Homecoming (13 page)

“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.