Martha Calhoun

by Richard Babcock

  Something bumped the wall outside. I rolled over to look out the window, and Elro’s face popped up. “My father wouldn’t go to bed,” he whispered. “He was up drinking coffee.”

  “That’s okay.” I was surprised at how glad I was to see him. I almost had an urge to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him.

  “I got some money. Almost a hundred dollars.”

  “Great!” I scrambled off the bed and pulled out the suitcase and pushed it near the window.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “My suitcase.”

  “That’s too big. We can’t get it down the ladder.”

  “But I’ve got to take some stuff.”

  “Find something smaller.”

  I looked around the room and remembered the brown Piggly-Wiggly bags that Mrs. Vernon used to line wastebaskets. Fortunately, she’d changed the one in Sissy’s room just the day before. I fished out the crumpled letters to Bunny, the only things I’d thrown away. Then I took the clothes from the suitcase and stuffed them in the bag. Everything fit. I folded the top neatly.

  “Hurry up,” whispered Elro.

  I put the money from the purse in one of my jeans’ pockets, retrieved the letter to Bunny from the French book and shoved that into the other pocket. The letter would get crushed, but that was okay. I’d been barefoot all this time, and I started to put on my tennis shoes, but then I thought that my brown loafers would go with either the jeans or the skirt I was taking. So I dug the loafers out of the closet and slipped them on. For a moment, I stood by the bed and let my gaze circle the room. I’d been there two weeks—two weeks of staring at Jesus statues, at the world’s ugliest wallpaper, at things that a dead girl had touched, slept on, lived in. Two weeks, and already the place seemed almost normal and safe.

  “Come on,” hissed Elro.

  I climbed onto the bed and handed him the bag. He backed partway down the ladder. I leaned out. This wasn’t going to be easy. The ladder stopped two feet below the window ledge, and somehow I had to get to the top rung. I pushed the window open as far as it would go and sat on the sill, so I could dangle my legs along the wall. Scrunching down to get into the space of the window, though, I couldn’t get my legs outside.

  “I’m too big,” I whispered.

  Elro came back up the ladder. “Maybe you should just sneak out the front,” he said.

  “Mrs. Vernon would hear me.”

  “Then you’re gonna have to back down.”

  I turned around, lying face down on the bed. Luckily, the bottom of the window was just a few inches higher than the mattress. Wiggling back slowly, I pushed my legs out the window, scraping my shins on the metal ribbing. I couldn’t see, but I knew my legs were sticking straight out into the air, fifteen feet above the ground. It was frightening, but not entirely unpleasant. Moving backward like this, pushing painfully against the windowsill, I had a strange sensation of something difficult and uncertain and yet somehow exhilarating. Was this what having a baby was like, shoving off blindly into the unknown?

  Moving slowly, I maneuvered my waist over the sill; my legs finally bent down toward the ladder. Elro reached up and grabbed my ankle, guiding me. I still clung to the sill, but soon I was balanced with both feet on a top rung. This was going to be all right. Elro let me catch my breath, and then, still holding my ankle, he guided my right leg down an additional rung. I let go of the sill and let my hands slide down the scratchy shingles on the side of the house until I could grab the top of the ladder. I took another breather and stepped down again.

  “Stop!” hissed Elro. Behind us, a light had flicked on suddenly, throwing our shadows against the side of the house. “Someone’s up,” he whispered.

  We stood on the ladder without moving. The light had come from the Porters’ house across the lawn. I waited a minute—waited for a voice to shout, a door to slam, a phone to ring. Nothing. Finally, I turned and crouched, peering under a low, heavy branch of the oak. I found myself looking into the eyes of Grandma Porter. She was pressing her face up against the window, the way a child does on the morning of the year’s first snowfall. Her jaw moved slowly, worrying, but otherwise she just stared.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered to Elro.

  “But she’s watching us.”

  “Just keep going.”

  “What’s she want?”

  “Just go.”

  I started backing down toward him and Elro again moved down the ladder. At the bottom, he let his hand slide up my back as I stepped off onto the lawn. The ground was soft from the rain, and the grass felt cool and damp. He handed me my bag and picked up the ladder. Side by side, we moved silently around the house, all the time under Grandma Porter’s silent gaze.

  Elro had parked his pickup a block up the street. I threw my bag on the seat and climbed in. The truck wasn’t new, but Elro and his brother had kept the cab neat. The seat was patched in spots with pieces of green canvas. A clean rubber mat covered the floor. Someone had attached a little plastic cow to the dashboard in the place where people put statues of Jesus.

  “Where’s your luggage?” I asked, after Elro had climbed in.

  “In back.”

  I looked through the rear window. Besides the ladder, the only thing in the truck was a small, battered suitcase—actually, it wasn’t any bigger than a briefcase. The handle had been replaced by a few strands of rope. Even compared to my Piggly Wiggly bag, it seemed a thin, pathetic way to start an adventure.

  Elro was still feeling spooked by Grandma Porter. “Do you think she’ll tell anyone?” he asked.

  “No. Now drive me to Bunny’s.”

  “There? Why there?”

  “I have something to drop off.”

  He glided the truck down Oak, then left on Charles, and back up Sycamore. No one else was around. The streets, with their ceilings of leaves and lamplight, were deep, quiet tunnels. Elro stopped about fifty feet from Bunny’s driveway and I got out and walked in the grass so as not to make any scuffing noises. The house was dark. It’s the smallest house on the block, just a box really, plopped in the middle of an unruly yard. Tiptoeing over the lawn, I thought of the summer days I’d spent playing on this patch of ground. Tom and I would be let out like ponies, and we’d only come in for lunch and dinner. There was the glittery, gray rock—bottomless, since we’d never been able to dig it up—on which Tom had cracked his head open; the spot near the stoop where we’d held a burial service for a mouse Bunny had caught; the circle worn permanently bare from being home base. Now, even the grass over home was luxuriant, almost to my ankles. I’d mowed the lawn the day before I went to the Benedicts’, and Bunny probably hadn’t thought of it since.

  At the front door, beside the three concrete steps, I paused for a moment to listen, not really sure what I’d hear—the familiar creaks and groans of the walls, perhaps, or the clunk of the refrigerator revving up to cool itself off. Voices, maybe—some assurance. But the house was dead quiet. I lifted up the mail slot in the bottom of the door and silently dropped in my letter.

  THIRTY-ONE

  When I got back to the pickup, Elro was drinking out of a bottle, and the medicine smell of whiskey filled the cab.

  “I swiped this from my old man,” he said. He thrust the bottle toward me. The whiskey inside looked black. “You want a drink?”

  I shoved it away. “You shouldn’t drink if you’re going to drive.”

  “I’m used to it.” He started the truck and let it roll quietly past Bunny’s house. “Where should we go?” he said.

  “I thought you had a place.”

  “No place special.” He took another gulp from the bottle. He was holding it with one finger crooked around the neck, and he tilted his head back when he drank, as if swigging from a jug. “What about Chicago?” he said.

  I remembered Mrs. O’Brien’s story about the girl who’d run away to Chicago with her boyfriend. Chicago sounded remote and dangerous. “How about Wisconsin?” I suggested. “You mentioned Wi
sconsin once.”

  “Yeah! Wisconsin. I been fishin’ there.” He guided the truck down East Morgan and turned onto the deserted square. A few spots of all-night neon enlivened the storefronts but only made the place look emptier. The tall concrete Civil War monument, a lone soldier with a rifle, stood out in the center of the park like a black, hulking scarecrow.

  “Why’d you come to the square?” I asked.

  “Don’t know. Just habit, I guess.”

  “Well, let’s get going. I want to get out of here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, take it easy.” Gulping another drink of whiskey, he misjudged a corner, and the truck’s tires screeched over the concrete.

  “Elro!”

  “Shit.” The beams of a car’s headlights suddenly swept onto the square. The car hurried and came right up behind the pickup. “Cops,” whispered Elro.

  Looking back, I could see the bubble on top. “Go slow,” I said. Then, remembering the trouble Bunny had had on Sunday, I added, “But not too slow.”

  “Shit,” said Elro again. He was rattled and kept looking back over his shoulder at the police car.

  “Don’t turn around,” I said. “They’ll suspect something.”

  “Shit.”

  As we looped around the square, the police car stayed behind us, its headlights bathing the cab of the truck in brightness. “That old lady must have called them,” said Elro. “I knew she was trouble.”

  “Calm down. Just turn off.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  We passed the old, boarded-up Ward’s building, a somber black wall, and Elro turned right on South Harrington. Suddenly, the cab was dark again. The police car continued on around the square.

  “Now we’re going the wrong way.” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “We’re headed south. Wisconsin is north.”

  “Just shut up for a minute,” Elro said. “Just shut up and let me think.”

  “Okay.”

  “Shut up.” He drank some more whiskey and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  The excitement of escaping had given me a temporary lift, but now the dread came back, a deep familiar ache. For a moment, I imagined that I was trapped in this pickup with Elro, that I was condemned forever to glide the streets of Katydid, pursued by the police.

  “The Dells,” said Elro. He sounded calmer.

  “The Dells?”

  “The Wisconsin Dells. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  “Okay.” Better humor him, I thought. Keep him calm.

  “Ride the ducks.”

  “What?”

  “Ducks. They’ve got these amphibious vehicles called ducks. They go anyplace—on land or water. They’re left over from World War Two. You see billboards for them all over Wisconsin. I always wanted to ride one.”

  “Sure.” Was he drunk already?

  “Anyway,” he added, “there’s lots of people there. No one’ll ever notice us.”

  Suddenly, I realized Elro was right. The Dells was the perfect place for us—a big tourist attraction, with people coming and going all the time, lots of kids around, a favorite date spot. We’d blend right in. Why, we could probably even get work. Me as a waitress, and Elro—well, maybe in a gas station or something. The Dells was perfect.

  “Great,” I said. “That’s a great idea.”

  He looked at me and smiled. “We’ll get a motel room.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I turned to stare out the window as the houses of Katydid passed in the darkness.

  We drove for an hour. Elro said he was afraid the police might come after us, so he took an out-of-the-way route, zigzagging north on gravel roads and dodging even the smallest towns. We hardly saw another car. As the miles ground on, I started to think how easy it had been—escape had been little more than a matter of deciding to do it. Aside from the soul-searching, there was no trauma, not even much tension. Now here I was on the other side, and I didn’t feel different. It was a bit of a letdown. I guess I’d been expecting a burst of courage, or an outflowing of passion, or a new, frightening guilt—something to confirm that I’d taken a momentous step. Instead, there was nothing. If anything, I was a little bored by the trip so far.

  A pale film of purple appeared along the horizon. “Sun,” grunted Elro, as if he’d just learned the word. He’d finished almost half the bottle, and, though his driving still seemed steady, the liquor had made him talkative. On and on he went, mostly about cars and trucks, about cams, piston rods, bearings, fuel pumps. And ducks. He kept returning to the ducks. Once he told me that the ducks had won the war for America, that they’d been the critical factor in a crucial battle. The Germans had retreated to a river somewhere. They’d crossed over on a bridge and then blown the bridge up, thinking they’d ensured their escape. But then an army of ducks came scudding up to the riverbank and swam right across to the other side. The Germans were surprised and defeated.

  “You sure about that?” I asked.

  “Of course I’m sure.” He frowned, unhappy that I’d doubted him.

  After a few seconds, his face brightened again. “You know, this thing will do ninety, ninety-five when I really goose her up,” he said, patting the dashboard of the pickup. “My brother and me bored out the engine so the thing’s faster ’n most cars.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You want to see?”

  “Not really.”

  “Watch.” He stomped on the gas pedal. The pickup paused for a second and reared back, as if taking a breath, then shot forward with an animal roar. “Whoooo-eee!” yelled Elro. The back end skidded sideways on the gravelly road.

  “Don’t!”

  “See?” His face was flushed. “See what I mean?” He let up on the gas, and the truck straightened out. “If some cop wanted to chase us, I’d give him a hell of a ride.”

  When we were back to normal speed again, I said, “What do you think they’d do if they caught us?”

  “I tell ya, they wouldn’t catch us in this thing.” Again, he touched the dashboard, this time stroking it gently. His hand was broad and thick, with stubby, coarse fingers. I found myself staring at it. I couldn’t imagine being touched, or, worse, held by that hand. It was like something not designed to come into regular contact with other people, like a boot, a heavy leather boot. I thought of Reverend Vaughn’s slender, delicate hand, and my stomach burned. Running away wasn’t that easy after all.

  “They’ll have to shoot us,” said Elro.

  “Shoot us?” The smooth, dark fields were coming clear in the sunrise. The horizon was now splashed with orange.

  “Yeah. The law says you can shoot fleeing felons. We’re fleeing felons.”

  “Fleeing felons?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re just kids.”

  “Don’t make no difference. They shoot fleeing felons all the time.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I heard it.”

  I turned to him, but avoided looking at his hands. “You’ve got a lot of stupid stories in your head, you know that? You’re like an old man who believes in superstitions and ghosts.”

  “I just remember things.” He picked up the bottle and thrust it toward me. The whiskey sloshed inside. “Sure you don’t want some?”

  I shook my head. “Let’s talk about something else, something besides cars,” I said.

  He swigged from the bottle. “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I thought for a moment. “Remember how in fourth grade, Mrs. Kirkpatrick used to talk about her pets all the time, how she’d spend half the morning telling what her cat did the night before? We were supposed to start the day with current events, but she just talked about her cat or her dog. And she had a parakeet, right? She brought it to school once. I used to time her. Once she talked all the way up to the first recess. Remember?”

  “Nah, not really.” Elro’s face had sunk into a pout. “I didn’t like her much.”

&n
bsp; “Really?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why?”

  “I just didn’t.”

  We fell into silence. “Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you,” I said after a while. “Did you really go out with Sissy? That seems kind of strange to me.”

  “What a bitch.” He made a noise, half laugh, half grunt.

  “I thought you liked her.”

  “She liked me, you mean. She wanted it.”

  “Don’t be crude. Anyway, she was a religious fanatic.”

  “That don’t mean she don’t get urges. Everybody does. My brother used to mow the lawn out at the convent, and he says they won’t even let the nuns order bananas there.”

  “Ugh! Shut up.”

  “It’s true.”

  This was hopeless. Elro started humming to himself and drumming with his fingers on the whiskey bottle.

  “But still,” I said, more to get him to stop humming than to keep up the conversation, “her mind was so full of Jesus that she wouldn’t have had time to think about things like that.”

  “A lot you know.”

  For some reason, hearing him talk that way, I felt offended for Sissy. “You really ought to be more considerate, Elro,” I said. “After all she went through—dying and everything.”

  “Hah!” he took another drink.

  “Why’d you laugh?”

  “I didn’t laugh. I said, ‘Hah!’ ”

  “Why’d you do that? That’s cruel.”

  “She didn’t die. She drowned.”

  “I know that. I was there. It was awful.”

  “I was there, too. I drowned her.”

  I waited a few seconds. “What are you saying?” I asked. “That’s crazy.”

  “I drowned her. She was botherin’ me, so I drowned her. Tough.” He drank again from the bottle. “Tough, tough, tough.”

  “How can you say that? How can you even think to say it? That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s true.”

  I turned to get a better look at him, shifting until the door handle pressed into my back. He kept his eyes straight ahead, locked on the path of the pickup’s headlights. For a second, I imagined his eyes were the headlights.