Follow Me (31 page)

But it was Leo’s escape that threatened to undo her. Frozen by panic as she’d watched the cat disappear, she felt she couldn’t
take any more — not another blow or harsh word, not any new expression of discontent from her daughter, not a prurient glance
from a store clerk at her swollen face, and especially not such an unspeakable betrayal as this, by the same cat that had
saved her life.

When awareness of the consequences caught up with her, she came to her senses and rushed after the cat. But the faster she
ran, the faster the cat bolted ahead, and he reached the edge of the woods while Sally was still far behind. She crashed after
him through the thicket, tore through brambles into a swampier area carpeted with moss and dormant stubs of cabbage. She shouted
his name and then called him in a desperate whisper that she tried to make alluring. But the only answer she received was
the hum of the wind.

She went back and found Penelope standing shivering, coatless, on the edge of the lot. She picked her up and tried to warm
her in her arms while she continued to call for the cat. When she realized that the glistening dots gathering in the girl’s
hair were flakes of melting snow, she carried her back to the car.

They stayed parked at the store for another two hours. Sally tried to lure the cat out of the woods with bologna, and when
that failed she bought a tin of sardines. By late morning the cat still hadn’t appeared, and Penelope was hungry again, so
Sally bought a turkey sandwich for them to split, and while they ate, she wrote out a detailed description of the cat on a
flattened paper bag. She even drew a picture of him on the bag, and she wrote down the number of Potter’s Hardware. With the
clerk’s permission, she pinned the notice to the community bulletin board by the door.

When she declared that they’d have to leave without the cat, she was surprised at Penelope’s apparent indifference. Sally
thought she would have been hysterical. Glancing at her as they drove north, she worried that her daughter was growing hard
and unforgiving. But such a change was impossible. She decided instead that her little princess was so used to affection that
it wouldn’t occur to her to love anyone or anything that didn’t love her back.

Until she either found a job or wired the bank in Tuskee to send the money from her account, Sally would have to pay for everything
in cash, with Mason Jackson’s money. It had been difficult to part with the first dollar, but she expected that with every
new transaction, spending it would become easier, more naturally inevitable.

Still, she felt compelled to search out the best deals possible. They stayed that night in a motel advertising rooms for $19.99,
located near the entrance to the state park, registered under the name she came up with when she had the pen in hand:
Sally Bliss.
She liked the name immediately, though when she asked her daughter if she wouldn’t mind trying out a new last name for a
while, the girl said no way, not for a hundred dollars. But Sally had already made up her mind. Even if she didn’t say this
to her daughter aloud, Penelope Bliss would just have to get used to it.

They had supper at the diner adjacent to the motel. Penelope ordered a cheeseburger, and Sally chose the most inexpensive
hot meal on the menu, spaghetti and meatballs, which included a basket full of soft, warm rolls, pats of butter on ice, and
packets of saltines. Not only did she eat several rolls slathered with butter, but she also slipped all the saltines into
her purse to snack on later.

A map of the state was printed on the place mat, and a dozen towns and cities were indicated with their first initials followed
by dashes to be filled in by children and other bored customers while they waited for their meal. The whole course of the
river was marked with a bold, squiggling line, and at the halfway point was a
T
for the city of Tuskee. Sally wrote out the name with a crayon from a cup on the table. She filled in the letters following
the
B
in the corner of the state and the name after the
A
to the east. And though she’d learned long ago that there was no such city called Rondo along the Tuskee, that’s the name
she gave to the city situated on the lake at the mouth of the river, filling in
o-n-d-o
after the
R
.

The newspaper she bought was from that city, Sally Bliss’s Rondo. She paged through the sections while her daughter watched
People Are Funny
on the television in the motel room. The TV audience’s laughter seemed to rise in response to the stories that Sally was
reading, and it made her wonder if any of it was true.

It could have been yesterday’s paper or tomorrow’s. But there was some useful information — a reminder that daylight savings
would end Sunday at 2:00 a.m. and a forecast of wintry weather for the weekend. And look at that nice photograph of Harold
Lloyd, shown seated on a hotel sofa reading a newspaper article about Bing Crosby’s marriage. So Bing was getting married.
Oh, that lucky duck of a woman!

There was a big ad for a men’s sport hat, the Dobbs Gamebird. And under the heading of church services, the sermon that sounded
most promising was “What the Bible Teaches about Demons,” to be delivered at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday at the First Assembly of
God on Field Street.

But really, it was the classifieds that mattered, and Sally set them aside as though they were dessert, turning to them only
when she was done with the rest of the paper. And here was a whole half page under the heading of “Help Wanted: Female.” One
announced an opening at a downtown bank, good pay with benefits, but keypunch experience was desirable. Girls were needed
for laundry work at the Star Palace, 61 North Street. Business girls who wanted to add to their present income were encouraged
to write to Avon Cosmetics, PO Box 516.

She circled the notice for
Girl, general office work, 5H days/week, must be good typist.
Another ad for an
Experienced person for one-girl shop office
sounded promising:
Typing, shorthand, payroll, and clerical duties. Weddell Tools.
But she had no experience with shorthand or payroll.

There were several ads for housekeepers, to live in or out, paying up to forty-five dollars a week. And there were other,
less familiar possibilities:
2 ladies to sell costume jewelry. Either home, fashion shows, or where you work. Weekly commission.

And there was an ad for
Dictaphone operations, section ability, shorthand not necessary.
This one offered a salary of
sixty to sixty-five dollars a week
.

The ad that looked the most appealing of all was for waitresses at Neimurs Dinner Cabaret,
Cocktail girls, nice figure, talent a plus. Performance potential. 5-day week. All benefits. Good salary. Apply at box office.
She circled this one and put a star by it.

The city at the mouth of the Tuskee may not have been as far as she would have liked to go from Benny Patterson, but in the
past she hadn’t ever gone as far as she’d planned. It appeared to be a big enough city where she could live without being
found. And if the classifieds were accurate, there were too many available jobs to pass by. The city of Rondo it was then
— her destination again, as it had been before.

She set the folded paper on the table and watched television with Penelope. By the end of the show she was convinced that
people really were funny, and she fell asleep in a hopeful mood.

The next morning they both slept late, past nine. They took baths — Sally had to plug the tub drain with a washcloth because
she couldn’t find the stopper — and they had a big breakfast of pancakes and sausages at the diner. But when Sally tried to
start the car, the engine just rattled without revving. Though she kept trying to turn the key farther in the ignition, pressed
the accelerator to the floor, and even banged on the dashboard, nothing happened.

If the car had broken down the previous day, she probably would have given herself up to despair. But she felt stronger after
the night’s rest, better prepared for unexpected difficulties, and she had enough wherewithal to ask the motel clerk to call
a towing company.

The tow truck arrived within the half hour. The driver — a polite, grease-stained teenage boy — looked under the hood of the
Mercury and diagnosed a carburetor problem. He said his boss was at the garage, and they’d try to have the problem fixed by
the afternoon. He apologized to Sally several times, as though he were responsible for the inconvenience.

It was a crisp day with a fresh blue sky, and after the car had been towed away, Sally tied a wool hat on Penelope and lured
her into taking a walk by telling her that they were going on a treasure hunt.

They followed the winding road a short distance into the park until they came to a sign posting park rules. From there they
followed a red blaze on a trunk marking the start of a trail. They walked parallel to the road for a hundred yards and then
down a gradual slope through a thick pine grove, between towering trees that must have been planted deliberately decades ago,
in even rows.

They passed only one person, a little man who came from the opposite direction carrying fishing gear. He grumbled a greeting
in an accent that Sally thought was German, and she had an impulse to stop and strike up a conversation with him. But with
his shoulders hunched and his cap low over his eyes, he gave the impression that he didn’t want to be approached.

They continued along the path, their steps muffled by the cushion of wet needles. For the fun of it, Penelope found a stick
and began lashing it against the bushes, and the ruckus startled a doe, sending it loping across the path ahead and into the
woods.

The trail grew rougher as it sloped downhill, winding from beneath the pines through a stand of birch, with yellow leaves
still clinging to the branches and glittering in the sun. Beyond the birch was a meadow, and past the meadow was a wooded
area cresting the steep ridge of a ravine, where, from the bottom, came a sound like a pot’s lid rattling over boiling water.
They climbed carefully down the path, Sally leading the way and turning at each difficult stretch to brace Penelope and keep
her from slipping. Though the sun was hidden by the far edge of the ravine, the bright sky cast enough light to make sharply
defined shadows that shivered and melted into new shapes with the breeze. Dampness intensified the smell of sap and pine bark,
and in the deeper shade, patches of frost were visible. Crows squawked back and forth high in the trees, and one of them burst
into a lengthy chatter so varied that the sounds seemed composed of words. And when Sally heard a small animal’s sudden scratching
through the needles, she had a flash of hope that Leo the cat had come back to them. But of course Leo had disappeared many
miles away.

The river appeared suddenly in front of them as Sally pushed aside the screen of brush. A set of uneven steps carved out of
the sandstone led from the path to the edge of the water, which flowed out from a cavelike opening into the broad stretch
between the wooded slopes. A hawk circled high overhead. The far side of the ravine was blanketed in a solid shadow, but the
water sparkled as it rushed against huge boulders, foaming and splitting into transparent cords, cascading over wide stone
shelves into foaming pools.

Here’s your treasure, Sally wanted to say. But the river wouldn’t be enough for her daughter. They’d come all this way, walked
for an hour or more, and she would be expecting a real reward, not just something to look at, but something to own.

Penelope was crouching at the edge of a graveled ridge that jutted out into the water, poking with a stick, stirring the submerged
pebbles into a smoky stew. She didn’t need to be warned to be quiet. She was silent, concentrating intently on the water,
so Sally relaxed, closing her eyes, breathing in the rich smell of moss. She thought it remarkably strange that this was the
river that came bubbling out of the spring on Thistle Mountain, the same river that crawled past Mason Jackson’s house in
Fishkill Notch and flowed below the Barge in Helena. It looked too pure and too contained by the high walls of the gorge to
have covered that distance. But she was certain it was the Tuskee because she’d been following it the whole way north.

Pressing her tongue over the jagged edge of the broken tooth and pushing at the loose tooth next to it, she imagined that
she was being healed in this remote spot on the bank of the Tuskee. And then, partly because she was curious to hear how her
voice would sound in this isolated place and partly because she just felt the urge, she began to sing in a soft voice.

It’s simple to wish…

Singing softly, eyes closed, swaying slightly, drifting through the verses, she didn’t hear her daughter’s sudden gasp or
see her arm freeze in the air. Not until Penelope whispered, “Mama!” did Sally open her eyes and look down.

At first she thought she recognized the same kind of fish she’d seen in the shallows below the platform in Tuskee. But she
was mistaken. It was some kind of water snake or maybe a salamander or a newt, yes, like the one she’d seen years ago at the
spring, with the weeds clinging to it like wet hair, the sleek bronze-colored strands matted on its head and wavering below
the surface. How dark and staring its eyes were — brown buttons too large for its head and heavy lids fringed with a fuzzy
line that almost looked like lashes. And how humanlike its tiny forelimbs were, the webbed, long-fingered hands clinging to
the curve of a rock, tensing when she leaned forward, as though it were preparing to bolt.

Funny little creature, too strange to be real, and yet it was real, too real and outlandish to be any kind of animal that
could be named. Why, it almost looked like it would open its mouth and talk. But it didn’t want to talk. It wanted exactly
what they wanted, to understand what it was seeing.

And simple to dream…

The murmur of song came from within Sally, but at the same time the sound seemed separate, impossible to stifle, as though
she weren’t responsible for it. She guessed that the music had a soothing effect, for the creature seemed to be straining
to listen even as it stared at Penelope, holding the girl in its gaze as though admiring her beauty.