Klickitat

by Peter Rock

  On a yellow pad of paper he’d written our names:

  Audra

  Vivian

  *Woman reported possible sighting on MAX train, 5/12, but when police questioned her answers were uncertain and she couldn’t identify V. with photos we provided.

  On the other side of the piece of paper, he had written:

  Iceland says it is natural for girls

  to wander. Of course she believes a

  lot of things that are difficult to

  believe.

  In his logbook I found Iceland’s call sign and I turned the dials even though as I did it I knew that would make the antennas on the rooftop turn and a person outside could see it and know that there was another person inside.

  “CQ, TF8GX,” I said. “CQ, Iceland. It’s me, Vivian.” I held the soft headset tight around my ears, but all I heard was static. I waited, but that did not change. I wondered how many people might be out there, listening to me, not answering. I wondered how many people were trying to talk to me, all at once.

  And then I heard something else, cutting through that static. A ringing. I pulled the headset down and then I recognized it and I picked up my pack and ran up the stairs, back into the kitchen.

  It was the telephone, and I reached out and almost answered it because I was used to answering it. I remembered, and pulled my hand back before I did. The answering machine played a message I couldn’t hear, and then there was a beep. All I could hear was someone breathing, very softly, and then suddenly a voice, so loud in the kitchen.

  “What are you doing in there?” a man said. “No, don’t pick up the phone, Vivian. I know you’re listening. I can see you standing in the kitchen.”

  I spun around, looking out the windows.

  “You won’t see me,” the man said.

  It was Henry, I realized. The voice was Henry’s.

  “As soon as I hang up,” he said, “delete this message. Then go outside, lock the door, and return the key to its hiding place. Meet me at the corner of 33rd and Klickitat.”

  “Okay,” I said, startled by my voice, knowing he couldn’t hear it.

  “Now delete this.”

  There was a click, and then I pushed the DELETE button so the light stopped blinking. I checked it and double-checked it, my fingers shaking.

  I went out the back door, where the key was still in the lock. I locked the door, then put the key back in its hiding place. As I walked around past the garage, I slid my yellow notebook inside my shirt.

  Henry stood where he said he’d be. He wasn’t looking in my direction, but I could tell he was watching me coming.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know why I wanted to go back—”

  He leaned close to me, almost whispering, his voice so low and strange.

  “Let’s walk,” he said, turning me by the elbow, so we faced the same direction.

  “Is it okay,” I said, “so close together, in the daylight?”

  “Just this once,” he said.

  We headed away from my parents’ house, away from Beverly Cleary School, farther away from where anyone would know me.

  “You went back for the notebook?” he said. “I can see where you’re holding it, there.”

  I didn’t take it out from inside my shirt.

  “Who do you think wrote those things?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The words just showed up. Like, it was closed, and when I opened it, they were there.”

  “That’s what I thought.” His hand brushed against mine, both swinging between us.

  “How did you know?”

  “Keep walking,” he said. “Look straight ahead.”

  We passed a blue mailbox. I felt the notebook’s spiral against my skin and thought of the letter inside it, the one I’d written to my parents.

  “What would someone think,” Henry said, “who saw us walking like this?”

  “We probably look like brother and sister,” I said.

  “Or brother and brother,” he said, “with that haircut of yours.”

  “Don’t tease me,” I said.

  “I’m not,” he said. “I like you.” His hand brushed against mine, and he smiled.

  I realized then that I hadn’t turned off the radio switches, that all the windows would be lit already the next time Dad went into the basement, the dials turned to Iceland.

  “I followed you, yesterday,” I said. “Up to Forest Park.”

  “I know,” he said. “I knew.”

  “I saw you go into that tunnel.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s that about?”

  “The tunnels?” he said. “I found them. I don’t know who made them, or what they’re for, but they remind me of home, a little.”

  “Where you live in tunnels?”

  “Sometimes, in the winter. You’ll see.”

  “So,” I said, after a moment. “You knew I was following?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I saw you with Audra, and I listened to the two of you singing.”

  “Why did you hide from us?”

  “You two need some time together,” Henry said. “To sort things out, how things will be. Audra’s not comfortable yet, with the three of us together. She can get a little jealous.”

  “Of me?” I said.

  “It’s not always easy for her. She’s getting used to it—”

  We walked. His hand brushed against mine again, and this time he held it.

  “I want to take you out in my boat, fishing,” he said. “The ocean rises and falls, just like it’s breathing. The water’s so cold, there. I’ll teach you about it. I’ll teach you to dry the salmon; we’ll build the racks, out along the beach.”

  After a little while, half a block, it felt nice and not surprising, Henry holding my hand like that.

  “These words that come to you,” he said. “I think they’ll make more sense when we get there—that’s how we’ll need you. To say when the ships are coming, and where the animals are hiding, to tell the people about all the things we can’t see, and what will happen. We’ve been without a person like you—that’s one of our problems.”

  We walked silently along, our arms swinging. The sun was bright and warm, not too hot. Our fingers were together and there was the smallest space between our palms, like we were holding a tiny, secret thing. I had never really been able to hold hands with someone for so long without becoming uncomfortable.

  “But what if it doesn’t work that way?” I said. “What if the words still don’t make sense, and I can’t do those things?”

  “It doesn’t help to worry about that,” Henry said. “I need you to come. And anyway, Audra won’t go without you.” He looked up then, squinted at the sun. “She’s waiting,” he said, leading me through the neighborhoods, letting go of my hand. “We should get back.”

  Silently, we hurried toward the house.

  Audra didn’t like it, seeing Henry and me come back together, crawling under where she was waiting. She didn’t really look at us, just kept shuffling things around.

  I wrote to her in the notebook, KLICKITAT, but she wouldn’t look at it. Henry just started stretching, balancing, doing his yoga exercises, and then Audra pulled the wool blanket across so I couldn’t see them anymore.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if she saw Henry and me holding hands, or what. I just sat there, afraid of agitation coming over me, afraid that if I tried to hold on to her she wouldn’t let me. For the first time since we’d been together again, I put the orange life jacket on and cinched its straps tight, to hold me. But the agitation didn’t come. Instead I lay there worried that Audra was mad at me.

  I heard the scratching, the scribbling, as they wrote back and forth in the notebook, having a conversation, an argument.

  SEVENTEEN

  When I woke up the next morning, I was alone.

  I opened the blue notebook, but almost all the pages were torn out. At the very end of it, beneath where I’d w
ritten KLICKITAT, I saw that Audra had finally answered me, while I was asleep: KLICKITAT. Then I knew that we would be all right.

  I fell asleep again, and when I woke up it was daytime, afternoon, and I was still alone. I stretched out, kicking off my blankets. Above I could hear the woman’s footsteps, then silence as she stopped moving, then the water running. I got used to the sounds she made, so I could guess and imagine what she was doing. Making her coffee, toasting her toast, washing her dishes, all without knowing what was beneath her feet. I even figured out the sound of the cat jumping from the kitchen counter to the floor. His front feet, then his back ones.

  After everything had gone silent for a while and I knew she was gone, I put my yellow notebook, my knife, and a sweater into a pack. I crawled out into the bright sunshine.

  Henry didn’t come out of the QFC when he was supposed to, and I got tired of waiting and went inside, walked up and down the aisles of mousetraps and ant poison and Ajax cleanser, past rows of bread and English muffins that made me hungry. The aisles of cold things where the air was cooler, all the frozen things to eat behind their glass doors.

  A tall, bearded man in a blue apron began to follow me. He straightened things on shelves, keeping me in sight as I circled the aisles, walked through the produce. I turned around when he wasn’t expecting it.

  “I’m not a shoplifter,” I said.

  “Can I help you find something?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Actually, I was looking for Henry.”

  “Henry?” The man made a face that was a kind of a frown and walked away, and for a little while I thought he’d gone to find Henry, to bring him to me, but he didn’t come back at all, so I headed outside again.

  Audra—all I knew was that she worked at a Fred Meyer. I didn’t know which one, except that she had to take a bus to get there.

  When I saw a blue mailbox, I took out my letter and mailed it—after all, we’d be far away soon, probably by the time Mom and Dad received it—and I kept walking, all the way to Mount Tabor.

  I found the practice blind that Henry had made, and climbed the tree where Audra and I had swung in our hammocks. I sat there, where no one could see me. I took off my backpack and hung it on a branch. Far away I could hear a ball bouncing, voices, and then the sounds drifted away.

  Through the branches I could see the city, the long straight line of Hawthorne with cars—red, blue, yellow, all pale in the late day sun—driving on it, toward me and away from me, all the way across the bridge, downtown.

  Closer, then, I saw a ragged bird watching me, loose feathers on his wings. Sitting ten feet away, on a branch, hopping a little closer. It flew away when I moved my hands, and it circled around and landed close to me. A little brown bird, some kind of sparrow, its neck jerking around so it could see in every direction, so it wouldn’t be surprised. It lifted one little foot, then the other, perched there.

  “What?” I said, and then I climbed down and began walking out from under the tall trees, past the playground, people on bikes and jogging along with bottles of water in their hands. Mount Tabor used to be a volcano, long ago before Portland was a city, and I sat on the grassy slope up above the square reservoir, waiting for the safe time to go back to Audra and Henry. Down below, two guys who were teenagers or older were practicing on the soapbox derby track, and a girl was with them. Their car was made out of a mattress and bicycle wheels, and had trouble turning the corners. It kept crashing into the trees.

  People pushed strollers around the reservoir. The sun was going down and the cars were turning on their headlights. Far away down Hawthorne I could see the lights on the Bagdad Theatre and for some reason all at once I began to cry because I knew I was about to leave the place where I’d grown up and the parents I’d known and everything else. It felt so strange to be crying, to feel the tears on my face. I couldn’t stop and I felt stupid.

  At last I wiped my eyes and looked around until I saw the moon, so pale, and then I stood up and began walking back toward the house. Enough time had passed where it was safe again.

  It was dusk, and harder to see, tears still in my eyes. Henry and Audra had taught me that it was never truly safe, and so as I got closer to the house I went slowly. I came into the alley the opposite way from how I usually did, and I stayed so low, my fingers brushing the ground in front of me. I could see there were no lights on in the house, and I slowly pushed out the loose part of the fence, backing up as I saw what had happened and then waiting to see if there were any voices, anything, after I moved the fence and stuck my head through.

  Nothing happened, and I peeked through again. The pieces of lattice were gone, and a wide yellow plastic tape was wrapped around where it had been, around the space where we’d been living.

  POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS

  And our things—the foam rubber mats, the car batteries attached to wires, our blankets and clothes and books, my orange life jacket, our toaster—were scattered around the yard. They looked sad and sorry, spread out like that.

  Quickly, I crawled through the gap and grabbed the blue notebook, as many of Audra’s books as I could carry. Back through the fence, I zipped it all up in my pack and kept moving, away, back out into the night.

  When cars passed, I hid behind trees. When lights came on in the windows of houses, I ran.

  I took the MAX downtown, across the black river, and when I got out I kept walking, checking behind me and all around as I reached the even darker darkness under the trees, to Forest Park. It was so hard to see, to find my way, even though the moon was out. I pretended that it was the day I followed Henry, that he was just in front of me, and that helped me find my way. And then I wondered if he might be behind me, with Audra, watching and following like some kind of test.

  Vines tripped me. Branches scratched my face and hands. As I went, I kept expecting a snare, to have my arm jerked away, to fall into a pit, to have my legs swept out and to be hanging upside down, high in the trees, swinging in the darkness.

  It took a long time, circling and circling, but my eyes adjusted a little and at last I saw the broken tree that Audra had shown me, before, and the green rock that was now black with shadows. I dropped down and crawled until I found the blind. I went inside. No one was there. I took off my pack and lay down, resting my head on it, waiting.

  No one came. There was only the silence of the forest, which is never quite silent. The cracks of the trees, the scratching of branches, the wind, little animals scurrying about, and sounds that might be footsteps, that end and don’t start up again.

  This was where Audra and Henry would come for me, but that didn’t mean no one else knew about it. Carefully, quietly, I brushed at the ground with one hand, clearing dirt and leaves from a board, which I lifted aside. Beneath it was the plastic box Audra had told me would be there. I took it out, pulled off the tight lid, felt around with my hand until I found a headlamp, its strap around my wrist. When I switched it on, I cupped the light in my hand, so it wouldn’t go far. I could see some rope, and matches, some camping food. The hammock was wound tight, smaller than a shoe. I took that out and I took the foil emergency blanket out. I set them aside.

  Then I unzipped my pack and pulled out some of Audra’s heavy books. There was room for them in the box, and I put them in and snapped on the top and covered it over, brushing the dirt and leaves across again.

  I didn’t want to stay too close to the blind, and I didn’t want to go too far away from it, but I knew if I fell asleep anyone might sneak up close to me. So I went a ways away, close enough that I would still be able to see the blind when I woke up, in the daylight. And then I began to climb.

  The knots I knew, I’d practiced them so often in the darkness under the house. Tying them, I told myself that they would hold me, that they could hold a lot more weight than me.

  I swung there, fifty feet from the ground in the hammock’s braided strings, wrapped in the thin emergency blanket that held all my heat in. I was so frightened, up the
re alone without Audra swinging next to me, explaining how things worked, how they would be. My shoes hung from their laces, closer to the tree’s trunk, and my pack was hooked there, too, still within arm’s reach. I heard dogs somewhere, barking, then crashing through the brush, below, the sound of them slowly fading away. An owl, not too close. The creaking and settling of the forest.

  EIGHTEEN

  The sound of birds, that’s what woke me, and the pink glow through my eyelids, the coming daylight. I opened my eyes slowly, and turned my head, squinting down between the strings of the hammock, the thick green of the leaves. I wouldn’t have seen the blind if I didn’t know it was there. If someone was inside it I wouldn’t be able to see them from where I was.

  Would they be able to see me? No, unless the sun came over the ridge and lit on my silver blanket, lit me up to reflect like a mirror. I pulled the blanket loose, crinkled it up in my hands as quietly as I could, shoved it into my pack.

  It took me a while to get down, my hands shaking on the tree branches, the ground so far below. Once I’d done it, I stayed barefoot. I circled around the blind, came in from the other side, but there was no one there to surprise, no one there to sneak up on.

  I dug out the box, sorted through the things it held. The headlamp, the food. Maps of Forest Park, and of the United States. Iodine tablets for water. A green bandana. A compass and a knife that I’d seen Audra use before. Toothpaste, a green toothbrush still in its package. A pair of jeans and a fleece shirt with a plastic thermometer on its zipper. Those were both my size. Socks and underwear, also for me, no clothes for anyone else. They must have already been here, I decided, Audra and Henry have already taken their things.

  I’m here, I wrote on a scrap of paper. Back soon. V.