Lark and Termite (28 page)

He looks up, head back, like he’s thinking it over. I start to lift him out and realize he’s listening hard. The dogs. He’s heard them, creeping up, and I grab a handful of gravel, throw it hard behind us in a steady arc. They back off. The floor of the boxcar is about as high off the ground as my chest. I throw in the capped water jugs and hear them roll along the floor, then I lift in the duffel bag, the laundry sack with the food. I push them in as far as I can reach, then lift Termite in beside. He tilts over onto them like a rajah on his pillows, hands up, fingers still. Speechless. Soft bars of moonlight fall across his face and his pale hair. His eyes move. He’s in a darkened, shattered marble with its colors held tight, waiting inside a roar he must know is coming. He can’t see me, but he hears me throw in the backpack, the sleeping bags. Boxcar camping, I’ll tell him, three days and nights, maybe four.

Solly’s nowhere. I don’t see him, don’t hear him. I’ll manage. I’ve got to get the wagon and the wheelchair in. I can’t leave anything to say we were here, where we’re going, how we got there. The floor of the car is smooth, not slatted; I put in a couple of big stones, to stop the wagon wheels, keep it from rolling once I get it in. The wheelchair isn’t as heavy as the wagon. I fold it, push it up sideways, and I’ve got it just inside when I feel the dog come up. I’ve got the rock in my hand when it pounces, slams into me snarling, hard and lean, turning with me against the side of the car. Nonie’s thick sweater rips in its teeth as we swing round and I slam the rock into its head, slam its head so hard against the steel car I think the world thuds. But it’s the train, slamming into motion. Somewhere far down the line, a shudder starts and builds. The dog drops away from me, silent in the noise, wobbling like a broken toy. I can hear its brains click, stunned or smashed, and I want it to creep away, crawl if it has to, away from here. In case it doesn’t, I throw the bloody rock into the dark of the car. There’s an almost human, overwhelmed groan as the train lurches sharply backward. The wagon is heaviest so I lift it at an angle, front wheels in the car, lean hard, and push. The boxcar shudders and helps take it in, pulls it up, moving. There’s an instant when I realize the click I heard was time ruined, thrown off just long enough. Running, I think about my mother’s little gun folded into the bottom of the duffel, about Termite, how I would have shot us both if I’d thought we could be separated. Lunging for the edge of the boxcar, I feel the hard metal edge in my hands and vault up, swing my legs up and over, scramble to fall forward rather than back.

I don’t know at first. Then I feel the roll of motion under me, and how lightning fast things can go right or wrong. In just a mile or two we’ll pick up speed, ride along the road before we cross the highway. Cars stop there at the crossing, the train moving just beside them. When we were kids, we used to watch each car pass to get that weird tickly feeling of moving backward. The car has got to look empty to anyone seeing it pass. After the crossing, we’ll roll out of town, across the rail bridge and the river. I thought about throwing the gun into the water, but I’ll take it to the ocean, let the waves float it far away. I move the wagon back into the corner, slam the rocks under the rear wheels. Later I’ll find the other rock, the one I’ll keep, flecked with a stain I decide is sacred. I’ll wedge it under the right front wheel in the beam of the flashlight, but for now I hope the wagon will stay put. I pull Termite to the other side of the car, into the corner with the duffel and rolled-up sleeping bags soft and secure against him. He can see out from here, but he’s far from the doors and no one can see him. “You can talk now,” I tell him, “we’re on the train. No one can hear us.” But he’s silent. He’s scared, or maybe not. He has to hear my ragged breath. He knows what almost happened. Or he doesn’t. Please, he doesn’t.

I may not be able to shut the doors by myself. They’re going to be heavy, rusted even, except these cars have come in here from somewhere else—nothing smells wet or damp. I’m standing to the side of the open doors. Now that we’re inside, the train has slowed, like in a dream. Like we’re holding still and everything is moving past us in blue and gray. We’re still in the rail yard.

Then I see Solly. He’s on the Harley keeping pace with us. He nods at me, like
hey,
from across a street.

He’s too late. I see him across a million miles.

He rides along beside us and I don’t know what he’s doing, looking over at us and back, back and forth, calculating, then he roars on ahead, up alongside the adjacent track to the freight dock as the train starts up the slant to the tipple, slow and steady. Through the wide-open doors of the car I see him pull up hard at the edge of the platform and stop, the bright light of the headlight a stark white beam. He revs and revs the cycle, waiting. We come up on him and he guns it, sails over space into us. The machine hits the floor of the car and there’s a bellow and whine as he pulls the keys and jumps, falling against me. We both go down as a boom of impact shakes the car like a cannon shot. The cycle bounces off the back of the car and falls over smoking, confused, spinning and roaring on its side. Then Solly’s up and off me, straddling the cycle as smoke blurs around him inside the quickening rumble of the train. He looks at us over the Harley with its big wheels still turning, and he smiles.

Nonie

There we all sat in a room at the courthouse. Elise nodded her head at the men around the table and the stenographer taking down the interview. We’d known them all for thirty years. Some of them worked with Civil Defense, still were, cleaning up the flood. Now they wore suits and looked tired. We all did, except Elise. She wore her white pillbox hat and pearl earrings, and her black raincoat that she didn’t bother taking off, as though she hadn’t time.

Gladdy was a hardworking woman, Elise told them, but demanding. They’d all remember. Was the stenographer getting this down? The stenographer was, and Elise went on. Gladdy demanded the watch as soon as I stopped the car, Elise said, and grabbed it so hard she broke the band. Noreen helped her anyway, carried those heavy bags up the steps. I wouldn’t have, Elise said, but Noreen did. She set them just inside before Gladdy slammed the door in her face. Sent her back into the storm, hard as it was blowing. Elise said she thanked her stars Gladdy was satisfied to have the watch. If I’d driven off alone, Elise said, I wouldn’t be here. Then she was silent, and sat up erect in her chair, as though she wasn’t only speaking to them. God as my witness, she said, it was me that hurt Noreen. I sprained her wrist when she pulled me out of that car against the flow of the flood. I’ve a lifelong fear of water, Elise said, and I lost my head. I scratched and fought Noreen something awful. I was in a panic, the water came in so fast. Well, the men driving the truck saw how quick the car swamped, how Noreen got me out, and I clung to her even after, until we all saw she was injured. Hold Noreen if you like, Elise told them, though she saved my life and didn’t hurt anyone. She went on to say, as though they didn’t know, that Charlie Fitz-gibbon was Gladdy’s son who cared for her every whim. If he was satisfied Gladdy’s fall was an accident, why wouldn’t they let him get on with mourning his mother? She looked at them outraged and her tears were real.

I had no tears and that was fortunate. I’d already agreed it was all as Elise described. I told them I didn’t mind staying at the county facility until the coroner’s report was final. The women’s quarters were more comfortable than my house, with nowhere to sleep but the attic. I suppose I was making a point. I knew Elise and Charlie would look after things, and Lark was perfectly capable. Charlie leaned forward and took my hand. He knew I didn’t push his mother, but no one could prove I did or didn’t, and Elise’s story had to be the only one. She’d put herself at risk. I wouldn’t have let her, except that I was certain Gladdy wasn’t breathing when I pulled that string over her dark basement stairs and the light fell over her. I’ve let Lola go too, finally, into whatever she’s claimed for herself, and now Lark knows the truth. She’ll find out what else she needs to know and Charlie will finally be her father.

I told Charlie to bury Gladdy with that broken watch. We didn’t need it anymore. If Gladdy had needed help, I would have found it, but she didn’t need us, or anything. The flood took its time and floated her free while her kitchen stayed pristine above her, dishes in the drainer and the table set. The fact that Gladdy lived in that big house, blocks and blocks from the flood plain, while Elise and I were driving into it, was simple geography. She fell because she insisted so hard on what she wanted.

The wash of the old stories is gone. We’re all going somewhere else now, somewhere different from where we’ve been.

Termite

He hears the ragged orange cat crouch small on the beam of the tipple. The cat stays and waits and sees, watching the train pull away in shadow, leaving the mud smell of the town. The staggering dog lies down to slide into the ditch. Termite feels the water move, a ripple in the rumble of the train, in the shaking of the boxcar that throbs in every board. The boxcar clacks its iron wheels, ticking every seam, spinning steel and waiting for the roar. Solly moves the roar and the sound races, hovers, races. The train slows and climbs and Solly rides the roar, pulsing, cutting through. The roar shines a light and leaps into them before it smashes, sparking and crashing and cutting up the dark. The light comes on white and Termite sees inside it when the pounding starts, pounding and pounding while the bodies are slashed and spilled. The bodies fall still and stay and a blue air slips up from between them, from this one and that one, air that is thin and veiled and curls, smooth silvery ribbons turning to find a way out. The man who stands alone and hears the shape lies still, but a shape stands up in his shape. He opens his hands in the pale ribbon of himself and Termite can see his fingers moving, opening. He turns toward Termite and his face comes clear in the moving blue. His face blurs and clears and blurs again like a face underwater. He picks up a shape that clings to him and another shape moves beside him, crawling and then standing, a slight feminine shape that turns and moves next to him. The man looks back before he turns to walk away with them in the ribboned air of the tunnel. He looks at Termite. The ribbons all around them are veiled as smoke and move like the river moves, rippling and curling, pulled in the air. No eyes, no ears, the ribbons only move and flow. Thin silvery ribbons, moving in the tunnel. So many of them, more and more, moving toward the opening, to where the light gets big and bright. He sees his father clear against the light and his father turns and walks. His father has a boy like him and a girl like Lark, and he takes them with him, out of the tunnel. He sees his father walking between the ribbons and the ribbons make everything blue.

Louisville, Kentucky

JULY 31, 1951

Lola Leavitt

he sits by the open window, looking out. It’s the same third-floor room she shared with Bobby, first night to last. Nearly empty now. She’d taken the furniture when she moved to Coral Gables with the baby. There’s only the chair she sits in, their valise, a double mattress on the floor, like those last weeks when Bobby moved her mattress off the bed frame so the only sounds were theirs. Lola hears the club downstairs, prep and start-up for On-slow’s Sunday night crowd. Sunday nights were slow except at Onslow’s and a few other bars. Soldiers from the base poured in. Onslow would introduce her, especially those months she was obviously pregnant, as a religious experience. The church service they’d missed earlier that morning. She hears him at the piano now, through the open windows. Lola’s the cat, he told soldiers, she can purr, she can scratch. You boys behave and she’ll arch her back when she sings to you. Onslow is playing her songs, her repertoire, as though it makes a difference.

Now that she’s here, she’s calm, settled. It’s the right thing. The baby’s breathing is good, clear. He’s strong in his way. He doesn’t move much but still she’s got him propped with rolled blankets, every side, so he’s safe and doesn’t stir. She’s nursed him just now in this chair, whispering songs, and now he’ll sleep the night. He sleeps more than most babies, and he’s quiet, doesn’t cry. In those ways, he’s easy. He can hold his head up now, and his arms. He moves his fingers. He moves them fast when he’s agitated, and his skin flushes. He goes rigid if he’s scared. He’s silent then, but anyone caring for him knows what’s wrong, begins to know. She’s left a list. He takes formula and she’s brought plenty, but her milk calms him most. It’s the only thing she regrets taking from him.

She’s been here a week, long enough that the girls have learned how to care for him. In case Noreen won’t take him, or not right away. But she will. The letter, the instructions, are in the big valise. It will all seem backward to Noreen. She’ll be angry. Don’t I have enough to do, she’ll rage at Charlie, but not when Lark can hear. They’ll care about him, protect him, even if they don’t understand. She can’t take him, though she’s decided to stop. She thinks Bobby would forgive her. She went on as long as she could, until she knew what to do.

She reaches for a cigarette to steady her hands. Lights up and leans toward the open window so the air will take the smoke.

She’s careful what he breathes, careful about noise. He loves music, or he’ll focus on a sound so small she barely hears it. Drip of a faucet, night cries of those penny-sized frogs in the grass in Coral Gables, the hush of the surf across the little road. Confusion scares him. Doctor’s visits. Strangers. So it was just her, the days filled with taking care of him. Onslow sent them money. Charlie wrote every month. Then the soldier came with his Korean wife and gave her the picture Bobby prized and carried with him. The cigarette pack, the little photo slipped inside the cellophane, still seemed curved to the contour of Bobby’s chest or the shape of his hand. The Korean girl only nodded, smiled. Not much English, Tompkins said. Her parents were dead, so he’d married her, and the government let her leave. She’d worked on gaining weight here, to look older. Still, now that he had the limp and the cane, people thought she was his nursemaid or his daughter. Watching them, she realized she’d been waiting, but Bobby would never be here, on a cane, in a wheelchair, missing whatever parts of him the war took. She had the house in the quiet town. They could have lived simply, on disability like half the retirees in Coral Gables. Instead she had the widow’s pension, and a survivor’s benefit, for the baby. She’d make sure Nonie got it. The thought came to her then, sitting in Coral Gables with the Korean girl and Tompkins. She’d wait a month, more, so Tompkins wouldn’t feel responsible. She’d make plans. She could plan now. She could look at the picture and see all that might have happened if the war hadn’t. And read Bobby’s letter, the one Tompkins brought her.

She smokes, closing her eyes, upright and tense in the chair. She senses the trail of the smoke, doesn’t watch it. She knows it curls and weaves, blue in the late-afternoon light, moving away from her.

She left the house as it was, only paid the man who mowed the grass to pack up the carriage and high chair, send them to Win-field slow freight. They’d arrive in a week or so, about as long as it would take Onslow to contact Tompkins and his wife, fly them up to drive the car, arrange for a nurse. And take the baby to Noreen. With the valise, his clothes, blankets he was used to, her perfume bottle with the moon face he liked to hold. The girls smiled when they saw it: it was part of that novelty perfume set they’d bought for her trousseau.

She pulls her upright chair soundlessly closer to the window. She knows these rooftops, this skyline, and she leans out to look. They’d lie in bed with these windows open, the smoke of their cigarettes curling over them. Breath of their bodies, moving in the air, drawn to the open.

She smokes her cigarette. It’s dark enough that fire glows in the ash. She looks now, and follows the smoke with her eyes. Air pulls the thin blue trail out the window, into the evening.

Lola’s the cat.

They brought the yellow telegram to her hospital bed, days after the birth. She knew before she read it. Bobby was missing, presumed dead. She was too weak to hold the baby but she wouldn’t let them bind her breasts. She made them help her feed him, prop him on pillows. She coaxed him to nurse until he did. He began to move his hands. Never his legs. His head was too big for his small, thin body. The baby has problems, they told her. You have problems, she said. She needed rest, they said, she’d lost a lot of blood. They kept trying to take him from her but she wouldn’t let them. He was going to live, she told them. No one should presume, she said. Rest, they said. No one is trying to take your baby. Is there someone we can call? No one who can hear you, she told them.

Now she knows how to sense him. Tompkins brought her the letter, but she waited until they left to read the words.
If you’re reading this, it means I’m not coming back.
Just like that, it was true. It was his voice and she believed him, when before all she’d had was the folded flag. She read the words and read them until she could feel him near her. It’s as though he’s released now into his son’s breath and smell, into the baby’s eyes and hands. The baby moves his fingers every moment he’s awake, slowly, carefully. The birth certificate she brought from Florida says his name, but she’s never called him by a name. She sings to him while she feeds, bathes, rocks, carries him. He answers in sounds, singsong tones.

At night, on this mattress on the floor, like their bed before Bobby left, she falls asleep holding the baby. She says Bobby’s name into his skin, against the cloudy pale hair, the broad forehead. Delicate blue veins are visible at his temples, just beneath the flesh. In the first weeks, she was sure he would stop breathing. Now he’s a year old, almost exactly. She can see some blended distortion of them, a resemblance transformed and shattered into what he is. He’s not like her or Bobby. He’s what happened to Bobby. He’s where Bobby went, where Bobby is. How can she reach Bobby. Maybe not touch him, but find him. Know where he is. She thinks it’s all still happening, existing where she can’t see. It doesn’t end until she ends it.

Lola’s the cat. She takes a last drag on the cigarette and stands, watches the smoke unfurl. The little derringer Bobby gave her is in her purse, with the folded flag, the telegram tucked into the front. We regret to inform you. She’ll walk to the police station down the street. They’ll take care of everything. She knows the baby is safe and she’ll think about Bobby. She’ll be on her way.