Rust & Stardust

by T. Greenwood

  “No!” Sally cried. She ran to Tex and dropped to the ground, cradling the whimpering dog in her hands. “How could you hurt a helpless little dog? Doris was right, you’re a bad man!”

  “We’re leaving,” he said. “Now. And the dog stays here.”

  SUSAN

  “Maybe I should go,” Al said.

  “To Texas?” Susan asked. “God, Al. We couldn’t find her when she was just in Baltimore. We don’t know anybody in Texas. And how would you even get there? Never mind who’s going to run the greenhouse if you’re gone. Let the FBI handle this, Al.”

  Susan pictured Texas as the Wild West of Hollywood movies that Al loved. Gunslingers and sunrise showdowns. Audie Murphy as Billy the Kid. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not imagine Sally there. (Perhaps she knew, in her heart of hearts, that by the time the police got there they’d already be gone. Tumbleweeds constantly moving, blown by that monster’s whim.)

  Al was pacing up and down the rows and rows of tomato plants at the greenhouse, hands buried in his hair. The air was thick with the heady scent of the plants, a smell she’d always found promising before.

  “Your mama’s about to lose her house,” he said.

  Susan nodded. He was right. Ella had stopped sewing. The phone had gotten shut off. Al had to pay her last water and electric bills so her utilities wouldn’t get turned off, too. Susan knew they’d need to move her in with them shortly. The thought of that filled her with a quiet and shameful dread. They were just starting their family. Dee was just beginning to get a little easier to care for. She and Al had some semblance of their life back. Well, as much as they could be given everything that had happened. A small awful part of her believed that Sally wasn’t coming back, ever, and that it might serve them all well to just accept it and allow themselves to grieve. But her mother’s anguish was endless, and she, like Al, knew that until Sally was home, Ella would never be well. Even then, there was no guarantee.

  “I’m thinking we could use the reward money. I could even take a plane down there.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Because she can’t … Mama, I mean … I can’t live with her, Al.”

  She expected he would come to her, comfort her. She even reached for him, imploring. But the look on his face was not the one he usually wore of concern and understanding. He was angry. She could count the times he’d been angry with her before on exactly one finger.

  “What if it were Dee?” he said.

  “What’s that?” Susan said.

  “What if somebody took the baby away from you? What if somebody stole her right out from under your nose and you didn’t know where she was, or what was happening to her?”

  Susan shook her head, the thought too painful to even allow registering. “I only meant—”

  “That poor woman, your mother, hasn’t got anybody but us to help her anymore. It’s been nearly two years, Sue. Newspapers don’t care about Sally anymore. Neighbors don’t care. Police say they’re looking, but they seem to be a day late and a dollar short. Somebody’s got to do something. For Sally. For Ella. She’s your mother, Sue.”

  As tears welled up in Al’s eyes, Susan felt sick. She’d never seen Al cry. Not even once. He was someone who never raised his voice, never lashed out, and certainly never wept. It made her feel uneasy, like her world was tilted somehow.

  She nodded, and felt a sickening turn of her stomach. Al was right. She was a terrible daughter. A terrible sister. She was the one who’d fled that house as soon as she was able, leaving Sally alone with her mother and her pain. If she’d been there, maybe Sally wouldn’t have gone off with that man. Maybe she’d be home now, and her mama wouldn’t be drowning in grief.

  SALLY

  The gun was in the glove box of the truck. This was a fact that brought both fear and solace to Sally as they drove across the endless desert, Route 66 stretching forever and ever in front of them, behind them. The terrain made Sally think of the moon, like some lunar landscape, pocked with craters and desolate. They were so far away from home now, it might as well have been the moon. She studied the door handle, thought of escape. But escape to what: this vast nothingness? She looked longingly at the train tracks that ran parallel with the highway. So many miles of tracks, but not a single train.

  Tex had run after them, so close to the truck’s wheels Sally feared they might run him over. She didn’t say a word to Mr. Warner for a whole day after that. No matter what he said to her, no matter how many times he explained that somebody at the trailer park would take him in. She hoped that was true, but she also hoped it wasn’t the mean little boys who lived in the trailer closest to the canteen, the ones who set that poor snapping turtle on fire. She tried not to think of Tex at all as they hurtled across the southwest, but she also knew she’d never forget the sound of him yipping at their tires. And she’d never forgive Mr. Warner for this.

  He gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  “They still got a reward out for me?” Sally ventured, but he only stared straight ahead at the road. “I just mean, I don’t know why we gotta leave unless they’re still looking for me.”

  “Goddamn it. Why do you ask so many questions?” he said, looking at her. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were angry.

  “I miss Tex,” she blurted, the knot in her chest coming undone.

  This time, he didn’t motion for her to slide across the bench seat, and so Sally pressed her body as close as she could to the door. She splayed her palm against the glass, which held the heat of the sun. Outside, there was nothing but rock and sand and tumbleweeds, which made Sally impossibly sad. How they cartwheeled, at the mercy of the gusts that swept across the highway. She curled herself into a ball and imagined she was made not of bones but of sticks. Twigs. Gnarled and brittle limbs broken off from their roots. She and the tumbleweeds were no different, both at the whim of a terrible wind.

  Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. They all looked the same until soon they were surrounded not by sand but by tall pines, standing like guards along the sides of the road, a mountain looming large ahead of them. The air was thin and so dry her split lip opened again, and she had to wipe the blood on a paper napkin she found on the floor. Flagstaff, Arizona. The window glass was cold now. The setting sun was bright, but there was snow tucked between the trees at the edge of the road. Then they were on a busy street with motels and restaurants on one side and train tracks on the other, the scream of the whistle as the train passed loud. They drove slowly, in traffic for the first time since Albuquerque. It was twilight, and the neon blinking sign was of a horse-drawn wagon, wheels flashing, spinning endlessly, but the wagon still. THE WESTERN HILLS MOTEL.

  “Please, can we stop here for the night?” she asked. They’d stopped after only seven hours the first day, staying in Amarillo at a small motel at the edge of town. But today they’d already been driving for eight or nine hours, only stopping to gas up and to eat and to use the restroom. She felt dirty; the sand from the desert had made a fine layer, a second skin. She wanted a bath. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a proper bath. Was it in Atlantic City? In Baltimore, there was no lock on the door at Sammy’s and she’d been too afraid to take a bath and have someone accidentally walk in. The trailer only had a stand-up shower. The closest thing to a bath she’d had was swimming in the Good Luck swimming pool. When she thought of that, she thought of Lena, and her eyes burned with the remembered chlorine sting.

  Mr. Warner shook his head. “Not much longer.”

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Near the Grand Canyon.”

  She’d heard of it before, of course. It was one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, according to National Geographic Magazine. She recalled that the article had said that the rock at the bottom of the canyon was around two billion years old. Facts like that made her feel small. Contemplating the center of the Earth or the stars in the sky made her head ache.

  “Think we might be able to park the trailer there,”
he said.

  “That where we’re going to live now?” she asked, and then felt that same sinking, diving-bell feeling. Plummeting. The Grand Canyon was almost a whole mile deep. If she were to fall into the canyon, she wouldn’t survive, and she certainly would never be found. Crying, she said, “I still don’t know why we had to leave the Good Luck…”

  He banged his palm against the dashboard. The loud smack of it startled her, and she held her breath. He leaned across her and threw open the glove box. She saw the gun, and felt a sob rise up. Her nose ran, hot snot running down, stinging her split lip.

  But he only grabbed a crumpled envelope, which he shoved at her.

  “Read it,” he said.

  She took the letter with trembling hands.

  Dear Florence and Frank,

  I am so sorry it’s took so long to write. We been on the road following the work.

  The reason I’m writing is that we’re in San Jose now, and we got a nice spot at a trailer park, kind of like the Good Luck. Hank’s found a job picking oranges at a citrus orchard here. There’s plenty of work, Frank. Maybe even some garages where you might find a job. We saved you a spot at the trailer court. They’ve got hookups and the rent’s cheap.

  I put the address on the envelope. I know y’all don’t have a phone, but I put the number here anyway. 6-4151

  Much love,

  Ruth

  “What’s this mean?” Sally asked, her breath catching. Ruth. She hadn’t forgotten her like he said.

  “We’re headed to California.”

  “California?”

  “It was gonna be a surprise, but you had to go and spoil it.”

  Her heart snagged, and she returned to the letter:

  P.S. We sure do miss you two. (And Tex of course!) Florence, you been like a daughter to me. Maybe if you come, I can give you a nice new ’do. I got the prettiest red ribbon.

  Shaking, she looked at Mr. Warner to see if he understood what this meant. The ribbon. It was a message inside a message, like those little wooden nesting dolls. But what did it mean? What was Ruth trying to tell her?

  * * *

  As the sun set that night at the Grand Canyon, and the sky filled with stars, Sally grew dizzy looking up at them. They looked close enough to touch here, not hidden behind the clouds like they were back home. There was a whole universe out there she didn’t understand. All those bright heavenly bodies. Sally thought of her mother and sister as well. Of Lena and Ruth. Of Doris and all those other girls back at home. All of them looking up at the same sky. How could it be, how was it possible, when she felt like she was so far away, that the sky was the same?

  She didn’t sleep that night; instead she watched Mr. Warner sleep. Studied the way his chest rose and fell. Inside was a heart that beat like hers. Inside his head a brain that thought and dreamed and wished. Inside his veins blood flowed. He was just a man. Just a man. As he tossed and turned in the small bed, he was vulnerable. He trusted that he would wake in the morning. That she would not run, not leave. He was as stupid as she had been, she thought. As foolish and blind.

  She thought of those bright stars overhead, and that vast canyon below. Both more limitless and terrifying than this single, awful man sweating and sleeping before her. She thought of Ruth; the letter like a promise. She thought of the glove box. She thought of the gun.

  San Jose, California

  March 1950

  ELLA

  Before Al could set out for Texas like he planned, the detectives called Ella and told her that they’d located a trailer park in Dallas (The Good Luck, couldn’t they have spared her the cruel irony of its name?), but that man and Sally had already left.

  “Where did they go now?” Ella asked.

  “We believe they’re headed to California,” the officer said.

  California. As far away as they could possibly be from Camden, New Jersey. It might as well have been the other side of the world.

  “You’re never going to find her,” Ella said, feeling the pain gripping her shoulders, her hands. Her fingers curled into fists, balls of hurt. “You’ll keep chasing, and he’ll keep running. Don’t you see?”

  “Ma’am,” he said. “I assure you. We’re going to find them. We interviewed the neighbors at the trailer park. They knew her.”

  The pain that gripped her joints quickly took hold of her heart.

  “They knew Sally?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Said she seemed like a happy girl. She went to school and liked to swim in the pool. She had a little dog she called Tex.”

  Could this be Sally? A happy girl who liked to swim, who had a pet dog? How could it possibly be? For two years, she’d been away from her mother, her home, living with a monster. A child molester. A rapist.

  “Neighbors said the dog followed her everywhere. They found him sitting in the empty spot where their trailer used to be, like he was waiting for her to come back.”

  Ella choked back a sob. “California?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll keep you updated, but you just need to stay positive. Let us do our jobs. She’s alive. She’s healthy. She’s being taken care of.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she thought of that dog sitting in the empty space, waiting for her to come home. Wondering what on earth he’d done wrong to be left behind.

  * * *

  That afternoon, Susan came over with the baby for lunch. Ella was in the kitchen, hunched over a loaf of bread, but she wasn’t making the sandwiches. She was gripping the Formica, her knobby knuckles white. She barely recognized her own hands anymore. They made her think of roots, like the bare roots of the rosebushes Susan brought her from the greenhouse.

  “Mama?” Susan asked, setting Dee into the high chair. “Are you okay?”

  When Ella looked up, for an odd moment it wasn’t Susan she saw, but Sally.

  “Mama, what is it? Are you having pains?”

  Yes. Yes. Nothing at all but pain.

  “Come here, sit down,” Susan said, taking Ella by the elbow and leading her over to a chair. “Is it about Sally, Mama? They’ll find her. This is just another setback.”

  At Sally’s name, Ella let out a mournful sigh.

  “I forgive her,” Ella said, nodding. “I really do.”

  “Who’s that, Mama?”

  “Sally. I forgive her for what she done with that man.”

  Susan released Ella’s arm and scowled at her. “Mama, Sally didn’t do anything to be forgiven. That man, he was wicked. He made her do those terrible things. You can’t possibly blame Sally?”

  Ella shook her head. “No, no. Of course not…,” she said, waving her hand as if she were simply confused. Had misspoken.

  “Mama,” Susan repeated. “Ain’t nobody at fault here except for Frank La Salle.”

  At the sound of his name, Ella winced. Just the mention of him like a sharp blade. She squeezed her eyes shut, but the only thing she could see was Sally, playing with a puppy. Splashing in a pool. A happy little girl, living thousands of miles away from her crippled mama. Maybe forgetting all about her by now.

  RUTH

  “They should be arriving soon,” Ruth said to Hank as she packed his lunch pail. She was a bundle of nervous energy. “Frank and Florence.”

  Hank was bent over, lacing up his boots. He grunted.

  “It sure will be nice to have her around again,” she said. She closed the lid on the metal pail and latched it shut. The silver box always made her think of a coffin.

  “What time will you be home?”

  Hank sighed. “When the pickin’s done, Ruthie.”

  Ruth wondered sometimes how the men did it, how Hank and the others survived those fields, those groves: the daily picking or cutting or gathering or plucking of berries or lettuce heads or sugarcane or fruit. The bloody hands, the aching backs, the endlessness of it, and for what? Collecting baskets or boxes or barrels of another man’s garden. The mindless hours, the harvesting of fruit that would only serve t
o make another man rich. Ruth, at least, made something beautiful. When the women from the trailer park (mostly the other migrant wives) came to her, she was able to transform them. To take their limp tresses and inspire them, to take their willful curls and tame them into submission. The women who came to her trailer left changed. She was an artist. This was what she thought as she pulled the cool shears from the waistband of her housedress. I am creating beauty in this ugly world. What was Hank creating but another dollar in a rich man’s pocket?

  Still, each day he headed off to work the groves with the braceros, those weathered, dark-skinned men. They must have been leery of Hank with his fair skin and hair, his white-blond eyelashes and brows. She’d been teaching herself Spanish so that she could at least exchange a few words with their wives as she cut their hair. The women were warming up to her now. She knew that the men only spoke Spanish as well, and so Hank must have gone entire days without speaking, or understanding, a single word. She tried to imagine his loneliness: the endlessness of the trees, the heaviness of the ladder on his back, the sun on his skin.

  At least he got to keep as many oranges as he could carry; any that had fallen from the trees were his for the taking. He brought home the best ones. She squeezed them for their juice, sent them in Hank’s lunch kit, even spritzed the citrus into her own hair before sitting in the sun; the juice bleached highlights into her clients’ hair. Everything here in California was golden.

  “I’m hopin’ it’ll be in the next day or two,” she tried again.

  “What’s that?” he said, distracted.

  “Florence,” she said, and the girl’s name felt like a puff of dry cotton in her mouth.

  “Have a good day, Ruthie,” he said, and kissed her head as he did every day. “Stay outta trouble.”

  He was only teasing, an old joke. He didn’t know her real reason for inviting Frank and Florence here, that this was just the beginning of her plan. He would have said she was meddling, that it wasn’t her place. Still, she’d written a letter inviting them, convinced the owner of the auto court to reserve a spot for their trailer, offered to do his wife’s hair for free in exchange. She didn’t tell Hank she felt somehow responsible for Florence, that she thought of her as she might her own daughter. She didn’t tell him about the way it felt to braid her hair. The way tenderness overwhelmed her sometimes. That when Florence confided in her, she’d felt for one strange moment that her whole life had been leading to this. That perhaps her destiny had been not to be a mother but to be this girl’s protector. Hank wouldn’t have understood this. He was so focused on the single orange, the single head of lettuce, the single cane of sugar, he couldn’t see beyond his own hands. He couldn’t see the field, the grove. He couldn’t see beyond the green leaves of those orange trees.