And what will he do then?
See, I have to believe priests read the papers and watch the TV like everyone else, so he will know what baby you are talking about. He will say, And where is the Wilson baby now? And you will tell him, Father, the baby is here. You will find him in his carryall just inside the front door. And a paper sack with his formula and his diapers and a tube of Polysporin for his bellybutton.
And when he gets up and runs down the aisle, you slip out the side door to right here where we are parked.
Karen is a brave woman. She has always been brave, and never more than in this moment. She walked in there with her skirt swaying from her lovely hips and her hair, which she had tied up in a ponytail given the solemnity of the occasion, also swinging from side to side, and for the same reason her usually bare feet in a pair of sandals.
But before she took her deep breath and stepped down from the Windstar, she held the baby in her arms and caressed his round little head and brushed his dark hairs with the tips of her fingers as he stared up at her in his impassive manner and then looked away. And then Karen slipped him gently into my arms like a friend of the mother’s who has been given the privilege for just that moment of holding another woman’s child.
THAT WHOLE DAY as we drove she slept in the backseat, curled up with her hands under her chin. I had decided to head north, staying off the freeways for the most part. When it was evening, I pulled into a motel and she went right from the car to the bed, where she got under the covers and went immediately back to sleep. I didn’t take any chance that she would wake up and watch the TV, so I pulled the plug and bent it out of shape before I went to the restaurant they had there and watched for myself on the bar TV. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were shown hugging their baby and laughing through their tears. They were not the youngest of couples, they were both on the portly side, and in fact Mr. Wilson had a paunch on him to make me think I would never let myself go that way. And it turned out they had six other children of various sizes standing around the couch looking at the camera with what I recognized as the same unsmiling quietness of expression as Baby Wilson himself.
Meanwhile an announcer was telling the story of the return, and quoting Mr. Wilson saying he and his wife were so happy they forgave whoever had kidnapped their child, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief, the camera cut to the FBI official in charge of the investigation and he said that the FBI would continue the search — that, regardless of the outcome, a federal crime had been committed and it was never up to the Wilsons to decide whether or not to prosecute. And then another shot of the bad drawing of Karen.
In the gift shop there I bought a pair of sunglasses and an Angels baseball cap, and we got up at dawn and drove away. Karen wore the glasses and that cap with her hair tucked up inside all the way through California. I used the credit cards sparingly, each one never more than once until the last one, which I hazarded a couple of times and then threw it away, not wanting to press my luck, and now we were down to our diminishing cash funds.
In San Francisco, I parked Karen in a movie theater and went around to Noe Street to see if Fran still lived there. She did. When she opened her door, she said, Well, will you look what the cat dragged in! Fran was never the sort to bear a grudge. She was a song stylist who made her living singing in clubs. She had a housemate now, a kind of blowsy older woman, who nevertheless had the tact to excuse herself on some errand or other, probably to her chosen bar. I visited with Frannie almost the whole two hours of a feature movie, and then she walked with me to the ATM at the local grocery. As I left, I swore I would return her generosity in full. I knew she didn’t believe me, because she gave a good-hearted laugh and said time would tell and she was smiling and shaking her head as I waved and turned the corner.
Just before the Oregon state line, I removed the Nevada plates from the Windstar and replaced them with the Durango’s old California plates.
In Seattle, we took the ferry to Canada, standing at the rail in the gray and green mist of that day, with the foghorns coming over the water and the smell of the sea and gulls appearing and disappearing in the bad visibility. Karen loved this part of the trip. There was a new peace between us, and she held my arm with both her hands with a kind of fervent wifeliness.
At the hotel in Vancouver we resumed our lovemaking as in our first days together and it was action-packed. She had really come awake to life as I realized now, reflecting on the last months between us, when she was more withdrawn than I wanted to admit.
Vancouver is a squeaky-clean town, like all of Canada that I have ever seen — glass office buildings the color of the sky, the waterside filled with flag-flying yachts and motorboats, the downtown without litter of any kind, and everyone going about their business so as not to disturb anyone else. Not a town you want to stay in very long. But you find things if you look and I found a man in the import-export business who would take the Windstar off my hands, and if he gave me three thousand American for it, I knew he would clear at least ten at the other end.
Then I bought Karen an opal engagement ring and a gold wedding band for one thousand Canadian, though we didn’t actually get legally married till we were settled in this town in Alaska, where she is known not as Karen Robileaux but as Mrs. Lester Romanowski, although she doesn’t get around enough to be known very well in her condition but stays up there in this hillside cabin we rent and tends her garden and cooks good things, not only for me but for herself, since she is eating for two, while in the meantime I am working down below, at sea level, between the mountains and the waterside, which is where the town is crammed.
I have different jobs, one scrubbing pots and pans in this phony frontier restaurant, where the monster hamburger menu is up on blackboards and the bartender has a red beard and wears a lumberjack shirt with the sleeves rolled and there is sawdust on the floor. I also drive a school bus in the early morning and mid-afternoon, and another job, when I have to, is the slime line, which is where they handle the fish off the boats — a heavy-hauling, slippery job requiring rubber apron and gloves and hip boots and a shower and a good deodorant at the end of the shift.
Just now I have a new opportunity on the weekend. I put on a funny bear costume and meet the cruise-ship passengers as they come down the gangway. I do it because, A, nobody knows it’s me in that stupid outfit and, B, it gives me a chance to get close to those ships without drawing attention to myself. I dance the ladies around a bit and make them laugh and pose with them for a photo to record their historic visit to Alaska.
On my off day, Karen and I have found a place to watch the bears fishing in the shallows for their salmon dinner. Lots of birds busy in the forest, and animals I don’t get up out of bed to identify rustle around the cabin at night. Up through the tops of the trees every morning we see the black bald eagle that lives up the side of the mountain and likes to soar about in the thermals.
Most people living here don’t quite fit into the greater U.S. for one reason or another, so nobody asks too many questions. Everyone I’ve met mostly has an attitude of big plans for themselves, which I certainly can appreciate. I’m beginning to think my big plan must have something to do with those cruise ships. They sail up every day to rest their block-long hulls against the dockside. When the tourists pour down the gangways to flow through the streets, well, this, plus the fish, is what keeps the Panhandle in the money. But more of the money stays aboard at the gaming tables and so I’m thinking I might find a way to I.D. as a passenger, take an overnight cruise to the next landing, come back flush the next day — I don’t know — the modus is there, it is only a matter of time till it makes itself known to me.