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  If there was no walkway, they would have to walk on the shoulder of the road. Someone would be sure to stop them. If they didn’t get run over first. Cars and trucks and buses—all hurtled over that bridge as if the devil himself was chasing them. He’d be chasing them from both directions then, Dicey thought; he’d catch you either way.

  Dicey crouched down where she was and buried her face in her knees. How could they go forward from here? The railroad bridge downriver had a draw section in the middle that was raised up. They couldn’t cross there. It was miles and miles upriver to the next bridge. Tears welled up behind her eyes and the corners of her mouth pulled sharply down.

  You don’t cry, she said to herself. Not you.

  No money, no food, no way to go forward. The silence behind her told her that her brothers and sister were watching her. Maybe they could just all stay right here, without moving, and turn to stone. Then her troubles would be over. Dicey opened her eyes and studied the darkness of her knees. There was nothing more she could do. Nothing. She had done her best and that wasn’t good enough and now she could do no more. That was it. The end.

  She sighed and felt a small hand on her shoulder. Maybeth. She raised her head to look out again over the impassable river.

  At least it was beautiful, with curves and marshy islands and yachts moored along the edges. At least the trees that crowded up to the top of the bluff spread above them, proud and growing. A solitary, two-masted sailboat glided down the river. She watched it.

  “Dicey?” Maybeth said.

  “Yes, Maybeth,” Dicey answered, without turning her head. Food, money, a way forward. They had none.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Dicey almost laughed. “What’s right?” is what she wanted to answer, but she didn’t speak. Never mind even the way forward, you couldn’t get food without money and they had none.

  Kids just couldn’t earn money.

  She had, yesterday. She had earned seventy-five cents in all. They could eat something today, if they had seventy-five cents now.

  James asked, “What’re we going to do now?”

  “I dunno,” Dicey said. So, she had to earn some money. But how? There was that shopping center. It had a big parking lot, and a supermarket. She pictured it carefully, and then pictured herself coming out of the market with two big bags filled with groceries after she had earned money somehow, bags filled with fruit and meat and breads and cans of vegetables and a pan to cook things in. And a can opener; it would be just her luck to forget the can opener.

  In her daydream, the Dicey she saw walking out of the store with enough food for her family to eat for days, with her eyes smiling and a big grin stretching her mouth, that Dicey tripped and fell. The food scattered over the ground. The wheels of cars squashed the scattered oranges and bananas. A dog took the package of hamburger meat and ran away with it. The people around went off on their own ways, carrying their own heavy bags of groceries.

  Was this how Momma felt? Was this why Momma ran away? Because she couldn’t think of anything more to do and couldn’t stand anymore to try to take care of her children.

  Dicey said to herself, I’m getting as bad as Momma. Imagination doesn’t do any good. Then her mind flicked back to the people with their heavy bags.

  That might be a way. If they all did it. They might earn something.

  She turned her head and ran fingers through her hair. They had to look neat or people wouldn’t trust them.

  “Listen, we could carry groceries to cars out at that shopping center. People might tip us.”

  “I wanna eat first,” Sammy said.

  “We can’t.” Dicey looked directly into his eyes. “We don’t have any money left, you know that. All we’ve got is this,” and she held up the white bag in which she was carrying the map.

  “Dicey? Is everything going to be all right?” Sammy looked scared.

  Momma always reassured him, whenever he was afraid or when she’d been angry because she was worried. She always smiled at him and said everything would be all right. And somehow, it always was.

  “I hope so,” Dicey said. “I don’t know. I’ll tell you, if this idea works and we can earn some money, the first thing we’ll do is buy a quart of milk. The first forty cents we have. That’s a promise.”

  The fear stayed in Sammy’s eyes, but he nodded his head. Dicey tidied them up as much as possible. She had not noticed how dirty they’d become. Maybeth’s hair was a tangled mess. James’s hands were brown with dirt and his nails were black. And Sammy looked—well, Sammy looked like most six-year-olds, so that might be okay. Her own shorts were grubby, her knees stained. But her dark hair was always kept short, so that must look all right. They’d just have to try it.

  They stationed themselves outside of the entrance doors, where the paper bags were brought out on a rolling belt. Maybeth looked at the people going in and coming out and shook her head. Her eyes grew big and pleading. Dicey understood. She told Maybeth to sit quiet at the far end of the belt. Maybeth nodded and ran off. She sat and didn’t move a muscle, just sat quiet as if she was waiting for her mother to come and take her home.

  Most of the people the children approached said, “No, thank you,” with a kind of puzzled look, as if it didn’t often happen that someone offered to carry their grocery bags. Some, especially ladies with babies, said yes, with a grateful look, and Dicey or James or Sammy would carry huge bags out to large station wagons. The people would give them a dime, or some nickels.

  True to her word, at the end of the first half-hour, when they had forty cents, Dicey went inside to buy milk. They ducked around the corner of the building to drink it, careful not to spill any as they poured it into their mouths. The cool, rich liquid flowed down Dicey’s throat and settled gently into her stomach. The carton was soon empty. “Better?” Dicey asked. “Better,” they said. They returned to work.

  All afternoon they went up to strangers and asked if they would like their bags carried. Dicey learned to read the no or yes in people’s eyes before they spoke it. Then, unexpectedly, the way good luck always surprises you, they had a piece of very good luck.

  An older man and a little girl came out of the busy store. They stood waiting for their bags to emerge from the metal doors the rolling belt used.

  Soon, the man moved to a group of three grocery bags. The little girl followed beside him. Dicey stepped up to him. “Would you like me to carry those bags?”

  He looked at her. “We’ve got three,” he said hesitantly.

  “My brother could help too,” Dicey said.

  “The car is across the lot, by the restaurant,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” Dicey said.

  The man waited, hesitating, maybe, for her to say more, to ask again. When she didn’t speak, that seemed to decide him and his eyes twinkled at her. “Why not?” he said to the little girl. “Sure,” he said to Dicey, “you and your brother carry these two and I’ll take the third. Be careful—there are some eggs in there somewhere. We did remember the eggs, didn’t we?”

  “Grandpa,” the girl spoke. “You keep asking that. Stop teasing. But Grandpa”—her mouth puffed out sulky—“you said I could carry a bag. You said.”

  He shook his head at her.

  “You said I could because I’m your helper on the boat.”

  He ignored her. Dicey ignored her too, not liking the tone of her voice.

  “But I’m bigger than him,” the little girl said, pointing at Sammy. “It’s not fair.”

  They walked along to the car. Sammy carried the lightest bag. The man and Dicey carried the heavier ones. The little girl trailed behind. To make conversation, the man asked Dicey how much money they’d earned, and she answered that they hadn’t counted yet. He asked her how long they’d been at it, and when she answered all afternoon he said she must like working. Dicey shrugged. He said he himself liked working, but he wasn’t sure if he didn’t like it because it made vacations so much more pleasant.

&nb
sp; Dicey smiled at this.

  “So you’re all in it together,” the man said. He didn’t say it nosy, but as if he was really interested in her, Dicey.

  Dicey wanted to answer, even though she couldn’t tell him the truth. “We want to get our mother a birthday present,” she said.

  “What are you thinking of getting her?” he asked.

  “She needs a new ironing board,” Dicey answered.

  “Your father can help you out a little, can’t he?” the man said. Dicey knew that was the way this man would do it.

  “He’s not around,” she said shortly.

  The man just nodded. They had come to the car. It had Pennsylvania license plates. He held the rear door open while she and Sammy put the bags inside, and then he put his own bag in. He put his hand in his pocket. “How many of you are there?” he asked.

  “Four,” Dicey said.

  He took out his wallet and gave her two dollars. “That’s fifty cents apiece,” he said.

  “It’s too much,” Dicey protested. She would not take the money.

  He folded the bills and stuffed them into the pocket of her shorts. “That, young lady, is for me to say. Now scoot and good luck to you.”

  Dicey thanked him and turned to go. By then the little girl had scuffed her way to the car. She stood up on tiptoe to speak to her grandfather, and he lifted her firmly into the car, talking to her. He was angry with her, but not rough. He plunked her down on the seat by the steering wheel.

  Dicey and Sammy walked away. “How much did he give you?” Sammy asked, as soon as they were out of earshot.

  Before Dicey could answer, she heard running feet and the little girl caught at her arm. “Wait,” she said. She held another dollar in her hand. “This is from me. Grandpa said I could. Mommy gave it to me to buy her a present while I was spending the night with Grandpa on his boat, but everything was plastic and she doesn’t like plastic. She says it’s tack-y. She’d rather I wrote her a story anyway, and I can do that tonight. Grandpa got me some paper and crayons. To keep me quiet, that’s what he said. I talk a lot. Maybe I’ll write her a poem because that would be shorter. So this is for your mother. I’m sorry I got mad.”

  Dicey hesitated again. “Take it, Dicey,” Sammy urged.

  “Please take it.” The little girl smiled. “I want you to, I do. Mommy likes my poems better than anything. She says they’re stupendous. I’m going to write one about fish, because we’re on a boat. Do you think fish would eat flowers, because I write good poems about flowers.”

  Dicey could barely keep up with the stream of chatter. She grinned and took the dollar. “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay,” the little girl said happily. She ran back to the car where her grandfather waited. Dicey did not watch them drive away.

  “Good-o,” was all Sammy said, but he strutted back to his post by the supermarket doors.

  Shortly thereafter, Dicey called James and Sammy together, and they counted the money they had earned. Five dollars and fifteen cents. Dicey nodded in satisfaction.

  “That sure is an improvement,” she said. She went inside to buy peanut butter, bread and milk. She still had $3.85 when she came out. “And we got a good heavy bag too.”

  They returned to their wooded post looking over the winding river. They could see only two houses, one on each side of where they sat, both built low to the bluff and designed to face out over the river, both with those walls of windows that modern houses have. After they had eaten, Dicey explained the next difficulty, that they couldn’t walk over the river on the bridge. She no longer felt so hopeless, so she could say it without sounding defeated. They had earned money, more than enough money. And that grandfather and the little girl—Dicey didn’t know why they had made her feel better, but they had, even though it wasn’t going to get any easier.

  The Tillermans sat in a row and looked down at the river flowing below. They looked at boats moored close together in marinas, or alone at the ends of long docks. Overhead, cars roared across the bridge.

  “We could go upriver to the next bridge,” James suggested.

  “That’ll take days,” Dicey said. “But we may have to.” She was reluctant to journey away from the water; she didn’t want to go far from the Sound that was part of the sea.

  “Does the river get narrow enough to swim across?”

  “I don’t know,” Dicey said. “It would be too risky to light a fire, wouldn’t it? I feel like sitting by a fire, don’t you?”

  Maybeth snuggled up to Dicey and hummed tunelessly. Dicey sat looking down, not thinking or worrying, just feeling her full belly and her sister’s warm body, watching the river water shimmer in the sun, remembering with pride how James and Sammy had worked that afternoon, wondering which boat the little girl was sleeping on and thinking those two would remember her. A melody came into her head and she sang one of Momma’s old, sad songs: “ ‘The water is wide, I cannot get o’er. Neither have I wings to fly.’ ”

  The melody floated out over the water, where she could not go.

  “ ‘Give me a boat that will carry two, and two shall row—my love and I.’ ”

  The setting sun floated gold along the surface of the water.

  “ ‘Oh, love is bonny, when it is young,’ ” ’ Dicey sang. “ ‘Fair as a flower when first it is new.’ ” Then she stopped. “We’ll take a boat,” she said.

  “Good-o,” Sammy said.

  “Where will we get a boat?” asked James. “Where could we get a boat?”

  “All these yachts have little dinghys that go with them, so the people on the yachts can get to and from their moorings. We’ll take a dinghy and row across and tie it up on the other side. I can row and so can you, James, if you have to.”

  She led them down the steep bluff, clutching the bag with leftover food and the map in it. She wouldn’t leave food or map behind again, no matter what. They slid most of the way down, bouncing on their fannies, giggling. At the foot of the bluff, Dicey turned upriver.

  They found a rowboat easily. It was upended on the ground beside a long private dock. Waiting for dark, they watched nervously up the cliff to the house whose lighted windows looked out over the silver river. When full dark came, somebody inside pulled curtains over the long windows. Then the children stealthily approached the boat.

  James and Dicey carried it down to the end of the dock and lowered it noiselessly into the water. James held the painter while Dicey went back for the bag, the oars and Maybeth and Sammy. They were accustomed to boats, so they had no trouble getting into it quietly. Maybeth sat at the bow, Sammy and James at the stern. Dicey shipped the oars and James pushed off. The boat slid away from the dock.

  Dicey lifted the oars in their oarlocks. She brought them down cautiously, unused to their weight. The oars bit into the black water, and the boat shot ahead.

  The current carried them slightly downstream, Dicey’s strokes carried them across, the smooth water eased their passage. The bridge loomed overhead. Its thick pilings caused races in the current that could trap a small boat and maybe even overturn it. Dicey knew enough to simply follow these races until the boat had floated out of their currents. Then she dipped the oars once again into the dark water.

  The sky was dark. The air was dark, so dark that they could barely make out one another’s faces. The water flowed beneath them, black and bottomless.

  Dicey headed for the lights on the opposite shore. It felt good to stretch the muscles in her back and arms, to lean back and then pull forward against the oars.

  In the middle of the river the current eased and the boat shot straight ahead. Then, as they drew near the far bank, Dicey felt the twists and eddies begin again. James directed her to a huge marina, where lights burned in many buildings and in many of the small windows of the boats tied in rows along the docks. It looked sort of like a parking lot. They pulled up beside a boat that was dark and empty and tied their dinghy to its stern. Dicey thought that if she left the dinghy there it had a good ch
ance of being claimed or returned.

  They had come down close to the mouth of the river, where its water flowed out into the Sound. A small town lay on the low flatlands. They walked through the town, to the south. It was late at night and the houses became fewer, but there was no safe place to sleep. After an hour, they were all tired, and Sammy stumbled with every third step. Dicey put him on her back, giving James the grocery bag. She discovered then how much the long rowing had strained her muscles.

  They came to a church, shining white in the dark air. Behind it stretched a graveyard, with groves of trees planted among the tombstones. Dicey turned toward the graveyard.

  Behind her, James drew in his breath.

  At the first grove of trees, Dicey put Sammy down. He was already half-asleep and just curled up on the ground. Maybeth settled beside him without a word. Dicey stood, looking at James.

  “It’s a graveyard, Dicey,” James said.

  “I know,” she said. “But we’re tired.”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked.

  “I never saw one,” Dicey said. She sat down. James sat down right beside her. They could see tombstones placed in neat rows. Some of them had statues on top.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” James said. “All the same, I don’t like this place. It’s—too quiet.”

  Indeed, the silence was thick as fog around them. The silence vibrated, as if with things beneath it struggling to break through.

  Dicey yawned. She was too tired, the day had been too long, for this kind of worrying. “I like quiet.”

  James flicked his eyes over the cemetery. “We’re all gonna die, you know.”

  Dicey nodded. “Not for a long time.”

  “Do you think Momma’s dead?”

  “I don’t know. How could I know that?”

  “No matter what, we’re all gonna die,” James remarked. “So it doesn’t matter what we do, does it?”

  Dicey was thinking about other things, about maps and food. She didn’t answer.

  “Unless there’s a Hell, to punish us. But I don’t think there is. I really don’t. Or Heaven. Or anything. Dicey?”