Mariel closed her eyes, hugging herself for warmth, thinking of Geraldine Ginty and what she’d say if she found out Mariel was on a bus in Manhattan, New York.
21
Mariel
The dark wasn’t Brooklyn dark with the streetlight glowing at the end of Midwood Street. Here in Windy Hill only one small light brightened the tiny station. Past that was nothing she could see. The noise of the crickets was loud, reminding Mariel that all kinds of living things were between her and the safety of Claude’s house.
Even the driver seemed uneasy as he opened the doors. “No one’s here to meet you?” he asked.
“Maybe …”
But Brick was out the door before the driver could finish.
Mariel had to take the two steps more slowly. “Wait a minute,” the driver said.
Mariel glanced back at him. She pretended she threw herself into horrible dark places every day. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re fine. The house is just up the road.”
If only the house really were just up the road.
And then she was off the step with Brick looking as uneasy as the driver had.
“Don’t worry, Billy Nightingale,” she said. “I can walk.”
“It’s a long walk.”
She swallowed. “I can do it.”
“Maybe you should wait. Claude has a little cart in his barn. I could come back for you.”
Her eyes were getting used to the dark now. But stay here alone with the sound of a thousand insects ringing in her ears and strange rustling noises that might be anything? Never. Even the damp air smelled different, like cut grass maybe. “I can walk,” she said again firmly, wishing she believed it. “I can walk almost as well as you can.”
He took her hand as they started up the road. His hand had calluses that reminded her just a bit of Benny’s. It was a good hand to hold, she thought. And as she looked up, she saw the stars, pinpricks of light flickering above her, and suddenly a sliver of a moon appeared, high and white, lighting the fields in front of her. She stopped, pointing up with the hand holding Brick’s. “We never see all those stars in Brooklyn,” she said. “Never.”
He didn’t let go of her hand. “Orion’s Belt,” he said. “Those three stars. And the Big Dipper with the North Star pointing the way.”
“Even to Claude’s,” she said.
“Especially to Claude’s.” She could hear the catch in his voice. “And to my house just past that.”
Suppose she found her mother? There was something she didn’t want to think about. Why hadn’t her mother looked for her?
She thought about Loretta then. Being without Loretta was terrible. At home her chipmunk-safe bedroom was empty. Loretta had come up the stairs from work, dropping her pointy nurse’s cap on the table, and started dinner, and then …
Then …
“You’re all I need, Mariel, to make me happy.” Loretta ran her hand over Mariel’s head, and then she laughed. “It would be nice if we could find a guy, though, a husband for me, a father for you. But even so, we’re a great pair just as we are.”
Loretta would have nobody.
She shook her head. She knew Loretta would be proud of her. You can do anything.
What Mariel wanted to do then was wait in the station, wait for the next bus and go right back to Brooklyn, to Loretta.
The road seemed to go on forever, up one hill, down the next, turning so that as she looked back even the glimmer of light at the station was gone. Rows of trees threw giant shadows across the fields. Were they apple trees like hers? And then the road turned again one last time. She saw lights through the trees, squares of light, yellow and warm, and heard a dog barking.
“It’s Regal, Claude’s dog,” Brick said, and whistled.
Another moment and a light went on over the porch. A woman stood there, a small woman with a knot of hair on top of her head and a shawl thrown over her shoulders. She peered into the darkness, her hand on the dog’s head. The dog stayed at her side only for a moment, then loped toward them, his tail wagging, circling around them, whining.
Brick let go of her hand, and crouched down, his arms going around the dog’s neck. “It’s me, Julia,” he called.
He turned back to Mariel. “I’m home, Mariel,” he said. “Home.”
22
Brick
Everything was just the same in Julia’s kitchen, even the pot of water on the stove. “Tea,” she said, bustling around, not asking if they were hungry. She put thick wedges of bread on the table and a bowl of blackberry jam.
She hadn’t asked about Mariel, not yet, but he knew she was wondering. And she wouldn’t ask, not with Mariel looking tired enough to fall asleep at the table, but sitting up straight and stiff, her eyes anxious, her fingers moving against the blue-and-white tablecloth.
Brick looked up at the stairs, waiting to hear Claude come down with his heavy step, waiting to see Claude’s eyes light up when he saw who was there. “Thought I’d come in time for the harvest,” Brick would say. He felt as if he couldn’t wait one more minute.
Then he saw Claude’s feet in the old work shoes on the steps, Claude’s hands still bandaged, one of them touching the banister lightly, Claude’s face. He couldn’t say a word. He met Claude at the bottom of the stairs and Claude’s arms went around him. Claude smelled of apples and the kitchen woodstove. They stood there for a long time, and still he couldn’t say a word.
“I have been waiting for you,” Claude said at last in his loud voice.
“That’s true,” Julia said, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair into her bun. “I told him he was a foolish old man, but he knew you were coming.” She motioned to the table as she poured tea and then honey into mugs.
And now Claude saw Mariel.
She looked up at him, Brick thought, as if she knew she shouldn’t be in Julia’s kitchen, as if he might send her back out to the bus station again.
But Claude held up his bandaged hand. “Tell me,” he said. “Are you the angel who brought Brick back to Windy Hill?”
She laughed and reached up to pull her elastic hat band over her head. She put her hat on the counter in back of her and reached for a piece of Julia’s bread. “May I stay?” she asked.
Claude was smiling, too. “You’ve come a long way,” he said. “And your family must be wondering.”
She nodded uncertainly. “My family, Loretta, knows I’m with Brick. She knows I was coming to Windy Hill. I left a note.”
“All right then,” Claude said. “This is what we will do. Tomorrow morning as soon as it is light—”
“Please,” Mariel said.
“She has to stay,” Brick said at the same time.
“Early tomorrow,” Claude said, “you will go to the town and use the telephone at the post office.” He looked at Mariel. “Is there a phone in your big city?”
“Jordan’s,” she said. “At the candy store.”
Julia nodded, her gnarled hands around the teapot, warming them. “Yes, we will have to let them know, all of them, Brick’s family, too.” She turned to Mariel. “Sometimes Claude makes sense. Not too often, but on occasion.” She frowned. “But what about school?”
Claude shrugged. “There is always time for school, but not just now.” He took a noisy sip of his tea.
“The apples,” Brick said. “The harvest.”
Claude bent his head. “We have hung on for so long,” he said. “Through floods and dry spells, but this time there is no saving us.”
“I’m here to pick,” Brick said. “You know that, Claude.”
“But you are the only one,” Claude said. “My hands are useless.”
“Joseph and I—” Brick began.
“Joseph is old,” Claude said. “Older than I. He says he’s too old to climb. I think he has no heart left for it.”
“Shhh.” Julia’s eyes glistened. “We will talk about this tomorrow. It is late, and you are tired.”
Brick could hear Mom’s voice in his hea
d: “It will look better in the morning,” she’d say. “It always does.”
But Claude was right. There was no way one person could pick the apples.
23
Brick
Outside the window, the barn and the trees were smudges of charcoal in the early-morning darkness. Brick thought he must be the first one awake. But Julia was in the kitchen, sitting at the same spot as if she hadn’t moved all night, though she wore a flowered housedress and her bun was small and tight against the back of her head.
“I will make you breakfast,” she said.
“Let me go outside first,” he said. “I want to see the trees.” He didn’t want to tell her it was his house he wanted to see. He wanted to put his feet on the porch that ran around the front, take the key that was always hidden under the flowerpot, and open the kitchen door. He wanted to touch Mom’s yellow movie dishes on the shelf and go up the stairs to his own bedroom.
Julia pushed back her chair as if she’d go with him. “Even though it was such a dry summer,” she said, “and even with the fire, the apples held on. It’s hard to understand that now they will fall off the trees in their own time. Too late for us.” She tried to smile. “Good for the deer.”
What could he say to her? “I’ll come back before Claude gets up.”
She made a soft clucking noise. “That old man gets up later every morning. It’s his hands. He feels helpless. For the first time, he is afraid.”
Claude afraid. Brick thought of Claude in the orchard, his hands huge as he cut into an apple, showing him the seeds, running his knife along the center.
Brick could see it on Julia’s face. She was afraid, too. Without the harvest money, they’d never be able to stay. And where could they go?
He went outside and walked along the wide path that separated one row of apple trees from another. A rim of pink at the edge of the sky shone through the trees to the east. He could see the damage the fire had done. On some trees the bark was stained black; on others, the leaves seemed sparse. But the apples were large, and in the early light, he could see they had turned a rosy color.
He put his hand on one of the trees, looking up. It was time to pick; just a twist and the apples would fall into his hands. He’d slide them into the bag he’d have slung over his shoulder and around his waist.
The path veered now; it wasn’t as straight as it seemed. He turned, taking the narrow way to the top of the hill and his house. He climbed the fence between Claude’s orchard and the ruined cornfield and leaned against it, his eyes on the brown roof with the double chimney.
He was glad their own orchard was hidden beyond the house. He’d hate to look at the blackened stumps, the twisted shapes that would never grow apples, never even grow green leaves. Pop’s words on the day they planted came into his head. “We’ll have a harvest. We’ll never have to leave this house. We’ll stay here forever.” He thought of Mom dancing, humming along with the radio music.
He heard the uneven step and turned. Mariel was coming up to the fence she couldn’t climb. She still wore the same dress, and she hadn’t combed her hair yet. But she was wide awake even this early.
“There’s a gate,” he said, “halfway down.” They walked together, one on each side of the fence, until he opened the rusted iron gate for her and they crossed the field to his house.
He wanted to run now, he was so anxious to feel the kitchen doorknob under his hand, but he waited for her.
“Go ahead,” she said, waving her hand. “I know you’re in a hurry. I’ll catch up.”
He shook his head and made himself walk slowly, thinking of her waiting at the end of the bridge for him in her straw hat with the elastic band. He’d never forget it.
And then they were in the living room. It had a closed-up, unused feeling, and there were dead flies on the sill the way he had pictured them when he left. “I’ll open a window,” he said, banging on the sash to ease it up.
He pulled out the movie dishes to show her, and with the air blowing in the open window the room began to feel the way it usually did. Mom would have had a vase of daisies on the table, and maybe a bowl of apples, but even so, it was almost as if he hadn’t been away at all.
It seemed as if Mom would be coming down the stairs to start breakfast, and Pop trudging in from the barn, kicking the mud off his shoes against the step.
Mariel watched him, her head turned to one side.
“What?” he asked.
“I was wondering what you were thinking.”
He grinned at her. “Wondering where your hat is this morning. Wondering if that band under your chin hurts. Wondering …”
“The hat’s on the dresser. I’ll let you try it on, snap the elastic, see what you think.”
He smiled, picturing a straw hat on his head, then led her outside again onto the porch. Their feet were loud on the board floor, and he stopped to watch the rocker with the broken leg moving gently in the wind that had come up.
Mariel caught her breath as she saw Claude’s orchard spread out in front of them. “Lovely,” she said.
He thought so, too. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“I’m going to pick,” Mariel said. She looked fierce.
“We have to put ladders under the trees,” he said, not wanting to tell her how hard it would be. “We have to climb up to get most of them, and reach out to …”
“… pull off the apples,” she said.
“Right.”
She went to sit on the rocker.
“Wait!” he said, but a moment later, she was sprawled on the porch floor, looking horrified as the chair lay collapsed under her.
He let her worry for a moment, holding in the laughter, before he told her. “That happens at least once a week. We have to put the whole thing together again.”
She rubbed her elbow, looking up at him. “Loretta says I can do anything.”
He looked at her uncertainly.
“We’re going to find out if she’s right,” she said.
He bit his lip. He and Mariel would be up in the trees, and Julia below with the baskets. Could they do it? “I’ll tell you something, Mariel,” he said. “If it can be done, we’ll do it, you and I. We’ll do the harvest, and find out about your mother.” He swallowed. “We have to try.”
He bent down then to knock the rocking chair back together. “Let’s go to see Joseph. Maybe he’ll help.”
24
Mariel
Mariel stared at herself in Julia’s mirror. Julia’s shapeless dress actually looked nice on her, she thought. The skirt covered most of her knees, and the rosy color made her cheeks look pink.
Julia was outside waiting for them, and they went to town sitting in the back of her dusty pickup truck. Mariel looked carefully at the little main street, the feed store, the ice cream parlor, and then up at the hospital on the hill. She had expected to recognize something. There, she’d say, that’s where I got sick.… But before that …
All of it was strange. Not a street, not a building seemed familiar to her.
Julia came inside with them. “I must talk to your parents,” she said. “They must know that you’re with me, that you’re safe.”
The phone was on the wall, waiting for them. And then, suddenly, Mariel couldn’t wait to talk to Loretta, couldn’t wait to tell her she had gotten herself all the way to Windy Hill. “All because of you,” she’d tell Loretta. She caught her breath. Suppose Loretta was angry, really angry.
“Number, please,” the operator said.
“In Brooklyn,” Mariel said. “On Bedford Avenue. Jordan’s candy store.”
The phone rang in the dark booth in back of Jordan’s store, seven, eight, ten times. Mariel remembered sitting at the counter one time, watching Jordan as he counted out change, never hurrying as the phone rang and rang.
At last he was there, sounding as if he were standing next to her.
“Please, could you get Loretta Manning for me?” she asked.
&nb
sp; “Is it Mariel?” Jordan said. “Oh, Mariel. Stay there, girlie. Don’t move.” She could hear him calling to someone: “She’s on the phone. It’s all right. I think she’s all right.”
It took forever before Loretta picked up the phone. Mariel counted off in her mind: Jordan sending one of his kids along Bedford Avenue, turning into Midwood, up the block, ringing the bell.
Loretta’s voice was breathless. “Mariel?” she said. “Is it you?”
Mariel could hardly talk. “Yes, it’s me,” she said.
“I ran all the way,” Loretta said, “every step.”
“I knew you would.” Mariel pictured Loretta’s hair flying, lipstick crooked. She held the phone tight to her ear.
“Are you all right?” Loretta began. “And is Brick with you?”
“Of course,” Mariel said. “I want to help with the apple harvest.”
“The apple harvest,” Loretta said as if she couldn’t believe it.
“And I want to find—”
“Where are you? Good grief, Mariel. Tell me right this minute.”
Mariel blinked. “I’m in Windy Hill.”
“It must be two hundred miles!”
“At Claude’s farm.”
“Claude,” Loretta said.
“Brick’s friend who has an orchard.” There must be something wrong with the phone, she thought. Loretta kept repeating everything. “I told you in my note.”
For a moment Loretta didn’t answer. “A note?”
Mariel closed her eyes. The bag of food on the kitchen table. Scooping everything up: peaches, sandwiches. The note? Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, Loretta, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She broke off. “Listen, maybe you shouldn’t tell Ambrose I’m gone.”
“What do you think? That I’ve been sitting around, not looking for you?” Loretta stopped and then went on. “Do you think no one cares about you? The whole Seventieth Precinct is looking for you. And everyone you know. Benny, blaming himself. Jordan. Ambrose up all night.”