Shelter (1994) (6 page)

They heard the stream before they saw it; they washed dishes and pots here, dunked their sweaty clothes, gulped handfuls of water so cold it stung. The stream tumbled down the mountain to join Mud River, widened, widened, flattened finally at the bottom of the hill, and grew slow. Just before it joined the river it flowed over its former banks, dammed by a deserted beaver dam and fallen trees. The beaver dam stood sentinel, a dike of branches and crumbling mud. Whatever washed down through the stream came to rest against it; no one walked or swam too close. There were a few cans and bottles, some of them broken, and the occasional desolate bit of clothing: a ladies' glove, a man's shoe. Then there was the river, wide as a three-lane road, and the trail alongside like an afterthought. Now Lenny could make out the swinging bridge, still and elemental in the dark. Moonlight caught one edge and glistened the shape; it hung there like a woman's necklace. Lenny wanted to start across but Cap took her arm and urged her farther up along the boundary of the woods—the opposite bank had been torn up by the workmen laying pipe. At night the scarred ground and dirt piles, the tubular mounds of iron, seemed an abandoned desecration. On this side, farther along the river, the trail split off through the woods to Turtle Hole. Here, at the border of camp property, the county people swam when camp was not in session, diving from a flat boulder that overhung the water. Girl Guides didn't swim there, which was odd, as the water was a perfect silver oval, deep in the center. Maybe there were snapping turtles, or ghosts. How would it look at night? Lenny wanted to see. The bridge moved as though trod upon, and shimmered as they left it behind.

Threading their way along the narrow riverbank, they were scouts or spies, moving as though pursued, scrambling precisely. Cap was first, a certain shield. Lenny consciously echoed her movements, crouching, swooping, standing taller and striding; she felt like a clean white cloth, a rippling slipstream. She saw her own naked legs move reliably over the dark ground and stayed in tandem, Cap's shadow, secret even to herself, invisible. Cap would move fast and go far—Lenny imagined following, unseen, to distant times and places, places most people from Gaither would never go. An understanding struck Lenny wordlessly: Cap had arrived in Gaither only to find Lenny. That's why she was here where she didn't belong. Even now, Lenny felt crowds watching them, rows of silent presence, and she turned her head to see the glower of the trees, row upon row of staggered slender shapes. Second-growth maples, oaks, ash, the trees held upright their densely leaved bouquets. Only the knobby beginnings of branches were visible under the foliage, as though a few thin arms supported these masses of minutely stirred leaves. Lenny moved quickly and her rapidly changing perspective lent the trees a semblance of movement as subtle as the shifting of an eye. The forest was not like rocks or sticks, it was
alive.
She had never really known before.

They had left the river behind and were moving through the woods, almost to Hurtle Hole. Cap slowed and crouched down. Lenny was impatient. Now she could see the water, perfect, silver and contained.

"Be quiet," Cap whispered. "There's someone here, up high, on the rock." She lowered herself into the tall reeds along the border of the woods and they both sat, peering through stalks.

"Is it Buddy, wandering around at night?" Lenny saw no one.

"No, he wouldn't be out this late. No, it's a man." Cap sighed intently.

They both moved forward carefully, nearly to the edge of the water. Lenny listened. She heard movement, the quiet clank of something metal. A hunched form sat on the flat slab of boulder that overhung the water. Then the form straightened and pointed an immensely long, thin finger into the night sky. The finger cracked and whistled, flinging an invisible line far out.

"He's fishing," Cap said.

The line had landed and sunk its weighted hook. Soundlessly, concentric echoes widened across the breadth of the water. The surface looked placid and heavy, reflecting dull particles of light. By day Turtle Hole was just the dull green of a turtle's horny flesh; now it was different, and the mute border of the trees was black. The form sat quietly, holding the long pole. He was dressed in dark pants—he wore no shirt but Lenny saw the glint of a belt buckle. He turned and settled, leaning against a large stone. They could make out his staring face, his eyes fixed on the water.

"Frank," Lenny breathed. Here was where he came at night, probably every night. She knew of him suddenly, days at his campsite, sleeping miserably in the drowsy heat, appearing to play reveille and taps, to mow the grassy quad with the old push mower. His wrinkled clothes. Sometimes he wore a billed hat. He noticed none of them. They were beneath his notice because this is where he lived while the rest of them were dead in their swoony sleep. No one told him what to do. He was alone.

Cap touched Lenny and pointed. Not speaking, they inched closer, careful to stay concealed. The grasses smelled pungent and were sharp; Lenny felt them trailing over her skin and knew they tasted sour. Through the reeds, she could see him. He moved his head, not hearing them but sensing an approach. They stopped, perhaps thirty feet to his right.

Lenny knew she would stand and make him see her. She felt dulled, heavy with urgency, like an insect pinned to paper, trying to beat its wings. She heard the low vibrato of crickets and wanted to walk straight toward him. She must have begun to stand.

Cap stopped her with a whisper. "No, let him see me first." She stood silently, waiting for him to find her. Lenny crouched, her head level with Cap's knees. She gazed up the length of Cap's long body and remembered her mother's bare arms in summer, how large Audrey had seemed, a giant at the screen door of the kitchen, how the door whammed shut with a slash, cutting the air like a weapon. The concrete stoop beyond was lit up by the angle of the sun, its nubby surface embedded with shards of glitter. Lenny felt herself momentarily blinded by those dazzling mornings, as though a light were switched on in the dark, but it was night now, and in fact the night sky was pricked with stars far above Cap's shoulders. The stars were endless, faceted and glowing. Like fireworks, they had exploded into the sky and were still receding, falling and burning.

"He saw me," Cap said. She had knelt back into the grass and she was untying Lenny's sneakers. Lenny shifted her weight and the shoes were gently pulled away. The water was close and the ground was damp.

Hidden, Lenny felt powerful and safe. But he had seen them; he had put down the pole and was looking into the dark, empty air above the grasses. No motion, no sound. The feeling would crumble and burn up, like the stars, unless she moved. Whoever, whatever he was, she felt herself hurtling toward him. She held him in her gaze and stood. The air was vast as outer space, and warm. She couldn't read his eyes, his expression, he was only a form, standing, beginning to move. The water, a silver mass, held more light than the night could hold, and she moved toward it. She couldn't feel the ground. Her feet, her legs, were pleasantly numb, tingling, but her hands stung with heat and she opened them. She waded into the water to be held up, but the water, to her waist, to her breasts, was not heavy enough to help. She saw him slip into the pond in his baggy pants, moving toward her, and she only wanted him to hurry. The water broke around him and the sound of its crack and gentle roll seemed delayed, like thunder after mile-high lightning. She had to open her mouth to breathe.

Now he was close, his face, his eyes. He didn't recognize her, he had never seen her before and perhaps didn't see her now; she was
safe and she opened her arms to him. He didn't seem like Frank, the boy they'd watched. So near, he was almost a man; his hands were broad and flat, his shoulders squared at her forehead. She stroked him and felt his muscles tense as though her touch was electric. He was ready and he was afraid. His open palms on her nipples were a soft pressure meant to confirm her nakedness but she moved forward and up and made him support her weight. She couldn't stand; she wanted to close her eyes and hold on. Her head was above him now, her face in his hair. He was unbearably fragrant, like flowers and dust, and his thick dry hair was warm. He nuzzled inside, between her breasts, like a vicious baby, pushing, using his mouth. He moved his hands, lifting her against him, sucked at her skin, her throat, tasting until he found her lips. She had never really kissed anyone but her parents and girlfriends; it wasn't what she had thought. It was more like eating, eating something swollen and sweet that you could taste but never swallow, never have. She was feeding him, filling him up, but he couldn't pull her close enough. He pushed deeper with his tongue, slower, pulling her tighter the length of their bodies. His hands grew frantic, moving haphazardly over her; their panic began to pull everything into focus. Lenny felt a core of blurry fear almost coalesce but then Cap was in the water near them, touching them both, circling round them, her mouth on his neck, his ears, as though she were whispering. He was breathing quickly, trying to move them toward the bank, but Cap held Lenny against him, touching the backs of Lenny's thighs, urging her closer so that Lenny opened her legs and clasped his waist. His hands found her hips and she touched the hard buckle of his belt, pressed her hand close under it, inside. When she touched him he froze and made a sound that started a throbbing pain in her. She nearly moved to touch herself but felt a hand hard against her. She felt it probe inside and let her weight rest there, then she clasped him tighter and stopped thinking. His mouth was on hers but she pulled away, gasping; she had to cry out, then she couldn't stop her voice. Shattering, she heard a coarse, continuous moaning as she turned, over and over, tumbling through some pierced and narrow space. She felt a hot rush and knew she was urinating, emptying into the hand that held her. She let that warmth happen and the turning eased. Tears of relief filled her eyes even as he stiffened against her, voicing his own smothered sounds. She wanted to hold him but Cap was between them, urging her back. Lenny remembered the water again as an element separate from herself; she could taste it, smell it. She wanted to sleep in it, let herself sink. Her feet touched the mud bottom and Cap was pulling her away. They moved together, escaping before anything was said, before he heard their voices or truly saw them. They ran, throwing water off their long bodies, forgetting Lenny's shoes in the tall reeds, stumbling until they gained the path. The woods stretched before them, dense, connected shapes surprisingly the same, but the color of the night had altered.

He awakens in witch's light, the light of the Devil's love, night light made luminous by moon glow and mist rising off the water. Now the night is coolest and T\irtle Hole, warmed by the sun, drifts a moist, low-lying cloud. Moonsmoke, Preacher had called it, smelling the air in Calvary, where a stream behind the rickety wooden porch of the house charged the air with a similar languid wet on summer nights. Where was Preacher now? Dead and rotted, and Parson wakes at this hour, always, near midnight, rolling up toward consciousness the way words rolled up on the bottom of the plastic 8 ball Preacher had kept at the house. It's how prayer moves, he'd say, cloudy and clear, come and go; waking those years, Parson would often hear him reading aloud, conversing with a heavenly ghost. Later, in prison, Parson woke to nothing, dead air, the men rocked shut in acres of separate cells. Here the air is so alive it tingles, alive with all of them, all the children breathing their milky sleep, pearling the night with their breath. It's a kind of heaven he's found, and the evil that could hurt such innocence was great, it would
be an evil unafraid of good, an evil thriving as shadow of every gesture and desire, every future. Time moved that way, and disease, and fire ate that way, catching the edge and burning toward the center. Burning to follow Carmody, find him, Parson had waited a week after Carmody's parole, then walked off a work detail, easily, carefully, overlooked after seven years as a slow and powerful child, content, dementedly religious, afraid of the outside. He'd walked off with just the clothes he wore, his Bible strapped to his stomach under his shirt, walked the first few miles, his prison blues not so different from any laborer's clothes. A trucker at a gas station gave him a ride straight out of Carolina, gave him a map. Parson found a half-familiar cluster of names and marked those names with the cross of the Lord—Winfield, Bellington, Gaither, town names printed smaller and smaller, and the camp, Camp Shelter, set off as a small pastel square, a forest preserve, yes, preserved, in the northern part of the state. Carmody had said he lived at Shelter, hell no, wasn't no town, just a dirt road and a few hicks, each with a couple of acres, and a church full of crazies down the bend. The women yelling and rolling, Carmody had laughed, fuck Jesus blind if they could, and Parson thought, in the jostle and roar of the truck cab, of Jesus, the mystery, taking a woman to Him as Preacher had taken women, sometimes in Parson's little room, on Parson's cot, pious women feverish with guilt or want. Preacher was a big man, heavy, clothed in black and the dark woolen coat he wore in winters; beneath him the women seemed prostrate as he worked over them, performing a sacrament that elicited the heavy breathing of hard labor. Sent out for wood, Parson looked in the window near the foot of the bed and watched, seeing only Preacher's backside and the women's white legs straddling the edges of the narrow cot or flung up over Preacher's behind. He was too big to hold in his bulky clothes and their flimsy, imploring limbs seemed useless. Parson could see nothing, really, the women saw nothing, it was fast and hard and Preacher got inside them without taking off their clothes, without removing his own, then he sat up over them, still panting, pulled them upright and prayed over them. It wasn't the young girls who came around but the older women, thin ones, dried out and wan like something had left them too long in the sun. Left for dead, Preacher would say, and they never told, only never came back, or returned when they couldn't stay away. They needed that punishing comfort, the sharp heat of it, Preacher said, and he was a grievous sinner tempted by need, a sinner as surely as any murderer or thief, he brought sinners to the Crucible because he was a sinner himself. Those needy women were evil. He trusted only the big women, women like Carmody's wife, he said they slept in their bodies, had vanquished the Devil in the fortification of the flesh. They were the ones to whom he delegated the organization of church suppers and revivals, the posting of notices. They brought food to the back porch in baskets, breads and cakes and roasted meats, homemade butter faded and white as the worn complexions of those other women, who stumbled through the door of Parson's low-ceilinged room as though they were faint or sick, who flung themselves down on the narrow cot in the sway of an urge Parson felt, watching them. Like a fire in his guts, sick with burning, and when he told Preacher, the old man said he must spill his seed on barren ground, never in the house or in his bed, seduced by pleasure, he must cleanse himself kneeling and alone where the earth was hard, or in the cold of the river. Throw it in the river, Preacher said, that is the seed of evil. Too late for a man of sixty, but Parson might yet remain clean. He was a big boy, Preacher said, an animal needy as a dog or a horse, a man never mothered by a woman, but he must pour the passion of the body into the work of the Lord, and Parson began to lead prayers at meetings, and to preach. He spoke of evil, having known it, he spoke of smelling its approach and described the smell, he spoke of the Devil's fragrant oils and the swollen itch of the Devil's hunger, of stanching the flow of the Devil's bloody need, for that need was a mortal wound at the ravaged breast of Jesus, who took no woman and no man and was loved by God. Yet the Devil cleaved unto whatever fed him and feasted, drunk with flesh, feasted until he failed to defend his mind from angels. It was then Parson felt himself empowered as a warrior of the Lord, free to suck at the marrow of the Devil's sated bones.