My Abandonment(48)

"Are you a little girl?" she says to me. "We didn't expect visitors."

"We got lost in the storm," I say.

"Caroline," Father says, like he should be the one talking. "We did get a little turned around," he says to the lady.

"Is someone after you?" she says.

"Followers," I say.

"Caroline," Father says.

"Who?" she says.

"Just for tonight," Father says. "If we can share your shelter and warm up a little then we can figure things out. The weather."

Now a faint glow comes off the walls and that is the only light. The air smells like metal. Dry and baked and rusty.

"We'll be out first thing in the morning," Father says. "Is it all right with you if I light a candle?"

"Light a candle," the lady says. "You can sleep here. People have to sleep."

The cabin is only one room and there's not much place to stand. There is a bench built along the wall and the lady and the boy sit there. There are no other chairs and there's a black plastic garbage bag next to the boy where maybe their other things are. They are only wearing jeans and T-shirts and sneakers. There's one little table and a bunk bed frame that is splintered and broken without any mattresses.

The lady's name is Susan and the boy's name is Paul. The two of them haven't moved at all since we came inside. They lean against the wire that's wrapped around and around the inside of the walls, loose across the bottom of the door. It's been all stripped down to its copper. Susan: I've never seen a lady look the way this lady looks. Her white face has sharp edges and it keeps shifting like it's never quite still, alert like a squirrel in a tree. Her fingernails are painted dark and in the dim light this makes her fingers short or like they have been cut off.

"Have you eaten?" Father says. "We just bought a store of food in town."

"Town?" she says.

"Sisters," he says. "Down in the valley."

"We're fine," she says. "Thank you."

"We're fine," the boy says. His voice is as high as mine and he is my size but he isn't talking very much.

"We ate in a restaurant," I say. "It had the name Bronco Billy's."

Their eyes are half-closed as they watch us eat. We sit on the floor. We both eat a handful of raisins then an apple with peanut butter. The water is half-frozen and almost too cold to drink against my teeth.

"Who's after you?" the lady says.

"No one," Father says.

"The girl said you had followers."

"What it is," he says, "is we're just trying to be left alone, you know, to live the way we want to."

"Yes," she says. "That's not so easy. We know all about that. Someone always wants to get involved."

Father's hair is starting to stick up because of the air in the room, lifting to show his ears. I reach up to feel how mine is sticking up.

"Your hair is two different colors," the boy, Paul, says.

"We dyed it," I say. "Now it's growing back my real color."

When we finish eating there's nothing to do and not very much space. The lady and the boy do not quite have their eyes closed but they aren't saying anything.

"Caroline," Father says. "This kind of round structure is known as a yurt. We're lucky these people are here with their yurt tonight." He turns toward the lady. "At least let us sit out of the way," he says. "The two of you can stretch out to sleep."

"We like it this way," she says.

"We're used to it, we're comfortable."

"You'll sleep sitting up?" Father says. "We like it this way," the boy says.

We take out our clean socks and underwear to use as pillows beneath our heads. Father blows the candle dark and we stretch out.

In the darkness the buzz of the walls crackles in one place and then another with a little white light and then it will just relax into the buzz that is almost a hum. The wind outside whistles hard and then into a deeper kind of sound. It blows the snow like mist across the window that I am watching and then right at the window so it's like someone throwing a handful of white sand against the glass. On my side I feel Father pressed against me, between me and the lady and the boy and I can hear them breathing through their mouths and I know how they look, sitting there. I am not cold and I am not exactly warm. I am thinking that the wind sounds like a ghost and then I am thinking about the picture that Miss Jean Bauer showed me of the house in the storm and the story I told about the people inside and the people outside seeing the windows and being cold. This tonight is kind of the same as that and also kind of different but it's still almost like I could see that it would happen to us from all the way back then.