When She Flew (23 page)

Maybe she was meant to be part of something larger than herself, something more human than the police force, more effective than DHS. Even though it would be easier to do what her superiors expected—especially now that she knew Ray and Lindy’s whereabouts—she couldn’t. Her path lay in front of her as clearly as the path out of the forest had the night before.

“What if I say I reunited Lindy with her father last night, and that they intended to buy bus tickets to an undisclosed location and are now probably long gone?” She looked at Ray. “Okay by you?”

“You’re taking the fall for all of this?” Ray’s eyes flitted from her to the reverend, back again. “You’ll lose your job.”

“I promised you last night I’d do all I could, and, well . . . that’s what I’m doing.” She shrugged.

“You could face charges,” Michael said quietly.

Jess nodded, and the group sat silently for a moment. “A lot could happen,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I can do the wrong thing to avoid it.”

Ray blinked his eyes a few times, thin fingers endlessly worrying a knot in the oak table. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to thank you,” he said.

“There’s no need,” Jess said. That was what she told the people she helped every day, followed by: It’s my job. Instead she said, “It’s my choice, Ray. Really.”

He nodded, but didn’t meet her eye.

Jess stood. “I guess my next step is to go back to the station, tell them I’m not bringing anyone in.”

“God bless you,” Rosetta said, splaying her manicured hand to wipe her eyes with the pads of her fingers.

“Somebody’d better.” Jess felt better than she had since they’d first set out on this mission the afternoon before. “Can you run me up there?” she asked Michael, and he nodded.

There was no going back; she could only move forward. The caffeine was starting to kick in.

“Ready?” Michael asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Let’s go.”

25

W
e couldn’t find the peacocks, even though we looked in every bushy area, in the trees at the back of the property, and along the sides of the house and buildings. John said they were clever at finding secret places to roost when they weren’t feeling social.

We gave up after a while and I collected feathers on the way to go see the goats. As we hand-fed them fresh hay, we heard those mournful crying sounds again:
aaah OW!
From right where we’d been looking in a tangle of wild roses and blackberry brambles out strolled the most amazing blue creature I’d ever seen, even more dazzling than in pictures. The great blue heron is majestic and beautiful in its own way, but it’s certainly not a peacock, all glistening blues and greens, exotic silk tapestry patterns in its plumage, an elegant little doodle bobbing on its head as it struts through clipped and perfectly green grass. This peacock seemed a civilized bird, not a wild one, not one content to live among muddy marshes and tall reeds. He seemed to be king of the bird world, his home a palace, with humans as servants and everything neat and in its place.

It was a new kind of beauty I’d never experienced before. I could have watched him all day, but he kept strutting until he found the insects he was looking for in the dirt beneath a Douglas fir. He followed their trail back into the bushes, his tail sparkling in the sunlight, then dulling down in the shadows before it disappeared.

I tried to imagine myself living inside a big fancy house, like Mark and John’s. They’d put our backpacks near the barn when we arrived, though, so I’d already guessed that would be where we’d stay.

“Where are Pater and I going to sleep?” I asked, picturing corrals and bales of the same hay I was holding.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” John said, scattering the last of his hay on the ground.

One baby goat hadn’t gotten much to eat because the others kept crowding it out, so I bent down in front of it, shooing the others away as I watched the smallest kid chomp its weird flat teeth, one strange sideways eye watching me.

“That’s Vanna . . . like Vanna White?” John looked at me, smiling, but I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You name them after friends?” I guessed.

“No, no, that’s a TV star.” He blushed. “I don’t guess you . . . no. Anyway, she lost her mom. We had to bottle-feed her for the first few months, so she’s pretty sweet. Looks like she likes you.”

I patted her bony head and stood. “I’ll be back later to feed you more,” I told her, brushing my hands on my jeans. Her coat was nearly all white, with a few patches of gray on her left side. They looked like continents on a map.

“Oh, I know,” I said, as we walked across the pasture. “You named her White because she’s white.”

He chuckled. “Something like that.”

Inside the barn, we went up a long flight of stairs toward a door at the top, me carrying my pack and my feathers, and John carrying Pater’s backpack. Inside the door, I couldn’t believe my eyes; we were in a real apartment inside the barn! It wasn’t just a room with a bed on one side and a couch on the other, like the apartments I remembered. It was more like a real house, with separate rooms, only smaller.

“This is it,” John said.

“It’s very nice,” I said, and it was. There was a green couch and a chair and a table with a lamp, and a small television on a stand against the wall. Over the couch hung a big photograph that looked just like my forest.

“Do you recognize where that is?” he asked softly. “I took that at the Woodburn Trailhead, near the Joseph Woods Visitor Center. You ever go there?”

I shook my head. Too many people, Pater always said. We stuck to the back ways in and out of the forest.

“I used to have a beach scene there from the coast, but I thought this one might make you feel more at home, so I swapped it out.”

I nodded, swallowing hard. My legs trembled. I wanted to run into the picture so badly I could feel the twitch in my feet. “It’s a good picture,” I said, because I could hear Pater saying,
Mind your manners
. I cleared my throat. “Thank you very much.”

“So, the bedroom’s back here,” he said, carrying Pater’s pack down the hall, past a kitchen and a bathroom.

A real kitchen!
I was thinking.
A bathroom!
I hoped the towels and sheets weren’t white. I hadn’t lived in a place with a bathroom since the motel when we first got to Oregon. The last time we’d had a kitchen was back in Colorado when Pater was gone, before we started getting kicked out of every place we tried to live.

I followed John and settled my backpack on the floor next to Pater’s. There was only one big bed.

“The couch in the living room folds out into a bed, too,” he said, but I didn’t want to spend another night without Pater nearby. I pressed my lips tight together so I wouldn’t say anything rude. Maybe we could put the mattress from the couch on the floor in this room.

We stood looking at everything for a while; then he said, “Well, why don’t I let you settle in, Lindy? You can unpack if you want. There’s the closet, and there’s a dresser with enough drawers for each of you.”

“Thank you.” All of a sudden I felt shy. These people were so nice, almost too nice in a way. How could you say “thank you” enough to pay for all this?

“We’re really looking forward to having you here,” he said. “Both you and your dad, but I have to admit it’ll be nice to have a young person around the place again.”

“Have other kids stayed here?” I asked and he nodded. “Who?” Were there other people like us, people who couldn’t live at home anymore because the police wouldn’t let them?

“We’ve had quite a few families. Mostly people who are from other countries and trying to get their citizenship before the government makes them leave.”

“Oh, I’ve read about that,” I said. “But I didn’t know they did it to children, too.”

“I’m afraid they do.”

“Do you have children?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“You should,” I said. “You’d make a good father.”

He got a funny look on his face, then smiled. “Well, thank you, Lindy. Maybe someday.”

After he’d gone, I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It wasn’t as full as Reverend Rosetta’s, but there was an unopened carton of milk, a jug of orange juice, a full loaf of bread, and new jars of peanut butter and strawberry jelly. In one of the drawers at the bottom, there were four apples. Were these things for us? I wondered.

In the cabinet next to the sink were glasses and coffee cups. In the next one there were plates and bowls, and in the next, cereal, rice, and crackers. Bags of flour and sugar, cans of pinto beans and tomato soup. Pater would be happy. We’d left all our canned goods behind.

The stove was shiny white. I opened the oven door, closed it, turned the far right knob to “high,” then jumped back when a ring of flames leapt up. The stove at Reverend Rosetta’s had a flat coil that got hot, not fire. I couldn’t remember anymore what other stoves were like. I turned it off and tried the others, then turned on the faucet in the big sink and played with the sprayer for a while. I dried my hands on a flowered towel hanging on the handle of the oven door, but I couldn’t make it hang as prettily as it had before.

The best thing about the kitchen was the small round table and two chairs. Pater and I would have meals there, like real families do. I would do my homework there. I would write in my new blue notebook there, and daydream and draw.

I wandered into the bathroom. The towels there were a beautiful shade of green, like the peacock feathers. I was so happy they weren’t white. On the ledge of the tub sat bottles of shampoo and conditioner, a fresh bar of soap. I looked up, and sure enough, we had a shower. Sometimes, Pater and I hiked into the Joseph Woods campground with our towels and soap, but the showers there had only cold water. I closed my eyes and imagined how it would feel to take a warm shower. I’d probably just stand there forever, never wanting to get out, until Pater said I had to.

Out in the living room I sat on the couch and sank deep into it. Calm washed over me as I looked out the window. I could see trees across the pasture, leaves glittering like coins in the breeze. I could see blue sky and a wedge of cottony cloud. I got up and sat in the chair and looked out the other window. From there I saw the back corner of the main house, two tall windows side by side with open curtains, and a veil of giant maple leaves at the edge. All was quiet except for the occasional
aaah-OW
of a peacock, the bleat of a goat, the cooing of a pigeon.

It was almost as peaceful as the woods.

I felt I might fall asleep, so I stood up, walked to the television, and turned it on. Two people sat in a fancy restaurant. The woman wore too much makeup and talked weird, all fake and loud, and the man was almost prettier than she was. I carried the channel changer back to the couch, sat, and pushed buttons until the picture changed. I wondered if there were any cartoons on. You never knew—I might still like them.

Every channel had a commercial for something: car crashes, dishwashing liquid, technical colleges. I kept pushing the button.

When a picture of Pater filled the screen, I dropped the channel changer to the floor. “Uhn!” I said, like somebody had punched me in the stomach, and my heart started to beat hard. It was the picture on his driver’s license, from when we first got to Oregon, but how did they get it? It was in his back right pocket with his VA card, his library card, his money.

“The two were last seen in police custody late last night,” a man’s voice said. “In a bizarre twist, police officer Jessica Villareal disappeared along with the man and girl, and hasn’t been seen since.”

The picture changed to a man and woman at a desk. The woman said, “Do police suspect foul play, Dan, or do they think the police officer disappeared on purpose?”

Now a smaller picture floated to the left of the man’s head. It was Officer Villareal. Jessica, a name much prettier than Jess. I could barely breathe.

“At this time, there’s been no activity at her home, and neighbors say they’re concerned. We’ll have those interviews in the next hour, and a press conference with Police Chief Gleason is scheduled for noon today. We’ve got it all right here for you, so stay with us on KEAN News Seven.”

Someone knocked on the door. I reached down to pick up the channel changer, trying to figure out how to turn off the television with fingers that no longer worked, using eyes that no longer saw clearly.

“Hello?” Officer Villareal said from the other side of the door. “Are you in there, Lindy? I came to say goodbye.”

She knocked again. I couldn’t find the right button, and now another woman was standing in front of the wildlife sanctuary, talking about Pater and me, saying we were “transient,” which is just another word for “homeless”—I’m not stupid—and then the door was opening, and I was crying, and Officer Villareal was walking in, her smile changing when she saw what I was watching.