Our Daily Bread (23 page)

He looked out the window. In a moment of drunken sentimentality a couple of springs back, Albert had planted a forsythia bush outside this window. He'd pilfered the plant from a park in town. The flowers, a cheery yellow in early spring, were gone now and the bush was a green scraggle during the day and a flap of rags in the moonlight. He looked through the leaves to the main house. They called them parties, what went on up there. Figures roamed inside, flashing across the lighted windows. Big Sonny's shuffling retard gait, and it looked like Lloyd, and his wife, Joanie, were up there as well. In Albert's mind, he had a high power rifle with a long distance sight on the top.
Stay away from the windows,
isn't that what they always said in police movies? A country and western tune squalled from a portable CD player no one in the family could have come by honestly.
Ten feet tall and bulletproof,
the nasal-voiced singer bragged. The sounds ebbed and flowed and Albert preferred the noises. It was easier to judge what was going on if you heard voices.

A gaggle of kids hovered at the edge of the wood, Toots and Kenny, and Ruby, and it looked like a couple of Lloyd and Joanie's kids were there, too—Griff and little club foot Brenda. There was a bigger kid with them, looked like Jack. Albert hadn't really talked to his little brother in a while. From the way the other kids gathered round him, it looked like he was taking some sort of a leadership role. They circled round Jack. Jack pointed to one of them—to Toots. They were probably making plans for when things got bad. Toots looked toward Albert's cabin. She and Jack started in this direction; the other kids skittered off into the treeline.

“Fuck,” said Albert.

“What's up?” Bobby put his beer on the floor and made a rocking motion like an old man to get up out of the sucking beanbag chair.

“Stay where you are. I think we're about to have visitors.”

Toots and Jack crossed the muddy ground. Toots hung behind, and Jack took her hand, tugging her. She snatched her hand back and scowled. Albert stepped out of the cabin, closing the door behind him. The air smelled of earth, with the slight metallic whiff of trouble. This must be the way animals sensed things, he thought, smelling that sharp trace of adrenaline and fear they all gave off, for even the dogs had disappeared under the various structures. They'd stay down there, dug into the mud, nose to tail, until whatever was going to happen was over.

The kids were near now. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said his little brother. “What are you doing?”

“What's up, Jack?”

“What do you think's up?” Jack stood a few feet in front of Albert, his arms crossed over his skinny chest, his hair standing up every which way. His eyes were deep-set, like Albert's, and he was nearsighted. He didn't have any glasses, though, and squinted badly. “We can't let the kids hang alone tonight. Others are all high.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Don't be an asshole, Albert. Let us in. It's not like it was, even. It's worse.”

“Can't do it. Sorry.”

“Albert,” said Toots, wiping at the hair falling into her eyes, “don't make me be with them tonight. It's been bad all afternoon. Meth bad.” She wore rubber boots and leggings with holes in them.

“Fuck,” said Albert. Ten-year-olds shouldn't even know about stuff like meth, but it was years too late for that.

“If you were paying any attention to what the hell's going on up here, you'd know that they've been on meth for months.” Jack and Albert locked eyes.

“I know what's going on,” said Albert.

Jack's jaw clenched with anger. He was going to snap one of these days. When the time came he was going to go off like Albert had done that night back when he'd been Jack's age. His little brother was going to have to make choices. He was going to have to lay somebody out, maybe more than once, and prove he was a man, crossing the floor to the adult side. And when he crossed, what would he do—build himself a cabin in the woods someplace like Albert had? Join the fun and games? Or maybe, Albert thought, little brother Jack would kill one of the uncles, or Old Harold. Or maybe he'd kill Albert himself, sneak up on him while he slept one night, full of revenge dreams for all the nights his big brother didn't protect him. Albert wouldn't blame him, either. He still had some killing dreams himself.

Somebody cried out from the main house.

“Where's Jill?” said Albert, for he recognized the pitch and waver in the voice. It got so you could tell that sort of thing, even from so far away.

“Exactly where you think she is. They called her in to cook,” said Jack.

My sister, thought Albert. Wizened and pinched like an old woman already. Jill. My sister. For whom Old Harold bragged he'd been paid five hundred dollars when she was barely thirteen. Then, nine months later, had come Kenny—Kenny of the pale yellow hair nobody else on the mountain had.

She cried out again and a man's laughter followed the cry.

Albert heard a sound behind him and turned to see Bobby's face in the window. He looked grey in the fast-failing light. Albert's stomach flipped.

“Who's that?” said Toots, pointing.

“Nobody,” said Albert.

“Is he yours now?” she said. “Are you keeping him?”

“We know you've got him here,” said Jack, a smirk on his face. “Ruby saw you from the woods when you brought him in. You think you can hide shit up here?”

“They know?” Albert jerked his chin in the direction of the main house.

“Not yet. You're out of your mind, bringing an outsider up here like this—especially first of the month, when the cheques are in.”

They all turned as a sedan emerged from the woods, the tires crunching over gravel. Rock music ricocheted through the trees, the bass making the air vibrate. The music drowned out the noises from the house, or maybe they'd seen the car arrive, too, and piped down. It was packed with college kids, girls and boys, all of them giggling with the danger of being up on the mountain. Albert hated them. They had no fucking idea, just thrill-seekers who'd shit themselves if they really knew.

Ray came out of the house, leaned into the car and pocketed some money. A minute later he was back. He passed something to the driver through the car window. Albert focused on him, willing him not to look this way, but he did. Toots and Jack dashed around him into the cabin.

“Shit.” Albert ducked inside and slammed the cabin door behind him, keeping one eye on the main house through the smeary window. Jack stood on the balls of his feet, as though ready for a fight. He was small, but he had an unpredictable streak. He was wired for the fast strangling jab to the throat, the bone-snapping kick to the side of the knee. His slightly slanted eyes were full of fury. His cheekbones were sharp, his reddish hair like an explosion above his head. “You're not throwing us out tonight,” he said.

He was one of Peter Pan's lost boys. They all were.

Toots stood in the corner between the stove and the foldout bed, a hungry gremlin, all ragged and clutching at shadows. Bobby was rooted in the middle of the room, looking around as if vampires had just invaded the place.

“You know the rules,” Albert said. “I don't tell anybody where you are. I don't join in on nothing. I'm not part of them, but I don't fight anybody else's battles. You got to go.”

Jack looked over at Bobby. “You sure you're not one of them? Got your own private party here?”

Albert took a step toward his brother. “I'd be very careful what you say right about now, Little Jack. Very careful.”

“Hey, I—” Bobby started.

“Sit the fuck down and shut up,” Albert said to him. He pointed at Bobby, but didn't take his eyes off Jack. “This doesn't concern you.”

“Please, Albert,” Toots said from the corner. “We ain't got anybody else. Jack can't stand up to them alone.” She sounded like she was crying. “Jill's already got a split lip.”

Albert heard a noise and looked out the window. The teenagers' car turned around while Ray watched, and headed off slowly down the mountain. If only it were that simple. Ray stood for a moment, scanning the woods. His eyes stopped on Albert's cabin. Then he turned and went back in the house.

“Who's Jill?” said Bobby.

“Our sister,” said Jack. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Bobby Evans. I'm Albert's friend.”

Jack laughed. “I didn't know Albert had friends.”

“Jack, I swear I'll break your fucking arm if you don't shut up.”

“Somebody hurt your sister?” Bobby leaned forward. “Who hurt her? Shouldn't we do something?”

“I thought I told you to shut up!” said Albert. “Jesus, you too, Toots! Stop that snuffling. I can't hear myself think.” He put his hands up to the sides of his head. Sometimes it seemed all he ever heard were the sounds of somebody crying, somebody crying out. It was his nightmare nursery rhyme, his lullaby. Toots was just a little wraith in the dark spot behind the stove, trying to disappear, maybe once and for all.

It still wasn't too late to drive the kid back down the mountain. Drop him off in town and let him sleep in a fucking doorway for all Albert cared. Let the rest of the kids take care of themselves. Put the pedal to the metal, head out and see where the world would take him. And there was Bobby, looking at him like he was supposed to do something. Looking at him like he expected a superhero. The Avenger of North Mountain.

It occurred to Albert, just for a flashing moment, that maybe he'd known this was going to happen when he agreed to bring Bobby up here in the first place. Nobody in the world had ever looked up to Albert Erskine, and when he was brave enough to peek into the folded-up corner of his mind where he kept such knowledge, he knew he wasn't worth looking up
to.
That was the heart of it. He looked at Bobby, skinny little runt. Jack, like a little mongoose, ready to fight the cobra. Toots, broken little household imp, smelling of ash and unwashed clothes. His tribe of lost children. If he sent them away now, it would be over. He'd be alone again, and if you'd asked him a couple of months ago what he wanted more than anything else, he would have said it was just that: to be alone. Now he wasn't so sure.

Jack said, in a low voice, “You have to take a stand, Albert. You can't always be on the fucking sidelines. There are no sidelines up here. You should know that. It's time.”

“When did you grow up?” Albert said, when what he really wondered was when little Jack had become more of a man than he was. He locked eyes once again with this small and semi-feral boy, who was most likely illiterate, although Albert had never taken the time to find out, and whose future was almost certainly, as Albert imagined his own to be, bleak and short. When he saw what was in those eyes—all the familiar corroding resentment and scalding sense of injustice—it felt as though he looked back in time, to his own not-so-distant past. In the unforgiving light that seemed to fill the cabin—the light of exposure, of being known—Albert imagined his life and his pride as rocks easily turned over, revealing all the wriggling, shameful things beneath. He imagined he heard small, soft-bodied things scuttling for the shadows, scratching at the corners with their claws. It was useless, he knew. Once known, shameful things are never unknown. He took a breath, dropped his eyes for a moment, and then said, “Fine, then. Bring 'em in.”

Jack blinked, as though he really hadn't expected it to be this easy.

“I'll get them,” said Toots and, before Albert could change his mind, she scurried across the floor and out into the night, making no more noise than any other small creature accustomed to avoiding predators.

It was a matter of a minute or two, during which time no one in the cabin spoke, and then the door opened and the small herd of dirty, bruised children bustled in, looking around as though they had just stepped into some foreign, potentially treacherous world. Kenny and Ruby made a dash for the foldout, and hunched up in a corner. Griff and Brenda, with her sloping, painful walk, held hands and took a spot in the corner next to the table. Next came chubby Little Joe. Eight-year-old Frank arrived last, carrying two-year-old Cathy. Cathy sucked her thumb and had obviously been crying; her only garment the messy and malodorous diaper drooping around her hips. The air buzzed with anticipation and the murmur of high-pitched whispers. Eight little kids, and Jack and Bobby and Albert, crammed into a cabin built for one.

Albert scratched his head. “This is going to be one long fucking night.”

“This is a lot of kids,” Bobby said.

Cathy whimpered and Frank jiggled her, trying to calm her, his eyes wary and alert.

“You got another diaper for her?” said Jack.

“No,” Frank said. Cathy turned her head and tried to hide in Frank's neck. “We can use my T-shirt,” he said. He squatted on the floor and stripped off his shirt. There were old cigarette burn scars on his back. Eight of them in two perfect squares.

“Holy shit,” said Bobby.

“Exactly.” Albert held his nose as the noxious fumes filled the cabin. He'd never get that smell out, the smell he remembered all too well from his years in the trailer-shack with Gloria and his grandmother Sybil. That smell was one of the reasons he'd sworn he'd never have children.

Noises tumbled down through the pines from the house. Voices, shouts, and the sound of breaking crockery or glass. Laughter.

“Are we going to try to get Jill?” said Jack. His jaw was set and Albert knew fantasies danced in his head, visions of storming the house and rescuing their sister, maybe taking out a few of the others at the same time.

“Nope.” Albert looked out the window and watched the shadows and forms in the windows on the other side of what seemed an ocean of mud and garbage. “We wouldn't get her. Not now. They're too far into it.”