Ian came out of the bathroom, his toothbrush still in his hand, and said, “What’s really so funny is that no one was right. Isn’t that weird? I thought it was the same town as Mankson, and you said it was New Haven, and that librarian said it probably stopped being a town at all. And the answer was something totally different! It’s like, I thought you might be right because you’re really smart, and I thought that librarian might be right because she lives here and stuff. But no one was!”
“Except for you,” I said.
He thought about it a second, then raised his toothbrush triumphantly in the air and bowed.
When he lay down again on the bed, he didn’t even pick up The 21 Balloons, which surprised me a little. Judging by the spot where he’d stuck the hotel channel guide as a bookmark, he must have been right at the most dramatic part, where the gull makes a hole in the hydrogen balloon and the professor crash-lands on the mysterious island. Instead, he lay there looking around the room as if he expected more mysteries to solve themselves, more revelatory maps to unfold.
I found myself at an utter loss—for words, for action, for decisions. I’d just come crashing down from the height of my revolutionary fervor, and here was Ian sitting across from me, apparently elated by his discovery. I decided to throw it all back on him, once again. Letting Ian call the shots had started as a way to assuage my guilt, both moral and legal. Now it was simply a way out of paralysis.
I said, “Since you’re the guy with all the answers, you need to decide what’s happening next. We’re pretty much out of money. I can get some more if we really, really need it, but right now we’re almost out. We barely have enough to get back. And we’re not going to beg in the streets anymore.” I wasn’t trying to lead the witness, but I did want to give him an excuse, if he was ready to go home. The whole day, except for my brief inspiration from the gravestone, had felt like the end of something. The end of our money, the end of the country. And hadn’t Ian been telling me we were done, by letting us find his grandmother? He could have kept us circling Vermont for several more days, if he’d tried. Or he could have said, “Oh, did I say Vermont? I meant Virginia!”
He looked at the ceiling, as if he were deciding what he wanted for breakfast in the morning. “The thing is that the auditions for the spring play are next week, and I definitely want a part.”
“Okay.”
“Only the eighth graders get the leads, but I still want to do it, even if it’s just the chorus. So I think we should probably go back now.”
He kept looking at the ceiling. I assumed it was because he didn’t want to look at me.
“Miss Hull, I’m sorry if I’m changing the subject a little, but why do bagpipes only ever play that one song? You know the one song they always do, like at the parade?” And he began a fairly decent impression. He still wasn’t looking at me.
I said, “I have no idea. Most composers don’t really write for the bagpipe.”
“I’m going to put them in my symphony. They can have a whole section of the orchestra. Or the bagpipe players could be hiding all through the audience with their bagpipes under their seats, and then suddenly they all pull them out and start playing, and everyone’s totally startled. Only they couldn’t wear those kilts, because that would sort of give it away.”
“It would certainly look a little suspect.”
I went into the bathroom and put a cold washcloth on my face.
I was surprised—and surprised to be surprised—but I couldn’t figure out what it was that I’d expected. Was I really going to raise him myself and enroll him in school somewhere? Homeschool him? Sign us up for the circus? Somewhere in the back of my mind there had always been a fantastical and illogical ending to the story, as crazy as Ian’s story about his grandmother, and if only I had bothered to examine it first, we wouldn’t be here. I’d forgotten that all the runaway stories end like this. Everyone goes home. Dorothy clicks her way back to Kansas, Ulysses sails home to his wife, Holden Caulfield breaks into his own apartment. Huck didn’t go home, at least—but what happened to Jim? Probably something terrible. I couldn’t even remember.
What happy ending could I have been nursing, this whole time? It lurked there like a dream, half remembered. There was a picture from somewhere of a place I would take him, maybe a place from a book: a white-walled, sunny house where people took care of children, where they would explain everything and let him stay there forever or until he was strong enough to face his parents. Or we would all launch out together in our happy little boat and forge a new country on new land rising from the ocean foam: an ideal America finally or again.
35
Outstanding Fine
I was up once again at four in the morning, my pillows unbearably hard, my heart beating fast as a hamster’s. For better or worse, Ian was going home. That was settled. But where was I going? The room was pitch-black with the thick hotel curtain drawn, so I got up and opened it and let the parking lot lights illuminate the room. There, in the lot, side by side, were my car and its twin. I had stopped being surprised. I was really just impressed. I wondered if he’d follow us all the way back to Hannibal. And then what? Turn me in for a reward? And what if I didn’t go back to Hannibal at all? Would he follow me or follow Ian? Who was he really after?
Even if I did go home, and even if Mr. Shades went back to whatever dark rented basement he’d crawled out of, I knew eventually Ian would slip up. Or even more likely, Pastor Bob would drag the story out of him. And there I’d be in Hannibal, behind my little desk, ready to arrest.
Then there was this: I didn’t really want to go home. I wouldn’t see Ian anymore, I knew. His parents would keep him away from the library, even if they didn’t suspect me. I couldn’t quite picture what would happen if we ran into each other, if I saw him at the Fourth of July parade. It would be different and diminished and sad. In addition to which, Rocky wasn’t my friend anymore, or maybe never was. And minus Rocky and Ian, I didn’t even like my job.
I lay down again and waited for morning. Ian would have to go home alone. If I drove him back myself, we’d get pulled over twenty miles outside Hannibal for the brake light I still hadn’t fixed. The cops would recognize Ian, and not even my father could invent a story good enough to get us out of that one.
I counted the hundred and twenty dollars left in my purse, and then I turned on the TV with no sound. I watched the weather channel, watched the bands of color sweeping eastward across the nation again and again and again. When Ian woke up at seven, I turned it off. I said, “Have you ever been on a Greyhound bus?”
No, he had not, but he had seen them, and he was visibly excited by the prospect, even when I told him he’d have to do it alone, and overnight. He might have to get off in St. Louis and call home or the police from there. I told him I’d come back separately. My major concern, though, was his safety over the two days. I thought of giving him my cell phone and having him throw it out the window as soon as he crossed the Mississippi, but there were too many ways that could go wrong. I had to trust that Ian would find the most helpful adult on the bus, the grandmother on her way to St. Louis, and latch on to her. I remembered the way he’d swindled half of Church Street. He’d be fine.
As soon as I found the address of the Burlington Greyhound station in the phone book, we started packing up. I didn’t want to call Greyhound from the front desk—it would be like tying everything up in a nice little bow for the prosecuting attorney. And of course the hotel had no Internet. Lots of mold, but no Internet. We’d have to get to the station, see the schedule and wait it out.
On the drive back to Burlington, we tried to solidify the details of the plan. Ian was jumpy, and he kept rubbing his ears with his shoulders. He had dark circles under his eyes, and I wondered how much he’d really slept. He’d seemed pretty out of it from four to seven, but of course those might have been his only hours of sleep.
I said, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I didn’t know what I’d
do if he said no. He said, “I probably missed a lot of quizzes.” I took it as a yes. I didn’t have to, but I did.
So I changed the subject. “People might be looking for me,” I said. “Either right now or later. Even if you don’t say anything at all.”
Even as I said it, I saw Mr. Shades pass another car behind us and come up right on our tail. He was getting bolder in his espionage, if that’s what it was. Either he was planning his big move, or he figured I was onto him and had decided to drop any pretense of subtlety.
Ian was pulling a hole in the knee of his khakis wider and wider. “I swear I wouldn’t say anything. But they could have found a clue. Like, maybe I dropped something in the library, like a sock or something, and they did a DNA test.”
Oh my God.
My hands went numb on the wheel. “Ian, did you clean up your origami?” I didn’t mean to shout.
“What origami?”
“The origami in the plant! Remember, the plane crash and the people? When you were hiding?”
He sucked his lips straight into his mouth.
“Did you clean it up when we left?”
He shook his head no.
The truck in front of us slowed to turn, and I almost crashed into it. Mr. Shades almost crashed into me. When Ian and I both had our breath back and the seat belts had slackened again, I said, “Maybe they’ll think it was from a craft class. There wasn’t anything with your name, was there?”
“Because those other ladies who work down there wouldn’t even know. They’re both kind of stupid.”
“Right.” They wouldn’t fingerprint origami, would they? And Rocky couldn’t go downstairs. It was horrible to be glad for that, but thank the Lord, Rocky could not wheel himself down the stairs.
We both relaxed a little, and Ian started counting all the cows we passed.
I said, “So even after you’re back, you might not see me in Hannibal a lot.”
“That one other librarian always loses her place when she reads, every single time.”
We hadn’t figured out yet what Ian would say, and when he reclined the passenger seat all the way and closed his eyes, I was glad for the time to think. We’d probably have time in Burlington, too—who knew if Greyhound would have tickets for anytime soon? We might have to live there a few more days, camping out in the middle of Church Street, stealing bread crusts off the café tables.
I hadn’t thought of anything brilliant by the time we got there. I started to wake Ian up as I parked, but he opened his eyes on his own and began organizing his backpack and the plastic bag he’d been carrying when the backpack became too small. I saw, as he rearranged everything, that he still had all the Vermont books and the Lynton library books. I made him give them back to me.
“Because it would be like a trail?” he said. He was getting good at this.
“You can finish The 21 Balloons at the library,” I said. “I know we have two copies. And you have to promise me you’ll check out The Hobbit, too. But you could read Johnny Tremain on the bus.”
As we climbed out of the car, he said, “You know the whole thing about the shrimp? That means, like, lobster and everything too? Didn’t the Pilgrims eat lobsters, from the Atlantic Ocean? I thought the Pilgrims were very Christian.”
Mr. Shades was suddenly nowhere to be seen, but I doubted that would last very long.
“That’s what it says.”
“Are you sure?”
“You can look it up when you get back. It’s in Leviticus, I think.”
He opened the back door of the car and searched under the seats to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. His voice emerged from the car floor: “But it’s just, like—that can’t be right.”
It was a small triumph, but I was enormously happy. Those stupid shrimp and lobsters might, in the long run, be the crucial wedge between Ian and Pastor Bob. We crossed the parking lot to the small, quiet building.
I reconsidered his amazement the night before at no one but him solving the mystery of Havre. It was the universal revelation of adolescence, that the adults around you do not have all the answers—and like all children growing slowly and painfully into their mature selves, he’d realize it again and again over the next few years. But in Ian it was more than a simple disillusionment. It might well be what would save his life. It had saved the lives of thousands of people before him, the ones who, unlike my friend Darren, had looked at those outdated moral codes, at the judgments of their parents and aunts and priests, and said the same thing: Wait, no. That can’t be right.
I was no moral relativist. I couldn’t have been, or I’d have believed that Pastor Bob was entitled to his opinion, that the Drakes should raise Ian however they saw fit. It had always bothered me that fundamentalists would assume, when you argued with them about gay rights or abortion or assisted suicide, that you were arguing that there was no absolute right. When really I do believe in an absolute right; I just don’t believe in their absolute right. I don’t believe that the universal truths are encoded in a set of ancient Aramaic laws about crop rotation and menstrual blood and hats.
We approached the counter inside the Greyhound station, and Ian himself spoke to the attendant, a smiling old man who seemed thrilled to talk with a child. There was a bus leaving at 10:45, in only an hour and a half, and if he transferred just twice he could stop right in Hannibal, and yes, there were seats still available. Ian didn’t seem surprised at all—and no wonder, Hannibal being the center of his world—but I was astounded. And vaguely insulted, as if the universe had just slapped me in the face. Not only did the universe want him out of my hands and back home, it wanted it immediately.
“How old do I need to be to travel by myself?” Ian asked. I was impressed—I wouldn’t have thought of it.
“If the trip’s more than five hours, you gotta be fifteen.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Ian said loudly. “Because I just turned fifteen last Tuesday. And I got a learning permit for driving a car!”
The man raised an eyebrow at me. I nodded. Yep, really fifteen.
“You might think I’m kind of short,” Ian went on. I willed him to stop talking. “But that’s because I drank too much coffee. It stunts your growth.”
The man tapped his fingers on the counter, a lot less amused now. “I’m gonna need some ID to that effect.”
Ian and I looked at each other. I didn’t even have enough money to come with him if I wanted to. Besides which I’d be abandoning my car. And I’d have to get off the bus early, in Illinois somewhere, with no car and no money, and nowhere near Chicago. “This is really an emergency situation,” I said. “His mother—I’m not his mother—his mother is very sick.” The man shook his head.
“Hey!” a voice behind us said. “No worries! I have got here in time!” A thick Russian accent.
It was Mr. Shades. The shades still on, even indoors.
I stared at him, at the forehead above the sunglasses, at the cheekbones and stubble and thin lips below—but he was no one I knew, no cousin or family friend, no shady business associate from my father’s Russian Chicago. He said to the ticket agent, “I go with the boy. We go to Missouri, yes, okay?” My instinct was to grab Ian and dive through the “Staff Only” door and blockade ourselves, but Mr. Shades’s left hand was in the pocket of his blazer, and I figured he might have a gun.
“Okay, then,” the man behind the counter said, glancing at me to make sure it was all right, which I must have indicated it was. “One child ticket, one adult.” He rang it up, and Mr. Shades pulled an alligator skin wallet out of the left pocket. He paid with three crisp hundred-dollar bills. Ian looked even more terrified than I was, and only slightly impressed by all the money. I planted my hands on his shoulders.
Once the ticket man handed the tickets and receipt over to our Russian interloper, we all three walked to the far side of the station, awkwardly, slowly, each of us glancing constantly at the other two to make sure we were cohering as a group. A loud trio of older women i
n matching green T-shirts separated us now from the ticket counter.
“Listen,” said the man, “I no hurt him. They tell me, Mr. Hull will kill me if I touch him. I no want to touch him to begin with, okay? I just sit in the back of the bus. I be like Rosa Parks, okay? Yes? Back of the bus. I am not wanting to mess with Mr. Hull, you believe me.”
Ian said, “You know Mr. Hull? The guy with the horns?”
I said, “You gave us fifty dollars. At the Walgreens.” I realized I’d been holding Ian’s shoulders this whole time, digging my nails in.
He took off the sunglasses, finally. He had small green eyes. “Look, I was not intend to scare you! You are very pretty lady, okay, and I was not wishing to make scared!” He handed me a business card: Alexei Andreev, it said. And underneath, in place of an occupation: Reliable, discreet. He said, “I work many times before for Mr. Leo Labaznikov, and I never make mistake.”
I had been so stupid, assuming the cigars in that shoebox had been for a past or future favor. They were for a present favor. There had probably been a stack of money in there, too. And that morning at the Labaznikovs’ house, the way they’d kept us there so late, they must have just been waiting for Mr. Shades to show up. Though how my father had figured anything out, I didn’t know. How had I fallen for his lies for twenty-six years when he didn’t fall for mine for ten minutes?
Alexei Andreev reached into his other blazer pocket and handed Ian a shiny black cell phone, one of the skinny new ones. “This is extra, okay? The boy can test this, you see it works, he can hold this in his hand the whole way.”
I said, “What are you going to do with your car?”
He laughed. “It’s a disposable.”
I had relaxed significantly by this point. Whoever this man was, whatever his training or criminal background, he was clearly, irreversibly, on my side. And as loath as I’d always been even to accept my father’s money, tainted as it was with the illicit dealings of his Russo-Chicagoan black market, I was in no position to turn down help. A little assistance from one criminal to another.
The Borrower Page 24
