Shelter (1994) (32 page)

But the light that lit a path guttered like a flame and went out. Buddy felt himself curled flat on the rock floor and Dad was behind him. Dad was talking in the dark. He was saying those foreign words and then he stopped and Buddy felt him twist around, tugging the rope at Buddy's wrist and talking on.

"Off'n me," he said, "get off." He made a low whine, like a dog might, pulling at a trap.

Buddy waited.

"Get outa me," he said, and jerked, and when he moved Buddy heard the pint bottle skitter away across the rock floor. It slid like something empty.

Buddy heard Dad move, sit up maybe.

"Ah," Dad said.

It was so quiet Buddy heard a rushing trickle of water, far off, deeper in. The water sounded, a whisper and a clatter.

Dad heard it too and he leaned forward, pulling Buddy with him. "Who's there?" he rasped, "who's in here?"

Buddy sat up from under the sleeping bag and found he could see Dad's shape in the dark. Just barely, in the black. Like he'd learned how to look in his sleep. He knew Dad couldn't see nothing at all. Dad turned his head side to side, fast, like he was blind and had a panic in his ears.

"It's just the water," Buddy said. "There's a stream back there."

Dad jerked the rope and pulled Buddy in tight. "Where you been? Where did you go?"

"It was dark," Buddy said. "I fell asleep."

But the cave wasn't so dark as before, when everything was black, sucked in deeper and deeper. Buddy couldn't tell why. He thought he knew which direction was front, toward the opening, but there was no light at all that way or the other, like they were stuck mid-throat in some big animal. A thing so big it couldn't feel them or be bothered to swallow them.

"Asleep." Dad nodded. He flailed his arm out sudden and fast and nearly knocked himself over. "That's right, I went asleep."

He kept on rubbing at his face, like he was spooked by spiders, like he was wiping at spider webs. Buddy could see his arms moving. There were tracings in the dark where Dad moved, some outline that barely shone. Buddy watched Dad, looking hard, then he felt something and wanted to turn, look behind him. But he nearly couldn't. He had to breathe deep in his stomach and try hard, slow, turning, and he faced the wall of the cave and saw how the writing in the rock glowed up. He couldn't see the light if he looked straight at it, but when he moved his eyes across the sweep of high stone he saw shapes glimmer, and a gold dust swim the air. Buddy thought about magnets: he had him a magnet that was shaped like a horseshoe, painted in red stripes, and nails stuck to it, and tacks, and the powder that came from the writing in the rock shifted in the air like it was pulled. It didn't fall or sift like dust. It was more like a smoke that moved, drawn together, and Buddy could see it around Dad's face. It clung to Dad's arms and shoulders. The cave had lit him up.

Dad stared out blind. He lurched to the side and rubbed his face with his sleeves.

Afraid of the rope now, Buddy thought, scared of the feel of it. Aloud, he said, "It's that there rope. Got to untie that rope on your arm. It's dragging over you, ain't it?"

Dad fumbled with one hand at his wrist. "Gimme that flashlight," he said, and his hand was on Buddy, feeling him, pushing him aside.

The dark was chocolate around Dad's shape. Buddy could make out the little box of the flashlight beside Dad's leg and he grabbed for it, pushed it into Dad's hand, but Dad dropped it so Buddy picked it up and turned it on. The slant of light was bright yellow and Dad brought his arm to his mouth and pulled at the rope with his teeth, his fingers, till the loops came undone and the rope was off him.

Dad was lit up in the circle of the flashlight and he pulled at his face with both hands.

"All that rope," Buddy said, "the rope's all got them things in it." And he thrust his wrist into Dad's face and Dad worked at the rope and pulled it loose, and threw it far from them like it was alive.

"Gimme that light," Dad said. "Don't think you're goin anywhere. You can't see nothing."

And the yellow beam flared around wildly, Dad taking hold of it and fumbling like he was burnt. Buddy could only see the light, how the black against it was dead again, so black they could fall into it, and Dad did fall, standing up, but he got to his feet and stood behind the light. He aimed it at Buddy and Buddy stared straight in. He knew not to turn away or shield his eyes.

He could hear Mam talking, behind the light.
There's a spirit goes along with us,
she said.
Sometimes it goes along and sometimes it picks us up and carries us.

The light was so bright it seemed to flare red at the edges, vibrating. "You still got that ring?" Buddy said it loud, into the center of the fiery circle. "We got to go and get them other rings."

An arm came out of the light and picked Buddy up. He was gathered up at his neck, the collar of his shirt bunched into a knot that held him. He felt himself lifted high and pulled into a heat that flared at his face, tasting him.

"Course I got the ring," Dad said. "You want to wear the ring, little girl?"

His words steamed, like an animal's insides steam when it's gutted and the entrails lay out sudden in the air, smoking.

"You want the ring," Dad said, "you got to do some favors."

"I don't need no ring," Buddy said. He kept his eyes wide open in the light.

But Dad held him high with one arm and kept the light on him, and began to turn, slowly, till Buddy couldn't tell anymore where the walls were, where the sound of the water came from, which direction was the way out. And Dad's rasped whisper was everywhere—not a whisper even, but a breathing that said words and got into Buddy's head till it took up all the room and he couldn't hear anything else.

They were turning, smooth, like a planet and a moon. It felt to Buddy like they were falling sideways, falling and falling.

"You need it," Dad said. "You want to do them favors. You got me on the porch those times, and you had me behind the house, that time you run and got me on my knees. You didn't want to do it, you think I woulda known to make you?" He shook Buddy hard, one time. "You think I woulda known?"

Everything was light. Dad's head and the cave were light, and the arm that held Buddy pulled him closer to the white eye of the light. The eye was all heat and fire, burning, and Dad's voice said, "You didn't want to do it? You a girl, ain't you?" The fire wavered, and then it roared, "Answer me!"

"No!" Buddy screamed. "You did it! You wanted to! I'm no girl, I'm a boy, I always been a boy!"

And the light burst apart, falling back in fiery shards. An onslaught of rushing air exploded from behind the flared core. The bats seemed to flow through by the hundreds within that black pulse, scattered and streaming, rippling from high up, far back. In the air of their wings Buddy heard them all around, an infinite rapid crackling like snapped flags, pulsing forward like a grid in buoyant motion. The grid spliced around and beyond him and closed past him in a surge, pouring through.

What held him bobbed and weaved and fell down, and Buddy was talking in the dark. "They ain't going to hit you," he said. "They can feel where you are."

The light had dropped and flared round, a vertical, empty beam drawn upwards, and Buddy saw the bats pass through its edges like a tremor. They poured forth, separate and connected, a flickering smoke. Their sharp little faces seemed to dip and glint in the high rattle of their passage. They were like fist-sized foxes, with their pointed ears and lifted lips, tasting the air over Turtle Hole, all of Camp Shelter their dense, moon-fed food. Dispersed, glimpsed far up over trees, they contracted like skeletal birds and fluttered, blurred and ashen. But here they were animals. Looking and surging for the hole at the front of the cave.

"It's dark now," Buddy said. "We got to go out."

He dove for the light but Dad grabbed it first. Dad crouched down and held it tight between his knees, all folded over it like a long-limbed bug lit up from beneath.

"No," Dad said, "we ain't going anywhere."

The light only shone through from underneath him, in lines.

"We got to go now," Buddy said. "They all at the bonfire. I can get them rings now."

"No," Dad said, "I think we stay here now." He hunched farther down, rasping each word. "You gonna do me a favor and then we going to stay here. We ain't going to go out."

"You afraid of them bats?" Buddy said. "Bats ain't going to hurt you. It's this dark you got to get out of."

"Ain't dark," Dad said. "I got the light. You ain't got it."

"I can get them rings," Buddy said, "for your stake. You don't need no car, you got a stake that can get you a far ways. All the way to Florida, to that white sand—"

Dad kept his hands on his face and he was talking and murmuring words. "You lie, you lie," he seemed to say.

"I ain't lying," Buddy said, "I can get them—"

Dad talked on and Buddy realized he was saying his foreign words. Dad was all turned around. He'd believe a he and he'd turn off the light. Buddy thought he might be able to see again if the light was out.

"Turn the light off, then," Buddy said. "Them bats will fly toward that light. You keep that light on, them bats will head for you. They looking for the light, get outside to the water, all them skeeters over the water—"

The light went off.

Buddy thought about the elliptical hole of the cave entrance, the lopsided hole in the rocks. He saw it, the way it looked from the outside, with sunlight playing across the stone and scrub pine grown up around it. Out there the air was so big it went clear up to the sky, and Turtle Hole lay still and blue in a dark so soft it was only shadows. The look of it was like a picture in the utter blackness of the cave, a black fierce and close as the dense hide of an animal. Buddy could still hear bats pass above them, swooping disconnected now in isolated, drooping glides. All in one direction. He turned and walked two steps, three more. He wanted to put his hands out in front of him and feel his way, but he made his hands stay down and looked with his eyes. The wall with the glimmering writing should be to his right. He swept his gaze across again and again but he saw nothing. Fly up, dust, sift down like gold—but it was like Dad's flat palms were clapped tight against his eyes. The gold had clung to Dad, the shadow lifting in a pool around his form, pulling at him. The cave wanted to keep Dad, Buddy thought. Dad was supposed to stay in the cave. He could only get out if he went away from Dad.

"Boy," Dad called out. "You get back here."

Buddy heard the bats flying around him, silent far up, and closer, rattling gently just above his head. Couldn't hear their eerie, ringing sounds but he could feel the shapes of their calls and screams expanding in curves and bells all through the dark. If only he could find the entrance before the cave emptied, Dad would be too scared to turn the light on, Dad wouldn't find him. He looked back to see if Dad had moved and he could see a hunched body behind him, a shadowy hump, yes, dimly glowing. Smoky with the gold dust.

"You!" Dad yelled. "Where you going." He stayed put and craned his head like a turtle might, coming up from water.

Buddy turned his eyes back sharply and thought he saw something move in front of him. Something small, no bigger than a cat. He stood still to look and the form vanished. He tried moving forward, balanced, so still, on the balls of his feet, and the form coalesced again, this time far to his left. There was a sparkle, like a tingle in the dark, or a shudder, and Buddy saw a face in the creature, a textured face drawn down in folds. The mouth moved like a cat's mouth, in a long, luxuriant yawn, and one of the stumpy arms held up a shape, opaque and golden. It held the shape up like a lamp, but it wasn't a lamp, only a gold glow. The creature stood on two legs and turned away to walk, and Buddy followed a faint outline in the dark, trying to get closer. He thought it wore clothes, and its head was an odd shape. It came perhaps to Buddy's knees, were he to get close enough to stand near, and it moved with a trundling motion, like a two-year-old or a midget, but it could surge forward. Or seem to disappear and reappear to the side, or farther ahead. Buddy realized the cave turned to the left, and he wondered if the creature was leading him out or deeper in. He stopped walking and the creature paused and turned. The face, twenty feet beyond Buddy, was an old man's face, yet strangely animal. It wore a hat, conical, like a soft clown's hat, and a bulky jerkin. Suddenly Buddy remembered:
green jacket, red cap.
Mam's rhyme.
Fear of little men.
But Buddy wasn't afraid. The creature shimmered and beckoned him, jangling a silent urgency, and Buddy started forward again. The rock beneath his feet slanted upwards and he could feel space narrowing, as though they moved through a tunnel and the tunnel grew smaller as they progressed. They seemed to be moving quickly, without effort, and there was a shine to the rock sides of the world. Buddy blinked his eyes. Dad could never follow him here. It was so easy to walk now. Ahead was a circular formation, a wreath as big as a door, and the rock v/as dark gold, lustrous; the stones felt warm when Buddy came up on them and touched them. The creature was gone or escaped, Buddy thought, for he peered through the circular rocks and saw the slanted hole to the outside of the cave. He stared, trying to make sense. There was a blue space beyond the hole, and that was evening, and evening had so much blue that it was not dark at all. Buddy understood: he was looking at the hole from the wrong angle. He had come another way, from the side. Dad had walked straight in, but the cave was full of ways to move, and Buddy went forward and climbed through, raking his arms to clamber down and through the shelf-like hole.

He got outside and everything smelled of plants and dirt in the dizzy blue, and the blue rolled over darker in the air that led to the sky. The ground Buddy stood on was springy with moss, so soft he staggered and sat. He sat down and pressed both hands flat; he looked, to watch himself, and he saw Dad's broad hard shoe beside his hand.

Dad's shoe, like a wall no one could get over.