Searching for Caleb

But her bag was straw, not string, and he knew what she carried. Coffee beans, and salty things to nibble on, and the future wrapped in a square of rotting silk. Hadn't she always? She turned from the mirror, as if guessing his thoughts, and opened the bag to show him. He saw neither food nor cards but only sheaves of yellowed photographs belonging to her grandfather. Aunts and uncles standing around in the ocean, by waterfalls, beside new cars; cousins holding up fish and diplomas and Bible-study trophies; Grandfather Peck carefully posed, 8X10, behind an enormous empty desk, beneath a parade of Maryland Digests and ALR volumes; somebody's bride; somebody's baby; Duncan laughing; Great-Grandma guarding her soul against theft by camera; more uncles; more aunts at someone's garden party, clustered together with their faces frozen in surprise. (They would run to a mirror just beforehand and then run back, level, bearing their chosen expressions as carefully as jellies on a platter.) Justine snapped her bag shut again. She gave him a long measuring stare that turned him cold. "That's what I carry," she said, "but don't tell the children."

Then she walked out. The bell quivered but kept silent. Duncan thought of going after her-asking at least where she was headed, or whether she would be there to fill the house for him when he got home. Or most important: what he had done to make her look at him that way. The way other people had looked at him all his life. All his life they had marked him as thoughtless and mischievous, wicked even; yet he had continued to feel that somehow, underneath, he was a good man. With Justine, he was a good man. Had she changed her mind about him? He didn't want to know. He didn't want to ask, and have to hear her answer. In the end all he did was return to his game of solitaire.

In an airport waiting room, at eleven thirty in the morning, ]ustine sat in a vinyl chair with her straw bag balanced on her knees. She was watching a group of students on standby. The regular passengers had already filed through, and now an official took a stack of blue tickets from his podium and began calling out each standby's name. They cheered and came forward, one by one. They accepted their tickets like Oscars, smiling at the official and then waving triumphantly to their friends, who clapped. Justine clapped too. "Mr. Flaggl" the official called. "Mr.

Brant!" Mr. Flagg beamed. Mr. Brant kissed his ticket. "Mrs. Peck!" And though Justine had no one with her, she was so carried away by all the gaiety that she beamed too, and turned back to bow to the empty row of chairs before she headed through the gate marked New Orleans.

18

At night, in his narrow white cot, with old men wheezing and snoring all around him, he lay flat on his back and smiled at the ceiling and hummed

"Broken Yo-Yo" till the matron came and shut him up. "Just what do you think you're doing?" He didn't answer, but the humming stopped. A fellow at the end of the row called out for a bedpan. The matron left, on dull rubbery heels. The fellow went on calling for a while but without much interest, and eventually he fell silent and merely squeaked from time to time. Caleb continued smiling at the ceiling. What no one guessed was that "Broken Yo-Yo" was still tumbling note on note inside his head.

From four a.m. till five he slept, dreaming first of a cobbled street down which he ran, more agile than he had been in years; then of fields of black-eyed Susans; then of grim machinery grinding and crumpling his hands. He awoke massaging his fingers. The ache was always worse in the early morning hours. He lay watching the darkness lift, the ceiling whiten, the sky outside the one gigantic window grow opaque. The tossing forms around him stilled, signifying wakefulness, although none of them spoke. This was the hour when old men gave in to insomnia, which had been tracking them down all night. They would rather not admit their defeat.

They lay gritting their gums together, tensed as if on guard, betraying themselves only by a dry cough or the occasional sound of one foot rubbing against the other.

Caleb was stillest of all, but now "Stone Pony Blues" was spinning between his ears.

At six o'clock the matron came to snap on a switch. Long after she had gone, fluorescent tubes were fluttering and pausing and collecting themselves to fill the room with glare. The sky appeared to darken again.

Morning came later now; it was fall. In December he would have been here seven years and he knew every shadow and slant of light, all the sounds of night and morning and mealtimes, which he tabulated with a sense of contentment.