A Measure of Blood (25 page)

“Any drugs? Drug usage?”

“That's prejudiced.”

“In what way?”

“Because I have Puerto Rican blood.”

“That has nothing at all to do with my question. Drugs are a common occurrence. People with Russian backgrounds and Italian backgrounds and Irish and British heritages get hooked on drugs. People with totally American backgrounds for five generations or more get hooked. In each case, they think the drugs will help them cope and the trick is … the opposite happens. They end up coping less well. So it's always a possibility. With anyone who is hurting.”

“I'm not hurting.”

Solar nodded.

Nadal thought how Maggie was like a drug. He got hooked and he got worse.

“What were you thinking just now?”

“Why?”

“Your face got angry.”

“Nothing. Just how rotten it all is.”

He watched the little gold clock ticking until he could get out. “I feel better,” he told Arne and his mother. “Yeah, I feel better. I'll concentrate on school. I'll talk more.” And he quit Solar after one more session.

He hated Solar, but when he thinks about it now, he can't figure out why.

He walks around for a bit in the small main room and finally opens up his computer. He boots up in the wild hopes that somehow he can get the latest, but there's nothing doing. And of course he knew there would be no signal out here. The little arches don't show up, the dialogue box tells him he is not connected to the Internet, and he stares at his laptop … thinking of all the waste, even including the paper for class that he began—wasted tuition money. But he's leaving his old life behind.

Luckily this cabin is more substantial than most. Two rooms instead of one and a generator-driven refrigerator and a two-burner stove. Electricity, anyway. Almost enough food for two days—counting the beer and beef jerky and what he brought, the two frozen dinners, plus his bag with cereal and wrap makings and crackers. No milk. No juice.

He goes into the bedroom and makes various noises, testing. The boy doesn't move. Asleep. Now is the time to go. Get it over with.

He's pretty sure he remembers where there is a general store. If the boy wakes when he is gone … he can't think it. He has to believe in luck. He hops into the VW and drives as fast as he dares, up over the bumps like a kid riding something at Kennywood Park.

WHEN MATT WAKES,
he is not sure why everything looks so strange and it comes to him slowly that this is not his bed or the one he had at Jan and Arthur's or the one in the strange room in the house the man took him to, but something else entirely. This is a bunk bed, and he doesn't know who or what is above. He peels a rough gray wool blanket off him and sits up slowly. There are no sounds. Nothing. He shakes himself—trying to get rid of the fog that envelops him, noting each detail. He is still wearing his clothes, even his shoes. His feet feel a little buzzy, so he flexes his toes. The door to the room is a wooden thing—up and down boards and then one that goes on the diagonal. He is sure it will be locked. Finally he gets the courage to stand and look to the top bunk. Nobody. He is alone.

Still, it's as if the air around him is fuzz, cotton, something soft. If only he could feel better. He tiptoes to the door and pulls. It's heavy, but it opens, making a scraping sound on the floor where he can see a groove has been cut by just this thing, the opening and closing.

The next room is like a kitchen but also has a chair and a couch. There's a little stove and a refrigerator. Where is the man? He walks from wall to wall—all logs, the insides of logs, but there is only one door. And two windows. He looks out the front window to see woods for as far as his eye will take him. And out the back window is some old truck and otherwise just more woods. There is the man's laptop on the single table. The man's backpack is on the floor.

His mother's voice says,
Think, think.

But he isn't sure what to think. So he sits on the sofa. His mother is dead. Today will be her cremation, and he is not going to be there. The man who brought him here is a liar, because his mother is not alive.

For a few minutes he lets himself think perhaps his mother
is
alive and the man will bring her here. But then he knows she isn't because in his mind he hears Christie's voice. Then Jan's voice. Then Arthur's. They all said she was gone, and they did not seem like liars, any of them.

The names he saw—Arnett and Mala—make no sense to him. The email he saw—it feels like a dream. There's something he needs to know but he can't figure out what it is.

He waits for the man to come back. To give him rules.

But nothing happens. So he gets up to study the room, looking for a phone. The man threw away their cell phones, but maybe … No. Electrical outlets but no phone outlets. He peers out the window. No sign of the man.

His heart begins to pound. He knows it's wrong, but he opens the backpack, hoping for something, another phone. But there is only a T-shirt and … envelopes. In the envelopes, money. Lots of money. His heart sets up a wild racket. What is all the money for? Where did it come from? What is it for?

The computer is sitting on a small table, open. He approaches gingerly and presses the power button. It hums to life. He can hardly use his hands, he's so nervous. He recognizes the little
e
and the other thing, the flames around the world. Selecting one, then the other, he gets the same message each time:
You are not connected to the Internet.

He goes to the window again.
There is nobody in sight. No sounds except rustling and maybe something croaking—a frog perhaps, if there's water. He can't tell.

Back at the computer, he clicks on an icon.

Nate Brown

Comp Sci 2003

Changes in Firewall Protection Systems

There are significant changes being made in firewall protection.

Nate Brown, Mala Brown, Arnett Brown. Are these relatives? He clicks on other icons but nothing makes sense even though he sees the name Nate Brown several times. He suddenly feels his stomach drop. The man (Nate?) will probably be angry if he catches him. He powers off the computer and goes back to the sofa, waiting.

After a while, he tiptoes to the refrigerator and looks in. Beer and little brown sticks, maybe cigars. The label says beef jerky. That sounds like food. He opens one and smells it. Then he takes a bite. It makes him chew, like licorice, but more so. He opens a cupboard and finds cereal—the same kind he was given this morning. Cheerios. He takes a handful of cereal and eats it like candy, surprised at how good it is.

How long is he supposed to be alone?

Matt opens the door to the outside.

Now is the time to run.

The air is chilly. The forest sounds are unfamiliar, but he can figure out what he's hearing: animals, leaves rustling, birds chirping. There's forest and more forest as far as he can see.

He begins to walk into the woods. Just go a little. Find a path, he tells himself. The old good feeling of wanting to run won't come to him. His heart knocks hard against his chest.

He begins to walk down the path that the car probably used to get them here. It's hardly a road.

He misses his mother.
Think, think, think
, she says.

In the distance he hears something new. An engine, a noisy motor.

“HOW'S GREER ABOUT
SPLITTING
duty with you?” Dolan asks. He's driving well for a man who hasn't slept, skirting potholes, timing lights.

“She's okay. She's a pro. No information from the Philips kids so she's back to the office, waiting for word from us. I'll call her as soon as I have something she can do.” Christie feels like he's on heavy drugs—sleep deprivation makes him almost hallucinate. Light hurts his eyes. There's something that feels like a heavy lump at the back of his skull.

Route 22, part of it, is a nightmare as usual, but they aim to get to State College in record time.

Christie has been on the phone almost nonstop with the team up there. He wants them to take samples but not to disturb anything until he gets there.

Lights flash up ahead. Parked on the side of the road are two police cars. One is State Police, the other Johnstown Police.

“Stop,” Christie says. But Dolan, who always understands what to do, is already pulling over.

Christie doesn't have to introduce himself to the other cops. He's known, from TV mainly in any area that picks up Pittsburgh stations. As soon as he exits his vehicle, the others do, too. They're eating a take-out breakfast. They hurriedly stash food wrappers on their car seats and turn back with the look of guilty children. “You have any news, Commander?”

“We think he took the boy to State College. They're not there now, but we're going to look around.”

Christie knows these guys are on the road trying to locate the cell phones. The Johnstown patrol cop gestures to the State Police officer. “He has one of those metal detectors. We haven't given up.”

The phones will help, no doubt, when it comes to a trial, though the Pittsburgh Police also have the phone records to go on.

And moments later he and Dolan are back in the car and on the way again to State College. He has asked the folks up there to use an unmarked car and to have at least two officers in the house, hidden and armed. Also, they should hide their lab car. And even more importantly, he wants two cars at each end of the street in case this guy, Nadal Brown, is on his way back and gets the willies and the thing ends in a chase.

“We have to put it on the news, his name,” Dolan says.

“I know. I have this hope that he just went out for breakfast and is coming back with the kid. If we can nab him before we scare him … ”

Most of the phone calls to Nadal Brown from Mala Brown originated from a landline at the house in State College. And where is she? Is she involved?

“His roommates say he was strange. But what version of strange?” Dolan taps at the wheel.

Christie bargains silently. Get the kid back and he'll quit trying to arrange everyone's life. If it's Jan and Arthur as the parents, then all right, that's it. After all, it's what he wanted to begin with.

MATT'S EYES ARE
WIDE.
He sits on the sagging sofa, an old mohair thing. He's breathing rapidly.

“Did you go outside?”

“A little bit.”

“Why?”

“To see the woods come awake, like you said.”

But the boy can hardly breathe and Nadal's own heart begins to pound. He reaches behind him for the door lock and slides the bolt. “I thought we were okay.”

“No,” Matt blurts. He seems as surprised by what he has said as Nadal is by the show of spirit. “You tried to tell me my mother is alive.” He waits, open-faced, hoping to be contradicted.

Nadal knew this moment would come, but he thought it would come differently, gradually, with sideways questions. He sits down in the chair across from the sofa, thrown off at first by how it sags and the way the springs poke up at him. Leaning forward over his knees, he tries to hold Matt's eyes.

“I'm sorry. It was an accident. Nobody can understand how much of an accident it was. I thought she was going to kill me.”

“If it was an accident, you would get help.”

“It was an accident. But I wasn't thinking clearly about what to do. I wanted you, to take care of you. So I looked for you. And then I left. All I knew was, if they took me to prison, I couldn't take care of you.”

“Why did you want me?”

“Because you're mine.”

For a long while, Matt doesn't say anything. Then he says, “I got hungry. I ate cereal.”

“That's okay. That's fine. That's good. I went out for milk. Would you like a bowl of cereal?”

Matt nods, biting his lip. Not speaking again.

Even Nadal's hands feel the tremors of his terror. He has made big decisions and now he has to make them right. With deliberation, he opens one cabinet after another, finds a bowl, washes it out, finds a spoon. He's hungry, too, his stomach is growling, but he is too shaky to eat. He holds the cereal box with two hands and pours a full bowl, then adds milk. His boy is lean, not sloppy, and that's good. “You burn it off,” he observes. “That's a good thing. Come to the table. It's easier.”

Matt comes to the table.

“Where would you go if you left? I just want to know, to understand.”

“The people I was with, I guess. They wanted me.”

“I want you. It's going to be all right. You'll forget them. Everything will fade. It takes a little time.”

Matt takes up the spoon and begins with tiny bites. He doesn't seem as hungry as he said he was. “I had friends, too. And a dog. And a new computer. And I was in a play. I should be going to rehearsal.”

Nadal sighs raggedly. “I'm sorry about that but … we've cut ties. We can't go back to anything we had before. It's all new from here out.”

Matt pushes the cereal away. “I was getting used to things.”

“I'll get you a dog.”

The boy's face changes, interested.

“I'll buy you a computer.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I like games. Video games. I like
Red Dead Redemption
.”

“I don't know much about that.”

“It's hard but it's good. It's an adult game, but I play it.”

“I see. Are you going to eat your cereal?”

“I think I changed my mind.”

“I'll eat it then.” Nadal pulls the bowl to him and takes up the spoon, working to control his hands.

“That's my spoon. I mean, I used it.”

“Well. There aren't many here. And your germs are my germs. I mean, you're my son.”

Matt's face furrows.