Nat slipped out of Jacob’s house, still in just pajamas and bare feet. Padded down the freezing sidewalk for half a block, to home. Opened the front door with the key around his neck.
Then he went upstairs to Gamma’s bedroom, a room he had only three times entered, and began looking around to see what he could find.
He likely could not have put words to what he was looking for. But in his gut he felt there must be something. Pictures of his mother. Letters from her. There had to be something. And Gamma kept everything. She was not one to throw sentimental items in the trash. Or just about any items, for that matter.
He opened her dresser drawers but found only humiliating personal undergarments. He closed each drawer again, touching nothing, so Gamma would never have to know he had looked.
He looked on her closet shelves and found only shoes and hats. Again, he left no evidence of his intrusion.
He looked under her bed and found a wooden cigar box.
He pulled it out. Brought it under the light. Opened it.
Inside were a few papers. Not nearly enough to fill the box. On the very top was a folded clipping from a newspaper. Yellowed with age.
Nat unfolded it.
It was the headline story, dated 3 October 1960. Two days after his birth. The headline read, in shockingly large, bold letters, “ABANDONED NEWBORN FOUND IN WOODS BY LOCAL HUNTER.”
The jittery sensation that had haunted Nat’s stomach since he’d stood in Jacob’s kitchen was blasted away by the news. It felt good. It felt good to replace nervousness with shock. Because shock, at least in this moment, felt like nothing at all.
He had even stopped shivering from the cold.
He skimmed the article.
Lenora Bates. His mother’s name was Lenora.
Richard A. Ford. His father’s name was Richard A. Ford. So why wasn’t his name Nathan Ford?
He had a mother and a father. Somewhere.
And on the night of his birth they had discarded him.
Were they still in prison? Or had they served their time and been released? And disappeared without so much as a word to him?
He scanned down to see about the man who found him. He wanted to memorize that name as well. But he was only referred to as “a man on a duck-hunting outing with his dog.”
Nat started over and read the article word by word.
When he had finished reading, he refolded it carefully and held it in his left hand while he slid the cigar box back under the bed with his right. Then he took the article with him to his room, where he packed a suitcase with only the most essential of his belongings. Jeans and underwear. Tee shirts. His baseball mitt. The article.
The phone rang, and it startled him.
He ran downstairs and picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Nat! Oh, thank God! We didn’t know where you were.” Jacob’s mom.
“I forgot something at home.”
“Are you coming back right now?”
“Yes. Right now.”
He hung up the phone and walked back upstairs, where he changed into jeans and warm socks and shoes. And a jacket he didn’t like very well, because the one he did like had been left at Jacob’s.
He let himself out, locked the front door carefully. Stopped at the curb and threw the key-on-a-string down the storm drain.
He chose a direction more or less by feel and began to walk.
? ? ?
It was unclear to Nat how long he had walked, or where he was headed. He knew only that the suitcase was heavy, and he had to keep transferring it from hand to hand.
He followed dark streets until they opened up on to the train yard. Which he assumed would also be deserted. Every place he had walked since leaving home had been deserted.
The entire world was asleep, he thought. But not the train yard.
Here a huddle of four men stood around a fire built in an old oil barrel, warming their hands and laughing. A couple more men sat in an open freight wagon of a still train, their legs dangling and swinging over the edge.
They all looked up to mark Nat’s arrival.
He walked closer. Liking the idea that someone lived here, and used the night for something other than sleeping.
“Well. Who do we have here?” one of the men asked. Viewed up close, they looked poor. Their coats and beards were untended, to say the least.
“Nobody,” Nat said.
“Perfect,” the man said. “You’ll fit right in.”
? ? ?
Nat sat on the edge of a freight wagon, dangling his legs over the edge. Staring into the leaping flames of the fire. Letting it hypnotize him. Burn all the thoughts out of his head.
He watched little lights swirl in the air above the oil barrel, thinking that some were sparks and some were fireflies, and that it was hard to tell them apart.
But no, it was too early in the season for fireflies. Or was it?
Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.
The old man sitting next to him was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle. He held the bottle out to Nat.
“Snort? It’ll warm you up.”
“OK.”
He accepted the bottle. Wiped off the mouth of it with his sleeve. Pulled a swallow. Coughed. All the men were watching and they all laughed at him.
“Where do you go when you jump on a train?” Nat asked the old man.
“Anywhere I damn please,” the man said.
“That sounds good.”
“It has its advantages.”
Another younger man, standing warming his hands at the fire, said, “Has its advantages for us. But maybe you’d best go home.”
Nat said nothing.
“Where’s your family, boy?”
“Don’t have any.”
“Well, what’ve you been doing up until now?”
Nat shrugged. “Just living with a stranger, I guess.”
“Maybe a stranger is better than nothing at all.”
“I guess I used to think so,” Nat said. “But I don’t any more.”