The Third Silence by Nancy Springer Page A

yodel of a siren sounded. But I didn’t move. I didn’t even turn to see whether it was my father.
    Sure and graceful, like a ballet, the woman with the gray braid turned to the rear door and fender, took a big brush and made three swoops of sage: hills. A quick splatter of yellow: buttercups. Caramel shadows. Indigo and violet: sky and sea. All down her braid, down the back of her denim jacket, she wore little bows of yarn that exactly matched the colors in her palette. She must have planned this escapade for months, maybe years. I pictured her in shadows with her head on her pillow, her hair in waves like a flowing gray ocean, asleep, dreaming of what she would paint on her car.
    She wrote, “Time held me green and dying, though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
    “Fern Hill!” I blurted. “Dylan Thomas.”
    She gave me a glance again, like a Yeats horseman casting a cold eye, never breaking the rhythm of her brushwork.
    Behind me a big cop voice said, “Okay, folks, show’s over. Move along. Back to your cars.”
    I didn’t have to turn around to know that yeah, it was my dad. Officer Litwack.
    His voice broke the spell. I heard a shuffle of feet, a woman giggling, and some man saying, “She never got over the sixties. Damned old hippie,” as he walked away.
    Behind my ear, one of my friends said, “Come on, Brad.” Friends? I’d forgotten all about them and the Emporium of Ice-Cream. I shook my head.
    “Well, we’re going.”
    “So go. Bye.” I didn’t even look around. Instead, I walked closer to the gray-braid woman, who probably never heard my footsteps, she was so intent on swooshing yellow petals onto her gas cap cover, painting a Van Gogh sunflower there.
    My father stood right behind her in his navy-blue army-booted uniform with his black guns-and-gadgets belt lugging heavy on his hips. He chuckled and said to himself, “Well, this is different.”
    Gray Braid didn’t look up, just dabbed a garland of quick mauve daisies around her sunflower.
    Dad switched over to his cop voice. “Ma’am,” he said, “I have to ask you to pack up your paints and move this car. Right now, please.”
    She ignored him so well that I actually wondered whether she noticed him, and it was hard not to notice anything as big and strong as my father. I mean, he was born to be a cop. His father had been a cop, and Dad wants me to be a cop too. Me, in that uniform? Yeah, right. But Dad says if more people with ideals signed up, the force wouldn’t have such a bad name. He hasn’t given up on me yet, because I can’t help listening to him at least some. When Dad speaks, people generally listen.
    Except the woman with the gray braid. She stood up, but only to start painting something in blue on her car’s trunk.
    “Ma’am, I’d appreciate your cooperation. I don’t want to have to take you in,” my father warned her.
    She didn’t even blink to show that she’d heard him.
    “ Ma’am —” he started to warn her again, but then he caught sight of me, and he kind of yelped, “Brad, what are you doing here?” Like he thought I was with her.
    “Just walking home.”
    For some reason Dad frowned at me. “You’d better get going, then.”
    Huh? Why? But then I realized: Dad didn’t want me to see him arrest Gray Braid.
    And I didn’t want him to arrest her at all. I stalled for time. “Who’s Dario Fuentes?”
    “What?”
    I pointed at the crimson name painted on the car door. “Dario Fuentes. Who is he?”
    Dad stared at the name, and under the peak of his police hat his face went as still as snow. For just a moment. Then his brows bunched like thunderheads, and he glared at me. All of a sudden he was like a different person.
    Like my grandfather. All nightstick.
    Dad used his cop voice on me. “Brad, I told you to go home. Get moving.”
    That voice could have muscled me home all by itself, it was so powerful. I backed off, but I managed to stop by the car’s rear bumper, watching as Dad reached