Shelter (1994) (12 page)

The big trees behind the dining hall hung their leafy branches down like waterfalls. He could climb them and sit hidden but he wanted to wait and listen, he could hear the girls walking down the trail, he could hear them talking their bird sounds near and far and see them appear, white blinks that moved behind the covering green. He was running then and he knew all the paths from games he played alone, pretending to hunt and shoot, climbing fast with gangs he made up. Wee folk from Mam's singsong rhyme were sounds in the leaves; soldiers were cracks in the branches. Higher up, soldiers were thunder or wind. Since Dad was back from Carolina Buddy ran faster, creeping and hiding, quieter, silent, walking rocks in the stream like Dad was some animal tracking him, smelling where Buddy had been. But Dad never walked in the forest, he stayed to the house and the road; he wasn't the one Buddy thought about, the one who'd give him a rifle and a hat with earflaps, take him hunting and complain, sternly,
stay with me boy, you creep around in front and behind till I don't know where to shoot that's safe.
From far off the tall girls really were like a line of clumsy deer, shivering the woods. Close up they were loud, talking and laughing, they didn't care who heard them, not like Buddy. He could go along in the bushes and cover like a frog in a hop, a woods mouse sliding over big roots, between the stems and vines and thorny runners. The tall girls never saw until he wanted them to see. How old are you this year, Buddy, and he said eight even if he couldn't write eight or write words, the letters with all their black jumping shapes turned around this way and that. In school he had to sit in the circle with the others but finally the teacher stopped asking him and he only sat holding the book, not seeing it, seeing instead the shoes of the girl beside him, little black shoes that shone and had bows and no laces. If only his shoes had no laces. He didn't care about reading but he wanted to learn to tie his shoes, at home he wanted to but his mother tied them with double knots so they never loosened and he couldn't get them off, they find out you can't tie shoes they might not let you in that school and what will I do with you while I'm at work? In summer there were no shoes and he didn't have to sit anymore, asleep and awake and not moving till he was so pinched and drawn up he had to run at recess, back and forth without stopping, whooping and screaming till the boys followed him and the girls stood watching.

Now he was in the trees, deep in the quiet, silent and loose, ranging up and down the trails and through the woods, I don't know where you come from, boy, Dad would say, you got stones for brains and the woods sense of a she-fox; then Mam would tighten the corners of her mouth and put her big hand on Buddy's head, touch his hair so tender he stood still to feel it. Today his pockets were stuffed
with rolls, with the plastic jam cups served at breakfast, and spinach leaves he'd taken from the sink when Mam didn't see. Bait for the trap, trap, trap. He counted his footfalls, not with numbers but with words, a word, he'd get him a rabbit this week, he knew he would, and he'd show it to the girls, keep it hidden here, away from Mam and Dad. Climbing, he remembered the discarded crate outside Great Hall, the one he'd helped Frank open yesterday, Frank tugging and cursing, You know what this is, Buddy? A lectern from some mail-order place, I guess that crazy dame is going to make speeches, and together they'd kicked and shoved the wooden box back against the stone foundation of the hall. It would still be there and Buddy would only have to nail some wire across one end, maybe both ends, Frank would help him for a few beers. Sneak back to the house and get them around noon when Mam was busy with lunch and Dad would be sleeping on the porch, Dad would be sleeping on the broken metal chaise while the flies made their sounds near his face, sleeping on his side with his feet tucked up and his long arms folded over his belly, that's how he'd slept in jail, Buddy knew, on a hard slab like a piece of meat. The old feather tick in the bed felt too soft now and Mam made him nervous, he said. Why, you as big as the side of a barn, like trying to straddle a whale, then his laughter beyond the wall of the blanket tacked between the beds ... you still feel it though, big as you are, your old hard luck pushing up, like this, this, and her voice all rough like she was tired from walking hard, go on out of here, get away from me, he not even asleep. What you talking about, he's a farm boy, seen it since he's old enough to wiggle, he back there before I show you how to. In his sleep Buddy could hear them, like they talked all night in the worn, shiny dark, and when Buddy opened his eyes he watched a big mosquito move its tangled legs in a web that bridged a corner of the window. You think we any different than those dogs and chickens and cats, Dad would say, those hogs, those coons you hear scream out by the dump? They did scream, wild women, Dad called them, fighting over garbage they washed in the same stream that moved through Camp Shelter. Buddy had seen them, hunched by the water in moonlight like midget crones, worrying whatever scrap like they were blind and had to find it, dipping their monkeyish hands and pulling back to hiss, screaming warnings, showing the teeth
in their masked, bright-eyed faces. Hurtling down the hills of the meadow, through the brush of the trails in the woods, they looked like small bushy bears, trundling at a fast, wobbly roll. Buddy envied them: if they tucked their cat-like heads they could roll like balls. He might have a coon if he could ever find a baby and bring it up, but that was luck, they were mean as snakes and bit, a rabbit was easy to get and if he built a cage in the woods so no one saw, Dad wouldn't kill it, seemed like Dad ate whatever moved. You'd get yourself a job instead of sleeping all day you wouldn't be in such a lather at night, Mam told him, there's men laying pipe right down at the camp. Moving through the trees, Buddy heard their voices played back like whispers, like he must have heard them in the dark while he was dreaming. Let em lay pipe, I got plans. What plans? You get to drinking and fighting again, you can sleep somewhere else. He's old enough to see it now and I don't want him watchin. Dad's cackled laughter. You fixin to kick me out? Won't have to fix nothin, you on parole, they'll come and get you. You not callin nobody, you waited five years for my sorry ass. Her long sigh mixed in with the sough of night breeze and the house seemed to move, eddy like a paper boat on the surface of the stream that was still warbling down by the woods in the dark, and Buddy would dream he was outside in the string hammock between the pines, rocking in the shade where no grass grew, there was only hard bare dirt littered with needles and sticks, dirt black and moist from the old shade of the tilted, pencil-point trees. He remembered when Mam would sweep the ground with a broom on Sundays and they'd spread a blanket and eat blackberries Buddy picked down by the road, when it was all like a long song broken up by the screech of trains, trains they took to the prison in December and April. Shiny lights in the station, gleam of the rows of empty benches on a floor like flat, pearly stone. Big as a church, bigger, the biggest city he'd ever seen and no people except droves that came and went, he might have seen these girls there, the girls from Highest camp at the top of the mountain. They might have been there, unseen by anyone but him, talking and laughing, making a bright space in the center under the big clock, under the statue. The statue was a giant man painted hard and black, holding the clock before him like a shield, and his helmet was fastened on with bolts of lightning. The girls would have stood shining near his naked iron legs, Lenny the tallest, palest one, and when the trains came shuddering in beyond the closed doors to the tracks, she would have touched her face to the lowered sword of the giant and felt the same vibration Buddy felt in his feet and his hands. He heard a whining in his head like when he listened to the rails in the woods, rails where the trains no longer moved, had moved once, lifting the branches of trees on a bellowing roar. And when he and Mam picked up bags and parcels and moved out with the rest, out to where it was dark beyond the doors and the tracks were laid down in long pits and the trains were steaming, the girls would have moved on ahead in the pale-lit twilight of the outdoor lamps. He almost remembered them now, glimmering far ahead. Light shone through them to where the rails emptied in blackness. A train could fall off the edge, falling and falling down like a heavy clanking serpent. What's out there, he'd asked Mam, and she told him those lights were the city, a city stayed lit all night. He remembered when they were going to the jail, she didn't like him to ask her why, for a long time she didn't say Dad got sent there, just that he went. The train rattled through the night and the sound made Buddy sleep but he knew Mam was awake, reading the palm-sized Bible she took traveling. Later, once, they were walking from the motel to the dead stone face of the prison and she said Dad had done a bad wrong and was waiting here to be forgiven. Buddy knew then that Mam was mistaken, she knew even less than Buddy knew, because Dad would not wait to be forgiven, he was only waiting for them to open all the doors and gates, and that would take a long time. The first door didn't want to open at all and Mam had a hard time pulling it while Buddy dragged through the paper sacks of fruitcake and baked chicken and new long underwear, then they were inside where it was no longer cold but it was like night again, with the lights on overhead, and men in uniforms like mail clerks all had circular metal rings of keys. And all the time Buddy walked, burdened with sacks and parcels, he heard the jingling of the keys, their chiming, desolate sound the measure of each man's gait. Before him Mam moved on silently in her long gray coat, the broad rounded wall of her backside wider than any two of the men.

He was safe with Mam, her tilting, gentle lurch the only indication he was where he should be. She walked her slow, considered, heavy
walk and he moved in her wake where there was no resistance, just a cleared path whose view was blocked by her bulk. He didn't need to see, it was all like blindman's bluff, walking down the road to the school bus fall, winter, spring, sucked into a tumult of voices as the bus wheezed and clamped shut its shuddered doors. Mam rode too, sitting always behind the driver, a woman she knew, and the kids on the bus first taunted him, your mother is fat, big as an elephant, a house, and he spat back threats, challenges, shut up or she'll sit on your belly and crush you dead, she's done it, I've seen her. What's the ruckus back there? the driver yelled. You kids sit down, and Mam would turn and fix them all with a silencing look. When she worked in the lunchroom she wore her hair in a net. If they went to the grocery or the welfare or the welfare clinic they walked home or caught a ride with someone who let them off at their road. Behind her, Buddy didn't care if he saw where they were going, he could feel by the air and the weighty sound of densely leaved branches above them that they were on their road, he knew the ruts and turns and the narrow, broken bridge where the stream ran under, the stream that bled its sound behind his house, through Camp Shelter, the stream that went underground in the cave and fed Turtle Hole. Behind the big rock near the water, a slanted hole opened like a hideout. Buddy didn't go in the cave; it was too low and still, and water rattled inside like something in a drawer. At the prison there'd been no sound but footsteps on cement, the buzzing of the lights overhead a low drone like insects trapped in glass tubes. In the prison he'd been glad he couldn't see, he'd wished he didn't have to see Dad, look across the counter and through the window. Dad wore pajama clothes and his eyes were burnt. Stand him up there beside you, let me see if the wise guy has growed. Eh? You still a wise guy? Mam lifted Buddy before he could run and Buddy was higher than the half walls of the cubicles. Clusters of huddled visitors looked up, dark rumpled men opposite them looked up, a guard started over and Buddy jumped down. He hid then under the counter while Dad was laughing, Jesus! You think he's gonna storm the gates? After an instant Mam laughed, polite and quiet, the guard had sat down again but Buddy stayed hidden. Mam's black boots were wet and the white flesh above her rolled woolen socks was veined with blue, like she was too big for her skin. At night in the cold Buddy slept with her and dreamed he was running, running like this in the woods, higher and higher, cleaving sideways and upwards on a loose dirt bank, moving on all fours to grasp roots and vines under the canopy of trees. Make no sound, leave no sign, that was not a rhyme but a song he sung, hearing the girls near him now, above and to the right,
up the airy mountain
all in a column like a green centipede. Buddy knew it all, every move they made: they were marching to breakfast, having raised their own flag at Highest, he could circle round behind and watch, follow them down, find Lenny and Cap near the rear of the line and tell them about the rabbit, promise he'd trap one, they could touch it, he'd let them as a secret, away from the rest. He ran with the promise in mind, sensing at his fingers the loose, thick scruff of the rabbit's neck, its hide like a fluid glove over a clockworks of small hard bones and long pink slides of muscle. He could smell the rabbit, waiting somewhere and looking, its pounding heart like a seed that jumped.

Lenny knelt over a jumble of empty bowls. Her reflection in their empty surfaces wavered back at her. Mess kits were the only mirrors Senior girls ever saw in camp; Lenny thought the ripply mirage of a shape, a face, was better than the real picture, more honest, because, really, nothing was so clear. With the flaps down the tent was still shadowy and dim inside, but light pulsed at each break in the canvas. None of the flaps actually met despite their string ties; daylight fell through in illumined bars. She crouched on her haunches in one of those bright lines, smelling the meadow beneath her through the wide slats of the board floor. A dark smell, still sweet, like clover and soil. Dense, heavy. Safe.

Waking up scared was like sleeping on mirrors, or sitting on reflective ice so thin it might crack if she moved in any direction at all. Some dream had made her cry, and she'd overslept, but before she could begin to worry about having no shoes or seeing Frank at flag raising, standing back in the line to stay hidden, their counselor had appeared in the tent and dumped twelve mess kits onto the floor. They were all still dirty, apparently, and would have to be washed again; Lenny and Cap would have to do the job properly and catch up with the group later. If they wanted breakfast in the dining hall, they'd better hop to it. "
Hop
to it?" Cap had asked, her pillow over her face. "You mean, like a rabbit?" But the counselor had ignored her. Probably they'd all been told to ignore Cap's remarks, since Henry Briarley had helped the camp open, and provided at least one Full Supplement—for Delia Campbell, Alma's friend, whose father had worked in the office at Consol Coal. Wasn't just a car wreck, Cap had said, Nickel Campbell drove into the river on purpose. A big gamble. What if he'd lived and had to answer everyone's questions? Drowning, you always tried to save yourself. It was a reflex. That's why people put rocks in their pockets when they walked into water and didn't plan to walk out. Right?