Shelter (1994) (18 page)

Now Alma smiled, imagining how B wing must look from above, glimpsed from one of the lookouts along Highest trail. She thought of the Seniors as rugged angels, able to view the whereabouts of the younger girls at any moment. Alma knew she would spy on everyone if she were a Senior, on the girls and the counselors, on Frank, on Mrs. Thompson-Warner. But Seniors had no interest in lower camp. They were up there in the woods like soldiers, cooking, chopping trees for lean-tos. They never set foot in Great Hall except for opening and closing assemblies.

Great Hall was beautiful. Standing in the massive doorway, Alma could already feel herself enter a wash of cooler air, night air collected through dark hours in the vast, eaved space, sheltered from morning sun. The air was chill and smelled of stream water and pine, the knotty pine of the walls and ceiling, of the enormous beams that angled high above the girls' heads, a series of inverted V's. Looking up, Alma thought of church, a deserted church; no matter how many girls converged in the space below, their bodies, their noise, seemed temporary. From each towering apex of the ceiling beams hung powerful lights, their green glass shades shaped like Chinese coolie's hats. The hall was so cavernous that the lights stayed on all day. Before McAdams switched them on there was a wonderful dim ocher in the big room. The stone fireplace at the far end was a shadowy monument six feet across, flaring to the ceiling itself. Mrs. Thompson-Warner had positioned the state and national flags to either side, and hung the banner of Girl Guides from a pole. The three brass poles stood mute below the picture of Jesus. It was the same picture Alma remembered from church school, but this version was so large that it seemed entirely another likeness. Jesus was nearly in profile, his face bathed in golden light. Behind him wavered a fluid darkness, as though he stood in the foreground of an oily water. His visage was lengthened and gaunt, his eyes soft, uplifted, mournful. He was clothed like an angel, like a Roman, in the requisite white gown. Where had the face come from? Someone had invented it. Now it was shown to children at camps and schools, printed on keepsake cards for funerals.

Alma knew who had built Great Hall. Wes used to drive big machines before he began to sell them to the mines; he knew about buildings and he'd told Alma that all of Camp Shelter was WPA work.

"What is WPA?" she'd asked him.

"Means it was built during the Depression. Jobs for people who wanted to work, feed their families. Stonemasons, carpenters, road builders." He fixed her with a quizzical smile. "You're going into seventh grade. Haven't you studied about the Depression?"

"No, not yet."

"Nineteen thirties, when I was a young kid. Everything went bad. I remember standing along the road when I was seven or eight, and a flatbed truck would come by and pick up my dad and my older brothers, take them off to dig ditches. Dollar a day."

"Was that in Gaither?"

"No, we lived in Bellington then." Wes shook his head, considering. "People worked with their bodies more, had a pride about it."

"Did your dad work to build Camp Shelter?"

"I don't think so, but men like him did. Those halls will last into the next century, if they don't burn down. Those stone chimneys, all by hand."

Alma was enthralled that he knew of the camp, admired it. It was almost as though he knew of her life. "Have you been there, Dad? Did you go to camp there?"

"No, they didn't send kids off to camp then. Kids weren't kids. I mean, we worked. But yeah, I been there."

When Alma looked at the giant fireplace, she wished there were a fire burning in it. The iron grate was the size of a baby's cradle. Alma had never seen it full of logs and flames, but the stones and mortar behind the big portrait of Jesus were discolored, as though some heat had passed blindingly over the surface.

Now she walked away from the fireplace toward the rear table, the one nearest the windows. Delia had already reached it and staked out seats. It was the table most removed from supervision; Alma would do Delia's picture as well as her own, and they could eavesdrop on McAdams and Pearlie. Resolutely on break during hobby hour, the counselors sat nearby and talked openly, as if the younger girls had been struck deaf. Even their trivial remarks were of great interest. Pearlie sat sipping a soda she'd bought from the machine in the hallway. Alma was already leaning over to inspect bowls of materials set out for the day's collage—sunflower seeds, lengths of brown twine, cotton, pastel paper straws, a quantity of the smooth pebbles people bought for goldfish bowls. Alma actually liked hobby hour, though she pretended to be bored. Delia sat gazing aimlessly into the hall.

Nickel Campbell had died four months ago. Alma thought it miraculous that Delia was still Delia after her father disappeared so suddenly, buried in a box that Alma herself had touched. Alma was usually afraid to ask questions, afraid to remind Delia, afraid Delia would see through to what Alma knew. Every time she thought of Nickel Campbell, Alma heard the pitch of her mother's voice rising and falling, droning on like a phantom radio no one could turn off.
Nickel Campbell comes from a good family up in the north of the state. Nickel was his mother's surname, and where they got their money ... The family were mighty unhappy when he married Mina, and moved down to Gaither to start over with no help. Of course, now he admits they were right about Mina, if nothing else. Sometimes we talk about how it could have been if he'd met me before I tied up with Wes.
Lights in Great Hall flicked on as McAdams and Pearlie stood long enough to call out instructions. Under their directions, Audrey's voice raced on in Alma's head, as though time were limited. Her hand was on Alma's wrist, arm, shoulder, like a restless bird trying to light.
You remember that barbecue we all had summer before last, your dad's birthday? We invited the Campbells and Lenny asked the Briarley girl? Well, I guess that was the start of it. He walked down through the yard to stand at the fence and watch a Piper Cub land at the airstrip across the field, and I realized he'd wakened up, like me, and found himself in the wrong life. And you don't even know what I'm talking about, do you, sweetie?

"Alma! Hurry up. Sit here." Delia indicated the chair to her right and shifted her own seat to make room.

Dejected, Alma sat. More than anything, she wanted not to be her mother's sweetie, but miserably, she knew she was. The metal folding chairs of Great Hall were sharply cold, as though they'd been refrigerated. Later, during archery or hiking in the heat of the day, Alma would want nothing more than to come back here and lie down across four of their hard, cold seats.
Not many women can talk to their daughters like I talk to you. Thank god I have you. I can't talk to any of my friends. Why, I'd sooner print everything in the newspaper. Oh, I know he's not my husband, but he wishes it were different, the things he says. No one ever talked to me like he does.

"I'm going to set up my picture," Delia hissed, "to make them think I'm interested. Then you can change it around. Do yours now, OK?"

Alma dumped a fortress of white pebbles into the center of the manila sheet. What did it mean, the wrong life? Nickel Campbell had died because he drove off the bridge. Alma knew the facts, but it seemed to her that Audrey was guilty. Well, Audrey had always been guilty (seemed like always) but the guilt was secret. Now the secret was bigger, deeper. And a secret had to be paid for. Delia was angry, angry at everyone and everything but Alma. Alma wanted to feel the anger rain down on her, wanted a series of screams that opened out until the earth shook, howls that would shatter glass and stone, cries that were empty like the wind is empty, a voiceless keening that would let Alma go, let her betray her mother.

Below him the empty quad sits still like a square green jewel as above it he tilts and leans, nearly falling closer, he moves so fast. His steps on rocky slants and layers of leaves are so sure that even as he stumbles he rights himself and slides into balance. He doesn't even think about his body, he hears a heartbeat and the air he moves through, and the other snatches of sound, birdsong, skitter of dislodged pebbles, simply fold into what he enters. He breaks the cover of the woods, finds level ground, feels the lack of resistance as a push from behind and runs flat out, as though some winged predator glides above him, poised to strike. Across open space the dining hall sits like a stone shape meant to echo Great Hall, and he must run past the steps and the columned porch to the back, where Mam is cooking, she must be, breakfast is nearly over. The girls are inside. He feels at this distance a surge of buzz and clamor, more vibration than sound.

Once inside the screen door he leans against the pantry wall, gulping a fragrance of hot butter and bacon, batter and air. He tastes and swallows, seeing the whole reach of the big kitchen in an uproar. They're serving second platters and Mam thunders near him, sees him, bends down to peer into his face as she opens the heavy oven door to retrieve another deep pan of crisping meat. They are both panting, her smooth skin moist; it's as though she runs this fulsome oval while he runs the lines of the camp; he is cutting through, slitting space open with the slender blade of his movement, and she is filling a sphere that grows more dense and full with each revolution of her big body. The smells and the food and the rising bread all seem to evolve from the heat she generates in each repetitive pass and circle.

She jerks her head toward the little table where he usually eats and raises her brows at him, meaning she can't take time now he's so late but sit down and stay out of the way, and she's gone back out to the dining room as he moves toward her. He glimpses through the swinging door the long benches filled with girls, the double row of long white tables all laid with place settings and tray after tray of food. He sees Lenny and Cap cross the front of the room just as the kitchen door swings back toward him, and he is maneuvering around to look again, watch the two girls sit down, see Lenny put food in her mouth like all the rest, when his errant arm catches the protruding corner of a big rectangular platter of scrambled eggs. He is too close to the sideboard and the platter hits the floor, sliding a few inches on its steaming contents. A groan goes up from one of the other women and Buddy moves as she turns to grab him, then she changes her mind and hustles away to find wet cloths and towels. Buddy opens the door to Mrs. Thompson-Warner's little room and scuttles inside, shutting the door so silently he knows he is safe; they'll think he's run off across the quad. No one is allowed here; no one will find him.

First he sits motionless, waiting. There's Mam's heavy tread back and forth to the counter, the blam of big cans set down hard, water running in the deep sinks. He's never seen inside the old redhead's room before. It smells of sugar and it's dark, nearly dark, or seems dim after the bright kitchen and the noise. Her filmy curtains are drawn shut, with the bright shape of the window behind them. In the filtered light from that one square he sees the neatly made cot and wants to touch it, touch the white spread that is covered with little yarn bumps like popcorn and drapes nearly to the floor. The bed is edged all round with a fringe of these little balls that tremble on their strings and jump when he kicks them. Sometimes when small things move or jerk he does want to kick them, hurt them, not animals but insects and the small toads he picks up in the grass after a rain.
Frogs for their watchdogs:
he tries to remember Mam's singsong rhyme, the one she used to say. But Buddy can't think straight, like Dad has squeezed his head. He watches the fringe on the bedspread ripple; the little balls dangle, spin lazily in some repetitive current, like a long line of tiny animate creatures. Buddy feels a wash of air and realizes the electric fan on her bureau is turning its small round face from side to side, the blades encased in a circle of metal cage.
Ain't no cage can hold me, you mays well forget trying to settle my hash.
Dad said that. Hash was little cubes of potato with corned beef from a can, Mam fried it with pepper and the meat was so salty Buddy could pucker his mouth, just thinking. He feels his hunger as a vague burning and there's a sound past the door. He crawls under the bed to disappear and all around the hem of the bedspread those little yarn nubbins jump, like a shiver runs along them in time to the sweep of the fan.
I told you I'm not stayin around here on no dirt road end of nowhere.
Where was Dad going and when would he go? Maybe soon, in the car. He'd said so. Then it would be all right.
Take you with me, get hex goat, wouldn't it.
And Buddy feels his stomach seize up like he's so empty he might get sick, and then Mrs. T. will know someone has been in here when she left the door unlocked. He presses himself flat down on the floor, feels in his pockets the small, sharp rock he carries and the hard bulk of the leather bag of marbles. Always before, Dad has given him bubble gum or a jawbreaker, like what they sell in penny machines at the liquor store.
You and Mam.
He does things to her too, behind the blanket that hangs down. Mam knows everything but she doesn't know about Dad, or she does. Buddy knows she's afraid. She makes noises at night, and the old bed moves. She doesn't have to answer questions like Buddy does, but Dad talks to her in the same voice. Like he's got hold of them both. Like if they move he digs in deeper.
Arch up there. You be in trouble you rile me. You like trouble, have some.
Buddy stayed still in the dark. Dad forgot about Buddy unless he got mad at the end.
Don't hush at me, I'll make some noise he can hear.

Mrs. Thompson-Warner's room is quiet. Buddy hears water in the wall pipes. Washing up. He has to stay here now till breakfast is over, and sneak out through the dining hall after Mrs. T. gets to yakking at those girls, the younger girls that take her class about Russians. Mam has to clear off so those girls can set up the room. Mrs. T. might turn out the lights and run a film, and Buddy could get himself out the other door of her room. Two doors and neither goes to the outside; her room is just a corner between the kitchen and the vast dining room. Big old closet they punched a window in, Mam said, and nailed up plyboard around a toilet that used to be for the kitchen workers. Mrs. T. had to have her own bath; the other women could use the bigger restrooms in Great Hall. Stop work and walk all the way over there, like they had all the time in the world. But the plyboard would be ripped down when Girl Guides camp was over and Mam and him might take it home and nail it up in a tree, floor for a treehouse, Mam said. After while Mam would forget about the spilled eggs. Under Mrs. T.'s bed, the smooth floor is cool against Buddy's cheek. Not even dusty. He flattens his face against the boards and breathes; little white feathers from some pillow skitter along just out of reach. White wisps. He puts out his hand to catch one; the filaments are downy, lighter than air. Lenny's hair is not that white, but the white starry shapes of feather against the dark floor are like her when she is walking, the way she looks bright against things. He follows with his eyes the border of the shadowed space and over against the wall he sees a shape. Crawls carefully, soundless, until he touches a round silky box pushed back between the bed frame and the wall. Buddy zips it open. Some money folded up inside, and hairpins, a brooch with a ghost face, and two, three rings. He feels them, tries them on. One has a sparkle piece like glass and the gold band is cut with swirly shapes, a ring for a queen, that's what, a ring for Lenny. That old redheaded woman has a lot of rings; she could think she lost this one. Buddy sees Lenny's eyes, the sweep of her lashes, the plane of her face as she holds the ring close to study it. If he gave it to her she'd ask him where he got it. No, he would put it in her footlocker, in that little cardboard box where she keeps stamps and pictures amongst pink sheets of paper. She wouldn't even find the ring, most likely, until she left camp; he could put it into one of the envelopes and lick it shut. Hidden.