Forty Days at Kamas by Preston Fleming Read Free Book Online Page B

loose, knee–deep snow up a steep mountain path much like the one that had led to Helen's cabin. The men in her dream were moving much more slowly than the men she had seen on the road, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep pace with them. Time after time she strained to get a better look at the prisoner who looked like her father, but most of the time his back was turned to her, and besides, he looked too skinny to be her dad.
    Still, there was something about the way he held his head and the way he stooped when he walked that made her pretty sure it was Dad. But she kept falling behind and it made her terribly unhappy because she wanted so desperately to catch up to him and wrap her arms around him and take him home to someplace where they could be a family and she wouldn't need to be afraid anymore.
    Helen knocked gently on the half–open door and entered the dimly lit bedroom. She sat at the foot of the bed.
    "You've slept for nearly twelve hours, Claire."
    Claire gave a weak smile.
    "Do you remember where you are, sweetheart?"
    The girl nodded.
    "I have some breakfast for you in the kitchen. It's not much, but it will keep you going till we get to town. Are you hungry?"
    Another nod.
    "Come with me then. I think we need some talking time."
    Helen gathered Claire's dirty clothing and carried it out with her. In the kitchen, she had filled a plastic tub with hot soapy water and began washing the corduroy trousers by hand. She picked the turtleneck off the floor but hesitated before dropping it into the tub. Tucked inside was a zippered travel wallet that contained Claire’s passport, national I.D. card, photocopies of correspondence with her grandparents, and two folded ten–dollar bills. Helen removed the passport, examined it quickly and stuffed it back into the wallet. Then she tucked the wallet inside a cereal box at the rear of the kitchen cabinet and closed the door.
    Claire trudged along behind her and took a seat at the kitchen counter opposite a bowl of hot oatmeal. Without looking up or testing the first spoonful she began to eat.
    "Claire, I wish we had lots of time for this but I'm afraid we don't."
    Seeing her guest stop eating long enough to look up at her, Helen continued.
    "I know it's hard to know whom to trust sometimes. Without your mom and dad around, it's extra hard. Claire, I may not be your mother, but once, a long time ago, I had a daughter your age. If my little girl were ever lost in a strange place, the thing I'd want more than anything in the world would be for some good person to take her in for a while and help her find her way back to me.
    "So here you are, and here I am, and you need help getting back to where you belong, and I'm ready to help you. But for me to do that, you need to tell me some more about yourself. Do you think you could do that?"
    Claire let out a demure burp, covered her mouth with her hand and giggled.
    "I guess I can," she answered. "But could I have some more oatmeal first?"
    Guided by Helen's gentle questioning, Claire told the story of her twelve–year–old life, starting with her birth into a family in which nearly every adult on both sides of the family had earned an advanced degree and achieved success in business, engineering, or law. She told of a contented childhood in a small town with plenty of friends and of her room in the stone farmhouse near Sewickley with a sweeping view of forest and farmland.
    Then she told of how her father had cut his own pay several times to keep his company from going out of business and of her mother's return to work in Pittsburgh when taxes and inflation made it impossible for the family to survive on her father's earnings alone. And she told of how she had missed her friends after the private school they attended had been forced to close its doors under the President–for–Life's latest education reform plan.
    When Helen asked what had made her leave Pennsylvania and travel all the way to Utah, Claire