Shelter (1994) Read Free Page B

Sometimes in the morning Buddy didn't know what he'd really heard or what was animals fighting in his dreams, big animals with vast, muffled forms, making sounds that shook the room.
    "Buddy? You ready?" Mam nodded toward the door. She had on her church clothes that fast.
    He put the soap back on the drainboard and held his hands in cold water, splashed his face. He smelled wild onions on his fingers and wished it were afternoon. During summers when Mam cooked at the camp, he was on his own between meals in the big camp kitchen, wandering back and forth through the woods and along the road, using the house as an outpost he owned in Mam's absence. Now Dad was home, Buddy stayed in the woods and the fields, and walked back with Mam from Camp Shelter after supper. Once they rounded the bend she'd take off her crepe-soled shoes and Buddy would carry them. She'd roll down her nylons that only came to her knees, like socks, and put them in her pocket. My god, she'd tell Buddy, them girls throw away enough food every day to feed us for a month. But she brought supper home to Dad, and she'd found an extra freezer at camp that worked once she plugged it in. Mrs. Thompson-Warner had already told her she could buy it cheap, since it looked like the camp might shut down when the girls left. She was not going to steal food, no, stealing was a sin, but it was all right to freeze leftovers, and when camp closed she hoped she'd get one of the pipe crew to move that big freezer in their truck. Hadn't they said how they liked the lemonade she sent out to them with Frank?
    "Come on out here on the porch and dress. Ain't a soul going to see you, it's full dark, and he's not sleeping sound." She leaned toward Buddy, her bulky shape vanilla-scented, her big arms filmy in her white blouse. Then she turned, her broad skirt preceding him out the door like a dark wall. They huddled down, her knees cracking as she knelt to hold his pants, and she pulled on the shirt and buttoned him in before he'd even got his hands through the cuffs.
    "Mam, this shirt is hot. I'm sweating to pieces."
    "Now, I had to iron it, didn't I? We just get to walking, you'll cool down on the road."
    She was talking and they were down the rickety steps and the house was behind them with Dad in it, asleep like a bomb could sleep, Buddy thought, and the moon was up so bright he could see the shoulders of the road looking blond against dark brush. After the dew came up, the road didn't smell dusty, didn't smoke up a tawny veil that could drift and follow him. Now the road lay still, glowy and damp. It was the same road they walked to Camp Shelter, but church was farther on. The stone pillars of the camp entrance were dark shapes all grown over with vines. Honeysuckle licked up and down their height, countless sprays of blossoms emerging luminously ivory and gold against the dark, stacked rocks. The camp was all hidden, Buddy thought: some drunk going along at night, a drunk on foot, a drunk in a car, might not even find it. Like tonight Dad had cursed how he couldn't drive out of this place, had to walk two mile to even get to a paved road. Maybe he knew a little lady who would lend him a car that worked. You get yourself a car from some rip, better you just keep driving, Mam had told him. I'll drive, he'd said. But how could he, he'd only wreck himself. Maybe he'd get a car and not drink so he could drive.
    "Mam, is our road two miles out to the highway?"
    "No, course not. It's barely a mile. Don't we walk it every day, all winter? We dress warm, why, we're all right." Her breath came in soft, wuffling huffs, a kind of music. "That's why I buy us the best boots I can get, and gloves for inside our mittens, and you got that fur hat I made you."
    Buddy wanted her to stay quiet so he could hear her beside him, the sound coming from above and just ahead of him, a sound familiar as his own heartbeat. Sometimes when he was by himself, he'd open his mouth a little and pant slowly, softly,