My Abandonment, page 10
At the end he takes off his jacket and flaps it all around and we run laughing from all the loose hairs floating through the air like we always used to.
The sun has actually come out. We're laughing. Father runs ahead slapping his head, the last hairs falling down behind him and I'm chasing. He's ahead and when I catch up he's not laughing anymore. He's standing still. I can't tell what's happened and what's changed.
"Listen," he says. "I was thinking it might be good for us to have some alone time just to range around and remember. So we can get comfortable again."
"Are you going to stay in the forest park?" I say. "I can come with you."
"Let's just decide on our watches," he says, "and then we'll meet back where we slept. You can find that again, right?
Father does not check back. He disappears through the trees tall and uncertain, not in any kind of straight line. The maple leaves are bright red and yellow and orange against the green pines. After a while that is all I can see.
First I take off my shoes and socks then put them back on since the ground is cold and wet and hard. I run a little ways and then stop so I can think. No one can see me, I'm thinking. I'm thinking how Father says someone could always see us on the farm but now here in the forest park I'm not even sure no one is watching. With my short fingernail I scratch Hello in the green of a leaf.
I circle back to get Randy, just in case. His body is cold, stiffer than usual. When I take him out of my pack I put him back in and put the whole thing on my back since I just don't know.
I walk out along the edge of the forest park and there are no criminals in their orange outfits. I do not see or hear any dogs.
"What?" I yell in the loudest voice I have ever used in the forest park. "Lala!" I say. Nothing happens and no one answers except the birds are quiet for a moment before they start up talking again.
Father is already waiting when I come back and I am early. He stands up and swings his frame pack onto his back.
"We need to find the men's camp," he says.
"I thought we decided never to go back," I say.
"Caroline," he says. "So much has changed. Stay close to me."
We walk the old path that is not a real path but when we get to the men's camp it is abandoned. It is more overgrown even than our old house was. Someone probably the rangers has picked up the trash and other than the fire rings and broken glass and torn off tree branches a person might not even know.
It's easy enough even for me to see the direction the men went. How they dragged things and stepped all over the ferns and the little maples. Father and I follow all this for only another ten minutes and then I hear a voice call out low saying how we look and then another lookout who knows who we are calls out our names.
There's only one fire. Dirty wool blankets and stained, soggy sleeping bags hang from branches. There's only about twenty people. None of the Skeleton Family, no Nameless of course but I can't even see Richard and if he was here he would at least come talk to me, or try to talk to me. It's like every person has been replaced by another person even if they all look the same and wear the kind of clothes. If Richard was here I see that I would be kind of happy but he is not.
It is only Clarence coming over to talk to us. His red beard is longer and he wears a wool-blanket poncho and a bright orange hunter's cap that anyone could see a mile away. Instead of shoes he's got the inside felt liners from snowmobile boots and they're filthy and shredded up. Closer to us I can see he's frowning.
"What?" he says. "You know better. This is ridiculous."
"Hold on, now," Father says, and his deep voice slows Clarence. "I thought you might have some of our things, that were left behind when we went away."
"Since you went away!" Clarence says. "That's an excellent way to put it. Since you've been away. Well, since you've been away what you've done is rain down shit on everybody and brought cops through here like they never even cared before. You and your daughter! Do you even know? I can't believe you would come back here and lead them to us again not to mention that this is the exact first place they'll come looking for you. Stupid."
I wait for Father to say something and so does Clarence. I look up and I can't even see where the lookouts are, the men who called our approach. I think how last night I didn't even check the lookout over our old house, how someone could have been up there listening and waiting. But Father doesn't say anything right away and Clarence just kicks his legs back around and goes back to the fire and sits down and doesn't look back.
Over to the left then I see the shredded paper people. There's matchbooks all around on the ground and the silver plastic from sheets of pills. They're cooking something on our green Coleman stove.
"Look," I say. "Look."
"Come on, Caroline," Father says, turning me away. "That's poisoned now."
We cut across a slope, a different direction than the way we came. I feel that I might not know my way.
"Nature ever flows," Father says, "never stands still."
"They might come looking for us, here," I say, "but they'll never find us again. We'll make a new house. We know how."
"He's right it was stupid," Father says. "Even for one night. They won't find us here because it was never the plan to stay here. We only came back to get our things, what we could."
"What is the plan?" I say. "Where will we sleep?"
"The main thing is we found our knives," he says, the oilskin holder in his hand.
Father tightens the straps on his pack and we keep walking. A little while later we push through a stand of bushes, into a clearing and I stop since it seems like I've been here before.
"What?" he says.
"Isn't this the place," I say, "where the deer died?"
"What?" he says again.
"Where the dead deer was?" I say.
We start kicking the long grass with our shoes, then pull at it with our hands but don't find a single bone or tooth or even a tuft of hair. Either every last scrap has been taken or this is not the same place at all.
These are the worst days. The rules and the way things work in the city are different, sharper and dirtier than in the forest park but you can still be aware and stay out in the open enough not to get trapped and still not draw attention so people won't want to know who you are and what you're doing, a girl out alone in the city. If someone thinks they know me I am to tell them there's been a misunderstanding, that my name is Elaine and I live in Lake Oswego. If I see a police car or a policeman I am not to run away. I turn my face in another direction. I can look like I am on my way to school or catching the bus home or like I'm shopping for birthday presents or meeting my friends.
There is alone time in the city but that means really that we are apart from each other not that we are alone since there are people everywhere. Mostly they are not looking at you. They think you're looking at them.
I can only sleep decently in the forest park but Father says that's too dangerous, especially to stay in one place and maybe once every two weeks he'll let us sleep in some different part of the forest park but more often we just nap during the day and wander at night. Sometimes it's different parks, even across the river on Mount Tabor or Laurelhurst but there's always homeless people in that park. We've slept in a parking garage in unlocked cars and in the entryway under the metal mailboxes in an apartment building. When you're tired it makes everything in the day harder.
My head is bent over the sink in the Fred Meyer bathroom and it doesn't take long. It burns in my nose and throat. Someone knocks on the door and Father tells them to wait. The water is running and running and my back is sore and when I look up all my hair is bleached out to a yellow that doesn't look real. My eyes look different and the edges of my face are harder to see. Father smiles behind me, his beard makes a scratching noise against the collar of his jacket. I look fake and wet. I don't like it at all but would I like it better if my hair stayed black and we were caught and locked up again?
At Pioneer Courthouse Square there's punk rock kids playing hackysack and smoking cigarettes. The MAX train slides in and out. The food trailers here have stainless steel sides printed in triangles that cut up your reflected face. I order the largest vegetarian burrito, the size is called Honkin.
Sitting on the red brick steps I can't even eat half of it but then I leave it on the bricks and walk away. Father walks over from where he's standing by the Starbucks. This is how we do it, how we share so we're not seen together. If we tried it the other way with him eating first it would draw attention and someone might worry about a girl eating leftover food. We have to think all the time. The two of us together draw a kind of attention since they will look for us to be together.
When he finishes the burrito Father throws the wrapper into a trash can and walks away. I follow. Sometimes I'm across the street, sometimes on the same side trailing behind. If it's raining we have umbrellas and there are signals we have with opening or closing or twirling them but today it is not raining.
I think I know where he's going. My pack slaps my back, Randy's hard nose against my neck. We do all this and yet I'm the small one who people don't see and Father draws attention right away with his strong way of walking and his red frame pack that we have nowhere safe to keep so he carries it everywhere. And still he jerks his head to check behind him and he's drawing attention by trying not to.
I cross the opening of a parking garage, a car coming out and then a wide doorway. I shiver since it seems like maybe the building where we were locked up when we were caught. I walk faster and turn my face away as a police car drives past and turns under the building.
Father says the helicopters over the city are mostly for traffic, to tell people through their radios where there are a lot of cars but there are other people in the helicopters too who are looking down with binoculars for people like us. This is one reason Father wears the piece of mirror taped to the top of his engineer's cap, so it reflects back up whoever's face is trying to look down at him. As he walks the sun reflects in the mirror and slides shining lights all along the brick wall above his head. If he bends down to tie his shoes it can hit you sharp in the eyes.
I was right: He goes into the Mailboxes store. When we lived on the farm Father switched our address to a close post office and before we left the farm he rode his bicycle to town and switched it to this place. Smart. Only he is nervous when he comes out with the envelope in his hand so I can see that he got it, that everything's fine. Next, the Wells Fargo machine, to deposit the check.
He's ten feet in front of me on the same side of the street when a black man in a baseball cap comes out of a door and reaches out to touch Father's arm.
"Jerry!" he says to Father. "Haven't seen you in a long, long time. Missing a lot of meetings, my man. You staying healthy?"
"Been out of town," Father says like he's trying to get past.
"I keep getting caught up on the fourth step," the man says. "Moral inventory, you know. You coming back?"
"At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again," Father says. "I better get on my way."
"Way you talk," the man says. "Cracks my shit up."
We keep walking. I talk to Father's back and he does not turn around so if you saw us you'd think we were talking to ourselves and not having a conversation.
"Your name's not Jerry," I say.
"That's just what he knows me by," he says.
"Why?" I say. "How does he know you?"
Two more police cars drive by. I look at three mannequins wearing dresses in a shop window so the space between Father and me can grow wider. Then I catch up.
"How does he know you?" I say.
"Hardly," Father says. "I liked that burrito."
"And what's a sojourner?" I say.
"Look it up," he says.
He says this when he knows I don't have my dictionary with me and I'd have to go to the library to look up the word sojourner. The downtown library is very big and homeless people gather there both inside and outside so we are not allowed to go there. It's no place to be seen. I've hardly done any homework or read a thing since we left the farm. Father sometimes writes in his notebook but it's more like he's adding up numbers or checking off lists than writing and I haven't seen him reading his books like he used to. Reading in public draws attention.
It's almost getting dark and I come out of the mall and on the sidewalk a shepherd dog in a red vest is looking right at me. I know I'm caught. If I turn or run, it will chase me. I remember my hair and I try to not walk or move like me. I am already thinking what Father will do and whether I'll tell about the hotel and everything else.
The dog's leash is short though and it's held by a lady in square sunglasses and her brown hair back in a ponytail. She's not looking at me like the dog is and then I see how the writing on the red vest does not say POLICE but something else I cannot read. The dog is kind of pulling this woman along as they walk away and I see then that it is that the lady is blind. So I am not caught and I keep walking.
It's darker now, late enough that the workers have left the hotel. It stands all fenced in. They didn't knock it down today. The signs on the fence say DEMOLITION and every night I have to find a new way through. I count the floors up all the steps and around all the trash in the stairwells, the broken shopping cart and everything else.
In our room Father has taken everything out of my little pack and put it neatly on the mattress. He is taking things from his pack and putting it in mine. He kisses me but he's thinking of something else.
"I saw a blind lady," I say.
"I think I have to go out," he says. "For a while. I'm waiting to hear from someone."
"I bet I know who," I say.
Father knows plenty of people in the city. He has a lot of different names. I don't have to know these people and it's better if they don't know me. Some of them are from other times and some are helpful now. Vincent is one of these people, Vincent who is even taller than Father but much skinnier and probably weighs half as much. He always wears dark creased slacks and a white shirt. His shoes shine. I am not to talk to him. I am never to be alone with him not that I'd want to be. When he walks he hardly bends his knees.
There's a knock at the door then and Father looks up. Through the peephole I can see Vincent's face: His black beard is pointed and the hair on his head is exactly the same length as that beard so it's like a helmet where you can only see the skin of his face around his mouth and high on his cheeks and his white forehead and black eyes.
"Open the door," Father says. "Let's see what he wants."
Vincent is not winded from walking all those flights of stairs.
"Hello," he says. "I have come. I have come because there's something to do."
Vincent has a different way of talking with his voice hardly rising or falling and there are no commas in anything he says. I count for a full minute and Father's eyes blink eight times and Vincent's only blink once. My eyes blink nine times in a minute which is hard to test when I'm paying attention. All I'm trying to get clear is that Vincent's eyes hardly blink.
"Does this interest you?" he says.
"Can you maybe give me a little more information?" Father says.
"It's a delivery," Vincent says.
"More wire?" Father says.
"A delivery and a pickup," Vincent says. "And then perhaps another delivery. That's what I know."
"All right," Father says, "same deal as last time. Caroline, you lock the door. I'll be back late, after you're asleep."
They leave the room and I lock the door and after a little while I can see out the window, them getting into Vincent's white Chrysler K-Car with the trunk that opens and closes as it drives away from the hotel which is all surrounded by fences and barbed wire.
There is not glass in all our windows so it's almost as good as sleeping outside, I can breathe halfway decently. We have a mattress that's queen-sized, bigger than we've ever had and than we need. There are only beds from the sixth floor up. Below that the rooms are empty since Father says the workmen probably got tired of emptying it when they're going to knock the whole building down anyway and gravity will do that work for them. He says this was a nice hotel, once, over a hundred years ago. Now there's no electricity and all the water's been turned off. All the toilets are full or there's just trash in them but that's all right since we use a chamber pot again and some of the drains still drain. Father carries buckets of water up all the stairs. It stretches out my arms and hurts my fingers to try. You have to stay away from the elevators even though the doors are closed. It is dangerous.
I do everything I can think of doing in our room. I straighten all my things and I write. I have no books to read and I am not to read Father's books or to look inside his pack. Here I am, a girl in this hotel and no one knows I'm inside here. The building that Miss Jean Bauer works in is not far away and I wonder if she still thinks about me and what she would say if she knew I was this close.
Days, weeks and maybe a month has gone. Mostly we stay here in the hotel at night. Father and I change the hands on our watches around so much that it confuses the numbers in the little window that would tell me the day. It is hard to keep the days straight.
Alone I am not to unlock the door or leave our room at night without Father but I do. I wander with the headlamp in my hand, my fingers around it so the light won't draw attention. I wear shoes because of the nails and dirt and dust. Other people sleep here but they are afraid of Father. He won't let anyone else sleep on the seventh floor or even above us. I do go above us to the eighth floor and even the ninth floor. I don't dare go below the sixth. The door to the rooftop is locked with a thick chain around all the handles.
I wonder about my bedroom that I never slept in, in our house at the farm. I think about all my clothes I never wore and if they're still in my wooden dresser, washed once and folded and waiting. I would wear those to school and by now I would be in school. Kids would maybe have called me names but there also would have been good parts. All the books and games and maybe someone would like me after they got used to me and I was used to everything. I would have had the same clothes as everyone but now they are far away.
