Hurt Go Happy (22 page)

She awoke, as she often did, with the sheets knotted in her fists. Her mother's screams rang in her ears as clearly as they had when she could hear. It was Joey's sixth birthday and the cake her mother had baked lay smashed on the floor, beneath a circle of chocolate icing on the wall.

That afternoon, Joey, who could not remember lying more than once or twice in her life, told Michelle, and then the school counselor, that she was going home for a few days to help her mother with her brother's fifth-birthday party. Her mother, she told them, had fallen on the stairs and dislocated her shoulder. With crossed fingers jammed into the pockets of her jacket to ease her guilt, she told an elaborate story of how her mother had tripped on the stairs but stopped her fall by catching the banister. Doctors said the injury to her shoulder had saved her from breaking her neck. Joey guessed the school might send a get-well card, but not until Monday, and it would take a couple of days to get there. Michelle's mother might call, but she'd be too scattered to think about it until Monday when the household settled down after a hectic weekend. By that time Joey would be in Miami with Sukari.

Early Friday morning, she caught a bus to Emeryville. Once on board the train, the attendant came by to check tickets. Joey had only glanced at them herself to make sure that there were train tickets to Albuquerque and plane tickets from El Paso to Miami. She settled into her seat on the train thinking she would read and sleep and wake up tomorrow in Albuquerque. The attendant, as usual, wrote the destination code on a card and fitted it into a slot on the overhead luggage rack. Joey sat in the window seat. She could see the cards of the people across the aisle, but not her own. They were getting off in BFD, wherever that was.

Joey hadn't slept for days, first worrying about whether she'd get caught before she got away and then about the condition she'd find Sukari in. She forced herself to stay awake through the Fresno stop because she wanted to see if it had changed since she'd last seen Sukari.

In Fresno, she stared out the window, comforted by the trees that were taller and bare of leaves. As they pulled out, she wondered why she felt better. What comfort were trees in winter? Just before she drifted off to sleep, she remembered how grateful she'd been that the people who now owned Charlie's house had changed the way it looked. She needed the world to change, even a little. It should not go on without noticing that important people were missing.

A man in overalls carrying a vacuum cleaner shook her. “What are you doing here?”

Joey blinked and sat up, rubbing her eyes. “What?” She looked around. The train was stopped and empty.

An attendant rushed up and snatched the destination card from above her seat and showed it to her. It read “BFD.” “The bus left hours ago.”

“What bus? I'm going to Albuquerque.”

“Yes, but you have to…” The attendant pulled Joey's suitcase from the overhead rack, so Joey missed the rest of what she said.

Joey patted her coat pockets, searching for her hearing aids. She hadn't missed them and now realized they were still on her dresser. “I'm deaf.”

The woman paled. “You can't hear?”

Joey shook her head.

“Oh, man.”

As it turned out, this train ended its run in Bakersfield, California. She was to have gotten off and taken a connecting bus to Los Angeles to catch the Southwest Chief from there to Albuquerque. The station manager and a conductor came running when the attendant radioed them. Both men's lips were thin and compressed, impossible to read, but they were clearly mad at her.

“I have to be on that train,” Joey said, trying desperately not to cry. “It's very important.”

The station manager said something, then took her by the arm and rushed her off the train, roughly, as if she'd stowed away. They took her into the station and made her sit, as if she were a child, or not too bright. She felt she deserved their anger. If she'd only looked at her tickets, she'd have seen that there was a bus coupon there. Maybe her mother was right not to want her traveling so far alone. If she couldn't be trusted to remember her hearing aids when she was going clear across country by herself, she probably wasn't responsible enough to make the trip. Joey got up and went to the office door. The station manager was talking on the phone. “I'm sorry that I missed the bus,” she said, “but you have to get me on that train.”

The man waved for her to be quiet. The attendant came toward her, pointing toward the chair she'd just left. “You go sit out there.”

Joey took a step backward, then flushed.
The only thing you can't do is hear,
Charlie had written. “I'm deaf, not retarded,” she snapped. “Don't talk to me like that.”

“I … I'm sorry,” the attendant said, then suddenly realized that Joey had understood her. “You read lips.”

“Yours pretty well. Not his.”

The attendant looked at the manager, then back at Joey. “We've got a taxi coming to take you to Barstow to meet the Southwest Chief. It left L.A. on time.”

Joey's knees wobbled, she was so nervous. She caught “taxi coming” and “Barstow.” She pretended to understand completely. “I don't think I can afford to take a cab to Barstow. How far is it?”

“About a hundred and thirty-six miles.”

Joey unzipped her backpack and took out her wallet. Mr. McCully had sent her $250. “I don't think I have enough to pay for the cab, but here is the number of an attorney in San Francisco. I'd like to call him.”

“You don't understand. Amtrak will pay for the cab.”

“Really?”

The attendant nodded. “If you'd told me you were deaf…”

“I know, I should have, but I didn't know about the change and you didn't say anything when you checked my ticket.”

The attendant shot the manager a look, then walked Joey from the office. “Do you need to use the restroom or anything? It will be a long ride.”

The cab ride through the dark desert night was wild. The driver had been told she was deaf, so he hunkered over the steering wheel, wordlessly, and drove as if they had a fire-breathing dragon on their tail. Joey spent the ride terrified they would crash and terrified they'd miss the train. At one point, he pulled into a gas station to use the pay phone. When he returned, he said, “It's nip and tuck,” then shrugged, got in, and sped out of the parking lot, tires squealing.

The train was sitting in the station with only one door open. As the taxi careened to a stop, the attendant waved for her to run. Joey crushed a twenty-dollar bill into the driver's hand, flung open the door, and ran for the train.

The second she leapt aboard, the attendant waved to the engineer, slammed the door, and the train started to roll. “You waited for me?” she gasped.

He smiled, took a pencil from his pocket, and wrote,
You must be pretty important,
on a little pad.

“I'm not,” Joey said, tears streaming down her cheeks, “but I'm meeting someone who is.”

Mr. McCully had reserved a deluxe sleeper for her. When the attendant led her through the car and slid open the door to room B, Joey couldn't believe her eyes. There was a sofa, a swivel chair, and her own little bathroom. The decor was a bit tired-looking, but she sank into it gratefully.

She'd missed dinner and the dining car was closed, but a few minutes after she boarded, the attendant brought her a tuna sandwich and a bag of chips. While she ate, he turned the sofa into a bed. Joey's last thoughts, before sleep overwhelmed her, were of Sukari comforting Luke that day in the yard after he ran into the power pole. Joey hadn't understood the signs then but she'd remembered them now. Sukari was hugging Luke and when he stopped crying and grinned, her solemn little face lit up and she signed, HURT GO. HAPPY. As the train rolled through the night, Joey's last thought was that her own happiness depended on believing that someday, no matter what they'd done to her, Sukari's pain, too, would end.

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Though it had been less than a month since Joey learned where Sukari was, she'd had plenty of time to imagine this day. She'd tried to steel herself, but nothing in her worst nightmare could have prepared her for what she was about to see.

Dolores Miller, an attorney friend of Mr. McCully's, and Kathy Lawson, a sign language interpreter, met her at the train station in Albuquerque. From there they drove in a rented van with a large cage in the back for more than five hours to Alamogordo, New Mexico, a small town near White Sands, where the first atomic bomb was tested, and just southeast of Roswell, where the first aliens from outer space supposedly landed.

Joey knew that if aliens had landed anywhere near here, it must have been by mistake. She'd never seen such desolation. The only color out the van window on the drive down Interstate 25 was beige. The mountains, dotted with short, dull green scrubs, were beige. The flatland, pocked with gray-green sage, was beige.

Ms. Miller drove and Kathy rode shotgun. Joey had wanted to sit in the backseat and not talk, but Kathy tried to include her by interpreting everything that she and Ms. Miller said. How warm they thought it was for early December, how long since it had rained, and so on.

At San Antonio, they took SR 380, a two-lane road that seemed to drift randomly south. There was nothing for miles before they went through the single two-house town of Bingham. Kathy pointed out that the man in the first house sold maps to the Trinity Site, where the first atomic bomb was tested, and the owner of the second house had a rock shop that sold “trinitite,” soil from the blast site turned to molten glass by the heat of the explosion.

Joey appreciated that they were all trying not to think about the task that lay ahead, but she finally pretended to sleep for the peace closing her eyes brought. She must have dozed off, because when Kathy patted her knee, she started.

WE HERE, she signed as they slowed to turn right into Holloman Air Force Base. A guard, absurdly dressed in jungle camouflage against such a barren background, put one hand on the large pistol on his right hip and held up his left hand for them to stop. Another guard stepped out of the little gatehouse and stood rigidly, watchfully, his rifle at the ready.

“Is this the right place?” Joey asked.

Kathy only nodded, afraid, Joey guessed, to move her hands.

Ms. Miller showed the guard a copy of the court order for Sukari's release. Joey could see none of the conversation that ensued and Kathy's hands remained knotted in her lap, but after a phone call, they were directed to pull into the small parking lot across from the gatehouse. A few minutes later, another armed guard wheeled into the parking lot on two of his jeep's four wheels. He led them to the main entrance, where they were asked to produce identification and again show the court order.

Kathy jumped when the guard reached in and slapped a temporary pass onto the inside of their windshield. Ms. Miller remained tight-jawed and unflinching, staring straight ahead while they waited for the security police to escort them to the Clarke Foundation.

For most of the six- or seven-mile drive, Joey sat forward and center in the backseat. When they passed the German Air Force Headquarters they looked at each other.

“This place gives me the creeps. We could disappear and nobody'd know what became of us,” Kathy said, but signed only the first part for Joey, who guessed the rest by catching “disappear” and “what became—us.”

They passed the USAF Space Command and Surveillance Squadron, a large, dark brown cinderblock building with no windows. It was ringed by a high chain-link fence topped off with coils of razor wire. In spite of herself, Joey grinned. “Do you think this is all here because of the aliens?

Ms. Miller finally smiled. “These probably
are
the aliens.”

Kathy laughed and interpreted.

Joey was thinking that this must be the longest seven miles on the planet, when they made a turn onto Vandergrief Road, and there, far off to the right, on the broad flat horizon like a dead snake in the sun, she saw a long, single-story building. She knew this was it, and her heart began to pound.

The approach off Vandergrief brought them to the back of the building. They drove its length, past a series of metal doors, each with a chain-link enclosure attached.

“Dear God,” Kathy said.

Ms. Miller made a right turn past the sign that read,
CLARKE FOUNDATION, PRIMATE BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH LABORATORY
, and pulled into the parking lot. Two scruffy-looking bushes and a straight-backed chair against the front wall beneath a row of windows were all that broke the monotony of the beige building. Joey opened the sliding van door and got out.

About a half mile away, she could see more than a hundred corn cribs shimmering in the heat like a mirage on the desert landscape. She stared at them. “Ask him what those are,” she whispered to Kathy.

“Monkeys,” the guard said.

Maybe it was the dry heat, but Joey felt dizzy. Was Sukari out there? Did he say monkeys because he didn't know the difference, or were they really monkeys?

“Not chimpanzees?”

“No, monkeys,” he said. “A thousand of them. Come this way. I want to see Dr. Fred's face when he gets this.” The security guard grinned and waved the court order.

An old dog with fur the color of sand lifted his head to look at them as they came in the glass doors, then laid it down again and thumped the floor with his tail. They waited in the shabby lobby with the dog until the guard came back.

About midway down the corridor, standing in the only open doorway, was a short, round, wispy-white-haired old man in baggy, wrinkled gray pants held up by suspenders. Joey thought of the empty chair against the building and guessed it belonged to him. She pictured him out there till the sun came up over the roof, content to watch the jets scream across the sky, or the quieter comings and goings of the people who worked here. As they approached, she saw the stub of a cigar clamped in his teeth and his icy stare. After they passed, she glanced back and saw him crush the court order in his fist, go back into his office, and close the black-lettered door:
DR. FREDRICK CLARKE. DIRECTOR
. The man who owned and ran the most notorious research lab in the country was a dumpy, angry old man. If she wasn't who she was and wasn't steps away from taking Sukari away from him, she might not have believed it was possible for men like him and her father to exist in the world, which otherwise seemed relatively compassionate.