AT DAYBREAK MABEN WOKE ANNALEE AND TOLD HER TO GET dressed. Hours gone now. Enough time for the body to be taken away and examined. Enough time for men in uniforms to have combed the cruiser and the roadside. Enough time for word to have spread. Annalee asked why are we leaving and Maben said because we got to go and the girl moaned at walking again. Get up I said. We don’t have time for this.
When they were dressed Maben put the few remaining bills in her pocket and said I’ll be right back. She walked over to the café and stopped at the cash register. The same waitress from yesterday came over and said I bet you slept good.
Maben nodded and handed her the key and the girl said thanks but Maben didn’t answer. She turned to walk out and noticed two men sitting at the counter, one with his glasses on top of his head and rubbing at his eyes while he waited on the other man in a black suit to finish talking on the phone. Maben hurried out and across the lot and Annalee was standing in the motel room door. Maben stepped around her and picked up the garbage bag containing all they owned and said let’s go.
“I’m thirsty, Momma.”
“Come on. We’ll get something down the road.”
“Why can’t we get something here?”
“Because I said so.”
She had wrapped the deputy’s pistol in a shirt and buried the shirt in the middle of the rest of the clothes. They walked out of the parking lot and to the interstate and turned north. Four miles to McComb. Not far after that. The morning sun met them without regard and they were both redfaced within a mile. Cars passed on their way to work. Or to wherever. She kept thinking of tossing the pistol into the weeds or into a ditch but there was too much traffic and she didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to be noticed or remembered. And she hadn’t completely convinced herself that having a pistol was a bad idea no matter who it belonged to or how she got it. Maben and Annalee walked on and gusts brought the wind to them but it also brought dust and sometimes rocks with the wind. In a little more than an hour they saw the exit sign for McComb. One mile.
“Is that it?” the girl asked.
“That’s it.”
“Where are we going when we get there?”
“Somewhere. Just keep on.”
She had lain awake the rest of the night wondering what to do. And she still didn’t know. So they were heading toward the shelter. It was another two miles along a four-lane. They walked on past used car lots and hardware stores and liquor stores and Maben finally let them stop at a gas station that had a picnic table at the side of it. The table was in the shade of the building and mom and child sat down with cold drinks and powdered doughnuts. They finished up and walked on again, Maben promising the girl that it wasn’t much farther. Another half hour and they could see the downtown buildings and Maben thought she remembered Broad Street being the street closest to the rails. The bag was getting heavier with each step and Maben’s shirt was soaked through with sweat. The child’s forehead was red and wet and her face seemed stuck in a squint.
Maben hadn’t noticed it but creeping up behind them in the southern sky had been thick gray clouds and still blocks away from the shelter they were startled with a snap of lightning and then came the thunder. The sunlight disappeared almost instantly and a moodiness fell around them and at a street corner Maben looked down to the left and she saw a pavilion and playground equipment and she pulled the child and said hurry on this way. They walked as fast as their tired legs would take them as the wind kicked up and then the first drops fell, fat drops that hit the pavement like nickels. They were nearly there when the bottom fell out and by the time they had made it under the pavilion they were as wet as if they had been dipped into a pool. Maben set the garbage bag on top of a picnic table and she shook her arms and head and the child did the same.
Gray hovered in every direction and it looked like they would be there for a while. Maben realized they were next to the cemetery. The rain washed the footprints from the playground slides and seesaws and puddles began to form in the holes that had been dug in the sandbox. Annalee walked over to the edge of the concrete where the drip from the roofline hit in tiny claps and held out her arms and let the water splash on her wrists. Maben sat down on top of a picnic table with her hand propped under her chin. She watched the rain bounce off the swing seats and then she turned and stared across the graveyard that sat next to the playground and she wondered whose bright idea it was to put the playground next to the graveyard. The gravestones looked slick in the rain and the red dirt of a fresh grave was turning to mud. The thunder roared and roared and there were quiet flashes of lightning and then the rain came harder and an unexpected gust of wind brought it to them. Annalee squealed and she ran over to her mother and Maben helped her up onto the table next to her and the rain beat on the pavilion roof and the sound of their desolation was even greater than it had been before.
The storm came on strong and then it left as quickly as it had arrived. They walked into downtown with steam rising off the sidewalks and streets. Shop owners set plants and sidewalk signs upright and at a café customers sat around tables eating toast and drinking coffee. Church bells rang from somewhere. Deep and resounding chimes that caused the child to look up into the sky. Maben switched the bag from shoulder to shoulder, both sides tired now. Curious eyes followed them. These wet and worn people. A big one and a little one. The blisters on Maben’s heels burning and bleeding. At the end of Main Street they ran into the railroad tracks and she was right. Broad Street ran with the tracks. Maben set the bag on the sidewalk and bent over with her hands on her knees and the child patted her on the back and said it’s okay Momma. Maben forced a smile at her and raised up and looked one way and then the other. No sign of Christian Ministries Family Shelter and she had forgotten the number. Only remembered Broad Street. There was nothing to do but keep walking. A police car eased up behind them and from the rolled-down window the officer asked if they needed anything and Maben said no. But then she asked about the shelter.
“Other way,” he said. “Hop in and I’ll take you down there.”
“That’s okay,” Maben said. “We’re wet.”
“Don’t matter.”
“We’re okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” he said and he drove to the end of the block and turned right.
They retraced their steps back three blocks to where they started and crossed the street. Several more blocks and they moved out of downtown and walked past hundred-year-old houses. Some with boards across the windows and sagging porches and some rejuvenated with paint and new roofs and flower beds. Up ahead at a depot an engine pushed a railcar into another railcar and there was the sound of clashing steel and after that Annalee walked with her eyes on the train cars and she was still watching them when her mother said this is it.
It looked like it might have once been a church or a schoolhouse. It was brick and rectangular and behind the front desk was a row of partitions that stretched to the back of the building and between the partitions were cots and small dressers and nightstands. The woman at the front desk wore her gray hair pinned on top of her head and she was small but sure when she looked at Maben and Annalee and asked them what they needed.
“We need a place to stay,” Maben said and she dropped the garbage bag on the floor next to the girl. The woman came from around the counter and bent down to the child and asked her if she wanted something to drink. Annalee nodded and the woman called out and a teenage girl appeared from an office to the right.
“Bring us some water. Towels, too,” the woman said and the teenage girl went back into the office and returned with two bottles. The first thing both Maben and Annalee did was to press the cold bottles to their foreheads. The grayhaired woman pointed them to chairs lining the wall and the three of them sat down. Maben rubbed the towel over her head and then did the same for Annalee.
The woman said that her name was Brenda and then she began asking questions that Maben answered. Hardly any answers the truth. Annalee drank in silence, finishing her bottle before her mother. When Brenda seemed satisfied that the woman and child legitimately needed the place she explained that they had room but that it was only temporary. She didn’t explain what that meant. Today is Friday and we’ll start your clock. There is a small kitchen but if you mess it up you clean it up. We got the basics, so don’t go looking for a menu. No men allowed into the building at any time. If that rule gets broke you’ll be asked to leave immediately. We can put two cots in the same room so that you and the child won’t be separated. There are showers and towels and soap. Washer and dryer. I’m here all day and somebody else comes in at night and the door locks at eight o’clock and you gotta have a password to be let back in. And if you want to work there’s a café downtown that will let you wash dishes and work in the kitchen.
Then she asked what was in the bag.
“Everything,” Maben said.
The garbage bag had punctured and torn and clothes pushed out of the holes.
“Let me get you something else,” Brenda said.
“No,” she said and she pulled it toward her. “This is fine. Can you show us our spot?”
“That’s easy enough seeing as you’re it right now. Had one woman run off God knows where over the weekend and another end back up with her boyfriend. Same one she ran from in the first place. It never ends. You can pick wherever you like. All the spots are about the same size. You might want to get toward the back, though, cause the train don’t tiptoe when it comes through.”
They picked a spot in the back close to the kitchen and the bathrooms and underneath a tall window because Annalee wanted to see the moon when she lay down to go to sleep. Maben dug through the bag and pulled out dry clothes for both of them and they changed. She wanted to unpack the entire filthy wad but had nowhere to put the pistol so she shoved the bag underneath her cot. She went into the bathroom and washed her face and she wet a cloth to wipe Annalee’s face but when she returned Annalee had fallen asleep. Maben touched the cloth to the child’s forehead and then she put it down and she lay down on the cot next to the child and the walking and the worry caught her and she closed her eyes and dreamed of sirens and strange men doing whatever they wanted to do with her and she awoke with a quick shout. She looked around. Figured out where she was. Looked at the child who hadn’t been bothered by her mother’s shout and slept on.
Maben stood up and went into the bathroom and she sat down on the toilet. Buried her face in her hands. Began to breathe as if she’d climbed the stairs of a tall building. She felt herself beginning to sweat and she stood off the toilet and paced back and forth in front of the mirror. Tried to calm herself by humming and then singing but she couldn’t think of a song so she turned on the faucet and splashed water on her face and told herself to breathe like a normal human but that was damn near impossible.