by Lucy Treloar
I found her something from the breakfast box, a favourite cup of Claudie’s with a little yellow chick that I couldn’t leave behind. ‘Here you go. Shall I take Treasure?’
‘Nope. She can come with me. It’ll help.’ She took the cup and held Treasure close. ‘Don’t you follow. Leave me be,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it . . .’ Her words faded as she went into the house.
I got busy tidying the car, which was a mess from the haste of our packing, and Alejandra held the cub and stroked its forehead, and between its eyes and down its back. She felt its tiny claws, sharp as broken shell.
‘What’ll we call her?’
‘Niña,’ Alejandra said. ‘Little girl Niña.’ She touched a finger to her lips and then to the pup’s forehead, between her eyes, like a blessing.
Cat came back with a little cup of milk and by dipping a pinkie finger in it and putting it to Niña’s mouth again and again we were able to get some down.
‘You could sit in the truck,’ I told Alejandra, ‘and mind Niña. Could you do that? Don’t let her fall now.’
‘No, I won’t.’ She took Niña and walked solemnly towards the car, her head bent over and her arms curled around the tiny creature.
Cat stood to one side holding Treasure, pulling the covering back from her face, tugging her beanie down and smoothing it there. The baby’s mouth trembled at one corner – some dream she was having. Cat smiled too. I stroked her shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ Cat said, and lifted the baby an inch in some gesture, reminding me of her. I hadn’t forgotten her. But I had not properly remembered how a baby or a child is always there even if they’re in another room. They cannot fall from your mind. And where we were, I knew that Cat would not let her go except into another’s arms. This place was not safe now.
‘She is beautiful,’ I said. ‘You could wait with Alejandra.’
But she worked one-handed, getting things into the car, while Luis and I dragged Girl, grown stiff and cold, onto a blanket and outside. I didn’t let the tears stop me. I didn’t like to think of her out in the open, but there was nothing around to dig with. We pulled her over the lumpy ground and the fallen leaves to the edge of the wooded area, and wrapped the blanket about her and piled dead branches over her and that was all we could do. We changed out of our bloody, wet and stinking clothes, wrapped them up tight and put them in the truck. I thought it better to throw them away in a big town. Anyone could have bloodied clothes in town, couldn’t they?
Then we left. Driving away in the cold morning, the sun not yet broken through but the white cloud glowing, the wet tracks that Luis and I had left were still plain along the asphalt. Whether they would dry to nothing or leave ghost footprints I wouldn’t know. There was nothing we could do except hope for more snow or rain.
Girl, Girl, Girl. All those years on Wolfe together. I had lured a man onto rocks. I had shot someone, and there was Josh, who I as good as killed. Three men. I was alert to threat now. I was dangerous. My world had changed, and I had changed with it. I looked at my hands on the steering wheel and didn’t recognise myself. I was silent unless someone spoke to me, and my hands shook unless I held the wheel firm. I tried thinking things through. Did I have a choice or not: that sort of thing. What else could I have done? Nothing, nothing. A small insistent voice inside me was saying, Who are you? Fool, murderer, you’re not deceiving me. I know what you are, I know your like. And I could go on despite that, despite what I had done.
I thought of the prisoner on death row. He seemed close just then. He’d only killed one man. For the couple of years that I visited, he would tell me about his innocence, how he had not done the thing of which he was accused, and how one day the truth would come out and he would be released. I never said anything about that. What would be the point in quarrelling? If there were raised voices that would be the end of it and by then I wanted to be there when he stopped lying or when he said something that made me think he truly had been unjustly accused. I didn’t think that would happen. Sometimes I wanted to kill him. Then one day he said, ‘What’s it like out there today?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The weather, the sky, is it blue? Or raining? I liked the rain.’
It was late in spring and I had driven up through fields that were shooting bright, the great bowls and stretches of soybean and corn scooped out of stands of dogwood and maple and pine. ‘Sun’s out,’ I said. ‘It’s warm, almost hot. The sky’s pale blue – high, you know? I saw an eagle on the way, circling round.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I like an eagle. I never seen one except on TV.’
That was all he wanted, a taste of life. Something about him made me porous and he seeped in. (It should have been a relief to leave him behind, to drive away free and clear, but from experience I knew it would take days to break free.) Later that very same visit, like something had loosened in him, he said, ‘I didn’t do it.’ I didn’t say anything, same as usual. But this time he went on in a heavy way, like he was putting something down. ‘Didn’t mean to. It was a accident. I just was falling. I tripped is all.’ I didn’t say anything about that either. He said, ‘It was a misunderstanding. That guy, I don’t know, he was trigger happy or something.’
‘He had a gun?’
‘Yes. I thought I saw it. He might have.’
And the time after that that when I visited he said, ‘He gave me a look, right at me. I thought he was coming at me. He had a look on him. He was going to get me. I knew it.’
‘I heard he was saving someone.’
‘We were okay.’
‘I heard different.’
‘A little shy, you know?’ He giggled as if it was an old joke, then remembered who he was talking to, a visitor, a woman, and instantly stopped. ‘She was coming round.’
‘So you shot him.’
‘For my protection. What else could I do?’ He had a simple look on his face, like he’d thrown down his last card and was begging for mercy, as if admitting this might give me the power to arrange his release. I thought it was my release he’d arranged.
I said, ‘That was my boy. Tobermory Hawke Hartford.’
‘Oh shit, ma’am,’ he said, ‘oh fuck,’ and he dropped his head and his hands jerked up, trying to hide himself, before they fell back. He had to let the tears run free down his face. That was all the freedom he had. I didn’t feel much about that then. Some curiosity. He was a real person. The tears were evidence of that even if I wasn’t sure who they were for.
I watched until the tears reached the corners of his mouth and his tongue came out and licked them away. ‘I have to go now,’ I said.
Chapter 19
We saw police cars and heard sirens wailing. Twice, I saw people being questioned or dragged in the street. I was frightened of the Silverado being recognised or photographed or having been reported. There were the tyre tracks we’d left at the house, and the man’s body and his car, and always the thought of Josh, who might be somewhere. We passed a golf course with its fence torn down, and tents all over. Tee Up A Tent – Human Rights For All, a banner said.
When the fuel ran low I parked around the corner from a gas station in a town and filled the spare tanks and Luis and I lugged them back to the car. We emptied them into the truck on a quiet back street.
‘Run out of gas?’ a man passing said. ‘That sucks.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, slopping some in my surprise.
‘Need some help?’
I kept pouring. I didn’t want him too close. ‘All done.’ I smiled and he went on.
We found a vet in town, a young, tired woman with a pleasant manner. We struck it lucky there. She sold us some puppy formula and told us: ‘Little and often. It really matters to keep everything clean. Remember, she hasn’t got her mother to lick her or feed her or keep her warm. That’s your job.’ She gave us a
box of pipettes and a couple of bottles for when Niña was bigger to help feed her.
‘Are you going to help with the little cutie?’ she asked Alejandra.
Alejandra got chatty. ‘Kitty’s going to show me how and then I can do it. I’m big enough.’
‘Are you really careful? Because you have to be really careful with such a new puppy.’
‘I am, aren’t I, Kitty?’
‘You’re my right-hand girl,’ I said.
‘What happened to her mother?’ the vet said. She sort of slid that in, not looking at us, while she was searching for something in a drawer.
‘Whose mother? Alejandra’s?’ I nearly told her out of surprise. ‘Oh, you mean the cub pup.’
‘She got shot. Girl got shot,’ Alejandra said. Then she was stricken and didn’t know where to look. There were so many secrets in her and this one just spilled out. She couldn’t help it.
I put my arm around her. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. To the vet I said, ‘It was an accident. This little one was the only pup that made it.’
‘You got her out?’
I nodded.
‘You must have been quick.’
‘I was,’ I said. ‘She was something special, her mother.’
We were both quiet after that, thinking of Girl, and watching her baby bumping her head around on the examination table, looking for shelter. It was warm in there, but metal is not cosy. I picked Niña up and held her in close under my chin and she settled.
It might have been the strange story that alerted her. I had Alejandra with me, it’s true, but the car was down the street. Or it might have been how shabby we were, and how dirty. We probably smelled. Yet we had enough money. They made sure of that at reception before we went in.
‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ the young woman said when we were done, ‘might you be on your way north?’
‘I’m not sure why you would want to know?’
‘I wondered if you might like some advice about . . . that.’
She was so gentle and pleasant with Niña – with Alejandra too. I examined my feelings and decided to trust her. ‘If you know anything you can pass on, I would appreciate it,’ I said.
So she told us the best road to take, and when to leave the car to cut through a wooded area. She drew a small map. ‘Don’t try driving across the county line,’ she said. ‘Local armed men, vigilantes, whatever they call themselves, patrol that road – not all the time, but enough.’
‘What are they looking for?’
She looked patient. ‘People who might be heading that way instead of south.’ She glanced at Alejandra. ‘The same is happening in a few towns – anywhere close to the county border. It’s the off-season now. Not a good time for travel. Longer days and warmer nights make it easier for travellers, but more comfortable for people hunting them. They can’t touch you after you cross it and mostly they don’t. But there have been some shootings. You can come back for your car later.’
‘I don’t know about later.’
‘Get to Freedom first. The camping store’s over the road. If you want.’
Freedom. It had another name on the map. It was the last stop before the county border to the far north and true freedom. People talk about the kindness of strangers, and I have found that to be true some of the time. I wouldn’t risk anyone else wondering about Alejandra. I took her back to the car and went to the camping store alone.
We stayed in an old cheese house of silvered wood that night. It smelled of wild animal and rodent. We left the door open for as long as we could and I made a broom of loblolly branch, tying some extra needles at the end the way Doree and I had done when we were girls, and we swept it out pretty well. Luis brought everything in from the car. I put Niña, wrapped in a soft bit of blanket I’d torn off, on Alejandra’s lap. It suited them both. The puppy stayed warm and it gave Alejandra something to do. She stroked Niña’s head with her forefinger and when she woke up I prepared a little cup of warmed milk and showed Alejandra how to draw milk into the pipette and hold it to Niña’s mouth and squeeze it in. ‘Not too fast,’ I said. ‘Kind of drip, drip. Give her time to swallow.’
I watched to make sure she had the knack of it. She curled her head over the tiny creature, intent as if each single drop of milk was the breath of life.
We went through everything, dividing into two heaps: take and leave behind. At the camping store I’d picked up a tiny saucepan, which I got out then, and more matches and firelighters. We had a bigger saucepan we’d found at one of the houses we stayed at. I was using it at the edge of the fire Cat made.
Cat said, ‘Why not the big one? It’s not that far, is it?’
‘Feel the weight of it. Awkward to carry. As long as we’re warm enough or can get something warm inside, things won’t seem so bad. Niña can’t have cold formula.’
‘We don’t need the potatoes,’ Luis said.
‘We can carry them for one day. I’ll carry them. I’ll roast them in the fire,’ I said. ‘I think we’ll be grateful for them.’
‘How about the apples?’
‘I’ll cook them tonight.’
‘A tent? You got a tent, Kitty?’
‘Only a pop-up. Hardly weighs a thing. If it rains, we can all squeeze in.’
In this way we proceeded, whittling things away until all that was left was warmth, food and shelter. An insulating mat and four space blankets came. We took as much dehydrated food as we could, and packed the bags. I gave Alejandra the job of carrying Niña’s things.
We dumped the car behind a ruined barn the next day, and walked along the edge of a field of corn stubble. We were close to the county border then, but ‘close’ when you are on foot and have a puppy and a baby to keep fed and a child to keep going is still quite a way. We stopped often to feed small creatures, and to ease the weight on shoulders and the cut of bags into hands, and slept that night in a shed shrouded in dead honeysuckle in the middle of a field of sprouting grain. After dark we kindled a small fire and cooked some of the food we’d bought in town. I put those potatoes, which I had more than once considered dumping, into the coals to give Alejandra something to poke at and think about. The fire lit up her face. I boiled water in the pan to sterilise Niña’s things. Somehow I remember that, making things sterile for Niña and keeping her fed, not the walking and carrying, as the worst bit of the journey’s end. She was a tough little thing, though, she wanted to live, and I wanted to make that happen for all our sakes, not only Girl’s.
We walked through open country next morning, and stopped near the edge of the woods marked on the map, across the county line by our estimation, aiming to cut back and meet the road after the checkpoint, not that we knew for sure where it was or what it looked like. Between wood and road lay swampy marshland, not so bad at the edge where we were. Alejandra was weary enough to stumble and lose her footing by then. Luis took her hand and lifted her back to her feet, neither saying a word, and she went on in the way of children and puppies. Complaining would make no difference.
We came across a fallen tree and a pool of speckled sun and sat for a few minutes, and I let my mind empty of everything but sensation, the way I used to on Wolfe. I was glad I still knew the way of it. Cat fed the baby, who kicked out her legs and wriggled. Luis watched and looked away. There was rarely any telling what he might be thinking or feeling, so there was nothing unusual in that. But he’d become more distant from Cat, too, in recent days, when they’d been so easy with each other on Wolfe. It was as if he was always preparing to lose her, expecting to. He held himself aloof and didn’t talk to Cat or anyone a great deal. He was carrying a lot, another whole person. He was not alone in that, I know. Alejandra sat at his side on a fallen log, stroking Niña, whispering to her and nodding as if she understood well what Niña was thinking.
We all drank a little of the remaining water, passing the cup along the
line of us. Cat handed the baby to Luis and took off her jacket, which she laid on the ground, and took Treasure back and laid her there, kneeling to change the baby’s nappy – she shivered at the air, straightening her legs and drawing them up.
‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ Cat told her, and Treasure began to kick her legs up and down, her heels drumming the jacket she lay on. She was a good baby, listening as keen as any other creature to the thing that kept her safe. Cat wrapped her again and held her tight, kissing her neck and blowing a bubble into it until the baby laughed. Here is the truth that I feel in such moments as watching my granddaughter feeding her baby, watching the light on the water and the wind in the bare and blushing trees and the turn of a cheek: I love life, which I haven’t always, despite everything.
When it was time, Luis stood up. Alejandra didn’t say a word, just followed into the reeds, holding his hand. I heaved on my pack and picked up Niña and a bag. Cat carried Treasure.
Late that afternoon we chanced upon a small farmhouse not marked on the map at the back of a cornfield. Its porch roof was caught mid-blink over its two front windows, part of it resting on the porch railings. A woman in jeans and a puffer jacket came out, ducked beneath the roof and jumped to the ground. She stopped at the sight of us and looked back, calling out to someone, and kept her wary gaze fixed on us. Another woman and a man came out, and three children, a girl and two boys, all younger than Alejandra. We could have kept on, but we needed water and there was a tap outside I had hopes of. I held my water bottle up and waved it and we kept on towards them. They were worn down. We filled our bottles. They didn’t do anything, but they didn’t stop watching.
Cat said, ‘It’s okay. We’re running too. Not much further.’
Luis said something too, and they spoke a little.
I said, ‘Good luck to you all.’
One of the women nodded. A little boy burrowed his head under her arm and stared. They kept staring as we left, following an overgrown farm track, and were still watching when the path curved into the woods.