It wasn’t a new thing for people to come around looking for Wade. There had been plenty of times when me and Ruby were playing out in the yard and somebody’s car would stop and they’d roll down the window and say, “Y’all seen your daddy?,” or something like that. There had been plenty of times when I woke up in the middle of the night with headlights shining bright on the wall of our bedroom and the sound of somebody banging on the front door, screaming for Wade. Mom would get up cursing at herself and go out to the front room and yell at whoever it was that Wade wasn’t home and didn’t even live there anymore.
But something about this time felt different; nobody’d ever come to find us at school before, and nobody’d ever talked so quiet or stood so still when they asked about Wade. And not a single one of them had ever known my name.
That night, after dinner, most of the kids hung out in the TV room and watched the Cubs play the Reds. My bedroom door was closed, but I could hear them cheer every time Sosa came up to bat. Ruby hung out in the computer room and played Oregon Trail. She liked it just as much as I did. I didn’t leave our room after dinner except to get ready for bed; I didn’t feel like being around anybody because I had too much on my mind. My bed was covered in homework I hadn’t finished, but I couldn’t stop worrying about whether or not Marcus would come over, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the man I’d seen out in the woods. His voice wouldn’t leave my head.
Ruby opened the door and walked into the bedroom just as I was closing my math book after finishing some division problems that were due the next day. She kicked off her shoes and pulled down her covers.
“How’d you do?” I asked.
“Okay,” she said. “I didn’t make it all the way, though. And you died of cholera.”
“Great,” I said. I slipped my homework into my book bag, climbed off my bed, and dropped the bag by the door. “Are you sure you didn’t have any homework?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said.
“Well, then I guess we should get ready for bed.”
We took turns brushing our teeth in the bathroom across the hall, and then we got into bed; I turned out the light on the table between us. Miss Crawford opened our door a few minutes later and told us good night. I was still hoping that Marcus would come, and I didn’t plan on going to sleep, but the next thing I remember is Ruby whispering my name.
“What?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t it be fun?”
“What?” I asked again.
“Going on a trip,” she said. “Just me and you, just like on Oregon Trail.”
“It would,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
But I must not have slept too soundly because my eyes popped right open when I heard him at the window. I looked over at the clock on the table; it was just a little after one in the morning. I kicked the sheets off me as quick as I could so that he wouldn’t tap again and wake up Ruby. I crawled down to the end of my bed and unlocked the window and slid it open. I sat back and waited.
I heard Marcus put the toe of his shoe against the outside of the house to start climbing up, but when a pair of hands came in and grabbed on to the windowsill I realized they weren’t his. The hands were white, and they had hair on the backs of them and little tufts of it above the knuckles. I knew the minute I saw them that they were man’s hands, and I was too surprised and scared to do anything except watch as they helped whoever it was climb up through the window and into our bedroom. I looked over at Ruby and saw that she was awake and sitting up in bed. She had the covers pulled up around her, and she sat there and stared at those hands too.
But then the light coming in the window showed white paint on the man’s hands, and when he put his shoulders through I saw the old blue Braves cap, and by the time he’d pulled his legs through I saw the old paint-flecked blue jeans and the same green T-shirt he’d had on at the baseball field a couple weeks ago. I clicked on the light on our bedside table just as he stood up straight.
“Wade!” I said. “You ain’t supposed to be here!”
“Shhhhhh!” he said.
Ruby kicked the covers off her and jumped out of the bed like it was Christmas morning. “Daddy,” she said.
“No!” I said. I jumped out of my bed too and tried to stop her from going to him, but she was too fast. Wade picked her up and hugged her to him.
“Hey, baby,” he whispered. He squeezed her tight.
“Put her down,” I said. “You’re going to be in big trouble for this.” I moved like I was walking toward the bedroom door. When he didn’t sit Ruby down, I put my hand on the knob like I was going to open it. “You need to leave,” I said, “or I’m going to holler for Miss Crawford, and she’ll call the-” But he didn’t let me finish.
“Y’all have to come with me,” he said. He stood there holding Ruby and staring down at me. “I’m serious,” he said. “You ain’t even got time to pack nothing. We’ve got to go.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. I gave the knob half a turn.
“I’m serious,” he said. “This ain’t no joke. You can stay here alone if you’re hardheaded, but I’m taking your sister.”
Ruby still had her arms around Wade’s neck, and I knew her well enough to know it was going to take some real convincing to get her to turn him loose.
“We ain’t going to let them send us to Alaska, Wade,” I said.
“This ain’t about Alaska,” he said.
“Then what’s it about?” I asked. I let go of the doorknob and put my hands on my hips to let him know I meant business.
“I’ll tell you in the car,” he said. “But we need to go; I’m serious. It’s not safe here.”
When he said that, I pictured the man I’d seen standing off in the woods that afternoon: the smile he’d given me, his closed eye, the way his skin looked all saggy on his face. Then I looked all around our bedroom, at all the nice, new things we’d been given after we moved into the home. But then my eyes stopped on the open window Wade had just crawled through, and I pictured something else: snow piled up high enough to pour inside onto the carpet; voices I didn’t know that belonged to people I’d never met coming from rooms down the hall in a house I hadn’t seen before; the daytime gone as black as night outside our window.
I looked up at Wade where he held Ruby in his arms, and I don’t know why, but at the time, leaving with him seemed like the best answer. At the time, it seemed like the only safe thing to do.
I jumped to the ground, and then I turned around and waited for Wade to lower Ruby down from the window. When he held her out to me, I could see that his shirt was wet with sweat around the armpits. Ruby and I were both still in our nightgowns; all he’d let us do was put on some socks and shoes. We stood back from the house and watched Wade climb out of the window and jump to the ground. Three houses down, there was a car parked on the street, and Wade took our hands and led us to it.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he whispered. He walked fast, and I could tell he wanted to get as far away from that window as we could. He opened the back door on the passenger’s side and me and Ruby climbed in. When I slid past Wade I caught a whiff of him, and I could tell that he hadn’t had a shower in a while. He went around to the driver’s side and jumped in and started the engine. The radio came on and I heard men’s voices; they were talking about baseball. Wade left the headlights off and drove away from the curb. I got up on my knees and looked out the back window at the home, figuring I might be seeing it for the last time. I saw that Wade had left our bedroom window open and one of the curtains was hanging out. There was a little bit of light shining from the window where I’d left the lamp on by the bed.