The Secret City Read Free

they’re here anyway. If I did have paper or a book they’d be chewing on that.
    The three Fs: Flight, Fight, or Freeze. I hold one of the mice in my stare. He doesn’t move. I count to twenty, then I let him go. Or maybe he held
me
and let me go. Or maybe we just stared at each other, one creature to another, and then decided that was enough.
    I ’M TO GO IN FRONT OF A JUDGE FOR ASSAULT AND vagrancy and goodness knows what else. Finally, Jonesy takes me for a shower. (I’ve been washing in a basin for five days.) He sits at the door. I want out of here before they dress me in a red jumpsuit and take me off to a bigger, better prison. This is about the biggest jail I can stand.
    I washed my flowery shirt and chinos, and I have my shoes back. The day of my trial there’s only three men to help me into the van. I won’t need to test the freeze. My strength is why I’ve never needed to try it.
    I LOCK THEM IN THE VAN, DRIVE A COUPLE OF blocks, turn off on a side street and ditch the van. I walk a few blocks and hotwire a car. Drive two blocks and pick up another. Walk again. It won’t take the owners long to find them.
    I’m heading for the place where they first found me. I want to see if they left any of my things there. It’s on the edge of town and on the road towards the mountains. Not hard to find. It’s a messy place, that’s why I chose it. And next door to other messy places. The house needs paint (as the neighboring houses do) and the porch roof is about to fall down. Best of all there’s a big yard full of bushes and weeds—rabbitbrush, black brush, baby tumbleweed, and the big bushy good smelling sage that I slept under. If only I didn’t snore like a bear.
    I go straight to the sage and check under it. My red jacket with the white stripe along the sleeves is gone and my extra shirt. My little kit with comb and razor, gone. Why didn’t they give it back to me in jail? I’ll look a mess without it.
    I crawl out from under and stand up. I hear a sharp intake of breath. The old woman I scared … I presume it’s the same one … is on the porch looking right at me.
    I wonder that she’s outside in this heat—someone as old as she looks to be should be inside keeping cool. I can see a swamp cooler on her roof but it’s not running.
    She sits back down with a plop and then sags over as if in a faint. I should see if she’s all right. I should urge her to go inside. But I don’t want to scare her again. Of course my head is shaved and my little black mustache gone. Even if she had seen me hauled away she wouldn’t recognize me, but I’d scare her even so. Maybe all the more with this shaved head.
    I go up to the porch slowly. I can think of some excuse. I could pretend to be selling some religion or other. They’re all into religion, especially out in the country, maybe especially those of her age.
    I go up the porch steps. I say, “Madam?” but I know that’s wrong for around here. I say, “Misses?” Then (oh yes), Ma’am. “Ma’am? Are you all right?”
    She isn’t. I come closer. I touch her shoulder. Gentle as my touch is, she collapses all the way down. I catch her before she hits the floor. I feel her pulse. I lean to feel her breath. She’s alive.
    I pick her up and carry her inside. She’s small and light, even for one of them. Hunched over from osteoporosis. It’s a wonder she didn’t break something from her fall. Lucky it was more of a sagging down slowly.
    I put her on the couch. The cushion is already lying sideways with a head shaped dent as if she had been napping there not so long ago.
    I start the cooler. Then I look for the kitchen so as to find a towel to wet. I also get her a glass of water. Then it occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t wake her up just yet. I put the water beside her and the wet cloth on her head. Then I go to look around. I need men’s clothes. And a razor.
    The house is much nicer inside than I expected. Not clean, but nice things. And, in the