The Story of Beautiful Girl (10 page)

Mighty fine behavior for a rich boy,
Tallest McClintock signed.

Fattie explained,
He just mad his girl brought us her car yesterday.

Then he especial mad at him,
added Buck-Toothed McClintock, pointing to Blue,
owing to he gave her a ride home on that mule while her car was setting here.

Homan felt the old tree-kicking anger come back. He told himself to ignore Wayne and might have succeeded if Blue hadn’t shouted something out. Homan could only guess what it was, but the look on Blue’s face said it was a name for nasty folks. Like maybe “Swine-butt.”

Then Wayne braked the car, and before Homan knew it, the whole pack was taking baseball bats from the back and climb
ing out and slamming those bats on the car the boys were working on. Right on the windshield! The headlights! The boys, trying to stop them, got pushed to the ground. Blue grew so mad that he body-slammed Wayne, bringing him down, too. The McClintocks, rising to their feet, laughed—
That’ll teach him to get above himself,
they signed. Wayne scowled at Blue as he got up, slung the bat over his shoulder, and dusted himself off. He turned to go. He fixed his eyes on his car. But just before he reached it, he turned back, right in front of the feeding mule. Then he lifted that bat and smashed Ethel in the head.

With a scream Homan could see, Blue ran after the car. But it was going too fast.

That night: Blue crying in their bed, Homan shaking with rage.

He would always remember how, the next morning, when he and Blue went down to Wayne’s house, the honeysuckle was in bloom. They had no weapon. They had no plan.

The shiny new car was sitting out in front of Wayne’s house.

Homan, full of anger, darted to the car, opened the front door, and slid behind the wheel.

Blue gave him a
What you doing?
look through the windshield.

Homan smiled as if to say,
You’ll see
. Blue pounded on the hood. But Homan just went ahead and did what the McClintocks taught him to do. The car moved forward. He pressed his foot to the pedal, picked up speed, and jumped out. The driverless car drove up from the curb, across the lawn, and into the living room wall.

He felt the ground shake. Blue’s eyes went wide with delight—and then horror. The front door was opening, Miss Velma was coming out in her robe, and Wayne was behind her.

Blue made one of the only signs he knew.
Run.

Homan ran out of eyeshot of their house, feeling Blue at his
feet. He ran to the end of the block. He knew Blue was lagging behind. He wanted him to run faster, faster—
like me!

He whipped around to make sure Blue was there.

Blue was three houses back—lying on the ground. Not moving. A red hole in his chest. Wayne was nowhere near. It was Mr. Landis who was there, standing above. It looked as if he’d spent the night with Miss Velma and brought his shotgun. And was now turning the barrel from Blue, looking to the end of the street, seeing right into Homan’s eyes, raising his gun—

Homan ran.

He tore down the next block. He leapt one fence, two, five, yard to yard to yard. He ripped into groves of trees, through a lake, across tobacco farms, over streams. He ran as though his feet were on fire. Blue was gone. They would be after Homan. Mama would lose her job. Mama could never take him back. He had nothing left but running.

He ran all day and all night. And the next day and night. He ran through towns and then across states whose names he didn’t know. He ran in rain and heat and snow. He ran long after he gave this time in his life a name.
The Running.
He ran and ran until they caught him in Well’s Bottom, a place where no one believed that hands could ever speak.

He felt the car come to a stop. It was night now, but Homan wore no watch and did not know how to tell time. He tried to angle his head to see the stars. The sky was thick with haze.

He felt the door open. There was Pudding, indicating with his thumb that Homan should get out.

His leg still hurt, though he could stand. The day had grown cold, so as he looked around, he wrapped the sleeping bag over his shoulders. Brick buildings were pressed tight together, lining streets without trees. Stores were gated closed. A train bridge
crossed overhead a few blocks off. It was a city, he understood. Why had they stopped here? And why was Dot sitting on the hood, fingering the ends of her hair, while Pudding was reaching into the trunk, pulling something out? Another fur coat, Homan saw as the trunk closed. Rabbit fur. He remembered finding a rabbit outside the barn once and holding it up so Beautiful Girl could stroke it. This made her smile.

Pudding was acting so strange, patting the coat like someone was already in it and he was checking the fit. Then he handed the coat to Homan.

It felt good, with a lining that was smooth against his skin and the softest fur on the outside. He’d never worn a fur coat, and he felt fancy and lucky, even though it was too small for the buttons to reach the holes. He held the front together.

Then Pudding made a gesture toward something at the end of the street.

It was a fenced-in lot, with gray-and-orange trucks parked in neat rows and a small building in the center. The fence was chain link with barbed wire on top.

He looked at Pudding with a question on his face. Pudding just waved his hand, egging Homan forward. Homan shot a glance at Dot, who was still on the hood, gazing nowhere. Maybe they were saying he was free to leave, and he almost laughed with relief. But Dot had been nice to him, so he clapped his hands to signal a good-bye.

Pudding threw his arms in the air. His nostrils grew wide, his eyebrows fierce, and he began speaking. Dot lowered her head, answering into her lap. Then she jumped off the hood and walked toward Homan.

He couldn’t understand what was happening. Pudding was jabbing his finger at her, and she was turning to Homan, making eating gestures, pointing at the building. He didn’t want to laugh
anymore. He wanted to run. Then he thought of Pudding’s knife. If Homan didn’t do what she wanted, what would happen to her?

She took Homan’s arm and he allowed her to step them forward, toward the truck lot. Soon she picked up their pace, looking over her shoulder to see Pudding. Then she turned back and rubbed her belly, as if showing Homan how good the food inside the fence would be.

At the gate, she reached up and turned a dial on a padlock. It sprang open. She walked inside the gate with Homan. The lot was not well lit, and he could smell no food. He felt her hand leave his arm and turned. She was running outside the gate, then locking it behind her.

He lunged at the fence. But as much as he shook it, he could not get out.

Pudding was leaning against the car, pointing to the building. Homan looked at Dot. She cut her gaze away from him, then wiped her cheeks. She turned and walked away.

He could not believe, so soon after breaking out of the Snare, that he was in a lot with nothing except parked trucks and one lonely building. No food. Not even any lights.

Then he saw a short man standing behind the glass door of the building. The man wore a vest and small glasses, and he opened the door and urged Homan to come in. If Homan did, he might have trouble. But what was he going to do out here? And the guy was more of a shrimp than the littlest guard at the Snare. If Homan could outwit the water below the dam, he could pin a pipsqueak like that to the floor. And maybe get something to eat, too.

He went inside, entering a room with a counter and cash register. Without turning on a light, the man gestured toward a doorway, then a flight of stairs. Homan went first, glad there was a window in the staircase letting light from a streetlamp in. He
glanced out the window as he passed. Between the trucks and the fence were weeds. In one spot there was just dirt.

Upstairs was a room with a couch and table. A plate with a hot dog sat on the table.

He stepped toward it. The man grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back, looking annoyed. Homan made a pleading motion. The man said something, and Homan shrugged. Finally, the man curled his fingertips in like spider legs. Homan realized he meant,
Give me
.

Give him what? Homan was the one expecting something.

The man snatched at Homan’s new coat.

Homan backed up. The man narrowed his eyes. Homan backed up more.

The man lunged, grabbing again at Homan’s coat, sliding his hands beneath. Homan felt the lining give and the man pull back. In his hands was a small package.

Homan understood: The coat was like an envelope. The man just wanted what was inside.

Then the man thrust a real envelope at Homan and shoved him toward the stairs. He tore down them as fast as he could, dashing through the office and into the lot.

Dot was waiting outside the chain-link fence. He ran toward her, grinning, waving the envelope in his hands, ready to get going to Beautiful Girl at last.

But now Dot was running away, and a flashing light caught his eye. He looked around. Three police cars were peeling down the street toward the lot.

He ran. Freeing his arms, shoving the envelope into the jacket lining, he ran. Not toward the gate, where police were jumping out of cars. He ran to the rear of the lot, where he pulled himself to the top step of the biggest truck. He turned to look. Police were fanning over the lot. He could not let them send him to jail in
Edgeville. Or send him back to the Snare. He could not let them arrest him for whatever was making Dot and Pudding drive off right now.

The truck door was unlocked. It took nothing to turn on the engine. It took nothing to press the gas and steer for the chain-link fence. It wasn’t even hard to jump out the other side and watch the truck pass right through.

The police tore after the truck. He tore the other way, around the side of the building. He ran to the dirt by the fence and fell to his knees and dug wildly.

Then he was in the hole. For a second he thought of Beautiful Girl, pushing the baby out. He scrabbled forward, thrust himself through, grabbed the ground on the other side.

And he was out. Tearing down the streets, breath hard in his chest, skin sweaty.

Ahead he saw a freight train passing on the bridge, just like so many he’d seen in the Running. He could do it, even though he was no longer fifteen.

Up the train bridge he scrambled.
You can’t let no one break you,
Blue used to say when someone did them wrong.
If you don’t let no one break you, you win.
One last heave and he was over the train. One last jump and he slammed down onto a boxcar. He pressed his body to the roof.

The train picked up speed until it was shooting through the city, high above the streets. He didn’t know where he was leaving. He didn’t know where he was going. He just knew he had to get back, and he had to do it soon.

1968

M
artha heard a locomotive in the distance before she opened her eyes. The sound was soothing, so much like the breathing near her ear. The breathing, after all, must be Earl’s; and how content she felt being close to him again. Slowly, though, she remembered that Earl had not slept beside her for years, and her farmhouse was nowhere near a train. Then unfamiliar scents became apparent: a rustic cabin smell, floral soap, furniture polish. She turned over, groping across the sheets for Earl, tasting a candylike tartness. She kept no candy in her pantry—but then she recalled thumbing up two sourballs from a bowl at a hotel registration desk. Her arm arrived at the far edge of the sheets; the bed was empty. Yet someone was breathing. And suddenly she saw it again: the suitcase, the drive to Well’s Bottom, the journey north on Scheier Pike, the sign in front of her student Henry’s hotel, the bell on the registration desk.

The baby.

She sat up. Sunlight cast tree shadows on the window shades. The baby lay in the bassinet Eva Hansberry had given her and that Martha had set up when they’d reached the hotel last night at three a.m. As she’d assembled the bassinet at the foot of the bed, she’d thought about how she had never been up so late, much less while changing a baby. She’d inhaled the woody scent
of a fireplace in the lobby two corridors away and listened to rustlings of the mountains outside. She’d peeked behind the shades, but night was too dark in this corner of New York State to see anything. Then, with the baby finally sleeping, Martha put on her nightie and turned back the quilt. Sleep came so swiftly that when the baby’s cries woke her later, she discovered she’d failed to draw the quilt over her body. The bedside clock said ten after five. She’d hurried to the baby, worried she’d failed with her, too, and was relieved the cries were only for a bottle. At the next feeding, six fifty, darkness was lifting and the scent of coffee and eggs was drifting in from the dining room; in no condition to make an appearance, she’d slept yet again. Now, although the sun was strong, she was no more ready to face the world.

Saddened by the resurrection, then loss, of Earl, Martha glanced at the bedside clock.
Nine fifteen!
How was that possible? Martha had never enjoyed late risings; she agreed with Earl that “sleeping in” was synonymous with indolence. The hotel clock simply had to be in error. She glanced at her wrist. Incredibly, her watch matched the time on the clock.