Dreamland(19)

There were only a few people milling about in the station when she went to the ticket window and took her place in line behind an elderly woman in a heavy brown cardigan sweater. When it was her turn, she stood before a man with bags under his eyes and a long side patch of stringy gray hair that he swept over his bald spot. She asked for two tickets to Chicago, and as she handed over the money, she mentioned casually that she and her sister were going to visit their mother. She didn’t want the man behind the Plexiglas to know she was traveling with her son, but apparently he didn’t care one way or the other—he barely seemed to notice her as he handed her the tickets. Beverly returned to a bench kitty-corner from Tommie, where she could keep an eye on him but it wouldn’t be obvious that they were together. Every minute or so she would glance at him, then toward the entrance, searching beyond the glass for the black SUV with tinted windows, but thankfully it never appeared. She also studied other faces in the terminal, trying to memorize them, seeing if anyone was paying attention to a little boy sitting all alone, just in case. But no one seemed to care.

Dawn arrived, a bright late-spring glare. In time, the engine of the appropriate bus began to idle beneath one of the aluminum canopies out back. With her stomach in knots, she sent Tommie ahead so he could pretend to be boarding with a man in a bomber jacket, a father and son traveling together. Through the windows, she watched Tommie follow the man toward seats near the rear of the bus. Others boarded, then she finally stepped aboard, walking past the thin, dark-haired bus driver. She took a seat in the second-to-last row; on the opposite side, in the next row up, was an older woman crocheting, moving the needle like a conductor standing in front of an orchestra. Tommie remained in his seat ahead of her until the bus started moving, just as she’d instructed, and when they reached the highway, he joined her. There, he leaned his head against her shoulder while she continued to watch the people on the bus, forcing herself to remember them and trying to figure out whether any of them had noticed anything amiss.

She reminded herself of how careful she’d been. Gary was out of town, doing whatever secret thing it was he did for the government. They’d also left on a Saturday, and on each of the four previous weekends she’d made sure not to leave the house or even let Tommie play in the yard, establishing a pattern that would hopefully buy time. Using money she’d secretly saved over a period of six months, she set up automatic timers on the lights, which would come on and then go out in the evenings. With any luck, the driver in the black SUV wouldn’t know they were gone until the school bus showed up on Monday morning.

The bus rumbled along, and as the hours slowly passed, Beverly thought that every minute meant another mile farther from the home she needed to escape. Tommie slept beside her as they rode through Texas and Arkansas and then finally into Missouri. They rolled past farmland and stopped in cities and towns, most with names she didn’t recognize. People got off and others got on, and the brakes would squeak and the bus would eventually lurch forward again, toward the next destination. Stopping and starting, all day long and then into the night, the engine rumbling beneath her seat. By the time the first driver was replaced by a new one, she recognized no one from the original bus station, but even then she tried to remember every face she saw. The woman who was crocheting had been replaced by a young man with short hair, carrying an olive-colored duffel bag. Army, maybe, or Marines, and when he pulled a phone from his pocket, Beverly’s heart slammed in her chest. She pulled her baseball cap lower and stared out the window, wondering if the young man worked with Gary, wondering if he could have possibly found her already. She wondered again about the hidden powers of the Department of Homeland Security. She had lied to Gary and Tommie and neighbors and friends, and though she hadn’t been raised to lie, she’d had no other choice. Across the aisle, the young man with the short hair put his phone back into his pocket and closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window. He hadn’t so much as peeked in her direction, and little by little, her heart began to slow again. Though exhausted, she found it impossible to sleep.

In Missouri, the bus stopped again. Another station, another nameless place. Beverly sent Tommie ahead of her, off the bus, then eventually followed him. She led him to the ladies’ room in the terminal, ignoring the irritated expression of a heavyset woman in a floral-print blouse. She used water from the faucet and wax to dampen Tommie’s cowlick, and though she had little money to spare, Tommie was six and growing fast and she knew he needed to eat. There were two apples and two granola bars in her own backpack, but that wasn’t enough. In the convenience store across the street, she bought milk and two hot dogs but nothing for her own growling stomach. She decided she could have one of the apples in an hour, even though she knew she could eat both of them and the granola bars and would likely still be hungry. At the register, because there was a camera, she kept her head tilted down, the brim of the hat shielding her face.

They got on the bus again. Tommie remained quiet, flipping through the pages of his book. She knew he could read it by now; she had read it so often he had probably memorized it, as well. Instinctively, she knew that Tommie was more intelligent than most children his age; he picked things up quickly and always seemed to understand situations and ideas far beyond his years. When she looked at him, she sometimes saw Gary’s eyes, but his smile was his own, and his nose resembled hers. She sometimes saw him as a baby and a toddler and on his first day of kindergarten, the images merging in her head, making Tommie perpetually familiar and yet always new and different. Beyond the window, she saw farmland and cows and silos and highway signs advertising fast-food restaurants one or two or three exits ahead. Beverly ate one of the apples, chewing slowly, trying to savor it, to make the flavor last. She’d sewn most of the money she had saved into a hidden pocket in her jacket.