Zebra Forest (11 page)

A
fter that, I found that Andrew Snow knew quite a lot about hygiene. This is possibly something they teach you in prison. I don’t know. But he certainly spent a lot of time improving the hygiene of that kitchen.

“I’m surprised you haven’t gotten sick before now,” he said when he found a stack of dirty dishes festering under the kitchen sink. “You’re growing enough mold here to make penicillin.”

Since I had never heard him make a joke, I started to defend Gran, but he stopped me.

“She was always a great cook, you know,” he said. “When I was a kid, she made a lot of pancakes. Every morning almost.”

This was one thing I had figured out myself.

“She makes them for us sometimes,” I said.

“My father liked pancakes,” he said. “He could eat stacks of them in the morning. He said farmers have always known breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and they’d eat pancakes even before dawn.”

“Was he a farmer?” I asked.

Andrew Snow did laugh then. It was a strange, happy sound. A minute after he did it, I couldn’t figure out how that laugh had come out of his face. But then, I’d seen Rew laugh a billion times, before Andrew Snow came. It was kind of like that.

“No,” Andrew Snow said. “He lived all his life in the city. But he loved the country. The woods, especially. He had all these nature books, and he’d read them at night, learning about trees and wildlife and such. He said that one day he’d retire out here, probably to a place just like this one. He never did, though.”

“Why not?”

Andrew Snow didn’t answer for a little bit. He stared out the kitchen window at the Zebra Forest. “He got sick,” he said finally. “He didn’t have time.”

I looked out at it, too. Until Andrew Snow came, I hadn’t been away from the Zebra for this long ever, not even in the coldest winter. I tried to imagine my grandfather, always wanting to come out to the country and never getting to.

“I don’t remember him,” I said after a while. “He died when I was little.”

Andrew Snow nodded. “That must have been when she moved out here,” he said.

“Gran, you mean?”

He nodded again. “She wrote me. She said she couldn’t stay in that old apartment of theirs without him. Especially not with me — away. But she didn’t say where she would go.”

I couldn’t think what to say to that. But Andrew Snow didn’t need me to say anything. He just stared out at the Zebra, quiet. At last he said, “They loved each other with a passion, those two.”

I stood there looking out at the Zebra, too, wondering where Gran, who kept every magazine she’d ever subscribed to, had put all the pictures of her husband, my grandfather, the man she’d loved with a passion.

T
he next morning, I went on another supply run. This time, I didn’t mind the bus ride, didn’t worry that people would know. But when I passed the blue mailbox, I felt that familiar drop in my stomach.

Before I’d gone downstairs, I’d taken the letter and stuffed it back in my pocket. I knew by now I was never putting it in the mail. But I couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with it. Then I noticed a garbage can, one of those public ones that sit on the edge of playgrounds. There was a little park near the bus stop, and I could put the letter in there just as easily as I could put it in the mailbox.

I crossed the street to get to it and stood over it for a minute. When the sidewalk emptied, I pulled out Rew’s envelope and looked at it again. It had gotten crumpled from sitting in my dresser and pocket so long. But the red
EMERGENCY
still stood out bold as anything.

I dropped it in the garbage can, my heart pounding, and turned to go. Then I thought what would happen if the garbage man saw it and opened it. No. That wouldn’t work. So I went back and plucked it out.

My hands were sweating, and they left smudges on the envelope. I couldn’t keep carrying it around. What if it dropped out of my pocket? What if Rew found it? A man passed me on the street, and I shoved the letter back into my pocket, then took it out again. Rew had written that
EMERGENCY
big enough that someone could see it from across the street, I thought. I tore open the envelope.

Then I started ripping. I just tore it all — the envelope and the letter — into tiny pieces. No one could read it when I’d finished with it. And I let the pieces fall, like snow, into the garbage can.

All the time I was doing it, I could see Rew, sitting there writing that letter on his bed. See him happy. And my chest ached, and my eyes smarted. My hands were even shaking. But I couldn’t send that letter. I knew I never could.

It took me a long time to pull myself together after that. I went and sat on one of the swings in the little playground, sat there holding tight to the chain, letting my feet push me back and forth gently, till my heart stopped rattling my ribs so hard. And all the time I kept thinking that if Rew knew what I’d done, he would never, ever forgive me.

W
hen I made the bell ding at the Sunshine Grocery I found Molly back at her TV watching, and it was a relief to find something that felt normal.

Andrew Snow’s list this time included not just vegetables but a bunch of cleaning supplies, some of which I’d never heard of. He’d made me take a knapsack, even, so I wouldn’t have to carry it all in my hands. That’s how much he wanted me to buy. I knew Molly would notice and thought about what I might say to distract her when I got to the counter.

But Molly, cracking her gum with a vengeance, wasn’t one to let things go.

“Looks like someone’s making a project of it” is what she said when I set a bottle of bleach, scouring pads, and Windex on the counter. Plus a bottle of vinegar, which Andrew Snow said is a great natural cleaner. “It’s a little late for spring cleaning, don’t you think?”

I wasn’t sure if she was joking, so I tried to think of a reason for her. “Well, we’ve got time now, in the summer,” I said. “I guess that’s why.”

Molly sighed. She pushed her hair back off her face and then shook it out behind her. “Lots of people having time on their hands in this town,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard, but there was a major layoff at Enderfield. A bunch of guys are out of work.”

I didn’t know what she wanted me to say to that, so I asked, “Did they catch the people? The ones that ran away?”

Molly shook her head, and the brown wings in her hair did a little jump. “Just a few. And now the FBI had to come down and take photos from the prison files to put up at all the post offices. The warden’s in the doghouse, if you know what I mean. My boyfriend’s brother-in-law works in the office there, and he said it’s likely the warden will be out any day.”

Molly blew a huge bubble and popped it loudly. I could smell the fruit flavoring from across the counter.

My heart started beating a little faster, and I took a breath, trying to slow it. “What happens to the people they catch?” I asked. “The prisoners?”

She shrugged. “Do I know? I guess if they try to fight, they get it, don’t they? They’re fugitives, after all — and dangerous, I’m betting, too. Now the FBI’s on their case, they’ll be looking all over the country. They’ll get them back. You don’t go messing with the FBI. Those guys are professionals.”

I noticed suddenly that Molly kept the air on too high in the Sunshine Grocery. It was giving me a chill. “Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

Molly cracked her gum then. She was just getting started. “The question is, What’s going to happen here in town in the meanwhile? It’s a shame, is all I can say. All those people out of work.”

“Will they bring them back?” I asked her. “The ones they catch? To Enderfield?”

She tilted her head, considering, while she chewed. “Probably. I mean, there’s not unlimited space round the country, you know? Unless they do something real bad while they’re gone. Then I guess they’d ship them off to maximum security.”

I didn’t know what that was, but it sounded bad.

Molly went on, “But my boyfriend’s brother-in-law says that if the warden has a word to say about it, they’ll all be right back here. He calls them his ‘population,’ and he plans to fight for them.”

“I thought you said he’s going to lose his job,” I said.

“Yeah, well, that’s likely.” She laughed. “But then, the one that deserves it is usually the last canned, know what I mean?”

I didn’t, but she went on: “He’s making announcements, that warden is. All about security changes. And maybe it’ll save him. Who knows? The top dog’s always the last to fall — that’s what it seems like from my side of the counter.” And she laughed again.

I didn’t care much about the warden, but Molly’s line of conversation was making me jumpy. I glanced at her TV, hoping to find something to distract her. Phil Donahue wasn’t on, but there was a news program going. Pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a furious-looking old man with a beard and turban, flashed on the screen behind her. I nodded toward it.

“He’s the head of Iran, right?” I asked her.

She looked, cracked her gum again, and nodded. “Oh, yeah. Crazy maniac. But they let one out, you know. Yesterday or today, I think.”

“A hostage?” I asked her, surprised. “How come?”

“He was sick,” she told me. “So they let him go home.”

I paid for my things then, and Molly helped me put them in the bag. The bottles were heavy, and I arranged them carefully in the knapsack before I slung it onto my back.

Molly nodded her approval. “Good thinking,” she said. “Save your back.”

I heard her snap her gum one last time before the bell dinged as I let myself out.

All the way home, I thought about hostages let free just for being sick. I wondered if Andrew Snow knew that even Iranian mullahs did that. But then I thought about the FBI, and what they might do to fugitives. They were experts, after all. Probably sharpshooters and everything. They probably didn’t even have to come inside to kill you. They could get you right through a window.

Of course, they had to know you were there first.

O
n day thirteen, Adele Parks came to visit. I saw her from the front window, parking her car at the end of the road that turns to gravel when it hits our property. Adele Parks didn’t like to drive up all the way because of the time her car got stuck in the mud that collects along our unpaved drive. She had to pay a tow truck to pull her out, and ever since then, she’s parked down at the end and walked up.