Beyond the Cabin

  “Like when Luke purposely gets somebody in trouble. Or if an adult sees part of a fight, it’s no use trying to tell your side of it, because they jump to conclusions and there’s no chance at anything like real justice,” I said. “Then Abraham beats the crap out of you.”

  Chapter 28

  I only realized what I’d said after the words were out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure if I should look at Aaron or the dirt, or laugh it off.

  The silence felt like it was filling with something electric.

  “What?” Aaron’s voice sounded tight. I felt him staring at me.

  I didn’t want to get into it. Shame and anger filled me as the images came back, the fear, the wet pants. I swallowed hard.

  “Josh. What are you talking about?”

  I wondered if I should tell Aaron about what had happened. Would Aaron believe me? I still had a few bruises to prove it. And what would we do about it?

  Aaron put his hand on my shoulder. “What happened?”

  What would it hurt? I didn’t have to tell Aaron about my pants, about how much of a chicken I was. “I had a fight with Sauly. Miriam saw only the last second when I kicked him. I got sent to my room.” I tried to figure out a way to say it without sounding like a baby. “I guess Abraham has some fatherly protective instincts, because he came up later and let me have it.”

  “Are you saying that Abraham hit you?”

  “Yeah, but that’s nothing new. Ezekiel spanks the little ones all the time and slaps most of us on the head when he gets mad.”

  “But if it was nothing new, you wouldn’t have said anything about it.”

  I couldn’t argue with Aaron’s logic. But that didn’t mean I knew how to describe what had happened.

  “What did Abraham do?”

  “He just hit me and stuff.”

  “How much?”

  “Does it matter? He was mad and basically acted like a bully!”

  “Did he hit you a lot?”

  That was better. Maybe Aaron could ask questions and I could answer them. That’d be easier. “Yeah.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Aaron took a few seconds to ask his next question. I couldn’t look at him, so I didn’t know what was going on in my brother’s head. “Did he punch you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I heard the anger in Aaron’s voice with the next question. “Did he kick you?”

  “I think so.”

  Aaron swore. He jumped to his feet and stormed around the cabin, swearing more and calling Abraham names. I was impressed. It made me feel good that Aaron would get so angry.

  After a minute, Aaron turned to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “No. I don’t think they’d believe me.”

  “Did he leave any marks? You could prove it.”

  “Some bruises, but it’s still my word against his.”

  “You’re right. They wouldn’t believe you,” Aaron said. He swore again. Then he made a visible effort to compose himself.

  “But you do, right?”

  Aaron sat next to me again. “Of course I do.”

  “I’ll get him back.”

  “How?”

  “I’m still figuring that out,” I said.

  “You can’t fight him,” Aaron said.

  “Yeah, but I could make him disappear in the woods,” I said.

  Aaron burst out laughing.

  I turned to him with a grin. “No really. I could find a way to get him in here, dig a trap with some sharpened stakes and nobody would ever hear from good old Abraham again.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” Aaron said, shaking his head, “but I’ve never seen Abraham come into these woods.”

  “True,” I said.

  “The truth is,” Aaron said, “I don’t think getting him back would do any good. He’d find a way to get you alone and do it all over again.”

  “Not if I did something permanent.”

  Aaron fixed me with a dry look. “Haha.”

  “I’m only kind of kidding.”

  “Fine. But you’re gonna take the high road because you’re not like Abraham.”

  “Not if the high road means I take it and let him get away with it,” I said, a flash of anger warming my face.

  “No, I know,” Aaron said. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what do you mean? Forgive him? Not a chance, he’s a bastard and he needs to know it.”

  “I don’t know. Like maybe you show him he doesn’t scare you. That he has no control over you type of thing.”

  “I’ll think of something.” I dragged my heel through the dirt.

  “Don’t do anything that makes it worse.”

  “I won’t alright? Geez.”

  “I’m just saying that I think that if we control our choices instead of letting the stupid things the Faith, or the grown-ups in the Faith, control what we do and our reactions, it’s like we’re winning,” Aaron said.

  I wanted the conversation to be over. I was going to think of something. Abraham had to pay for what he had done. “I get it.”

  “You have to let me know if it happens again,” Aaron said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “It won’t happen again.” I felt the fury in my voice. Not a chance in hell would it ever happen again.

  “Good.”

  Silence filled the small space between us. It expanded to fill the cabin.

  I looked up. “So do you have any idea about how to get a roof on this thing?” I pushed to my feet.

  Aaron stood too. He looked up. “Tree branches?”

  I shook my head, mentally thanking Aaron for being willing to change the subject. “Nah, I don’t think that’d work. Water could still come through.”

  We exchanged a few more ideas, but didn’t come to any solutions.

  Finally, Aaron said, “Well, I probably should get back to the computer. Something’s going on with the payments page. Miriam’s kind of upset.”

  “Cool,” I said. “Hey, what do you think Miriam would do if we started calling her ‘Mom’?”

  Aaron snorted. “She’d probably quietly tell us that it shows more respect to call her by name.”

  “Yeah. Did you ever notice that almost everyone’s got a Bible name?”

  “Hard not to,” Aaron said.

  “Do you think Miriam changed her name when she got this whole thing started?”

  Aaron nodded. “Yeah. I wonder what it was before.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Aaron headed to the door of the cabin. “Oh,” he said, “remember what I said about the choice thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can choose not to be alone, too, I think.”

  “Okay,” I said, unsure of where Aaron was going with this.

  “So we’ll talk again, okay?”

  “Right.”

  Aaron nodded, shrugged and left. I watched him go. That changes things. I surveyed the cabin.

  I remembered how alone I’d an hour before. I tried to imagine feeling that again. I couldn’t. Did Aaron know about the vines too? I should show him.

  The thought of the vines kind of caught hold of me, so I took another look around the cabin, nodded in satisfaction at the window, and turned to go. I crossed the small clearing and found the vines a few minutes later. They were a mess. I remembered that the last time I had used them was on the night of the memorial service. It had been too dark to set them back up again.

  I picked up the forked sticks and stuck them in the ground so that the vines could be held at an angle. One of the sticks was broken, so I poked around for another. Finding a young pine tree, I said, “Sorry,” and broke off a likely-looking branch. The tangy-sweet smell of green pine filled my nostrils. I stood still, inhaling the vibrant scent. The tiny-leafed canopy above me rustled in wind so gentle I couldn’t feel it. The trees seemed alive, the woods welcoming and bursting. My feet, so solid on
the ground, felt like they were pulsing in time to a barely detectable beat. I stroked the young pine tree, its bark still smooth under my touch.

  I wanted to taste it all, wanted to know the flavor of the woods, the world. I wished I could use all five senses, and maybe others I didn’t know about, to drink in the essence of the world around me.

  I wasn’t alone. I had a brother. A brother who was a friend. A brother who swore when he heard what Abraham had done. I smiled at the image of Aaron storming around the cabin, his usually pale, calm face red with anger. Aaron was probably right about not being able to get Abraham back in a physical way, but I was still going to do something. I would find a way. And when I did, I might see if Aaron would come around and help me.

  But for now, I was going to swing. I broke the branch that I’d taken from the tree and made a small fork. I finished setting up the vines. I grabbed the first one and climbed the slight rise at the starting point. Gripping the vine tightly, I pushed off. Wind whistled through my hair and in my ears.

  I caught the next vine. I missed the third and, for a frozen second, felt like I was floating. Then I fell to the ground, banging my right elbow and shoulder. Grinning, I set the vines back up in a hurry and grabbed the first one again. I wouldn’t miss it this time. I took a deep breath, then whooped as loud as I could, the sound straining out of my chest, making my throat shake. I pushed off hard. I imagined my shout echoing up through the tall tree trunks, bouncing off branches and leaves, startling squirrels and deer and dispersing in the clouds. At the apex of the last vine’s swing, I leapt off. I felt as if I caught an updraft, felt like the gentle wind caught and lifted me.

  By my fifth time, I knew I needed to get back. I dropped and, breathing hard and my cheeks hot, hit the ground at the end of the vines and stayed there, flopping onto my back. I had to tell Aaron about this place. The guy had to need breaks from the boring computers and vines would do the trick.

  I rearranged the vines and headed back toward the cabin. When I got there, I looked up at the empty roof again.

  “Tarps,” I said. That was it. I could stretch tarps across the rafters, nailing them down tightly. I hurried back toward the house, hungry for dinner and eager to see if the Faith had some tarps I could make off with.

  Maybe Aaron would help me put them up.

  Chapter 29

  Isn’t Mary’s birthday coming up? As I wandered out of the classroom, I glanced at Mary’s neck. She was bent over stowing books in the cubby under desk. She’ll be fourteen. Which meant my birthday was only a couple weeks away. Fifteen. Three years until I turned eighteen.

  I wasn’t going to wait that long. Last night, after poking around a little in the attic storage area, looking for some tarps, I had been able to grab two cans of noodles and sauce. Today I would go to the cabin and deposit them there in the hole I had dug and covered with a dirt-encrusted board.

  But I also felt the burning need to finish the roof of the cabin. Maybe there were tarps in the old outbuildings.

  Did Miriam even remember that I had been grounded? It was funny, or not really, that we could be totally ignored for pretty much our entire day outside of classes. But do one thing against the rules, or run away, and they noticed you and brought you back in line as hard as they could. Before forgetting you all over again.

  I stepped onto the porch and hauled myself to a stop. Mary was sitting on one of the porch chairs.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi.” She smiled. The world slid into a brighter place.

  “Everything okay?”

  She nodded. “Sorry about the other day.”

  I wondered if she was going to explain what was going on. I nodded, “It’s okay.”

  I waited for her to say more, maybe tell me what had happened.

  “Um, I know we went to the library on Monday.” She scratched at the peeling paint on her chair. “But I looked and I think I might have a couple books that you could borrow.”

  “Hey, great.” Had she been sick or something? I forced the questions away.

  “Do you want to come and get them now?”

  An image flashed through my mind; I shook it away. Geez. Quit it. “Sure.” Then I remembered I was going to try and find some tarps I could use for the cabin roof. That could wait. “I’ll come up in a minute?” I wondered if she would get it or if I would have to explain. I didn’t think anybody was in the living room, but why take chances? Suspicions could be raised if I was seen following her up the stairs. Better to be careful.

  “Yeah,” Mary said. “okay.” She went inside.

  A few minutes later, I knocked on the door to the girls’ room.

  Mary opened it. “Do you want to come in?”

  I blinked. “Uh, I don’t—“

  “I’ll close the door. Nobody’s going to notice,” she said. “It’ll just take a second.”

  I didn’t want to be a chicken, so I nodded. “Okay.”

  I stepped in, imagining that at the very same moment an adult would step into the hallway and catch me.

  The door closed behind me. Mary gave me a small smile. Another image flashed. This one more vivid. I wondered again if I was imagining things or if Mary felt the same thing. This might be my chance to find out. I pictured coming up behind her and saying her name. She would turn and seeing me right there, stop, her mouth open. It could happen so quickly, but it would change us, change everything.

  “Here.” She handed me a book.

  I blinked, feeling myself blush. I tried to will the heat away from my cheeks. “Oh. Hey, great.”

  Mary sat on her bed. “Sorry again. I just…” she pursed her lips. “It’s been a weird couple of days.”

  I shrugged. “No, it’s okay.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then stopped.

  “What?” I asked. My heart was going crazy in my chest.

  Her bright green eyes held mine then moved away. “I’m glad… I’m glad you came to look for your jacket.”

  I was a bit slow, but I got it, remembering that day. “Oh, yeah.” Then I understood what she meant. Holy smo—she… I felt a grin try to stretch across my face, fought to control it and lost. “Yeah, me too.”

  Mary held me in her gaze for another second and looked away again. I wondered if I should say something more to keep the conversation going.

  “Are you gonna read now?” Mary asked.

  “Oh,” I said, mentally running through possibilities. I decided I’d rather read later; I really wanted to try and find tarps. “I think I will later.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Mary said, her voice different.

  Suddenly I realized what Mary had really been asking. She wanted to read with me! But if I changed my mind, would I come off as silly or desperate?

  “I was gonna go to the outbuildings. I have this thing I’m trying to do and I need to find some old tarps,” I explained.

  Mary turned to me again, a question on her face. “What for?”

  I almost told her about the cabin, but stopped myself. Maybe later, but not yet. For now I wanted to keep it a brother place. “Nothing big. I just need a couple tarps.” Maybe I should tell her instead of avoiding the question or lying.

  No, not now. “Do you want to come?”

  Mary thought about. “Sure.”

  “Cool.” I turned and opened the door.

  “Careful,” Mary said.

  I nodded at the reminder. This is so dumb. It’s not like we’re doing anything. Can’t even go in each other’s rooms. I peered into the hallway; it was clear. I heard a voice downstairs in the living room or dining room, but nobody would see me. I stepped into the hallway. “I’ll see you out there.” I glanced back at Mary.

  She was smiling at me again. My heart skipped a quick beat. “I’ll see you out there, okay?” I paused, meeting her eyes again.

  “Okay,” Mary said.

  I slipped through the hallway, down the stairs and out the door.

  I turned right when I got outsid
e, circling around the side of the house and heading toward the rundown outbuildings. The rough, old plaster covering the exterior walls seemed like it had flaked off even more since the last time I had been there. I figured the extra damage might be due to the younger kids following their destructive tendencies. As I got closer to the buildings, my mind wandered back to Mary’s room. There had been a few seconds there when she was smiling at me…

  A realization hit me so hard that I almost stopped walking. I tried to think back to the last time I’d had a soundtrack running through my head while something happened. I couldn’t remember. Not in the cabin, not when talking to Mary. Not even earlier this week in the woods when everything had seemed so… full and vibrant and delicious.

  I wondered what that meant. Maybe I should try to bring the soundtracks back. Was I becoming someone different? I tried to think of what might have made me stop letting the soundtracks run in my head. But I was still me.

  No clue. Maybe I forgot. Maybe I didn’t need them anymore.

  I pulled the rusty sliding bolt back, opening the faded wood door of the main outbuilding. Light spilled through the two windows whose glass panes had been long destroyed, illuminating a long, low room. More daylight came through multiple gaps in the decrepit ceiling. A wall of paint cans, rusty and filled to varying degrees with what must have been dried blocks of unidentifiable paint, filled fully a quarter of the main room. Ancient gardening and farming tools rusted the remainder of their days away next to another of the rough stone walls. Piles of debris, some as tall as me, filled the room, making footing treacherous. Dust covered everything.

  I felt mildly surprised to see that the dust on what could be seen of the floor appeared undisturbed recently. I could have sworn other kids came in here to explore and stay out of sight and out of mind of the adults.

  I got to work, hoping Mary showed up soon.

  Almost on cue, the door creaked open and Mary stepped carefully into the big, dim room, looking around.

  “Hey,” I said, waving dust away from my face.

  “Hi.”