My Abandonment, page 3
We squint into the sun. A dog barks, so close to my ears, in the back of a truck speeding past. I look back behind us where airplanes slide in and rise up from the airport. I've never been on an airplane, not that I can remember. Further than the airport there are mountains. Mount Hood in snow a little to the right, and Mount St. Helens, a volcano on the left. They are too far to walk to. If we had a car we could drive to them but we will never have a car.
The bridge shakes and trembles beneath my feet. Halfway across is almost halfway home. The trees are a solid changing green and as you come closer they break apart and separate so you can see how it works. Looking up to the left I can see all the green trees of the forest park and can guess where our home is, where someone in the lookout could see us now. Someone could walk into our house if they could find it and we couldn't do anything about it. At least Randy is with me, and Father, who could make another house any time or place.
We're almost to the forest park when I see the orange spots against the green trees.
"What are those orange men doing?" I say.
"Who?" Father squints. "Criminals," he says.
"What are they doing?"
"Whatever those police say. You see those two men? And that white truck has dogs in it, so if any of the criminals tries to run away they let the dogs loose to catch them."
"How many dogs?" I squint to see the truck better but it is far away.
"Those men have to clean up all along the highway," Father says, "and cut back the tall grass since they did something wrong and got caught."
"They did a crime," I say. "Criminals."
"Exactly," Father says.
"Like what?"
"Let's walk. Don't worry about them, Caroline. We have ourselves to worry about, and that's plenty."
The red spots on his neck have dried and I reach up and brush them off.
"Thank you, Caroline," he says.
"Shaver," I say.
Father is strict. He has to be strict. That doesn't mean he knows everything I do or think. There are all kinds of things he's taught me and ways I've taught myself and things I've learned. There's the animals and then there's sounds and actions and feelings that not even the trees or plants are making. I am the one who knows about food in the forest park, the best places for blackberries and when the morels are up I know where to find them and the mushroom harvests are maybe when we eat best. There are ferns you can also eat and of course the things I grow. Once I found a patch of mint growing wild by just the smell and also wild ginger but those are more flavors than food.
Sometimes a stone will roll up a hill. Or a stone will leap in the air and rap against another stone or a tree like he is angry at them. I have seen this happen. I have seen a fallen tree slowly right itself and its dead branches will sprout leaves.
One alone time I hear a noise and see Father behind a bush, watching me which is not what he is supposed to be doing. I can use his tricks against him, though. I can be more patient than him, wait for his attention to drift. I do things he doesn't know about and I have places where he's never been.
I have my own lookout all covered in branches, high off the ground. I climb into it and rest on my back. The sound of the wind is wonderful and always changing. The airplanes fly over with their sound. They leap from space to space between the trees. I hear the dogs coming and turn over on my stomach.
They bite at each others' shoulders and get snarled up and plow sideways into the bushes but let loose so they don't fall behind and can catch up. I think the head dog is a girl dog, brown and without a collar even if some of the dogs have collars and Lala just keeps running and running and the other dogs, some of them might be coyotes but Father says that's impossible even if there are coyotes in the forest park. The other dogs are all shapes and sizes and all different colors. There are usually more than ten but not twenty and today almost twenty. They follow Lala since they think she knows something or is going somewhere just by the way she runs and the truth is I think is that it's just that she likes to run so much and she's happy. I know how she feels.
Even after they are gone the bushes are still snapping back. I can still hear the sound of snarling and panting and breaking sticks.
Now Father comes walking silently through the trees, a brown paper bag in his hand. Even from up high he looks tall. He wears his city clothes. His hair is shiny, wet down and his face is smooth. I duck down before he looks behind him or checks the sky like he does. I am down on the ground behind him and he doesn't hear. I follow.
He looks all around again before he steps out of the forest and onto the street, the sidewalk. His steps are long. I am after him. Still barefoot I'm careful, one block almost away and I'm shivering even though the sun is not quite down and it's warm. I can feel people in the houses looking out and the people in the cars driving by and I don't know what Father would say if I catch up or if he looks back. I'm afraid. My breath is hard. I turn and race back to the forest park, the safe dark shadows of the trees stretching out to meet me. Back inside I breathe slow, easier. I am walking deeper and I am thinking it's fine if Father has secrets since I have secrets. We trust. And I am also thinking that it is not okay to have a secret where he leaves me behind even if I'm being alone.
I can now run for five minutes without slowing at all. I practice. With only Randy in my hand I leap over stumps, ferns, check my watch, circle back, practice being able to breathe after all that without making a sound.
The hinged back of a book. Strength of character or strength of willpower. A sharp or bony projection such as found on a porcupine.
***
The sunlight is still not down to us and the ground is damp and cool. Father's red frame pack is full and the only thing in my pack is Randy.
"Wear shoes," Father says.
"Why?"
"They don't have to know everything about the way we are," he says. "Let's go."
We do not walk in a straight line to the men's camp. We take a different path every time so we don't wear down a trail and lead people to us.
As we walk he says the kind of thing he always says: "You notice how there are no women there at night, no girls who sleep there, how you've never seen a baby there. That's because it's too dangerous, because the men can't be trusted. You notice how they move their camp all the time and how only the rangers pick up after them. They break into the hikers' cars in the parking lot and steal things and that draws plenty of attention, you know. Without the men's camp, our lives would be easier, here."
"Still," I say, "we barter with them. How come I get no summer vacation from school?"
He doesn't answer. He just grunts and leads the way. Maple-seed pods spin down, helicoptering, but I don't use that word.
I hear Father's name and mine shouted from above, a lookout in the trees. If we wanted to slip in without them seeing we could but today it doesn't matter.
The flies are on my face and hands already. Father is slapping them away from his own face. There are always flies everywhere here since the men don't hardly dig latrines or they don't go far enough and let trash pile up too. When the flies get too bad or if the rangers break it up they just move the camp and you sometimes walk through where an old camp has been and there's still trash and fire rings and everything is beaten down and foul and it takes a long time for anything to grow.
The friendly dogs reach us first, jumping up to lick, their dirty paws.
"Fleas," Father warns me. "Remember what happened last time."
The long grass is all stomped down and there are cigarette butts all around and shreds of plastic bags. Clarence with the red beard is older and mostly in charge. He sees us and stands and walks across. He's already licking his lips around inside that beard and reaching out his scabby hands to hold the things that Father is unpacking.
Behind Clarence is Richard, who is looking at me. He has drawn lightning bolts in black pen on the sides of his jeans and he's wearing a bright orange T-shirt that anyone could see through the forest from a mile away. He's twenty or so, Richard. His bleached out hair is pulled into rubber bands like ten nubby horns on top of his head. He won't get too close or talk straight to me since he's afraid of Father.
"I'll show you something," he says like he's not talking to me, and then he walks on his hands with his boots kicking the air so mud flies off. He does a cartwheel and a round off and leaps sideways making sure I'm watching.
I stay close like Father said but I don't watch or listen to the bartering. There are too many people around, not to mention Richard who is looking sideways at me and rocking from foot to foot like he might try another trick while he is singing this song I've heard him sing before, all about the girl with my name who lost her long hair and who used to be happy and who cannot be found:
"Oh, Caroline, no," he sings. "Who took that look away?"
"Could you shut up?" Father says and Richard turns away, quiet, and all the dogs' ears prick at the sound of Father's deep voice. These are not the ones that run with Lala, these always stay near the men and sometimes have ropes around their necks and will sometimes be in the city when the men are begging on a sidewalk since people will give money if they see a dog.
There are three different fires going and that's one place you can really get warm even though I understand why Father does not allow fires. One man at the nearest one has his feet almost in the fire and he's fallen backward over a log and is stretched out snoring with his back in the mud.
The shredded paper people are skinnier than the Skeletons and they're twitchy, crouched around as they fit pages and words together, trying to find out something they can use to get money or something. Names and numbers, Father told me. Credit cards and social security numbers. They don't look up for anyone or any sound. They hardly have any teeth.
Over at the furthest away fire is a group of people I know. They are a family of people but they are not actually a family they just all stay together like one since it's safer. I call them the Skeleton Family in my mind since they're so skinny. The oldest ones are named Johnny and Isabel who are like the parents even if they aren't the parents. They tell everyone what to do. They don't sleep at the men's camp I think but sometimes visit. A girl named Valerie waves at me and I wave back and the way she waves is like we're still friends and she knows that I can't go over there by her Skeleton Family and have to stay close to Father. He will shout if I go closer.
A few times here I played with Valerie. The Skeletons mostly live in the city which is one reason Father doesn't like them. They beg money and maybe steal. They only sleep in the forest park if they're afraid or if the police are sweeping or something so Father says if they're here it's bad for everyone. People were never supposed to live in cities. They gathered together since they were scared and then living like that only made them more and more afraid. Valerie is nice, though. She is a year older than me and hasn't hardly read any books at all and says she doesn't care. Last time she had a kitten that she let me pet. Black and white with runny eyes it could barely walk.
"Okay, Caroline," Father says. "Let's go now."
In two minutes the flies let up and the air is sweet again. It's like there are more birds and the leaves of the trees are greener the further away we walk.
"Richard," Father says, "stopped getting smarter a long time ago. You're finished speaking with him."
"Yes," I say. "It's weird," I say. "Going there."
"If you're going to say something," Father says, "be specific. You just said nothing at all."
"Well," I say, "you can go there and do nothing, really, and still when you leave you just feel tired."
"That's because of the way they live," he says. "They're tired all the time and they don't even know it. You're right, Caroline. However good the bartering, it's just not worth it. And today? Just these two blue tarps, one ripped. Not much, but better than having to carry all that junk we traded all the way back down to the city. Still, you're right. That's the last time we go there."
"Ever?" I say.
"I don't know if we're getting better," he says, "or they're getting worse or both, but it's just gotten to this point. And it's not good for either one of us, being exposed to that. Now look here," he says, and pulls back the bushes.
We're back at the dead deer and there are only a few tufts of hair, a dried-out strip of skin. The white skull is stripped clean and part of the rib cage and the bones are scattered around disappearing into the bushes like the skeleton fell out of the sky and shattered in every direction.
"Look at this, Caroline," Father says. "If you were in a schoolhouse you could never learn like this. You're going to be the smartest of them all."
We look at the deer a while longer, kicking gently with the toes of our shoes, before we turn and start back for home, walking again.
"You really don't like Richard," I say.
"What's to like?" Father says. "He's a fool."
"What about Nameless?"
"He wasn't there, was he? He's gone."
"He's still in the forest park," I say. "Just not in the camp. He left it."
"A fool also," Father says. "Have you seen him?"
"Where else would he go?" I say.
"We have the liveliest interest in a wild man," Father says. "They feel the impulse from the vernal wood."
Father will talk like this sometimes, saying things like he memorized them and someone said them before or he read them in a book. It's a hard thing to answer.
"But Nameless left the camp so maybe he's smart," I say. "He doesn't steal and he eats what he finds. He can run faster on all fours than most people can run on two legs."
"The liveliest interest!" Father says, his voice rising.
"What?" I say. "Do you think a person can really eat banana slugs? Richard told me that Nameless does."
"Maybe," Father says. "Look that up in your books, or next time we're at the library. Why not? People eat snails."
"Snails?" I say.
"What are you so worked up about?" Father says. He reaches his hand out and pulls me close, the side of my body against the side of his body. "You don't need to worry about these people," he says. "You're better than they are. Smarter and more civilized. We've already worked so hard. Are you ready to study this afternoon? Geometry?"
"Chess first?" I say.
"Only one game," he says, but once we get home and get settled we play three and the last one takes longer than half an hour.
In chess the knight is a horse and he moves in the shape of an L. I wonder what Randy thinks about that as a way to get around.
Two squirrels are chasing each other like they're not really fighting but playing like they're friends. Squirrels' memories are much shorter than ours even if their lives are much shorter too so maybe they remember more carefully and that's what sets them twitching and jerking around. In alone time I like to follow but it's not always easy to follow a squirrel. It depends what it's up to or where it wants to go and when two are chasing each other that makes it trickier so I just keep walking.
To follow a bird is impossible. I can follow a banana slug or some ants for hours and that whole time my thoughts slip away and I have to keep bringing myself back to remind me what the insects are doing.
People are easy to follow, and it's amazing the things they do when they think no one can see them. I follow joggers or even Richard or men I don't know from the men's camp and no one ever knows I'm there.
This morning a boy and girl come walking up the gravel road in the middle of the forest park called Leif Ericksen Drive. At first I think they are two boys. In the trees alongside the road, fifteen feet away, I walk like they are, keeping up. The girl holds a piece of yellow candy in her teeth and the boy snatches it, puts it in his mouth and I wonder if I were there, their third friend, if he would pass the candy to me so I could try it since I am not allowed to eat candy. They are my age or barely older.
The boy and girl slip down a side trail and I stay higher on my own trail. They're down in a hollow where there's a clearing and a tall round blue water tank with a flat top and a ladder I can't reach. That's where they climb and start to dance around with their arms like they are pretending to swim. Then the girl takes off her shirt and the boy is in his white underwear and sits down. The girl keeps dancing so her dark hair comes loose and her white shirt leaps all the way down and is caught in some bushes below, her shoes kicked off and her bra but I can't see much. I can hear myself breathing as I watch. She sits down next to him, close like they are talking and then after a while she puts her bra back on and stands and goes back to the ladder and slides down a rope the last ten feet. She finds her shirt and her backpack where she left it. The boy comes down after and then I lose track even if I could still follow if I wanted.
Father and I are supposed to meet at home at eleven to go over my homework but I'm over an hour early so I take the E encyclopedia and climb into the lookout. It's impossible to climb with both the encyclopedia and Randy so I take two trips. No horse has ever been higher in trees. Then I lie on the narrow platform on my back, the book beneath my head and Randy on my chest and I think a while.
An airplane slides along, the white line behind it. Far away I can hear cars on the freeway, a sound I wouldn't recognize if Father hadn't told me.
It is already a hot day, the legs of my pants rolled up almost to my knees and I am thinking of standing and taking off my clothes and hanging them in the branches around since sometimes in my alone time I like to look carefully at my body to see how it's been changing. There is a way that bodies can look that mine is starting to look like. The white bra of the girl on the water tank, the shape of her makes me think, makes me want to check my own body.
I have my shirt pulled off down to my undershirt when I hear cracking sticks below, branches pulled back and whipping around and then coming closer I hear breathing. Huffing and puffing is the only way to say it. I turn over onto my stomach and peek over just as a man comes busting into the clearing.
