by Lauren Wolk
“So will I,” she said.
And, once again, Rachel thought that was that. An end to things. And this time she was right, for she left town that afternoon just as she’d planned, with all of her things in one battered trunk and not a single loose thread to trip her up.
One week later Rachel stood in her kitchen, thinking of these things, while she prepared her supper. When she noticed the big bowl of salad sitting on the counter at her elbow she was surprised, for she could not remember making it. She felt oddly refreshed, purged, and intensely hungry.
Rachel wiped her hands on a clean dish towel, filled a hollowed-out green pepper with cold water from a jug in the fridge, and drank it down in one long swallow. The water was so cold that she felt it in her jawbone. Then she bit off a chunk of pepper, chopped the rest into bits, and threw them in the bowl. She tossed the salad and ate it much as an animal might: to sustain herself, without fanfare, nothing more.
After the salad she was still hungry, so she grabbed a mug of milk and a pan of brownies she had baked at three o’clock that morning and headed out the back door.
It was a beautiful May evening. The trees were finally in full leaf and the lilac in bloom. The sky was a shade of blue that winter cannot achieve: soft, deep, and variegated, like the eggs of some birds.
Rachel dragged a little cast-iron table over to her tree-slung hammock and arranged the milk and brownies where she could reach them.
“Ahhh,” she sighed as she sank back into the ropes. She heard her neighbors down the hill calling their children in for supper. She heard the infrequent passage of cars along Maple Street at the bottom of the hill. She heard the faint but invigorating clamor of geese, far above, straining northward. And, as she swallowed the last of a brownie and reached for another, she heard a screech of metal, a yelp of brakes, and, after a moment, a shout of consternation. Someone unfamiliar with Belle Haven had tried to drive something large over the narrow bridge that crossed Raccoon Creek. Rachel knew she would hear all about it the next morning when Ed delivered her mail. She grinned shamelessly up at the darkening sky, made a pillow out of her arm, and felt glad all over again to be back where she belonged.
Chapter 9
Rachel woke up early the next morning with the irrepressible notion that something unusual would happen before long. To her. Something she might not really notice or fully appreciate. Like a seed, something that would lead to a blossom of sorts, or a fruit. She felt strangely hollow and profoundly hungry. Her skin felt hot and flawless beneath the early-summer blanket. Although it was barely light outside, she was completely awake and felt so competent, so primed, that she craved conversation as much as food. So she sprang from her bed, threw herself into a cool shower, dressed in clothes she’d just laundered—every stitch—and strode out the door with omelets on her mind.
Angela’s Kitchen served the best breakfast in Belle Haven. It was clean, and its big ovens sent fragrant drifts clear out to the sidewalk. It was run by a woman who knew how to cook, how to feed people, and how to get along without a husband who was never coming back. Her nine-year-old son, Rusty, made her as happy as she had ever hoped to be. Every time she found a quarter lurking in the shadow of a coffee cup, she tossed it into the shiny metal bucket that sat beside the coffeemaker. So far she had emptied the bucket fifty times. No one ever stiffed Angela. Everyone in town knew she was saving the money for Rusty’s education.
“I don’t really care whether he gets it in a school or on the road,” Angela always said. “As long as he gets it.”
When Rachel walked into the coffee shop at seven o’clock that morning, Angela had just pulled eight dozen cinnamon rolls from her great oven and the air was thick with yeasty steam. The smell of fresh coffee, cinnamon, and bacon made Rachel feel almost dangerously hungry, as if she would fight for her food if necessary.
“Well, bless my soul, if it isn’t ravishing Rachel.” Angela glanced at her watch, lit a cigarette, and waved the match at an empty stool. “Get your ass over here and tell me what has driven you from your bed at such an ungodly hour.”
“What ever happened to ‘Good morning’?” Rachel said, settling herself at the Formica counter. “I’m hungry, that’s all. And I’m out of bread and eggs. And your cinnamon rolls just happen to be slightly better than mine. Slightly.” She held up a thumb and forefinger so they were almost touching. “Now fetch me some coffee, please, before I lose my mind.”
A couple of workingmen sat at a corner table by the window, nursing their coffees and silently contemplating the sun. Otherwise, the shop was empty. Angela had already been working for hours, getting everything ready for the breakfast crowd, which would be on its way soon. She was a young but perpetually tired woman who looked too much like her mother and not enough like her son.
“You’re getting skinny, Angie,” Rachel said, wondering again what it would be like to have a sister. “Tell me you’re not on a diet.”
“Not on purpose. Actually, I think I’m onto something big. A new diet for mothers. It’s gonna make me famous, if I can get on Donahue or something.” She poured Rachel’s coffee, gave her some cream, and came around the counter to take a seat beside her. “I call it the Leftover Diet. You eat only what your kid leaves on his plate. It’s perfect if you’ve got a kid who eats all the fattening stuff, leaves bread crusts, vegetables, stuff like that. An inch of warm milk, crumbs in the bottom. Perfect. The only problem is that the longer I’m on it, the more I cook for Rusty. Last night I gave him this huge slab of meat loaf, scads of mashed potatoes and butter, a pile of lima beans. I ate so much I couldn’t move for an hour. Plus, if you’ve got three or four kids, the stuff they leave on their plates can really add up. But the idea’s spot-on. It’s gonna make me famous.” She put out her cigarette, drained her cup, stood up with a groan. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
Which made Rachel laugh. Angela walked behind the counter and faced her from the far side, changed in subtle ways. “What’ll it be?” she asked.
All at once Rachel felt near tears. She longed for her mother. She was so very hungry. The coffee seemed to splash in her empty stomach. “I want your apron,” she said.
“My what?”
“Your apron,” Rachel repeated impatiently. “Your apron.” Angela didn’t hesitate. She had witnessed the changes in Rachel much as she might have watched a volcano rumbling toward eruption. She untied her apron and lifted its harness over her head as Rachel came around the counter and stood waiting. Angela silently fitted the apron on her friend. “It’s all yours, my dear,” she said, reclaimed her stool, and lit another cigarette.
Rachel went straight to the big fridge. She assembled three eggs, a dollop of cream cheese, and a ripe tomato. Found a frying pan. Diced a small onion. Collected a bowl, a whisk, a spatula, salt and pepper. She cracked the eggs into the bowl, whipped them into a lather. Cut a disc of butter and set it to sizzle. Swirled the onion in the butter. Poured the eggs into the hot skillet. Added the cream cheese in small chunks, a few cubes of tomato, salt and pepper. “This is my favorite omelet,” she said over her shoulder. Angela watched in silence, enjoying her cigarette and the sight of Rachel as she cooked. None of her patrons had ever made breakfast in her kitchen before.
While the omelet swelled, Rachel made brown toast and spread it with butter and jam. She put ice in a tall glass and poured orange juice into it from such a height that the juice immediately frothed up, instantly cold, and the ice cubes whirled. She poured fresh coffee into a clean cup, slid the omelet onto a hot white plate, added the thick, sweet toast, and wiped her hands clean. When she turned to the counter with her breakfast in her hands, she saw Angela smoking another cigarette and noticed the flour that had collected in the lines around her eyes. She saw the tiny pits in her earlobes where jewelry had once hung. She saw pale hair scraped back into a knot, fingernails dulled by detergent, cut to the quick.
“Put out that vile thing, Angela, and here”—she set the orange juice on the counter—�
��cleanse your palate.” She put down the steaming omelet, returned for the coffee, and on her way back to the counter, grabbed knife, fork, cream, and sugar. “Eat,” she said.
Their eyes met for a moment, no more, before Angela picked up a fork and began to eat. The two men in the corner stood up, put on their hats, and called out good-byes without comment as they walked into the sunshine.
“Want a job?” Angela asked, omelet in her mouth.
“Maybe someday.” Rachel cleaned up the mess she’d made and warmed her coffee. Then she lifted a cake cover off a plate of fresh cinnamon rolls and picked the biggest one she could find. The first gooey, buttery bite nearly dissolved in her mouth. “God, that’s good.” She groaned.
“Better than sex, when they’re fresh. Last longer, too.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Rachel said, licking wet brown sugar off her wrist as she carried the roll back around the counter and took her seat at Angela’s side.
“Hear anything about the doorknob who got stuck on the bridge yesterday?”
“Didn’t hear about him, but I did hear him,” Rachel said, her mouth full. “All the way up in my backyard.”
“I got the skinny from Ed just before you got here, and he’s a pretty reliable source,” Angela said, wiping her plate clean with a corner of toast, “but there’s a lot that doesn’t quite add up. For instance,” she said, reaching for her coffee, “here we have a young man, about your age, give or take, dressed up like a Harvard snot, looks like an ad for L.L. Bean (though, according to Ed, he coulda’ used a shave and a shower), talks like he’s got a plum in his mouth, driving, get this, a motor home that’s half as old as I am. Which, I grant you, is not all that old. But still. Doesn’t quite fit his image. Plus”—and here she leaned forward and rested her hand on Rachel’s forearm—“he knows absolutely nothing about this thing he’s driving. Has no water, doesn’t know how to work the pump, the heater. He couldn’t even find the gas tank. When it comes time to pay Frank for the gas, he hands over an American Express Gold Card. Looks real nervous the whole time. Turns out the card’s no good. So this kid pays with a fifty.”
“This clinches it. I always had my suspicions about Ed, but now I’m sure. He’s an android. Gotta be. A man gets stuck on a bridge, and within twelve hours Ed could write his biography.”
“Shut up and let me finish before this place gets busy.”
“You want your apron back?” Rachel asked as Angela slid off her stool.
“Nah. Keep it on,” she replied. “Suits you.”
Rachel smiled all the way through a second cinnamon roll while Angela, mixing pancake batter in a huge bowl, told her the story of Belle Haven’s newest arrival.
“Just Joe. Frank doesn’t remember the name on the card. The kid cut it up and threw it out, and Frank can’t be persuaded to troll his Dumpster for a second look. Old bastard. Anyway, the boy says his name is Joe, just Joe, but if there’s one thing he’s not, it’s a Joe.”
“This according to Ed.”
“Right. But Ed’s got very good judgment.”
“Absolutely,” Rachel said, still smiling. She couldn’t remember when she’d enjoyed a breakfast more.
“After Frank hauled him off the bridge and gassed him up, he sent him out to Ian Spalding’s place. Haven’t been any campers out there for months ’cause the hot spots make them nervous, but he’s still got hookups and privies on a real nice piece of ground near the crick.”
Angela heard the bell on her door jangle and turned to take a look. “Well, speak of the devil,” she muttered.
Rachel saw Joe for the first time in the polished side of a ten-slice toaster and therefore spent the next few minutes thinking he was fat. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Angela hand him a menu and pour him a cup of coffee. She was afraid that if she looked at either of them she’d burst out laughing. So she leaned over the counter, hooked a dishcloth with her fingernail, and began to wipe down the countertop. She polished a pair of salt and pepper shakers, decided to top them up, but Angela, suspicious of her motives, reached over and took them out of her hands.
“Thank you, Rachel,” she said. “I must’ve missed this pair.” But Rachel was not to be so easily put off.
“May I take your order now?” she said, turning, and looked straight into the eyes of the man who called himself Joe.
He had had better nights. Once he’d arrived at Spalding’s defunct campground he had managed to find the spot that Mr. Spalding had assigned him and had then unpacked the groceries he’d bought at the Belle Haven A&P, filling his sink with ice and perishables until his tiny fridge was up and running. Bolstered by a cheese sandwich and a tepid beer, he filled his water tank, got his generator going, and, having finally read the owner’s manual cover to cover, unlocked the mysteries of on-the-road hygiene. The toilet and all its attendant complexities still gave him pause, however, so he thrashed his way through the impressive collection of spiderwebs that seemed to be doing as much as nails to hold the nearest privy together and speedily took the first steps toward relieving himself.
It was damp and gloomy in the privy, though, and he simply could not force himself to sit down on the moldy seat below which untold horrors lurked. Even more appalling was the thought of shining his flashlight into the unspeakable pit. So he set it down, clambered up onto the wooden bench, and carefully, carefully stood up—all the while terrified that the old and soggy wood would suddenly give way and he would plunge down into the noisome depths. Standing so that he was straddling the despicable toilet seat, he was unknowingly veiled with the cobwebs gracing the rafters, only vaguely aware of something clinging lightly to the helixes of his ears.
As he lowered his pants, he felt an almost overwhelming need to talk to himself aloud. To say things like, “What in hell am I doing in a privy—a privy—in the middle of this godforsaken wilderness?” But he took pains to keep silent. He had never yet talked to himself. He would not start now.
Slowly, he crouched above the toilet seat, lowering his pants to his ankles in order to free up his legs. Almost immediately, he heard the approaching drone of a mosquito and knew, when it abruptly ceased, that it had landed on him somewhere. It wasn’t until he felt an astonishingly painful jab in his left buttock that he realized where. As he reached awkwardly back to defend himself, he was yanked off balance by the pants that hobbled him. With a purely involuntary scream, he pitched forward, knocking the flashlight over and slamming into the privy door with his head and shoulder. The door flew open like a torpedo hatch, and he landed on the mossy ground, bounced once, and skidded into a tangle of thorny bushes. The bounce, which had knocked the breath out of him, left him heaving and gasping, tucked up like a fetus, his pants still down around his ankles.
Ian Spalding was getting old, and his eyesight wasn’t what it had once been. But he knew his way around his land. Glasses were a pain in the ass, he thought as he headed out to check on his new and only tenant. It was warm and still, and he was enjoying the feel of the night as he walked down the grassy lane that cut through the woods to the campsite. He stopped now and then to listen for the whisper of bats, to refresh himself with the sight of stars. As he approached the campsite, he almost turned back: it was one of his favorite indulgences to lie full-length in his unmown yard with nothing between him and the star-spangled sky, a pipe warming his palm, and sometimes the sound of owls, waking from their dreams.
This Joe who had come to him so suddenly was a nothing sort of boy. Handsome, yes, but that wasn’t something he had earned. Arrogant, the way he had come straight out of the blue, saying I want this and I want that with every other breath. Hardly worth his trouble. But everyone deserves a place to sleep, water for his thirst, warmth when it’s cold, fire, food, safety. So he’d allotted the little prick a campsite, helped him sort things out, and felt it only right to look in on him before bed. Now, despite the lure of the stars, he continued on through the trees—and broke into a run when he heard a muffled scream up ahea
d.
Something white was thrashing around in the bushes near Joe’s campsite, but without his glasses Ian couldn’t make out what it was exactly. He paused at the edge of the woods to arm himself with a long and spiky branch, then went on more slowly. Skunks were fairly common around these parts. Rabid ones less so, but not entirely out of the question and dangerous as all hell. He warily crept toward the thing, sniffing the air, wondering where Joe was. Whether he’d heard the scream. Whether he’d done the screaming. Maybe the boy was lying there in the bushes while this possibly rabid skunk gnawed his head off.
Closer now, Ian admitted to himself that whatever it was, it appeared to be much larger than any skunk he’d ever seen, rabid or not … about two, maybe three feet long, with a big, moon-shaped head on it, bucking and doubling up on itself like it was in pain, which made Ian think again about the scream he’d heard. What in the hell is it, Ian wondered, taking another step closer and belatedly unclipping his flashlight from his belt. As he fumbled with the switch, the thing in the bushes begin to wheeze and splutter … and to roll slowly toward him. His adrenaline pumping, Ian lifted his club high over his head and shined the light directly at the creature’s round, white head.