Francie's Got a Gun, page 17
“Who’s your friend?” Mom asked, and Kate almost felt bad for her, she looked so excited. She knew so little.
“This is Peter.”
“My mom’s running the half-marathon,” Peter offered.
“Oh, wonderful! Just like David!” Sally almost jumped for joy. Why did she have to be so dramatic?
Dad said he needed one more stop at the porta-potties (too much information!), and at the exact same moment someone shouted, “Boo!” and Kate turned around, and there were her friends, especially Emma. “Where were you? Why didn’t you run with us?”
And that’s when she noticed—her stomach felt fine. She wasn’t sick anymore. It was all over. It was all beginning. “I hear there’s free food?” she said.
“Are you hungry, I made sandwiches!” Sally offered, but Kate and her friends, including Peter, were already heading for the food tent.
“Later, Mom!” Kate turned around and shouted, in case Sally was worried, but it didn’t appear that she was. She was adjusting a bag that was hanging over the stroller handles, and then she stood up very straight in her long, shapeless dress that looked exactly like a burlap sack with armholes, her hair in one long braid down her back, staring ahead at something Kate couldn’t see, and probably didn’t want to know about at all.
* * *
Sam was stuck in the stroller. The lady stopped pushing, the stroller stopped, and all he could see was a bush. The action was happening behind him. Loud music, loud voices, loud colours, loud people. Go! He rocked his head and chest and legs and got the stroller shaking a bit, but it didn’t move. He twisted his head back on his neck and screeched.
But the lady didn’t notice. She let go of the handles, Sam snapped his body backward, and the whole stroller crashed to the grass.
“Goodness! What’s all this fuss!”
Sam was hot, wet, thirsty. Through teary eyelids, he saw the lady’s giant legs under a swishing skirt and her head, far away, looking down at him. The dog ran up and licked Sam’s face. The boy pulled the dog away.
“He’s a bit red,” the lady said to the boy with the dog. “Run to the van. Bring the juice boxes. And a sun hat!”
The lady unstrapped Sam, freed him from the toppled stroller, just in time for a loud BANG! Sam saw people running away. He pushed to his feet and staggered after them. There was his sister. She was digging around in the grass, looking for something, with her friend Alice. “AAA-SH,” Sam said. “AAA-SH.”
“He’s saying my name!” said Alice.
“No he’s not,” said Francie. “He can’t talk.”
There was a loud noise: Eee-oh-eet! The lady was making it. Alice jumped up and grabbed the lady’s arm.
“Where’s Kate?” the lady said. “Has anyone seen Kate?”
“Mom!”
The dog was back, knocking Sam onto his bottom, licking Sam’s mouth. Sam grabbed one of the hairy ears and pulled. The lady unpeeled his fingers, poked a straw into a juice box, and put it into his hands. Ooooo!
Francie said, “He’s too little to hold that.” But the lady didn’t listen.
Sam squeezed, juice squirted out of the straw down his chin, neck, shirt, front, he was wet, sticky. He sat down hard. His sister came over and said, “Not like that, Sam!” She tried to put the straw into his mouth and he screeched. She squeezed and juice squirted onto his tongue, and it tasted sweet and he wanted more. More!
They were moving now, the lady in the dress was moving them, she tried to put Sam into the stroller, but Sam arched his back and screamed till she gave up. She picked him up and squashed him under one arm, the stroller under the other. Her arm was strong and meaty, but Sam kept fighting. All the way up a hill.
“What’s the matter now?” The lady was talking in a whispery hiss. She hissed, “Babies love me.”
The lady stopped at a picnic table beside a tree.
“AAA-SH!”
Alice took Sam into her arms. He thrashed with excitement. Alice turned in circles till Sam spit up some juice. Purple. Nobody saw but Alice. She wiped his mouth on the bottom part of her shirt.
The lady held out a sandwich and Sam took it and threw it on the ground.
“Bad Sam!”
The dog was eating the sandwich very fast, one two three gulps. Sam was hungry. He plopped over, face down, and smacked his forehead on the ground. Smack, smack, smack.
“What is he doing? Stop him!” the lady said.
Francie said, “He hits his head on things when he’s mad. He likes it.”
Alice stroked a squishy bit of bread across Sam’s ear, his cheek. He stopped smacking his head and looked at her. She gave him the squishy bit of bread. And more. He sat up. She gave Sam a bit of salty meat. She gave Sam warm cheese. A whole slice of bread. But the dog got it.
“Bad dog!”
Alice tried to hug Sam and Sam pinched her face, he pulled her hair.
“There’s something wrong with that baby,” said the lady.
“He’s not a baby!” Francie said very loudly. She threw a slice of tomato and some lettuce onto the ground. The dog did not eat either.
The lady lay down on a blanket on the grass, on her back. She folded her hands over her chest. She said it was nap time.
Sam knew all about nap time, and he was not interested!
“Quiet! I need quiet!” said the lady.
Alice and Francie were calling Sam like he was a dog: “Come, Sam, come, Sam!” He crawled after them like a dog. Then they walked faster. “Come, Sam, come!”
“Don’t go far!” the lady shouted. “I’ll eee-oh-eet you!”
“Okay, Mom!”
Sam bobbled to standing and teetered along, trying to catch Alice and Francie. When he lost balance, he had to sit down, hard, but he always got up again. They were ahead of him, sliding on their bellies under a big bush. “Come, Sam!” Sam plopped forward and crawled under too.
Alice peeled an orange. She bit each slice in half, half for her, half for Sam.
It was shady under the branches, cool. Sam was not thirsty, not hungry, still sticky.
He lay on his belly. Sighed. Ear on dirt. He fought against nap time. He felt full, round, heavy.
The girls were talking in quiet, excited voices. Alice had a watch on her wrist with buttons on it. They looked through the branches. He could hear their voices, soothing. Sam liked hearing their voices, quiet, excited.
“Here they come!”
“Do you see your dad?”
“There he is!” The watch made a beeping sound. It was the beeping sound that pushed Sam over the precipice of sleep.
When he woke up, the shadows were different, and he was alone.
“Eee-oh-eet!” he heard. “Eee-oh-eet!”
And then, oh! His sister was crawling in beside him. She was curling up beside him. She was whispering to him and he lay quietly with his ear in the dirt, and neither of them were alone.
And he knew—they were hiding. They didn’t want to be found.
* * *
What Sally remembered about that day was that she lost everyone. Everyone! It was a failure at a profound level, failure of attention, failure of control, failure of responsibility. And none of it was her fault!
She’d been woken from her nap by Francie’s incoherent shrieks. “What’s happening?” Sally sat up too quickly and blood rushed away, leaving spots behind her eyes. “What have you done! Where’s Alice?!”
So that was Alice, lost.
Sally leapt to her feet: “Eee-oh-eet!”
“David! David!” Francie gasped and pointed. Something terrible had happened to David, but Francie couldn’t explain. David fell down, David was dead? Sally hurtled across the grass, her sandals flew off, first one and then the other, and the ground shook under her feet. David wasn’t at the finish line, he wasn’t in the food tent, or the lineups for the porta-potties, so that was David lost, which was when Sally lost herself, at least temporarily.
“Eee-oh-eet!”
Sally lost Diego when Max couldn’t hold on to his leash, the wolfhound moved to feats of strength by the vision of Sally up and running madly off. Of course, Diego should, by rights, have found Sally, but he became distracted by a family barbecuing meat at their picnic site, and that was that. Diego lost.
(Sally had already lost Kate, though she didn’t know it yet: Kate had caught a ride home with a friend from school whose parents said they’d buy the girls ice cream, a plan Kate had relayed to her brother Max, which Max had either forgotten or not registered in the first place.)
And Max wasn’t lost, exactly, he’d just gotten bored waiting at the picnic table for people to come back. When nobody did, he remembered he still had the keys to the minivan from when he’d fetched the juice boxes for his mom earlier, so he walked all the way out through the field of parked cars and stuck the key in the ignition and turned on the radio and scrolled through the stations, till he got bored of that too, and walked back.
By then, Sally had discovered she’d lost the Fultz kids.
“I can’t believe it, I’ve lost a baby! He’s not even mine!”
* * *
Although David briefly and avidly believed otherwise, he was not dead, he was not even dying. It was a simple case of heat exhaustion, the paramedic was saying, but this was as David was surfacing to a very bad smell, his throat making gruesome noises that approximated language, and he did not know where he was or who was speaking to him. His head was pounding and he was covered in goosebumps. He assumed it was the very bad smell that had both knocked him out and then roused him. That was his first conscious thought.
He was not dead, but part of him believed that he had been.
He couldn’t remember much past the finish line. Big black dots blurring his vision, a closing down, like a lens clicking shut.
A commotion sounded over the loudspeakers, somewhere outside.
The paramedic said: “Once you’re cooled and rehydrated, you’ll be good to go.” David noticed his daughter, Alice, pressed against the wall of the tent, as the paramedic helped him sit up, propped a wedge of foam behind his shoulders.
“Sip this.” The liquid in the paper cup tasted like plain old yellow Gatorade. Not exactly the elixir of life David was expecting. There was a frozen towel wrapping the back of his neck.
David smiled at Alice.
Alice burst into tears, and ducked out between the flaps. The paramedic was setting up a flimsy divider. “We’re going to get you cleaned up and out of these shorts.” He held up a pair of scissors.
Oh. That was the smell.
* * *
What Alice remembered about that day was that she found everyone; and also, that not everyone wanted to be found.
First, Alice found her dad. Alive. In the medical tent. Talking in Spanish, which he spoke sometimes if Alice asked him to, especially. “Hija.” Dad sat up and smiled at Alice, and she didn’t know the right words to say back to him.
Dad! You’re not dead!—
She had to go, to run fast—“He’s not dead! He’s not dead!” Alice found her mom, barefoot, pacing blindly near the finish line, a volunteer holding her back from entering the course. “Mom! I found Dad! He’s not dead!”
On the way to the medical tent, Alice found Diego, gnawing a splintered chicken bone. She wasn’t afraid to yank it out of his mouth. “Bad dog! You’ll choke!”
She found Max sitting on the picnic table.
She didn’t find Kate, but then, no one had even noticed Kate was lost.
The real trouble started when Sally said it was high time to get home. The stroller looked abandoned beside the picnic table. “Where are the Fultz kids?”
And nobody knew.
“I can’t believe it, I’ve lost a baby!”
Nobody knew, except for Alice. Alice had found Francie and Sam under the bush, and Francie had told her not to tell anyone. They were running away.
“But where are you going? What will you eat?”
“That’s not important.”
Alice did not understand. Was this a game?
“Don’t tell anyone, Alecka. It’s about the jewels.”
Shivers ran up Alice’s spine. Fool’s gold. “Can I come too?”
When Francie said no, “We have to save our dad,” Alice felt it in her heart. Something was wrong, but she couldn’t make it right.
The hardest part was not telling anyone that she’d found Francie and Sam when she went back to the picnic table. Her mom was trying to describe Francie and Sam to a policeman who was wearing shorts. Alice noticed the gun holstered to his waist; she didn’t take her eyes off it.
“We’re just babysitting! The kids aren’t even ours! Tell him, Alice.”
“Francie is my best friend,” Alice whispered.
“We need the best description you can provide.”
“Sam has black hair,” said Alice.
“He’s wearing something sticky!” Sally broke in.
“A white shirt and blue shorts,” said Alice, “and Francie has jeans and a cat t-shirt. It’s her favourite.” Should she even be giving these details? To the police? Was it betrayal?
“Her hair is quite dirty,” said Sally.
“She’s still wearing her race number!” said Alice. “From the race.”
“Fun run,” said Sally. “She ran with our older daughter.”
“She won!” said Alice.
“Technically, she did not,” said Sally.
“How mobile is the baby? Crawling, walking, could he have wandered off on his own? Maybe his sister went looking for him?”
“Walking,” said Alice.
“Don’t worry, we’ll find them.” The officer’s right hand rested on his gun.
“What am I going to tell their poor mother?” Sally wailed.
There was an announcement over the loudspeakers with a description of two lost children.
Alice’s heart felt like it was sitting in her stomach. She poked around in the picnic lunch her mom had packed and found a bag of trail mix, and one juice box. Sneaking around felt like the worst kind of pretend, the kind Alice was no good at. She was too much herself, too much Alice, not enough Alecka, too aware that her body was her own, her movements her own, her mind her own. She could not separate from herself.
When she was sure no one was watching, Alice crawled under the bush, again. Francie and Sam were still there. She almost cried with relief, to see them. “I brought food,” she said. “For the journey.” But she choked on the words. “Don’t go!” she begged Francie.
“Sam can’t eat nuts and stuff.” Francie rejected the trail mix, holding on to the juice box. “You can’t keep coming back. You’re going to give away our hiding spot!”
“Francie, the police are looking for you now.”
Sam was sitting up, fussing for the juice box. Francie’s face went stiff and serious. “Who called the cops?”
“Um. My mom is really worried about you guys,” said Alice. She was feeling more and more like she might have to cry.
And Sam agreed. He was fussing and grunting. He rocked on his bottom and grabbed for the juice box, and Alice’s nose told her that something was going on in Sam’s diaper—didn’t Francie smell it too? Dirty diapers were real, not pretend, and you couldn’t imagine them away.
“The policeman has a gun, Francie. I saw it. He has a gun.” It was clear to Alice that someone would find them soon enough. Sam was about to blow up, and with him would go their hiding spot. “I’ll say that I found you,” Alice said quietly. She glanced into Francie’s eyes, and was surprised to see Francie wavering, almost afraid.
Francie didn’t say no.
* * *
—
“It’s a miracle! You’re a wonder!” Mom hugged Alice over and over.
“Can we go home now?” said Max.
“I’ve always said she’s special,” Mom told the police officer. “Sensitive to anyone in need.” Alice stood quietly, not looking at his face, keeping an eye on his gun instead.
The loudspeakers announced the good news, but the cheers were muted, almost everyone had already gone home. The race was over. The grass was littered with trash, the reek from the row of porta-potties thick in the air as they walked past on their way to the field where the van was parked. Mom carried Sam in her arms, and even she didn’t seem to notice that his diaper was full.
He fussed and screamed, “AAA-SH,” and Alice was sure he wanted her instead, but she felt too tired to fight for him. She felt too tired to fight. Dad leaned on Max. A volunteer had found him a pair of shorts in the lost and found (“Don’t think about that too hard!” Mom said), but he didn’t smell great. Francie pushed the stroller with the bunched-up picnic blanket plunked into its seat, and Alice held on to Diego’s leash. Kate’s absence had gone unobserved and would remain so till they got home and Alice ran inside ahead of everyone else and found Kate already there, reclined on the good couch, writing in her notebook, with a paper sack of empty containers on the floor beside her, from a fast-food restaurant the family never went to.
But Alice didn’t care.
A change was coming, or had already arrived. She was trying, but Alice couldn’t see what Francie was seeing; she couldn’t feel what Francie was feeling. There was something happening inside Francie that Alice couldn’t understand, something Francie was trying to show her, unable to, and Alice didn’t know what to do about it.
She had the feeling that Francie didn’t know either. Or worse: that Francie might not even know anything was happening inside her, yet.
“I am done with this day,” Mom announced, carrying in Sam. “We must never speak of this day again!”
“I think it’s been a good day,” said Dad. “A great day. A wonderful day!”
