Race Across The Sky Part 30

Janelle took an audible breath; in it Shane could feel her attempt to stay calm. "No, he left a message. He's with that woman, and her baby."

Shane's head spun, his arm felt numb, things in front of him seemed to slow drastically.

"I called the number but whoever answered didn't know who he was."

"When he calls back, give him my cell. I'm on my way there. I love you."

He screeched out of the lot, and took the 101 as fast as the old car would handle. How long was it to Yosemite? He had friends who'd gone up for camping weekends, and it seemed to him that they had said it was three or four hours. He would be fighting daytime traffic, trucks, and tolls to the East Bay. Then it should open up.

But at the Bay Bridge he slowed to a crawl, alternately gunning the engine and braking. It was afternoon, he clenched his jaw; no one should be going anywhere. Who were all of these people, not to be in their offices and homes?

Shane punched his steering wheel as the car stood still on the Bay Bridge, hovering vulnerably over the waving water.

In the woods the humidity jumped; he feared ticks and small snakes, tripping over tree roots, and branches that might scratch Lily's face.

He kept only a thin curtain of trees and brush between him and the highway, so that he was always just a few steps away. It would be a horrible thing to be lost in these mountains.

He walked quickly on this slight path for over an hour. At a certain point, he acclimated to the humidity and realized that the air felt fresh and full of pine. And he began to enjoy himself. The plants and leaves slipped off their coats, revealing a single, vibrating, golden energy. Caleb felt the forest rooting for them.

He reached up and back, and held Lily's dangling hand, as he made his way along the workmen's trail. Later the ground sloped abruptly, and he met the concrete barrier of a curving off-ramp. A truck took it slowly, and Caleb peered over it. Below, he saw a cl.u.s.ter of gas stations, fast-food signs, and cars. He guessed they had gone four or five miles.

"Okay, Lulu," he said cheerfully, "let's get you some milk."

A steep decline like this was worrisome with his tired quads. If he slipped he would fall with her face unprotected. Caleb moved deliberately. At the bottom of the ramp, he found himself suddenly amidst the world. The first place with food, he repeated to himself. He pa.s.sed two gas stations next to each other on the left side of the street. Did those count? No, she had meant a place you could sit. Across the street, he saw a small truck stop diner.

He stopped outside of it, on a concrete parking area. He slid off the pack, balanced it carefully on its three poles, and lifted Lily out. He kissed her strawberry hair, stuck to her sweating forehead.

"Let's go," he told her.

Inside the diner the intensity of the air conditioning, the smell of the grease, the sudden noise, launched his body into a kind of shock. Caleb moved uncertainly to the back counter and sat Lily on it, and himself on a stool in front of her, as sweat poured from his body onto the floor.

"Can I have a gla.s.s of milk, and some water, please?"

A middle-aged waitress nodded without looking up.

"And do you have a phone?"

She shook her head no. "There's one at the Mobil."

The waitress set a tall, chipped red plastic gla.s.s of cold milk onto the counter with a crack that made Caleb snap his head up. Caleb poured it into Lily's bottle and placed it into her wide, grasping hands. His senses heightened to the point of abstraction: colors lifted from the truckers' plaid shirts, swirled in the air. Outside the window, a nuclear bomb irradiated the county; it took him a moment to appreciate this as the noon sun. He slammed a full gla.s.s of metallic tap water, reached over the counter to a small metal pitcher, refilled it, and drank it down again.

"What can we get you?" the waitress asked, looking at him and Lily more closely.

"Bananas. Pancakes. Applesauce," he said, hoping June had given him enough money to pay for it. "Do you have a bathroom?"

"Over there."

He carried Lily to a plastic changing station and checked her diaper. It was wet. This was good, it meant she was still somewhat hydrated. Changing her, she batted at him like a kitten, her eyes playful, her lips happy. June was right, it would be madness to take her back into the woods. All that mattered was getting her to San Francisco, and whatever treatment Shane had waiting for her. June could hitch or walk here when she was ready. In the meantime he would get Shane going.

When the food came he held Lily on his lap, fed her, and ate while she played a game of pushing pink packets of sugar around the sticky countertop. Then he filled her bottle with cold milk and rummaged through the backpack for the cash which June had shoved into it. He found a bunch of crumpled tens, twenties, and singles, paid, and took a gla.s.s of icewater with him to the door to find that pay phone.

Outside, country and hip-hop played in tandem from the idling trucks. The sun blasted his eyes. His head hurt, he had eaten too much sugar too quickly, had too much rest. He stood staring at the trucks, black exhaust, loud diesel engines, pickups, neon signs, fast-food smells, gas stations, insanity-he felt it all pressing in on him. It was not safe here, he realized, among this plowed and destroyed earth. His eyes madly sought the trees. But they were far away, across the busy street, up in the hills. He felt that his body was about to collapse. Then, without an ice bath, he would go into shock. What would happen to the baby? There was no way that he could wait here for hours for June or Shane. His plan, he saw, was fatally flawed.

What was he supposed to do? The carbohydrates and pota.s.sium shook his systems, his liver needed to know whether to produce more glycogen, his body needed to know if he was running or stopping? He was sixty or so miles into this run, just warming up. And he had learned one thing, one thing with absolute certainty during his life: when in doubt, the answer was always to run.

Behind the gas station, Caleb noticed a narrow road leading away from the noise of trucks and people. It seemed to run parallel to the choked highway. He hesitated, confused at the progression of his thoughts. June would understand, he knew, as soon as she saw they were not at the diner, that he had needed to keep moving. A shaking began at the bottom of his tailbone and wormed up his spine. Here was the moment, move or fall. Here was the pivotal decision. Sit and wait for them, and possibly the police, to find him here? Or continue forward?

He doused Lily's sun hat with water from the red gla.s.s and tied it under her throat. He found the sunscreen and applied it liberally onto her skin. With a kiss he buckled her in.

"You all right, Lulu?" he called up as he pulled on the Kelty. He was rewarded with a playful tap upon his sunburned head.

Caleb started across the four-lane street, holding his hand up to slow approaching vehicles. He walked along the side of the gas station and began to jog the small brown road. Ahead he saw tanned hills dotted with Holsteins. He made cow sounds; Lily giggled and tried, he thought, to copy him. The movement was magic; his energy was back. Things, it seemed, were in their proper motion. Twisting rust-colored manzanitas splayed at his ankles as he pushed into a jog. He reached behind and tugged on her small ankle. What was Lily experiencing up there? It must feel like flying; he supposed it must be wonderful.

Caleb began to tell her fairy tales. Whatever he could remember of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel. But some these were frightening stories and not good for being so close to the woods.

Soon Lily fell asleep, he could tell by the way her weight slumped against his shoulders. Some hours later, the single-lane road widened, and traffic grew heavier. To his west he saw the outskirts of what looked to be a small city, and pa.s.sed a blue sign. It read OAKDALE, 14 MILES.

The sky was turning violet, the weather was finally cooling. He felt they both needed to eat, and he wanted to change and hold her. He wondered if he looked normal enough to walk into a store.

Caleb slowed to a walk, let his breathing normalize, the sweat dry on his skin, and turned toward town. Sensing some change, Lily awoke crying. He felt her tiny arms pound the sides of the pack.

"Lulu," he called to her cheerily, "good evening to you."

In a convenience store parking lot he stopped. Removing her from the backpack Caleb noticed an annular patch of sunburn on her smooth shoulder; he must have missed it when applying sunblock. He kissed her damp hair and carried her inside in his arms.

He purchased cans of protein shake and pasta, baby food, a plastic tube of aloe. There were, he saw, a few big hills left.Outside he blinked into the emerging streetlights and saw a taupe Holiday Inn a few blocks away, lit brightly against the blackening sky. A bench had been placed under plastic palms and an orange heat lamp. A bellhop in a tan uniform watched them walk across the street.

"Waiting for my wife," Caleb explained, sitting on the bench.

He did not, he realized, look like a man waiting for his wife. He looked like a man who had been running for thirty-six hours. But Lily prohibited the bellhop's more obvious conclusions, and he looked away.

Caleb pulled off her shorts and diaper, fumbled through the back pocket of the Kelty for wipes, and cleaned her. He put on her blue fleece, fed her, and rubbed aloe along her sunburn.

"Cay Cay," she smiled, her one tooth protruding from her lower gum like some optimistic flag.

He held her wheezing chest to his. "We're going to get you better," he whispered into her perfect ear.

Caleb emptied packets of salt into the protein shakes and killed them in one long sip each. Then he took stock of his position. Possibly he should go inside this hotel and call Shane, but the same issues he faced at that diner would a.s.sault him here. His running was going well, and anyway he was too tired to speak clearly. He laid Lily on the bench, her head on his lap under the heat lamp, leaned back against the wood, and dropped into a dense sleep.

Sometime later someone shook his shoulder.

"My man."

Caleb sat straight up, blinking. His mouth was dry. A Latino guy with a shaved head and strong breath was glaring at him.

"You been here like two hours."

"She's sleeping," Caleb whispered, forcing his eyes open. His neck was stiff.

"What room you in?"

He blinked rapidly. What was his story again?

"If you ain't a guest here you got to move on, bro."

The man walked back inside. Caleb could see him talking to an older man with an earpiece. A cold panic shot through him.

Lily was sound asleep. It was the middle of the night, and red lights blinked in pitch blackness. A black Jeep squealed alongside them. Its doors were thrown open, and Kyle and Juan jumped out. They grabbed his arms, pulled them inside. Mack turned from the driver's seat, screaming.

Caleb almost fell off of the bench, and the shock snapped him out of this hallucination. He blinked, breathing hard.They must be out here looking for him, he realized. Gently he slipped Lily's sleeping body back into the Kelty pack, rolled up a T-shirt and placed it behind her neck for support, lifted the thirty-odd pounds over his shoulders, and clicked the plastic belt shut. Feeling a sour panic, he turned off of the main avenue onto a small street filled with aluminum houses. He read a street sign in the starlight and saw that by an act of karma he was on Yosemite Avenue.

The power nap had worked magic though; he felt recharged and able. If he had stayed in the Yosemite Slam, he would be scaling El Capitan now, he thought. It seemed a comparatively easy thing to run across these gentle dark hills, following the shadow of the distant interstate, beneath the silence of the stars.

But what about Lily? He considered the generations of babies who had survived hard pa.s.sages into America. Who had been packed for months among tubercular emigres on suffocating Irish ships. Who had been carried across the Sonoran Desert under raging heat. Who had been baked alive on Cuban rafts, laid among blankets crawling with boll weevils. Who had been frozen in open wagons, kept below deck on rancid boats, on their way to America.

These babies survived, grew strong, and all of them had made it without the benefit of a specially designed child backpack. Lily might get uncomfortable, and if so he would stop and help her. But she was would be fine.

As the weight of the pack pressed warmly into his shoulders, he could feel her slowly blending into him. Which was no hallucination, he understood.

Because, in fact, she was.

4.

June sat on a small patch of land by the freeway.

She practiced a sitting meditation. Hearing Mack's voice guide her through each organ and muscle of her body made her feel sick so she replaced it with her own. She began feeling better. The pain in her side was subsiding. After a few hours, she considered the six-lane interstate in front of her.

Caleb would have arrived at the next exit by now. He would have taken care of Lily, found food, and then borrowed someone's cell and called his brother. They were waiting patiently in some Burger King booth for her, she imagined. That Caleb had stumbled, had fallen ill, had broken some limb or punctured some organ, did not occur to her. Lily was in the best arms in this world. June felt an unsustainable urge to get to them, and the more she envisioned Lily, the more insistent this need became.

She stood, tried taking a step toward the speeding cars, and extended her arm for a ride.

A small white truck slowed; she did not appreciate the appearance of its driver and shook him off. She kept walking, afraid to try to run. Her hand, she realized, was pressed against her side in antic.i.p.ation of more pain. Perhaps a kidney was infected; if so, it would not take any more stress. And then an old blue Explorer paused and its pa.s.senger window lowered.

An older woman with long gray hair called to her. "Hey. You all right?"

The first time June answered her throat was too dry and no sound came out. She gathered herself and tried again. "Car's broke."

"Come on in here."

June drew a long breath and pulled the door open. She noticed a steel coffee mug in her cup holder. Her radio was tuned to slick country music of the sort Todd liked. It felt safe, she thought, in here. As June sat down she watched the woman pull back abruptly. Her smell, June understood.

"Are you hurt, honey?"

"No. Just, you know, really tired."

The smell of coffee, leather, the bounce of the wheels, she feared she might vomit. A vivid vision of Arizona overcame her, her brothers shooting targets in the desert, surprisingly sharp and defined.

"You sure about that?"

June smiled. "Our car had trouble. I just need to get to the next exit."

The woman nodded and drove forward. She signaled at the first offramp. June saw two gas stations, and a small truckers' diner. Some rigs were parked outside. She gazed at its concrete step, as if she recognized something there.

"My family's waiting for me inside," June told her, pointing to the diner.

The woman's face broke open with relief. "Oh, great."

"Thank you for the ride. You're awesome," June smiled, stepping out slowly.

When the car drove away, June hesitated. She wanted to take a minute to calm down, to appear strong, to get herself together before Lily saw her. But she ran to the door as fast as she could, pulled it open, and burst inside.

Janelle heard the phone from the baby's room. She had been replacing the soft lightbulb in the little blue lamp on the dresser. The noon light dappled the copper mobile above her. She had purchased it in Berkeley on a happy Sat.u.r.day in her first trimester, and it always filled her with the joy of those giddy and expectant months.

"Is Shane there?" a woman asked in a painfully soft voice. "Shane Oberest?"

"This is his wife," Janelle stated, her voice rising as if asking a question. Over the phone she could hear murmurs of voices and distant music.

The woman asked urgently, "How is Lily?"

Janelle frowned. "June?"

"Yes. How are they?"

Janelle took a long breath, steadying herself against the dresser. She could feel this woman's anxiety across the ether. "So Shane's on his way to get you guys," she explained, her hands raising up to calm her.

"They're not with him?"

"June, I'm sorry. With him?"

"Lily and Caleb, aren't they with Shane? Driving?"

"Caleb left a message that you're at the Groveland Hotel?"

"No," June sobbed. "No. That was before."