My Abandonment(6)

"My camera," he says. "Can I take your picture?"

"No," I say. "Are those your dogs in there?"

"Yes."

"You can let them out. I like dogs. I'm not afraid. Do they have fleas?"

He's closer. He's not so afraid of me now but if I leaped forward he'd probably still run. He's smaller than me and I came out of the dark forest.

"You thought I was a ghost," I say.

"You're a girl," he says. "Where do you live?"

"In a house with my father."

"What school do you go to?"

"At home," I say. "What are you looking for, out here?"

"A man," he says. "A kind of man, maybe. Maybe not a man."

"What?"

"He lives in the woods and the dogs are afraid of him. He's quick and quiet. He never talks at all. I don't even know if he can."

"Maybe not a man?" I say.

The boy looks up at the moon and the stars. "I think," he says, "I think he might be a Bigfoot."

I laugh.

"Don't," he says. "I told you. You don't know."

"I laughed since I know," I say. "I know what you're talking about. I know him. That's the way he is."

"Where is he?"

"Around," I say. "He could be listening right now, but I doubt it. His name is Nameless, which is kind of a joke. He used to have a name. I've talked to him before."

"You couldn't talk to him," he says. "Is that a horse in your hand?"

"Yes," I say. "His name is Randy."

"The man or the horse?"

"The horse," I say. "He's a special horse."

A woman's voice calls out from the house: "Zachary? Who are you talking to out there? What are you doing?"

The boy turns to look and when he turns back I am already in the shadows gone, silent as I slip between the trees still thinking of him. Zachary. How long did we talk? Five minutes? He was only a boy, maybe ten, so much younger than me but sometimes it is all right or easier to be friends with a boy who is not your age. We had talked like we were friends, about his camera and Nameless and about Randy.

"Thanks, Randy," I say, whispering into the hole in his stomach. "Zachary," I say.

The round hole in Randy's stomach is not wide. It can be covered by my fingertip, which is how I hold him even though almost nothing would get inside him and nothing would fall out. Two things I have put in there: a small shiny stone that I found in the stream and a scrap of paper rolled up tight where I have written a secret secret in case I ever forget it. You would have to cut Randy open to get anything out of him.

You could cut him on the seam between white side and his painted side that shows his muscles and organs like his skin is torn off. Heart, liver, kidney, lungs. Horses' bodies are not the same as humans' but still I can learn from the painted side as I have the same organs inside my body. So do you. The white side has red dots with black numbers by them, where I practice my arithmetic. Add this and this, Father says, pointing on Randy's body, now take this away from that, now multiply these. There are one hundred and fourteen numbers and the ones closest to Randy's mouth are 19 and 20 like he is saying them. The numbers around his eye are 7, 8, 9, 10, 12. The number 11 is right on his eyeball so anything he'd see on that side has a dot and that number like looking through a glass window with writing on it. Only that makes things backward but 11 is the same both ways. Father gave Randy to me and when I first got him he smelled like a chemical and paint. Now he smells like nothing at all so maybe he smells like me. I touch my tongue to him and he tastes like salt from my hands.

I've made it all the way back deep into the forest park without even paying attention since my bare feet know the way so well and my mind has been thinking about other things. Animals might have passed close by me and thought I was sleepwalking.

Listening for my own breath which I cannot hear I hear shouting instead. Men's voices from the camp. I spin and ease closer with now the sun down and not any shadows so it's easy to get close. Around the fire I don't see Nameless or even Richard, just a bunch of men eating and drinking things and smoking cigarettes with their dogs sleeping by the fire whose ears raise up and then droop down since the smoke is in their noses and they can't tell where or who or even if I'm out here.

***

The post office is just over the St. Johns Bridge, on Ivanhoe Street. I rush to our box and lean my eye to the little window and there is one envelope inside. It's Father's check that the government sends him every month for being in a war. He opens the envelope, looks at the check, then puts it back in the envelope and folds it and puts it in his front pocket.