Hush Little Baby (16 page)

Ed got into his car.

Muffin could not believe it. He was going to drive away. And Sam, poor Sam, must be lying on the floor! And he didn’t even have a shirt on, he was still in his tea towel, with its pattern of forks! Kit hadn’t even gotten the blue blanket piece down the stairs before Dusty and Ed drove away.

Ed started his engine.

Ed was not the type to look behind him. Muffin leaped up from her crouch on the dark grass, ran to the front steps, and turned the handle of the front door. It was locked. “Why, you creep!” she whispered, meaning Ed. How was she supposed to get in to take care of Sam the Baby?

She tiptoed among the little button-top foundation shrubs to look in the windows and see where Sam was crying, but they were too high for her. She couldn’t see in.

Ed drove off with the kind of spurt that would leave trenches in the driveway.

Muffin raced to the side door she remembered from her bathroom trip, holding her spread fingers in front of her face to ward off bugs and spiders and spiderwebs and bats. The door was unlocked.

It was a good thing she’d been to the bathroom here and checked everything out. Ed had left the light on where Sam was, but everything else was dark. She steered over half-remembered boxes and trash piles. “I’m coming, Sam,” she called.

He was soaked with spit-up, and red from crying. Muffin scooped him up and crooned, “Poor, poor, poor, poor, poor Sam the Baby. But I’m here now. We’ll tell on Ed. We’ll tell my mother he left you alone in a house in the dark. We’ll tell the police.”

Telling Mom was much more serious than telling police.

Outside, it sounded as if Ed had hit a tree.

“Everything is fine, Sam,” she told him, but Sam did not believe her. Which showed he was smarter than his mother, Dusty. Because everything was not fine.

She used toilet paper to mop his runny nose and dropped his used diaper on the floor, because there was no place else to put it, and dried him with toilet paper, and folded up the tea towel for a diaper. She had nothing to fasten it with, so she held it together with her hands.

Then she began hunting for a telephone. Ed had to have driven out the driveway by this time, so she turned on the lights. She found the jack in the kitchen, but no phone was hooked up. There was a sweater draped over an open cabinet door and Muffin examined it carefully. It belonged to a grown-up man. It was a button-up-the-front kind and it was old and snarly. It would have to do for Sam the Baby. She wrapped him in it, tying the sleeves around him twice, and he was easier to hold when he was tucked in and fastened like that, and it felt less likely that he would just skid out of her arms.

She found a jack in the living room, but no phone was hooked up to that, either.

The house had no telephone.

Rowen picked himself up off the grass, grateful for years of athletic events in which he had learned to avoid being crushed or caught. He’d turned his ankle, but he was good at limping until the shock wore off; you did that in a game; you didn’t surrender to the injury, you got back into play.

He staggered into the shadows on the far side of the drive and tried to be a tree. He didn’t think Ed had even seen him. Ed was so frantic to be out of here, he’d started without bothering to flick on his headlights. He’d been going five or ten miles an hour and wasn’t looking. It hadn’t occurred to him there was anything to look for. Well, it hadn’t occurred to Rowan in his plan to stop Ed that Ed wouldn’t see him standing there in the grass, saying, No, don’t leave. But it was dark and shadowed, and Ed was fiddling with the dashboard, and Row had flung himself to the side.

Then
Ed put on his lights.

Then
there turned out to be a car parked in his way — Rowen’s — and Ed’s passenger side scraped hard along the driver’s side of Rowen’s car. Ed didn’t react fast, and drove all the way down both cars before stopping.

Rowen cringed at the thought of the damage to his car. He wasn’t even going to think about what his parents would say.

Where was Muffin? Row couldn’t see her. “Muff!” he stage-whispered. She didn’t answer.

In the faint light from the front room of the house, he spotted her peering in windows.

Muffin! he thought.

Ed backed up. He wasn’t going to leave now that he knew a trespasser was here. Row decided to stay in the shadows until Ed got back out of his car, and then tackle him; immobilize Ed so he couldn’t hurt Muff or the baby. Then Row and Muff and the baby would get out of here. His car would drive fine, it was just bashed up.

But Ed drove in a circle and launched his vehicle straight into Rowen’s. He hit Row’s car like a race driver passing on the inside turn, not caring about scrapes and dents. Their two sides collided with a horrible mangling of metals and when Ed made a huge U-turn in the grass, Rowen realized that Ed was going to make a third pass at Rowen’s car; he was going to have his own personal demolition derby out here in the yard.

Rowen raced to the house to get Muffin and Sam. He ignored his aching ankle.

But Ed was not making a third run at Rowen’s car.

He drove over the lawn, reaching the side door before Rowen did, leaped out of the car, and ran into the house in which Muffin had turned on every ceiling light.

Muffin, holding Sam in his sweater, was in the kitchen.

If Muffin had been alone, she would have been terrified. But she was not alone. She had Sam. He was a burden, really; six or eight pounds of hunger and thirst. But Sam could not live without her. She had gotten him clean, she had gotten him warm, and now she was going to get him fed. Ed was not important, the way he would have been if Muffin had been alone.

Muffin glared at Ed. “You’re going to be in a whole lot of trouble. My brother Rowen is driving to the store to use the phone. He’s calling the police. So there.” Muffin made a hug of herself, with Sam tucked inside her crossed arms. She could feel his tiny heart beat against her ribs.

“Give me that camera,” said Ed, a demand that startled her completely. Muffin had forgotten the camera. So that was the annoying, hard rectangle pressed against her belly button, getting in the way of holding Sam. “You can have it,” she said. “But I have to keep holding Sam.”

“You do that.” Ed’s fat hand, its fingernails split and stained, reached down to her tummy as he took the camera out of her kangaroo pouch. “Don’t drop the baby, Muffin,” he said, “no matter what happens.” He curled his fingers through her hair and raised his strong arm high, so she was held vertically upward by her very own hair.

Rowen appeared in the door.

“I told you!” Muffin said to Ed. “I told you so. I told you Rowen went to get the police. So there!”

Ed laughed. He twisted her hair until she had to stand right next to him, and he twisted again, forcing her face into the pattern of his shirt.

“Walk outside,” said Ed to Rowen.

Muffin said into the shirt, “Row, where are the police?”

“There are no police,” said Ed.

At first the hair yanking was just scary, just a weird new pressure, but now it was hurting, and then it was hurting a lot, and it was harder to think about Sam, and harder to keep her balance, and hardest to remember that holding Sam counted the most.

Her big brother said, “Muff and I will take care of Sam for you, Ed. We won’t tell anybody anything. Really, Ed. Muff and I are on the same team as you are. We want Dusty’s baby to have those great parents. We want the adoption to go through. It’s very late and we’re all tired and the baby probably needs a bottle, and —”

Ed said, “Get out of the house, kid. Go get your car keys.” He began walking Muffin forward. Her feet tangled when he turned her so she was facing forward. Her scalp was higher off her head than it was supposed to be, as if Ed might jerk and peel her scalp away from her skull.

Rowen said, “You don’t need this, Ed. A baby and a nine-year-old? They’re real pains in the neck. What you need is the money that Cinda and Burt are paying you, and we have to sit down and talk about how we’re going to get that.”

“Get your keys,” said Ed, “or I’ll hurt your sister and the baby both.”

Then he did jerk hard on her hair, and the thought of her hair coming right off, of Ed standing there with her whole hair in his fist, was so horrific Muffin screamed, which was stupid and wrong, because it frightened her brother. He obeyed Ed. He left the kitchen, which was the last thing Muffin wanted him to do; she felt they must stay with the house until the police got here; and now they were going out into the dark.

Ed marched Muffin over the grass to his car, opened the driver’s door, and kneed Muffin into the opening. Ed did not let go of her hair. She didn’t see how she could do anything because she had to keep holding Sam.

Rowen raced back, gasping for breath, holding the key chain on one extended finger for Ed to take. Muffin knew what would happen now. Her brother — who liked wrestling and soccer and ice hockey and baseball and tennis — her brother would tackle Ed while Muffin would throw herself sideways into Ed’s car with the baby, and scrabble out the other door while they were tussling, and —

“Throw the keys in the woods, Rowen,” said Ed. “Your best throw.” He changed his grip on her hair, forcing Muffin’s head backward until her throat was white and exposed.

“Okay,” said Rowen, “okay. Just don’t hurt them. Listen to me.”

Ed yanked Muffin’s head back so far that Muffin screamed with pain as her neck cracked, but there was no scream, because the tilt had flattened her throat out and she could make no sound.

“Throw the keys.”

Rowen threw the keys into the woods. It was his best throw. Muffin could hear leaves parting as if for a bullet and she knew they would never find the keys.

“Start backing away from me,” said Ed.

Rowen did not move. He said, “Ed, come on, she’s only nine.”

“I could break her neck,” said Ed conversationally.

Rowen backed up.

Muffin hung on to Sam with everything she had. Her brother was getting farther and farther away now. She couldn’t see anything but stars, and she was no longer sure whether they were stars in the sky or stars in her brain. She didn’t know time, either, and how long Row had been backing.

Ed let go of her hair and shoved her and the baby over on the seat. Then he got in, drove around Row’s car and down the drive, accelerating. She and Sam were flung forward, and she twisted hard, trying not to let Sam get bruised, and the hard long curve of the dash smashed into her arm.

She would not cry. She would not cry out, either.

She scootched herself back on the seat, bracing her sneaker bottoms against the dashboard to make herself a stiff safety net for Sam. She had never been in a car without a seat belt. She and Sam bounced and tipped and jarred.

It was an old car, and it smelled of old things, old food and old oil.

Ed picked up his car phone. He tapped in a number.

Muffin buried her face against Sam. He was even littler than she remembered, as if he had shrunk during the day, from not enough food and not enough love and not enough safety.

I am all Sam has, thought Muffin. I cannot make mistakes. This isn’t spelling. This isn’t arithmetic. This is Sam.

Cinda and Burt had both cars. Neither Cherokee had room for a passenger. They could hardly stand outside in the street shifting boxes and deciding which car to abandon, while Kit yelled for help and the neighbors came with cell phones, guns, and Dobermans.

Cinda and Burt were immobilized at the front door, terrified of leaving the soft sanctuary of the house, equally terrified that Kit’s father would have reached the local police and that any second, sirens would come screaming down the road.

Cinda still had her knife, but she had lost track of why she wanted it.

I’d be better off with Cinda, thought Kit. She’ll drive, and people driving cars cannot threaten anybody with a knife. She’ll have to set it down, maybe next to me where I can use it, or at least on the floor by her feet. She sure can’t use it. Cinda’s ready to talk. So she’s the one I want to be with. I think I can break her down. Or lie to her about Sam, and get her to drive where I want her to drive. And where would that be? What’s my master plan now? “Oh, Cinda, would you just turn into that driveway, please, the one marked
Police
?”

“Here,” said Kit, taking over. “The best thing to do is find Dusty and talk things through. I’ll take the boxes out of Cinda’s front seat, and once I’ve made room —”

“There’s room,” said Burt. He hauled her toward the navy Jeep as if it had been his idea. “Get on the floor,” he ordered. “You can fit.”

“Fit” was hardly the word. A tennis ball would have fit in the space on the floor. Kit had to shift boxes and wedge between reams of paper, but she did arrive on the floor of Cinda’s Cherokee and Burt did slam the door behind her, while Cinda got in the driver’s seat.

Kit found herself starting to giggle. The giggle took hold, and felt good. Down here, hunched over like a dog having kibbles, she could, like a dog, chew on Cinda’s ankle if all else failed.

Cinda and Burt were in the midst of a whispered conference when Cinda’s car phone rang. Cinda answered it, and the voice that rasped out of the phone was Ed’s.

Ed and Dusty. They were still driving around with Sam! Probably looking for Cinda and Burt so they could get the next installment of the adoption payment. So now the three cars would rendezvous — two Grand Cherokees and one ancient Caddy — and money and baby would change hands and Kit would be in the way. And what about that knife?

While Cinda was driving, Kit would just have to get out of the car. Though how she would manage that, scrunched down on all fours, she did not know. She pictured herself opening her door with her toes behind her back, and bumping out fanny first into New Jersey traffic.

“You come and meet me!” said Ed. He was spitting out each syllable. “I want my fifty K! You promised it to me and
I want it
! I already spent some of it. You give me my fifty K! You give it to me
now.
This situation has gotten crazy. Now I’ve got a damn little kid here, too! You come get this baby,
you bring my fifty thousand
!”