My Abandonment(35)

"What?" he says. "You know better. This is ridiculous."

"Hold on, now," Father says, and his deep voice slows Clarence. "I thought you might have some of our things, that were left behind when we went away."

"Since you went away!" Clarence says. "That's an excellent way to put it. Since you've been away. Well, since you've been away what you've done is rain down shit on everybody and brought cops through here like they never even cared before. You and your daughter! Do you even know? I can't believe you would come back here and lead them to us again not to mention that this is the exact first place they'll come looking for you. Stupid."

I wait for Father to say something and so does Clarence. I look up and I can't even see where the lookouts are, the men who called our approach. I think how last night I didn't even check the lookout over our old house, how someone could have been up there listening and waiting. But Father doesn't say anything right away and Clarence just kicks his legs back around and goes back to the fire and sits down and doesn't look back.

Over to the left then I see the shredded paper people. There's matchbooks all around on the ground and the silver plastic from sheets of pills. They're cooking something on our green Coleman stove.

"Look," I say. "Look."

"Come on, Caroline," Father says, turning me away. "That's poisoned now."

We cut across a slope, a different direction than the way we came. I feel that I might not know my way.

"Nature ever flows," Father says, "never stands still."

"They might come looking for us, here," I say, "but they'll never find us again. We'll make a new house. We know how."

"He's right it was stupid," Father says. "Even for one night. They won't find us here because it was never the plan to stay here. We only came back to get our things, what we could."

"What is the plan?" I say. "Where will we sleep?"

"The main thing is we found our knives," he says, the oilskin holder in his hand.

Father tightens the straps on his pack and we keep walking. A little while later we push through a stand of bushes, into a clearing and I stop since it seems like I've been here before.

"What?" he says.

"Isn't this the place," I say, "where the deer died?"

"What?" he says again.

"Where the dead deer was?" I say.

We start kicking the long grass with our shoes, then pull at it with our hands but don't find a single bone or tooth or even a tuft of hair. Either every last scrap has been taken or this is not the same place at all.





These are the worst days. The rules and the way things work in the city are different, sharper and dirtier than in the forest park but you can still be aware and stay out in the open enough not to get trapped and still not draw attention so people won't want to know who you are and what you're doing, a girl out alone in the city. If someone thinks they know me I am to tell them there's been a misunderstanding, that my name is Elaine and I live in Lake Oswego. If I see a police car or a policeman I am not to run away. I turn my face in another direction. I can look like I am on my way to school or catching the bus home or like I'm shopping for birthday presents or meeting my friends.

There is alone time in the city but that means really that we are apart from each other not that we are alone since there are people everywhere. Mostly they are not looking at you. They think you're looking at them.

I can only sleep decently in the forest park but Father says that's too dangerous, especially to stay in one place and maybe once every two weeks he'll let us sleep in some different part of the forest park but more often we just nap during the day and wander at night. Sometimes it's different parks, even across the river on Mount Tabor or Laurelhurst but there's always homeless people in that park. We've slept in a parking garage in unlocked cars and in the entryway under the metal mailboxes in an apartment building. When you're tired it makes everything in the day harder.





My head is bent over the sink in the Fred Meyer bathroom and it doesn't take long. It burns in my nose and throat. Someone knocks on the door and Father tells them to wait. The water is running and running and my back is sore and when I look up all my hair is bleached out to a yellow that doesn't look real. My eyes look different and the edges of my face are harder to see. Father smiles behind me, his beard makes a scratching noise against the collar of his jacket. I look fake and wet. I don't like it at all but would I like it better if my hair stayed black and we were caught and locked up again?





At Pioneer Courthouse Square there's punk rock kids playing hackysack and smoking cigarettes. The MAX train slides in and out. The food trailers here have stainless steel sides printed in triangles that cut up your reflected face. I order the largest vegetarian burrito, the size is called Honkin.