stalls, but Leah turned before Brooke reached him.
To no surprise, Leah left the livestock pavilion. She had no idea where Danny and Brooke would be headed and was loath to cross their path somewhere in the dim and cavernous building, perhaps be mistaken for spying. But once outside in the bustle of the midway, she was uncertain what to do; and the many strangers meandering past—mostly young, mostly couples snuggling—only accentuated her aloneness, both in fact and in her condition. She spotted the Ferris wheel (it was hard to miss) and recalled how secure and safe she’d felt on it just minutes earlier. She marked it as her destination and purpose for the next twenty-five minutes, something tangible to hold on to.
And that resolve held through the brief walk to the ticket booth, paying her fare, and the short wait in the dwindling line. It held through walking up the wooden ramp and giving the operator—a wild-eyed, gap-toothed old man with weathered skin and an unsettling dent in his forehead all too near the wheel’s moving frame—a pleading smile that persuaded him to let her ride alone (all the others in line were couples anyway).
But her confidence faltered as the rocking seat slowly rose into the dark in starts and stops, and evaporated altogether as too soon the operator threw his lever forward and the wheel started spinning, and spinning, and spinning. With each circuit she grew more terrified. She clutched the guardrail so tightly her fingers ached. She looked out into the night in hopes of finding some semblance of the calm she’d felt earlier but found there only more spinning lights, more confusion, more aloneness. That was the worst part—she was alone in her terror. There was no one there to watch over her, guide her safely home.
She closed her eyes, and felt her body falling earthward in an absolute stillness, accelerating earthward, bound to crash. But it didn’t. Her body leveled off, gravity withdrew, and she was rising, flying, out into what was no longer darkness but light, brilliant white. She was flying! She released the rail, extended her arms, felt the full force of the cold wind on her face. She was flying!
And the voice said Did you ever doubt it?
Leah said Yes, I did. She pulled her arms back as her flight slowed then reached a perch atop the white world.
No more.
And just as quickly she began to fall. But she wasn’t scared this time. Her arms stayed in her lap, waited the inevitable rising.
When the operator released the safety latch and pushed the guardrail out of the way and rocked the seat forward to ease her departure, he was transfixed by the glow that radiated from her. She stood a moment before him, patiently bore his gaze. Then she touched her forehead, touched her heart, before walking down the ramp and out into the milling crowd, past the paired lovers waiting their turn on the wheel.
She was back at the head of the Holstein aisle at ten twenty-eight. She’d passed a dozing guard at the entrance, but otherwise the building appeared empty of humans. The rows of resting animals seemed so peaceful, so sure of their place in God’s order. Leah waited there five minutes, then ten—no Brooke. She walked quickly down the aisle to the Ashford Farms block. Annabelle was there, same as before—head up, eyes watching, chewing her cud. The other beautiful Holsteins were there, all awake and watching. But no Brooke, no Danny, no human anywhere in sight.
She raced up and down all the aisles. Most of the stalls were occupied but only with animals—all dairy breeds for the first three days of competition. She looked out the wide doors at the rear of the building into the back parking lot. There were many trailers and pickups with camper tops parked out there, and some had lights glowing through their tiny curtained windows. But no sign of Brooke, and she’d not start knocking on camper doors at this hour.
In one of the stalls near those doors, there was a young boy—he couldn’t have been ten—sleeping with his head on an Ayrshire calf’s flank. She paused and stared at the sight. Who was guarding whom, she wondered? She’d not wake him. How could he help anyway? How could she explain her situation without words, to him or anyone? The full depth of her plight only just now descended on her. Might as well tell it to the cows, she thought; at least they could understand and respond with compassion and reassurance.
She closed her eyes, took three deep breaths, then opened them again. She checked her watch—ten to eleven. She walked calmly back down the Holstein aisle to the Ashford Farms stalls—still no humans present. She spotted a pad with a local feed supplier’s logo and a nub of pencil amongst the supplies at the head of Annabelle’s stall, and wrote Gone to the car—Leah on the top sheet and propped the pad against a small transistor radio. As she walked past Annabelle, she leaned over and gave the cow a hug around the neck and said in words she knew the animal would hear—Good luck tomorrow. Then she left the stall, the aisle, the building, the fair, walking quickly but calmly out into the sprawling parking lot.
It was a lot darker out there than earlier, with many open spaces among the smattering of remaining cars. She gave a wide berth to a group of drunken boys arguing and tried to ignore the steamed up windows in a few of the cars she passed. She spotted their station wagon from far off, an island of steel and rubber amidst the sea of darkness, and immediately knew it was empty. She retrieved the key from the frigid bumper, opened the passenger door, and slid into the car. In the dome light’s glow she checked her watch—ten past eleven. She pulled the door shut and depressed the lock.
Inside the stark isolation of that car off alone in a far corner of the parking lot only barely lit by a weak light atop a wooden pole in the distance, Leah felt neither isolated nor frightened. But she was cold; so she slid over into the driver’s seat, inserted the key, and started the car. It took a few minutes for the heater to warm, but then tepid air followed by warm air followed by hot flowed out over her feet and legs. She switched the heater to defrost to clear the condensation on the windshield.
She turned on the dome light and checked her watch—eleven twenty. She turned off the dome light, switched on the headlights, put the car in gear, and eased off the parking brake. Then she drove out of the parking lot and onto the highway toward home.
Because she was so watchful and attentive, and not distracted by voices or the radio or random noise, she had long been an accomplished driver in her mind’s eye, not only knowing the local roads by heart and all the stop signs and streetlights but also envisioning likely surprises and her calculated response—slowing into a curve, sudden braking at the milk van backing out of a blind drive. She was in these skills already a better driver than Brooke (which wasn’t saying much), better than Matt, better even than Momma. She modelled her driving after Father’s, who was the best driver she’d ever ridden with—and she’d watched them all closely, even the bus drivers, even the church van drivers.
Lately she’d supplemented her mental visioning with actual time behind the wheel, in the driveway while waiting for Brooke to emerge from the house and take her to school. She’d start the car to warm it up (at Brooke’s request). Then one day she tried putting it in gear—backing up a few feet, then pulling forward again. She’d be eligible for her learner’s permit in a few months, why not try it out now? So confident was she in her driving ability that she didn’t consider this action reckless or even inappropriate.
Nor did she consider the drive home from the fair reckless. She knew the way. The roads were well-lit and lightly travelled this time of night. She drove with a relaxed ease that didn’t surprise her, but beneath that calm she was secretly thrilled—that is, until a police cruiser pulled up in the lane beside her at a stoplight three blocks from their street. She froze then, staring hard at the circle of red glaring down on her, feeling the twin eyes staring at her right profile. Would she be able to move when the red circle turned green? What would happen if she didn’t? But then from someplace unknown inside herself, she found the courage to turn her face toward the police cruiser. Its driver was a middle-aged patrolman with jowly cheeks and a receding hairline, his hat hung on the passenger-side headrest to fool other drivers into thinking he had a partn
er in the car. And he was indeed staring at her. But then she saw his look was not one of suspicion. She exhaled a sigh of relief and offered him her best charming smile and a short nod. He smiled and nodded back. Just then the light turned green. She let him start forward first, but followed shortly, her feet and legs working the pedals just fine.
Back at the house she eased the station wagon into its normal spot at the side of the drive, under the basketball goal. The windows in her parents’ bedroom were dark, which she took as a positive sign. Maybe she could get into the house and up to her bedroom without Momma confronting her. Then she looked at her watch—eleven thirty. There was no way Momma would let such tardiness go unaddressed. She braced for the worst, and had no idea what she would say when Momma asked where Brooke was and how she got home.
But Momma wasn’t waiting for her in the kitchen. And she knew the minute she stepped inside the door that the house was empty, felt it in the utterly still air. She confirmed the fact by looking down the hall and seeing that her parents’ bedroom door was open, then checking the garage and seeing that the Buick wasn’t there. She recalled her parents planned