LITMIR.BIZ

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“It’s awful,” she said, her heart thumping. “I want to go home.”

      “How did Fred catch you?” Will asked.

      “I went for a walk,” Stella said.

      “You ran away from home,” Will said. “Do your parents care?”

      Stella thought of Kaye waking up to find her gone and wanted to cry. That made her nose hurt more, and her ears started to ache.

      The wire mesh door rattled. Will pointed, and Kevin left to see what was going on. Stella glanced at Will and then followed Kevin. Mother Trinket was at the cage door. She had just finished shoving a cafeteria tray under the mesh frame. The tray held a paper plate covered with fried chicken backs and necks, a small scoop of dry potato salad, and several long spears of limp broccoli. The old woman watched them, eyes milky, chin withdrawn, strong mottled arms hanging like two birch logs.

      “Yuck,” Kevin said, and picked up the tray. He gave it to Stella. “All yours,” he said.

      “How’s the girl?” Mother Trinket asked.

      “She’s really sick,” Kevin said.

      “People coming. They’ll take care of her,” Mother Trinket said.

      “What do you care?” Kevin asked.

      The old woman blinked. “It’s my son,” she said, then turned and waddled through the door. She closed and locked it behind her.

      The girl, Free Shape, was breathing in short, thick gasps as they carried Stella’s tray into the back room.

      “She smells bad,” Mabel said. “I’m scared for her.”

      “So am I,” Will said.

      “Will is Papa here,” Mabel said. “Will should get help.”

      Will looked miserably at Stella and fell back on the couch. Stella put the tray on a small folding table. She did not feel like eating. Both she and Kevin squatted by Elvira. Stella stroked the girl’s cheeks, making her freckles pale. They remained pale. The patches had steadied in the last few minutes, and were now even more meaningless and vague.

      “Can we make her feel better?” Stella asked.

      “We’re not angels,” Will said.

      “My mother says we all have minds deep inside of us,” Stella said, desperate to find some answer. “Minds that talk to each other through chemicals and—”

      “What the hell does she know?” Will asked sharply. “She’s human, right?”

      “She’s Kaye Lang Rafelson,” Stella said, stung and defensive.

      “I don’t care who she is,” Will said. “They hate us because we’re new and better.”

      “Our parents don’t hate us,” Stella ventured hopefully, looking at Mabel and Kevin.

      “Mine do,” Mabel said. “My father hates the government so he hid me, but he just took off one day. My mother left me in the bus station.”

      Stella could see that these children had lived lives different from her own. They all smelled lonely and left out, like puppies pulled from a litter, whining and searching for something they had lost. Beneath the loneliness and other emotions of the moment lay their fundamentals: Will smelled rich and sharp like aged cheddar. Kevin smelled a little sweet. Mabel smelled like soapy bathwater, steam and flowers and clean, warm skin.

      She could not detect Elvira’s fundamental. Underneath the illness she seemed to have no smell at all.

      “We thought about escaping,” Kevin said. “There’s steel wire in all the walls. Fred told us he made this place strong.”

      “He hates us,” Will said.

      “We’re worth money,” Kevin said.

      “He told me his daughter killed his wife,” Will said.

      That kept them all quiet for a while, all but Free Shape, whose breath rasped.

      “Teach me how to talk with my dapples,” Stella asked Will. She wanted to take their minds off the things they could not hope to do, like escape.

      “What if Elvira dies?” Will asked, his forehead going pale.

      “We’ll cry for her,” Mabel said.

      “Right,” Kevin said. “We’ll make a little cross.”

      “I’m not a Christian,” Will said.

      “I am,” Mabel said. “Christ was one of us. I heard it in the woods. That’s why they killed him.”

      Will shook his head sadly at this naïveté. Stella felt ashamed at the words she had spoken to the men in the Texaco minimart. She knew she was nothing like Jesus. Deep inside, she did not feel merciful and charitable. She had never admitted that before, but watching Elvira gasping on the floor taught her what her emotions really were.

      She hated Fred Trinket and his mother. She hated the federals coming for them.

      “We’ll have to fight to get out,” Will said. “Fred is careful. He doesn’t come inside the cage. He won’t even call a doctor. He just calls for the vans. The vans come from Maryland and Richmond. Everyone wears suits and carries cattle prods and tranquilizer guns.”

      Stella shivered. She had called her parents; her parents were coming. They might be captured, too.

      “Sometimes when the vans come, the children die, maybe by accident, but they’re still dead,” Will continued. “They burn the bodies. That’s what we heard in the woods.” He added, “I don’t feel like teaching you how to freckle.”

      “Then tell me about the woods,” Stella said.

      “The woods are free,” Will said. “I wish the whole world was woods.”

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

      The rain came back as drizzle. Kaye pulled off and parked just north of the private asphalt road that led to the big, white-pillared brick house and outbuildings. The sky was dark enough that the occupants of the house had turned on the interior lights. The black steel mailbox, mounted on a chest-high brick base, showed five gold reflective numbers.

      “This is it,” Mitch said. He peered through the wet windshield and rolled down his window. A red pickup and camper had been parked in front. There were no other vehicles.

      “Maybe we’re too late,” Kaye said, fighting back tears.

      “It’s only been ten or fifteen minutes.”

      “It took us twenty minutes. The sheriff might have come and gone.”

      Mitch quietly opened the door. “If I can grab her, I’ll come right back.”

      “No,” Kaye said. “I won’t be left alone. I don’t think I can stand it.” Her fingers gripped the steering wheel like cords of rope.

      “Stay here, please,” Mitch said. “I’ll be okay. I can carry her. You can’t.”

      “You’d be surprised,” Kaye said. Then, “Why would you have to carry her?”

      “For speed,” Mitch said. “For speed, that’s all.”

      He opened the glove box and took out a cloth-wrapped bundle, pulled open the cloth, smelling of lubricant, and removed a pistol. He tucked the gun into his suit coat pocket. They had three handguns, all of them unregistered and illegal. Getting charged with gun possession was the last thing Mitch and Kaye lost sleep over. Nevertheless, they both looked on the guns with loathing, knowing that weapons give a false sense of security.

      Mitch had cleaned and oiled all three

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