Homecoming

  Definitely, then, the eastern shore was better. At Wilmington they would get on a bus going south. How far they went would depend on how much it cost. That was easy enough. She folded up the map and returned it to her suitcase.

  The bus made its way through Philadelphia and then south through more farmland, more small cities. After another hour, after a bridge like a section of roller coaster, they came into Wilmington.

  The Wilmington Bus Depot was a one-story building, a single room with wooden benches, a lunch counter, lockers where you could store your suitcases, six windows where tickets could be purchased and at its center an information booth with a clock on top of it. Three forty-five. Dicey told James to stay with Maybeth and Sammy by the door. Only one bus stood waiting, now that the one they had ridden on had gone on to Baltimore. That bus, she saw by the sign above its front window, was going to Annapolis.

  Inside, Dicey picked out a schedule from the assortment at the information booth. The first thing she did was to see if Crisfield was there, at the bottom of the list of towns. It was. After Salisbury, Eden and Princess Anne, came Crisfield.

  Her eye went back up to the top of the list, found Wilmington and traced the buses leaving for the eastern shore. There were several, but most went no further than Cambridge. Only one went down to Crisfield, a morning bus.

  Then Dicey saw that the last afternoon bus heading south to Cambridge left Wilmington at two thirty. The only bus after that didn’t leave until nine at night.

  Nine. By nine, Cousin Eunice would have been home for almost three hours. By nine, she could call Father Joseph. By nine, they might be able to trace the Tillermans, and maybe find them, and stop them. She didn’t know Dicey had money, did she? She might think the Tillermans were walking. But Dicey couldn’t count on that. She couldn’t count on anything. She rushed up to the information booth and asked when the bus for Annapolis was leaving. The man put his hand over the microphone and told her, “Five minutes.”

  Five minutes, how could she think it through in five minutes? Dicey hurried over to a ticket window and bought four tickets to Annapolis. They couldn’t just sit around the bus station for five hours, waiting to be recognized. Cousin Eunice would have to do something to find them; she would think it was her responsibility.

  Dicey joined her family. “We missed the last bus until nine.”

  “Tonight? We better stay here,” James said.

  “No,” Dicey said. “We can’t. We’ll go to Annapolis. It’s the only bus.”

  “But Dicey—”

  “Do as I say, James.”

  She wasn’t thinking, she knew that. She wasn’t thinking clearly. She hurried her family onto the bus just as the driver was closing the door. They sat at the back. Dicey chewed on her lip.

  “Nobody will expect us to go to Annapolis,” James said. “It was good luck that we missed the bus.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Dicey said.

  The bus left Wilmington and headed south. This bus was air-conditioned, and you couldn’t open the windows. The windows were smeared with grime, so you couldn’t see out. The hour and a half to Baltimore seemed endless. At Baltimore, a lot of dressed-up people got on, commuters, Dicey guessed, going home from work. The bus grew crowded.

  The circuitous route from Baltimore to Annapolis, where they kept getting on and off the same road to stop at little huts by the road and let off passengers, took another hour and a half. Dicey tried to control her impatience by reminding herself that if they had been walking it would have taken days and days. This was slow, but it was faster than walking. They’d be walking soon enough.

  At last, the bus turned into a parking lot before a low brick building. The bus driver turned around and called, “Annapolis. End of the line.”

  The Tillermans hopped up and joined the few people waiting to get off the bus. Dicey just followed in the direction the majority took, turning left down a sidewalk, away from the bus station. Behind her, the sun lowered, so they were walking on their own shadows, heading east.

  “Where we going?”

  “We’ll find a place to sit down and think,” Dicey said. “I’m looking for a park.”

  They passed a drugstore and a finance company and three banks. They saw bookshops and card stores, clothing stores and a wine-and-cheese store. The road they walked along came up to a traffic circle. Cars and trucks whirled around it, circling a church that stood at its center.

  Dicey led them around the circle. Streets led off, but none promised to go to a park, although one said it went to the hospital. At the top of one street, Dicey looked down and saw blue water with sails on it. She stood, staring.

  It looked like the painted backdrop to a movie, not like anything real. The long main street went downhill and then fetched up at the water. On the blue water, boats sailed or motored as if they were in an entirely different world, and it wasn’t clear, in the bright August light, where water ended and sky began.

  They headed down the hill to the water, passing stores and shops and more banks. The street was crowded: parked cars lined both sides, while moving vehicles crawled bumper to bumper uphill and the sidewalks were crowded with people. At the foot of the street was another circle, around which cars traveled slowly, with a steady chorus of horns and many near collisions. Across this circle, a quiet finger of water, hemmed in by concrete, marked the corner of a narrow area where people thronged, eating, talking, sitting and watching one another. Dicey moved through the milling crowd and along beside the water. They passed boats crowded as closely together as the cars in a parking lot, motorboats, sailboats and old, worn fishing boats.

  At the waterfront, beyond a huge parking lot jammed with cars, they found a public park. It had no grass, just trees in wooden boxes. The ground was covered by wooden flooring. Benches, however, there were in plenty. The benches right at the water were all full, but one beneath a sparsely leaved young tree was empty. The Tillermans sat on that.

  “It’s hot,” James said. His face was red. Sweat plastered his hair to his neck. The air hung moist and heavy over the park. A slight ripple of a breeze came off the water, but that did little to relieve them. Everybody seemed slowed down by heat. Nobody walked briskly, everybody sauntered. A lot of people were licking ice cream cones. Dicey’s mouth watered.

  “What time’s it?” James asked. Without waiting for an answer, he hopped up and asked the same question of a man moving by, who held his suit jacket over his shoulder. “It’s seven thirty,” James reported. “Time for supper.”

  “How about ice cream for supper?” Dicey asked. She didn’t know just how much money she had in her pocket, not enough for a real dinner.

  “We passed a hamburger joint,” James countered.

  “Ice cream,” Sammy said.

  “Hamburgers,” James said.

  Sammy stuck his jaw out.

  “Ice cream’s cheaper,” Dicey said. “Double dip?”

  “Can I have seconds?” James asked.

  “We’ll see how hungry you are,” Dicey said.

  James agreed.

  “But first I’ve got to figure out a couple of things, okay?”

  “Like what?” James asked.

  “Like where to sleep, and how to find an army-navy surplus store. And how to get across the bay.”

  “Get across the bay? Why?”

  Dicey pulled out the map again and showed him where they were. Then she pointed out Crisfield.

  “Oh, Dicey. What are we doing on this side?”

  “I told you, we missed the last bus.”

  “Yeah but—” James caught a glimpse of Dicey’s face and stopped speaking.

  “I know. I know. But if we can just get across, we’ll be much nearer.”

  “How can we do that? Okay, we’re here. We need a place to sleep tonight, right?”

  “I guess. The army-navy store will be closed, wherever it is.”

  “If there is one.”

  “I’m sorry, James,” Dicey said. “I panick
ed. When I found out we’d missed the last bus—”

  “It’s okay, Dicey. I just thought you had it all planned.”

  “I did. For me to go.”

  “Are you angry at us?” Sammy asked this. It sounded like the beginning of a quarrel.

  “No. Well, yes, a little, but that doesn’t matter. I’d rather be all together. Really, I would. I’m just confused still because I didn’t have any plan for all of us. Can you understand that?”

  Sammy didn’t answer.

  “I was going to come back,” Dicey said to him.

  He looked at her, with the question in his hazel eyes. “Really?”

  “Really. Really and truly. Don’t you trust me, Sammy?”

  “You said you didn’t trust anyone.”

  “I didn’t mean any of us. I didn’t mean you. Would you leave me behind? Or James or Maybeth?”

  “No!”

  “Well I wouldn’t leave you, either. I feel the same way.”

  “But you were going to leave us behind,” Sammy said stubbornly. Dicey sighed.

  They rose to find the ice cream store. James got a double-dip chocolate-nut cone, explaining that nuts and chocolate were both rich and filling. Dicey got a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of butter almond. She noticed a pile of maps of Annapolis on the countertop and took one. Maybeth wanted pink sherbet and green, but Dicey told her to get real ice cream because of the milk. She chose two scoops of strawberry. Sammy asked for strawberry ripple ice cream topped with peanut butter ice cream. “Ugh,” Dicey said, listening to his order. He grinned at her.

  They sat at a small table to eat. The ice cream tasted rich and smooth and cold. You could tell that it was made from real cream, it was that rich. Dicey studied her map while her tongue made valleys in the ice cream and then smoothed them out. The cone was crunchy and sweet.

  “There’s a college,” Dicey said. “Let’s try that, okay?”

  James had a single-dip cone for seconds, another scoop of chocolate-nut. They walked out and onto the crowded sidewalk. What were all these people doing? It was like a carnival.

  The college lay in summer twilight, set back from the road by a long, sloping lawn. It was brick and very old. Everything looked old about it, old and tended, the smooth brick sidewalks, the many-paned windows, the little dome on top of the main building. It had trees—huge, tall trees, with branches too high for climbing—all about on its lawn. There were plenty of people. Students lay scattered about, reading. Watchmen wandered around on the brick paths. Families were eating picnic suppers. Children ran everywhere.

  The Tillermans stood on the sidewalk, separated by a brier hedge from this scene. “No good,” Dicey said. “Too many people.”

  She did not move on, however. It looked—so quiet and solid; the air over it was lavender in the evening light, and mysterious. She wished . . . she didn’t know what she wished.

  Resolutely, she turned away.

  Her map showed only something called the Historic District. They had walked through some of it. All the houses crowded up onto the sidewalk, close to one another.

  Dicey moved on. The suitcase weighed heavy on her shoulder muscle and banged against her legs. The map showed the Naval Academy in one direction, closed in by a wall that ran all around it. She turned the other way and led them back toward the first circle they had seen. She chose the road leading to the hospital, and they walked on, past that large building.

  The houses were bigger here and had front lawns. A residential area. A rich residential area.

  She walked on.

  They saw one vacant lot that had no cover to conceal them from the surrounding houses.

  She walked on.

  The air grew darker, gray-violet now. The heat did not abate. Sweat ran down her back.

  She walked on.

  On her left, she saw a long, narrow stretch of grass in the middle of a kind of courtyard of houses. On both sides of the stretch ran roads, and houses stood facing one another across the grass. At the end of this stretch, with all its many windows dark, stood a house larger than any other on the street. Dicey headed down toward it.

  They walked down the middle of the grass. There was one broad clump of bushes the little kids could hide in, if it came to that.

  When they stood before the large house, Dicey noticed oddly shaped piles. Old radiators had been dropped here and pipes and slate shingles from the roof and even a bathroom sink. They were piled up right by the front porch.

  “Let’s go around back,” she said quietly. “I think it’s empty. It looks like somebody’s fixing it up. If anybody calls out, don’t run. Tell them we’re looking for Prince George Street. Tell them we’re lost. Don’t look guilty.”

  Their feet silent on the unmown grass, they stepped around the side of the house.

  A silver pool of water glimmered at the end of the long lawn. The back of the house was as dark as the front, and Dicey breathed easy. She put her suitcase beside one of the overgrown bushes that grew by the screened porch, and they all walked down to the water.

  A long-fingered willow swept the top of the grass at the water’s edge. Two towering pines stood silent guard. On the silver pool, which was part of a river, some sailboats floated.

  There was a bulkhead at the end of the lawn made out of railroad ties. They sat on that and dangled their feet over the water.

  Dicey’s stomach had butterflies of excitement in it. “Remember that first house?” she asked James.

  “Yeah. Think it’s empty?”

  “I think so. Let’s risk it.”

  No other houses were visible, although patches of light from windows showed through high hedges or trees. It was a private lawn.

  “No fires,” Dicey said.

  A sailboat, its sails down, motored up the river. It made little waves that streaked the silver with black and lapped gently against the bulkheading.

  Dicey turned to look at the house behind her. Its windows were comfortingly blank.

  “We’ll have to be quiet and get out early,” she said.

  Her family watched out over the water with dream-dazed eyes. They nodded. The river was narrow enough to swim easily. Across it, houses looked back at them.

  Dicey smiled. Sammy drummed at the wood with his heels, quietly. James lay back and looked at the sky. Maybeth hummed, a tune Dicey half-recognized. “What song is that?” she asked.

  “Stewart’s song,” Maybeth said. “ ‘Oft I sing for my friends,’ ” she sang softly. “Remember?”

  Dicey shook her head. “We can’t sing—but I sure feel like it,” she said. “I don’t really know why.”

  “Yes, you do,” James said, but said no more. He was watching the first stars emerge in the gray sky.

  And Dicey did. They had money and a good place to sleep. She had a map. They were together alone again, themselves again. The night air was warm, and the willow whispered behind her, and the water whispered before her.

  “Okay,” she said, rousing them, rousing herself. “Let’s go up and get to sleep.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Safe as she felt, Dicey woke early. She rolled over on her back. The lightening sky arched over her. Behind her, the empty house stood like a protecting wall. From the water came the cries of gulls. Their quarrels cut through the quiet slapping sound ropes and rigging made against masts. Dicey stretched lazily and sat up.

  James lay sprawled on his stomach, one arm flung out. Sammy had curled into a tight ball. Maybeth lay on her back, her arms folded over her stomach.

  To the east, the sky showed a lake of clear blue into which the sun would rise. It was a particular blue, made of light and darkness mingling, clear as glass, smooth as glass, as much like water as sky. Dicey stood up and went around the far corner of the house to pee behind a large evergreen bush. She decided to let her family sleep awhile longer. Even men eager to get started while the day was cool wouldn’t come to work this early. Dicey returned to the bulkheading and sat.

  The boats rocked at
their moorings. The houses beside her and across the river from her slept. Quiet as kittens, the water lapped at the boats and the bulkheads. In the east, that first blue lake increased to an ocean. The sun rose.

  The air shimmered in golden light. Water reflected and brightened the air. The masts and spars of the boats stood stiff and dark. The colors of the hulls became clear: whites, reds, yellows, greens and one burnished mahogany.

  Dicey walked back through the long grass. She called each of the sleepers by name.

  “James?”

  He stirred, rolled over, sat up, grinned. “Hey. Good morning. Is it late? I’m starving.”

  “Maybeth?”

  Maybeth’s eyes flew open. She lay still for a minute, staring blankly, remembering herself.

  Dicey crouched next to Sammy. She put her hand on his shoulder and jostled him gently while calling his name. “Sammy. Sammy. Time to get up.”

  He mumbled something and curled up more tightly.

  “You’ve got to. Sammy?”

  One eyelid struggled to open, then fell closed.

  “Wake up, Sammy. We can’t stay here.”

  He opened both eyes. “Okay,” he said. He closed both eyes.

  “That’s right,” Dicey encouraged him. James grinned at her. “C’mon, Sammy—time to get up. Gotta go to the bathroom and get out of here.”

  He stumbled to his feet. He and James walked together to the bush, James holding Sammy’s arm to keep the little boy from falling.

  Dicey pulled her suitcase out from under the bush, opened it again and took out twenty more dollars. She wondered how much money she had left. She could worry about that later in the day. For now, she wanted breakfast and a phone book.

  They returned to the circle with the church at its center and to the steep main street. Once again Dicey was surprised to see the backdrop of water that lay at its foot. Something was peculiar about the perspective here, she thought. It looked as if two photographs of two different places had been jammed together. The town looked as though it fell into the water.

  Her eyes searched eastward, across the water. “I can see something,” she said. She could see a distant looming of land, low and flat. “Do you think that’s the eastern shore?”