کتاب 09-26

26

All through the following morning, Harper was conscious of being observed, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes openly. An old man in a wifebeater glared at them from behind the screen door of his cottage. Three small and nearly identical boys with running noses studied them from the window of their ranch house. Nick waved. They didn’t wave back.

Another time, a black car followed them, hanging about a quarter mile back, gravel grinding under its tires. It stopped when they stopped, and when they proceeded it rolled on in their wake. Four men in it, two in front, two in back, men in flannel hunting coats and porkpie hats.

“I think they have guns,” Renée said. “Do you think we’re safe? No, don’t answer that. They say there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but I believe that qualifies. We haven’t been safe in months.”

The black car kept pace with them for over an hour before suddenly accelerating, then lurching off the highway onto a narrow side road, tires throwing stones. One of the passengers hurled an empty beer can out the window, but Harper wasn’t sure he was throwing it at them. She didn’t see any weapons, but as they took the corner, a fat, ruddy-faced man in the backseat made a pistol with his hand, pointed his finger at Nick, and pulled an imaginary trigger. Pow.

Very late in the day they reached the Bucksport Trading Post, which had the look of a former stable, with a hitching post out front and window frames of wormy, untreated pine. Antlers rose above the front door. A nonfunctional Coke machine from the forties collected dust on the board porch. The dirt lot was empty, a chain hung across the entrance. A white sheet had been draped over the chain, words slapped on in black paint:

ALL HEALTHY HERE SICK GO ON

But a folding table had been set up on their side of the rusty, swinging chain. On it were paper bowls of chicken noodle soup. Paper cups of water had been arranged in a row.

The smell of the soup was enough to get Harper’s saliva glands working and her stomach tightening with hunger, but that wasn’t what really excited her. Over on one corner of the table was a bottle of some kind of pink syrup and a little plastic syringe. It was the sort of syringe you might use to orally administer medicine to a dog or a small child. The label on the bottle said ERYTHROMYCIN and gave a dosage for someone named Lucky. It had expired over a year ago and was only half full, the outside of the bottle tacky with dried syrup. Pinned beneath the bottle was a ruled sheet of notebook paper:

heard you are with invalid will this help?

Harper took the bottle in one hand and peered up at the Bucksport Trading Post. A black man in a flannel shirt, with gold spectacles resting on the end of his nose, peered back from behind a window crowded with knickknacks: a carved wooden moose, a lamp with a driftwood base. Harper lifted a hand in a gesture of thanks. He nodded, his glasses flashing, and retreated into dimness.

She gave John his first dose, squirting it into the back of his mouth, and followed with aspirin, while the others sat on the side of the road, tipping their paper bowls to their mouths to drink lukewarm soup.

An orange DETOUR FOR SICK sign pointed them west, along a winding country road, away from the town of Bucksport itself. But they paused at a wooden sawhorse (SICK DO NOT CROSS) to peer along a lane that led into town and down toward the sea. The street was shaded with big leafy oaks and lined with two- and three-story Colonials. It was late in the day and Harper could see lights on in the houses—electric lights—and a streetlamp casting a steely blue glow.

“My God,” Renée said. “We’re back in a part of the world that has power.”

“No we aren’t,” Allie told her. “That part of the world is on the other side of this sawhorse. What do you think would happen if we tried to cross?”

“I don’t know, and we’re not going to find out. We’re going to follow the signs and do what we’re told,” Harper said.

“Walk right this way,” Allie said. “Up the ramp and into the slaughterhouse. Single file, please. No shoving.”

“If they wanted to kill us, they’ve had plenty of opportunities,” Renée noted.

“Never mind me,” Allie said. “I’m just your typical jaded teenage leper.”