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Somehow it happened. Willie must’ve had too much ale. Not like Willie who’d used to be a drunk but had reformed, to a degree. Could not burn off the alcohol like he’d done. Your liver starts to weaken. Once you turn fifty. Telling Hazel when she brought him his chocolate cream custard pie and coffee about the old days in Horseheads, when him and Ethel had been kids. And Hazel nodding and smiling politely though she had other customers to serve, and tables to clear. And Willie hears this loud old-man’s voice asking, “D’you know why Horseheads is named like it is, Hazel?” and the young woman smiles saying no she guesses she don’t, Willie is all but touching her elbow to keep her from ru
So Willie starts to stammer. Flush-faced, knowing he’s made a spectacle of himself. But not knowing how to back out of it saying, guffawing, “Anyway, Hazel. That’s how ”Horseheads’ came to be. What you got to wonder, is why’d they stay here? Why the hell’d anybody stay here? Poke through the grass there’s not one or two or a dozen horse heads there’s three hundred. And you decide to stay, settle down and stake out a claim, build a house, plow the land and have your kids and the rest is history. That’s the twenty-four-dollar question, Hazel, God damn ain’t it?“
Hazel was startled by Willie’s vehemence. Loud-laughing and red in the face as she’d never seen him. Murmuring some muffled words not overheard by anyone except Willie, the waitress slipped away from his grasp and hurried through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
Willie’d seen the repugnance in her face. All that talk of horse skeletons, skulls, “Horseheads”-he’d ruined any beauty the moment might have had.
Next morning, Hazel Jones and the child were gone forever from Horseheads.
It was an early, 7:20 A.M. Greyhound bus they’d caught out on route 13 with all their suitcases, cardboard boxes, and shopping bags. The Greyhound was southbound from Syracuse and Ithaca to Elmira, Binghamton and beyond. Hazel would leave their room spic-and-span Ethel Sweet would report. Her bed and the child’s cot stripped of all linens including the mattress covers and these neatly folded for the wash. The bathroom Hazel and the child had shared with two other boarders, Hazel left equally clean, the bathtub scrubbed after she’d used it very early that morning, her towels folded for the wash. The single closet in the room was empty, all the wire hangers remaining. Every drawer of the bureau was empty. Not a pin, not a button remained. The wicker wastebasket in the room had been emptied into one of the trash cans at the rear of the I
Dear Ethel-
Zacharias and I are called away suddenly, we are sorry to leave such a warm good place. I hope this will suffise for April rent.
Maybe we will all meet again sometime, my thanks to you and to Willie from the bottom of my heart.
Your friend “Hazel”
5
It was an old river city on the St. Lawrence at the northeast edge of Lake Ontario. It looked to be about the size of the city of his earliest memory on the barge canal. On the far side of the river which was the widest river he’d ever seen was a foreign country: Canada. To the east were the Adirondack Mountains. Canada, Adirondack were new words to him, exotic and musical.
Observers would have assumed she’d traveled south with the child. Instead she’d changed buses at Binghamton, traveled impulsively north to Syracuse, and to Watertown, and now beyond to the northernmost boundary of the state.
“To throw them off. Just in case.”
That shrewdness that had become instinctive in her. In no immediate or discernible relationship with available logic or even probability. It was keeping-going, the child knew. He’d become addicted to keeping-going, too.
“Come on come on! God damn it hurry.”
Gripping his hand. Pulling him along. If he’d run ahead on the cracked and potholed pavement impatient after the long bus ride she’d have scolded him for she always worried he might fall, hurt himself. He felt the injustice of her whims.
She walked swiftly, her long legs like scythes. At such times she seemed to know exactly where she was going, to what purpose. There was a two-hour layover at the Greyhound station. In several lockers she’d stored their bulky possessions. The keys were safe in her pocket wrapped in tissue. She’d zipped up his jacket in haste. She’d tied a scarf around her head. They’d left the Greyhound station by a rear exit opening onto a back street.
He was out of breath. Damn he couldn’t keep up with her!
He’d forgotten the name of this place. Maybe she hadn’t told him. He’d lost the map on the bus. Much-folded, much-wrinkled map of New York state.
Keeping-going was the map. Staying in one place for so long as they’d done back there (already he was forgetting the name Horseheads, in another few days he would have forgotten it entirely) was the aberration.