Lucy (28 page)

46

LUCY WALKED ALONG
the highway with her thumb out as the cars and trucks tore past. More than an hour went by before anyone even slowed down. Lucy had begun to think that hitchhiking had gone out of style. But presently, a battered old Ford pickup truck, formerly black, pulled over and Lucy ran ahead to meet it. Through the open window she saw the smiling face of an old Native American man in a greasy cowboy hat and overalls. He leaned over and opened the door.

“Where you headin’, sonny?”

She climbed in and said, “Albuquerque.” Why, she wondered, was he calling her sonny?

“Today’s your lucky day, then. Shut that door, son.”

Lucy slammed the door, remembering that her head was shaved. As the truck rattled into the flow of traffic, she sighed with relief. This is perfect, she thought. Nobody will be looking for a boy.

“What puts you out on this highway so early in the morning?”

“I’m going to visit my grandmother.”

“You don’t see people hitchhikin’ much anymore. It’s a lost art. Before the war, why, I hitched all over this country. People are scared now.” He turned on the radio and twirled the dial, but only static came from the single naked speaker, which was bolted to the dashboard. He lifted his foot from the accelerator, and the truck lurched and slowed. He raised his foot and kicked the radio, then resumed driving. Lucinda Williams came on, singing “Big Red Sun Blues.”

“I gotta get that thing fixed one of these days.”

After they had driven for about twenty minutes, the old man pointed out the window and said, “The spirits live out there. Have you seen the petroglyphs?”

“No.”

“Drawings on the rocks of all the spirits. All this used to be rich farmland. Rivers runnin’ through it. Wild grain growin’ for miles. Plenty of fish and game. Then the spirits came and sucked out all the water. The human beings had to move on. Now it’s all dry.” Traffic slowed to a crawl and he asked, “What the hell is this?” He answered his own question: “Prolly a wreck.”

But as they crept closer, he craned his neck out the window. “Some kind of police roadblock. They’re inspecting the cars.”

“What for?” Lucy asked in alarm.

“Beats me.”

As they inched closer, Lucy could see that the police were questioning each driver and the passengers. She said, “Please, don’t tell them you picked me up hitchhiking.”

“Why not? You in some kind of trouble?”

“No. Please. Just tell them—tell them that I’m your grandson.”

He looked at Lucy steadily. “What’d you do? You rob somebody?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I ran away from the orphanage. I lied to you. I don’t have a grandmother in Albuquerque. I’m an orphan. But I couldn’t stand the place. Please, don’t let them take me back there.”

He stared at her for a long time. They were next in line.

“Why should I believe you?”

“It was a Catholic orphanage. There was a priest there. He was molesting all the boys. I had to get away.”

He looked up at the police cars and the officers in their sunglasses. Then he looked back at Lucy. “Shoot. I guess you could pass.”

“Pass?”

“Say you’re from the Mescalero Apache rez down around Las Cruces. Your name is William Little Bear. My name’s Ronald Little Bear. You got no ID because you’re too young. You got that?”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.”

As they pulled forward, two officers stepped up on either side of the truck. A tall one with a moustache leaned on the old man’s window and asked for identification. The old man handed over his driver’s license. The policeman on Lucy’s side was short and Mexican-looking. He said, “Let’s see some ID.” He had a slight accent.

She felt a trickle of blood begin to seep from the wound beneath her hat.

“He ain’t got no ID. He’s just a kid.”

Lucy said nothing. The trickle of blood was inching down her scalp. The Mexican officer asked, “What’s your name, son?”

“William Little Bear.”

“You two related, then?” the other policeman asked.

“He’s my grandson.”

“Seen anybody hitchhiking?” the Mexican cop asked.

“Nope.”

Lucy could tell that the policemen were picking up all sorts of signals from her and the old man. But they could think of no logical reason to detain them. They had only a gut feeling. Lucy knew: In order to use The Stream you had to accept it. She could feel the trickle of blood reach the headband of her hat. She pushed her head against the headrest to try to stop it there. As she leaned back, she caught a glimpse of herself in the truck’s side mirror and felt her heart sink. She saw the forlorn face of a boy with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. It seemed as if her skull was trying to escape through her bloodless skin, the mouth drawn like a seam across the face. She almost reached up to touch her own face, as if to make sure that she was really there. But she stopped herself.

She knew that they could smell the blood. Any animal could. But they had become so used to ignoring their senses that they didn’t even realize that they were smelling it. They were fighting with themselves, attempting to figure out why they wanted to keep them. But in their linear way of thinking they could find no reason.

The old man stared straight ahead. After what seemed like an eternity, the officer gave him back his license and waved him on. As the truck pulled away, Lucy let out the breath that she’d been holding.

The old man looked over at her. “What happened to your head? You’re bleeding?”

“I fell. On the rocks. It’s just a scratch.”

“What’re you going to do in Albuquerque if you don’t got no folks?”

“I have a friend. He said I could stay with him.”

“How old are you anyway?”

“Seventeen.”

“You are not.”

“Fifteen.”

“Christ, I could go back to jail. I must be outta my mind.”

47

A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN
sat behind a reception desk in the airy atrium at the Denton’s headquarters. Jenny and Amanda announced themselves and signed in at 1:42 in the afternoon. A few minutes later, Ruth Randall emerged from a chrome elevator and walked smartly toward them, her white sneakers squeaking on the terrazzo floor. She hugged them both and said, “I’m so sorry it’s come to this. Come in. You’ve had a long trip.”

“Thanks,” Jenny said. “We’re exhausted.”

“I have my foundation offices here.”

They followed her to the elevator and rode up to an office with an open plan, laid out with a maze of chest-high cubicles. Ruth led them to a conference room, and they sat at a long table.

“My little cubicle is too cluttered. We can talk here. Let me get you something to drink or eat.”

“Just water,” Jenny said.

“Yes, water,” Amanda said.

A young man had come to the door and stood waiting. Ruth said, “Ian, could you bring some water, please?”

“Certainly,” he said, and left.

Ruth stood and closed the door and then sat with them. “You can talk here,” she said. “It’s safe.”

When the man had brought their water, Jenny and Amanda took turns bringing Ruth up to date. Ruth listened intently, biting her lower lip, the lines compressing around her eyes and mouth. Her blue eyes glittered with moisture, as if she could feel their pain.

“How dreadful,” Ruth said.

“If I’m right and she escaped,” Jenny said, “then she may try to get to you. Because you’re the only person she knows in New Mexico.”

“She’ll be safe if she does. Lucy’s smart. Smart enough to find us here. In the meantime, you need rest. Why don’t I take you to the ranch?”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “I do need to get some sleep in a real bed.”

“There’s nothing more you can do until Lucy makes contact. You can leave your car here. I’ll drive you out.”

Ruth drove them out of town in a white Chevrolet Suburban with the Denton’s logo on the door. They entered into the wild yellow land between great reefs of red and brown stone under a cloudless sky.

Amanda asked Ruth, “Did you and your husband start the Denton’s business together?”

“No, I married into it. When I met Luke in 1954, he was a retailer. His grandfather, Denton Randall, founded a general store in Lawton, Oklahoma. And Luke’s father, Edward Randall, opened a five-and-dime in Tulsa. They were successful enough. Luke had come through New Mexico once, and he liked it. He also saw opportunity. There weren’t many stores. So he opened up in Albuquerque.”

“How did it get so big?” Jenny asked.

Ruth pursed her lips, and the lines tightened around her mouth. She glanced at Jenny and tilted her head with a tight sad smile. Then she began. “Well, Luke was always interested in ways of improving the business. He was ambitious and saw that by negotiating better discounts with his suppliers, he could pass those savings on to his customers and increase sales volume. He was passionate about the customer being satisfied. So the one store he had, Randall’s, was a success.”

“It was called Randall’s?” Amanda asked.

“Yes, Randall’s, in downtown Albuquerque. And it supported us nicely. We were just going to settle down, raise a family, and live in the community. We had no great ambitions then.”

A silence fell as Ruth turned off the highway and entered a rough and narrow road that led into the mountains.

“What changed?” Amanda asked.

“Well,” Ruth began, and sighed. “Luke and I were married in 1956. We moved into a nice house on Mulberry. Our son Denton was born in 1958. Named after Luke’s grandfather. Denton was the light of our lives, you see. Luke was always a very practical, hardworking man, but Denton just brought out the joy in him. I’d never really seen Luke play before that. At any rate, the store improved, and we were doing well. Denton had just started kindergarten. I remember the day. Luke had taken off from work to go horseback riding with him. Denton was just learning on this gentle old pony named Leo. They came home, and I was fixing supper. It was their favorite, my meatloaf with mashed potatoes. Green beans. But Denton couldn’t eat. He went and lay down on the couch after supper. I took his temperature and thought it was just the flu. Children in school, always passing germs around. But when I took his temperature an hour later, it was 106, and I was alarmed. I knew that wasn’t right. By the time Luke and I got him to the hospital, he was having seizures.”

As Ruth talked, Amanda and Jenny exchanged a look.

“Oh, no,” Jenny said under her breath.

“He was dead within a day and a half.”

“What was it?” Amanda blurted out, her voice cracking.

“Strep,” Ruth said. And with a wild laugh, she said it again: “Strep! Who would have believed it? I mean, you have a sore throat, you take a pill, and then you’re better. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? But this one went into his organs, no one knew why. Before they could control it, the damage was done.”

Jenny turned and put her hand on Amanda’s knee, and their eyes met.

“I’m sorry,” Ruth said. “What’s got into me? I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“No,” Amanda said. “It’s terrible. But I want to know. I want to know.”

Ruth took a deep breath and looked over at Jenny, who nodded at her. “Denton was gone, and that was all. Luke was crazy with grief. He threw himself into his work. I tried to be there for him, but work was the only thing that could distract him. And I was a fair mess myself. Luke became a man obsessed with the minutiae of retailing, down to the kind of paper clips they used. He fought with his suppliers as a way of venting his feelings, and as a result, he offered the lowest prices and walked away with everyone’s business. He could never rest. He was running from Denton’s ghost, opening store after store, running faster and faster. We changed the name from Randall’s to Denton’s and had fifteen stores by 1966. He took the company public and kept right on going. He created an empire out of grief. A parent never recovers from a blow like that. There’s nothing worse. Nothing. And I know that if he has anything to say about it, Luke won’t let anything happen to Lucy. Luke would go to the ends of the earth to save a child. That’s what the foundation is all about. If Lucy needs him, he’ll use all his money and power to protect her.”

They rode in silence the rest of the way, winding through the mountains until they reached a wrought iron gate set into a high stone wall. The gate swung open, and they drove for another ten minutes on a red dirt road. The main house looked like an old western saloon, with a wooden porch wrapped around it and high brick chimneys. Several smaller frame houses of natural redwood appeared, and as they drew closer, a swimming pool came into view. Ruth pulled the car up to one of the smaller houses, saying, “I’ll get you settled, and then I’m going to take my swim and have a nap.”

The house was paneled in natural wood and had a red tile floor with animal skins for rugs. Large windows and glass doors opened onto views of the mountains and valleys on all sides. Ruth showed them around and then said, “I’ll be up at the big house if you need anything. There are soft drinks in the refrigerator. Just come up to the house if you care for anything to eat.”

“Thanks,” Amanda said.

“This is so generous of you,” Jenny said.

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Ruth bit her lower lip and smiled. Her blue eyes settled on them, and then she turned and walked, tall and regal, across the tiles and out the door. Jenny watched Ruth leave, her sneakers squeaking on the tiles and then crunching in the red volcanic gravel on the drive. Jenny marveled at the woman’s strength. To take something so horrible and make something useful of it. That was the secret. Jenny wondered if she had the strength to do it.

“I have to close my eyes, honey. I’m just going to lie down for a bit.”

“Me, too. Don’t worry. It does no good. Worry is a waste.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Amanda took Jenny’s hands and looked into her eyes. “I grew up with my mother,” she said. “I know what it means to worry about someone you love and depend on. I know what it means to worry until you’re grinding your teeth in your sleep. And I gradually learned to let it go. I was just a little kid. You can figure it out, too.” Amanda smiled at Jenny. “Which bedroom do you want?”

Jenny laughed. “I don’t care. You choose.” She watched Amanda cross the tiles to one of the bedrooms, thinking, What a marvelous creature she is. How did she get so wise so early? She knew the answer: She’d been given the gift of adversity.

Jenny kicked off her shoes and collapsed on top of the bedspread. But despite what Amanda had said, each time she pictured Lucy it was like a sharp stab in her chest. She fell asleep with images of horror swirling around her.

Jenny was in the midst of a dream. She was back in Congo at her little hut, watching a family of bonobos play in the clearing. One of them was Lucy, only she was two years old. She was happily wrestling with another small bonobo and making cheerful noises. Inexplicably, there was a telephone beside Lucy, and it was ringing. It rang and rang until at last Lucy picked it up, and said, “Hello?” Clear as a bell.

Jenny sat up in bed and saw Amanda through the open door holding the phone and saying, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Then she screamed and said, “O-my-God, o-my-God!” She rushed into Jenny’s room, her eyes wide, her face happy. “Luke’s got her. Luke’s got her. Ruth just called. They’re coming here.”

“Oh, thank God.” Jenny put her hand to her chest to stop her heart from hammering. She closed her eyes and felt tears welling up. “How is she?”

Amanda jumped up and down and spun around, “He’s got her, he’s got her, he’s got her!” she screamed, dancing across the room.

“When will they be here?”

“She said they were leaving now. What did it take us to get here? An hour?”

“Did I sleep?”

“Yeah, about three hours. I’m going to take a shower!” Amanda screamed, beside herself with excitement. “I’m going to take a show-errrr!”

“Me, too.”

“Hurry, hurry, hurry. Oh, God, I’m so happy!”

Jenny laughed to see her so thrilled. She felt as if the entire world had been lifted from her shoulders. But as she undressed and then stood in the shower, steam rising around her, she thought, It’s not over. They’re not going to give up searching. And what if Lucy really did kill a man? There would be a nationwide hunt for her. It was probably under way now.

Jenny shivered at those thoughts. She stepped from the shower to dry off and dress, wondering if that had occurred to Amanda yet. As she was putting on her clothes, Amanda came dancing into the room, already dressed, her hair wet. “Let’s get them to take us out to the gate so we can be there for Lucy. I wonder if Ruth has any grapes?”

“Grapes?”

“For Lucy.”

“Sure. Let’s go over to the house.”

Ruth drove them out toward the gate in the Suburban. Amanda was quiet, sitting in the back with a plastic bag of grapes in her lap. She seemed subdued now.

“What are we going to do?” Amanda asked.

“Yes, I was having the same thought,” Jenny said. “It’s not over.”

“But she’s home, that’s the most important thing,” Ruth said.

“Yes,” Amanda said, “we have her back.” She looked at Jenny, searching her eyes.

“Yes,” Jenny said, trying to smile. “Let’s enjoy her while we can.” She felt that her words hadn’t come out right. “She’ll have to go to Donna.”

“Yes,” Amanda said. “Donna.” And Amanda’s yearning eyes fixed on Jenny. “And then we’ll see her again.” She paused, bit her cuticle. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “We’ll be okay. Of course we will.”