When I Found You (8 page)

When Nat got home from school, Gamma was standing next to a packed suitcase in the living room. Already twisting a knit scarf around her neck.

“Where are you going?” Nat asked.

“Your Uncle Mick is in the hospital. His appendix burst. I have to take the bus to Akron to sit with his kids.”

“Where will I be?” he asked, hoping she would judge him old enough to stay at home by himself.

“I made arrangements with Jacob’s mother. She’s making that homemade chicken noodle soup you like so much for dinner. Now run quick and grab your toothbrush and a pair of pajamas, and anything else you think you’ll need, and hurry over there right now. I have to go.”

Nat sighed, and trudged up the stairs to his room. He pulled his red pajamas out of the drawer, threw them on the bed, grabbed his toothbrush from the bathroom, threw it on top, then rolled up the whole mess, wedging it under his arm.

He liked Jacob’s house well enough, but the situation made him feel he was being treated like a child — at nearly thirteen years old.

Gamma stood shifting from foot to foot at the bottom of the stairs.

“Can you possibly move any slower? You know I have to go.”

“Why can’t
I
go? I like Uncle Mick.”

“Because you have school. And besides, you’re too young to get into the hospital to see Uncle Mick, anyway. You’d only get to see his kids. And you don’t particularly like his kids, if you recall. But that’s not the main thing. The main thing is you are not going to miss even one day of school. Not with your miserable grades. Now here’s a key to the house. I put it on a string so you won’t lose it. So when you need to come home to get more clothes or whatever you’ll be able to let yourself in.”

She hung it around his neck. Didn’t even hand it to him and let him slip it on himself. Nat felt like a five-year-old holding still to have his mittens pinned to his snowsuit. It was putting him in an increasingly foul mood.

“So, is Uncle Mick going to be OK?”

Gamma’s slapped look. A face full of horror. “Well, of course he is. How can you even ask such a question?”

How can I
not
ask it? Nat thought. How can
you
not ask such questions? But of course he kept those thoughts to himself.

•  •  •

“Oh, shit. Where’s my cat?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t know. Downstairs, I think.”

They were in bed, on lights-out. So neither was sure if they should move or not. And they spoke quietly.

“I have to get her in my room with the door closed. Otherwise my mom will throw her outside for the night. Especially when Janet is here.”

“Who’s Janet?”

“Her girlfriend she yaks and gabs and gossips with for half the night.”

“I didn’t know there was somebody here.”

“I’m not sure if she’s here. I just know she’s coming.”

“I’ll go find the cat,” Nat said. Mostly because he liked the cat, and wanted an excuse to pick her up again. She always purred when he picked her up. He liked to hold her to his ear for a moment, listening to that soft motor.

“I can be quiet.”

He padded downstairs.

Sure enough, Jacob’s mom had a girlfriend over. He could hear them talking in the kitchen as he searched the living room. He was able to gather that Janet had a gentleman friend. And that she was furious with him.

“Jacob, is that you?” The screechy sound of Jacob’s mother’s angry voice.

He hadn’t been quiet enough.

“No, ma’am,” Nat said, sticking his head through the kitchen door. “It’s me. Nat.”

“Why aren’t you in bed?”

“I was looking for Buttons.”

“Well, you better find her, too. Because if I find her first, she’s going outside. Janet is allergic to cats.”

Nat wondered whether Janet’s allergies explained the box of tissues on the table between them. Or whether Janet had been crying. Maybe it was both.

“You’re Nat?” Janet asked. As if it made you very famous and distinguished to be Nat. As if Nat were a truly unusual and remarkable thing to be.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Janet turned to Jacob’s mother. “Is he—”

Jacob’s mother shot her down with a look. A disapproving look and a slight shake of her head. As if to say, don’t. As if to say, under no circumstances finish that sentence.

Silence.

“Am I what?” Nat asked. Rather bravely, he thought.

“Nothing, dear. Run find Buttons and then go back to bed.”

Nat backed out of the room. Walked very slowly to the bottom of the stairs, where he knew he would be shrouded in darkness.

There he sat. And listened.

“So, that’s the boy.”

“Yes. That’s him. Poor little bugger. I feel so sorry for him.”

“I don’t blame you. Can you imagine? Your own mother. Trying to murder you.”

“Well, it wasn’t murder. Exactly. Bad neglect, I suppose.”

“Are you kidding me? You must be kidding me! Bad neglect would be if she never changed his diapers. It was freezing cold out in those woods. It’s a miracle he didn’t die. Does he even know the whole story, do you think?”

“I don’t know what he knows. His grandmother forbids everyone to talk about it. Jacob says he told him once, and that Nat said he knew, and didn’t act like it was any big deal. Denial, maybe. Or maybe he was too young at the time to understand. Jacob says the kids at school sometimes make taunting remarks. And that four or five times Nat’s gone home to his grandma and demanded to know what they mean.”

“How does Jacob even know that? Do they discuss it?”

“I think those were just the times he was right there. So you can imagine how often it must happen if he’s overheard it four or five times in the six or seven years they’ve been friends.”

“What does his grandmother say?”

“She lies to him. Says the people who say such things are mistaken. Or that he misunderstood.”

“That’s wrong, I think.”

“Well, what would you do? If you had a boy his age who had such a horrible thing like that in his past, what would you do? Would you tell him a thing so awful?”

A long silence.

“Whew. I don’t know. I’m just glad I don’t
have
to know.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Now get back to what you were saying about Geoffrey.”

•  •  •

Nat slipped out of Jacob’s house, still in just pajamas and bare feet. Padded down the freezing sidewalk for half a block, to home. Opened the front door with the key around his neck.

Then he went upstairs to Gamma’s bedroom, a room he had only three times entered, and began looking around to see what he could find.

He likely could not have put words to what he was looking for. But in his gut he felt there must be something. Pictures of his mother. Letters from her. There had to be something. And Gamma kept everything. She was not one to throw sentimental items in the trash. Or just about any items, for that matter.

He opened her dresser drawers but found only humiliating personal undergarments. He closed each drawer again, touching nothing, so Gamma would never have to know he had looked.

He looked on her closet shelves and found only shoes and hats. Again, he left no evidence of his intrusion.

He looked under her bed and found a wooden cigar box.

He pulled it out. Brought it under the light. Opened it.

Inside were a few papers. Not nearly enough to fill the box. On the very top was a folded clipping from a newspaper. Yellowed with age.

Nat unfolded it.

It was the headline story, dated 3 October 1960. Two days after his birth. The headline read, in shockingly large, bold letters,
“ABANDONED NEWBORN FOUND IN WOODS BY LOCAL HUNTER.”

The jittery sensation that had haunted Nat’s stomach since he’d stood in Jacob’s kitchen was blasted away by the news. It felt good. It felt good to replace nervousness with shock. Because shock, at least in this moment, felt like nothing at all.

He had even stopped shivering from the cold.

He skimmed the article.

Lenora Bates. His mother’s name was Lenora.

Richard A. Ford. His father’s name was Richard A. Ford. So why wasn’t his name Nathan Ford?

He had a mother and a father. Somewhere.

And on the night of his birth they had discarded him.

Were they still in prison? Or had they served their time and been released? And disappeared without so much as a word to him?

He scanned down to see about the man who found him. He wanted to memorize that name as well. But he was only referred to as “a man on a duck-hunting outing with his dog.”

Nat started over and read the article word by word.

When he had finished reading, he refolded it carefully and held it in his left hand while he slid the cigar box back under the bed with his right. Then he took the article with him to his room, where he packed a suitcase with only the most essential of his belongings. Jeans and underwear. Tee shirts. His baseball mitt. The article.

The phone rang, and it startled him.

He ran downstairs and picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Nat! Oh, thank God! We didn’t know where you were.” Jacob’s mom.

“I forgot something at home.”

“Are you coming back right now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

He hung up the phone and walked back upstairs, where he changed into jeans and warm socks and shoes. And a jacket he didn’t like very well, because the one he did like had been left at Jacob’s.

He let himself out, locked the front door carefully. Stopped at the curb and threw the key-on-a-string down the storm drain.

He chose a direction more or less by feel and began to walk.

•  •  •

It was unclear to Nat how long he had walked, or where he was headed. He knew only that the suitcase was heavy, and he had to keep transferring it from hand to hand.

He followed dark streets until they opened up on to the train yard. Which he assumed would also be deserted. Every place he had walked since leaving home had been deserted.

The entire world was asleep, he thought. But not the train yard.

Here a huddle of four men stood around a fire built in an old oil barrel, warming their hands and laughing. A couple more men sat in an open freight wagon of a still train, their legs dangling and swinging over the edge.

They all looked up to mark Nat’s arrival.

He walked closer. Liking the idea that someone lived here, and used the night for something other than sleeping.

“Well. Who do we have here?” one of the men asked. Viewed up close, they looked poor. Their coats and beards were untended, to say the least.

“Nobody,” Nat said.

“Perfect,” the man said. “You’ll fit right in.”

•  •  •

Nat sat on the edge of a freight wagon, dangling his legs over the edge. Staring into the leaping flames of the fire. Letting it hypnotize him. Burn all the thoughts out of his head.

He watched little lights swirl in the air above the oil barrel, thinking that some were sparks and some were fireflies, and that it was hard to tell them apart.

But no, it was too early in the season for fireflies. Or was it?

Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.

The old man sitting next to him was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. He held the bottle out to Nat.

“Snort? It’ll warm you up.”

“OK.”

He accepted the bottle. Wiped off the mouth of it with his sleeve. Pulled a swallow. Coughed. All the men were watching and they all laughed at him.

“Where do you go when you jump on a train?” Nat asked the old man.

“Anywhere I damn please,” the man said.

“That sounds good.”

“It has its advantages.”

Another younger man, standing warming his hands at the fire, said, “Has its advantages for
us
. But maybe
you’d
best go home.”

Nat said nothing.

“Where’s your family, boy?”

“Don’t have any.”

“Well, what’ve you been doing up until now?”

Nat shrugged. “Just living with a stranger, I guess.”

“Maybe a stranger is better than nothing at all.”

“I guess I used to think so,” Nat said. “But I don’t any more.”

21 March 1973   

When Nat woke again, the train was moving. The door to his freight wagon had been closed without his knowing it, and the train had departed. And there was no one else in the car except him.

Good, he thought.

He scooted over to the door. A crack about an inch or two wide allowed light in. And allowed him to see out. And he watched the world go by.

He saw mountains in the distance. He had never seen mountains before. And massive sheets of icicles hanging on rock faces. He saw fields of cows and sheep, and horses running in a big paddock with their tails raised like flags.

He saw the dankest, most depressed corners of cities. The junkyards and train yards and stacked cargo containers and chain-link fences and steel railroad bridges.

And then, the country again, with its barns and tractors and silos and irrigation ditches separating neatly tilled fields.