The Shelter Cycle

by Peter Rock

  He climbed, the cold growing sharper, tighter around him. When he reached the first line of brush, he bent down behind it and looked back. The kitchen light still shone, though he could see no shapes, no shadows inside it. The light in the other house was out, however, that whole house dark, the white snow a moat around it, glowing against the night. Looking down from this height, Colville expected to see the dark circle of the trampoline.

  He thought of the girl, the lost girl’s sister. He remembered her. He remembered that the time he spoke to her, they had been right at the same place where he stood now. This hollow in the thick brush, the small overhang where he’d left his books, his tape recorder, the cassette tapes of the Messenger’s decrees. Earlier—an hour ago?—he’d returned to this place, stashed his frame pack before descending to Francine’s house; now he pulled the pack from under the overhang, across the icy ground. Taking out his headlamp, he shone a beam back as far as he could. A few tangled strands of tape reflected back, plastic shards of broken cassettes. The tape recorder was no longer here. The books, probably burned into the ashes that blackened the rocks to one side.

  Soon he approached a house under construction, perched on top of the ridge. Yellow plastic tape circled it, signs warned against trespassing. Shivering, he felt someone watching, eyes on him, then waited until the feeling passed. He walked around a bulldozer, its metal treads frozen in glassy puddles, and squinted at the house’s new windows, all closed. A sheet of plywood had been attached across the front door, another NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to its center.

  Circling the house, he peered down into the cement window wells. He lifted a metal grate, slid it away, dropped his pack to the gravel below, then lowered himself down. This window was locked. When he kicked it in, the glass shattered on the floor inside. He eased himself carefully over the sill, then reached back for his pack, fished out his headlamp. He held it in his hand, shielding it; he didn’t want it to flash up the stairs, out a window, to be seen by someone below.

  The metal ductwork shone overhead, but there was no furnace, not yet. The stairs that stretched up were rough, temporary, and the rest of the house, as he moved through it, seemed similarly unfinished. In some rooms, drywall had been hung, and in others the walls were only exposed studs, water pipes snaking here and there, the white zigzags of electrical wire strung from outlet to outlet. The air hung cold and still, thick with the smell of sawdust. The plywood subflooring echoed slightly beneath his boots. The kitchen cabinets had been installed, yet had no doors; the tile work in the bathroom was half finished. A toilet rested on its side in the hall.

  There were signs of work, of workers—loose nails glinted along the floor, and a carpenter’s belt was coiled in one corner, a 7-Eleven coffee cup on a windowsill—but it felt to Colville that it had been a while, that the money had run out or winter had slowed things.

  He paused, held himself perfectly still, listened for one minute, two. Nothing.

  The picture window in the front room overlooked the city, lights glowing in a sleepy grid. Closer, down the long slope, all the windows of Francine’s house were now dark. Snow was beginning to fall. The girl’s house, too, was all in shadow. Had he walked close by the lost girl and the man, when they’d been hiding up in these hills? He had not known, not seen or heard them. Perhaps he had missed them by days, or only hours, arrived in Boise moments too late. Finding her then hadn’t been part of his path. If he had found the girl, back then, would he have returned to the shelter, or met Jeremy? Would he be freezing right now in this half-built house, uncertain what he was supposed to do next?

  Dragging two sawhorses across the room, he stretched a blue tarp across them, making a kind of tent. He folded the edges around, weighed them down, then opened a roll of pink insulation, tore it into long pieces, and put it on top of the tarp. Next, he slid two more strips under the tarp, the pink side down, brown paper up. He kicked off his boots, unrolled his sleeping bag, climbed inside. The tarp sagged down, a slight pressure on him from above. He zipped the bag tightly against his chin, only his face exposed. He closed his eyes and slept.

  •

  A noise, somewhere in the house. Someone searching through the rooms, then a scratching overhead. Not exactly footsteps. Colville squinted out, along the floor. Were the sounds coming closer? He had to pick his moment, then crawl out, take his boots and pack, slip quietly down the stairs, into the window well. Had there been a ladder, in that space, a way to climb out? Or would he be trapped there, waiting to be discovered? The sound of breathing came closer.

  And then, just as he had his arms free, as he began to reach for his boots, the black dog came skittering through a doorway at him, licking his face, whining. Colville scratched Kilo’s neck, slapped the skin of his belly as he rolled over.

  “Good morning,” Jeremy said, standing there. He wore the white quilted parka again, the blue moon boots on his feet. “Hot water,” he said, holding out the 7-Eleven cup that Colville had seen last night. “I remembered how you used to drink that some mornings. Here’s a couple doughnuts, as well. Aren’t you surprised to see me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were having such a good time, I know, making decisions on your own, all the responsibility. You were doing quite well.” Jeremy stepped to one side, reached out to touch the sawhorse structure, the tent of tarps and insulation. “But I realized that you very well might need Kilo here after all.”

  The dog, sitting close against Jeremy’s legs, looked up at the sound of his name. Colville felt the heat of the water through the cup in his hand.

  “Did you bring the girl?” he said.

  Jeremy looked out the window, at the pale sky. Colville just watched, sipped at the hot water, waited.

  “I thought I made it clear that she can’t come back here,” Jeremy said. “Not like that. I believe I suggested, at the very least, that she was following her own path. I asked you to learn from her, to pay attention.” He clapped his hands, opened them to reveal a roll of bills, held them out to Colville.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Take it, just in case you need it. You can never be certain what will happen—”

  “Yes,” Colville said, folding the money away. “I know that.” His boots were cold, stiff. He laced them tightly, rolled up his sleeping bag, then stuffed it into his orange pack. Crouching there, he tried to decide whether to take down his makeshift tent, whether or not it mattered.

  “As you know,” Jeremy said, “it’s up to you. I have every confidence, of course—no one else could do what you will, no one else would even know where to start. And you’ll do it calmly, you know, as if it’s already been done—”

  As he spoke, Jeremy gave a kind of half-wave, stepping through a doorway, wandering into another room as if trying to understand the house’s layout. His voice continued, difficult to hear, and then there was only silence. Colville waited. Kilo followed through the same doorway, then returned, sniffing the floor.

  Colville stood after a moment, leaving the tent as it was. Slowly he walked around the dim, half-built house, from room to room. Jeremy was gone. It made no sense to call his name.

  In the small room next to the kitchen, on the other side of the house, a glass door opened onto a wooden deck. Colville unlocked the door, slid it open, and stepped through; he waited for Kilo to follow before sliding it closed again. The houses on either side were built farther down the slope, their windows beyond where he could see. That meant no one looking out could see him as he stepped into the open.

  In the new snow around the house, he could reconstruct the comings and goings of the night before. The tracks of two rabbits, then a coyote, not long after, slowing and then jogging away, up the ridge. Birds had settled, flown off again. Kilo’s prints approached the front door—the plywood still nailed tight there—then stopped at once, as if he’d been lifted into the air. Jeremy had left no footprints that Colville could see.

  “Come on, boy,” he said, and Kilo ran b
ack, stayed close alongside him. The dog had to recognize where they were; so close to Francine’s, to his old home. They did not walk in that direction, but over the other side of the ridge, down to a paved road that curved around, that would lead them back to the city. Colville’s skin itched, probably from the pink insulation, maybe even from yesterday’s haircut. The blacktop was icy, slushy; they stayed on the shoulder, though no traffic came past. This morning, he suddenly realized, Jeremy had looked the same as always—his blond hair smoothly swept back, his thick beard combed into a point. As if it had all grown back overnight.

  23

  COLVILLE TRIED TO IMAGINE everything that could go wrong and how to make it right. He’d been preparing his whole life, especially these last few weeks, since the raccoon had found him in Spokane.

  He’d spent most of the day planning and preparing, buying the things he’d need. He did his decrees and meditated in his motel room; he went over and over the passages he’d copied into his notebook: Observe a person’s or animal’s routine, find the weak point in that routine, and then enter the weak point and move with it, thus becoming invisible to everyone. This dead space exists in both nature and the city. Even those people walking alone at night, fearful of attack or robbery, frightened and hypervigilant, still have countless dead spaces in which one can operate. Even those who stalk have this dead space.

  Now energy radiated out, all around as he walked through the dark neighborhoods, returning to Francine’s house. Kilo pranced down the icy sidewalk, running ahead and returning with his snout in the air. He seemed to recognize where they were.

  Colville’s frame pack was light, empty of almost all the things left back in the motel room. He swung the pack around, set it down in the vacant lot at the end of the block, in the dark shadows of the fence, then pulled off his black nylon poncho so he was wearing the white hooded sweatshirt he’d bought earlier; with the white sweatpants, he would be more difficult to see against the snow.

  The sweatshirt and pants were silent as he crept along the fence behind the houses. Kilo stayed close; he didn’t need a leash, he could sense by the way Colville was moving—arms out for balance, lifting his knees high and setting only the balls of his feet gently down—that this was no time to stray.

  Colville reached to touch Kilo’s neck, and the dog sat down, waiting, watching as Colville pulled himself upward, peeked over. Only one light was on, deep in the house, probably in the living room.

  It took a moment to find the loosened boards in the fence where Colville had taken Kilo, but when he did he worked them free from the ice and pried them out again. Just enough so that, on his hands and knees, twisting sideways with a nail snagging his sweatpants, his bare hip sliding, cold, he could pull himself through, into the back yard. He remained on his stomach, spread out on the white snow. No sounds, no voices, no lights turning on. Next he held the boards back and took Kilo by the scruff of the neck, helped him through. He held the black dog close, hugged him tight, whispered in his ear: “Thanks, boy. You’re home again. Remember what to do.”

  Kilo whined once as Colville dragged himself, then crawled away, past the picnic table, standing very slowly to open the gate that led to the driveway. Once there, he crept around to the other side of Francine’s car, knelt down, and waited. A light on the garage, attached to a motion sensor, switched on. Brightness, black shadows suddenly everywhere. After a moment the light switched off again. Silence.

  And then Kilo began barking. Tentatively at first, and then, as lights came on in the house, more loudly. Colville could hear him running in circles, tearing around the yard as he barked, his claws scratching the wood of the fence as he reared up on his hind legs, as he changed direction.

  The door opened at the side of the house, twenty feet from Colville.

  “Kilo?” Francine said. “What?”

  Colville squinted through the window, across the inside of the car and out the windshield. It was impossible to see her clearly, only the shape, the blue of her robe and then a blur of red as Wells came out behind her.

  “Is it really him?”

  They rushed down the stairs, so close to Colville, then opened the gate to the back yard. Kilo was still barking, still running, unable to calm down. When the wooden gate swung shut, Colville could no longer see Francine and Wells. That meant that they could no longer see him. Now was his moment.

  Moving quickly across the narrow space, up the few stairs, Colville opened the door, slipped into the kitchen. Staying low, out of sight in the windows, the house now all alight, he crawled past the table, past the sink full of dirty dishes, the refrigerator with a card that said “Congratulations on Your Baby Daughter!” attached by a magnet shaped like the letter F. He stood up when he was in the hallway, pausing once to listen—Kilo still barking, the voices still outside—and he opened the door slowly, squinted into the bathroom. No. Backing up, he opened the door he’d passed. The sound of wind rose up, startling him; it came from a small round machine on the floor, plugged into the wall beneath a growing green nightlight. His eyes slowly adjusted. He stepped over the cord, around a laundry basket, to the crib.

  The baby’s eyes were closed. She slept. Colville lifted one blanket and saw that she was swaddled in another, wrapped tightly. She wore a stocking cap, striped, with a tassel. Only her small face was exposed.

  He hesitated. The air buzzed and shuffled; the sound of the wind was everywhere; it covered any sound he might make, would muffle the baby if she cried, but it also deafened him to what has happening outside. He’d have no warning if Francine and Wells began to return.

  The baby pursed her lips, whimpered slightly as he lifted her—she was lighter than he expected—but she did not awaken. On the way out of the room, he took a handful of clothes from the laundry basket, another blanket from the shelf beneath the changing table.

  A sound, the kitchen door opening. He stepped sideways from the hallway into the living room, past a baby swing and a stack of cardboard boxes. He breathed silently. He tried to hold himself invisible, to believe it as he heard Kilo clatter into the kitchen—claws on the linoleum, tail slapping the cabinets, the refrigerator.

  “Settle him down,” Francine said. “Keep him quiet.”

  “Here you are,” Wells was saying, the pitch of his voice rising. “We didn’t get rid of your bowls. No, we didn’t. We wouldn’t do that, Kilo.”

  As Colville stood there in the living room, holding the baby, Francine came down the hallway. Her lips were moving but she was not saying anything aloud; her hair was pulled loosely back, a strand hanging in front of her face. She looked tired and strong and she did not notice him, standing so close.

  Once she was past, Colville glanced at the baby in his arms. Her eyes were open, gazing up at him as if she recognized and had been expecting him. He felt her breathing, her heartbeat, the vibrations so calm in their rhythm together. Still she made no sound.

  He took two steps and carefully turned the knob of the front door. The hinges squeaked only slightly as he eased it open. The storm door, next, the laundry held in his armpit and the baby cradled as he carefully stepped off the porch. Across the icy walk they went. Up the street, under the bare branches of the trees.

  His pack leaned against the fence where he’d left it, and he opened its flap with his free hand, pushed the laundry into a side pocket. The main compartment was lined with his down sleeping bag, open, soft, and warm. In the faint light he could see that the baby’s eyes were closed again. Her mouth seemed to curl in a faint smile. Gently, he eased her into the pack, then wrapped the sleeping bag around, pulled down the flap. Next he took out his black poncho, pulled it on, and carefully lifted the pack to his shoulders.

  Colville listened; he heard nothing. No voices, no sirens. He began to walk through the dark streets, back toward the motel. Perhaps Francine had been going to check on the baby, or perhaps she had gone to the bathroom, or back to her bedroom to sleep. She had not seen him, and she had been so close.

&nb
sp; He heard a car horn, distant traffic. No sirens, no shouting voices. A television glowed blue through a curtained window. A cat slipped quietly past, leaping a stretch of ice. Colville listened to the baby’s soft, sweet breathing as she slept in the pack, her mouth so close to his ear.

  24

  THE BABY SLEPT. Colville had changed her diaper twice, careful to memorize the folds of the blanket that swaddled her. When she was awake, she kicked her legs, grabbed hold of his fingers; he had worried about her crying, that it would draw attention, but she’d hardly made a sound.

  She slept on the queen bed farther from the door of the motel room, closer to the kitchenette. He rested next to her, Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care open on his chest. The bottles and nipples he’d boiled stood lined on the kitchenette counter. Next to them, the tins of formula, the glass jars of baby food. Squash, green beans, bananas, all pureed.

  The room was dim, the only light from the digital clock—2:45—and the sliver from the bathroom, that door ajar. Colville believed that he could feel it, the purity of energy that Jeremy mentioned, the clear vibrations that spun out from the baby. She shifted a little. Her chest rose and fell: she breathed.

  He should sleep also, but he could not sleep. There was too much he didn’t know, too much he had to figure out. The information about how to care for her physically—that he could learn, he could read about. He could watch her closely and react. It wouldn’t be easy, he didn’t want it to be easy, but he knew he could do it. Otherwise why would he have been led on this path, entrusted with her? What he needed to know was how to protect a baby’s Light, how to prepare her. He remembered how it had been with Moses—one rule was that no one was allowed to touch the top of the baby’s head; another was that no one outside the family was allowed to hold the baby for the first six months. These were the kind of Teachings he needed, and he had given Francine all the books that contained them.