“Yeah?”
“You know the only thing you can count on, the only thing that’s always true? It’s the speed of light. Louis told me Einstein figured it out, 186,000 miles per second. That’s the only sure thing. Everything else—changes. I was proud of Sammy for stealing that food, you know that?”
“So was I.”
“You were? You sure didn’t act it. You acted angry.”
“Well, I was.”
“Dicey, that doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m too tired to make sense, James. I’m trying to figure out where we might be. We came way downriver. We’ll have sandwiches for breakfast and finish the food up so we don’t have to carry it.” Dicey let her mind wander. “Did you ever hear Momma talk about her father, James? We had to have a grandfather, you know.”
“Probably dead,” James said. “Everyone’s either dead or dying.”
“Go to sleep, James,” Dicey said. “That’s just morbid. You’ll make yourself crazy.”
“I make myself crazy when I try to figure out a good reason why I shouldn’t be morbid,” James answered.
“Go to sleep.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Go to sleep, please. You’re not crazy. You’ll never be crazy. You’re just too smart for your own good. Anyone who stays awake so he can have ideas like that . . . well, he ought to be going to sleep.”
Dicey lay back and closed her eyes resolutely. James sighed.
CHAPTER 7
Morning broke low and cloudy. Streaks of smudged gray clouds covered the sky. “It’s still true,” James said. He looked out over the cemetery, where bright green grass contrasted with the faded marble of tombstones, and the tombstones reflected the cold gray of the sky.
“Some of them are bent over,” James said. “I bet they’re old, really old. Hundreds of years.”
After breakfast, while Dicey gathered together their litter and packed it into the paper bag to be discarded at the first trash can they saw, the little ones explored the graveyard. Sammy stayed with James, because James could read everything to him. Maybeth wandered among the rows, studying the statues of angels and lambs.
Dicey had a sudden fear that she had forgotten where they were going, so she recited Aunt Cilla’s address to herself. Mrs. Cilla Logan, 1724 Ocean Drive, Bridgeport. She ought to make the others memorize it. She made a mental note to do that as they walked that day.
Then she studied the map and admitted that they would have to go back to Route 1. She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay among big houses and tall trees, on the shore road that would keep her close to the water. But Route 1 was the shorter way, even though it looped up north of the Thruway before entering New Haven.
Those decisions made, Dicey went to call the others. They had to start. They had money and a map, their stomachs were full—it wasn’t a bad way to begin.
While she waited for Maybeth to return and for James and Sammy to finish working out what was written on a cracked stone that slanted back toward the earth, Dicey looked at the gravestones about her. She read an inscription: Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor home from the sea.
What a thing to put on a grave.
As if to say that being dead was home. Home, for Dicey, was their house in Provincetown, where the wind made the boards creak in a way that was almost music. Or Aunt Cilla’s big white house that faced over the water, the one she had dreamed about. Being dead wasn’t going home, was it? Unless—and she remembered what James had been saying last night—home was the place where you finally stayed, forever and ever. Then this person was home, and nobody would be truly home until he, or she, died. It was an awful thought.
Only living people had homes. That was the difference.
(If Momma was dead, where was her grave? What was written on it? Nobody would even know her name or who she was or when she was born.)
If you took home to mean where you rested content and never wanted to go anywhere else, then Dicey had never had a home. The ocean always made her restless; so even Provincetown, even their own remembered kitchen, wasn’t home. That was why Dicey always ran along the sand beside the ocean, as if she had to race the waves. The ocean wasn’t home, then, and neither was anyplace else. Nobody could be home, really, until he was in his grave. Nobody could rest, really, until then.
It was a cold, hard thought written on that cold, hard stone. But maybe true.
If Dicey died, she guessed she wouldn’t mind having this poem on her tombstone, now that she thought about it. She was the hunter and the sailor, and she guessed dead people did lie quietly in their graves.
“James,” she said when he came back. “You know what you were saying last night?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re pretty smart,” Dicey said.
“I know,” he said.
A pale sun showed behind the clouds. It looked like there were two layers of clouds now, one layer lower, like a gray veil spread before the other. Where the veil broke, you could see silvery islands of clouds on which tall angels might stand. Not cute little Christmas angels, but high, stern angels in white robes, whose faces were sad and serious from being near God all day and hearing His decisions about the world. Dicey was hypnotized by the molten silver of the cloudy islands and not until the veil of fuzzy gray blew across it again did she begin their march of the day.
Route 1 had not changed in their absence. Stores, shopping centers, garages, furniture outlets, restaurants, quick-food stands: the cement procession marched on, broken only by traffic lights dangling from heavy wires over the roadway. Traffic was heavier, and the exhaust and the diesel fumes could not rise into the sky on that first gray day, but hung over everything. Their faces and hands felt grimy all the time. Day by day, their money dwindled away.
When she thought back on this part of their journey, Dicey found that she could remember very little of it, that it all blurred together in her memory, all the long days, all the strange nights. They spent a night on a shaly beach, with no shelter and no fire. They spent a night in a grove of pines that stood at the entrance to an estate, where Dicey woke frequently with the fear that they would be discovered by the owners of the big stone house that lay at the end of the driveway. They spent a night by the entrance to another state park. As Route 1 looped north, they crossed under the Thruway and spent a miserable night huddled at the back of a shopping center. They slept sitting together on the concrete walkway, against the concrete wall. As they approached the large city of New Haven, the buildings were closer together and there were no more open spaces.
In all these days, the sun had come out only twice, once for an hour early in the morning, and once late in the evening to give them a fine sunset. Slowly, rain had been building. The rain finally began to fall during the night they spent in a tiny playground beside the Branford River. The next day they spent the last of their money, standing in the rain to eat cold doughnuts. The rain continued, steady and gentle, all that day. Dicey led them under the shelter of an empty car wash for that night and roused them early so they would be gone before anybody arrived to open the business or to wash a car. She roused them early even though nobody in his right mind would wash his car on a rainy day. You couldn’t expect people to act as if they were in their right minds. Dicey was taking no chances.
They approached New Haven and Dicey took out the map, which she carried under her shirt, where the cloth and her arm would protect it. She planned their way through the city. She wanted to get across it before dark. She didn’t like cities and didn’t want to have to spend the night in one.
That they had nothing to eat and no money to buy food with, these facts she refused to think of. They would cross the city first, and then get some money. They would cross the city hungry because they had to.
James, Maybeth and Sammy greeted this announcement without a change in expression. They did not speak or sing anymore, just followed Dicey meekly. If she had food to give them, they ate it. If there was no
food, then they said nothing. Dicey thought she might prefer to have them complain, but that was another worry she could not deal with until they had crossed the city. That was a worry that went along with the limp James had developed from a hole worn into the sole of his left sneaker; with the gray under Maybeth’s eyes and not having heard her voice for days; with Sammy’s new habit of clinging to her hand and doing whatever she told him, right away, not even the start of a quarrel.
James, Maybeth and Sammy listened quietly while she recited the streets they would take to cross the city. “We have to get off Route One to cross the rivers,” she said. “So we’ll follow the train tracks for a while, then take a couple of blocks on a street named Quinnipiac, up to Ferry Street. That will take us over one branch of the river. When Ferry meets with Chapel Street, we’ll turn left and start walking across the city. We’ll go over a river, then by a big college. There, we’ll be about halfway. Okay?”
They nodded, three pale faces.
“Then, we’re going to have to get back to Route One, so we’ll turn left onto a cross-street to meet up with it. It doesn’t matter which street we take. We can follow Route One the rest of the way out of the city.”
They nodded, six blank eyes.
“So let’s go. Or we won’t get across before dark.”
Dicey walked with Maybeth and James took Sammy’s hand. At first, most of the buildings were low, four or five stories of soiled brick. They walked beside the railroad tracks and saw only the backs of buildings, houses with no grass in the yards, ripped curtains in dirty windows, fences that looked like some giant rat had been gnawing at them. The empty windows of factories stared down. Rain fell steadily. Sometimes they would glimpse a face through an open window. Most often, except for the people looking out of train windows, they saw no one.
They crossed a small river, walking on a narrow, fenced-over walkway that was built to run beside the road. Rain showered down and made miniature puddles on the turgid river water. Green and oily slime floated on the river and gathered in stringy islands by its banks.
Chapel Street was wide, lined with stores. Groceries, five-and-dimes, an occasional movie theater, army-navy surplus stores, liquor stores with metal gates across the windows. The street passed a small park before it crossed another river. On the other side of the river, tall modern buildings, with whole walls of windows, lifted up out above the squat brick constructions.
The Tillermans walked on, over the Thruway. They passed hotels, clothing stores, jewelers and bookstores; then old brick churches, with signs out front saying what sermon would be given the next Sunday, and a few large old city homes. As evening thickened and lights were turned on, you could see inside where large mirrors hung on ivory-white walls and long curtains framed polished wood tables.
Dicey did not look in the store windows as the others did, or in the windows of the houses. She looked in the unsmiling faces of the people walking past her.
Night, hurrying down upon them, was not in their favor, nor was the rain, falling steadily. But they were all past hunger, she thought—she knew she wasn’t hungry anymore. Just tired.
It was after ten when they came to the college and the square park that lay at the center of the city, bordered by the college on one side, a chapel on the opposite and the city on the others.
Dicey finally admitted that they would have to sleep the night in the city. This park would have to do, even though it was too open. She chose a cluster of bushes far from any street lamp. “Look, you all go in there,” she pointed to a kind of nest made by the low branches of the piny bushes. “You curl up there, as covered as you can. I’ll stay out here and keep watch.”
Without a word, they obeyed.
The rain pattered down. People hurried across the park, their heads bent. Dicey sat on a bench near her family’s hiding place and looked across the park to a long wall of college dormitories. Some of the windows had lights in them. One had someone sitting in it.
Dicey sat and stared into the night without seeing, without thinking. Lights shone all around her. The streetlight cast puddles of light on the wet sidewalks. The raindrops caught the light from the lamps and glowed, falling, like yellow pebbles. Bright red neon light shone hazily on top of a building in the distance. The arch-topped windows of the dormitories showed like yellow cutouts. The water on the roads and sidewalks reflected light with a silvery sheen.
Dicey sat and kept the watch. Three little children, alone in a city: she couldn’t sleep.
How many more days until Bridgeport? And Aunt Cilla’s big white house.
How would they get money? Why had she thrown away the twenty dollars Sammy found? How would they eat all those days until Bridgeport?
How was she going to see to it that they got there, when she didn’t even know where it was?
Dicey thought the rain had grown warm, until a stuffiness in her nose and an ache in her throat (like she was trying to swallow an apple whole) told her she was crying. But she never cried! And now she couldn’t stop.
She heard footsteps approaching, the first in a long time. Just one person. She bowed her chin down and folded her arms across her chest, trying to look as if she was asleep. She held her breath against a sob that was swelling in her throat. But she kept an eye out. If she needed to, she could break and run, away from the bushes where her family slept. They all knew Aunt Cilla’s address.
Somebody—a man she guessed from his pants legs and loafers—sat down at the other end of her bench. His pant legs were wet, as if he had been walking for a long time. They clung against his calves. Dicey didn’t move.
But the sob moved. It swelled up and broke through her clenched teenth. Dicey’s panicked eyes moved to the face of the person beside her.
He had turned to look at her. He was young. He wore a yellow raincoat and his hands were jammed into the pockets. In the dim light, his eyes were dark and serious. His hair was plastered down over his forehead.
When he spoke, his voice was flat. “You looked like a girl crying. I thought you were a girl crying. Can I help?”
Dicey bit her lip and shook her head.
“You lost?”
Dicey shook her head again.
“Okay.” He seemed to believe her. “Can you walk home from here?”
This made Dicey feel like smiling, but not from laughter. She shook her head.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“Nope.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what I think. I think you don’t have a place to sleep, you’re probably hungry, you’re frightened and worried, and you don’t want to tell me anything. So far, am I right?”
“Yeah.”
He shifted on the bench and turned to face Dicey. “Okay. Now. You don’t have to believe this, but you can trust me. I’ve been in your kind of jam myself, more than once. If it helps, I’m studying at the college, if that tells you anything about me.”
“Schools are closed in summer.”
“Not colleges. They have summer session. I’m taking a geology course because I flunked it this year and I have to pass it to graduate. I want to graduate next June.”
“You don’t sound stupid,” Dicey said.
“Oh, I’m not. I just didn’t work at it, so it’s my own fault. Look, I have an idea for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Don’t say no right away. Okay? Okay. Why don’t you come with me and get some food and camp out in my rooms tonight. It’s better than the Green—it’s dry at least. I’ve got a roommate so you won’t have to worry about being alone with me.”
“I’ve got roommates too,” Dicey said.
He smiled.
“No, three—over there.”
He looked at her carefully. “Okay then, we’ll all go. All your age?”
“No. Younger. They’re my brothers and my sister.”
His jaw fell a little, and then he pulled it up sharply. His eyebrows twitched, as if he were keeping them from shooting up in surprise. “Will wonders never
cease?” he asked. He stood up briskly. “Let’s see the worst. I’ve made up my mind anyway and I guess four kids can sleep on our floor. You’ve made up your mind to trust me, haven’t you?”
“I’m afraid so,” Dicey said. That made him laugh, but she didn’t know why. “Wait here,” she said.
He stood absolutely still, as if to show that he would do exactly what she told him, and a smile played around his lips. He wasn’t serious. He was teasing her. Dicey looked up at him through the rainy light, still trying to decide. He made his mouth still, and then she nodded at him. “Okay,” she said. “But we don’t have any money.”
“I do,” he said.
Dicey roused her family. They woke easily, even Sammy, who usually slept deeply.
They rose up out of the bushes, Maybeth first, then James, then Sammy. Their eyes were surprised, but they didn’t question her. She felt suddenly very sorry for them. She wondered if she had done the right thing, when she began this whole journey. Was she doing the right thing now?
With one arm around Maybeth’s shoulders, holding Sammy’s hand tight, Dicey led her family back to where the young man stood waiting. James tagged behind, limping slightly.
The smile went out of the young man’s eyes when he saw them. Dicey was briefly worried, but he crouched down on his heels, ignoring the puddles, and looked up at them all.
“You don’t have to feel sorry for us,” Dicey said. “You can back out.”
“Not on your life. That’s not it. I’m curious—intensely curious—about you. What are your names? Mine’s Windy . . . well, Windy’s what they call me here because they say I talk too much. How did you get here? Where are your parents? Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” Sammy said fiercely.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
“Yesterday, I think,” Dicey said.
“Then what are we hanging around here for?” the young man asked. He stood up and took James’s hand. James was too tired to protest this extraordinary gesture. “I know just the place,” Windy said. He led them to one of the city sides of the Green and into a small diner that had a long counter and four booths. The clock read 1:30. Windy herded them into a booth, then brought over menus. He called the waitress before they had even opened the menus and ordered each of them a large glass of milk. He asked for a cup of coffee for himself.