The Garden of Last Days (34 page)

“I’m hungry.”

“It’s late, Francie. You go back to sleep till we get to your mama’s house.”

He glanced up at her in the rearview. She seemed to take in what he’d said: Sleeping, then her mama.

“My name is
Franny
.”

“Franny.” He smiled at her in the mirror. He liked her spunk, but what would come of it? Spunk turns to sassy turns to bitch turns to whore. Just like her mama. Who’s to say this runt wouldn’t grow up into another Spring? Another Marianne? Just smiling and shaking her tits and leading you on till you’re broke and your Visa’s full and you’re holding your dick in your hand?

“I’m hungry.”

His numbed wrist rested against the door handle. Every time he slowed or sped up or made a turn, the ice pack slid off onto his leg and he had to press his knees to the wheel to hold it steady and readjust the pack with his good hand. He wasn’t even going to try to sip the coffee from the holder. He never did find a cup worth a shit for driving and had settled on a red plastic one from Busch Gardens with no lid and already a third of it had sloshed out all over his truck carpet. He needed to stop and get a proper cup. He needed to stop and get this girl a snack so she’d get quiet again and the Benadryl could kick in.

“Please, I’m hungry. And I’m thirsty.”

“I heard you, hon.”

In the darkness he drove under live oaks, Spanish moss hanging down like nagging reminders of something he’d forgotten to do. He passed by scrappy yards and small houses, everybody in them asleep, probably curled up to someone they loved. He’d never gotten tired of that with Deena. Even after she’d gained all that weight. Even after nights of bitching and screaming, it’d all be over by one or two in the morning and they’d just be echoes in his head and she was a soft, warm body he’d curl up against, his nose in her hair, his hand and arm on her soft hip. Whenever he dreamed of Marianne, he never did get that far with her—the way he saw Deena, like she wasn’t just a woman but home itself.

“I’m thirsty.”

At the turnoff to 301 the lights of the Mobil station shone whitely and there was a convenience store section and he bet they had coffee brewed in there. He checked his gas gauge. Quarter tank left. He’d get coffee and gas and buy this girl a snack. But did he want that? Wouldn’t that absorb some of the Benadryl he’d given her? Wouldn’t that make it harder for her to go back to sleep? He didn’t know, but he couldn’t have her hungry and going on and goddamned on.

He pulled up to the pumps and cut the engine, the ice bag slipping off his wrist onto his leg. He tossed it onto the leftover twelve-pack on the passenger’s seat.

“I want a Shush Puppie.”

“A hush puppy?” Mama used to make them when he and Eddie would come home with fish, wonderful cornmeal and eggs and green onions rolled up in a ball and fried in hot oil in an iron skillet. He smiled and opened his truck door. “They won’t have hush puppies in there. Does your mama make those?” His respect for Spring maybe rising just a bit, picturing her frying a meal for her girl.

“No,
Slush
Puppie. Can I have a Slush Puppie, please?”

A fucking slush. Well Cole liked them too.

“Yeah, you can have one.”

He swung the plastic tray up over her head. She was a cute little thing, looking up at him with her tiny face, some of her fine hair sticking to her cheek.

“I want grape.”

“Okay.” He was about to lift her out of the cab, then remembered the gas. “Hold on, honey. I’ve got to buy gas first, ’kay?”

He started to close the access door but then left it open, pulled the nozzle free, uncapped his tank, and began pumping. He could see her through the hinge-crack standing there, her head not even reaching the tops of his bucket seats. She yawned and rubbed her eyes with her fists. She stepped closer to the door’s opening and looked at
him through the tinted glass. “I want Mama.” But she didn’t cry. Just looked at him like she was almost mad at him, that it was his fault she wasn’t with her mama right now. And she had a point there, didn’t she?

“You want a grape Slush Puppie, right?”

She nodded.

“Just a minute then.”

How bad could Spring be if her daughter missed her this much? Maybe other than being a lying whore and taking her baby to a place no kid should even know about, she was all right. You did what you had to—no, bull
shit
; there was that woman in Oneca a few years ago who beat her eleven-month-old with a stick and even then, the baby would come crawling back to her, to his mama, to the only hope he had, the same place that gave him nine broken bones. And Spring should fucking
thank
him for taking the time to drive this girl away. She should get down on her knees to him. But she won’t. The best he could hope for was to scare the living piss out of her.

The pump clicked off. Almost thirty-four dollars and that wasn’t for a full tank either.

“I want a Shush Puppie, please.”

His arm pain had moved permanently to his neck and head. His eyes ached and the swelling in his hand had gone down but not much. He’d have to ice it again, longer this time. Stop somewhere so the pack would quit slipping off his wrist. He should just drive right to the marina across from the temple. Park his truck near the palm trees and protected mangroves and ice it for a good hour. He’d have that much time before he had to carry her over. And as he carried her now, careful to hold her at his side away from his bad arm, he enjoyed smelling her hair and feeling the slight weight of her. She wasn’t afraid of him and that made him feel good. Like he was the kind of man he knew he really was, the kind who’d never have papers on him from a judge keeping him away, but a good man who’d been wronged.

Taped to the door of the Mobil Mart was a poster for a boat show in Tampa. After the hospital and calling a lawyer, after a day and night’s rest, that’s the first place he’d go. And wouldn’t it be fun to take Cole with him? Wouldn’t Deena maybe want to come too? To the coast city to look at big gleaming boats?

HIS NAME WAS
Sergeant Doonan. He’d told April to sit up front and buckle herself in, and now she sat there on the other side of his computer screen and radio while he drove her without her child, without her Franny. April’s nose was stopped up, her throat sore from screaming and crying, and it was as if each white line passing under the patrol car was taking with it her intestines and stringing them out along the road in the dark, leaving her a shell of muscle and bones with a heart that wouldn’t stop pounding for what she’d done and for what she hadn’t done and for what she couldn’t do now—hold her and keep her safe, and God, Oh God, please God, just
find
her.

“We will.”

Did she speak? Was she talking? She looked over at him, his glasses halfway down his nose, this grandfather taking her home to wait for a call because there was nothing to do now but get out of their way and
let them do their work. And her car was evidence, the picture of her and Franny ripped from the yarn it’d been hanging from, lying on her seat like she and Franny had been the target of somebody who knew them both when she’d been alone here; there was just Jean. And there were people back home.

“Here you go.” The cop’s hand held out a tissue. His watch was gold. The hairs on his wrist grew around it, his voice deep and strong, not like an old man’s at all. She hadn’t known she was crying again. She took the tissue and pressed it to her closed eyes, but in the darkness was Franny’s face when she slept, her eyes closed, her eyelashes impossibly long, her hair pulled back from her cheek, then a man’s hands under her chin, a knife, a belt, duct tape, an old blanket and weeds, a muddy ditch, gasoline and flames, Franny underwater, her open mouth—Oh God, Oh God, this moan rising up from deep beneath the scar April had let the foreigner touch, as if selling her child’s place of origin had violated her beginning and so fated her end, dissolving her, cursing her, making her disappear.

THE KAFIR OFFICER
holds Bassam’s license. He looks from it to Bassam, then at the license once more. He turns it over. Bassam’s heart beats too forcefully inside him for the cash still strains the seams of his pockets. Will the policeman ask to see what he carries? And what will he tell him? In the kingdom they would have stripped off his clothing by now, taken all that is his. They would torture him until he told everything. Until he gave up everyone. Bassam’s mouth is dry as smoke, and he is afraid when he speaks his tongue will stick slightly, revealing him, and he makes a silent du’a to the Mighty to protect him.

“What’re you doing on the Gulf Coast?”

“Visiting a friend.”

“Where?”

“Venice.”

“What do you do in Deerfield Beach?”

“I am student.”

“Where?”

“Gainesville.”

“So why’re you in Deerfield Beach?”

“I have a job for summer only. Pizza.”

“You make pizza?”

“Transport it.”

“Pizza?”

“Yes.”

“You deliver it?”

“Yes, I deliver.”

“Did you see a small girl tonight?”

“No, only women. Many women.”

The officer smiles weakly. He hands to Bassam his license. “You’re freetogo.”

“Excuse, please?”

“You’re free to go.”

Bassam looks at the kafir, at the rash on his throat from shaving, at the dark hair upon his arm like his own.
Freetogo
. What does this mean?

“Go ahead.” The policeman motions forward with his hand, the same motion Ali al-Fahd would make when in Bassam’s earlier life he wanted him to hurry, and now he understands and turns and leaves this den of Shaytan, brightly lighted now and dirty.

In the parking area there are more police vehicles than before, their flashing blue lights, the air cooler and smelling of the exhaust of their running engines, but there is a lightness in the air around him, and Bassam starts the Neon and closes his eyes.
All praise is for Allah by whose favor good works are accomplished
. He shifts the auto into reverse gear and backs slowly over shells from the sea, his eyes upon all the policemen behind him, some standing beside their autos, others seated inside, none of them watching as he pushes the shifter and disappears.

He drives south, the yellow light of the tall sign in his mirror growing smaller. The screams of April. So very like the screams of his own mother, how they came much later, after his father washed Khalid’s body, cut and broken and bruised, in the required order of ablutions. For the final washing he added camphor to the water, dried his body with a towel, covered it in white. At the mosque his mother recited with the others the salaat-l-janazah and she did not weep for she knows the soul of her son is with the Sustainer. Khalid’s grave lies not far from a grove of fig trees and there was comfort in knowing they had buried him before one full day had passed.

But later, after the three days of mourning, she could not hide her cries. They came always behind the doors she closed. Her face was pressed to pillows but her sounds could not be softened. They were of a woman being stabbed by a hot sword. Bassam’s sisters or even Ahmed al-Jizani, his face gray, his eyes dark and full, they would go to her but she could not be stopped. Her suffering could not be stopped, and Bassam would leave the home in search of Karim or Tariq or Imad or even a cigarette he could smoke as the bad Muslim he had been.