All the Way Home (6 page)

M
istakes! He had made so many since yesterday. Mistakes Pop never would have made. Pop thought ahead.
Apple trees need pruning in the spring. Claude said we have to get light in between the branches. And next year …

No next year for their orchard. But there was a chance for Claude. If he went back and helped Claude, it wouldn’t be so terrible that their own farm had burned, wouldn’t be so terrible that he hadn’t been there. He had to get back to Windy Hill. No more mistakes.

Some mistakes he hadn’t made, though, some things he had to give himself credit for.

No one knew his name.

Billy Nightingale
. All the policemen had had to do
was look at the signs over the stores and they would have known.

But they hadn’t looked up. He had gotten away with it.

Standing in the hot schoolyard now, one of the boys had pushed him into a boxball game, pitching the ball to him on a bounce. Brick slapped at it with his hand, heading for first base, hardly thinking about what he was doing.

It had been so noisy in that big room at the police station last night. The clatter of the teletype, one cop calling to another, a phone ringing, made it hard for Brick to think. He wondered how anyone could think. At home the police station was quiet. Only one cop there, one small desk.

It was late when the cop sat down next to him, dropping his hat on the bench. The hat had left a mark along his forehead. He had blue eyes and a small scar on his cheek. “I’m Ambrose,” he had said.

Brick was starving by the time Ambrose had cut into a chocolate cake for him, and he ate three slices as he listened to the chiming of a clock somewhere. Nine o’clock. What were Mom and Pop doing now? “Made the cake myself,” Ambrose said, and handed him a Melloroll.

Brick had taken the ice cream in chunks because his mouth was so dry, then licked the cardboard wrapper until there was nothing left but the taste of ice cream on his tongue. “I have to walk two miles at home for ice
cream,” he said, and realized it was a mistake when he saw Ambrose’s eyes.

“Knew you were a farm boy,” Ambrose said. “I could see it in your face and in your hands. Don’t belong in Brooklyn, do you?”

It was the last thing he’d tell the policeman. Better not to say anything, not one bit of a clue anyone could put together. When he saw Ambrose glance down at Claude’s book, he had gripped it hard in his hands, but Ambrose hadn’t touched it, hadn’t even asked about it.

“Listen,” Ambrose had told him. “Your mother and father must be out looking for you.”

Wrong
, Brick thought. They didn’t even know he was gone yet.

“They’re probably feeling terrible about what went wrong.”

That was true. He thought of Mom, her freckles, her dark curly hair, her eyes still red when he left. And he thought of Pop. One night after the fire he had heard Pop crying. He had never heard Pop cry before, never even knew a man could cry. He felt so sad for them both, so lonely for them, but he wouldn’t let the cop know that. Instead he reached for another Melloroll.

“If you’re in trouble,” Ambrose had said, “we’ll try to find a way to make it all right.”

Brick wanted to tell him he wasn’t in trouble, at least not the kind of trouble Ambrose meant. But Ambrose had a face that made Brick want to tell him everything. And Brick was suddenly so tired he knew he was going
to blurt out the whole story: the apple trees, and Claude’s hands, and wanting to get back.

He had to get back
.

Ambrose must have seen the tears in his eyes. He leaned forward, his hand on Brick’s shoulder. “You’ll feel better if you tell me, a lot better.”

Brick opened his mouth. The whole story was ready to come out, every bit of it, and if it had, he’d be at the nurse’s house right now with all his plans ruined.

But before he could begin,
“It started on the road from town, the lightning …,”
someone had called to Ambrose.

“I’ll be right back,” Ambrose had said.

As Ambrose walked away from him, Brick saw it all in his mind: he’d stand on the ladder in Claude’s orchard, with apples coming down into his hands, and baskets filling, and Julia and Claude calling back and forth.

And even Ambrose knew when he came back. Brick’s face was tight, one hand holding Claude’s book, the other holding the arm of the bench. Ambrose sighed, then patted Brick’s shoulder. “All right. Let me find a place for you to sleep. We won’t send you off to the children’s services just yet. Tomorrow one of the teachers is having a picnic. I’ll see that you get there.”

Brick nodded, thinking he’d run during that picnic, start back.

“Just promise me one thing,” Ambrose said. “Don’t run yet. Give it some time, a week. Everything will look different by then.”

Brick knew what Ambrose was doing. He was buying himself time to find out who Brick was. But the thought of a bed, the thought of stretching out, closing his eyes, made him nod. “All right,” he said. “I guess so.”

Ambrose touched his shoulder. “Word of honor?” Brick hesitated, but it was hard to look away from Ambrose’s eyes. “Word of honor,” he said.

9

T
he picnic was over, and Mariel didn’t have to think about school for another six days. Besides, she had something else to think about, the company that had never come yesterday.

Loretta had worried about it this morning. After ironing the dirndl skirt, she had taken her breakfast coffee into the living room to look out the window at Midwood Street. “Maybe I had the wrong date.” She had rattled her cup in her saucer. “I was sure it was Monday. If only they had a phone.”

“Tell me who …,” Mariel began.

“It was supposed to be such a nice surprise,” Loretta said.

Strange for Loretta to worry. Loretta never worried.
“We’ve got each other,” she’d say, tapping her pink nails on Mariel’s arm.

And Mariel wasn’t worried, of course not. How could she worry when she didn’t even know who was coming? She was curious, though. The guest bedroom off the kitchen, the size of a skinny closet, was all fixed up with the blue chenille bedspread, two pillows, and the extra radio.

But Loretta wasn’t even home when Mariel opened the door after the picnic. Mariel threaded her way along the killer vines rug into the kitchen. There was no company in sight either.

Mariel was starving; she hadn’t bothered with any of the food at the picnic. She thought about what she’d eat now. One of Loretta’s nursing caps was drying off on a towel. She gave the pointy top a little poke, then peered into the cabinet. How about Saltine crackers, and strawberry jam with fat red strawberries and interesting seeds to roll around her teeth?

She took a plateful into her bedroom. Small and dark, the room reminded her of a chipmunk nest she had seen in the Brooklyn Museum. The nest was there in a window: a chunk of earth with tunnels and tiny rooms for food and birthing for a chipmunk family. Safe, just as her room was.

She set her plate on the windowsill and turned on her little radio to listen to
Lorenzo Jones
as she looked over the things on her everything table. There were score-cards from the Dodgers games, a picture of Pete Reiser
and Dixie Walker, and one of Cookie Lavagetto. Up on the wall over her bed was her world’s best thing.

That was what Loretta called it, and that was what she called it, too. It was a two-dollar bill, brand new, never been used, in a frame just as if it were a picture.

She sat there looking up at it, remembering.
“I’ll never get out of here,” she had said, talking in between the breaths the iron lung took for her because the insect army was fighting her breathing muscles. “I’ll never walk. Never stand up. Never even breathe on my own.”

“Betcha.” Loretta, starched and white in her nursing uniform, smelling of spring flowers, had leaned over so close her cap slid down over her forehead. “Betcha two bucks.”

Mariel pulled her chair up to the bedroom window to look out at the apple tree with its small white fence and the baseball diamond. Mariel loved to look down at the leaves as they quivered in the least bit of breeze. They reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what, something happy, something safe like her chipmunk room.

She was waiting for apples. This year she had spotted a couple of tiny green ones in July, but they were gone now, maybe for a squirrel’s breakfast.

She spread a thick dollop of jam on a Saltine and put the whole thing in her mouth. On the radio, Lorenzo Jones was driving his wife
razy cray
with the inventions he was fiddling with in his garage.

Downstairs the door opened. Mariel chewed quietly,
listening. Footsteps. Loretta’s quick voice, and a deeper voice …

She sat up. Ambrose? Ambrose the cop in her house?

She went to the door and opened it a crack. She could see a piece of the stairs, the broad banister, the hall below. And the top of a boy’s head. Red hair.

Was that Billy Nightingale? She swallowed the Saltine in a rush, feeling the soft mush of it in her throat.

Yes. The three of them were standing, almost in a circle, looking at each other: Billy Nightingale, Loretta, smiling a bit, her hand on Billy’s shoulder, and Ambrose leaning against the wall. Loretta and Ambrose were talking, as Billy turned and looked up, straight at her.

She shut the door again and leaned against it.

Billy Nightingale was the company?

She could feel the Saltine grow thicker in her chest, making it hard to breathe. It was like the yeast bread Mrs. Stahl made in the bakery, the lump of it growing, spreading, until it took up the whole baking pan.

Mariel had spent the afternoon hiding her legs from Billy Nightingale. She had stood in back of the table forever while the class played Kick the Can and Walking Up the Green Grass. She had stood there pouring lemonade, taking small glimpses of Billy Nightingale when she thought he wasn’t looking.

But how could she stay in her bedroom forever?

The outside door closed again. Ambrose was gone. He’d be strolling down Midwood, turning onto Bedford, his hat down over those blue eyes that saw
everything. He’d be whistling, a soft whistle with his tongue in back of his closed teeth.

But she couldn’t think about Ambrose. What was Billy Nightingale doing?

Loretta was calling. “Mariel?”

She put her hands tight over her ears.
Can’t hear you. Can’t hear a word. Sounds like the water at Coney Island. Please go away, Billy Nightingale
.

She leaned against the door, hardly breathing as she heard Loretta. “Don’t even think about this little mix-up,” she was saying. “Everything’s all right now. We’ll go to a Dodgers game as soon as we can and root for Pete Reiser and Cookie Lavagetto. School will be fine, you’ll see.”

Billy Nightingale wasn’t saying a word.

Mariel went from the door to stand at the window. She stared at the apple tree and shoved Saltines and strawberry jam with seeds into her mouth, Saltines that were going to fill up her whole chest.

10