Steven Gould - Jumper:Griffin _s Story

I don't even remember him pulling out of the petrol station.

Burning Bridges Consuelo lived with Sam, but it was a strange relationship, almost as if she was his girl-of-all-work and he was her little boy. I mean, she cleaned and cooked and did laundry. But she also scolded him constantly, long bursts of rapid-fire Spanish to which he almost always answered, "I Clam que si!" At first I thought they were married, but she had her own little bedroom in the back with a wall of religious icons, saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus.

They stayed at home the day after they'd found me but for the next four days after that, they loaded the truck up with the stretcher and medical supplies and bottled water and drove out.

Consuelo would make me a lunch and show it to me before leaving. "Ahi te deje listo to lonche." Then she would say, "Descanza y bebe mucha agua." And she would mime drinking from a bottle.

And I would say, "/Claw que si!"

And Sam would laugh and she would start scolding him again.

I did rest and drank mucha water the first day. And slept. It was very easy to sleep. I was tired but thinking about anything-well, about Mum and Dad-exhausted me. It was cry or sleep and sometimes both.

The second day I walked around outside. It was an old adobe house in the middle of the desert, with weathered outbuildings for livestock and horses but they were long gone. The only remotely domesticated animals on the property were a few feral cats.

"They keep having kittens but the coyotes keep their population down," Sam'd told me. "My dad sold off most of the land in the fifties, when he went from ranching to running the co-op in town, but it's been in the family since before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Wouldn't be if they hadn't married Anglos into the family, but that way the land grant stuck. Didn't hurt that nobody really wanted this desert crap."

He said there were neighbors about a mile away, but nobody closer. "Water's iffy. I've got a spring but most places around here you have to drill six hundred feet to get water."

I spent most of the time outside by the concrete tank that captured the spring. The runoff poured over a little notch in the edge and ran down into a gulley-I guess it would be called an arroyo. The little brook didn't last long before it sank into the sandy bottom, but this wet section of the arroyo was a riot of green. Three large cotton woods shaded the tank for most of the day and if I sat still I could count on seeing birds, jackrabbits, deer, and once Sam pointed at a track in the wet sand and said, "Desert bighorn. Very rare."

The third day I jumped to Balboa Park, on the southern edge near the aerospace museum, and crossed 1-5 on the Park Boulevard bridge to get to downtown and the public library on E street. It was a lot cooler in the city-near the ocean and all that-but I still had to rest often.

Outside the library, from the plastic window of a newspaper vending machine, my face stared at me, like they'd put me in that metal box.

Drug slaying? I reached into my pocket to pull out quarters to buy the paper but it suddenly felt like every person on the street was staring at me. Instead I turned and entered the library, walked back to the men's loo, and locked myself in a stall.

Drug slaying? That didn't make any sense.

Thirty minutes later I peeked out the bathroom door but there wasn't the swarm of police I expected. No one seemed interested in me at all so I worked my way back to periodicals and snagged the Union Tribune, then found a chair facing the corner. They'd used a picture from Mum's desk that she took at the zoo three months earlier.

Police still seek missing nine-year-old Griffin O'Conner (see photo) after finding both of his parents murdered in their Texas Street apartment Thursday night. DNA tests of blood found on the site are believed to be the boy's and he is feared dead, but there has been no sign of the boy dead or alive since he was last seen at his karate class Thursday afternoon. Persons with information are urged to contact the police or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-TIPS.

Large quantities of cocaine found on the premises lead the police to believe that Robert and Hannah O'Conner, UK citizens, were involved in the smuggling and sale of drugs, and that the slaying was either the work of a rival gang or a drug deal gone bad.

Utter rubbish. Mum didn't even like it when Dad had more than one pint at a pub because she'd had alcoholics in her family. Why on earth would the police think-well, 'cause they found the cocaine. And the cocaine wasn't there before, right?

I felt this moment of doubt, a moment of world-twisting alienation, then shook my head. If there was cocaine in the apartment, then someone brought it with him, and no matter how many times you see that sort of thing on TV, I doubted it was the police. So it was the murderers, but why?

Because nobody cares what happens to drug dealers.

Because there wouldn't be a hue and cry to find out who did it if the victims were criminals themselves. And the police would be looking in the wrong direction-for other drug smugglers in the city, not for people who'd been following us since we'd lived in England.

I put the paper back, walked between two shelves, and jumped to the elementary school, between the hedge and the stairs, near the flat. I didn't want to go directly there. I was afraid they were still watching the place. If they wanted me, they could be waiting inside for me to appear again. And they'd kill me.

Dead.

Like Mum. Like Dad.

I didn't understand it. I hadn't done anything to them. I was pretty sure Mum and Dad hadn't, either. But they pretty clearly wanted me dead.

I walked toward the flat and almost immediately a woman pushing a baby pram stopped and said, "Aren't you that British boy whose parents were-"

"No, ma'am." The only American accent I could do with any sort of conviction was Deep South. "Ah just look like him. You're the second person who's said that today."

"Oh."

I smiled and walked on but when I turned the corner she was talking on her cell phone. Bugger all. I cut into an alley and when the tall fences hid me, I jumped away.

Empty Quarter again. Either I was getting better or I'd already moved so much of the loose dirt here that there wasn't as much to sweep into the air. The bloodstains were fading but ants were now mining the dark dirt. It still reminded me of bloodstains on carpet. I kicked gravel and sand over the spot, ants and all.

It took me a moment to calm down enough to jump back to Sam's place, by the spring. I splashed water over my face and sat down in the shade. After a bit, I wandered back to the house and pulled out the lunch that Consuelo had left me- tamales with pork. The smell made me want tortilla crisps and salsa. Crunchy, salty crisps and a medium salsa-I couldn't handle the hotter stuff.

Why not?

I jumped back to the elementary school. There was a Safeway market a block east of the school grounds and I went there and bought tortilla crisps and salsa and several large bottles of Gatorade, then jumped back to the spring. I started to put the extra Gatorade in the fridge-there was plenty of room-but then I thought about Sam and Consuelo seeing it there so I stashed the bottles under my bed instead. The crisps and salsa tasted good-really good-and I ate them until the bag was empty and I was uncomfortably full.

The bag I buried at the bottom of the rubbish bin, but the salsa jar was half full so I put it at the back of the fridge, behind the pickles and mayonnaise.

I wanted to take another run at the flat, to try to get there without drawing attention, but I was tired and sleepy from the walking and the full stomach. I was still weak, I guess, from the blood loss. I thought about jumping directly back to my room, but I remembered the footsteps on the stair. Maybe they'd planted bugs? Maybe they were watching?