“You don’t look fine.”
Now he remembers why he is here—he is scared. And drunk.
“I’m not okay,” he tells her, his eyes wide. They are screaming at her,Something is wrong, and I cannot tell you what.
“I can see that,” she says, gently.
If he were a white man, Betty would call the local police, and they would take him to the station to dry out for a few hours. They kept an empty cell in the back for just that. Every town had its collection of drunks, and Pickleweed was no different.
But that treatment was not for men like him. To tell the truth, it wasn’t safe for a lot of the locals, either. They might find themselves charged with all sorts of crimes and end up in the state prison, working the crops. Everyone suspected that the cops had quotas, but no one rebelled much against it—they were too convinced that without the police, there would be lawlessness. Betty reflected that this might be true. It was a conundrum, all right.
“Did you use drugs, son?” she asks. At one time, Betty had served on the town’s auxiliary medical unit, created because they were so far fromthe closest hospital. As a trained volunteer, Betty learned how to tend to overdose victims and give insulin and B vitamin shots to alcoholics having delirium tremens.
“No.” He shakes his head, confused.
He’s just drunk, she thinks. Nothing he can’t sleep off, but she can’t let him get back behind the wheel.
She gives it some thought, and decides, smiling.
“Tell you what,” she says, pushing the soda toward him. “Take this. It’s on me. You probably need some fluids. Have a little nap, outside, in your truck. I’ll come wake you in a few hours, when you’re feeling better. Then I’ll tell you how to get home.”
“Union City,” he remembers.
“See? We’ll get you there.”
“You will?” His mouth feels numb.
“Sure. You just need to sleep it off. I’ll watch over you, I promise. Everything will be fine.”
He is worried, even in his stupor. He turns around, looking over the brightly lit gas station with the jar of pickled eggs next to the ropes of jerky and the jar of pickled hot sausage, and feels a vast disturbance of spirit.You are in the wrong place,that feeling tells him. It starts in his feet and climbs up his knees.
“Am I okay, ma’am?” he asks.
“You’ll be fine,” she reassures him, again. She pats the cold counter. “Put your keys here. Come on now.”
He digs for his keys, and, forgetting she had offered him the soda for free, grabs for his wallet. He pulls it out with numb fingers.
Betty watches him carefully lay his keys and wallet on the counter. She starts pushing the wallet back, but he has already grabbed the soda and is weaving his way back to his truck. The step is harder on the waydown. He lurches to his truck, opens the driver’s side door, and crawls inside.
In a few moments, she goes to check on him, peering through the crack in the window. He is already asleep.
In the dark down the road, in the shadows, the man is watching. He has pulled over and killed his lights. He sees Betty’s white hair and smiles.
After a bit, he opens his door.
41.
“hammock county home for children,” said the pocked metal sign on the road, and in front of Ruby, shrouded in the misty hills, was the home. Ancient oaks draped in moss lined the drive, and from their bark emanated the dusky roar of the cicadas.
She parked in the front. In the back, she could see, there were still pastures and pens, and a freshly painted barn.
She made her way up to the porch, thinking about how many doors she had knocked on over the years. Someday, maybe she would knock on all of them, asking the question under her heart: Have you seen her?
A woman answered the door, and Ruby felt a strong sense of déjà vu, because she had visited hundreds of places like this in her work. Orphanages, with modern-day names like “residential facilities.” Transitional housing—that’s what they called halfway homes nowadays. Group homes—what were once called insane asylums. Different names, still the same. Places of exile.
Including for children. Like this home.
She could hear them, though, humming in the walls like the insects outside. After a brief explanation, she was admitted.
