The Night Travellers

17. The Northway

17 TheNorthway Encased in the small red car like something put up in a tin, Mary held Kathy, who slept nearly all the way in her lap. Mary's own arms went to sleep and grew numb, dead-feeling, but she did not want to wake her. "Did you ever nearly die?" she asked Leonard. She thought of the flat road before and behind as she visualized it on a map, climbing northward, out of the below they had descended to for bringing up Kathy. THE NORTHWAY, said the signs, the white letters for a moment in sunlight seeming to blaze as they passed, becoming a heavenly message spelled out boldly on a green background. "I once dreamed I died," said Leonard. "The night my brother was killed in a car accident, skidded and went over a cliff, off on a trip in Italy, the mountains. I woke in the night and dreamed the fall, lay mangled in the wreckage trying to cry for help." He reached to touch her hand. "What do you think of that?" "That you're always reaching out." She shifted her shoulder where the child's mouth had wet it. "Because of you I've half of everything I want." "If I can get you both over the border." "You will." "I won't take the same road. Put your scarf on, we're near the crossing . Get yourself on the backseat.Take her with you. Cover her." Precautions all taken, they moved forward to another obscure crossing where no one gave her a second glance. They mounted then, skyward into Canada, safe and dreamy in summer, green and wide, where the tree branches, starved for light during the snow-dim win205 2 0 6 T H E N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S ters, grew high up on straight trunks, like fronds stuck in tall vases, then bent kindly earthward, like hands in a dream. "What's the other half?" he asked, when they could begin to breathe again. "Jeff, of course. You can't get him for me." "He'll come for you." "Of course he will. I know." They were crossing a little river at a town called St. Henry. After that would come Sabrevoix. Leonard moved his hand. "I'll be happy for you," he said faithfully. She smiled at his gentle tone, glanced at his dark gypsy profile. His cry of love she had heard that day was now like smoke on a far horizon, or the distant call of a bird in a deep wood. That night at Leonard's house, Hilda held Kathy on her generous lap. She had cooked a supper of blintzes, cucumbers in yogurt, and generous slices of pot roast in warm spices, smelling like a narrow street in some Middle Eastern city. Back on Seymour Street, Mary found the letter. Gerda Stewart writing to say, Dear little friend, I scolded you when it was Gordon I should scold. I should only have shown you my sympathy. It's what I deeply feel. Where are you? Let me hear. We must stick to being fellow Americans here. Let's discuss anthropology again sometime soon. The telephone rang. It was Estes Drover, saying he had organized a group for a modern dance program and even booked a small theater. A grant had come in. Could she join? At the buzz of the intercom she ran into the hall. A muffled question through the outer door, answered in the nonsense phrase she had learned—"Ten for a penny and sixteen for a dime"—then the hand reaching through. The envelope with fresh bills folded snugly together inside. Jeff's promise kept again. The passingthrough of many nameless hands. A new beginning. Mary sat cross-legged on the floor and wrote a postcard. Dear Mother, Don't worry. Where people care you are never alone. Voices from Afar 207 Sitting up to her ears in the warm tides of that same caring, she forgot the card and she wondered at it all. She thought of the strong forces that had come into play around her. She had drawn them without meaning to, without even knowing why. They had come to flash and circle her being—northern lights—and in doing that, they had created a self within, unified, tender and able. What was this warmth in a...