Hush Little Baby

  Kit could not keep this up. It wasn’t a sweet little family. It was two criminals with a jealousy problem who’d purchased a newborn the way they were purchasing a life — in a shady underhanded way that hadn’t worked.

  They were at an enormous intersection: many lanes, each with its arrow and an array of gas stations that also sold tacos and doughnuts and charcoal briquettes and had enough pumps for a dozen cars.

  Cinda came to a full stop.

  I can get out, thought Kit. Walk over to that gas station, where there are ten people there to keep me safe, pick up the phone, and call 911.

  But then Cinda and Burt will meet Ed without me, and I won’t be there for Muffin and Sam.

  Kit could hit Cinda over the head with one of the heavier boxes. Or slam the gear into park and yank out the keys.

  But then nobody would go meet Ed.

  Ed … as desperate for his fifty K as an addict for his needle.

  Ed … alone with Muffin and Sam.

  In the dark of the car, Muffin could not quite see the baby, but he was warm and soft in her arms. He was too quiet, as if he were too tired to cry anymore. Muffin knew instinctively that a baby should never be that tired. A baby should not give up saying how hungry he is.

  Sam the Baby was giving up.

  He was a very little guy, and he needed more than he was getting.

  And Ed on the phone was yelling that he wanted his fifty K.

  At first Muffin did not know what K was. In a few sentences she figured out that it was money. “You bring me that fifty K or else!” screamed Ed into the phone.

  Or else.

  Or else what?

  Or else, what happens to Sam and me?

  Rowen was running.

  He had had to run laps, of course, a jillion times, for warm-ups or for punishment for most teams he’d been on. But running itself did not interest him. Now he ran over potholes, ruts, and piles of gravel and unexpected projecting stones. He ran in complete darkness.

  In the distance, a dog howled, and right away another dog howled, closer. A night bird shrieked, and there was a whuffing near his head, and a sort of grunt. The leaves did not rustle, but jostled and clapped. Branches scraped bark.

  His running felt so fast that he kept thinking he would catch up to Ed’s car. But of course he would never catch up to Ed’s car. His little sister, and a stranger’s little baby boy, were vanishing.

  Had vanished.

  His goal was the main road, but once he reached the main road, it wasn’t one. Twisting and narrow, it just didn’t have traffic. When he’d driven here, he hadn’t particularly noticed the pavement itself, but now he saw it had crumbled at the edges, that weeds had worked through cracks. He wasn’t going to flag down a rescue because there weren’t going to be cars.

  His ankle, which he had refused to think about, was throbbing again.

  He had to reach the next road, and maybe even the road after that, near Route 80, near that convenience store, and every step he took, no matter how fast he took it, no matter how long his stride, was only the tiniest fraction of what Ed could do.

  A car did approach, and Rowen stopped in the road, waving his arms wildly, but the driver leaned on the horn, skidded around him, and never slowed at all.

  Row wouldn’t have stopped, either, for some strange boy in the road in the middle of the night. Who knew what maniacs were around?

  I know what maniacs are around, thought Rowen. And my sister’s with one of them.

  “There!” said Muffin to Ed. “Stop there. At that store. We have to get Sam milk. He’s very very hungry.”

  The big old Caddy kept right on going. “He stopped crying, that’s all I care about,” said Ed. Ed’s voice was too big. It had swollen, like his hands, like his temper.

  “He has to have supper. You have to stop. And diapers, we need diapers. We can’t just use a sweater.”

  Ed looked in her direction. His eyes felt all stare-y, as if they weren’t going right. She was glad it was dark and she could not really see him. “It’s your cousin, this baby,” said Muffin. “Your cousin Dusty had a baby, so this is a numbered cousin. I have some of those. He’s your second cousin or your third cousin. I forget how it works. And he needs his milk, your cousin. So you stop the car and buy the milk.”

  Ed grinned and she saw that he was missing teeth, and she wondered if he would go to the dentist with some of his fifty K, because he looked bad with those gaps in his mouth. “You’re a pretty sturdy kid for nine years old,” said Ed.

  Muffin had been thinking the same thing, and was proud. She was a sturdy kid for nine. It wasn’t as little as everybody thought. Nine could take care of a baby. Muffin had made a decision not to think about how her head hurt. She had decided to think only about Sam. “Sam is not sturdy,” she reminded Ed. “He’s all folded over and sickish. He needs his milk.”

  Ed slowed down, eyeing the store. It was not the twenty-four-hour store Kit and Muffin had stopped at before. Muffin didn’t know where it was. Ed had driven somewhere else completely, which Muffin didn’t like, but on the other hand, what difference did it make? She was stuck in the car no matter what. And one good thing, which she knew from training at home and at school and on television, if she could get to a phone — even the one in this car, if Ed would leave her alone — 911 worked anyplace.

  Hadn’t she said to Rowen and Kit all along that they should call 911?

  And had they listened to her?

  No. Because she was nine, and nobody listened to nines.

  Ed made up his mind. He pulled up in front of the store. It shared a strip with a movie rental place and a dry cleaner. He said, “I’ll hold the baby. Here’s five dollars.”

  “I’m not giving you Sam,” she said. “You might drive away. You might not take care of him at all. You didn’t even bother with a car seat. I have to stay with Sam. You go into the store and buy the milk.” I’ll use the car phone, she thought. I’ll call the police.

  “I don’t know what to buy,” said Ed. He was laughing at her. “You think I’m gonna leave you with a car phone? You’re smart, sister, but you can’t outsmart me.”

  Muffin glared at him. “Then we’ll all go in.”

  “Don’t you say a word to anybody,” said Ed. “I don’t want anybody knowing there’s anything happening.”

  Like people wouldn’t wonder why a brand-new baby was blanketed in some old thrown-out sweater. Like people wouldn’t wonder why this creepy man and this little girl were showing up at ten-thirty at night with a brand-new baby who ought to be home in his crib. “My door doesn’t open,” she said.

  “I smashed it against your brother’s car. Get out on my side.”

  She sidled over the seats, Sam flopping awkwardly in her arms, and the three of them went inside and put together a baby rescue package. One six-pack of ready-mix formula. One Gerber disposable bottle starter set. One pack of newborn-size Huggies. It was more than five dollars. Ed was mad, but he paid.

  On the way back to the car, he put his hand on her shoulder. It didn’t hurt, he didn’t grip the way he had gripped her hair, and he really didn’t do anything. He just put his hand on her shoulder.

  But her hair stood up as if he had been yanking on it, and the skin on her arms turned to gooseflesh. She made a pout face to keep herself from gagging. “Sam and I,” she said, “will sit in the backseat. It’s safer there. The airbag in front might hurt us.”

  “Yeah, right, like a car this old has airbags,” said Ed. “When I get my fifty K, I’ll have a car with airbags that could kill you, but not tonight.” But he opened the back door, threw the plastic bag of purchases in, and Muffin climbed after it. Ed slammed the door before she was fully inside, not actually catching her left foot in the door, but shoving it in and twisting it.

  He laughed and backed roughly out of his parking space, and swung hard and too fast into the road again.

  Muffin settled Sam on his back on the seat, leaning over him to hold him safe with her chest
while she put together the bottle. Good thing she had had practice. There were several pieces to insert and screw and add. Pouring the formula into the bottle while the car was jouncing around got half of it on her lap. She hadn’t washed her hands and she’d touched disgusting things, like this entire car, but she couldn’t help that, and she gave the bottle a little squeeze, to get milk on the tip of it, and she brushed the milk on Sam’s lips, and tucked the nipple in Sam’s mouth, and he began to eat.

  It was surprisingly noisy, this baby eating stuff. Sam smirked and snuffled and choked and gulped and hiccuped. But the milk in the bottle disappeared.

  Muffin was hungry, too. But she was nine, and strong, and now that she had food for Sam the Baby, so he wouldn’t fold up and sicken away, she had to think about or else, and how to get them away from it.

  “Why do you have that stupid name, anyway?” said Ed from the front seat.

  “You mean Sam? Kit picked Sam. It’s not a stupid name. It’s a strong name, because he’s going to be a strong kind of guy. ”

  “I mean Muffin.”

  “That’s not a stupid name.”

  “Is it your real name?”

  “My real name is Margaret.” She was not ready to be Margaret. Margaret was the person she would be when she was grown. Margaret was a woman Muffin would meet someday, and recognize.

  “All right,” said Ed suddenly, his voice completely different. It growled, as if he had turned into a dog; as if she would look over and his face would be fur.

  She clung to Sam, as if Sam could save her. As if either of them had any hope.

  Nine was not sturdy. Her head hurt, and Sam was heavy, and she was afraid.

  “All right, here we are,” said Ed, parking the Caddy. “And they better have that fifty K. Or else.”

  Chapter 14

  ROWEN BEGAN RUNNING AGAIN as soon as the car passed him by, running and screaming inside his brain, fear using up the energy he needed to run.

  When he heard a second vehicle coming, he went out into the middle of the road and did jumping jacks to signal them.

  They stopped.

  It was a pickup truck with a double cab. Rifles hung across a rack. Toolboxes lined the truck bed. Two heavyset guys said nothing, but just looked out at him.

  Row clutched the triangle of chrome that supported the outside mirror and gasped, “Car phone, you have a car phone? I have to call the police. My sister.” He was surprised by the love and the horror in that tiny phrase: my sister. “Somebody took my sister,” he said.

  “Where’s Burt?” said Cinda. She peered in her rearview mirror and frowned, and then turned in her seat and looked behind her, and then looked way to the right and way to the left. “Where’s Burt?”

  “He’s probably back one red light,” said Kit, looking around, too.

  The light changed, but Cinda did not drive through it.

  The car behind them honked instantly and long.

  Cinda did not move.

  Kit rolled her window down and signaled the car to go around them. It did, the driver shouting obscenities. You don’t know how lucky you are, mister, alone in your car and able to go any place you want, Kit thought.

  Cinda said, “Where? Is? Burt?”

  Well, he isn’t here, thought Kit. I know where I’d be. I’d be on the fastest road out of town.

  “If he dumped me …” whispered Cinda. Which sounded as if Cinda had been expecting something of the kind.

  Is it better or worse that Burt dumped her? Kit thought. How do I field this? I do not care about Cinda’s marriage or who goes to prison. I care about Muffin and Sam.

  “He probably stopped for a coffee,” said Kit lightly. “Or a burger. Probably thought he’d whip into a drive-up window and be out in sixty seconds. Probably he’s starving. And then, you know how those things are, he’s stuck in a line and they’re making some special order for the car ahead of him, and —”

  “Shut up!” screamed Cinda.

  They waited through another light change.

  They were on a commercial stretch where there were several superstores, all closed. The huge empty parking lots were punctuated by lights on silvery poles. A temperature change had turned the air misty, so the light pooled and shimmered in the damp air.

  They no longer had a car phone, so they couldn’t call Burt to see what was holding him up. Cinda stared at the little pocket that normally held the phone. She fingered it. She said, “What if the police have our license plates? What if they picked him up?”

  “We would have seen that,” said Kit. “He was behind us a few minutes ago. We’d have seen lights and heard sirens. Wherever he is, he wants to be there.”

  Cinda stared around the interior of her car, and examined her hands, and then she even looked at her reflection in her rear-view mirror. “It wasn’t supposed to work out like this.”

  “It hasn’t worked out at all yet,” said Kit. “Here’s what we do. We go find Ed. We tell Ed my father is putting together the fifty thousand, which my father can do, he won’t even notice it. Then …”

  Kit had no ideas for then.

  Then I take Muffin and Sam?

  Then Cinda drives away, waving in a friendly fashion?

  Then Ed heads home, confident Dad will fly in and hand him fifty thousand dollars?

  Cinda whispered, “I will not go to prison. I was not meant for that.”

  Dusty, too, insisted that things were meant. It was a stupid-person sentence for when you had gotten yourself into a bad corner and you had only yourself to blame and you would not admit it. “I totally agree,” said Kit. “You were meant for better things. You write these very sophisticated programs and —”

  “Don’t patronize me!”

  “Fine!” said Kit. “The light has changed six times while we’ve sat here. So use this so-called brain of yours and do something intelligent. And don’t you dare hurt the baby boy you wanted to bring up as your own just one hour ago.”

  The two men hauled Row into their truck.

  They were wonderful.

  They helped him tell the police what he had to say, they clarified the names of roads and the location of Cinda and Ed’s house, they agreed to wait for the cops at the driveway.

  They had even just come from McDonald’s and handed Rowen the rest of a bag of Chicken McNuggets.

  “Ed was going to break my sister’s neck. Literally. He was going to take her hair and—”

  “He won’t do that,” said one of the men. “He needs her to hold the baby. He just did that to make you get out of his way.”

  Hungry as he was, Rowen could not put food in his mouth. He choked; there was no room in his throat. They drove back to the broken white fence and waited for cops. Rowen felt as if he were blacking out, but it was probably exhaustion from the running and fear for Muffin.

  When they arrived, the police were patient with him; said how smart he was to have memorized the plate number, color, and make of Ed’s car.

  But he had not been smart; he’d been dumb all day.

  It took no time for the cops to figure out what had been happening in this strange place. One glance at some of the paper on the floor of that abandoned house and the cops knew these were the ATM scammers they’d been trailing. One call and they connected with the cops Kit’s father had reached by phone from Seattle. One more call and they connected with cops who’d picked up Dusty Innes sobbing at the side of the road an hour ago. She had wanted to be dropped off at a coffee shop where she insisted her husband would come for her.

  Rowen had a harder time connecting. He stalled on the vision of Muffin trapped with Ed — Ed who killed flower beds and cars by running them down; Ed who doubtless entertained himself running down pets in the road.

  Ed.

  Muffin.

  Sam.

  “You think you’ll get Muffin and Sam pretty quickly?” said Rowen. He had lost control of his voice. It was trembling. The truck driver put an arm on his shoulder and it helped, but not much.
br />   The cops did not fool around with him. Rowen appreciated that. He did not want them to lie to him.

  “These two knew we were on to them,” said the cop in charge. “We found their fake ATM and we’ve located a post office drop they use. They’ll want to get out of here fast. They’ve probably got another hideout in some other state. I don’t think they’re going to want a baby on their hands while they’re running, but who knows? Maybe they’ll make a deal with Ed Bing on a street corner. But your sister? It’s a problem. A newborn can’t identify you. A nine-year-old can.”

  Rowen sagged against the large frames of his rescuers, and they tilted him back upright and stood a little closer to him. He whispered, “But we can all identify them. It’s stupid for them to worry about Muffin when there’s also Kit and me to worry about.”

  “Right,” agreed the cop. “But, see, everybody in this is stupid. You don’t know what stupid people are going to do when they get cornered. A computer thief, now: He’s really proud of his sophisticated programming. That’s their favorite word — sophisticated. Your computer hacker thinks all the time how he’s smarter than anybody. You corner him and now he has to admit he’s as stupid as the next jerk and he doesn’t want to admit that. And that makes him dangerous. Smart people think they shouldn’t have to pay a price the way crummy old burglars do. Smart people think they should get bonus points for committing a crime. They didn’t work prison into their equation. They had fun figuring out a system where they’d never get caught, and now they’re caught, and they’re terrified because prison is out there. Years of prison, just as horrible and disgusting and scary as it is for anybody who ever stole a car or dealt drugs. And now, even if nobody meant it to happen, they’ve kidnapped two children, and they know it, even if they’re pretending not to know it. So they’re scared, kid. Everybody in this is not just stupid. Everybody in this is dangerous.”

  In their navy Cherokee, among their boxes, Cinda and Kit sat while the traffic screamed at them and circled them.

  “Get out of the car,” said Cinda.

  “Why?” said Kit. “Where are you going?”