Our Daily Bread (22 page)

“Hello,” she said, swallowing the tremor in her voice. “Who's there? Are you hurt? Hello?”

It was as though she had fired a shot. The response was a small, piercing shriek, like a rabbit pinned to earth by an owl's talons. Dorothy's hands flew involuntarily to her ears. Even the crickets went silent. “I won't hurt you,” she said. “Can I help? Tell me where you are.” She took a step forward and as she did, a rock sailed past her head. She jerked and it hit the side of the car, bouncing off with a crack and a bang. It was not a powerful throw, but it left a mark, a small dent and scratch she could see even in the murky night. Something told her the stone had not been intended to hurt her, but how could she know what rage lay under the surface of such sorrow? She scanned the woods, trying in feeble moonlight to catch a glimpse of the child. She stepped forward. The gluey mud beneath her feet smelled of rot.

“Child,” she called. “Stop that and come out.” She sounded braver than she felt.

A movement to her left and then a rain of small pebbles, some of them landing on her shoulder, one on her cheek. “Stop that!” she cried, more in shock than pain. She jumped back in horror at a new cry, one a thousand times more effective than pebbles or stones. The child, whoever it was, screamed. A wordless howl of bestial fury and survival fear.

Without thinking, Dorothy scrambled back inside her car, fumbling with the handle, slammed and locked the door, her fingers trembling with the keys. Through the trees, a flash of something pale and thin and fast and—was it possible?—naked. Running and zigzagging. Visible for only a second. Not long enough to make out sex or age. Under ten? Under fifteen surely? Dorothy started the car and the headlights made everything outside their beams invisible. The car jumped forward. Dorothy forced herself to let up on the gas. She would crash into a tree if she didn't calm down. Her hands were slippery on the wheel. She breathed so shallowly she was afraid she'd hyperventilate. She kept looking in the rear-view mirror; her imagination filled with images of ghostly children running after her car, of tiny naked bodies jumping in front of her headlights. She feared she was going to cry. Slowly, she told herself.
Slowly. It was just a child. A child, a child.
The curves of the road seemed endless. Far longer to go down than to come up. The trees looked as though they might suddenly rip a root out of the ground and grab the car. She imagined she was lost forever in enchanted nightmare woods. What had she seen? What had she done? What had she not done
? Oh God, we confess we have sinned against thee in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

The lights from the main road began to flicker through the trees ahead. As safety neared, Dorothy's breathing began to normalize, and as it did a pitchy bile of self-loathing rose in her throat. She had run in fear from a child, a despairing child. She turned onto the main road, her wheels skidding ever so slightly on the curve. In a few minutes, she would be back in her own house. She looked in the rear-view mirror one last time, half-expecting to see a truck of angry Erskines coming after her. She did begin to cry then, the tears stinging and bitter, full of self-contempt.

At eight-thirty the next morning she stood at the scuffed counter in the sheriff's office, facing down Carl Whitford, her arms folded across her chest and her face red with indignation.

“I'm telling you, Carl, something's going on up there.”

“And I'm asking what you were doing up there, Mrs. Carlisle.” Carl stood behind the counter, his arms folded over his chest as well, as though he was mocking her. Behind him, on the imitation wood panelling, hung a photo of smirky George Bush. She unfolded her arms, entwined her fingers. She would not be laughed at.

“I was dropping something off, but that's not the point, now is it?”

Elliott Blanders, the deputy, sat with elbows on his desk, nursing a cup of coffee in a paper cup, regarding her with more annoyance than interest. She knew how she must look, a more-than-middle-aged woman puffed up with righteousness. She probably sounded like Mabel, like Francine and Doris. She didn't care.

“It just might be the point. You know as well as I do why people go up to the mountain.”

“You're not implying, surely, that I was there to purchase illegal alcohol?”

“Can't think of any good reason for you to be up there, honestly. They're not exactly your kind of people, now are they?”

“My kind of people? Your kind of people? What does that mean, exactly?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, and that's precisely the problem, isn't it?”

“I'm not going to argue sociology with you. But believe me, you don't have all the facts about what it's like up there.”

“Carl,
everyone
in this town knows what it's like up there and I am ashamed of us. We've done nothing about it year after year, decade after decade. I admit I glossed over things, didn't want to look too closely. I am guilty of that, and more, probably. Nevertheless, I can't ignore it any longer. Not with what I saw last night. And neither can you.” She thrust her chin out and widened her stance.

Carl inflated his cheeks and made a squeaking noise through his lips, the kind of noise with which adults amuse children, pretending to be elephants. Dorothy was not amused.

“Stay out of it. It's not safe up there,” Carl said.

“That's what I'm telling you, Carl! If you know it's not safe for me, then how can you imagine it's safe for those children? Answer me that.”

He ran his hand over his face and turned to look at Elliot, who just shrugged. Carl studied the floor for a few minutes. “All right, I know you think we're not doing anything, but that's just not true. We know more about what's going on up there than you might think and all I can say is you have to trust us.”

“Trust you.”

“Yes. And stay out of it.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I don't mean to be rude, but you heard me.”

“There is no time, Carl. You must do something immediately. Today.”

“What I must do, Mrs. Carlisle, is my job in the best way I see fit. I'm telling you, politely, to let those of us who are qualified handle things in the right way, at the right time.” He put his hands up. “No more. That's final. And I don't want to hear any more about you going up there for any reason.”

It was useless. She could see that. Damn this town. She turned and opened the glass door to the street. “You do what you see fit, Carl. We must all do what we see fit.”

I don't understand where people get the idea that The Tribulation is a time when people will be able to blissfully wait for Jesus to come and rescue them. The tribulation is going to make the firebombing of Dresden look like a day at the beach. Few people realize that right now we have a window of opportunity. It won't be open long. When the rapture comes, you don't want to be left behind. Can you imagine the horror of the tribulation before Jesus' glorious return?
“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, nor ever shall be.”
Matthew 24:21. There is only one reason why the tribulation is going to be so horrific. God will be trying as hard as He can to get man's attention. Every time we read in Scripture that God has poured out His wrath on the earth, we also read that man had refused to repent for his evil deeds.
“Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.”
Revelations 9:20–21.

—Reverend Ken Hickland,
Church of Christ Returning, 1998

It had gone without a hitch
, just as Bobby said it would. When Albert called the house earlier that morning, Tom Evans sounded so downright pleased his kid had a friend to spend the night with that he pissed Albert off.
Well, that'll be real nice for Bobby. I sure appreciate the interest you and your family are taking in him, Mr. Gardner. Sure appreciate it.
What an idiot, Albert thought. Fine then—Evans wasn't going to take care of his kid, Albert would. And now here they were, Saturday afternoon, with Bobby beside him in the truck cab, as keen as a dog on the way to a grouse hunt. Albert had picked him up at the high school, where Bobby told his father he was meeting the fictional Ernie Gardner for a pick-up game before they went to his house. They'd snagged a pizza on the way and the air smelled of pepperoni and tomato sauce. It wasn't until they were out of town and turned off the highway that Albert noticed how Bobby popped his knuckles and bounced his knee.

“So, what do you know about us, anyway?” asked Albert.

“Nothing,” Bobby answered, too quickly.

“Come on. Go ahead and tell me what you've heard. You won't hurt my feelings. Believe me, there's nothing I don't know about my own family.”

“Well, I heard some stuff maybe.”

“Of course you did. Town leaks gossip like a rusty bucket. We've known each other for what? Four, five months? You wanting all the time to come up and hang with me on the mountain. But you've never said what you know, and what you don't know. Never asked too many questions at all for that matter, so I have to figure you have some ideas. Have to conclude you think you already know some things. So why don't you tell me, young Bobby, what you think you know.”

Bobby looked at Albert quickly, then away. “Well, you run some businesses up there. Like you're bootleggers.”

“True. What else?”

“I don't know. Nothing.”

“So you ain't heard anything else about what might be for sale up there?”

“No. Honest. I haven't heard anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“Nothing.”

The road was rough, and steep. Bobby held on to the strap above the window, his other hand braced against his knee. There was nearly as much sky in the windshield as land. He gunned the engine. “Scared?”

“No,” said Bobby, and then, “kinda steep, isn't it?”

“You think?”

The mountain slopes were a mass of hickory, chestnut, beech, cedar, spruce and pitch pine, but now and again they passed through clear-cut openings. Stubbled and broken earth, these gaps looked as though a cunning, specifically targeted tornado had roared through. Distant stands of trees bore silent witness to their fallen brothers. Chasms of red-clay earth were wounds where the run-off, with no tree roots to absorb it, had formed channels, deep and ever-changing, as though dragons had dug their great claws through the ground.

Then, at last, they came upon the compound, near the peak of North Mountain, where the view of the valley might have been wonderful if anyone had thought to trim the trees. The rutted, debris-strewn drive led into the woods, and was the only overt evidence of habitation. “Duck down,” said Albert.

“Huh?” Bobby looked at Albert, puzzled.

“I said, duck the fuck down. The family ain't exactly social.”

Bobby unbuckled his seatbelt and crouched on the floor under the dash. As they passed the main house, Albert waved at Sonny and Old Felicity. Felicity smoked a hand-rolled cigarette while Sonny picked his nose and carefully examined the results before flicking them into the garden. When Sonny saw Albert's truck, he stood up and grinned, waving frantically, excited as though he hadn't seen Albert in months when in fact he'd seen him not three hours ago.

“Hey, Albert!” he called. “Hey, Albert!”

Albert waved back. “Hey, Sonny.”

Sonny's T-shirt was too small and a wide band of white fat drooped over the top of his jeans. Felicity sat with her legs wide apart, her stretch pants straining against her thighs. She wore a baseball cap printed with the words “Thinking Hurts” in pink. Her grey hair hung greasy and lank over her ears. She raised her chin and spit into the dirt by way of greeting.

Albert steered the truck farther into the woods, until the track was nothing but a bouncing rut. Bobby cried out as he hit his head on the underside of the dash. Albert pulled up on the far side of his cabin, where he figured, even if they were watching, nobody would see Bobby getting out of the truck. He cut the engine.

“Stay here,” he said. He walked around the cabin. He stood in front of the cabin and took a piss in the direction of the main house, scanning the treeline to make sure none of the kids were hanging around. He didn't put it past them to go telling tales, using information as bargaining chips if need be. He'd done the same before he learned other ways of defending himself. His blood popped and fizzed with adrenaline. He told himself again what an idiot he was to risk bringing Bobby up here. The kid was a civilian. If anything happened to him, there'd be hell to pay. Still, there was the break-in. Albert could always hang that over the kid if things went south and he wanted to tell his old man or the cops, which would be pretty much the same thing. The kid was a fucking virgin, in more ways than one, and he was in Albert's truck. The image of Bobby's thin pale chest floated past. His jeans hanging low off his skinny hips. Albert wondered if it was too late to take him back and be done with it.

“Albert?” Bobby stood there, out of the truck, bold as fucking brass, his backpack in one hand, his sleeping bag in the other.

“Jesus Christ!” Albert dashed to the door and, using the key he kept round his neck, opened the padlock. He swung the door open and pushed Bobby inside.

“Hey! What are you pushing for?”

“I just don't want the whole goddamn place coming to see who I've got in here, is all. And you don't want that either.”

“Why not?”

“I'm an asshole for bringing you up here.” Albert slapped himself on the forehead. “What the fuck was I thinking? Get back in the truck. Go on!” He held the door open again.

“Ah, come on, Albert. I'm sorry. I get it. Nobody gets along with their family. Don't make me go back there, Albert. Not tonight. I won't be any trouble, and look,” he fumbled in his backpack and produced a bottle of brandy, “I brought this. We can drink it, like, you know,” and his face broke into a grin, and he waggled his fingers beside his mouth like Groucho Marx with a cigar, “you know, like gentlemen.”

The idea of the two of them sipping brandy like gentlemen struck Albert momentarily speechless, and then he laughed, laughed so hard he had to bend over to catch his breath. Bobby laughed too, and they hung onto each other's shoulders and laughed until they had tears in their eyes. The kid was all right.

A couple of hours later they sat smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. So far, three cars had appeared, the occupants conducting business and disappearing quickly. Each time, Albert rose and watched from the window before relaxing again.

“I like your place,” Bobby said.

“Oh, you do, huh?”

“Yeah, it's got character.” Bobby lounged on a malodorous yellow beanbag chair. He'd had three beers and a couple of brandy shots. His voice was low and loose. “You sure got a lot of books. You read all them?”

“Every single one,” said Albert from where he lay on the pullout couch. There were no sheets, just an old sleeping bag over the stains. The metal from the frame had worn through the material and created ulcerous-looking gaps.

“Wow. Where'd you get 'em all?”

“You want to know a secret?” Albert smiled and his face shone in the glow of the fire from the open door of the woodstove. “Mrs. Carlisle. She's been coming up here for years, leaving shit. Clothes for the kids, cans of beans and evaporated milk and crap like that. She left a few books, like
Robinson
Crusoe
and
Treasure
Island,
in a box marked especially for me.”

“Really? Why?”

“I have no fucking idea. I was pissed off at first. I mean, I didn't want her goddamn charity, right? But then, I don't know, one night I was going out in the woods and I knew how boring—”

“What were you doing out in the woods at night?”

“Camping. Shit. I was camping. Anyway, I knew I'd be bored out there for hours, so I took a flashlight and this book with me.
Huckleberry
Finn.
This story about a kid with a drunk old man. You read it?”

“Naw. I'm not much for books.”

“You should read, Bobby. You don't want to grow up to be an uneducated fool, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, then. Anyway, I liked it. I really liked it. So I watched and waited and figured out her schedule—she and her old man came up about every few months or so. She used to leave stuff at the compound entrance. I watched for her lights way down the road and then I stuck a thank-you note on a stick in the spot. Said I'd like some more. And that was that. Every few months I got books, and you can bet your ass I got out there before anybody else did. Those books were for me. Only lost out a couple of times.”

“Lost them, like somebody else took them? Why didn't you just share them?”

“They don't care about the fucking books, just about pissing me off.”

“So you and Mrs. Carlisle have, like, a relationship, then.”

“She doesn't know I know it's her. At least I don't think she does. She'd never said anything. Neither have I.”

“Why not?”

“What the fuck for? So I could be her little charity pet? She can do what she wants, or not do it; I don't care. I can buy my own books now, if I want to. And I don't have to worry about saying ‘Thank you, Mizz Carlisle,' every time I pass her on the street, you know?”

“I guess. Huh. She left you food, too?”

“You tell anybody and I'll knock your fucking teeth out. You're a suburban kid, really, aren't you? Through and through. I don't think you'll ever get out of that.”

“Yeah, I will,” said Bobby.

“Not that I blame you. It's not your fault, but, man, what you don't know about life.”

“Like what?” Bobby peeled the label off his beer and squirmed on the beanbag.

“You had a girl yet, Bobby?” Albert leaned back on an elbow.

“A girl?” He rolled the label into a little tube.

“Or maybe you like boys?”

“I'm no fag. I like girls.”

“So, you fucked anybody yet?”

“No. Almost though.” The boy's skin was fire-lit and pink with both embarrassment and liquor. There was a slight sheen on his upper lip.

“Oh, almost. Almost. What does that mean—you touched somebody's titties? You do that, Bobby? With some little girl from school?”

Bobby shifted, uncomfortably. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Naw.”

“I bet it never happened. I remember when I popped my first cherry. I couldn't wait to tell everyone.”

This was not true. There had been no “first time” for Albert, not one he could point to as an event that separated what came before from everything that came after. No rite of manhood in the way of other boys. There was the first time he had had sex away from the compound, with Gladys. Teacher and tender tutor. He'd bumped into her one night in Mavericks when he snuck in for a little underage drinking and she was plying a trade as old as time itself. She'd been shaking her stuff, with her boobs all pushed out of the top of the scarf she'd tied around her chest like a kind of blouse. He must have looked a fool with his mouth hanging open. She'd taken pity on him and brought him home with her. She had been sweaty and musky and eager for him, surprised only when he flipped her over and insisted on taking her from behind. Said she couldn't imagine where a boy his age could learn such things and he never told her. She was the only woman he'd ever had sex with who was still a sort of friend. But it sure as hell hadn't felt like the first time for anything. Just a different time, in a different place, with a different person in charge.

The light was beginning to fade—purple and orange through the trees. Albert got up from the bed and went to the small rickety table by the window to the right of the door. He took the glass off an oil lamp and lit the flame. A willow dream catcher hung from a nail stuck in the wooden bar bisecting the window. This Indian girl had given it to him last summer. They'd hung out for a few weeks and then she'd said she was going away and couldn't see him anymore. She gave him the dream catcher because, she said, the bad dreams would get caught in the sinew-woven web, in the centre of which was suspended a tiny quartz crystal, like a drop of dew. She said the magic was very old and powerful. He'd almost thrown it away, but then didn't; he'd nailed it up as she told him, but he didn't notice any difference in his dreams. The crystal glinted in the lamp light. As he replaced the glass on the lamp, the room took on a softer glow. The shadows weren't banished, certainly not defeated, but they knew their place. A spider, the size of a half-dollar, sat dead centre of a web it had spun in the corner of the window. He considered killing it, and then didn't. Live and let live.