’ll come back,” I said. “I promise.”
Many parents were doing the same thing, I realized a few minutes later, as we got our kids settled down with popcorn, and ducked out. Most of the others hadn’t bothered with the charade of buying two tickets.
I straightened up the car, packed the suitcase and put it in the trunk along with the blanket and sleeping bags; I put the six-pack of beer and some chips in a paper bag on the back seat, added the can of smoked oysters, and looked it all over. Satisfied that no one would suspect I was traveling with a child, I got in the line of traffic heading south, stopping and starting, stopping again. Finally I was at the head of a double line where the right lane became an access road to the interstate about three miles to the west, and the left lane was local traffic. I was in the left lane, and was not detained very long, but they asked me to open the trunk and they checked the registration Joey had left in the glove compartment.
It chilled me more than anything else had done. We were more than three hundred miles from Atlantic City, and they were checking cars. Maybe random checks, maybe they had been tipped, someone had become suspicious, maybe there were escaped convicts. I knew I had to get off the road, stop long enough to get some sleep, and think. I pulled in at a Best Western motel a few blocks farther down and registered for Mr. and Mrs. Marcos and two children; my wife and kids were watching the movie and I would collect them later, I said. The clerk was so bored he hardly even looked up.
I returned to the mall by side streets, keeping well back from the highway that bisected the town, and arrived at the theater a few minutes before the movie ended. Ten or fifteen other adults were also waiting for the children to emerge. I saw the child before she saw me; she was disconsolate and guarded at the same time. She looked like a little girl who had been abandoned. Then she spotted me and her face lighted up; she laughed and ran to me.
“Hi, honey,” I said, swinging her up in my arms. She kissed my cheek.
* * *
That night I watched her sleeping. She could easily pass for five years old, I knew. No one would question the age if I said that. She was smart, maybe brilliant, but ignorant. There simply hadn’t been time yet for her to learn about things like donkeys and owls. I had read Winnie the Pooh for a while; she had stopped me repeatedly to ask questions. She needed a library to read her way through, and school books, textbooks, math books, whatever other kids took for granted, no doubt many things I wasn’t even aware of. Like names.
My plan to drive around for a few days had to be scuttled. I had to get her somewhere and settle in, stay out of sight, off the roads, but where?
I finally lay down on the other bed and it came to me: Aunt Bett. Not a real aunt of mine, she had been my mother’s best friend as far back as I could remember. They had grown up together, had gone to school together, married at about the same time, and visited back and forth almost daily until twenty years ago when Aunt Bett had moved to Tennessee where she still lived. After that they had paid visits to each other several times a year. When my father died almost instantly from a massive coronary, she had come and stayed for several weeks. A year later, when my mother drove into a tree doing ninety, Aunt Bett had wrapped her arms around me and said I shouldn’t blame myself. At nineteen, I found that embarrassing, and until then it had not even occurred to me to attach blame. I had not seen her again until four years ago when I had dropped in to see her on my way to a trade show in Cincinnati. We didn’t correspond, or exchange Christmas cards, or phone calls. She was not listed in my address book. Aunt Bett. About seventy-five, maybe a little more, she lived in a house by herself in an area that had been taken over by developers, leaving only half a dozen of the original residents. Good old Aunt Bett, I said to myself; then I was able to go to sleep.
* * *
The last time I saw Aunt Bett the house had needed repairs which she said a hired man would do as soon as he could. The repairs had not been done, and I understood now, with a pang of guilt, that there was no hired man, probably not enough money to hire anyone, and the house was gradually falling apart. Aunt Bett was more frail than I had expected, close to eighty. She kept up the flower beds, and had a tiny weed-filled garden, but the rest of the two acres had gone to brambles and scrub pine and oak trees. Across the creek that made up one side and the back boundary was an upscale subdivision with a high wire fence.
Aunt Bett was delighted to see us, and started to bustle in an authoritative way. “Of course you’ll stay a while,” she said. “And, Win, dear, will you see if the upstairs bedrooms are aired out? If you’d just let me know.…” Like that, we were invited to stay as long as we wanted.
I told her that Joe Marcos was the father, that his wife had had an accident and would be in traction for a few weeks, and they had been desperate for help with the child, who had told me that today she was Alice. Alice Marcos.
“I thought I would keep her for a week or two,” I finished. The child had watched me silently as I gave her a father and mother and background in a New York City apartment.
“You’re going to leave her alone in that big house of yours while you go off working every day? Win! That’s no way to treat a little girl. Come on, Alice, you can help me make supper.”
At breakfast the next morning the child announced that today her name was Mary. I held my breath, but Aunt Bett nodded. “All right, Mary. I like that name, always did. You want to help me wash up the dishes?” I let out the breath.
I made a list of things that needed doing most—puttying windows, replacing two panes of glass, fixing the front porch rail … it was a long list. I checked Aunt Bett’s groceries and made another list, even longer. Aunt Bett had no idea how much food that little gir
l could stow away.
And Aunt Bett started the child on a new education. “She doesn’t know a biscuit from a bread roll,” she said indignantly. “She doesn’t know a cosmos from a zinnia. What were they thinking of, bringing her up ignorant?”
In the afternoon, I was on the ladder finishing a window when I heard Aunt Bett naming the flowers to her: Busy Lizzie, Sassy Francie, old man’s beard, honeysuckle … they moved out of range. Later, from the roof, I saw the child darting here and there, examining everything. She had on a red sweater and her hair was tied back with a red ribbon; she looked like a rare tropical butterfly in the golden sunlight, swooping down, darting away, alighting somewhere else.
She was going through the books in the house at an alarming rate. Aunt Bett’s children had left stacks and boxes of books upstairs, and more were in the attic and basement. The child clearly intended to read them all. Whatever she read she remembered, whatever she heard she retained. Her education, haphazard as it was, advanced like lightning. And she was growing. I worked at fixing up the house and tried to think of what to do with her.
I mowed the lawn and reglazed some windows. I fixed the porch rail and took down the screen door and replaced the screening; I puttied and caulked and put up weather stripping, and I was no closer to a solution than I had been the day we arrived. I was beginning to feel desperate; I had to go home, go back to my own life, my office, my company.
We had been there for six days when a visitor dropped in, the first one all week. “Is Mrs. Markham here?” she asked. She was a prim-looking woman of about fifty whose clothes and car—a Buick—said money. She was eyeing me with unconcealed hostility.
“Aunt Bett? She’s around back, I think.”
“Oh, I thought you might be one of her sons.”
I had been painting the new wood of the porch, and I stopped, waited for her to go, but she took a step or two toward me instead. “I’m Hadley Pruitt,” she said. “I’m a volunteer worker for the county senior services. Frankly, Mr.—”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection Page 77