Shelter Read online

  This night he rises in one effortless movement to look out the window of the shack at Turtle Hole; he feels he has moved by merely imagining movement. The water shines, and the black piece of boulder overhanging one side is darker than the air around it. The boy, Frank, sits fishing, suspended in the dark like an ornament. His bare chest looks unnaturally white, and when he throws his line out Parson can feel the hook rip through resisting water. Mornings at seven, the kid blows reveille on a beat-up trumpet at the quad, a grassy oval near three stone hewn buildings that seem too massive to house the activities of children. Even the workmen down by the river could hear the kid's bugle, the sound was so piercing, breaking on the high notes. Moments later would come the girls' voices pledging allegiance, faint and dreamy. Parson has never seen them, saluting in a circular line; the men were already at work by then, or at least gathered by the river to drink coffee. The other four brought tall thermoses but Parson drank from a plastic cup while the foreman laid plans.

  Plans were always the same: dig out earth for ten foot of pipe, set the pipe, and spend afternoon cutting brush for the trail road for the truck. They kept the trail close but wound around stands of trees too near the riverbank. Sometimes they dragged pipe with chains as far as thirty, forty feet, in teams, like horses. Sweating, cursing, they paced themselves with their own insolent complaints while the foreman cursed loudest how he'd only taken the job because the mines had laid him off, goddamn mickey mouse operation. Occasionally the little girls hiked the forested hills across the river. They were led by college-girl counselors and their faces appeared and disappeared far off amongst the trees, their white blouses forming a shifting, patchy mosaic. Sprites, the men called them, as though they were forest spirits, and when they were too high up or far away to be seen, their laughter and their urgent, childish speech carried down bright and tiny, perfectly preserved. The older girls, camping higher in the hills, were subjects of speculation and offhand jokes only because the camp directress had asked the men not to set foot across the river without special permission. They were discouraged from walking through the camp except when they were on their way to or from the work site, as though Girl Guides were somehow threatened by the vision of five men in khakis. They'd said as much to Frank, who was sent out hot afternoons with paper cups and a big jug of cold lemonade, and Frank told them he didn't work for Mrs. Thompson-Warner and Hilda Carmody didn't either, or they wouldn't be getting any lemonade. The place was just rented out to Girl Guides these three weeks; unless there was a church camp coming or the Y-Teens, the camp would be vacant most of August. Probably it would shut down. Figure I could hire on with you men? But the foreman had smiled, his lips wet with the cold sweet liquid. Boy can't do a man's job, you a boy, ain't you? I can dig, Frank had said, and I got my own tent I stay in. I don't think so, kid, but you tell that fat woman she makes good lemonade. Sweet as a baby's tits. Those women you take orders from know how much time you spend spying on the girls up at the top of the hill? I don't go up there, the boy had said, they gotta do everything themselves. And the foreman had joked about everything, how that old redheaded dame sure seemed worried about those girls, worried about somebody. Nah, she's worried about Communists, Frank had said.

  Yes, she was worried. At night in the shack Parson can feel her think in her sleep, creasing her powdered forehead while the Devil passes in and out her open window. Those white frilly curtains she'd hung rippled each time the Devil moved and his legs were the flayed red color of raw meat, and wet like that, and Parson knows the smell in her room is the smell of blood. Blood smelled of meat, warm rotted meat, sticky, like when Preacher had got shot at the card game and the feel of his blood had stayed on Parson's hands. In the shack at night Parson still smells blood, staggering in his dreams under Preacher's weight on the slippery metal stairs of that hotel fire escape. Snow had turned to rain over all the gray parking lot behind the building as Parson dragged them both to Preacher's old pickup, going through the old man's pockets for the keys as he held the falling bulk of his burden up against the cab of the truck. Preacher was still breathing, a sound like rasps of air through ragged holes, and Parson got him into the truck, his own hands and front bloodied, pulling fast out of the lot as the attendant came to the door of the little booth. Parson didn't think of hospitals, he thought only of getting away, going home, Preacher would want to go home. He had driven several streets, roaring down alleys to cut out toward the highway, trying to hold Preacher upright with one arm, when the girl's startled face and form appeared like an apparition beyond the wet glass of the windshield. There was the dull thud of contact overwhelmed by the scream of the brakes and the girl flew up onto the broad hood of the truck, rolling hard, coming for Parson, flying as though impelled into the windshield, hitting lengthwise across it head to foot, assaulting Parson with her wet yellow hair and wide death gaze. She was like a fish with thin human arms outspread, a fish in a flimsy raincoat with a girl's blue face, slapping so hard on the wet glass that Parson screamed into her broken shape, screamed even after she rolled back along the hood and onto the street. In the shack at night he remembered the trundling sound her body had made rolling away, an object out of its element, because she was a fish, that was clear when the police came and he stood looking down at her in the wet street. This man is shot to death, they'd said about Preacher, and grabbed Parson's arms as though he might run, but they had to drag him away. He wanted to look at her, this fish, the ends of her long yellow hair spiky with moisture, her wet coat open, her limbs pulled close as though she were one long shape and might ripple across the puddled surface of the pavement like an eel. But they covered her up and put him in a squad car and he didn't see her again until he got to the penitentiary in Carolina nearly six months later, and she would swim at night, every night, naked, thin and white, through the darkened main corridor of the cell block. The dark there was green and oily, nearly phosphorescent, and she swam face forward, her wet hair flat to her head, legless, armless, her body one undulating streak.

  Now Parson wakens in the shack and sees Frank fishing Turtle Hole, the long bamboo pole barely visible over the glassy surface of the water. He imagines the girl who is a fish, circling deep within that wet bowl, down where the line and hook will never touch. The boy seems to hang suspended against an outcropping of dark rock, pulling his line out again and again only to throw it across to the same spot, raking the surface in slow swaths. He seems to break the water gingerly, stirring it in identical sweeps as though it were volatile. But the water sleeps. Parson sees the two girls long before Frank knows they are there, he sees them walking across the river trail from the woods, moving carefully and quickly, nearly in tandem. They are not ghosts. One is in white but for her dark pants. The other is more than human. Nude, whiter still, she follows the first as though to restate each gesture and step with longer, thinner limbs, a bound shimmer of pale hair moving behind her. They have no faces, only forms, and the paler, more fluid one swims the air, only seeming to walk. Parson goes to the door of the shack and beyond it, moving soundlessly closer, crouching along the barely discernible trail to the water. He creeps through reeds and lies hidden, watching: no, this girl is different, but she is the same, as though she's a sister to the one in the street, the one who swims still in some dark space, searching for him. And might never find him again, never, until he is a shade himself. Already he sees and hears as a shade, hearing no voices now but feeling himself inside the mind of the girl who might be a fish; he finds himself surrounded by her magnified, sonorous pulse, by a great ruffling of air. She might be capable of flight, there is such wind in her, and electric blue flares that shoot up like fires, and in the dark of her something cracks, loud as the crack of a gun, keeps cracking apart. Parson shakes himself to be outside her again, watching, and in a moment he sees them, the two girls, on their knees at the edge of Turtle Hole. Frank has not seen them, he must be nearly sleeping, staring at the unbroken surface of the water.

  See how the water holds
still, as though enclosed in glass, sheer as first ice. But the night air is warm, just cooling, and as Parson creeps closer, so close he can see her face, the other girl stands, silent, waiting for Frank to look at her. When he does, she kneels back into the reeds, and the taller one appears, nearly opalescent above the dark grasses. She has a face like stone, stone shaped by hand: the brow, the wide-set eyes, the straight nose and parted lips. In jail in Greensboro, waiting to come to trial, Parson had seen from the high window two stone women tower above the courthouse steps across the street. At night, the street deserted, the building lit so their shadows fell across the broad steps, Parson imagined the end of the world, no people at all but just these buildings, sidewalks, long empty streets, and the statues fallen over. Now he imagines this girl as one of them, the whole white length of her lying not in the depths of Turtle Hole but in the stream, which was shallow and looked so clear, her face washed by water until the regular features and cast of eye are obscured. Until she is smooth as scooped stone, long and tapered in her body, a rock fish, a fish with breasts. Her breasts are like white apples, full and compact, young, not the large breasts men slept in, but breasts men mouthed and tasted, nearly tore with their teeth. The nipples are faint bruises at the centers. Parson sees Frank, unmoving on the rock like a light-blinded animal, so startled at the sudden appearance of her body that he has not really seen her face. He looks, keeps looking, and as he does, she lifts each foot gently, never altering her gaze, so the other girl can remove her shoes. Then she walks into the water as though drawn to its center, as though she would walk until she disappeared, and the boy stands and jumps in. I threw it in the water, Parson had told the men in Carolina. They were men in suits but there were no windows in the little room, they took off their jackets and rolled up their sleeves. There was the one who gave Parson cigarettes and called him son, and the one who shoved him from wall to wall while fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead. Parson remembered the heat and how the men had paced like winded dogs, big dogs who could only sweat from their tongues. Who shot him? Who were the others? Did you shoot him? Where's the gun the gun the gun ... but Parson wouldn't answer, wouldn't say. They had come straight for him in the fluid, moving room just as the boy swam for this girl now; Parson dug his fingers into the dirt and watched her lift herself, hold to Frank's shoulders as though she might drink the whole deep bowl of Turtle Hole, drown as Parson had drowned in the cage room that smelled of those men. The girl was a fish, he'd told them, lost from Christ as they were lost, as Preacher was lost, gambling on evil, and the room had circled as the whole sheen of Turtle Hole now begins to circle, stirred to move by their bodies and the silence they make until the other girl wades in, her clothes wet and darkened, her darker hair a black cap. She is the dark one who puts her mouth on them, touches them, she and Frank hold the naked girl between them and the girl cries out. The sound she keeps making freezes Parson's blood, he has to lie down in the reeds and hold himself tight, clutch his ears, but she goes on and he begins to try to crawl away, move backwards like an animal in a narrow space. This is how that other one would have sounded had she opened her mouth and let a sound roll from her long white throat. In all the years he has seen her, navigating dark air like a sea, she has not made this sound from death. The sound goes on, eating its own fear, released and saved, and when it stops Parson cannot remember where he is, all of space seems so empty. But it is night here and the girls move in the water, emerge pouring water from their bodies, the naked one shining, stumbling, and they run then, gain the path and are gone. Parson watches Frank, who calls once to them and follows, just to the edge of the water, then crawls out and lies down, seems to rouse himself, walks back through the woods to where Parson knows he has a tent in the clearing.

  Now the night looks blue. There is silence but for a far-off wind just grazing the woods by the river, and the rustling of those leaves is half heard. The moon will lighten the air even more in an hour, two hours, mist will settle above the water, never touching, so that the surface can still be seen and the white smoky vapor might be hung above it from invisible cords. Parson walks to where the girls stood and sees they have left the shoes. He takes them to the shack and feels them all over, looks at them in the glint of the window, then thinks of the flashlight one of the workmen gave him. He takes it from under the corner of his pallet and shines a short, wide beam of light across the shoes. White canvas sneakers with frayed shoestrings. One of them has a cloth decal of Mickey Mouse (Parson remembers the foreman cursing goddamn mickey mouse operation) sewn inside. The other has a gummed label on which is written: LENNY.

  LENNY: BY THE RIVER

  The night looked bluer now, bruised with moonlight, and Lenny saw that mist had begun to rise from the river. A cool smoke hovered just on the surface, thick and thin in patches, and Lenny felt as though the ground itself were no more substantial than clouds on the water. Her feet touched the path but she couldn't quite tell where she was walking, she didn't care, it didn't matter. Suddenly they were gone from the river, they were high in the woods, leaving the cover of the trees to climb the steep meadow to the tent. Cap shimmied up the pole to the wood floor and Lenny followed her but they said nothing. Lenny's clothes were damp from the trail but her body still glowed and burned, and when she lay down on her cot the feeling was worse. She could turn just so under the sheet, curl up, press her fists between her legs so hard it hurt, and she must have slept, wondering how to find him, how to be with him again, with both of them, dreaming Cap had done something to her, she couldn't find her way out of Cap's hands. She woke and slept and Alma was waiting for her by the river, Alma was looking for her in the river, and the crows were in the meadow at dawn, screeching their hoarse calls. The crows were screaming too loud and he had found her and put his hands over her ears, he read her face with his mouth, kissing her, talking so urgently, making words on her skin with his tongue, his teeth, but she couldn't hear him, there was no sound, he had no voice. She slept, and Highest camp was in a dream, they all overslept until reveille sounded again and again, fast and shrill and far away.

  ALMA: REVEILLE

  When reveille began the bodies moaned and turned as mosquitoes caught in giant webs above the screens were turning. Alma and Delia rolled, hit weathered floor, grabbed each other. Guttural sounds, push for the door. Tangled in nightgowns, they fell over each other in the foyer where the cabin's wings separated, bones of an arm. Wrapped in arms, sleep-ridden, they lifted the heavy latch of the barn-board door, scraped their ankles on the concrete steps, and ran grabbing hands, hissing, up the gravel trail to where the woods broke by the quadrangle. Reveille built in the blocked light, piercing, staccato, an automatic gun on gold wind.

  "Is he there? Is he there?" Alma heard Delia whisper a cadenced repetition, breathing in time and running.

  They threw themselves down. Crept to where the woods ended and lay in creepers. But they could never see him, and the sound washed into them from air. Alma moaned. Where was he? Every morning he stood in a different spot, trying to make it interesting for himself, or because it wasn't serious. Alma dug in, stubbed her dark toes on rocks; her long oval face was intent. She searched with her eyes, considering.

  Alma was silent. The game was not a game. Where was Frank, really, where? Alma had to find him; Delia said she loved Frank but Alma wondered. She thought Delia wanted to be Frank, wanted to be a son with all her might, so she could have her father inside her and never look for him. Alma squared her body, felt her pelvis find the bowl of the ground. Beside her Delia rustled in vines. Alma tightened arms around her. She felt Delia's weedy presence; she felt the A-line wasp of Delia curling in the brushy cover. Her own stone thighs pressed dark in the rotating dirt. She thought of words she liked to pronounce, words in Nickel Campbell's books, long words with smudged letters. She heard, close to her ears, the whine of bloodsuckers in the grass.

  "Alma Swenson, Delia Campbell," Alma said over and over, to counter the mosquitoes, to drift the whisper of their nam
es across the quad. She pulled the grass and crawled up closer; her cocoa irises fixed on a point and held. She wanted to see Frank, study him; she thought she saw a shadow before it lengthened and became the top of the flagpole, knobbed in gold, the long cord snaking down. The flag began to ripple, the rope cord swaying gently in a breeze only the early morning allowed. Frank had to let go to blow reveille again; he held the bugle with one hand and saluted with the other, racing through the shrill assault three times in rapid succession. He was all alone out there; secretly, Alma knew how he looked, exactly how he stood.

  Yesterday morning McAdams had taken Alma to the infirmary with Delia before anyone was up; the nurse had to clean Delia's swollen lips with hydrogen peroxide and tape gauze on the cut. Nurse said Delia should give her mouth a rest, don't talk too much today, and keep the bandage moist with salve. Just then, reveille had begun, so near everyone was startled, and Alma ran to stand just beside the door. The infirmary was a tool shed attached to the dining hall; Alma could see Frank from behind. His arms looked skinny. He was scruffy, ramrod straight, held taut by the bleating of the bugle; he was at least fifteen. Beyond him, the open quad, the line of the woods, the paths that led to the cabins lost in trees, looked dewy, already warm, as though steam would rise when the sun hit.

  Now Alma's eyes watered. Her face was too near the grass.

  "I hate camp," Delia whimpered, twisting a knee into Alma's solid flesh. "Hate it, hate it, but I don't ever want to go home."

  "Do your lips hurt much?"

  "Frank will go home. At the end of camp, everyone will have to go home."

  Alma touched the smear of hard scab at the edge of Delia's mouth. "Did they make you call your mom?"