Woman On The Edge Of Time (33 page)

The orderly who loaded her on a truck and pushed her down the hallway to the creaky old elevator was bored and sleepy and annoyed. “Creeps,” he kept mumbling. Nobody hurried. Parked outside the x-ray room on the truck, she found the minutes oozing slowly as the orderly and the nurse stood around complaining. But eventually the nurse left to make phone calls and the orderly went off to the coffee machine on the floor above, having got the nurse to break a dollar for him.

As soon as the orderly left she climbed down. Wiped the blood off as best she could on a sheet from the truck. Her nose was still dribbling blood. Then she trotted off down the nearest hall, trying every door as she went. In a closet she found a technician’s coat. All the labs and offices were locked. A broom closet was open and useless. Finally she turned a corner and
saw a door to the outside. It was marked with a sign promising that if it was used as an exit the alarm system would be triggered. “What can I do? Santa Maria! Help me now, just once!” She burst through it and it began ringing fiercely, loud enough to be heard everywhere, everywhere.

She had no idea what side of the building she had emerged on. Quickly she circled, looking for her clothes, but the outside lights flashed on and she gave up and started running. Perhaps she could hide someplace till dawn, till the search quieted, then circle back for her clothes. If only she had planned some better way to get the clothes out with her. She ran as hard as she could pump her short legs across the lawns, hopping low hedges, dodging benches. Soon they would be out looking for her in force. She was outside, she was outside for the first time since April! She ran, panting terribly, coughing, under the sliver of crescent moon, sharp enough to cut herself on. White as the metal span Sybil had pretended to attack her with. Bright as freedom. Skinny as her chances. “Pretty moon, mother, lady of those horns, help me. Luciente, shining one, like my friend, help me.”

But the sharp scythe of moon mocked her. Commented in a stagy voice like Sybil’s that she had planned, but planned like a madwoman, not thinking past the first stage of her escape. Had panicked when the first doors were locked and seized the outside exit with the alarm. She should have continued to try every door on every corridor to make a safe exit.

They might not find her clothes caught in the privet. If she hid, in the daytime she could shuffle slowly as any other inmate through the walks, meander close to the hospital, and grab the package. Another voice in her said, run, make space between. Escape and worry about clothes later. You have ten dollars. Buy, beg, steal clothes. Monday comes soon. Somebody will be doing a wash. Clothes will be hung on lines. Run! The voice sang that if she didn’t seize what chance she had, if she didn’t leap into the darkness, if like Sybil she awaited the perfect moment, the perfect moment never came. Alice had not tried to escape, and what punishment could they give her worse than to be turned into a toy, a puppet, a laboratory monkey?

She decided to keep going and forget her bundle. A siren
was screaming nearby Search parties, the police—they would all be after her. She knew where to get over the wall. She dodged among the buildings, along the inside of the hedges. She was glad she had been here before, glad she had had grounds privileges toward the end of her last stay so that she knew the layout. Now she was clambering up and over. Running in her clip-cloppy cheap shoes across the road to the far side. Behind a bush she crouched, panting. Waited for her breath to ease in her side. She coughed and coughed and spat. Used the white smock to wipe the blood from her face. Pulled the lump of bills from her shoe and stuffed it in the smock pocket.

As soon as the pain loosened its grip on her ribs she rose and walked along the road. She could see headlights approaching. Whenever a car came, she hid in the bushes. She walked quickly. Before she reached the next crossroads at the end of the hospital grounds, four cars passed her. One of them was a police car. Every car had cruised too slowly to be passing motorists. She imagined the description: dangerous lunatic escaped. At the crossroads she paused, staring at the expanse of paving without protection. Then she ran clopping across the naked asphalt. Here was the state highway. She must follow it, but she was afraid to walk on the pavement. To reach cover would take too long. She clambered down into the drainage ditch that ran alongside. When a car approached, she threw herself on her belly. As soon as the car vanished, she rose and resumed a quick trot. Her braises were aching, her cut thigh chafed, and already her feet burned. She had hardly walked in the past months and her feet were tender; her body was slack and weak from bad food and lack of exercise. She felt spent. She wanted to lie down in the drainage ditch. Sleep would rise slowly around her, sleep would rise around her aching body as warm water filled a tub, yes, warm sweet clean water rising slowly, rising up to cover her nice and warm. She was kneeling, her head bowed to the gravel. She forced herself to rise and march on.

All right, she could run and trot no farther. But she could walk. One foot, two foot. Right foot, left foot. A march played in her mind that people had been singing at militia practice, a
song they said was from the time they called the Struggles or the Thirty Years’ War.

The words formed themselves in her mind and she hummed as she walked. Right foot, left foot. With her head tilted, she looked into the clear sky. Almost overhead a big red star shone. A little to the north, still high up in the sky, she found the Big Dipper. West and a little lower down, a sickle of stars hung. She wished she could remember how to find the North Star. Her father had shown her when she was a child.

To leave the state highway would make her safer, but if she did she had no idea how to get to the next town. Again a police car came shining its spotlight lazily to both sides of the road. In the tall weeds of the drainage ditch she lay on her belly, glad that it had not rained for days. A mosquito settled on her leg and patiently sucked out her blood as she lay waiting for the police to leave. As she came to the next crossroads and raced across under high arc lights, she noticed that her green print dress was stained with dirt She was less acceptable-looking than ever. A gas station stood on the far corner of the crossroads, dark and shut for the night. She tried the doors of the bathrooms. The men’s had been left unlocked.

Blood on her face. She looked like an accident victim. She did not dare keep the light on but sat down to rest with a pile of wet towels and cleansed herself, sponging dirt from her dress as well as she could. Helping herself to a nice big stack of toilet
paper and a few paper towels, she tucked them away in the smock, which she put on to protect her dress. It was white and might stand out, but if she was too dirty she would never escape notice when it was time to get on a bus. In the pocket of the smock she found a wad of paper handkerchiefs, a pack of Kools with five left and a book of matches. She turned the latter over in her palm reverently. For four months she had been forbidden possession of this dangerous weapon and scrap of dignity: a pack of matches. The picture on the cover showed a man carrying a briefcase and smiling broadly. It invited her to go back to school and train for a great career through the mail. Even without a high school diploma she could earn $$$$$$$ preparing income taxes after only one eight-week mail order course.

She wished she could go back to school. In Luciente’s time everybody studied as long as they wanted to. They took courses all the time in fours and fives and sixes. What would she study? She hardly knew where she would want to begin. She was an ignorant woman; sometimes she pitied Luciente for lighting on her, when what did she know? Reluctantly she rose from the tiled floor. The room stank less than the bathrooms in the hospital. It was wonderful to use the toilet alone, with no one looking at her. To shut the door of the toilet stall. Wonderful to wash her face, her hands, her body and feet carefully in the basin. Her feet were swollen but they felt better after a soak. She took the tiny bit of soap left and wrapped it carefully in a paper towel.

Though she was eager to get back into the dark again and away from the intersection, on the chance that there might be a key left in the ignition, she checked all the cars parked behind the garage. They had taken the keys. In one, however, she found a state map, in another a pair of sunglasses (for disguise, maybe?), and in the trunk of an old white Thunderbird, someone had left a denim jacket. She tried it on. Better than the lab coat. She rolled back the sleeves and transferred her ten dollars, five cigarettes, the precious matches, the map to the pockets of the denim jacket. Then she folded the smock and tucked it under her arm.

Then a panic whirled up in her for spending half an hour at
the station and she began trotting down the drainage ditch beside the highway. Fatigue made her weak. As she trotted, then slowed to a walk, she nodded out and dreamed in snatches. Dolly and she were drinking café con leche very sweet in Dolly’s steamy kitchen. Nita sat on her lap, cuddling. She was letting Nita take a bite of her doughnut, soaked in the sweet milky coffee.

Car. She fell forward blindly and struck something sharp with her arm. She lay still, her arm hurting, while the car swept slowly past. Something rusty. Luckily it had not cut her but had only bruised the skin. The jacket had protected her. She crawled forward and then shakily rose. She walked and walked. The moon sank into the trees. Trucks passed. She spent as much time lying in the ditch as she did on her feet walking. She stumbled. Fell again.

At the next intersection she waited, looking in all directions before that stretch of pavement. There had been a gas station here too but it had gone out of business and the pumps hauled away. On the comer nearest her a produce stand was shuttered and padlocked for the night. She could find no easy way in. Behind it fruit and vegetables were thrown in the garbage, not good enough to sell. A rat stood its ground, then leisurely waddled into the tall grass as she approached. She was afraid to poke around. What a smell. Rotting fruit, rotting greens. Her stomach humped. She shook her head hard. She must eat. She forced herself to pick through the garbage until she had rescued some carrots, a yellow cabbage, some black but edible bananas, and a few sprouted potatoes. The denim jacket held them all except for the bananas, which she ate as she walked on.

Her hands stank. Patience. Wait. In the drainage ditch on the far side of the intersection, a small stream was running. Water in this drought. Taking off her shoes, she tried to wade in it but the water stank and the bottom was slippery with muck. She chose to walk on the side of the ditch away from the road, nervous because hiding was more difficult and the going rougher. Tall weeds tore at her legs and slowed her. She felt visible when she saw headlights or heard an engine and crouched in the tall grass beside the stream.

Her feet were raw. When she sat on a stone, she discovered her sole had worn a hole. She tried to patch the hole with a
paper towel, but that created a lump that blistered her foot. She could not walk farther and the sky was beginning to lighten. She had to get off the road.

Limping now between the stream and a barbed-wire fence with some crop growing on the other side, she could see no escape but forced herself on. The air was a thin gray, watery as institutional soup. She hardly had the energy to drop flat as cars approached, and in fact in her stupor a car came from behind without her realizing until it had gone past. By luck it was not searching for her, for it never slackened its speed. She was too exhausted to march on, but she could see no place to hide. She tried to walk faster on her last strength with oozing feet, through the air that betrayed her, growing thinner at each step. She forced her sore and sweaty legs on, swollen, bruised, stumbling beside the polluted ditch with its water flowing sluggishly in the same unknown direction.

She saw a patch of woods across the road. She had to wade the foul water again and then scramble up the embankment to the road and make a run for it. But she could no longer run. She hobbled across the pavement, vast and gray in the half light. Forever she picked up her leaden hoofs and crumpled forward. Her feet were damp with blood and fluid from broken blisters. She crossed the wide pavement with skid marks etched on it. At last she flung herself down the other embankment without pausing to look, because she heard the sound of an engine. No stream ran at the bottom here. She landed on a pile of broken bottles she rolled over limply. Hunched, she began to make her way forward, falling on her belly as cars approached. Lighter still. Now she could see clearly as far as a city block—and be seen. Then she reached the first scraggly tree of the woods. A barbed-wire fence ran along this side of the highway also, but she found a spot where she could use a wad of weeds and her white smock to push the rusted wires till she could crawl over. Then she thrust blindly through the brush until she was out of sight of the road. She collapsed.

Something crawled on her leg. She picked off a tick and flung it. Got up. With the road behind her, she forced her way through the brush toward taller trees. Finally she stood in a grove of tall feathery white pine with occasional young oaks coming up beneath them. The floor was reddish brown
needles, beautiful and sweet-smelling. She picked a spot under a tall tree and spread the smock. Lying down with her head on it, she slept almost immediately, collapsing into the thick sleep of exhaustion.

When Connie awoke she lay a moment, confused. Her brain felt swollen. Her head ached as if she had really had concussion. Her legs were stiff, sore, and itchy with bites. The sun stood well into the western sky. Yet she was free, she was still free. She felt bewildered with space and half drunk.