Sons of Liberty

by Adele Griffin

  “This is a wicked bad idea,” Rock said. I’ll go with you let me go let me leave let me start all over somewhere new, nudged the voice inside his head. It caught him by surprise, the loudness of his inside voice, all that longing.

  “Maybe so. But right now, I figure I’d rather be anywhere than where I been.”

  Everybody was quiet. Liza looked down at her lap while her fingers worked to smooth strands of her dark hair behind her ears. Rock stared at the top of her head, noticing how her hair parted, thin and crooked as a line on his palm. Somehow it made her seem younger than she was, like she couldn’t quite take care of herself. If only he had a car, or some cash—real cash, not just lawn-mowing or quahogging money—then he’d take Liza far away, to Hollywood. To a house that smelled like lettuce, with its own movie theater.

  “You need money.” Cliff’s voice was certain, a rope of logic that pulled Rock out of his daydream. He watched as Cliff tugged some loose bills from his jacket pocket and shoved them into Liza’s hand. “It’s still a dumb idea, but it’s dumber without enough cash. You can pay me back whenever.”

  “And send us a postcard or call us or something, if you aren’t back in a week. Just to let us know you’re …” Rock shrugged.

  “I will. Thanks.” In the next moment, Liza leaned over and wrapped an arm tight around Cliff’s neck, bumping her forehead against his, but before Rock had any time to feel left out, she turned and then folded her arm around Rock’s neck, too, and he breathed in deep her Certs and apple smell, her Lizaness. His eyes prickled and he lifted his head, staring straight into a shaft of sunlight that fell though one of the station windows. The brightness nearly blinded him, and when he blinked, his vision filled with a distracting swarm of fiery red-and-yellow dots.

  “You wait. I’ll be back soon. I just need to shake ’em up a little, huh? Show ’em I got other alternatives. I’ll probably be back home before you get my first postcard.” Liza snapped the return ticket in the air. And then she turned away from them, shouldering her duffel bag and first walking, then half-running through the station, skimming across its marble floor, out the battered brass-worked double doors, and then disappearing on the street.

  On the last quarter mile back to Linwood Drive, Rock’s bones felt dense with fatigue. The gush of melting snow that dripped off roofs and trees and whirled through the gutters sounded soothing as sleep. The sun was warm on his face, heating him up under his jacket and causing his glasses to slip down to the edge of his nose, reminding him for the first time that day that he’d been wearing them at all. It always surprised him how quickly he took his clear eyesight for granted.

  “Cops have all kinds of ways of twisting words around,” Cliff remarked suddenly, shifting gears as they hit a flat stretch of road. “And they might arrest us for being accomplices.” His words froze Rock to the core. “But before the time comes we need to start explaining, I’m hoping Liza’ll’ve come back home.”

  “Yeah,” Rock agreed. He couldn’t imagine what Liza’d be doing, anyway, out in a city like New Haven with no money and no place to stay. “We left her,” he said, his voice tight with dismay. “That was a real bad idea. Anything happens to her is our fault.”

  Cliff frowned. “But when you look at the whole picture, with Timmy and everything, it doesn’t matter so much whose fault so much as the fact that she got away, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Rock said. “Kind of like at the battle at Lexington—no one knew who fired first, the British or the colonists. But in the end, it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t about whose fault, right? ’Cause a war’s a war.”

  “Uh-huh.” Rock knew that Cliff wasn’t really listening, which annoyed him, since Rock thought he’d made a pretty solid point.

  “Hey, Cliff, I been thinking.” Rock could hear the forced casualness in his voice and he hoped Cliff didn’t notice. “I’m not sure I’m exactly right for the Marines.”

  “Oh, no? Why’s that?” Cliff asked uninterestedly.

  “Just because I think what I’m really good at, you know, is writing facts, like history facts. You know what I mean? Like for books, maybe?” His words sounded awkwardly childish in the phrasing. “Don’t you think?”

  “Didn’t you get a C-minus in English last quarter, sailor?”

  Rock went silent, mortified. It was true, but he hadn’t expected Cliff to bring it up, especially in such a Dad voice, and especially when Rock had been trying to tell his brother something real. He struggled to pick out the best insult to slam back at Cliff, but just then Cliff braked his bike, causing Rock to veer sharply at his side.

  “Sorry, Rock.” Cliff’s eyes were steadied ahead in the distance. “I don’t know why I said that. ’Cause I think you’d be excellent doing history research stuff, especially for those kinds of books like what Mom’s got all piled up in her bookshelves, right?”

  Rock nodded, embarrassed. He didn’t trust his voice to speak, but he managed a cough that sounded close to the word yes. “Yeah, that’s a way better plan for you than the Marines,” Cliff said. “Way better.” Then he pushed off on his bike, double speed, his body crouched over the handlebars like a racer in the Tour de France. Rock followed.

  Arlene was waiting for them. She’d been sitting with Trev on the covered well at the end of Linwood Drive, and she jumped when she heard them coming, slapping shut the picture book she’d been reading. Her brown eyes looked like wet almonds sunk deep in the puffy dough of her skin. Her hair, usually combed into a headband or bandanna, stuck out on all angles. She slid off the well and stood facing them, her hands on her hips, and for the first time ever Rock saw a piece of Liza in the stubborn stance of Arlene’s compact body. He and Cliff slammed to a stop in front of her.

  “Hey, Arlene,” Cliff said. “Weather’s warmer’n usual for January, huh? Nice change.”

  “You boys seen my girl?” Arlene asked, wrinkling her forehead. “I been waiting for you-all awhile, thinking you might’ve. She’s been gone all morning. Your ma says you kids been gone all day, too. She’s worrying.” Arlene’s voice strained with the effort at civility. She looked past them, her eyes wildly searching the road.

  Cliff perked up his mouth and eyebrows, lifted his palms to Arlene and opened them, all innocence. “We were in New Haven. Liza’s taking a later train home.”

  “New Haven? What you been doing—how much later?” Arlene twisted her fingers inside her jacket and drew out a packet of lavender paper. “I found her room all tidied and Pearl’s pellets and water bottle filled. This letter she wrote me was lying on her bed … and I just can’t tell from it … if it sounds like she’s ever fixing to come home. How much later?” She rubbed the paper between her fingers. “She say anything to you? How much later, you say? I—I don’t know what to do. I gotta call the police, maybe. I gotta tell neighbors, people …”

  “She said she’ll be back,” Cliff said.

  Arlene searched Cliff’s face and moved a step closer to him. “You know about this.” She spoke softly and only to Cliff. Rock strained to listen. “I don’t think this letter’s for real. She wouldn’t just leave me, but then if she did … I know you’d be the one.” She pointed a finger at Cliff and her voice dropped to a singsong, whispery pitch. It would have sounded almost friendly if you couldn’t see her face, puffed and blanched with anxiety. “You’d be the one, Cliff. You’d be who she’d turn to.”

  What about me? Rock frowned, Liza turns to me just as much, he wanted to say.

  “All I know is, she said she’ll be back,” Cliff answered. He squared Arlene in his gaze. “She’s likely gone off to do some thinking,” he said.

  “You’re weighing on my patience with those words, Heathcliff Kindle.” Arlene raised her chin and placed her hands over Trev’s shoulders, drawing him close against herself, as if to guard him from Cliff. “You can’t be holding nothing from me, hear? Now, where’d you take my girl? Where’d she run off to?”

  “I don’t know.” Cliff slid off his bike and let it
crash to the ground. He stuck his hands in his front pockets. “Three of us went into New Haven together, just to hang out. But I don’t know where she’s gone off to now. She had her duffel. She’s even got a return ticket, right, Rock?”

  “Yep.” Rock’s stomach felt wavy and he hoped Arlene wouldn’t try grilling him next. The cover-up wasn’t half as much fun as he’d imagined. Arlene looked like she was about to buckle into a heap of nerves.

  “I gotta phone the police is all I know,” Arlene said. Her voice shook. “You shoulda brought her home when you had the chance. You shouldn’ta just left her in that god-awful city. Lord only knows what’ll happen to her. I can’t even think straight.” She pressed her fingers against her temples. “What’m I supposed to do? I gotta call the police. That’s what I need …” She bent and swept Trev up her arms, then turned, tripping over gravel as she began clumsily jogging back to the red cottage, the blanket and picture books abandoned on the well like the remains of a picnic in a rainstorm.

  Timmy and Arlene and Trev descended on the Kindle house that evening, when Liza still hadn’t returned home.

  “We went to New Haven,” Rock took up the story. Cliff had become silent as soon as he saw Timmy. Instead, he sprawled on the couch, taking up too much of its space, especially considering there was company. Cliff’s arms were crossed in front of his chest and one foot tapped out a quirky rhythm while his lips moved occasionally to a song that played in his head as he stared at the wall, at nobody. He only got away with this rudeness, Rock knew, because their father would rather see the Mobleys standing, awkward and unwelcome, than taking up space on Kindle furniture.

  “Why? Why’d you go so early?” Arlene shrilled. “What kind of hanging around can you do before sunrise?”

  “It was just a plan, just to go and see New Haven. We didn’t know Liza was planning on staying. She has a return ticket, anyway. Cliff bought it for her, I saw it myself.”

  “You get a call, you remember anything new, you better tell us,” Timmy said. “Hear me, Rock?”

  “He hears you,” their father snapped. He had been grouchy with the situation from the moment the Mobleys had set foot in his house. “Your girl’ll be back any minute now. She’s probably out smashing up car windows with some new friends.”

  “Cops’ll get the truth out of these boys, if they’re hiding something,” Timmy returned.

  “If the cops come,” Cliff spoke his words slow while still keeping his gaze pinned on the wall in front of him, “I’ll try real hard to remember anything that might’ve made Liza hafta leave home. I’ll think real hard on that one, Timmy, see if maybe I can’t come up with something.”

  Timmy’s going to hit him, Rock thought. Timmy’s hands were clenched into fists and his face looked like a fist, too, squeezed into an expression of solid hatred. Arlene, watching him, took a halting half step that wedged her body into the space between Timmy and Cliff.

  “It’s my fault,” Arlene said, her words so quiet that it seemed as though she were talking more to herself than the other people in the room. “I know it. I have to live with it planted on my conscience.” But the way she looked at Timmy, Rock thought, wasn’t so much a look of guilt as it was blame. Timmy started to say something to her, then decided against it. His eyes shifted to Cliff, then to the door.

  “Stupid kids,” he muttered. “Run off to the city, searchin’ out trouble. That girl’s gonna have some price to pay—”

  “You can keep your big mouth shut about this, Tim Mobley.” Arlene wheeled on him. “She’s done paying her price, you hear me? She’s been paying, she’s done paying.” But even as she raged at Timmy, she seemed to shield herself from him, spreading her fingers over her face and inching toward the escape of the front door. “My Eliza’s gone from me and she’s likely not coming back. She’d warned me before, made me promise. I didn’t hold to my promise, I held back my interfering.” She inhaled a fierce and shaking breath. “And now it’s on my conscience, Tim, even if it ain’t on yours.”

  “I’ll make us all some tea,” Rock’s mother said determinedly, rising up from the couch and striding into the kitchen. “Calm your nerves.” It seemed to Rock, though, that it was his own mother’s nerves in need of calming, as she filled the teakettle with unsteady hands, a frown cutting her face into lines of worry.

  The next day, when Liza didn’t return home, Officer May and Officer Donnelley came all the way from the Guilford precinct and jotted Cliff’s and Rock’s comments into their matching spiral flip notepads. Although they produced their train ticket stubs and told the officers where Liza’s bike was, still locked under the train station, neither Rock nor Cliff mentioned the Seamus letter, the house on Manahasick, or the possibility that Liza could be in Los Angeles looking for movie parts. “Just remember you don’t need to tell more than what they ask,” Cliff had advised as they’d watched the squad car pull up to the house. Rock had been nervous anyway, waiting for the awful moment he would be tricked into spilling all his information.

  The moment never arrived. The officers told them to call the station if they remembered anything else, but there was no word twisting, no threatening with prison on the grounds of being accomplices, the way Cliff had predicted. “We got a lot of runaways on our books,” Officer May said tiredly. “Not much you can do to find a kid who wants to stay lost, especially an older kid. Better to concentrate on the little ones, the kidnappings. If she said she was coming back, let’s just hope she means it. If you don’t mind, Mrs. Kindle, I’ll take another piece of that pumpkin bread.”

  Go find her, Rock yelled inside his head. You don’t have time to hang out here stuffing your face. Go find Liza and arrest Timmy, you stupid cop. When Officer Donnelley had asked if there had been any reason Liza might have left home, Cliff had jumped at the chance. “Her stepdad’s a jerk,” Cliff had said. “He’s rough on her. You should be grilling him, not us.”

  “A lot of kids don’t have it good at home and think they solve the problem by running away,” Officer Donnelley had answered. “But the streets aren’t usually a place that solves anybody’s trouble.”

  “Good point, officer,” Cliff had answered sarcastically. He’d been almost totally silent for the rest of the questioning and had bolted upstairs as soon as the cops stood up to leave.

  Later that week, Liza’s sixth-grade photo appeared in the Shoreline Times, with an accompanying article explaining that Eliza Beth Vincent was last seen at the New Haven train station at approximately 11:15 A.M., wearing green corduroy slacks and a light purple ski jacket.

  “She sounds farther away when they call her Eliza.” Rock flipped the newspaper to the sports section so that he didn’t have to stare at her picture.

  “Could be she found that Seamus kid after all,” Cliff said. “Maybe he was just taking trains around, like Liza said he did all the time.”

  “Sure,” Rock agreed. He liked that thought.

  His mind made a picture of Seamus, with bright hair like Ms. Manzuli and thoughtful eyes like Ben Franklin. He pictured Seamus and Liza riding a train out to Los Angeles and Liza offering him a roll of Certs and talking about her friends Cliff and Rock, who were going to come out and visit her when she won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Telling Seamus how tough Rock was, how he could beat up any kid in the seventh or eighth grade, how he could keep a fireball in his mouth over five minutes without taking it out.

  “Maybe she’ll send us a postcard,” Rock said. “If she decides not to come back.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Cliff answered. “If she’s got to anywhere she wants to be.” But his voice was listless, dulling Rock’s pleasant images of Liza and Seamus rumbling safely across the country, bound for Hollywood parties and big breaks in movies needing blind people.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DECLARATION

  ROCK FELT EACH DAY that arrived and faded without any word from Liza as a slow crumble in his trust for her safety. He never wanted to talk about it, not even with Cliff, to speculate on
what could have happened to Liza or where she might have landed. His mind formed a glittery picture of Hollywood and refused to think harder.

  “She’s probably okay,” he would say in response to any murmuring and sympathetic remark made by his mother or the neighbors or kids at school. He closed his eyes and conjured up images of palm trees and warm breezes and people with fake white teeth. He thought about Liza wearing purple shorts and turning cartwheels down Hollywood Boulevard, her hands pressing over the warm concrete sidewalk squares embedded with the names of all those dead movie stars.

  Their father’s low opinion of the Mobley family sank even deeper, as he began using them as a ready example of a family without discipline or principles or self-control.

  “Tim Mobley’s a fool,” he was fond of saying. “Put your house in order, that’s my advice. But you can see disaster just looking at that family. Lazy white trash, unfit to raise decent children.”

  “Cowboy George is sitting even higher on his horse these days,” Cliff scoffed later to Rock in private. “Sometimes all his hot air makes me wish I’d have gone with Liza when I had the chance. See what Cowboy George would have said to that. ‘Yep, my son Cliff was always lazy trash,’ ” he drawled. “’Good for nothing. Always took the easy road. A man’s home is his castle, never forget. Or do I mean corral? Sometimes it’s hard to remember, even when you know everything in the world, like me.’” Rock started laughing, the first easy laugh he’d had since Liza disappeared. “Seriously, though,” Cliff continued. “If I could have ditched town with Liza that day, I would have.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Rock asked. “You want to go to San Diego, right? You could have taken off no sweat. You could have cashed that savings bond, gone to the airport, and bought a plane ticket, even.”

  “Nah.” Cliff half-smiled. “I wouldn’t leave my whole entire family behind like that. I couldn’t ever do that.”