The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(38)

Dishes washed and dried, I stepped back outside to find the chill had gone, the sun blazing overhead. It was what Laurel calls a shiny day—so bright and clear your eyes ache with it. She’d gone with Olin to the coop earlier, and her sneakers were caked with mud from the storm the day before. I took a bucket to the yard and was scrubbing her sneakers when Jessie suggested we walk to town to get Laurel a pair of rain boots. I wiped a stray bit of hair from my face and stared at Jessie, searching for a sign on hers—anything to indicate she was aware of what Olin had told me last evening. A hint of complicity. Of knowing. Maybe even of sympathy.

But it was Jessie as Jessie had always been—her gray hair coiled to a tight bun, her sturdy frame as straight as a fence post, brooking no argument.

She tied on a straw sunbonnet and handed me another. It was wide brimmed, and from long habit I slung it low to hide my face. I brushed Laurel’s hair into a ponytail and the three of us set out.

This was the first time I’d ventured off the farm, and even now—even now—I couldn’t imagine heading along this road without running into a deputy’s cruiser, slanted off to the side, engine idling, windows dark. And Jim hunched like a vulture behind the wheel. But I knew that if I hid out on this farm much longer, I’d only be making myself a prisoner on purpose.

We struck out for town—toward the Mountain—an easy walk not only for its length, a mere two miles or so, but also because it felt as if the road sloped down a tick, although to my eyes it seemed level enough. The effect was of some force drawing me on, compelling me to come.

As we walked, Jessie pointed out wildflowers on either side of the road. So many, and such variety. She began to name them: fiddlehead and soap tree yucca, thistle and red *toes, lupine and Indian paintbrush, chicory and biscuit-root, sagebrush and mountain dandelion, heartleaf and pearly everlasting.

The only sound aside from Jessie’s voice was the faint basal hum of cicadas. Their drowsy noise always reminded me of high-voltage transmission wires, and a thought struck. I looked about, and there were no transmission towers in sight. No power lines anywhere, in fact. No telephone lines or utility cables. No poles to string them on. No cell towers, no radio towers. Behind us, no poles or lines running electricity to the farmhouse. Yet the house had electricity. Something was powering the lamps, the radio, the sewing machine, the oven, the clocks . . .

I glanced at Jessie, at my daughter walking so easily with her, the two of them holding hands like great friends.

Jessie glanced back at me, her expression obscure, still reciting the names of flowers in a singsong voice as soothing as a lullaby.


*

By the time we rounded that first foothill, I had few expectations of Morro. Olin had said it was long forgotten, and I’d seen bypassed towns before: the bitter decay of empty storefronts and boarded-up windows, littered streets and broken sidewalks.

But Morro was nothing like that.

It wasn’t big, consisting of but a single street. But that street was more like a broad boulevard that ran for blocks, and smoothly paved. At the town line a sign read:

WELCOME TO MORRO

Beyond the sign, sidewalks with rows of shade trees that branched thirty feet and higher lined each side of the boulevard. On the outskirts of town stood handsome family homes with deep lawns, while at the center well-kept commercial buildings bustled with people. And right in the middle of the boulevard stood a large domed gazebo.

Jessie stepped briskly to the sidewalk, making for the business center of town. Laurel and I followed. There were few cars, and no traffic signals. We passed a sidewalk café and an Italian bakery selling gelato from a walk-up window. An antiques store, an art gallery, a butcher shop, a green grocer’s. Across the street was a lending library and a redbrick building with a sign that read, Town Hall. Beyond that were more shops, then more homes lining the far end of town.

But the anchors of this place were clearly the general store—a three-story building that took up the better part of a block—and across from it a grand Victorian hotel called the Wild Rose, painted in flamboyant shades of red.

I walked slowly, the better to take it all in.

There wasn’t a single crack in the sidewalk, no hole in the asphalt. No chipping paint. Not a stray bit of litter skittering down the street.

Morro was idyllic—a town Norman Rockwell might have dreamed up.

Or me.

Jessie led us past the hotel, where a couple emerged—very elegant, in their thirties, with dark hair and skin. The man wore a tan sport coat and open-collared shirt; the woman, a beautiful sari of apricot silk. I tried not to stare—they seemed so cosmopolitan, and in their way as anachronistic as Olin and Jessie.