The Night Parade(94)

Gently, Ellie rested the girl’s head on the pavement. She stood, and there was blood smeared on her shirt and along one pale white arm. She turned and, without hesitation, approached the mother who remained kneeling in the middle of the street. Ellie’s shadow fell over the woman’s face. She reached out and touched a hand to the left side of the woman’s face, as if to caress her. And indeed, the action looked very much like a caress—an act of comfort, of kindness.

The woman ceased crying. Her chest hitching, her breath coming in rapid gasps, she looked up at Ellie. David watched as the woman’s eyes softened, as her respiration slowed . . . as a semblance of . . . peace . . . settled over her face.

But not just her face.

Her entire body.

When Ellie was finished, she rejoined David and Gany at the side of the road. She took both their hands and led them back to the car.

“What did you do?” Gany asked her. “What the hell just happened?” She glanced over her shoulder at the girl, who remained prostrate in the middle of the street. The girl’s mother had crawled over to her and was cradling her now, weeping against her lifeless body. The crowd of onlookers stared.





51


They had driven less than three minutes from the scene with no one capable of speaking a word until Ellie said, “Pull over. I’m gonna be sick.”

Gany pulled the Caddy onto the shoulder of the wooded highway. The moment the car stopped, Ellie was out the door and hurrying into the trees. She got only about five yards before she bent forward and vomited in the grass.

David got out of the car and joined his daughter. When he reached her, she had finished retching, but remained bent forward, hands on her knees, staring off at the dark, intersecting branches of the trees. David rubbed her back. He didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said. Then she spit on the ground several times.

“Feel better?”

“I guess so.” She turned her head and looked up at him. Her face was beet red, her eyes bleary. A trail of saliva hung from her chin. “It was a lot to take in.”

“I guess it was. Were you trying to save her life?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know what I was trying to do. But she died, anyway.”

“Yes,” David said, still rubbing her back. “But much more peacefully than she would have, I think.”

“I took it all out of her and helped her get over,” Ellie said.

“It was very brave,” he said. “Very stupid, but very brave.”

She began to cry.

“Aw, hon. Come here.” He hugged her tight. “It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

“Shhh,” he told her, squeezing her more tightly. He looked back toward the Caddy and saw Gany standing outside, leaning against the hood and smoking a cigarette. Watching them.

“What are we gonna say to her?” Ellie said. She was looking at Gany now, too.

“I’ll handle it. You okay to go? Feel better?”

Swiping the tears from her face, Ellie nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s roll.”

When they got back in the car, David expected Gany to hit them with a barrage of questions. But to his astonishment, she said nothing. Not a word. It made him uncomfortable, so he cleared his throat and proceeded to fumble through some sort of explanation that was somewhere between a half truth and a complete fabrication.

“Hey,” Gany said, interrupting him. “Listen, man. You guys don’t owe me an explanation. As far as I’m concerned, your girl back there’s got a big heart and was trying to help someone in need. We can leave it at that.”

“All right,” David agreed. “Let’s leave it at that.”

In the backseat, Ellie fell quickly asleep.

*

By the time Gany left the highway and pulled onto a narrow ribbon of blacktop that wound through acres of bare-branched forest, Ellie was awake again. She stared out at the trees, not talking. All conversation had pretty much died after the highway incident.

“This place is a retired chicken farm,” Gany said as she navigated the unwieldy Cadillac along the serpentine twist of roadway. “Tim’s been out here for about a year, I guess. Previous owners sold it to him for a song. Not much use for a chicken farm when there aren’t any more chickens.”

“What exactly does he do out here?”

“Whatever he wants,” Gany said. “He’s always been a bit of a recluse, only now it’s trendy.”

“But what does he do for money? Does he have a job?”

She looked at him. “You guys are brothers, right?”

“Well, stepbrothers. We haven’t spoken in a long time.”

“So, are you one of those guys who only reappears when he needs something?”

The question jarred him. About a million responses shuttled through his brain, but none of them seemed adequate enough. He opened his mouth to speak, but Gany cut him off.

“I’m just screwing with you, man,” she said, smiling at him. She had a bit of an Elvis curl to her upper lip.

“I just don’t want to get him in trouble,” he said. Then added, “Or you.”

“Tim’s no dummy. He looks before he leaps.” She glanced sidelong at him. “I’m no dummy, either.”