by Laura McNeal
Before them, the dirt road splits fenced fields as far as the eye can see.
Lana turns uncertainly to Chet. “So this is the road to Hereford?”
He squints and considers. “Maybe,” he says.
Lana folds her hands on the pebbly leather of the Ladies Drawing Kit that sits in her lap. At least she’s got the last sheet of paper, if she just knew what to do with it, if she just knew how to draw a happy ending. A pretty big if, really. Because a mistake with the last wish would be the worst kind of mistake, the kind that could make you think you just weren’t smart enough or good enough to make a pure true wish and never would be.
Lana closes her eyes and an image comes into her mind: the other two drawing kits, the ones she saw that day in Miss Hekkity’s shop.
Her eyes snap open.
What if they’re still there?—and what if they have powers, too? Then she could buy the other kits and she and the Snicks would have all the wishes they’d ever need. She wouldn’t have to worry about making the last wish good.
For the next mile or so, Lana tells herself that gathering another batch of wishes must be the reason for bringing the Snicks to Hereford, but it doesn’t really feel like it.
The real reason is something else, something she doesn’t understand.
She looks down at the black leather case, thinking of the last wish it might or might not contain, and suddenly she just wants to get it over with. She wants just to remove the last page and pick up the pencil and close her eyes and see what lines her hand might draw, and then that would be that, done deal, end of story.
But the moment Lana begins to untie the case, she stops short.
Thoroughly and with perfect clarity, she knows she can’t draw the last wish riding in the car. She can’t draw the last wish anywhere, except in the town that it came from.
The last wish needs to be drawn in Hereford.
That’s the reason she’s going there.
Whether it’s a good reason, Lana can’t say. She only knows she trusts in it completely. Completely and possibly foolishly.
Just like she trusted in Whit.
The Whit who wasn’t.
This is the general vicinity of Lana’s thoughts when Chet for no apparent reason says, “There.”
“What?” Lana says, and then she sees it, too.
There, at a T in the road, is the sign that says Hereford 11.2 miles, with an arrow pointing east.
57.
Without the distractions of the annual picnic, Hereford looks like a different town. Almost normal. Two stout women wearing shorts and knee pads weed the irises encircling the commemorative cow statue at the entrance to town, and on Main Street, a young woman pushes a double stroller up the sidewalk. A short, gray-haired man, dapper in a blue suit, carries a parcel toward the post office, and a boy pedals by on a bike with a baseball glove hung over the handlebars. It reminds Lana of a scene in a movie that’s meant to show that everything is hunky-dory, just before it isn’t anymore.
Chet parks the Monte Carlo in the shade across from Miss Hekkity’s building, and Lana slides the Ladies Drawing Kit under the seat. As she gets out, two men inside a nearby insurance office look up from their standing conversation to stare at the unfamiliar car and at her.
It’s hot, even in the shade.
Lana glances down the street for any cars that might’ve followed them into town—there are none—then she looks across the street at the wooden stairs leading up to Miss Hekkity’s shop.
“This’ll just take a second,” she says to Chet, then she looks into the car at the others. “Can you all just stay quiet in the car until I get back?”
The Snicks look back at her blankly. Lana knows that the second she leaves, they’ll do what they want to do, which could be anything.
“Leave it to me,” Chet says. “Chet’s in charge.”
Lana is frankly doubtful of this fact, but she doesn’t have any other choice. She crosses the street—she can feel the heat of the asphalt through her shoes—and hurries up the stairs, but before she gets to the landing, she sees a sign on the door that says CLOSED. Above it is a small version of the shop slogan: WHAT YOU DESIRE, MISS HEKKITY PROVIDES.
Lana feels thwarted, then angry. The sun burns into her back. What I desire, she thinks, is that you have your shop open during normal business hours.
She cups her hands around her eyes and leans forward to peer through the glass. The lights are off and the shop is dim. Inside, nothing moves. Lana knocks three times, each time louder, but nobody answers, nothing changes inside the shop. She looks around. She checks the street and she checks the windows of nearby buildings. Nobody’s looking, or at least nobody she can see.
She tries the door handle.
It clicks and gives.
With a nudge of her hand, the door swings open.
Lana feels a drop of sweat break from her armpit and course down her ribs.
She takes one last look around and ducks into the shop.
It’s cool inside and dark, but Lana finds the string that switches on the overhead lamp. She thought she’d look for the drawing kits first, but she doesn’t. She goes straight to the cash register and starts pushing keys until a bell rings and the cash drawer slides open. She lifts the upper drawer and there, beneath it, is the two-dollar bill.
Exactly where, that day, Miss Hekkity had put it.
Lana smoothes the bill over her hand for a second or two, and as she does this, her body begins to relax. Her heartbeat slows. She rolls the two-dollar bill tight, secures it with a rubber band she finds on the counter, and tucks the bill behind her ear. She touches it there and feels better. Good, in fact.
She breathes in and breathes out.
There’s money in the top drawer of the cash register, quite a bit of it, enough that a few twenties might not be missed, and if she and the Snicks are going to keep moving, they could use a few twenties—but Lana doesn’t take any. Instead she peels off two one-dollar bills from her folded pizza money and slides them under the cash drawer.
There. Even steven.
She supposes it should bother her that she’s buying back her two-dollar bill with Veronica’s money, but it doesn’t much. She figures her gig as upstairs maid earned her at least a couple of bucks.
Now, the drawing kits.
Lana walks down the aisle to the pile of antique petticoats and chemises she’d seen before. She sets aside the pile of clothes, and there are the two drawing kits, just as before. But this is strange: there’s none of the excitement she felt that day when she’d picked up the first sketch paper.
She takes the two drawing kits to a chair near the overhead light, and as she opens first one and then the other, Lana has the growing sense that something’s wrong. The cases are the same, and the paper and pencils seem the same, but something is different. Wrong. She can feel it.
Still, she should try them. She opens a case, takes out one sheet and a pencil, and stares off. Start with something simple, she thinks. Outside, it’s a hot glary day. She’ll draw clouds to cool it.
But as she begins to draw, there is no automatic feeling running through her fingers, there is no smooth living line. In fact, what Lana begins to draw barely resembles a cloud, and she can’t bear to look at it. She quickly tries the second kit. Worse. The results are even worse.
So there won’t be a new supply of wishes anytime soon.
There is just the one wish, the last sheet of beautiful, pink-flecked paper, her one last chance for drawing a happy ending, a fact that sends a small shock of fear through Lana’s body. Maybe she should go down to the car and draw the last wish right now, but she doesn’t know what to draw. She isn’t ready. She needs to wait until she’s ready.
Lana is buttoning the kits when she’s aroused by the sudden sound of music from outside. It’s somebody’s rock music, played loud, so that all Lana can really hear is its steady throbbing bass. Which sounds like what? she thinks, but she doesn’t know.
She goes to
the window and looks down. The music is coming from the Monte Carlo. Three older people stand huddled across the street staring at the car and at the Snicks, who are going in different directions. Garth and Alfred are halfway down the block with Chet chasing after them. Carlito has just stooped to bless a large black dog, who seems to hope that the blessing will lead to petting. When it doesn’t, the dog trots off. Carlito rises, spots the cluster of three old people, and moves their way to bless them, too. Tilly is the only one who has stayed in the car, but she’s the one who’s turned the music up high, so high that the windows of Miss Hekkity’s shop vibrate slightly with the throb of the bass. Which sounds like what? Lana thinks again, and this time she knows. It sounds like the giant heart of the world.
If a giant heart is what the world has.
A big if, Lana has to admit. Maybe the biggest one of all.
Down on the street, the three old people watch Carlito approaching them with real alarm. He is huge, he walks as if made of wooden parts, and he is heading toward them. As one, they step back until they hit the wall behind them. If they weren’t so old, they’d run for it.
Lana wonders what it means that she isn’t alarmed by this unfolding spectacle.
A young girl in a cowboy hat approaches the Monte Carlo and bends in to talk to Tilly in the backseat, then the cowgirl leans far into the car to turn the volume down, but not off. Tilly leaves it that way. She’s hunched over something in the backseat, intently doing something. What it is, Lana has no idea. Not yet.
Lana has the sense that time is slowing down, stretching out.
Her gaze drifts over the commercial buildings on Main Street to the green roof of the tall Victorian she’d noticed the first time she visited here. Then a crow perched so still it seemed part of the roof’s ornamental openwork slowly rises and draws Lana’s gaze east.
There, far off, moving left to right through the flat fields, is a cloud of dust.
A car, probably, or maybe a dust devil.
In the display case beside Lana stands a pair of old brass binoculars, painted black, with leather grips. She picks them up and reads the tag: French Horse Racing Binoculars, c. 1895, $42. Lana trains them on the dust cloud, and as she slowly brings them into focus, she sees that at the leading edge of the dust is a car, and not just any car.
It is a police car.
And then Lana thinks of Tilly. She thinks of Tilly and wonders what she’s doing down there in the backseat of the car, but for only a moment, because then Lana knows what Tilly is doing, knows it in her every bone.
She lowers the binoculars and stares down at the Monte Carlo. Through the rear window Tilly can be seen in the backseat, hunched over something and doing something to it. Lana brings the antique binoculars to her eyes, finds Tilly, and brings her into focus.
She finds a pencil in Tilly’s hand and below her hand the pink-flecked edge of the last sheet of paper.
Tilly is drawing the last wish.
And far away, but not as far as before, the cloud of dust that carries with it the police car is moving their way. There is time.
They could do something. Chet could make a show of driving off, create a distraction while she and the others hide someplace in town. Or they could hide the Monte Carlo and themselves in somebody’s empty garage.
Lana slips the picture of her father from her shirt pocket and tilts it to the light. He stands with his line of fish, grinning back at her.
A siren. She can hear it now. The police car is coming with its siren growing louder.
We don’t run and we don’t hide. Lana suddenly thinks, her father’s words, but they feel like her own now, and it’s not just what she thinks, it’s who she is. I don’t run and I don’t hide.
The sound of the siren is close and piercing.
The red spool bed stands under the one large overhead light. Lana walks over to it and sits on its edge, as if under a spotlight. She puts the photograph of her father back into her pocket. She touches the rolled bill over her ear. She feels for the piece of paper in her back pocket, Chet’s wish, the one that says Lana.
They’re all there, all of her talismans, safe and sound.
She breathes in and breathes out.
She feels the same calm elation she felt the day the dust devil came onto the porch and went right through her and took away all the bothersome thoughts and left behind a tranquil emptiness that made her feel hopeful about things.
And then she is grinning. She has no idea what Tilly might have done or might still be doing with the last page of sketch paper, but she’s glad, deep-down glad, that the pencil is in Tilly’s hand, because Lana has the sudden certain idea that finding the right wish might be a lot like finding the right rock or stick or feather, and nobody is better at that than Tilly.
The sirens, close by and shrill, abruptly stop.
It’s still and quiet for what seems like a long while before Lana hears heavy, hurried footsteps on the wooden stairs.
Then the door to Miss Hekkity’s shop bursts open.
58.
Two men in sheriff’s uniforms rush a few feet into the dim room, spread their positions, and stop. Each holds a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other.
“I’m right here,” Lana says, and at once one of the men crouches and trains his gun on her. Lana, strangely, is not afraid. She is in fact a little indignant. “What’re you doing?” she says, and the man yells, “Hands to your sides, fully extended!”
The other man, older than the first, says, “Jesus, Ronald, take it easy, it’s a girl,” and the other deputy says, “You don’t think girls kill people?” but he does relax a little.
Lana stands, and the older man says, “You okay, miss?”
Lana casts a glance at the young deputy. “I am as long as he doesn’t start shooting up the place,” which gets a small smile from the older man.
“Why don’t you go ahead and holster it, Ronald,” he says, and after a second or two, Ronald does. Ronald looks about nineteen. There’s a lot of red in his face—he’s tense and tightly wound, a type Lana saw more than once in the long line of her mother’s boyfriends. The older deputy works at a lower pitch and is clearly in charge. He looks at the younger one and says, “Go down and radio the sheriff that everything’s secured and we don’t need any backup.”
The younger one seems reluctant to go. The redness in his face is fading, but as it recedes, his self-pride rises. They’ve caught somebody, and he doesn’t want to miss a minute of it. “Shouldn’t we cuff her?” he says.
“No, Ronald, we shouldn’t,” the older deputy says. “But what you should do is what I asked you to do, which is to go downstairs and radio Sheriff Burns that everything’s under control here.”
“What about those retards down there?” the young deputy says.
The older deputy takes a deep breath, and Lana wonders if he doesn’t spend a lot of his day trying to keep himself from strangling the young deputy. In a restrained voice he says, “That’s fine, Ronald. Let the sheriff know we found the kids, too. That they’re all safe and accounted for.”
Ronald starts to say something else, but the older deputy cuts him dead with a look, and Ronald turns to go.
“And get hold of Miss Hekkity,” the older deputy says. “She’s the lady who owns this place.”
Once Ronald is out the door, the older deputy looks around the room for a few seconds, then turns to Lana. “Kind of a funny location for a stickup,” he observes dryly.
“I didn’t steal anything,” Lana says. “I was looking for something and when I found it, I paid for it.”
The older deputy’s eyes are fixed on Lana’s. “And yet the cash register is open,” he says.
“Yeah, that’s where the two-dollar bill was that used to be mine,” Lana says, and points to the bill rolled over her ear.
The older deputy’s eyes go from the bill to the cash register and back to Lana. “You were looking for a two-dollar bill that used to be yours.” He says the sentence slowly
, as if that might help reveal its meaning.
Behind him, the door opens, and they both turn to see Miss Hekkity walking toward them. The older deputy nods. “Hello, Julia.”
“Hello, Carl,” Miss Hekkity says, but she’s already looking past the deputy toward Lana. She’s wearing slacks and a light cardigan and the same red shoes as before, and she looks cheerful, as if she’s walked into a surprise party. “What’s the occasion?”
The deputy fills her in briefly, right up to the two-dollar bill. Miss Hekkity listens, and nods, and more than once peers at Lana through her glasses. Again Lana is surprised at the woman’s slightness, the luminous blueness of her eyes, the way she looks like a girl whose skin alone has aged.
“So that’s where we are at the moment,” the deputy says when he’s finished.
Miss Hekkity doesn’t say anything. She laces her fingers together in front of her chest and seems to be thinking. Lana expects her to ask if anything’s missing, but when she finally speaks, she says, “Who’re those other kids down on the street?”
The older deputy is about to speak, but Lana says quickly, “Those are friends of mine. But they don’t have anything to do with this. They don’t even know why I wanted to come here.”
The woman lifts her chin slightly. “And why did you want to come?” Not sharp or accusing, but actually curious.
“I’m not sure,” Lana says. “I guess because I had the money to buy back my two-dollar bill.”
There is a brief silence, then the deputy says, “You’d better check out your money drawer, Julia.”
The shopkeeper goes over, gives the open cash register the quickest glance, and says, “Everything’s here.”
The deputy shrugs. “It’s still breaking and entering, if you’re interested in that.”
“I’m not,” Miss Hekkity says in a firm voice. “I’m not in the slightest.” Then, her expression softening: “But that isn’t to say I don’t appreciate your looking after things here, Carl.”