Finding Casey (14 page)

She smiled a lot. Never trust smiles from strangers. They want something. Strangers will steal from you; they will screw you every time. Aspen's ventilator made the
puh-shoo-up
noise that meant it was taking breaths for her. Every couple of hours the nurse came to suction it out and those quiet times when the machines stopped made me so nervous I thought I might throw up.

“You're very brave,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“It's a lovely day outside. Not too cold and the wind's stopped.”

“Yes, I noticed from the window that the trees are still. Thank you.”

This Ardith Clemmons had very dark brown eyes that hid her thoughts from me. She wore wire glasses that slipped down her nose like Old St. John's did. That pearl necklace with the very large pearls puzzled me. If they were real, then she was rich, so why did she have a job? If they weren't, then that meant she was attached to Worldly Things and Materialistic, which means you don't have the Compassionate Spirit and you should take a sweat and chant and fast until you do. Her teeth were so white and perfect that I was ashamed of mine. In the back where no one could see, I was missing two molars. One knocked out by Abel, one I pulled out myself so it would stop hurting.

“Mrs. Smith,” she said, “would this be a good time for us to go have a cup of coffee and chat?”

“Thank you, but I have to stay with my daughter.”

“We can ask the nurse to keep a special eye on her if that would make you feel better.”

It wasn't a question, but she wanted me to answer. “No, thank you. I want to stay here.”

That made her be quiet. After a while she said, “You don't need to thank me so often, Laurel. How would it be if I brought you a cup of coffee and perhaps a little breakfast? The family visiting room across the hall, where you had dinner? We could chat with the door open, and you'd be two steps away if Aspen needed you. You can see her room from there.”

Did she count the steps like I did?

I was hungry, but Abel and Seth had taught me how to fast to make myself pure. “Coffee isn't good for you.”
Thank you
, I said in my mind, but not out loud.

“Oh, I see. Is that a dietary choice, or because of your religious beliefs?”

I had to think about that. There wasn't a rule, not exactly, but Seth wouldn't let me, partly because it cost too much. “I don't care for coffee,” I said, which was a lie because I drank it at Louella's all the time.

“Perhaps I could bring you some hot tea, then, or a soft drink? Do you like Coke or are you a Pepsi drinker?”

“Diet Coke Vanilla,” I said. Somehow the words just came out of my mouth like they had always been there, waiting. I couldn't even think how it tasted. I was tired, and all I wanted was to shut my eyes and drift off to the sound of Aspen's machines.

“I am a Diet Cherry Coke gal myself. Tell you what. If you'll excuse me, I will go in search of some Diet Coke Vanilla and a snack and we can visit another time. Will that be all right?”

“I guess so.”

“What snack foods do you like?”

“I don't have those.”

“Are you going to tell Aspen more of the story I heard last night?”

“I might.”

“Well, if you do, I'd love to hear it.” She handed me a card with a telephone number on it, and the initials M.F.C.C.

What did that mean? Minister? Female? Compassionate? Chaplain? “I don't have a telephone.”

“Just ask the nurse to page me. Good-bye for now,” she said. “Aspen, feel better soon.”

I said good-bye for both of us. And I remembered to not say
Thank you
.

She walked slowly down the hall to the elevator and I wondered if she was going to call the cops. Seth said there weren't any cops in this town, but maybe a hospital had cops. Maybe she was going to the cafeteria; they had soda machines. Frances secretly drank Dr. Pepper soda. Some nights, when Seth had been really mean and I was crying, she'd drag her sleeping bag close to mine and we'd split a Dr. Pepper. She'd whisper, “You know what, Laurel? Some Outsiders are nice. We could leave this place, get a room somewhere, work as hotel maids.” She said that at night, but in the morning she always changed her mind, saying once you have a prison record, no one will hire you. I never believed her when she said we could leave, but I listened to make her feel better. I never told Seth what she said because then he might hurt her, too, and it was bad enough with him hurting me.

I looked at the clock in Aspen's room and thought about how many hours it was until four o'clock. Last night I
was
starving hungry because I hadn't eaten at all that day. I went for a walk to the bathroom and I watched this man eating a sandwich in the hallway. Then he wrapped one half of it back up and set it in the trash can by the elevator. Outside people threw perfectly good food away all the time, even though people were starving. Caleb and Old St. John told stories about Dumpster Diving, which was when stores threw out perfectly good cans and lettuce and bananas that were brown and they went and got them. Pick off the flies and they were good for making banana bread, Frances said. On the Farm she froze loaves for when we had guests like the drumming group. Right now they were probably having breakfast and eating that bread, warmed up, slathered with butter, sunflower seeds in it, so chewy. We grew sunflowers
in the summer. I had to put nets over them to keep the birds from taking all the seeds. Once Seth took a rifle and shot a raven dead right in front of everyone. Frances said that was bad luck and Seth shot another one. I got the feeling he would have liked to aim the gun at Frances. I dug holes and buried the birds, telling them I was sorry, even though I didn't shoot the rifle. Sometimes I dream of them, too. If I could breathe life back into them, I would.

I picked up that half of a sandwich out of the trash and ate it and nothing bad happened except the cafeteria lady saw me. It was some kind of meat I didn't know, with bright orange cheese. Old St. John said the Outside World doesn't care about the homeless and hungry, but I'm not homeless. Even though I am here in this hospital with Aspen I have a home at the Farm. As soon as Aspen wakes up, we're going home. I know the gate code. Seth will be mad but he'll get over it.

One late autumn day, the princess—let's call her Leafy—insisted the guard walk with her in a different direction, on a trail that eventually led into the dark forest.

The trees out this way were so old and big that it would take ten guards with their arms outstretched joining hands around the trunk of one tree to make a circle. Their heavy branches reached clear across the road, creating places so shady that it sometimes was as dark as night in the middle of the day. Their leaves stayed green all through the seasons. They dropped pine-cones or acorns, which is a tree's way of planting seeds. An acorn is a kind of nut with a brown body and a lighter brown cap. They're smaller than a hen's egg, about the size of a grape.

I would buy you some grapes to eat if you'd wake up.
Puh-shoo-up.

Princess Leafy wanted to take acorns with her back to the castle. She thought she might make them into doll faces. A doll would make her less lonely in the wintertime, when the leaves were gone and she couldn't go collecting.

“We mustn't go too far,” the guard warned her.

“Just a little farther,” the princess begged, and she sang a tune so beautiful that it made the guard remember his childhood, when there was plenty to eat, and people everywhere, other children to play with, and best of all, wild spotted horses and white ponies roaming the hills.

So they walked up a hill until they came to the edge of a cliff they'd never seen before. If the princess had been paying attention, she might have realized that someone was watching, but instead she was paying attention to the noisy river that ran below. It looked like a silver ribbon, splashing along. She imagined the rainbow fish that swam in there. Maybe she could catch a fish and bring it to the king for supper.

The water turned from silver to blue and black, then blue again. The current was swift, and the river sounded like it was laughing. Maybe it
was
laughing, at her foolishness. The princess saw five silver birds singing in the oak trees' branches. They flew around her and the guard, and then spiraled down to the river to drink. The princess asked the guard, “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful as those five silver birds?”

“Beauty surrounds us,” the guard answered. “But so does danger. I implore you, Princess, collect your acorns and let us be on our way. It isn't safe to linger here.”

“No one would dare to harm a princess,” she said, laughing
and then bursting into song. Her singing caused the silver birds to fly so close that she could almost reach out and touch them. But birds don't wish to be caught. She reached and reached, but they knew how to stay just out of her reach. “I must have those silver birds,” she told the guard.

“Birds fly south for the winter,” the guard said. “They need to be warm to make nests and lay eggs for the new birds. It's not right to meddle with the ways of animals.”

“Nonsense,” the princess said. “I have a fireplace in my chambers. You can keep it burning. Besides, what bird wouldn't rather live indoors and have its every wish? I will place them in a golden cage so that they can sing to me when the snow falls and it's too cold to fly. Fetch them for me at once.”

“Princess,” the wise old guard said, “you are lovely and powerful, but things are not so simple as you might imagine. Collecting leaves that are done with their lives is one thing, but interfering with the living is unwise, and unkind. I will not do this.”

“Then I will catch them myself.”

The princess said things like that all the time, so the guard paid no attention. She stood at the cliff edge, her heart aching for the birds. Nothing had ever been refused her, and desire rose up and grabbed her heart. She had forgotten her search for the acorns. To cheer her up, the guard collected the best five acorns he could find. He got down on his knees and searched. Every one had the little hat with a piece of stem attached. When he turned his back to place them into the sack, a terrible thing happened. Something or someone—for he never caught a glimpse of his attacker—gave him a great shove, and off he went, tumbling over the cliffside, falling this way and that until
he landed by the stream with sticks in his hair and blood on his cheeks. His bag spilled. Pages from the book were torn out, wrinkled, and flying away in the wind. He was dizzy, and he imagined that he called out for the princess. When he heard no answer, he realized he had only dreamed it. He crawled toward the water, praying she hadn't fallen in, since he did not know how to swim. In the water's reflection, he saw a great hand take hold of the princess by the arm. She gave out a single scream and then went silent, disappearing from view. The guard fainted. He was bleeding from his torn scalp, and in his leg a bone was broken. The silver birds flew around him, chirping, trying to wake him up.

But he didn't. He slept because just like you, he was so sick. I wonder sometimes if maybe he didn't wake up because he didn't want to. Sometimes, when a terrible thing happens, a person tries to forget it by going to sleep. They pretend it never happened so hard that their mind shuts off. The guard went to the place where there are no dreams. It was quiet there, with time to rest, maybe even forever. The sky turned the colors of leaves, yellow, orange, red, burgundy, and then nearly black. Darkness replaced every stitch of sunlight. Still the guard slept, while his wounds clotted and closed over with new skin. The broken bones in his arm and legs found each other and began to knit back to the way they used to be, together. He didn't wake until all five silver birds plucked at his sleeve and pecked at his face. When his eyes opened, the birds flew into the sky and took their places. You see, they weren't birds all the time. In the night they lived in the sky as stars. It was a good thing the princess hadn't taken them, or the guard wouldn't have been able to find his way to the castle.

My voice is so tired. I might take a nap.

Aspen, are you dreaming about the birds, or are you in the not-dreaming place? Rest as long as you need to. One day you'll be out in the world again, playing and singing. I'll tell you more tomorrow.

The day after Thanksgiving, Joseph left early for the Candela board meeting. Glory showered, dressed in maternity jeans, a long-sleeved stretchy shirt, and a fleece vest that she hadn't been able to zip for months. Juniper and Topher had made scrambled eggs and vegetarian sausages. When Glory walked into the kitchen, Halle was flipping through the newspaper inserts. “I can't believe you slept so late! It's Black Friday, we need to go shopping!” she said, even before “good morning.”

Halle was dressed in taupe slacks and a black cashmere turtleneck, and she was wearing makeup and beautiful silver earrings. Since being forced to take early maternity leave from the feed store, Glory didn't bother with makeup or earrings. Just getting through the day was enough work. She noticed the bottle of Baileys Irish Cream on the table and wondered what it was doing there at nine A.M. She poured a cup of decaf and said, “You might want to dial down your expectations, Halle. Our mall has Dillard's and a JCPenney. This isn't San Francisco.”

Glory's mother looked up from the crossword puzzle and said, “Amen to that. Shopping instead of dealing with your troubles doesn't cure anything, it just empties your pocketbook.”

Halle shot her a look that Glory wouldn't have dared. Ave didn't flinch.

“Mom,” Juniper said, “Topher and I are going to the movies. Daddy Joe said to ask what you need us to do before we go. We fed the hens and the dogs. Not that you'd know it by the way they're behaving.”

All three dogs hovered under the table near Ave's chair. She was feeding them entire sausages and toast. “Mom, please don't give them people food,” Glory said. “Haven't we been through this already? They get sick.”