When the caseworker requested it, Micky also presented her social-security card.
After entering the number from the card, F worked with the computer for a few minutes, pausing repeatedly to study the screen, entirely involved with the data she summoned, as if she’d forgotten that she had company.
Here was the dehumanizing influence of technology, which she’d so recently decried.
Micky couldn’t see the screen. Consequently, she was surprised when F, still focused on the computer, said, “So you were convicted of the possession of stolen property, aiding and abetting document forgery, and possession of forged documents with the intention to sell — including phony driver’s licenses, social-security cards… ”
F’s words did what too much lemon vodka and chocolate doughnuts had failed to accomplish: caused a tremor of nausea to slide through Micky’s stomach. “I’m … I mean… I’m sorry, but I don’t think you have a right to ask me about this.”
Still gazing at the screen, F said, “I didn’t ask. Just ran an ID check. Says you were sentenced to eighteen months.”
“None of that has anything to do with Leilani.”
F didn’t reply. Her slender fingers stroked the keys, no longer hammering, as though she were finessing information from the system.
“I didn’t do anything,” Micky said, despising the defensiveness in her voice, and the meekness. “The guy I was with at the time, he was into stuff I didn’t know about.”
F remained more interested in what the computer told her about Micky than what Micky had to say about herself.
The less that F asked, the more Micky felt obliged to explain. “I just happened to be in the car when the cops took him down. I didn’t know what was in the trunk — not the phony paper, the stolen coin collection, not any of it.”
As though she hadn’t heard a word of Micky’s reply, F said, “You were sent to the Northern California Women’s Facility. That’s south of Stockton, isn’t it? I went to the asparagus festival in Stockton once. One of the booths offered dishes created by Women’s Facility inmates involved in a culinary vocational program. Far as I remember, none of them was particularly tasty. This says you’re still there.”
“Yeah, well, that’s so wrong. I’ve never been to the asparagus festival.” When Micky saw F’s face tighten, she bit the tartness out of her voice, tried to sound contrite: “I was released last week. I came to live with my aunt until I get on my feet.”
“Says here you’re still at NCWF. Two more months.”
“I was granted early release.”
“Doesn’t mention parole here.”
“I’m not a parolee. I served my time, minus good behavior.”
“Be right back.” F rose from her desk and, without making eye contact, went to the door.
Chapter 36
Across the badlands, through the night, as the clouds move east and the sky purifies, the boy drives westward to the dog’s direction.
Gradually the desert withers away. A grassy prairie grows under the rolling tires.
Dawn comes pink and turquoise, painting a sky now as clear as distilled water. A hawk, gliding on high thermals, seems to float like the mere reflection of a bird on the surface of a still pool.
The engine dies for lack of fuel, requiring them to proceed afoot in more fertile land than any they have seen since Colorado. By the time the Mountaineer coughs out the fumes from its dry tank, they’re finished with the prairie, as well. They are now in a shallow valley where cottonwood and other trees shade a swift-slipping stream and where green meadows roll away from the banks of the watercourse.
Throughout the long drive, no one shot at them, and no more charred cadavers tumbled out of the night. Mile after mile, the only lights in the sky were stars, and at dawn, the great constellations conceded the stage to the one and nearest star that warms this world.
Now, when Curtis gets out of the SUV, the only sounds in the morning are the muted pings and ticks of the cooling engine.
Old Yeller is exhausted, as she ought to be, good scout and stalwart navigator. She totters to the edge of the brook and laps noisily at the cool clear current.
Kneeling upstream of the dog, Curtis slakes his thirst, too.
He sees no fish, bin he’s sure that the brook must contain them.
If he were Huckleberry Finn, he’d know how to catch breakfast. Of course, if he were a bear, he’d catch even more fish than Huck.
He can’t be Huck because Huck is just a fictional character, and he can’t be a bear because he’s Curtis Hammond. Even if there were a bear around here somewhere, to provide him with a detailed example of bear structure and bear behavior, he wouldn’t dare get naked and try to be a bear and wade into the stream after fish, because later when he was Curtis once more and put on his clothes, he’d be starting all over in this new identity that remains his best hope of survival, and therefore he would be easier to spot if the worse scalawags showed up again, searching for him with their tracking scopes.
“Maybe I am, stupid,” he tells the dog. “Maybe Gabby was right. He sure seemed smart. He knew everything about the government, and he got us out of that trouble. Maybe he was right about me, too.”
The dog thinks otherwise. With typical doggy devotion, she grins and wags her tail.
“Good pup. But I promised to take care of you, and now here we are without food.”
Relying on his survival training, the boy could find wild tubers and legumes and fungi to sustain him. The dog won’t want to eat those things, however, and won’t be properly nourished by them.
Old Yeller calls his attention to the Mountaineer by trotting to it and standing at the closed passenger’s-side door.
When Curtis opens the SUV for the dog, she springs onto the seat and paws at the closed glove box.
Curtis opens the box and discovers that Gabby travels prepared for the munchies. Three packets of snack crackers, a package of beef jerky, turkey jerky, two bags of peanuts, and a candy bar.
The box also contains the motor-vehicle registration for the SUV, which reveals that the owner’s name is Cliff Mooney. Obviously, if he’s related to the immortal Gabby Hayes, it must be through his mother’s side of the family. Curtis memorizes Cliff’s address, which he will one day need in order to properly compensate the man.
With the glove-box vittles, boy and dog settle by the silvery stream, under the wide-spreading branches of a seventy- foot Populus candican, also known as the balm-of-Gilead or the Ontario poplar.
Curtis knows more than movies. He knows local botany as well as local animal biology, He knows local physics, also complete physics, chemistry, higher mathematics, twenty-five local languages, and how to make a delicious apple pandowdy, among many other things.
Regardless of how much you know, however, you can never know everything. Curtis is aware of the limitations of his knowledge and of the abyssal ignorance that lies beneath what he knows.
Sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree, he tears the beef jerky into pieces and feeds it to the dog, morsel by morsel.
Anyway, knowledge isn’t wisdom, and we aren’t here just to stuff ourselves with facts and figures. We are given this life so we might earn the next; the gift is a chance to grow in spirit, and knowledge is one of many nutrients that facilitate our growth. Mom’s wisdom.
As the sun climbs higher, it cooks the night dew, and a low mist shimmers just above the meadow, as though the earth breathes out the dreams of the vanished generations buried in its breast.
The dog watches the mist with such interest that she exhibits no impatience when Curtis takes a while to strip off the stubborn wrapping from the second jerky. Ears pricked, head cocked, she focuses not on the treat, but on the mystery that is the meadow.
Her species has been granted limited but significant intellect, also emotions and hope. What most separates her from humankind and from other higher life forms isn’t her mental capacity, however, but her innocence. The
