Hush (24 page)

bushes near the play area. The sight of him made her brake suddenly and stall

the Honda. He sat with his head down below his knees, as if hiding his face

could hide the rest of him. She restarted the car and pulled back into her spot.
Who the devil was on van duty today? She started parading the Center's personnel

through a mental checklist when she remembered Allison rushing out of her office

after their meeting. She'd been running late. Doesn't matter. This is

inexcusable. You don't leave behind a child. The drivers don't know. Half the

time the district sends over a new one.
Davy didn't look up as she approached, so she called his name softly and shook

the bush lightly, which spooked him enough that he jumped into the open.
"Easy, Davy, it's just me. What are you doing out here? School's over."
He knew that but he didn't want to go home. That's why he snuck away when the

teacher's helper wasn't there. If he went home there'd be nothing but Chet till

Monday, and he wanted to stay here. He could live here and draw all the time.

They had a kitchen and bathroom, it wasn't anything like a regular school, and

he could sleep on the floor. They had a carpet, a nice clean carpet, not like

that linoleum at home with the dark stains. And he didn't need a bed. He didn't

have a real one anyway, just some old cot. He'd be plenty warm on the carpet, or

on the couch in the living room. It looked like a house too. Someone should be

living here. He could take care of it when they left. Keep it clean. He knew

how. Chet made him do it a lot. He'd figured out how to get in too. He'd seen

the window in the basement that was cracked. He'd bust it right open, but he'd

fix it too. He would. Someday.
He could have been there the whole weekend. Chet never would have found him.

Maybe Mrs. Griswold would have stayed with him. Just for an afternoon, the two

of them. They could have watched TV, or she could have read him a book. His

mother used to read books to him. He'd sit right next to her so there was no

space between them at all and he could feel her body and look at the pages with

her, the funny pictures. Dr. Seuss. She'd make her voice change and pull him

closer, and sometimes he sat on her lap. Where'd she go?
Davy concentrated on this so hard he held his breath. If he could just remember

he could find her and they could run away together and he'd never have to be

with Chet again. But he couldn't remember where she was, only that she used to

read to him. But that made him happy. Till today he hadn't remembered that at

all.
Mrs. Griswold opened her car door and asked him to put on his seat belt, but he

had trouble with it. Chet's truck didn't have them. He didn't believe in them.

He said so. He didn't believe in a lot of things. Davy liked the way Mrs.

Griswold leaned over him and snapped the buckle closed. She smelled good. Then

she shut the door and started to come around to her side.
As Celia rounded the front of her car she saw Tony walking down the front steps.

She knew she'd better tell him, so she looked at the boy through the windshield

and held up her finger. "One minute," she mouthed.
She intercepted Tony on the walkway. He was moving at a brisk pace and grimaced

when Celia flagged him down.
"Sorry, but Davy missed the van. I found him hiding in the bushes."
"He missed the what?"
Celia didn't care for his overly dramatic response, and had all she could do to

keep from saying, You heard me.
"It's not that big a deal. I can—"
"Who was on van duty? That's what I want to know."
Why was his first impulse to blame someone? Was it a male thing? Then, wincing

inwardly, she recalled having had a similar response just before coming up with

Allison's name.
"I don't know," she lied, hoping for Allison's sake that by the time Monday

rolled around Tony would have calmed down or forgotten the incident entirely.
"It wasn't you, was it?"
"No," she said curtly.
"Ethan?"
"No, Ethan did it yesterday."
"Ethan," he repeated like a curse, and then said no more.
While he stood there apparently trying to think of someone to blame, Celia said

she'd be glad to give the boy a ride home, an option Tony sharply tried to

dismiss.
"You can't expect me to endorse that suggestion after what I just told you."
"Then I guess you can do it," she snapped. Lowering her voice so Davy wouldn't

hear, she added, "I've got plenty to do around here without running a bus

service."
In truth, she welcomed giving Davy a ride home and was banking on Tony's refusal

to be inconvenienced.
"No." He studied his watch. "I can't." He looked over and saw Davy in her car,

and that appeared to be all the excuse he needed. "He's already with you. Just

take him. But minimize your interaction with him. Take him home and drop him off

and leave."
"Fine," she agreed crisply, though she had no intention of following his

directive.
Tony walked away.
After settling into the car seat, Celia turned to Davy. "You're going to have to

help me find your place, okay? I don't know that area real well."
She actually had a good idea of where he lived. Center rules required everyone

to know how to find the clients' homes. New drivers often needed help with

directions, and in an emergency the staff couldn't afford to waste time trying

to locate an address. Barbara kept a continually updated map in her desk. Celia

had asked for Davy's assistance because she wanted to use every opportunity to

develop communication with him.
He looked at her.
"You can just point, but I really do need your help. I hope you don't mind doing

a little shopping with me. I've got to make a stop on the way home."
After her kissing affair with Ethan, she decided to put together a romantic

dinner for Jack. Catholic guilt. God, would she ever outgrow it? She had her

doubts. So she'd serve up some penance along with a breast of chicken, though

the former was easier to find in Bentman than the latter. Blame it on Andy. He

owned the town's only market, a small, stubbornly ugly food store that squatted

like a dirty old hen by the side of the road, an appalling old box of a building

slapped together out of local timber during Bentman's big boom in the early

fifties.
She herded Davy through the door, plastered with promotional stickers for

cigarettes, chew, and "specials" on twelve-packs of Bud, and immediately noticed

the filth on the floor, the grit ground into the linoleum by decades of boots

and shoes dragging in the dust and mud of the Oregon mountains. Dirt and grime

had settled on the shelves too, and turned into a gooey kind of glop that made

the cans and bottles stick just a little when she picked them up.
She tried to get in and out quickly, as much for Davy's sake as her own, but

this always proved impossible. The aisles were narrow and crowded with rickety

displays, and the shelves rose to within inches of the ceiling. She often had to

ask Andy to reach up and grab an item for her, and then bide her time while the

bald, burly man moved with the speed of a house plant.
If she encountered another customer she'd have to edge along the canyonlike

aisles to squeeze by, but the shelves had all kinds of crap hanging from them:

cheap little plastic toys, flyswatters, mousetraps, special sponges and

doohickies of all types, the kind of junky items that really enjoyed gravity,

that dropped to the floor as soon as she brushed against them, and fell again

when she tried to hang them back up.
She eyed a package of chicken breasts that did not appear too abused by their

internment at Andy's. After sniffing them carefully she decided they would do,

then moved on to the produce counter, where she picked out some healthy-looking

green beans. Andy had just taken delivery on a crate of local mushrooms, so she

bagged a pound of them for a sauce that would go nicely with the beans.
There, she said to herself, with a bottle of wine and the sorbet in the freezer,

we'll be set. A candlelight dinner on the deck.
She found Davy ogling the candy shelves just below the cash register, so she

told him he could help himself to one item. He immediately snatched up a bag of

Gummy Bears, then held them tightly in his fist as if she might change her mind.
He loved Gummy Bears. His mother used to buy them for him all the time. He

especially liked the red ones, but all the colors were good. They didn't

disappear when you put them in your mouth. You could make them last and last if

you wanted to. He could make a bag last all day. She used to joke with him about

that, called him a squirrel 'cause he was always saving them up. But if you were

smart that's what you did. Make them last. After his daddy died he knew for sure

that you had to save up the good times too 'cause otherwise they'd go away

before you knew it. And then his mom left and there was nothing left to save,

nothing he wanted to keep, and just remembering her was so hard to do. Like her

reading to him. He didn't remember that till today. But there had to be more.

Had to be. But maybe no matter how hard he tried he could have her only a little

bit at a time. And then he thought that maybe his mom was like the Gummy Bears,

and he should go real slow. He could think about this one thing, like her

reading to him, until the memory melted away completely, and then he could think

of another. Maybe he could make her last forever this way. And each time would

be sweet as candy. He put the Gummy Bears in his pocket where they'd be safe.
Celia escaped without letting Andy bog her down in one of his interminable

diatribes against environmentalists, whom he blamed for the decline of the local

economy in general and for his own misfortunes in particular. He'd even been

nice enough to give Davy a peppermint, which the boy jammed into the pocket with

the Gummy Bears.
As she turned south on the highway, she asked, "This way?" to see if he'd help

her. When he nodded she offered a cheerful, "Okay, we're on our way."
*
The sun hovered just over the mountains to the west, and she guessed they had

another hour or so of daylight. Tomorrow night she'd have to set back the clocks

an hour, which reminded her to check with Tony to see what Halloween activities

he'd planned for the Center. Most of the children loved to dress up as witches

or goblins or monsters. Lets their darker sides flourish in a socially

acceptable manner, she thought. She glanced at Davy, and it occurred to her that

some adults she'd met recently might benefit from this as well.
"What are you going to be for Halloween?"
Davy looked at her but didn't seem to understand the question.
"Have you thought about it? Do you want to be a ghost or a pumpkin, or a—"
Batman. He didn't hear what else she said because he wanted to be Batman, that's

all. But he knew he'd never get to wear that cool mask. There'd be no

trick-or-treating with Chet. He hadn't said so, but Davy knew. Not like with his

real dad, taking him around from house to house and waiting by the curb and then

asking him what he got.
Last year Davy had run down the steps of a scary old house with a paper skeleton

on the door and showed his father a big Hershey bar. The old man who lived there

had said, "Boo," and tossed it into his bag. His dad had said, "That's a good

one, Davy. We got to remember this place next year."
But there was no next year. There was Chet.
Celia didn't expect Davy to tell her what he wanted to be for Halloween, but she

kept talking to him as she would to any other child. She was genuinely curious,

though, to know what he'd be if he had the chance. And then it hit her. What had

be been drawing?
"I'll bet you'll be ..." She made a long pause to get his attention, and

succeeded; Davy stared at her intently. "...Batman."
When his eyes widened, she knew she'd nailed it.
How'd she know? Davy wondered. It was like she could hear what he was thinking.

Maybe she could hear other things too, just like he was talking, so he pictured

his dad to see if she'd say, "Your dad." But she didn't.
"I'll bet you'll be a great Batman."
Davy knew he would be too. If he had a real costume he could climb walls just

like Batman, and he'd be strong and real fast and Chet would never catch him,

and if he did he'd beat him up so he couldn't move anymore.
Celia passed Broken Creek Road and the way to her house, and had a fleeting

thought about the shepherd, the kind of costume he might wear; then told herself

that next weekend a lot of people would pay good money to try to look as scary

as he did every day. Few, of course, would succeed.
"This way?" she tested Davy as she approached a cross-street. He shook his head.

"But you'll let me know, right?" He nodded.
A couple of minutes later he pointed left, and Celia slowed to study the forest

on the other side of the road. She spotted a two-track that looked like an old

logging road, pretty much what she'd seen on the map at the Center.
"Here?"
Davy nodded again.
She drove down the narrow path bordered on both sides by spindly firs that

blocked much of the dying light. If she hadn't thought she was almost there she

would have switched on her headlights, but she worried that she'd forget to turn

them off— she had a bad habit of doing that— and she sure didn't want to get

stuck out here.
After about a quarter of a mile Davy pointed again, this time to the right, and