Shelter (1994) (28 page)

They were at the entrance to the cave, an elliptical hole not quite obvious behind brush and grass.

"I ain't going in there," Buddy said.

Dad leaned close, pushing Buddy to a near crouch, and pointed into the dark. "You tell me you ain't been in here?" he asked softly. "You ain't been in this cave?"

"I only been in a little ways. I don't like going in." Buddy set his foot against the wall of rock and tried to brace himself.

"You say you don't know I had my stash in here?" Dad pretended to be surprised. "You didn't come here and find my stash while I was gone? Why, who took it, then?"

"I don't know. Anybody coulda—"

He grabbed Buddy up sideways and aimed him head first through the opening. He had to bend down over Buddy's face to clear the shallow entrance. "She sure as hell didn't," Dad said. "Never woulda told her what I had. Wasn't more'n three hundred bucks, but enough to get me outa here."

Buddy felt the moist dark yawn up around them like it was alive. Mouth of a wet animal, shaggy and cold. And the throat of the animal was deep in, blacker than any dark. Farther on there sounded the rattle of a stream.

"Don't need that stash anyways, do I now. Wish I could see her fuckin face when I told her you stole from that rich cow, all on your own, like." Dad giggled, drew his breath in sharp. Buddy heard him unscrew the metal cap of the pint, and he reared back full height and drank.

The cave must open up. The cave must get big. It wasn't always so small and tight. Buddy felt a wash of air pass by them, fast, like something big and billowy and cool had rolled over them.

"Ah," Dad said, like he hadn't felt it. He screwed the cap back on and Buddy heard the bottle slosh as Dad put it back in his pants pocket. "Guess all that goddamn prayin you two did, didn't do a lick. Did it, girls."

"I took it for a reason," Buddy said, soft.

"Did you now? Well, ain't we all got our reasons." And he dropped Buddy.

The floor of the cave was damp rock, and there was no dirt here.
Whomph.
The fat air flew past above Buddy, then he sat up quick, looking all around. There were streaks of deeper purple in the black when he moved his head, streaks from the corners of his eyes. Buddy sat on his haunches. Dad jerked the rope so he pulled Buddy's one arm up straight, like Buddy was putting up his hand at school.

"I see you," Dad said. And the flashlight went on bright in Buddy's face. Dad's voice was behind it, like the circle of light was talking. "I know what you think. You think I been drinking and you can get away if you wait your chance. You ain't so dumb. You ain't dumb at all." He jerked the rope. "You just a fuckin girl, is your problem."

Buddy blinked into the light, and listened for the air Dad couldn't feel.

"Say it, girl."

"Girl," Buddy said.

"Say it all."

"Goddamn girl," Buddy whispered. He heard skittles of delicate sound beyond the light and he listened hard. Airy rustles. Live things. Bats, must be. But they weren't the same as what he'd felt before, the rolling of air no one could hear. Felt it, not heard it. Like it took up all the room for an instant, rolling through the cave on a pulse, and Buddy heard it in his guts, inside himself, but Dad didn't seem to hear it at all.

"That's right, you a girl." Dad shone the light on his own face. His face hung in the black, talking. "Now you listen, girl. You might get away from me, but even you did have the light, and you don't, you couldn't get yourself outa here. I could leave you here right now, you tell me you ain't goin back in that bitch's room to get whatever else she's got." He waited. Purple dots ranged across his face. "You gonna tell me that?"

"No."

"No. You ain't. And after I get my ass outa here, you gonna keep your mouth shut."

"Mouth shut," Buddy whispered.

"You don't, I'll be back to talk to you about it. Open your mouth."

Buddy opened his mouth and the light trained down, a white flash. Fast, Dad's fingers were inside, clamped hard over Buddy's lower teeth, and his thumb held Buddy's chin. He jerked Buddy's head up and down. "You gonna do what I say? Say yes."

Buddy only breathed, his head vibrating.

"Got yourself a fat pink tongue there. Like yer Mam's tongue. Why my, my, my. Lookee there." Dad flashed the light back on his own face and waggled his long tongue in and out. "Know what a tongue's for?"

He shook Buddy's head side to side.

"Nah, you don't know. Maybe I show you, show you some things while we waiting."

Buddy shrank back but Dad pulled him to his feet. The beam of light was jumping and bouncing; they were walking on a sort of shelf, back toward the entrance a little way. The walls of the cave seemed shiny. Buddy stumbled, and the fan of yellow showed a rumpled sleeping bag shoved into a pile on the rock floor. Dad shone the light on a metal lunch bucket beside it. The metal looked dull and corroded, and when Dad opened the metal buckles Buddy saw crumpled bread bags inside. Dad pulled them out and trained the light across the words. Wonder Bread: Buddy knew what the letters said, he didn't have to read to know. Yellow and red and dark blue polka dots, and the letters.

"Had the bills inside them bags, one inside another, keep em dry. But when I got back and got in here, there wasn't nothing." The light flashed off. He spat, and Buddy heard the screw cap of the bottle turn, and Dad drank a good tug. Then he was on his knees beside Buddy. "Can you believe 'at? A man's hard-earned savings. Being a criminal yourself, you can appreciate."

"I ain't no criminal," Buddy whispered.

Dad lunged against him and Dad's breath was on his face and the smell of whiskey was strong, like a smoke, and Dad's hands were on him, turning his head. "No? Well, now what are you, then?" He shone the light up along the wall of the cave, and the wall curved up and bulged. "Maybe you a brain surgeon. Or a scientist. Lookee at this, mister scientist."

There were crosshatches on the wall, like a bird with forked feet had burned its sharp prints into the rock. The marks tracked upward, like overlaid arrows that pointed; the light bounced from one column to another, and there was color in the deep scratches, some lighter color that made the marks seem to float. It was writing, Buddy thought, some kind of writing, but it didn't have to make words. It was what writing should be. So old it looked to be grown in, older than letters or numbers.

"I ain't never lit it all up, but I figure this whole wall must be covered," Dad said. "What's it say, there, brain surgeon?" He plunked the big light into Buddy's hands and grabbed Buddy under both arms, lifted him straight up, like he could read the wall if he were a little higher.

Buddy's feet dangled, and he felt Dad's arms start to tremble. He held the light on the marks. They tracked clear up and he couldn't see where they ended.

"Well?" Dad said, and a wheezing moan was in his voice. "You better say what them marks are meaning. You better say and say—" He began to shake Buddy, and the light jumped big and small across the writing.

"It says," Buddy began, and squeezed his eyes tight shut, "stay here, and when the bats fly out from inside, you'll know it's dark. It says—" He opened his eyes, and when he looked at the wall again the marks seemed to glimmer, firing on and off across the rock. "Sleep here," Buddy said, "sleep here and lie still, and don't ever tell nobody."

One more shake. "Tell nobody what?" came Dad's voice in the dark.

"That you been here," Buddy finished.

Silence. And he did feel tired, so tired. Buddy felt his head nod once, and twice, and he let his arms fall, holding the heavy flashlight, and the beam of light traced downward. Dad lowered him to his feet onto the rumple of the sleeping bag. Buddy's legs wouldn't hold him and he crouched down, shivering.

"Well now," Dad said softly, "I don't plan to tell nobody nothing." He took the flashlight from Buddy and turned it off, and splayed one big palm across the top of Buddy's head, pressing.

"I got to tell you," Buddy said, and tried again. "There was someone there, when the car wrecked."

"What you saying?" Dad was swaying Buddy to and fro slowly, holding on so Buddy rocked from his heels to his toes and back again.

"A man followed me when I walked from the camp. And he knew you. You told him you seen him before, in the dark, when he wasn't real. But he was real. I seen him behind you."

Dad took his hand away. The flashlight went on, licked across the floor of the cave, and lingered on the lunch bucket near Buddy's feet. Dad's hand fumbled inside and brought out a pack of matches. The light went off again and the black was deeper, more purple. There was a crackle, and the match flared out like a flower, the bright glow curling orange, black-edged. Buddy saw Dad's eye squint through the flame, and Dad's thumb was beside his eye, the mooned nail streaked with yellow. "A man," Dad said, and his voice was in the black. "And what was the look a this man?"

Buddy's eyelids fluttered. The orange light was pulling in and folding. "He was tall as you, and big like you, and he didn't wear no shirt."

"Maybe it was me you seen," Dad said. "Maybe you seen me twice."

The little flame dipped and guttered out. "He had black hair," Buddy whispered, "not yellow hair like yours, and he said—"

"He said what?"

"I'm too cold," Buddy said. "I'm mighty cold in here." He had begun to hiccup and there were tears on his face. He hunkered down on his knees and pulled the sleeping bag up around his shoulders, and the quilted material was colder still, full of the breath of the cave and the old smell of the marks on the walls. Buddy let himself fall over and crawl deeper, until he was under the damp fabric, pulling it closer and tighter, and he could taste the dust on his lips. He felt the pull of the rope but he unclenched his hand and thought he could pull free, falling away, deeper. He didn't have to be here anymore, he was gone, he fell far away in a density that churned, darkest green and lovely. A furred wing grazed his face as he fell and the layered trees gave way; the shadows of their limbs and their rooty hearts came up around him.

He has some paper sacks he found among newspapers and magazines Mrs. T. sent to the dump; he will pack what he needs to take. When he shakes open the paper bag it sits on the floor of the shack in an empty rectangle. He takes off his work boots and settles them in the bottom. He puts his Bible into one of the big boots, and his socks that were prison issue, and he folds his khaki prison trousers on top. The trousers are stenciled inside, but he can still wear them. No one will see in his clothes; no one will see inside him. The prison shirt he has long ago thrown into the crawl space under the shack, but he folds the khaki shirt given him by the pipe-crew foreman and puts the twenty dollars left from his pay in the front pocket. He puts the shirt in the bag.

His cloudy legion watches him, all of them, floating up along the incline of the peaked roof. They float in front of and behind that wormy beam, and the forms of their lustrous shadows waver with the waver and slant of the boards.

Harkness wears his blue postal uniform and today he keeps his eyes closed. His breath furls near him, blue and cloudy, dense with the smell of whiskey, but he has no need of breath and the cloud only drifts near his mouth like a memory. In his arms he cradles the old iron grate from the fireplace, empty and blackened, cold now; his whole body curls toward the square iron shape as he rocks, disturbing the gray ash that still clings to the bars. The ash is a backward snow, spiraling among the faces, collecting on Preacher's hat brim, that black hat Preacher wore traveling. Preacher's face in the hat talks on and on, even if no sound comes out. This time he looks as he did when Parson first saw him at Proudytown, yes, that first day, preaching to a crowd of boys in a quiet voice that drove through stories and Scripture, offered twelve-year-olds a captain in Jesus, a hideout, a shield and a weapon; he stalked back and forth across the room then, but here he drifts gently, nearly disappearing at times, the hem of his black topcoat frayed and flaring out behind him. Preacher gave Parson books of Bible stories, then a large-print Bible meant for the half blind. That Bible was Parson's text, his dictionary; he learned to use a dictionary to read the endless pages. It was a Bible thick as a footstool; much later, Parson had to leave it in Preacher's ramshackle house, stacked among Preacher's books in the front room. He'd never been back after Preacher got shot. Months in a county jail while his court-appointed lawyer tried to argue Parson was crazy; the voices talked outside and around him. Preacher spoke whole pages of Scripture in Parson's head, page after page of bold print from that first mammoth Bible. Verses with Christ's red words glowed up bright and lost.

But someone has retrieved Parson's Bible. The girl who was a fish swims the slant of the shack roof; the thick dark book fills her extended arms, glows like a beacon that pulls and pushes. She moves in a neon fluid that blurs behind her shoulders; years in the rain have washed away all but color and motion, a dark radiance like the refracted neon in oily puddles. Other forms shimmer in her long wake, turning in silent meditation.

The stringy kitchen matron from Proudytown, jerking her head in time as she chops chicken parts on a board.

And the woman from the orphanage, way before that, the one who sat knitting in the corner while the little boys fell asleep at night. Summer evenings they could still hear car horns and the cries of other children in the busy street. Seemed like there were a lot of beds in Juvenile Boys but maybe there were really only four or five. Still, she seemed far away in her chair because Parson was farthest from her in his bed by the wall. She read from a volume called
Children's Bedtime Bible Stories,
about how Jesus knocks three times:
the first knock is the knock on Father's door by the little boy or girl who has been naughty and is sorry for it.
When she read to them she kept her head lowered, her eyes downcast, and the light moved across her face and throat like a bath from the moon.
Now, the second knock is the knock of Jesus on the door of our hearts. To every boy and girl, He comes at some time and says, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him, and he with Me.
" She would clear her throat and lift her head, and something glimmered across her face.
Think of Jesus inviting himself to supper! Yet that is just what He loves to do. And sometimes He comes unexpectedly; you never know when He may call. So it's really best to leave the door ajar and tell him to come any time He likes.
Parson remembered her buttoned white collar and her long white sleeves against her dark dress; he thought parts of her body were good and seemed to shine.
The third knock is the knock that comes too late
... The others fell asleep before she stopped reading; Parson saw how the shadowed light moved across her until he couldn't see her face anymore, only the front of her chest, dark, rising with her breath.
I hope you never have to knock like that ... Knock now. It is dangerous to put it off. Be sure to give that first knock now.
Later, when the others were asleep, Parson heard the pipes behind the wall and tried to count the ghostly thumping: she was wrong about three knocks, the knocking went on all night. Like someone was lost, up and down between the walls and floors, but never gave up looking. She didn't hear. She sat with her head bent over her knitting, the needles clicking in dim light from the hallway, and she peered at the measured commotion in her hands as though something unfolded there. Parson thought she composed the pictures in his head, what he saw and heard when he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore. There were hallways thin and dark as those wandered by the lonely Christ in the walls, and shouted phrases in a musical language Parson didn't understand. There was a tub of water in the center of a floor, and steam poured in from a kettle, and in the tub a body whose breasts were long; the broad-backed body turned and was smooth like a column. Parson was under a table and the aluminum leg of the table was a silver post; he couldn't move far from the post, and when he pulled to get away the table shook. There were more pictures and sounds but the knocking in the orphanage walls drew him close and let the pictures fade. He slept in the shelter of a luminous body whose robes enveloped all pictures and all sounds.