My Abandonment(32)

Today he wears a blue and white striped engineer's cap. He changes hats almost every day so anyone watching might not know it's him. He's given me four bandanas to wear on different days on my head: red, blue, yellow, camouflage.

The engine quiets down and for a while he's sitting with his back against the tractor's tall wheel without moving or getting up to fix anything so I climb down from the aspen and hop across the stream and walk down the slope of stubble and long cut grass careful not to kick it out of its straight rows. I leap sideways at a black snake but see then that it's cut in two, in three, the edges red from the sharp blades of the swather.

Father doesn't see me coming, he's not looking for me, the sound of the tractor idling covers my footsteps. His hat is off and his face is darker down low, a necklace of white around his neck when he takes his shirt off at night. He doesn't look up until he feels my shadow.

"Are you crying?" I say.

"No," he says. "Not really. It's just my eyes, Caroline."

The tractor is not broken. He's just taking a break. Then he lets me sit on his lap even though Mr. Walters does not like me on the tractor and the engine is so loud it's impossible to talk. I steer the tractor as we cut down the tall grass. You have to look straight ahead where you're going and at the same time out of the side of your eye watch the big black wheel turning just behind you on the right since you want it rolling just on the line of what's been cut so the swather behind you doesn't miss one stalk.





The days are still long even though they're getting shorter. The sun slants across the field. The big round yellow bales are spaced all the way across from fence to fence and all the way up the slope to the stream.

"Are you counting them?" I say to Father who is standing at the window looking out. "How many are there?" I say.

"You see those shadows?" he says. "Down next to every bale? A person could easily hide in every one of those black shadows."

"Could be," I say. I don't say that we could go out and check, that I doubt it.

"Here," he says, holding out my backpack that I haven't seen in a long time. "We're going on a trip. Pack up some things."

"We're going now?" I say. "Where?"

"Once it's dark," he says.

"This is our house," I say. "Are we coming back?"

"We'll see," he says.

"How long?" I say.

"Four days, maybe? Just put whatever you can in your pack. Some clothes."

I go into my room and pull out the dresser drawers. I have so many clothes. While I'm deciding, Father comes in and watches me.

"Don't take those new school clothes," he says. "Those will draw attention. They'll recognize you. That's why they gave them to you. So they can keep track."

"Do you want to pack for me?" I say.

"No," he says. "I don't. But here, here's something I want you to keep."

It's a plastic card that fits in the Wells Fargo ATM machine, just like his card. I am not to use it unless Father says or unless something happens to him. I memorize the number I need to memorize by looking at the spots on Randy's body. One halfway down his throat, one on his hoof. I put him in my pack, and then my forest pants that I haven't worn for a long time and probably don't even fit me anymore. I put the Wells Fargo card in the front pocket of my pack with my library card that I've almost forgotten about.

Once it's dark we go out the back door, close around our house.

"It would be faster to ride," I say as we pass the bicycles where they are leaned against the wall, under the roof's overhang.

"No," Father says. "We leave those here."

We hurry without talking past the barn, along the fence. The horses follow on the other side. Father hisses but they keep coming lined up in single file under the moon like they are saying good-bye or trying to give us away by drawing attention. They do not give us away.

I look back once at our house with all our things in it. In the big house yellow lights shine in the square windows but nothing moves.

"How far are we walking?" I finally say, out on the road where we can't see the houses anymore.

"Not far," Father says. "Only to a bus stop. You remember a long time ago, that special way we rode the bus?"

"Yes," I say.





Four


The headlights grow wider and I stand alone at the stop. I climb on and pay my fare and just then Father comes running up slapping the side of the bus like he almost missed it and like we aren't together. He sits in the back of the bus and I sit in the middle, on the right side.

Outside the sky is darker than the clouds and inside the bus the lights flicker on and off. I see my face in the window's reflection, then the dark fields, then my face again. On my head I wear a stocking cap with all my hair pushed up inside it so maybe I look like a boy. I close my eyes to rest since Father told me at the bus stop that it might be a long night. I open my eyes and we come down through the curving streets, into the lights. I recognize some of the buildings' shapes and the names of the streets: Salmon, Jefferson, Oak.