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Part I

THE WORST DREAM IN THE WORLD

5-1 BV

The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there

-KATHERINE ANNE PORTER,

Pale Horse, Pale Rider

ONE

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere-the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years-she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy Amy Harper Bellafonte

The day Amy was born, her mother, Jeanette, was nineteen years old Jeanette named her baby Amy for her own ave her the middle name Harper for Harper Lee, the lady who’d written To Kill a Mockingbird, Jeanette’s favorite book-truth be told, the only book she’d ht have nairl in the story, because she wanted her little girl to grow up like that, tough and funny and wise, in a way that she, Jeanette, had never ed to be But Scout was a nahter to have to go around her whole life explaining so like that

Amy’s father was a man who came in one day to the restaurant where Jeanette had waited tables since she turned sixteen, a diner everyone called the Box, because it looked like one: like a big chro off the county road, backed by fields of corn and beans, nothing else around for miles except a self-serve car wash, the kind where you had to put coins into the machine and do all the work yourself The man, whose nas like that, and he was a sweet talker who told Jeanette as she poured his coffee and then later, again and again, how pretty she was, how he liked her coal-black hair and hazel eyes and slender wrists, said it all in a way that sounded like he meant it, not the way boys in school had, as if the words were just so the car, a new Pontiac, with a dashboard that glowed like a spaceship and leather seats creaht, really and truly loved him But he stayed in town only a few days, and then went on his way When she told her father what had happened, he said he wanted to go looking for him, make him live up to his responsibilities But what Jeanette knew and didn’t say was that Bill Reynolds was married, a married man; he had a family in Lincoln, all the way clean over in Nebraska He’d even showed her the pictures in his wallet of his kids, two little boys in baseball uniforms, Bobby and Billy So no matter how many times her father asked who the man was that had done this to her, she didn’t say She didn’t even tell him the man’s name

And the truth was, she didn’t nant, which was easy right until the end, nor the delivery itself, which was bad but fast, nor, especially, having a baby, her little Aive her, her father had done up her brother’s old bedroom as a nursery, carried down the old baby crib froo; he’d gone with Jeanette, in the last s she’d need, like paja over the crib He’d read a book that said that babies needed things like that, things to look at so their little brains would turn on and begin to work properly Froht of the baby as "her," because in her heart she wanted a girl, but she knew that wasn’t the sort of thing you should say to anyone, not even to yourself She’d had a scan at the hospital over in Cedar Falls and asked the wo the little plastic paddle over Jeanette’s stohed, looking at the pictures on the TV of Jeanette’s baby, sleeping away inside her, and said, Hon, this baby’s shy Sometimes you can tell and others you can’t, and this is one of those times So Jeanette didn’t knohich she decided was fine with her, and after she and her father had emptied out her brother’s room and taken down his old pennants and posters-Jose Canseco, a roup called Killer Picnic, the Bud Girls-and seen how faded and banged up the walls were, they painted it a color the label on the can called "Dreaood whatever the baby turned out to be Her father hung a wallpaper border along the edge of the ceiling, a repeating pattern of ducks splashing in a puddle, and cleaned up an oldchair he’d found at the auction hall, so that when Jeanette brought the baby home, she’d have a place to sit and hold her

The baby cairl she’d wanted and na the nauessed she’d never see again and, now that Aer wanted to And Bellafonte: you couldn’t do better than a name like that It meant "beautiful fountain," and that’s what Aed her, and when Aht because she et or hungry or didn’t like the dark, Jeanette stumbled down the hall to her room, noat the Box, to pick her up and tell her she was there, she would always be there, you cry and I’ll co, that’s a deal between us, you and me, forever and ever, my little Amy Harper Bellafonte And she would hold and rock her until dawn began to pale theshades and she could hear birds singing in the branches of the trees outside

Then Amy was three and Jeanette was alone Her father had died, a heart attack they told her, or else a stroke It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone needed to check Whatever it was, it hit hi to his truck to drive to work at the elevator; he had just enough time to put down his coffee on the fender before he fell over and died, never spilling a drop She still had her job at the Box, but the h now, not for Amy or any of it, and her brother, in the Navy somewhere, didn’t answer her letters God invented Iowa, he always said, so people could leave it and never come back She wondered what she would do

Then one day a man came into the diner It was Bill Reynolds He was different, soood The Bill Reynolds she reht of his mostly, like the way his sandy hair flopped over his forehead when he talked, or how he blew over his coffee before he sipped it, even when it wasn’t hot anyht from inside that you wanted to be near It reminded her of those little plastic sticks that you snapped so the liquid inside one He looked older, thinner She saw he hadn’t shaved or co all whichaway, and he wasn’t wearing a pressed polo like before but just an ordinary work shirt like the ones her father had worn, untucked and stained under the arht out in the weather, or in a car soht her eye at the door and she followed hi here?

-I left her, he said, and as he looked at where she stood, she smelled beer on his breath, and sweat, and dirty clothes I’ve gone and done it, Jeanette I left my wife I’m a free man

-You drove all this way to tell ht about you He cleared his throat A lot I’ve thought about us

-What us? There ain’t no us You can’t co about us

He sat up straight -Well, I’ht now

-It’s busy in here, can’t you see that? I can’t be talking to you like this You’ll have to order so