Dawn’s Thoughts

Once upon a time…for that’s how all stories should begin, there lived a man and his daughter, and they were happy. And then the daughter got unruly and left, and came back years later with a child, a little boy.

That’s what Gene tells his grandson, when he asks. Which is oftener than he’d like.

But maybe it didn’t happen that way at all. Maybe, instead, it happened like this, with Sally whining about something he can’t remember now, and at her age too, just fifteen, and carrying on. And maybe there’s a knock at the door, a wild unrelenting hammering that makes Gene’s head throb, and his ears pop.

And Sally, dear God, opens the door wide, smiling like there’s something there she wants, and then she’s gone, sucked outside, hurried along by men in dark coats. The County, perhaps, but then again, something different. Gene’s had experience enough with the County, with the poor farmer’s kids and migrants, and just plain mean folk who live out here — yes, their children. Except now it isn’t their children at all, but his.

“You sneaky bastards,” he yells. He knows it sounds like a movie, and doesn’t care, just yanks at arms, and every so often beating somebody about the head, as if that will make them turn her loose. Sally’s open mouthed, crying, and thrashing about, and these folks trying to hush her, quietly, but hurrying now. Can’t make a scene, can they, with their dark suits and regular cars. Above the noise of Elvis Presley singing on the radio, him with a new record out, Gene hears his name being called.

“Mr. Tracker!” one of them says, “Calm down! Your daughter’s going to a good school, where she’ll be properly cared for, taught a trade. It’s no good making a nusience of things.”

He doesn’t know what’s going on, exactly. But he doesn’t like it. He yanks this man forward by the collar. “If it’s such a good place,” he says, “how come you got to haul her off –”

“There’s no need for violence,” the man says, reaching a hand up tentatively and trying to loosen Gene’s hold.

“Violence, hell!” Gene snarls. He stops, rakes a hand across his face. “Leave me this one, please. The County…”

“We aren’t the County,” says the man. “We’re here to train your daughter, Mr. Tracker, to be of some use. It’s no good you keeping her here, where she’ll only breed little feeble-minded—” Then he gasps, sharply, breaking off, and Gene rubs at his fist, wincing.

“Don’t talk that way,” Gene says.

“We’ll call the police,” the man squeaks, a voice wrenched out of him, gasping for air.

“All right. You do that. I’ll tell ‘em you…”

But he realizes he’s talked too long now, reasoned with them too much, and then Sally’s wailing is gone, too. The men in dark coats and their car, have vanished.

No one will tell him where Sally’s gone. Not then, and not later. No matter how many letters he writes or phone calls to this police station, or that one, breaking all customs, for no one here calls the police unless somebody’s near death. What isn’t said is just as bad. Besides, isn’t it a county’s right, indeed, their duty, to take the children of the poor, and make them into productive citizens, away from the corrupting influences of parents? Gene may be poor, but he knows this isn’t why Sally was taken. That’s a job for the County. His Sally is simple-minded, in common sense at least, and that’s enough for her to be packed off to a warehouse for children. A farm, maybe, or a chair making operation, or a place where wailing fills the air, all day. Yes, that’s where Sally’s gone, and no one will tell him which place.

It’s as if she never existed at all.

Months pass, and the neighbors hum and haw and at first they’re sorry enough for him, as you should be, when the County comes, or someone like them, but later they whisper.

Maybe Sally had a baby and that’s why he sent her away.

Maybe she stole money from him and he threw her out, though the older generation shakes their head at that.

Maybe she got a baby there…right at home….

Oh, well. Maybe not. Maybe it’s only talk, for Gene’s so well-liked in the community that it’s only the gossip heads, over knitting and coffee, that might believe these things. But even the feeling-sorry hurts more than the gossip, burns into him at the market. Because he wasn’t mean to Sally, didn’t beat her, hadn’t lost his job recently, done nothing in fact to bring down the wrath of whatever school she’s been shipped off to. And finally, he releizes, it might be Sally herself, her own simpleness that brought this on her. Maybe not by anyone’s choice, but there you have it.

And so at last he settles down to wait. Still making calls, and yammering on about it, still waiting for his child, growing older, now, perhaps taller. Hopefully, though he doubts this, learning new good things at that school. Useful things, like they said. But sometimes among the poor folk with simple children, and there are a few in towns nearby, there are stories…

In late March, six months later, a car pulls into the drive, scattering chickens and Gene barely stops working on the house, looks over, goes on with his job.

And then Sally steps out, and something happens inside his head, as though she’s a stranger, someone he can’t recall at first. Well, there she is. She looks so different. Leaner and empty-eyed and taller, too. He drops what he’s holding and walks over to her, slowly, knowing it’d please the folks who brought her to pull her away.

“Sally, honey,” he says, sounded strange himself. “How’ve you been?”

Now there’s a stupid question. She hasn’t been well. Any fool can see that. Of course there’s no one but him to see, as the car has vanished again. He supposes this is so he doesn’t fetch his gun for the state they brought her home in.

He takes his hollow-eyed feeble-minded daughter into the house, where he tries to get her to eat something and talk. That’s their word, of course, them and the townsfolk, that feeble-minded. He’s never said such as that to Sally.

“Gene,” she says, swallowing milk, eating now as though there won’t be enough. “I’m sick.”

“I know, Sal.”

“I’m gonna have a baby,” she tells him.

He damn near drops the dishes. Well, she’s straight forward as ever, that’s for sure.

“Are you?” he says quietly, conversationally. “How you know?”

A shrug. “They told me. The doctor, he said.”

Gene scratches his head, debating who to shoot first. “Huh. So you went to the doctor there, did you?”

Sally nods, euthusistacally. ” I like him. He said, ‘Sally, do you like movies?’ And I said, yes, and he said did I like home and I said sure…”

“Huh,” Gene says again. He wants to interuppt, break something perhaps, but if he does, he might never have Sally talking about this. So he only pours more milk for her.

“And if I wanted to come home, they had to cut me open first.”

It wouldn’t hurt. A small operation. Then she could come home.

Sally leans closer to him, whispers. “When I was asleep, Gene, they said they’d make so I’d never have any welfare brats, and they…”

Gene rises and pats his daughter on the shoulder. He makes a doctor’s appointment for her, and listens patiently while she tells him, as if it’s everyday, about the boredom in the school, the lack of anything to do except simple things. Nothing like they did at home, no crops, no machinary. Nothing fun.

After a time, Gene says, “How come you know you’re gonna have a baby?”

Sally smiles. “Doctor told me. He said I have just one and no more.”

“Well, he got that part right,” Gene says. “You ain’t going back there.” He’d like to find them all, the doctors, and do something to them, but he can’t think of anything awful enough. Stealing a man’s child, for one thing…and he doesn’t even want to think about how Sally’s having a baby, and what-all was done to make it so she can’t have anymore.

Dr. Fredericks says yes, indeed, it’s just as Sally says. And the gossip group has another thing to talk about. Sally’s sick mornings, soon enough, and doesn’t why.

“It’s the baby,” Gene tells her. He wipes her mouth and straightens her clothes. He does these things just as he has done forever, and he doesn’t blame her a bit for the child inside her. Ain’t her fault. She was taken away from here, that’s all. That’s the trouble. Maybe he should hate the baby, like the folks down at the store say. Any child like that they wouldn’t allow in their house, but he can’t do that either. He’ll be a grandfather then. when the baby comes.

Gene lets her stay home from school, because she cries often enough, at the thought of going, and where her hatred of school once pushed him to have her go, he does nothing now. She wants nothing to do with school now, no matter what he says.

And when the baby comes, and comes home, later, she only stares at it, as though the little boy is a doll.

“He’s small,” she says, but after that, shows little interest in the child, no matter how Gene has her hold it, no matter how he rocks the baby himself. He knows she’s watching, but she’s not paying attention.

“Sally, godammit,” he says. “Watch me.”

He tries to be patient, but it’s harder now. No matter what happened, she ought to pay attention to the baby. Somehow it’s so hard to remember she’s a child too.

And of course, he’s always afraid in the back of his mind, that the school will come back for her, because after all, what’s to keep them from wanting her back. They need someone to sweep and clean and run things there, and Sally’s bright enough for that. She’s different now, though, slower somehow, than before she went away. Something he can’t put his finger on.

He debates what would happen if the school folks come back, even goes so far as to take the baby and put him in the closet, the door cracked. He pats the baby’s head. “You stay there,” he whispers. “You stay right here.” And then he takes him out again, right away. The school people can’t barge in here, surely, but if they do, he can keep this child at least. It doesn’t occur to him that he’s choosing one child over another, that if he runs to put the baby in the hidden place, old Sally will have opened the door wide again. She’d be screaming and carrying on, gone before he could rush out. And if he hid her too, well, she’d likely not stay hidden. She likes folks, does Sally, always following him about and wanting to do something fun. She’d run out, right away, open the door early.

He tries this, without telling her why.

“Crawl under this bed,” he tells her, wiggling under the bed himself, as far as he’ll fit.

She blinks at him, puzzled. “what for?”

“For…well, for emergencies, girl. That’s why. Like…hide and seek. You wait here until I come fetch you, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

He goes into the other room then, but soon enough she runs out. “Hey, Gene! Where are you?”

He has to swallow several times. He’s relieved and angry, and sorry, too, all because she can’t play hide and seek, even for something like this.