Free Miami Noir by Les Standiford

minute,” Marcy said. “Go around by the door. I’ll be out.”
    When she met him at the door, the boy reached to touch her cheek. He wanted to do something, to kiss her, maybe, but he didn’t know where to start.
    Marcy reached up and took his hand before he touched her face. “Be careful,” she said.
    “I was just—”
    “You was just maybe figuring we’re alone out here and you’d take advantage of the situation. If my daddy knew, he’d—”
    “I’m sorry.” The boy turned his head to check the edges of the clearing. “Where is he?”
    “He went looking for something to drink,” Marcy said.
    “He won’t find much around here.”
    “He’s got his ways. He says he’s got a sixth sense.”
    “A what?”
    “Sometimes he sees things before they happen. Not always, and not that he can control it, but I seen it work. Like coming here.”
    “Visions, like?”
    “I don’t pretend to understand it.” The girl’s face darkened for a second and she shivered. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. If he knew I was alone with you…”
    “He won’t know if you don’t tell him. We’re just talking. So why are the two of you out on the road?”
    “There was trouble.”
    “With your mama?”
    She looked up at the boy. “My mama’s dead. This trouble was with the law up in Duval County. They said Cal, my daddy, they said he stole. Said I was in on it. It was a lie, but we had to go anyway. I didn’t have no one else, so I went with him. I didn’t have a choice.”
    “You could leave him.”
    “He needs me, and I need him. You understand that, don’t you? Ain’t that why you’re out here in nowhere?”
    “I could leave. I will someday.”
    “But you haven’t yet.”
    “It don’t seem right, though. You, a girl, out on the road.”
    “Well, we’re not on the road now, are we? Come on inside. There’s something I want to show you.”
    Marcy took Speck’s hand and led him inside over to the bed. She reached down and slid the battered suitcase from underneath. “This is my hope chest.” She untied the twine and lifted the lid. She took a carefully folded white cotton dress from the case and then a patchwork quilt, a pair of polished black leather shoes with hard buckles, something made of lace that she quickly hid beneath the quilt, the brush and mirror, and finally a photograph—Marcy when she was a fair-haired child wearing a long white dress—in a gold frame.
    “This ain’t the hope chest itself, naturally. It’s what goes in one.” She arranged the few pieces on the bed. “These are my pretty things. I’d hate worse than anything to part with these.” She lifted from the suitcase a wad of newspaper and unwrapped a small glass globe.
    “I thought it’d be broke,” she said. “It’s so delicate.”
    She showed Speck. Beneath the little roof of glass there was a tiny city of white with steeples and onion-shaped domes, castles, and palaces. Blue lagoons and arched bridges connected the white streets. On the bottom of the globe there was gold printing: Enter herein ye sons of men .
    “What is it?” Speck said.
    “It’s the World’s Fair. In St. Louis a long time ago. This came from there. It was a keepsake. It’s for looking and dreaming. Watch.” She turned the globe upside down and hundreds of silvery flakes floated above the miniature city before settling silently back to the bottom. “Don’t they look just like stars?” Marcy said. “Don’t you wish you could be somewhere so pretty? It was handed down in my family from my mother’s side. Her daddy helped build it—the fair.”
    “You saw it?”
    “It was a long time ago. It ain’t there no more. They built up this great white city and people came from all over the world, and then when it was over they tore it all down like it never happened, like it was kind of a dream. Still, I want to see where it was someday.”
    “I could take you there.”
    “That would be nice. Maybe someday you’ll be there, and