Mr. Mercedes

The baby gave a croupy cough Augie didn’t care for, stirred in the Papoose, and then settled again. At least the kid was bundled up; there were even tiny mittens on her hands.

Kids survive worse, Augie told himself uneasily. He thought of the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression. Well, this one was great enough for him. Two years ago, everything had been fine. He hadn’t exactly been living large in the ’hood, but he had been making ends meet, with a little left over at the end of most months. Now everything had turned to shit. They had done something to the money. He didn’t understand it; he’d been an office drone in the shipping department of Great Lakes Transport, and what he knew about was invoices and using a computer to route stuff by ship, train, and air.

‘People will see me with a baby and think I’m irresponsible,’ Janice Cray fretted. ‘I know it, I see it on their faces already, I saw it on yours. But what else could I do? Even if the girl down the street could stay all night, it would have cost eighty-four dollars. Eighty-four! I’ve got next month’s rent put aside, and after that, I’m skint.’ She smiled, and in the light of the parking lot’s high arc-sodiums, Augie saw tears beading her eyelashes. ‘I’m babbling.’

‘No need to apologize, if that’s what you’re doing.’ The line had turned the first corner now, and had arrived back at where Augie was standing. And the girl was right. He saw lots of people staring at the sleeping kid in the Papoose.

‘Oh, that’s it, all right. I’m a single unmarried mother with no job. I want to apologize to everyone, for everything.’ She turned and looked at the ba

‘Sometimes I want to apologize for Columbine, and 9/11, and Barry Bonds taking steroids.’ She uttered a semi-hysterical giggle. ‘Sometimes I even want to apologize for the space shuttle exploding, and when that happened I was still learning to walk.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Augie told her. ‘You’ll be okay.’ It was just one of those things that you said.

‘I wish it wasn’t so damp, that’s all. I’ve got her bundled up in case it was really cold, but this damp …’ She shook her head. ‘We’ll make it, though, won’t we, Patti?’ She gave Augie a hopeless little smile. ‘It just better not rain.’

It didn’t, but the dampness increased until they could see fine droplets suspended in the light thrown by the arc-sodiums. At some point Augie realized that Janice Cray was asleep on her feet. She was hipshot and slump-shouldered, with her hair hanging in dank wings around her face and her chin nearly on her breastbone. He looked at his watch and saw it was quarter to three.

Ten minutes later, Patti Cray awoke and started to cry. Her mother (her baby mama, Augie thought) gave a jerk, voiced a horselike snort, raised her head, and tried to pull the infant out of the Papoose. At first the kid wouldn’t come; her legs were stuck. Augie pitched in, holding the sides of the sling. As Patti emerged, now wailing, he could see drops of water sparkling all over her tiny pink jacket and matching hat.

‘She’s hungry,’ Janice said. ‘I can give her the breast, but she’s also wet. I can feel it right through her pants. God, I can’t change her in this – look how foggy it’s gotten!’

Augie wondered what comical deity had arranged for him to be the one in line behind her. He also wondered how in hell this woman was going to get through the rest of her life – all of it, not just the next eighteen years or so when she would be responsible for the kid. To come out on a night like this, with nothing but a bag of diapers! To be that goddam desperate!

He had put his sleeping bag down next to Patti’s diaper bag. Now he squatted, pulled the ties, unrolled it, and unzipped it.

‘Slide in there. Get warm and get her warm. Then I’ll hand in whatever doodads you need.’

She gazed at him, holding the squirming, crying baby. ‘Are you married, Augie?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Children?’

He shook his head.

‘Why are you being so kind to us?’

‘Because we’re here,’ he said, and shrugged.

She looked at him a moment longer, deciding, then handed him the baby. Augie held her out at arms’ length, fascinated by the red, furious face, the bead of snot on the tiny upturned nose, the bicycling legs in the fla

Augie did, and the woman burrowed deeper into the bag. Beside them, where the line had doubled back on itself for the first time, two young men were staring.

‘Mind your business, guys,’ Augie said, and they looked away.

‘Would you give me a diaper?’ Janice said. ‘I should change her before I feed her.’

He dropped one knee to the wet pavement and unzipped the quilted bag. He was momentarily surprised to find cloth diapers instead of Pampers, then understood. The cloth ones could be used over and over. Maybe the woman wasn’t entirely hopeless.

‘I see a bottle of Baby Magic, too. Do you want that?’

From inside the sleeping bag, where now only a tuft of her brownish hair showed: ‘Yes, please.’

He passed in the diaper and the lotion. The sleeping bag began to wiggle and bounce. At first the crying intensified. From one of the switchbacks farther down, lost in the thickening fog, someone said: ‘Can’t you shut that kid up?’ Another voice added: ‘Someone ought to call Social Services.’

Augie waited, watching the sleeping bag. At last it stopped moving around and a hand emerged, holding a diaper. ‘Would you put it in the bag? There’s a plastic sack for the dirty ones.’ She looked out at him like a mole from its hole. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not pooey, just wet.’

Augie took the diaper, put it in the plastic bag (COSTCO printed on the side), then zipped the diaper bag closed. The crying from inside the sleeping bag (so many bags, he thought) continued for another minute or so, then abruptly cut out as Patti began to nurse in the City Center parking lot. From above the ranked doors that wouldn’t open for another six hours, the ba

Sure, Augie thought. Also, you can’t catch AIDS if you load up on vitamin C.

Twenty minutes passed. More cars came up the hill from Marlborough Street. More people joined the line. Augie estimated there already had to be four hundred people waiting. At that rate, there would be two thousand by the time the doors opened at nine, and that was a conservative estimate.

If someone offers me fry-cook at McDonald’s, will I take it?

Probably.

What about a greeter at Walmart?

Oh, mos def. Big smile and how’re you today? Augie thought he could wallop a greeter job right out of the park.

I’m a people person, he thought. And laughed.

From the bag: ‘What’s fu

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Cuddle that kid.’

‘I am.’ A smile in her voice.

At three-thirty he knelt, lifted the flap of the sleeping bag, and peered inside. Janice Cray was curled up, fast asleep, with the baby at her breast. This made him think of The Grapes of Wrath. What was the name of the girl that had been in it? The one who ended up nursing the man? A flower name, he thought. Lily? No. Pansy? Absolutely not. He thought of cupping his hands around his mouth, raising his voice, and asking the crowd, WHO HERE HAS READ THE GRAPES OF WRATH?

As he was standing up again (and smiling at this absurdity), the name came to him. Rose. That had been the name of the Grapes of Wrath girl. But not just Rose; Rose of Sharon. It sounded biblical, but he couldn’t say so with any certainty; he had never been a Bible reader.