When I Found You (9 page)

He watched for hours, which turned into watching all day. And never once felt bored. How could he be bored? It was the world. It had been here all along, but no one had invited — or allowed — him to see it. Did they think he didn’t care about the world outside his miserable little city? Or was the world just like everything else? Just another secret to be kept from him?

His stomach felt empty and achy, but it seemed worth the sacrifice. No people. No school. No lies.

He would find food. He would beg it, or steal it, or work for it, but he’d find a bite somehow before the sun went down. That is, if this train ever stopped.

One way or another he would get by.

22 March 1973   

He woke in the pitch dark with a start. Still inside that freight wagon. Still unfed. Teeth chattering from the cold. His hip ached where it pressed against the cold metal floor. His mouth was dry, and he worked hard to wet his parched tongue with his own saliva.

He could hear the doors of train wagons being banged open. That’s what woke him. And the noises were moving closer.

He wondered if there was still time to slip out and get away.

The huge cargo door slid open with a clang.

Nat squinted into a light. A light was being shined on him, and he threw a hand up in front of his eyes.

“OK, son,” a big male voice said. “Your vagabond days are over. Grab your things and come with me.”

23 March 1973   

“You scared the living daylights out of me!” The old woman shrieked the words too close to Nat’s ear, making him wince. Then she raised her hand and struck him. Hard. Right across the ear, causing the inside parts of his ear to ache. “And Jacob’s mother. She was responsible for you. Do you know how scared she was?”

Another vicious smack, again on the same sore ear.

He looked up at the cops. As though they might be some help to him.

If Nat had smacked someone that hard, they would probably have arrested him all over again. Lectured him on how violence was wrong, and never solved anything.

But apparently grandsons were fair game.

The cops just raised their eyebrows at him and said nothing at all. But their looks seemed to say Nat deserved all that and more.

“And why? Because I left without you? Because you thought you should be allowed to come along? That is the most selfish behavior I ever heard of!”

Nat flinched. Guarded his ear with both hands. But she kept her hands at her sides this time.

“Is that why you did it?”

Nat said nothing.

“Answer me!”

Still Nat said nothing.

“What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

“Nothing,” Nat said.

•  •  •

“You know, you’re going to have to talk to me sooner or later,” she said on the long drive home.

She had estimated it would take her nineteen hours of driving to get back, and did Nat have any idea what all that gasoline would cost? Not to mention the wear and tear on the car?

He did not. Nor did he care.

“Sooner or later you’ll have to say something.” That’s what you think, he thought.

“Why didn’t you give them your name? If you’d told them your name I would have gotten the call yesterday. But no, you said nothing, and I had to wait another day while they matched you up with missing-child reports from all over the country. And poor Jacob’s mother just about died a thousand deaths waiting. She felt so responsible for you. Why didn’t you just tell the police who you were?”

Because, Nat thought, if I had wanted to get back to you, I wouldn’t have hopped a freight train to begin with.

“And then poor Mick’s wife had to take two days off work to stay home with the kids because I had to come home and report you missing. And they can ill afford that cut in income. Especially now, with poor Mick in the hospital. You know, I’m beginning to think you’re one of those selfish children who just always has to be the center of attention. Poor Mick doesn’t even deserve my attention when his appendix bursts, because it always has to be all about Nat. Is that how it is, Nat? Because if that’s how it is, I will not tolerate that. I will not raise some spoiled little child who feels he’s the center of the entire solar system, and that we’re all supposed to revolve around him like he was the sun. So, is that how it is with you?”

Nat said nothing.

“Why won’t you speak for yourself?”

Because you don’t listen, he thought.

“And now what am I supposed to do? They still need help at Mick’s house, but now I don’t dare leave you alone. Because I don’t know if I can trust you. Well? Can I? Can I trust you?”

Nat said nothing.

“Well, it wouldn’t even matter if you said I could. It wouldn’t help. Because I’d still never know if it were true. For all I know, you might just be lying.”

Imagine that, Nat thought. Imagine not knowing if the person you know best in the world is telling you the truth or lying to your face. But he didn’t say any of that. Of course. He said nothing.

“Well, this is going to be a long drive,” she said.

Nineteen hours of this and I’ll go crazy, Nat thought.

But she continued to talk. And he continued to ignore her. He just looked out the window and watched the world go by, in case he didn’t get to see it again for a very long time. And for nineteen hours and more he said nothing.

30 September 1974   

“I hope you don’t think I’m going to get all soft and break that promise I made to myself,” she said. “Because I’m not. I said it and I meant it. No presents until you get your grades up above failing.”

He was lying on his back on the couch, watching TV. A show he didn’t like. And pretending to ignore her. And pretending that receiving no gifts from her did not in any way hurt. She was standing over him, partially blocking his view. Railing at him. Which is why he was watching a show he didn’t like. So it wouldn’t bother him when she made him miss it.

He said nothing.

“You probably think I’ll feel sorry for you tonight or in the morning. And that I’ll run out and get something. But I won’t. Because a promise is a promise.”

Nat said nothing.

“And I’m not restarting your allowance, either.”

Still nothing, though Nat felt as if he were
wanting
to say something. As if communication with her was vaguely possible and yet just beyond his grasp, all at the same time. As if, on the rare occasions he attempted to say something to her, the words hit a brick wall and fell to the floor defeated.

“You’re already looking at summer school. In three subjects.”

He looked up at her for the first time. “What about my present from The Man?”

She looked flustered for a moment. Then she said, “Ah. It speaks.”

“Well? What about it?”

“Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that. Well, you never like anything he gives you, anyway. So it’s hardly a reward. That’s between you and him, I suppose.”

“Has it come?”

“No. Why should it have?”

“Well, the mail’s already been.”

“They don’t come in the mail.”

This was miserable news to Nat, who had been counting heavily on getting a look at the return address. But he was careful not to frown or otherwise betray his thoughts.

“What do they come in?”

“They just show up on the porch in the morning.”

Which is similarly interesting, Nat thought. Because he took it to mean it would be delivered in person.

•  •  •

Nat sat up in the dark, in his room, on the padded window seat, looking out on to the street. On his lap lay the binoculars The Man had given him when he was six.

He watched the shadows of the maple tree sway on the far wall of his room. The streetlight out front threw spooky shadows, and a good strong wind was up that night. And it gave him something to watch. Because nothing happened on their street at night. No people. No cars. No nothing.

He could read the clock clearly, even though it was all the way over on the dresser. Its face glowed in the dark. And it ticked. The ticking had never bothered him before. But it bothered him tonight.

It was ten thirty.

Sometime in the next half hour he dozed off without meaning to.

He woke to the sound of a car door.

He jumped, and sat upright, his back stiff from the uncomfortable position. Across the street, a car was parked. An older station wagon, with its motor softly running. He couldn’t see the color because of the darkness. And he couldn’t see either the front or rear license plate because it was so directly across the street.

A man was walking across to his house, carrying a parcel.

He glanced at the clock. Five minutes after eleven.

He raised the binoculars and sighted through them. Trying to get a good look at the man’s face. But he was wearing a brimmed hat, and by now he was more or less directly below the window. He disappeared from view, too close to the house to be seen from Nat’s vantage point. Then, a second later, he reappeared on his way back to the car. But now his back was turned.

He stepped back into his car, shifted into gear and drove.

Nat first tried to see the man’s face, but it was too dark in the passenger compartment. Then he turned his binoculars to the license plate, but too late. He had only read the letters DCB when the car disappeared from sight.

Nat sat a minute, nursing his own frustration. That’s not much progress, he thought. And he would only get two chances a year.

•  •  •

He tiptoed downstairs and out on to the front porch to retrieve his present. A medium-size box. He shook it a few times, but it only made a series of dull and not very telling thumps.

He carried it up to his room. Tore through the paper.

Boxing gloves.

And a punching bag of some sort, but not the kind Nat was familiar with. Not an inflatable speed bag that pops back and forth when you pummel it with both hands. It must be the big, heavy kind you hang from the ceiling. The kind that absorbs huge blows as if it were a person, a real opponent. But it was hard to tell, because it was only the leather and fabric shell of a bag. It wasn’t filled with anything.

It had a chain at the top, presumably to hang it by.

Nat put on the gloves, not knowing how to lace them at his wrists.

“Well, old man,” he said aloud to the empty room. “Now we might be on to something.”

1 October 1974