My Abandonment (15 page)

"It doesn't matter," I say. "It's dark. No one's watching."

"Everyone's always watching," he says. "That's how we have to think."

"I want to say some things," I say.

"You were talking to that lady sitting next to you."

"I believe in you," I say. "In the city I had to say those things since I was afraid. I love you and I know you are doing everything for us and that I can't always understand why."

"She is watching us," he says. "What did you tell her?"

"Nothing," I say. "She's asleep. I'm sorry."

My face is close to Father's. He smells the same as he always does. He jerks his face away and scrubs at the cloudy window and looks out.

"I'm your girl," I say. "You came back to teach me so we'd never have to be apart again."

"Stand up, Caroline," he says lower than a whisper. "Follow me and don't say anything. Be sure to get your things."

His red frame pack is stuck in the shelf above and finally he gets it loose. I follow him toward the front of the bus and when I get my pack the lady still looks asleep. My picture on the window is fogging back over but still there.

Father stands at the yellow line by the driver you're not supposed to cross.

"Excuse me, sir," Father says. "Would you let us out up here?"

"Where?" the driver says.

"Anywhere here's fine," Father says. "Our cabin is just up over that ridge there."

The bus slows but does not stop. Outside the black pines fill the windows.

"Any special stops are supposed to be cleared at the station," the driver says.

"I spoke to them about it in Vancouver," Father says. "We transferred buses, you see. Please, sir. If we go all the way to Bend, we can't get home until tomorrow, and my wife will worry about the girl."

"Please don't tell me you have luggage underneath," the driver finally says.

"No, we don't," Father says. "None at all."

***

The windows of the bus are dark. I can't see any faces looking out. The red taillights don't last long and then we're alone and it's darker all at once.

"Feels a lot colder," I say.

"It's the altitude," Father says.

"Are we close to a town?" I say.

"Not really," he says, "but look, the number on this road here looks familiar to me."

It's not a paved road, and not really gravel, just worn down dirt. It looks like a fire lane in the forest park but more overgrown.

"I have some friends who live around here," Father says. "Who have a cabin up here, somewhere."

"Where's the moon?" I say. "I thought it was out before."

"That nosy woman," he says. "She was asking you questions, wasn't she?"

"I didn't say anything," I say.

"She could have had the police waiting for us in Bend, or even in Sisters, waiting to take us back to Portland and all that. Would that have made you happy?"

"She was just a lady," I say. "She didn't care about anything but that lake. She was just a boring lady."

The road slants upward. Enough light comes down through the trees that the edges stick out. The potholes and ruts are easy to follow.

"So what are you saying?" Father says. "That I made us get off into this forest in the middle of the night for nothing?"

"No," I say. "I don't know."

"Better safe than sorry, Caroline," he says.

"I know that," I say. "You're right. So you really know where we're going?"

"It seems familiar," Father says. "That's all I said. Are you tired?"

"Not exactly," I say.

"Good," he says. "Good girl. If we slow down too much we could really get cold."

"I'm already cold," I say.

"No you're not," he says. "You just feel cold."

The road levels and the trees open up and thicken again. We pass through a stretch where we have to climb over trees fallen across the road. Some are blackened and burnt. Some of the standing trees are just sharp black spikes against the gray sky. Father is explaining about the forest fires when it begins to snow.

"Better than rain," he says.

The flakes drift slow and heavy at first. Father takes off his pack and takes out two white plastic shopping bags. He puts them over my feet with rubber bands around my ankles to hold them on. He has his boots but I have only my sneakers. I don't know when he took off his empty black eyeglasses.

Pretty soon the snow is sticking to the ground and we're walking on top of it.

"I read about igloos before," I say. "It's warm inside there even if the ice is cold somehow."

"Sleeping in the snow is a lot more fun to read about than to do," Father says. "I promise you that. Here."

He straps the headlamp across my forehead but the light only pulls snowflakes into my eyes and makes it more impossible to see. I switch off the switch without seeing anything. The wind is stronger now and the air is colder and the snow is sideways. I have my head turned a little to be able to see at all and in that moment along the edge of the road she comes running, dark against the white. It's Lala with her mouth open and there are no other dogs with her, her thin brown shape and her tail slipping past and then gone behind us.

"Lala!" I say.

"What?" Father says. "Who?"

"A dog from the forest park," I say. "She just ran past us. Didn't you see?"

"There's nothing out here," he says. "Just keep walking. Are your feet cold?"

"They were," I say. "Now I can't even feel them."

"That's good," he says. "That's a good sign, as long as you can keep walking."

"This is a slippery kind of thing to have on your feet," I say.

"Better slippery than wet. Trust me on that."

The trees open up and then close in again. It's gotten darker, it's not even lighter when we're out of the trees. I don't know if we lose the road because of the snow or before that.

"We could start a fire," I say. "No one would see it."

"Everything's too wet out here," Father says. "What would we burn?" He says something else but I can't hear it.

"What did you say?" I say.

"I don't even think we have matches," he says.

"Do you really know where we're going?" I say.

"I think so. It's been a long time." He turns all the way around and then we head in a slightly different direction. "Also," he says, "it's snowing and it's the middle of the night. That complicates matters."

If I walk close behind him it blocks some of the snow. We keep on without talking. A little later we come to a stretch where there's strips of black in the ground like roads or water so the snow stands out white like islands around them.

"Yes," Father says. "Very good." He takes off his glove and puts his bare hand on the ground. "We're in luck," he says.

"What?" I say.

"How much do you know about volcanoes?"

"Some," I say.

"There's heat inside the earth," he says, "and some places it comes up."

"Look," I say, pointing over by some trees, where there is smoke. "Someone has a fire over there."

I can feel the bottom of my feet again, warm as we run across the black rocks. When we get there though it is not a fire but a pool of hot water. Steam cooks up into the sky. The air smells like eggs. Father stares down at the water then sets down his pack. He holds his bare hand against the water. He touches the water with his finger and jerks it back out.

"Hot?" I say.

"Oh, yes," he says. "Sit down like this, here, Caroline. Stretch out."

All the ground is warm. I can feel it through my jeans, all along down my legs. Father rolls over from his back to his front, he stretches out his arms.

"These black rocks are broken up lava," he says with one in his hand. "They used to be liquid. Isn't that hard to believe?"

"Where are we going?" I say. "What are we doing?"

"If you keep asking me these questions," he says, "that really throws off my judgment."

"Sorry," I say.

"Everything will be a lot easier in the daylight," he says. "Our focus right now is just making it through the night. And that's no problem. We're lucky. This will be a night we'll remember. It's an adventure, our adventure. Hey, if we had a tarp we could make a kind of tent and catch all this heat and it would be like spending the whole night in a steam bath."

"We always have tarps," I say. "Blue ones."

"I gave them away," Father says. "I lost them."

We wait like this. We turn over and turn over again. I warm up my back until my front is cold and then the other way around. The wind blows and the snow is still falling but it melts as soon as it lands on the warm stones around us. Trees grow around the clearing and it's black beneath them. Someone standing there could easily be watching us if they could see in the dark. I am thinking of the lady on the bus and all the other people and where they are now. Bend? I wonder what we would have been doing now in Bend, where we would be spending this night.

"Are you asleep, Caroline?" Father says.

"The rocks are too hard," I say, "and half of me is always cold."

"I'm thinking of getting into the water," he says. "To raise up the temperature of the core of my body."

"Go ahead," I say.

"I think you should, too," he says. "You don't want to catch cold. Be sure to take off your watch first and put it in your pocket."

My clothes are warm and damp and heavy. The plastic bags have melted off my feet so there are just scraps held onto my ankles with the rubber bands.

"Hot!" Father says behind me, splashing.

It's been since we lived in the forest park that Father has seen my whole body and I know it's changed but he doesn't say anything and it's dark. Still the way my body looks makes me want to get under the water faster even though it's so hot like needles with only my foot in. The bottom is gravel, not sharp gravel. The pool is maybe two feet deep and not so wide. Father and I both fold our bodies around so almost everything is under. His hairy legs are pressed soft against mine. I slip deeper in the water so it makes a hot circle around my neck, rising up.

"Don't let it get in your ears," Father says.

"Why?"

"I can't remember," he says. "Something about the bacteria."

"What about all the other holes in our bodies?" I say.

"I don't know," he says. "They're farther from our brains. Doesn't this feel good, Caroline?"

It does. Where I am coldest is deep inside me and the warmth eases in a little at a time, further and further. My feet that I hadn't been able to feel before now come back to hurt. I feel a heartbeat in them and then that slows to an ache and then they feel like the rest of my body and skin. My wet hair on my neck is cold. I sink down a little to change that. I see Father through the steam and then he's gone and is back. I see the dark mark on his shoulder that is the tattoo of my name even if I can't quite read it. All he wears is his bracelets. The water is freezing in his beard so his face looks sharp like porcupine quills around his mouth.

"Is this place going to explode?" I say.

"No," Father says. "It's not an active volcano and it's too far away. It's been thousands of years at least."

"But it could," I say.

"There would be warnings," Father says. "Noises and trembling."

"Did you really not see that dog?" I say.

"No," he says. "I'm sorry I missed that."

The dark shapes of the trees are cut off by the steam too so their tops hang loose in the dark sky, the clouds from the pool. My skin is all loose, the gravel sharp against my hip. My fingers are all pruney. I listen closely and can hear the snowflakes melt I think as they hit the hot water.

"How long have we been in here?" I say.

"What?"

"Keep the water out of your ears," I say.

"I think we shouldn't stay in for too much longer," Father says.

We climb out and pull on our damp warm clothes. Father is hopping and balancing on one leg as he pulls on his pants. Steam rises up from his wet head toward the trees like his body is smoldering inside. I look above my head and see the same thing. My body feels warm deep down in the core like Father said.

We stretch out on the stones again. We don't talk. We are both awake. We turn over and then turn over again. Father melts snow by holding his plastic mug in the pool so we can drink. We eat all the almonds which are the only thing we have to eat. Three times in the night we get back into the pool and then out again and lie some more on the stones, waiting. The snow never stops falling. We're never quite dry but never quite cold.

It's so much easier to see in the morning. It's still hard to understand where we are or where we are going. I am trying not to ask Father these questions. He's standing and stretching his arms over his head.

"That wasn't so bad," he says, "was it? We'll feel a lot better once we start walking and get the kinks out."

There are no birds or squirrels or chipmunks I can see. In the white snow there is not one footprint. We walk out across a meadow and then into more blackened trees. The bark is all burned off some of them so they look like a completely different kind of tree.

"Could all this be from the volcano?" I say.

"No," Father says. "It's a forest fire. We're safe, here. Look down there, there's a river. I wonder if there's fish in it. We might be able to catch them."

"Why?"

"To eat them," he says.

"We're vegetarians," I say. "And we don't even fast on Fridays anymore."

Father stumbles since his feet break through the crust of the snow and I can walk along on top. There's one green tree surrounded by all the burned spikes and fallen blackened trunks like it's been spared or gotten lucky or been somehow stronger. It's a pine tree with the longest needles I've seen.

"Fasting works best when you're eating on the other days," Father says.

"But we'll go back to it."

"Yes," he says. "When everything is right again, yes."

Some of the burned standing trees are half gone and hollowed out, jagged sticking into the sky and when you walk around they're only an inch thick. One of these has perfect round woodpecker holes in it that look like two eyes twenty feet off the ground.