Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  Victor tensed and Sweet Caroline stopped combing. Molly didn’t know whether or not to continue, but as Victor settled again, she did.

  San Francisco was great, but it got too intense, so I came back to Atlanta for now. You’ve got to see this band, man. Here’s a copy of “The Bird,” read all about them. I’m worried about being drafted. If this war goes on for two more years, you’re going to face this decision, too, cuz.

  Molly fought tears as she read. Barry, Barry, Barry. She reached for Aunt Pam’s tablecloth and blew her nose on the corner of it. Norman exhaled a heavy sigh and looked away.

  Sweet Caroline tenderly combed Victor’s hair. Molly found her voice and read more. Norman put food away and tended the fire. There was no Wavy to tell them that compassion is a wonder drug, that “it feels good to be nice,” that acts of kindness beget more kindness. They didn’t need Wavy tonight. They had one another.

  Sweet Caroline interrupted Molly’s letter reading to list for Victor all the reasons he should come to Disneyland. Pirates of the Caribbean. The Magic Castle. Goofy. Cinderella. She sang “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” and Victor closed his eyes and smiled. Norman was impressed — even with her terrible singing voice, the song was sweet because it was full of feeling.

  “At Disneyland all your dreams can come true,” she said.

  “What are your dreams?” Norman asked her. Immediately, he wished upon the first star he saw. Please let them include me.

  “I have bad dreams,” said Victor.

  “I’m sorry,” said Caroline. She kept combing Victor’s hair, in long strokes now, from his forehead, along his scalp, to the back of his head. Victor gave a soft moan as she began to massage his neck. Sweet Caroline did not giggle.

  “I haven’t been touched in a very long time,” he whispered.

  “Then it’s about time,” she whispered back.

  Norman’s face was on fire with embarrassment. It felt so intimate and so private and so like he should have been the one Sweet Caroline was whispering to. He was jealous. He felt sorry for himself. He was losing her; he could see it.

  A log shifted on the fire and Victor stared at it. Molly quit reading the letters. Flam snored under the picnic table.

  “I killed people,” Victor said.

  Norman’s eyes sought Molly’s although he did not turn his head.

  Sweet Caroline put both hands on Victor’s shoulders and held him that way, gently. “I know,” she said.

  Molly couldn’t believe Sweet Caroline’s composure.

  “I want to die,” Victor said.

  Tears filled Molly’s eyes as she heard once again what Victor had told her on the Square.

  “We don’t want you to leave us,” said Sweet Caroline. “Do we, Molly?”

  “No,” said Molly. She was trembling, but Sweet Caroline seemed steady. “Do we, Norman?”

  “No,” said Norman. “No, man. We need you.”

  “Why?” Victor looked Norman in the eye for the first time since he’d met him.

  Norman tried to think. “If anybody will know how to talk to Barry when we find him, it will be you.”

  Victor shook his head.

  “Yes,” said Molly. “I feel it.” She did not. What she felt was dread.

  “Come to Disneyland first,” said Sweet Caroline. “That’s where we’ll find my mother. She’ll take good care of all of us.”

  “Your mother!” Molly sat up straight.

  It came out in a tumble. “Yes, my mother. I’ve been trying to get to her for such a long time, and I’m sorry, Norman, I thought you would take me, I thought I could talk you into it, but you didn’t want to go and I didn’t want to make you go. I do like you, I really do, but not the way you think I do. I shouldn’t have led you on. What I really want is to go to Disneyland.” She took a deep breath.

  Norman couldn’t speak. He stared at Sweet Caroline as his vision clouded with tears. It hurt.

  “So what you really want is a ride,” said Molly. “I knew it.”

  Victor covered his face and sobbed, once, then stopped himself, which brought them all back to him. “It doesn’t matter!” he said. “Don’t you see? None of this matters!”

  “You’re right,” said Sweet Caroline. She squatted in front of Victor and pulled both his hands from his face, held them in hers. “You’re right. It’s not important, Victor.”

  “Why is your mother at Disneyland?” asked Norman when he could speak.

  Sweet Caroline answered without taking her eyes off Victor. “My mother left us to find herself fifteen years ago. I was a baby. I grew up in foster homes. My mother came to California. She was the first Snow White at Disneyland when they opened. Then she went to Hollywood and acted in a million movies — she was an extra. I used to watch old movies on television to see if we could find her in them.”

  Sweet Caroline’s eyes were full of glistening tears, but she was smiling at Victor, keeping him with her as she told the story.

  “Over the years, she wrote letters to me and told me she would bring me out to be with her as soon as she had enough money saved, but she never did. The letters never had return addresses. I couldn’t write to her, I couldn’t call her. I never even knew her.”

  “How would you find her by going to Disneyland?” asked Molly. She closed the top on the box of letters.

  “They’ll have an address for her there. It’s a place to start.” She let go of Victor’s hands. “Just a minute, I’ll be right back. Don’t go away.”

  She stood up and turned to Norman and Molly. “You two have everything and you don’t even know it. Norman, you have a dog, a bus, a cousin — two cousins — and you have a quest. An important quest. You have family. A mother who loves you and will do anything for you — you told me so yourself. Your father loves you, too, even if he’s insane right now. He’s human. You’re so lucky.”

  She returned to Victor, who was watching her with fascination and growing understanding. He stood up. She stood directly in front of him.

  “I want someone to journey with who will love me and who needs me and who will let me help him and who will help me. I want you, Victor. Do you want me?”

  Molly swallowed. This wasn’t happening. She was dreaming.

  “I am …” Victor began, trying to find a word. “… damaged.” But something in him moved as he said it, Sweet Caroline could tell, and Molly could see it transform him. His face softened as if it was letting go of a burden.

  “So am I,” said Sweet Caroline. “I’ll be your family, you be mine. You can never be like Barry, with the chance to make your decision again, and not go to Vietnam. I know that. I understand that. We can’t undo what’s been done. I can never be like Molly, who has a mother and a father and a house to grow up in with them, memories to make with them. But we can be family to each other and it can be good. Together we can have a future. I’m willing to try. Are you?”

  Victor stood up. “I … I don’t know what to do.” The longing in his voice was unmistakable. So was hers.

  Sweet Caroline reached up and touched Victor’s face with both of her hands. “Neither do I. Let’s take care of each other.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist. She was short and he was tall. She tucked her head under his chin. He lifted his arms and slowly, slowly wrapped them around her. She sighed deeply. She transferred her affections so easily and truly, it took Norman’s breath away. He sat with a thud on the picnic bench. Molly got to her feet. She couldn’t think of one thing to say.

  “We’re going for a walk,” said Sweet Caroline. She led Victor away by the hand. He stopped her and turned around to Molly.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?” she asked. Her throat filled with tears and her nose started to run.

  “For noticing.”

  She sniffed and smiled crookedly at Victor. “You’re welcome.”

  * * *

  They disappeared in the dark, two souls who had chosen each other.

  “We’
ll be back,” said Sweet Caroline.

  In the morning they were gone.

  MARY, MARY

  Written by Michael Nesmith

  Performed by the Monkees

  Recorded at Western Recorders, Hollywood, California, 1966

  Drummer: Hal Blaine and Jim Gordon/the Wrecking Crew

  Just before dawn, Norman poked at the fire’s embers, added some foraged wood, and brewed coffee in the campfire pot they’d taken with them on the Appalachian Trail. He used their can opener to punch holes in a can of sweetened condensed milk and found the jar of sugar in Aunt Pam’s box labeled Staples.

  Molly braided her hair and liked how it felt. She tied her Keds and pulled on her sweatshirt. Norman, with his short hair and a slight stubble around his chin, wore his jeans and a YMCA T-shirt.

  As Molly appeared for coffee, Norman said, “I’m sorry. For everything.” Molly sighed, trying to think of what to say. She settled for “It’s her loss,” and then added, “Love is weird, isn’t it?”

  “Girls are weird,” he said. He’d understood that Lucy hadn’t loved him, but he’d tumbled for Sweet Caroline and now he felt foolish for ever believing a girl could love him back. He finished folding the laundry, a task Molly assigned him. Victor’s clothes were gone, but Sweet Caroline had left Norman her Mickey Mouse T-shirt. He gave it to Molly.

  “They’re doomed,” she said.

  “Probably,” Norman agreed.

  Norman seemed to have a selection of T-shirts now. “Did you trade all your white T-shirts for these? Is that what you were doing in the Aspen Meadow?”

  Norman shrugged. “It just happened. I still have some of mine. But I like these. Want one?”

  “Well, I don’t want to wear Mickey Mouse,” Molly announced. But she was tired of her usual uniform. She picked a sleeveless pullover shirt in red and white stripes. She would wear it to California.

  They packed the tent, broke camp, and climbed on board Multitudes. “We’ve got to get across the Mojave Desert before noon,” said Molly. “The heat will boil the bus. I read it in An Adventurer’s Guide to Travel across America, a book that is not always completely truthful, as we’ve seen, but I believe this much.”

  “I’m ready,” said Norman. He turned the key in the ignition, Molly settled into the navigator’s seat, and Flam, not quite ready for the day, trotted back to the sleeping bags and flopped down for a snooze. Daylight began to announce itself in shades of silver and gray as they trundled past the Mohave County Courthouse, a radiator repair shop, a Harley-Davidson dealer — Barry! — and pulled onto Route 66. The road was lonely and dotted with signs that declared

  LAST GAS FOR 100 MILES

  CHECK FOR DRINKING WATER AND COOLANT

  IN CASE OF BREAKDOWN STAY WITH YOUR CAR

  “You’re sure you checked all the engine fluids?” Molly asked.

  “Yes,” said Norman. “Twice.”

  They began the descent into the basin of the Mojave. The Sierra Nevada mountains in the far distance created a rain shadow on the desert floor, trapping the humid air from the Pacific Ocean and cooling it so it evaporated before it could water the desert. As a result, dust and sand danced on the dry winds, and plants captured what little moisture passed over the mountains and held it in their spines and thorns. Large desert tortoises dug deep burrows in the sand and sheltered under crevasses. The land was wild and silent.

  “It’s spooky in the dark,” whispered Molly.

  “It’ll be daylight soon.” Norman squinted into the distance. “What’s that! Gaaaa!”

  Molly jumped as the bus headlights illuminated what looked like ghostly monsters menacing them from either side of the empty highway.

  Norman leaned forward in his seat and strained to see. “They’re trees!” He laughed nervously. “Trees.”

  A grove of Joshua trees dotted the landscape, their thick trunks spreading and branching into many bristling arms that seemed to reach skyward for them like ominous ogres on the march.

  “Still spooky,” said Molly. Blinking blue lights zigzagged across the sky and were gone as suddenly as they had arrived.

  “What’s that!”

  “It’s a UFO,” said Norman.

  Molly reached over the silver partition and slapped Norman on the shoulder.

  “It’s probably some plane from some air base around here,” said Norman. “Didn’t that Drew kid say there were missile bases out here or something?”

  “Telescopes,” said Molly. “And you missed them when you slept through Flagstaff.”

  The sky lightened and so did their mood. The sun rose behind them in the east as they barreled west with the windows up against the cool desert night.

  They crossed the Colorado River.

  “Welcome to California!” said Molly with glee in her voice. Norman smiled at her in the student mirror. Finally, California.

  The bright morning sun crested the Sierra Nevadas and immediately began to bake the bus. Molly walked past each window, opening it and letting the hot air circulate. Soon they were driving through the oven that was the daytime Mojave Desert.

  “It’s so much hotter than yesterday,” said Molly. She got them some water in paper cups from the melting ice in the ice chest.

  Norman’s thoughts drifted to Sweet Caroline and her ministrations of ice water, giggles, and a cool washrag. He shook his head so he would think of something else. There were few other cars on the road, the occasional tractor-trailer truck, and so much brown everywhere. So much sand.

  “Remember when that boy sank in the quicksand in Lawrence of Arabia?” Molly asked.

  Norman didn’t answer. Lawrence of Arabia was not one of Pam’s more positive moves, although it had started out that way. When Lewis turned forty, Pam decided they would all celebrate with dinner at the Swamp Fox Room and Lawrence of Arabia at the Riviera Theater on King Street. They dressed in their very best clothes and polished their shoes. Uncle Bruce opted in for dinner, and out for the movie.

  That left seven of them at the Riviera watching Lawrence yank off his head scarf and throw it, over and again, to the Arab boy, Daud, trying to save him as Daud sank under the sand in the Sinai Desert. Molly, who was barely ten, wailed so long and loud that her dad had to pick her up and take her into the lobby, where her sobs could still be heard throughout the theater.

  Finally, Mitch took her outside — in December — and home. You’ve just got lots of feelings and that’s a good thing, Barry told her later, when she remained inconsolable at home, fresh tears cascading down her cheeks whenever she thought about poor Daud. The incident was part of their shared family lore.

  “I never did see the end of that movie,” Molly said now. Flam thumped his tail from a blanket at Molly’s feet.

  They rode through oppressive heat and heavy silence across the vast Mojave with no radio signal strong enough to reach them. Dust swirled in front of their bus, came at them in puffs, and then, as the wind picked up, flew like a herd of gigantic Texas tumbleweeds rolling into one another, combining their stretch and strength until all Molly and Norman saw ahead of them was a blanket of dust, brown and thick with menace.

  “Shut the windows!” shouted Norman. He slowed the bus to a crawl.

  Molly jumped from her seat like she was back at the Riviera Theater, ten years old. Her heart raced, her pulse pounded, as her fingers frantically squeezed the metal pincers on the sides of each window, lifting each glass until it clicked in place, moving swiftly to the next one, dust coating her lips, swirling into her nose and eyes, making her cough as she ran from seat to seat, then gave up on the windows and ran to the back, where she tripped over the boxes and stepped crookedly onto the foam rubber mattresses, twisting her ankle and sliding into Norman’s bass drum.

  The dust invaded the bus and smothered her. Suddenly, she was Daud, buried under the earth, sand in her ears, her nose, her eyes, her mouth, unable to scream for help. She rolled herself into a ball, pulled her sleeping bag over her head, and pressed her face into the
foam rubber mattress. She willed herself to be anywhere else.

  Norman left the highway — Molly could feel it. She knew he would have to stop driving. She waited for him to stop the bus, but it seemed to go on for a long time, the crunch of a dirt road under the tires until the bus slowed and then stopped. She heard Norman coughing and closing the windows in the back near her. Then she felt him beside her, with Flam. He pulled one of Pam’s blankets over the three of them and they stayed that way for what seemed like a long time. It got very hot in the bus.

  Are we going to die out here? She wanted to ask the question, but she would not open her mouth. She kept her eyes closed. Norman left their blanket fort and returned pulling the ice chest behind him.

  “Here.” He peeled off his YMCA T-shirt, dunked it in the icy water, and gave it to Molly. “Put it over your face. I’ve got one, too.” He stripped the pillowcases from their pillows and soaked them as well. He laid one over Flam’s head. The dog lay very still, as if he sensed the danger.

  The wind blew so insistently it rang the bell outside their bus beside the door. Time slipped away from them. They slept. Then, finally, Flam began to sneeze and work his way out from the blanket. Molly opened her eyes. It was eerily quiet.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  “I think so,” Norman agreed.

  They opened every window and door, back and front. The seats were coated with a layer of dust in the way the tree pollen coated everything at home each spring.

  “Where are we?” asked Molly.

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Norman.

  They opened the folding door and stepped outside, into the haze.

  Molly had read in An Adventurer’s Guide to Travel across America that people who didn’t stick to the highways got lost in the desert and were never found. “What if we’re stuck out here forever?”

  “We won’t be,” said Norman, but he didn’t sound sure. He tried to reconstruct their path. “I got off at the first road I could see and suddenly I was on this dirt road, and I don’t think I made any turns on it, but I can’t be sure. Now we’re here, under these … trees.”