Follow Me (12 page)

T
he only bus leaving Amity that evening was heading north, so Sally headed north with it, taking the seat directly behind the
driver, hoping that no one had noticed she was barefoot. There were just three other passengers: two old women wearing dusty
black capes over black dresses, looking as if they’d been riding the same bus in the same clothes for days, and a blank-faced
boy of about fourteen who’d been waiting alone at the stop on the outskirts of Amity and yawned the whole way up the aisle
when he’d boarded.

The motion of the bus was jerky, and the interior rattled over every pothole. Smoke hung in the air from the last set of passengers,
stirring in Sally a longing for a cigarette. She blinked drowsily, but sleep wouldn’t come to her. She sat up a little straighter.
Bumping along toward her new life, she studied the back of the driver’s head, a tangle of gray, brown, and white hair that
reminded her of batter for a marble cake.

Wouldn’t she rather have been stirring a cake batter’s chocolate into swirls, dipping in her finger for a taste? Sure. Pouring,
measuring, creaming sugar with sweet butter. And the good smell of the cake baking in the oven. Mmm-mmm. The spongy holes
from the prongs of the fork, and it was done, la-di-da, see what Sally made all on her own, sure, you can have some, there’s
enough to go around, but wait your turn.

Loden and Willy would be right there holding out empty plates to be filled. And Tru and Laura and Clem. And a little boy,
his face smeared with chocolate frosting.

He likes the cake so much, he’s not coming up for air till he’s cleaned the plate.

Look how happy he is.

Happy to be eating cake.

And the rest of them — what had they been up to these past years?

Doing and doing and doing. You know, the same old thing. They always liked best doing as close to nothing as they could get
away with. Leaning against the trunk of a sycamore at noon, looking up through the cool shade at the highest branches and
the sunlit green of the leaves between patches of blue sky. Not that they’d ever put it that way. But there were some things
they would never take for granted, like the coo of a dove. Who doesn’t love that sound? And the sweet racket of a cricket’s
chirp. And at night a full moon, a soft breeze, and the pulsing glow from a firefly trapped in cupped hands. What a life.

Well, we’d best be going. Come along now, finish your cake and say thanks.

Thanks.

Wait, don’t leave!

It was you who left.

Then and now separated by the wall of Sally’s foolishness, an unbreachable wall built stone by stone, reaching high and wide
enough to block the view. Sally on one side, her little boy on the other. Why was she heading in the opposite direction, away
from him? Because she was only riding on the bus, not steering it.

Good-bye, Sally.

Who’s Sally?

I’m your mother, damn it, and one day I’m coming to get you.

Trouble was, she’d paid for her fare all the way to the last stop on the bus route, the end of the line — not Rondo, not her
unreal city, but close enough. Before too long, she’d go back home and find her little boy. But for now she wanted to get
as far away as possible, as quickly as possible, from Fishkill Notch. Upriver, downriver, it didn’t matter where she was going,
as long as she was going away from Mason Jackson’s house and that box on the shelf.

Bumpety-bumping through the darkening land. The rattling shell of the bus made talk impossible, so Sally would never know
whether the two old mourners across the aisle were on their way to a funeral or coming home from one, or why the boy was traveling
alone, or what the driver with his marble-cake hair was thinking about while he piloted the bus along the uneven road, from
Amity through the hamlets of Garlinport and Canadice and — look at the sign illuminated by the bus’s headlights, look there,
why, it was Helena. What was so important about Helena? Sally knew the name, yet at first she couldn’t remember why she knew
it.

That her recognition was imprecise initially made her all the more interested in the place. Helena. She recalled that Helena
was… what? She associated the place with all things sophisticated, gleaming, sharp, and witty. Why? She wasn’t sure. But here
she was, in the town… yes, she remembered now, where the worldly Gladdy Toffit lived.

She leaned forward. “Do you stop here?” she asked the driver.

“What’s that?”

“Do you stop here?”

“You want to get off?”

“I was just wondering…”

“Yes or no, miss?”

“Well…”

The next thing she knew, the bus was slowing to a halt, and the hinges were creaking as the doors folded open. The driver
dropped his arm with obvious impatience. The other passengers were silent. All attention was focused on Sally, who sat there
staring ahead, trying to pretend that she wasn’t solely responsible for this interruption. It was a long, awkward moment,
and it became more awkward with every second that passed. She might as well have spoken a different language from the rest
of them. She couldn’t make her desires known because she wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted, and no one was going to make
a move to help her. She was condemned to fulfill the expectations of these strangers, which meant that she had no choice but
to tighten her grip on the rolled edge of the paper bag full of Mason Jackson’s money and get off the bus.

She was left standing barefooted on the sidewalk. A row of streetlamps lit up the block where she’d inadvertently landed —
the center of the town where Gladdy Toffit lived. There were several empty stores across the street, and on one of the boards
that had been nailed over the window, someone had painted a skull with gaping black eyes. On Sally’s side of the street was
the local credit union, a small grocery store, and, down at the end of the block, a neon sign for a tavern, the Barge. The
B
of the sign blinked weakly, off and on again, and then surprised Sally by suddenly going out altogether.

Clutching the paper bag, she headed toward the tavern. Since she didn’t hear music or the noise of a crowd when she stood
outside the door, she expected to find the interior quiet. Instead, when she pushed open the heavy oak door and stepped inside,
she was met by a blast of music from the jukebox and the clamor of voices trying to be heard. People were packed against the
bar, others were standing idly, and there was a group of men, all bearded, all in baseball caps and sleeveless shirts, hovering
by the entrance.

To move farther into the tavern, Sally had to pass between the gauntlet of these men. She pressed forward. But the space between
them narrowed, and she heard their murmurs as they became aware of her. She considered the ridiculous impression she was making:
a young woman in a mud-splattered yellow silk dress, with no shoes. She’d have expected strangers would prefer to keep their
distance from a girl like her. But the men seemed eager to claim her as their own, pressing in, raising their voices to announce,
“Why, won’t you lookie here, we got a vee-zit-or!” and “Hello, baby doll!” and “Hey, how come I don’t know you?”

“Excuse me,” she said, trying to push through the crowd. When the men wouldn’t budge, she seethed, “Get on out of my way,
you dumbbells!” thinking this was closer to the language they spoke.

In response, an arm came up and wrapped around her waist. A man put his face close to hers, flashing a grin that revealed
bloody barbecue sauce filling the cracks between his teeth. She felt another hand slide more stealthily down her buttocks,
smoothing her dress. She tried to free herself, but the group of them were surrounding her, bearing down, the lot of them
becoming one brutish force.

She should have been offended. But all Sally could think about right then was protecting the bag full of Mason Jackson’s money.
Whose money? She’d stolen it — or he’d given it to her. Which? Both. Either. It was hers now. No, it was still his. How disorienting
it was to consider this while she was trying to push her way through the men. With their groping and fondling, they were coming
too close to Mason Jackson’s money.

Stay away, you perverts!

Did she say that aloud? She wasn’t sure. But it wouldn’t matter what she said because they weren’t listening to her words.

Then listen to my elbow, you bastard, right in your fat gut!

“Uh!”

And how about a kick in the kneecap?

“Uh!”

That’ll show you, baby-dolling a girl you don’t even know…

She watched their mouths move, but their voices seemed to come from elsewhere, to belong to others hidden behind the curtain
of bodies. They asked her, “What are you doing here?” and “Why are you alone?” and “Where are your shoes?”

“I’m looking for a friend.”

“He’s not here.”

“She.”

“Who’s she?”

“Gladdy Toffit.”

“You’re looking for Gladdy? Why didn’t you say so? Hey, she’s looking for Gladdy.”

“We should have guessed.”

“She’s Gladdy’s friend.”

“Gladdy! Where’s Gladdy?”

“There she is!”

A hand cupped gently under her elbow, steering her through the crowd.

“Move aside, boys, let us through. I’ll take you to Gladdy. Come on now, out of the way, make room, here we are.” Men stepped
back, opening up a path straight from the entrance to the bar. The song on the jukebox finished, the record clicked back into
its slot, and as the voices in the bar softened to a hush, the man who was guiding Sally tapped the shoulder of a woman drooping
on her barstool.

She straightened, tipped back the wide brim of her straw hat, and blinked against the ceiling lights. The foundation greased
on her face made her skin shine. The penciled line of her plucked eyebrows seemed to move independently of the muscles of
her face, bunching when she smiled.

“My darling Lily!”

Gladdy grabbed Sally’s arm and pulled her into an embrace. Her breath had a sickly smell of licorice, with a hint of vinegar.

“You’ve come home,” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Why didn’t you write?”

“That’s Lily?” a man in the background asked.

“That’s not Lily,” someone else declared.

The man who had accompanied Sally through the crowd asked her directly: “Are you Lily?”

“Who’s Lily?”

“Why, we all thought you were out in California.”

“I’m not Lily. I’m Sally.”

“Sally who?” Gladdy asked, wobbling slightly on the stool, squinting against the blur.

“Don’t you know me, Gladdy?”

“That’s Lily’s dress,” Gladdy announced, suspicion in her voice.

“You gave it to me,” Sally reminded her, but just then the jukebox started up again.

“What?”

“You gave it to me,” Sally shouted, “to wear at Georgie’s wedding!”

That was enough of a clue for Gladdy to guess the answer to the riddle. “Sally! Why, Sally!” The heave of her hiccup would
have sent her flying from her stool if she hadn’t still been holding on to Sally. And now Sally was holding on to her.

“Hello, Gladdy.”

“I thought you were my Lily,” Gladdy said loudly, in an effort to be heard above the noise. “Just appearing out of the blue
in Lily’s dress and all. And with that light shining in my eyes.”

Sally could guess that it wasn’t the light confusing Gladdy. It was drink after drink after drink. And now she wanted Sally
to sit by her, sit here on the stool that her friend Mick would give up, what a gentleman, and they could talk, Sally and
Gladdy, over drinks, and laugh about old times — as if their brief history of gabbing at Erna’s parlor was already that far
back in the past.

“What’ll you have?”

The question was put to her as if it were a test, and Sally realized even as she answered, “Lemonade, I guess,” that she’d
failed.

“Lemonade? Lemonade!” Gladdy hooted. “Give her your famous Wallop, Bill,” Gladdy directed the bartender. “And the same for
me. You’re in my town,” she said to Sally. “Let the fun begin!”

The fun began with a bitter concoction of Wild Turkey and soda water, which Gladdy goaded Sally into drinking in gulps. A
full glass replaced the empty one, and Sally kept on drinking, though more slowly. Between sips, she asked Gladdy why she’d
missed Georgie’s wedding.

“I hate weddings,” Gladdy replied, and with that flat declaration she made Sally aware of how little she knew her or knew
about her. The woman who lived on what she’d called a
handsome trust
and who had always seemed to have more advice to share than there was time to share it — it was hard to match that woman
with this one. Sally hadn’t known, for instance, that Gladdy spent her nights drinking at this dingy bar. She hadn’t known
that Gladdy liked to get so drunk she couldn’t think straight. She hadn’t known that Gladdy hated weddings. Why did she hate
weddings? Sally wanted to ask. But Gladdy preempted her, demanding with sudden clarity, “Why are you here?”

“I…” Sally didn’t know what to say. The pronoun hung there, without meaning. Just a dumb, reckless, forgettable
I,
unaccountable and attached to only one thing: the paper bag stuffed with Mason Jackson’s money. She gripped the rolled edge
more tightly, making a small tear in the paper.