by Bruce Wagner
Out!—through the driveway, under cover of shivering trees, hugging the shore of lawns and bushes as she goes, choking and crying. The main road looms. Winds up beside the trash bin of Kanyon Korner Mart. She thinks of Topsy standing beside her that morning at the bakery—Topsy! The very name makes her yelp in the chill air. A car parks and a teenager gets out.
Amaryllis hears her own voice: “Excuse me, miss, but do you know the time?” The girl looks at her as if she’s mad. “Nine-thirty.” Amaryllis thanks her. Chest is burning and she has to pee; a low wave of pharmacological inertia washes over … She thinks of asking the girl for money when she comes out; maybe she’ll go in after her. Jolts awake: what if Jilbo’s shopping inside? Or Mrs. Woolery! She begins to run—yelping and crying, toxins excreting through hot tears, straight down the middle of the brightly lit boulevard. Anyone could see her: any cop or concerned citizen … even Earlymae. She was convinced that woman didn’t sleep and spent the night trolling the streets for children, ricocheting between residential homes.
Amaryllis felt superhuman as she ran, like the day she fled the St. George; maybe the earth would give way and she’d fly off into space. Her shadow overtook her body, and she wished she were back with her mother, who after all this would now surely mend her ways! Topsy would take them to the special part of the rescue mission reserved for single women with children, and they’d have turkey and gravy and pomegranate pastries. She was sure that if the postulator of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints could see her run, he would favorably assess her worthiness; she would slowly ascend, walking on starry black air just as Jesus walked on water—that would be the miracle to beatify her. Secretum meum mihi …
Then a shape bulleted toward her from across the street, grunting freakishly. Its trajectory was certain, but the thing itself uncoordinated, like a sack filled with tomcats falling from a bridge. Numb with terror, Amaryllis ran off the highway and up a hill, but the thing pursued and she was no match. It tackled her, and she screamed as it gurgled, lurched and spat into the air, holding her to its big, dirty bosom so she couldn’t breathe.
It was Jane Scull who held her down.
†In this regard, Mrs. Woolery’s expertise was such that she had no use for that of others. It’s a fair certainty her present boarders began their extirpation long ago; and can even be said without overdramatizing that the boy Dennis, sometimes disparagingly called “D-Rate” by Mrs. Woolery, after the code for special-needs children—and who would live ten years beyond this writing—was already dead.
CHAPTER 18
Little Girl Lost
The orphan stopped struggling.
After a few smelly, apocalyptic moments, Jane Scull gripped Amaryllis’s shoulders and held her away, the better to scrutinize; having discerned no damage done, she kissed the girl’s crown and fussed over her, snowcapped whiteheads glistening with tears and perspiration.
But Amaryllis did not find her rank—no: Jane Scull was merely one of the tribe, the underground railway of lumbering misfits to whom the girl felt entrusted. She was certain the saints had similar helpmates, making sure this was noted with proper humility so as not to get puffed-up. Topsy and Jane were her people, rough and elemental as the earth itself, with hearts the size of moons: circus types, raucous, itinerant acrobats of superabundant poise and poignance and avoirdupois, grand grotesques shot through with cathedral light—thrones and seraphim, eccentric angels of virtue, stamina and spirit.
Jane Scull took the girl’s hand and power-walked into the night, singing an indecipherable song. They arrived at a bus shelter and she dispatched Amaryllis to its recesses. Then Jane stood alone, waiting. Whenever a car would pass, her protectress deftly pivoted, blocking the child from view. Amaryllis shivered and stared at the movie ad encased in the shelter’s foggy frame: scratched by graffiti, the pigtailed girl wore a mustache, and swastikas were carved onto her sheepdog companion’s coat. It made her think of Boulder Langon—in fact, it was Boulder Langon. But Amaryllis didn’t have the energy to fully conjure those faces, or that famous afternoon.
The bus was empty when it arrived. Jane Scull led them to the middle. She ticked off significant streets as they drove, guttural and slurred, enraptured: Pennsylvania became Ensilanee! Montrose On Nose! Verdugo Errugo! La Cañada Ahkahnahduh! San Fernando Anurnanoh!—then Avenue 26 and Figueroa and suddenly WHOOSH on the archaic Pasadena and Amaryllis too knew the exhilaration of her own magical mystery tour. It was even a revelation that buses traveled on freeways.
Close to midnight, they alit on Chinatown. Jane Scull moved quickly now and without regard to the girl she had rescued. Her gait was fluid and her strides so huge Amaryllis imagined her on Rollerblades; before long, as in her dream of Topsy, she ran after but failed to catch up. The quiet drizzle became a downpour and the child involuntarily squealed with the sensation she was again going to be left behind (but this time, no baker). Like a movie rewound, they strode—or rather Jane Scull strode while Amaryllis scrambled and faltered—past the very landmarks by which Topsy had carried her scant days ago, though by now time was a jumble. Her chest heaved like a failing engine as they passed the Central Heating and Refrigeration Plant, but this time the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels brought no saints to bear.
In the middle of Temple Street, Jane Scull turned and waited for the girl. Then she clasped her once more. “Anku!” she cried, heaving with sobs. “Anku Amuhwiss!”
She kissed Amaryllis’s cheek, then ran off.
The orphan watched this uncaged creature berserk with freedom, head bent to sky, gummy sea lion maw wide open, pelted by the filthy, exorbitant rain, dizzy, gamy and exalted. There are other circuses, she thought, whispering good-bye—for that is where she imagined her friend to be headed. Circuses and caravans, with elephants marching tail-to-trunk … Jane Scull was rapidly receding so the girl raised her voice: Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye good-bye good-bye—whole body trembling with emotion. Her organs felt sludgy and her mouth tasted like blood and metal, liverish from Mrs. Woolery’s Rx.
The fleeting thought of that horrible woman was enough to send her running back to the shadows. “I’m watching you, child!” she heard Topsy bellow. “Courage! Courage, or you’ll never see the babies again!”
Sheets of water—like in a movie—as she neared the St. George, a weak wet bird flitting past stands of boxes shrouded in plastic tarp, end-of-the-road tenants sleeping within. A hand reached out and encircled her ankle: she clawed it and ran—toward the place where she’d find the Korean—but why? What was she doing back there? … wild with grief, revisiting the raided nest to smell her vanished babies! The St. George was dark and locked for the night; rain had washed the infants’ scent away. She stole toward the cupola of St. Vibiana’s deserted diocese, soon to be demolished. Still no entry, else she would have liked to have stayed. She drifted across the street instead, again to that fated place.
The alley entrance used for their escape was glued shut. Fresh plywood had been nailed over chinks in the Higgins armor, but the girl was small enough to slip through an already damaged plank. She made her way to the lobby and stood dead still—no sound of pigeons or trespassers. In the half-light of a pleuritic moon, it looked like someone had made nominal efforts at clearing out debris. As the exhausted child climbed the stairs of the cold copper tower, her heart sank; she knew Topsy would not be in residence.
When she reached the place of their reunion, Amaryllis was not wrong. It was dank and freezing; she was dank and freezing, and determined never again to move or stir. She slumped against the wall, uncaring of her fate or anyone else’s.
As fatigue and Mrs. Woolery’s soldier-stragglers drew her to dreamless fields—to Minotaur’s maze—Jane Scull danced across the screen of her eyes and Jane Scull only: dear Jane with her big white hearing aids, spinning into Forever like an ensorcelled top.
Morning—noon. The world outside shiny and new, hung to dry in the sun. She stirs, then sleeps two more effortless hours. Awakens, fever
ish. Chest aches. Thirsts and shivers, clothing damp. Slowly, she walks downstairs. There are pigeons and they gladden her.
“There, look!”
She seizes, choking.
Someone-Help-Me points with a cane.
“She the one there!” he shouts, advancing. “Come here last night—try to grab her foot but she too fast! Scratch me up good!”
Peering at the child from his side of the broken slat is a handsome, world-weary man in white shirt and tie, stylish sport jacket slung over his arm. In comic contrast to his guide’s histrionics, Samson Dowling squints like a bird-watcher at some point above Amaryllis’s head, which must have seemed a goad to the vagrant, who wished the little fugitive’s apprehension to be handled in a more Most Wanted fashion.
“Wull,” he says, turning to the detective. “Get her!”
Amaryllis sprints on cue, and Someone-Help-Me pimpily gives chase. The investigator, shod in tasseled Church’s English, takes casual, graceful flight. “You! Idiot! Stop!”
He commands the bum, but the little girl, arrested by the powerful voice, can run no longer—and collapses.
Someone-Help-Me does a victory jig and the detective tells him to disappear, his tone menacing enough so the snitch is gone in the briefest time imaginable.
Detective Dowling kneels, bunching his expensive coat under the girl’s fainted head.
When they got on the freeway, she became agitated—certain he was taking her back to Mrs. Woolery’s.
“Were you staying at the motel, Amaryllis?” A nauseating lump grew in her throat—for she hadn’t yet told him her name. “Were you staying at the St. George?”
“The babies!” she cried, broken. “Where are the babies?”
He reached out to pat her head; he was awkward with kids. “The boy and girl? They’re fine, fine. Don’t cry, now.”
“How do you know?” she snarled. A ray of hope pierced through: “Have you seen them?”
“Not personally.”
“Then how do you know?” She hated him again. He had hairy, muscular arms and reeked of cologne and she held him in the utmost contempt. “How do you know anything about them—”
He laughed, not unkindly. “Because I know the detective who made sure they were safe. A female officer,” he said, then corrected himself. “A woman. She really took to those kids. They’re your brother and sister, aren’t they?”
Now she was possessed of a new torment: the babies were bonding with one of their captors! They would love the policewoman and not even recognize her when she came to their rescue. “When can I see them?”
“Soon, I’d imagine. First we need to get you well and on your feet. You’ve had a rough go of it, haven’t you? It couldn’t have been wonderful sitting with Mom all that time the way you did. You’re a brave little gal.”
They rode awhile in silence. He cracked a window, because the smell of her was overwhelming—like the worst, infected whores he’d found in crackhouses, or half dead in littered fields. He asked about the man—“a big, tall fellow” whom a “witness” saw carry her off into the night. Went by the name of William, he said, or Topsy … He wanted to know where the man had taken her, and if he was a friend of her mother’s.
There is no man, she said. And where are we going?
“A place called MacLaren.”
“Is it in the Canyon?”
“It’s in El Monte. What canyon?”
“Is it a house?”
“MacLaren? In a way, though it’s a lot bigger. There’s a school and a gymnasium—even a swimming pool. Lotsa kids your age.”
Amaryllis scanned the interior: the dash-mounted beacon on a curved, creepy metal neck … battered computer wedged between them … shotgun rack—prison! He was was taking her to prison!
The detective’s insistence this MacLaren place wasn’t a jail did little to ameliorate her terror. The children who lived there, he explained offhandedly, were not prisoners—why, there weren’t even locks on the doors! He went on to say that in point of fact at MacLaren locks on doors were “against the law”—of course there were some locks, he clumsily amended, to prevent strangers from coming in, not to stop kids from going out, a system so designed to protect the “pop” (“short for ‘population’ ”) from unhappy parents, who in very rare cases may wish to do their children harm—
With each botched blandishment the detective dug a deeper hole for himself and his detainee, multiplying her paranoia tenfold until the looming sight of Mac’s outer wall—the highest, thickest wall Amaryllis had ever seen—delivered the final blow. The only thing stopping a leap from the moving car were the babies. They were there, at the place called MacLaren, like prisoners in a deathstar. She knew it. They had to be.
Then it all blurred. She was taken to the infirmary, where an RN peeled off layers of clothing and gasped, hand to startled mouth. Other nurses and staffworkers gathered to gawk. Doctors were called; wounds were cleansed. She was examined for pelvic inflammatory disease and tested for TB, strep, syphilis, HIV, chlamydia, clap. They poured penicillin in her veins, and Demerol for pain.
Amaryllis slept for three days. In a languid flirtation with consciousness, she heard the stealthy footfalls of children arriving for daily meds. They poked their heads around the curtain to look before being chased away.
When some of her strength returned, a woman from “intake” came bedside to announce she could make two phone calls, adding that both would be “monitored.”
“Who would you like to talk to?” she asked cheerfully.
All this time, Will’m lay low in Angelino Heights, the grateful guest of Fitz and his maimed pet. The peculiar trio put up in the garage of a Queen Anne Victorian on Carroll Avenue. The owner (one of Fitz’s former supervisors at the DCFS) had hit a financial bump in mid-restoration; chain link surrounded the property. Fitz was on-site to ward off vandals.
The architecture was to Will’m’s liking. It reminded him of Red House at Bexleyheath in Kent, the dwelling built for Janey on occasion of their marriage—with its humble demi-courtyard garden, rose-entwined wattle and decorative well house with conical roof, he felt he was truly home again. There were two stories, plain and spacious, and polished, set-back porches. By light of day, he explored the Gothic-arched drawing room of this earthly paradise and made secret plans to paint a mural on a hall cupboard, the one he had begun so long ago but never finished: Morte d’Arthur. This time he would include Fitz and Amaryllis among the likenesses of Lancelot and Tristram, and even work in Half Dead.
At night, while Fitz smoked his chemical pipe in the garage and ranted about the Department of Children and Family Services, Will’m paced the hortus conclusus, square plots of lilies and macerated, streetwise sunflowers, reciting verse from News from Nowhere (which he need soon retrieve from its Olympic Boulevard storage bin)—
I know a little garden-close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy morn to dewy night,
And have one with me wandering.
To be frank, he hadn’t slept well since giving up the girl. The small face, with its rough cherub’s mop, tugged, calling him to seek her out; he made resolution to reconnoiter the bakery and look in on her progress. But skid row tom-toms soon brought news of her capture by police—and Someone-Help-Me’s perfidious involvement in the dragnet. Will’m was undone. Discreet by nature, he decided to gather Fitz into his confidence, bringing him up to speed on all that had transpired between him and Amaryllis, culminating with the freedom flight from Higgins to East Edgeware alley.
Fitz focused his rage upon the malignant beggar, for whom no love had been lost. “Why, that cocksucker snitch; he ought to be murdered!” At this moment, the once honorable George Fitzsimmons looked more than ever like one of those sociopathic eggheads from thirties heist films who plan bank jobs but don’t dirty their hands. “He brought that cop to the Higgins, Will’m, don’t you see?”—Fitz had heard it all from Mise
ry House cronies—“so the weasel could’ve seen you that very first night you were with the girl. Now, I know you didn’t do anything with her; nothing but love and protect her. But they’ll accuse you of molestation, and God knows what else. That’s their game!”
Will’m was in a daze. “But how did she leave Frenchie’s? How would they let her wander away?”
“Never mind that—there was a murder, Will’m, a murder in the motel. The St. George! The girl’s mother they think was killed—that’s what the boys on the street tell me. And they’ve got her now, they’ve got the girl. They don’t like unsolved murders on the books, Will’m. If they can jail us for walking outside a crosswalk, then they’ll jail you for this, believe me! By the time they finish, she’ll turn on you herself!”
Will’m grabbed him by the shirt while Half Dead lamely launched himself at the aggressor’s calf. “Don’t you say it, Mr. Fitz! Don’t you say it, ever!”
“Oh, I don’t mean anything, Will’m”—he reached for the giant’s implacable wrists to loosen the grip—“Hell, she’s a kid—I know what happens to frightened kids when the goons get hold of ’em. Before you know it, it’s the mob after Frankenstein. You’d never be able to defend yourself.”
“I need to speak with Mr. Mott,” said Will’m, entering a trance again. “To find out what happened … how could it have come to this? What was she doing back at Higgins, in the dead of night?” He began to pace and sweat, kneading his hands like a heart-shaped motor. “And that mangy bum! That child-stealer! I’ll tear his head off!”
“Don’t go out there half-cocked! They’ll be gunning for you, can’t you see? You’ll walk right into their web! Lay low and let me make a few calls—I’ll find out where they stashed her.”
