“They have waited many years for this,” my brother said.
“It has happened before,” I said to him, looking up into his hard eyes, but he would not answer me.
The Trail Where They Cried. My grandfather never tired of telling my brother and me of the thing. Children waving goodbye to the mountains—and they used to say the rain wouldn’t fall on those mountains, the Snowbirds, unless the Cherokees were there. The elderly dying in the sleet and snow—sleeping on the ground without a fire, and they had given all the blankets to the children. Twenty-two buried at each stopping place from the pneumonia, silent graves marking the trail outside Chattanooga, Athens, Princeton, Marion, Jackson, Springfield, Fayetteville, the whites coming from the town to watch them move.
Families separated, driven like cattle, penned up like cattle in stockades with no shelter, having to urinate and defecate in public, losing everything save what they carried, wheels and horses and rain and endless rain, a quagmire.
Grandfather cried when he told of the old women with bare feet and heavy loads, a fifth of the nation lost. Graves desecrated for the silver pendants and ancestral jewelry left to the dead; the dead stripped! Many of the children never smiled after that trail, never again.
The removal, they called it.
The animal people began prodding the Indians within the stockade with claws and sharp teeth. The Indian faces: pale and stark, the eyes dead.
The principal people, we used to call ourselves. Ani-Yun-Wiya.
I looked up at my brother. His face was in shadow. A dark triangle of shadow seemed to grow from just behind his ear, spreading into his jaw, making his head seem longer, longer.
My brother growled in his throat and he showed his eyes to me. Large with enormous whites, dark pupils. The gray-furred snout. He sniffed me. Then licked the side of my head with a long, pink, probing tongue.
My brother howled. It was pain and anger. It was Coyote.
The animal people stopped and stared. Porcupine showed his yellow eyes. Fox began to bay, Ferret to whine. I could hear Old Martin in the stockade, muttering an ancient prayer.
“My brother?” I stared into Coyote’s dark eyes. “Where are you?”
Coyote made a yapping, almost laughing sound, then drew his long muzzle back and used it to point at the night sky.
I looked up into the narrow streamer of stars stretched out over earthwoman’s black shroud. The dog road, the milky way leading into the Darkening Land. Usunhiyi. And a white shape there—or did I imagine it? —of a deer. Oh my brother, Long Tom, cinnamon deer, leaping up the dog road into the Darkening Land.
Coyote was yapping more loudly, laughing harder now, and one by one the animal people began to peel away from my people in the stockade. One by one they dropped to the ground as Coyote’s song became louder, Beaver then Fox then Crow then Snake, and their dark shadows, their true shapes, slipped out of the animal people suits and the Strange Ones, the aliens, blew away in the wind of Coyote’s song.
He looked down at me, grinned, and licked my face.
I struggled to keep the fear in my belly. It wanted to reach out and grasp my throat. I did not want to see this thing; I did not want to see the ancient way come back; it was all too fearsome. I did not want Coyote to take the world back.
Coyote yapped and reared his great head. His mouth snapped and his tongue licked. Earthmother rolled over in her sleep. Dirt flew into massive mounds as the broken city dug itself a hole in terror, jumped in, and began covering itself over. Mountains rose on all sides of me. The Indians from the stockade, the last of them Old Martin, fell into the hole with terrified shrieking. Coyote sang, and the trees jumped on top of the mountains. Coyote laughed valleys full of tears, and the tear rivers flowed into lakes and oceans. The night fell down with amazement and hid behind the mountain. New animal people came out to greet the sun Coyote had hung on the sky like an ornament. Coyote laughed and laughed and laughed, and earthwoman changed her dress and put on beads.
I turned to Coyote. “And me?” I whispered.
Coyote frowned and looked puzzled. He looked over my shoulder and grinned his Coyote grin at what he saw. I turned slowly to see.
Old Man, Yo-he-wah, was limping down the road. He had a tree trunk helping him walk; he carried another larger tree over his shoulder. When he reached Coyote he embraced him, this Trickster, then rolled him up like paper and slipped him into the purse at his belt. Then he looked back down the road.
My brother Long Tom, my handsome brother Long Tom, was leading Old Martin and the others back from the Darkening Land. I ran to greet them, but suddenly Old Man was in my way.
He shoved the massive tree into the ground. He pushed me on to the first branch. He made me climb.
When I reached the top of the tree I discovered that I could see a long distance. I could see my brother and the other Indians building the fires below. I could see Moon dropping over the mountain and swimming slowly after Old Man.
I am dressed as well as the Redbird. I am as manly. I can do as much.
I remember all of this. I sit high in the branches of the tree, near the center of the city park. The city stands up around me and makes its stomach noises. We are both shape-changers. We are all shape-changers. I wait for Coyote to knock it all down again, to break its arms and kick it into the deepest hole.
I think about my brother and I cannot sleep. I cry from yearning for him but the tears will not leave my large, clear eyes.
My name is Owl.
SAFE HOUSE
The woman had that familiar stare of unmendable fatigue. Her eyes hardly blinked, even with the three kids crawling all over her as if she were some sort of playground ride.
Laura didn’t have kids. Until she’d worked at the safe house, she’d thought she would someday. Now the very idea of having children chilled her.
“Do you need shelter?” Laura positioned her pen at the top of the form. The shelter had stopped giving the forms to the women themselves to fill out a long time ago.
The woman’s eyes glowed blue with something beyond fatigue, beyond sadness. Laura had seen that look before. “Yes,” the woman finally mustered. “I need shelter.” She looked at her feet as if she were trying to remember something. One of the kids—a little girl—grabbed on to the woman’s belt, pulled and lifted up her tiny feet, swinging. The woman paid scant attention. Laura stood, afraid the child was going to topple her mother, but the woman’s renewed attention stopped her. “I need shelter,” she said again. “Me and my kids.”
“Your name?”
“Betty.” She paused. “Betty… Carter.”
Laura knew that pause very well. She forced herself to look into the woman’s eyes. They looked like peeled grapes, drying out from a lack of blinking. She was feeling a little impatient, anticipating an argument. She tried to soften her voice. “We really need your real name. In case of medical emergencies, and for your children, in case something were to happen…”
“Something’s already happened.”
“I know… Betty. I know.” She looked across the desk at the woman’s children. The little one had let go of the belt, and lay on the floor curled around her mother’s feet. “But you can give us your name. He won’t find you here. He can’t get to you. I promise.” Laura wondered why she kept saying that, except most of the staff said things like that, promised these women anything. But certainly there were no guarantees.
The woman stared down at the form then turned, looking at the room around her: the sad women lounging on sofas watching TV or scanning magazines, the harried women trying to control small children and carry on a conversation at the same time, the newly-repaired plaster walls, cracks still outlined in white, the half-painted ceiling, the furniture donated from thrift stores and ancient hospital waiting rooms. Laura blushed.
The woman’s unblinking eyes caught the reaction. “You promise,” she said flatly, without either the sarcasm or desperation Laura might have expected.
Laura shrugged.
“It’s a safe house. The location isn’t publicized. This one’s only been open a few months…” Laura felt herself withering beneath the woman’s gaze. “But there’s been no security problems so far.”
“Then you put down Betty Dodd,” the women said, her finger pointing at the form with authority.
Laura obeyed, then got Betty’s home address, phone number, closest living relatives, children’s names and ages, insurance. She avoided looking at Betty, however. Once she’d agreed to giving her real name, Betty seemed to have taken charge, as if it were up to Laura to prove that Barrow House was going to be a good place for her and her children. In theory, Laura welcomed that kind of assertiveness. Normally, the godawful passivity of these women made working with them so difficult that sometimes she’d felt like slapping one of them herself. But she was uncomfortable now having the tables actually turned like this, having the person on the other side of the desk acting like the one with power.
“Your husband’s name?” Laura had almost reached the bottom of the form. She was already wondering what room she could put them in; the house was practically overrun. One of the staff had said to expect that the first few hot nights of summer.
Betty said nothing. Laura asked the question again. After a few long moments she was compelled to look up. Betty was staring at the form as if it were a death certificate she was being forced to sign. Finally, in a quick, harsh whisper, “You don’t need that,” she said.
Laura felt her patience rapidly slipping away. “Having his specific name will help us keep him away from you. The police will need to know who he is. And the staff here will need to know what he looks like in case he were to show up.”
“You said we’d be safe here.”
“You will. Betty… it’s just a precaution.”
Betty eyed her children as if she were plotting to escape with them, eyed Laura herself as if she were some sort of jailer. Then she tore a piece of paper off Laura’s note pad, without a word grabbed the pen out of Laura’s hand, scribbled something, then handed both pen and paper back to Laura.
The paper said “Frank Dodd.” Laura looked back at Betty. Betty stared at the wall. That embarrassed Laura. The wall was mint green until two-thirds up the wall, leaving above that the godawfulest combination of yellow cupids and bright-red cupid-eating flowers. The volunteers for the physical chores never seemed to stay, or complete anything. Betty was rubbing her hands, as if washing them, as if the very act of writing the man’s name was poisonous to her. Unsettled, Laura copied the man’s name onto the form so quickly it was almost illegible.
“Your husband…” Laura almost said his name, but the stiffness in Betty’s face stopped her. “He lived with you?”
“It was his house, always his house.”
“Where does he work?”
“He doesn’t… anymore.”
“A phone number where he might be reached, not that we’ll be calling him of course. Security reasons.”
Betty looked at Laura as if she were crazy. She just shook her head. Laura wrote down “none.” The children were climbing on their mother again. Betty ignored them, except now and then she would reach down and stroke the head of the youngest, who paid her back by planting tiny hard soles on her mother’s knees as she hung from Betty’s belt. Laura had to admire her patience. Many women in her position would be screaming at the kids by now, and swatting any piece of them she could reach. “Shhhh…” Betty said softly as the youngest began to cry.
“Have you been in a safe house before, Betty?”
“And if I have will that hurt our chances of getting in here?”
Laura knew that for some of the staff members it would. If a woman kept going back to her husband, and hopped from one safe house to another, some of the staff would counsel her to go back home. These women shouldn’t use us as a hotel, was the way Marge, her coordinator, put it. “I’ve already accepted you in,” Laura told her. “There’ll be no problem. But it’s on the form and I have to fill in an answer.”
“Three other places. Six… maybe seven times in all.”
Laura put down “1,” and then the phone rang.
The phone looked like some kind of weird sculpture, all silver and curves. One of the well-to-do volunteers had donated it when she had her home redecorated. Laura guessed it hadn’t matched the decor. She didn’t like to use the thing; it felt funny and cold against her ear. But it was the phone they’d put on the front desk.
She wedged it against her ear as she turned the form over for Betty to sign. “Hello.” The first day she’d volunteered she’d answered the phone “Barrow House.” Luckily, or unluckily, it was a member of the board on the other end. She’d gotten the first of many lectures on the importance of the shelter’s security procedures.
The phone crackled so that at first she couldn’t hear the caller, in fact couldn’t tell if anyone was talking at all. Then suddenly it cleared so completely she thought at first the line had gone dead. “I want to talk to Betty,” a man’s voice said.
Betty raised her head and looked at Laura with a tired and apprehensive look, as if she’d not only overheard the voice but had expected the call. Laura kept her voice low. “I’m sorry but you must have the wrong …”
“Betty Dodd. Tell her it’s Frank.”
Laura watched as Betty grabbed her children and started for the door. The receiver felt ice-cold against Laura’s ear. “You have the wrong number, sir,” she said quickly and hung up. Betty already had her children halfway out the front door, which was plain and supposedly anonymous. Laura ran after them.
She caught up with them at the bus stop. “Are you sure you didn’t mention where you were going? To a neighbor, a relative, anyone?”
Betty sat on the bench, searching the street anxiously. The two oldest kids were crawling around under the bench; the youngest was asleep, her head in Betty’s lap. “I shouldn’t have even written it,” she mumbled, then repeated herself.
“What are you saying?”
“I shouldn’t even have written his name! That’s why he called!”
“Betty! That’s…” Laura thought better of using the word. Besides she felt guilty. She’d promised the woman and her kids they’d be safe.
“It’s not your fault,” Betty said, as if reading her mind. “I shouldn’t have tried. He always finds us. He always comes.”
“Betty, there’s no more buses tonight. Come back inside. Believe me, it’s safer there.”
Betty began to laugh. “I know. That’s why they call it a Safe House. A house is a safe place, right?”
“We have a guard on duty. Always. And if you like I’ll stay the night with you and the children. Sometimes I do it. I don’t mind.”
Laura couldn’t read the look on Betty’s face. She was either grateful or appalled.
“Frank won’t like that,” Betty finally said. “He won’t like that at all.”
Laura took the little girl from Betty’s arms. “Please,” Laura said. Without further protest Betty got the other two kids and followed Laura inside.
Laura’s night-shift replacement tried to get her to stay in one of the nicer bedrooms used by the overnight staff, but she’d never felt comfortable with that marked disparity in furnishings. Besides, the whole purpose in her staying was to let Betty know that Laura was confidant Barrow House was safe. She had to be right there in the room with her and the kids.
The only room available was one on the top floor of the house, part of the attic. It was barely adequate: the holes in the walls stuffed with rags and rough plaster, the only light one bare bulb, and the ceiling hadn’t yet been raised so you had to stoop to crawl into the ancient beds shoved up under the eaves. The room was cold and cheerless, but Laura carried up an armful of blankets and quilts, and flashlights and coloring books for the kids. “It’s like camping out,” she told them, and they’d liked that.
Betty refused to get under the covers. She sat on top of the sheets, staring at the door. Laura left the woman to
herself and concentrated on the kids. Once she had a bed to lie on the little girl was a delight, engrossing herself with the coloring books until she fell asleep with a red marking pen in her hand. Laura put her to bed, a little unsettled by the red smears all over the child’s face and hands. She didn’t know if that kind of thing would bother her mother or not. Laura had never had kids; she’d never met a man she thought she could have kids with. Soon the other two children were asleep as well. Laura turned the dimmer switch until the bare bulb was no more than a vague yellow outline in the room. That left only herself and Betty awake within the yellowed shadows of the cramped room.
“What scared me most were the kids,” Betty began. “I was afraid he’d start hitting on the kids.”
Laura glanced anxiously at the small, sleeping forms, as if the danger Betty was talking about were imminent. But the house was safe. There was no danger here. “He never hit them,” she said, as if saying that would be reassuring.
“No, but that time was coming closer. It seemed like he got angrier every day. He started screaming at them all the time, and acting like they were the cause of everything bad.”
“Sounds like you had plenty of reasons to leave.”
“Oh, sure, I had the reasons. I just have to look in the mirror if I want to count them.” Betty had lifted up her skirt. A bruise dark as a shadow appeared to have obliterated half her left thigh. It was like an island of dark purples and greens on the milky skin. Long scratches ran down the other leg, crossed by a dark, narrow loop, the impression left by a coat hanger or electric cord.
“Why didn’t you leave…”
“Don’t say his name!” Betty ordered in a frightened voice, half rising.
“Your husband. Why didn’t you leave your husband earlier?”
Betty laughed harshly. “Momma always said that if you loved a man, then you stuck by him, no matter what the problem was.” She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. “My momma always was a stupid woman.”
City Fishing Page 10