“What is it?” she cried, and the distraught tone of her voice caused Baby LaVon to burst into fresh tears just as she was winding down to sniffles. “Have you gone crazy? They’ll send soldiers after us, Charlie! Soldiers!”
“Not tonight they won’t,” he said, and there was some thing so sure in his voice that it was horrible. “Point is, sugar-babe, if we don’t get our asses in gear, we ain’t never gonna make it off’n the base. I don’t even know how in hell I got out of the tower. Malfunction somewhere, I guess. Why not? Everything else sure-God malfunctioned.” And he uttered a high, loonlike laugh that frightened her more than anything else had done. “The baby dressed? Good. Put some of her clothes in that other suitcase. Use the blue tote-bag in the closet for the rest. Then we’re going to get the hell out. I think we’re all right. Wind’s blowing east to west. Thank God for that.”
He coughed into his hand again.
“Daddy!” Baby LaVon demanded, holding her arms up. “Want Daddy! Sure! Horsey-ride, Daddy! Horsey-ride! Sure!”
“Not now,” Charlie said, and disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later, Sally heard the rattle of crockery. He was getting her pin-money out of the blue soup-dish on the top shelf. Some thirty or forty dollars she had put away—a dollar, sometimes fifty cents, at a time. Her house money. It was real, then. Whatever it was, it was really real.
Baby LaVon, denied her horsey-ride by her daddy, who rarely if ever denied her anything, began to weep again. Sally struggled to get her into her light jacket and then threw most of her clothes into the tote, cramming them in helter-skelter. The idea of putting anything else into the other suitcase was ridiculous. It would burst. She had to kneel on it to snap the catches. She found herself thanking God Baby LaVon was trained, and there was no need to bother with diapers.