Rust & Stardust

by T. Greenwood

  Ruth tapped her fingers gently against the window, but Florence didn’t roll it down. Didn’t even turn to face her. Maybe she was just sleeping? She tapped again. “Florence?”

  Florence turned to look at Ruth, indeed as if waking from a dream, and slowly reached for the handle to roll the window down.

  “Florence!” she said, feeling overwhelmed at the sight of her.

  The child, too, looked worse for the wear, her clothes and skin both ashen, as if they’d carried a fine layer of dust from the desert with them from Texas. She sat upright, her hands clasped in her lap. She was plump still, healthy at least, with a little bit of color in her cheeks. But her hair. What a mess. Her curls had grown out since Ruth had given her the haircut back in Dallas, but they were matted, tangled, pulled back in a frayed braid. She was just a child, a child left to care for herself.

  Ruth’s hand shot out instinctively and opened the truck door. Florence tentatively stepped out, her legs longer, Ruth noted by the higher hem of her old skirt.

  “This the spot, Ruthie?” Frank bellowed. He stood in the empty space next to Ruth and Hank’s trailer, hands on bony hips as he surveyed the space.

  Ruth nodded, speechless, and opened her arms to Florence, who fell into them. Ruth buried her nose in Florence’s curls, smelling the weeks they’d spent on the road in one quiet inhalation: fried food, sweat, sunshine, gasoline. Florence clung to her, her hands gripping Ruth’s housedress, her desperation so profound and palpable, Ruth could feel it. Smell it.

  When she pulled away, Ruth felt her knees weaken. Dangling from the end of Florence’s braid was the red ribbon.

  “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay,” she whispered to her. “You’re safe now.”

  Frank came back over and hopped into the truck, pulling forward to position the trailer in the right space.

  Florence’s body was shaking, just a little, not perceptible to the eye but certainly to Ruth’s fingers as she stroked her back. When she began to shake harder, Ruth pulled back and gripped her shoulders. Peered into her sweet face.

  Frank got out of the truck and moved behind it to start to undo the hitch.

  “Everything is going to be fine, sweetheart. I promise you,” she whispered.

  Florence’s eyes were wide. Terrified.

  “What is it, hon?” Ruth whispered. Florence hadn’t said a word.

  Both of them glanced at Frank. He was crouched down, examining the hitch. The knees of his trousers were worn thin.

  “He’s gonna…,” she started to say, and her voice sounded brittle.

  “What?” Ruth whispered.

  Florence trembled.

  “He’s gonna kill me.”

  AL

  “What are you doin’, Al?” Susan asked, feeling a sudden and inexplicable chill.

  He was rifling through the drawers where she had carefully folded his shorts, meticulously rolled his socks.

  “If I drive, I can be in California in less than a week.” He opened up the closet door and pulled out the suitcase they hadn’t taken out since their honeymoon. “I’ll just sleep in the car, save money that way. If I don’t stay at any motels.”

  Outside, it was a bright spring day. Birds were chirping hopefully in the trees. Sunlight streamed through the window, bathing the room in a soft warm light.

  “Al, honey…,” Susan said. “They don’t even know for sure he’s got her in California.”

  Al threw the suitcase down on the bed next to her and released the metal clasps keeping it shut.

  “How long have I known you, Sue?” he said.

  “Why, since I was in second grade? Course, you were in the fifth grade then. Older boy.” She smiled.

  “Since before Sally was born. I’ve practically been a part of your family since I was ten years old. I used to love to come to your house, wished I lived there.”

  “You did?”

  Al’s face softened. “My house was always so loud. Eight of us kids. It was like a zoo. But your house was always so … peaceful.”

  Al had never talked about this before.

  “Course, your mama never said much to me, but she made sure there were snacks for us to eat. Cookies, what have you. Remember the time I busted my knee open playing Red Rover?”

  Sally nodded. She remembered helping Al up the steps to her house, her mother ushering them inside and into the powder room, where she silently tended to Al’s ravaged knee.

  “She gave me a little nip of whiskey before she set to cleaning the gravel out.” Al smiled a little at the recollection. “Took every last bit out with a pair of tweezers. Kept asking to make sure I was okay.”

  Susan nodded. She’d forgotten this. She’d forgotten her mother’s tenderness. She’d been taking care of her mother for so long now, she could barely remember when her mother had taken care of her. Hearing Al speak of her with such fondness filled her with a guilty sort of melancholy.

  “Nobody cared for me like that before. That had happened at my house, I’d still have those bits of gravel in my knee.”

  Al reached for Susan’s hand.

  “You’re too hard on your mama sometimes,” he said. “Her life’s been nothing but heartache, Sue.”

  Susan nodded, and she thought about her mother’s pain. About the permanence of it. About her anger and frustration and impatience. She thought she’d been hiding it. But Al could see through her.

  A sob escaped her lips, and her hand flew to her mouth.

  “I’ve got to take care of a few things at the greenhouse first,” he said. “Make sure my brothers don’t run it into the ground while I’m gone.”

  Susan wiped at her tears.

  “You really think you can find her?” she asked.

  Al shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if I do … what he’s done to our family, to Sally … I swear to God, I’ll kill him.”

  RUTH

  Florence was here now, but Ruth knew from the wild desperate look in Frank’s eyes and the way that Florence clung to her that the girl wasn’t safe. She’d told Ruth he was going to kill her. She’d said that; Ruth hadn’t dreamed it. When Ruth had sent the letter to Frank in Dallas, urging them to come to San Jose, her plan had been simply to get Florence back to where she could keep an eye on her, hopefully get her to open up, to tell her what was going on. But Frank hadn’t left the girl alone for a single minute since their arrival. It had been three days, and Frank had been practically glued to her side. She needed to find a way to get Florence alone.

  Ruth pulled her shears from her apron pocket and turned the chair so that her neighbor, Gert, was facing her. Gert was the only other woman who spoke English at the trailer park, but she was decades older than Ruth. Ruth studied the soft gray curls that framed the elderly woman’s face. Her eyes were milky blue, cataracts most likely. It was difficult to tell if she’d ever been beautiful. Gert had been at the trailer court in San Jose since she was Ruth’s age. Almost forty years now. She’d raised two children here, but only one of them had made it to adulthood. Boy and a girl, she’d said. My daughter … influenza. She was five years old. Her son never came to visit. He was a lawyer in Sacramento with his own family. Gert spent most of her time listening to her stories on the radio or tidying up the tiny trailer. She and Ruth went to the market together on Sundays, and every month Ruth cut her hair. Gert’s husband, Ben, was an electrician by trade, a handyman by necessity.

  “Where’s Ben working these days?” Ruth asked today, pulling a curl on either side of the woman’s face, making sure they were even length.

  “He’s still working odd jobs over at Normandins’,” she said. “That car dealership near the Lucky Supermarket?”

  Ruth caught her breath.

  “Normandins are a real nice family. They’ve always got something for him to do.”

  “That right?” Ruth asked, wheels spinning fast. “Hey, do they happen to have a services department over there? A repair shop?”

  “Sure. Something wrong with Hank
’s truck?”

  “No, truck’s fine. I actually got a friend looking for work,” she said, feeling her throat close around the word “friend.” “Maybe Ben could put in a good word?”

  “I don’t see why not,” she said. “Always happy to help you out, Ruthie.”

  As Ruth clicked her shears, trimming Gert’s curls, her mind raced. She needed to get Frank away from Florence. Just a few hours would be all it took, she hoped.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Ruth stood outside Frank and Florence’s trailer. Frank leaned one hand against the doorway, the other running across his unshaved chin.

  “Ben’s put in a good word for you, said you’re a hard worker, a good mechanic. All you need to do is show up.” She tried to sound as casual as she could. Just a friendly neighbor helping a fella out.

  She’d brought oranges for Florence, used them as an excuse to come over to the LaPlantes’ trailer.

  “Want one? They’re real sweet,” she said, holding the bowl out to Frank. He grabbed one and grinned at her.

  “I don’t know nothing about foreign cars,” he said.

  “Foreign cars?”

  “Imports,” he said. “Those cars made over in Europe.”

  Ruth shook her head. What was the difference? Weren’t all cars made the same way? She hadn’t thought to ask Gert what kind of cars they serviced.

  “I’m sure they work on American cars,” she said, nodding as if this were a fact. She scrambled to come up with something to convince him. “Hank brought our pickup in after we got here. It’s a Ford,” she lied.

  Frank sighed. “My truck’s clutch is startin’ to slip. I shouldn’t be driving it far until I can fix it.”

  “Oh, that’s no trouble. Ben says you can take the city bus in at lunchtime, that’s when his boss can give you an interview. He’ll give you a ride back to the trailer park after work.”

  “You’re a real peach, Ruthie,” Frank said then, and leaned forward, kissing her cheek. She felt her body tense, the hair on the back of her neck rise as his bristly cheek brushed against her skin. But she smiled and waved her hand.

  “I’m happy to help out,” she said.

  “You keep an eye on Florence while I’m gone?” he asked, tilting his head.

  Ruth nodded, her heart fluttering. “Of course. Like she was my own.”

  SALLY

  “What’s the matter with you?” Mr. Warner said. “Cat got your tongue?”

  The next day, Sally sat in a lawn chair in front of the trailer, writing in her composition notebook. Her handwriting was still small, though not the microscopic etchings it had been when he first took her. She was braver now; it showed in every loop and letter. She never went back to the early pages; it was too painful to reread the musings of her eleven-year-old self. Too difficult to see how stupid she’d been. How hopeful. This document was proof of so many things. Of what Mr. Warner had done, yes, but also what a fool she had been. He was right.

  But she was tired of being a fool. Tired of being fooled.

  “I said, what’s the matter with you?” Mr. Warner asked again.

  Sally stared down at the lined pages of the notebook. They’d only been in San Jose a few days. Mr. Warner hadn’t even mentioned school yet. She wondered if he had any plans for her to finish out the school year. Thinking about school made her think of Doris. She imagined her in the classroom back in Dallas, wondering where Sally had gone.

  “You gone deaf on me now, too?” he asked, leaning down. “Huh, deaf and dumb.”

  A tear dropped to the page, blurring the ink.

  Mr. Warner buttoned his shirt and said, “I’m taking the bus into town this afternoon to look for work. I’ll be home by supper. You tell Ruth to help you cook up those chicken thighs in the icebox. A couple of potatoes, you just got to cut the eyes out. You stay with Ruth today.”

  Her eyes burned. Ruth.

  “Something wrong with your ears?” he said, louder this time, and cuffed her ear softly.

  Still, she refused to look at him.

  “Goddamn deaf-mute,” he muttered, laughing as he walked across the dusty lot toward the bus stop. “Fucking Helen Keller.”

  * * *

  As soon as the bus lurched away from the bus stop, Sally stood up, threw the notebook down, and went inside the empty trailer. Shaking, she paced up and down the narrow trailer hallway. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Where to go, what to do. She hadn’t been alone in so long, she hardly knew what to do anymore. She remembered the valise then. Those photos. It had been so long since she’d found them, sometimes she wondered if she’d dreamed them.

  She went to the bed and dropped to her knees. There it was, right where she’d left it back in Dallas. She reached under and grabbed it by the handle, sneezing at the dust that had gathered there. The clasp was still broken, and so the lid lifted easily. She pulled out the envelope and shook the photos onto the bed again. There was that girl Dorothy, Dot, just as Sally remembered her. She wondered where she was now. If she was grown. She started to put the envelope back and then noticed a silky pocket in the valise she hadn’t noticed before. She reached her hand in, felt a couple of loose bobby pins (Dot’s?), and then a folded-up piece of paper shoved way over in the corner. It was also a news clipping, yellow, fragile. She unfolded it carefully and smoothed the wrinkles out, her breath hitching.

  POLICE SEEK GIRL, 11, MISSING WITH FORMER CONVICT. It was her own face pictured beneath the headline. That photo taken of her in Atlantic City. She barely recognized that little girl on the swing anymore. Fingers trembling, she sat down on the floor and read the horrific truths in black and white.

  Thursday, an eight-state police search was under way for blue-eyed Florence (Sally) Horner and a convicted 52-year-old rapist who persuaded her mother to let the child accompany him to Atlantic City, New Jersey by posing as the father of Sally’s school chum.

  He was not her father. He was a stranger. A convict. A liar. Nothing he’d said was true. Her hands shook so hard, she had to press her palm to the floor so she could read the article.

  “I don’t think my little girl has stayed with that man all this time of her own accord,” Mrs. Horner said.

  Her mother. She could hear her voice as she read her words. She hadn’t known.

  Sally glanced at the door as if he might just walk back in, catch her here holding on to his lies. But the trailer was still. He was gone. And so she gathered the photos and the clippings, put them all in that yellow envelope, shoved the valise back under the bed.

  Knock, knock.

  She jumped, felt her skin tingle with fear.

  “Florence?” Ruth called out.

  “Just a minute!” she answered. She ran to the bureau and threw open the top drawer, but the gun was gone. She rifled through his undergarments, but it was not there. Which meant that he had it with him.

  Clutching the envelope, she made her way to the door of the trailer and stepped out into the blinding sun, where Ruth was waiting in a pair of bright yellow pedal pushers and a crisp white sleeveless blouse, knotted at the waist. Her hair was in curlers. Her eyes looked frantic, but she was smiling.

  “I just made some lunch, sweetheart. You hungry?”

  MARGARET

  The girls at St. Leo’s sometimes ditched school at lunch. Instead of going to the cafeteria, they snuck away to the park. They walked together arm in arm, plaid skirts swooshing against bare knees. Margaret Howard followed behind them, invisible. At the park, they’d gather around the picnic table, smoking cigarettes or flirting with the boys who were never far behind. They didn’t notice Margaret. Not today, not ever.

  And so she sat alone on a bench, eating a peanut butter sandwich and pretending to study her primer, listening to the squeals of delight and the cries of frustration (sand in the eye, a lost toy) of the children on the playground. She watched the little boys chasing each other, shooting with imaginary guns. She observed two little girls climbing the octopus-shaped contraptio
n that emerged from the sand like some prehistoric beast, its eight arms reaching from the subterranean depths from which it came. Had she ever been carefree like this? Shouting and laughing with other children? Or had she always been this lonely?

  The three girls from her class sat huddled together at the picnic table, poring over a magazine, heads pressed together, the locks of their hair (three indistinguishable shades of blond) intertwined. Clean white bobby socks and saddle shoes, Catholic school plaid and cardigans buttoned tight. In uniform, she might look like the rest of them, but she felt so terribly different.

  When a gap opened up in the huddle, and one girl looked up at Margaret, smiling with something close to recognition, if not invitation, Margaret boldly stood up and walked toward the girls.

  “Hi,” she said, but her voice didn’t even seem to register, the smoke from their cigarettes more substantial than her vaporous words, which blew away in the breeze, and the girls’ circle grew tighter, a fortress shutting her out. So she walked away, kicking at rocks with her scuffed brown shoes. Staring at the ground, quivering chin to chest, she slipped into the shadows of the eucalyptus trees.

  “Hey!”

  Margaret looked up to see an old man jogging toward her.

  “Excuse me!” he hollered, smiling, breathless.

  She studied him quizzically.

  He bent over, hands on knees, to catch his breath and looked up at her, smiling. “You haven’t seen a loose dog running around, have you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Normally, she doesn’t run off,” he said, shaking his head, looking toward the grove of eucalyptus trees, shielding his eyes from the sun. “But she saw a rabbit and took off after it.”

  “Oh no,” Margaret said. “What kind of dog is she? I have a collie at home. Her name’s Rusty.”

  “My dog is a collie,” he said, incredulously. “She’s only a few months old.”