FSF, September-October 2010 Page 18

  As we were clearing the dishes, Mom handed me an oil lamp and a matchbox. “It gets dark in here,” she said. “You and Trey will want that if you need the bathroom.” She pointed to a grimy plastic paint tub in the opposite corner.

  I set the lamp and matches down on the table. “That's all right.” I nodded to my backpack, with its fifteen-inch metal Maglite strapped into the side pocket. “I've got us covered."

  * * * *

  I woke, clammy with sweat. Something had a grip on my ankles.

  "Shit!” I croaked. I twisted and kicked, trying to find my way out of the sleeping bag. My flashlight fell to the floor with a sharp crack. I snatched it before it could roll under the bed, twisted it on, and raised it over my head like a bludgeon.

  Light swept across my feet. Nothing there. Just my legs tangled in the sleeping bag.

  I had been dreaming I was watching Trey. He was younger, four, maybe five, and we were in the grocery store. It was crowded. He kept slipping his hand from mine, darting ahead into the crush of people. One of them—but which one?—wanted to take him. I tried to run after him, but my arms and legs moved so slow, like the floor was made of river mud....

  I put my hand out to the wall to steady myself. The rock was like ice, so cold I wondered if it was wet. I turned the flashlight on it. Beads of moisture glistened on the stone. I pulled my hand back and rubbed my fingers together under the sleeping bag.

  Trey raised his head out of the hammock. “What's going on?"

  "Nothing,” I said. “Just a bad dream, that's all."

  Trey dropped his head back into the netting. “I was dreaming about Toad,” he mumbled, and then the deep, soft breaths of sleep overtook him again.

  Toad was our cat who died six months after Mom disappeared. Trey kept it together pretty well after our mother up and left, but when the cat died, Trey lost his shit. Crying non-stop, full five stages of grief and everything. I lay back on the trundle bed. The wire supports dug into my back through the thin mattress. I clicked the flashlight off and laid it across my chest. Having Toad there to guard the foot of the bed didn't sound so bad about now.

  I closed my eyes. Just as my head was getting soft, floating me off into another dream, a wash of freezing air spread across my neck. I sat up. Soft whispers trickled in from the other side of the hanging sheet, quiet like bare feet on stone or the almost imperceptible pat of water falling from the ceiling. I eased myself out of bed. Cold pressed through my socks. I clutched the flashlight and shivered.

  "...clsser theokkm binethkk..."

  I moved silently into the living room, pressing my tongue between my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  "...frumundr tek grrn hik kraa..."

  I lifted the sheet to the room where Ian and our mother lay side by side on a sagging futon. Ian had thrown one leg over her thigh in his sleep. I swept the flashlight across the room. Knapsacks against the wall, clothesline above the bed, guttered candles on the floor, two pairs of muddy boots, Ian, my mother, facedown on the bed, and—

  The beam of light tripped over a break in the wall. I paused, then stepped back, letting the flashlight's scope widen against the far side of the room. Squinting, I moved forward again. There was a black wood door built into the rock.

  "...hak yhhh sttp clsser..."

  I snapped the flashlight off. My heart tapped out a rapid beat against my breastbone. I would count to three and turn the light back on. The longer I stayed in the dark, the more I felt as if the door were moving closer in the blackness.

  I tried to breathe in, hold, and breathe out, slowly, like Corrine had showed me that night under the waterfall, but instead, I heard myself drawing in hurried gasps.

  "Fuck,” I whispered. I turned on the light.

  The door was still there, slightly too narrow for its height, its round, metal doorknob mottled with tarnish. I glanced at my mother and Ian, deep asleep, unfazed by the diffuse circle of brightness the Maglite cast over the wall beside their bed. I inched forward, reached out my hand, and touched the door. The wood gave slightly, as if it were waterlogged or soft with termites.

  "...sssyak lmos yeer..."

  I drew back. The air around my head cleared, as if a transformer humming far in the distance had shut off. The pines and maples creaked outside the mouth of the cave. I angled the flashlight to the floor and walked backward, out of the room, back to the cold trundle bed.

  * * * *

  I hunched beside the sawhorse table, trying to drink a mug of wild chamomile tea Ian had brewed. Morning light pressed against the window glass, brilliant and silvery. My mother hovered near the stove. Every few minutes she stopped kneading her lump of bread dough to shove another log in the fire and warm her cracked palms by the stove's open door.

  "And on the way home, I can show you the apiary,” Ian said over his shoulder as he walked one of his big plastic water collection barrels through the front door.

  Trey followed, skinny arms holding up the back side of a wheelbarrow piled with bags of cement mix. “What's that?"

  "Bees,” I cut in. “It's a place where you keep bees."

  Trey's eyes went wide. He looked at Ian. “You keep bees?"

  "Yeah,” Ian said. He scooped up a bag of cement mix and dropped it on the floor beside our room. “They're wonderful. Honey's nature's sweetener. We don't have to gum up our systems with refined sugars or high fructose corn syrup anymore.” He made a face.

  "Trey's allergic to bees.” I put down my mug. I frowned into the murky tea at the bottom. If only my mother's new lifestyle involved coffee. And sugar for coffee. My head hurt like I had chased a six-pack with one too many rum and Cokes and French-kissed someone with mono the night before. Trey acted like he'd spent the night at the Marriott.

  "Oh. Well. You can still eat honey, right?” Ian asked, reaching for another bag.

  Trey glanced at me. I looked up from my mug and nodded.

  "Yeah, eating it's okay,” Trey said. He lifted the last oversized bag of cement mix around its middle.

  "Hold it there,” Ian said. He screwed a length of hose onto a valve at the bottom of the rain barrel. Water came bubbling out of the open end. He angled it down and let the water stream into the wheelbarrow, then pulled a fat-bladed hunting knife from his tool belt and slit the bottom of the cement bag.

  "Okay, now shake,” Ian said.

  Trey jerked the bag back and forth and cement powder spilled into the wheelbarrow. The bag lightened. Trey hopped up and down, sending a cloud of white dust into the air.

  "Whoa, whoa.” Ian laughed. Powder clung to his beard. “That's good."

  Trey hopped again. Another clump slid into the barrow. “Ren, guess what we're making. A wall."

  I looked around at the scattering of trowels, rebar, and cinder blocks. “You need any help?"

  "You can stir.” Trey looked at Ian. “Right?"

  "Sure.” Ian shrugged.

  I abandoned my tea and took the wooden paint stirrer he held out to me. I worked it through the thickening gritty sludge, while Mom baked bread and Ian and Trey laid out a line of cinder blocks where one of the hanging bed sheets had been. We positioned the rebar and slopped cement over the blocks. Ian told us about the years he had driven a taxi in Tempe, Arizona. He swore he had picked up Leonard Nimoy at an all-night bowling alley one time, and another time he had spent the small hours of the morning cruising through an industrial area while a state senator and a spray-tan blonde from a local escort service occupied the back seat.

  "Crazy,” Trey said, sinking his trowel into the wet cement. “Who'd want to just drive around all night?"

  I glared at Ian. “You explain it."

  Ian twisted the end of his beard, deep in thought. “Maybe Astra will make some honey biscuits for us tonight. We should have a big dinner to celebrate you boys being here, right, babe?"

  Our mother laid a loaf of bread in the middle of the table, and then plunked a container of thick, oily peanut butter down next to it. “That sounds great.�
�� She didn't look up at us.

  Ian wiped his chalky hands on his jeans. He sliced the bread and handed a piece to me, then one to Trey. The bread had a hard smokiness to it. The crust was blackened in spots, but thick and warm at the center.

  "Did you make this?” I called into the kitchen. I wanted to add “Mom,” but I wasn't sure if I should call her that, or Laura, or Astra, and anyway, it came out sounding harsh, not how I meant. I held the bread up to my nose again.

  My mother squatted by one of the huge plastic bins of rice, corn flour, and recycling junk she and Ian had stacked along the northern wall of the cave. I thought she hadn't heard me, but then she looked up and nodded. She leaned over the junk bin and started rummaging.

  "We want to start grinding our own peanut butter, too.” Ian tapped the jar with a butter knife. He looked at it thoughtfully. “And maybe put in a forge someday. Make our own silverware."

  "Like Thor,” Trey said, his mouth full of peanut butter.

  Mom straightened up suddenly. “Why don't you boys go get your hiking gear together?"

  Trey dropped his uneaten crusts on the table. “You coming, Ren?"

  "Where are we going?” I rubbed my forehead.

  "Down to the stream."

  I shook my head. “Maybe I'll catch up."

  Trey and Ian headed for the back of the cave. I sat at the table, watching my mother sort through the recycling. She pulled out handfuls of empty bread bags and folded squares of used tinfoil, tossed them on the floor.

  "Did you lose something?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “I'm just...you know, organizing."

  I paused. “Are you eating breakfast?"

  "Oh...I'm not hungry.” She leaned into the bin and raised a clanking-rattling of tin cans that drowned out all hope of conversation.

  I stared at the nearly whole loaf of bread. I leaned my elbows on the table and ran my hands over my short hair.

  "Hey, Mom?"

  She raised her head and looked over her shoulder. Her eyes were small and naked without makeup.

  I was going to ask if she was okay, if I could help her find whatever she needed from the bins, or organize them or whatever the hell she was up to, but the words bottlenecked in my throat. “Did you know there's a door in your room?” I asked instead.

  Her shoulders dropped. “Oh. Yeah."

  "What's that about?"

  "That? That's just the cold cellar. We keep milk and stuff in there. It's like a natural refrigerator.” She went back to her rummaging.

  "Did you and Ian build it?” I frowned at her back.

  "Oh, no. That was here when we got here. Ian's friend says people have been living in this place off and on for, oh, three, four hundred years? Maybe more. Mountain settlers, and before them, the Cherokee."

  I picked at a hangnail on my thumb. Not that I would know, I guess, but the door hadn't really looked Cherokee to me. I scraped the chair back from the table. “You know, I think I'll go down to the river after all."

  * * * *

  I let myself lag behind Trey and Ian as they cut a trail downhill through the bracken. Outside the cave house, the day had turned bright, sticky-hot, what I expected of summer. As we filed through the woods, the high sun began to thaw my muscles. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and flipped it open. The screen pulsed to life. Roaming...Roaming....

  If I could just get a connection, I would call Corrine. I needed to hear her voice, have her remind me that every day here was another I wouldn't have to do over again. Every day was bringing me back to the bearableness of routine.

  I let myself pretend I was walking home across the miles of crinkling twigs and slick-leafed hillsides, like the Civil War deserter in that movie me and Corrine saw in her parents’ basement the time they went out of town and left her to watch their Pomeranians. At first, it had been an excuse, white noise and a glow to fill the room as we lay back on the couch. But we had ended up watching the movie all the way through, Corrine sprawled across me, the warmth of her breasts pooled on my bare chest.

  Thin branches switched against my shins and upper arms. I folded the cell phone away and concentrated on pushing them aside, keeping Trey's back in view. His yellow T-shirt bobbed through the breaks in the trees. I needed to make sure Ian didn't let him wander into a ravine or get himself coated in bees.

  We met up with a deer trail and followed the snake of it down the mountainside. Once I stopped when our path crossed an ancient, rabbit-eared television set with the screen blown out. My thoughts flashed to some mountain kids hauling it through the woods, leaning it against the tree, drinking beer, trying to shoot out the screen with a hunting rifle. I glanced behind me. The last thing I wanted was to run across some trigger-happy good ol’ boys.

  The slope bottomed out several dozen feet from the riverside. Trey and Ian already stood calf-deep in the slow-moving stream, little eddies of water swirling around their legs. Ian was trying to fashion a fishing pole out of a thick reed and a length of twine. He tied an extra hook to the end of it and speared a chunk of dried-out peanut butter to the barb.

  "Hey, Ren, are you gonna fish with us?” Trey called as I slithered down the last few feet of slope.

  "I don't have a pole,” I called back.

  "Ian can make you one.” Trey jogged toward me, barefoot, the makeshift pole bobbing in his hand. “See? Check it out."

  I lifted the line to inspect it. “I think I'll watch."

  "Ugh. Gay.” Trey rolled his eyes. He ran back to the river and splashed in next to Ian.

  I sat on the grassy bank, watching Ian and Trey fish. They talked quietly, the conversation bubbling into laughter when they discovered they both loved Dungeons & Dragons and some comic about runaway teenagers with superpowers.

  "See, that's the only thing I miss about living on the grid,” Ian said. “Comic books, man."

  I got up and paced the bank. Bits and pieces of Trey and Ian's conversation floated over the water.

  "...was like, ‘critical failure,’ and he was like...."

  "...and with the heirloom tomatoes, you can save the seeds...."

  Clearly, Trey wasn't going to get eaten by some mutant trout or swept away by a flash flood. I flipped open the phone again, checking for a signal. Still nothing. My chest tightened a little, even in the bath of warm afternoon sun.

  "Hey, guys?” I pointed up the river. “I'm gonna take a walk. Go exploring. That okay?"

  "Sure,” Ian said. “We're not going anywhere."

  Trey kept his eyes cast down.

  "I'll be back soon, okay? Okay, Trey?"

  He nodded, his eyes still fixed on the spot where his line broke the water.

  I took off in a jog. The afternoon was beautiful, golden, but I couldn't shake the feeling of unease that clung to my skin. I needed a flat, open area, somewhere free of granite that would let my cell signal through. Ahead, the riverbank tapered away into a thick stand of trees. I jumped down into the shallows and plunged shin deep in the chill current.

  "Mother—!” I bit my lip. Icy water seeped past my socks and filled my sneakers. I scrambled up onto a broad slab of river rock and scanned the water. Farther upstream, more slabs broke the surface, but none of them looked close enough that I could use them to jump across. I took a deep breath, then fished my cell out of my pocket, held it above my head, and slipped back into the river.

  Cold bit at my ankles and toes, but after a few steps it faded away. Numb warmth flooded my feet. I waded further in. The river didn't carry much current, but near the middle, up to my pockets in water, I could feel what little there was tugging at me, trying to upend me and pin me under one of the innocent-looking rock formations downriver. I turned back, but the bank behind me looked farther than the one ahead. I was pretty sure Ian had said something about water snakes on the way down, but I hadn't really been listening, and it was too late now. I pushed forward, holding the cell phone high.

  On the opposite bank, a short, red mud grade led up to a copse of tr
ees overhanging the river. Their roots were exposed where high water had worn away the soil. I stuffed the cell phone back in my pocket, grabbed the roots, and pulled myself up into the warmth of the afternoon.

  Ahead, the trees petered out to a thin, new-growth forest, dotted with wild blueberry bushes and downed, moss-coated oaks. I broke into a jog, trying to coax the blood back into my legs. I thrashed through a line of brambles and suddenly, the forest opened up into a field. I slowed to a stop. A sea of mountain laurel and waist-high grass, long gone to seed, spread out in front of me. Late-summer flies buzzed around my head.

  I stepped forward. The silence of the field pressed in. I couldn't hear the stream rushing behind me anymore, or the constant chirping and rustling of the forest. I pushed forward a few more steps and opened the phone. Connecting....

  Finally, I thought. Corrine. But no, it was Dad I should call. He should know about the cold and the door and the bees. He could come get us, like he said.

  I dialed. On the fourth ring, the phone went to voicemail. You have reached William Merrick. If this is an emergency, please call my home phone. Otherwise, leave a message and I'll return your call as soon as possible. The phone beeped.

  "Hey, Dad, it's me,” I said. “I guess maybe you're just getting back to Greensboro or whatever, but the reception around here's really shi—uh, sketchy, and I, uh, didn't know when I'd get to call you again. I thought you'd want to know Mom and Ian are keeping bees, and I know you packed Trey's epi-pen and all, but I just had to walk, like, four miles to get to a place where I could call out.” I paused and took a breath, ran a hand over my hair. “Also, it's really cold at night. Like, freezing, bad cold. And there's this...No, that's—you'd think that's dumb—but it's bad enough how cold everything is. Mom is...you know, Mom. And Ian, all he does is talk about high fructose corn syrup and sustainable agriculture...."

  The phone cut me off with an extended beep. Mailbox full, an automated voice said in my ear.

  "Ugh,” I groaned. Way to sound calm and mature, genius. High fructose corn syrup? I closed the cell and stuffed it back in my pocket. Tomorrow I could try to walk down to the road we drove in on, see if I could get a signal near the old church.