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  “Well?” Dotty asked, amused that he’d been so hard on Canny. “What else you wanna know?”

  His eyes were on the solemn little girl, shivering as she bit into her doughnut. “What if the people that find her don’t want to bring her all that way home?” He looked at Dotty. “What if they just keep her?” he asked, his voice thinning with alarm.

  Dotty was opening her milk carton. She stuck in a straw. “Maybe they’ll be real nice people,” she said between sips. “A really nice family with kids and a dog and a nice house.” She bit into the doughnut. A blister of crumbs grew in the corner of her mouth.

  “But what if they ain’t? What if they don’t be nice and they get sick of her and jest drop her off sometime by the road and some other people find her and then it turns out they don’t like her neither and she keeps getting dropped off and picked up.…” His eyes widened with fright. “And by that time, the note’s all dirty, so nobody can read it, or mebbe it’s even lost.…”

  “How ’bout if I drop you off with her then, Aubie? Then every time the two of you get picked up and dropped off, you can hold the note.” She tilted the carton and slurped out the last of the milk. “And I’ll even print,” she added scornfully. “Nice big letters so you can read it.”

  He thought this over, then shook his head. “That won’t work,” he said somberly. “Nobody’ll want a growed man in their family.”

  Dotty coughed on the milk and choked so that her eyes teared and milky phlegm leaked from her nostrils.

  “And what if the car broke down?” he went on. “What would you do then? How ’bout if we jest go to Hollywood, us three? I could mebbe do markets out there and we could get us a real nice place and then you could get in a movie and have diamonds and fur coats and mebbe out there, they don’t need birth certificates to get in school and I’d get Canny one of them girlie lunch boxes she’s been wanting and a thermos to match—like Cinnerella mebbe, and ever’ morning I’d do her lunch up in them little baggy bags and cross her at the corner on them yellow cross lines.…”

  He blinked. Dotty was running down the road. He hadn’t even seen her leave the car. “Canny,” he called, rolling along the breakdown lane with the door still open. “Get in! Quick!” Canny had already started down the hill. She scrambled inside and pulled the door shut. A few hundred feet ahead, Dotty trotted backward with her thumb out. “Motherfucker!” she screamed at every car that whizzed past.

  Wallace pulled alongside, keeping a slow pace with her frantic backward gait.

  “Get the hell outta here!” she screamed at them.

  “Momma!” Canny called out to her. Suddenly she stood up on the seat with her torso out the window and clamped her arms around Dotty’s neck.

  “Little bastard!” Dotty screamed, trying to pull her off. “Lemme go—just lemme go … please.…”

  Canny had to wait outside the car again. This time she stood close by Wallace’s door holding on to the handle. The windows were closed and starting to steam with Dotty’s tears. She had gotten him to promise they would drive straight on through to Massachusetts and drop Canny off at the first church they came to.

  “Then what?” she sobbed.

  “Then we turn around and head on out to Hollywood,” he repeated softly. Canny was tapping on the window. “You said a minute,” she reminded them.

  “You promise?” Dotty asked with a teary gasp.

  He nodded. Canny had begun to bang on the window. “Please, Poppy,” she called with her face pressed to the glass.

  “I promise,” he said.

  “You swear to it? You swear on your wife’s life?”

  “I swear.”

  “That’s too easy,” Dotty said, blowing her nose. “You didn’t like her anyway, you said.”

  “She din’ like me’s what I said.” He reached back and unlocked the door for Canny. “Here,” he said, passing back a napkin. “You got doughnut sugar on your face.”

  Canny scrubbed her mouth and cheeks. She was burning mad, but didn’t dare say a word. Whenever Dotty went off the deep end, Canny always knew her place.

  “What was her name again?” Dotty was putting on lipstick, blotting it. “I forget.”

  He pulled into the traffic. “Hyacinth,” he said after a minute.

  Dotty knelt on the seat and grinned. “Say her last name. I love the way you say it.”

  “Kluggs,” he said with a little wince and she giggled.

  “What she look like?”

  “Not too much, I guess.”

  “Tell me!” Dotty squirmed happily. Canny looked from one to the other.

  “I dunno. Kinda short.” He shrugged. In the mirror, his eyes met Canny’s. He knew she was dying to ask who Hyacinth was, but didn’t dare break the spell of Dotty’s happiness.

  “What about her teeth?”

  “They was crooked and stuck out,” he said softly.

  “And how’d she walk? Tell me that.”

  “She walked pigeon toes.…” He looked at her guiltily. “I musta tole you a hunnert times, Dotty.”

  “Yah, but I like it when you tell me,” she said, sitting back and hugging her legs. Her chin rested on her knees, and from this angle she looked like a little girl, younger certainly than the sharp-eyed child behind them. “It’s like family I never met. Like she’s my long-lost grandma or something and you keep having to tell me so I’ll know who everybody is … you know what I mean?” Dotty said, dreamily.

  “Nope.”

  5

  By noon the pale sun had dissolved in a low gray sky. The windshield pimpled with drizzle and only the wiper on Wallace’s side worked. After just a few miles, the car was damp and raw with the cold. The heater hadn’t worked in two years.

  “Jesus,” Dotty said through a shiver. She reached back for a blanket. “I forgot how goddamn cold it gets. And here it is June.” She threw the blanket onto the floor. It was wet from the melted ice. In the back seat Canny’s teeth started to chatter. They were approaching the Star Bright Motel. Wallace looked questioningly at Dotty. She nodded and he pulled into the parking lot. The little motels were too hard. This one looked just big enough.

  “Looks like nobody’s checking out,” Dotty said.

  “Here comes one,” Canny said, pointing at a tall, baggy-eyed man in a three-piece suit, coming out the front door.

  “No suitcases,” Wallace muttered. “Probably staying.”

  “All I can do’s try,” Dotty sighed, getting out of the car. She headed toward the man as he set his briefcase down and fumbled through his pockets for his keys.

  “Good morning,” Dotty called brightly. “Hope you had a good stay!”

  “Very nice,” the man muttered blearily.

  “Well, I better get in there and get your room all fixed up nice for when you get back,” she said with a little wave. The man opened the car door. “I checked out,” he said.

  “Aw, that’s too bad,” she said, hugging her arms in the chill. “What room’d ya have?”

  “Two-twelve,” the man said.

  “Oh yah! You’re Mr. Jones!” she called.

  “Carleton,” the man called back, then ducked into his car just as the drizzle turned into a downpour.

  Wallace laid his head back on the seat and a little smile worked at his mouth. Dotty would tell the desk clerk that she was joining her husband, Mr. Carleton who had decided to keep room two-twelve another day. If all went well and it usually did, the clerk would give her the key, and as soon as she was in the room she’d take a shower. If the room had an outside entrance and no one was around, she’d clear out as much as she could—glasses and soap, the little bottles of shampoo, lotion, and mouthwash for herself and Canny; and to sell at their flea markets: towels, bathmats, blankets, sheets, pillows, bedspreads, and sometimes even the pictures off the walls, the shades off the lamps, and, once when the pills had made her most fearless, the curtains right out of the window. Wallace chuckled softly and closed his eyes.

  “Poppy?” Canny
said from the back seat. “You know that guy last night? The one I hit?”

  “Yup,” he murmured fuzzily, his arms and legs already weightless with sleep.

  “Think he’s dead?”

  “Nope.”

  “You sure?” Her voice seemed distant and fading.

  “Yup,” he mumbled, his head bobbing forward with a snore.

  “He touched a dirty place, Poppy.”

  Wallace’s head shot up. “Mebbe he had to go to the bathroom,” he said uncomfortably. Lately Canny was wanting to know about the birds and bees. But she never asked Dotty. Always him. She was watching him through the mirror. Her mouth twitched and she looked away. “I mean my dirty place,” she said miserably. He didn’t know what to say. He leaned forward and scrubbed a hole through the steam on the window. He scratched his chest. He felt grubby all over. He lifted his arm and sniffed. His shirt stank of sweat. “Dammit,” he muttered. “She’s taking too long.”

  Canny leaned over the seat. She smelled too, rancid and stale. A necklace of grime circled her throat. Her hands were dirty, the chewed nails caked with brown.

  “It wasn’t my fault, Poppy.…”

  “I know.”

  “It hurt!”

  “Don’t!” he choked.

  “I hit his hand away.”

  “Don’t,” he warned. He shook his head and rubbed his stubbly jaw. His teeth ached, the few he had left. “It ain’t nice to talk about,” he said hoarsely. He was too ashamed to look at her. Except for the rain that drummed like hollow fingers on the roof, the car was quiet and cold as a tomb.

  Sometimes he felt like a hundred-year-old man, instead of fifty-two or -three, whatever, he’d lost track. Sometimes he was scared so crazy of dying just the word could make him shiver all over. Then other times like now, this funny feeling swelled over him like a glassy bubble and everything that happened was really happening to someone else. And it was all right, perfectly all right. Nothing hurt. Nothing mattered. The boys used to wake up screaming in the night, clutching his waist and babbling on about ghosts. Dead men only die but one time, Hyacinth used to say from the dark of her bed, like a ghost herself, like something that was waiting to be joined in death.

  “Somebody’s coming,” he said, tensing forward as the motel door opened onto a woman in black pants and a violet jacket, and then he realized it was Dotty wearing clothes he had never seen before. Her hair swung in wet braids as she ran through the parking lot, carrying a red plaid suitcase. She gestured angrily toward the car. In a motion, he turned the key and played the gas, inching toward her, his eyes keen on the motel door.

  “Get the door!” he hollered to Canny, who slid into the front, opened the door, then slithered into the back again as Dotty pushed the suitcase onto the seat and scrambled in after it, laughing so hard it took twenty miles to tell the story.

  After her shower in Mr. Carleton’s room, she had heard voices in the hall. The husband and wife from two-ten were arguing about where they should leave their luggage while they went down to lunch. The wife wanted to put it in the car. The husband said she was a pain in the ass. Why should he get soaked bringing it out to the car when the desk would send someone up. So off they went, and Dotty opened the door and slipped the biggest bag into two-twelve. She emptied the suitcase, keeping only the outfit she had on. The rest of the clothes were shitbags, she said. Then she took the blankets off Mr. Carleton’s bed, and some clean towels, and “this,” she laughed, unzipping the suitcase. She held up a half-empty quart of Scotch. “Compliments of Mr. Carleton,” she laughed, slipping the bottle under the seat. She passed a blanket back to Canny and spread one over her own legs.

  Ten bucks easy, Wallace thought, eyeing the suitcase. Luggage went fast at flea markets.

  “I always wanted a real nice suitcase,” Dotty said. “Up there,” she pointed suddenly ahead. “That’s the exit we want.”

  “Where we going?” Canny asked as the old car groaned onto the ramp.

  “Just going,” Dotty sighed and closed her eyes.

  “That’s what you always say,” Canny said.

  “I know,” Dotty sighed again.

  “You love me, Momma?”

  “Course I do,” Dotty said sleepily.

  The sign said WELCOME TO MASSACHUSETTS.

  The rain had stopped and the sun burned its way through the racing clouds, but the air was still tight with cold. They got off the highway in Worcester and stopped at a drugstore, where Dotty bought a pad of paper and some envelopes. Their next stop was a gas station so they could get Canny cleaned up.

  Wallace brought the ladies’ room key back to the car.

  “Get the men’s,” Dotty said, nibbling the end of the pen. “I gotta write this and I need quiet.” She looked up. “What’s the date?”

  “June something,” he said.

  “Jesus, you’re a big help.”

  The stink in the men’s room was so bad he had to leave the door open. He plugged the sink with a wad of paper towels and made Canny soak her hands while he scrubbed her face and her neck with one of the motel towels. Then he held her over the sink so she could dangle her feet in the water, which was a puddle of black when they were done. As he rubbed her legs with the dry end of the towel, men’s voices rose from the office. Canny was trying to tell him something. She kept tugging on his shirt. Two cars had pulled up to the pumps; their exhaust streamed past the door. Dotty was still writing the letter. He patted the towel carefully over the thick scab on Canny’s knee. He peered closer; part of the scab was red and edged with pus. By tomorrow the whole knee would probably be infected.

  “Poppy! Poppy!”

  By tomorrow, she’d be somebody else’s worry. Somebody else would have to tend to it.

  She poked his shoulder. Don’t, he almost said. Don’t talk. Don’t make me think. Can’t think. Don’t wanna hear nothin’ or say nothin’. Just do what’s gotta be done; what should’ve been done a long time before this, before his heart got so … so tied up in hers.

  “How ’bout my hair?” she was saying.

  “Sink’s too little,” he said hoarsely, taking his comb to the snarls in her hair. Some of them were as big as eggs.

  “Ow!” she yelped, as he began to pry the biggest snarl apart with his fingers. Tears stood in her eyes. “Poppy,” she said, as he bent closer to work out the next snarl. “I think I got bugs again.”

  He moved her into the light of the doorway and parted her hair to the crusty scalp. Holding her breath, she bowed her head.

  “Don’t see any,” he muttered, parting strand after strand. She sighed with relief. “Any nits?”

  “Nope.” He combed her hair back into place, arranging the top layer as best he could to cover up the rest of the snarls. He balled up the towel and hurried back to the car. Dotty licked the envelope and laid it on the dashboard and winked at him. He sat behind the wheel, hesitating before he turned the key. He had that empty feeling he got whenever they moved out of a place—like he was forgetting something. Something vital. Some part of himself. The motor turned sluggishly. As he drove, the wheel vibrated under his white knuckles. His arms felt numb. Don’t talk. Don’t think. Their voices fluttered against his locked stare.

  “Can I sit up front now that I’m washed?”

  “In a while.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You just ate!”

  “You made me eat too fast.”

  “Turn here—sit down, Canny.”

  “You mad at me, Momma?”

  “Course not; try that left up there. Jesus, Canny! You’re hanging all over me!”

  “We looking for a place? ’Cause there’s a sign! See!”

  “Shut up, Canny!”

  “I was just tryna help!”

  “Well don’t! Right there! Right! Jesus Christ, will you stop!” Dotty was screaming. The veins in her neck swelled like worms.

  He jammed on the brake.

  “It’s a church!” Canny cried happily. She had been after them
for a long time to bring her to church. She had never been before.

  Dotty was explaining to her now that they couldn’t go in with her. She had to do this alone. It was very important. Wallace stared straight ahead as the door opened. From the corner of his eye, he saw her get out of the car. She was so little. In the wind, her hair lifted stiffly like a lifeless wig. He knew if he looked close he’d see goose bumps on her legs. He pulled his cap close over his eyes.

  “You just wait inside and pretty soon, somebody’ll come, and you give him the letter,” Dotty was explaining.

  “But why?” asked Canny, poking her head in Wallace’s window.

  “So Poppy can get a job,” Dotty said, her voice nettling impatiently.

  He stiffened as they talked past him.

  “But why can’t Poppy do it?” Canny wanted to know.

  “’Cause he’s too damn bashful. You know that,” Dotty said. Canny looked down at the envelope she held. “What’s the job?”

  “Cleaning the goddamn church, Canny! Now get on up there!”

  “You gonna wait?”

  Dotty rolled her eyes. “Course we’re gonna wait. Now hurry up before somebody else gets the goddamn job!”

  Canny leaned on the window well and whispered in Wallace’s ear. “Can I help you do the cleaning, Poppy?”

  He nodded and swallowed hard. Dotty squirmed on the seat. “Will you hurry up!”

  They watched Canny run toward the wide granite steps that led up a steep little hill to the dark stone church. “Get ready,” Dotty hissed. “Minute she’s inside, go.” Her leg stretched apprehensively.

  “What’s in the note?” he hissed back.

  Dotty’s eyes moved up the steps after Canny. She wet her lips nervously. “Just that it was a town in Massachusetts and it was five years ago and the house had a big round porch and how we’re sorry and we don’t want any trouble.”

  On the top step, Canny looked back and waved the envelope at them. She smiled.

  Dotty waved back and drew in her breath. “Get set,” she said, her face blank.

  He had seen Canny step up to the wide oak door and now he closed his eyes and shuddered as a cry rumbled through his chest and into his throat, a wordless sob of such intensity, such terrible throbbing pain, that he thought he was dying, so certain was he that some vital pumping organ had just been torn from its cavity, bloodied, and shredded.