CHAPTER FIFTY

On the far side of the picnic grounds, Luke skids the car to a stop. He and Daisy jump out. Luke is still unsteady on his feet, but he’s using every bit of his strength to charge ahead, clumsy and ungainly, but moving fast. They both dive right into the middle of the crowd.

“You take that side,” Luke calls, “and we’ll meet up at the end near those booths.”

“Right,” Daisy says. Neither of them considers how disreputable and out-of-place Luke looks. How unlike the happy groups of clean, crisply dressed suburbanites he is, with his bruised, swollen face accentuated by a four-day growth of beard, his wild and messy hair, torn jeans, and bare feet. And the fact that he’s running through a crowd that’s leisurely milling.

Almost instantly, he’s noticed. The response that follows in his wake is hostile. But Luke picks his way so quickly through the clots of people, head bobbing back and forth in search of Lucy, that he’s gone before anyone can stop him. But as he passes through the crowd, each person stops and turns his head, trying to follow the stranger.

Luke doesn’t even look at their faces as he whips past, his eyes focused downward, searching for the little girl. He’s not aware of the commotion he is causing until someone grabs his arm.

“Hold on there!” A burly, beer-bellied hulk stops him.

Luke tries to free himself, but the man’s grasp is like iron.

“Let me go. I have to find someone. It’s a matter of life and death.”

The minute Luke says the words, he regrets them. The fact that they’re true doesn’t alter the fact that they sound so bizarrely melodramatic. That attitude, combined with his appearance, makes the situation even worse.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“It doesn’t matter. There’s a little girl in danger and I have to find her.”

“Yeah, I know, life and death. You don’t belong here.”

By now, an unfriendly crowd has materialized around Luke.

“Who is he?” someone asks, and someone else answers, “Some kind of nut.”

“Hey! I know that guy. He lifted a bottle of vodka from my store! He’s a thief! Lemme at that son of a bitch!”

The big man holding Luke twists Luke’s arm behind his back. The barman grabs his legs, and they start pulling him to the ground.

“Watch out! He’s crazy!” someone shouts. Luke fights, but the more he struggles, the more people jump in to restrain him. Finally, buried under a mountain of men and women, Luke’s fragile strength is exhausted. He’s physically overwhelmed.

But still he shouts, “Let me go! I have to find her!”

It’s no use. He’s powerless, trapped under the weight of flesh and bone that holds him as fast as the beams and concrete of his sewer prison. Once again, he’s an impotent, a homeless man, a drifter, a bum, the nonperson to whom the children reduced him.

“Daisy! Daisy!” he shouts. His last chance, but there’s no way she can hear him through the noise of a thousand people enjoying a carnival picnic.