My Abandonment (19 page)

Only once I get closer do I think that animals could have found Father there and licked and bitten at his bloody hand or pulled at the bones showing in his arm but when I take the branch away he's there like he was. He stares up at the sky. His hair's burned off and his beard and there's frost on his face.

"They were having a party in the cave," I say. "They're all gone but there's still a fire."

The sled has frozen a little to the ground and I kick Father's side by mistake getting it loose. Then I put on my pack and carefully slide him down through the trees out at an angle across the slope. In front of the cave the snow is stamped down by all the footprints which makes it easier to pull the sled. The ground inside is frozen near the mouth so I pull until the sled catches on the gritty floor and then I drop the rope.

The fire is mostly coals so I drag over some boards and pile them on, careful of the nails. I blow on the coals and sparks snap up and bounce across the cave's floor. It is still hours until the morning and there's nothing to do except to wait and try to stay warm. I'm not hungry anymore even if now I have the pack.
Somewhere Susan and Paul have Father's pack and our things. I think of them walking away with our snowshoes and wonder how far they got and if they're inside somewhere and maybe thinking of us now. I don't know why they did what they did and left us or why they didn't want to be with me and Father. Perhaps it was all an accident, but we don't believe in accidents we simply adjust the way we're going.

The fire eats away at the wood. I stare into it for a long time. A thick board buckles and gives way and everything collapses so the places the flames lick all change. I stand, I add wood. I stare. I am thinking of how Father came after me and how he found me, how I didn't even recognize him or know who he was when I first saw him.

That was in Boise Idaho when we're all planting trees all around in our neighborhood even at people's houses who aren't in our ward. My foster father is wiping off his bald head and laughing. The trees will grow to shade our street.

That day Father is dressed in a blue dress shirt and his hair is cut as short as it was after they caught us and kept us in the building, before the farm. That day with the trees he looks like anyone's father but he doesn't have any children with him. Even then he doesn't tell me who he is right at first. I just think he's a friendly man from the next ward over and the strongest person there. He can pick up the small trees with their bundles of roots by himself when it usually takes three people. He tells me once that he likes my shoes, that I'm a pretty girl. He thanks me for holding a shovel.

While I'm sitting next to the fire in the cave and remembering all this it's like Father has rolled over a little in the sled and is watching me from twenty feet away. His eyes shine against the fire and he knows what I'm thinking. He cannot say, "Don't look backward now," he cannot tell me not to remember.

Now I stand and walk back toward the mouth of the cave where he is waiting with his eyes still open. His mouth looks like he thinks all this is almost funny. His arms are stiff like frozen and hard to move so I can reach into the pockets of his jacket and his pants.

These are the things that I find and take from Father: his small notebook full of writings, two wooden yellow pencils, over four hundred dollars in a plastic sandwich bag, the three sharp knives and the long scissors in their oilskin case, his seven copper bracelets. These round bracelets are too large and slide over my hands too easily but still I put them on my wrists. The sound of their clinking is like Father is helping me to do all this now as I try to move him from where he is.

"You made a mistake," I tell him. "It's not the fault of Paul and Susan but your fault for liking them and thinking she was the same as you when she was different than us. It was a misunderstanding and you thought it was an understanding."

I kick in snow and bring more in. Some of it breaks off in slabs and I throw them down in front of the sled and slide it this way deeper into the cave, back to where the ceiling slants down and ends and the floor drops away. Father is heavy but from the pile of wood I take a thick board and wedge it under him. I lift so he rolls out of the sled and off the edge. He lands with a solid dull sound and even when I stick my head into the darkness I can't see where he is. I don't say I'm sorry since he knows why I'm doing this and that there is always a way not to draw attention when one does not want to get caught. There is always time to think about one's feelings after the necessary actions have been completed.

I breathe in hard, one time, and am careful not to hit my head on the shelf of rock above as I pull myself back out. I drag the board over to the fire and throw it on and sparks leap up. I get more wood than before and keep piling it on until the fire has a roar, a wind of its own inside it. I get warmer. I let myself get hot. It is easier to remember, now.

I am not even ten years old yet, back in Boise. It's a warm night when it happens so my sister Della and I are sleeping out on the round black trampoline in my foster parents' backyard. Our sleeping bags zip together and we're in nightgowns so it's plenty warm. She is asleep and the lights are out when Father comes silently over the fence. He stands so still and calm next to the trampoline with his giant hand around a silver spring. I remember him from the ward tree planting, how much everyone liked him.

"I'm sorry it took me this long," he says. "I've come for you, my daughter."

"What?" I say. "My father's inside."

"They adopted you," he says. "Temporarily. They're good people but they have to give you up. If you look deep inside you'll feel that you truly aren't theirs, and that they aren't yours. Come on, now. Gather up your things. These larger shoes on the ground here are yours? That's right. Put them on."

"Can I say goodbye?" I say.

"I wish it could be like that," he says. "Right now we don't have time."

"What about Della?" I say.

"Don't wake her."

We don't climb the fence. We go right through the gate and out the driveway and walk past the dark houses of all the people in the ward, houses where my friends are sleeping. A car passes and does not slow down. We're in no rush. I'm afraid and excited at the same time. I keep thinking we'll go back and then I think of what he said and I do feel something. The calm and sure way he said it all makes me believe and see how this has been coming without me even seeing it.

In the foothills not far from new houses being built Father has a camp. Deep in thick bushes he's dug a kind of cave into a hillside with a roof that slants over so it's hidden and hard to see. It's like an earlier copy of our house in the forest park and not nearly so nice. That's where we stay that first night. It takes me a long time to fall asleep and Father does not sleep at all. He watches me.

In the morning we eat bread and peanut butter. Father wears dark jeans and a green sweatshirt.

"I'm so happy," he says. "Aren't you happy? We're together at last. Finally. I've missed you so much."

Later we hear searchers, people close by calling my name. If I answer they will take me away from him and he says bad things will happen to my sister and my foster parents, to me and even to him. He knows things about them, about everyone. We sit silently. The searchers call my name, then it's silent, then they pass in the other direction. We eat more bread, more peanut butter.

"What's kind of funny," Father says, "is that name they're calling isn't even your real name. You know that, right?"

The next morning he leaves me there in the camp in the hills outside of Boise. He puts on the blue dress shirt and all the clothes so he looks like an elder from the ward. He shaves and combs his hair with water. Even not standing next to other people he is I think the biggest man I have seen.

"I'll be back," he says and I tell him to wait, that I can come along, but still he makes it so I can't go anywhere, so I can only move a little bit.

That day I hear more calling and I sit silently by myself. I shift my legs under me. I stay in the shade. I squint at the sun and watch the line of shadow move along the ground. When Father comes back it's almost dark.

"Where did you go?" I say.

"To search for you," he says. "I joined a search party."

"But you know where I am," I say.

"So they wouldn't be suspicious," he says, and unlocks my hand. He starts to unpack some food he's brought in a plastic bag.

"I don't know," I say. "I don't know if you're really my father."

"I understand that it's confusing," he says. "We had to give you up. Your mother was ill and when she passed away I couldn't care for you. It was temporary. You see that."

"My mother?" I say.

"You and I are together now," he says. "That's what matters, here. Things will start getting better from right now, but I need your help."

"What about Della?" I say.

"Who?"

"My sister."

"Oh," he says. "Yes. I don't know her by that name. We won't forget her, we'll be back for her. We just have to wait for things to settle a little bit before we go after her. Right now I can only take care of one daughter. Aren't I taking care of you?"

He unfolds a piece of newspaper that has my picture on it, and my sister's and my foster parents'. He lets me read the article before he takes it back.

"They aren't bad people," he says, "but they have to let you go, they have misunderstood things." He lights a match and burns the newspaper away. "If I weren't your father," he says, "how could I have walked right into your backyard and walked away with you and no one said a word? It was the right thing to do, it made things right, and that fact is why we're together, why you knew better than to cry out or draw attention. I need you to be brave, Caroline."

"All right," I say.

There is something fun and something scary in these first days when we're getting to know each other again. Already I am dressed like a boy with a knit cap and blue jeans and sneakers. I wear a football jersey Father gave me that has the number 55 on the front and on the back. Sometimes we stay in the shelter in the hills and sometimes even in the city. We never sleep on the streets or at the homeless shelter but sometimes Father finds a friend like the clerk from the Boise Co-op who has a small apartment with a couch and records. I am not to say a word when we stay there.

It's all like Father says since out in the open it's so clear how things are. I walk past posters with my face on them, my old name, and no one sees me. I see people I know from the ward, and the rule is that they have to call out and recognize me first before I can say anything to them and they never do. Sometimes they're close enough to reach out and touch. People tie blue ribbons in the tree branches for me since they think that is my favorite color even if my favorite color is yellow. I read about the blue ribbons in the newspaper. Father reaches high and pulls one loose for me and I fold it up in my pocket to keep.

"My heart," he says, "from now on it's best if you don't speak of your foster parents or your sister, to me or to anyone. If you can keep from thinking about them, that would be best. It will get easier."

These days are only practice for who we'll be and where we'll go. We're not staying in Boise, we're heading west since already Father can see the future and how we'll live in the forest park, all the happy days ahead.

The funny thing is that the city of Boise has grown and spread out everywhere and still Father's camp and shelter are hidden and it looks like hardly anyone has ever come through the underbrush and found it. There's a couple bent beer cans in the back and that's all.

That's where I stay the first night I get to Boise. There's still the flat stone where the stove went, the one shelf that held the pots and pans, even the metal pipe with concrete on both ends like a barbell too heavy for almost anyone to lift. The scratches of the handcuff are still on that pipe where it slid back and forth when I was left alone.

Sitting here now I wish in a way that it was back then and we were here together. We could set out and do it all over, every part except the end even if that was meant to happen. Even if it was and it happened again I'd like to go back to right here with Father, starting out. I would try to help Father not to make the mistake he made by thinking the lady and boy were like we are. I am angry at Father even if he couldn't help it since now we are apart and I am alone.

To get here this time was easy. Mostly since I had the money though there's less of that now. It was afternoon by the time I walked into Sisters and I found the bus station without asking anyone.

This is the day before yesterday: I pretend when I get on the bus that I'm with the lady in front of me and there's lots of room on the bus so I don't have to sit next to anyone. I lie down with my arm looped through my backpack and fall right asleep. Everything about me smells like smoke from the fire in the cave.

It's sunny when I sit up and we're almost in Boise. I can tell by the shape of the mountains and I don't need a map to find my way around. I don't need to ask for directions.

First I buy a new sleeping bag that costs almost one hundred dollars. Second I buy two pairs of wool socks, third some batteries and then a blue stocking cap that says
GO BRONCOS
in orange knitting around it. That's the name of the sports teams at the university.

Then I buy nuts and bread and fruit and water, as much as I can carry. I am not worried about anyone recognizing me. If they couldn't see me before when I was with Father and looked the same as they remember they'll never see me now that I'm taller and dressed this way with my pack and all my hair up in the cap. I limp but am not slow. It's a long walk and confusing since so much has changed and there's so many new houses and none of the new streets are straight, up in the foothills. There's yellow machines parked where flat parts have been cut into hills, and houses half built where I could stay but I will not stay. Finally I understand and I backtrack some, I am careful like someone is following me even if no one is. It's almost dark when I reach the end of the houses, up high where there's snow on the ground. There's dark paths beaten down through the snow from people or animals or both. That's the way I go.