Relief Map (11 page)

“Do we have a plan?” Livy said. Nerves made her imperious.

“Let's get out of the parking lot first,” Brian said, and Dominic dropped the end of his cigarette and stepped on it. They walked down under the bridge and stood on the gravel and dead leaves and fine sucking sand at the edge of the water. The arch was high and invisible over their heads, taunting them with the reflected sound of their nervous breathing.

“We'll walk down in the creek,” Brian said. “And then, when we get to Maronne, we'll come up before the bridge and blend in.”

“Blend in?” Livy said.

“It's two in the morning,” Dominic said. “There's going to be nobody out.”

“Okay, so nobody will see us,” amended Brian.

“I'm saying if anybody does see us they're going to notice us. When's the last time you were in Maronne at two in the morning and didn't get picked up?”

“What do we do when we get to Quick Drug?” Nelson said.

“You have money?” Livy said.

“Yeah.”

“Won't it look
weird that we want this stuff in the middle of the night?” Livy said.

“No,” Dominic said. “It's a twenty-four-hour drugstore. It wouldn't be open twenty-four hours if they didn't expect people to want prescriptions twenty-four hours.”

“It'll take a long time,” she said again.

“So we'll wait. Do you have a better idea?”

“No,” Livy said. It was the second time he'd said that. He turned and walked away, and they followed him.

Not far from the bridge the undergrowth crowded them off the bank and into the water. It wasn't cold, but the creek bed was rocky and Livy knew it was full of rusty metal, bedsprings and bicycle parts and scrap steel that fell off the trains as they went around the turn. She had canvas sneakers on and plenty of things could go right through the soles. After a while she found herself in front; she was more knowledgeable of the underwater geography than the others were, and she moved faster than they did. In this part of the creek even the deep parts came only to their thighs and the bottom was smoother, sandier, less treacherous. She pushed through the deep water, her arms pivoting gently.

The bridge disappeared from view as they rounded the curve and the trees gathered close to the bank. Here the hill was too steep to be useful for anything, so it was empty, and had always been empty—bare and wild, so
close to people, for so long. At the top there was bedrock that pushed straight out of the earth. All the hills of the valley were crowned with jagged bedrock like that, though it was hidden under the softness of the trees in summer.

The valley was deep black where they were. It was a warm night and the crickets sang in the undergrowth close to the water. Past the bend, the creek was shallow, filled with silt islands where whipping brambles grew between the sycamores. Livy led them through the burbling shallow water between the west side of the creek and the nearest sandbars. She heard somebody swear just behind her, and then the sound of clumsy, dangerous splashing. She stopped and turned.

“Are you okay?” she heard Brian say.

“Fuck. I guess,” Dominic said.

“You stepped on something?” Brian said.

“It's fine. Let's go.”

Livy tried to concentrate on her own feet. Looking into the water gave her vertigo: it was perfectly black. A rock shifted under her sneaker and she stumbled and reached out for a tree standing close to the water. As she looked up, a van coasted around the turn of the hill from Maronne.

“Shit,” she said. “Get down, get down, get
down
.”

She dropped to her hands and knees in the water. Nelson crouched down beside her and past him the dark
shapes of Dominic and Brian fell into line. She could make out shadows against the lights high above the creek. The sounds of voices, people getting out of the van, and then the crackle of radios drifted down to them and flashlights snapped on. Livy tried to make herself smaller, her knees pressing against the stones.

Flashlight beams sliced down through the slender trees clinging to the far bank, making arcs of incandescent green. Livy's lips touched the water. There was not a single sound from the others, and with her face nearly in the water she was blind to everything and she could have been alone. She breathed in and out, slowly, five times.

She made herself look. She could still make out the shapes of the people standing next to the van, but the lights were panning farther up now, closer to the railroad bridge at the edge of Maronne. She sat up a little. Something sharp dug into the palm of her left hand and she took her weight off it.

Branches were crackling on their side of the creek. Lights advanced through the trees from the railroad bridge.

“Get back,” she whispered. She grabbed a handful of Nelson's shirt and stumbled over the gravel, away from the island and toward the bank.

“Livy, they're coming from that way!” he hissed.

She dropped down again where the water was calm and dragged Nelson down with her, and it was the spot she remembered, a swimming hole where the water cut deep into the soft earth along the bank and heavy roots skimmed the surface, and they could almost disappear. She crouched neck-deep in the water. Next to her Nelson had taken hold of a thick root that curved above the water as smooth as a bare arm, and he was pulling himself back out of sight, against the small feathering roots underwater and the things that lived in them. Dominic was half out of the water, hiding behind a tangle of blackberry vines. Livy tipped her head back and pushed herself lower. She was submerged except for her eyes and nose and mouth, and she was looking up into the overhanging branches of the old trees. Far out over the center of the creek there was a patch of orange-lit sky.

On the far side of the creek, red lights shone through the weeds along the road: the van was backing up, going on its way. Livy lifted her head clear of the water to listen, and heard footsteps behind her, on the path that followed the creek a few yards back in the woods. A flashlight beam cut across the leaves of the tree above them.

They could hear men close now, ten or fifteen feet away. They could hear the noises their clothes made: the fabric on arms and legs rubbing together, the cracking of
sticks under their boots. Water was running into Livy's mouth and it took all her concentration not to choke and spit. Time seemed to split into two tracks, so that there was no time to move and yet infinite time to imagine the disaster that loomed in front of her. The police would mistake them for the fugitive and they would shoot. She would die. Hiding was the wrong choice: if they had stood where they were and shown their hands, they would have only been arrested.

The flashlights waved and then there was a male voice, a few words. A single phrase reached them intact—“pick up”—and there was a murmured response and then the voices and footsteps faded away. For a count of thirty or sixty or ninety Livy stayed where she was, unconvinced of their good luck. There was no sound but a breeze in the high leaves. She lifted her head out of the water and took in a long breath. Relief expanded through her, like a balloon filling. She felt loose and warm and untouchable. Nelson was holding her arm under the water but he was invisible to her, back under the hanging roots. She squeezed his fingers and looked around for the other boys, not yet rising to her feet.

Was the night getting brighter? She could see the shape of Brian's head in the water; she thought she could see his closed eyes. Her legs nearly drifted out from under her. She floated there with Nelson holding on to her arm.

It felt like they waited ten minutes to move after the men were gone. Brian was the first to stand up. Dominic staggered and whispered, “Fuck, my foot.”

“Can you walk?” she said.

“Yes, I can fucking walk.”

They moved faster now, and kept to deeper water. Their clothes weighed them down. In five minutes they were out of the darkness of the trees and into the open, breathing tightly. They could see the massive arches of the old stone railroad bridge standing against the orange fog that hung over Maronne. They were past the roadblock and they could hear the trucks on the highway and see the lights around their edges, a bulb at each right angle as they rattled by.

The railroad tracks that followed the course of the creek crossed overhead on an iron bridge, and after they had gotten out from under its shadow they found themselves between retaining walls. The creek bed was silty and if they paused their shoes got sucked down into it and they staggered pulling them free. They walked along the side closest to the road, reasoning that the angles of sight were in their favor there, and glad for the guidance the wall offered in the dark.

They reached the arches of the stone bridge that marked the edge of Maronne. On the north side there was only the bare hill, showing in its granite face the
marks of the dynamite charges that had cleared the way for the highway. On the south side were the first blocks of Maronne row houses, the first gas station, the clusters of warehouses, and, a little to the west, the scrapyards where the railroad tracks ended. The four of them climbed up out of the water under the high black arch and stood panting in the dark. The intersection was just as it had ever been; a truck and three cars eased to a stop at a red light as they watched, obedient even at 2:00 AM, a turn signal flashing like a pulse. Crickets and katydids sang.

“Wait until they go,” Brian said.

They stayed under the bridge. The light changed to green and the truck and the three cars dispersed, two left, two straight ahead. They watched the red brake lights trail away up the hill. Livy thought the hard part might be over now. They walked out into the light of the streetlamps.

Livy could see Dominic's face now and it was clear that he was in some pain. He was limping and frowning.

“We could look at that,” she said. Her legs were shaking slightly but she felt strong. She knew it was only the adrenaline still working in her, but she felt like skipping.

“Don't be stupid,” he said.

They crossed the intersection and started up Broad. There were too many of them, Livy realized. Four people on the empty street like that, all together, not talking, the
tallest of them limping; they were conspicuous. Under the streetlights she saw how her white shirt was stuck to her bra and she pulled it away from her skin, feeling the new cold. Their shoes squeaked and wheezed comically. Dominic alone had managed to stay dry above the knees.

The Quick Drug sat spilling icy light across a parking lot. Livy quickened her pace when it came into view, feeling an odd pleasure at the thought of doing this ordinary thing, a shopping trip. She'd brought a ten-dollar bill and intended to buy some candy. She pushed through the jingling door just behind Nelson and paused by the newspaper rack at the door, looking around at the makeup displays and rows of hosiery.

Dominic skirted around the edge of the store, down the side aisle, and met them at the empty pharmacy counter. His mouth was open and he was breathing audibly; his forehead was creased.

“You all right?” Nelson said.

Dominic lifted his chin and leaned back a little, moving his shirt aside at the hip. They could see a bit of his pale stomach.

“What?” Livy said.

“Look,” he said.

It took a moment for her to understand what she was looking at. The handle of a gun was sticking out of the waistband of his jeans. She was speechless. Dominic
leaned past her and tapped the bell on the counter with the palm of his hand.

“What the fuck is that for?” Livy said. “You said you had money!”

“But I don't have the
prescriptions
,” Dominic said. He smiled.

“No, no, no,” she said. She felt a thrumming through the air; it was the blood rushing to her ears. She looked at Nelson and he was closer to her than she expected, an expression of astonishment on his face. Brian appeared around a rack of sugarless candies, looking tense but unsurprised.

“Dominic, this is not a good idea, all right?” Nelson said, stepping forward with his hands out. “You haven't started yet. You don't have to start.”

They heard a door open, invisible behind a bank of shelves at the back of the pharmacy area, and a man shuffled out. Nelson froze, halfway through his plea.

“Can I help you?” said the pharmacist. He was not a man. He was a boy, her own age. He was wearing a lab coat, something plaid underneath. He had a lanyard around his neck with keys hanging on it:
Cowlton Panthers
. He lifted a pair of glasses and put them on. “Um,” he said.

Livy could imagine how they looked. Dominic was staring meaninglessly at him, the gun hidden under the edge of the high counter, and the three others stood in
a rigid half circle behind him, all of them skull-faced with fear.

“Put your hands up,” Dominic said. He lifted the gun over the edge of the counter and pointed it at him.

The pharmacist stared. His mouth opened.

“Put your hands up,” Brian reiterated.

The pharmacist put his hands up. “There's only thirty-five dollars in the register and I don't have the key to the safe,” he said. It sounded like he'd said it before.

“Livy, get back there with him,” Dominic said.

Livy stared at him and flexed her numb hands. She felt the idiocy of her expression. “What for?” she said.

“No,” Nelson said. “No.”

He grabbed at her wrist, trying to watch Dominic at the same time, and missed. Dominic looked at her as if he didn't recognize her. His blankness was frightening, and she could not stop looking at the gun. She backed away from him and tried to walk through the little white gate beside the computer, but it didn't move and she pitched forward over it, both hands slapping the counter. She reached down to unhook the latch and her face burned.

“Don't push any alarms,” Dominic said.

“What?” said the pharmacist.

“Don't do any alarm things.”