Winfield, West Virginia

JULY 31, 1959

Lark

I put Termite in the wheelchair Stamble gave us and take him with me downtown, past Barker Secretarial. Murphy’s flooded but those old ceilings are high. Barker’s is open, same as always, or will be, for third term in two weeks. I think about Nonie this morning, her arm in that sling, walking toward the sheriff and me along the mud path Nick Tucci dug out to the alley. Mud piled up on either side like sloggy drifts and the boarded-up kitchen windows of the house behind her. “I’m sorry about this, Noreen,” the sheriff said next to me, “but there’s going to be an inquest. We’re going to have to hold you until we can straighten this thing out.”

Gladdy Fitzgibbon had swelled up some when they pulled her out of her flooded basement, and Nonie’s wristwatch was in her tight-shut hand. Otherwise, with the gash on Gladdy’s head and her twisted ankle, they might have assumed she fell down those stairs when she was alone. There was no one to say she didn’t— Charlie stayed at the restaurant two full days, and it was full of Civil Defense workers and volunteers. Everyone knew that Nonie and Elise took Gladdy home in the car, it was raining so hard, and Nonie would have walked her inside. Gladdy was nervous about ice and weather. She would have demanded help walking up the porch steps that were slick with water, and Nonie would have carried the bags of food Gladdy brought from Charlie’s, more than usual because she knew she’d be housebound a few days.

But no one knew how long Elise waited in the car. Like a lot of people, they didn’t get home the night of the flood. They couldn’t drive to the river side of town because the water was too high, then it came up around the car so sudden. The car was half submerged, and the rescue squad wouldn’t push it onto dry ground. They said they had enough to do. Unless Elise and Nonie wanted to climb up on the roof of that car and hope for the best, they had better get into the truck and get themselves driven to the Armory, where evacuees were spending the night.

All night Nonie was gone, her wrist sprained and scratched from where the band of the watch pulled apart. Someone holding on awful hard, like Gladdy always did.

I keep on going with Termite, left on Spring Street to Miss Barker’s house. We turn up the walk to her front door. Like everybody else’s, her porch is full. Rugs laid open, drying. Ruined things on the grass. Miss Barker would have saved a lot, moving whatever she could upstairs. She’s very practical, Miss Barker is, never distracted. I have to put the brake on the wheelchair and leave Termite at the foot of her porch steps while I go up, ring the bell without thinking. Then I knock hard.

She opens the door looking mismatched like we all do. That red-and-black hunter’s jacket must have been her father’s. “Lark,” she says, eyes wide like she’s seen a ghost.

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Barker. But I came for my evaluation? We’re going to be leaving town, Termite and me. Going to stay with my mother, down south.”

She steps back on that one. “Your mother?”

“Yes. She heard about it all, and we can’t stay here. The house is pretty much ruined, except for the attic. Anyway, I’ll be getting a job, in an office, I hope, and the evaluation would say what I’ve studied so far, my speeds and all.”

“Well, what about him?” She lowers her voice, looks down at Termite, sitting below us in his chair. “How can you get a job when you have to look after him?”

“My mother will help. He’s her son, after all. She’s looking forward to some time with him. Or I may get a job where I can bring him along. He can be quiet, if he feels safe. In small towns, you know, people might be understanding. Especially if I have good evaluations, and a letter of recommendation that, like you say, inspires confidence.”

She’s nodding, though I’m sure she finds the idea of taking Termite to a job site completely unprofessional, and absolutely out of the question. “Of course,” she says. “I have your evaluation, and a letter of reference as well. I’d already typed them all out, and I brought all the files here before they locked the building. You were best of class. Executive ability. Remember, bigger firms, insurance, lawyers. Room for advancement. Of course the evaluation will help, and the letter will serve as a character reference.” She’s the same Miss Barker, with her hair uncrimped, in a man’s odd camphor-smelling clothes. The cedar chest would be upstairs. Anything in there would have stayed dry.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t finish the course, Miss Barker.” I turn then and look back at Termite. “Just a minute,” I call down to him. “Be right there, Termite.” He surprises me then, starting up for all he’s worth, good and loud. Right there, right there, right there. Pounding his wrist on the right armrest, like the bell from the old chair at home is there when it’s not. Moving his head side to side.

“Let me get them for you,” Miss Barker says. “I’d ask you in, but of course, there’s nowhere to sit. You go stand with him, so he won’t be upset. I’ll bring them out to you.”

She disappears into the house and I’m waiting behind Termite’s chair when she comes back with a manila envelope. “There are multiple copies of the reference and the evaluation, and if you need more, you just let me know. You realize it’s perfectly proper to apply for several positions at once.” She takes my hand, shaking it like she showed us in mock interviews. Except both her small dry palms enclose mine. “How wonderful you’ve heard from her. That you’ve got somewhere to go until all this is… resolved.”

“That’s right.” I know she’ll tell people, discreetly, over the next few days, as they begin to ask. “Good-bye, Miss Barker.”

“Now, if anyone wants a phone reference, have them call me. I’m here.”

“Thanks, Miss Barker. Thanks for everything.”

“Of course, dear. Of course.”

She stands politely while I turn the chair around on the narrow walk, then I hear her go back inside, quick fast steps, as we move down the walk and out the gate. She always kept the gate shut, but it’s gone now. The curlicues of the iron fence are clogged with brown tufts, grass and weeds that got caught.

“We’re going to see Elise now, at the Coffee-Stop,” I tell Termite. “The power is on along Main Street. She’s probably getting ready to open.” I can use her phone, I think. Then we’re coming up on the phone booth at the corner of Spring and Main, and I realize it’s better to call from here. Privacy. I slide the glass door open on its hinges. The glass is beige about two feet up, but when I put a dime in the slot, the dial tone comes right on. I pull Termite’s chair around so he can see me. “It’s working, Termite. I’m going to make a call, and you watch me, OK?”

He tilts his head to look past me.

“I’ll be right out,” I tell him.

I know he hears me, but he’s quiet since the flood. The moving around, everything missing and changing. Things I can’t help. Maybe he thinks I can’t manage, and doesn’t know I will. I line up some dimes on the little metal shelf in the booth, and shut the door. If someone walks by, I don’t want them hearing me. I dial the number, and Social Services answers, sounding just the same, like there was never a flood or a Civil Defense motorboat in the fog.

“Winfield County Social Services?” She says it like a question.

I know this receptionist’s voice. She’s been there for years. “Hello? I’d like to speak with someone about Mr. Stamble, please.”

“Is he a client, Miss?”

“No, he worked at Social Services. He was my social worker.”

“And your name?”

I tell her my name, and Noreen’s, and Termite’s. I’m sure she knows who we are, but she doesn’t let on. Confidentiality. I hear phones ringing on her end. Pandemonium, and I’m glad.

“Stamble, did you say? I’m almost certain there’s no one by that name working here, but I’ll check the personnel files.”

I can hear her opening file drawers, flipping pages. “He doesn’t work there now,” I tell her, “but he did. A young man, thin, blond. Stamble, Robert Stamble.” I need his previous address, I want to say, next of kin, some way to find out more.

“No, nothing here. I think you’re confused. I can tell you there’s not been anyone here by that name, not in the eight years I’ve been here.”

“He’d only been there a few weeks. He was new.”

“Oh, then definitely not. Our last caseworker hire was two years ago. We certainly could use more help, but we don’t have it.”

“Could I speak to your supervisor, please?” Phones ringing, and ringing.

“Miss? Let me look up your file and refer you to your assigned caseworker. Whatever the problem, she can help you. I’m sure you understand greatest need takes precedence now, but we’re doing everything we can to assist Flood Relief.”

“No, don’t bother,” I tell her. “I must have been mistaken.” I don’t want a referral, or anyone to take notice. I hang up fast, before she can ask if I want to leave a message. They’re supposed to log calls, but she’s so overwhelmed, maybe she’ll forget.

Stamble never worked at Social Services. That’s why there were no forms about the chair. Social Services can’t flip a light switch, Nonie says, without duplicate and triplicate forms. The chair just appeared, like he did. Solid, when he wasn’t. He was real in his way, but not from now, or here. And he was right, a smaller chair is easier, especially when you’ve got somewhere to go. We’ve got to take it with us, before someone asks where we got it. If they asked, what would I tell them?

Termite’s listening. I look at him through the glass and turn my fingers in the round dial of the pay phone. It clicks and makes a chiming sound, like a call to nowhere. Maybe that’s where Stam-ble came from, and where he’s gone. I don’t know if they’ll find him, washed into the mounds of mud and debris and broken buildings they’ve pushed aside with bulldozers. Or if he’s somewhere else. I come and go, he said. Maybe Solly was right, and Stamble wasn’t in the boat. Maybe he didn’t need to be there for us to see him. And he didn’t need to work at Social Services to bring us a wheelchair we didn’t ask for. I can feel he’s gone. He gave us what we needed, like he knew who we were, and where we needed to go. The rest is up to me.

I look down the street and see the lights on at the Coffee-Stop, dimly, in the bright morning. Elise will be talking to lawyers and police on Nonie’s behalf. It’s better if I don’t tell her anything, but there are things she needs to tell me.

Nonie said it was amazing how fast Flood Relief got to us, that it was what came of knowing people in high places. Charlie’s command center, she called the restaurant. We stayed with Elise two nights, but then we were back home. The yard was packed mud, but the house had been scrubbed and nearly emptied, down to its stained walls. Flood Relief said it was “relatively sound” but not worth renovation. They frowned about the cleaning, a misuse of resources: they were putting our house on the buyout list. Elise wanted us to move in with her. She had an extra room and a pull-out couch, and it would take weeks for the government to resolve the paperwork or cut a check. We didn’t have lights but the plumbing was working, and there was plenty of bottled water. Solly brought Termite’s wagon down from the attic, and his big upholstered chair for him to sit in. Flood Relief left us blankets and cots and I set them up in the living room. Here was our couch, I told Nonie. So to speak, she said. The waterlogged piano was left, too big to move, but the top made for a shelf, and the bench was a table. “You’d set up housekeeping in a ditch,” Nonie said. “Don’t be getting comfortable here.”

I didn’t have to tell her what I knew. She guessed at all of it, the minute I walked her up to the attic and she saw the opened boxes, the red kimono robe still on the floor. She touched Robert Leav-itt’s uniform jacket where I’d put it on the bed with my mother’s metal box. “You saved so much, Lark,” she said, and I knew she meant it. I had questions, but she looked so tired, her wrist bandaged, her arm in the sling. She wanted me to pack everything, she said, all the clothes, the bedding. Fasten up these open boxes, and any papers and documents should go into the safe at the restaurant. Someone would be moving us out. We were sitting on the bed and I saw a police car pull up on the packed mud where the alley used to be.

“That’s the sheriff’s car,” I said. “Is Flood Relief buying the house now, already?”

Nonie leaned over me to look out the window. “No,” she said, “the sheriff is here about Gladdy They found her yesterday, before Charlie even got home, and they want to talk to me.” She looks at me in the narrow space between us. “Lark, Gladdy fell down her basement steps during the flood, and she died. The police did house-to-house searches before the all clear, when evacuees were allowed to go home, and they found her in her flooded basement.”

“Oh.” I thought of Charlie. His mother dying alone, like mine did. Like I think she must have. “Nonie, why do they want to talk to you?”

“Because I was the last to see Gladdy, when Elise and I took her home in the storm. And because she took my watch, broke the band, actually, and she was holding it, like Gladdy would. Her body had been in the water of her basement almost two days, but the watch was still in her hand. There may be some sort of hearing.” She could see I didn’t understand, or couldn’t believe it, and she sat beside me on the piled-full bed. “Elise knows how I hurt my wrist, but they’re investigating how Gladdy fell, whether Ipushed her.” Nonie touched my hair, smoothed it back from my face. “Maybe Gladdy deserved pushing, but not to a death like that, and I would never have hurt her. You know now that she was your grandmother, and you have every ounce of her drive and determination, without her more irritating qualities.”

We heard, through the open window, the slam of the car door, and saw the sheriff standing in the alley, wearing rubber boots that came to his knees.

“Lark,” Nonie said, “you and I never had this conversation. You don’t know anything but whatever the sheriff chooses to tell you. If they want to hold me, I’ll stay voluntarily, because I don’t want them arresting me, and the women’s facility at the courthouse is perfectly comfortable. Don’t worry, and stay away. Don’t remind people you’re alone, taking care of Termite. This may take time to sort out, and if it does, the county may try to enforce protective custody of both of you.”

I was already thinking, trying to plan.

“You’re not of age,” Nonie said. “I’ll look into assigning guardianship to Elise, but they may want to put Termite into care, until—”

“Will Social Services accept Elise? She isn’t a family member.” And she’s small and skinny and getting old, I wanted to say, and works ten-hour days at the Coffee-Stop. She chain-smokes, and that’s not good for Termite. “I’ll think of something,” I told Nonie. “I’m going out to the alley now. I don’t want him coming in the house, thinking it’s too bad for us to stay here.”

“There’s over two hundred dollars in that salt box where I keep loose cash,” Nonie said. “You use it, and Charlie will get you whatever else you need.”

I checked on Termite in his chair in the living room and went out, and asked the sheriff, cheerful, if he was here about the buyout. No, he said, was my Aunt Noreen at home. He didn’t say anything else until Noreen was there, and then she got in the front seat with him as though they were going to a meeting. They drove off down the alley in the cruiser. There were chains on thetires, like for a snowstorm, but they were silent, clogged with mud. The surface was dry enough to crack under the wheels, but underneath the mud smelled wet and dark. I looked down the alley after them, and that dirty orange cat that trails Termite everywhere came right out and sat itself in front of me, like a warning, not ten feet away. Someone would come in a car soon, and take Termite. I looked back toward the Tuccis’ house, and Solly was walking toward me.

The Coffee-Stop has a CLOSED sign on the door, but I see Elise inside, wiping down the narrow counter. Elise’s store is the shape of a diner. She likes to say she has an eight-person seating capacity, every seat a window seat, but the Coffee-Stop is really just a grocery that sells hot dogs and cigarettes and coffee. I knock on the glass and she opens the big door to let us in, leans down to make a fuss over Termite.

“Well, look at this new chair you’re riding in.” She tousles his hair. “The power’s back on. You want to hear some music?” Elise has a jukebox unit on the wall. Her favorite songs, regardless of fashion. Now she joggles the coin drawer and takes out some quarters, turns Termite’s chair so he’s in front of the little window where the 45s slide and click. “Chet Baker,” she says. “He has a new one. Termite can listen while we talk.” She knows he likes it loud, but the song’s melodic, and I can hear her under the phrases. “You want some coffee, Lark?” She’s got her ashtray and cup at the end of the counter, and she beckons me over. “That Chet Baker,” she says, “pretty as a woman, and sounds like one.”

I sit just beside her. “Elise, do you know who my father is?”

“I do know, honey, but even if Nonie had never told me, I could hazard a guess.”

“Why? Why can you guess?”

“Charlie helped Noreen raise you in that restaurant and dotes on you completely. Even Gladdy accepted it. Charlie wouldn’t have it otherwise.” She looks at me, lights her cigarette, and nods. “It’s not unusual, an aunt raising her sister’s children.”

“Why would Charlie have a child with my mother? And why would Nonie come back here, after he did?” I’m asking, but I know, I remember. Inside you. Be careful when you’re young. Now you get it.

“Lola”—Elise is saying and her voice trails off—“well, she had a hard time. She was too much for anyplace. And she wasn’t lucky, not from the very beginning. You’re not like her, honey. You’re just about as pretty, but you’re steady, like Charlie. There’s no one steadier than Charlie, or as loyal. He stood by Gladdy all those years, a woman only a saint could love, even if he is her son. And he’s stood by Noreen as well, in his way. I know you blame him for not marrying her, but truth be told, it was Noreen who wouldn’t marry Charlie, after she came back to Winfield. He’d betrayed her, and his being sorry didn’t change it. He talked her into coming back to him, and she helped him save that restaurant. She hasn’t married him since because she’s happy as she is.”

“It was me,” I say, “I’m the reason no one would ever say my mother’s name.”

Elise holds up her thin hand. “It wasn’t you, Lark. From the time you got here, you were the joy in Noreen’s life, and Charlie’s. Noreen couldn’t have children. More every day, they were grateful. Lola gave them the child they could never have had. And she told Noreen she’d intended just that—you were no accident.” Elise leans forward and takes both my hands, her birdlike face intent. “I’m telling you this for your mother’s sake, Lark. My mother used to say, with babies, there are no accidents. And she was right. We can plan the bad, but who can plan the good?”

She looks at me like I might answer. “I don’t know, Elise.”

Elise smiles, wry and quiet. “You can understand Noreen didn’t appreciate Lola’s intentions at the time. She stayed with her, though, until you were born, there in Louisville. Then she left the second husband, the nightclub owner, and came home.” Elise leans back and lights a cigarette, looks out the window of the Coffee-Stop. “Small towns talk. Noreen kept Lola secret for you, to protect you from the rest of the story, your mother’s story. It was painful for Noreen, and it still is. She wanted you to grow up before you had to know about it. And you have.” The smoke from her cigarette lifts, trails its way to the open window.

“What happened to her, Elise?”

She doesn’t answer for a moment. “Sadness,” she says then. “The war happened. That boy she married was killed in Korea. People forget that a soldier’s death goes on for years—for a generation, really. They leave people behind. If he’d come back, they would have managed with the baby.”

“Did he die before Termite was born?”

“No one knows, but Termite was born by the time they notified Lola. Afterward she moved to Coral Gables.”

“Coral Gables?”

“Oh yes. That was Lola’s house, where she’d planned to live with her husband. And wanted Nonie to let you come and stay with them when he got back, which Noreen was not about to do.”

“But he died,” I said.

“It was a confused mess over there in Korea, first weeks of the war,” Elise says. “They never told Lola how or why he died, or sent a casket back.” She looks over at Termite and leans a little forward, lowers her voice under the music. “And the baby, at first she only knew he wasn’t normal, he didn’t cry. She kept going for over a year, thinking what to do and then deciding. I can imagine her wondering about taking him with her, as much care as he needed. Deciding, for some reason, not to.”

“She knew better,” I say.

Elise doesn’t say yes or no, just looks at me.

“And Gladdy kept the house,” I say.

“It was never Gladdy’s. She went down to Coral Gables to sell it for Charlie, and took such a liking to it that she told him to keep it. Her retirement home, she called it. Charlie was never there once.”

“My mother,” I say to Elise. “How did she do it?”

“Lark, Nonie wouldn’t want me telling you.”

“Nonie isn’t telling me. But someone has to, Elise.”

“I’ll tell you,” she says, “only because it would be so hard for Charlie.” She stubs out the cigarette, moves her hand to dispel the smoke, but it hangs in the air. “She’d arranged everything. She locked up that little house and hired a car to drive her to Louisville, to Billy Onslow’s club. He was Noreen’s second husband, older, well, much older. He was like an uncle to Lola. Owned a nightclub. Lola had moved back there, where she’d lived all during the forties, where she met that soldier in the first place. She still knew most of the girls who lived there.”

“Why did they live there?”

“He owned the building.” She barely pauses. “Lola sang in his club for years. Oh, she had a voice. Sweet and husky, like, say, Rosemary Clooney She never was famous like that, of course. For her it was a job, a job she liked. They thought she’d come back to sing again, where she had help with the baby. She’d been there about a week and had put him to bed. The girl she paid to watch him was on her way but hadn’t arrived. It was evening, plenty of people around, before the club opened. She walked downstairs, told everyone she’d be right back, she was going outside to have a cigarette and would they check on the baby in just a minute. Smiled. Waved. Walked a few streets away and shot herself with that little derringer the soldier had left with her.”

The gun in the flag. Someone packed them into the boxes.

“Lola was gone,” Elise says. “What could Nonie do but take the baby? She sent you away.”

“Church camp,” I said.

“Yes. Now that was uncharacteristic. You know what she thinks of religion. It was all she could find on short notice. A veteran brought the baby, someone who’d served with the boy in Korea. He was in uniform, I remember, walked with a bad limp. That was why they let him come home, because this was in ’51, the war was still on. I guess he was badly injured and spent months in a VA hospital. Then he looked for Lola, brought her a letter. The boy had asked him to give it to her personally, that kind of thing. Anyway, it was several weeks later Lola died.”

“Sergeant Ervin Tompkins,” I said.

“Was that his name? Came with his wife. Korean girl, war bride. Brought a nurse with them to care for the baby. Billy Onslow hired the nurse and provided the car, a big Packard.”

“Is Billy Onslow still in Louisville?”

“No. Died years ago, heart attack. But he did what Lola asked. Had that baby brought here, where her family was.” Elise looks over at me. “That was you.”

I don’t know when the music stopped, but it’s quiet now. Elise looks around, like she’s just noticing as well. Termite is still, holding his head to the side, turned toward the jukebox and the window that looks out on Main Street.

“Well,” Elise says, tearful. “We’ll get through this, and you and Termite will stay with me until we can.” She sniffs and stands up, takes a breath. “Don’t you worry about Noreen. The coroner’s report will clear her, and so will I. They had words about that watch in the car. Gladdy grabbed it off Noreen’s wrist, broke the band right in front of me. Noreen helped her anyway, carried those heavy bags of food up the steps.” Elise looks past me and nods, definitive. “I wouldn’t have, but Noreen did. She wasn’t gone a minute. Didn’t step foot in that house.”

“Nonie told me about Gladdy,” I say, “this morning, before the sheriff came.”

“Well, of course, she would have.” Elise fixes me with her nearsighted gaze. “I don’t know if she told you she saved my life. Reached into that car in the flood and pulled me out. I have a fear of water, and I wasn’t myself. I sprained her wrist, fighting her. I’ll tell them as much, on a stack of Bibles.”

The jukebox sounds a series of clicks in the quiet, finishing up.

“I’ve got to open the store soon, honey,” Elise says. “Just wait here while I go across the street for a minute, will you? Soon as I get back, you’ll go talk to your father.” She’s out the door.

I go over and stand with Termite. “My father,” I tell him, “Charlie is my father, and yours died in the war. He never wanted to leave you.” I lean down close. “We’re going to Florida, Termite, to the ocean.” I feed the jukebox a few more quarters from the open drawer, push REPEAT. The street in front of us is empty and mostly shut down, but Elise’s music glides along like the sound of a movie we’re not watching. A horn, a tinkling piano. Couples could fill the sidewalks, dancing slow like they’re moving in another world.

This morning, in the alley, I told Solly I was leaving with Termite. Quickly, tonight. Gladdy’s house in Coral Gables would be empty. We’d go there, and hope they didn’t find us. With the flood and the cleanup, they might look for us or they might not. If we were gone, and our own family said we were accounted for, they might just figure we weren’t their problem. Charlie would give me the keys, and directions. The story I told Miss Barker would get told.

“Lark, if you’re leaving, I’m coming with you.” Solly was walking me back into the house, pulling me inside. The houses on the alley were empty. They were all on the buyout list, but Solly was already being careful. “The water ruined Joey’s car,” he said. “All I’ve got is the bike. I used the lift down at the garage and got it onto the second floor of the shop before the flood, but it’s half apart.”

“It’s no good to go in a car,” I said. “Cars are easy to find. We’ll go on the train, in one of the boxcars, right out of the yard. No way to trace us. The Chessies go direct to Miami, and I know exactly when they run. They’re shuttling cars through, moving them out. In a few days, the yard will be empty. It has to be tonight.”

We were standing with Termite then, in Nonie’s nearly empty living room. “I was on my way to Florida, more or less,” he said. “I already told Nick I’m going to school, and gave notice at the garage.” Solly knelt down to talk to Termite. “Termite, you mind if I come with you? We’ll grow a garden, maybe build a patio. I’ll take you to the beach. We’ll look at the ocean. What do you say?”

Termite only breathed, short sighs. “He wants his ribbon,” I said. “Termite, there’s no time.”

Solly touched Termite’s hair. He left his hand there, on Termite’s head and white neck. “He’s never had a mother or father, and he never will. He has us.” Solly pulled me close to them, put his mouth almost on mine, made his voice quiet, every word distinct. “We’ll take him and we’ll leave here. We’ll get married as soon as you’re of age. You have the birth certificates. You can prove you’re his sister. Even if they find us, no one will take him.”

“Solly, I’m not eighteen for seven months.”

“That’s not long. We’ll go to Florida, lay low in Coral Gables. A good mechanic can always get a job. I’ll wait on school.”

“You might not have to. Lauderdale isn’t far. But if you come with me, Solly, you have to do it my way. No record of where we are or how we got there. And tell no one you’re with us, not Nick, not Zeke—no one. You’re going to school early, that’s all. Be at the rail yard by eight twenty, just after dark. If you can’t get there, or you change your mind, promise me, tell no one. The cars move at eight twenty-seven. We’ll have to find an empty Chessie.”

He looked at me. “I’ll be at the rail yard. You’re not riding a boxcar to Florida alone, with him. I’ll be there.”

Now I see Elise coming out of the restaurant and I wonder if everything I’m planning is a dream, like this music. If I’m in a panic I can’t feel, and I’m not thinking straight. Then Elise looks up and sees me through the window, and she waves at me. A little wave, like, It’s all right now, come along. Just like that, I know we’re going.

I won’t ask you why,” I tell Charlie.

“The ‘why’ was you,” he says. “I knew the minute I saw you. All the regret began to end. For Noreen as well. And then, you are who you are. It might not have turned out that way, but it did.”

“I’m sorry about Gladdy”

“There were things in her life she couldn’t see, things she wasted. I tried to take care of her, without doing the same.”

Once I would have told him he was wrong, but now I’m glad they kept their secrets, glad there’s no gravestone or public knowledge of what happened to my mother, what she did or where she is. Not here, anyway, or where we’re going. I put my hand on Charlie’s.

“Things caught up with me,” he says. He looks white in the face. The restaurant is empty except for us. He’s so alone here without Nonie. He takes my fingers into his big palm and holds them. “I don’t want you to worry about Noreen. Elise told you. She saw what happened, and Noreen will be cleared.”

“You can all stop telling me not to worry. I’m not a child. We don’t know what’s going to happen, or how long it will take.”

Termite is sitting in his wheelchair, pulled up to our table, like the three of us are a meeting Nonie and the sheriff have missed. Charlie looks at him, and nods.

It’s all laid out like a hand of cards someone’s holding and hasn’t played yet. I smooth Termite’s hair back from his face. “With all that’s happened, Social Services will put Termite in one of the ‘care situations’ they’ve mentioned before. I need to leave now, while they’re occupied with the mud and the mess. We can go to Florida, to Gladdy’s house. No one will know us there. No one will be looking for us. I’ll tell people we’re going to stay with my mother. That she’s contacted me. But I won’t say where, and you won’t either.”

Charlie gets up and goes to the safe. It’s under the counter, behind a shallow false shelf he calls his security system. I hear him dial the combination, open the heavy door of the deep box. “The house in Coral Gables is yours, Lark. I put it in your name years ago, after your mother died.” He sits down with us and gives me an envelope. “This is a copy of the deed. It’s down on paper, held for you with Noreen as trustee until you’re eighteen, in case I kicked off while you were growing up. It was always yours, not Gladdy’s, not mine. I mortgaged the restaurant to buy it for your mother, but it’s paid off now, free and clear. She’d made the down payment just before Termite was born, but his father wasn’t coming back from Korea, and Noreen and I wanted to help her.”

“We’re leaving tonight,” I tell him, “Termite and me.”

“How?”

“We have transportation to Miami,” I tell him, “and then we’ll take a cab.”

He looks doubtful, starts to speak.

“I won’t tell you more,” I say. “You’ll have to trust me. We’ll talk about it another time.”

“I don’t want you going alone,” Charlie tells me.

“I’m not going alone.”

He wants to ask, but he doesn’t. “This is the address.” He’s writing it down.

“Beach Road,” I say. “I know the address.”

“There’s a phone,” he says, “and a used car Gladdy bought. The bills are paid through the restaurant, but she has a checking account in a bank there. After I get things settled, I’ll put it in your name. But take this.” He gives me some folded bills and the keys, on a key chain that’s a plastic daisy. “Gladdy’s keys, to the car and the house.”

A car, I think. Solly can teach me to drive. On a sand road by the beach.

“You call us as soon as you arrive,” Charlie says.

“I will,” I tell him, “but not from the house.”

We both stand, and he embraces me in his big arms. He has, lots of times, but it feels different now. I turn Termite’s chair to go, and then I remember. “Charlie,” I tell him, “I’ll want you to send me my mother’s things. And mine, and Termite’s, whatever’s in the attic at Nonie’s. It’s going to be Lola’s house again, and ours.”

•  •  •

I hear someone at the kitchen door. Solly, I think. But I look through the glass and it’s Nick. I almost don’t let him in, but I open the door. “You out of work early, Nick?”

“Night shift tonight,” he says. “On my way. I’ve come from seeing Noreen.”

“She told me to stay away. Charlie says—”

“Charlie,” Nick says. “If it weren’t for Charlie, Noreen wouldn’t be in the county facility. I’d like to strangle him. Playing the big cheese. He should have taken his own mother home in the storm.”

I could say Charlie is sorry now, sorry he didn’t. But I don’t. “Elise says Nonie will be cleared.”

“Maybe,” Nick says. “And how long that takes depends on how aggressive they want to be.”

At least Nick will tell me the truth. I’m moving back just enough to let him into the kitchen. I don’t want him coming into the living room and seeing that I’m packed to leave.

“I’ve talked to a lawyer,” he says.

“I’m glad, Nick, but I hope she won’t need one.” I move as though to walk outside with him, but he takes my arm, touches my shoulder. He turns me, lightly, almost like we’re dancing, so that I’m standing against the wall in the empty kitchen, and he’s very near me.

“I should get back to Termite,” I say.

“This isn’t for him to hear,” Nick says softly. His hand is warm and cushioned and I remember how strong his arms are. How I used to fall asleep on his chest. “Listen to me, Lark. It’s only a matter of time until they take him, and not much time. Fighting it could take weeks, and you have no home, nowhere to live. Staying with Termite at Elise’s won’t satisfy them, and you can’t live with Charlie, it doesn’t look right. He’s too involved.”

I want to tell him everything, that I’m leaving and taking Termite, but I can’t speak with his hands on me.

“If you were married,” he says, “to someone with a home to offer you, someone older, with a good job, and a family to support and help you, the county wouldn’t pursue it. They’d let you be. You’re like a sister to my boys, you grew up with them. I’ve always loved you, Lark—”

I draw in my breath, turn, and he turns with me.

“Yes, like that,” he says, “for years now, for too long.”

I can’t breathe, or move, with his mouth so close to my eyes. I feel the heat of him near me, how practiced his body is, how powerful.

“I wouldn’t have said anything, maybe ever, but everything’s changed now. In this state, you can marry at sixteen with parental consent.”

“You asked Noreen if—”

“I’m not asking Noreen,” he says. “I’m asking you.” He touches his hands to my face, moves them, touching me, until he’s laced his fingers lightly behind my head, but he doesn’t pull me toward him. He’s waiting for me to move, or even let him know I want to. Anything, a breath, a look. “I don’t want you to pick the wrong person, or series of people. You can’t. There’s too much at stake. And I—” He stops speaking, tense, trembling. His dark eyes are wet, like he’s holding something heavy, straining not to move.

I feel that syrupy pain coming up in me like tears I want to jam down. I want to put my fingers into the dark thick hair of Nick’s chest and pull hard, hear the sound he’d make, see his eyes.

“You feel this,” he says, almost like he’s surprised. Then he steps away from me.

I don’t let myself move after him. He stands across the little room from me, by the kitchen window, looking at me, and looking. This is how people get caught. Past his shoulder, I see that it’s dusk.

“You shouldn’t stay here tonight,” he says.

“Termite wants to.”

He shakes his head. “Keep the doors locked. This part of town is deserted. I’ll check on you as I come home. I don’t know where Solly is, but I can send Zeke over to stay with you.”

“It’s OK, Nick. We’re fine.” I open the kitchen door, and he walks past me, into the yard. All the dark, wet warmth spills out with him.

He turns to me, halfway to his car, his eyes lit and full. “You’re my girl. I’m going to take care of you, both of you.” I watch him drive away. The wrapper, that thud. He would have left his car at the plant, to save it from the water. Nick is gone. He did that just right, I think, so that it could go either way. I feel warm with relief, almost faint, as though I could lie on the floor and sleep, but it’s getting late. There’s not much time.

I hear Termite in the quiet, letting me know. We’re fine. We’re fine. We’re fine.

You have to ride in this,” I say to him. “Again. You have to.”

I fasten the strap snug across him and pull down the metal footrests for his feet. He didn’t want to move from his soft chair, and he doesn’t want to leave it. I’ll ask Charlie to send it to us somehow, bring it to us in a truck. The day has cooled off some. I pull on an old sweater of Nonie’s because Termite will miss her and like the smell of it, then I tie the wagon onto Stamble’s wheelchair by a length of rope. I pile in the duffel bag of clothes, the sleeping bags, jugs of water Solly filled, a laundry bag of food. If I stand just behind Termite’s chair, pushing and walking, the line of the rope pulls taut beside my hip and the wagon stays in line pretty well. It’s not downhill to the rail yard, it’s nearly uphill, a long gradual slant. Good thing you’re a strong girl, Nonie would say. Just at dark we get going. It’s hard through the alley, but the street moving out of the dank flood zone gets easier. The broken pavement that leads to the rail yard is a hard surface, and we don’t make much of a sound. His chair is near silent on those wheels and we’ve got Stamble to thank, in his nowhere, wherever he came from, wherever he went. The chair looks almost new, and I’ve got Termite’s blanket in the pack slung over the back, his pillow, the moon pitcher, the deed Charlie gave me, the money, and the keys. In the duffel, folded in with our clothes, I brought the flag and the gun, and my mother’s metal box.

All the rest is gone, gone from us, the alley and the house, and the town and the stores and the flood. Flood Relief will buy the house and tear it down. Nonie should come south, see what’s left where it’s never winter. Charlie can open a diner where the ocean is a flood that stays in place. The river will follow us to it, branching and turning, visible awhile, dipping away beside the tracks, retreating into woods, crossing along and under us while the train roars over it. We have to get to the rail yard in time. Find a Chessie car. To make it happen I think of the cat’s face on the steel sides of the boxcars, that silhouette shape as big as we are, and I say to myself, I can manage, I can manage, in case no one is there, no one but us.

I must have said it out loud, because Termite says it too. Low, careful tones. Manage, manage. “Shhh,” I tell him, then he’s quiet, and I am. It won’t do, talking to myself, it won’t do in job interviews or offices, in a town where there are flowers all winter.

Closer to the yard, I can see the stray dogs loping between ruined houses, over the mud that’s dried on the drowned grass. A door lies twisted off its hinges, flat as a raft across a sodden shoe. All the Polish kids are gone, the houses empty. Flood Relief is maybe a chance to do better. But Nonie said most of them will move into subsidized housing on the other side of town, no more floods, no high water, just brick apartment buildings with concrete courtyards. She says Nick will keep his house, clean the mud off the porch and kitchen linoleum, renovate with Relief funding. Zeke and Solly carried nearly everything, even the rugs, upstairs. Finally, Nick told her, a reason for sons, and if Joey had been there he’d have held back the water itself.

The water’s nearly gone now, but the mark and smell of it are everywhere. The rail yard is higher than the alley houses or the river, and the steel of the tracks glows ahead of us in faint lines. No one sees us but the dogs, and they gather a house lot away, six or seven of them, furtive for now, separate from one another, like they’re seeing us off. They’ve got to be hungry. Nothing here anymore, no trash cans to turn over, no scraps. By the time we get to the yard, they’ve come together behind us. They’re pretty far back and they’ve slowed, catching some instinct drift, sizing us up. I move a little faster, but not too fast. I could back them off with a few well-aimed stones if I turned around and yelled, but I can’t yell. It seems there’s no one but there’s always someone, and no one can hear or see or find a sign of us. I’ll have to find an open car, lift everything up quickly.

The yard looks almost normal except that the ditch along the edge is full of floodwater and wider, like a little canal. The chute from the tipple’s been gone for years. The double ramp up to it, the platforms they loaded from, are still there, running alongside the tracks like a roller-coaster structure no one ever finished. Tracks for the coal carts still gleam along the slant on top. They ran up a few carts at a time, emptied them into the tipple so they could load the long flatbed cars that ran north to Cleveland, east to Pittsburgh, south to Memphis, and everywhere. The lower platform’s for freight, with a broad dock behind. They moved boxcars opposite to unload. Once a wide steel ramp slid across right into the cars. There was noise and motion. Men walked back and forth, heaving, hauling, but there’s no freight now, and the boxcars sided here are empty. Some go by with their big doors flung open. The engines that push and pull them don’t even have engineers. They run on switches, shunted and slammed from empty yard to yard until they’re run down south and loaded. Winfield is just a siding, not even that, now the tracks from the northeast are torn up. No reason to fix them. The trains will stop altogether. These cars will move on schedule to be switched off down south, all the way south. We’ve got fifteen minutes.

There are three Chessie cars and I stop at the one with open doors. It looks clean, where I can see. Moonlight slants in at the back, like it’s falling through a window. There must be slats on one side, ventilation for moving livestock. In the days we’ll have to be careful, but there’ll be air and a way to see out. “This one’s ours, Termite.”

He looks up, head back, like he’s thinking it over. I start to lift him out and realize he’s listening hard. The dogs. He’s heard them, creeping up, and I grab a handful of gravel, throw it hard behind us in a steady arc. They back off. The floor of the boxcar is about as high off the ground as my chest. I throw in the capped water jugs and hear them roll along the floor, then I lift in the duffel bag, the laundry sack with the food. I push them in as far as I can reach, then lift Termite in beside. He tilts over onto them like a rajah on his pillows, hands up, fingers still. Speechless. Soft bars of moonlight fall across his face and his pale hair. His eyes move. He’s in a darkened, shattered marble with its colors held tight, waiting inside a roar he must know is coming. He can’t see me, but he hears me throw in the backpack, the sleeping bags. Boxcar camping, I’ll tell him, three days and nights, maybe four.

Solly’s nowhere. I don’t see him, don’t hear him. I’ll manage. I’ve got to get the wagon and the wheelchair in. I can’t leave anything to say we were here, where we’re going, how we got there. The floor of the car is smooth, not slatted; I put in a couple of big stones, to stop the wagon wheels, keep it from rolling once I get it in. The wheelchair isn’t as heavy as the wagon. I fold it, push it up sideways, and I’ve got it just inside when I feel the dog come up. I’ve got the rock in my hand when it pounces, slams into me snarling, hard and lean, turning with me against the side of the car. Nonie’s thick sweater rips in its teeth as we swing round and I slam the rock into its head, slam its head so hard against the steel car I think the world thuds. But it’s the train, slamming into motion. Somewhere far down the line, a shudder starts and builds. The dog drops away from me, silent in the noise, wobbling like a broken toy. I can hear its brains click, stunned or smashed, and I want it to creep away, crawl if it has to, away from here. In case it doesn’t, I throw the bloody rock into the dark of the car. There’s an almost human, overwhelmed groan as the train lurches sharply backward. The wagon is heaviest so I lift it at an angle, front wheels in the car, lean hard, and push. The boxcar shudders and helps take it in, pulls it up, moving. There’s an instant when I realize the click I heard was time ruined, thrown off just long enough. Running, I think about my mother’s little gun folded into the bottom of the duffel, about Termite, how I would have shot us both if I’d thought we could be separated. Lunging for the edge of the boxcar, I feel the hard metal edge in my hands and vault up, swing my legs up and over, scramble to fall forward rather than back.

I don’t know at first. Then I feel the roll of motion under me, and how lightning fast things can go right or wrong. In just a mile or two we’ll pick up speed, ride along the road before we cross the highway. Cars stop there at the crossing, the train moving just beside them. When we were kids, we used to watch each car pass to get that weird tickly feeling of moving backward. The car has got to look empty to anyone seeing it pass. After the crossing, we’ll roll out of town, across the rail bridge and the river. I thought about throwing the gun into the water, but I’ll take it to the ocean, let the waves float it far away. I move the wagon back into the corner, slam the rocks under the rear wheels. Later I’ll find the other rock, the one I’ll keep, flecked with a stain I decide is sacred. I’ll wedge it under the right front wheel in the beam of the flashlight, but for now I hope the wagon will stay put. I pull Termite to the other side of the car, into the corner with the duffel and rolled-up sleeping bags soft and secure against him. He can see out from here, but he’s far from the doors and no one can see him. “You can talk now,” I tell him, “we’re on the train. No one can hear us.” But he’s silent. He’s scared, or maybe not. He has to hear my ragged breath. He knows what almost happened. Or he doesn’t. Please, he doesn’t.

I may not be able to shut the doors by myself. They’re going to be heavy, rusted even, except these cars have come in here from somewhere else—nothing smells wet or damp. I’m standing to the side of the open doors. Now that we’re inside, the train has slowed, like in a dream. Like we’re holding still and everything is moving past us in blue and gray. We’re still in the rail yard.

Then I see Solly. He’s on the Harley keeping pace with us. He nods at me, like hey, from across a street.

He’s too late. I see him across a million miles.

He rides along beside us and I don’t know what he’s doing, looking over at us and back, back and forth, calculating, then he roars on ahead, up alongside the adjacent track to the freight dock as the train starts up the slant to the tipple, slow and steady. Through the wide-open doors of the car I see him pull up hard at the edge of the platform and stop, the bright light of the headlight a stark white beam. He revs and revs the cycle, waiting. We come up on him and he guns it, sails over space into us. The machine hits the floor of the car and there’s a bellow and whine as he pulls the keys and jumps, falling against me. We both go down as a boom of impact shakes the car like a cannon shot. The cycle bounces off the back of the car and falls over smoking, confused, spinning and roaring on its side. Then Solly’s up and off me, straddling the cycle as smoke blurs around him inside the quickening rumble of the train. He looks at us over the Harley with its big wheels still turning, and he smiles.