Look at Flower Read online

  “We’re good,” Patsy says. She turns around and talks directly to me.

  “O.K., Flower, here’s the deal. We’re gonna follow Run, then Shadow, Merry, and me are going to get in the truck with him. You’re gonna stay with the Buick here. We’ll leave you the keys. I know you’ve driven it, so you’ll be O.K. All you gotta do is just stay with it. If, if somehow we don’t show up after—” she gives Merry a look “—let’s say three hours, then you can just take the car and head home. All right?”

  “What’re you guys up to?”

  A long silence, then Shadow says in his low voice, “A little work.” His purple-lipped smile. “For the revolution.”

  We drive after Run, back toward the downtown. The pickup truck heads around some leafy streets for a while, then pulls up before a big empty lot. There’s a huge elm tree right under where we parked. Merry reaches over and grasps my arm, tight, with surprising force, and then I’m alone in the Buick. The four of them pull duffel bags from the Buick’s trunk and load them into the back of the pickup. Then they drive off.

  Now I’m not stupid, but I really don’t know what’s going on. I’ve been out on this farm and everything’s been mellow; and sure they talk a lot at night, voices inflamed with wild urgency, and this revolution thing just keeps popping out and sticking to all of them like fly paper; but, really, what are we but kids in the country on a summer groove? I think back to that night we first heard Sgt. Pepper, the way the sky seemed lit with fireworks, the stars points of boundless hope and promise, the very night a plush blue cushion of endless joy. The actual reason I’m sitting here in the Buick, yawning from not enough sleep, is just not in my imagination. That’s all right. If I’d been thinking as much as I should have, I would have simply turned the engine over and gotten the hell out of there.

  About an hour passes. I daydream about Toto, hoping he’s happy in Frisco, and then think about the writer Kay, wondering how she’s doing in her big ol’ Frederick Street house. And the Dead—still playing free shows in the Panhandle? I realize I’m missing the big city. Maybe I’ll head back there and check it out again.

  I hear something and turn around, and there’s the white pickup truck flying down the empty street. Shadow’s driving, and he throws on the brakes, and with a shriek of its tires the truck slides to a stop right next to me.

  And everything’s total chaos. Shadow reaches in and grabs me roughly, pulling me out of the front seat and pushing me into the back. Then he and Patsy help Run in. The first thing I see is his face, it’s pale, almost white, and his lips stand out; they’re almost black. His T-shirt is ripped, and someone’s tied a long part of it around his upper left arm. Then I see the tied part is soaked with a rust-red color. It still takes me a minute to realize it’s blood.

  By then Shadow’s in the driver’s seat, and the two girls have piled in, too. Merry’s to my left, and Run to hers; he’s crumpled at the waist, his head in her lap. She keeps stroking his brow, brushing aside his bowl of hair.

  Shadow guns the Buick out of there. In the distance I hear sirens for the first time, but they’re still pretty far away.

  “Slow down,” Patsy says. “Drive normal.”

  “Where’s the fucking highway?” Shadow yells instead. He’s not going any slower.

  “I mean it,” she cries. “Damn you, get yourself together.”

  Run groans. It’s a heart-tearing sound, of pain and dismay. At the blood, the sudden chaos, I’m in a kind of shock myself. I bring my legs up and press them against my chest and wrap my arms around my knees. I’m a little ball. A tiny seed, floating in the breeze.

  Shadow drives down this street, then that one, and for a moment we see the rise of the highway, but the road he takes to get to it leads only to a dead end. There are more sirens now, and they’re coming from different directions, like a crazy four-track stereo record.

  “What did you guys do?” I say, but my voice is shaky and not very loud. Nobody says anything.

  “What the fuck!” Shadow cries. He’s pounding his knuckles against the steering wheel. “Where the fuck is the goddam highway?”

  Finally we come to a four-lane road. Shadow slows, turns left, and with Patsy glaring at him, he creeps slow as a snail down it. There . . . there’s a green sign that says route 99 south, with an arrow. And a cop car heading past us, and another one right behind.

  Everyone holds their breath. It’s quiet as a tomb in the Buick. Shadow creeps into the left lane, extends his arm to signal the turn, then makes it. His aim’s a little off, and he runs into the dirt next to the highway. Patsy shoots him a look. Merry’s turned around, looking back, her bright-red hair all a-tizzle. Shadow’s checking out the rearview mirror. Still nobody’s breathed. Shadow slows to merge into the highway, but there’s not a lot of traffic, so he’s on it easily. Finally our breaths start up again. There’s nothing but open road, and he holds to the right lane, driving a steady and legal sixty-five.

  When about thirty minutes later we cross the Oregon-California border, Merry starts laughing. It’s a wild, shocking laugh, close to hysteria. And it’s catching. Patsy lets out her own breathless cackle, and even I’m gasping for breath around these giggles that seem to come uncontrollable right out of my gut. It’s weird. Patsy starts shouting, and we’re all yelling and hurrahing, like we’ve just come back from the circus or something. A car full of loons. All except for Run, who makes no sound at all. Just little bubbles I can see escaping between his dark lips.

  On the Rails

  Look at Flower, I’m on this train . . . yeah, I’m sitting crosslegged in a boxcar on these loose-slatted boards (I can see the tracks clattering beneath us), looking out the open door at these amazing pine-covered hills. The air’s cool and crisp. The train judders and jerks, but now we’re slowing some, taking a tight turn, the cars groaning; and when I look down, Jesus, we’re on the very edge of the world and there’s nothing below us for a thousand feet.

  I feel Run’s hands on my neck, kneading, massaging. He’s very good that way, always letting me know he’s there, protecting me, taking care of me. I just . . . I mean, it’s amazing that I have someone like him looking out for me. It’s amazing that we’re here.

  We got back to the farm and laid Run out on the kitchen table. Patsy had worked in a doctor’s office, and she took over. She said the bullet had just left a surface wound on Run’s upper arm; that there was a lot of blood and he was in shock, but that a good bandage should get him going again. Merry took the Dodge down to the Rexall and came back with what seemed like yards of gauze.

  “Nobody watched you buy that?” Shadow said.

  Merry gave him a look, then hissed, “Don’t be so damn paranoid.”

  But we were. I pressed and got answers. They’d tried to rob a bank in Medford, but there’d been a guard in the back in the bathroom, and he came out with his pistol up. There was this scary standoff—Merry said they all just froze, the five of them and the guard, just stunned like in a silent Keystone Cops movie—but then the guard got a tight look on his face and simply shot at Shadow. He missed, but he shot again and hit Run. Shadow had a gun hidden under his shirt. He drew a bead on the guard, but Patsy hit his arm when he was pulling the trigger and the bullet went wide—nobody else was hurt.

  “Yeah, I wanted us the fuck out of there,” Patsy said later, after Run was bandaged up. “I didn’t want a fuckin’ murder rap over us.”

  “We got bank robbery,” Merry said. She was in tears half the time. I . . . I was still in shock. “Any way you cut it, we still got that.”

  “And we didn’t even get any dough,” Shadow said.

  “A big fuckup,” Patsy said. “But at least we’re all O.K.”

  “Are they after you?” I said hesitantly.

  They all shook their heads. “We had stockings over our heads.” Patsy laughed. “I saw us on a monitor, we looked like big worms—”

  I could just see that, and I gave up a giggle, it just popped out, from nerves, I’m sure; but
nobody else was laughing.

  “Yeah, but we got nothing,” Shadow said. He spit. “Fuckin’ nothing.”

  Everyone was quiet. The question out there, I could tell, was: What to do next? No one wanted to speak.

  Finally Patsy said with a dark laugh, “Well, no real harm, no foul.” She shrugged. “At least it was a good practice run, right, guys?”

  That caught my breath. You mean, they’re thinking of doing that again? I kept clammed up, but from that second I simply wanted out of there. But it was this funny thing, what they’d been through made everyone closer, not in such a good way—suspicious but also desperate. One of the girls was always peeking out the window, as if she expected the cops to turn up any moment. “We’re brothers in blood now,” Shadow said at one point, and nobody contradicted him. And I can tell you, everybody kept a sharp eye on everyone else—even me. How could I get out of there? We were too far from town, there was nobody I could call, and someone always had their eyes on me. No, I didn’t see any way I could do it.

  Fortunately, Run got better quick. Patsy started off caring for him, but she got bored and told me to do it. I’d change his bandage, make sure he got a lot of rest, then talk to him.

  Run had a gentle, curious way about him that was growing on me. We talked a lot. He asked me all kinds of questions about my life, like it was important to him. I told him about the farm in Bend and my adventures in San Francisco. He asked about Harley, but I told him we were just casual friends.

  Then Run told me more about himself. His father was Japanese, his mother American, with red hair like Merry’s. Right after Run was born, his family was torn apart, his father sent to an internment camp for Japanese people about a hundred miles east of here.

  “A camp?” I said. I never heard of such a thing. “Like, what, like Nazis?”

  Run nodded. “They didn’t gas anyone, but, yeah, it was the same kind of deal. While my father was there, my parents broke up.” He gritted his teeth tight. “I was raised, well, after the war he got out, but I was raised being sent back and forth between them. It was . . . true injustice.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “And things like that are going on now. You know, we’re raised to think America is all about freedom and equality, but it’s not—”

  “That’s why you’re here?”

  He nodded. “It’s something we have to fight.”

  “I guess,” I half said.

  “No, we have to—we do.” His fist was clenched; his jaw firm. There was such passion in his eyes. I didn’t know if I’d ever felt so strongly about anything, and I was a little envious, even a little swept away.

  I said softly, “What do you—I mean, what do we do now?”

  He gave me a look I’ll never forget. It was startled and raw and yet full of this disarming warmth. “We?” he said softly. “I think we’ll just—” A quick smile. “Well, we’ll just have to see.”

  I patted his arm, just below his bandage. “You’ll keep getting better, right? And then we’ll come up with something—”

  He took a long while to do anything, and finally he gave me one nod. But it was . . . well, it was like everything had changed. Run and I had a kind of secret between us. A pact.

  Nobody told me anything, but I could tell they were planning another what they called “action.” I went to bed early; they stayed up late. Even after everyone else fell asleep, I knew Shadow stayed awake. I saw his silhouette if I got up for water or the bathroom. He was gazing out a window into the dark night, waiting for something. My first thought was he was keeping guard for the police, but he never seemed to look during the day. I didn’t have a clue what he was really looking for or even thinking, but from the glaze in his eyes I had the powerful suspicion that he was waiting for some kind of apocalypse, a true doom.

  Even after two weeks everyone was still nervous, bugging each other over nothing, jumpy. I kept changing Run’s bandage regularly. Nothing much else had happened between us, but when we were alone, he’d smile at me, and I’d smile back. Secret smiles. They were sweet.

  A few days later something got decided, and I was told that we’d all be leaving the farm. I asked if I could go back to San Francisco, but Shadow said nobody could break up the group, and the two girls nodded. I tried not to look at Run, didn’t want to give anything away, but I stole a glance at him. He was gazing down at his hands.

  There was evidently a fight over where to go. Shadow wanted New Mexico, Patsy San Diego, Merry the Midwest. Run said he didn’t see why we couldn’t stay where we were. “Obvious reasons,” Merry said, her jaw hanging down. Nobody asked my opinion.

  I was still sleeping downstairs, off the kitchen, and one night Run woke me up; it must’ve been 3 a.m. He whispered in my ear, “How fast can you get ready?”

  It took me only half a minute to say, “I’ve been ready for weeks.”

  “Well, we’re going.” He smiled, sweet, mysterious.

  I was quick up on my elbows. “What do we do?”

  “Get whatever you got to take, lighter the better, and sneak outside in five minutes, then walk down to the road. I’ll be along within half an hour.”

  I leaned up and looked him right in the eyes. They were firm, determined, fiery. I wanted to kiss him, but he quickly turned away.

  “After high school,” he told me when he met me on the dark road not even twenty minutes on, “I rode the rails a lot—”

  “You mean trains?”

  “Doesn’t cost a penny, and it’s fun.”

  My eyes were wide.

  “We just gotta get to the other side of town. We walk, it’ll take an hour or two. Maybe some early bird will give us a ride.”

  “I’m with you,” I said without a moment’s hesitation.

  We got lucky. A milkman came by and took pity on us. He ran us into Davis, and we walked another couple miles till we got to the freight line stop. There were a couple cars there, big boxy things, but not much else.

  “What do we do?” There was nothing there, just the two parallel lines of rails.

  “We wait.”

  “And?”

  “Were you good at gym? Chin-ups? Monkey bars? That kind of stuff?”

  I gave Run a nod, then to lighten the tension, I lifted my left arm and scratched my arm pit with my right. I grunted then jumped around till Run finally said, “O.K, Flower, I get it: monkey bars. O.K.”

  A train came by around dawn. There were pools of yellow light above the raw tracks. The engine thundered toward us. The whole ground was shaking, like an earthquake.

  “What do we do now?” I said breathlessly.

  “It’s going to slow up,” Run said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  “And then?”

  “Basically, you follow me.” He was already moving along the track, his black hair streaming behind him. “I’m going to figure out the best car, then we’re gonna run like mad,” he shouted behind him. “I’ll find a way to climb aboard, but you gotta be there with me so I can pull you up.”

  “Really, we’re going to—”

  “Flower, it’ll be fine.”

  Then I had a worry. “How about your arm?” The healing had been good, but I noticed he still favored his right, uninjured arm.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Run always knew what he was doing, till the last. I gave him my full faith.

  And it wasn’t too bad. The train finally slowed to a creep, the conductor blew the horn—a huge smoke-gray sound, filling up the whole sky—and then as a string of cars jogged by, Run and I ran in earnest. He grabbed a metal pole at the end of a car with his right hand and boosted himself up onto a ladder. It was about three feet to the boxcar door, and with both hands he swung his feet out and around till he leaped through the opening. He did a quick somersault, then got to the opening and leaned out for me.

  I was easily keeping up with the train, but just as I reached for Run’s hands, it started speeding up. The first time my fingers
caught his palm, but there wasn’t enough for me to grab on to. I sped up, my blonde hair flying into my eyes. Run reached down again, and this time grasped my forearm. He lifted me then with all his strength. The way I rose into that car was like a cartoon character—effortless, with grace, almost straight up like a good witch on a broom.

  That was two days ago. The train, Run said, was heading north, and when we got to Washington, we jumped off our train and caught another one, heading east. I asked if he knew where we were going, and he simply said, “Yeah.” I raised my eyebrows, but he wouldn’t say anything more.

  It’s pretty great on the train. All day we sit there, most of the time our feet dangling out the side, and watch the countryside go past; I haven’t seen so many cows since I was back in Bend. At night I have trouble sleeping, the car so rattly and noisy, the horn blowing every time we go past a crossing gate, my eyes flinging open to flashing red warning lights. Run gives me his jacket as a pillow, and his sweet smell is on it; and I guess I sleep, because I never really get tired. It’s like every moment is crystalline with adventure.

  Heading east, we go through these amazing gorges, the train barely on tracks cut into the side of the mountains, then skirt silver ribbons of river. I remember a Woody Guthrie song we sang in elementary school. This land, it goes, was made for you and me.

  I don’t know how Run knows where we are, but he seems to pretty well; and then one afternoon he says, “O.K., next stop we’re off.”

  “To where?”

  “Little Princess,” he says. He’s started calling me that; it makes both of us laugh. “You will certainly see soon enough.”

  I do. We hop off the train and we’re in a small mountain town, just a few stores and a gas station on one road. No stoplight; not even a stop sign. Everywhere I look are pickup trucks; a lot like home. I use the Ladies at the gas station—sure beats squatting over the aluminum pail we found in a corner of the boxcar—and when I come out, Run is using a pay phone. I walk over to him and he gives me a thumbs-up.