Firebirds Soaring (37 page)

I make it clear . . . I hope I do . . . that I’m the one who has to find him, that I’m her only chance to get him back. “He’ll go off into the woods and be a hermit. He knows how. Or he’ll end up in some other town you’ll never find. You’ll lose him for good. Why not let him at least go to school? You can teach him, too—all the royal things he needs to know. We’ll settle down . . . just for a while, get jobs, save our money, and go to France when he’s a little older.”

“Even over there nobody will know.”

“They’ll know. Maybe just one look is all they need.

They’ll guess right away.”

Hard to believe, but she actually believes me.

I find him in an unexpected place. The senior center.

It’s all by itself in a grove of trees. I see the grocery-store truck pull up. I see the man—the very same man who gave us food before—carry out bags of bread and still-good vegetables.

I go in behind him, thinking maybe I can get us some more food. There are a lot of old people in there working hard. They’re setting up the tables for the people who are going to have lunch there. The volunteers look to be just as old as the people they’re going to serve. (In fact, that grocery-store man looks to be one of the oldest.)

And who should be helping set the tables but Bill. Somebody has bandaged his hand for him, but he can manage.

He sees me, but he doesn’t stop working till the tables are all ready.

I sit and wait.

He comes and sits beside me, says, “I’m getting paid in lunch.”

A couple of old ladies invite me to eat, too. As we eat, I notice my fingernails are black and nobody else’s are.

We have a very nice lunch. In fact, it’s better than any meal I can remember in a long time. There’s a salad and a baked potato with cheese on top and slices of beef and rolls with butter and gelatin with fruit in it. I can’t believe all this food.

And there’s nobody who isn’t nice. Even the addled ones who don’t make much sense are nice. They seem to like having kids around. They give us their desserts until we can’t eat anymore. I let Bill do all the talking. He’s good at avoiding hard questions. “We’re on the trail just passing through. We’re on the way back to my school. I’m in the fourth grade. I got held back a year.” (How does he think up all this stuff?) “We got delayed but we’ll be there soon. My school starts late, anyway. We’re with our father.”

Father!

After, we help clean up and then we go outside and sit on a bench not far from old people on other benches. We whisper.

“If I can get Mother to stop in this town, will you come back to her?”

“She won’t.”

“Were you going to hurt her or were you going to cut yourself? ”

“I don’t have to tell you.”

“Mother will go crazy.”

“She’s already not like any other mother.”

When has he ever known about any other mothers?

“I’ve got a house you can hide in.”

I
think
I do. Just because Mother saw me—or probably did—looking in the windows at 45 Overridge Lane, doesn’t mean she’ll find him at some other empty house. There was another one not so far away.

This time, as we go, we keep looking around to make sure Mother isn’t following. We double back. We hide behind bushes and wait. It takes half an hour. Then I take him to the last house on Farm House Road. We don’t have any trouble breaking in a back window. Not much more than a
“p’tit coup de pouce”
as Mother would say. He already has our best flashlight. I don’t have to tell him not to use it much and to keep it away from the windows. We’re used to hiding. He sneaked a couple of buns from lunch so he won’t get hungry. And there is a fruit tree in the backyard (though not a peach). There are apples on it and apples lying under it, rotting. A sure sign that even the neighbors or the neighbor kids don’t bother to come around. We gather a few of the best ones. I take a couple to bring back to Mother. Of course, they’re wormy, but that’s another thing we’re used to. We always love abandoned orchards.

It’s a little house with a kitchen/living room all in one and two small bedrooms. Perfect for us, though Mother won’t think so. She’ll say, “Better no place at all than this.” There is a little furniture: a surprisingly clean mattress, a stool, some old newspapers. Somebody else has been camping in here. I hope not recently. I warn Bill to escape out the window if somebody comes.

Nothing works—no water, no electricity. Somebody has made a fire on
top
of the stove. There’s a lot of ashes there. It’s a mess.

Last thing
I
tell him: “Remember,
petit à petit
. . .”

Last thing
he
tells me: “I don’t want to hear any more French.”

So then I go back to Mother.

She’s not there. I get worried again. I don’t know what to do. I sit and watch the ducks. I imagine Mother following us even though we tried so hard to lose her. I imagine her, right this very minute, grabbing Bill in her iron grip and dragging him away—on purpose without me.

I get up. I’m about to go back and see if Bill is all right when here she comes—out from one of the little tool-shed houses.

“Viens,”
she says. “I found us the greatest place for the night. Guillaume will like it.”

She takes me to one of the sheds. She’s put herself exactly where I wanted her to be.

It’s a one-car-garage-sized shed. Obviously deserted. It has one tiny, dirty window at the back. The whole place is dirty and full of spiderwebs. There are shelves, empty except for old paint cans. Mouse turds on the floor. I’d rather be in our tent, but if she likes it . . .

She’s laid out our three sleeping pads, Bill’s in the middle. She’d rather wait in a place like this until she finds us a palace. I wonder how long she’s expecting to live in it.

She sits down on her pad, cross-legged, all knees and elbows. I wonder when she last combed her hair. Her fingernails are as dirty as mine.

“So where’s Guillaume?”

She’s so pleased with herself for finding this place, she doesn’t sound upset anymore. She thinks everything is fine.

“He’ll come back when we’ve settled down. When we have jobs.”

“He’d better not try to go back to that school. They just teach nonsense.”

“I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself if he doesn’t get to go.”

“Why would anybody hurt themselves? Besides, they don’t teach the things he needs to know. They won’t even teach decent French.”

“You can do that. You taught me. Think of it. We’ll earn money and then we’ll go there. To France.”

“I’ll bet they don’t even teach good biology.”

“It’s grade school, for heaven’s sake.”

But then it starts. I sit down on my pad and get ready to look as if I’m listening. I try to glance at her watch as she waves her arms around. I figure it’ll take about twenty minutes before she’ll stop bad-mouthing schools.

I wonder if we’ll ever be able to trust her to stay in one place. She might get all settled down and Bill will come back and everything will seem rosy and off she might go, dragging us along.

This town is too small to hide them from each other for long. And Bill will go to school even if he has to sneak in and out the back door. Maybe it’ll work.

But what about me? Will I ever get to go? And can I get a job? Would I look more grown-up if I wore lipstick? I’d have to steal some.

 

She’s often embarrassed after one of these talking sessions. Finally she sits down and says, “You must be tired.” That means she is. She gives me cheese from two days ago. It’s her way of apologizing without saying so. I give her a wormy apple.

She says, “Where’s our big flashlight?”

“Bill has it.”

When I call him that, she gets up again and turns away, but she’s too tired to go into another tirade.

Bill and I meet the next day behind the Senior Center, not inside it, and not that near.

He spent the night nowhere near that mattress. He slept in the other, smaller bedroom. Somebody came in, in the middle of the night, rattled around a lot too. Next morning somebody made a fire of sticks on
top
of the stove and cooked eggs and bacon. Left the fire of sticks (smothered with a metal pan lid). Bill found the matches and the bacon, but not the pan. He lit the fire again and cooked some of the bacon wrapped around a green stick. Trouble was the fat made the fire bigger than he wanted.

“They mustn’t see smoke.”

“I
know,
but
he
got away with it. Besides, there’s trees all around.”

I ask Bill did he smell any liquor, and he says no.

He watched the person out the bedroom window as he left. He says, he’s a thinnish man, nice and neat in a dark suit and tie, carrying a briefcase and wearing a hat. The dressy kind.

“For heaven’s sake, are you sure?”

“Of course. I know what I saw.”

“You can’t stay there.”

“I like it. I’ll have an address.”

“So does
he.
We have to find a different place.”

“This one is practically right on the trail. There was a jackrabbit in the backyard this morning. And quail. I saw a coachwhip snake. It’s pretty far north for them and kind of cold. They’re usually way far south of here.”

“He could be dangerous. Sometimes men prey on good-looking boys like you. You know that.”

“If anything bad happens, I’ll go out the window.”

“You trust people too much. Actually, Mother does, too.

Or she trusts that people will give her what she needs. I hope you know better than that.”

He shrugs and makes a face as if to say:
Why are you telling me what I already know?

“Well, don’t. I mean, trust.”

We’re close. We have to be. We only have each other. Usually he listens to me, but I’ve lost him this time.

“You don’t have to sit up straight just because Mother says to.”

“I
know.”

He’s sitting like a gentleman and keeps on doing it.

“So you didn’t go to school today?”

“Mmmm.”

“So that teacher helps you?”

“I
trust
her.”

“That’s okay.”

“I
know
.”

“How did you sleep without a pad?”

“’K.”

“Bet you didn’t.”

“Did too.”

“I could get your pad for you, except . . . Mother will be furious.”

“I
know
.”

“But I’ll do it anyway.”

“’K.”

“Meet you back here in half an hour. Did you have anything to eat besides that bacon?”

He shrugs, and I know he didn’t.

“I’ll see what I can find.”

But he’s the one who finds food for me. Wrapped-up egg salad sandwiches. He won’t tell me how he got them. I’ll bet he stole them. Though maybe not. He’s good at finding odd jobs and getting people to give him food. Maybe it’s that natural majesty of his, though I hate myself when I fall into Mother’s way of thinking. The royal smile. Ugh. Yet there it is. As if bestowed on us underlings. Though maybe a little bit too shy for royalty.

I give him his sleeping pad. Mother wasn’t there, so I didn’t have to deal with her. I hope she was out looking for a job.

Bill hugs me when we say goodnight. A sure sign he’s lonely and worried. That worries me, too, but I don’t want him coming back to us. We’d be on the trail in no time and who knows how many trees he’d punch next time or who he’d cut.

I find Mother washing clothes in the duck pond. It’s good she’s found a sheltered spot to do it in. I don’t think the townspeople would like that.

First thing she says: “Isn’t this a great place? It has everything. Even water. Guillaume will like it. Except you took his sleeping pad.”

“You want him to be comfortable don’t you?”

“I’d rather he’d be comfortable, here with us.”

“Did you find a job? When you’re settled in for a while, I know of an even better place for us to stay.”

I’ll take her to that Overridge Lane place that I think she followed me to. There won’t be . . . at least, I don’t think there’ll be . . . somebody else living there. Of course there won’t be any water, and maybe there’ll be just as many mouse turds as here.

I help Mother bring the clothes back and hang them up on a frayed piece of rope above our sleeping pads.

“So did you get a job?”

“Maybe.”

But that’s all she’ll say. She does have food. Packages of sliced chicken and sliced cheese. A huge bag of lettuce. I don’t know if she bought them or stole them.

“If you need an address, use this one. I’m hoping to get us all there. It’ll be better for getting a job.”

“This is a good enough address. I like it here. You’ve been seeing Guillaume.”