They sit, companionably, passing the joint. The world darkens more. At some signal, the Amish boys stand and nod at the Arcadians and disappear into the woods, back toward their safe, solid houses, back to their families.
Ike puts on his dryish pants, Cole kicks dirt over the embers of the fire. They begin to walk fast, homeward. Bit holds his words in for as long as Ike needs him to. They are halfway home before Ike looks at his friends. His face is baggy; for miles, his stomach has been audibly rumbling.
Those Amish dopes were so fucking weird, Ike says and begins to laugh.
Cole gives his little whinny. Bit finds himself laughing, too, laughing and laughing until tears spring to his eyes and he has to lean against a tree to stop it, or he will piss. When they’re quiet, the boys look helplessly at one another. They feel tired in their very bones.
Those mofos, Cole says. They’re even weirder than we’re going to be out in the real world.
Bit begins to shiver, though they are going quickly enough to warm themselves. He feels sick, wants to break into a trot, a gallop, a sprint. He cannot imagine himself in the Outside. Because, he can admit it now, no matter how he strains his brain, he cannot imagine the greater world at all. He is not ready.
Night has fallen when they come up into the Eatery. They have missed their dinner. The kitchen is dark and empty. But they find a note on the stainless-steel counter: Hannah had saved plates in the oven and a whole loaf of bread, just for them. Bit hides the note in his pocket so Ike won’t see how his mother wrote I love you at the bottom and feel his own lack.
They are just finished when Helle comes into the kitchen, her cheeks glassy. Ike, she whispers, Margrete’s here.
In blows an old woman, straight and white, Astrid but smaller, the air around her dense. There is a power to her. A witchiness. Her mouth telegraphs rules, hard chairs, cold-water showers, feline familiars with bladder troubles. You come now, Isaac, she says in Astrid’s accent, comically exaggerated.
Ike stands and towers over his grandmother. She pats his cheek and goes out. Air returns to the room.
Ike says, I’m not saying goodbye. Goodbye means never again, and I’ll see you in weeks. Months, at most. He turns his back on his friends and rushes out.
Helle hugs Cole for a long time, too long, Bit thinks. When she comes to hug Bit, he drowns in her vanilla, her dreads making a tent around his face. Her retainer is a flash on her tongue. He has grown, he sees with a startle: he can almost see level into her golden eyes.
Don’t forget, she says, leaning her forehead against his. Me.
I couldn’t, he says.
If you do, it’ll be like I’ve never existed at all.
He’s all knotted up. She kisses him, sharp of teeth, touch of tongue, hands cold on the back of his neck. He wants to tell her so much that he can’t say anything; if he does, he will spill out onto the ground. She holds his hand and Cole’s as they go down the slate steps to the car waiting on the gravel. Before she turns, he pulls out the photograph he’s been carrying in a plastic bag, pinned to the inside of his shorts. He puts it in her hand. It is Helle at the Pond, so early in the morning she thought she was alone, standing naked on the rock, reflected in the glassy water. A taper with a shock of blond dreadlocks at each end, so beautiful, beauty was no longer the word for it. She looks at the picture and winces; she braves a look at his face, and with a terrifying swoop in the chest, he knows she understands. Ike has a pillow over his eyes and won’t look when they knock on the glass.
Helle gets in, the car gentles off. Out of the darkness at the edge of the wood there steps a giant, which is caught now in the headlights and shines. It is an old man, comically bug-eyed, fork-bearded, with bendy spaghetti arms. It waves and bows in graceful, almost human movements. When the car passes beyond and the darkness steals back out from where it had hidden at the edge of the woods, Bit sees Leif under the puppet, still dancing in the dark.
They are one hundred. Regina and Ollie bought a truck in Ilium, a beautiful, sleek Ford with a huge bed. They go to the Bakery in the middle of the night and take the industrial mixers and one of the ovens before anyone has time to stop them. The next day, two old people in a Jaguar show up for Scott and Lisa, and before they are allowed in the car, they must take off their Arcadia clothes and put on new ones, khakis and a button-up shirt and blazer for Scott, a dress and panty hose for Lisa. Bit watches, heartstruck, as Scott and Lisa climb into the backseat and hold hands, and smile uncomfortably at their knees as the driver in his boat shoes and golf pants roars at them, choleric, speeding off.
Hannah says, I always suspected they were secret Republicans.
They were your friends, Bit says.
Friends, Hannah says. What a word.
There are sixty left. The tomatoes rot on the vine.
The toilets back up in Arcadia House, and there is no Horse or Hank to fix them. The smell drives out thirty Arcadians. Hannah makes dinner by herself, out of what they have: tempeh from the freezer, a few cans of beans, some boiled cabbage.
The next day, Sweetie comes to the Ado Unit, trailing Dyllie. His little face is electric with nerves. He is pale, almost as pale as his brother. Sweetie seems heavy with her sorrow and runs her hands over Cole’s head, the hair sparking with static electricity under her palms. We’re going, Cole, she says. A girlfriend of mine’s going to take us to the city.
Down at the car, Cole and Dylan hug Bit wordlessly and get in. The car moves off. After his friends have gone, the sound of a woodpecker in the forest redoubles, festive as castanets. There is a puncture in the world, and everything Bit knew about himself is escaping.
Hannah wakes him in the night. Baby, she murmurs in his ear. Grab your things.
He has kept a brown bag under his bunk for a week now and takes it out, and climbs out of bed, full-clothed. When he stands up, Hannah is already gone. He catches her on the spiral staircase and sees something hard shimmering on her face.
Out into the cool. Down the slate steps. He cannot look back; he knows what happens when one does. There is a car coughing on the drive, a junky Pinto. Abe already sits in the front seat, his wheelchair strapped to the trunk. The family’s few effects are on the backseat, in a box. Bit knows that the faceless cloth babydoll on top, an Amish gift, is stuffed with high-grade bud.
Hannah closes the door and puts the car in gear. The forest is hunched as they slide past, the Gatehouse is dark. The County Road curves to the path that pushes out to Verda lonely in her stone cottage. There, Hannah turns off the engine, and Bit and she climb out (the cherries in full fruit over the night-darkened door making all slick underfoot). Eustace gives a desultory woof, and Verda emerges in a white nightgown, holding her rifle on her shoulder. Slowly, she lowers it.
Oh, she says. The day is come.
I’m sorry, Hannah says in a whisper.
Verda disappears inside. She comes back out with a bundle she places into Bit’s hand. I won’t see you again, Ridley, she says. He hugs her fragile bones. Hannah steps up and hugs her too, and Verda says, Go along then. Her hair blazes in the headlights, but her eyes are only sockets as they pull away.
Bit unwraps the bundle. In it is a bag of rosehip tea, a four-inch thickness of papers bound with a ribbon, the scrimshaw, a wad of cash as soft as mouse fur. He hands the papers to Hannah, who pats them and returns her hand to the wheel, and the money to Abe, who gives a whistle. Bit holds the scrimshaw, feeling the fine carvings with the pads of his fingers until he has memorized the shape of the face repeated in the bone.