THE LAST BOY (38 page)

“Hello,” said Adelaide. She had an arm around the boy and it looked as if she was supporting the child to keep him from toppling over.

“Hi,” said Tim It hurt Molly just to look at him.

“Tim's got leukemia,” the man blurted out.

The trio now stood blocking her path. “He's gone through chemo twice,” began the woman and then suddenly her tiny eyes welled with tears. The man, though struggling to hide his emotions, was now dabbing at his eyes as well.“And it didn’t work. He still has got these fevers and his white count…”

Danny silently watched the exchange, intrigued, his eyes shifting from the family to Molly and back again. Molly looked for a way around them to her car.

“Look, I’m terribly sorry, really. But I don’t see what I can…” she tried to go on but couldn’t. She suspected what was coming.

“If Danny could just…” said the mother, outstretched hands imploring Danny.

“Just touch Tim,” added the father.

“It's not going to do anything,” said Molly.“Believe me.”

“What can it hurt?” asked the man.“He's not contagious.”

“No. No. It's not that,” objected Molly.

“Please,” said the woman, “I’m begging you as one mother to another. I’ll get down on my knees, if that will—” and she struggled to lower herself to the ground.

“No! Don’t!” cried Molly mortified as she caught the woman by her elbows and held her up.

“I can touch him,” said Danny, and before Molly could respond, Danny had already wrapped his arms around the frail frame of the other little boy. He stood there holding him as Molly looked on awkwardly, watching the two little boys locked in an embrace.

Both parents stared down at Tim, anxiously waiting.

The boy, looking Danny in the eye, began to slowly grin.

“How do you feel?” inquired the mother.

“Tim?” asked the father bending down to get a closer look.

Then, suddenly, turning his face up to his parents, Tim broke
into a big, beaming smile. “Better,” said the boy, shaking his head earnestly.“I feel much better. Really!”

He did look better, thought Molly. At least happier. What the hell, she thought. “Look, I gotta run. This storm has messed things up and I’m late for work.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried the mother as Molly took Danny and hurried to her car.

“How can we ever repay you?” she heard the father calling after her. Molly could have sworn he was reaching for his wallet as she pushed Danny into the car and snapped on his seat belt. When the engine sprang to life on the first try, she was more than a little relieved.

As they drove to Rosie's downtown house, Molly saw a clear swath of destruction. The tornado had touched down on the Eastern Heights near Molly's trailer park. Approaching the mall, she could see how it had sliced across the western edge of the shopping center, through Sears and Hoyt's Cinema, pulverizing the buildings and scattering their contents. Everywhere, the ground was littered with heavy timbers and big sheets of corrugated steel. Clothes and toys, linens and tires and tools, whole store counters were dispersed over the nearby backyards, parking lots, and fields. Bras and nightgowns hung from the trees like Christmas ornaments. The power of the storm must have been beyond anything that she had ever witnessed, she thought.

Danny was fascinated by the intensity of the storm.“Look!” he said, pointing to a pair of seats from the movie theater which sat perched high in a tree as if waiting for occupants.

Molly turned on the local news as they headed down into the valley paralleling the storm's path. There was talk of numerous injuries. A still uncounted number of deaths.

“Oh, poor trees,” sighed Danny, sighting the twisted remains of the old, majestic willow trees that had once lined the shore at
Stewart Park. They had been torn up by their roots and scattered as though they were flowers plucked by a cruel hand. In the marina, pleasure craft lay in sloppy heaps amidst chunks of concrete and shards of wooden dock.

Shifting in her seat, Molly turned to Danny. “You didn’t
really
know this storm was going to happen, did you?”

“Yes,” he said with his childish lisp. “But not this big. Just look at that!” he motioned towards the top of West Hill; and when Molly took her eyes from the road, she saw a huge yacht perched upright on top of the hill.

“But
how
did you know?”

“I could feel it. The warming,” he said, still staring in wonderment up at the big boat.

“You mean the summer?”

“No. No,” he shook his head.“The Earth.” It was almost as if he were blaming himself.

“Okay,” she said.“What are we supposed to do about it?”

He turned to her, shook his head worriedly.“I don’t know,” he said.“I just don’t know. He never told me.”

“Did you see what the storm did?” asked Rosie when they got to her place.“There's this big ship sitting on top of West Hill!”

“I saw it, too, Aunt Rosie!”

“It's just like in the Bible, Honey. Noah's ark.”

“Before or after the flood?” asked Molly with a touch of sarcasm. She hoped Rosie would not be filling his head with a lot of nonsense.

Rosie laughed good-naturedly. “Well, looking on the bright side, there’ll be plenty of work for masons. Ed just got called out on a big repair job.” She turned to Danny, stroking his neck.“So it's just going to be you and me and the twins, Pudding.”

“Okay,” said Danny.

Molly stood there watching, reluctant to leave.

“So go to work already,” said Rosie, finally.

“You’ll be all right, Honey?” she asked Danny.

“Of course we will!” Rosie rested her hands on Danny's shoulders.“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“Yes,” Danny nodded.“I had some raisins.”

Molly shook her head.

“Oh, so you wouldn’t want some nice hot pancakes with maple syrup and melted butter, would you?”

“I’m not that hungry, really.”

After Molly left, Rosie fixed him some pancakes. “They call these silver dollars, because—”

“I know,” he said, watching the butter melt in puddles that dripped down the edges of the stack.

“Go on,” she coaxed.

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Just give it a taste, okay? Aunt Rosie went to all this trouble and…” She poured syrup on top. “This is
real
stuff, right from the maple trees. None of this supermarket junk. Uncle Ed has this friend in Candor who's got this big farm with sugar maples.” Rosie kept up a steady patter all the while shoveling food into his mouth. “It's good, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Aunt Rosie,” he said sweetly.

“Oh, Pumpkin,” she cooed and kissed the back of his head, “I don’t want you being sad like this.”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you liked the old man. It's terrible what happened. But, well, people don’t live forever anyhow. We’re here on earth for, well, like a visit, wearing our body suits. And then we just take them off and go somewhere else that's nice, too. Maybe nicer.”

He gazed up and looked at her intently.

“You want to play with the babies?” she suggested when he got up from the table and went to the window to look out. A pair of
deer were standing in the backyard staring at him.“Will you look at that!” said Rosie. “Deer in the middle of the city. Boy those guys aren’t afraid of anything these days.” A buck with a full rack leaped into the yard.“Look at him!” she exclaimed.“Isn’t he beautiful?”

Danny pressed his face against the glass, and Rosie noted how the buck stepped boldly closer.

Later, he went into the nursery and held the babies while Rosie did the laundry and tried to straighten up the house. When Rosie went to check on him, Danny was talking to the babies.

“…and why couldn’t people just leave him alone?” she overheard him say. “But I don’t care what they say. I know he's not dead. He couldn’t be dead. He promised me he wouldn’t die until I was ready.”

“I don’t want you to panic,” said Rosie when she got Molly at the office just before lunch,“but—”

“But what?” Molly held her breath.

“But I can’t find Danny.”

“Oh, God!” she gasped.“No!”

“I’ve looked everywhere around the block, but I can’t go very far with the twins. And Ed's working somewhere up on—”

“I’ll be right over,” said Molly, grabbing her keys. She brushed right past Larry who was headed her way.

“Hey, what's up?” he called after her, but she was already out the door.

She found Rosie standing on her porch, crying and tearing at her clothes.

“I don’t know how he got out,”Rosie kept wailing.“First day he's here and then he disappears into thin air. And I was watching him like a hawk—you’ve gotta believe me! He had just helped me put the twins to sleep. I was making lunch and I looked around…and…and he was just gone!” She broke into sobs again.

Molly tried calling Tripoli at his home, but he didn’t pick up. His
cell phone was off, too. She tried the station, but in her panic forgot he was on leave. She called his house again. She let it keep ringing as Rosie stood behind her rattling on and on.

Finally, after a dozen or more rings, he picked up.

“Trip. You’ve got to help me.”

The day in town was torrid again. As Tripoli pulled up on Rosie's block, Molly ran to his car, her face flushed and streaked with sweat.

“Oh, Trip!” she sighed, leaning in the window.

The air rushing in from the streets was so oppressive he felt like he was in the tropics. “Let's try not to panic on this one,” he said.

Molly noticed that he had a growth of stubble on his face— which was unusual for a fastidious guy like Tripoli. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and his forehead glistened with perspiration. “Look, I’m going to cruise around. You work the neighborhood. Whoever finds Danny first, calls the other. All right?” Through the open window, he handed Molly his cell phone.

“I’m sorry to have to drag you in again like this…”

“No problem,” he said,“Better than sitting home and brooding. You can leave a message for me with IPD. They’ll call me. I’ll keep my radio on. I just don’t want to call out all the troops yet, okay?”

It wasn’t quite okay, but Molly had no choice.

“Stay calm. I got a hunch where to look.”As she turned to hurry off, he peeled away from the sidewalk, took a right, and went east on Green Street. Running a series of red lights, he took a sharp left on Aurora and headed up the incline.

Tripoli spent a good ten minutes snaking around lower South Hill, checking backyards and alleys. Then, finally, he spotted Danny cutting up Hudson Street. Except for his sneakers, the boy didn’t have a stitch of clothes on. And, sure enough, he was headed south.

Tripoli pulled up alongside the naked boy and threw the door open.“Come on, hop in,” he said.

Danny, ignoring him, continued moving. Tripoli switched on his lights and kept pace with him, letting the car slowly creep ahead, signaling a van behind him to pass.

“Well, where do you think you’re going?” he called out the window.

“I’m not talking to you,” Danny said, pouting.

“Okay, don’t talk to me. Your mother just called me. She was worried. Wanted me to find you.
She
wanted to know where you’re going?”

“I’m going to see the hut.” The breeze was carrying the car's exhaust in his direction and Danny reacted with a grimace of pain.

“Yeah, I figured so. Come on, give me a break and get in. You’re making your mother sick with worry. Is that what you want?”

Danny stopped.

“Come on,
please
, we all feel bad enough as it is.”Tripoli opened the door again and finally Danny climbed in. He sat on the front seat beside Tripoli, staring straight ahead.

“So, where are your clothes?”

“I don’t know.” Frowning, he turned to the side window.“I forget. It was hot so I took them off.”

“Well, you can’t go around like that.”

“Why not?”

Tripoli chuckled. He didn’t have a good answer. It was so hot and sticky he wished he were naked himself. He drove down the hill and stopped at the first phone booth.

“Hey, you can relax,” he said to Molly when she answered his cell phone. She was all the way up North Cayuga Street near Fall Creek. “I’ve got your little escapee.” He looked over at Danny and smiled. Danny glared at him.

Tripoli cut across town and toward the high school. Molly had gone there, figuring that maybe the heat had gotten to Danny and he had headed for the cool waters of Fall Creek. Except for a pair
of teenagers wading in the stream, the place was deserted.

As they pulled up, Molly stood waiting in the shade of a tree, her hands on her hips. Scattered at her feet lay branches broken by the storm. She was livid as she slid into the front seat, shoving Danny closer to Tripoli.

“What the hell happened to his clothes?’

“Beats me,” said Tripoli with a shrug.

Danny peered at her sheepishly. This time it was clear she was in no mood for forgiveness. “You can’t keep doing this to me!” she exploded, grabbing Danny by the arm and shaking him.“You’ll get me fired. Don’t you understand? And then what will we do?”

“Go easy,” said Tripoli.

“Easy nothing!” she snapped.

Molly's teeth were clenched, her features hard, and Danny looked at her, puzzled, frightened, as if she were a stranger. Tripoli had never seen her angry like this, certainly not at her boy.

“Why don’t you let me take him for the rest of the day,” he suggested.

Molly looked at him, then turned back to Danny.“Be my guest. He's all yours. I’m getting so tired of all this.”

As Tripoli drove down Cayuga Street toward her office, she stared mutely out the windshield. He could feel her wrath slowly beginning to subside.

“I’m sorry I got upset like that,” she muttered later without looking at either of them.

“We understand, don’t we?”Tripoli glanced over at Danny who looked small and still cowed by her fury.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said and turned to Danny. He looked up at her, his eyes welling with innocence.“Oh God,”she uttered with a sigh, and finally embraced him.“What am I going to do with you?”

Tripoli found Danny's clothes on a bench on the east side of the
Commons. He tossed the clothes to Danny in the front seat, then headed out of town, crossing the bridge spanning the inlet.