Father walks to the front to get off and I go out the back door. We're downtown in the city of Portland and I'm excited and afraid and a little disappointed. We might sleep in a doorway or down along the river which we have done before a long time ago.
"What?" I say to Father, whispering without really facing him.
"Did you hold on to your transfer?" he says. "Good girl. Now we catch one more bus. Here goes."
We're not even downtown for ten minutes and we don't talk to anyone. We climb onto the next bus, careful that others get on between us so it looks like we are not together.
We're out again in fifteen minutes, past dark houses and parked cars. A dog barks. Father and I walk on opposite sides of the street, walking at the same speed. The rain barely starts and we are across the mowed park then on the little trail along Balch Creek, safe under the trees.
An owl calls hollow from one side then the other. We're not talking. We turn right at the stone house and it is harder to walk and find our way than I remember, like the trees have grown up in new places while we were gone and thickened the dark. I feel like I'm back where I belong and then something else sharp I'm not sure what.
Father is careful. His headlamp is around his head but he doesn't switch it on until we're close. Our feet find the old stepping stones.
The circle of light darts and settles. I am glad I can't see all this at once even if every sad thing adds up the way I see it so later I will remember them lit up and lost. Part of the roof has been torn off our old house so the plastic and tarps show. There's a hole where maybe someone's foot went through and I think how that would be, to be reading a book or playing chess or lying in bed when a foot comes punching through the ceiling.
There's a fire ring in the middle of our clearing, all wet and charred logs with blackened beer cans crushed up. Keystone is the name of the brand of beer. There's cigarette butts and shreds of plastic bags.
"Oh man, oh man," Father says. His hands are on his head and he's turning slow circles so the beam of light flashes against the tree trunks, up into the branches, there and gone, resting on a white sign that says sheriff but Father can read it faster than I can and the light flashes away, down into our house which is empty.
"Of course, of course of course this is how it is," Father says. "This is exactly the kind of thing they love to do, every single time. Oh man, Caroline."
Our green Coleman stove and our kettle and our pots and pans and everything is gone just like I said they would be taken. The only thing left really is my encyclopedias and they're all damp and pulled off the shelf and piled on the floor. There's black mold growing in the pages so they're thicker than they should be with the spines stretched open. I pick up the L and try but it smells bad and the pages are stuck together so I drop it.
"Do we have to sleep here?" I say.
"We could," Father says, "but I don't think I can."
Instead we sleep in the hollow beneath a fallen tree trunk. Father spreads a blue tarp beneath us, on top of ferns and moss. He's brought a blanket from our house on the farm to put over us. We're in all our clothes, holding hands. The trees scratch and creak.
"At least we're back," I say.
"Now, Caroline," Father says. "Try to sleep."
I turn over and over again. I listen. I am not asleep since I want to see it all again in the morning and since I am a little afraid and since I can tell that Father is also not asleep.
There is frost on the blanket in the morning, just barely. My ear that is outside of the blanket is cold. Father is already up slapping his legs and stretching his arms over his head trying to get warm.
"This is great," he says. "Just like old times." He keeps saying things like this and the more he says the less true it sounds.
"Caroline!" he says. He's pulling plastic bags out of his pack. "Breakfast," he says.
He's brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and while we eat them I think of our refrigerator and the full jar of jelly there and the orange juice, and the toaster on the counter.
"What do you want to do today?" he says.
"I don't know," I say. "Start building a new house, I guess."
"Let's walk around a little," he says. "Stay warm until the sun comes up."
We walk on paths and not on paths. Wet ferns stripe our legs. The sky is overcast and there's nothing to say. It's like every animal is hibernating or hiding. Father isn't even bothering to make a trail. He kicks sticks out of the way, cracks them. He tears leaves with his hands. And then he sees something and crashes sideways though the bushes. He stretches to reach up into the crook of a tree. Into a hollow.