My Abandonment(54)

The fire is mostly coals so I drag over some boards and pile them on, careful of the nails. I blow on the coals and sparks snap up and bounce across the cave's floor. It is still hours until the morning and there's nothing to do except to wait and try to stay warm. I'm not hungry anymore even if now I have the pack. Somewhere Susan and Paul have Father's pack and our things. I think of them walking away with our snowshoes and wonder how far they got and if they're inside somewhere and maybe thinking of us now. I don't know why they did what they did and left us or why they didn't want to be with me and Father. Perhaps it was all an accident, but we don't believe in accidents we simply adjust the way we're going.

The fire eats away at the wood. I stare into it for a long time. A thick board buckles and gives way and everything collapses so the places the flames lick all change. I stand, I add wood. I stare. I am thinking of how Father came after me and how he found me, how I didn't even recognize him or know who he was when I first saw him.

That was in Boise Idaho when we're all planting trees all around in our neighborhood even at people's houses who aren't in our ward. My foster father is wiping off his bald head and laughing. The trees will grow to shade our street.

That day Father is dressed in a blue dress shirt and his hair is cut as short as it was after they caught us and kept us in the building, before the farm. That day with the trees he looks like anyone's father but he doesn't have any children with him. Even then he doesn't tell me who he is right at first. I just think he's a friendly man from the next ward over and the strongest person there. He can pick up the small trees with their bundles of roots by himself when it usually takes three people. He tells me once that he likes my shoes, that I'm a pretty girl. He thanks me for holding a shovel.

While I'm sitting next to the fire in the cave and remembering all this it's like Father has rolled over a little in the sled and is watching me from twenty feet away. His eyes shine against the fire and he knows what I'm thinking. He cannot say, "Don't look backward now," he cannot tell me not to remember.

Now I stand and walk back toward the mouth of the cave where he is waiting with his eyes still open. His mouth looks like he thinks all this is almost funny. His arms are stiff like frozen and hard to move so I can reach into the pockets of his jacket and his pants.

These are the things that I find and take from Father: his small notebook full of writings, two wooden yellow pencils, over four hundred dollars in a plastic sandwich bag, the three sharp knives and the long scissors in their oilskin case, his seven copper bracelets. These round bracelets are too large and slide over my hands too easily but still I put them on my wrists. The sound of their clinking is like Father is helping me to do all this now as I try to move him from where he is.

"You made a mistake," I tell him. "It's not the fault of Paul and Susan but your fault for liking them and thinking she was the same as you when she was different than us. It was a misunderstanding and you thought it was an understanding."

I kick in snow and bring more in. Some of it breaks off in slabs and I throw them down in front of the sled and slide it this way deeper into the cave, back to where the ceiling slants down and ends and the floor drops away. Father is heavy but from the pile of wood I take a thick board and wedge it under him. I lift so he rolls out of the sled and off the edge. He lands with a solid dull sound and even when I stick my head into the darkness I can't see where he is. I don't say I'm sorry since he knows why I'm doing this and that there is always a way not to draw attention when one does not want to get caught. There is always time to think about one's feelings after the necessary actions have been completed.

I breathe in hard, one time, and am careful not to hit my head on the shelf of rock above as I pull myself back out. I drag the board over to the fire and throw it on and sparks leap up. I get more wood than before and keep piling it on until the fire has a roar, a wind of its own inside it. I get warmer. I let myself get hot. It is easier to remember, now.

I am not even ten years old yet, back in Boise. It's a warm night when it happens so my sister Della and I are sleeping out on the round black trampoline in my foster parents' backyard. Our sleeping bags zip together and we're in nightgowns so it's plenty warm. She is asleep and the lights are out when Father comes silently over the fence. He stands so still and calm next to the trampoline with his giant hand around a silver spring. I remember him from the ward tree planting, how much everyone liked him.

"I'm sorry it took me this long," he says. "I've come for you, my daughter."

"What?" I say. "My father's inside."