The Fall of Alice K. (29 page)

When she started the Taurus to drive away, it made no more noise than the refrigerator starting. She kept the lights off, slipped the car into drive and eased off the yard. She arrived at the Vangs' house fifteen minutes earlier than she had said, and pulled up with her headlights pointed away from their house. Nickson was already outside and walked toward the car, casually carrying his backpack.

He got in and immediately told Alice that he had to revise his story for his mother. When he had told her that he was going to the Redemption Library, she suggested that he ride with Mai, who also said she was going there. So he had to tell his mom that Alice was picking him up to go to the Redemption Library. Now both of Lia's trusted children were off on dates instead of at the library. The Redemption Library was working overtime that night in providing alibis.

Alice's stomach knotted when she heard the story. There was no regret that this was happening, but she had a vision of being caught.

“I'll drive past the Redemption Library. Maybe some people will see us and think that's where we went. Then if your mother talks to somebody. . . .” 

“Mom doesn't talk to anybody about where we are,” said Nickson. “She just asks us. She trusts us.”

“Are you feeling bad about doing this?”

“It would be hard if my mom figured out what I was doing,” he said. “Lying to my mom is tricky. It's all right,” he added. “That's my thing and you shouldn't worry about it.”

Alice picked up an aroma coming from Nickson. Something musky but sweet. He put on his seat belt and turned toward her as she drove slowly away from the Vangs' house.

“Looks like you're ready to argue with that backpack of material,” she said.

“Resolved,” he said.

“No rebuttal,” she said.

“I love your hair,” he said.

“Thank you. You look great.”

Alice felt herself relax as she sensed that he was relaxing too. This felt even better than she hoped it would—a plan that was working to a T.

She did drive past the Redemption Library but then out of Dutch Center on the blacktop road that led toward South Dakota. She turned on the radio and asked Nickson to find some music. He cruised the dials and stopped on soft rock when he saw her turn and smile. He was learning to read her. She liked that a lot. She would learn to read him too.

After ten miles, the Dutch names started mixing with non-Dutch names on the mailboxes. Ookstra followed by Sutter followed by Vanden Boom followed by Jenkins followed by Den Broelekamp followed by Wanek until they were out of the mixed neighborhood and all mailbox names were non-Dutch. They had crossed into the land of freedom. No one but no one would recognize them out here.

Alice pulled over at the next intersection, put the Taurus in park, and turned off the headlights. She turned toward him. He loosened his seat belt, slid over, and they kissed and kissed and kissed in the land of “hell yeses” and “damn rights.”

When they saw headlights approaching in the distance, he slid back into his place and Alice drove on slowly until they came to the rickety bridge over the Sioux River. Ahead lay the forlorn little town of Ludson.

Just over the border she pulled over again, and again they kissed, even more intensely, more lavishly, than before, and reaching around him she found a spot between his shoulder blades that when she touched it his whole body arched, and she pulled him against herself, hard, to feel his chest against her breasts. Their breathing filled the Taurus with warm moist air that covered the windows with a soft mist.

When headlights of another car approached, she drove on. The sun had set and darkness pushed some stars into the sky. A crescent moon hung low to their left, and then they moved under the dull yellow streetlights of Ludson. The sad little town had one deteriorating small business after another. No malls in Ludson. She drove past the Lariat Restaurant where pickups and minivans had moseyed up to the curb, and then drove into the residential area.

Sweet and disheveled little Ludson was free of judgment, free of ostentation, free of anything familiar. If there were any churches, they were in hiding. The town catered to neither Seekers nor Dwellers. No one here
looked as if they were on the treadmill of bootless desperation or stuck in the ruts of contentment. Ludson showed the peacefulness of failure. Under the dim, single-bulb streetlights innocent but tough-looking kids on old bicycles swerved from one side of the street to another, while in the houses the colors from TV sets filled the windows. The kids hardly looked like achievers with their thin faces and unkempt hair, but they did look like a new generation of freedom addicts. Maybe they were restless. Maybe they were their own kind of Seekers, swerving over people's lawns and turning roadside curbs into ramps that sent them and their bicycles briefly into the air.

“I like this place,” said Nickson. “Feels like a place that doesn't care what the next person is doing.”

“I like it too,” said Alice. She reached toward him with her right hand, which he took in his, easily and gently, almost as if to give a soothing afterglow to their intense kissing. He rubbed the heel of her hand, then the palm and slid each of her fingers through his fingers, easily and gently, and she could feel the cares of the day easing from each finger as he slid it through his, and then the relaxed feeling spread up into her arm and farther to her shoulders and neck and back and down into her legs. He let go as she started to turn left at the next intersection and needed both hands.

She drove back past the Lariat, where a group of young men had gathered in a circle, all dressed like hard working farmhands with their seed corn caps and denim work jackets. They did not look up as the Taurus drove by, but Nickson's shoulders jolted back.

“What?”

“It's them,” he said. “It's those guys.”

“What guys?”

“Those guys that jumped me. All three of them. They're standing next to each other in that bunch of guys there.”

“I'm getting out of here,” she said, and accelerated.

“No,” he said. “Drive by again. I want to make sure. Come on, they won't see us—they're busy talking.”

All the tension reentered her body, but she accepted Nickson's reading of the situation. Those young men were so busy with each other that they'd have no reason to look at two people in a Taurus driving by. She did a U-turn at the next intersection and started back, but Nickson was
busy in his backpack. They were almost back to the Lariat when she saw what he had been looking for—in his right hand he held a black L-shaped thing, and with his left hand he shoved a flat rectangular tube into the handle. The streetlights made the barrel glow.

“Just in case,” he said before she could utter her horror. “It's okay,” he said and laid the gun on the floor between his feet, the muzzle pointed away from them.

She did not slow down as they passed the Lariat. She kept her eyes straight ahead and did not say a word.

“It's them, all right. It's them. They're dealing.”

She didn't have to announce that she was going to get the two of them out of there. She aimed the car out of town and did not speak until they had crossed the bridge out of South Dakota.

“Nickson,” she said. “Where did you get that gun?”

“One of my uncles,” he said. “When folks back in Saint Paul heard I got jumped, my uncle brought me this nine millimeter the night of the healing ceremony. He's just a year older than me and knows about these things. He taught me how to use it.”

“That thing really scares me.”

“I got caught off guard once,” he said. “Never again. Don't worry.”

“You wouldn't use that thing. You wouldn't shoot somebody.”

He sat silent, then picked up the gun, took the clip of bullets back out of the handle, and dropped the gun and clip into his backpack. “If they were trying to kill me or hurt you, I'd have to,” he said.

Alice kept her speed under the speed limit. She wondered how Nickson could suddenly be so calm again. As if nothing had happened. They passed the turn-off to the dirt road that would have led them down to the river, to the place she remembered where her father took her fishing as a little girl. She had imagined standing on the riverbank with Nickson, but she let that fantasy go. “We'd better get back to Dutch Center,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm real sorry about this.”

They rode in silence for a few miles, both staring out the front window as the white centerline stripes flashed rhythmically by. Then Alice said, “I've got a little bit of a nicer surprise in my backpack. Reach back. It's in the main compartment.”

Nickson pulled out the container of meatloaf. “You hungry?” Alice asked.

“This looks good,” he said. He took out the thick slice of meatloaf and bit into it. “Wow,” he said, “this
is
good. You make it?”

“My mom made it.”

“This is really good. She's a great cook.”

“No she isn't.”

“I like it,” said Nickson. “I like your mom.”

“You what?” Alice lifted her foot from the acceerator.

“I do. I like her. She's a straight shooter.”

“You don't even know her.”

“I watch her in church. I've seen her downtown. She knows who I am. She always says hi, and sometimes we chat for a couple minutes. She's kind of uptight, but she really seems to want to hear what I have to say.”

“My mother?”

“Sure. You tell me everything she says to you, and I can see that she might talk to you like that. A person knows where they stand with your mother. She doesn't sugarcoat anything. I like that.”

No, not again, Alice thought. Was a distorted version of her mother seeping out into the universe like a vicious virus, infecting people's minds?

“I can't believe what you're saying.”

“There's a lot of her in you—the way you cut through things and see the way things really are. You look a little bit like her too.”

“People say I look like my father. I still can't believe what you're saying.”

“You look like both of them. You have your father's strong chin and his stretchy walk. You have your mother's beauty, that long back, that slim waist and those sharp hips.”

“You've been looking at my mother's ass?” Alice did more than slow down more; she pulled off the road. She turned in her seat and stared at him.

“No! Not like that,” he said. “I just notice those things about your mother that remind me of you.”

Alice did not put the car back in gear. She kept looking at him. “What about those blank eyes? Do I have her blank eyes?”

“I don't see that. I don't see blankness. I see the eyes of somebody who's kind of puzzled by things and trying to figure them out.”

“She's puzzled, all right. She's downright bewildered. She's certifiably nuts is what she is. I can't believe she snowed you like this.”

Alice put the car back in gear and pulled onto the road.

After a mile of riding in silence, Nickson said, “I love you, Alice, and that means your family is in the picture. Your mom is who she is. Mine too.”

Alice looked at the speedometer. She was going only thirty miles an hour.

“Could you find some music?” she asked.

She drove without talking to the sound of soft rock. She was with a man who thought her mother was a straight shooter. Strange choice of words for somebody who carried a weapon that could kill people. This would have been the time to tell him that she never wanted to see him again, but that was not what she felt. She felt the opposite. She wanted to protect him from a world that would make him carry a gun. She wanted to be his shield against everything that was unfair. And if he could find a place in his heart to accept her mother, he had to be the most generous-spirited person in the world. She wanted to give herself to him, although her silence as she drove did not tell him that.

She dropped Nickson off at nine thirty. She turned the lights off to give him one last good-night kiss.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“I want to see you again,” she said. “Soon. And I'm sorry I smeared so much makeup on you. I was trying to hide my pimples.”

“I know,” he said, “but you don't have to hide anything from me.”

When he walked toward the house, she turned the headlights back on, only to see Mai in the kitchen window with her big friendly smile giving her a friendly wave. Alice waved back and drove off.

30

Alice fed the hogs and cattle and read her Shakespeare and generally showed the world that she was someone who was bravely carrying on, even with her parents going off to work at night and her sister Aldah becoming a resident at Children's Care. What others couldn't see was that Alice was caught in the swirl of it all, driven by a force that didn't let her mind pause and evaluate. Nothing made sense and yet everything was clear: she would do everything necessary to see Nickson.

Her life became a series of calculations. Doing her homework quickly cleared the path to see Nickson. Doing her chores efficiently cleared the path. She fell asleep thinking of him and got up thinking of him. She couldn't look at anything without thinking of what he might say about it. She couldn't speak to anyone without wondering what Nickson would think if he heard her voice. She couldn't listen to anyone without thinking of his voice in its place.

Except those times when the unwelcome voice of her mother came out of nowhere and replayed itself in her mind: “I see trouble brewing.” Alice hated that voice and would repress it quickly by turning to the tasks that stood between her and seeing Nickson. If Nickson heard her mother's voice, he might feel different about her too. But if Nickson actually liked her mother, Alice fantasized the possibility that Nickson's acceptance of her might mean that he could reason with her if and when that became necessary. One good thing Alice could say about her mother: she tended to accept, or at least tolerate, people who showed her respect, and Nickson apparently had done that.