Safekeeping

by Karen Hesse

  I wonder if abandoned dogs are forming packs now, preying on solitary walkers.

  Inside my head a voice whispers, Don’t think those things. Think about getting to Canada. Think about finding Mom and Dad. Don’t think about anything else.

  * * *

  At last, after hours of walking, I reach the village of Putney. The town is densely settled. I carefully thread my way through and continue north a little longer before crawling inside a shed and sitting out the remainder of the night.

  Through this evening’s entire march I saw no cars at all and only one small convoy of military vehicles. And it was easy to hide from them.

  Holding Jethro’s bear, I huddle in the abandoned shed and imagine my parents just up ahead, encouraging me.

  Knowing their preference for small roads, I think they, too, could easily be walking Route 5. They certainly drive it often enough. My mother’s taken hundreds of pictures along this road.

  The idea quickens my heart. The idea that I might find them.

  * * *

  With a couple hours of sleep to go on I resume my daytime schedule. I feel safest walking in daylight. I don’t worry about packs of dogs. I worry about a thousand other things … what I’ll eat, where I can wash up and relieve myself, whether I’ll find a safe place to stop for the night, whether someone will get too curious about me, whether I’ll make it all the way to Canada before I’m arrested, whether someone will hurt me, or kill me, whether I’ll be hit by a car, whether I’ll find my parents along the way … but I don’t worry about packs of dogs.

  I’m comforted by the number of people walking the road with me. Some heading north, some south. Though we avoid making eye contact, I feel less conspicuous with so many other walkers.

  They’re obviously not all heading to Canada. I don’t know where they’re going. I’m not about to ask.

  Daytime traffic is pretty light compared with what it used to be. I guess because fuel has been so scarce. Nearly every service station I pass has a sign saying “No Gas.” That may explain why my parents left on foot. It may also explain why there are so many others walking.

  On this part of Route 5 the road is treacherous, twisting around corners with no shoulder to speak of, sharp, dented guardrails, and rock walls hovering over the road. I travel as deep into the shoulder as I can get, but there are times when there’s no place to be safe.

  Occasionally I get squeezed between a guardrail and a speeding car. Some drivers do their best to avoid me by drifting into the opposite lane, but some get a thrill out of terrifying me, coming as close as possible without hitting me.

  Trucks are the worst, though. When they pass I’m slammed by a wall of wind that at best stings my skin but sometimes lifts me right off my feet.

  Fortunately there are even fewer trucks on Route 5 than cars. And fewer cars than slow-moving military vehicles. And they don’t seem to be interested in stopping along Route 5. At least so far.

  I’m tired from walking through most of the night last night, through most of the day today. I’m ready to stop long before curfew but my search for collapsing barns, abandoned houses, unlocked sheds to slip inside for the night proves unsuccessful. I push myself to keep going. My burning eyes sweep over both sides of the road, desperate for a place to stop. And, at last, a sagging barn offers itself.

  The night, though cool, is sweetly scented with blossom. I curl up inside my parents’ old camping blanket and try to sleep. I’m dead tired. My legs ache, my mind is mostly a dull buzz. But there is this hot wire of alertness that never goes out and keeps me from sleeping truly deeply.

  Another day, another section of road that curves and rolls unceasingly up, down, and around narrow shoulders where it is almost impossible to get out of the way of traffic. Fortunately, there’s less and less traffic all the time, particularly on the long stretches of road between towns.

  Trying to make my cash last, I’ve become expert at picking food out of Dumpsters … bar trash is the best. It turns out deep-fried potato skins covered in melted cheese is my favorite. I never used to like that stuff … too greasy. Now I fantasize about it.

  A lot of restaurants seem to have closed, but the bars appear to be doing fine. Most of them use generators. I can hear the growl of the motor long before I reach it.

  Trash pickup isn’t regular either. Garbage cans overflow, Dumpsters are filled to the brim. It’s easy pickings. I just wish there were a few more of them.

  I walk through Westminster, Bellows Falls, Springfield. I walk through woodland and farmland.

  For long stretches I’m within view of the Connecticut River.

  I follow trails into the woods from time to time where I can rest and eat, relieve myself, study the map. I still have so far to go. But I’m chuffed at how far I’ve come already.

  Washing up in a gas station bathroom, I wish I had someone to walk with. Someone to talk with.

  I miss the children at Paradis des Enfants more than I can say. Not even Jethro’s bear comforts me. At least not enough.

  I miss Chloe and the hours we spent cruising the neighborhoods with our hips swaying, sassing anyone who passed us. My hips aren’t swaying now.

  Small cuts, bruises, and bites lick their little tongues of fire all over me. Some jerk throws a soda can at my head out his open car window. I pick up the can after it hits me and cash it in for the deposit at a market in Ascutney.

  As curfew approaches I take shelter behind an abandoned building. There is no roof over me tonight, but it’s not raining and the bugs aren’t bad.

  My legs scream with pain after another long day’s march.

  I groan silently, easing myself down, trying to get comfortable.

  Until I turned thirteen, I hiked with my parents every Sunday morning. I loved those hikes. I can admit it now.

  I miss walking with my father, stopping to examine a plant, learning its Latin name. I miss my mother, obsessively recording with her camera the fall of light through leaves, the growth of fungi on trees, a rock cairn left by hikers who came before.

  If only I knew which way my parents had gone. It’s possible they were arrested and are sitting in some jail now. But I choose to believe, instead, that they, too, are making their way to Canada.

  They would advise, “Radley, keep yourself safe. We’ll find you when this nightmare is over.”

  I’m hopeful I’ll find them before that.

  I must not allow even a moment’s lapse in attention. Not a moment. Less than an hour ago the police caught someone who was heading toward the woods where I had only just hidden. The siren screamed, the revolving light making terrifying shadows in the trees and across the sky.

  I’d only been in here a few minutes. Only just wrapped myself in my parents’ camp blanket. If I’d tried to squeeze in one more mile, tried to find a place that felt safer, a barn, a shed, if I hadn’t given up exactly when I did and settled for sleeping under the trees, the police would have caught me.

  If the traveler had not been caught, he would have spent the night in these woods so close to me I don’t know how I could have avoided him. With so many of us on the road, why hasn’t this happened before, why hasn’t someone else ducked into the same place I’m hiding for the night?

  Or maybe it has happened. Maybe I have spent the night in a barn where someone else lay hidden, someone who felt safer remaining concealed from me.

  I pull my knees up under my chin and don’t realize I’m crying until I wipe away the tickling on my cheek and my hand comes away wet.

  Today the walking is miserable, in heavy rain.

  My mom loves rain walking. She’d come back from hours of following wet paths, her hair and coat dripping.

  She’d stand in the front hall making puddles on the floor.

  I wrinkled my nose at the scent she carried up the stairs with her on those days. That wet wool smell.

  How I took for granted being warm and dry.

  Mom would come into my room, having stripped out of her wet thin
gs, her robe belted around her waist, and she’d sit on the side of my bed with her animal eyes and her damp hair smelling like dog fur.

  I loathe walking in the rain.

  I’m chilled and drenched and wretched.

  When I find an empty house somewhere south of Windsor with a For Sale sign in front, I consider my options. The house has a deep, concealing porch. The grass on the lawn is up past my knees. If I climb onto that porch I’ll be invisible from the road.

  If a realtor comes to show someone the place … I can get away … I make a quick plan of how to escape if a car pulls into the driveway. And then I’m up on the porch and hunkering down before I can change my mind.

  I spend the day under the shelter of that porch roof. This is the first day I’ve allowed myself to stop. I’m torn, thinking I can catch up with my parents if I just keep going. But today the need to find my parents is not as strong as my need for shelter.

  Maybe my parents are doing the same. Mom likes walking in the rain, but Dad hates it as much as I do. Maybe they are just up ahead, sitting knee to knee in an abandoned horse stall, congratulating each other again on how smart they were to send me to Haiti when they did.

  Another day of drenching rain.

  After spending the night on the porch, I’m tempted to stay but I’m afraid of stopping any place for too long.

  I climb down off the porch and walk through Windsor, instantly regretting my decision to keep moving. Rain slides its chill fingers through my hair, down my collar. I am so cold, so wet.

  My hair hangs dripping over my face. I must look like something the cat dragged in. I definitely feel like something the cat dragged in.

  After raiding a moderately satisfying Dumpster (no potato skins, no French fries, but an end of salami and some burnt chili in a soggy cardboard tub), I look again for a place of refuge.

  Settling inside an empty barn, I remember one time, several years ago, my mother brought a package in from the front porch and carried it up the stairs to my bedroom.

  “For you,” she said. “From Grammy.”

  My mother’s mother had stunning taste. But she had no idea who I was or what I liked. Her gift to me was a cowgirl dress, a jaundice-yellow fabric printed with brown horses. It was the ugliest dress I’d ever seen. I couldn’t bring myself to put it on. I couldn’t imagine wearing it, even as a joke.

  I feel a deep pain, like a punch to the gut.

  I’d wear it now, if only I could have my parents, my grandparents, my old life back.

  I’d wear it now.

  Did I do the right thing leaving home? I’m so tired. I don’t know how I can keep going. The weather feels more like March than June. My skin is wet rubber.

  The route twists and turns, heading south when I want to go north, east when I need to go west. I know I’m making progress. But I still have so far to go. And my map is coming to pieces in this sodden weather.

  If I surrendered quietly, at least I would have shelter and food. And I could dry out.

  Occasionally I find a dripping newspaper in a trash bin. Most of it falls apart as I try to turn the pages but there are articles about snipers picking off soldiers. Farmers protecting their property with hunting rifles. Prisons overflowing with looters and protestors. Under this emergency law, anything can get you arrested.

  I feel cut loose from the world.

  I wonder if the world actually still exists.

  I’m floating in some alien universe without an air supply.

  And I’m drowning in all this rain.

  The sun finally breaks through late in the afternoon. I unfold my damp, gray, stiff, miserable body and begin to walk again.

  I think about the children of Haiti, how they welcomed me, arms open, pushing their small bodies up against mine for the sweetness of human contact. I understand now. I understand hunger for the touch of another. I step off the road into the woods, look at the shredded map for the hundredth time, and lift up my face as the rain of the last few days evaporates from my hair, my boots, my skin; threads of steam rise off my clothes toward the warming sun.

  I think of the children at Paradis des Enfants and hope they have not had so much rain.

  White River Junction crawls with soldiers.

  I’m terrified they’ll notice me. I try in every way to avoid calling attention to myself.

  They have nothing to fear from me. They never did. I don’t want to topple a government.

  I only want to be dry and safe, I only want something hot to eat.

  I only want to find my parents and get my old life back.

  My head itches, my hair stinks. I don’t bother letting it out of its clip. It’s too disgusting. Why didn’t I cut it before I left? I’d do it now if I had a pair of scissors bigger than the snips in my first aid kit. Of course if I chopped all my hair off I’d be more conspicuous. But it feels as if my scalp is crawling with vermin.

  Once, when I visited my cousin in Montreal, I spent a small fortune to have my hair cut. My cousin had been teasing me about being a country mouse. In that beautiful city, in my flannel shirt and jeans, I felt like a country mouse. And so my cousin took me to her hair salon and I didn’t ask the cost.

  My father paled when he got the bill. But he swallowed hard and told me my hair looked beautiful. All he said was he hoped my haircut would keep its shape for a very long time.

  Once again I’m going to Canada dressed like a clod. And once again I’m in need of a haircut. I’d head for Montreal straightaway if my cousin was still there. But she lives in Miami now. At least she lived in Miami before all of this began.

  I’m careful. Kids congregate in out-of-the-way places … the sort of places I seek for shelter. They look restless, angry, short fused. Usually they cluster in groups of threes and fives. The looks they give me are dangerous. I could never stand alone against them. It is safer to back away, not test them, even if they are close to my age. I can tell where I’m not wanted. Where I’m not safe.

  So I’m surprised when not everyone looks at me with suspicion. A small boy waves to me as I pass. A little girl wearing butterfly wings and clinging to her mother’s hand turns and smiles at me over her shoulder. These fleeting moments of kindness give me hope that the world is not completely lost. I replay them in my head as I walk, as I settle down for the night. Like Jethro’s bear, they comfort and console me.

  Several times I have seen bikes and considered stealing one. But stealing a bike is not like stealing those quarters from the people at the Manchester airport.

  What a difference a bike would make. How many more miles I could cover in a day. How much more normal I would appear, pedaling a bike along the empty stretches of Route 5.

  But I can’t steal someone’s bike.

  And besides, I never learned to ride one.

  There is a girl I’ve caught sight of several times. I’m curious about her.

  How much I miss human contact. My mother was always hugging me, kissing my cheeks, brushing my hair off my forehead. It used to drive me crazy. I’d snap at her, try to hurt her, to keep her at a distance. Why did I do that? Why?

  I fear this girl. She looks defiant, something in the way she holds her bony shoulders as she walks, something fierce in the glimpses I get of her pale face. And she travels with a dog. Just the sort of dog that has always frightened me. When I was little, the same sort of dog jumped on me, knocked me over. It terrified me. I don’t want to get too close to either of them.

  I follow behind, silently, keeping a healthy distance.

  But as wary as I am of the two of them, I also feel strangely drawn to them. The girl doesn’t look like the children at the orphanage, but there is something about her.

  I creep along rather than stretching my legs at full stride. The girl moves slowly, as if something hurts inside her.

  We stop for rest, food, water at matched intervals. The synchronization of wayfarers.

  If the girl gets ahead it’s easy to catch up to her.

  I worry about thi
s attachment I’m forming. My mind wanders, spinning fantasies about her. It’s pure relief to think of something other than myself for a change. But it’s dangerous to let myself become so distracted. I realize a police car has driven past me several times in the last hour. I pray he’s not looking for me and take the first opportunity to duck into a gas station, get myself off the road, try to make myself look a little less travel worn.

  And then, a mile or so later, I’m nearly creamed by the same cop as he comes careening around a blind corner, siren screaming. His car comes close enough, it brushes my sleeve.

  Almost being hit steals my breath away. Makes my heart thunder. But there is also relief. He is after someone else.

  The girl and her dog stepped off the road and into the woods moments before the policeman skimmed past me. They did not emerge from the trees after the tail lights disappeared.

  Fine. I take the lead. Force myself not to look into the woods when I pass the place where she vanished. I just keep walking.

  The weather turns foul again this morning. I find another empty house, another protected porch. With some food and water in my pack, I decide to wait out the rain.

  I think maybe I’ve been dozing. Suddenly, a dog stands over me.

  The fuzziness of sleep instantly vanishes. Replaced by the sharp focus of fear.

  Pressing my back against the porch wall, I try inching away but the dog keeps closing the distance between us.

  I jerk myself to a standing position, surprised when the dog shows no sign of aggression at my sudden move.

  Instead, the dog lowers itself to its belly and inches close enough I can feel a trace of heat coming off it. Then it raises its nose and touches the hem of my pants. So gently.