Jude felt his recital winding down. It hadn't been painful — quite the opposite: it almost felt good to talk about it.
Tizzie wasn't quite ready to stop. "So your early life in Arizona — you really don't remember anything about it?"
"No, not really. Just little things here and there. Stupid little meaningless things."
"Like what?"
"The heat when we'd go down to the desert. We were up in the mountains, so the days were bearable, but down below, it was miserably hot and the nights were freezing cold. There were some kind of mines there."
"Mines?"
"Yeah, tunnels and shafts, I remember playing in them — exploring them, hiding in the dark, dropping rocks down hundreds of feet. I used to play a lot with this girl."
"Who was she?"
"A tomboy. That's what I nicknamed her — Tommy. Her parents were in the cult, too. We spent a lot of time together." He stopped.
"What is it?"
"It's funny, but I was just remembering. When my mother died, I didn't cry. When my father died, I didn't cry. But when we left there, when my father took me away, I cried my eyes out. It was all because of this girl. She raced along the side of the road as we drove away, and both of us were bawling our heads off. I just looked and looked out the back window as she got smaller and smaller in the distance. We went to some kind of motel. I remember crying for nights afterward. I thought my life had come to an end."
Jude looked at Tizzie, who sighed and squeezed his arm.
Then they stood up and walked back down the boardwalk toward the elevated train rattling in the distance.
Chapter 11
The Valdosta Baptist Church was a low-slung wooden structure whose sole adornment was a square, chimney-shaped belfry, but no bell. The window panes were covered with decals of garish reds, blues and greens, separated by black squiggly lines, meant to evoke the stained-glass grandeur of the medieval cathedrals of Europe.
In the basement, sweltering despite an air-conditioning unit that groaned and dripped a steady stream of water on the garbage cans outside, Skyler lay upon a cot. It was uncomfortable, made of canvas tightly stretched upon crisscrossing wooden legs, which rendered it easy to dismantle with all the other cots when the screaming children came in for morning day care and the homeless were given a quick bowl of cereal and put back out on the streets.
He was depressed. He had every reason to be depressed. He had been there for — how long? — days and days, it seemed, more than a week surely. Lost, hungry, desperate, he had wandered the streets of the city in a crash course to come to grips with the insane new world he had dropped in upon so unthinkingly. He felt like a voyager from another planet. The frenzy, the noise, the filth — it all crowded around him and pressed in upon him in an overload. Never mind understanding it, just try to survive it. The cars careering around corners, the crowded sidewalks, the menace lurking in every shadow. It was like the worst of the TV programs shown back on the island.
On his first day, after walking away from the airfield and pushing through a hedge, he'd approached a young girl to ask where he was, and she'd turned and fled. Children made fun of his old clothes, dogs barked at him. It began badly and got worse.
That first morning was forever imprinted upon his memory. The plane was still droning on when he awoke with a start; panic rose up as palpable as the bile in the back of his throat. His nap had left him disoriented and frightened, and he felt claustrophobic in the baggage compartment. His arm was sore where the dog had lunged at him. He had an irresistible urge to take his bearings, to scout out the situation, and so, cautiously and slowly, he raised his head to peer into the cabin.
There was the back of the pilot's head, baseball cap in place just as before. But outside through the windows, everything had changed. Gone was the blue expanse of water. Instead, there was only land — and so much of it! It extended in all directions as far as he could see, patches of dark green for trees and long strips of brown soil that looked deep and rich, the way fields back home looked at planting time. There were chocolate brown rivers snaking through the landscape and rounded humps for hills — all of it wreathed in a fog that made parts of it disappear and reappear.
There were long black ribbons — roads — and upon them were cars that moved slower than the plane and turned this way and that like little animals that had minds of their own. And as the plane flew on, they came to a more populated area, roofs and roads, and a bright green field with brown paths that puzzled him until he realized it was a baseball diamond. They were flying lower now: more houses, more roads and cars, and a large round wooden tower with writing on it. What was that for? The plane banked, and Skyler saw something large and dark on the ground that was moving below them, and he was alarmed until it dawned on him that it was the plane's own shadow.
Suddenly, the pilot spoke. Skyler dropped down in terror and didn't move. The pilot spoke again, but in a casual, disengaged way, so that Skyler surmised that it had nothing to do with him. Once more, he dared to look over the partition, and he saw the pilot in profile, with a little tuft of gray hair poking through the forward hole of the backward baseball cap. He recognized him — Bryant, the handyman in the Big House. Knowing who it was made everything seem more real and even more frightening. Bryant was holding a receiver in his hand, and Skyler presumed that he was communicating with someone on the ground.
Not long after that, the plane banked again and came in for a landing, setting down on the runway with a bump. The engine abruptly squealed louder, and at that moment the aircraft began to slow; then it turned sharply to the left, and moved ahead until the engine tapered off and stopped with a sputter. There were more noises close by — clicks and snaps and footsteps coming down the aisle toward Skyler. He realized that Bryant was standing right above him; he could almost feel him looking down upon him. He stopped breathing and held every muscle rigid, the pulse pounding in his temples. Then, suddenly, the tarpaulin moved. Skyler was ready to spring up, and was gathering his strength to do so, when he heard the door swing open. He moved his hand; the suitcase that had been at his side was gone. Bryant was already outside.
The footsteps disappeared, and Skyler waited until he could hear nothing. He got out of the plane and stepped onto the tarmac in the shade of an open hangar under a corrugated metal roof. He looked in all directions: no one in sight. Nearby was a two-story tower topped with large, square windows and a rotating metal object. Beyond that was a brick building with windows that reflected like mirrors, and a parking lot half filled with cars. To Skyler's left was a metal fence, and farther on, a hedge, and through that he could see a road. It was already hot as blazes.
He ran — just ran straight out as fast as he could, and when he came to the fence, he vaulted it, cutting his arm on the uppermost metal spike, and then he struggled through the hedge. Then he ran some more up the road, turned and looked behind him. No one was following him. He slowed to a quick walk and looked around. There were large signs on stilts. One said AQUALAND and showed children with their mouths open plummeting down a slide filled with water. Another was for a gas station. At a crossroads, he came upon a sign with red letters against a yellow background, mounted on rubber wheels, which read: COME JOIN US FOR DINNER. But no one was around. Then he approached the young girl walking down the sidewalk and asked her for help, and she turned and ran away.