Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

bit. I think that would make us both feel better.“
    “Settle him right down. Does for me.”
    “It’s so peaceful out here,” I said.
    “That it is.” He tilted his head back and looked up at the moon.
    “I think if I lived here, I’d come out to the garden every night, just to be by myself for a little while, have some place that was my own.”
    I felt Jackson’s fingers twitch in my hand.
    “I wouldn’t care what the rules were. What harm could it do to sit out here, look up at the moon and down at the shadows it makes in the yard?”
    Homer walked over to the raised beds of plants against the north wall. I headed for the door, Dashiell looking back where the treasure he’d found had been reburied, then running on ahead.
    While the kettle heated, I gave Dashiell water and two of Lady’s dog biscuits. Then I wet a small, clean dish towel and washed Jackson’s face and hands. There was paint every-
    where—streaks of green on both sides of his shirt, paint on one cheek, more paint in his hair, his hands so caked with dirt I couldn’t see the paint underneath until I started to clean them, which he passively let me do.
    I filled a bowl with warm soapy water, and Jackson let me put his hands in it, to loosen the dirt from under his nails and get the layers of paint off his skin. While the tea was steeping, I rinsed and dried his hands.
    Sitting across from each other, we drank our tea without saying a word. Dashiell had fallen asleep on the floor near the water bowl. Listening to him breathe, sounding like a kid with a stuffed nose, I wanted to go home, soak in a hot bath, and then crawl into bed and sleep, too.
    But there was only one day left before all hell broke loose. Sitting there with this shell-shocked man and my sleeping pit bull, I thought, no, what was I thinking, there wasn’t one day left, all hell had already broken loose, and if I didn’t find out why, things were going to get even worse than they were now.
    I stood and reached for Jackson’s hand. For a moment, only a moment, he seemed to look at me, the way he had done once before. He looked away, reached into his shirt pocket with two long fingers, and pulled out a piece of bread, holding it out to me, then dropping it into my upturned palm. It was as hard and dry as a bone long ago picked clean by a hungry dog, but I had always been told it was the thought that counted, and I believed that. I went around the counter, standing in front of Jackson and looking at him. His eyes flashed again, like heat lightning on a summer night, a quick, bright light, then darkness.
    Jackson stood, again looming over me.
    “Come here, honey,” I said, opening my arms.
    This time he stepped toward me, and when I folded my arms around him, he lifted his. I felt the weight of his lanky arms on my shoulders. Then I felt the tears, mine wetting his shirt, his landing on my neck, warm and wet and sad as death.

Chapter 26
    Lady Vanishes

    Jackson took off his paint-splattered Keds and got into bed with his clothes on, too tired to change into his pajamas. Or maybe he would have needed help, but I didn’t know the drill, and at this point it didn’t seem very important. I pulled a chair close to the bed and sat, Dashiell sprawled on the floor, everyone exhausted by now.
    Paint on the bookend. What did that mean? Had it been Jackson who had tried to kill Venus?
    But why?
    With a population this disabled, was there a why I could understand? These were people who could be stressed beyond my comprehension by the ordinary things that made up my world—the touch of a fellow human, the sound of someone’s voice, color, light, noise, change of any kind, the barking of a dog.
    With some, their brains couldn’t discriminate among the sounds that made up speech, so they could neither speak nor understand when someone else spoke. Some were labeled brain-damaged or retarded because of this, the way people deem animals dumb because they try to judge their intelligence without first understanding how they function. Wouldn’t we be considered the dumb ones if the test had to do with following a scent trail?
    Charlotte got so stressed by normal city noises that she wore earmuffs to block out the sounds of traffic and construction. Some of the kids became mesmerized by things they saw—curls of wood coming out of a pencil sharpener, light flickering on a wall—or by repetitious activities of their own making—sliding a toy back and forth on the floor or table,