My Abandonment (4 page)

"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.

He is running. He is a runner. He has on white shoes and red shorts and a gray tank top and a white band like a halo around his long brown hair that is bald on top. Around his waist he has a belt that has little plastic canteens on it. He looks like he's run a long way and when he hits our clearing he stops and puts his hands on his knees and spits on the ground. Looking down he sees something through the branch across our door and steps closer and tips it away. He bends down and looks in and steps back and spits again, right next to the door of our house.

I make a little noise in my throat when he spits like that. I don't mean to and somehow then he looks up and sees me. His face is shiny from sweating and he turns all the way around shielding his eyes and I slide back so he cannot see me. I try to see him through the slats in the platform, through the branches attached on underneath and I cannot. I hold my breath. Randy is half under me sharp in my ribs.

"Hello?" the man says. "Hi? Girl? Don't be afraid."

I'm afraid he might try to climb the tree and I turn a little so I can kick down on his hands if he tries it. I breathe silently and hold my breath again. I can hear the man breathing, below, his steps on the grass we try not to ever step on. Minutes pass. I can hear my watch tick, and after a long time I hear a branch snap down low and heavy steps and more silence.

When I look over he is gone and no one is below and I see how my shirt is still off, hanging on the branch above me and that's what the man's eye caught on and how he saw me at all which was a stupid mistake.

A breeze kicks up and shivering I put my shirt back on over my undershirt. The green leaves still slide thick above, the sky pale blue past that. Branches rub against each other, back and forth, a slow creak. Squirrels and birds rattle from tree to tree. The air up here does not smell like dirt. It's sharper, closer to the sun. People have seen me in the forest park before but never so close to our house. That is a rule that has not been broken before and I do not want to make another house. I stretch out, my head on the encyclopedia and my hand around Randy, my fingertips on the edges of his organs. I watch the green leaves above. I try to concentrate, to look for airplanes.

"Caroline?" Father says, all of a sudden below. "My heart?"

"Here," I say. "Up high."

"You're all right? What in hell happened here?"

I look over to see the branch tipped over, the grass tromped down by the runner.