The cry of a siren floated through Chris’s dream. On the TV screen were crowds of civilians and soldiers and police. Fighting, battling in the streets of some far-off city, on a continent where the most terrifying beasts in the jungle now carried clubs and wore uniforms and masks of hatred.
He was sitting in the big stuffed chair with his grandmother, and the scene played before them on the old console television in her living room. But he knew it wasn’t just a movie. He was only a little kid, but he knew it was real. He could tell by the look on his grandmother’s face and the way she shook her head. And then she had said it—a quote from the Bible that he would hear her utter often over the years to come. “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
The wail of the siren became the screech of the alarm clock, and he woke up. He sat upright and swung his feet to the floor, fumbling in the dark for the clock radio. He switched off the alarm. His grandmother’s words hung in the air like a rain cloud, weighing on his senses, dampening his hopes.
What had he sown? And what was he now going to reap?
Pat was sitting up in bed. Chris could make out his shape in the dim light filtering in from the street lamps. And he was saying something.
“What?” Chris said.
“You didn’t hear me?” Pat said. “Where were you, dreamland?”
“Something like that.”
“I said, are you ready to go get your little sister?”
Chris was surprised to find that he was ready. Despite the dream and what it had done to his spirits just a moment earlier, he was ready. Maybe Bud and Clover would reap the whirlwind. “I’m way past ready,” he said.
Twenty minutes later they were squatting behind Bud and Clover’s back fence. They’d made their way down the streets and back alley without seeing anyone. Most of the houses, including Bud and Clover’s, were still dark inside. Off to their right, dawn was creeping into the eastern sky. Chris peered at his watch—5:30.
He looked through the knothole, checking for something—anything—they might have missed last night, but the yard looked the same. He sat down on the ground next to Pat and waited.
At six o’clock, a light came on in a back room. The other bedroom, Chris figured. At least they were up. Now, how much longer until Bud left?
“What do you think he does all day?” Pat whispered. “Bud, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Maybe works on getting the shop remodeled. Maybe he’s selling ice cream and stuff from the truck already.”
“What if he doesn’t leave?”
“He’ll leave,” Chris said. “He has to.”
They waited. Daylight came and the sun rose through the trees, painting shadows on the fence. Chris and Pat no longer had the darkness to hide them, but at least there was no one else around. The big vacant lot behind them was thick with pines and saplings and undergrowth. And only one car had come down the alley; an old lady, looking straight ahead over her steering wheel, was driving it. They pretended to be looking for something in the bushes when she passed, but she didn’t even glance at them. They went back to the fence and sat down, and took turns looking through the knothole. And waited.
Finally they heard a door slam shut—a car door, or maybe a truck. Chris jammed his eye up against the knothole. Across the yard, he could see the upper part of the van over the front section of the backyard fence.
Then a starter cranked and an engine sparked to life. The van engine. It had its own sound and Chris knew it by heart. He glanced at Pat, who’d recognized it, too. Quick smiles lit their faces.
Chris turned back to the hole with Pat hovering next to him, shoulder to shoulder. Then the engine sound changed, and Chris watched the top of the van back away and disappear. “It’s moving,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “He’s leaving.” They listened to it stop, shift gears, and accelerate up the street toward Palm. Then the sound was gone.
“How do we know it was Bud driving?” Pat said.
Pat was right, Chris thought. They didn’t know. He shrugged his shoulders. “It probably was,” he said. But what do they do next? He was sure the doors were locked. And what if Bud were in the house?
“What do you think?” Pat said.
“I don’t know,” Chris said. “I guess we need to wait. We need to find out who’s in the house—look through the windows, maybe. They have to raise those shades sometime, or maybe they’ll unlock the door.” It sounded good, but how long would they have to wait, and how long would Bud be gone? If it was Bud who had left.
“Maybe it’s already unlocked,” Pat said. “I could go check.”
Chris was thinking about this idea when he heard a click, a bolt being turned in a door. He was sure of it. But locking or unlocking? He didn’t know. He looked through the knothole: nothing.
And then suddenly the door swung open. Clover backed out, pushing the screen door open with her wide bottom. She was carrying a plastic laundry basket full of wash. She turned and looked right toward the fence, and for a moment Chris was afraid she’d seen his telltale eye. He jerked back, holding his breath.
“What’s going on?” Pat whispered.
“It’s Clover,” Chris said. “Clover’s in the backyard.”
“Doing what?”
Chris put his eye back to the hole, and watched her walk over to the clothesline and set the basket on the ground. She reached down, grabbed a blue work shirt, and clothespinned it to the line, obscuring her face and upper body from Chris’s view. “She’s hanging clothes to dry.” He moved out of the way to let Pat take a look.
For Chris’s benefit, Pat described in a low whisper what she was hanging up. “Another shirt…a sheet…another sheet…some pants…” Suddenly his whisper rose a notch. “A dress! A little girl’s dress!” He grabbed Chris by the back of the neck and pulled his face over to the hole. “Look!”
And there it was, little and pink with a white border around the sleeves and collar, hanging from the line. Chris’s heart was drumming in his chest and his eyes were watering, blurring his vision. He blinked, and Clover was hanging a shirt. A little red T-shirt with some kind of design on the front.
And then her voice carried across the yard. “Almost done with your cereal, honey?” she called.
Chris couldn’t see the back door—the sheets were in the way—but he guessed it was still open. He strained to hear a response from the house. He felt Pat’s hand grip his shoulder and tighten, and he thought he heard a voice. Or had he imagined it?
No. “I’ll be right there, honey,” Clover called. She put a second clothespin on the shirt and headed for the back door, disappearing behind the sheets.
“Should we go for it?” Pat asked. He’d maneuvered Chris out of the way so he could look again.
“I don’t know,” Chris said. He wanted to, he wanted to badly, but was this the time? They still hadn’t seen her. He pushed Pat aside again and peered through the hole: nothing yet. And where was Bud? How long until he got back? Chris decided it was time to do it.
But then Clover’s voice carried back to them, getting louder as she moved from the house to the yard. “You can just bring your little chair and your dolly out here, honey, and watch me hang the clothes,” she said. Her feet appeared below the bottom of the sheets. Next to her, the legs of a little wooden chair hung above the ground before settling into the grass. Then the lower halves of two little bare legs materialized. And feet, in red tennis shoes—shoes Chris didn’t recognize. But so what? They could have gotten new shoes for her.
A baby doll with tousled blond hair dropped to the ground next to the chair. Chris caught a glimpse of a tiny hand as it reached down to retrieve the doll and lift it out of his sight. He held his breath, his heart hammering in his throat.
“What’s going on?” Pat whispered.
Chris wasn’t sure he could talk without shouting, but he managed a raspy whisper. “She’s in the yard. Molly’s in the yard, but I can’t see her face—she’s behind the sheets.”
Pat moved him gently out of the way and pressed his face to the fence. “Just her legs,” he said after a moment. “But I think that’s enough. Let’s get her.”
Chris didn’t answer. He was trying to decide if they could get over the fence and across the yard before Clover could grab Molly and get into the house. He moved Pat out of the way again. He wanted another look. “Let me see something first,” he said, ignoring Pat’s impatient glance.
He stared through the hole, calculating the distance to the clothesline, and between Clover and the back door. Could they do it?
A strong breeze suddenly swept across the backyard, pushing the sheet bottoms up to the level of Clover’s knees. And Molly’s stomach. Chris’s heart skipped. A little higher. Just a little higher, he thought. But the breeze died and he was back to looking at ankles and feet. Then another sudden gust. The sheets flapped up for a split second. High. High enough.
And he couldn’t believe what he’d seen. Just a glimpse, but it was enough.
He pushed himself away from the fence and sat down with his head in his hands, staring at the ground. After all this! He’d just lost Molly, again.
“What’s the matter?” Pat said.
“It’s not her, Pat,” Chris said, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “It’s not her.”
“What?” Pat said, pressing his eye to the hole. “How do you know?”
“I saw her, I saw her hair—short. No, not just short—dark, real dark.”
Pat turned and sat next to him, letting out a long breath. For a minute he said nothing. Then: “I was sure she was here! Who is that little girl, anyway?”