Shelter (1994) Read online

  Now Parson could hear the Devil walk near the shack at night, stalking spirits in the vaporous air. The devil made a scrunching sound in the grasses and leaves and loose dirt, a sound like a creature with tiny feet, and there was the airy, slick whish of the Devil's probing tongue, tasting and wanting, just on the other side of the thin board wall. The mist of Turtle Hole was like wet smoke in the hours before dawn. In those hours Parson had to stay awake to pray, his was a consecrated soul, no matter that the Devil slithered and wandered, sniffing at the corners of the boards, picking away with his bony, glowing fingers at the rotting wood. Poor devil, the country people would say of a man in the grip of poverty, disease, dissolution. And that face of the Devil pulled and sucked at Parson, weeping. Wasn't the Devil a fallen child, too hungry to eat, starving, ravenous, alone so long he didn't remember who'd first cast him out, a boy child, abandoned, lost? Parson had to pray the old prayers, ones he'd learned when Preacher had first called him Parson Boy and made him kneel to speak. Those prayers were words and more than words, flailing chants that set the air to humming, made it thick, kept the Devil pressed back beyond the boundaries of the Kingdom, back where the Devil moaned and cried, outcast, betrayed, while Preacher rattled on like a man wielding chains and whips. Back then, Parson lay in his bed in the wooden house by the river in Calvary, not thirty miles from Proudytown and the Industrial School for Boys where he'd spent the last six years. He lay in bed in his closet room behind the small kitchen and listened to Preacher pray alone in the parlor furnished with folding chairs, chairs filled three meetings a week with Christ's pilgrims. Phrases cut and slashed across Parson's vision like colors and worked their way into his sleep. Hear ye, Jerusalem! Cast out your sinners and entreat your guests, slick with the liquid gold of the Devil's songs ... Parson mouthed the cadences of the lines and forgot what his name had been before, at the orphanage in Huntington, the city and the dingy park, at the foster homes where he'd always just arrived or was preparing to leave until the last, the one where he'd set the house on fire to get away and old Mr. Harkness had died, stone drunk on the broken bathroom floor, where he'd staggered from Parson's bed. Harkness was one of the Devil's weaker servants, but foster homes for older kids were hard to come by in the coal towns, and the social workers sometimes placed boys with a widower on a farm. The caseworker called Harkness, rheumy-eyed and sober, the picture of sincerity; Parson had been there four months, along with another boy of seven or eight who never talked, just ate his rice and beans and grits and boiled chicken at Harkness's scarred table without looking up. There was the familiar mud of the country winter and the hogs and the six goats to milk, and that was all right, the goats were warm and quick. Their strange vertical pupils scared the little kid, who tailed along after Parson regardless, eager to be outside because Harkness was in the kitchen, drinking. After dark he took his Wild Turkey out of the tin cup that hung by the door on a hook. Even then he didn't hit them; he staggered, cooking suppers, and reeled around in the downstairs rooms after they'd gone to bed. Later he came up, crying softly or whimpering, and lay down fully clothed on their beds. The little boy slept under his bed but Parson lay wrapped in his blankets, motionless under Harkness's tentative, cautious touch until the old man fell asleep or stumbled away, afraid. Now in the shack at night Parson watched the shapely dark congeal into faces, all their powerful faces, his succession of keepers and parents. Harkness wasn't the worst of them but he was helpless, sober all morning at his half-time job as a postal worker, offering his apologetic grin, seeing their clothes were clean and making a show of buying new schoolbooks instead of used ones. The night of the fire was cold and Harkness's cold face felt dead to the touch, used and stretched like putty. His mouth and the smell of the whiskey were on Parson's ears and neck. Harkness begged to get into the blankets and did, then walked to the bathroom, fell down. Parson got up and went downstairs. There were still hot coals in the fireplace and he pulled the iron grate across the bricks to the rug, and the rug caught and began to blaze. It was warm quickly and there was a lot of light, and Parson went back up and pulled the kid from under the bed and they went out the bathroom window, walking over Harkness, and as they slid down the roof they could feel it was already hot and smoke came off the shingles. The kid said they'd better get the goats out, since the barn was attached to the house. They did and the goats went off, their hooves crackling over dry leaves in the dark.

  The boys watched the fire from the edge of the woods. They weren't even cold, the old place made such flames, and later at the police station there was a Christmas tree on the desk. Parson told them he made the fire but no one believed him, and the kid said nothing. Parson said other things, how the Devil had licked his ears and breathed on him with his sick breath and begged to get warm. Then he was sent to Proudytown and the psychologist found out he couldn't read. He learned, decoding old texts no longer used by the county schools, a few words to a page with pictures of the blond children and the spotted dog. Run, Spot, run! Betty throws the ball! Beyond the brick facade of the school the winter sky was low slung and yellow. Scrub pine edged the hills, gnarled and overgrown, crushed by the weight of the cold, the damp that smelled of decaying straw. Parson read Bible stories from a children's book and went to the prayer meetings run by Preacher Summers, the volunteer revivalist from Calvary. Everyone called him Preacher. In chapel he turned the lights up bright, then snapped them off and prayed in the sudden dark; once in a downpour he opened the windows wide. Hear the cleansing thunder of the Lord! Among you are souls bound for God, chosen to recognize His enemies and cast them out—the wind may tear the clothes from your backs, the multitude may call you infidel, but the Lord's child never stumbles.

  Here at the camp Parson wore khakis like the others, work clothes given the pipe crew by the foreman. He was in disguise, just like in prison. In the shack at night Parson saw the dead, the legion of the vapor world, and the shades of the living who were marked for death. Carmody floated near the ceiling, leered his snide joke of a grin, or lounged along the low board wall in prison blues. Where you from? You from up in my country? What you in for? He'd laugh, and his laughter was too long and too slow. Not saying, or don't know, maybe. They say you ought to be locked up with the loons. Carmody's mocking words were drawn out like the sounds on Preacher's old Victrola. Preacher used to lay his finger on a record to slow the sound of the hymn, distort it to a garbled rumble: The Devil speaks in many guises, but this is the sound of his dark, sick soul. Never pity those who are sick with evil. The darkness in the shack swelled a little around Preacher's words, rippled, shivered like the skin of a horse. Carmody rippled too. Along the angled rafters Harkness floated in his ill-kempt blue uniform, whimpered like a dog half froze, kicked with his feet as though he were trying to swim. But the river was a ways through the trees and Turtle Hole was too perfect to admit such desolation. Harkness began a low buzzing like a fly trapped in a screen, and Parson slept.

  BUDDY CARMODY: BLACK LEAVES

  No one was safe at church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go. While Dad was away in Carolina they'd walked down the road to the clapboard building maybe three nights a week, winter and summer, and every Sunday. Now they only went if Dad was asleep, but lately he drank himself into a stupor most nights. Then home was like it used to be. Buddy and Mam could play Crazy 8's and Slapjack at the table, and pop corn on the stove in the covered skillet. Buddy hated going to church when it was already dark, pulling on his long pants and a button-collar shirt in the heat. The clothes stuck to his sweat. At least now he didn't have to take a bath first, or Dad might wake up and get to swearing. Mam only wiped Buddy across the face with a cold cloth and made him scrub his hands. Now she shoved him gently toward the sink, whispering at him to hurry up. He squeezed the yellow soap, a slippery rectangular hunk of Fels Naptha she'd brought home from the camp kitchen. The strong-smelling lather stung his scratches.

  Buddy didn't think he remembered Dad from before the prison visits, not
really. He remembered someone, but Dad had gone away. Five years he was gone, and now Buddy wondered why he'd come back. It was like he didn't know he'd left jail, the way he woke up in the dark and didn't know where he was, and then went after Mam like a dog that was near starved and loony. When he was like that, she did what he wanted, and he was so loud he woke Buddy up. Fighting sleep to listen, Buddy got nervous and drowsy like he used to sometimes at school; he'd hear things, and then hear the shivery echo of each word or sound, the echoes coming faster and closer until he couldn't keep his eyes open. Sometimes in the morning Buddy didn't know what he'd really heard or what was animals fighting in his dreams, big animals with vast, muffled forms, making sounds that shook the room.

  "Buddy? You ready?" Mam nodded toward the door. She had on her church clothes that fast.

  He put the soap back on the drainboard and held his hands in cold water, splashed his face. He smelled wild onions on his fingers and wished it were afternoon. During summers when Mam cooked at the camp, he was on his own between meals in the big camp kitchen, wandering back and forth through the woods and along the road, using the house as an outpost he owned in Mam's absence. Now Dad was home, Buddy stayed in the woods and the fields, and walked back with Mam from Camp Shelter after supper. Once they rounded the bend she'd take off her crepe-soled shoes and Buddy would carry them. She'd roll down her nylons that only came to her knees, like socks, and put them in her pocket. My god, she'd tell Buddy, them girls throw away enough food every day to feed us for a month. But she brought supper home to Dad, and she'd found an extra freezer at camp that worked once she plugged it in. Mrs. Thompson-Warner had already told her she could buy it cheap, since it looked like the camp might shut down when the girls left. She was not going to steal food, no, stealing was a sin, but it was all right to freeze leftovers, and when camp closed she hoped she'd get one of the pipe crew to move that big freezer in their truck. Hadn't they said how they liked the lemonade she sent out to them with Frank?

  "Come on out here on the porch and dress. Ain't a soul going to see you, it's full dark, and he's not sleeping sound." She leaned toward Buddy, her bulky shape vanilla-scented, her big arms filmy in her white blouse. Then she turned, her broad skirt preceding him out the door like a dark wall. They huddled down, her knees cracking as she knelt to hold his pants, and she pulled on the shirt and buttoned him in before he'd even got his hands through the cuffs.

  "Mam, this shirt is hot. I'm sweating to pieces."

  "Now, I had to iron it, didn't I? We just get to walking, you'll cool down on the road."

  She was talking and they were down the rickety steps and the house was behind them with Dad in it, asleep like a bomb could sleep, Buddy thought, and the moon was up so bright he could see the shoulders of the road looking blond against dark brush. After the dew came up, the road didn't smell dusty, didn't smoke up a tawny veil that could drift and follow him. Now the road lay still, glowy and damp. It was the same road they walked to Camp Shelter, but church was farther on. The stone pillars of the camp entrance were dark shapes all grown over with vines. Honeysuckle licked up and down their height, countless sprays of blossoms emerging luminously ivory and gold against the dark, stacked rocks. The camp was all hidden, Buddy thought: some drunk going along at night, a drunk on foot, a drunk in a car, might not even find it. Like tonight Dad had cursed how he couldn't drive out of this place, had to walk two mile to even get to a paved road. Maybe he knew a little lady who would lend him a car that worked. You get yourself a car from some rip, better you just keep driving, Mam had told him. I'll drive, he'd said. But how could he, he'd only wreck himself. Maybe he'd get a car and not drink so he could drive.

  "Mam, is our road two miles out to the highway?"

  "No, course not. It's barely a mile. Don't we walk it every day, all winter? We dress warm, why, we're all right." Her breath came in soft, wuffling huffs, a kind of music. "That's why I buy us the best boots I can get, and gloves for inside our mittens, and you got that fur hat I made you."

  Buddy wanted her to stay quiet so he could hear her beside him, the sound coming from above and just ahead of him, a sound familiar as his own heartbeat. Sometimes when he was by himself, he'd open his mouth a little and pant slowly, softly, trying to sound like her. In the winter her breath came out of her like furled clouds. Now she went on like a chant or a song.

  "Wasn't enough for you a whole coat from that fur. Just pieces of an old muskrat jacket I got at Goodwill. Had I found more, I would have lined your coat..."

  He stopped listening, aware of sounds beyond her voice. Just here the road was a space with tall, dense walls of foliage on either side. Honeysuckle trailers moved, slight and wafting. The same trembly flowers grew like a tangled webbing all around the frame church, and Buddy thought he could smell them too, like the heady perfume and the church itself and all the voices singing in it were creeping back along the road. Spirit could creep that way. He smelled it coming toward them.

  "Listen to me, Buddy." Mam was talking still. "Don't you pay Dad any mind when he rails on like he does. He rants out his head."

  "Out his head." Buddy paused. "Why is he like that?"

  "Oh, he didn't used to drink so bad. But he never could stand being cooped up. Jail scared him, I reckon, reminded him of things he tries not to think about." She felt for Buddy behind her, and took his hand. "I know it's scary, but maybe the Lord means you to see what drink does to men. Then you know never to put that poison in yourself."

  Buddy wanted to say Dad was poison. Instead he asked, "Would we ever get us a car?"

  "Couldn't get a car moving on this road in much snow, and takes money to fix cars. They're always breaking down. And it don't hurt people to walk, whatever weather. You know my uncle gave me this house and we own it free and clear." She laughed. "When you were little and starting school, I thought of finding something in town. But those rents were so high! So what I did was get one of those plastic saucer sleds, and I'd pull you all the way down the road to the bus. You had the best time!"

  During the school year, she worked in the kitchen at Buddy's school. She was the biggest of all the big women in white uniforms. It was mostly country kids who ate hot lunch, and Mam who stood behind the counter, spooning red beans onto plastic rectangular plates. Town kids got mad if their beans touched their cornbread. Mam shoved the dense yellow wedges to the side, her hand in a see-through glove the kids called monster hand. When she began working at the sink instead, Buddy could eat better, but he wanted her near him; he'd never ridden the bus without her. Last winter, he'd made her stop pulling him on the sled. It started to scare him, how hard she'd be wheezing by the time they got to the bus stop. If she fell down in the snow, he wouldn't be able to move her.

  "You think you're too grown up for that stuff now," she said. "Remember how we'd hide that saucer in the pine trees and get on the bus, then pull it out in the afternoon and go on back home?"

  "Yeah." He was listening hard. At certain points on the road, he could hear the girls in the upper camp, far up the mountain, singing around their fire. No words, just a windy carrying sound Buddy thought of as Lenny. He thought of the sound as her voice, and he heard it near her even in the daytime, like it wafted off her skin, and nothing could ever touch her or grab her. He'd be safe with Lenny. He was scared at church with Mam. Sitting in the long pews, she was like all the rest, saying amen, nodding, agreeing in a voice Buddy didn't recognize, a voice that was broken, gone soft. He was even scared of the road when they walked to church. It was his road, but at night it led to the church with the round windows that were like eyes. He wanted the sanctuary of the trees, their darkened leaves and layered pewter depths, and he longed to run into the woods where Mam wouldn't follow. He could imagine her standing in the road, looking at the border of the trees as at a surface of unmoving water, shouting his name, but he would have disappeared, vanished. Mam could never track him, no one could, not even Dad. A long time ago he'd learned how to run and move, cleaving sidew
ays and upwards, using roots and vines, using stones in the stream to leave no trail at all. He could be running the stream now, hearing the rattle of the water, flying across and over it to Lenny, but he was here with Mam.

  "Will you look at this?" She pulled his hand for him to stop, and they stood seeing the thickly grown trees, how they were all tangled up with glossy piles of rhododendron. The moon shone bright and just here the honeysuckle had broken out in a long gash of whitey yellow that spilled like a waterfall down a length of green. The smell of it washed over them. "Smells like honey cooked to a boil and cooling in the air. No wonder the bees go wild. But we got it to ourselves now the dew is up."

  "I figure all that's on this road is ours," Buddy said.

  "You do, do you. Even the bees that's thick in the daytime, even that camp where I'm working."

  "We're the only house on the road, and there ain't nobody at the camp all winter, all fall, even all spring."

  She laughed a warm, pleased laugh and moved her fleshy hand to the back of his neck. "That how it seems to you, why that's fine with me. Used to be a couple more families, back before you remember, but they moved out. Reckon they did better in life."

  "Well," Buddy said fiercely, "them old broken houses of theirs don't count. This here is our road."