Instead . . . she'd disowned me again. This time for good. This time there was no chance of apologizing. Ever.
Goddamn her for leaving me!
And goddamn me-for everything!
I didn't know what to do. All I knew how to do was keep on keeping on. So that was what I did.
I lurched from one day to the next, doing odd chores for Betty-John and the others and waiting for things to sort themselves out.
Of course, they didn't. They never did. Jason had always said
Fuck Jason.
So, mostly, I hung around the mess hall. I ate their food, there wasn't any shortage of food here. I swept their floors. I washed their dishes. Maybe I could stay here for a while. I could lose myself in books and sandwiches and videodiscs and games. I'd been pretty much that way as a kid.
But there had to be something else, something moreBetty-John came striding through the mess hall on some busy errand or other. I tried to flag her down, but she hardly noticed me. She was involved in some uproar concerning committee schedules. She was yelling into her phone
"Betty-John?" I touched her sleeve.
"Oh, Jim-look, I'm awfully busy right now. Can it wait? Thanks. Look, be a love and go down and watch for the bus. We've got some new kids coming in. Okay?"
"Yeah, sure." I felt grumpy, but one thing about Betty-John. If she said, you did. You couldn't really argue with her; the more you talked to her, the more jobs she laid on you.
Kids. They were an annoyance; underfoot, loud, and messy. Runny noses, scabbed knees with red stains of Mercurochrome, dirty faces, small clammy hands-and it was hot outside too.
I went anyway. I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and I must have looked like somebody's idea of a camp counselor. Clean and scrubbed. And it's hard to look impressive in shorts. Especially if you have knobby knees. Probably I looked younger than I had in months; I'd always looked younger than my age. One of my many vanities had been to fantasize that the armed services would make a man out of me. But I couldn't see that there was any difference in the mirror in the morning, and had reluctantly come to the conclusion that whatever it was they were supposed to do for me, it hadn't taken. I'd always heard that those who had been through combat came back with an extra little hardness around their eyes, a kind of mysterious glint that women could somehow sense and respond to. All I saw in myself was my usual unfriendly scowl. If I had somehow taken on a "bloody aura of danger" I couldn't see it.
Never mind. I parked myself under a tree near the lower barricade and began to wait.
I was awakened by a horn beeping and the tired wheeze of a dusty yellow bus. It reeked of methanol and its brakes complained loudly as it rolled to a stop before the sawhorse that kept traffic off the main street of Family. Anxious faces of children peered out of closed windows. The driver-he couldn't have been more than sixteen himself-climbed down with a clipboard. "Hey!" he called imperiously.
I stood up and walked over.
"Who's in charge here?" he demanded.
"Who're you looking for?"
"You know someone named . . ." he checked his clipboard. "Tremaine?"
"Yeah. She's up there somewhere." I gestured vaguely.
"Oh, shit. Hey, can this barricade be moved? Or knocked down?"
"'Uh-uh. We've got children running around. You'll have to hoof it."
He groaned and went back to the bus, opened the door and called in. "You kids stay here, or else! I'll be right back."
I watched him. He had about as much empathy as a slug. And just as much sense. The kids started piling out of the bus within seconds-I would have too. He hadn't inspired much trust, and these weren't trusting kids anyway. They were wide-eyed and suspicious. Curious, but very cautious. The oldest couldn't have been more than fourteen, the youngest were two bundles in blankets, held by two of the girls. They looked tired.
I sighed to myself and walked over. Somebody had to keep an eye on them. "Hi," I said.
They all froze and stared at me. There were seventeen of them, counting the two babies. They had large round eyes, and looked like a cage full of hungry puppies who'd been beaten instead of fed.
I hunkered down to look at one little boy, about four or five. Sandy-haired, he looked a little like Mark. (Mark? Oh, yeah, my nephew. Had I really forgotten?) "What's your name?"
He just stared back at me with the roundest eyes of all. "My name is Jim," I tried. "What's yours?"
Still no answer.
I pointed at the almost shapeless hunk of stuffed animal he carried. "What's your bear's name?"
He murmured something. Very tentatively. "Huh? I didn't hear you. What's his name?" This time louder. "Bear."
"Mm, that's a good name. Is he a good bear?" Round-Eyes shook his head slowly.
"He's a bad bear then . . . ?" Again he shook his head. "But he's your bear, isn't he?"
Slow tentative nod. The child wasn't sure what to make of me. Grown-ups were supposed to be good people, but I was a stranger to him. And God alone knew where he had come from and what he had been through. I wanted to stroke his hair or give him a hug-to show him everything was going to be all right now-but Betty-John had warned me, some of these kids were funny about being touched. Don't touch any of them unless you ask their permission first.
"Will you shake hands with me?" I held out my hand, but not too far. He'd have to reach for it.
He looked at it. He looked at me.
Most of the kids were watching us. They were watching me more than him. A little girl opened up then. "I'll shake hands with you." But there was a "What's in it for me?" implied in the way she said it.
"Okay," I said. I held out my hand to her. She was wearing a faded brown dress-where had I seen her before? She'd been skipping, hadn't she? She must have been seven or eight, or maybe even nine, but she was so gaunt it was hard to tell. She could have been older.
She shook my hand gravely, never once taking her eyes from mine.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Holly," she said solemnly.
"Well, hi, Holly. I'm Jim." I tried to coax a smile from her. I'd been told that if you keep smiling at a kid, they'll smile back, because they haven't yet learned how to smother an almost instinctive response. But apparently this bunch had learned, because it wasn't working. They were regarding me like a used-car salesman. They were skittish, and obviously frightened; what would this towering grown-up want from them? I wondered what some of them must have been through to have learned a reaction like that.
"I had an Uncle Jim once . . ." Holly offered. It was a wary comment, as if she wanted to know if I was going to try to be the "official" replacement.
I tried a different tack. B-Jay had warned against dredging the kids' memories, especially in inappropriate circumstances. First they had to experience that they were in a truly safe place before they could confront their past experiences.
I said, "Good. Will you be my friend?"
She stared. "Don't you have any other friends?"
I shook my head, slowly and very deliberately. I'm sure she suspected me for a liar, but adults never lied. Well, hardly ever. "Not any?" She was horrified. "But you must . . ."
"Not even a bear," I insisted.
That convinced her I was telling the truth. If grown-ups insist on something, it must be true.
"Well . . ." She thought about it. This was a pretty big commitment, even more than getting married. She hesitated, then decided. "I'll be your friend."
"Okay." I looked back at little Round-Eyes. "Do you have a friend?"
He had been watching the exchange between Holly and me with the most intense stare I'd ever seen on a child. Now, when I turned back to him, he merely hugged his bear tighter and tried to shrink away. I wanted to pull him closer to me, but instead I just shifted my position. All this hunkering down and squatting to talk to three-foot people was hard on my back.