My Abandonment (17 page)

"Yes," a voice says, then. "We are inside."

"Who?" Father says. "Sorry," he says as the headlamp lights up their faces and they squint at us. It is two people. A lady and a boy.

"We found it first," the lady says. "Close the door if you're coming in. If you're not coming in, close it, too."

Her hair is blond and wavy down past her shoulders, one side sticking up more. The boy wears a yellow and black striped cap like a bee, his face wide and pale and staring.

"Don't trip over those wires," she says as we step in.

Father closes the door and we are inside. I can't see except for the circle of light from Father's headlamp sliding along the dirty plywood floor.

"Are you a little girl?" she says to me. "We didn't expect visitors."

"We got lost in the storm," I say.

"Caroline," Father says, like he should be the one talking. "We did get a little turned around," he says to the lady.

"Is someone after you?" she says.

"Followers," I say.

"Caroline," Father says.

"Who?" she says.

"Just for tonight," Father says. "If we can share your shelter and warm up a little then we can figure things out. The weather."

Now a faint glow comes off the walls and that is the only light. The air smells like metal. Dry and baked and rusty.

"We'll be out first thing in the morning," Father says. "Is it all right with you if I light a candle?"

"Light a candle," the lady says. "You can sleep here. People have to sleep."

The cabin is only one room and there's not much place to stand. There is a bench built along the wall and the lady and the boy sit there. There are no other chairs and there's a black plastic garbage bag next to the boy where maybe their other things are. They are only wearing jeans and T-shirts and sneakers. There's one little table and a bunk bed frame that is splintered and broken without any mattresses.

The lady's name is Susan and the boy's name is Paul. The two of them haven't moved at all since we came inside. They lean against the wire that's wrapped around and around the inside of the walls, loose across the bottom of the door. It's been all stripped down to its copper. Susan: I've never seen a lady look the way this lady looks. Her white face has sharp edges and it keeps shifting like it's never quite still, alert like a squirrel in a tree. Her fingernails are painted dark and in the dim light this makes her fingers short or like they have been cut off.

"Have you eaten?" Father says. "We just bought a store of food in town."

"Town?" she says.

"Sisters," he says. "Down in the valley."

"We're fine," she says. "Thank you."

"We're fine," the boy says. His voice is as high as mine and he is my size but he isn't talking very much.

"We ate in a restaurant," I say. "It had the name Bronco Billy's."

Their eyes are half-closed as they watch us eat. We sit on the floor. We both eat a handful of raisins then an apple with peanut butter. The water is half-frozen and almost too cold to drink against my teeth.

"Who's after you?" the lady says.

"No one," Father says.

"The girl said you had followers."

"What it is," he says, "is we're just trying to be left alone, you know, to live the way we want to."

"Yes," she says. "That's not so easy. We know all about that. Someone always wants to get involved."

Father's hair is starting to stick up because of the air in the room, lifting to show his ears. I reach up to feel how mine is sticking up.

"Your hair is two different colors," the boy, Paul, says.

"We dyed it," I say. "Now it's growing back my real color."

When we finish eating there's nothing to do and not very much space. The lady and the boy do not quite have their eyes closed but they aren't saying anything.

"Caroline," Father says. "This kind of round structure is known as a yurt. We're lucky these people are here with their yurt tonight." He turns toward the lady. "At least let us sit out of the way," he says. "The two of you can stretch out to sleep."

"We like it this way," she says.

"We're used to it, we're comfortable."

"You'll sleep sitting up?" Father says. "We like it this way," the boy says.

We take out our clean socks and underwear to use as pillows beneath our heads. Father blows the candle dark and we stretch out.

In the darkness the buzz of the walls crackles in one place and then another with a little white light and then it will just relax into the buzz that is almost a hum. The wind outside whistles hard and then into a deeper kind of sound. It blows the snow like mist across the window that I am watching and then right at the window so it's like someone throwing a handful of white sand against the glass. On my side I feel Father pressed against me, between me and the lady and the boy and I can hear them breathing through their mouths and I know how they look, sitting there. I am not cold and I am not exactly warm. I am thinking that the wind sounds like a ghost and then I am thinking about the picture that Miss Jean Bauer showed me of the house in the storm and the story I told about the people inside and the people outside seeing the windows and being cold. This tonight is kind of the same as that and also kind of different but it's still almost like I could see that it would happen to us from all the way back then.

I open my eyes in the morning and I've turned over to my other side during the night. Father faces me, snoring softly and past his shoulder I can see the lady and the boy, Susan and Paul, still sitting on the benches, still leaning against the wires. She wears a thin copper strand as a necklace. He has a necklace and bracelets too. They sit watching us and my eyes are barely open so they can't even tell.

"It's a man and a girl," Paul says.

"They came last night," Susan says. Her blond hair is so thick it's almost matted. It isn't sticking up and staticky like Father's or mine that I can feel around my face. Paul still wears the striped yellow and black stocking cap.

"They're our friends?" he says.

"Yes," she says. "We're going to have a fun day."

"They came last night," he says.

Without opening my eyes wider I stretch out my hand and touch Father's neck just below his whiskers. He opens his eyes and I watch his face as he remembers where we are and smiles to see me.

"Caroline," he says. He sits up and stretches his long arms over his head and groans. "Good morning," he says to Susan and Paul. "Looks like the weather cleared some."

Outside the window it is bright white everywhere but the snow isn't falling. The sky is pale blue, hardly darker than the snow.

"We really owe you," Father says. "It was so late last night. We were in quite a predicament."

"You had to sleep somewhere," Susan says.

"Are there any outlets here?" Father says, "or just all the wires? I don't imagine you have a way to heat up water?"

"No," she says.

"Did you tap into the transformer out on the pole yourselves," he says, "or did someone else string that wire? Ingenious."

"We have water," she says.

"We have water, too," he says. "I'm just thinking about getting some breakfast together."

I sit up too. I feel a sharpness in my throat from breathing the humming dry air all night. The bread we bought at Ray's IGA isn't too crushed since it was in the top of Father's pack. With a fork we can hold slices close to the walls and toast them that way. We eat toast and apricot jam. We eat an apple and an orange. Paul and Susan just watch us.

"There's plenty," Father says. "We're happy to share."

Susan is mixing orange powder into plastic jugs of water. Paul holds one up to his mouth. It looks heavy. Bubbles rise up and he makes noises in his throat that make me thirsty.

"That's fine," she says. "We'll just drink for now. It's Tang. You and your girl should have some."

"No, thank you," Father says.

"Is it like orange juice?" I say and feel that my tongue is a little sore and swollen from where I bit it last night. "I like orange juice," I say.

"It's too sugary," Father says. "Have a little more water, Caroline."

"It's good energy," Susan says. I see her take more of the orange powder in a scoop and pop it straight into her mouth, dry like that.

When I am changing my socks the toe of the left one is black and stiff with blood. I turn away from Father but Paul sees how the top of my foot is worn down with the skin shedding off and my toes raw too.

"We've been walking and walking," I tell him. "These days we've walked all over."

"It is just so difficult not to draw attention," I hear Father say. "Once they've found you and they're interested."

"Yes," Susan says. "That's the trick. From San Francisco to here, that was a race. Staying ahead is the trick."

"It's tiring, that's for sure," Father says.

"That's a horse with numbers on it," Paul says, leaning over and looking down into my pack. "I've never seen one before," he says, "but that's what it is."

"A horse is a mammal," I say.

"What?" he says.

"You're also a mammal," I say.

"Oh."

"Mammals are warm-blooded," I tell him. "Back-boned." I pull out the book and hold it open. "Look," I say. "A rabbit is not a rodent." I show him the fox or dog family picture with the wolf and coyote and poodle at the top and the dog-like mammal that looks more like a cat and lived forty million years ago.

"Did you ever own a dog as a pet?" I say.

"A dog?" he says.

Father is sitting on the bench now with his shoulder almost touching Susan's and she has her fingers around his wrists even though they won't reach all the way around.

"Pretty good bracelets," she says. "They must really help you."

"Maybe," he says. "Could be the placebo effect."

"They're good ones," she says again. "Pure copper. I can tell. What's this? Are they tarnished?"

"We were in a hot springs the other night," Father says. "It's probably the minerals in the water or something."

"We spent a whole night in a hot springs," I tell Paul. "We kept getting in and out of the water so we wouldn't freeze to death."

He listens to me and I can't tell how much he even hears. I understand then that what makes it so hard to talk to him is that his face hardly makes any expressions and his voice doesn't hardly rise or fall when he does say something even if maybe he is just copying the way Susan talks. Also, he has no eyebrows.

"Don't you have anything to show me?" I say. "Where are you from? What are you carrying?"

"Caroline," Father says, overhearing, stopping me. "How about the two of you go outside for a little while?"

"Yes," Susan says. "We adults have to talk. There are some things we have to figure out and decide."

"I thought we were leaving first thing in the morning," I say.

"Caroline," Father says. "You could go sledding or something."

My shoes are still damp. I am thinking not to trust these people since I don't understand them and Father and I are fine by ourselves. Father sees something in them to trust, I can tell. He's not even looking at me as I scrape the door open.

Outside there's no sun but brightness comes from every direction out of the snow. The orange sled is frozen down where we left it so I kick it loose with my good foot. Paul just watches me, still wearing only his jeans and his T-shirt.

"Aren't you cold?" I say.

"Cold?" he says.

"You can borrow my jacket, if you want it."

"Sled," he says.

I reach out then and take hold of the striped cap and pull it off his head and drop it on the ground. His head is completely smooth without any hair at all. I can see the blue veins between his skin and his skull. He's not mad and doesn't say anything, he just bends down and picks up the cap and shakes the snow out of it and puts it back on.

"What happened to your hair?" I say.

"We don't have hair," he says. "That's all right, to not have hair."

"Who?" I say. "What is your problem?"

He is fast, already climbing up the slope. I step in his footsteps and pull the sled behind. The way the light is it feels like it's already afternoon and I can't tell by my watch how long we slept or what time of day it is.

From the top of the hill we can see the edge of the yurt's roof, some of the snow blown off. I think of Father and Susan inside there now. Talking and looking at maps and planning and maybe doing other things I don't know.

"You two are not like us," I say. "Just because we're all out here like this and there are two of us and two of you."

"Sledding," Paul says. "We're sledding, right?"

"Are you thirteen?" I say. "That's my age."

He sits in front and holds on to my legs and then I go in front. It's faster if we put the sled in the same path as before where it gets worn down and icy. We scream and laugh and fall off the sled at the bottom so it gets away into the air and bounces off trees. We keep doing it again and again.

He is breathing harder, now he's the one who can't keep up when we're climbing to the top. He never pulls the sled behind him. I wait there at the top.

"What do you think they're doing in there?" I say.

"Who?" he says.

"In the yurt," I say. "The adults. My father and your mother."

"My mother?" he says. "She's not my mother."

"Where's your mother?" I say.

"I don't know," Paul says. "That's all right not to know that."

His jeans and T-shirt are completely wet and crusted with ice but he's not shivering or anything. Next to us is a shallow puddle and both of us are reflected twice, once in the ice and another reflection balanced on the head of the first, a shadow on the snowy hillside.

"My mother is dead," I say.

He just points down at the sled. "We could try it with you on your front," he says, "lying down flat and I could lie on top of you."

"You're as big as I am," I say. "Why should you be on top?"

This time I'm in front and we're going faster than before.
Halfway down Paul's not holding on enough and he falls off and I hang on. I just scream. At the bottom I look back and can't see him.