Part 16 (2/2)

”I can't take it,” he said in a doomed voice.

”That's all right; I'll give it to you ,” she said, and tore the page out. Folding it up small, she put it into his coat pocket.

Moving with leisurely slowness, he put back the Green crayon. Then, holding his hands close to his chest, he pulled off one of his gloves and took the folded paper out. He thrust it into an inner pocket, glancing over his shoulder as he did so. n.o.body had noticed. Hastily he puked the glove back on.

”Thank you,” he said.

”You're welcome,” she replied.

At that moment gravity s.h.i.+fted, the steady racketing sound altered and became louder, and there were three distinct b.u.mps. n.o.body in the car seemed to notice. Many of the grownups were asleep and snoring, in fact, and did no more than grunt or s.h.i.+ft in their seats as the train slowed, as the nearest of the lights swam close and paused outside the window. It was a red blinking light .

”Ah! This is our stop,” said the elegant man. ”Summerland. Come along, Daniel. I think we've seen enough of the Dome Car, haven't you?”

”Yes, Father,” said the boy, b.u.t.toning his coat. The elegant lady yawned gracefully.

”Not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be,” she drawled. ”G.o.d, I hate being disappointed.

And bored.”

”And you bore so easily,” said the man, and she gave him a quick venomous glance. The little boy s.h.i.+vered, climbing out of his seat.

”I have to go now,” he explained, looking miserable.

”Good luck,” said the little girl. The lady glanced at her.

”I'm sure it's past your bedtime, little girl,” she said. ”And it's rude to stare at people.”

She reached down her hand with its long scarlet nails as though to caress, and the little girl dodged.

Two fingertips just grazed her eyelid, and with them came a wave of perfume so intense it made her eyes water. She was preoccupied with blinking and sneezing for the next minute, unable to watch as the family walked to the front of the silent car and descended the stair.

But she held her palm tight over her weeping eye and got up on her knees to peek out the window.

She looked down onto no platform, no station, but only the verge of the embankment where trees came close to the tracks.

There was a long black car waiting there, under a lamp that swung unsteadily from a low bough. The elegant couple were just getting into the front seat. The little boy was already in the car. She could see his pale face through the windows. He looked up at her and gave a hopeless kind of smile. She was impressed at how brave he was. She thought to herself that he would have made a good soldier. Would he be able to escape?

The train began to move again. People woke up and talked, laughed, commented on the meteor shower. She sat clutching her eye, sniffling, until her mother got up to see if she had fallen asleep.

”Did you get something in your eye?” her mother asked, her voice going sharp with worry.

The little girl thought a moment before answering.

”The rich lady's perfume got in it,” she said.

”What rich lady, honey? Don't rub it like that! Bill, hand me a Kleenex. Oh, what have you done to yourself now?”

”The lady with the little boy. They sat there. They just got off the train.”

”Don't lie to your mother,” said her daddy, scowling. ”Those seats have been empty the whole trip.”

She considered her parents out of her good eye, and decided to say nothing else about it. By the time she was bundled off the train, wrapped against the dark and cold in her daddy's coat, her eye had swollen shut.

It was red and weeping for days, even after they'd come home again, and her vision in that eye remained blurred. She was taken to an eye doctor, who prescribed an eyepatch for a while. The eyepatch was useful for pretending she was a pirate but did not help, and made her walk into walls besides.

She knew better than to tell anyone about the things she saw out of the other eye, but she understood now why the boy had wanted so badly to escape. She thought about him sometimes, late at night when she couldn't sleep and the long lights of pa.s.sing cars sent leaf-shadows crawling along her wall.

She always imagined him running through a black night country, finding his way somehow through the maze of wet cobbled alleys, hiding from the n.a.z.is, hiding from worse things, looking for the dome coach so he could escape; and he became clearer in her head as she thought about him, though that always made the headaches come. She would pull the covers over her head and try to hold on to the picture long enough to make the train arrive for him.

But somehow, before he could slip into the safety of the station, bright morning would blind her awake. Sick and crying, she would scream at her mother and knock her head against the wall to make the pain go away.

In the end the doctor prescribed gla.s.ses for her. She started kindergarten glaring at the world through thick pink plastic frames, and no one could persuade her she was not hideous in them.

Two Old Men.

It was Sunday, January 26, 1961, and Markie Souza was six years old. He sat patiently beside his mother in the long pew, listening to Father Gosse talk about how wonderful it was to have a Catholic in the White House at last. Markie knew this was a good thing, in a general kind of way, because he was a Catholic too; but it was too big and too boring to think about, so he concentrated his attention on wis.h.i.+ng his little sister would wake up.

She was limp on his mother's ample shoulder, flushed in the unseasonable heat, and the elastic band that held her straw hat on was edging forward under her chin. Any minute now it was going to ride up and snap her in the nose. Markie saw his opportunity and seized it; he reached up and tugged the band back into place, just incidentally jostling the baby into consciousness. Karen squirmed, turned her head and opened her eyes; she might have closed them again, but just then everybody had to stand up to sing ”Tantum Ergo Sacramentam.” The little girl looked around in unbelieving outrage and began to protest.

Markie put his arms up to her.

”I'll take her out, Mama,” he stage-whispered. His mother gratefully dumped the baby into his arms without missing a note. He staggered out of the pew and up the strip of yellow carpet that led to the side door. There was a little garden out there, a couple of juniper bushes planted around a statue of a lady saint. She was leaning on a broken s.h.i.+p's wheel. It had been explained to Markie that she was the patron saint of sailors and fishermen. Markie's daddy was a fisherman, and when he'd lived with them his mother had used to burn candles to this saint. Karen's daddy wasn't a fisherman, though, he only cut up fish at the big market on the other side of the harbor, and Markie a.s.sumed this was why Mama had stopped buying the little yellow votive candles anymore.

Karen tottered back and forth in front of the statue, and Markie stood with his hands in his pockets, edging between her and the juniper bushes 133 when she seemed likely to fall into them, or between her and the parked cars when she'd make a dash for the asphalt. It was a dumb game, but it was better than sitting inside. Every so often he'd look away from the baby long enough to watch the progress of a big s.h.i.+p that was working its way across the horizon. He wondered if his daddy was on the s.h.i.+p. The baby was quick to make use of an opportunity too, and the second she saw his attention had wandered would bolt down the narrow walkway between the church and the rectory'. He would run after her, and the clatter of their hard Sunday shoes would echo between the buildings.

After a while there was singing again and people started filing out of the church, blinking in the light.

Markie got a firm grip on Karen's fat wrist and held on until Mama emerged, smiling and chatting with a neighbor. Mama was a big lady in a flowered tent dress, blonde and blue-eyed like Karen, and she laughed a lot, jolly and very loud. She cried loud too. She was usually doing one or the other; Mama wasn't quiet much.

She swept up Karen and walked on, deep in her conversation with Mrs. Avila, and Markie followed them down the hill from the church. It was hot and very bright, but the wind was fresh and there were seagulls wheeling and crying above the town. Their shadows floated around Markie on the sidewalk, all the way down Hinds Street to the old highway where the sidewalk ended and the dirt path began. Here the ladies in their Sunday dresses shouted their goodbyes to each other and parted company, and Markie's Mama swung round and began a conversation with him, barely pausing to draw breath.

”Got a letter from Grandpa, honey, and he sent nice presents of money for you and the baby. Looks like you get your birthday after all! What do you want, you want some little cars? You want a holster and a six-shooter like Leon's got? Whatever his d.a.m.n mother buys him, honey, you can have better!”

”Can I have fis.h.i.+ng stuff?” Markie didn't like talking about presents before he got them-it seemed like bad luck, and anyway he liked the idea of a surprise.

”Or I'll get you more of those green soldiers-what? No, honey, we talked about this, remember?

You're too little and you'd just get the hooks in your fingers. Wait till you're older and Ronnie can show you .” Ronnie was Karen's daddy. Markie didn't want to go fis.h.i.+ng with Ronnie; Ronnie scared him.

Markie just put his head down and walked along beside Mama as she talked on and on, making plans about all the wonderful things he and Ronnie would do together when he was older. She was loud enough to be heard above the cars that zoomed past them on the highway, and when they turned off the trail and crossed the bridge over the slough her voice echoed off the water. As they neared their house, she saw Mrs. O'Farrell hanging out a laundry load, and hurried ahead to tell her something important.

Markie got to walk the rest of the way by himself.

Their house was the third one from the end in a half-square of little yellow cottages around a central courtyard. It had been a motor court, once; the rusted neon sign still said it was, but families like Markie's paid by the week to live here year in and year out. It was a nice place to live. Beside each identical clapboard house was a crushed-sh.e.l.l driveway with an old car or truck parked in it, and behind each house was a clothesline. In front was a spreading lawn of Bermuda gra.s.s, lush and nearly indestructible, and beyond that low dunes rose, and just beyond them was the sea. Off to the south was a dark forest of eucalyptus trees, and when Markie had been younger he'd been afraid of the monster that howled there; now he knew it was just the freight train, he'd seen where its tracks ran. To the north was the campground, where the people with big silver trailers puked in; then the bridge that crossed the slough, and the little town with its pier and its general store and hotels.

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