Until She Comes Home (6 page)

W
hile the adults spent the day at the church, Arie and Izzy stayed inside like they promised. Mostly they stayed in their room and looked out the window onto Alder Avenue, hoping to see something, anything. Down on Woodward, the hum of traffic built as the day wore on, and the faster the traffic soared by and the more cars that piled up, the louder the hum became and the more Arie and Izzy felt themselves left behind. When, after an entire afternoon, they saw nothing down on Alder except a few cars and one stray dog, they gave up on the window and plugged in their record player. Sitting like a small black suitcase on the end of Izzy’s bed, it had been waiting for the girls when they first arrived at Aunt Julia’s house. A gift for both of them. Propped up next to the small case had been a Tune Tote carrier filled with 45s. All afternoon, Arie spun those records, always especially careful when she lifted the needle at the end of a song so as to not scratch the vinyl. She wanted the music to last. Not that she really cared much for the records. None of her favorites were inside the pink carrying case anyway. It was mostly full of Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. What Arie did care about was making Izzy happy again so she didn’t do anything to cross Uncle Bill and Aunt Julia.

Song after song, Arie rolled the small knob on the record player, making the music louder and louder so Izzy would dance and spin and stop thinking about Elizabeth and their lost cat. Izzy had been sulking ever since Uncle Bill made them cross their hearts and swear to stay inside and not go searching. But listening to records, no matter how loudly, did not make Izzy forget and they did not make her happy, and what Arie feared all day finally happened after Uncle Bill checked in for the last time. He said he and Aunt Julia would be back home in an hour or so and that Izzy and Arie should behave until then. Even before Uncle Bill was out the door, Arie knew Izzy had a plan.

“Who’ll ever know?” Izzy says. “It’s dark now. No one’ll see us and we’ll be back long before Uncle Bill and Aunt Julia come home. We’ll look for Elizabeth, but we might find Patches, too. Happens all the time. Animals follow their people all the way across the country, so why not to the other side of Woodward? Street’s so quiet, we just might find them both.”

Arie agrees only when Izzy threatens to go with or without her. Together, they slip on their sneakers in case they have to do some running and decide to leave the house through the kitchen door. Less noticeable than the front. Arie goes first and Izzy follows, letting the screen slap shut. Arie scolds her with a shake of her head, but before she can follow up with a reminder to be quiet, Izzy yanks her down the stairs. They run across the backyard, brightly lit because Aunt Julia made sure both the front and back porch lights were switched on and that both bulbs were fresh. She didn’t want one burning out when they were most needed. They run until they reach the shadows thrown by Uncle Bill’s garage, Izzy dragging Arie all the way, and once there, they flatten themselves against the rough siding. Both breathe deeply. Their chests pound up and down, not so much from the long run, because it wasn’t so long, but because sneaking outside and running into the dark and listening for any sound at all on the empty street and hearing not one thing are all scary enough to make every breath hard to find.

“I’m not going on the street,” Arie whispers, one hand pressed to her chest to slow her heart. “Someone’s sure to see us out there.”

The garage scratches their bare shoulders and arms. They should have thought to put on long sleeves. The air is always cooler when the sun sets, so they should have known. Arie shivers, partly because of the cold but mostly because of the dark.

“Then I’ll search the street by myself.” Izzy talks a little too loudly, as if trying to fool herself and Arie into believing there is nothing to fear. “You check the alley,” she says, and begins to slide her feet, one after the other, toward the far end of the garage. “Nobody’ll see you back there. Be sure you kick all the bushes. We’ll meet here in fifteen minutes.”

Arie waves at Izzy to come back. She wants to ask what will happen if she kicks a bush and accidentally kicks Elizabeth or their cat or something else entirely. But before Arie can ask, Izzy has disappeared around the side of Aunt Julia’s house. Another question Arie should have asked is how are they to know when fifteen minutes is up. Neither of them wears a watch, so how are they to know? One thing she is certain of—she won’t be kicking anything. She’ll walk to the end of the next block and back again. That’s not so far, and when she returns long before Izzy, Arie will lie and say she only just got back too.

Stepping into the alley, Arie immediately drifts toward the middle. Even though the edges are more brightly lit, something or someone could hide along the edges. The center feels safer, like whatever might be hiding would have to jump out at her, giving her time to run for home. She continues walking, letting her eyes roll from left to right and, every few yards, checks behind her. It used to be, on a night like this, Arie would watch the dark sky for hours, hoping for a glimpse of that Russian rocket. She imagined it would look like a bolt of lightning, shooting from one end of the sky to the other. She stopped watching and stopped hoping the dog inside was alive when her teacher said the ship had fallen back to Earth. She forgets sometimes, on a night like tonight when the sky is especially dark, and still looks up, hoping to see that bright light.

When she reaches the Obermires’ house, she stops walking. They don’t have a garage, and Arie can see between the houses all the way to the street. No sign of Izzy. She takes a few more steps, keeping her eyes on the space between the houses as long as she can. She’s going to watch the street until she can’t see it anymore and then she’s going to run as fast as she can all the way to the end of the next block. It doesn’t matter how tired she gets or how much her feet burn or her lungs ache. She won’t stop running until she’s standing back at Uncle Bill’s garage. Buckling up her fists, she dips her head, takes three long strides, and stops.

He must have stepped out of the shadows hanging over the Richardsons’ garage and into the center of the alley because Arie would have seen him if he’d been there all along. He’s only a house and a half away. She would have seen him. She backs up a few feet and stops again when he lifts a hand. He holds it out like a stop sign and leans as if he’s talking to someone inside the garage. He straightens. He’s a solid shadow with arms and legs. He waves a hand like he’s swatting away a bug. He means for her to slip over to the side of the alley. He means for her to hide. He leans again, straightens again, and this time, touches a finger to his lips to silence her.

Grandma would call this prairie grass. No one must mow back here. Mrs. Schofield died and Mr. Schofield doesn’t care about the overgrown grass. Arie parts the tall stalks and pushes her way through, wishing again she’d changed into slacks and long sleeves. She slides down the side of the garage and squats there. Her breath is too loud. It rushes down into her lungs and back up again. She cups one hand over her mouth and wraps the other around her knees. The garage digs into the knobs of her backbone.

The man who was a shadow stands at the Richardsons’ garage. Mrs. Richardson is Aunt Julia’s best friend. Her blond hair is almost white and always smooth no matter what the weather is like, and in a few months, she’s going to have a baby. Izzy and Arie both agree: if they could look like someone, anyone, they would look like Mrs. Richardson. The man leans into the garage again, tilts his head in Arie’s direction, and when he straightens, two more men walk out. One of them is the same size as the man who waved Arie away, and the third is taller—taller even than Uncle Bill.

When the men have taken a few steps in Arie’s direction, she tucks her head and hides her eyes. Air races through her body, much too loudly, so loudly they’ll hear her. Count to twenty. Count to twenty and they’ll be gone. But the counting makes her dizzy. She holds her breath. Gravel crunches and tiny rocks bounce across the hard dirt path as they’re kicked about. The footsteps stop. Arie lifts her eyes. The group stands a few feet beyond her hiding place. One of them, the largest, stoops and picks up something from the ground near his feet. The other two walk on down the alley while the largest rears back and throws. Glass shatters and the three men take off running.

Izzy will be back soon. After fifteen minutes, she’ll come back and she’ll press herself against Uncle Bill’s garage where they started out, where she’ll be hidden from the men. Arie tries to count again, but her hot breath and the garage digging into her back and the stalks poking and scratching her arms make her want to cry and she can’t count when she’s crying. Somewhere close by, a door opens and heavy boots hit a wooden porch. Arie cups both hands over her mouth.

At the far end of the alley, where it meets up with Woodward, the men run around the corner. They’re gone. Arie unfolds her legs, rubs her hands over the scratches on her arms, and lifts one foot and then the next up and over the tall grass. Inside the Richardsons’ garage, something bangs about, not loudly, but quietly, as if someone is trying not to bang about at all. There is a thin, soft groan. Someone standing. Arie backs away from Mrs. Richardson’s garage, swings around, and runs for home.

•   •   •

Most on the block are not yet home from the church. Malina would have normally stayed until the last dish was washed and packed and the tables folded and stowed in the storage closet, but when Mr. Herze said he’d be making a final run through a neighborhood north of Alder and that one of the men would drop him at the house, Malina had said she’d be happy to drive the car home. She had taken the keys, smiled, and only then noticed how closely Mr. Herze watched her.

“You’re not concerned about the glare?” he had asked.

“How can I be concerned with my own fears when our poor Elizabeth has yet to be found?”

Mr. Herze had stared down on her for so long that the ladies standing nearby drifted away. When finally he left with the other men, Malina excused herself, trusting the rest of the ladies to do the cleaning.

She drops her keys and the large brown handbag on the entry table. The house is dark. Leaning to peek outside, she sees one of those twins running up the street toward Julia Wagner’s house. It’s the first Malina has seen of either one of them this summer. She leans out the door, looking for the other one and thinking she might scold them for running about at this inappropriate hour, but she hasn’t time for such matters.

Checking the street one last time and seeing no sign of Mr. Herze, Malina closes the door and opens her handbag. It was a terrible embarrassment to be carrying this monstrosity at the church, being out-of-season as it is, but she had needed the large bag again if she was going to tend to the things that needed tending. Now she’ll hurry up about it before Mr. Herze comes home. From the bottom of the handbag, she pulls out the hammer she purchased from Simpson’s Hardware earlier in the day to replace the one she dropped down on Willingham.

Making her way across the driveway and toward Mr. Herze’s garage, Malina holds the hammer with both hands, and as she walks she tests the weight and feel of it. Much like the other hammer, as best she can remember. At the sound of a car engine, she stops and listens, but the engine continues on past her house and fades as the car drives down Alder. Not Mr. Herze. If she had the time, Malina would count to twenty to try to slow her heart and quiet the tension that has settled in her neck and shoulders. The nerves have traveled as far as her stomach tonight, and she might need to chew a sliver of ginger root before slipping into bed. Dr. Cannon says there’s always time for a few deep breaths, but he’s wrong. There’s never time for counting and breathing when a lady is truly in need.

Inside the garage, Malina tiptoes through the boxes and bags scattered about the floor, all of them donations for the thrift store that the other ladies have dropped off with her to be sorted and delivered, and once she reaches the center of the room, she stretches overhead and tugs on a small chain. She squints in the sudden brightness. The breeze that followed her through the door stirs up the single bulb that dangles from the ceiling and light rolls around the small room, aggravating her already-queasy stomach. The thin silver chain swings from side to side and eventually hangs motionless.

There is always a certain smell in the garage, like sawdust, though Mr. Herze rarely runs a saw, particularly in the summer. He prefers to tackle his projects in the autumn and early spring. But some odors are like that—always sticking to things and making a nuisance of themselves no matter how many weeks or months have passed.

In Malina’s hand, this new hammer’s wooden handle is smooth. She can’t remember if the other one, the one she dropped in that dark alley, was also smooth. And wasn’t the other handle red? But the hardware store hadn’t had a red-handled hammer. Only this brown-handled one. It isn’t as if she regularly touches Mr. Herze’s tools, but she is quite certain the head of the hammer she carried down the factory’s alley was forked on one side. She is quite certain of that. How much more could matter about a hammer?

Edging toward the wooden slab that Mr. Herze uses as a work surface for his gluing and sanding, Malina reaches out with both hands and gently lays the new hammer in two metal hooks hanging from a pegboard. The board is a result of careless neighbors. So many times Mr. Herze has loaned out a tool only to find it missing when he later discovered a need for it. By that time, he often forgot to whom he had loaned the tool. Now, with one glance at the black outlines on his pegboard, he can know which tool is not in its proper place and he no longer forgets. The rest of his equipment—fishing rods, a shotgun handed down from his father, a black pistol, filet knives, and an ax or two are locked up in a cabinet alongside the pegboard because Mr. Herze must worry the neighbors will make off with those things too. Oddly, not as many neighbors ask to borrow tools anymore.

The night she took the hammer and dropped it in her handbag, she had briefly, only for a moment, considered unlocking the cabinet and taking the black pistol for her protection. A gun, however, would require a certain degree of skill, and she didn’t begin to know about bullets and triggers and such. Mr. Herze once mentioned he kept the weapon loaded. In an emergency, a man wouldn’t want to be fooling around with boxes of ammunition that might spill or, worse yet, be misplaced. But Malina had no way of knowing for sure if it was loaded or not, so she had settled on the hammer.