The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(24)

“Joanna.” His voice was deep and soothing, the way I talk to Laurel when she wakes up in tears from a bad dream. “If such a situation should arise, I’ll know how to handle it.”

Olin had to be eighty, at least. Not a big man. But at that moment I understood that his frame, however slight it might seem, was forged of iron. He wasn’t giving me easy assurances—he was giving me his word.

“Thank you,” I choked out.

“You got any people, honey?” Jessie asked. “Family?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then.” She rose briskly to gather the breakfast dishes. “About time I had some female company around here. We were never blessed with children of our own, and after a while we stopped praying for them. It’s like having a family laid right in our lap, ready-made. I figure to enjoy it while it lasts.”





Vantage Point





It was a struggle to settle my mind on coherent thought. It wanted to wander. It wanted to kick off like Laurel in that swing under the chestnut tree, shoot for the sky and keep going.

Staying occupied, going through familiar motions, helped to ground me. I didn’t keep to my bed anymore, but helped Jessie with the chores—weeded the vegetable garden, kneaded dough, swept the heart pine floors and beat the rag rugs, hanging them over the fieldstone fence.

Jessie had to show me how to launder clothes in her big-bellied hand-crank machine—the old-fashioned kind I’d seen only in pictures. It had to be decades old, but they’d kept it in fine condition, and she insisted it still served her well. I’d hang the clothes on the line out back, fetching them in again when they were dry and smelling as sweet as buckbrush. Sometimes I’d bury my face in them and just breathe.

Always that terrible mountain was at my shoulder, reigning over the valley, hanging on my every move. I resisted looking at it the way you avoid looking directly at the sun, for fear it could blind you. But as with any forbidden thing, there was a strong temptation, too. To give in. To turn and steal a peek. To see what might happen if I did. But when I’d do so, the ground wanted to slide out from under me all over again, and I was reeling on the edge of a cliff.

The Mountain didn’t seem to bother Laurel—she played for hours under its shadow, oblivious. I didn’t dare tell the old couple how it disturbed me, or they might wonder if their houseguest was losing her mind. For all I know, they’d be right.

We landed at this place like true refugees—with just the clothes on our backs, and not so much as a toothbrush. Jessie bought clothes for Laurel at a general store in Morro—dungarees and shirts, a jacket, sneakers and socks. For me she bought yards of fabric and sewing patterns. From the styles of the dresses and skirts, some of those patterns must have been lying in store bins for years. Still, they were pretty in a vintage sort of way.

Jessie had an old Singer machine—black and gleaming, smelling faintly of machine oil—stored in a walnut housing cabinet. She’d mail-ordered it ages ago, she said, from a catalog. After supper, Olin and Laurel would play dominoes or checkers, while Jessie and I would sit in the corner, the machine whirring away.

Nearly every day, Jessie and her husband assured me they’d heard of no police search for a woman and child, but I failed to see how they’d know—they owned no television and took no newspaper. From what I could tell, their only link to the outside world was a radio—a boxy antique that picked up a single station that broadcast oldies music and radio shows.

It was as if the old couple had decided one day—decades ago—that a rustic life suited them, and they would keep just as they were for as long as they could. As if they had extricated themselves from the evolving world, and not just from its modern conveniences. Sometimes when I looked at them, I got the unsettled feeling that I was watching them through a rearview mirror, slowly receding from me.

Despite their reassurances, Jim never strayed far from my mind. I couldn’t seem to shake him, however hard I threw myself into routine. I couldn’t peer out a front window without expecting to see a deputy’s unit speed up the dirt road or beeline for the house. In fitful dreams, police lights strobed outside, but were never there when I woke.

Back in Wheeler, whenever Jim would drive us to town, I’d stare out the car window and note all the places to hide. Every house with busted windows and an overgrown yard. Every shed with no padlocked door. Every boarded-up business. Every playhouse, doghouse, culvert.