My Abandonment(44)

"Don't let it get in your ears," Father says.

"Why?"

"I can't remember," he says. "Something about the bacteria."

"What about all the other holes in our bodies?" I say.

"I don't know," he says. "They're farther from our brains. Doesn't this feel good, Caroline?"

It does. Where I am coldest is deep inside me and the warmth eases in a little at a time, further and further. My feet that I hadn't been able to feel before now come back to hurt. I feel a heartbeat in them and then that slows to an ache and then they feel like the rest of my body and skin. My wet hair on my neck is cold. I sink down a little to change that. I see Father through the steam and then he's gone and is back. I see the dark mark on his shoulder that is the tattoo of my name even if I can't quite read it. All he wears is his bracelets. The water is freezing in his beard so his face looks sharp like porcupine quills around his mouth.

"Is this place going to explode?" I say.

"No," Father says. "It's not an active volcano and it's too far away. It's been thousands of years at least."

"But it could," I say.

"There would be warnings," Father says. "Noises and trembling."

"Did you really not see that dog?" I say.

"No," he says. "I'm sorry I missed that."

The dark shapes of the trees are cut off by the steam too so their tops hang loose in the dark sky, the clouds from the pool. My skin is all loose, the gravel sharp against my hip. My fingers are all pruney. I listen closely and can hear the snowflakes melt I think as they hit the hot water.

"How long have we been in here?" I say.

"What?"

"Keep the water out of your ears," I say.

"I think we shouldn't stay in for too much longer," Father says.

We climb out and pull on our damp warm clothes. Father is hopping and balancing on one leg as he pulls on his pants. Steam rises up from his wet head toward the trees like his body is smoldering inside. I look above my head and see the same thing. My body feels warm deep down in the core like Father said.

We stretch out on the stones again. We don't talk. We are both awake. We turn over and then turn over again. Father melts snow by holding his plastic mug in the pool so we can drink. We eat all the almonds which are the only thing we have to eat. Three times in the night we get back into the pool and then out again and lie some more on the stones, waiting. The snow never stops falling. We're never quite dry but never quite cold.





It's so much easier to see in the morning. It's still hard to understand where we are or where we are going. I am trying not to ask Father these questions. He's standing and stretching his arms over his head.

"That wasn't so bad," he says, "was it? We'll feel a lot better once we start walking and get the kinks out."

There are no birds or squirrels or chipmunks I can see. In the white snow there is not one footprint. We walk out across a meadow and then into more blackened trees. The bark is all burned off some of them so they look like a completely different kind of tree.

"Could all this be from the volcano?" I say.

"No," Father says. "It's a forest fire. We're safe, here. Look down there, there's a river. I wonder if there's fish in it. We might be able to catch them."

"Why?"

"To eat them," he says.

"We're vegetarians," I say. "And we don't even fast on Fridays anymore."

Father stumbles since his feet break through the crust of the snow and I can walk along on top. There's one green tree surrounded by all the burned spikes and fallen blackened trunks like it's been spared or gotten lucky or been somehow stronger. It's a pine tree with the longest needles I've seen.

"Fasting works best when you're eating on the other days," Father says.

"But we'll go back to it."

"Yes," he says. "When everything is right again, yes."

Some of the burned standing trees are half gone and hollowed out, jagged sticking into the sky and when you walk around they're only an inch thick. One of these has perfect round woodpecker holes in it that look like two eyes twenty feet off the ground.





Mammals have developed effective ways of living. Some mammals can hibernate. Such adaptations have made mammals dominant today. Among mammals are animals that man considers the most important animals alive today. Mammals add greatly to the interest of forest, field, and desert. Man is the most adaptable of mammals.





The cabin is all covered in snow so it's hard to see. It is an A frame which means it is the shape of an A, tall and pointy.

"This is it?" I say. "Your friends' house?"

"Let's see," Father says.