Understory

by Lisa J. Lickel

  She sat up. Fearful of making too much noise or falling, she slid from Cameron’s bed and crept on her knees past the glow of the stove in the living room and the heavy even breathing from the couch. Lear thumped his tail from his position facing the front door but otherwise made no sound or movement. She entered the kitchen, getting a view of the room from Munchkin height. The woodstove in this room didn’t have a glass door like the other one, but the odor of wood smoke and grease led her toward it.

  Outside, it was dark before dawn, the time of waiting, as if the world held its breath in mutual fear and anticipation of the day.

  She saw a kettle on the stove top. Wonder how warm the water was? Never mind. Where would he keep the tea? She hoped she wouldn’t be forced to go through cupboards. Using the seat of a wooden chair, she pushed herself to her damaged feet. She pressed her wrapped hands against the edge of the tiny wooden table and straightened. The room was small enough she could reach the kettle on the stove. Shuffling closer, she tested the temperature of the metal. Yes. A little shove sent liquid sloshing inside.

  Now for the tea. A hurricane lamp sat in the middle of the table. She hoped the font wasn’t empty and decided to risk lighting it. Dim light from the living room helped as she tugged the glass from the prongs and struck a match.

  After replacing the shade, she lowered herself into the chair to get off her feet before the pain overwhelmed her sensibility. Glass-front cabinets lined the outer wall. A sink and antique pump sat beneath the lone window. Next to the door, a stack of papers and several books perched on the countertop. Looked like a radio too. Must be the one Cameron talked about before. Amazing he could get any signal this deep in the woods. Maybe a communication tower nearby.

  Oh…tower…right. Limms. Funny, no one seemed to mind them when they thought Cameron Taylor was the devil, thinly disguised. Cameron seemed like he could handle himself, but she didn’t want to make any trouble for him. Soon as she could, she’d get out of his hair, find some way to thank him.

  Teatime. She pushed herself upright again and took the lamp over to the counter. Kingston’s little baggies were all lined up. At least Kingston hadn’t changed that much. Now for a mug.

  The papers were none of her business. Really. Stark headlines on newspaper clippings etched her spirit. Cold cases. Millions of budgeted funds unused. Civil rights marchers murdered. Black businesses burned. Justice. Unsolved murders. Decades pass, memories fade.

  Apparently not for Cameron. And that story he told. Wonder if she could peek at those diaries from his grandmother?

  While the tea steeped, she brought two files to the table to leaf through. One contained newspaper articles, clipped and yellowed, some from relatively current years, some photocopied. The other consisted of Cameron’s outline for his book and underneath, some printed pages.

  * * *

  Kenny held up his wrist and blinked at the glowing green numbers. Twenty to five.

  “Thomas!” Kenny reached up from his sleeping bag on the floor next to Thomas’s bed and patted his friend’s arm. At least he hoped it was an arm. Thomas was so wiggly he might have turned all the way around. “Thomas, wake up,” he whispered. “Time to get going.”

  The power must have come back on because lights from the tall power poles outside shone through the bitty windows of the bedroom.

  “S’what? Huh?” Thomas sat up and stared all around the dark room with his eyes wide open. “Hey! My clock’s back on. It’s only two forty.”

  “That’s because it started again at the last place it stopped, dummy. C’mon.”

  He and Thomas dressed quickly, pulled out their packs from under Thomas’s bed where they left their school books and papers. When Thomas headed into the bathroom, Kenny pulled him back. “Outside. We don’t want to wake your mom.” Their flusher sounded like an old man groaning through the whole trailer.

  “Right.” Thomas yawned.

  In the kitchen, Kenny shined his miniflash around, and they grabbed some chips and bread and two cans of soda pop each. He made Thomas add two pairs of underwear to his pack last night, or he wouldn’t have taken any. They’d wrap the cans in their extras. “Add those candy bars,” he whispered to Thomas. “Chocolate’s s’posed to keep you from freezing to death.”

  Thomas stopped stuffing his pack with bags of potato chips. “Freeze to what?”

  Kenny aimed the light at Thomas’s nose. His face was as creepy as last night, but his eyes were round like a baby’s. Maybe taking Thomas wasn’t such a good idea. But he had the telephone. Kenny made sure of that. And the matches. Thomas wouldn’t let him have any.

  “We won’t die. That’s what I’m saying.” Thomas put on his snowmobile suit, and they decided he would carry the backpack. Of course. Thomas tossed his schoolwork in his overflowing closet. Kenny carefully wrapped the syringe in one of Thomas’s old, holey socks and put it near the bottom, under the clothes and food. Thomas watched with his mouth hanging open.

  “I gotta keep this safe. So I can show the cops later.”

  “Right.”

  “I want to look in my house one more time before we go.”

  “What for?”

  “In case I missed something.”

  “Something what?”

  “I dunno, like a clue.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tanks! Al Qaeda! Cam shot upright. Dreaming? No. Was that the sun out there, bobbing and weaving through the trees? The sun didn’t make those moves. His windows rattled, and Iago howled. “Stop that!”

  Lear joined in.

  Cam shook his head and checked his watch. Five a.m. He strode to the window. Ah. He cuffed Lear gently then scrubbed the dog’s neck. “It’s just the plow. Relax.” He opened the door for the dogs. Stretching and yawning, he rotated his neck. Sleeping on the couch was going to lead to a pinched nerve, at least.

  Rosalind? She might be scared. He turned toward the bedroom. The open door looked like a haunted parabola. He backed up to the kitchen, where lantern glow framed the figure of a woman seated at the table, leaning over…

  Now what was she doing? He sighed and strode to the kitchen. She had no business messing with his personal papers. “Good morning. I see you’re nosing around early.”

  Why do they do that? Women? Spock got away with it because it made sense, pondering Kirk’s dilemma, helping his captain get to the right course. When a woman raised one eyebrow it was an act of disdain. It was outrageous. Meant to unman the recipient.

  Then she smiled.

  Cam narrowed his eyes in an attempt to appear threatening. She held a pen.

  He inhaled and surged forward. “You can’t be serious? You’re…you…” As his wounded befuddlement cleared he noted the checks, circles, and arrows on his pages of type. She tapped the pen against the last paragraph.

  “I am a college instructor. I think I know…” Cam let out the last huff when he realized he had made a couple of wrong caps and left off some punctuation. “It’s only a first draft.”

  He tumbled back in time to seventh grade. Mr. Mackelroy passed around copies of his report on Martin Luther King, showing all his mistakes as a lesson on punctuation. The part of him that didn’t want to slug Mackelroy wanted to erase the humiliation from happening to anyone else. The experience made him reluctant to show his personal work to strangers. But it also made him return to grad school and teaching after the army.

  He slumped to the other chair across from her, took the paper and studied it. Glancing up, he twitched his lips, trying for a frown but failing. Cam chuckled and poked at his ear. He lowered the paper. “You got me. Thanks.”

  She cocked her head.

  “You’re using your hands,” he said. “They must not hurt too much.”

  Rosalind turned away, presenting that profile again, a slightly sloping straight nose, high cheekbone and half bow of a lip. He was glad she hadn’t done serious frostbite damage to her face. Pretty enough, and not too unusual to be stuck-up about it. “Can you talk to me yet?” />
  White teeth caught her lower lip.

  He sniffed. “You couldn’t sleep? You were in pain?” He got up, and restocked the stove, and added more water to the kettle. “How are your feet?”

  Cam smiled at her grimace. “You can speak. Remember, I heard you.”

  She twirled the pen while staring at him. Her mouth quirked, and she reached for his notebook and scribbled, “Better if I don’t.”

  “What’s your name? Can you at least tell me that?”

  She grinned and wrote “Rosalind.”

  Cam laughed. “Lucky guess, eh?” He sighed and walked over to the window. “Looks like Sven and Ole are about done. I’d better go talk to them, get the bill. You want me to tell them about you?” He turned. “Maybe you...no? You don’t want them to know you’re here? Who are you hiding from, really?”

  Her frightened expression kept him company on his way to answer the heavy pounding on his door.

  “Ole!” Cam stepped outside, forcing himself not to glance back. “Thanks, man. I owe ya.”

  Ole grinned and held out a clipboard with an invoice to sign. “Yeah, you do.”

  Cam chuckled, hoping Ole hadn’t noticed the nervous tone. Apparently not, for the big guy grunted and initialed Cam’s signature, shoved the top copy at him, saluted, and took off. Cam waved at the plow where Sven sat in the driver’s seat.

  A hundred bucks those two clowns charged him. He heaved a sigh and returned to the kitchen. Rosalind glanced in his direction but went on writing. To keep his patience in check, he made coffee with his stash of free trade Alto Grande beans. He used Grandma’s hand grinder, sending rich Peruvian aroma to his nose, while watching Rosalind from the corner of his eye. When she slid the notebook to the other side of the table, he searched her face first. Sincere. Slightly scared—of who or what?

  He bent to read.

  So she wouldn’t talk, but she would write. The shakiness of her letters showed Cam her pain in holding the pen.

  “Kingston Findley and I were friends in high school. I didn’t stay in touch after we graduated and I moved away for college and work. I lost my job and had to come home. Needed to find Kingston for advice on a personal matter. I know you want more, but, believe me, it’s for your own good not to. If my stepbrother finds out I’m here with you, no one can help us. Don’t go to Limms. They’re not from around here. Just don’t.”

  Rosalind underlined the last word three times.

  Cam’s personal creep-o-meter stood at nine-point-five. He groaned and raised his hands to his face. “This is exactly what I don’t need.”

  When he looked up, her lips were set in a straight line, her expression blank as if her spirit resided in another place. She rested her hands like stumps of wood on the table. Blood seeped through the gauze of the first two fingertips on the right one, making him wonder at her intense fear.

  It wasn’t her fault he’d plucked her from the peace of freezing to death.

  “Rosalind.”

  Animation relit her green eyes. She sighed as though he’d interrupted her gourmet meal with a phone call.

  “You were trying to get to Kingston when I found you?”

  Nod.

  “What were you thinking, walking through the woods in the middle of a blizzard?”

  Lightning bolts crackled from the storm in her eyes.

  Cam twitched the corner of his mouth. “Is Kenny your stepbrother?”

  The storm turned to an eddy of terror. Her mouth opened. “He’s my nephew. I must find him. Kingston will help me, hide us.” She cleared her throat and lifted the mug to her lips.

  Stunned, Cam wondered if he’d imagined the words. The tone of voice was exactly as he’d dreamed it would sound, like one of those paintings on velvet, not the black Elvis ones, but the moonlight on the ocean ones. He tried an active listening technique to be sure. “I understood you to say Kenny is your nephew?”

  “He’s only ten. A little boy.” The syllables were reluctant, rusty, tugged on chains like a sea anchor from an ocean floor.

  “And you need to hide from who?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Cam frowned and tried another track. “Where is he?”

  She shook her head. “I hope it’s not too late. My sister—his mother—and my stepbrother might hurt him.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t want you involved.” She took another sip from the mug. “This stuff is really nasty.”

  Cam drummed his fingers as he replied. “Smells like that mushroom tea. You made it?” How involved did he want to get? Did he owe her anything for saving her? Or was it the other way around? Frowning drew the skin tight across his forehead, making his eyes ache. He tried to relax, one facial muscle at a time. He blinked. The last person he thought he’d helped accused him of rape.

  “You’re afraid of someone,” he said. “This stepbrother? He hurt you?”

  “No. No more. I can’t prove anything yet.” She clammed up and bent over the mug, letting her hair curtain off her face.

  Involved? “I guess I could have let you die.” He got up and restacked the notes and chapter of his grandparents’ work with the Civil Rights movement. Talk about being involved.

  Rosalind cleared her throat, like she was going to say something else. A few beats later, Cam knew she wouldn’t say anything more and went back to thinking about the grands.

  It was true what he’d told her earlier about the murder and how they’d filed a lawsuit in Milwaukee over the death of a neighbor they’d witnessed. Equally true that Granddad had disappeared not long afterward. Grandma Bonnie filed every kind of report she could, but there were no answers, no clues, no evidence. That was the part he’d been working on this past month, slow Internet hampering his efforts to dig out the police reports and any other files that were surely now public record. He’d gone to the fancy new library a few times with its shiny new computer and Wi-Fi, and managed to dig up a copy of the initial report. “Person of Color” on the top of the form made his blood chill. His grandmother eventually sold her house and moved back to Amarillo.

  Yep. Bad things happened when a person of color tried to do a good turn. Stepbrothers weren’t so scary—not like the mujahideen or the little kids with bombs strapped to their chests or the women in suspiciously lumpy burkas.

  But why was she worried about the Limms? They must have a worse rep than his. Rich guys could afford mercenaries. Maybe even a whole contract service, who knew? Of course, they only needed something like that if they were involved in shady stuff. Cam grinned. Politics, maybe. But why here? They didn’t seem bothered by Findley’s little setup. He could be their distraction.

  Cam strode to the living room where the dogs whined and bumped against the porch walls from the outside.

  “You two are going to go soft on me, aren’t you?” he told them when they caromed through the door and headed for the stove in the kitchen. “One thing we’re getting straight right now. When the thermometer gets back above freezing, you’re going to stay outside.” He followed them to meet Rosalind’s crinkly smile.

  Then again, how hard could it be to find one little boy and reassure his aunt he was okay?

  Cam went into his bedroom to clean up and dress. His bed cast a sleep spell, beckoning to him. He let his eyelids fall to test his tiredness and immediately felt its pull. The couch in the living room wasn’t too short or so narrow he couldn’t relax, but it was more than exhaustion that begged him to visit the land of Nod. Last night he’d dreamt the dogs wouldn’t stop barking no matter what he did.

  Since basic training, the only way he could truly relax was in light slumber. When he admitted he often went thirty-six hours without major shut-eye, Laura told him it had something to do with letting his unconscious state sort out and deal with his problems. The thing he hadn’t told her was what happened when he tried to sleep before his body was exhausted. If he let himself go completely under, dream situations mocked him, shifting from the campus and his students to the
barracks and desert. Night watch. Daytime patrol. The adrenaline high of constant alert even in his sleep made Cam edgy during wakefulness. Laura researched a lot of home remedies for him on the Internet. None worked. Laura…

  Four years ago a few dates developed into a relationship with math instructor Laura Betthews. Laura began to re-align his internal peacemaker, but it all crumbled when a deer through a windshield one night ended her life not long after she’d accepted his proposal.

  At least she hadn’t had to share his shame when that crazy student filed her complaint and he’d been arrested for suspected misconduct. No one stood with him then. Not his football and pizza buddies, not the campus recruiters, nor the others in his department. No stain on the campus allowed. Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on your way out. Don’t bother us for references.

  The framed picture of Grandma Bonnie snagged his attention. She wouldn’t have even hesitated to tell him to help the girl. Waving her bony forefinger with her long fake nails and rattling the rings, loose around her other digits, she would have said, “Don’t you go acting like those white trash folks. You come from a proud heritage, son. You do not run when confronted. You stand your ground and you reach out to help those who need you, no matter the color of their skin or the color of their heart. Maybe you’ll make a difference you’ll never know about. With God on our side…”

  Grandma! This is different, Cam tried to tell her. Himself. He’d already done Rosalind a good turn, and as soon as she left, he sincerely hoped he’d never know what kind of difference he’d made in her life. Echoes of Grandma’s favorite verse—Choose this day who you will serve, as for me and my house—she always stopped and looked whoever she was speaking to in the eyes and repeated “and my house” slow and drawn-out so there was no mistaking what she meant—we will serve the Lord, from the end of Joshua. The Sunday school lessons, little bits of Bible verses and songs, were as firmly ingrained as the poetry he’d once taught.