The Night Visitors(4)
Disgusting, I hear my mother say.
Yes, I agree, rubbing harder.
Then I look at my watch and see I’ve got ten minutes to make the fifteen-minute drive to the bus station. That’s what comes of flitting about in the middle of the night. My mother is out in full force tonight. Meddling in other people’s business. Neglecting your own.
Having almost killed my old dog, I have nothing to say in my own defense. So I grab my pack and go, turning the thermostat up a notch to keep poor Dulcie warm while I’m gone.
IT’S MOSTLY DOWNHILL from my house to town, something I appreciated as a kid when I needed to get away fast and could coast on my Schwinn from my driveway to the Stewart’s without turning a pedal. Frank Barnes and I used to race down the hill, daring each other on. When I was seven and he was nine, I took the curve at the bottom too fast and wound up in the Esopus. I still have the piece of flannel Frank tore from his shirt to stanch the blood and the scar on my forehead as a reminder of my folly.
Coasting down the ice-slick road tonight, my wipers barely keeping up with the sleet and icy rain, has me praying to Anita, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Ganesh, and whatever pagan wood spirits haunt the lonely pines that stand guard around the little mountain hamlet of Delphi. I roll the window down and take deep gulps of cold, pine-scented air. The shock of the temperature steadies my hands on the wheel for the last hairpin curve before town and through deserted Main Street, past the boarded-up windows of Moore’s Mercantile, where my mother bought me my school clothes every fall, and the Queen Anne Victorian that used to house my father’s law offices but is now home to Sanctuary. There’s a light on downstairs. Doreen’s probably rearranging the food pantry and donation bins. Every night like a goddamned house elf, Muriel, the head of volunteer services, says. I’ll check in with her after I drop off the mother and son at St. Alban’s. Bring her a bear claw from Stewart’s. Give her a chance to talk about the call.
The bus terminal shares a parking lot with Stewart’s—the only place in town open. There’s no bus there yet. Either it’s late or I’ve missed it. But there’s no boy and woman standing outside, waiting for me.
I park the car and turn it off, tempted to leave it running but afraid that someone will steal it. Some of the people who do get off the bus aren’t the most savory—drug dealers running heroin from the city to the Catskills, gang members from Newburgh and Kingston, parolees from the prison over in Hudson.
You always think the worst of people, Doreen tells me.
It’s what I used to say to my mother. I’ll stop when people stop confirming my worst suspicions of them, she used to answer back.
Atefeh Sherazi is at the counter inside Stewart’s. She smiles when she sees me come in. Doreen and I helped find her this job when she came to Sanctuary two years ago. She’d left her husband in New Jersey and taken the bus upstate with her two children. When I asked her if she was afraid her husband would follow her she said it was her brother she was worried about. He had brought her to America from Iran ten years ago by promising her an education and had instead brokered an arranged marriage. When her husband started hitting her she went to her brother, but he said that it was her fault she wasn’t able to please her husband. He’ll kill me if he finds me, Atefeh told us.
She’d stayed at St. Alban’s until her application for Section 8 housing was approved and Roy Carver gave her this job. Now she’s taking classes part-time at Ulster Community College, working toward the education she came here for.
“What are you doing out on a night like this, Ms. Lane?” she asks. I’ve asked her to call me Mattie many times to no avail.
“Picking up someone on the bus from Kingston. Has it come in yet?”
Atefeh shakes her head. “The driver called in half an hour ago to say he’d be late. Black ice on 28. He had to pull over and wait for the sand trucks. Can I get you some coffee while you’re waiting? There’s a fresh pot.”
“I’ll get it, Atefeh.” I hold up my thermos and nod at the open biology textbook on the counter. “You keep studying.”
I walk to the coffee counter at the back of the store and fill the thermos. Then I pour myself a cup, adding sugar and milk, to keep myself awake. I pick up a quart of milk, orange juice, butter, and then eye the pastries on the warming rack. The mother and son will be hungry when they get here.
While I’m deciding between bear claws and cinnamon rolls the bell over the door jangles. I look over to see if the bus has come, but it’s only two guys in heavy camo gear getting out of a jacked-up plow truck, fake foam antlers strapped to the plow and a very real, very dead buck strapped to the roof. Their exhaust steam is billowing around my little Honda. I guess they’re not worried about someone taking off with their ride. I turn back to my pastry selection and hear one of the hunters ask Atefeh for lottery tickets.
Like that’s going to change your luck.
It’s not that I have anything against hunters. I know enough families around here who rely on that meat, and the local hunting club always donates a venison roast for Sanctuary’s community holiday supper. In fact one of the hunters, the older and heftier one, looks familiar. I think he’s come into Sanctuary with donations a couple of times.
I glance back toward the men. The one I don’t recognize, the younger, skinnier one, is staring at Atefeh’s name tag.
“Atefeh? What kind of name is that?”