Shelter (1994) (5 page)

Across the aisle, Alma heard Delia turn in her bed. She was asleep; they were all asleep, but McAdams might still be listening for sounds. Alma began to move, shifting her weight by increments to the metal edge of her cot. McAdams had put a towel over Delia's pillow, to keep her from bleeding on her pillowcase; there weren't any extra bed linens. Last night Alma had been so tired from the hike to Highest that she had fallen asleep in her own bed, and Delia had fallen asleep as well, without waking her. Delia always slept like a stone. Sometimes, even during the day, she came back to the cabin and fell asleep. She was allowed because the counselors all knew about her father driving off the bridge, but the counselors didn't know about anything, not really. Alma thought Delia was tired because she had to try so hard not to think. When she was asleep, she couldn't try anymore; Alma had to hold on to her. Now Alma touched the cool wood floor of the cabin with her toes and slid like an otter into the pool of dark around her bed. Crouched, she held still. No sound. And she began to inch forward, swimming the distance on all fours. She would reach Delia and they would both sleep. This part seemed to her the beginning of a journey that lasted the night, and all the night moved in slow motion, coursing through them and over them, an island on Delia's bed. Whatever dreams began in Alma's mind would pass harmlessly into the air.

Alma didn't ever want to leave camp, despite the heat and the chores and the hiking. From the first night, Delia had come and stood over her in the dark. Alma had looked up at her and realized Delia did know: somehow, she knew everything, but she didn't know she knew. Her eyes were open but she didn't see. Suddenly it was as though Alma hadn't really spent all those Saturday mornings wandering alone through Souders Department Store, waiting for her mother to pick her up in three hours at the big revolving door in front. It was like Delia had been with her, the two of them anonymous among cosmetics counters and mirrored displays of bottles, tubes, barrettes. They'd both walked unobtrusively through the five floors of the crowded store, then bought a magazine at the notions department and ordered hot chocolate and toast at the basement lunch counter. And Alma hadn't sat alone, reading something like
Seventeen,
imagining how easily Lenny could step into the glossy pages and be lost to her forever. If Delia had been there, they would have joked about the models and drawn on them with pens. They would have tried on clothes and hats, and requested Top 40 songs in the music department. Alma had done all those things at first, and she'd carried her new baton in a plastic bag with a fancy handle, wishing it had come in a case with a clasp; she wanted to assemble it, break it down, like a flute or a clarinet or a gun. But finally she left it in the car each time, and walked through the store aimlessly, more interested in the salesgirls than in the merchandise. It became her practice to observe them unnoticed, and try to overhear their conversations. She knew the names of her favorites and looked for them each week, to see how they'd worn their hair that day, or whether they looked worried. She learned to keep moving, be nearly invisible. She could read at the lunch counter if she went there just at ten, between the breakfast and lunch rushes; she'd stay nearly an hour and leave a good tip, instead of getting more hot chocolate. And she'd be waiting at the door on the stroke of twelve. Audrey stopped saying where she and Nickel Campbell had been, but she didn't usually drive up from the direction of the bus station. Watching for her, Alma pretended to look for Lenny, as though they were grown and Lenny was coming for her; Lenny was driving something low and beautiful, something fast, and they were on their way together.

"No," Delia said now, and turned in her sleep.

Alma moved soundlessly forward and surfaced at the head of Delia's bed. The shadowy dark seemed to break and eddy on the glint of Delia's hair, on her white shoulders in their camp T-shirt, her long pale back, all of her curved away. She slept on her side, her knees pulled up, as though she were waiting, making room. Alma knelt on the mattress, one knee at a time, in silence, and slid beneath the sheet. She lay with her face on the cool side of the pillow, smelling Delia's curls and the back of Delia's neck, and she fit herself to Delia's shape. She could hold on, one arm under Delia just at the curve of her waist, hands clasped, and they could both drift without moving.

Now they slept, released.

Even Lenny was her sleep self in Alma's vision, a self washed free. There were the night sounds of camp, loud, cacophonous, the cricket warble and soughing of leafy branches and twelve girls breathing, turning, crying out like weepers surprised by dreams, but all those sounds dimmed as Alma continued to negotiate the narrow aisle between the row of beds. She seemed to walk a long time; the aisle went on longer than any cabin until it was the hallway at home, and home was deathly quiet, the woods far away. Dreaming, Alma heard the bathroom faucet dripping and reached out to touch its metal neck, then bent to drink in forbidden fashion, fitting her mouth around its circular hp. She doesn't have to swallow, the water snakes down her throat like contraband, and she is just climbing to get closer, fit her whole body into the oval sink, when she turns to find herself in Lenny's room. Lenny looks cold, but comfortably so, as though she is meant to be cold, like marble or crystal. She sleeps like a nun, fearless and still, on her back, her hands at her sides, her head gently inclined. Her face, expressionless, perfect and smooth, seems a face unconcerned with possibilities, a face waiting to be alive. Her long, loose hair is the color of bleached hay, hay that has weathered in fields. All day her hair is bound in a long blond swatch, a silky blunt-cut ponytail that swings when she moves. Wes, who learned to barber in the army, trims it once a month—and now Lenny is in the kitchen, stalwart in her straight chair, Wes with his sharp scissors and rat-tail comb. Winter howls at the windows as Audrey puts newspapers under them to catch the hair, but Alma steps back into summer and the pale wisps begin to fall into the grass of the yard, take flight on a gust of darkening breeze. Alma looks up into the black field of the night sky and sees Lenny and their father tilting and spinning through space, Lenny seated, their father's hands in her hair.

"Lenny, you can hear them." Cap moved on her bed. "They're flying."

"What, the owls?"

"No, there—like whistling rattles, but they zoom close and go away. Bats. They must fly up from down near the river."

"How do you know there are bats?"

"I heard the counselors talking. Bats. They get rabies."

"There aren't bats," Lenny said. "If there was even a chance, the counselors would be wearing protective clothing after dark. Suits of armor."

Cap laughed her gravelly, private laugh. "Lenore, aren't you scared, lying naked like that? What if the bats swarm in and cover you with their rat bodies and their little claws and their crackly wings?" She crawled silently from her bed and lay full length on the plank floor at the rear of the tent, her face at the edge, peering out into darkness. "Last night I thought I saw them, but there was no moon and they vanished too fast. Tonight we'll see them, at the tops of the trees, where the light is strongest."

"What light? All I see is the light of those white underpants of yours."

Lenny thought of crawling quietly onto Cap's back and sleeping on top of her, letting her weight settle in. She had such thoughts; somehow, at camp, Cap had become as familiar, ever present, owned, as Alma at home. There to be touched and jostled and irritated, except it was Cap—not Alma, Cap—who was stronger and a little shorter than Lenny, whose freckled skin smelled of some velvet woods creature, whose breath smelled enticingly of tobacco, who stole cigarettes from purses. They were both fifteen but Cap was older by several months; her face was browned from the sun and her eyes looked lighter now, gray as slate, and hard. Cap, whose father was Mr. Briarley of Consol Coal, lived in Gaither in a big house with a maid. She slept in a canopy bed. Lenny had slept there with her, under a kind of ruffled ceiling. Here in the night-green drab of the tent, in the woods, along the trails, in the institution of the routine, they were a team, cut loose from the safe things that separated them. Lenny teased and held back but Cap smiled, breathing
at your service
or
Queen Lenore the Unconscious;
she shoved and teased and made all the games more fun. She liked baiting Lenny, she dared her to wrestle, she laughed and plotted pranks that were never carried out, just talked about in the dark in wild, interesting words, curses Cap said her father had yelled at her mother. In the dark, she whispered in sibilant tones that sounded like another language, very fast and harsh. She affected a Natasha accent from the Bullwinkle cartoons but made it delicious and threatening, squinting her eyes, moving her hands as though to ward off cobwebs. She was powerful, off on her own in a society she could circumvent, but her power supported Lenny—Lenny could daydream or forget, shirk some chore, and Cap would take up the slack, finish for her, do it for her. She was "of service" but she wanted something back. Lenny was only waiting to find out what it was.

"Lenny, I see them. They're eating the clouds of gnats that come out of the weeds at night. Quick, you can see them." Cap felt for Lenny's arm and pulled.

"All right." Lenny hated to get up when she was floating, but she stood upright and the feeling stayed with her. She was even a little dizzy, getting to her knees, then lying down with her chin at the edge of the flooring. Cap touched Lenny's face, turning her head and pointing down at the crown of the trees below them. Just on the surface of the foliage, shadows fluttered. The shadows rose higher and took form, scraps of black paper, shaken angrily, gaining the air in spasms.

"
Look
at them," Cap whispered.

For an instant, naked, Lenny was paralyzed with surprise. Her skin tingled as though a veil had been pulled across her flesh. The bats moved, their flight inherently terrifying in its speed, its inhuman tremor. The night looked navy blue, round as a deep plate. The bats were soot and remnants, emitting the silent screams of their community. Then pieces of the mosaic dropped suddenly and swooped, lifted, and were gone, flown back over Highest to the north.

Dimly, Lenny heard Cap murmuring and felt her wrist wetted and warmed. Cap held it in her mouth as a dog holds damaged prey, teeth resting on the flesh just hard enough to make an impression. Instinctively, Lenny kicked and swung, felt herself released, Cap's misplaced slap at her face landing on her neck. Cap left her hand there and grasped Lenny's hair. "Take it easy, Lenore, I was joking. They're just bats."

"Well, I never saw them before," Lenny spat back. "I've never seen them, they're not like birds at all, they're horrible."

"OK, OK, forget you saw them. Who said they were like birds? They're vermin."

"Oh, be quiet. Can't you stop showing me things? Leave me alone."

"Sure thing." Cap hissed the words and rose from the floor in one movement. Her bed creaked when she sat, then she sighed, betraying herself.

Listening, Lenny was frightened again. "Let's go, let's go down the mountain. I can't sleep now because of you. You have to come too."

"What?"

"No one will even know we left. We can go down here, right off the edge of the tent, circle around to the woods trail, and go down to Turtle Hole. We can swim and be back in an hour."

"Lenny, I don't want to put my clothes back on and walk all the way down there."

"Yes you do. I can tell you do."

"I'll only do it," Cap said, "if you go just as you are now."

"Don't be dumb. The brush off this way is full of briars."

"All right. But once we get on the trail, you have to take off everything but your shoes." Already, Cap was putting on her clothes, fighting her way into a T-shirt.

Lenny tossed her head defiantly, like at home, even though no one was watching. She found her shorts on the floor and pulled them on. "Fine," she said, "I don't care. There's no one on the trail. But when we get to the water, you have to go in too. Both of us."

"Oh, in that mud bottom," Cap said, "when you can even touch the bottom! You sink to your ankles ... I'll have to tread water, I can't bear it!" She stage-whispered, her Natasha accent drunkenly precise.

Zippers, tying of laces, double knots at the ends, no slipping in the darkest dark of Highest trail. Cap opened the footlocker to find the flashlight but Lenny shushed her and closed the heavy lid—no light, she signaled, cat's eyes, night vision, see in the tunnel, radar, laser light—anyway, someone would see a flashlight beam, suddenly cutting across the trail.

"You first." Cap motioned toward the edge.

They squatted and Lenny was over first. The slender pole, central support propping the tent floor, smelled of dirt. The rubber soles of Lenny's sneakers slowed her short descent and when she was down, she looked up. Peculiar feeling, like spying under someone's secret room; the board floor with its wide slats showed space between the lengths, as though the ground illuminated upward.

Exhilarated, Lenny turned and ran, lifting her knees high to skirt the briars, plundering the smell and the wetness. Grasses ripped as she moved. Little by little, she could see. She touched with her fingertips the wet umbrellaed tops of Queen Anne's lace, heard the briars catch at her, didn't feel them. Ahead, the furzy towering shapes of the trees sheltered Highest trail, a few hundred feet down from the tents. All the rest were sleeping! And this was better than a dream. Lenny gained the trail and stopped. She took off her heavy green shorts and the blouse she hadn't bothered to button. The dirt she trod in her sneakers seemed softer, more velvet, dew had wet it. The whole world looked softened, night-furred; the depths of the woods were an odd black shot with deep green. She stood at attention, listening with her skin. Years ago, they'd let her go shirtless in the summer, like a boy. It had felt like this, catching the blinkering fireflies in bottles, but not so good. Cap was beside her, breathing as though she'd jumped onto the trail from a high place, dropped down from the limbs of the trees. She picked up Lenny's clothes and threw them to the side of the trail, then shoved. They were running, skip, stub, touch the rock sides of the slanted earth, touching with their shoes each big stone they skirted in daylight. Going down in darkness was fast, unbelievably fast, no sound but their breath,
hut hut hut
as though someone softly punched them as they dropped.