The Heroines (15 page)

A
howling train thundered through the shelter. Or so it seemed. The plastic sheet shook with the downdraft, and outside, the horse whinnied and brayed and clomped its hooves. I opened my eyes to the first migraine of my life, my mouth so dry, my lips cracked at the corners when I closed it. I felt incoherently angry with the train, annoyed by the horse. I pinched the web between my thumb and index finger to redirect the pain from my skull. It didn’t work. I should have been happy not to wake to the reveille of curtain rungs screaming across the rods, courtesy of Eleanor, but I wasn’t. I was ready to dive in the murky pond to quench my thirst. I squinted at the other side of the shelter. Conor’s cape hung from the young oak at the center of the hovel, but he was gone.

I crawled out of the shelter and looked up at the boxcars. The moist dawn air was a relief compared to the musty hovel. A Soo Line car rumbled past, a washed-out red peace sign spray-painted on its panels. A gold flatbed held huge spools of wire. Albie and I always loved to count the cars, but the clank of the wheels felt like a stake through my head. Between the boxcars, I caught a glimpse of the pink horizon, though the sky between the trees was still midnight-blue. I got to my feet and headed toward the stream, stepping carefully in my bare feet over twigs and moss-covered stones.

As I walked, my vision blurred, and I stumbled off the path, nettles and arum brushing my knees. I squeezed shut my eyes. When I opened them I was staring at a tall Queen Anne’s lace plant. The reddish brown floret at the center was like a spot of blood on a veil. Water trickled in the creek. Where was Conor? I jangled my hands and tried to shake off the feeling, then ran down to the water. I kneeled at the edge, then cupped the cold water in my hands, gulping it down in a panic. The relief was instant. I plunged the crown of my head in the water, hoping it would ease my headache and dispel the visions. I wanted to shake off my skin, or scratch at somebody else’s. I must be going through withdrawal! A murder of crows landed in the tree above me, as if on cue, cawing and croaking and polluting the air with their ugly arguments. I looked up into the oaks at their shiny black wings and curved beaks. First some creature had taken the crow’s shape to communicate with Conor. Now it felt as if my migraine had conjured a hundred of them.

An overwhelming longing for home gripped me. If Conor was gone, I could give up this whole misadventure. It wouldn’t take much to convince Mother not to send me back to the Unit. I heard the snap of a branch and looked up. What I saw coming toward me made me drop to my knees.

Conor strode down the path, his hair wild, a smear of blood on his cheek. Over his left shoulder dangled two dun-colored legs, tipped with black hooves. On his right shoulder rested the head of a doe, her eyes wide open and twitching. One of her forelegs was bent forward like a hockey stick. Blood trailed behind Conor as he walked. His head pressed the doe’s furry side, her ribs rising and falling with labored breaths. He stopped suddenly and grabbed the doe’s legs, lifting her off his back with one strong heave. She writhed in the dirt, tossing her head from side to side. Conor drew his sword.

I turned away quickly, crawled up the embankment, wet leaves plastering my knees, and grabbed the polished stones that buttressed the creek bank. When I reached the trail, my head spun as I stood up. I wanted to run, but I felt too weak. My headache had reached a grueling peak. I had never seen Conor like this. One word rang through my mind:
brutal, brutal, brutal.
It drummed in my skull. As I staggered past Conor’s horse, it dropped manure that splattered on the ground. I felt bile rise in my throat, tried to force it back with my hand on my mouth. Too late. I projectile-vomited the remains of the previous night’s Salisbury steak and potatoes. I heaved until I was empty.

My legs trembled so much I couldn’t go any farther. I backed into the shelter. I’d have to pretend to sleep and make my getaway later.
Brutal, brutal, brutal.
I heard him coming closer. I crawled across the dirt floor and lay down, draping an arm over my eyes. I remembered how Mother’s headaches used to incapacitate her for half a day. I started to worry. Maybe my time at the Unit had actually made me crazy. Maybe now I was a hallucinatory psychotic. Maybe Conor was an illusion. Maybe the deer was a nightmare. Maybe the musty hovel was a figment of my imagination, and this was all a bad dream! Maybe not having a father had finally unhinged me. Something was missing, something was off.

I ached for my mother’s migraine medicine. I’d fetched it a hundred times, popping off the child-protection lid and shaking out two pills. I could see the clear green container in her medicine cabinet. My fingers mimicked the action, thumb depressing the plastic tab; my other hand clawed the air. I could scale the walls of the Homestead, slice the screen, and raid the cabinet, pry off the lid with my teeth. I could do it! I crawled across the floor and poked my pulsating head out the doorway.

My eye met the dull eye of the deer that was hanging upside down from two forked poles. The deer had been sliced through the side. I saw meat and blood and sinews. Conor crouched in the dirt, smashing rocks against each other, trying to get a spark. He didn’t notice me watching. I felt the vomit rise again in my throat, but I forced it back this time, swallowed the rancid burn in my mouth. I backed into the shelter and sprawled on the dirt.

I was truly ill. There was no doubt about that. The shelter spun as I dug my fingernails into the dust. When the spinning waned, I dragged myself to the bed and lay on it face down.

I must have slept for at least an hour. The smell of fresh peppermint woke me. Conor was squatting in the tent, grinding peppermint leaves with two stones. His calves bulged with muscles, and he bit his lip as he worked. The headache had ebbed somewhat, but I was afraid to move or breathe a word in case it came roaring back. So I lay still, eyes open, watching while he ground the mint leaves and placed the pulp in a McDonald’s cup. He must have felt me watching him then, because he looked over and his face broke into a ferocious smile.

“I see you’ve been sick. We’ll get you sorted out with this.” Conor brought the cup over to me and held it under my nose. “I’ll add some water, but a good sniff will settle the stomach. There you go.”

I carefully propped myself up on my elbows, inhaling the peppermint. It smelled wonderful—cool and light—but when I sniffed too hard, the headache intensified again. Just closing my eyes felt like a strain, and when I did, I saw a piercing light and short spasms electrified my brain, more startling than painful, but as they passed, the headache mushroomed.

“I’ll get you some meat after it’s roasted. You need to eat again.”

The thought of eating the once-frightened, now-disemboweled doe repelled me, but I held my tongue and tried to banish the thought of slaughtered doe from my mind. I lay back on the paper mattress in slow motion and wondered about Conor. I couldn’t square it: the brutal hunter and the kindly king. Then the headache rendered thinking moot.

I practiced breathing deeply as Mother did, stretched out on her four-poster bed, the shades and drapes drawn so not a glimmer of light snuck into the room. She had told me she focused on something peaceful and beautiful, so I thought of my pink satin duvet, inhaled and exhaled, pretended it was rising and falling on my chest. Condensation dripped from the plastic ceiling onto my leg. Though the shelter was warming up, my teeth started to chatter. I couldn’t tell whether I could control them. It felt like I could and couldn’t. The tooth-on-tooth pressure offset the headache. For a while. Then my thoughts started to race, and all I could think of was,
Valium, Valium, Valium.
I spelled it backward and forward:
Muilav, Valium, Muilav, Valium,
chanting like a cheerleader. My headache leveled into lofty numbness. I stood up, teeth clattering, and danced from foot to foot. Conor came in, holding a slab of meat on a garbage can lid, and shook his head at me.

“Working your spell, are you?”

“Valium, Muilav, Valium, Muilav,” I sang. I rushed over and grabbed his shoulders. “I must have it now!”

“Girl, you must eat! It will return you to your senses. An empty gut works ill on the mind.”

I took a chunk of greasy, smoky meat and lifted it to my lips. I tore off a chunk and chewed. It was tough but tasty, and I chewed and chewed, relishing how my grinding teeth offset the headache. Conor studied me; he seemed to be counting my chews. Then he held up the McDonald’s cup filled with water and peppermint.

“Thanks.” I was shocked by how good the meat tasted, even though I couldn’t bear to think of how it came to be in my hand. I accepted the cup and the water cooled my throat, while the peppermint eased my stomach. Once I’d eaten the chunk of meat, I lay back down, exhausted.

“There’ll be no going after Deirdre till you’ve rid yourself of this sickness. I’d say someone in the prison laid a mighty curse on you.”

“For sure.”

The curse of meds. I’d never been this sick without having my mother around. Conor was the only one I had. He was the first man besides my grandfather to care for me. I had a confusing mix of romantic and daughterly feelings toward him. The daughterly feelings were both wonderful and painful, as they came with a sharp ache for the father I’d lost, that moody man who’d died in a fiery car wreck. Before Conor, I hadn’t really registered how much I missed having a father. Timing had something to do with it. All this chaos made me wonder about the man I’d lost, made me wonder if I would have wound up in the Unit if I had a father.

I, typically and unoriginally, took out my anger on my mother. Before that, she and I were happy in our tidy twosome. I’d always been told that I had been an easy baby, an easy child. I think Mother longed for those idyllic days for the rest of her life. Now she had turned away from me. She was most responsible for my being in this state. I didn’t know who to trust anymore. Conor could single-handedly catch and slay a deer; imagine what he’d do if I crossed him. If by some fluke my period started, I’d have to sleep with him. How could I hide it? Yet he was taking care of me, so it seemed incongruous to fear him. I looked down at my chest; it had been weeks since I’d measured it, but I felt my nipples and was shocked to discover that they were bigger. I couldn’t believe it. I’d been too doped up at the Unit to notice. I wished I had a measuring tape. I looked across the shelter and discovered Conor staring at me. He lay on his side, one hairy knee bent toward me. The blood on his cheek had turned brown.

“I’ve never gone this long without a woman.” He rolled over on his back and reached for a thick walking stick that lay beside him. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the wood and drew it across his calf. He cracked it in two on his shinbone. He took the two smaller pieces and cracked each of those in half. “You need to get Deirdre to me.”

I felt a new urgency to do that.

W
hen my headache subsided somewhat, I rolled off the mattress and tried to sort my thoughts. My to-do list was short but herculean: get to the Homestead, trick Deirdre into coming to the woods, all while avoiding Mother. I also wondered what was happening in the Unit. Mother must have been called by now. The cops would come looking for me. It was only a matter of time. I remembered TV news reports of cops and hounds and locals combing the woods for a missing girl. The humiliation of having my face broadcast over the local news terrified me.

I was pretty sure it was Sunday, but I didn’t have a watch, so I had to determine the hour by the sky. By the level of heat and the angle of the sun through the roof, I figured it was early afternoon. Conor was outside stuffing another lawn bag with decayed leaves from the forest floor when I heard a familiar voice.

“Did you get her?”

“She’s resting in the shelter.”

Albie! I crawled out of the hovel, and when I stood the trees spun. Albie lent me an arm and I squeezed it tight. “You’re here!” I said. I’d never been so happy to see him. Next to Conor he seemed like a garden rake, with his bony legs and wild hair. Despite his pimply face, the stoop of his shoulders, and the whiff of body odor, I was delighted to see him. A friend.

“Hey, Penny. Nice outfit.”

I looked down at my pajamas and crossed my chest with my arms, ashamed of the corny anchor print.

“I got away as soon as I could,” he said. “The Prairie Bluff fuzz was all over me.”

“Cops came to your house?”

“With your mom. They know you escaped. After forty-eight hours, they’ll start searching the woods.”

“We better move,” I said.

“Sure a humble place it is, but—” Conor said.

“We’ll be safer farther back in the woods. They’re bound to come looking for me. The guys at the hospital might have—”

Conor jumped to his feet, turning on me angrily. “The High King runs from no one!”

“I’m not saying you should run…” I felt a hint of my old self returning with Albie’s presence. I could manage Conor a little better. His brazen courage had gotten me out of the Unit. I’d read enough Tolkien to understand the code: he was driven by pride and honor. “I just think
I’ll
feel better going out on raids if the base camp is secure.”

“I don’t know, Penny,” Albie said. “They’re getting close. Maybe you should go back farther. Back where we used to build the forts. I told them I hadn’t heard anything from you. I admitted that you’d called me that one time, ‘cause they could probably check the phone records.”

“Shit, Albie. I’m so sorry you’re getting in all this trouble.”

“Good thing my parents left for Biarritz. My mom would be going nuts. Grandma’s just vacuuming. Vacuuming upstairs the whole time the cops were there. But I’ve got her snowed. She won’t squeal.”

“How’d you get out?”

“She went to church. No dragging me there. She can’t stand parading me in front of the High Episcopalians anymore with my long hair. And there’s some luncheon thing going on afterward.”

Albie looked over each shoulder, as the super sleuths in his comic books probably did. “I got an idea about how to ward off the cops. I was eavesdropping on them. They kept asking your mom if they’d found a note saying you’d run away. See, if you’re a runaway, then they don’t really look. If they think you’ve been abducted, then it’s a totally different scenario. Bloodhounds and stuff.”

“So I should write a note—”

“And I’ll sneak it to Gretta. Around the back. That way they’ll back off some.”

“What do they think happened?”

“All the cops said was that a nurse went in your room this morning and you were gone.”

“The orderlies aren’t talking?” I asked.

Albie shook his head. “Why would they?”

“Long story. But I guess they don’t want to say some guy in a cape hoisted me out the window.”

Albie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Not if they don’t want to wind up as patients.”

Conor lifted the bag of leaves off the ground and walked toward us. “What about Deirdre? Can you bring her here?”

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

“We’ll focus on Deirdre tomorrow. I promise, Conor. One more day.” I turned to Albie. “But I don’t have a pen!”

Albie took a sheet of folded loose-leaf from his back pocket and a Bic pen.

I searched the ground for a smooth writing surface, finally settling on a shorn-off tree trunk. Though I had no idea what would happen if they found me, I felt fairly certain that Mother wouldn’t sign me back into the Unit. What I didn’t know was whether Keller could do it without her consent. I squatted on the ground and scribbled a messy note:

“What’s up with your hand?” Albie asked.

My hand was shaking and my penmanship a nasty scrawl. “I think I’m withdrawing from the medication they gave me.”

“What’d they have you on?”

“I don’t even know. Maybe Thorazine or Valium or something.” I handed him the note.

“My cousin was on that. Strong shit.” He slid the note into one pocket, then extracted a tightly rolled joint from his Marlboro hard pack. “This’ll take the edge off.”

“Really?”

“It’ll relax you.” He gestured toward the trail with his chin. “Let’s clear out for a while. Not sure what would happen if the Lord King of the Ruddy Hoard got a toke off this.”

“He told you who he was?”

Albie smirked. “Kinda. He went off about a bunch of titles. Lord this, king that. But you need to lay the real sitch on me. Let’s hike up to the other side of the railroad tracks.”

“I don’t have any shoes,” I said.

Albie turned his back, squatted, and held his arms out like a wiry monkey. “Jump on my back.”

“No!”

“C’mon. You’re like a sister. And you weigh about two pounds.”

“You weigh about three.”

“Exactly. I’m bigger.”

It seemed to be my destiny to ride the backs of horses and boys. But Albie was right. I didn’t want to smoke pot around Conor and I was too woozy to go anywhere on my own two feet. After everything he’d done, Albie deserved an explanation. I jumped on his skinny back, wrapping my legs around his waist. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I let them rest on his bony shoulders. As he straightened up, he staggered, gripping the back of my legs to find his balance.

“What’d they feed you in that place?”

“Puke food.” As we headed down the trail, I called over my shoulder to Conor, “We’ll be right back!”

“’Tis a strange transport!”

Albie hoofed up the trail and crossed a broken bridge that led to the ditch along the tracks. I squinted as we emerged from the woods and into the sunny prairie. I hadn’t been out this far since Franny had disappeared, two summers before, and I felt a queasy feeling of guilt. It was almost the same time of year. Purple-spiked thistles waved in the air; sunflowers drooped on their fuzzy stalks. Albie galloped through the weeds, huffing and puffing up to the tracks, where he paused to catch his breath. Despite the heat I shivered at the sight of the woods on the other side, which had swallowed up Franny.

“Let’s stop here,” I said. “You’re tired.”

Albie didn’t object. His smoking habit hadn’t exactly done fine things for his lungs. He crossed his legs and sat down on a crosstie. I faced him, cross-legged on the other side, my legs on the splintery crossties, my feet on the warm rocks. There was something wonderful about sitting in the middle of the tracks, the sun blazing down and glinting off the rails. It wasn’t really dangerous—you could see trains coming a mile away—but still it felt risky. My sailor pajamas, unfortunately, diminished the rebel stance, reminding me that I was a nuthouse escapee.

Albie pulled out the joint and lit it, peering down the tracks. “Maybe we should just jump the next freight train.”

“Yeah, I can just picture it. Me tooling around the States in pajamas and bare feet.”

He flicked open his Zippo lighter and said in a fake British accent, “Shoes are a mere contrivance!” After a long hit, he handed me the joint. “My cousin weaned off his meds with grass.”

I took a deep drag, and the end of the joint sizzled. My lungs filled up and burned my insides. Blinking and frowning, I coughed out all the smoke and passed the joint back to him.

“Easy, there,” he said with a laugh. “Haven’t I taught you anything? I wish your mom could see what a tame stoner you are.” He squeezed the joint between his fingers. “Like this.” With his pinky lifted, Albie had a gangly, Jagger-esque elegance when he smoked a joint. After he inhaled, he talked through clenched teeth, careful not to let the smoke escape. “Hold it in for a little bit, like five seconds, then let it out real slowly.” He exhaled a steady stream, then reached across the crossties and handed the joint back to me. “This’ll take the edge off. Grass is way more natural than the shit pharmaceutical companies cook up.”

Usually when I smoked with Albie, I didn’t try that hard to catch a buzz. This time I inhaled carefully, counted to five as I held in the smoke, then exhaled as if I were blowing out a single birthday candle. My nerve endings jangled, then went calm. My senses expanded from the pot; the wild grasses throbbed a deeper gold, and I stared at the swirling pinwheels on Albie’s tie-dye. Even the birdcalls were amplified. The humidity no longer felt like a wool blanket, but more an element I had to glide through with composure.

“The birds are so loud,” I said.

“You’re stoned.” Albie laughed.

I felt suddenly elevated inside. Being high made me feel like a leavened version of myself: lighter and loftier. I had to confess everything. My mind started to race and I blurted out, “Albie, you have to know. You probably won’t believe me. But these Heroines come to our house. It’s crazy. It’s—”

“Yeah, what’s the story?”

So I told him everything, and it felt different than telling Kristina, who’d lapped up the story like juicy gossip. Albie stayed calm, almost neutral, merely nodding his head like a stoned wise man. The most he ever said was, “Yeah, I always knew something was up with your mom.”

I told him about Scarlett and Madame Bovary, about Daisy Buchanan and Blanche, but I couldn’t bring myself to confess what had happened with Franny. The pot made me paranoid enough to fear even uttering her name within earshot of the woods on the other side of the tracks.

“How old were you when you figured out what was up?” Albie asked.

“Five. My mom sat me down. Told me about Rapunzel visiting when she was a kid.”

“It couldn’t have mattered before you could read, right?”

“But it did matter. Or it started to matter. When Hester Prynne came, with Pearl.” I rarely thought about that visit. But it all started to come back to me.

“She brought the kid?”

“They were never apart.”

“Grim, man,” Albie said. “
Scarlet Letter
’s a sad tale.”

“I didn’t really get what happened till last year, when I trudged through the book and started to remember what they’d said. It had always been there—you know, fragments of memories, but they never really added up.”

“I have memories like that. Like I can’t remember if I dreamt them or if they really happened.”

“I think this really happened.”