Shelter (1994) (36 page)

Buddy heard Lenny then. "Alma," she was screaming, "Alma!"

And Dad hit the stranger with the rock along the side of his head, and the rock made a sound when it hit.

The stranger got up, holding on to Dad, and he fell back down.

Buddy heard Lenny screaming, "Run! Run!"

Dad was yelling too, and he was laughing when he yelled. "Run," he said, like she did, and he had her by both arms and moved her forward with his knee. "You gonna run! All a you run!" And he pushed Lenny down with his knee and she was on the ground.

There was a roaring in Buddy's head and he had the rock in his hand and he darted forward. Dad was kneeling on Lenny's back and Buddy hit him with the rock. He hit him on the top of his head, and Dad lurched just a little, and put out one hand to steady himself.

Lenny had twisted under him, trying to hold him off with her arms. "Cap," she cried.

And Cap was beside Buddy, and she brought a rock down on Dad's head. She held it with two hands, and she hit him twice, and he fell sideways, grabbing at her, and the rock dropped, and the other girls screamed and came forward with rocks, and Buddy was pushed back. There was just the sound of the rocks hitting Dad's head—dull, separate sounds, like steps they were all walking, deeper in. The girls came together, hiding the ground in a wall of ragged sounds, their arms moving scared and rapid, and Buddy thought they should keep hitting Dad, just there, on his head. Dad's head hurt him; there was something so bad in Dad's head. He would get all of them. None of them would get away from Dad now if Dad got up; none of them would ever get away. Dad was like a stone that wouldn't bleed, but the inside of Dad's head could fall in, hunch down small and smashed the way Dad really was.

Then Buddy heard a silence that was empty, seeping around and between them all. The girls staggered, their backs to him, reaching for each other. Buddy thought they would fall down, fall on their knees: they were scared to be where Dad was, scared of where Buddy had been. Buddy saw through their clasped hands, their bodies that touched and drew apart. He saw Lenny crawling out from underneath Dad, trying to stand up.

A voice said, "Buddy."

But he couldn't look away.

They were screaming, she heard them dimly, Alma distinct from the rest, her guttural repetition of Lenny's name ripping out meaningless, keeping time. He was on her back with one arm under her, pulling her hips off the ground like he was going to rip her open from behind. She hit the ground hard under him, her breath sucked into a hard, bright point of pain at the base of her spine. Maybe she closed her eyes, or the ground grew a luminous black, and she saw Buddy across the stream from her in the woods. The woods were lit up and Buddy was a little animal crouching on his haunches, trying to make them laugh, disappearing across a divide; in her mind she took hold of him and pulled him to her over the bright line of the water. From somewhere above them all she saw Buddy dart forward, the only one to move, hurling the rock with all the force of his body, jumping into the blow. What gripped Lenny faltered and she twisted under it, struggling to see, to breathe, and the girls' faces appeared above her, contorted and weeping. They weren't looking at her but at what held her; it all ground down, slow and silent. The blur of their moving arms seemed to continue a long time, as though they were pounding a stake into the ground, deeper and deeper, and Lenny felt the impact of each blow as she was hammered into the earth beneath his dark, dense weight. They seemed to be hitting her in a part of herself she couldn't feel, desperately, forcing her down and down. She fell away from them and saw the evening sky beyond them, aswirl and starless, alive in its convex field, and she knew she would never leave this place. They kept hitting him, too terrified to stop, to touch him or pull him off her; she tried to crawl toward them to tell them,
stop, stop, you're too late.

But they had reached for her. She stood up shakily in their embrace, into a still instant.

Everything stopped.

Lenny could hear the air. Clouds of mist turned in their slow descent, drifting and dissipated. She felt the others near her, a bitter warmth above his sprawled form. They stood, looking down. A silence rippled out from him and the silence seemed to coalesce, heavy and calm, holding them all in place. So near, and so far from her, Lenny heard the hushed voices of the others.

"He's not moving," Delia said.

"He might get up," said Alma.

"He won't get up," Cap whispered. "He was crazy, like an animal."

"We should never have come here," Delia said. She began to sob, but quietly, as though any sound might waken him.

"Shhh," Lenny said. "He would have hurt Buddy." She dropped her own voice to a whisper. "He wanted to kill Buddy."

"Don't we have to tell someone?" Delia put her hand in Cap's, tried to pull at her, but Cap didn't answer. She didn't raise her eyes from the shape on the ground.

"It's over now," Lenny said slowly, evenly. "But if we tell someone, it'll never be over. We'll have to tell it and tell it. We'll never be able to stop telling it. Nothing else will matter anymore, ever."

Cap turned her head to look at Lenny. Her eyes were wide, startled, so close Lenny saw the facets of her green irises. "Then what?" She mouthed the words silently, over the heads of the younger girls. The wind tossed a coppery strand of her hair across her lips, and Lenny looked away. Dense woods circled the open clearing of Turtle Hole. The giant beeches and willows arched their limbs, nearly bestial. Their branches stirred and moved, hulking, protective. Lenny strained to hear the sound of the leaves, as if there were words in their lissome rattle.

"It should stay here," Lenny whispered. "It should all stay here."

"Look at him," Cap murmured.

The shape on the broad dirt shore hadn't moved. His legs were twisted and his upturned hands were empty, the fingers curled. Lenny looked at him and her body stung in the moist air, limb by limb, as though it were painful to come alive again. She imagined lying still. He would have stood over her like this, or reached for the others. Which one? She pulled them all closer. The world would not be as it was. She saw that there was no world but this one now, full blown and dense with shifting air; they were born into it, mourning. He lay at their feet, unmoving: now he looked like a man. Above them the far-flung sky arched away and dusk gathered, blurred and soft, rolling like a wheel that only rolls and darkens as it rolls.

He moves to stand and knows he can't, not yet, but his vision clears and the colors separate into forms. He sees the boy first, a shape light and then dark, a profile finely etched against a cataclysm of sparks. He calls the boy's name once, twice. There is a hush and that quiet holds still. He sees the boy for what he is: a piece of light with dark scars on his wrists, at his throat. Someone is sobbing calmly, but it's a sound like water pouring from vessel to vessel, a sound like an undercurrent. Parson thinks it's a sound he has heard and brought here with him, an old sound that goes on a long time. The boy moves toward Parson and the sound fades; the light gives way, becomes Buddy's face, Buddy's hands on him. He gets to his knees. The boy wants to hold on to him, takes his arm as though to show him, lead him closer, but the girls stand with their backs to him. Parson can't see what's in front of them.

He stands and the knot of their bodies loosens. They say nothing, they only wait, and Parson edges them all a little aside, moves into the circle. Carmody has turned nearly face down on the bank of Turtle Hole at their feet; there is an absence, a blank around his body, and the absence is empty: everything has gone away. Parson bends down, kneels, reaches beneath the body to unbutton Carmody's shirt and pull it off. He wraps the shirt around Carmody's head and face, and ties the empty sleeves to keep the shirt in place. But there is not much blood. It's as though whatever was in Carmody's head has withdrawn, pulled back, moved on; now he is only what's left. He has a weight, dense and quiet; he sleeps in a layered dream, a dream so deep he has sunk far from whatever he knew, far from all of them. Now it would be wrong to hurt him, and impossible. He is delivered; it is already done.

Parson looks up to see the girls standing motionless, a still configuration. Lenny with her arms around the younger ones, each wedged near like a shadow, and the other girl then, standing just before them, one arm flung out in front of them all. She holds a rock in her other hand, as though Carmody might stand and lurch toward them, as though it might all begin again. Parson hears them, hears someone, gasping.

He stands up and nearly loses his balance; he does lurch toward them but Lenny moves closer and places one hand flat against his chest. They are all moving, tilting, standing near him. There's a smell coming off them, a smell of tears and sweat, new and smashed, sweet. Like clover reduced in someone's hands, worried until it's moist. A panic smell, but they're standing in their own silence.

Parson looks at Lenny and tells her, "Stand with the little boy."

Quickly, while they're moving, Parson stands between them and Carmody's body. He puts a foot against the nearest stack of piled rocks and shoves hard; the rocks topple scattered on the ground and Parson picks up the largest, the stable, flat rock from the bottom of the pile, and lifts it high with both hands. He brings it down on the back of the hooded head but the body never twitches. Still, they can't know. Parson has taken it on.

He whirls round in a smooth progression and topples each pile of rocks. One hard, balanced blow, a well-placed kick, and the rocks fall in a pummeled, nearly circular grid no one will know how to read. No one will come here looking, not for years and years. They'll look for Parson somewhere else, and they'll find him, and it won't matter then.

The boy steps forward, his pale, peaked face round as a moon, as blank and wan. "You got blood on you," he tells Parson.

Parson only looks at him, and Buddy comes closer, gestures for Parson to bend down, puts one hand on Parson's shoulder. "You got blood here, where he hit you," Buddy says, and Parson feels Buddy's hand on his temple, a touch as light as some wafted petal, a pale and waxen touch. Buddy brings his palm down then and opens his hand to show Parson the red stain, and he moves into Parson's arms, fits himself closely. He folds himself in and sighs raggedly. Parson stands, holding him, and they walk into the water just far enough for Parson to crouch down, immersed to his chest. He cradles Buddy in the water easily, with one arm, and he tilts Buddy's head back, only slightly, as though he will rock him, to comfort him.

"You can wash it off," Buddy says. "You can get it clean."

Parson nods and puts a finger to his lips, widens his eyes in a signal for the boy to be quiet. He palms a sluice of water into his hand and touches Buddy's head, first with his wrist, then with the heel of his hand, fingers opening, a slow, practiced caress.

Buddy looks, interested, into Parson's eyes. As though he's watching a man shoe a horse, Parson thinks, or load a gun, or make a pie. Cupped water from Parson's hand courses down his face, but he doesn't blink. His wet lashes are fixed in starry points.

Holding the boy in his arms, Parson lets himself sink into the water. The boy only nestles closer, light, lighter than air, Parson thinks, like some bird just resting, an intricate, airy works, densely packed, nearly weightless. Parson lets them turn in the water, thinks of stopping here, but he stands and begins carrying the boy back to shore. Buddy touches his face.

"Mister," he says, "let me see." He slides his fingers over the throb at Parson's temple.

Parson feels the ache as a separate pain for the first time, as though the pain responds to the delicate pull of the boy's fingers. "He clipped me one," Parson murmurs. Hears, doesn't see, the hip-high swak of water against them. Holding the boy, Parson lets him float, moves him forward in the water like a cradled ship.

"Not too bad," Buddy says, still peering at him through near dark. "No one's going to be asking you."

"Don't matter," Parson says. "I'll get away, lie low." He looks at Buddy, wanting an answer. "No one knows me here. You're the only one could even say where I came from."

They hear an owl call across the water, the sound a question and exclamation, hung in the air to fade.

"You know me?" Parson asks softly. "Do you know me, boy?"

Buddy looks up at him, smiles. "I saw that owl in the water," he says.

"They fish off the surface sometimes," Parson says, "frogs and peepers."

"I saw him deep down," Buddy answers. "Flew up at me from them lights on the bottom." Then he goes quiet, lapse of a heartbeat, and says, nearly too fast to make out, "Dad wanted me to steal them rings the old lady has in her room, so he could take him a stake away with him. He was fixin to go. He was going to take me too, then he was going to let me stay if I got the rings."

"He did go," Parson says. "He has gone and he won't come back, and you don't have to be afraid."

The boy finds his own feet and stands, walks out of Parson's loose embrace as they come up on shore. Parson feels his movement and lets him go, and the two of them move close to the girls until they stand, all of them, at Carmody's feet. Carmody's wet khaki pants are smeared with red mud, and his boots turn in awkwardly. The soles are pitted, dug in long scratches, as though something has clawed at them.

One of the little girls is still crying, sobbing.

"Delia," Lenny begins, stops, takes a breath.

Parson looks at her, at all of them. They raise their eyes to him, even Delia, each gaze cutting space like the spoke of a wheel. "You can finish it," he tells them quietly. "The body has got to be put somewhere."

The one called Delia shakes her face free of her tousled, curly hair. She looks into Parson's face and her wet eyes look blasted awake, alert. "The water, then," she says.

"No," Parson says.

"I know where," Buddy says. He is looking along the ground, walking a few steps away, and he stoops and picks up a box-like flashlight. He cups his palm over the plastic front and turns it on, and his hand shows suddenly red, the light pouring round his feet like something spilled. He switches it off. "Got to have a light," he says quietly. "But I know where."