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My Abandonment(12)

By:Peter Rock


"Caroline?" Father says, all of a sudden below. "My heart?"

"Here," I say. "Up high."

"You're all right? What in hell happened here?"

I look over to see the branch tipped over, the grass tromped down by the runner.

"I don't know," I say. "Everything was this way when I came back so I climbed up here to be safe."

"Good girl," he says. "You come down, now."

Later while he's reading Father looks up and says, "Are you sure you didn't see anything today? It seems like we'll have to move again."

"No," I say.

"You didn't see anything?"

"Not here," I say. "By the water tank I saw a boy and a girl."

"That's what you're writing about?"

"Yes."

"And what were they doing?"

"Taking off their clothes."

"Taking off their clothes?" he says. "Why would they do that? To get a suntan?"

"I don't think so," I say. "I don't know. Maybe to see what their bodies looked like."





It's late in the afternoon on a Friday and I hear the sound of dogs barking and echoing like they're in a cave or something. Usually when I hear them their barks are getting louder so they're running closer to me or they're fading away so the dogs are running in another direction. This time the loudness and so the distance isn't changing and I try another direction, walking, where it gets louder as I go and I hurry on down the slope.

I squint my ears and still can't tell if it's Lala. What it is is all the barking comes out of one white metal truck and even a hundred feet away through tall grass waving in the wind I can see the word CANINE painted on the side. I can see dark shapes and shadows back behind the bars. It's a truck full of dogs.

And the tall grass between the truck and me isn't really waving in the wind, it's chopping back and forth with pieces tossed in the air. Flashes of orange break through, and arms with long tools. It's the men again in their orange outfits, the criminals cutting down the tall grass. Still walking closer, I slow and stay in the shadows. I notice two men between the criminals and the truck, now, holding rifles pointed in the air. If a criminal tried to run away into the forest park they might shoot him or they might let the dogs loose to chase him. I sit and think that the dogs might not care once they were up in the trees where I am. They might just keep running until they meet up with my dogs and could run along with them all night. This is what I'm thinking when I look up and a man is closer, chopping at the grass. He stops to rest, wiping his black face with an orange sleeve. He sees me and he stares.

I step further back into the shadow and then turn and begin to run slipping back and forth through the trees up the slope. Behind me I can hear nothing but the dogs' echoing barking and then even that fades away so I know they're not after me.

I don't reach out for the blackberries along the trail since Friday is the day we fast which makes me hungry and I don't feel strong but you get used to it by the afternoon. The thorns on the vines scratch me as I go.

I slow and check around and I'm close to my secret lookout so I circle and come in the other way and climb up and stretch out, resting. The sky is hazy and hot, not exactly clouds.

I close my eyes and all at once there's a cracking like the dogs but no barking anywhere. I peek over and Nameless is coming. On all fours he shoots down a pathway then darts on his feet sideways over a stone and ducks low beneath a sword fern. He steps out, checking his trail to see the marks he made, if he made any. Then he backs up and does it all over again. I can tell that he's practicing.

"Hey," I say, hissing down at him. "Nameless."

He doesn't look up until I break a stick from a dead branch and throw it down at him. His face is blacked out and his teeth and eyes are both more yellow than I remember.

"You're smart to get out of the men's camp," I say. "We're never going back there again. You could say my name," I say. "Or don't. Just look at me." But he doesn't except out of the side of his eye.

He turns away and I start to climb down before he's gone.

"There's criminals over there," I say. "And dogs."

Halfway down the tree I can see him starting to go through his routine again like he can't even tell I'm there. I wait until he comes back into the clearing.

"You're not deaf," I say. I jump down and step right in front of him so he has to look at me and when he does it's like he's going to smile and then he doesn't make any expression at all. Up close it isn't dirt on his face but blackberry juice, smashed on and sticky. That's what's clumping his hair together too. A fly lands under his eye and he doesn't brush it away. I do and he leaps back like I pinched him.