by Lucy Treloar
‘Thank you,’ she said, looking at it, stroking the head of the Virgin Mary and a rose and a small cross and a sweet skull all lined up and the thumb of the hand that held it. ‘Oh yes. I would be sorry to lose this. My daughter gave it to me.’
‘Hold it there,’ the guard said, his glance moving from one to the other. I hadn’t realised until we came close how alike they were, mother and daughter: their high cheeks, the kink in their hair, the little turn at the outer corner of their eyes, the way they both blinked so rapidly in this moment. ‘Okay. I’m going to ask something. I want you to think carefully before you answer. Understand?’
Alejandra’s mother nodded.
‘Do you know this kid?’
‘I have never seen her before in my life,’ she said.
I curled my fingers about Alejandra’s shoulder. She was as stiff as a board, vibrating, just holding herself together.
‘Thank you for stopping for me. I would not like to lose it,’ she said to Alejandra, and to me, ‘Thank you for your kindness.’
The sound of the truck cabin door opening came from behind us. ‘Everything okay back there?’
‘Just moving on, isn’t that so, ladies?’ the guard said.
I was obedient, but Alejandra lingered and I think she might have said something else to her mother, and the guard might have said something to one or other of them, but I didn’t hear it. Alejandra’s mother turned with the guard and they walked away towards some trees. Alejandra came to my outstretched hand and held it tightly and there was nothing for us to do but leave.
I drove blindly after that, not thinking of direction, just of Alejandra and Luis white-faced behind me. We weren’t going home; nonetheless, some homing instinct sent me towards the coast and after an hour or two we came to the beginning of marshland, and dead and dying pines standing stark and white-trunked and bereft of branches and almost any green, and entered it. It was a serpentine road that slithered along the flatness and canted around bends through slow-moving cattails and shivering grasses at marsh edge and more pine forests, some living more or less, and stretches of water like lakes, utterly still and reflecting the pines and sky above so the water appeared black and deep. There was no shoulder to the road: just two narrow lanes, then water-filled ditches and then endless marsh.
We came upon a truck with a big-headed white-and-tan dog sitting bolt upright on the tray. Everything slowed from the surprise of finding it and the lone dog, and us watching and the dog impassively watching us. Girl was quiet at the sight. She and the dog stared at each other. I could not discern their mood. There was not a sign of a person on that stretch of road and no way for them to leave the road except into marsh, yet the grasses along that stretch were not broken and the reeds stood tall and the line of them was unblemished and we saw not a soul and the road stretched and stretched before us and behind. But even despite that dog, which I would not wish to see any harm befall, I didn’t stop to see if help might be needed. I slid by and pulled away and was half surprised that no gunshot came and no bullet hit the car. I didn’t turn in case it would provoke such an action, as if there was no difference between a turned head and a pulled trigger. ‘Don’t look back now, honey,’ I said to Alejandra, and she was so well trained to flight and terror by then that she obeyed me.
Further on, raggedy weeds wavered along the fields’ salt line, the rime of white dusting the brown on its other side. Say you found a watertight house; you still needed a way to live, something to eat, something to wear. Shelter is only one thing. I kept playing over in my mind what had happened with the prison guard and whether he liked his job, the way he was with Alejandra and her mother, and with me too. He considered us as if something was nudging his mind; he might have seen the resemblance between them. What if he was a decent man whose farm had been ruined with salt water like the places around here? What if his wife worried about his work and the way it troubled him and ran against the grain of him, but he did it anyway to keep a roof over his family and food on their table and make sure they had clothes to wear? What if his wife felt bad about that, wishing she could leave her children in someone else’s care and go out to work in his stead, or couldn’t find a job or child care but chafed at him anyway about getting a less troubled job? What if that was all there was for them and they were grateful for it? What if he went home that day and said to his small daughter, about the same age as Alejandra, ‘Honey, I met a little girl today almost as sweet as you.’ And she said, ‘Did you, Daddy? What was her name, the little girl?’ And he had to make something up or tell her he didn’t know, and then she would wonder how he would meet a little girl without knowing her name. For years she might wonder about that strange day her father came home and told her that. What if his children had friends from other places and they kept their father’s work a secret from them? What if he kept his work a secret from his family? What if he’d treated us as decently as he could when there were witnesses? What if he was bad? There were so many ways that could be true; I tried not to think of them.
Do you see what I mean? I’ve teased at the edges of that encounter and the people who made it up, wondering what it meant, and none of the meanings can explain why I couldn’t get away from that convoy fast enough. When we drove away, Luis was pure rage; as if rage was something that could be carved out in the shape of a young man and Luis would be its truest form. He didn’t look back, he wouldn’t allow it in himself and I don’t know if he thought that would be weakness, or whether he was frightened that the rage would then run free and he wished to protect us from that. Alejandra was merely misery, and the danger of that is slower. Twice she looked back, and when they were beyond sight she stared in black-eyed sadness for mile after mile as we drove, the car slithering on the road’s edge when I accelerated too fast, which I couldn’t help doing. There was some badness in it I couldn’t understand.
Ruined houses reared up in places, or rested in ancient disintegration, broke-backed or droop-faced, more eloquent than the few ragged people we passed walking the roadside’s edge, their stares so frank and direct. Who had lived in these places? It seemed my leaving home, even if it was for a different reason, was a common thing and a piece of me resented the commonness of that. What did it matter, though? The result was the same. I had nowhere to call home and neither did they.
The road followed queer pitches and tilts in the marshland. The gas station attendant had been right: the land had changed since the maps were drawn. Roads dove into marsh and reappeared ahead past a stretch of water. Thick grasses and reeds encroached along their edges. The roads, like the trees, were dead or dying, and haunted the landscape with the world that had been. With no way to test water depth there was nothing to be done but turn and try another road back along the way we came, feeling our way along, and doubling back, again and again, as haphazard and bumbling as an insect in a flood.
Finally we came upon a town, by chance more than design. It was like Blackwater, all prettiness, each dollhouse down the main street a different colour and trimmed in white. A few stores had hopeful stands of clothing out front, and souvenirs and paintings of sunsets in their windows. A big sign out front of a diner said Crab Cakes and More! We should have kept moving, but I wanted something good to happen that day and I slowed and made the next right and parked down a quiet tree-lined street carpeted with sodden leaves and a scant covering of snow.
‘What are you doing?’ Cat said.
‘Getting crab cakes. Who knows when we’ll get another one? You want to come, Alejandra?’ I was hoping to lift her spirits.
‘No thank you, Kitty.’
‘Sweetheart,’ I said.
‘Kitty, you shouldn’t,’ Luis said. ‘People are going to notice.’
‘No they’re not.’
‘People always notice you.’
‘No they don’t. Anyhow what would they say? This lady came in for crab cakes. Great story. Come on.’
‘You stay here, Alejandra,’ Luis said.
She looked at me and she looked at him and said, ‘Okay.’
‘You too, Girl.’
Girl was so heavy with unborn cubs that she didn’t care, just curled up in a patch of sun shining in.
I got out and walked away from the sadness of them, trying to walk away from my own. What would their mother be thinking now? She’d looked into my eyes; I didn’t mention that before and I kept thinking of it now. ‘Thank you for your kindness.’ I kept walking down the road, pulling my jacket tight against the chill, covering the ground fast, trying to put that out of my mind. Crab cake, how hot and fragrant and melting it would be in a soft white bun.
One house on the left I felt before I saw. It was small and low, a dirty white and grey with one mean little dormer poking from its roof. The yard had not been raked clean for some time; sodden leaves lay thickly on the ground and nothing but a single leafless shrub and the tree that had grown the leaves grew there. Even on a bright day with the tree bare and the sunlight reaching the ground it still appeared shadow-filled and watchful. The neighbours had tried their best to conceal it with thick bushes along the boundaries. The shrub was hung with enormous fruits, though the time of year was wrong, and the way they hung was wrong, and their colours – browns and greens with flashes of muted orange or blue – were wrong. Slaughtered ducks, not fruit hanging there to ripen. Then, from the angle of their slender necks and the way their bodies hung against the world at a queer diagonal, and from the stiff way they moved, like pendulums counting out the wind, I saw that they were only wooden decoys. Yet their lack of life, their never-life, seemed threat and nightmare both. My heart pounded as much as if I’d been a child. I wished I’d crossed the road.
I held my breath while I rounded the corner and only let it out near the shop. The door had a jaunty old-style bell, which startled me, and for a half-second I was stopping at Patty’s for ices after school. The woman behind the counter was young and soft and slumped-looking in her pale blue polo. Her light brown hair was lank and pulled back. Her skin had a sheen of grease. She didn’t smile.
‘Afternoon,’ I said.
She nodded.
‘I’d like crab cakes with coleslaw.’
‘Slaw?’
‘Yep. You think it’s a bad idea?’
‘I do.’
‘What would you recommend?’
‘Lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise.’
‘No slaw?’
She made a curt motion with her head. ‘As a side.’
‘Slaw for one. Five of everything else. And fries.’
‘For five?’
‘Is that okay?’
‘Sure. It’ll cost ya.’
‘I’ve got money.’
She made a note on the little paper pad she had and put the pen in her pocket and phoned the order through to the kitchen. She kept an eye on me while I poked around the shop to see what else we might need: a couple of cans of soup, a box of Rice-A-Roni, a bag of dog food, milk, juice and took them to the counter.
‘Where’d you say you were from?’ she said.
‘I didn’t. South of here. You know how long it’ll be?’
‘Ten, fifteen minutes.’
‘I’ll just step out. I saw something in a shop down the street. I’ll be back.’ I went out and the doorbell rang behind me again. Further up the road, past all those quaint and pretty shops, I turned the corner and walked and turned another corner and walked and turned another corner and I was back on the street where the car was parked. There it was, fifty yards ahead maybe. The yard of the corner house was open at the back, and piled against a shed were stacks of the slat baskets that people used to use for crabs and oysters, and some oyster tongs, long and rusted, and dredges and crab baskets, most of them neat – someone had expected to use them again – but some rusted, and all grown through with weeds. It was like Wolfe. I kept walking and had a strange sensation of alertness all over my skin, but didn’t turn or look about to see where it was coming from. An old man came out of his front door and stepped onto the porch over the road from the car. He didn’t do anything, just looked at the car. I got in, paying him no attention.
‘Where are the crab cakes?’ Alejandra said.
‘They’re cooking now, sweetie. Just going to move the car.’
‘Why?’ Cat said.
‘Someone paying too much attention to no business of theirs. Don’t look now.’ But of course it was too late for that. They flung their heads like windvanes in a changeable breeze. ‘Stop that now.’ I eased away up the road. There was no rush – no, nothing at all worth noticing.
‘We should go. I really think we should, Kitty,’ Luis said.
But I wouldn’t. My stubbornness used to drive Hart crazy. I circled the block to the next street and parked beneath a tree so the car was in shadow and walked down to the main street and around the corner. There was a police car near the diner, no lights going, and two police going in, one feeling his holster, the other holding the door. Oh, my heart. I stopped at a stand of sweatshirts, and began flicking through and over the top of the stand saw one of the troopers come back out and peer up and down the sidewalk. That was enough for me. The minute he went back in I turned and was at the corner and around it so fast. Any minute, any minute, they’d be at my side hauling me in, but if I broke into a run someone would notice for sure. I took my jacket off, as if I’d got a little warm out walking, and tucked it under my arm, and when I got to the car I threw it in and started it up.
‘You were right,’ I said.
‘What happened?’ Cat said.
‘We shouldn’t be here. I don’t even know. It’s like this whole town is watching for something.’
‘What about the crab cakes?’ Alejandra said.
‘Another time. Might be a coincidence. Those cameras at the prison, those guards. What if they’re looking for the truck? What if Josh . . .’ I turned on to a street running parallel with the main street and headed along. Every bit of me wanted to press hard on the accelerator, but I didn’t. My foot was shaking and my hands were trembling. ‘It didn’t feel right. Police looking for something or someone. Probably a coincidence, probably not us.’
‘Go faster,’ Luis said. His head filled the mirror as he turned to look behind.
‘No.’
I went along every back street I could find that kept heading out of town and when there was no other choice I rejoined the highway, and got off it as soon as I could, back on to the byways that ran through woods, even on ones heading south if they presented themselves, steering clear of any road with a name that included ‘point’ or ‘pier’ or ‘dock’ – they went nowhere – heading away from that pretty and dangerous town. The whole world could trap you at the end of one of those roads. There’d be no way out but by boat. I gripped the wheel so hard. Driving through those places, doing our best to stay unnoticed, it seemed like everything, every thing, made me angry. A tree felled, a hunched cat crooning over a bird, a salted field, a bug-eyed and lank-haired man who reminded me of the creature who’d touched me in an oyster shanty, and another, a town teacher who made Claudie cry when she stood up to him. I went and told him what I thought and it didn’t happen again. Wolfe had contained me, it had held me in place, and seeing all this, people, places, there was nothing to hold me together. I don’t know what it was. I felt like I was running loose, and now I understood running.
Chapter 18
It was the relief at being off those slippery roads and the feeling of having been trapped within them that kept us at the next place we found for two nights. We went through a fair-sized town beforehand, which Cat knew from other trips with Josh. She directed me towards a big supermarket and went in and did the shopping herself while I minded Treasure. A small woman from somewhere in the far south knocked on my window. I let it down. She didn’t have any hopes of me. She
looked so tired, but she would do this anyway because what choice did she have. She said something, and held out her hand. Reluctantly, Luis involved himself. ‘She would like some money,’ he said. ‘Her family is hungry. There is no work. They left their farm from many seasons of drought and now they are hungry.’ I gave her some money and she bobbed her head and tucked some strands of hair behind her ear, and bobbed again.
Alejandra leaned forward to watch her go. ‘Who was that lady?’
Luis looked terrible. He looked out of the window, staring until she’d turned a corner. ‘I don’t know.’
We had to leave the first house we tried in a hurry. It seemed empty – no smoke was rising; blinds were drawn; leaves tumbled across the lawn; we couldn’t see a car. But no sooner had Girl leaped down and begun her sniffing than a second-floor window went up and a man put his head and his gun out. ‘Anything I can do for you folks?’ he asked in a scornful voice, as if he was playing with us. I made up some excuse about the wrong address.
‘What address would that be?’ he said.
I didn’t reply and he said, ‘Thought so,’ and waited until we went.
The next place we found was a couple of miles further on, just another farmhouse down one side road and another, and along a drive set into a wooded lot. Cat went and knocked at the door first to make sure no one was there. (She’d prepared a story about losing our way in case someone was home.) A few toys had been left behind – a small car on a windowsill, a rattle behind a door, a child’s bicycle in a lean-to. Alejandra rode around on it in the ghostly light. We boiled some water and sterilised the rattle and it amused Treasure for a while. There was an old-fashioned wood-burning stove in the kitchen and a little furniture. It was a good house. It hadn’t been let go. We got half comfortable and settled for a couple of nights; that was a mistake. Somehow I couldn’t stop making them. It’s when you start to relax that things happen.
In the half-light of dawn on the second morning Luis and Cat went outside for more wood and kindling. I sluiced out the dishes from the night before and got the breakfast box from the kitchen. Alejandra’s eyes were open when I got back. She moved to the sagging sofa and watched while I got the fire going again, putting one little stick on after another and blowing the basket of twigs until they spurted into flame and the basket fell and crumbled and became the bed for larger pieces of wood. The room flickered into life and I could imagine how it had been once, with maybe some photos and knick-knacks on the mantel and a lamp in the little window on the cold north wall – who knows, maybe flowers even. I poured some cereal into a cup for Alejandra and she picked at it with her fingers, dainty as a lady.