Looking around at the booths and the rush of diners in and out, I thought of my grandfather, his loud laugh filled with false teeth. The last time I had seen him, a few months after the accident and just weeks before he died, he had taken me out for ice cream at a restaurant much like this one. Sitting upright had still been painful then, but I had tried not to show it, listening to his happy banter and doing my best to smile at his jokes. He had ordered a double cheeseburger while I’d asked for a scoop of vanilla. “You be sure and put a cherry on that,” he’d told the waitress, giving me a wink.
Halfway through the meal, he had reached across the Formica tabletop and patted my hand. “You’re gonna be all right, sweetie.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
“You will. I know it. After all, you’re just like me.”
I must have given him a wary look, because he’d laughed. “Not the bad parts. The good ones. You and me—” he had gestured at the other tables around us—“we’re not like these people here. We’ve got brains in our heads. At least, we’ve got the brains to know there’s something else out there, right?”
“I think everybody knows that,” I’d said.
“No, sweetheart.” He’d shaken his head ruefully. “They don’t. You might think they do, but they don’t.”
After that, he’d seemed to watch me for a long moment.
“I’m an old man, you know,” he’d said finally, then thrown his hands in the air. “God! Look how old I am. I look just like those old bastards who sit around bullshitting at the gas station all day. Somehow, I never thought this would happen.” He’d been smiling, and I’d managed to smile back, although rays of pain were beginning to spread through the bones on my left side.
“And yet it still seems like just the other day you were a little thing riding around on my back like I was a horse.” He’d picked up a cold French fry. “You remember that?”
“Yeah. Of course I do.”
“Your grandmother hated it. We’d keep knocking things over in her living room and it’d drive her nuts.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, well. We had fun, didn’t we?”
There had been an odd note in his voice, and I’d looked up from my dish. His eyes had been almost too bright, his smile slightly uncertain.
“Sure, we did,” I had answered, thrown off-guard.
He had reached over and patted my hand again. “You’re a good girl,” he’d said.
He’d begun talking about something else then, a car he’d bought the week before, the first one he’d ever had that was foreign-made. When we were ready to leave, he’d held my jacket for me, helping me as I cautiously slid my arms through the sleeves.
“You all right, honey?” he’d asked when he dropped me off at the house I had until recently shared with Amos, and which I hadn’t yet relinquished. “Want me to walk you up to the porch?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks for taking me out, Grandpa.”
He had reached over and hugged me, kissing me roughly on the cheek the way he always did. “Sure thing, my girl. Like I said, you’re gonna be all right. You just remember that.”
I had walked into the house, pushing my way through the heavy door with its flaking paint. Inside, as I’d struggled to take off the jacket, I’d realized that the car’s engine was still running outside. Through the picture window in the living room, I’d caught sight of my grandfather slumped in his seat behind the wheel, his eyes closed and his hand over his mouth. He’d rocked forward, his shoulders seeming to shake. Just as I was about to go back outside, he had straightened, seeming to compose himself, and driven away.
I missed him. To this day, I regretted not having gone out to him, telling him that everything would be all right. That I loved him, which, in spite of everything, I did.
The nurses let me spend the night in my grandmother’s room, curled in the armchair in the corner. When the dawn came, her condition still had neither worsened nor improved.
“If she pulls through, she’s going to be in pretty rough shape,” one of the early-shift doctors said. “She’ll need somebody with her around the clock. You folks thought about how you’re going to take care of that?”
On the drive up the mountain, I kept hearing his voice. If she pulls through. You folks thought about that? Around the clock. If she pulls through. If.
“I don’t know what to do,” I told the stranger at last, standing before him in the dark pit where I could see him shiver even though he tried to hide it. “We have to get you out. But I can’t leave her.”
But by then, he was calm, almost strangely so. I didn’t know where it came from, this eerie tranquility, nor was I sure I wanted to. I didn’t let myself imagine what he thought about, alone in the blackness hour after hour.
“It’s all right,” he said in response. Then, to my surprise, he gave a small laugh. “It’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Nothing is ever as we expect.”
* * *
—
That afternoon, Jerry came into the store. There was no gun this time, but the look in his eyes made me uneasy anyway. I moved mechanically but warily, fixing his food.
“Thanks,” he said when I gave it to him.
I waited for him to put the bag on the counter, but he didn’t. Instead, he lifted his cap and resettled it on his head, looking away. His face, I realized, looked as though it had aged, marred by deep lines that I couldn’t remember having been there before.
“Hey, listen,” he said.
His tone made my back stiffen.
Not again, I thought. Not now.
He slid his thick hands into his pockets.
“I’m gonna need an advance,” he said.
I looked at him. His beard had grown longer, nearly reaching his chest.
“An advance,” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
The electric heater on the wall hummed.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Five hundred,” he said.
I looked at him. Between us, his drink was cooling.
“Five hundred?” I echoed, although I knew I’d heard him right.
“Yeah.”
We locked eyes.
“I don’t have five hundred,” I told him.
“Yeah, I know.” He straightened and looked away. “But you’re gonna have to get it anyway.”
“Well,” I said after a moment, “I can’t.”
He licked his lips, seeming to prepare himself.
“You’re gonna have to,” he repeated. “Or else I tell my niece. About you.”
For a moment, the world stopped. I imagined Beth as she might have looked at that very moment, pursing her bright-pink lips as she listened to a customer attempt to banter with her. The way she’d leaned toward me on the couch the day we’d fought. How she’d held my hand when I’d been recovering on my hospital bed for all those months, barely speaking to anyone. The hope in her eyes when she’d tried to talk me into going back to college.
I looked at him, and then I began to laugh. A long, rolling laugh that filled the store.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Tell her. In fact, invite me when you do.”
His face tightened.
I kept laughing, trying to stop but unable. For a second, I worried I would lose control and slide into hysterics, but eventually I slowed down.
He waited until I was done. Then, leaning forward, he put his hands against the counter, bringing his face inches from mine. From inside his clothing, there was the clank of something metallic. I could smell motor oil, sweat, wood smoke.
For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. I stayed where I was, seeing the redness of his eyes, a scratch that ran down the edge of his mouth.
He was thinking about something, something other than the scene that was playing out between us. I could see it.
He wanted me to see it. To know that he knew.
There was no laughing now. He had the look of someone who, no matter what else he might be, fully understood hi
s own size and strength. Who had the advantage.
“Don’t be a fool, girl,” he said quietly. “I know every inch of this place. You think I don’t know where he is?”
A cold sensation ran down my arms and legs. I stared him in the face, but inside I quavered.
He looked me up and down. Then he pushed himself back from the counter, shrugging.
“Have it your way,” he said in a low, flat tone, and turned away.
I watched him take a step toward the door.
“Wait,” I said.
For a moment, I didn’t move.
Then I opened the register, taking out the tens and twenties. My fingers seemed to thicken as I counted them, putting them in slim piles.
There wasn’t enough.
With quick steps, I moved past him. Through the door, outside, into the storage room, to the safe in the wall. I spun the combination lock and reemerged.
“Here,” I said, holding out the bills.
We stood facing each other on the porch, squaring off.
He counted the cash, keeping half an eye on me as he did so.
“Okay,” he said finally.
I looked at him, the money in his fist. The bills seemed abnormally green, as if they’d been transformed, as if they were shouting to the world that something had happened here, something for which someone should feel guilty. I felt my skin prickle.
He folded them and put them in his pocket.
“Next time,” he said, “don’t say ‘no’ to me. It don’t suit you.”
His boots made heavy sounds as he walked across the porch. He looked back at me for a moment, then vanished around the corner of the building.
I only realized then that there was still nothing on the counter. No bag.
I locked the store and climbed the steep embankment behind it, sitting down on the shoulder of the state road and looking out over the park. The trees hadn’t begun to bud yet, but the snow was disappearing, and I knew the great thaw wasn’t far off. I reached out to pluck a crocus, then wrapped my arms around my knees, picturing my grandmother in her hospital bed, the empty house, my room, the paper bag under the mattress, the trodden earth as I’d followed John on his horse, the great stretch of the valley, the mountains that bounded the world.
There was only one thing to be done, I thought. About the stranger, about everything.
And I would do it, I knew then.
I would do it.
Still carrying the crocus like some kind of talisman, I slipped into the hostel, glancing around to make sure I wasn’t being observed, although by now I knew I probably was. I made my way down to the basement, then the crawlspace, feeling my way in the darkness until I reached the bottom of the ladder.
“Hey,” I said, my voice sounding strange in my own ears.
“Oh,” a voice replied. “I wasn’t expecting you.” There was a click, and the stranger appeared, holding the flashlight Martin had given him.
“We’ll leave first thing tomorrow,” I said. “I just have to do something first. It’s important, but I’ll…I’ll take care of it as quickly as I can.”
There was a layer of dust on his skin, but his eyes shone out at me.
“You look so terribly sad,” he said.
I gestured the words away. “Let’s not talk about it. I had some decisions to make, and I’ve made them.” I reached out to touch a loose brick in the wall. “I’ll probably still open the store in the morning so no one gets suspicious, like we talked about.” There was a twisting in my gut, but I didn’t tell him who “no one” was. “I’m not sure how we’re going to get you out of the building without anyone noticing, but I’ll talk to Martin and we’ll figure out something.”
He hesitated, then nodded. His look was vague and thoughtful, as if his mind were far away. Glancing around at the cracked walls, he looked back at me as if he might say something, but he didn’t. If he hadn’t nodded, I would almost have wondered if he’d heard me. “What’s that?” he asked finally, glancing down at my hand.
“What? Oh. It’s a crocus. First sign of spring. Here, take it.”
I gave it to him, his dusty fingers brushing my palm. He raised it to his face.
“Don’t be afraid,” I said, as much to myself as to him.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he held the flower in front of him, turning it in his fingers, taking in the deep violet color that was even more striking in the dim light.
“I brought your bird down here,” he said, sounding almost shy.
“Bird? What bird?”
He knelt and reached behind him, then held out a glass figurine. It was coated with dirt, but still whole.
“Oh,” I said, taking it in my hands. The glass was cold.
“It makes me think of better places. If you understand what I mean.” He smiled, looking down at his shoes. Then he looked back up. “You know,” he said, “truly, you are very good. I’ve met few people who would be so generous.”
My throat constricted, and I looked away. “I’m not as good as you think I am. Believe me. I wish I were.”
“You’ve made all the difference to me.”
I grimaced. “No,” I said with difficulty. “I’ve made things worse for you. You don’t realize it, but I have.”
He shook his head. Then, reaching forward tentatively, he brushed the hair away from my face, taking care not to graze my skin, as if he were afraid I would run away. Surprised, I looked up at him.
He put his hand on my face then, his palm curving gently around my chin and his thumb resting on my cheekbone. His fingers were cool against my skin. As I stood still, he moved toward me, putting his mouth against mine. I felt the pulsing at his throat, the soft edge of his collar, realized I knew his smell.
He let me go, and I stepped back, stunned.
I found myself unable to look at him, caught by the sensations warring within me. Instead, I stood there, holding myself still, staring at the circle of light on the ground.
“I was thinking maybe northern New York,” I said finally, my voice sounding disconnected even to my own ears. “Along the river. From there, you can decide what’s best. I mean, heading down toward the city or up to the border or something. If that’s what you want.”
A silence filled the small space.
“All right,” he said.
We stood wordlessly for a moment, the light shining between us.
“I should get going,” I said then, holding out the figurine. “There are things you’re—we’re—going to need. For the trip.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Of course. Go ahead.”
“All right.” I stuffed my hands into my pockets. “I’ll see you then.”
Turning, I began to walk away.
“You know,” I heard him say, his voice trailing off.
I stopped, my foot on the ladder. But he didn’t finish the sentence.
“What?”
Even in the dim light, I could see his face turn a deep red.
“Only that if you want to come back…I will still be here.” He gave a small, embarrassed laugh. “I mean, of course I will. But…it’s just that you mean very much to me. That’s all.”
Behind him, the blackness was so black it looked infinite. I could hear my own breathing.
I lifted my hand to the rung.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
I mounted the ladder, choosing not to see him still standing there.
In the car, I shook myself, blowing on my cold fingers and gazing through the windshield at the steep wall of forest in front of me. It hadn’t happened, I told myself. It simply hadn’t happened.
I started the engine.
In town, I drove up to the ATM and left minutes later with my life savings—a pathetically small bundle of green—folded inside my fist. At the Walmart, I stuffed a wire basket with water, sandwiches, two sets of men’s clothing that didn’t look as if they’d come from some backwater Salvation Army, a pair of off-brand sneakers, a baseball cap that could be pu
lled low over the eyes.
Then, at the hospital’s back entrance, I joined the knot of people who always seemed to be there, drawing on their cigarettes and looking up at the setting sun. I asked my question, quietly, and after a moment of hesitation one of them told me where to go.
In an alley that ran between the courthouse and the bar next to it, near a warren of two-story houses that had been turned into apartments for the very young and the very old, I found a scraggly-looking man in a black jacket and told him what I wanted.
He looked me up and down suspiciously. Something about him looked familiar, as if I might have gone to school with him. I probably had.
“Twenty,” I said, opening my hand slightly to show him the folded bills there.
He still looked reluctant.
“You can search me,” I told him.
He moved away with a slouching but still alert walk and a few minutes later was back with a larger man, who did search me, patting me up and down as I stared up at the slice of waning light between the buildings, keeping any expression from my face.
When he was finished, the larger man looked at me. Maybe he recognized me, or maybe there was simply something in my look that he’d seen before.
“Give it to her,” he said to the smaller man.
I left with the bag in my pocket, walking alone back up the alley.
In the hospital lobby, I asked the receptionist if I could use the phone and dialed Beth. When she picked up, I suddenly found myself struggling not to cry.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, my voice threatening to break. “I can’t talk long. But I’m so sorry. I just want you to know that.”
“Oh, hon,” she breathed on the other end. “Don’t be. I’m the one who’s sorry. I should have known better than to say those things. You’re doing what’s right for you—I know that.”
My breathing became uneven, and I turned away from the waiting room, trying to hide my face in my sleeve.
“Honey,” she said. “Do you need me? Where are you?”
While I waited for her, I sat by my grandmother’s side, holding her hand and listening to the sound of her breathing. Her hair was a tangled cloud, and I washed it, running a cloth carefully over her face, the crown of her head. When I was done, she didn’t look any more like herself; she still seemed empty, just another old woman in the hospital. But I talked to her anyway, straightening her gown over her shoulders, telling her things she would have scoffed at if she’d been awake. At last, moving around the machines, I kissed her on the cheek and held her palm, keeping it in mine for a long time.
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