Sweetgirl (5 page)

She made breakfast every morning and I'd sit at the table and drink my coffee while we idled away that lazy time before we both had to leave for work. Mama is from South Carolina and she was always going on about the ocean.

“I never thought I'd miss anything about the South,” she said one day. “But I do miss the ocean.”

“You like the ocean better than the lakes?”

“A lake isn't anything to the ocean,” she said, and laid out some bacon strips on a paper towel. “A lake might look big from the shore, especially if you don't know any better, but you stand at the edge of the ocean and you'll see the difference. You'll feel it, too.”

“Feel it how?”

“It's hard to describe. But it kind of makes you feel empty and
all filled up at the same time. And after you leave the ocean, it sort of knocks around inside you. Like an echo. I haven't been back in fifteen years and I can still see it as clear as anything. I can see the piers stretching out and the storms coming in black above the water.”

“I wouldn't like the salt.”

“You'd take to the ocean the same natural way you take to everything, Percy. Which isn't to mention that the ocean is in your blood. You and Starr both.”

“I'd like to go sometime,” I said. “To South Carolina.”

“We'll go,” Carletta said. “My cousin Veronica still has a place down there. She's right on the beach, too.”

Deep down I never believed we'd actually make it to South Carolina, but it was good enough to sit there for a few minutes and think that we might. To see Mama smile as she dumped some eggs into the bacon grease and worked them with the spatula.

I would have liked to stay right there in that memory for as long as I could, until we crossed the river at least, but my toes were hot inside my boots and it was becoming hard to ignore. There were flashes of pain and it was already clear not going back for the socks had been a terrible mistake. I started to wonder how long it took frostbite to set in, or if it already had. I'd been cold before, but this was different.

I shifted my weight to try and trigger some circulation, though I was careful not to draw Portis's attention. I felt foolish, but also feared he'd make me take the sock from Jenna and put it on myself if he found out I was hurting.

It was best to keep walking. Best to keep focused on getting
to that bridge. Portis pushed ahead with his shoulders hunched forward and I blew some warm breath in Jenna's direction and hoped that it helped ease the cold some. I hoped it was better than doing nothing at all.

There was a clearing in the clouds and for a while we lucked into a bit of moonlight to walk in. I could see how wide the Three Fingers truly was, maybe twenty feet to the opposite side where the pines stood like a wall and held back the deep forest. The river sounded like a snare drum where it rushed and when the water broke the bank it would spray high and dimple the fresh powder.

Portis had picked up his pace and I sped up to keep close behind him. I was about to ask him about the bridge, about how much farther it was, when a light swept through the trees behind us and I heard the high whine of a snowmobile.

Portis dropped to his knees and I followed suit. Then the light drew back and the forest went dark. The drone receded and for a moment it was still and quiet in the woods. Portis looked over at me.

“We'll run if it comes back,” he said. “And if it comes to it and I have to stop to deal with Shelton, you keep running.”

“What do you mean, deal?”

“It don't matter,” he said.

“I'm staying with you,” I said. “I'm not running if you aren't.”

“Goddamnit,” he said. “You'll do what you're told.”

The light returned in full and the glare was wide and bright and filled the forest with shadow. I didn't know who it could be but Shelton, and he was louder and closer now. Portis told me to
kill my flashlight and I stood when he did and ran hard behind him down the river.

There was a thump in my feet with every stride, like a hammer dropping, but I did not slow my pace and ran through the pain as best as I could. The light swept back and forth behind us but I could not tell if we'd been spotted.

Portis cut hard to the left when we came to the bridge and I could see it stood about six feet above the river and that it stretched straight and long through the dark.

I followed him out onto the warped wood and took an unfortunate glance to the right, where the handrail was collapsed and the snow tapered into a smooth sheet of ice. If I slipped it would be a straight shot into icy water and I did not want to think about what would happen if I were dunked and caught up in the current.

Jenna was crying hard in the papoose and I clutched her close to my chest and ran with my eyes cast down. I watched every stride land and did not look up to get my bearings or to glance behind my shoulder to see if Shelton had closed in. I can promise you no straighter path has ever been run, and while you could credit me with some triumph of balance, in truth I was just too damn afraid of falling.

I was so focused on what was beneath me I was late to notice when Portis called out, when one of the planks snapped beneath him and he fell through to his knee. I didn't see he was down until I was right on top of him and I would have gone ass-over-teakettle had he not reached out to grab my waist and pulled me in.

I slid some in the snow but when I steadied he let me go and
told me to run. I stood for a moment and watched him struggling to free his leg.

“Go!” he shouted. “Get the hell across this bridge.”

I saw Shelton's lights cutting through the woods and when I reached for Portis he slapped away my hand and told me to get.

I did not want to leave him there, but I did. I ran to the other side and then collapsed into the snow on my knees. I was wheezing but I tried to calm Jenna between breaths.

“Portis!” I said.

“Keep going, Percy,” he said.

“Where?” I said. “It's all trees.”

“Just walk off the bridge a little ways. Wait for me up there.”

“I could come back out and try to pull you.”

“Shit,” he said. “This whole fucking bridge feels like it's about to go.”

“What happened?” I said.

“What do you think happened? I stepped through.”

“Are you in the water?”

“No,” he said. “My foot is dangling.”

The light had grown softer and more distant across the river. I was quiet for a few moments and listened until I could no longer hear the sled at all.

“I think Shelton's gone.”

“He might be,” Portis said. “At least for the moment.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stay here,” Portis said. “And become one of those pieces of human installation art. What do you think I'm going to do?”

“I'm serious,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “I'm glad you're serious, because I'm just fucking around. I'm just out here for the fun of it.”

Jenna had slowed her crying some and I looked down and told her that everything was going to be fine.

“It's okay, Sweetgirl,” I said.

Portis grunted something awful then, grunted loud and long and then screamed out as the bridge wood crackled. I sat holding Jenna and watched the woods over the river.

“Portis,” I said. “Are you out?”

He didn't respond, but I could hear his boots clomping, and when he finally joined me on the other side he was drinking deeply from his whiskey bottle.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Compared to what?” he said.

“I don't know,” I said. “Your usual self.”

“Compared to my usual self I am just fine. Though less drunk than I may prefer.”

Portis had torn through the left leg of his snowmobile pants. I put my flashlight on him and there was a brightly bloody gash that ran up and down his thigh.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “That might need stitches.”

“It's fine,” he said.

“Do you need to take a break?”

“You are welcome to,” he said. “But I will keep walking.”

“Are you sure?”

“I'd like to put a little distance between us and what's on the
other side of the bridge,” Portis said. “I believe I'll feel better when we are relaxing in the warmth of my shanty.”

“How much further is it?”

“A few klicks.”

“What's a klick?”

“It's hard to explain.”

“We need to take a break soon,” I said. “Don't walk us all the way to the shanty if it's much further.”

“Well,” he said. “I guess I've been told.”

“I'm serious, Portis.”

“That was established on the bridge,” he said.

Portis turned and kept walking and I was heartened by his rudeness, which was in keeping with his character and calmed me some about his leg. I was also glad to see that he was not favoring it too noticeably as I followed him onto what appeared to be a foot trail.

The walking was much tougher in the thick woods and all of it was at an incline. There was barely room to spit, yet alone travel by sled, and that was fine with me. We followed the short beams of our flashlights and I felt a little bit safer with each step we took away from the Three Fingers.

I walked and was glad to be with Portis and to have slipped right into the old, easy way we had always known together. I hadn't seen him since the summer but when it came to Portis and me it was always like no time had passed at all. As a little girl I used to hope the good parts of Portis would beat out the bad, and I believed all these years later that they had.

I was seven the year we lived together and could still picture
that Portis clearly, the one with a trimmed beard and black locks of hair spilling from the sides of his baseball cap.

He moved into the little apartment we had on Petoskey Street and after school me and Starr would come home to find him sprawled on the couch with his Viceroys and the television. He loved
Welcome Back, Kotter,
and when he wasn't bringing us up to speed on Barbarino's antics or reenacting one of Horshack's punch lines, he used the commercial breaks to regale us with stories of the summer he spent in Mexico.
Mex-ee-co,
he called it.

There had been lots of boyfriends, especially then, before Mama really turned. I could barely keep one man straight from the next, except for Portis, who was funny and harmless and forever combing his fingers through his bushy mustache.

Carletta didn't tell me or Starr shit about our own father. Only that we shared the same one and that he had left us high and dry when I was still in the womb. Carletta guessed he had moved back to Colorado, where she said he likely continued to not give a damn about anything but himself.

Starr said you had to take everything Carletta said with several grains of salt. Starr said we were born five years apart and how could we have the same father if Carletta never stayed with anybody, other than Portis, for longer than a few months? And did Mama think Starr wouldn't remember a daddy that had hung around for five years before suddenly bolting for Colorado?

I'm sure Starr was right, and what did it matter anyway? If anybody was my father it was Portis, and he only lasted a year before the night Mama kicked him out. I can't remember what they fought over and I'm sure it doesn't matter, but I remember
looking out at the rain after he left—beading on the windows and falling fast through the yellow light of the streetlamps.

I marked the moment as the beginning of Mama's unraveling, though Starr said its significance existed mostly in my mind. Starr said I only remembered that night because I was so young and because we had liked Portis so much. Starr said Mama had been unraveling long before he split.

“If she was ever even raveled in the first place,” she said.

I liked being with Portis, but it always came with a tug of hurt when I thought of everything we might have had, everything we might have been if only him and Mama had lived different lives and found a way to stay together through it.

The east side of the river felt much safer, but we were moving slow. The snow had deepened between the trees and I had to use the pines for balance and move from trunk to trunk. I was starting to lose feeling in my toes and between the numbness there were stabs of heat and outright burning. The pain came in waves, and when a bad one hit I had to stop myself from crying out. I found that if I put my weight on my heels it helped slightly, but it made walking that much more difficult.

There was no longer any light from the moon. The sky itself might have remained lit, but there was no way to tell through the high canopy. I felt about ready to collapse and was glad to see Portis finally drop his ruck and cop a lean against a tree. I stopped beside him and we both stood there breathing heavy.

“Goddamn,” he said. “That's a tough sled.”

“It's like walking through molasses,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Except it's cold as shit.”

Portis uncapped his whiskey and had a gulp. He had another and then offered me the bottle.

“You want a nip?” he said. “For the warmth?”

“No,” I said. “I'm fine.”

“Good girl,” he said, and had another.

Jenna cried some and I wondered if I should take her out. I knew she wanted to be held, that she was likely hungry, but thought it might be best to keep her sealed inside the carrier. That whatever warmth had gathered needed to be held.

Her eyes were hard-creased at the corners when she cried. The tips of her black hair were frosted with snow and the tiny mists her breath made in the cold tore me up with their smallness. I'd known that baby no more than a few hours and she'd already broken my heart a half-dozen times.

“She seems to be holding up,” Portis said.

“It's amazing,” I said.

“We'll feed her at the shanty,” he said.