Why Visit America by Matthew Baker

Author:Matthew Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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She rode the train through Appalachia, past misty shacks, past foggy huts, watching damp mining towns blur past from the chilly depths of an empty boxcar, periodically feeding the baby, that perfect beautiful child, who loved to be held, who loved to be bounced, who never fussed or cried, just smiled and babbled happily, grasping at her cheeks with his tiny fingers. She played peekaboo with him as the train clattered past a granite quarry. She played pattycake with him as the train flew over a rusted bridge. As the train crawled past the clanging signals at a crossing, the child spit up all over her hoodie, and her heart burst with happiness. When darkness fell she drifted off to sleep with the child wrapped against her chest in the cotton sling she had taken from the nursery, and later that night the child awoke her with a hungry squeal, and waking to find the child there in her arms was the most glorious experience of her life. Afraid of being recognized, she had buzzed her hair before abandoning the sedan, and the air was frigid on her scalp as she fed the child in the moonlight, but when the sun rose in the morning the air turned so warm and humid that she zipped off her hoodie, cradling the child in her lap as viny trees flew past the doors. Next to her in the boxcar she had a canvas rucksack full of trail mix and granola bars and bottles of water, stolen diapers and pacifiers and formula and a baby bottle with a rubber nipple, a flashlight, and a roll of toilet paper for emergencies. She also had a navigator, a handheld digital device that had been designed for hiking, which she had bought with cash to avoid being tracked. She used the navigator to follow the progress of the train, watching the blinking icon travel south. As the train screeched to a halt in a rail yard in Miami, she climbed down from the boxcar, wearing a running shirt and jogging shorts and a brand-new pair of hiking boots. She had the child wrapped to her stomach with the sling, carrying him where she had carried him when she was pregnant, with her hoodie zipped over the bulge, the bulge making her look pregnant again. Crouching in the shadows of a shipping container at the edge of the rail yard, she fed the child some formula, got him sucking on a pacifier, waited until he had fallen asleep, zipped her hoodie to her throat, and slipped on a pair of shades, and then she walked into the city, strolling down the sidewalk with an expression of calm, feeling tense and alert. She hailed a taxi at a hotel, praying that the child wouldn’t babble or cry when he woke, but the child didn’t wake once, sleeping through the entire ride, sucking peacefully on the pacifier. The taxi dropped her off at the dilapidated headquarters of

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