Shelter (1994) Read online

  "Why did you have to lose the scour pad, Lenny? It's stupid to wash them with rocks."

  "It's stupid to wash them at all in cold water with hand soap. If we can't get soap in the stream, how do they expect us to rinse dishes?"

  Now Buddy picked up pebbles to skitter along the water, to hit the plates they'd stacked, and the pebbles made sounds like rain blown suddenly off leaves. Lenny looked up; he'd known she would, but Cap kept on talking.

  "If you'd gotten all the food off your share last night, we wouldn't have to do them over again..."

  And while she talked Buddy came into the clearing in a- skitter, like a deer. Lenny was barefoot like him, her toenails painted with flaking pieces of red, and Buddy crouched across from her with the narrow stream between them and held his head just so, like her, moved his hands, his foot, and when she shook her hair out, he shook his too. She laughed and he made a somersault, rubbed his eyes like his hands were paws, peeked about like an animal waking up.

  "Buddy, you found us," Lenny said. "You're always finding us, aren't you. Such a wise guy."

  Cap was talking. "This kid is everywhere. Don't you ever stay home, kid? What's he doing now?"

  "Well, he was me but now he's a raccoon."

  "Great. If he's going to bug us, give him some dishes to wash."

  Cap tossed him a few plates that Buddy held up with his wrists to catch the light and show how coons liked shiny things. Then he licked them and sniffed them and trundled round them in a lumpy crawl and banged them together while the girls laughed. When they laughed like that, he was too big to be a raccoon anymore and he had to stand up and jump and do his best handstand, the one where he kept his legs straight until he flipped backwards and landed on his feet. He bunched down in himself, sat on his haunches and twitched his face, scratched his head with his back foot like a rabbit. Finally they clapped for him.

  "Shake the water off those dishes, would you?" Lenny threw some of the plates to Buddy.

  The metal clanked when the plates banged and he asked Lenny were they going to breakfast, why weren't they going, why not? "I got me some rolls in my pocket," he said, and pulled them free. He didn't want the rolls or even like rolls so much, mostly he liked to hold them in his hands when they were first warm from the pans. But now the bread was squeezed small, and Cap rolled her eyes at him so he threw the rolls high in the air and let them fall for birds. He grabbed the metal plates on his side of the stream, the clean ones that still smelled of the water, and jumped, jumped, jumped their wetness onto his skin, happy to hear Lenny talk, happy the way her voice was low and deep, happy Cap liked her too, made her talk and answer, and the two of them were like two birds flying, gliding up and down and crowing warnings.

  "Lenny got us in trouble, Buddy." Cap was smiling, making fun. "She didn't do her housework well enough last night. But she does some things real well if I teach her."

  "Oh, shut up," Lenny said. "Really, don't be telling him things."

  "Why not? You think he's going to tell his mother?"

  Cap snorted and Lenny shoved her so she lost her balance and her foot went in the stream.

  "If you want to borrow my sneakers, you better be nice," Cap said.

  Lenny made a face before she told Buddy, like he was grown up, "Cap lost my shoes last night and now she wants me to wear hers that are pink and too big."

  "Baloney," Cap said, "they're not lost, they're still at Turtle Hole. Oh, it's beautiful there, Lenny, wasn't it beautiful? I thought this morning when they got us up they'd found out everything, but it was only because you didn't wash the dishes right." And Cap jumped up to dance Lenny around in a circle, half shaking, holding her. Buddy skipped the stream to slip himself between them and tangle their legs; when they fell down with him their bodies were heavy and warm and smelled so different from Mam, they smelled like warm candy with a bitter tinge, like something he could eat. He thought about the rolls this morning, rising in Mam's camp ovens, the way the bread got so big it grew up from the pans and spilled over swollen, and he felt so dizzy he held on to Lenny's waist, clasping his hands across her stomach even when she tried to pry him off. He felt the tension of her muscles and the cleft of her buttocks against his face and he was silent while she laughed. He pressed hard against her and squeezed his eyes shut until the girls tickled him, digging their fingers into his ribs till it hurt and he squealed and let go.

  Then they were stacking the piles of plates and gathering things like he wasn't there, and he yelled out how Frank and him were going to trap a rabbit, Frank and him were making a rabbit trap out of Mrs. Thompson-Warner's lectern crate, Frank and him were going to get a rabbit for a secret pet, Frank and him were going to keep the rabbit at Frank's tent in a cage so Dad couldn't eat it. Buddy saw the girls didn't believe him about the rabbit but Frank's name got them looking, they looked at each other and wouldn't talk anymore, only stacked the plates and cups in a basket to take back to the campsite while Buddy stepped into the stream, splashing, and sang out, "Frank, Frank, Frank..."

  Lenny smiled at him. Then her serious voice said, "That's enough now. Be quiet."

  And he was quiet. The clearing was quiet and they were walking back up through the woods toward tents he could just see through the leaves. Those tents sagged from their rope sides and smelled like rope and hay and dust. Buddy liked them. They were better than any house because you could tie up the walls. He liked how you walked in the front but you could fall off the back, the way the floor stopped six feet in midair. When the Seniors were at breakfast he sometimes circled back up to their tents and found Lenny's cot. He stayed in her tent, lay on the cool wood floor and looked at the hill dropping off below till the start of the woods and, far down, the tops of the trees. He couldn't see the rest of camp and camp wasn't there, only this place that could be a tree house or a ship in the air, and he put his face on Lenny's pillow and his hands on her green army blanket and once he looked in her footlocker. He found a white T-shirt wadded up at the bottom, a shirt like a boy or anyone would wear. Seemed like she didn't want it anymore; Buddy folded it into a square and put it in the front of his own shirt to take home. In her stationery box there were stamps and pictures, little gray ones from the picture machine at the drugstore in Gaither. He saw that Lenny had been younger even than him, a little kid, and her hair had been white then, like his was, and the woman who didn't smile must be her mother. The blond man in the pictures had strong arms like Dad's but he didn't have tattoos like Dad, no heart with a sword, no Lucky Devil. The paper in the box was pale pink and too thin to be much good, and down underneath there was a ring with just a smear of hard glue where the jewel should be. It came to him: Lenny would want a jewel, not a rabbit.

  Now he took the crumpled spinach leaves from his pocket and threw them into the air. He moved his feet in the cool of the stream and pretended to look for jewels, combing the smallest pebbles with his toes, stirring up clouds in the clear water. He heard Lenny and Cap walking, running, moving down the trail from Highest to the quad. He wanted to be with them, following rules, but the day stretched before him, limitless like all the days. At the dining hall Mam would be serving up breakfast. There, the long tables of girls made a noise like acres of cackling birds. In the kitchen their roar came and went, admitted and closed off by the swinging kitchen doors that opened and shut as Mam and two other women from her church carried forth heaps of food in big round bowls. Buddy wanted to be there but Mam said he was underfoot during meals, get on out of here, I'll land on you like white on rice.

  So Buddy went anywhere and everywhere he wasn't allowed to go. Mealtimes, while the dining hall rumbled like it might burst, Buddy could make his rounds of the cabins where the Junior girls slept, look in the unlocked trunks, inspect the counselors' rooms that were always straight back of the foyer. Those were tiny little rooms where two grownup girls lived and kept their dirty underwear in plastic bags, underwear that was shimmery and small, girls' things, not like Mam's. Early in the mornings, he made his e
xcursions to the empty infirmary, to deserted Highest. Later he went to the swinging bridge to watch the men lay pipe. The camp floated in a dream, the heat seemed less hot, a breeze was discernible, the flag could be heard to gently waver if Buddy stood just at the foot of the tall pole. No birds wheeled in the sky.

  There was only Frank, reading comics and listening to his transistor radio. Frank's tent was in a clearing by the woods, not so far from Turtle Hole. Buddy could only visit if he brought Frank presents—candy bars, jawbreakers, a Pepsi filched from the kitchen, or a cold beer of Dad's, if Dad was drinking enough not to notice one missing.

  Sometimes Buddy took a beer and tried to drink it himself, or he sat on the swinging bridge that moved above the river and dripped the cold liquid down his legs while the workmen dug dirt and dragged pipes. He called them scary men and pretended they were the Russians; he could watch them from the bridge and think he was a spy. Every day he looked at them and heard their far-off voices laugh and mutter and curse. They wore uniforms the color of dried mud and smoked cigarettes that hung from their lips when they talked. They looked like Russians to Buddy, but he'd never seen them up close. Afternoons he sometimes sneaked into heritage class and heard Mrs. Thompson-Warner talk about Russians to the Junior girls, about the fiery furnace Russians had built in the basement of their embassy in Washington. The furnace could burn bone to ash and people had gone into the embassy and never come out. Buddy didn't know what an embassy was but he thought the scary men could build a furnace that burned people up, they were like the devil, they could make a fire that hot. And the words he heard them saying through warm, still mornings and sweltering afternoons were hell and damn and sweet jesus christ and goddamn you fucking fool. The words swam along under the rattle of the river.

  The river was gentle now but Buddy knew how wild it was in spring, how snow up the mountain melted and swelled the river to a torrent, how broken trees rode the crests of the brown water and caught in the bridge, tore the bridge loose nearly every year. Mrs. Thompson-Warner said how Russians didn't believe in God, but even the scary men would shut up in the spring when the river was raging, they wouldn't be digging here so close the banks. Next spring the river would be thunder and kill their voices and suck the heavy pipes into itself. If they were still here, the river would get them, but meanwhile Buddy spent his time on the bridge, carving one small cross in each plank with his sharp stone. Crosses kept the scary men below him, and lately he had known to carve the cross in the morning, not wait too long in the day. He thought he might as well go now and he felt in his pocket for the pointy rock he always carried. The rock was good and sharp but not too big, so it never worried a hole in his pants. He could turn it end to end in his pocket and he turned it now as he walked alone on the trail.

  Lenny and Cap were far below him, their voices distant and fading. If he cut off through the trees and dropped straight down, he could still beat them to the quad, he could sneak in at the back door of the kitchen and grab some bacon before the girls even sat down at their table. He could be eating and running the far boundary of the camp, along the river to the swinging bridge and beyond to Turtle Hole. Cap had said Lenny's shoes were at Turtle Hole, but girls never walked that far, they never swam at Turtle Hole, they swam in the river across the meadow from Great Hall. Their swimming place was marked off with yellow ropes and they swam in teams, back and forth, and the youngest ones wore life jackets so they wouldn't get their faces in the water. They all wore tight rubber caps and kept their hair dry and some of them paddled like dogs. Buddy had never seen Lenny swim but he thought she must curl her long body and pulse forward, fast and liquid like a snake on a surface streak.

  Buddy swam fast and silent too; he liked to swim naked at Turtle Hole and dry in the sun, sitting crouched on the diving rock. Often he went swimming after doing his time at the swinging bridge. The cool water of Turtle Hole drove scary men out of his head. He'd swim to the center where the water was deepest and kick his legs, excited he'd made an escape; he'd imagine the crosses he'd carved, stretched out across the entire bridge like the tiny tracks of some creature the devil would always fear. Today he could carve the cross a little later. He wanted to go to Mam and see her serve up breakfast. Maybe she'd sit him down with a big plate of food and he'd stay quiet, invisible, and watch. Mam had told him how the Holy Spirit was invisible; that was true, but Buddy knew he could hear the Spirit and smell it and see its tracks in the woods. Now when he was bounding down the mountain, taking the steep grades so fast he didn't have to think where to put his feet, how to grab branches and direct his slide, he thought he heard the Holy Spirit whistling past his face. The Spirit breathed on his face and in his ears, filled him up, smelled of pine and dirt and wind, made him full and perfect and he could not make a mistake, he flew and the earth fell away beneath him.

  ALMA: STARS AND BREAD

  At breakfast everyone was encouraged to eat some of everything; snacks were not offered between meals. A great roar of gluttonous eating and talking crested in the dining hall, a building smaller than Great Hall though large enough to accommodate the many rows of girls on white benches at long white tables. How many tables? Later they might all try to remember, but it seemed a vast confusion of tables and platters, with the swinging doors to the kitchen propped open and fat Hilda Carmody, the head cook who lived in the shanties farther up the river, scraping fried potatoes from a great black skillet into a voluminous bowl. Little Buddy hung at her skirts and she shook him off like a floppy dog, and as he hit the floor one of the doors was abruptly shoved to from within. The platters were in place on the tables and everyone sang grace. Grace existed in the dining hall like the eye of a storm. Those in the storm's eye heard, even in a moment of stillness, the echo and rattle of the circling wind; they were meant to sing only when the food was in front of them, mixing its smells and steam in the brief cool of the morning. Their joined voices climbed a breathy stairsteps and startled them all with the round, windy sound of their prayer. God is good and God is great, they asserted in a questioning tone, then answered themselves with grave words, a request for what was owed, a benediction. By His hand must all be fed, give us Lord our daily bread. Amen. Amen. Amen. And this last utterance of solemn assent was drawn out to five musical tones. They might have been angels. Many of them closed their eyes. They touched their own clasped hands with moving lips, feeling the breath and shape of words that tasted of familiar flesh. Bread was in evidence, endless mounds of warm homemade rolls served in dented metal pans. Alma thought of the rolls as the fruit of a living being—they were so warm and dense. Of course Mrs. Carmody made the dough in the afternoons, stirring with a great wooden ladle in the crockware vat they'd all seen in the kitchen, but Alma wanted the bread to have been grown by the body of a woman, laid like eggs from her private parts, or dropped from her fingertips like immediately edible fruit. Browned and buttered, the rolls tore like innocent, bloodless flesh. Alma ate them; Delia liked to crush one in her hands, worry and roll and squeeze it, turn it into dough again as though the whole enterprise had been a mistake. Alma obliterated hers with red jam, the same jam they'd eaten at school hot lunches all winter; it came in big plastic jugs and Alma had seen those jugs in the camp pantry.

  Alma was a little scared of Hilda Carmody. When Hilda lifted her big arms over her head to grab some implement, she breathed heavily and the flesh of her arms hung down like wattles. Her hands were dimpled and she worked relentlessly. Each day she kneaded dough by hand, lost to the elbows in the big vat. She gazed down at what she lifted with an expression of placid concentration and never saw the girls watching her, looking in the kitchen windows on their way to or from activities. The way Hilda moved, working rhythmically at something unseen, rocking her great body, reminded Alma of that man at the drive-in movie, the one who'd stood behind the cement block refreshment bar and kept his hands in his privates, pulling and tugging. Alma had thought he was urinating, the way he kept his head lowered and stood with his feet apart, and s
he'd stepped back in the shadows to look, away from the kids in line for Cokes. The ground was littered with the dirtied, red-and-white-swirled rectangles of crushed popcorn boxes, with cigarette butts and crumpled playbills. The man never looked at Alma, never looked up, but turned to face her so she could see what he held in his hands. There was a slapping sound, fast and violent. He was hurting himself and something came out of him; he bled milk like a broken plant. She could hear her own heart beating and she stepped away into the light, dirtied by her own curiosity, dirty because he was dirty and she'd watched, dirty because she'd left him standing there. A groan escaped him as she turned away. His eyes had not caught her but the sound he'd made found its mark. She could never be sure she was remembering exactly what she'd seen, but her memory of the sound never altered. That strangled, satisfied Oh, like something maimed and alive. Alma heard it in her sleep. When she saw Mrs. Carmody through the kitchen window, glimmered by the dust on the old screen, Alma thought the big woman knew the sound too, and felt it in her hands. Hilda Carmody slapped the dough side to side, staring into the crock as into a well or pool, finally lifting the crock itself to her breasts with both arms. She'd carry it to the black iron stove and cover it with cloths as though it were a being requiring warmth.

  The warmth of the food made Alma sleepy again. She squinted through curling steam above the platters to see Mrs. Thompson-Warner seating herself at the other end of the table. Today it was their turn to have Mrs. T. as breakfast guest. When she sat with one of the three tables of older girls it was called a mealtime lecture, since the Senior girls of Highest were too busy in the wild to have heritage classes, but when she sat with the Juniors they were meant to converse. Alma always tried to sit near her, which meant Delia was forced into the same vicinity out of loyalty. Delia regarded Mrs. T. now with sullen skepticism, then, dutifully resigned, stood up and shifted places as Alma led her closer to Mrs. T.