by Amy Espeseth
Over his knee, Reuben breaks branches piled next to the shack to make a fire to get my blood moving again. I figure he is awful worried that he will get the blame for my frostbite death and that Daddy might never let him out on the lake again. They pile the wood into the hole in the steel bucket that serves as our stove and get the fire roaring quick. Embarrassed, I stand there soaking, waiting for the boys to leave so I can strip down to my bare skin and wrap up in the wool blanket on the bunk. Naomi catches my darting eye and hustles the boys out for more wood so that I can hold on to at least a semblance of my pride. As she helps me pull off the many wet layers of snow pants, jeans, long underwear and tights, my body twitches and flicks like a muddy cow’s tail, and I think I will never again get warm. Naomi wraps me up in the green army blanket, and I lay down on the top bunk, still shivering hard but breathing better.
A hand comes round the door, holding more sticks for the fire. Naomi grabs them up and thanks Reuben for bringing them. At least they are working together and aren’t fighting anymore.
Sheepishly, he peeks his head through and barely whispers to ask if I am alright. Reuben’s scared, wrinkled-up face looks so worried, I laugh out loud and tell him to go on ahead and get fishing.
‘Watch out for those whitefish, they’re gunning for you now!’ I tell him, still laughing.
His smile tells me that he is relieved, and with him stopping his worrying, I stop my worrying too. I can see that I will well and truly live through a bit of a wet, cold leg.
The plywood door bangs shut after Reuben, and Naomi plops down on the bottom bunk and pulls out a secret roll of chocolate caramels from her coat pocket. We are shoving them into our mouths, and she is rubbing my wet foot hanging off the side of the top bunk when Samuel comes in out of the cold.
‘You get out there and skate a bit, Naomi.’ Samuel always talks in that low voice. ‘You didn’t walk all the way out to the middle of the lake to stuff your face full of candy. I’ll watch her.’
Naomi gets up and paces the room. She offers the caramels to Samuel, but he shakes his head. She stokes up the fire, but Samuel says it is burning high and right.
‘Go find Reuben, Naomi,’ he says with a sneer. ‘I’m sure he’s making another fire somewhere.’
She finally laces up her skates, throws a look over her shoulder at me, and slides out the door.
‘Ahhh, it’s getting hot in here, ain’t it?’ Samuel takes off his jacket and snow pants. ‘My jeans are a bit wet, don’t you think?’ He slides them off too.
By the time he climbs up into the top bunk, Samuel is wearing just his tight long underwear. He has to warm up now, and he has to help me warm up too. His breath is hot and his hands are cold, and I can see the slit of his thing sticking out the top of his underwear. It ain’t an accident this time, and I can’t even pretend anymore that it is. I know now that the other times — through the woods when we accidentally saw him skinny-dipping, in my tent when he didn’t mean to come in when I was changing, at the swimming hole when he sort of rubbed against us in the water, at church during worship when his arm brushed against my chest — none of those times was accidental neither. Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.
During, I hear Naomi come to the door, press her face against it and ask Samuel if she could warm up now. He tells her no, and she shuffles away. She comes back; he says no; she goes away. Samuel has laid on me and wriggled around before, earlier in the summer when Naomi was at Bible camp. But it was August and hot then, and because I am wet and cold, he has to really warm me now. He tugs at my nipples and rubs my chest with his rough hands. My heart is beating fast and I can’t breathe. He rolls on top of me. It hurts, though, and I push him away a bit, and then I pull him to me, and then I push him away hard.
He says, low and slow like he always talks, ‘You don’t have to. I might just go to Naomi.’
Naomi still wets the bed. I have to protect her. ‘Naomi’s only a little girl.’ An anger rises up in me, and I hit him hard on the arm. ‘You keep away from her.’
Samuel jerks back from me. ‘She might be a little girl, but she don’t have to stay that way. And she’s more woman than you’ll ever be, skinny.’
Now jealousy burns through me, down to my core, like a hot splash of urine melting through snow. My face is wet with tears. But I pull him down to me again and let him stay there until he is done.
Seems like I don’t know nothing, don’t know what to believe. Pictures twist through my head: a snarling badger hunting a snowshoe hare; Samuel towing Naomi round the ice, her skates slipping in the slush and gleaming in the glare; Reuben stabbing a northern pike through the eye with a maple stick; Samuel, leaning against the side of the shack, pissing a high yellow arc steaming into the snow.
But my spirit sees a spring empty of water, like snowflakes driven by a blizzard. Blackest darkness is just as dry. If a man knows the Lord — escaping the sin slavery of the depraved world — then entangles himself again and is overcome, he ends worse than he began. He should wish he never knew righteousness rather than reject the sacred commands. You don’t live long in Failing without knowing what is true: A dog returns to its vomit. A sow that is washed goes back to her wallowing in the mud.
14
SOME BAD KID HAS BURNT A CIRCLE INTO THE GREEN VINYL OF the bus seat in front of me. The edges of the hole are brown and smell like leaves on fire; a cigarette has left its mark. I’m sitting alone on the school bus. Naomi decided to share a seat with Reuben, and they are giggling under his big jacket. Samuel’s clear in the rear with the rough crowd. High school kids sit back there, swearing and throwing paper out the windows. I can’t help but hope they eat him alive.
After school today, Reuben and I are riding the bus to the parsonage. Naomi and I have to make the boys supper, and then Aunt Gloria will take us all home after she and Mom are done with their ladies’ prayer meeting. We got to rely on the church van because Daddy’s got the truck; he’s helping rebuild a burnt-down milking parlour out near the county line. Through the window, I see the too-tall box of the parsonage looming over its neighbours and I change my mind: I will not. The bus slows and stops and the door opens. Carrying all their books, Reuben follows Naomi’s swinging, chubby hips toward the exit. I make myself small and still as Samuel slinks from the back of the bus to the front. But I will not get off the bus; I can’t follow that boy down that aisle. Nobody notices, and the door closes. When I turn my head again to look out the smeary window, Samuel has already started walking toward his house. Reuben and Naomi, though, are standing looking stunned as I wave slow from inside the bus. Her mouth open, my cousin just gawks at me. My brother starts running, chasing the bus like a dog. We leave him behind in no time; our lady bus driver ain’t known for keeping an eye on the rear-view.
I stay hunkered down in my seat and most of the normal kids don’t even notice I’m there. All the way home, I listen to them talk of fancy vacations and television, rock music and movies. They are rich and don’t even know it; I am poor and I do. But I ride content in myself and happy — for the first time in a long time — on my lonesome. The children get dropped off house by house until only I remain, like an unhatched egg in a nest. I climb down from the bus and walk our long driveway. Truck tyres have splashed this morning’s fresh snow muddy. My shadow weaves amongst the scraggly pines that line the road; somehow, that darkness seems more real than my own body. Near the house, I see that Uncle Peter’s big truck is parked next to the garage. Strange, because nobody’s home — at least, nobody is supposed to be home.
I think he must be in our little garden shed, so I decide to go in there first. The footsteps to the shed are too far apart to follow; the men have big strides. The snow is deep to my knees, and there is no one to make a way for me, so I break my path myself. Because it is stuck with cold and ice, I have to push open the side door of the shed with my hip. The light ain’t
on inside the shed, but I can hear something moving. My eyes adjust to the dim light, and I can see to the back of the shed. There is a wire cage with a raccoon shivering in the corner. Even now, as cold as it’s been, it appears Reuben’s kept himself a coon — freezing and near to starving by the state of it — in this draughty, crooked shed. Me, I couldn’t sleep for thinking of that coon’s black-rimmed eyes all scared and her stripy fur shivering with the wind that breezes through the cracks.
But the boys don’t lose no sleep and the boys break all the rules. Like Samuel don’t have no self-control, but he do have selfishness plenty. He cares only for him; him and his pretty curls are all he thinks of day and night. To look at a broken windmill, its arms stretched crooked against the sky, most folks would feel sorry. Not Samuel, though; he looks at a crippled windmill and decides to clip the wings of birds. It is never enough to just look; boys need to keep. And they always need to touch.
There are rules for a reason. If a poor man has only one little ewe lamb, he’ll treat it like a daughter: share food with her, press his cup to her lips, and sleep with her in his arms. A rich man would have so many sheep and cattle, he wouldn’t even know their names. But if a traveller came and the rich man killed the poor man’s ewe lamb — instead of sacrificing one of his many, one of his own — it would be the wrong thing to do. It seems like folks with lots don’t care about those of us making do, always having little, always choosing the cheapest kind.
And in my heart of hearts, I believe Reuben knows what happened in the ice shack. When he looks at me — even tonight through the foggy bus window — I can see it in his eyes. He knows something special was taken away; he looks at me like I’m broken. I don’t know why he ain’t telling somebody, why he ain’t protecting me. Folks have their reasons, I guess.
Day is quickly dying, but I’m determined to let this raccoon go. I start toward the cage but lose my balance and almost hit the deck. There is a red gasoline can and a box of rags sitting in the middle of the floor. The box spilt when I tripped over it: beneath the rags are dirty magazines, women of all shapes and sizes, but always naked. I hold one of the magazines up to try and see what is appealing about ladies, what is so worth looking at.
The door behind me opens and brings in the light. I drop the magazine to my feet and feel my face flush.
‘Ruth?’ Uncle Peter is calling my name.
Breathing quick, I turn around.
‘Girl, aren’t you supposed to be in town?’
They always catch me. Others get away; I don’t.
But he ain’t got no reason to be here neither. ‘What are you looking for, Uncle Peter?’
And it’s his turn for a red face. ‘Your mother was feeling too poorly to go to meeting.’ He is speaking quick. ‘I came by to check on her. You should go inside and see if you can help.’
I nod my head yes, and he turns to go. His truck starts, and I listen to it pull down the driveway. And I hear that animal rattle her cage. She is straining against the wire. Before I go to my mother — make her chicken noodle soup and stoke the fire, whatever she needs — I’ll help here first.
The raccoon is squatting in filth; she’s got no way to stay clean but she sure as heck has somewhere to go. As I lean down to unlatch the cage, I wonder for a minute if she will fight me. She don’t. She just lays there. She’s learnt, I guess, that they can squeeze the life out of you. I open the cage and she stays put. She’s too dumb to know how to escape; too dumb or too scared or just too plain tired, I suppose.
By morning she’ll run and hide. What a funny word: hide. It is the skin of an animal. Hide is where the hunters sit. And hide is what we do to escape. Hide from harm, little coon. You run and hide quick.
15
REUBEN AND DADDY ARE ICE-FISHING UP AT THE CABIN TODAY. I didn’t want to go anyway. The old shack at Cranberry Lake is rickety and wheezes in the wind. They’ll fish sunnies all day, try for the northern pike during their feeding run at noon, and then expect crappies and walleye from sundown before supper until midnight. That is a long, cold day: Reuben struggling out of the shack to bait tip-ups, watching for flags flying up, faraway on the ice. Inside the shack, they’ll hook grubs, waxies and mousies and lower them into the ice hole. Daddy will take a mousie — meal-worm larvae — and warm her up in his mouth before lacing a hook through her. Whether it makes the bait or the fish awaken, I don’t know. I do know for sure I don’t want a soft baby worm in my mouth. Drinking out of the hole in the ice makes me cold, so I’d have that taste on my lips awhile. And when a pick-up drives by, we know where we are: the ice cracks and water gushes up the hole and overflows on the floor. The ice talks with cracks as it expands and grows. We can’t forget we’re fishing on ice on water; it is a thin and temporary truce.
But I wasn’t awake when Daddy and Reuben left, and they didn’t bother waking me. So I’m not sitting on ice; instead, I am hiding in the cold basement, pawing through a box of photographs. Some are black-and-white and cracking down the middle; yellow tape tries to hold them together. Coloured photos from when my brother and me were little have thick white edges. Some battered Polaroids are coming apart at the seams.
My favourite picture of me is this: a skinny man with mutton-chop sideburns cradles a rifle while balancing a four-month-old baby. The baby is riding a deer sprawled across a knife-marked table. The deer’s tongue lags quiet and his antlers are a modest spreading four point, but the man is more than happy. We’ll eat from the garden all winter. The man’s cheeks stretch in a big smile. Stacked behind him are shelves of glass jars holding green beans and tomatoes; before him, laid out, is the buck he shot amongst the leftover corn. He got it all from his garden, animal and vegetable. The basement is bare concrete; its ceiling studs stick out like wooden ribs. But we’ve got meat and more to get by during the coming cold, and the man’s eyes are relieved. He is smiling, showing his teeth to the blonde woman on crutches leaning half in and half out of the photo.
But it’s not really a picture of me. Mom’s stomach isn’t in the picture, and she didn’t even know she was pregnant yet. I was so little, my arms couldn’t reach my hands. I was dancing and swimming and gulping my mother’s water; I was closest to her then. I was living, though. I’m still living beneath cobwebs down here in the basement; spiders prowl above my head. It is my brother riding the deer; he was gulping mother’s milk. The basement has stayed a warm place for me: it is near and safe. Down here, I am away from them but most close to what they leave behind: outgrown snow pants, broken snowshoes and fading photographs. Near me, a pony on rusty springs sits in a wet corner; he wears a red wool stocking cap.
‘Ruth?’
I hear Mom limping — left leg always first, her hurt knee always behind — down the wooden stairs. She knows I hide in the basement. I go low in the house when I need to be alone, when I need to be away from their together. Sorting through pictures helps me sort my heart. Mom’s hair is wet, snaking long and unbraided down her back. She is fresh from a bath, wrapped in a terrycloth bathrobe. Her breasts sway soft with her moving and that little pouch of a tummy pushes beneath the faded blue belt that ties around her middle. My mom was a beauty, slim and gentle; even when she’s tired and dripping, it shows itself still. She comes toward me and my blanket on the worn couch.
‘Still feeling left behind?’ Her eyes are tender.
I shake my head, but she sees my heart.
‘You remind me of him, your daddy.’
She pushes aside the pillow next to my knees and settles near. Her hands start to trace my eyebrows, but just as they touch they move away; she turns my head to unbraid my messy hair.
‘He has a mouth like yours, crooked all along.’
Without his beard, I wouldn’t know my daddy. I never saw his mouth in mine. Looking at Daddy, I see bowed legs, thick forearms, and stained teeth: cows stamped his thighs, horses pushed his wrists, and tobacco burnt his
mouth. I don’t see him in me.
‘He’s got plenty to be forgiven for, Ruthie, but it ain’t not loving you.’
I don’t know who took the photo in the basement. We are all together in the picture. Someone stood a little bit away and watched my daddy hold my brother proud while my mom held me. Still broken from her accident, Mom carried me deep inside and stood only half in the picture. Fresh home from Alaska, Daddy held the gun and balanced Reuben on the deer. And I half remember being unborn, safe in the womb, sinking like a fish waiting to be pulled from the ice. We have stayed this way. Mom and I each sit alone, together in the dark, watching the snow fall outside the high basement window.
We don’t know when the snow will fall or when it will melt. All these things are hidden from our sight: broken toys scattered on the lawn, bare branches stripped of their leaves, and whatever else is buried under the snow. Mom and I are looking up at the sky with snowflakes in our eyes, eyelashes not catching this time. Even from inside the window, the snow melts into my eyes and I think it will freeze my sight. Nothing will change: the world will remain white and still. Even photographs alter, crumpling at the edges and growing yellow crackles across their skins. But I will always see like this: black naked trees, clear ice hanging in sharp points, and hard-packed snow in the crooks of the branches.
It is not for us to know the times or the dates the Father has set for the return of the Lord. The disciples had John to baptise them in water but had to wait upon the Holy Spirit to come and baptise them with fire. And when the Holy Spirit came — and when He comes now, and when He comes again — we all receive power, power to witness to the ends of the earth. Jesus was taken up before their very eyes; He was hidden in a cloud and the apostles stood dumb and wondering, staring at the sky. Angels came to tell them the good news: Christ will return the same way. He will come down for us, riding on the clouds.