"Even men in overcoats have to take a leak sometimes," he said.
I was taken aback by this vulgarity-it was at odds with his dinner-party politeness-but perhaps it was a sample of the orphanish jeering Reenie had predicted. I decided to ignore it. "You didn't set the fire, I take it," I said. I meant to sound sarcastic, but it wasn't received that way.
"I'm not that stupid," he said. "I wouldn't set a fire for no reason."
"Everyone thinks it was you."
"It wasn't, though," he said. "But it would be very convenient for certain people to take that view."
"What certain people? Why?" I wasn't pushing him this time; I was baffled.
"Use your head," he said. But he wouldn't say any more.
I got a candle from the stash of them in the kitchen, on hand for power blackouts, and lit it, and led Alex Thomas out of the cellar and through the kitchen and up the back stairs, then up the narrower stairs to the attic, where I installed him behind the three empty trunks. There were some old quilts stored in a cedar chest up there, and I hauled them out for bedding.
"No one will come," I said. "If they do, get underneath the quilts. Don't walk around, they might hear the footsteps. Don't turn on the light." (There was a single bulb with a pull chain in the attic, just as in the cold cellar.) "We'll bring you something to eat in the morning," I added, not knowing how I would make good on this promise.
I went downstairs, then came back up again with a chamber pot, which I set down without a word. It was a detail that had always worried me, in Reenie's stories about kidnappers-what about the facilities? It would be one thing to be locked into a crypt, quite another to be reduced to squatting in a corner with your skirt hauled up.
Alex Thomas nodded, and said, "Good girl. You're a pal. I knew you were practical."
In the morning Laura and I held a whispered conference in her bedroom. The subjects discussed were the procuring of food and drink, the need for watchfulness, and the emptying of the chamber pot. One of us-pretending to be reading-would stand guard in my room, with the door open: we could see the door to the attic stairs from there. The other would fetch and carry. We agreed to take these tasks in rotation. The big hurdle would be Reenie, who was sure to smell a rat if we acted too furtive.
We hadn't worked out any plan for what we would do if we were found out. We never did work out such a plan. It was all improvisation.
Alex Thomas's first breakfast was our toast crusts. As a rule, we did not eat our crusts until nagged-it was still Reenie's habit to say Remember the starving Armenians -but this time, when Reenie looked, the crusts were gone. They were actually in Laura's navy-blue skirt pocket.
"Alex Thomas must be the starving Armenians," I whispered, as we hurried up the stairs. But Laura didn't think this was funny. She thought it was accurate.
Mornings and evenings were the times of our visits. We raided the pantry, salvaged the leftovers. We smuggled up raw carrots, bacon rinds, half-eaten boiled eggs, pieces of bread folded over, with butter and jam inside. Once a leg of fricasseed chicken-a daring coup. Also glasses of water, cups of milk, cold coffee. We carted away the empty dishes, stashed them under our beds until the coast was clear, then washed them in our bathroom sink before replacing them in the kitchen cupboard. (I did this: Laura was too clumsy.) We didn't use the good china. What if something got broken? Even an everyday plate might have been noticed: Reenie kept track. So we were very cautious with the tableware.
Was Reenie suspicious of us? I expect so. She could usually tell when we were up to something. But she could also tell when it was more politic not to know exactly what that something might be. I expect she was preparing herself to say she'd had no idea, in case we were caught. She did tell us, once, not to go filching the raisins; she said we were acting like bottomless pits, and where did we get such hollow legs all of a sudden? And she was annoyed about the quarter of a pumpkin pie that went missing. Laura said she'd eaten it; she'd had a sudden fit of hunger, she said.
"Crust and all?" said Reenie sharply. Laura never ate the pie crusts from Reenie's pies. Nobody did. Nor did Alex Thomas.
"I fed it to the birds," said Laura. True enough: that's what she had done, afterwards.
Alex Thomas was at first appreciative of our efforts. He said we were good pals, and that without us his goose would have been cooked. Then he wanted cigarettes-he was dying for a smoke. We brought him some from the silver box on the piano, but warned him to limit himself to one a day-the fumes might be detected. (He ignored this stricture.)
Then he said the worst thing about the attic was not being able to keep clean. He said his mouth felt like a drain. We stole the old toothbrush Reenie used for cleaning the silver, and scrubbed it off for him as best we could; he said it was better than nothing. One day we brought him a wash basin and a towel, and a jug with warm water. Afterwards he waited till nobody was underneath and threw the dirty water out the attic window. It had been raining, so the ground was wet anyway and the splash was not noticed. A little later, when the coast seemed clear, we allowed him down the attic stairs and shut him up in the bathroom the two of us shared, so he could have a proper wash. (We'd told Reenie we'd help out by taking over the cleaning of this bathroom, on which her comment was: Wonders never cease.)
While Alex Thomas's washing-up was going forward Laura sat in her bedroom, I sat in mine, each guarding a bathroom door. I tried not to think about what was going on in there. The image of him with all his clothes off was painful to me, in some way that did not bear contemplating.
Alex Thomas was featured in newspaper editorials, not only in our own paper. He was an arsonist and murderer, it was said, and of the worst kind-one who killed from cold-blooded fanaticism. He had come to Port Ticonderoga to infiltrate the working force, and to sow seeds of dissension, in which he had succeeded, as witness the general strike and the rioting. He was an example of the evils of a university education-a smart boy, too smart for his own good, whose wits had been turned through bad company and worse books. His adoptive father, a Presbyterian minister, was quoted as saying that he prayed every night for Alex's soul, but that this was a generation of vipers. His rescue of Alex as a child from the horrors of war was not passed over: Alex was a brand snatched from the burning, he said, but it was always a risk to take a stranger into your home. The implication was that such brands were better left unsnatched.
In addition to all of that, the police had printed a Wanted poster of Alex, and had stuck it up in the post office, and in other public places as well. Luckily it wasn't a very clear picture: Alex had his hand in front of him, which partly obscured his face. It was the photo from the newspaper, the one Elwood Murray had taken of the three of us, at the button factory picnic. (Laura and I were cut off at the sides, naturally.) Elwood Murray had let it be known that he could have printed a better picture from the negative, but when he went to look, the negative was gone. Well, that was no surprise: a number of things had been destroyed when the newspaper office was wrecked.
We brought Alex the newspaper clippings, and one of the Wanted posters too-Laura had purloined it from a telephone pole. He read about himself with rueful dismay. "They want my head on a platter," was what he said.
After a few days, he asked if we could bring him some paper-writing paper. There was a stack of school exercise books left over from Mr. Erskine: we brought him those, and a pencil as well.
"What do you think he's writing?" Laura asked. We couldn't decide. A prisoner's journal, a vindication of himself? Perhaps a letter, to someone who might rescue him. But he didn't ask us to mail anything, so it couldn't have been a letter.