My Abandonment, page 13
"Not even the people who own this place can live here all the time," Father says.
Still my toes go numb and back and forth but they are not exactly cold. Father snores and I poke him until he rolls over. We are so tired.
Father fixes the doorknob in the morning. He puts a new rubber washer in the sink's faucet. There are many ways to pay someone back and be a good friend.
When he goes down under the house to split the logs in the woodpile I have our clothes and the sheets in the washer. I'm vacuuming upstairs to make the lines in the carpet like they were.
The girl's name is Melody. It is painted, her name on the small wooden bed and also written in some of her books which are some coloring books and then some others that I recognize. They are Golden Nature Guides: Fishes, Flowers, Birds, Whales and Other Marine Animals, Mammals. I had all these and also Insects and Fossils, a long time ago in my bedroom in the house with my foster parents. That is a very long time ago. I carried these books around. I liked nature then but I didn't know anything about it.
I remember the Mammals book especially, the drawing of the animals exactly like they were before. My favorites are the ones who can change colors with the seasons so they can hide better. The snowshoe hare is white in the winter and brown in the summer. In the spring and fall it is somewhere in between.
On a piece of my scrap paper I write Thank you, Melody, and carefully trace the picture of the snowshoe hare and all his different disguises. I fold this paper and slide it between the other books where she will find it.
When the laundry is dry we make up the big bed again. My socks and underwear are still warm from the dryer. I can feel them in my pack, between my shoulders.
We are only borrowing the orange plastic sled and the snow-shoes and besides all the firewood is split and the house inside is cleaner than before. Father's snowshoes are wooden and have crosses of sinew and mine are red plastic and are actually Melody's.
We walk and walk and walk. The snowshoes are kind of heavy but they make it easier and Father isn't falling through the crust anymore. He pulls his pack and a jug of water on the orange sled which smoothes the snow behind it.
"What are these orange poles?" I say. Thin, they are sticking up through the white snow.
"This is a road," Father says, "but it's closed. They don't plow it. The road is six feet beneath us and these orange poles show where it is."
Later in the afternoon we come to a long slope. Father is in back and I'm in front between his legs on the orange plastic sled. Slow at first we push with our hands and then slide racing down. The wind is cold in my face and the white snow kicks out as we shout just missing the trees at the bottom and not stopping, leaning hard and still going with the sled skidding across icy stretches.
None of the buildings in the town of Sisters are really more than one story tall. Slush splashes up from the tires of cars and pickup trucks. Standing at the post office you can see in every direction, to the four edges of the town. I stand there next to Father who is delighted since there's two checks in the post office box he set up before we left Portland. Everything is working like he planned it to work. He deposits the checks in the Wells Fargo ATM but doesn't withdraw any money since he has plenty already.
"I'm delighted," he says. "How about we find a restaurant and eat something?"
The sun is out and the sky above is blue but there's clouds resting all along the mountains. In the window next to me stand cowboy boots with flowers painted on their sides.
"Are you limping?" Father says.
"No," I say. "I'm just used to wearing those snowshoes. Do you think we should walk together? I could cross the street."
"Let's not worry about that," he says. "Not today. I'd like to walk with you."
He takes my hand. Our snowshoes and the sled and Father's big pack are all hidden at the edge of town. All we have is my small pack so we look like regular people walking down the street. No one hardly looks at us.
It's the middle of the afternoon so not many people are eating at Bronco Billy's. Some of the furniture looks like wagon wheels and the menu says it has the best hamburger in the state of Oregon. I have a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. Father has a garden burger. We share a chocolate milkshake.
"I can't believe I'm warm enough to eat this," I say.
Father's got those same maps spread out on the table while we eat. His finger traces along a crease.
"Are we staying here?" I say.
"Close by," he says.
"You still have a lot of friends here?"
"Some, maybe," he says. "People move around all the time and that was years ago."
"Before I was with you."
"Exactly," he says. "And now I feel like things are really finally changing."
"Better or worse?" I say.
"Better," Father says. "Like we could get lucky for a while. I haven't felt that way in I don't know."
"Are you still mad at me about the bus?"
"I wasn't mad, Caroline. Everything is working again," he says. "Now we just need to find a place to stay for a little while."
"Inside or outside?" I say.
"Oh, my girl," he says. "My heart."
Six
Grocery shopping always makes me feel that something in the future days is promised or settled, that there will be the time and a place to eat the food we buy. At Ray's IGA in Sisters we get bread and peanut butter and packets of oatmeal. Matches and candles. Raisins. Apples and carrots.
We eat the bananas as we walk across the parking lot since it's hard to carry them without crushing them. The sun is down. It's fun to sneak out of town, separate from Father but keeping him in sight. We watch for headlights, hide behind trees.
When we get back to where we hid our things it's all still there. Our packs are on top of the snowshoes to stay dry and the sled is on top of it all with two branches from a pine tree pulled over it by Father to hide the orange color. No one has found it. We switch the food from the plastic grocery bags into Father's red frame pack and then we buckle on our snowshoes and start up the slope.
The day was so sunny and the sky blue but already the storm is coming when we don't need it. Neither one of us says anything about the snow as it starts out and this time it doesn't start slowly.
"We could just walk back down and hide our things again," I say. "We could get a motel room at that place near the grocery store."
"We can't afford it," Father says.
"You have all the money," I say. "And we just got those two checks from the post office."
"I mean the exposure," he says, "not the expense."
"You could get a room for yourself," I say, "and I could sneak in later."
Father stops for a moment and looks back toward the lights of town that we can still see down below.
"No," he says. "This is better. This will be better. Trust me."
The snow blows down hard and sideways and slanting. It's cold in my eyes.
"Walk behind me," Father says. "You'll get a little cover, that way."
He's pulling the sled though so I can't walk too close and the toe of my snowshoes keeps kicking it.
"Caroline," he says.
"I'm not used to how long they are," I say.
I can tell Father is checking all the houses we see in case they're empty but there's lights in the windows so far.
"It's the weekend," he says. "That's why they're out here."
"Why?"
"These are just their vacation houses," he says.
Smoke twists out of chimneys and inside people are probably sitting watching the orange fire and its sparks crackling.
"Those people don't care if anyone sees their smoke," I say.
"Yes, Caroline," Father says. "That's right."
"That would be nice," I say, and he doesn't say anything back.
We keep walking past big houses and log cabins and A-frames like the one we slept in last night even if that seems longer ago. I know Father won't let us go back there even if we could find it. It's a long way away. Even if it was close it wouldn't matter since we couldn't see or find it.
A dog barks somewhere, the sound mostly lost in the snow. After a while I can't tell if we're walking up or downhill. The snow swirls around from every direction and blows straight up from the ground.
For a while there's the thin posts like orange fishing poles sticking up through the white snow, a curving line that we can follow one at a time since that's as far as we can see.
"Is this the same road as before?" I say.
"No," Father says. "I don't know. We'll find someplace. Don't worry. Right up ahead somewhere."
"When we left the city," I say, "you told me you would take me someplace that wasn't so cold."
My snowshoes seem heavier than his. They look like they're heavier. Even if we could hibernate I don't know where we'd go. All we have left to follow now is the poles for the electrical and telephone lines that could be stretching to a city a hundred miles away. The sled keeps dumping the packs off and I have to put them back on top.
"Are we walking in circles?" I say. "I haven't even seen the road posts for a long time. Those orange ones."
"I don't know," Father says. "I'm trying to guess where the moon should be."
We can't even follow our tracks back to where we knew where we were since they are all filled in. The snow is only falling thicker. It's later and it's darker.
"Over there," I say. "Look."
"What is it?" Father says.
The little shack is almost buried in the snow. Its outside curves, rounded. Two windows glow only a little like there's something inside but not enough light to really see anything. We stand there. The snow piles up on our heads and shoulders since we aren't moving.
We walk closer next to black cords of wire that snake down off the telephone pole and down low, just above the snow to the tiny round building.
Father knocks on the wooden door three times and nothing happens. He knocks again louder. He pushes the door and it scrapes open. Snow shifts down from the roof above.
"In anybody inside?" Father says.
There is a faint glow and a buzzing sound at first.
"Yes," a voice says, then. "We are inside."
"Who?" Father says. "Sorry," he says as the headlamp lights up their faces and they squint at us. It is two people. A lady and a boy.
"We found it first," the lady says. "Close the door if you're coming in. If you're not coming in, close it, too."
Her hair is blond and wavy down past her shoulders, one side sticking up more. The boy wears a yellow and black striped cap like a bee, his face wide and pale and staring.
"Don't trip over those wires," she says as we step in.
Father closes the door and we are inside. I can't see except for the circle of light from Father's headlamp sliding along the dirty plywood floor.
"Are you a little girl?" she says to me. "We didn't expect visitors."
"We got lost in the storm," I say.
"Caroline," Father says, like he should be the one talking. "We did get a little turned around," he says to the lady.
"Is someone after you?" she says.
"Followers," I say.
"Caroline," Father says.
"Who?" she says.
"Just for tonight," Father says. "If we can share your shelter and warm up a little then we can figure things out. The weather."
Now a faint glow comes off the walls and that is the only light. The air smells like metal. Dry and baked and rusty.
"We'll be out first thing in the morning," Father says. "Is it all right with you if I light a candle?"
"Light a candle," the lady says. "You can sleep here. People have to sleep."
The cabin is only one room and there's not much place to stand. There is a bench built along the wall and the lady and the boy sit there. There are no other chairs and there's a black plastic garbage bag next to the boy where maybe their other things are. They are only wearing jeans and T-shirts and sneakers. There's one little table and a bunk bed frame that is splintered and broken without any mattresses.
The lady's name is Susan and the boy's name is Paul. The two of them haven't moved at all since we came inside. They lean against the wire that's wrapped around and around the inside of the walls, loose across the bottom of the door. It's been all stripped down to its copper. Susan: I've never seen a lady look the way this lady looks. Her white face has sharp edges and it keeps shifting like it's never quite still, alert like a squirrel in a tree. Her fingernails are painted dark and in the dim light this makes her fingers short or like they have been cut off.
"Have you eaten?" Father says. "We just bought a store of food in town."
"Town?" she says.
"Sisters," he says. "Down in the valley."
"We're fine," she says. "Thank you."
"We're fine," the boy says. His voice is as high as mine and he is my size but he isn't talking very much.
"We ate in a restaurant," I say. "It had the name Bronco Billy's."
Their eyes are half-closed as they watch us eat. We sit on the floor. We both eat a handful of raisins then an apple with peanut butter. The water is half-frozen and almost too cold to drink against my teeth.
"Who's after you?" the lady says.
"No one," Father says.
"The girl said you had followers."
"What it is," he says, "is we're just trying to be left alone, you know, to live the way we want to."
"Yes," she says. "That's not so easy. We know all about that. Someone always wants to get involved."
Father's hair is starting to stick up because of the air in the room, lifting to show his ears. I reach up to feel how mine is sticking up.
"Your hair is two different colors," the boy, Paul, says.
"We dyed it," I say. "Now it's growing back my real color."
When we finish eating there's nothing to do and not very much space. The lady and the boy do not quite have their eyes closed but they aren't saying anything.
"Caroline," Father says. "This kind of round structure is known as a yurt. We're lucky these people are here with their yurt tonight." He turns toward the lady. "At least let us sit out of the way," he says. "The two of you can stretch out to sleep."
"We like it this way," she says.
"We're used to it, we're comfortable."
"You'll sleep sitting up?" Father says. "We like it this way," the boy says.
We take out our clean socks and underwear to use as pillows beneath our heads. Father blows the candle dark and we stretch out.
In the darkness the buzz of the walls crackles in one place and then another with a little white light and then it will just relax into the buzz that is almost a hum. The wind outside whistles hard and then into a deeper kind of sound. It blows the snow like mist across the window that I am watching and then right at the window so it's like someone throwing a handful of white sand against the glass. On my side I feel Father pressed against me, between me and the lady and the boy and I can hear them breathing through their mouths and I know how they look, sitting there. I am not cold and I am not exactly warm. I am thinking that the wind sounds like a ghost and then I am thinking about the picture that Miss Jean Bauer showed me of the house in the storm and the story I told about the people inside and the people outside seeing the windows and being cold. This tonight is kind of the same as that and also kind of different but it's still almost like I could see that it would happen to us from all the way back then.
I open my eyes in the morning and I've turned over to my other side during the night. Father faces me, snoring softly and past his shoulder I can see the lady and the boy, Susan and Paul, still sitting on the benches, still leaning against the wires. She wears a thin copper strand as a necklace. He has a necklace and bracelets too. They sit watching us and my eyes are barely open so they can't even tell.
"It's a man and a girl," Paul says.
"They came last night," Susan says. Her blond hair is so thick it's almost matted. It isn't sticking up and staticky like Father's or mine that I can feel around my face. Paul still wears the striped yellow and black stocking cap.
"They're our friends?" he says.
"Yes," she says. "We're going to have a fun day."
"They came last night," he says.
Without opening my eyes wider I stretch out my hand and touch Father's neck just below his whiskers. He opens his eyes and I watch his face as he remembers where we are and smiles to see me.
"Caroline," he says. He sits up and stretches his long arms over his head and groans. "Good morning," he says to Susan and Paul. "Looks like the weather cleared some."
Outside the window it is bright white everywhere but the snow isn't falling. The sky is pale blue, hardly darker than the snow.
"We really owe you," Father says. "It was so late last night. We were in quite a predicament."
"You had to sleep somewhere," Susan says.
"Are there any outlets here?" Father says, "or just all the wires? I don't imagine you have a way to heat up water?"
"No," she says.
"Did you tap into the transformer out on the pole yourselves," he says, "or did someone else string that wire? Ingenious."
"We have water," she says.
"We have water, too," he says. "I'm just thinking about getting some breakfast together."
I sit up too. I feel a sharpness in my throat from breathing the humming dry air all night. The bread we bought at Ray's IGA isn't too crushed since it was in the top of Father's pack. With a fork we can hold slices close to the walls and toast them that way. We eat toast and apricot jam. We eat an apple and an orange. Paul and Susan just watch us.
"There's plenty," Father says. "We're happy to share."
Susan is mixing orange powder into plastic jugs of water. Paul holds one up to his mouth. It looks heavy. Bubbles rise up and he makes noises in his throat that make me thirsty.
"That's fine," she says. "We'll just drink for now. It's Tang. You and your girl should have some."
"No, thank you," Father says.
"Is it like orange juice?" I say and feel that my tongue is a little sore and swollen from where I bit it last night. "I like orange juice," I say.
