My Abandonment (9 page)

"You're going to like this, Caroline," one of the officers says. I didn't know he knew my name.

Just past the horses we turn at a gravel driveway and roll by two red barns. Up ahead is a tall house and a smaller building at the bottom of a slope and next to the smaller building is a car with its door open. I see as we get close that it's Miss Jean Bauer and Mr. Harris and two other men standing next to that car, waving at our car.

When we stop I open the door and set my feet down on the unmoving ground.

"Welcome," they are saying, shouting. "Welcome to your new house!"

Our new house has a table and two chairs. There are two bedrooms and two beds. The bathroom has a shower and sink and a toilet and mirror. The kitchen has a refrigerator. Also it has: pots, pans, a kettle, matching plates, sharp knives that stick into slots in a wooden block. It is not a proper house but it is a real house. It is a bunkhouse since it is where the workers lived who worked for the man in the proper house. Mr. Walters lives in the big house now and Father is going to work for him. This is the job they've found for Father since we can no longer live in the forest park.

The whole time they are showing us they are proud of themselves. I keep hold of Father's hand as they show us through all the rooms. It is tight with all of us to get through the doorways.

"This will be so much better," Miss Jean Bauer says with her hand on my shoulder. "Caroline will be able to start school in a month and a half and get back to having a regular education like any child here in Oregon."

"Yes," Father says. "Thank you for all this. Say thank you, Caroline."

"Thank you," I say.

"We'll pay you back," Father says. "For all this. I didn't expect."

"Oh, no," Mr. Harris says. "If you want to pay us back, work hard and keep being good to each other. Mr. Walters is a generous man," he says. "You're lucky."

"We are," I say.

Mr. Walters is short and round and very friendly. His skin is pale white and there is no hair on his head, hardly even eyebrows. He wears both suspenders and a belt and he stands listening to Mr. Harris talk about him. He points things out as we go.

"I'm so excited we can do this," he says. "I've been hearing and reading all about you and I think this could be the perfect solution. I do need some help out here."

The other man is from the newspaper and he says hello but is already writing in his small notebook the whole time. He looks up at us and then to what he's writing. He turns a page.

"Is it all right if I take a photograph?" this man says.

"No," Father says. "No."

"A few questions?"

"I'm afraid not," Father says.

"That's all right," Mr. Harris says. "That's just fine. We all respect your privacy."

I keep looking around. In the bedroom that's mine there's a poster of a tall brown horse on the wall. The bathroom has a shower with a glass door. A back door goes out Father's room. The refrigerator holds food and there are cans in the cupboards. There's milk that isn't powder.

"Do you like it?" Miss Jean Bauer keeps asking me.

"It's too much for her to process," Mr. Harris says

After a while they have run out of things to show us.

"Tomorrow will be a full day," Mr. Walters says. "We'll go through all sorts of things tomorrow."

The police car drove away before and now the rest drive away and we turn from where we are in front of the small house and go back inside.

"It feels good to be by ourselves again," I say.

Father opens a window and breathes out.

"They had me take tests," I say. "I passed, I was ahead of where I'm supposed to be."

"Of course you were, Caroline," he says. "They wouldn't know what to do with a smart girl like you."

"And they had pictures," I say, "where I had to make up a story."

"Enough, Caroline," he says. "All of that, let's forget it happened. That tires a person out."

"But everything's different now," I say. "How we're going to live here and everything."

"It only seems different," he says. "Really it's going to be the same."

I am kicking off my shoes and balling my socks. Father goes into the kitchen and takes the tinfoil off the casserole they left then puts the tinfoil back over it. He opens the refrigerator door so the cold light shines on him and then shuts it without taking anything out.

Later I stand alone in the bedroom that is my bedroom. Through my window I can see the long slope of tall grass that leads into trees which is where the stream is and where we'll irrigate. I can also see the edge of the pasture and a corner of a corral where in the dusk I can see the dark shapes of horses. Randy rests on his side atop the dresser with my blue ribbon tied around him so I won't lose it. Beneath him in the drawers are: underpants, undershirts, socks, jeans, skirts. Blouses hang in the closet. I have a sweater and sandals and blue sneakers with blue stripes, all new.

I move Randy to the square table beside my bed so if I wake up in the night I can reach out to touch him. The lamp's switch is black plastic and turns like a key. I used to have one like it. The sheets are cold and white and the wool blanket smells like mothballs.

Under the blankets I try to sleep. The moon shines through the window and the shadows breathe. I can hear animals scratching somewhere but I cannot see them. Crickets outside are also breathing together. I can almost not believe how lucky we are and at the same time we do not feel like us at all. The face of my watch glows round but I cannot see the hands right. Has an hour passed? Two hours? I open the covers with a slap and set my bare feet on the ridges of the rug. I step across it and across the cold linoleum of the bathroom, into the darker hall. I open the door and step through into Father's room where the air is clearer to see.

"Is it all right?" I say, caught between the door and the bed.

"Oh, girl," Father says, just holding up the sheet and blanket so I can slide underneath. "I was going to come in there," he says, his mouth close to my ear. "We can't do every single thing the way they want us to. That's how we are."

"We're smarter than they are," I say.

"Yes," he says, "but we have to be smart enough so they don't know that."

"So they can think they're smarter?"

"Exactly," he says.

My breath slows now. Father's hairy legs are soft against mine under the covers. Through all the new smells he still smells like himself and lying still like this we feel like ourselves again. When he shifts the blankets his bracelets clink together and I am happy to hear the sound.

"I couldn't sleep either," he says. "I couldn't hardly sleep at all, these last five days. I'm sorry." He kisses my forehead. "I'm so sorry, Caroline. It's all my fault," he says. "We stayed in the last camp too long, but it was such a good one, I thought."

I don't say anything but I think of my shirt in the tree's branches, that I took off to look at my body and that the runner saw so that our house was found and we were caught.

Father isn't in bed when I wake up. He is looking out the window looking at the sky. He is not standing in front of the window but next to it so someone outside wouldn't see him there.

"What is it?" I say.

"Nothing," he says. "Good morning, Caroline. Aren't you curious what's been provided for our breakfast?"

We have not only real milk but real orange juice at breakfast. Cold cereal named Cheerios and Chex.

"Can you believe all this is ours?" I say. "This whole house."

"To keep bright the devil's doorknobs and scour his tubs," Father says. "Better not to keep a house."

"What?" I say, and then there's a knocking. It's Mr. Walters.

"Good morning," he says, opening the door. "Don't mean to interrupt your breakfast."

"Not at all." Father stands and walks to the doorway.

"I know from reading about you in the paper that you have your particular ways," Mr. Walters says, "and I don't want to cause any discomfort."

"We're just finishing," Father says. "What do you have planned for us today?"

"I was hoping you could take the tractor down to the south pasture," Mr. Walters says, "and drag some brush out from around the water tank. I'll show you where I'm talking about."

"I'd rather work with the horses," Father says. "Down in the stables."

"Yes, but I'd rather you not work down there. Mostly it's the ladies who come to see their horses and to ride. They're used to things being a certain way. They're wealthy ladies, mostly."

"I won't even talk to them," Father says. "I won't look at them. I'd just rather not drive the tractors or trucks."

"What are you," Mr. Walters says, "some kind of Mennonite? Or do you not know how?"

"No, I'm not," Father says, "and I do know how."

"Remember," Mr. Walters says, "I'm doing you a favor here. Things could go a really different way if you don't want to cooperate."

It's quiet for a little while. I can see blue sky around Father's head where he stands in the open doorway. A cloud disappears behind his shoulders. I cannot see Mr. Walters at all.

"Okay," Father says. "I don't forget how you're putting yourself out for us. Tractors, trucks, snowplows, whatever. I can drive them all."

From that first day Mr. Walters is trying to separate us, saying I don't have to be so close to Father while he works, that I'll get in the way, that it's dangerous. Still I stay close. I play in the long grass. I climb trees and watch Father work and it is not dangerous and I do not get in the way. I help him. We move manure. We fix window screens. We rub saddles and bridles with saddle soap until they shine and my fingers are sticky for days. We stretch the barbed-wire fences tighter and mend where the wire is broken. My arms are lined with scabs and my jeans are snagged from the barbs.

My favorite job is irrigating. Not moving the metal pipes out on the flat pastures which are too heavy for me but irrigating where Father and I both wear tall black rubber boots and over his shoulder he has a sharp square shovel and an orange plastic tarp wrapped around a wooden post. At the stream I pull the tarp unwinding and then he lays the post across the stream and we take heavy stones and weight the tarp down underwater. He cuts with the shovel pieces of sod to block the water better even though we have to let some past so it flows down to the next farm. We share. But our dam spills water mostly down over the slope into the grass all the way almost to our bunkhouse. We move the dam twice a day and the grass grows in wedges that are green where we've already been. It shows how long we've been here.

Up close to the stream is a stand of aspens that are loud in the wind and that I climb. From them I can see our house and my bedroom window and I know Randy is safe inside on the dresser. I can see the horses out in their corrals and pastures. There is no direction to look where there is not a road or building.

"I like it here," I say. "Don't you like it?"

"They want you to like it," Father says. "This way they can know where you are at all times."

"Who?" I say. "What?"

Father wears a straw hat on his head since we cannot stay in the shade like we used to and most of the trees have been cut down on the farm a long time ago. The sun still finds its way through the woven straw, sliding yellow needles down around Father's eyes and the skin of his cheeks as he stands with the muddy water sliding around his black boots. He points down to the road half a mile away, his head turning to follow each car.

"You see how they slow down as they pass?" he says. "And look at the size of these ladies' trucks. Who would need a truck like that?"

The wealthy ladies are riding their horses. Horses smell thicker than I expected them to. Dustier. But it's okay and they hardly make me sneeze after the first few times.

The ladies are beautiful. They ride with their backs straight and their whips in one hand. They wear tall black leather boots and white shirts buttoned up tight to their necks. Their hair is usually blond and straight and swings when they corner or jump a jump. They wear black helmets in case they fall but they never fall. They circle for the next jump and lean down to pat their horses' long necks. They whisper into their horses' sharp ears.

I have never seen a helicopter up close, only far away over the river and the freeway hovering over the colored lines of traffic. In the war, Father says, the blades of the helicopters which are called rotors spit sand in everyone's eyes and whipped their hair around. The helicopters rose up and came down and chopped branches off trees. They brought injured bodies and threw out papers to tell living people what to do next. Ever since I've known him Father has dreamed of helicopters and they come thick in these nights on the farm. He cries out and kicks and wakes up and I wake up to gentle him, talking about other things and talking him around to where I want to go while he is still sweating and slowing down.

"If you could be any animal," I say. "What would you be?"

"Not a horse," Father says. "Definitely not a horse. Maybe a bird."

"What kind?"

"Any kind that could fly," he says. "A small bird, but not a hummingbird."

"Why not?"

"Too much sugar," he says. "Too weird, all that darting around."

"Horses," I say. "Did my mother ride horses?"

"How did you guess that?" he says.

"And that's why you got me Randy?"

"Partly. Yes."

I pull up the sheet and fold the top up over the blanket so it won't be rough on our faces.

"In the building," I say, "they talked to me about mother, they asked questions. They wanted to know if I remembered her."

"Your mother wouldn't want you to be worrying about her," Father says. "That's thinking backward. Your mother would want you thinking where you are, and not too far ahead."

The red squirrels wake us, running across our roof and up and down the walls outside. They scrabble down under the floor and Father stamps so they get quiet for a moment and then even louder. We laugh.

Even if it's not the forest park, there are animals all around and I don't mean horses. A bird flies in the open window and Father says an abode without birds is like a meal without seasoning. It just takes a different way of looking to see these animals and sometimes that is listening. In the ceiling over the kitchen a pack rat has his nest. Father lifts me up with his headlamp on my head and I see the bright lids of tin cans and broken pieces of mirrors, all shining things. Mice are even quieter, darting across the floor when you look another way. The mousetraps that Mr. Walters gives us we put under the bed but we don't even pull back the springs. Even bigger traps go outside, underground to intercept moles and gophers in their blindness. Father shows me how he sets them wrong so they're already tripped like the animal somehow escaped.