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By Root 375 0

its side, a used tissue, and several scattered coins. In the pocket of the seat back, there’s an atlas and a tape cassette. And what’s this? I reach my hand out and touch a Snickers bar, unopened. I pull my hand back. There’s a long metal object that might be a tool tucked under the passenger seat. Other than that, the Jeep is fairly clean, not like the cab of my father’s truck, which is covered with rags, pieces of wood, sawdust, tools, jackets, and socks. It smells, too—like old apples. My father swears that there aren’t any apples in the truck, that he’s searched all through it, but I am certain there’s at least one rotten one back there somewhere.

I let myself cry for a minute. It feels good, though I have nothing but my sleeve to wipe my nose on. I remember the way my father cried in the parking lot. He seemed not to know I was even there.

My father and I saved a person’s life. I’ll be a celebrity at school in the morning. I hope my father doesn’t tell me not to talk about it. I wonder if I’ll be in the newspapers. My teeth begin to chatter, and maybe I help them along a bit. I think about our walk, about finding the baby in the woods, about the way my father fell to his knees. I wonder if being dangerously chilled is reason enough to get out of the car and go inside.

I sit up and peer out the window, which has steamed up a bit. How long has my father been gone? My fingers are cold. What happened to my mittens? I am starving. I haven’t eaten anything since school lunch at eleven thirty. I think about the Snickers bar. Will the detective notice if I eat it? And if he notices, will he care? I reach over to the seat back pocket and slip the bar out. I hold it in my lap for a moment, my eye on the door of the motel room. I will have to eat it fast and hide the wrapper. I don’t want to get caught with half a candy bar in my mouth.

I tear the wrapper open. The bar is hard from the cold, but the candy is delicious. I eat it as fast as I can, wiping my mouth with my fingers and stuffing the wrapper in the pocket of my jeans. I sit back, slightly breathless.

With shoulders hunched, waiting for a reprimand, I step out of the Jeep and shut the door. I walk across the plowed parking lot. I can hear voices now—the deliberately calm voices of technicians at work. I hesitate on the steps, expecting a bark.

It’s a small room and would be depressing even without the bloody sheets or the soiled covers ripped from the bed. The walls are paneled in thin wallboard meant to look like pine. The room has a bureau and a TV and smells heavily of mildew. A bloodied sheet lies just below the lone window, which is open. Through that window I can see the spotlights on the snow.

A technician is working over the bed.

“A woman gave birth in here,” Warren is saying.

On a side table is a glass of water, half full. A sock lies on the rug. “There’ll be fingerprints,” my father says.

“There’ll be fingerprints all over the place,” Warren says, “but none of them will do us any good unless one of them has a record—which I sincerely doubt.” The detective takes a handkerchief from his back pocket and blows his nose. “That tiny girl you found?” he asks. “She started life in this room. And then someone, most likely the father, went out that window there and tried to kill her. No one put that baby in a warm place where she’d be found. No one called in a tip. A man took that infant, minutes old, walked her out into the woods on a December night, temps in the single digits, and laid her naked in a sleeping bag. If you hadn’t found her, we’d have come across her, when? March? April? If even then. Most likely a dog would have gotten to her first.”

I think about a dog dragging a bone across the snow with its teeth. My father stands near the detective while he confers with a technician. Chief Boyd is leaning against a wall, his lips pressed hard together. From where I’m standing he can’t see me. I try to picture what went on in this room. I don’t know much about giving birth, but I can feel hysteria in the walls, the wrinkled sheets, the clothes left behind.