When she parked again, she was angrier than ever. Opening the driver’s door, she slipped out, closed it without even a click. Opened his door and pulled him out. “Come on. Not a sound.” He could almost smell her meanness and hate. She dragged him along the sidewalk, down the hill again, two blocks, and in among some bushes where she could watch the house on the corner and watch the cop car, its radio like talking into a tin can. Her hand on his arm was sweating, he’d never seen her sweat before. Somehow that made him feel better.
Never taking her eyes from the cop car, with her left hand she pulled her cell phone from her pocket, flipped it open. She started to dial one-handed but then, backing deeper into the bushes, she closed it again. The uniformed cop had stepped out of his black-and-white and stood looking across the street toward them.
Benny didn’t think he could see them there in the dark bushes, but his mother was as still as a scared rabbit. They stood there a long time. The cop did too, but then he got back in his car. He sat there, with his radio turned down but still tinny. Benny had to pee. He thought of asking if he could pee in the bushes, but he decided to hold it. They stood there with her hand scrunching the bones of his shoulder until another cop car came around the corner and parked behind the first one. When that cop got out, she dragged him away through the bushes and up the dark street again, to the car. Shoved him in the back, told him to stay down, swung into the driver’s seat and eased the car away, heading up into the hills. She drove slowly until a siren whooped behind them. She took off fast, careened up the hill watching in her rearview mirror so she nearly hit a parked car.
Were the cops looking for her? Had Grandma found him gone, and called them? But she was his mother, maybe she could take him wherever she liked, and what could the cops do? He wanted to look out the back window, but she kept watching in the rearview mirror as she skidded around corners, up the dark streets. Not many house lights up here, and those were far back among the trees. Suddenly she slammed on the brakes in a squealing skid, metal rammed into metal and he was thrown against the door; the car tilted sideways and went over, he fell hard onto the door and window that were now under him.
He could hear clicking and something dripping. In blackness he tried to find the door handle. His face was wet, and he could smell blood, the same as the night his daddy and Caroline died. He began to shake. His stomach heaved and without warning he threw up on himself.
Throw-up on his legs and bare feet, soaking his pajamas. He couldn’t crawl away from it. In the front seat, he heard her moan and then swear. She began to struggle, rocking the car. There was a clicking, and then thuds; then he heard the driver’s door swing open, bouncing as it fell, bouncing on its hinges. He heard cloth slide across cloth. She grunted; then his own door fell open under him with a screeching complaint and he fell out onto dirt and sharp rocks.
She dragged him out from under the door, didn’t ask if he was hurt. “Get up. Get up now!” Dragging him up, she jerked him away from the wrecked car. It was tilted against a tree where the road fell away, and tangled with a big pickup truck. The lights of both threw yellow rivers up into the night. In the truck, someone moaned. The air smelled of gasoline and of whiskey. She dragged him down the hill away from the wrecked vehicles, maybe before anyone saw them. “Run, damn it! Run!”
He tried to run. His feet were so cold, and his right leg hurt. Her hard shoes made running sounds on the pavement, pulling him along, running down the hill. When he stumbled and fell, she grabbed his shoulder, heaving him up and carrying him, running awkwardly. He went limp, tried to make himself heavy.
“Come on, Benny. Hold on, put your arm around my neck. I can’t leave you here.”
He didn’t see why not. He didn’t want to be with her. “I can’t hold on,” he lied. “My arm hurts. My leg hurts, it won’t work right.”
They were passing dark houses, all dark, no lights that he could run to if he could get away. But he tried pulling away and fighting her anyway. She carried him a ways as he fought her, then at last put him down. She was standing over him staring angrily down at him when voices broke the night. A man’s slurred voice and then a woman’s. Benny thought they sounded drunk, he knew about drunk. Pearl pushed him into the bushes. “Stay there and keep quiet. I’ll come back for you.” She ran, fled down the hill away from him, didn’t look back.
He knew she wouldn’t come back, she didn’t care what happened to him, all she cared about was herself. The sound of her running grew fainter until it was gone in the scuffling wind. He huddled shivering in the scratchy bushes, his leg hurting but not so bad as he’d said. The tears that squeezed out weren’t because of his hurting leg. He lay in the bushy shelter hugging himself. Which way was Grandma’s house? Could he find home? This road sloped up, and their house was in the hills, so maybe he should go that way. Rising, limping on his hurt leg, he moved up the dark road. The trees crowded black above him, branches over the road hiding the sky. Ahead, he could still hear the drunk couple arguing. He didn’t want to go near them. He was cold. He hurt, his leg hurt. His arm hurt bad where she’d jerked and pulled him. Among the trees that lined the road, there were no house lights at all now. Were there houses back in there, or was it all just woods? Should he go to those people, take a chance and trust a drunk man? Or go into the black woods and circle around the arguing couple? He moved on at last, away from them, up the narrow road, then through the woods, on up the hill through the night.
41
THIS WON’T WORK,” Dulcie said as Wilma hurriedly pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. “From the car, we won’t see anything, won’t have a clue where they’ve taken Benny. What, you want to just drive the streets clueless?”
“But you can find him, running the roofs clueless?” Wilma gave her a skeptical look and bent down to tie her jogging shoes.
“I can scan the streets faster from up there. I can see on four sides of a block in seconds. And sound rises, Wilma. I can hear more, too. If you try to follow me in the car, how will you see me? And what if I lose you among other car lights? It isn’t like we carry walkie-talkies.” That wasn’t a bad idea, Dulcie thought, except for the weight, except for having to wear a collar, which in itself terrified her. “I can look for him better alone,” she repeated stubbornly.
“Go,” Wilma said at last, exasperated. She had never, in all her working career, let her parolees rag her the way the little tabby bossed her around. She watched Dulcie streak away through the house, heard her cat door slap open and back as she bolted through. She imagined Dulcie scrambling up the oak tree, leaping to the neighbors’ shingles and vanishing across the rooftops. Where would she go, how would she know where to look? And yet, having lived with Dulcie a long time, she suspected the tabby would find a way.
She debated whether to call Ryan and Clyde, find out if they’d gone to help search for Benny. Maybe she could help them? Kit must … Oh, she thought, it’s Rock! Kit wanted Rock, she wanted him to track the child.
But then Dulcie’s on a wild-goose chase, she thought, looking away toward the windy rooftops. Will Dulcie think of Rock? Will she try to find and join them, instead of searching blindly by herself for Benny? She imagined Dulcie alone in the night searching uselessly, then imagined the ragtag midnight procession as Rock pulled Ryan through the dark streets, Clyde and Joe running to keep up, joined perhaps by a detective or two, a strange parade racing through the night. Will Dulcie find them? Or will she just go on searching all alone?