The Story of Beautiful Girl (18 page)

Immediately, he marveled at how well they treated him. For the first time he had a room of his own, with a desk and dresser and bed. The dresser was filled with nice trousers, white button-up shirts, dungarees, white undershirts, pajamas, socks, even drawers. The food was three squares a day, Silver Wife cooking it good and hot. They didn’t use Yell Faces. They treated him as just one of their three guests. They asked only that he tend to the pigs in the back.

The Silvers required something of the two other guests, too. One had skin the color of clay, a black braid, and a stocky build. The other was scrawny, pimply, and blond. Their chores were to accompany Silver Husband when he drove to inspect the pecking machines out back, to sit watching TV preachers with both Silvers, and to spend their afternoons reading a book, the same one Homan found waiting inside a little brown suitcase on his bedspread when he arrived. It was a fat book with a leather cover and pages with golden edges, and it had pictures of an old man with a long beard holding a rod in the air while a river peeled back, a boat setting out in the rain stuffed to the brim with animals, a boy letting loose a slingshot. He guessed it was the Bible. The McClintock boys had told him stories from the Bible—the miracle of loaves and fishes, the Good Samaritan. Maybe these were other stories, but how could he know? He’d set the book in the suitcase and the suitcase under his bed. So in the afternoons,
when everyone sat at the dining room table with the book, he went to the garage, which was filled with treasures like broken TVs, old vending machines, and bookcases in need of repair. It was egg-frying hot in the sty and garage, yet with the pigs, a toolbox, and the dream faces of his girls, he was fine.

He figured the two boys had been taken in like him, maybe at their own down-and-out time. But they could read and hear. When he was messing around in the garage, he’d look through the window and see the boys watching the preachers intently and talking to the Silvers, the book open before them. They even ran the praying at meals when everyone clasped hands. Homan kept wondering if the Silvers would expect him to join in, but they left him to his own devices. This arrangement, he thought, wasn’t half-bad.

Just one thing gave him the willies. Sometimes when he’d come inside, he’d catch the Silvers making a look at each other. There was also talking at dinnertime, with eyes flickering in his direction. It seemed the price he was paying for this luxury life was letting himself be talked about. He could put up with that till he figured out how to leave.

Leaving was the problem. He wasn’t in a place where he could hide behind buildings or jump freights. He was in a land with one long road and one lone house. Cars and trucks whizzed by now and then, but how could he grab a speeding vehicle? There was no traffic light or stop sign as far as he could see. He could just start walking out in the boiling sun, but the police had brought him here, and it seemed a fair bet they’d bring him back.

He considered stealing Silver Husband’s car. He’d sit inside it in the garage, feeling the wheel. Even though it was different from the cars at the McClintocks’ and the Snare, it was no puzzle. And even with him not hearing other cars or being able to ask directions, he could easily get away. Except sooner or later things might
go wrong. And if the police caught him for thieving, he’d end up serving time before holding Beautiful Girl again.

Then one morning, the Silvers piled him and the boys in the car and drove down the road a long, long way, to a crossroads with a diner, grocer’s, service station, and wide field of nothing. A red light blinked above the spot where the roads came together. They pulled into the empty field. A crew of men was already there, and soon a cement truck pulled up with its barrel spinning and another with gray blocks. The crew gathered around Silver Husband, who held up a megaphone. Then they went to work building something, and Homan was expected to join in. He had no idea what they were building, but he saw, as they poured cement for a floor, that it was going to be so big it could easily hold the circuses that came to the Snare. The next day they went back, and the next. It became his job to build walls with the gray blocks. He also helped put on a roof, run wires for lights and pipes for a lavatory, and—this one got him—construct a stage. The mystery of this building and the comforts of the Silvers’ home got him off track from getting away just now.

Then one day, after he and the crew set up rows of chairs inside the building, it got clearer. Just before sunset, he and a few others were sent to the roof for more work, and there he saw, lying flat and waiting to be raised, a huge cross. As he was helping to lift the cross upright, then holding it in place while others secured it, he looked down at the flashing red light marking the meeting of the roads. At the service station across the way, two young men stood with packs at their feet, holding their thumbs out, and a truck driver at the pumps waved them over. They hoisted their packs and got into his front seat, and off they went down the road.

Right. Ride Thumbers. He’d seen them on TV. That was what he had to do.

Getting himself back to the crossroads wouldn’t be hard, since
they’d been coming every day. It was making a break for the service station that would be tricky—and getting a driver to take him without him needing to speak.

Someone turned on a spotlight. The cross lit up and he stepped out of the beam, looking down to the crew below. It was a nice sight, everyone applauding. Then he looked across the road to the trucks.
That our answer, Beautiful Girl,
he thought. What a nice sight it was, too.

The next day, for the first time, the Silvers, Braidy Boy, and Scrawny Boy got dressed in finery. Silver Husband put on a suit, Silver Wife a dress with pearls and nylons, the boys pressed shirts and ties. Homan made to do the same, but they shook their heads no and indicated he was not joining them. He couldn’t believe it. Finally he was ready and they were acting like his brothers and sisters, leaving him alone.

After the meal, he took refuge with the pigs. Out the window he watched everyone get into the car, carrying their little suitcases with the books, and as they rolled toward the road, he ran after them. But they drove off. He stood at the road, watching the bumper move toward the horizon. He went up to the house and kicked the siding. He went to the clothesline in the back and threw punches at the pants, shirts, sheets. It made him feel good, and not just for evening the score. With each punch he felt how all that church building had muscled him up really good.

He slammed back into the house. He could walk right out of here. He should! Though as he paced in the kitchen, looking out to the pecking cranes, he admitted to himself that he didn’t want to be out in the elements again, dirty and frightened, desperate for a dusty hut. He needed to leave, but if he waited until they took him back to that blinking red light, he’d at least get to travel in a truck, maybe even with his new clothes and some food. He just
had to find a sack to stuff with provisions. No, enough of sacks. He’d use the little suitcase that came with the book.

The suitcase was still under his bed. He loaded his arms with edibles scrounged from the pantry and headed through the living room. There he saw the TV on, with a preacher like always. What sense did it make leaving on a TV for a deaf man? He made to walk off—

Then something snagged his attention. This show didn’t look like the usual show at all. This show was taking place in a huge room with crowds filling the chairs. He knew those chairs. He knew that room. Those were the walls he’d helped lay. The stage. And on the stage a preacher in a white suit stood before a microphone, making a Yell Face, raising his arms in the air. He was so worked up, his hair bounced on his forehead.

Homan sat on the couch. Preacher Bouncing Hair was moving across the stage, sweat rolling down his face. The stage sure looked impressive. Homan had been stubborn about sanding and painting, and he was glad. He imagined Beautiful Girl sitting beside him, looking at him with pride. He laced his hands behind his head and set his feet on the coffee table.

Then he noticed men pushing a ramp to the front of the stage. This was strange. Preacher Bouncing Hair didn’t need a ramp, and anyway, he was already on the stage.

Next thing he knew, Preacher Bouncing Hair was making a Come Up wave toward a girl in the aisle. She was in a wheelchair, which a woman behind her was pushing. The crowd was turned to them, and the young girl and the woman had shining eyes.

Homan unlaced his hands and sat up, his elbows on his knees.

The woman—the girl’s mother, it looked like—pushed the girl up the ramp and onto the stage, and Preacher Bouncing Hair set his hands on the girl’s head. His mouth moved. The mother
was weeping, the audience praying. The girl was looking into the preacher’s eyes.

Then Preacher Bouncing Hair flung his arms back from the girl and made a huge Yell Face. And the girl stood up from the chair! Homan couldn’t believe his eyes. The girl took a step toward the preacher. Her mother set her hand on her breast, folks were crying all over the room, and then—and then—the girl kicked her wheelchair away and skipped across the stage! The audience was beaming, crying, clapping, praying. The girl spun around like a dancer. Preacher Bouncing Hair was raising his arms. The crowd was on its feet.

Homan stared at the television.
No girl needing a wheelchair gonna suddenly jump up and become a ballerina! Maybe the Bible gots miracles like loaves and fishes, but this a trick. No matter what Preacher Bouncing Hair say or how hard he fling his arms, legs that don’t move don’t just fix themselves. Any more than eyes can just fix themselves, or brains, or—

And a chill came over him as he was filled with understanding.

The next morning, he woke to the dream face of Beautiful Girl, lying beside him in the hay of the barn, and Little One, crawling on top of them. Gazing at them, he was sure that his new plan was exactly right. So he felt prepared when Silver Wife handed him nice clothes to put on.

He went into his bedroom to put on the white button-up shirt and pressed pants and retrieved the little suitcase, now filled with utensils, canned food, and extra clothes. He left the book under the bed. He left the shoes they’d given him, too, and put on his own boots, newly shined. When he emerged with the suitcase and stood beside the boys, dressed up with their suitcases, too, the Silvers smiled, never noticing anything was up.

They all got into the car, and as they started down the long road, he saw a trouble he hadn’t considered. Braidy Boy was sitting on his one side, Scrawny Boy his other—like guards. He tapped his feet and patted his hands against his thighs. They were all talking, he saw, and probably about him. Probably all that talk they’d been doing about him was a master plan to get him to this preacher.

He looked at his knees and shook his head. Well, he was going to get away, and that’s all there was to it.

Then his eyes lit on his suitcase, lodged between his knees, and he felt a jolt of guilt. Here he was, so ready to return their hospitality with thieving and disappearing. They might be taking him on a fool’s errand, yet they were just doing what they believed right, and that made them better by far than the good-for-nothings he’d run into through the years. They’d been decent, too, feeding him, giving him a clean bed, shooting no nasty looks.
Maybe you owes them,
he thought
. Maybe you should just walk in that church and do what they want.
Besides, what if they knew something he didn’t—and the preacher
did
have the power to bring back his hearing?

Homan hadn’t given thought to getting his hearing back since he’d met the McClintocks. Now he thought of them and him conversing, their hands carnivals of stories. He remembered, too, the day at the revival, when they all hoisted themselves up the tree and pressed themselves to the windows and then the singing and clapping and hollering and sermonizing danced through the pane and inside their skin. He hadn’t missed hearing after that. Well, there were times when he’d longed to hear Beautiful Girl’s voice, and surely he would want to hear Little One’s first words. And there was no arguing he wouldn’t be in such a mess now if strangers could understand his speech. But what if hearing made him forget how to listen with his eyes, and skin, and nose, and mouth? Or what if the hearing he got was bad, like a TV picture that wouldn’t come in clear?

He saw the church now through the windshield. Toweling his palms off on his trousers, he hoped they’d pull into the front lot, which was just a hop, skip, and jump from the crossroads and the trucks now at the service station. Then they drove up, and he saw the front lot was for folks with canes and walkers and wheelchairs. The Silvers went into the back lot, which was awfully far from the service station. He’d have to let himself go inside—and if he was quick thinking, he could find a place to stash his suitcase and then, when they weren’t looking, make his break.

They entered the flow of people coming through the huge front doors, and as soon as they were inside, the Silvers and the boys got caught up shaking hands with others they seemed to know. He wanted to slip off, but someone always managed to be at his side. Finally, after what turned into endless hellos, it seemed he’d get his chance. His guards didn’t head straight to the seats. They went to the lavatory and took him.

The bathroom had a line, which meant they’d need to be occupied with their business before he could escape. He took in the other churchgoers, wondering if they’d nab him if asked to. It was hard to tell. Most looked well-to-do like the Silvers and put-together like the boys. A few also had differences: An old man wore the dark glasses of the blind, a young man had crutches clamped to his wrists. Homan looked to his guards. In front of him, Braidy was staring into space. Scrawny had gone to the mirror to comb his hair. Homan was not being watched.