"It was where we were and what we were about," Rose said. "It was a good fight."
"We lost," Laura answered. "Read any newspaper, and you can see we lost. Damn… if all that energy couldn't change the world, nothing can."
"Right on, sad to say." Rose grasped the bottle of sangria, and Laura let her have it. "Ancient history doesn't go well with red wine. I'll make you some tea. Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." Laura nodded, light-headed, and Rose walked into the kitchen.
After a while Mark Treggs came back into the front room. Laura was watching a movie on TV: Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, pre-Hanoi. Treggs settled himself into a chair opposite her and crossed his long, gangly legs. "You ought to go home," he told her. "There's no point in your hanging around Chattanooga."
"I'll go in the morning. Soon as I get some rest." Which was going to be next to impossible, she knew. Every time she closed her eyes she thought she heard a baby crying and the wail of sirens.
"I can't help you. I wish I could, but I can't."
"I know. You've already told me that."
"I'm telling you again." He steepled his thin fingers together, and watched her with his owlish eyes. "If there was anything I could do for you, I would."
"Right."
"I mean it I don't like not being able to help you. But look… all I am is a custodian who writes counterculture books that maybe a thousand people have read." Treggs kept his gaze on her face. "A wind-pisser, that's what I am."
"A what?"
"My father always said I was going to grow up to be a wind-pisser. Somebody who pisses into the wind. That's what I am, like it or not." His shoulders shrugged. "Maybe I've been pissing in the wind so long I like the way it feels. What I'm trying to say is that I've got a good little life – both of us do. We don't need much, and we don't want much. Just the freedom to speak and write, and up at Rock City I play my pennywhistle and meditate. Life is very good. You know why it's so good?" He waited for her to shake her head. "Because I have no expectations," he said. "My philosophy is: let it be. I bend with the breeze, but I do not break."
"Zen," Laura said.
"Yes. If you try to resist the breeze, you get a broken back. So I sit in the sun and play my music, and I write a few books on subjects that hardly anybody cares about anymore, and I watch my kids growing and I have peace."
"I wish to God I did," Laura said.
Rose came in from the kitchen. She offered Laura the clay mug with the image of her husband's face molded into it. "Red Zinger again," Rose said. "I hope that's o -"
"Not that mug!" Mark Treggs was on his feet as Laura's fingers closed around the handle. "Jesus, no!"
Laura blinked up at him as he reached out to take it away from her. Rose stepped back, out of her way. "It's got a crack in it, I mean!" Treggs said; a goofy smile slid across his mouth. "The bottom's leaking!"
Laura held on to it. "It was okay this afternoon."
His smile twitched. His eyes darted to Rose and then back to Laura again. "Can I have that mug, please?" he said. "I'll get you another one."
Laura looked at Treggs's face on the mug. It was wearing the same goofy smile. A hand-crafted mug, she thought. Made by someone who was an artist. She lifted the mug up, being careful not to spill any of the tea, and as she looked at the bottom for any trace of leakage she heard Treggs say in a tense voice, "Give it to me."
There was no crack on the bottom. The artist had signed it, though. There were two initials and a date: DD, '85.
DD. Didi?
As in Bedelia?
Didi made things, Treggs had said. She was a potter, and she sold stuff in town.
Laura felt her heart stutter. She avoided Treggs's stare, and she took a sip of the Red Zinger. Rose was standing a few feet from her husband, her expression saying she knew she'd screwed up. The moment hung as Redford and Fonda prattled on the TV and the chimes clinked outside. Laura drew a long breath. "Where is she?" she asked.
"I'd like you to leave now," Treggs said.
"Bedelia Morse. Didi. She made this mug, didn't she? In 1985? Where is she?" Her face felt hot, and her eyes locked on Treggs's face.
"I really don't know what you're talking about. I'm going to have to ask you to -"
"I'll pay you a thousand dollars to get me in contact with her," Laura said. "I swear to God, I'm not wired. I'm not working with the" – the word came out – "pigs. It's just me, alone. I don't care what she's done; all I care about is finding her, because she might help me find Mary Terrell and my baby. If I have to beg, then I'll beg: please tell me where she is."
"Look, I don't know what this is about. Like I told you before, I don't -"
"Mark?" Rose's voice was hushed.
He snapped a glance at her.
Rose stared at Laura, the corners of her mouth tight.
"Please," Laura said.
Rose spoke again, quietly, as if fearful of awakening the dead. "Michigan," she said. "Ann Arbor, Michigan."
The words were no sooner out of Rose's mouth than Treggs shouted, "Oh, Christ!" and his face mottled up with red. "Oh Christ almighty! Listen, you! I said I want you out of my house!"
"Ann Arbor," Laura repeated. She stood up, the mug still clenched in her hand. "What name does she use?"
"Don't you dig English?" Treggs demanded, flecks of spittle in his beard. He stalked to the door and opened it. A cold wind blew through. "Out!"
"Mark?" Rose said. "We have to help her."
He shook his head violently, his hair flying. "No! No way!"
"She's not working with the pigs, Mark. I believe her."
"Yeah, right! You want us both busted? Rose, the pigs could nail our asses to the wall!" His eyes, tormented behind his granny glasses, fixed on Laura. "I don't want any hassles," he said with a note of pleading. "Just leave. Okay?"
Laura stood where she was. Her light-headedness had fled, and her feet were rooted to the floor. "I'll pay you two thousand dollars to get me in contact with her," she told him. "The FBI doesn't have to know. It'll be between you and me. I swear to God, I won't breathe a word about where Bedelia Morse is. I don't care about what she's done, or what you've done to hide her. All I want is my son back. That's the most important thing in the world to me. Wouldn't you feel the same way if one of your children were missing?"
There was a long pause. The chimes jingled and rang. Laura waited, her nerves fraying more with each passing second.
At last Rose said, "Close the door, Mark."
He hesitated, a vein pulsing at his temple. The crimson had faded from his cheeks, his face gone chalky.
He closed the door, and when it clicked shut Laura saw him flinch.
"Aw, Jesus," Mark said softly. "Finish your tea."
He told Laura the story as she sat on the hard-springed sofa and tried very hard to keep herself from jumping out of her skin with anticipation. Mark had kept in contact with Bedelia Morse after the commune had broken up. He'd tried to talk her into getting away from the Storm Front, but she was "on fire," as he put it. Most of the time she was high on acid while she was with the Front, and she was always the type who needed to belong to some kind of group, whether it was a commune or a band of militant terrorists. About three months after the Storm Front was shot up in Linden, New Jersey, Mark had gotten a phone call from Didi. She'd wanted some money to change her face: a nose job and some work on her chin. Mark had sent her a "contribution to the cause." Over the years Didi had sent him and Rose all sorts of pottery: mugs, planters, and abstract sculptures. Mark had sold most of them, but some he'd kept, like the mug with his face on it. "The last time I talked to her was maybe five or six months ago," he said. "She was doing all right, selling her work in Ann Arbor. She was even teaching a couple of classes in pottery. I'll tell you something that I know for truth: Didi's okay. She's not who she used to be. She doesn't score acid anymore, and she'd be the last person on earth to snatch somebody's baby. I don't think she knows anything about Mary Terror other than what's been on the news."