Lost (43 page)

In her rear-view mirror, she could see that he hadn't moved. She had nearly reached the barricade before she stopped the car, slipped the gear to reverse, and eased back toward him. He slid into the frame of her side window. Leaning across the seat, she rolled the passenger window partway down and looked at him. “Waiting for somebody?” she asked him.

He shuddered. “Kinda,” he said. The snow blew between them. She could see that he was twelve, maybe thirteen, and his clothes were ragged and soiled. Snow had collected thickly on his cap, his eyebrows and shoulders; he was shaking with cold.

“You live around here?”

When he spoke, he was shivering so hard she couldn't understand him. In the dim light from the street, she could see that his nose was running and his teeth were chattering. “You shouldn't be out in this,” she said. “How long've you been out here?”

“While,” he said finally with some difficulty, the wind draining his voice away. With his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, he seemed to be trying to move in one place to keep warm. He was a little taller than the roof of the car and he leaned toward the window to try to answer her, then straightened up again.

“Why don't you get in here for a minute, anyhow? At least get in long enough to warm up a little.”

He said, “Okay,” and quickly reached for the door handle.

Leona set the emergency brake and shifted the car to neutral, knowing that when she removed her foot from the brake, the brake light would go out. Nothing would look suspicious. She turned the headlights off and flipped the heater knob as high as it would go. “Roll the window up,” she told the boy, and he complied.

He tried to hold himself still and could not, so that his chattering breaths came in sudden noisy bursts. He was all huddled up, trembling in his jacket. Across the expanse of upholstery, she could feel him shake in the seat. She asked him what his name was and thought he said “Bud.”

“What?” she said. “Bud? Is that it?”

He nodded a couple of times very fast. “Yeah,” he whispered. The streetlight was skimpy inside the car, yet she tried to examine him closely. He had a scrapper's face, but he had come out on the wrong end of a few fights. It was a stirring and painful sight: the face of a boy who had seen some very bad times. He began to grow less agitated.

“How'd you end up here?”

He ran his hand under his nose. “I just did—” he took a deep breath—“that's all.” He looked at her suddenly, almost angrily, and with a swipe of the same hand he scrubbed the tears from his eyes.

“Do you have a place for the night?” she asked him quietly.

But he wouldn't answer, wouldn't look at her now, as if, even at his young age, the tears had exposed some vulnerable part of him and he felt cheaper and weaker for it.

“What're you going to do?”

He shrugged. Finally, he said, “I'll just—I don't know. I'll wait till I catch a ride.”

A car came down the hill, casting misty yellow beams through the Pontiac. For a fraction of a second, Leona's heart leapt.
The police? No
. She took a breath. “You can't go back out there. You're just a kid. Nobody'll pass through here tonight, not in this kind of weather. You'd better come with me.” Then she told him about the big pot of soup she had on the stove, and the hot cocoa she could make, and she released the emergency brake, shifting gears, the yellow reflectors gleaming like scattered eyes as they swung past the barricades toward the Isle of Cats.

Dimly, against the sound of the wiper blades, the boy heard her say, “You'll get to meet my children,” and Sherman turned his face away toward the window glass and smiled.

21

Sherman!

The cry swelled in her throat and hung suspended on her tongue; Mamie clapped her hands over her mouth.
It was Sherman! Her brother Sherman!
Behind Leona's back, he signaled for her to be quiet and Mamie turned away and dropped her gaze. In the happy confusion of their arrival, Leona was introducing them. Sherman tried to grin. He stood just inside the front door, hands in his pockets, arms like lead. He wanted to rush to Mamie, lift her up, hug her. But he couldn't yet—not while the woman was in the room.

“And this is Mamie,” Leona said, her hand hovering, then patting the top of Mamie's head. It cut inside him, seeing them so close when he couldn't be close at all, couldn't move.

Patsy ambled toward him. “Who're you?” she asked. “What're you doin' here?” But Leona caught her by the shoulders and turned her back. “Come on, now, Patsy, be a good girl. Let him catch his breath.”

He was exhausted, but his scheme had worked and he felt some elation in that. Seeing Mamie revived him. Slowly he turned his head, tracking the woman. Just wait, he thought—you don't stand a chance now. Mamie watched him eagerly, her small face tilted toward him, her gray-green eyes bright with excitement. She began to smile, then bit her lips.
We're in this together, Mamie, you and me
. Leaning over the couch, the woman lifted Walter in her arms and started toward the stairs. “I'll be right back,” she said. “One of you girls bring me a glass of water.”

“I will,” Patsy said. Sherman stood stiffly, furtively watching the woman. He wasn't going to make another mistake now, not when he was this close, not when he had her at his mercy.

From the landing, Leona said, “Then, Mamie, you can help bring in our things from outside.” She went on up and Patsy followed her, the glass of water tipping in her hands. How long's it been since we were together? Sherman thought. How long? He couldn't count the weeks in his mind.

Left downstairs together, Mamie and Sherman looked at the lighted doorway upstairs through which the woman carrying Walter, and then Patsy, had vanished. Their hands reached out, and when Mamie leapt he caught her in his arms and whirled her round and round, all restraint gone. Mamie wanted to shriek with joy, just to be held by him, and Sherman almost cried out his happiness, burying his mouth against her small shoulder to silence himself. They clung together, tears of triumph standing in their eyes, while his battered shoes skipped and turned soundlessly on the old patterned rug.

Swallowing her voice, Mamie breathed in his ear, “
Sherman
,” and then a little louder, in a whisper, “Sherman … Oh, Sherman, how'd you ever do it?” He sought to caution her with a look, but he had waited so long and they were both far too excited. His face twisted in a big grin. “Oh, boy,” he said, softly. “Am I glad to see you.” Then he drew her into the kitchen, where the shadows fell on their faces. “I waited for her to bring me to you,” he said, and he laughed very softly. “I knew what to do so she'd stop for me. I had to, because I didn't know where you were.”

In her excitement, Mamie kept saying his name until he finally put his hand over her mouth and she covered his hand with hers, the way they had that one night, so many weeks ago, when he lay on the wicker lounge and she had gone to tell him to run away. “Everything's all right,” he whispered into her ear. “Everything'll be all right now.” Then he added, “Don't let on like you know me. Don't let her know,” and he nodded toward the lighted room. And all the time he kept putting his finger to his lips so Mamie had to say it quietly. “Sherman, look what I got.” And she showed him her skull ring. “It's Toddy's ring.” He hardly glanced at it. “Let's go home, Sherman.” There was such happy expectation in her eyes. “Let's go back home right now.”

Back home?
He could've laughed. And yet, for the moment, Sherman allowed himself to bask in her certainty. At last, he said, “Mamie, we can't go right now. I almost froze to death out there. I'm too tired. She'd just chase us down.” He was tired all over, tired to death. He hadn't slept in nearly two days. “Wait till everybody goes to sleep,” Sherman told her. “I'll come getcha.”

“But we shouldn't stay here,” Mamie whispered. “She'll figure out who you are. She'll never let us get away.”

“Ha, that's what she thinks,” he muttered. Behind him, the wind blew branches against the porch and he spun toward the sound, his knees gripped in panic.

“Sherman,” Mamie whispered. “Where's the Chinaman?”

He looked at her and then looked away.

“I saw him that one day. At that driveway,” Mamie said. “Didn't you bring him?” Sherman's face looked so odd and tense that she didn't know what to think. “Where is he, Sherman? I'd sure like to see him.”

Her small voice beat against him but he didn't answer. She could see something in his face, something like a secret or a lie. Impulsively she grasped his arm. “Sherman, what's the matter? Where's the Chinaman? Is somethin' wrong?”

They were standing near the pantry, on the far side of the table and chairs. Coming nearer, Sherman looked at her closely, and then he was telling her: “He got shot in that house where you went—you know, that crazy old lady. She shot him. I was gonna get that old lady, but the Chinaman he stood up on the windowsill and she shot him. I was gonna kill 'er. I shoulda. I shoulda gone back and done it.”

It was like a little stab of pain in her heart. “But, Sherman,” she murmured, “that was Funny Grandma,” and she thought,
He was gonna kill Funny Grandma!
It was frightening and it didn't make sense. “Why?” she said softly. “Sherman, she took care of me.”

But he didn't seem to hear her. “I tried everything,” he said. Then he told her about going to the doctor's house, and how the woman called the police, and the three Hershey bars. And as he spoke, Mamie let go of his arm. It had struck her—what he couldn't quite bring himself to say. “
You killed the Chinaman?
”

“It's her fault,” Sherman said, and pointed toward the lighted room, the muscles in his face drawing very tight. “If it wasn't for her, none of this woulda happened. She did it.” He scrubbed his sleeve across his face. When he looked at Mamie again, there were tears in his eyes. “Mamie, I'm sorry,” he said. “I'll make up for it. We can get another dog—a new dog. It'll be just like it used to be, just you and me. And him. I got some money. We'll get you some new clothes and everything, soon's we get outa here. I got lotsa money.”

A pulse throbbed in her throat. “But you were gonna kill Funny Grandma,” she murmured. “… And you killed the Chinaman.” Suddenly she took a step back and turned and ran into the other room before he could reach out to stop her. Around him the air seemed to rise and shift sideways in a slow inexorable drift.

“I'll get that,” Leona said to the boy as she came down the porch steps. “You'd better go in by the fire. You're still shivering.” Sherman followed her instructions submissively, hardly aware of moving. When they passed each other, he realized she wasn't actually as large as his mind had made her. Standing still, he would come within an inch or two of her shoulders. For the first time, he really looked at her, not in the dim lights of the car's dashboard or in the snow as they crossed the ice, but close and in light, an arm's distance away. She was a nice-looking woman, with friendly eyes and reddish hair drawn up in a bun. He hated her. It stirred deep inside him then, that first anticipatory gathering of strength and savagery.

As Leona lifted the large box of groceries from the sled and carried it into the kitchen, she said to Patsy, “I know you're worried about Walter, but now that we have some medicine, he'll be all right. I promise you.” Turning the burner on under the pot of soup, she wiped her hands on her apron and went back to the living room. Almost eight-thirty. Time to get them ready for bed. Patsy was sitting on the arm of a chair and Mamie was standing near her, rubbing the ring on her finger, but when Leona came through, Mamie stepped forward. With his hands in his jacket pockets, the boy stood by the fireplace. “I promised you something warm to eat, didn't I?” Leona said to him. She wasn't surprised when he failed to answer. “I've put the soup on the stove.”

The woman went past him, talking to the two girls, laughing at something Patsy had said. Leona's hair was coming loose. “My hair's wet,” she said, “I'm sure yours is, too.” With her fingertips, she flicked the beads of melted snow from her hair as she went to the linen closet under the stairs and pulled down a clean towel for herself and one for him. “Here,” she said.

The boy said, “That looks good,” and took the towel. As she patted her hair and dried her face, she felt something brush against her thigh. Mamie was standing immediately in front of her, looking at the boy. Long ago, when a stranger had come to the house, Leona remembered that she, too, had played peekaboo in her mother's skirts, and it made her happy that Mamie was doing it now. Patsy was talking to the boy. “Are you gonna stay with us?” she asked.

With Mamie still standing against her skirt, Leona reached down and tousled Patsy's red hair. “I think we could let him stay until tomorrow, don't you?” Patsy looked at him and shrugged. “I guess so,” she said. Leona smiled at the boy. His eyes were staring directly into hers, and for a moment she tensed with uncertainty. It gave her a queer, unwholesome feeling when he looked at her so closely. He went back to drying his face and hair with the towel, and she noticed that his left hand was wrapped in dirty, yellowish bandages. Taking a step toward her, the boy returned the damp soiled towel.
It's his eyes. What's wrong with his eyes?
Then she thought she recognized what it was. Good Lord, he must be scared to death. I haven't done much to make him feel at home. “You're hurt,” she said. “You must be in pain. What happened to your hand?”

He glanced at her as if startled, jerked away, and slipped his bandaged hand behind him. “Hurt it,” he said. “Workin' on an old car. Battery acid.” The air circled again, whirled maliciously before his eyes, faster, dizzying.