My Abandonment(28)

I have moved closer, right to the edge of the road without hardly noticing. The house is beaten-up yellow with cardboard over one front window and all the rain gutter broken and dangling and a metal ladder leaning there. The dog is a huge black and tan shepherd dog tied to a chain. Chainsaw. The boys are throwing a rolled up newspaper back and forth over the dog's head and it's jerking from one to the other growling and barking trying to get at them. More newspapers are all around the yard like no one ever picks them up and opens them and reads them.

"A girl!" the taller boy yells. The newspaper hits the ground and they're walking at me.

Both their hair is white blond and thin. Their faces are sunburned. The little boy is thinner and his T-shirt is dirtier. The older boy is as tall as I am.

"What kind of girl are you?" he says.

"What kind of boy are you?" I say.

"Are you a tomboy?" he says.

"I'm a girl," I say.

"What are you doing on our property?"

"I'm not," I say. "I'm on the road."

"Who said you can watch us?" he says.

"Does your dog bite?" I say.

"Chainsaw?" he says and looks back. "I don't know. She might."

"Chainsaw's deaf," the smaller boy says. "She's old, that motherfucker."

"You can't call a girl dog a motherfucker," the other boy says.

"Yes you can."

"I'm Caroline," I say. "Can I play with you?"

These brothers, the older one is named Ben and the little one is Michael and the game we play is where Michael tries to spray us with the hose and then he has a gun with rubber darts and we run around the house screaming with Chainsaw barking and trying to reach us and I can't tell if she's playing. Then Michael's got a slingshot called a wrist rocket and we're climbing up the ladder onto the roof. The shingles are slippery with grit. The hose sprays up that far and gets Ben in the face.

"Asshole!" he says.

It's fun. We're holding on to the chimney and Michael is still on the ground. A chunk of gravel hits me in the leg and it stings.

"Bitch!" I say.

Michael calls up at us. "Let's switch around," he says.

"Only if you can get Chainsaw up here," Ben says.

The dog has her front paws on the ladder and it's sliding like it might fall down. I wonder if we'd be trapped, if Michael would be strong enough to set the ladder back up or if he'd just rather leave us up here. We start throwing down sticks and laughing and shouting when a horn honks and a dented up blue station wagon with plastic wood on only one side skids into the driveway.

The lady who climbs up has wild blond hair and a flowered blouse and jeans on. She holds a brown paper bag against her.

"Boys!" she says. "What did we agree about the roof? You want the police to come again?"

We're halfway down the ladder before she notices me.

"I wish I could blame you for their behavior," she says. "Chainsaw! Back off."

The dog is sniffing at the bag of groceries.

Inside she gives us a glass of milk with strawberry powder which is sweet and good.

"My name's Caroline," I say. "I live right over there."

"I know who you are," she says. "You're the hillbilly girl that lived in the park."

"I'm a regular girl," I say.

"You look like a regular girl," she says, "but I heard about you on the radio, how you slept inside a cave for four years, all the things you did."

The cupboards are all open and she's sliding in one can after another.

"Crazy," she says. "What grade will you be in?"

"Eighth," I say.

"Same school as Ben," she says. "He probably won't talk to you at school, but you shouldn't feel bad about that."

"I won't," I say. "I might not even talk to him."

The two glasses next to me are empty with pink sludge at the bottom. The boys have already gone back outside.





I dream of running barefoot in the forest park where I can feel the leaves slapping around me and no one can keep up or catch me and I kick through the snarls of ivy and kick Father beneath the sheets. Or I kick and wake myself with my foot out over the air next to the bed since he's not in the bed. Father has his own helicopter dreams and now he's seeing them in the day too and when I wake up at night usually his eyes are open or he's standing at the window or he's not in the room at all.

I walk into the hallway and through the bathroom, into my empty room. We make up the bed in Father's room but here we mess up the blankets and leave them that way so it looks like I sleep in my bed even though I have never slept there. Randy glows atop the dresser and I pick him up and whisper my secrets into the hole of his stomach, holding my thumb over the hole in his anus so they won't slip out until they settle.