not. Marvin was way too cool to be one of them. Freeman edged closer to the car door.
They pulled into the cul-de-sac in front of the double doors and Marvin stopped the car before a wide set of concrete stairs. 'Here we go,' Marvin said. 'Wendover.'
Freeman glanced up at the windows on the second floor. A pale blur of motion appeared at one of them. A face? Someone watching?
Paranoid already. Good.
Freeman twisted his mouth into a frown. Better start off on the right foot, walk in mean, talk tough, squint like a miniature Clint Eastwood with saddle sores. Ready to eat nails and shit bullets.
Freeman got out of the car and tried out a strut. He took a breath of air and thought something was wrong. Then he realized that he wasn't smelling garbage and smog and car exhaust. The air was clean, cool, ripe with the fresh scent of pine and running water. So this was that Appalachian Mountain air that everybody had talked about when they promised he was going to a better place.
Marvin opened the trunk and retrieved the gym bag that contained all of Freeman's earthly possessions. Freeman looked up at the window again, real casual, so cool that he was probably exhaling frost. The face, or whatever it was, shimmered and disappeared.
Freeman's mouth fell open, definitely uncool. Must have been the sun. A reflection of a cloud. Faces didn't just disappear.
Freeman shouldered his gym bag and followed Marvin up the stairs. Marvin even moved cool, with an athletic grace. Freeman was tempted to imitate the driver's smooth stride, but it was hard to be smooth and jerky-tough at the same time, so he stuck with the limping strut.
Marvin held open one of the doors and slipped his sunglasses into his jacket pocket. 'Welcome home.'
Home. Freeman had heard that before. At least a dozen times in the last six years.
The smell of the place wafted from the hall like liquid sucked the fresh air out of his lungs and replaced it with a heavy corruption, like the funk of wet, moldy newspapers.
'Wendover, here I come,' he said cheerfully, in hopes of fooling good old Marvin.
He stepped inside the building and it was like stepping from day into night without passing dusk on the way, his eyes slowly adjusting to the gloom. The hallway ceiling stretched twenty feet above. The floor was tiled, spattered gray and brown, the kind that hid blood stains and vomit. A strip of worn red carpet lay along its middle like a weary tongue.
'Mister Mills,' came a high, thin voice. A man's voice, but not a manly, jock-itch man's. Some do-gooder wimp. Freeman looked up from the pointy toes of the shiny leather shoes before him.
'You talking to me?' Freeman said. De Niro in Taxi Driver, not Eastwood, but Freeman figured a Clint squint wouldn't fly in the bad light. He tried the line again, changing the emphasis of the syllables. 'You talking to we?'
'Welcome.' The man extended his hand. He was balding and his eyes were distorted behind his thick eyeglasses. The brushy mustache made him look like he was wearing one of those Groucho Marx disguises. His eyelids were heavy and purplish. The buggy, milky eyes blinked and the man licked his lips. Freeman's first thought was Lizard Man.
Freeman took the hand. It was clammy and moist, like the building's interior.
'Francis Bondurant,' Lizard Man said. 'I'm the director of Wendover Home.'
'Hey, call me 'Trooper.' I've got a history with that one,' Freeman said.
Lizard Man pursed his lips, and Freeman expected a long tongue to flick out at any moment and snatch a mosquito from the air. 'Why, er, yes, Mister Mills. How was the trip?'
'Nice ride,' Freeman said, with just an edge of toughness. No need to disrespect Marvin just to rack up an easy score against this guy.
'He was well behaved. A total gentleman,' Marvin said, and Lizard Man seemed to notice the driver for the first time, though he'd been standing a few feet behind Freeman. Maybe the Liz wasn't cool with 'coloreds.'
'Behaved himself, did he?' Now that Lizard Man had an adult to talk to, he became just like the rest, talked right over Freeman's head as if he wasn't there. 'Well, we hope he gets off to a good start here. Wendover has a reputation for helping the difficult placements.'
Difficult placements. The Liz made it sound like a game, stats to be padded like a batting average against a rookie pitcher. Maybe Wendover was the roach motel of group homes. Difficult placements check in, but they don't check out.
'Here's some of his papers.' Marvin pulled an envelope from somewhere inside his jacket. 'You should have received the rest in the mail.'
Lizard Man studied the papers, made sure everything was signed in the right place, then nodded curtly. The whole transaction reminded Freeman of a prisoner exchange in a war movie.
'Very good, sir,' Lizard Man said to Marvin, 'Are you rushing right back, or would you like to stay and rest a bit?'
Marvin rolled his eyes over the shabby interior: The oil painting of a sailboat that had lost its gloss, the paneled wainscoting that buckled from the wall in places, the ceiling tiles that looked as if someone had dashed coffee on them. 'Thanks for the offer. But I've got a Bible Study to lead back off the mountain. Wouldn't want one of my youngsters to misinterpret the parable of the fishes.'
'Amen to that,' Lizard Man said, and Freeman could tell right away the man had fallen into the automatic Jesus-response and didn't know the first damned thing about the parable of the fishes. 'Well, thank you for delivering this young Daniel from the lion's den.'
'He isn't delivered yet, Mr. Bondurant. You and your staff will have to take him the rest of the way to salvation.'
'Quite so.'
To Freeman, Marvin said, 'So long, Freeman. Hope it works out.'
'Thanks for the lift.' Freeman almost reached out to shake Marvin's hand, but didn't want to mess it up by fumbling around halfway between a high-five and a soul shake. So he just nodded. He was supposed to be tough, anyway. He wasn't going to be softened up with a few kind words and a fast-food meal. He'd been hit harder by better.
'See you around,' Marvin said to them both, then glided out the door. The shaft of sunlight that snuck in during his exit gave a hint of the wide green world beyond. Then the door swung closed, slamming with the finality of a coffin lid.
Freeman was home.
TWO
Francis Bondurant was already building a mental file on his latest charge. As Bondurant pretended to read the reports on his desk, he secretly studied Freeman Mills over the rims of his glasses. The boy lounged in the overstuffed leather chair in front of Bondurant's desk, looking at the art on the walls, prints of Brueghel, Goya, and Raphael. The kind of epic religious art that inspired young minds, or at least invoked a little fear.
'So, you had some trouble down at Durham Academy,' Bondurant said, pressing his lips together in appropriate disapproval.
Freeman didn't answer, just scuffed his feet on the carpet.
Sullen was the adjective that Bondurant slid into the mental file. He had two cabinets full of documentation, reports, GAF scores, criminal records, and Social Services data, but he preferred to build his own portfolio for each of Wendover's clients. Through this method, he could work the healing powers of the Lord on these wayward children. He had to carry the children in his heart before he could lift them to higher glory. Even though Dr. Kracowski had requested and arranged Freeman Mills's transfer, that didn't mean the boy's troubled soul should be entrusted entirely to science.
'Do you want to talk about it?' Bondurant said. 'Sometimes a little distance helps us put things in perspective.'
'It's all in those papers.' The boy shrugged, his face soft and feminine around his hard eyes. 'Whatever they
