When they left home Ellie carried a very heavy backpack. Micah had a backpack and two Boy Scout sleeping bags, his own and his older brother’s. “Julius won’t mind,” he said. “Now he’s in dental school he’s got no time for campouts. Wow! Your pack clanks!”
“Canned food,” Ellie explained. “Vienna sausages, Spam, lima beans, I got everything. And a can opener!”
“Far out!”
They rode the local bus to the highway junction. Neither traveler had hitchhiked before but Micah assured Ellie that it was a breeze. “You just stick your thumb out, and it’s groovy.”
“How do they know where we’re going?”
“We’re standing on Northbound I-64, aren’t we? That’s the beauty of it. We’ve got all summer. However far our ride goes, that’s our karma.”
Still, Ellie was glad that Micah made the first attempt. For ten minutes or so he stood, arm extended and thumb protruding. The morning rush hour was over. As Micah had pointed out, commuters would be going to Newport News or Hampton — not far enough. Ellie took a turn and then they tried both together, she towering over him.
At long last a truck slowed down, passed, and pulled onto the shoulder. The driver leaned across to unlatch the passenger door and called, “Hustle, will ya? It’s illegal to stop on the interstate.”
They gathered up the packs and ran. Ellie climbed in first, then Micah. As soon as he banged the door the driver put the truck in gear. “You must be some of those beatniks,” the driver said. “Where ya going?”
“Boston,” Ellie said.
“That’s a long way. I’m from Louisiana myself, driving to Colonial Heights. I can get you as far as Williamsburg, though.” He was a middle-aged man, sandy haired and with a complicated rumpled face like a shelled walnut. The truck was medium-sized, not a semi or anything. A white plastic scroll with a verse from the 23rd Psalm on it was magnetized to the dashboard, and a magazine about dog racing lay on the floor. Ellie took in all the unimportant details with a fierce clarity, as if her eyes had just been washed clean. She would remember this forever, her first ride out into the world.
Across her Micah said, “Great, Williamsburg is on our way.” Ellie rather wished he had got in first, so that she could sit by the window. The warmth of the driver’s leg beside her own oppressed her, and she almost took a look at him. But she remembered her good resolutions in time, and instead stared steadfastly out the windshield. Probably living with Ruby had made her paranoid.
The truck entered the tunnel portion of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel. In the dim enclosed tube of tile and concrete the diesel engine’s roar and the steady thrum of the tires was refracted and amplified, taking on a thin high whine. Ellie felt like a bullet, exploding through a rifle barrel on the way to its unknowable goal. In all the years she had lived in the area Ruby had never driven through the tunnel. A new experience seized for herself already, and scarcely an hour from home!
Then they were through, nosing up and out into the sunshine on the broad unrolling highway. The driver had been talking all this time, his voice hardly audible over the tunnel noise but now blossoming with meaning. “ — what I mean by free love. I mean, when you beatniks say free love I get a definite picture in my head, you know what I mean?”
He nudged her heavily with a meaty knee. Repulsed, Ellie realized her gift had shafted her again. This slob of a driver was seeing an image of her that his own needs shaped. Wearily she cast about for something to turn his interest aside. She couldn’t just kick the encroaching knee away — their ride had to carry them to Williamsburg.
“I’m not really a beatnik,” she began. “I’m just keeping my older brother here company on the trip.” It wasn’t enough, and she grasped for something more. “He’s fifteen, too young to drive, that’s why we’re hitching.”
“And how old’re you?” the driver asked suspiciously.
“Oh, I turned eleven last month,” Ellie lied, shaving as many years off as she dared. She slumped, to hide her height.
“Eleven! Honey, you’re jail bait!”
“I guess,” she said, hiding her triumph.
“Why, a little girl like you shouldn’t be wandering the highways ’n’ byways. It’s not safe!”
“My big brother takes care of me.” She jogged Micah’s elbow and he said, “Yeah, man.”
“He’s not even old enough to shave! What about your parents, huh? What do they say?”
Once roused, Micah took over. “Our dad’s in the Navy, at sea. And Mom just died last month in a car accident.”
“Holy god!”
“So we’re going to our uncle in Boston.” Ellie elbowed Micah again, to shut him up. He could lie glibly, but he didn’t know when to quit.
Thankfully, Williamsburg wasn’t very far from Newport News. By the time the driver had explained that somebody, the neighbors or the local church or the Navy or somebody, should have bought them two bus tickets to Boston, the truck was at the interchange. Reluctantly the driver let them off. Micah waved a jaunty farewell but Ellie was already thumbing for their next lift.
“He was far out, wasn’t he? Too bad he wasn’t heading north.”
“I guess. This time, though, you sit in the middle.”
Their next ride was two women in a station wagon, then another truck. According to Micah’s map there was no bypass around Richmond. So they rode with the truck all the way downtown. Hitching was impossible in the city traffic, but it took an afternoon of wasted effort for Micah to admit it. Finally they took a bus north to the edge of town where I-95 became a proper interstate again.
Two more frustratingly short rides got them past the suburbs and into the countryside. The sun was setting in a red haze, and a few cars had their headlights on. “I’m ready to quit,” Micah said. “Let’s pitch camp and eat!”
“Yeah, let’s,” Ellie echoed. She hadn’t liked to make the first move. “How about over there behind those trees?”
Neither had thought to bring a flashlight, so walking through the field was a ticklish business in the gathering gloom. Ellie stepped into a small unseen hole, and the jounce made her bite her tongue. Micah’s shoulder-length brown hair got hooked up in some brambles. Mud squelched treacherously under their sneaker soles, and low branches slashed at their legs and plucked at the backpacks.
When they got to the trees the ground was far too muddy for camping. They stumbled on. Finally, exhausted and impatient, they settled in a little dip behind some bushes. “Gonna be a bitch, lighting a fire in the dark,” Micah grumbled. “Find some dry branches, Ellie, will ya?”
“You should have thought of that when we were bumping into them back there,” Ellie snapped. “These bushes won’t burn all night.”
“We can’t let it burn all night anyway. Someone’d be sure to see. All we need is enough fire to cook on.”
Muttering, Ellie felt in the pitch dark for branches and leaves. Micah started a tiny blaze, using up many matches. By this light Ellie found more sticks. “Okay, now it’s your turn to find wood.” She dropped an armload down and sat heavily beside it, then scrambled up again.
“Sit on your pack, the grass is wet.”
“Thanks, I noticed.”
Micah wandered off to search. Ellie opened her pack and took out a few cans and a small saucepan. The flames looked clear and clean but when she held the saucepan over them a layer of smoky soot quickly formed on the underside. Scouring powder, I didn’t bring scouring powder, Ellie thought grimly. Heck, I didn’t even bring a cake of soap. She felt grubby all over, but there wasn’t a prayer of getting a bath.
Micah came back dragging what looked like a small tree. “I had a hatchet in Boy Scouts,” he panted. “But I didn’t bring it. We’ll have to break this up with our hands.”
“You gotta be kidding!” But he showed her how to set the tree over a big rock. When they each stood on one end, see-saw style, the half-rotten log broke in the center.
“Lay ’em near the fire to dry out. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.”
“Pork and beans. And some crackers. We have to eat from the pot.” By the time the meal was eaten they could hardly keep their eyes open. Without discussion they unrolled the sleeping bags, crept in, and collapsed.
The wetness woke Ellie. What with the damp patch on the seat of her jeans, and her wet socks, and the marshy campsite, the sleeping bag was soggy by morning. It had not occurred to Ellie before that the sun came up so early. Her eyes felt grainy from woodsmoke and sleep, and her joints were stiff. Sleeping in your clothes wasn’t so great either. She yearned for a shower, to rinse off this itchy rumpled sensation.
Micah was grumpy too. He mislaid his glasses and when Ellie found them he was ungrateful. “Coffee. Why didn’t you bring coffee? And sugar, too.”
“I’m not carrying an entire pantry,” Ellie snapped.
Though everything was so damp there was no water to wash the saucepan in. Ellie wrapped it in a sheet of yellowed crackly newspaper from under a bush. They packed up and trudged back to the highway, munching dry crackers. “Canteen,” Micah complained. “I should have brought my old canteen. And a groundcloth. These bags must have ten pounds of water soaked in.”
When they reached the road there was no truck stop or highway restaurant anywhere in sight. Miserable, they held out their thumbs and waited for rescue. Then, a ride once achieved, it seemed foolish to waste it for a cup of coffee, when the driver planned to stop for lunch in Fredericksburg. Although she had read about it this was Ellie’s first experience of any physical hardship.
The truck was going into Fredericksburg proper, so Ellie and Micah got out at the bypass. There was a Howard Johnson’s there too. They treated themselves to a slow luxurious lunch, cheeseburgers and ice cream sodas. Ellie spent an hour in the ladies room. She washed most of herself with paper towels, and cleaned out the saucepan. She also brushed out her hair properly, cleaned her teeth, and changed her socks and underwear. It felt marvelous, like putting on her proper self again.
By the end of the day, after a few more hitches, they were in the Washington D.C. suburbs. Micah wanted to go right into town and see the sights, and Ellie agreed. “I’ve never been in a really big city, except Pittsburgh. I mean, Richmond doesn’t count. And this is the capital!”
“They’re all bureaucrats and fascists,” Micah said automatically, adding, “We’ve got to climb the Washington Monument.”
It was too late to go further tonight. This time they had dinner at a truck stop and then set up camp in a clump of trees near a cloverleaf. From pure tiredness Ellie slept deeply and well, her dreams full of the noise of trucks downshifting. When dawn woke her she felt great. “Wow, it’s gonna be a beautiful day. Look at the sunrise, Micah!”
Micah yawned and sat up. “You’re gonna embarrass me, Ellie, acting like such a rube.”
A few cartons of juice bought the night before made breakfast much more cheerful. Ellie felt she was really getting the hang of this nomad life. The world lay before her, open like a book. Why should she not tour the entire country? And then there were always ships and airplanes. She could go to Europe someday, visit Rome and London and Egypt. She could spread her wings and fly anywhere.
They thumbed a ride with a real live bureaucrat, a woman who worked in the Commerce Department. With her graying hair and sensible shoes she looked more like a grandmother than a capitalist tool. She told them where to eat — Reeves, a cheap cafe famous for strawberry pie — and when the museums opened. She let them off on the Mall a block from the Smithsonian.
Even Micah’s radicalism unbent that morning. The Capitol rose out of a low ground haze, tinted pink and saffron by the morning sunshine. It might have been the Emerald City of Oz. In the other direction the Washington Monument loomed quite close, only across the street. Far beyond, at the distant edge of the green lawns, the Lincoln Memorial shone clean and white. “I want to see everything!” Ellie exclaimed.
“You’re as bad as my folks. Let’s go to the Castle first, they give out maps.”
A lot of sights they eliminated right away. Ellie was sure that Congress and the Supreme Court would be boring. Micah assured her that Establishment art was a drag, so the National Gallery could be omitted. They decided to begin at the Natural History Museum, with its mummy and fossils, and work their way down the Mall.
At the museum they checked the heavy backpacks at the coat desk. An enormous stuffed elephant dominated the entry rotunda. Ellie listened with delight to the tape-recorded information dispensed around the animal’s pedestal, while Micah waited with a bored expression on his thin face. “C’mon, let’s see the skeletons. They’re way cool.”
It was a fascinating museum. Ellie had never seen so many stuffed birds, fish preserved in jars, and mounted animals. Micah condemned the displays as unnatural, one of his favorite words. “You’d learn more by seeing a live eagle,” he said. “A stuffed one is static, dead. You might as well cast it out of plastic.” They also toured the minerals and jewels section (“Should be sold to benefit the proletariat”) and the dinosaur bones (“Irrelevant to the class struggle”). Ellie always nodded and agreed with him, but enjoyed herself anyway.
At lunchtime they went out and sat on the grass under a tree. After lunch — hot dogs from a pushcart — they shared a discreet joint. “You think there’s anyplace to camp near here?” Ellie asked. “No way we’re gonna see everything today.”
“Down in the park near the Lincoln Memorial.” Micah said with confidence. “There’s a lot of thick brush and stuff. No one’ll see us if we don’t light a fire.”
Ellie got up. “Let me duck back in and use the can, then we can go down to History and Science.” She pattered back up the steps into the building. It was great that admission was free. Everything ought to be that way, she felt — open to all. Life could be so good if people would just trust and love each other. Ellie knew she had a handle on a great truth, and the certainty of it made her feet as light as thistledown up the granite stairs. She could have embraced everybody — the bored security guard, the fat tourists, their whiny children. Even the museum’s ladies’ room fit into her mood. The tall dim chamber, lined with echoing white institutional tile, seemed to embody the endless quest for bodily conveniences. With hot water and cold at her fingers’ command, and soap and paper towels in their dispensers, Ellie was mistress of luxuries that emperors had lacked. She used the facilities with reverence, knowing herself at a modest pinnacle of human achievement.
When Ellie came out from the cavernous entryway into the sunshine again the grass under the tree was unoccupied. Micah must have gone in to use the john himself. She sat down again. The sun was deliciously warm, and she meditated drowsily on how nice it would be to save some of this warmth for later tonight. Her sleeping bag wasn’t really thick enough. Just thinking about the sleeping bag made her drowsy, or maybe it was the joint. She closed her eyes.
Suddenly she woke, moving from sleep to consciousness in one sickening lurch. Her heart pounding, Ellie sat up and looked around. Everything seemed as it was, the hot dog pushcart and the tourists with their cameras, the sunshine slanting down onto the sidewalks. As she stared around she realized that was what had altered — the sunshine. The sun was getting low in the sky. She had slept away half the afternoon. And where was Micah?
Scared, she jumped to her feet. She ran up the steps into the museum and darted through a few exhibit halls, looking for him. Then a scrap of common sense came back. She asked the guard at the door. But he shook his head at the question. “Girl, I see a million visitors a day. I don’t even remember you, never mind your pal.”
Ellie wandered outdoors again. She had left Micah sitting under the tree. Where could he have gone? The sightseers flowed past like the current of a river. There was no one who had been on this sidewalk two hours ago.
Then her stunned brain took in the hot dog vendor, just now folding down the door of his cart for the day. “I’m closed now, miss,” he said to Ellie as she came up.
“I know — I mean, I don’t want to buy a hot dog, we had some at lunch. I was sitting over there, under that tree, with my brother. And now I can’t find him. Did you see where he went? He had glasses, and real long hair.”
The hot dog vendor, an elderly black man, nodded his head slowly. “Cops took him.”
“The cops! What for? was it —” The joint, Ellie thought crazily. They were lurking, watching, and they saw the joint.
“It was the dam’ stupidest thing,” the vendor recalled. “The kid got up, turned around and began to pee on that bush there.”
“Oh, for pete’s sake.”
“Park policeman, he saw and told the kid to stop. The kid blew his top, began yelling like a crazy man.”
Ellie could well believe it. She could almost hear Micah raving about nature and natural behavior, and flinging accusations of fascism and statism. He called everyone in a uniform a fascist, even ushers and members of marching bands. “And the cop got mad?”
“Took him away in a squad car.”
But the vendor could not even guess where the policeman took Micah. Nor could Ellie. She had a vague idea that policemen on the Mall were different from cops in the rest of the city, that they were FBI or something.
She went back into the museum and found a phone booth. She consulted the telephone directory but the listings under “United States” defeated her. There were pages and pages of them. She didn’t have enough dimes to call around. As she felt her pockets Ellie realized with a sinking heart that she didn’t have any money at all. Micah carried every cent.
“And marijuana in his pocket too. The pigs’ll keep him in jail forever.” She wiped away a tear of fright and anger, and tried to think. She could try to find Micah, or give up on him and go on alone. When she thought about this second possibility her spine seemed to chill and shrink. Traveling without money didn’t seem insurmountable. With cocky confidence Ellie relied on her shoplifting skills. At the worst, she could panhandle. It was the idea of being alone that was scary — no one to talk to, to argue with, to reinforce her courage. And belatedly she realized that losing Micah meant losing her destination too. His Uncle Whatsit might take them both in, but surely he wouldn’t care about Ellie alone. Anyway, she didn’t know his address.
Ellie marched down the hall from the phone booth to the security desk again. “Excuse me. My older brother was arrested out front by the police. How do I find him?”
The guard gaped in surprise, and picked up his phone. He had to call around, but at last he said, “He’s down at the Juvenile Detention Center on Indiana Avenue. You better get your folks on down there. Where are they, anyway?”
“Oh, they’re getting the car. Thanks a lot!” Quickly she ran out the big glass doors before he could ask her anything more.
It was a long weary hike to Indiana Avenue, but she hurried because the afternoon was already waning, and they might not let her in after business hours. She almost changed her mind when she saw her destination — a blank modern building like a white Roach Motel. Timidly she went in the revolving doors and told the man at the desk what she wanted.
“You bringing him some night things, a toothbrush and so on?”
“Yes — no!” Now she remembered the packs, abandoned in the museum cloakroom, and cursed herself. Well, she couldn’t get at them tonight — the museum closed at six. “I could bring them,” she lied, “if he’s allowed to get them. But first I’d like to see him, so I can tell our folks he’s okay.”
He sent her to another counter down the hall, where she had to fill out a long form. She lied freely on it, making up names of relatives, her Social Security number, and so on. As long as they didn’t compare it with Micah’s she didn’t care. Then she sat for a long time in a dingy waiting room. She was the last visitor of the day so it was empty, but the weary air smelled of cigarette smoke and anxiety. There were some tattered Life magazines but she felt too edgy to read.
Finally they let her into a cubicle furnished with two chairs and a table. In another minute a policewoman led Micah in. “Oh Micah, I’m so glad to see you!”
He glared at her through his thick glasses. “Ellie, you numskull! What are you doing here?”
“Micah, I don’t have a cent. You’ve got the money.”
“Oh, so that’s it! Well I can’t help you there,” he said bitterly. “They’ve taken all my stuff, the pigs. You’ve got the packs, right? They’ll have to do. You can live off the land. You shouldn’t have come, stupid! They’ve busted me for possession. And —” his voice trembled with fury — “They’ve phoned my folks! Dad’s driving up tomorrow!”
“Oh no, what a drag!”
“So you better split, Ellie. You shouldn’t have come. Now the fuzz know about you — what if they tell Dad? He’d probably call your mom.”
“Oh jeez, he wouldn’t.”
“It’s just the sort of thing he’d love.”
“I’d better get out of here.” Ellie glanced around as if Ruby might burst through the door at any moment.
“Yeah.” Micah’s voice was thick with self-pity. “God, I envy you. You’re free, and here I am in jail. The Man’ll keep me here, and throw me to my Dad. I’ve lost it all, forever. But you haven’t, Ellie. Fly like a bird. Think about me sometimes.”
Sympathetic tears stood in Ellie’s eyes. Flinging herself into the role she said, “Oh Micah, be brave. Don’t lose yourself. They don’t understand. But they can’t beat you until you let them.”
The policewoman came in so their little drama ended on a high note. Not until she got outside did Ellie remember about Micah’s uncle’s address. But now it wasn’t important. Staying with a friend’s relative might be a compromise, and Ellie yearned to be pure and free. Micah’s frustrated desire seemed to be contagious. A hazy delicious craving for liberty coiled in her belly like hunger. She wanted to be untamable, to fly on the north wind, to do anything. Every day was Independence Day.
A police car rolled slowly by down Pennsylvania Avenue. Two hard official faces turned her way and with a flash of vision Ellie realized the cops suspected her of something — vandalism or panhandling or being a runaway. There was nowhere to go, with the museums and buildings closed, so she kept walking, steady and even, matching her breath to her stride, her mood of elation shattered. The police car idled on down the street, menacing and silent as a thundercloud.
Using the gift seemed to clear Ellie’s head. She had been doing it all along, she realized. This push to be free, it was really Micah’s. She had read his desire, neat as you please, without even noticing what she was doing. Disgusted with her weakness she concentrated now on what she herself wanted. That craving in her tummy was hunger. She wanted food and sleep.
Ellie hated herself when she thought about those two heavy packs, crammed with canned food and cozy sleeping bags, locked in the museum. She consulted her map and plodded across to Constitution Avenue. The sun was gone now, sunk behind the looming granite facade of the National Art Gallery. The cars swished by with their headlights on. “This damn town is all museums,” Ellie grumbled. “Not a restaurant in sight!”
The area marked “Constitution Gardens” which Micah had pointed out on the map was a long way away. She took a detour north up to F Street, where the Reeves Cafe was supposed to be. Her stomach ached with hollowness. She had to eat something.
F Street was a little seedy, lined with small shops that were mostly closed. From a trashcan she took a newspaper to sleep under, and a large ragged dry-cleaning bag to keep out the damp. Golden light poured from Reeve’s windows, but she didn’t go in. A man got out of a car and pushed in through the revolving door. A glorious smell of baking rolled out. Ellie’s mouth watered.
Then she noticed that the car was still idling. A paper coffee cup sealed with a plastic lid stood wedged upright on the dashboard. A danish loosely rolled in bakery paper lay on the passenger side seat. She peered into the bright cafe window and saw the man taking some packets of sugar from the bin on the carryout counter.
Like lightning she whipped open the car door. As the revolving door whirred she seized the danish and the coffee. “Hey!” a bass voice shouted behind her. She turned to run and an enormous hand hooked onto the slack of her jacket. The coffee squeezed out under the lid, scalding her hand, and with a jerk she flung the cup backwards. Coffee squirted over the man’s front. “Yow! Shit!” he yelled.
Ellie ran, dodging down an alley and around a corner, clutching the danish in its slippery thin paper. No footsteps followed her. She slowed down, gasping, and unwrapped the paper a bit. Cheese danish was her least favorite flavor, but she wasn’t going to be picky. She felt no sense of triumph. If she had been a little smarter, she might have stolen the entire car.
That night was the longest and loneliest in Ellie’s experience. A thin fog rolled in off the Potomac, so that the Lincoln Memorial looked ghastly in its spotlights. She chose a little clearing in a thicket not too far south of the monument. Her newspaper blanket rustled with every movement. The thin plastic bag did nothing to smooth the bumps and roots beneath her. Small animals, invisible in the gloom, rustled through the undergrowth and chittered to each other. Were they squirrels — or rats? She dozed fitfully as the night wore on but never really slept.
By dawn she was chilled to the core, and starving. The museums didn’t open until ten. She didn’t think her stomach could hold out that long. Abandoning her bedding she hobbled towards the memorial. Maybe there’d be a snack bar or a meal van there.
She was surprised to see the memorial humming with activity. Maintenance men hosed and mopped the floors, the walls, even Lincoln’s seated figure. No one paid attention to her. Remembering her luck with the danish she scouted around out on the steps, and glanced in the trucks parked nearby. A lunch box or a thermos would be a godsend, but there was nothing. The disappointment brought tears of weakness to her eyes. She walked slowly towards Constitution Avenue, head bowed over her arms wrapped tightly around her hollow middle.
The mists of last night still loitered in the air. The sky was curdled and gray, the cement sidewalk dark with moisture. It didn’t actually rain, but seemed to be thinking about it hard. “If it rains I’ll die,” Ellie said aloud. “I’ll just lie down and die.”
She shuffled towards the hateful museum. It was twelve long blocks away. A bus pulled to the curb and let out a few early workers, then roared away down the street. The commuters brushed past Ellie without focusing on her, as if she were invisible. She wanted to scream at them, obscenities, pleas, threats, anything to get them to notice her plight.
Then she saw a shiny glint in a tuft of grass near the bus sign. She dove to grab it. It was a dime. Joyous in an instant she skipped down the sidewalk. A dime would buy a doughnut! What more could she ask of the universe? And it was only eight blocks to Reeve’s!
As she went Ellie watched for more lost coins, in the gutter and on the sidewalk. When she got to the cafe it was just opening up.
She checked the prices on the menu in the window, then pushed in through the door. She bought an enormous jelly doughnut, large enough to cover her two palms, and filched a handful of sugar packets. When she went outside again the sun was shining, and people bustled by seemed active and alive, not heartlessly uncaring at all.
On a full stomach the time passed more quickly. The minute the museum opened Ellie redeemed the backpacks and carried them in triumph out onto the grass. There she unpacked everything from both packs, laying the gear neatly out. Micah might have forgot a few dollars in a side pouch or a shirt pocket.
Among other things his pack held a fishing kit, a small mirror for signalling, a roll of toilet paper, a trowel, and a Boy Scout compass. Ellie sneered at all this unnecessary bulk and weight. Far more pleasing was the quarter in the back pocket of Micah’s spare jeans.
His pack was nicer than hers and she repacked everything she wanted to keep into it. She kept his clothes but dumped the Boy Scout stuff. Sorting through all their possessions seemed to commit her to going on. The very act of rerolling the sleeping bags into one bundle was decisive. She wasn’t going back.
When everything was strapped up as neatly as she could manage she unfolded the map. Micah had lifted it from the family car, and it covered the entire eastern United States. It was like opening a huge menu in a fancy restaurant, or leafing through the Sears catalog. Everything she wanted was somewhere on that map. All she had to do was get there. She daydreamed about Miami or Maine, Lake Erie or Long Island, for a long while. The sense of freedom, of a million roads opening before her, was intoxicating.
Then unaccountably she was musing over Scranton, Pa. Ellie could just remember living there, in the rickety mobile home that jumped and shuddered like a startled thing whenever anyone slammed a door. When she looked back along the years everything seemed brighter and happier long ago. She remembered Ruby washing the dishes and singing “King of the Road” and “When You Wish Upon A Star,” while water splashed in the tiny sink. She even remembered the rubber gloves Ruby had worn. They had been pink, a preposterous bubble-gum color that only pretended to approximate the hue of normal flesh. What happened to them? Ruby didn’t wear gloves any more to do the dishes. Neither did she sing.
Suddenly Ellie missed Ruby dreadfully. In vain she told herself that the Ruby of Scranton days was gone. Surely if she hitched to Scranton that Ruby would still be there. She wondered if Ruby was mad that she was gone. Had she screamed, or slammed doors, or perhaps called the police to report a missing girl? Ruby would never willingly approach the authorities. But perhaps she thought Ellie was kidnapped, murdered, dead in a ditch somewhere. Ellie found she was half-hoping that Ruby had been desperate and upset enough to consult the police after all.
A severe voice high above her said, “I hope you’re going to pick up all this litter.”
Ellie bit back a scream. Towering above her on a sleek brown horse was a park policeman. “Oh yes, yes, of course!” she lied, terrified.
The cop stared sternly down at her. “There’s a trash can over there.”
Guiltily Ellie bundled up her discards. After a long nerve-wracking moment the horse ambled off, swishing its tail. She thrust the stuff into the trash can and hurried off, shouldering the heavy pack. Ruby would never report her to the fuzz. A rat would sooner run to the cat.
Ellie hitchhiked north. When the first car stopped for her its destination was Hyattsville, Maryland. She instantly decided to go there. From there she rode north on the parkway, towards Baltimore. “I’ll know where I’m going when I arrive,” she told a driver who picked her up.
“Young people these days.” The man shook his head.
She felt taut and fierce and brave, a young hawk cleaving the air. How she wished she could hold on to that feeling, hoard it against the approaching night! But as the afternoon wore on her courage trickled hatefully away. She could almost see it dribbling off, as the shadows grew longer and the occasional car turned on its lights. What a spongy spiritless character she had, how slackly changeable, softer than butter in the sun! How could she ever accomplish anything, if she kept on copping out?
“All right,” she said abruptly. “I’ve arrived. Let me out.”
“What, here?” The driver gestured at the pastures on either side of the highway. “There’s nothing here! At least let me drop you at the next exit — there’s nothing there either, but at least there’s a cross-road.”
Grudgingly Ellie consented to ride a few more miles. At the exit she got out of the car with a gasp of relief. She had been traveling too long today, she decided. After all the worry that Micah had put her through she ought to take it easy.
The exit sign said, “Aberdeen” but the town was invisible from the highway. There were some gas stations and a motor lodge. As inconspicuously as she could Ellie strolled past them deep into the surrounding trees.
At least it wasn’t like last night, she told herself. She set up camp and opened a can of stew for dinner, enjoying her own experience and competence. But how lonely it was! The distant roar of traffic on I-95 was impersonal and uncaring as the wind. She longed for someone to talk to. Without companionship to while away the evening there was nothing to do after supper but sleep. She needed to get up early anyway. She put one sleeping bag into the other, so as to have a double thickness all around. After last night it was heavenly soft.
When she woke it was still dark, but the trees stood out stark and black against streaks of colorless light in the east. The neon sign of the motor lodge looked tired and wan, after blinking “Vacancy” all night. Ellie put on her sneakers and tiptoed to the parking lot. Only four cars were parked there. She crawled on her hands and knees between them, trying the doors. Two were locked up tight, but the passenger side door on the third car was unlocked. She opened the door. Quickly she rifled the glove compartment and fumbled along the dashboard. Nothing! Where else would a driver keep toll money? She pulled down the sun, visors and felt along the grimy floor but there wasn’t a cent.
She sighed with frustration and hurried to the fourth car. In the growing light she could see there was nothing on the dashboard. Ellie hadn’t realized how fast the dawn came. Pretty soon some early bird would be able to see her. But there, in a plastic cup wedged between the seat and the floor gear shift, were some coins. She grabbed the cup and ran, and just in time. The motel office door swung open and someone yelled, “Hey! hey you!”
Ellie scurried into the underbrush and cowered panting behind a thorny bush. When no one followed, she stepped softly back to her camping place. The cup held almost two dollars, mostly in pennies. If only that guy hadn’t been so watchful! Then she would have stayed another day, and tried the cars again. Now it’d be safer to move on.
That day was unfortunate as far as rides went. Time and again the cars that stopped were “only going to the next exit.” It took all day for Ellie to get beyond Wilmington. The town itself was a disappointment, not much bigger or more interesting than Norfolk. Somehow on the map strange cities looked much more exciting. Just beyond the city the map showed a large state park, and Ellie marked this down as her campsite for the night.
She set up camp on a heavily-wooded hillside, deep in the park. Ellie had never lit a fire before, and it was much harder than Micah had made it look. In the end she used half a book of matches and scorched her thumb.
She was choosing a can of soup for dinner when footsteps crashed and thrashed through the underbrush, far down the hill. She froze, can opener in hand — the fuzz! How stupid she had been, to light this betraying fire! She scooped dirt and wet leaves onto it but the flames continued to burn, perversely clinging to life. The noises were climbing, coming this way. She clutched the can opener and licked her lips. All I need is a few good lies, she told herself.
The climber came into view. He wasn’t a cop — just a drifter, like herself. She could have cried with relief. “Hi,” he said. “Whatcha cookin’?”
“Soup,” Ellie said.
“I’ll join ya.”
Nonplussed, Ellie groped for a polite formula. “I don’t have but one can,” she finally lied.
“That’s okay.” Uninvited, he sat down. He was unsavory — shaggy, with the grime ground into his knuckles in dark gray creases. He could have been any age under his shapeless hat and long sagging coat.
Ellie almost would have preferred a cop. Slowly she set about opening the can again. Perhaps she could get rid of him by feeding him. She sloshed the soup into the pan and set it at the edge of the fire. There was a long silence. “You put out?” the man demanded suddenly.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You put out?”
Ellie was fairly certain what that meant, and she said, “No.”
“Now you don’t mean that.” The man stood up, terrifyingly tall all of a sudden. There was something in his hand now, a thick stick or a short club which swung straight at Ellie. Sitting, she could not dodge quickly enough, and it caught her on the side of the head. She fell helplessly into the blackness, the cry for help silenced in her mouth.
Ellie came slowly to herself through thick gray blankets of fog. Her head felt like it was falling into pieces. With a whimper of shock she found she was half-naked and freezing. She rolled over and stared at the sky. It was full of light behind the clouds. Somehow the entire night had vanished.
When she sat up her stomach revolted. She gagged and retched, but brought up nothing. Of course — she hadn’t eaten any supper. She peered around, forcing her eyes to focus. Her pack, the sleeping bags — everything was gone.
She wanted to lie down in the muddy leaves and die, but it was too cold. Trembling, she groped through the litter, hoping to find her clothes. Her bare legs were streaked with dried blood, and she hurt all over. When she looked down at her torn shirt she saw the raw red scratches on her breasts. Her battered brain refused to grasp it for a minute, and then flashed a single image, of those filthy hands kneading her. She almost vomited again.
The jacket was gone, but she found her jeans trodden into the ground. Unthinking she pulled them on, then gasped at their icy muddiness. Something rustled, deeper in the woods. Ellie was seized with the fear that he was coming back. She covered her mouth with her hands to keep the sounds of terror inside, and staggered as fast as she could towards the highway.
It was a much longer walk than it seemed yesterday. Pain misted her vision, and she kept on jerking awake to find her legs motionless, her arms embracing a tree. Whenever she tripped and fell she had to rest a bit until her head stopped spinning.
When she emerged into the open she didn’t recognize the place. In her confusion she must have wandered off course. Here the highway perched high up on an embankment. She climbed it, digging her toes into the thin dry turf. Whenever she got too dizzy she sat down and leaned back against the hill, facing the way she had come in case of pursuit. Some deep instinct drove her on, insisting that safety and rescue waited at the top. Foggily she almost expected Ruby to be there, with the Rambler Nash pulled up on the shoulder.
At last she reeled over the edge of the embankment and up onto the roadway. For a while she crouched on the rough gravel shoulder, panting and blinking to clear her vision. Cars whizzed by a few yards away. The wind of their passing tugged at her hair, urging her to look up.
When she did she saw nothing. No buildings, no people — just traffic zooming by, unseeing and uncaring. Ellie felt too ill to be disappointed. Her headache was worse, and dimly she began to realize she might be seriously hurt. Of their own accord her feet began to shuffle forward, on around the curve of the highway. If I die I’ll die walking away, she thought.
She looked at it for a while before understanding what it was. All she saw at first was three dark holes, clustered close together in mid-air. Then she realized these were the ends of three gigantic concrete culverts, sticking out of the back of a flatbed semi. Far away at the front of the vehicle the hood of the rig was tipped forward. The driver perched on the engine housing, peering deep into the mysterious innards with the help of a flashlight.
Without thinking about it Ellie approached the back. The culverts gaped hugely, three or four feet in diameter. Ellie chose the lower right one and began to climb up.
It took several tries, to lever herself up so high off the ground without anything to step on, but she didn’t question the necessity. Doggedly she persisted, scraping her tattered knees raw on the rough cement edge. Once inside she crept deeper into the pipe, out of casual view. Then she slept, entombed in the curving concrete.
Ellie was aware of time passing, but the awareness was unimportant. Much more vital was the constant motion of her tiny space. Mostly her cradle joggled comfortably, but there were occasional jolts that rattled her around like a bug in a jar. And sometimes it didn’t move at all. The rough concrete held no warmth. She grew cold against it, so cold that her shivering eased and she became almost comfortable again.
She could never say how long she lay hidden there, but it must have been at least a full day. Suddenly she became conscious of a change in her cylinder world. The tube was tipping, angling up and then down. She clawed feebly at the curving concrete but there was nothing to hold. Helpless, she slid down and down towards the circle of light.
She hit the ground with a thump that knocked the breath out of her. Harsh light and roaring noises assailed her. “Holy shit,” somebody exclaimed. “What the hell’s that?”
After the long darkness Ellie couldn’t see. Her eyes watered. At some point in the journey she had soiled herself, and she cowered in shame. The dreadful roaring noise muted. Many feet in muddy work boots gathered around. A figure in jeans and a yellow hard hat squatted down to peer at her face. “You okay?” he demanded.
She couldn’t answer. Her mouth was perfectly dry. Someone passed a plastic bottle with ice and water in it. She sipped a little and the incredible coldness made her gasp and choke. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Where am I?”
“The Bronx. This is the fill.” She didn’t understand him. With difficulty she took in the towering crane, which still held her culvert suspended above the flatbed truck. That was where the nearest roaring noise had come from. All around huge earthmoving machines lumbered through red earth. The tortured ground shook with it. The workmen were talking over her head, arguing about her. Voices were rising, angry arms raising. But she couldn’t understand them. “I can’t stay here,” she mumbled, terrified. They were going to hurt her, rape her.
Then, with a bursting sensation like pushing a finger through plastic wrap, she saw again. Deliberately using the gift after so long seemed perfect and right. How crazy she must have been to give it up — like going around with her fingers in her ears pretending to be deaf. Tears ran down her dirty face.
She saw very clearly that the fill crew meant kindly by her. Someone was advocating the police and the hospital, while someone else insisted on consulting a person named Joseph. They wanted to help her. It had been so long since she was certain of anyone’s benevolence, and here were half a dozen workmen arguing about the best thing to do for her. How did regular people ever figure it out? She relaxed, half-sprawling on the dusty earth, and drank from the water bottle. She was safe now. Never again would she fail to check people out.
The workmen came to a noisy agreement. “Can you walk, girlie?” one asked her. “Or you want someone to tote you?”
She staggered to her feet, clinging to their huge calloused hands. Very gently they helped her into the high cab of a dump truck. “Sully’s taking her to Newark and he’ll drop you at Joseph’s house,” another one explained tersely. “You’ll be okay there.”
“Thanks,” she whispered. “Who is Joseph?” But the truck’s engine bellowed into noisy life, and they were off.
She looked Sully over carefully. He was an older man with a swarthy Hispanic face. They jounced along a dirt track through the construction site, swerving this way and that to miss heaps of cement culverts or stacks of steel re-bars. He was obviously too busy to answer questions, and Ellie found she didn’t want to ask any. Her head was still full of fog. She grew accustomed to the jounce and sway of the truck and the thunderous snarl of its gears. They had reached a paved road now. She closed her eyes and dozed.
Someone was shaking Ellie, shaking the ache in her head into wakefulness. A deep voice said, “Little girl, we are here.” She blinked and looked blearily around. Her door was open. Sully the truck driver stood at it pointing across the sidewalk. Ellie saw wide steps leading up to a large portico supported on leprous granite pillars. It looked like a city hall or a bank. With a large calloused hand Sully helped her down.
The truck was parked next to a fire hydrant on the busiest street Ellie had ever seen. It was very wide and chock-full of cars. People were blasting their horns and leaning out their windows to curse. Sully’s dump truck got many dirty looks. It was much too long for the space near the hydrant and the rear half jutted out into traffic. Sully didn’t seem worried about the tie-up he was causing. With old-fashioned courtesy he held Ellie’s elbow and guided her up the wide steps. Her knees wobbled with weakness.
Inside the portico were huge wrought-iron doors. While Sully pushed the doorbell Ellie stared bemusedly at the brass plaque beside the doors. It read, “Joseph’s House. It is not the will of my Father Who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Matt. 18:4.” The words swam over her eyeballs without imparting any meaning.
A lady opened the door and talked to Sully. Then suddenly Sully said, “Okay little girl, everything’s gonna be all right now. You be good.” And he was gone, bounding down the steps and climbing back into the dump truck.
Ellie blinked. Her brain couldn’t seem to move fast enough. She didn’t think to say thank you until the truck had eased out into traffic. The horns blared and a bus trying to squeeze past nearly got creamed. “Come on in, dear,” the lady said, and led her inside.