MADDY HAD forgotten that it was Parents’ Day, or perhaps she had never understood what that meant. The camp parking lot was filling up with cars. Parents and grandparents picked their way slowly forward, smiling up at the roofs of the camp buildings which poked above the trees. They carried shopping bags of Fritos, Ding Dongs, Twinkies, special longed-for boxes of crackers, and cheese spread in aerosol containers.
At the foot of the macadam path leading up to the camp, a folding table had been set up. Over it was a yellow umbrella strung with pinecones and paper chains. Girls with calm, self-conscious faces were distributing name tags and directions. The name tags were in the shape of large yellow daisies. They stuck
to anything. Tweed and linen jackets, silk blouses and T-shirts.
No one offered Maddy a name tag. She didn’t belong there, and she couldn’t find a place to stand up or sit down.
Margo Cutter brought her a cup of lemonade and then wandered back to stand with her friends near the reception table. Occasionally one of the young women would glance at Maddy. If Maddy caught her eye, the woman’s face would immediately assume an expression of sincere concern.
To escape, Maddy picked her way among the parked cars to the entrance of the parking lot.
She noticed that she still had the cup of lemonade in her hand. It felt sticky. She set it carefully upright on a wooden post as a patrol car stopped near her and a short stocky woman got out. Maddy watched her. She felt suddenly very alert. Her fingertips tingled.
“Mrs. Golden? I’m Sarah Gallagher. County juvenile officer?”
Maddy nodded. She was the woman who didn’t know anything.
“I’m afraid we have a problem, Mrs. Golden.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your daughter and the boy were picked up this morning near Barnesville. By one of Sheriff Prosser’s deputies.”
Maddy looked over the woman’s shoulder at the patrol car. It was empty.
“Where are they?” she asked.
“Well, we don’t know, exactly. I’m afraid they stole his truck, Mrs. Golden.”
Maddy waited. There was more coming. She could tell.
“They didn’t go far. Just down the road. The deputy wasn’t able to follow them from there. I’m afraid they ran over his foot, Mrs. Golden.”
Margo appeared at Maddy’s side, hovering uncertainly. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Laura’s run over a policeman’s foot,” Maddy said.
“Oh, my Godl”
“Don’t be too upset, now,” said Miss Gallagher. She spoke to Margo, who seemed to be reacting in the right way. “The deputy wasn’t badly hurt. Just some bruises. And while I can’t promise anything, I don’t think Sheriff Prosser is going to make any charges here. He thinks the deputy mishandled the business. He turned off the highway to find a phone booth, and left the kids alone in the truck with the key in the ignition. He wasn’t in uniform. Sheriff Prosser thinks that Laura and Howie must have been frightened in some way. These aren’t the caliber of kids we normally deal with.”
Margo shook her head rapidly. No. No, they weren’t that caliber of kids. Over her shoulder Maddy watched a tall young girl come out into the parking lot and be enthusiastically embraced by an older couple. Maddy wondered who she was, and if Laura had once counted her as a friend.
“What did he do?”
Miss Gallagher didn’t understand.
“The deputy,” Maddy explained. “He must have done something. They wanted to come here. To me. And he didn’t let them.” She put her hand to her temple. The sun was beginning to make her head ache. “Why are we driving them away? I don’t understand that. Why are we driving them away?”
Miss Gallagher looked at Margo and then at Maddy. “Mrs. Golden, I think it would be best if I drove you back to your motel now. I’m sure that they’ll be picked up before long.”
“You don’t think she’ll come here?”
Miss Gallagher looked uncomfortable. “Barnesville is nearly ten miles away, Mrs. Golden. Perhaps it would be better if we waited at the motel. Margo will stay here. In case they show up.” Maddy looked at the two of them. They were both nodding their heads at her in the same encouraging way. Miss Gallagher had called Margo by her name. Maddy hadn’t realized that they knew each other. It was not unreasonable, perhaps, but she hadn’t known. She wondered how much else she didn’t know.
Back in the motel room Maddy took off her shoes and lay down on the bed. She had lost track of Miss Gallagher, but she assumed she was somewhere in the room, waiting. She apparently didn’t need to talk. That was a relief. Maddy wanted to study the ceiling, where light reflected from the motel pool wavered through a succession of bright patterns. It was like a dance of light and shadow, of coming together and parting.
She began to wonder if she would ever find her way to Laura. Somehow, in a way she didn’t understand, the chance seemed to be slipping away, lost in misunderstandings and casually inflicted hurts.
The boy leaned over the railing of the bridge and peered down at the river. It was stained brown with mud, its surface marked with long smooth ripples and broad undulations. He could see the reflection of his head, a dark knob on the reflection of the bridge itself. He leaned out farther, testing for the point of balance where his feet might lift from the pavement.
“Hey! Are you watching?” called the girl, sticking her head out of the phone booth.
“Yes.” He pushed away from the railing and looked up and down the highway. “I’m watching.”
The road cut straight through the pine forest, and from the bridge he could see for miles. There were no cars, not even a house or a barn in the distance. The old man who had lent them change for the telephone was sitting by a small white shed just where the road rose to cross the river. His name was Mr. Lockwood, and he sold honey. He couldn’t have sold much, there was so little traffic. Perhaps he didn’t mind. He had pulled a wooden kitchen chair into a patch of sun. He sat up very straight, but so still he might have been asleep.
The girl was talking to someone now. Behind the dusty glass of the booth she had taken out the little
notebook and was writing something down. The boy couldn’t hear what she was saying.
He wondered what had happened to the man with the Jeepster. He hadn’t been badly hurt when the truck had sideswiped him. He had gotten up right away. The boy had watched him in the rearview mirror. Perhaps the man wasn’t looking for them, after all. Maybe he was embarrassed because he had tried to lock them in the Jeepster. As the boy considered this possibility it seemed less and less likely. No, the man was out there somewhere, trying to figure out where they were.
The girl hung up the phone and squeezed out of the booth, fighting for a moment with the stubborn door.
“Did you talk to her?” he asked. “Was your mom there?”
She shook her head. Her face was pale. She seemed dazed by what she had heard.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t she come?”
“She’s there. But not at the camp. At a motel. In Ahlburg.”
“A motel?” He didn’t understand.
“She’s been there since the day before yesterday. Mr. Wells called her when we didn’t go back to camp. She drove up right away. Miss Haskell said she was sick with worry.” The girl put her fingertips to her lips and stared at nothing. “Oh God. She’s going to be so mad at me. Why didn’t we think that Mr. Wells would call her? Why didn’t we think?”
He didn’t know. It seemed obvious now that her mother would learn what had happened and come after her. That would be what she was supposed to do, wouldn’t it? Even if she didn’t really care. It was unfair to think that way, but he couldn’t help it.
“She said she couldn’t come until today,” he said coldly. “That’s what she said when you talked to her.”
The girl turned away from him wildly. “She didn’t understand! Don’t you see? She didn’t understand!”
He reached out and touched her shoulder, but she shook his hand away. He felt slow and dumb, like a windup toy beginning to run down.
“Do my mom and dad know? Did Miss Haskell say?”
“Mr. Wells sent a telegram. They haven’t heard anything yet.” She spoke over her shoulder, her voice soft and tired. “She said you can’t come home with me and Mom. It’s illegal or something. You have to stay at camp until they hear from your parents.”
He wasn’t surprised. He had always known, really, that there would be some rule like that.
“We won’t get to visit the sliced-up people,” he said sadly, but she wasn’t listening.
“Do you think Mom knows about that man? About how we took his truck?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not yet.”
“What am I going to tell her? She’s going to kill me.”
“No, she won’t. I won’t let her.” That was a joke, of course. He wished it wasn’t, but that’s all it was. Her mother would decide what she wanted, and there
wasn’t much he could do about it. Still, he had made the girl smile. When she turned and looked at him, he saw that she was smiling and crying at the same time. She could cry like nobody’s business. There were even tears on her glasses.
“Here,” he said, taking them off her face and wiping them on his shirttail.
“I’ve got to call Mom now,” she said as she watched. “Miss Haskell gave me the number. We’ll borrow some more money from Mr. Lockwood. Do you think he’ll mind?”
“No. He’s nice. We can give him an IOU.”
“I’ll tell her that we have to stay together. If she can’t take us both, I’ll stay at camp. We’ll run away again if we have to. Really.”
“Yes,” he said, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. He was ashamed because he didn’t believe her. Should he tell her that he wanted to run away right now? Would she be willing to disappear into the woods with him? He almost smiled. How crazy that idea was. Just a stupid dream. He would never tell her. There would never be a time. She would go back to the city with her mother and he would stay at camp and be a goat. That was what everyone would want. That was the rule. He shivered and looked up where the sun was blazing in the pale dome of the sky. Maybe he should be a bandit like Calvin had said and make his own rules.
She ran ahead of him to Mr. Lockwood’s stand. When he joined her she had more change in her hand,
and the old man was carefully studying the note she had written. He folded it neatly and put it in his pocket.
“I’m going to call now,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“No. I’ll wait here.”
The old man smiled at him when she was gone.
“You look right beat,” he said, and offered the boy a Mason jar filled with bright red Kool-Aid. It was warm and sweet, with a faint musty aftertaste.
“I make that with honey,” said the old man. “Keeps me traveling. You a traveling man?”
The boy shook his head. Goat, bandit, traveling man. He didn’t know.
“I thought maybe you were a traveling man. Come far?”
The boy shrugged, not knowing how to measure the distance, but he tried to smile.
“Far to go?”
Behind the honey stand a narrow trail ran back into the woods. It was overgrown with shrubs and dry grass. It didn’t look as if many people ever went that way.
“No. Not far.”
The phone rang. Once, then twice. Maddy heard a chair creak as Miss Gallagher stirred impatiently. Very slowly, her body as fragile as ash, Maddy sat up and picked up the phone.
“Mom?”
Maddy began to cry. “Oh, Laura darling …”
“There was this man,” Laura said slowly, as if she were going to tell Maddy a long and intricate story. “He said he was a deputy …”
“Yes, I know. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No. He was acting so strange … We hit him with a truck, Mom. It was an accident.”
“Yes, I know, darling. It’s all right. He wasn’t hurt. He won’t bother you anymore, I promise. Don’t be afraid.”
“We’re not afraid. We’re not afraid anymore.” The connection was poor. Laura’s voice was faint, vibrating against the hum of a thousand other conversations.
“Mom? I got your number from Miss Haskell at camp.”
“Yes, that was the right thing to do. I’m so glad you thought of that. But where are you, Laura? Please tell me.”
“Miss Haskell said that Howie has to stay at camp. That he can’t come home with me.”
“That’s not true, darling. She doesn’t know. He is coming. I promise.”
“We’ve got to stay together, Mom.” Laura’s voice was thin and stretched.
“I promise, I promise. He is coming home with us. I’ll steal him, anything. Just tell me where you are. I want you so much.”
There was a long pause. Maddy felt afraid. She tried to stop crying so she could hear.
“I don’t know, Mom. Don’t cry.” Her voice faded and grew strong again, as if she had looked away from
the telephone. “It’s pretty here. There’re trees, and a river. There’s an old man, too. He lent us some money so I could call you.”
“But …” Maddy tried to think. “Is it a pay phone? What’s the number? It should be right there. Right where you dial.”
“There isn’t one. Somebody scratched it off.” Laura’s voice suddenly sounded very tired. As if things had become too hard. Too hard to try anymore.
“I’m sorry that things didn’t work out at camp, Mom. I really tried.”
“That doesn’t matter, darling. Not anymore. Just stay where you are. Promise me that, Laura. I’ll find you. Just stay where you are.”
There was a series of sharp clicks, and a woman’s voice, clear and impersonal, said, “Please deposit five cents. Five cents. Please deposit five cents.”
“Mom?” Maddy heard Laura say, and then there was nothing at all.
Miss Gallagher took the phone from her hand. “Dial 911, Laura,” she said confidently into the dead receiver. “Dial 911.” The silence was replaced by a dial tone.
Miss Gallagher listened for a moment, her eyes staring into Maddy’s. She hung up the phone. “Where is she, Mrs. Golden? What did she say?”
Maddy could hardly see her. The world seemed to be drowning in a pool of her own tears.
“She didn’t know. There was a river. Trees.” What
did it mean? It was a state full of rivers and trees, going on forever.
“A pay phone. Don’t forget that.” Miss Gallagher looked thoughtful. She opened her white wicker handbag and took out a map. She unfolded it and spread it on the bed. Here, she explained, is where the truck was found. They couldn’t have gone too far on foot. This must be the river that Laura mentioned. As her blunt finger rooted through the tangle of red-and-blue lines, Maddy began to feel some hope.
“She said there was an old man. He lent her some money.” How foolish that sounded. Old men weren’t fixtures. They weren’t marked on maps.
Miss Gallagher nodded. “Lockwood. He’s got a honey stand by the bridge on County M. There’s a pay phone there, too.”
She folded up the map in the right way, so that it fell obediently along its original creases. Maddy began to respect Miss Gallagher. She knew how to fold a map. Perhaps she knew where Laura was.
“This is the place,” said Miss Gallagher. Maddy looked out the car window at the river, the trees, an enormous sky hazy with a long afternoon’s heat. There was a small stand by the bridge. It was painted a glistening white. One corner was sinking into a clump of goldenrod. A hand-painted sign said LOCKWOOD’S HONEY.
There was no one there. Large plywood shutters
closed off the interior of the stand as firmly as eyelids seal the eyes.
Maddy got out of the car. Her legs were a little shaky. She was used to seeing countryside through the closed windows of a swiftly moving vehicle. It made her feel vulnerable and slow to be standing there by the side of the road. She could feel the coarse gravel through the thin soles of her shoes and the wind moving against her bare arms. She could smell the pine trees. She had forgotten that pine trees had such a rich, promising smell. She thought Laura must be very brave to have come here, to be willing to stay, even until dark.
An old man came out of the woods behind the honey stand. He was wearing a black suit and a very white shirt, and he moved with a spry limp.
“I’ll just open up,” he said. He picked up a long prop of peeled white wood and lifted one of the shutters. Behind it Maddy could see shelves lined with greenish-gold jars of honey.
Miss Gallagher came around from her side of the car. “Mr. Lockwood? Have you seen a young girl and boy here? About half an hour ago. They might have used the pay phone.”
The man paused, bending for the second prop. He was very old, with black liquid eyes in a dry face.
“Oh yes. I seen them.” He calculated, putting out a pale tongue. “Are you going to pay me?” he asked abruptly.
“What do you mean, pay you?” Miss Gallagher was indignant.
The man chuckled and straightened up. As he came close to them, he extracted a folded piece of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket. It had been torn from a small spiral notebook. He smoothed it carefully with his fingers and then put it in Maddy’s hand.
“IOU,” it said. “Sixty cents. Shadow Golden.”
“Yes, of course I’ll pay you. I’m her mother.” Maddy fumbled for her purse.
“Shadow’s mother?” The old man recaptured the slip of paper neatly from Maddy’s hand.
“Don’t have to pay. You’d want the IOU then, wouldn’t you? I’d rather have the IOU.”
He folded the small page up carefully and put it away. Maddy could hardly bear it.
“But where are they? Where did they go?”
The old man turned and looked off into the woods and then up at the sun, trying to get his bearings.
“That way,” he said, waving his hand toward a dirt track that followed the bank of the river away from the highway.
“That road? But where does it go?”
“Not a road. Fire trail. Doesn’t go anywhere. Just up in the woods. I told them, but they seemed to know what they were doing. Sweet kids. Do you want some honey?”
Maddy shook her head, and the old man snatched
away the white wooden prop. The shutter fell down with a bang.
“Up in the woods, it goes. That’s where they are now.”
Overhead a helicopter was circling. As it passed low above them it made a terrific racket, its blades chopping frantically as if they meant to destroy the air itself. From their hiding place underneath an old spruce, the girl and boy watched it suddenly rise vertically into the air and sweep off to the west.
“Do you think they’re looking for us?” she asked.
“No. Why would they be looking for us?”
The girl thought there might be reasons. They had done all those things. Sneaking into that motel. Stealing. They’d taken that man’s truck. They hadn’t taken it very far, but still they’d taken it, and they hadn’t asked. Would that be enough for them to send out helicopters? Were men with guns looking for them? She didn’t know. It seemed possible.
“Well, I don’t think they saw us. I mean, if they are looking for us. Do you?”
The boy didn’t answer. She wished he would say something. When she had told him what her mother had said, he had simply nodded and walked off along the fire trail. She didn’t know where they were going, or what he was thinking.
It upset her that he wouldn’t talk. There were things she wanted them to think about together. She wanted
to tell him that her mother had cried on the telephone. She hadn’t expected that. She had thought her mother would be mad. Trying not to show it, perhaps, but still mad underneath. Her mother wasn’t mad. She was afraid. It made the girl afraid, too.
It frightened her to realize how much she mattered to her mother. She knew her mother loved her. She’d always known that. But she had always believed that her mother was safe. Safe from her. That she didn’t have to think about Maddy when she did something. But that wasn’t right. She had to think. She had to think because she had made her mother listen.
When she was little and her mother wouldn’t listen, she would punch her. She would punch her as hard as she could. Sometimes her mother had laughed, and sometimes she had been angry, but she had never cried. When the girl had been little she hadn’t been able to hurt anyone. Now she could.
The funny thing was that, in some queer, nervous way, she felt glad. She felt very real, as if her body had suddenly gained an enormous presence and weight. She wanted to talk about that, too.
She looked at the boy. The helicopter was gone, but he showed no inclination to move. He was sitting with his legs drawn up, one cheek resting on his knee, his arms tucked away across his chest. His eyes were open, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. It made her sad that she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere.” It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to tell her.
“Mom said we should wait for her at the bridge. She said she’d find us.” She had already told him that. “She said Miss Haskell was wrong. That you could come home with us. She promised.”
He took a deep breath and straightened up, as if he had finally decided to talk. “No, she didn’t.”
“What do you mean? Yes, she did!”
“No, she didn’t. She couldn’t. Miss Haskell is right.” He stood up and turned away so she couldn’t see his face. “It’s against the law.”
“What is?”
“I don’t know. Us.”
“That’s crazy,” she said. She was angry now. At him. Because he was making her afraid. “That’s crazy. You’re crazy.”
He didn’t answer, but he looked at her. He was holding his head up, and his eyes were narrow. It was as if he wanted to show her that he wasn’t crying. But he was, almost.
“I think we should go back,” she said. “I mean, maybe you can’t come home with me right away. Then I’ll stay at camp. But I think we should go back. There’s no place else to go.”
“Yes, there is. I’m not going back there. Not ever. You go. I didn’t say you had to come.”
She couldn’t breathe. She was ready to cry herself.
With anger, terror, she didn’t know. “I thought we were supposed to stay together.”
“No, we aren’t. They won’t let us.” He tried to think of something to say that would make her feel everything he was afraid of. “I don’t need you. I don’t want you anymore.”
They stared at each other over a wilderness that words had made, and then she jumped him, wrestling him to the ground and pounding at his face with her fists. He felt his glasses snap at the bridge, and relief swept over him like a wave. He was almost choking with it. He had never felt so strong in his life. He caught her hands, and twisted, forcing her over on her back so he could sit on her stomach. She didn’t give up. She didn’t seem to realize she was losing.
“You take that back, you bastard!” she panted. “You take that back!”
“I take it back. I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it.”
She stopped fighting then. It was funny. He was sitting on top of her, holding her hands back over her head, but she had won.
“I didn’t mean it,” he said again. She tried to smile, but had to sniff instead. Her face was wet, and her nose was running. He thought she looked beautiful.
“I know. But you still can’t say that.”
He let her go, and she sat up. They sat cross-legged, close together, their heads touching. For the
moment they weren’t able to look at each other, but they fumbled with each other’s hands.
“I’m sorry I broke your glasses.”
“Yeah. That’s okay.”
“Can you see all right?”
“Yes. No, not really. Everything’s fuzzy.”
“You can wear mine. We can take turns or something.”
He smiled when he thought of that.
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got some spare ones. Back at camp. Okay?”
He felt her head nod against his.
“Okay,” she whispered. He caught her nervous hand and held it. She gave it up to him like a gift. It wasn’t very clean. There was dirt under her nails, and there was a shiny callus on her second finger where she would hold a pencil. He was surprised again at how long her fingers were. They looked delicate, almost fragile, but he knew they weren’t.
“Listen,” he said. “There’s something I wanted to tell you about.”
“What?”
“Well, it’s kind of weird. I had this idea. About us. I had this idea that just you and me could live together in the woods. Sort of like Indians. We could get what we needed from, I don’t know, fields and cottages, and no one would ever see us or bother us again. They wouldn’t be able to, because we wouldn’t ever be there when they looked for us.” He knew he wasn’t being very clear, that she wouldn’t be able to
feel the magic of the idea, but that wasn’t important, really. He didn’t have to persuade her. He could let it go now.
“I used to think about it a lot, and sometimes I wanted to tell you, but I was afraid you would think it was just crazy.” He tried to laugh, but kept his head down in case she should want to look at his face. “It is crazy, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Kind of. It’s nice to think about, though. We could build a raft and go down the river. Just floating along.” She sniffed and laughed at the same time. “I’d have to learn how to swim. Finally.” Her head knocked against his as she thought. “The trouble is, we couldn’t go to Greece. I really want to do that when we’re older, don’t you?”
“Yes. We will, too.”
“And what if one of us got sick?”
“I don’t know.” He was genuinely surprised. “I never thought about that.”
“Well. We would think of something. We always do.”
Suddenly he was very sure that everything was going to be all right. He wasn’t a fool. He knew that there would be arguments and long-distance phone calls, and parents and camp counselors and policemen talking over their heads about things he didn’t understand. He would want to crawl in a hole, and she would cry. It didn’t matter. They would think of something.
They could look at each other now and smile.
“We better get going,” he said. “Your mom’s going to be worried.”
“That’s okay.” Some of her toughness had come back. “She’ll get over it.”
They climbed down to the path together and started back along the fire trail toward the bridge. The sun was shining. They could feel its warmth in their hair and on their faces. Small birds darted ahead of them, ducking and weaving, leading the way through the pines and the dry summer grass.
“There’s Mom,” said the girl.
Howie looked up. The woman was just a blur, coming fast. When she was close enough, he would see her face. He wondered what he would find there.
A stump loomed in front of them, splitting the path. They drifted apart, their clasped hands rising as it came between them.
“Hold on,” Laura said. “Hold on.”