Read Online Child of Silence by Abigail Padgett - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Abigail Padgett
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and killed an orderly. We need a petition now , and how do I find a foster home that can protect him? Somebody's trying to kill him, and St. Mary's is going to want to discharge him first thing in the morning. I'm on my way there now. Get up!”
Mildred hadn't stirred from her bedside basket as Bo opened the door to a hazy fog less dense than the night before. Something was taped to the outside knob. A flier, Bo assumed. A new pizza parlor. A car wash. She pulled the white sheet loose and glanced at it absently.
It was a picture, cut from a magazine. A picture of a fox terrier. The dog's head had been ripped off. The words “STAY THE FUCK AWAY” were block-printed in pencil across the bottom.
Oh, shit !
Running back inside she grabbed Mildred still wrapped in her blanket, and stuffed dog-and-blanket inside her jacket. So much for looking sane.
“No way!” she promised the dog. “This is crazy!”
11 - “Grandmother, Persevere . . .” —Kiowa Song
Annie Garcia sat halfway down the bus's left side, against the wall. It had been difficult, changing buses in Los Angeles, but a Mexican had helped her with her plastic bags full of clothes. She'd given him one of the tuna sandwiches Maria packed for the trip. Annie didn't like tuna anyway.
Outside the tinted windows darkness roiled and flowed across the desert floor. Nothing to see, and she'd seen it before. To see the desert, Annie had been taught well as a child, you have to touch it. With your feet and hands and eyes. The desert will not sing its stories for a passing glance.
Maria had not wanted Annie to take the bags of clothes.
“Why do you want to haul all that stuff up to Lone Pine?” Joe had asked as he heaved the bags into the truck for the trip to the little bus station in El Cajon. “You'll just have to haul it back.”
But Joe was Barona, not Paiute.
Maria merely saw, and said nothing. “Behind the blanket” it was called. The Paiute way of not being there in your mind.
Annie shifted her weight on the scratchy seat and tried again to sleep. Ten hours on a bus was agony. She was glad it was the last time.
Lodging her tongue in the gap left by a broken tooth thirty years ago, she hummed softly. The sound in her head helped her drift off. Not really asleep, but not awake. She heard the cry-dance singers, and saw a star. A dark star against a white background. Just a small, plain star with figures on both sides—numbers. She could see a 3, and a 5, and a 1. There were others, but they were too hazy. The star was smaller than the numbers, and above them. It wasn't much of a star.
The bus stopped briefly in Mojave and its lurch made the image shatter like bits of a mirror. But she remembered. A star and 3,5,1. A spirit-message. Annie sighed. Why did the spirits choose for their endless gifts old people who only wanted to rest? Why not the young, who'd be awake and paying attention? And what did it mean, this star?
The bus rounded a corner and narrowly missed a car parked on the street. Annie watched the maneuver, detached. But then it came to her. The license plate! The plate on the parked car reminded her of that other car. The one the white woman wanted to know about. The white woman who said she was loco, and worked to take care of hurt little children. How loco could that be? The spirits must like the white woman, and the child who couldn't hear. The star and the numbers were on the yellow car!
In the darkened bus Annie forced herself to remember until the rest stop at Inyokern. The card the woman had given her was in her purse. With wrenching effort she crept from the bus when it stopped in the shadowy little desert town and found a phone.
“Child Abuse Hotline,” a young male voice answered. “Yes, we’ll accept charges.”
“I call Barbara Bradley,” Annie read the name off the card, “about the little boy who can't hear.”
“You have a message for Bo Bradley?”
“Yes.”
“Well,
Mildred hadn't stirred from her bedside basket as Bo opened the door to a hazy fog less dense than the night before. Something was taped to the outside knob. A flier, Bo assumed. A new pizza parlor. A car wash. She pulled the white sheet loose and glanced at it absently.
It was a picture, cut from a magazine. A picture of a fox terrier. The dog's head had been ripped off. The words “STAY THE FUCK AWAY” were block-printed in pencil across the bottom.
Oh, shit !
Running back inside she grabbed Mildred still wrapped in her blanket, and stuffed dog-and-blanket inside her jacket. So much for looking sane.
“No way!” she promised the dog. “This is crazy!”
11 - “Grandmother, Persevere . . .” —Kiowa Song
Annie Garcia sat halfway down the bus's left side, against the wall. It had been difficult, changing buses in Los Angeles, but a Mexican had helped her with her plastic bags full of clothes. She'd given him one of the tuna sandwiches Maria packed for the trip. Annie didn't like tuna anyway.
Outside the tinted windows darkness roiled and flowed across the desert floor. Nothing to see, and she'd seen it before. To see the desert, Annie had been taught well as a child, you have to touch it. With your feet and hands and eyes. The desert will not sing its stories for a passing glance.
Maria had not wanted Annie to take the bags of clothes.
“Why do you want to haul all that stuff up to Lone Pine?” Joe had asked as he heaved the bags into the truck for the trip to the little bus station in El Cajon. “You'll just have to haul it back.”
But Joe was Barona, not Paiute.
Maria merely saw, and said nothing. “Behind the blanket” it was called. The Paiute way of not being there in your mind.
Annie shifted her weight on the scratchy seat and tried again to sleep. Ten hours on a bus was agony. She was glad it was the last time.
Lodging her tongue in the gap left by a broken tooth thirty years ago, she hummed softly. The sound in her head helped her drift off. Not really asleep, but not awake. She heard the cry-dance singers, and saw a star. A dark star against a white background. Just a small, plain star with figures on both sides—numbers. She could see a 3, and a 5, and a 1. There were others, but they were too hazy. The star was smaller than the numbers, and above them. It wasn't much of a star.
The bus stopped briefly in Mojave and its lurch made the image shatter like bits of a mirror. But she remembered. A star and 3,5,1. A spirit-message. Annie sighed. Why did the spirits choose for their endless gifts old people who only wanted to rest? Why not the young, who'd be awake and paying attention? And what did it mean, this star?
The bus rounded a corner and narrowly missed a car parked on the street. Annie watched the maneuver, detached. But then it came to her. The license plate! The plate on the parked car reminded her of that other car. The one the white woman wanted to know about. The white woman who said she was loco, and worked to take care of hurt little children. How loco could that be? The spirits must like the white woman, and the child who couldn't hear. The star and the numbers were on the yellow car!
In the darkened bus Annie forced herself to remember until the rest stop at Inyokern. The card the woman had given her was in her purse. With wrenching effort she crept from the bus when it stopped in the shadowy little desert town and found a phone.
“Child Abuse Hotline,” a young male voice answered. “Yes, we’ll accept charges.”
“I call Barbara Bradley,” Annie read the name off the card, “about the little boy who can't hear.”
“You have a message for Bo Bradley?”
“Yes.”
“Well,
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