My Abandonment (2 page)

I hop across the stones and walk out under the trees, past my hidden garden. The lettuce is easy, even if it's hard to clean. The beans want more sun than they get and I am impatient and dig up the radishes before they're ready.

A chipmunk darts quicker than a squirrel but a squirrel's more aware, his head jerking around from side to side, perched on a branch. Squirrels fall sometimes even if watching them it seems impossible.

Little maples try to grow up through the ivy that Father hates. The ground is all steep and rough and sometimes I'm hardly thinking as I go and then sometimes inside I'm saying Quiet, Caroline. Look at this. Caroline, careful, you lucky girl.

Our stream is narrow, especially in the summer. Here is the pool we dug to get drinking water and down below there's another for washing on hot days. We have tubs and barrels that collect rainwater in other places. The latrine, a trench with a bag of lime hidden in the bushes, is further away and we dig a new one every two weeks. There are right ways to do everything in the forest park so you won't draw attention. If you sharpen a pencil you pick up the shavings. If you burn paper there's still ashes.

Back toward home I switch the full water bucket from one hand to the other, the empty chamber pot in the tired hand. I look all around as I get close. We have moved three times since we came to live in the forest park and I don't want to move again. There's not even anyone in the trees except the birds and they're singing now that the sky is getting brighter.

Father is sleeping, exactly the same. He twitches all of a sudden like maybe the start of a helicopter dream and then he settles. Sometimes right when he's falling asleep he'll jerk his arms and legs too and he might wake himself up or kick me a little.

Silent I set down the pot and bucket. The flat stones are still cold so I stand on one foot then the other. I could climb in bed and read but my feet might touch him and wake him so instead I turn and climb the tall tree where the lookout is.

Ferns grow up high in the trees too, in the branches though not so high as where I am in the lookout. Squirrels chitter and chatter, now circling up and down tree trunks after each other. It's an easy climb for me especially barefoot, the branches mostly like a ladder. The platform is almost one hundred feet high, Father says and the bottom, the boards are covered over with branches attached on so you cannot see it from the ground. On the platform I can see all around us. I can see the pale flat stones that don't look like a path unless you know it's a path, which we step on so we don't make a trail. I see the place where my hidden garden is hidden and the branch across the front of our house which you could never see since the roof can be walked on and ferns are growing there like the rest of the ground and even the tiny maples with their five-pointed leaves. Our house is like a cave dug out with the roof made of branches and wire and metal with tarps and plastic on top of that and then the earth where everything is growing. Only Father and I see it's a house.

I can see a long ways, between the trees. The forest park stretches eight miles across and our house is somewhere in the middle. It goes up a mile from our house to fields and farmhouses and then slants down steep for a mile the other way, to the road and the city, the railyard and all the metal pieces and trucks and storage containers that Father says people can live inside. The pale green of the St. Johns Bridge, stretching across the river to the Safeway and the library and everything on that side. A long ship in the river with a red line around it, close along the water.

A rustle beneath me now and the branch below shivers, tips out, Father's hand showing and then his voice sounding.

"Where's my girl?" he says.

"Up high," I say.

By the time I'm down the green Coleman stove is out on its flat stone and the kettle is on it, the stove's blue flame spitting and catching. You have to listen closely so the water doesn't boil away since Father took the whistler off the spout.

Breakfast is cold oatmeal and dried apricots and hot water to drink.

"Heading into the city today," he says.

"Tomorrow," I say. "It's Tuesday today."

"We're low on things," he says. "Milk powder, oatmeal. Your appetite keeps growing."

"I'm growing," I say.

"Exactly," he says and he's smiling, the lines all around his eyes. "Anyways," he says, "the thing about schedules and routines is they're good to have for you but you don't want everyone to be able to predict you, either."

We change into our city clothes. Our forest clothes are darker so no one can see us and they can get dirtier but if someone sees you like that in the city they think all sorts of things. I put on my tan blouse and brown pants and braid back my hair.

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes," Father says. He laughs and pulls his shirt over his head and I see my name, Caroline, tattooed on his arm up high on his shoulder in cursive letters and then he buttons on his pale yellow city shirt with the collar.

Father's red frame pack has the metal wrapped with black tape so it won't shine. My pack is blue and has no metal. In the men's camp they let their garbage pile up but we don't. We carry it out in our packs, inside plastic bags. I put Randy in too with his head sticking out through the zipper and we're ready to go.

"Sweetheart," Father says, a name I like.

He has a book in one hand, he always carries a book. For me the encyclopedias are too heavy and the dictionary is not good to read since it keeps you going back and forth without ever slowing down to tell you enough about a thing which is not a way I like to read.

It's pretty in the morning walking down our secret path under the trees and the sun. You can buy a map of all the trails of the forest park but our paths won't be on it. Our paths run along next to some of those paths and fire lanes and trails for city people but they are different. I am behind Father and his hair is getting longer now so he's pressed it down with water. It is black and dark gray.

"How come," I say, "when I cut your hair you say the birds take the hair and use it in their nests and you still make us go so far away from home when only the birds are going to see it and then move it around?"

"We just do," he says.

The leaves are like lace, the sun shining through. Red berries grow on the bushes. We climb over deadfalls, their roots up in the sky. Some trees fall into other trees and never hit the ground but rest like the hypotenuse of a triangle slanting in the air. In the wind they groan as they rub against the tree that holds them or in a storm they can come crashing down.

Father stops walking. "I have a feeling," he says. He sniffs the air.

"Why?" I say.

"Not a good feeling," he says. "Let's go back."

"We're almost to the bridge," I say. "We're almost out of milk powder. You said."

"Caroline," he says. "Listen to me."

"Yes," I say. "I know. I just thought."

"There are more important things to do today," he says. "Not in these clothes, though. We have to change."

With the wire I carried from the salvage yard we build a hiding place, in case we have to hide if someone is after us. Most times it is better not to let people know we are here at all. We scoop out and dig down between trunks where many trees have fallen. Between the trunks, beneath where the dead sharp branches stretch out we dig hollows a little bigger than our bodies. We scoop and then we lay down to test the size and then we scoop out some more. Once they're big enough Father takes the wire and plastic bags and piles dirt and leaves and sticks on top like a trapdoor that looks like the ground and covers the holes. Hiding holes. I practice lifting up the cover and sliding in and Father checks to see how it looks and then he practices and I check and where he is it looks just like the ground.

"How about that?" he says. "Now we just have to remember where they are, since they're so hard to see."

Father can whistle in ways that fools birds. One finger, two fingers, no fingers. Breathing in or blowing out. Loud or soft.

"I could make a snare," he says. "I could catch a squirrel or rabbit, if we ate meat."

"Could you catch them without hurting them?" I say.

"Probably," he says. "Maybe."

"Why don't you?" I say. "Not for pets, but just to look at them up close. For homework."

There's crying in the air and we stop and watch a bunch of black crows chasing an eagle around in the sky until they slide too far out to the left and we can't see them anymore. We start walking again.

"I could easily do that," Father says, "if I wanted to. I could even make a snare that would catch a person."

"A person?" I say.

"He'd have no idea," Father says. "Until it was too late. Jerk him straight upside down, swinging by his heels."

I am a person who likes to be alone since I am never alone, exactly. It is important that we have time in solitude, Father says, and before he wanted to keep me in sight when he was working on something or at least make an agreement on how far I could go but now that I'm older I am allowed to range, except not leave the forest park's boundaries, and I am to stay off the roads and main trails. I have to hear or see anyone before they can see or hear me, and hide out of the way. We call this alone time, when we go out by ourselves.

I like to go barefoot. It is almost impossible to climb a tree wearing shoes. I cannot go barefoot in the city since it is dangerous and does not look right so it draws attention. In the woods it is fine. It is also fine to sing in the woods but there is no reason to sing loudly. If you can hear yourself, that is enough. If you had a friend you could walk close together and sing softly. With my fingernail I scratch words into some of the leaves around. Hello friend, I scratch, and the green goes darker under my fingernail so someone walking along might read that. It's not good to leave any signs but still I do this. I do not collect things since collections draw attention. It is possible to collect things in your mind or to gather them and one way to do this is to write them. I will never scratch anything into the bark of a tree since that hurts them but sometimes I will onto a leaf.

The alone time is strict on our watches. Father and I wear matching watches. We set them to match each other. The time on our two watches only matches each other since that's how we set them. If everyone else's time says it's four o'clock our watches might say eleven-fifteen. If the clock on the bank says nine forty-five, our watches might say six-thirty. We change them every few days. If I ever take my watch off I buckle it around Randy's middle, like a saddle next to my blue ribbon, and that way I'll never forget it. I keep it on when I'm sleeping and if my hand is under the pillow I can still hear it ticking.

Father used to say I had to be back at dusk but he learned it's safer for me at night since I know what I'm doing and there's almost no one around. My eyes adjust. It's easy. The animals don't even expect me. I startle possum, raccoons out across the clearings into deeper shadows or across the shiny streets below. I hardly have my hands out in front of me. I can smell when an animal is close.

Quiet I slip to the edge of the trees where broken fences lean. Lights shine through the windows so stretched yellow squares rest in backyards. At a house I can see dogs inside with just their thick heads and pointed ears and curved tails up in the windows. I stop and watch. I try to whistle high like Father can but they just keep walking around without any notice and their tails wagging.

A boy comes out the back door holding something black in his hands. He has square eyeglasses in dark frames around his eyes. The moon stretches his shadow at me and he walks to the edge of his yard and stares where the trees come down thick. He walks from one end to the other.

"What are you looking for?" I say. My voice is not loud, not a whisper.

He is already halfway to the house, hardly looking back.

"Wait," I say. "Don't be afraid. Come back." I step out a little, just so he can see my face.

He squints at me, says nothing. Then he steps a little closer, fifteen feet, a kind of fence between us.

"Are you a real girl?" he says.

"What did you think I was, a ghost?"

"I don't know."

"I'm real," I say. "What's your name?"

"Zachary."

"Do you go to a real school?" I say.

"It's summer vacation," he says. "Are you wearing shoes?"

"No," I say. "I can't tell what's in your hand."

"My camera," he says. "Can I take your picture?"

"No," I say. "Are those your dogs in there?"

"Yes."

"You can let them out. I like dogs. I'm not afraid. Do they have fleas?"

He's closer. He's not so afraid of me now but if I leaped forward he'd probably still run. He's smaller than me and I came out of the dark forest.

"You thought I was a ghost," I say.

"You're a girl," he says. "Where do you live?"

"In a house with my father."

"What school do you go to?"

"At home," I say. "What are you looking for, out here?"

"A man," he says. "A kind of man, maybe. Maybe not a man."

"What?"

"He lives in the woods and the dogs are afraid of him. He's quick and quiet. He never talks at all. I don't even know if he can."

"Maybe not a man?" I say.

The boy looks up at the moon and the stars. "I think," he says, "I think he might be a Bigfoot."

I laugh.

"Don't," he says. "I told you. You don't know."

"I laughed since I know," I say. "I know what you're talking about. I know him. That's the way he is."

"Where is he?"

"Around," I say. "He could be listening right now, but I doubt it. His name is Nameless, which is kind of a joke. He used to have a name. I've talked to him before."

"You couldn't talk to him," he says. "Is that a horse in your hand?"

"Yes," I say. "His name is Randy."

"The man or the horse?"

"The horse," I say. "He's a special horse."

A woman's voice calls out from the house: "Zachary? Who are you talking to out there? What are you doing?"