Sometimes the children are drawn in against their will, and taunted. This is the worst of all. They have learned to keep their door locked.
There is another loud crash, and Aunt Hester screams.
“What if he kills her?” Karen whispers, terrified.
“If he kills her,” Tom says, “there will be the authorities, for sure. We’d better make up our minds, Karen. We can’t stay any longer. Which will it be?”
Karen looks at Tom for a long time; then she opens the closet door and begins to stuff things into a canvas knapsack. Tom squeezes in beside her, gives her a hug, and begins to do the same, taking a little packet of money from his boot and dividing the contents between them. There isn’t much. “How far will it get us?” Karen asks.
“On a bus, a good way,” Tom says. “Forty-two eighty in all.” There is a sudden silence outside. The children hurry faster.
They wait for the noise to begin again to shield their trip down the hall to the front door. Finally, drunken shouting comes from the kitchen. Out they creep, Tom leading.
“Wait,” Tom whispers. “The note.” He pins it to the curtain of the front door. Someone going out might read it, while elsewhere in the house it could go unnoticed. It is a sensible note; they are resourceful children. It could very well mean their freedom in the days to come.
Dear Aunt Hester and Uncle George,
We do not want to stay any longer, and we think you will not care if we go away. We will provide for ourselves.
If no one knows we are gone you will be able to go on receiving the money Mother and Dad left in trust. You know that if we are not happy here we can be made Wards of the Court, and the trust will be changed. If you can make it seem that we are still living here, we will all be better off.
We do not hold any grudge, but just want to live our own lives in our own way.
Tom and Karen
The children hurry down the two flights of stairs, skirting trash boxes, and out into the alley, then along the early-morning streets until they reach the bus station, where the first commuters are beginning to make a bustle of activity.
The children share a cup of cocoa from a machine and look at the schedules. There is only one way to go, and that is north. Something nearly as strong as life itself draws them, though they know they cannot go home. “How far is it?” Karen asks as they board the bus.
“How far is what?” Tom says, knowing very well what she means.
“How far … well, how far until we’ll be safe in the country?” she whispers.
As the bus creeps through the center of the metropolitan area the day has begun to warm and the traffic is growing thicker.
“I think about five hundred miles,” Tom says as they get settled. He looks steadily at Karen. “It is eleven hundred miles to home, Karen. We can’t go there. We’d be found.” They are sitting quite alone at the back of the bus.
“I know,” Karen says. “I forgot for a minute.”
He puts his arm around her. They are handsome children, but they look very sad. Sadness lies just below the glow that adventure has given them, that freedom has given them.
By noon they are in the country, and they grow hungry as the smell of onions from the fields wafts through the bus windows. The farms seem green beyond belief after their long months in the city. There are crops of all kinds—lettuce, tomatoes, and the great fields of onions. When they stop for lunch they are famished and they eat two hamburgers each. “We can’t do that often,” Tom says, “or we won’t get far. We must get jobs as soon as we can.”
“I know,” Karen says. “But weren’t they good!” They board the bus again. “I think I can smell the ocean.”
Tom grins at her, but soon, sure enough, they are passing between fields of fernlike artichoke, and beyond these they begin to catch glimpses of blue between the distant trees. “It is the ocean!” Karen says, and then, a minute later, “Look!”
Horses and riders are galloping along a path between the fields, and the children press their noses to the window longingly. “I wonder where Kippy is,” Karen says sadly.
CHAPTER 2
The bus lurches and Karen wakes from dozing. They have crossed many miles of farm land and traveled for a while by the sea. Now they are coming into a stand of pines and redwood trees, towering up on both sides of the road. “Here?” Karen asks. “Could we live here?”
“Not yet,” Tom says. It is a decision for both to make, but they are not yet far enough away. And they are still going north. If this country is lovely, home is lovelier; yet they know they can’t go home.
At nightfall they reach San Francisco. They are tired and their courage is limp. “What if there is no night bus?” Karen asks. She is wild to get out of the city. “We can’t afford a room, and no one would rent us one, anyway—they’d just report us. And if we stay in the station all night someone might notice.” It is a wonder no one in the bus has asked why they are traveling alone. The back seat, and their extra height and mature looks have served them. But someone is to ask, later, and Tom is to answer, with an innocent, long-lashed smile, “Our grandmother is waiting for us. Mamma and Pappa put us on the bus this morning.” No boy with such a smile could tell a lie.
There is a night bus, and it goes clear to Portland. “We could not stay on it that long,” Tom says.
“I know,” Karen answers, looking excited, “I know.”
“Look,” Tom says, crowding onto the edge of a bench and making room for Karen, “here is a local, going north along the coast, Karen. Two or three hours from now we could be in one of those little towns by the ocean. I think there are cattle ranches there.”
“What kind of jobs could we get? Would a ranch hire US’?”
“Sooner than city people, maybe.”
“I could cook, if they needed a cook.”
They have said these things before, but it is comforting to repeat them.
“It will be dark when we get off,” Tom says. “No one will see us. We can sleep somewhere away from the town, and look around before we decide. We could be from San Francisco on a weekend.”
“All right. Then if we don’t like it we can go on tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
They find a cafeteria and buy a simple dinner, with extra sandwiches to go. Finally, fed and washed and feeling better, they settle down in the darkened bus and watch the city lights go by, the neon signs, the cars and apartments and street lights twinkling up the hills on both sides of them, then the lights of the bridge as they cross the mouth of the bay, and the scattered lights of the smaller towns, growing fewer until finally the bus is riding a high twisting road along the edge of a cliff. Far below is the ocean. They can see phosphorescence as the waves break white and glowing, and above them in the night there are stars, millions of stars. The only other light is the yellow path the bus makes before it along the mountain.
Soon they have passed through several villages. “We get off at the next one,” Tom says. “I’d like to walk through town just like we lived there. I wonder if we dare?” Karen looks shocked. This is not Tom’s way. “Maybe it’s the night,” he says. “Maybe it’s being free. I just … well, I just want to walk around a little town at night. But perhaps we’d better not.
Karen smiles softly. “It’ll be all right. I know it will. No one will pay any attention. Something hot would taste so good.”
“Well, we’ll see. Here we come.” They are descending a steep hill, the bus’s gears growling. Below are a few pale lights strung out in a row, a few splashes of colored neon, and some faint house lights farther on. Karen and Tom are the only ones to get off, walking softly past the sleeping passengers as the darkened bus stops at a corner. There is no station. A small shaggy dog greets them and follows them a way, but soon goes home to bed.