Eggs (11 page)
At first he thought it was some kind of mountain range, hazy blue with distance. Or giant churches, with their pointy tops.
“There ya go,” came Primrose’s voice behind him. “The big city. Skyscrapers.”
Two of them were way taller than everything else. They speared skyward so high it seemed they would snag the passing clouds.
“We’re almost there.” She tugged at him. “Come on.” He went with her.
She handed him a hoagie, unwrapped one for herself. “Got them at 7-Eleven.”
David hadn’t realized how hungry he was till he smelled the hoagie. “Aren’t we going to stop?”
Primrose bit into hers. “Gotta keep moving. Let me know when you’re thirsty. Look.” She held up a bottle of Mango Madness. “One for each of us. A cupcake too.”
David had walked while eating before — an ice-cream cone, a candy bar — but never a meal. “Is this lunch?” he said.
“Did you have lunch?”
“No.”
“Then it’s lunch.” She grinned. “At least there’s no carrot.”
They walked on, eating, staying off the tracks, listening. When Primrose finished her hoagie, she tossed the wrapper. David retrieved it, growled “litterbug,” and stuffed it into the backpack. “I don’t see the skyscrapers anymore,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” said Primrose, “they’re there.”
The river, in the distance before, was nearby now, separated from the tracks by only a thin row of trees and viny tangle. They threw stones into it for a while, then they went down to it. Rocks and tree limbs jutted from the water.
“How much farther?” said David.
“Not far,” said Primrose.
“You said we were almost there.”
“I lied.”
“How far do we have to go?”
“I don’t know. Miles.”
“How many?”
“How do I know?”
“Guess.”
“Fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty-two.”
They walked on.
“Primrose?”
“What?”
“What would you rather get hit with, an egg or a stone?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I don’t know, just a question.”
“It’s stupid.”
“I’d rather get hit with an egg. It splats all over you and makes an icky mess, but it doesn’t hurt like a stone.”
“That’s what you think.”
Farther on, David looked at the shrubs lining both sides of the tracks.
“Primrose?”
“Now what?”
“What if we get jumped?”
“Attack ’em with your yo-yo.”
The day had been such an adventure, David had not until now thought of his yo-yo. He drew Spitfire from its holster.
“Want me to teach you stuff?”
“Not really.”
David worked on his stunts, made even harder because he was walking at the same time. Then he had a great idea: walk the dog on the track! He stepped on the ties, snapped Spitfire down to the end of the line and laid it gently on the smooth steel rail, itself barely wider than the many-colored spool. Spitfire jumped off. It jumped a second time. He kept trying until finally he had it going, a spinning blur, runaway wheel of a rainbow train riding the silver rail. “Primrose, look!”
Primrose looked. He half-expected her to make fun of him or say he was being stupid, but she didn’t. She just looked and nodded and said, “Cool.” Then she said, “Can I try?”
David wound up the yo-yo and slipped it onto her finger. He laughed at her fumbling efforts. She couldn’t even make Spitfire sit down, much less walk.
He took Spitfire back and showed her how a real pro did it. Then he spotted a weed with a fuzzy white top. “Watch this.”
He returned Spitfire to its holster. He stood gunfighter style, facing the weed, scowling, feet apart, knees slightly bent, hands at his sides holster-high, fingers spread, fingertips tingling. “Say when.”
“When.”
In less than three seconds, maybe two —“Bam!” — Spitfire was zinging on a laser line. The fuzzy weed top exploded.
“Not bad,” said Primrose, “for an infant.”
She picked out a fuzz-topped weed for herself. She stood before it gunfighter style, scowling, fingertips twitching. “Say when.”
“When.”
She reared back and spit — “Ptoo!” Fuzz flew.
David clapped. “Good shot! Let’s mow ’em all down!”
They went from weed to weed: “Bam!” — “Ptoo!” — “Bam!” — “Ptoo!” — laughing, obliterating cotton tops till Primrose ran out of juice. It took a minute for her mouth to relube so she could talk right. “I coulda gone longer if I had a jawbreaker.”
“Why?” said David.
“They make good spit.”
They walked on.
Primrose said, “Did you miss me the last couple weeks?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
Later she said, “What did you do?”
David shrugged. “Stuff.”
Primrose chuckled. “I had fun.”
David chuckled. “Me too.”
Primrose wagged her head. “I had so much fun — whew! — I could hardly stand it.”
“Me too,” said David. “I had so much fun I almost got sick.”
“Yeah?” said Primrose. “Well I really
did
get sick one day. I went to the doctor, and he examined me and said” — she made her voice low — “ ‘You are all worn out, young lady. Looks to me like you OD’d on fun.’ He said I had to slow down or I’d give myself a heart attack.”
“Me too,” said David.
They rounded a curve, and again the two skyscrapers appeared before them, only this time they were different. The entire right sides, all the way up to the arrow-tip tops, were aglow. It was one of the most beautiful things David had ever seen. “Look,” he said, pointing, “they’re golden.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And bad news too.”
“Huh?”
“That’s not gold. It’s the sun shining off the windows.”
David looked at her. “So?”
“So the sun’s going down. So it’s getting late.”
Suddenly David felt cool. “You mean, like, dark?”
She snickered. “Yeah. Like dark.”
He stared at her. “Can’t we make it before dark?”
She didn’t answer.
“I want to go home.”
“That’s the hundredth time. Don’t say it again.”
“I want to go home.”
Primrose stopped. She grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. “You want to go home? Fine. Go.” She pushed him.
David stumbled forward a few steps and stopped. He balled his fists and wailed down the empty tracks, which were totally in shadow now: “I hate you!” He picked up a stone. He turned.
She picked up a stone. Hers was bigger.
“You wouldn’t throw that at me,” he said.
She grinned. “No?”
“I’m just a little kid. You said.”
“A little kid with a stone in his hand.”
“Who said I was gonna throw it?”
“Good,” she said. “So drop it.”
He had gone too far to drop it.
He swung his arm back. “I’m just gonna lob it, that’s all.”
She swung her arm back, she grinned. “Lob away.”
“Listen,
wait
—,” he said. He was boxed in. He knew it. And he could think of only one way out. “I know something about you, and it’s something you don’t want to know, and if you throw that at me I’m gonna tell you anyway and you’re gonna feel really bad.” He studied her. Did she believe him? Did he believe himself? “Okay?” She said nothing. “Look — I’m just gonna lob it. Here goes —” He lobbed the stone softly in a high arc; it fell harmlessly in front of her.
She reared back and fired her stone. It bit the ground at his feet and sent a spray of gravel against his ankle.
“You asked for it!” he yelled. But he never found out if he really would have told her, because she said, grinning smugly, “The guy in the picture isn’t my father.”
David stood dumbstruck. “How did you know?”
“Found out a couple years ago. I guess my mother made up all that stuff about my father. Anyway, I figured, who cares? Whoever he was, he’s sure as heck not here. Is he?” She made a mock show of looking around. “So ever since then I’ve just been” — she waved blithely and walked off — “pretending.”
David ran to catch up. “But don’t you feel bad?”
“Not really,” she said. “Pretending works.”
They walked on.
The golden skyscrapers were out of sight again. David kept looking at the sky, which was still a friendly blue. With trees on one side and high gray stone bluffs on the other, it seemed he was walking in a box with the lid off.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
Primrose checked the backpack. She pulled out the remaining items. “One chocolate cupcake. One inch of Madness, left in
my
bottle. But because I am such a fantastically nice person, I’m willing to share. One opened pack of chocolate malt balls, with” — she counted — “nine left.”
“I didn’t know you had malt balls.”
“I didn’t either. I think they’ve been in here since last Christmas.” She held one out to him. “Want?”
David stared at it, took it, smelled it, stared again, opened his mouth. Primrose barked: “Wait!” She snatched the malt ball from him.
“Hey!”
“Sorry,” she said. “I just remembered. This stuff will make you thirsty. We each have a half inch of Madness left. We can’t be getting thirsty.”
Streams of saliva flooded David’s mouth. He had never craved anything in his life as much as he craved that malt ball. He reached for it. She pulled it away. She stuffed the malt balls and everything else in the backpack and zipped it shut.
“I’m hungry,” he whined. He reached for the pack.
She smacked his hand. “We’ll eat later. We have to save it.”
“I’m hungry
now.
”
“You won’t be if you stop saying it. Think about something else.”
David tried, but now that his stomach had gotten his attention, it wouldn’t let go. Suddenly he had an idea. “
Buy
some food!”
She pulled her pockets inside out. “Broke.”
“Broke? How can you be broke? You always have money. You’re rich.”
“I spent the last dollar on wallpaper and food for today. And anyway, you see a 7-Eleven around here?”
David let out a yawp of frustration. He kicked stones. “I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I want to go home.” He scowled at her. “It’s all your fault.” He kept scowling.
She smiled.
“How far do we have to go yet?”
“Don’t know.”
“How are we getting back home?”
“Beats me.”
“Are we gonna be out all night?”
“Yerp.”
He jumped in front of her, planted his feet, screeched up at her: “You don’t even
care.
Do
you?”
She smiled — “Nerp” — and hip-swung around him.
With the balled bottom of his fist he thumped her on the arm, then jumped back. She strolled on, not even glancing at him. He dared again: thump, jump back. She was smiling and humming. “I hate you! I hate you!” he shrieked and hit her once more, this time not holding back because she was a girl, this time knuckles first.
She snickered. “That’s the hardest you can hit?” Snooty and grinny above him, she strolled on, whistling.
They were walking on the land side of the tracks, under the stone bluffs. Above, they could see the occasional back end of a shingled building, broken windows, a fragment of fence. They walked in a world of cindery gray.
“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?” said David.
“We’re going to Philadelphia.”
“I know. I mean why.”
“Can’t say yet.”
David groaned under the pain of unanswered questions.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
David couldn’t believe it. Primrose? Afraid? “What of?”
She made a scrunchy, lemon-sucking kind of face. “I don’t know. Afraid to say it, I guess. Out loud. It sounds so goofy.”
“Just tell me. I won’t think it’s goofy.”
“Maybe later.”
David groaned. He was still groaning and complaining when suddenly Primrose yelled, “Look out!” and snatched him and lunged for the tracks as a pair of fat black plastic trash bags bumped down the bluff to the ground. On impact, they split open, spilling contents.
Primrose screamed to the bluff top: “Jerks!” She headed for the bags. She found a stick and began poking through the spillage. “Don’t touch anything,” she warned. “Who knows what germs those jerks have.” She yelled again, straight up: “Coulda killed us!”
“Prim, look,” said David. He pointed to a comic book, its back cover showing. “Can I pick it up?”
She worked the stick between the pages and lifted it. She inspected it. “Go ahead.”
David took the comic. “Phooey. It’s
Veronica.
”
“
Veronica
? I’ll take it.” She put it in her backpack. She found nothing else worth taking. She gave a parting yell: “Cheapskates!”
When she turned she found David sitting on a railroad tie. She snapped her fingers. “Let’s go, Moe.”
“I’m not going anywhere till I eat,” he said.
She took a deep breath. She looked up. The sky’s blue was now darker than that of the painted trim on her new house. Across the river, lights were on. “All right,” she said. “Might as well stop for the night anyway. Let’s look for a good place.”
They crossed the tracks to the river side. It wasn’t long before David realized he didn’t know what he was looking for. “What’s a good place?” he asked.
“A clear space,” she said, “not too big, just for the two of us, bushes all around.”
It took another ten minutes of walking and looking before Primrose decided on a place, midway between tracks and water.
“These bushes aren’t all around us,” David said.
Primrose set down her backpack. “They’re between us and the tracks. That’s what counts.”
“Why does that count?”
“So people can’t see us from the tracks.”
David stared at her. “What people?”
“Who knows? All kinds of weird people walk the tracks at night.”
David let out a fearful cry.
“Stop worrying,” said Primrose. “That’s what the bushes are for, so nobody sees us.”
David cringed. “I’m scared.”
Primrose inspected the ground for bugs and sat down. “Just pretend we’re fugitives. We escaped from jail and they’re out there looking for us, but they can’t find us because we’re in this great hideout.”
“I don’t want to pretend,” he whined.
Primrose took out the chocolate cupcake, broke it, and held out half. “Here, pretend you’re hungry.”
David snatched the cupcake and stuffed it into his mouth. He swallowed it nearly whole. Primrose stared, her empty hand still out. David plucked a crumb from it.
“That,” said Primrose, “was really stupid. You should make it last.”
With her front teeth she clipped a bit of chocolate icing from her half. She sucked on it and closed her eyes and went, “Mmmm.” Then she clipped another bite.
“I want more,” said David.
“Wait till I’m done eating my cupcake,” said Primrose.
It took her ten minutes.
“I want my drink,” said David.
“The drink comes last. We each have about two swigs, and that has to last till morning. So we do all our eating first, then we drink.”
David held out his hand. “Malt ball.”
She gave him one. A crunch of teeth, a swallow — gone.
Primrose chose. “One for me.” She smelled it, she kissed its smooth chocolate coating, she rolled it over her cheeks and up and down her nose. She placed it on her tongue and closed her mouth over it. She closed her eyes and went, “Mmm . . . mmm . . .” When it reappeared, displayed between her front teeth, it was slightly smaller and off-white, its chocolate jacket gone. Back into her mouth it went, where it tumbled and crunched until, with a satisfied “Ahh” she said, “
That’s
how to eat a malt ball.”
“How
you
eat,” said David. “How many are left?”
She counted. “Seven.”
“Give me” — he figured — “four.”
“Three. Owner gets the extra. She counted out three. “You sure you want them now?”
He held out his hand. She gave them to him. He shoved all three into his mouth and chewed like a cement truck till they were gone. He held out his hand. “Drink.”
Primrose got the bottle. She wagged her head. “Dumb . . . dumb . . .” She studied the remaining inch of Mango Madness. With a malt ball, she made a small chocolate mark at the halfway point.
David reached. “Oh no,” she said. “Keep your hands down.
I’ll
hold it.
I’ll
pour.”
David grumbled but complied. She set the bottle to his lips and tilted it. He swallowed, but mostly what he got was air, a trickle in a canyon.
“Hey,” he said.
“Sip,” she said.
They did it twice more. Primrose checked the bottle. “That’s it,” she announced. She showed him. The Mango Madness was down to the chocolate mark.
“I hardly tasted it,” he whined. “That didn’t even add up to a whole swallow. You cheated.”
Primrose capped the bottle and returned it to the backpack. “I probably tricked you, right?”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Well, you’ll just have to pardon
moi
while I eat the rest of my dinner.” She sniffed another malt ball.
Like a dog at a kitchen table, David sat and stared, his eyes going from her hands to her face, as she took ten forevers to devour three malt balls. Most of the time she had her eyes shut. When she opened them for good with a final “Ahhh!” she rubbed her stomach and sighed. “That was one of the biggest meals I ever had. I am positively
stuffed
.”
She pushed herself grunting to her feet. She swayed, holding her stomach, bloating her cheeks. “Don’t know if I can walk.” She waddled past him, brushing bushes, groaning, “Oh, I’m stuffed . . . never again . . .”
The next time he heard her voice, it was different: “David.”
He rose, he turned, and at once he knew what had happened. They had been so busy fussing at each other that they hadn’t noticed. She was a shadow in a world of shadows. He went to her. Here, there, up and down the river, solitary lights nested in the dark. Somewhere a train whistle hooted, or was it something else?
He came closer. He clutched her shirt.
“Night’s here,” she said.