Part 8 (1/2)

”Go back, then,” she said. ”I won't bother you.” A train whistle sounded in the night. My arms were folded. She gripped my hand.

”I'm going to run away by myself,” she whispered, close to my ear. She cleared her throat and swallowed and sucked back her nose. ”I'm crazy,” she said. ”I don't care what I do.”

She didn't say anything for a while. I lay beside her, breathing. Then she kissed me, suddenly, hard on my neck, underneath my ear and shoved in closer to me. I didn't mind her kissing me. It made me feel safe. She let go of my hand and moved hers, which was rough and bony. ”I wanted to do it tonight with Rudy,” she said. ”But I'll do it with you.”

”All right,” I said. I wanted to. I didn't care.

”It won't last that long. We did it already, in his car. You should know about it, anyway.”

”I don't know about it at all,” I said.

”Then you're perfect. It won't even matter. You'll forget about it.”

”All right,” I said.

”I promise you,” she whispered. ”It's not even important.”

And that's enough to tell. It doesn't bear repeating. It meant little, what we did, except to us, and only for the time. Later in the night Berner woke and sat up and looked at me and said (because I was awake), ”You're not Rudy.”

”No,” I said. ”I'm Dell.”

”Well, then,” she said. ”I just wanted to say good-bye.”

”Good-bye,” I said. ”Where are you going?”

She smiled at me-my sister-then she went to sleep again with my arms around her in case she was cold or scared.

Chapter 35.

It was strange to wake up in the house with our parents not in it. We'd waked up without them there not that long before-when they'd gone away to rob the bank-but this time, Monday, everything was different. They were in jail-we a.s.sumed they were-and we had no idea what would happen to the two of us.

I slept all the way to eight-until my room was steamy from sunlight and I woke up sweaty. The hall fan was going again. Berner wasn't in my bed. The sheets beside me were cold as if she hadn't been there for some time. Through the walls traffic hummed on Central. An airplane took off up the hill at the airport. It occurred to me Berner had left, and I would have to make my way through the day alone.

She was in the kitchen, however, when I got dressed. She had re-cooked the steak from last night and eaten part of it and left a square on a plate for me-which I ate with cold milk. The house still smelled like beer and cigarettes. I thought we should take the garbage out before it got hotter.

Berner had dressed in her Bermuda shorts, which she hardly ever wore and that showed her hairless freckled legs and long feet. She had on tennis shoes and a sailor blouse and had taken a shower. She'd brushed her hair back and held it with a red rubber band. There was no talking about what had happened in the night. She didn't seem unhappy about it, and neither was I. We weren't the same people we had been, and that was good in my view.

”We have to go to see them,” Berner said, was.h.i.+ng her plate and mine in the sink, staring out the window at the side yard-the badminton net, the neighbor's house, one pole of the clothesline. ”If we don't, they'll get taken someplace, and we'll never see them.” With her wet fingers she picked up a newspaper off the counter and dropped it on the table where I sat. ”Somebody left us a nice present inside the porch screen.”

It was the day's Tribune, folded to display pictures of our parents-two separate ones, side by side-taken in jail. They were each holding a white card that said ”Cascade County Jail,” with a number underneath it. Our father's black hair was disheveled, though he was smiling. Our mother's mouth was tense and turned down in a way I'd never seen her look. She was wearing her gla.s.ses and her eyes were close together and were opened wide and staring out, as if she was gazing at a terrible scene. The headline read ”N.D. Bank Robbers.” Whoever left the paper had straight-pinned a handwritten note to the top of the page that said: ”Thought you'd like to see this. I'm sure you're very proud.”

I was surprised anybody would leave this for us. It made my hands tremble when I saw it. Our parents had robbed the Agricultural National Bank in Creekmore, North Dakota, last Friday morning, the story said. A gun had been involved. The sum of $2,500 was taken. Our parents had fled to Great Falls and been arrested in a rental house on the west side of town. Our father, whose name was put in quotation marks (”Beverly,” as was our mother's, ”Neeva”), was described as an ”Alabama native” who was discharged from the Air Force and had been watched for some time by the Great Falls police on suspicion of committing crimes that involved Indians from the Rocky Boy reservation. Our mother was described as being from ”Was.h.i.+ngton State” and as teaching school in Fort Shaw. She had no prior arrests, but an investigation of her citizens.h.i.+p was under way. They were to be extradited to North Dakota in the coming week. No mention was made of any children.

Berner was letting water drain out of the sink. ”They're just liars. Like everybody else,” she said.

I couldn't remember anything they'd lied about. Then I thought of the gun. It was a terrible surprise to read this in the newspaper-almost as bad as to know about it. ”Extradited” was a word I knew from TV. It meant they wouldn't come back. The packet of money was probably what they'd stolen, and we shouldn't keep it.

”If we go to the jail, they'll grab us,” Berner said matter-of-factly. She walked to the front window that looked out on the street and the park. Morning light was sharp and bright on the top of a car parked in front of the Lutherans. Fluffy clouds ran along above the trees against the perfect sky. ”We still have to go, of course. Even if they are liars.”

”Yes,” I said. ”I want to.” I didn't want to get handed over to the juvenile authorities, but there wasn't any choice. We couldn't not go to see them. ”What'll we do after we see them?” I wanted Berner to be a.s.sured we'd get away.

”We'll go have lunch at the Rainbow Hotel,” she said, ”and invite all our friends and have a big party.”

Berner never told jokes-something our father said was like our mother. She didn't have a funny bone was what he said. But saying we'd go to the Rainbow Hotel and invite our friends made me think maybe she'd been telling jokes all the time, and no one knew it. Nothing about Berner was simple. She turned at the window, folded her arms and looked at me, staring hard at my forehead the way she did when she wanted me to know I wasn't very smart. Then she smiled. ”I don't know what we're going to do,” she said. ”Whatever children do whose parents are in jail. Wait for something bad to happen.”

”I hope nothing does,” I said.

”You don't have to go looking for it,” Berner said. ”It finds you where you're hiding.”

It's possible some people are born knowing things. Berner had figured out already that everything that had happened in the last day and night had happened to us-not just to our parents. I should've known that. I was so much younger than she was, even though our ages were the same. Over the years, I would never know the world as well as she did-which is good in many ways. But, in many other ways, it's not at all.

Chapter 36.

The jail was in the rear of the cascade county Courthouse, on Second Avenue North. We'd driven past it two days before with our father. I'd ridden my bicycle by it on the way to the hobby shop. It was a large, three-story stone building with a wide lawn and concrete front steps, a flagpole, and the number 1903 chiseled into the stones above the entrance. Old oak trees shaded the gra.s.s. On the high roof was a statue of a woman holding a scale-which I knew had to do with justice. When you pa.s.sed the courthouse you'd sometimes see sheriff's cars, and deputies escorting people wearing handcuffs into and out of the building.

Berner and I made a complete tour around the block before we went in. We wanted to determine if we could see cell windows from the street, which we couldn't. When we walked into the echoing lobby, right in front of us was a sign that said JAIL IN BAs.e.m.e.nT-NO SMOKING. No one else was in the lobby. We went down a flight of shadowy steps to a metal door that had JAIL painted on it in red. This door we went through, and beyond it was a hall that ended at a lighted office behind a gla.s.s window. A deputy in a uniform sat at a desk behind the window, reading a magazine. Behind him-this was unexpected-you could see right to a barred door beyond which was a concrete corridor where jail cells lined one side. Opposite the cells was a long wall with barred windows at the top that let in pale light that looked cool and pleasant, although it was obviously a bad place to be. Our parents would be in there.

When Berner and I had walked from our house across the Central Avenue Bridge, past the Milwaukee Road depot, into the downtown and over to the jail, the morning had been bright and warm with the same high fluffy western clouds that flattened over the mountains, heading east to the plains. The river had smelled sweet in the heated morning breeze. Once again, people were canoeing on it, the last of the summer. We'd brought two paper sacks with toiletries we'd decided our parents would need in jail. My father's safety razor. A bar of soap. A tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, a tube of Barbasol, the bottle of Wildroot, a comb and a hairbrush. Berner had brought things for our mother.

As we crossed the Missouri there was plenty of Monday morning traffic. Twice I thought a car pa.s.sed that had some boy I knew from school inside it. Berner and I wouldn't have stood out-two kids walking across the bridge, carrying paper sacks. Invisible people. Again, though, if I'd thought someone recognized me and had an idea I was going to the jail to visit my parents who were locked up, it would've been too much for me. I might've jumped in the river and drowned myself.

The deputy behind the gla.s.s was a big smiling man with carefully parted short black hair, who seemed glad to see us. Berner told him-through the speak-hole-who we were and that we thought our parents were locked up in there, and we'd like to visit them. This made the deputy smile even more broadly. He left his desk and came around through a metal door beside his window and into the room where we were-it was just the end of the hall and had plastic chairs bolted to the floor, which was painted brown. It smelled like piney disinfectant, plus something sweet like bubblegum. The jail was a place you smelled more than anything else.

The deputy said he needed to see what was in our ”pokes,” which was a word my father sometimes used. We showed him our sacks. He laughed and said it was nice of us to bring these articles, but our parents didn't need them and jail rules forbid gifts. He'd keep them and we could take them back home. He was a heavy, moon-faced man who filled out his brown uniform. He had a severe dipping limp that made him have to reach and touch his leg above his knee at every step. Each time he did it his leg made a soft, metal click sound. I a.s.sumed his leg was wood. A wound from the war. I knew about that. He could only be a sheriff if he agreed to be the jailer. I believed we might see Bishop and the other, red-faced policeman who'd arrested our parents, that they'd recognize us and talk to us. But they weren't in sight, which made the experience of being there even stranger.

Once the jailer-who didn't tell us his name-had taken our sacks and made us pull out our pockets and show inside our shoes, he went back in his office and came out with a big metal key. With another smaller key, he unlocked the door he'd come out of and that had CELL BLOCK written on it and led us back through. Beyond the metal door the floor was painted pale yellow and felt much harder and colder through my shoes than our floor at home. My shoe soles seemed to stick to it. This was how anyone locked up inside felt-that jail existed for the opposite reason from why your home existed.

While we were walking to the jail, Berner and I had talked about what we would say to our parents. But once we were inside, and the barred door behind the deputy's desk was unlocked using the big metal key, we didn't talk. Berner cleared her throat several times and licked her lips. She was wis.h.i.+ng, I thought, that she hadn't come.

Beyond the first barred door was a s.p.a.ce just big enough for the three of us to stand in, then another barred door, which made breaking out impossible. Inside, it smelled like the same piney disinfectant but with food odors and maybe urine, like the boys' room in school. The door-opening noise echoed off the concrete. A black hose lay coiled below a faucet on the long wall, and the floor, which wasn't painted there, was damp and s.h.i.+ny.

No one was visible down the row of cells. A man's voice-not my father's-was speaking on a telephone somewhere. Outside the high barred windows across from the cells, a basketball was being dribbled and feet were scuffling. Someone-a man-laughed, and the ball bounced off a metal backboard just like in the park where Rudy and I had played earlier in the summer. Except for the watery green light filtering from outside, the only light came from bulbs high in the concrete ceiling and protected by wire baskets that barely let any light reach the floor. It was like a shadowy cave to be there. I thought it was exhilarating, although the feeling was lessened by our parents being inside.

”Not many guests with us, today,” the crippled deputy said as he let us through the second barred door and locked it back. He wasn't wearing a pistol. ”They check out early on Monday. They've had enough of our hospitality. We generally see them again, though.” He was cheerful. A tiny red transistor radio had been propped up on his desk, and I could hear Elvis Presley singing at a low volume. ”We're paying special attention to your mom in here,” the deputy said. ”Your dad, of course, he's a real pistol.” He began leading us down the concrete corridor, which shone in the green light and shadows. The first cells we pa.s.sed were empty and dark. ”We don't expect to have your folks in here with us too long,” he said, his leg clicking and being hauled along. He was wearing a hearing aid that filled his left ear. ”They're off to North Dakota Wednesday or Thursday.”

Then unexpectedly we were in front of an occupied cell, and there our father was, seated in the partial dark on a metal cot with a bare mattress that had its white ticking falling out in wads on the concrete. Something made me think he'd cut it open himself.

”You two kids shouldn't be here,” our father said loudly, as if he knew we were coming. He stood up off his cot. I couldn't see him very well-his face, especially-though I saw him lick his lips as if they were dry. His eyes were wider open than usual. Berner had kept on walking and hadn't seen him. But when she heard his voice she said, ”Oh, I'm sorry,” and stopped and she saw him, too.