“Did I do anything wrong?”
“Oh, no,” he says, reaching into a pocket and out comes a fancy leather wallet, leather the color of chocolate milk, and “I just, well,” and he’s opened the wallet, is fumbling around inside, and she can see the ones and tens and twenty-dollar bills tucked in there, can see the credit cards, and maybe this is her lucky day. Maybe McDonald’s or Taco Bell tonight instead of the shit they’ve been feeding her at the shelter. “I thought you might need some help, that’s all,” he says. “I thought maybe I might be able to help,” and no money from the wallet, just a card, and she takes it anyway; plain white card with plain black letters that read LOVING SHEPERD CRISIS LINE, 24 HRS. A DAY, a phone number, service of the Samford Univ. Baptist Student Union, and a cross stamped in the upper left-hand corner.
“I’m Catholic,” she says to the librarian, and he frowns, briefest frown, and then the nervous concern returns, and Dancy is handing the card back to him. “And that’s not how you spell shepherd,” she says. “It has another h in it.” Long moment then of her holding the card out to him, roles reversed now, and at first she thinks he won’t take it, never mind the reason, but maybe he thinks he’ll catch something from her, girl germs, cooties, some terrible skin disease. He looks confused and offended and unsure, and she’s already thinking she should have just taken his damn card, yes, thank you so much, and left it lying there on the table for some other bum who gives a shit. But too late now, and he does take it back, plucks it from her fingers, but it doesn’t go back into his wallet.
“I was only trying to help,” he says, curt, sounding more sorry for himself than her and Dancy looks back down at the National Geographic, takes her eyes off him, and so perhaps he’ll go away and leave her alone.
“Thank you,” she says and listens to his footsteps, loafers soft against the carpet, hesitant steps back to his desk, and a few minutes later, when Dancy looks up from an article on jade, she catches him watching her, smiles, and the librarian looks hastily down at the orderly stack of papers on his desk.
Two weeks now since the bus ride, most of a night on the bus from Waycross, Greyhound winding north on dark roads, back roads where buses still stop in the middle of the night to take on passengers, and Dancy tried to sleep most of the way. Something comforting in the smell of diesel and the constant rumblehum of tires against the road. A whole seat to herself when people got a good look at her, so she could stretch out and use the old duffel bag with her clothes and books and fifteen dollars hidden in a sock at the bottom for a pillow. Her grandfather’s duffel, Grandpa Flammarion who came back from Germany without his left leg, and she would close her eyes and listen to the engine purr like a huge kitten, purr like a clockwork lion to lull her to sleep. But the dreams always too close, the dreams and the things she was running from, running towards, fear for what she’d done and what was left to do, and finally Dancy gave up and stared out at the nightshrouded fields and woods and towns rushing past outside, squinting whenever the bus pulled into a gas station or bus stop and took on another passenger or two. She still had her sunglasses then and would slip them on against the occasional pools of sodium-arc glare, oases of light in the long dark Southern night as the bus moved north, Georgia finally exchanged for Alabama, swamps and pine barrens for black-belt prairies, and then, near dawn, the easy, rolling foothills of the Appalachians, and Dancy stared amazed at land the weight of the sky had not long ago crushed almost as flat as the sea.
Once or twice she noticed police cars behind the bus, following or just stuck back there on narrow state or county roads, and her heart raced, sick feeling deep in her stomach that she might have come as far as she was going to, that someone had found out after all, and they would drag her back to Waycross or Savannah or maybe all the way back to Florida, stick her in a jail or somewhere worse. And Dancy scooted down in her seat, making herself small, until the highway patrol or sheriff passed them and once again there was only tomorrow and yesterday to be afraid of.
Just past Sylacauga, and a man had sat down next to her, big yellow teeth smiling at her, teeth that seemed to glow, and for a second she thought maybe he was one of Them and They were smarter than she’d thought, sneakier than she dared to think, that maybe one of Them had been on the bus the whole time, all the way from Waycross, just biding its time, giving her enough rope, and, “Hey there,” the man with big teeth said. “Where you goin’?”
No answer at first, don’t talk to strangers, Dancy, her mother’s voice, grandmother’s voice, don’t ever talk to strangers, and the man grinned wider, showing about a thousand more teeth. “Oh, come on,” he said, and it was a wonder anyone could talk around all those teeth, a wonder anyone had room for a tongue in a mouth like that. “You can talk to me. I don’t bite.”
“What’s it to you where I’m going?” she asked him, and the man shrugged and shook his head, hair shaved close to the skin and ears too big for his skull. “It ain’t nothin’,” he said and shrugged. “I’m just tryin’ to make polite conversation, that’s all. Thought maybe you got a long ride ahead of you, and it might help to talk some.”
“Memphis,” she lied. “I’m going to visit my Uncle Stewart in Memphis. My Uncle Stewart sells Elvis T-shirts at Graceland,” all that spilling out of her, all-at-once deception before she could even be sure any of it made sense.
“Really?” the man replied, one eyebrow up, surprise or suspicion, and Dancy couldn’t tell which. “Graceland. Now that’s someplace to be goin’, ain’t it?”
“I guess so,” and she looked back at the window, and maybe a police car wouldn’t be such a bad thing to see, maybe a police car would scare the man with yellow teeth away.
“That’s the Home of the Blues,” the man said. “Memphis, I mean. W. C. Handy and Beale Street. What about you, Dancy? You listen to the blues?”
And her heart jumping, skipping a beat, because she knew she hadn’t told the man her name, knew that he hadn’t even asked so how could she have told him. She kept her eyes on the window, her reflection superimposed on the night, ghost of herself trapped there in the glass, trapped between him and the night outside, and “No,” she said, whispered, and it might be an answer or a wish.
“Well, you better start, if you’re gonna be stayin’ in Memphis. They take that shit pretty damn serious up there.”
And then the bus was turning, air-brake growl and hiss past a Denny’s and a service station and a green road sign that read CHILDERSBURG.
“Well, this is where I get off,” the man said, and he leaned forward on the seat, spit chewing tobacco on the floor. “But you take care of yourself, way up there in Memphis. Awful big city for a little girl like you.”
The bus pulled to a stop again beneath blinding bus-station lights and Dancy looked away from the window, automatic flinch, the light like needles in her eyes, and he was already gone. Just a shallow depression in the seat where he’d been, seat cushion rising slow like dough, filling in any sign he’d ever been there, and her heart so loud everyone in the bus could probably hear it. Whoosh and thunk as the bus doors opened wide, and she thought she glimpsed the man getting off, his silhouette indistinct against the windshield before he was gone down the stairwell and out into the garish light, bright, bright lights to shield something dark from her weak eyes.
“Jesus,” she said, loud enough that someone turned around and looked at her, glared, so the rest kept to herself. It was just a man, that’s all, just a man on a bus, and you’re about to pee in your pants you’re so scared. For a moment that even sounded good, good enough, anyway, and then, the smaller voice stuffed way down inside, afraid but speaking up anyhow. So how did he know your name? it asked, and she looked quickly back to the window, pushed her sunglasses back down on her face and watched the men unloading suitcases from the belly of the bus.
Dancy’s lost deep in the glossy pages of 1963, already halfway through her second heavy librarybound volume of National Geographic that morning, half a year stitched between st
urdy brown covers, when she looks up, blinks, and sees the tall girl at the information counter. All skin and bones, her grandmomma would have said, Ain’t nobody been feedin’ you? and Dancy closes the book, closes the year, the month, story about Egyptian excavations unfinished, and she watches the tall girl as she talks to the man behind the counter. The girl has set a cardboard box on the counter and keeps pointing at it. Dancy wishes that she could hear what they’re saying, could see what’s in the box, but the girl is whispering and too far away, besides. She has hair that isn’t long, but isn’t short, either, stringyflat hair the color of broken walnut shells, and Dancy knows that this is the girl, doesn’t know her name, but that can wait, time for that later, sure enough that this is the same girl she’s been sitting here, day in, day out, two weeks reading musty old magazines, waiting for her to come.
Dancy pushes the National Geographics aside, January through June, six months smooth across varnished wood, and she slides her chair back, stands up, and the gay boy who tried to give her the Loving Sheperd card glances at her from his desk, then. Possessive, half-resentful glance like she’s some opportunity that he’s missed, gold star beside his name he’ll never get because she wouldn’t cooperate, because she doesn’t have the good sense to know when someone’s just trying to help. Dancy ignores him, picks up her duffel bag from the library floor, and the brown-haired girl’s still talking, still pointing at her box, Campbell’s tomato soup box but anything might be in a box like that, she thinks.
She counts the steps, better than trying to figure out what the hell she’s going to say when she gets there, better to think about something else, how the rough beige carpet under her feet turns to smooth beige linoleum halfway to the information counter. Twelve steps from her table, linoleum scuffed by shoes, scuffed by years of shoes, and when she reaches twenty-seven and looks up again, the girl has lifted the box, holds it under her left arm, leaning a bit to her right to compensate, to balance, and the black man behind the counter points towards the escalators, points up at the great open atrium at the center of the library, the second or third or fourth floor, no way to know which. She can tell the box is heavy, the expression on the girl’s face, the way the wirethin muscles in her arm stand out. Dancy stops, thirty-one steps, and if the girl has to go to the escalator then she’ll have to come right past her to get there.
“Thank you,” the girl says, louder now or Dancy’s just close enough to hear, and the man behind the counter nods his head and goes back to work, back to his computer screen. And she’s right, and it’s only a few seconds before the girl with walnut hair is coming towards her. And of course she sees Dancy, of course she notices the girl with skin so white it’s a wonder she can’t see straight through her, cornsilk hair and her pink eyes with their startling crimson pupils; dangerous to walk in the sunlight, too blind to drive, but at least she has that much going for her, hard to miss a girl like Dancy Flammarion, hard not to gawk, and this one time she’s glad, this one time it doesn’t matter when the girl stares, maybe not meaning to but her eyes wide, and then she looks quickly away. That’s nice, Dancy thinks, so used to people not giving a shit, like she was in a carnival sideshow tent and they’d paid for the privilege so what business did she have being offended if they stared or laughed or pointed their fingers at her. But now the girl’s staring down at her scruffy leather work boots as she passes, like she never even saw Dancy, so Dancy has to say something to make her stop, still no idea what she should say, so “Hi,” out fast, and maybe the girl will just keep walking, she thinks, maybe afraid Dancy’s a beggar and wants spare change, weird albino panhandlers nailing people in the goddamn public library these days and she’ll keep going until she finds a security guard to toss Dancy out on her ass.
But that isn’t what she does, not this tall girl, turns around instead, turns around, and her eyes are green. “Hi,” she says, trying to meet Dancy’s gaze and trying not to stare at the same time, have your cake and eat it, too, and “Hi,” Dancy says again. The girl’s beginning to look confused, and Dancy’s trying hard to think what comes next, but she never dreamed this part, so no idea what to say to a total stranger, and “Can I help you?” the girl asks, shifts the box under her arm and Dancy almost sees what’s inside.
“What’s in the box?” she asks, none of her business but that’s the first thing that comes to mind and she takes it, probably as good a start as any since she can’t tell the girl the truth and looks will only get you so far.
“Oh,” the girl says, maybe the slightest hint of relief in her voice because she has an excuse to turn away for a second, a moment to look in the box like she doesn’t remember what’s there, and “Just some old papers,” she says. “Some old manuscripts. Some of my grandfather’s old manuscripts that I’m giving to the library.”
“He doesn’t want them anymore?” Dancy asks, and the girl frowns, soft frown, but Dancy knows that she’s said the wrong thing even if she doesn’t understand exactly why. And before she can apologize, I’m sorry or That’s none of my business, is it? the girl isn’t frowning anymore, is looking straight at her like she’s some normal girl who’s asked some perfectly normal, inconsequential question. “He’s dead,” the girl says, that matter-of-fact, like she was telling Dancy it was hot outside and it was going to be hot again tomorrow. “He died last week, and I thought this stuff would be safer here.”
“Oh,” she says. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean, I mean, I shouldn’t have even . . .” but the girl is shaking her head and, “No, it’s okay,” she says. “You couldn’t have known, could you?” And Dancy repeats the same question in her head, Couldn’t I have, shouldn’t I have known that? “But they’re just some old papers,” the girl says again. “Some things I cleaned out of his office, and I’m taking them over to the archives.”
“My name’s Dancy. Dancy Flammarion,” one hand out to shake, and for a moment the girl acts like no one’s ever tried to shake hands with her before. She shifts the weight of the box again and this time Dancy hears the papers shuffling inside when she does. “I’m Chance,” she says back and finally takes Dancy’s hand, squeezes a little too hard when she shakes it. “Chance Matthews,” and Dancy smiles, trying to look friendly, trying not to look like a street crazy in her dirty clothes, her tangled hair.
“Chance,” she says. “How the hell did you get a name like that?”
Chance Matthews shrugs once and not exactly a smile for her, but at least the girl isn’t frowning anymore, and “Nobody ever told me,” she says. “I guess they just thought it was a good idea at the time.” Another glance at the Campbell’s tomato soup box, and “This stuff is really getting heavy,” she says. “I was on my way to the elevator,” and she releases Dancy’s hand, then, points at two shiny brass elevator doors at the end of a short hallway past the escalators. “The archives are over in the old building, and the crosswalk’s up on the third floor.”
Dancy apologizes for making the girl stand there with the heavy box of papers, runs on ahead to hit the UP button, her duffel bag swinging back and forth, dangerous canvas pendulum as she runs. A bell dings loud and the doors slide open like secret panels in the wall, and Dancy holds the elevator until Chance gets there. “Third floor?” she asks, making sure, still smiling, and Chance, more confused than ever and showing it, nods her head. “Thanks,” she says, and so Dancy presses the peppermintwhite button with a bold black number 3 printed on it. The button glows yellow, and the elevator doors slide slowly, quietly, closed again.
Two years, almost, since the first time she dreamed about Chance. Her mother was still alive then, her grandmother was still alive, and a hurricane spinning furious counterclockwise somewhere south of their cabin in the Okaloosa wilderness, big hurricane waiting somewhere offshore, sitting out there past Eglin Air Force Base and Fort Walton Beach, past the suburbs and beachfront tourist traps, crouched over gulfdeep water and just the tattered edges were almost enough to drown the swamps, to rattle the windows and bend the pines u
ntil they creaked and groaned. Her mother listening to the radio while her grandmother stared nervously at the raindark windows, oil-lamp shadows on the walls like goblins, and Dancy had fallen asleep watching them, listening to the weather reports, the excited voices of men and women relaying the storm’s speed and position, trying to second-guess its grayblue intentions.
Finally, too sleepy to be scared anymore, nothing she could do anyway, nothing any of them could do but hope the storm moved on south or west, anywhere but north, and “We should’a got out of here while we still could,” her mother kept saying, accusing tone in her voice to blame her grandmother, blame her that they hadn’t run; her grandmother accepting the blame by not saying a word in her own defense, just watching the windows, and Dancy shut her eyes, trusting the goblin shadows to keep their distance, and in a moment she was asleep.
And at least the storm had the decency to stay out of her head, out of her dreams, and instead she was standing in front of a big white house, nowhere she’d ever been before, and You’d have to be very rich to live in a house like that, she thought, a house with electricity and so many rooms, a house in a city. The sun hot on her exposed skin, but the grass was cool against her bare feet, bare toes, and that’s when she saw the girl sitting in the window, high-up attic window looking down at her. The girl with brown hair and green eyes looking straight at her, but not seeing her.
Dancy waved and the girl ignored her or didn’t notice, no change in her blank, unblinking expression, and Dancy turned around, hoping she might see what the girl was looking at. I’m standing on a mountain, she thought, staring down at treetops and rooftops and the city skyline farther out, glass and steel and stone towers, concrete highway ribbons. She’d never been on a mountain before, even a small one like this, and it made her a little dizzy, the sky closer than it should be, the world tilted at an unnatural angle, and she sat down on the cool green grass to keep from falling.
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