Dolly lifted her head and turned to give him a smile, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘My, ain’t you something,’ she said, quietly beginning to cry.
As they sat down to breakfast the next morning, a small blue plane buzzed the house.
‘That’s for us,’ Dolly said. ‘He’ll drop something on the next pass.’
Annalee went outside, Daniel scampering in front of her. They watched, hands shading their eyes against the low sun, as the plane banked slowly to the left and came back over, dropping a small silver cannister that bounced along the road and finally rolled to a stop behind the flatbed.
‘That was a great shot!’ Daniel enthused.
Annalee picked up the cannister and handed it to him. ‘You can carry it in to Dolly.’
They read the message together at the kitchen table: ‘H1M1142400. Beach. Walk. NoV.’
‘I hope you know what it means,’ Annalee said, ‘’cause I don’t have a clue.’
‘Highway 1, Marker 114, at 2400 hours,’ Dolly translated. ‘That’s midnight. Meet on the beach. Walk over. “NoV” means no vehicles. How far is it from here?’
‘Two miles maybe – an hour at the most. There’s an old saddle trail. But that’s just to the highway. I don’t know the highway marker.’
‘I’ll bet 114 is close to the trail. I guess I should leave around ten o’clock. You have a spare flashlight?’
‘I’ll walk down with you,’ Annalee said. ‘We hike over all the time for fish and abalone.’
Dolly glanced at Daniel.
‘I carry him. One of those kiddie-carriers, sort of like a backpack.’
‘It’s fun,’ Daniel said.
‘There’s no point, really. And if somebody caught up with me at the last minute…’
Daniel said hotly, ‘I wouldn’t tell! Never, never, never.’
Chuckling, Dolly rumpled his hair. ‘I wasn’t worried about that. You got so much face you could never lose it all. But I don’t want them to take you hostage.’
‘What’s hostage?’
‘Where they trade you for me.’
‘I wouldn’t trade,’ Daniel said flatly.
‘I would,’ Dolly told him. ‘That’s why you and your mom are staying here.’
Dolly left a few minutes before 10.00. Annalee and Daniel walked with her down through the orchard to the saddle trail. Annalee gave her an old day pack that she’d stocked with a sandwich, the last of the large gauze pads, and extra batteries and bulb for the flashlight. Dolly lifted Daniel in her arms and gave him a huge hug, waltzing him around a moment before setting him down. She and Annalee embraced briefly.
‘Thanks for the help and hospitality,’ Dolly said. ‘You’re real people, both of you.’ She took a deep breath of the clear October night. ‘Damn,’ she sighed, ‘it’s so
‘Stay that way,’ Annalee said.
Hand in hand, Daniel and Annalee watched as Dolly, limping slightly, set off alone toward the coast.
Shortly after Daniel’s fifth birthday, Annalee sat down with him and outlined the possible benefits and disadvantages of attending school as carefully as she could. She left the choice to Daniel. It only took him a moment. ‘Naw,’ he said, ‘school sounds shitty.’
However, while Daniel was unschooled, he wasn’t uneducated. Annalee – an excellent student herself before her parents’ deaths – had already taught him to read by the time he decided against institutional learning. On their supply runs to town, they spent half their time at the library as Daniel selected his reading material till the next trip – and he was always careful to determine from Annalee exactly when that would be. His reading choices were eclectic, but he had an abiding interest in animals and the stars. When he was nine years old, he ordered a color poster of the Horsehead Nebula. He rhapsodized over it for days, lecturing Annalee on the nature and mysteries of the seething whirl of gas and dust. Annalee had never seen him so entranced.
She said, ‘I bet I know why you like the Horsehead Nebula so much.’
‘What are we betting?’ Daniel said. She only made bets like that when she wanted to know what he was thinking. He liked the odds.
‘Dinner dishes.’
‘Okay,’ Daniel agreed. ‘Why do I like it?’
‘Because it’s beautiful.’
‘Nope.’
‘Well – why then?’
‘I like it,’ Daniel said, ‘because it’s as much as I can imagine.’
Annalee pounced. ‘That’s exactly what I meant by beautiful.’
‘Wrong,’ Daniel declared. ‘You have to do the breakfast dishes too, for trying to cheat.’
Like most teachers, Annalee learned with her student. Each New Year’s Eve they chose a subject to study together. One year it was rocks. One year, birds of prey. The year devoted to meteorology was the most fun. Each night they put their sealed forecasts for the next day’s weather into a jar, opening them after dinner on the
