Paintings from the Cave (10 page)

She dropped her chin onto her chest, staring down at the water trickling past her legs. Through the burning in her eyes, she saw the sudden appearance of brown and white and black.

The dogs had paddled out and were scrambling up, their front claws scratching and their back legs pedaling to clamber up to the flat top. They sat, each facing in a different direction, and watched the creek flow past their rock island. Jo climbed up and looked down too.

The water had to run around the boulder to keep flowing. It couldn’t move the stone but had to curve and ripple around the edges.

The stream, she thought, was like everything ugly in her whole life, everything broken and damaged in the entire world. But the rock was like what the dogs had given her, what Rose had given her.

And nothing could ever take that away. She had a family now, and a friend, and no matter what happened, that would never change.

J
o had been sitting on the rock with the dogs for most of the afternoon when Betty jumped up as if she’d been stung by a bee, leaping into the water. Mike and Carter yipped at Jo until she followed, sliding off the rock and wading to the bank. The dogs shook the water from their coats and then led Jo through the woods. She hardly dared hope they were right, but she saw that they were taking her to the other side of the woods, to the edge of Rose’s yard. She held her breath and kept her eyes on the ground until they reached the yard.

Jo lifted her head. Rose was sitting in a lawn chair,
gazing at the woods, waiting for them. Her face lit up when they bounded out of the shade toward her.

She had a bandana tied awkwardly around her head. Jo could see that she was trying to hide her baldness. Rose wore a huge sweatshirt and was wrapped in a blanket. She had shearling moccasins on her feet.

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you.…”

“I wanted to come and …” Jo couldn’t finish her sentence.

“No one is very happy with me being outside.” Rose gestured over her shoulder to the house. Jo saw a curtain flick in the window as someone peeked out. “But I said I wanted to sit in the sunshine for a while.”

“That’s always a good idea.”

“I … I need to know some things that I think the dogs understand. No one else can tell me, and they … well, I think they—Oh, I don’t know how to say it right.”

“I understand what you mean.”

“My parents don’t know what I think about,” Rose said. “They tell me there’s hope, that the doctors say I’ll go into remission after this treatment. And they want it so bad that I …”

Jo didn’t respond, but Mike placed his paw on Rose’s arm the way he always thanked Jo after she fed him.

“Do your dogs always know what’s going to happen before it does?”

“Probably. The sky’s blue right now, but it’s going to
rain later. They step fast and light, like they’re doing right now, when rain is about to come.”

“Because they see what we can’t and so they know what we don’t?” Rose’s eyes looked tired.

“Yes, I think that’s it.”

Rose’s voice was soft. “Do they know what happens when somebody dies?”

“Yes. They must know that.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. I’ve been so—” Rose inhaled, quick and sharp.

When Rose broke off, Betty turned to gaze at her. Betty pushed her forehead up into Rose’s hand and slowly wagged her tail.

Rose looked up at Jo for a second, a minute, a week, a year, all of time, as if they knew something together, just the two of them.

Jo took a huge breath and felt that same warm flutter she had when Mike had first laid his head on her thigh.

“The dogs make me feel safe,” Rose said.

“Me too.”

Rose smoothed the fur near Betty’s crooked ear, carefully stroking it into a straight line, looking into Betty’s kind brown eyes, which never left her face. Mike and Carter were pushing into her legs with their shoulders. “They’re more than just dogs, aren’t they?”

Jo nodded. “They never hurt anyone and they know everything there is about love and all they want is to help us not be alone and scared. They never give up.”

Rose said, “Could they help me?”

“Of course.”

For the first time in years, Jo was crying. For the first time ever, she was crying for someone else.

Rose rested her hand in Jo’s. They stayed still for a long time, their hands clasped as darkness fell, looking above the trees, where small white clouds were being gently pushed past the full moon by a soft wind.

Finally, the dogs stood with a jingling of collar tags, filling the air with the sound of bells.

“
J
amie. Time to wake up.”

I open my eyes and see Erik, my older brother, crouched next to where I’m sleeping on the floor. He’s shaking me awake. The apartment is dark and he’s whispering. “We’ve got to get moving. C’mon. Time to go.”

I sit up, stretch and yawn while Erik rolls up his sleeping bag. He gestures to me and I slide out of my bag, slip my shoes on and tie the laces while he ties up my sleeping bag. We sleep in our clothes, so after rolling up our bedding and grabbing our backpacks and the duffel bag with our spare clothes, we’re out the door.

He gives me a dollar when we get to his car before he goes to work.

I have $1.78.

That means I can afford a bagel for breakfast because, with tax, a plain bagel costs $1.21. If I’m smart, I’ll only eat half and save the other half for lunch. I’m not that smart, though, so I’ll eat the whole bagel this morning on the way to school and then my gut will be complaining this afternoon.

But I can usually fool my stomach by drinking enough water at the fountain to feel full. I’m into quick fixes. Quick fixes are the only thing I’ve got these days.

I don’t have to worry about supper; Erik always brings me food. He works at the Burger Barn and his manager lets him have the patties that have been sitting in the warming tray long enough that they start getting dried up around the edges. No ketchup or mustard or pickles or onions or tomatoes or cheese, and by the time I get them, they’re cold and rubbery and the buns are stale. But there’s usually enough to eat to make me feel stuffed.

Erik and I ran away from home two years ago when I was ten and he was fifteen.

No. That’s not quite right.

We drove away in the car he stole.

And what we left was no kind of home.

Erik’s Rule #1: Don’t talk about—don’t even think about—what happened before.

“That’s over,” he said as we pulled away in the blue Toyota that belonged to some guy who was passed out in our mother’s room.

I nodded.

“We’re never going back there.”

I nodded again.

“No one will ever try to hurt you again.”

My brother doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it sounds like rules, or warnings, or instructions. Not regular conversation. But that’s okay because he never yells and all the words he uses are PG-13. Which is a nice change of pace.

Erik and I have been on the move ever since we left. I tried to remember exactly when that was, but I’m not good with dates so I can only guess. I know it was summertime, because for the first few weeks we camped out, kind of, spreading our sleeping bags in the storage shed at the beach and showering in the locker room.

We’ve slept in the office at the garage where Erik works part-time. Once, when Erik was dating a girl whose mom owned a dance school, we slept in the studio. That was the best deal yet—we crashed on the couches in the waiting room and soft music played all night long. But then the girlfriend, I can’t even remember her name, started dating someone new, a guy whose little brother didn’t want to sleep in her mom’s lobby, probably, and we had to move on.

A few times we had nowhere else to go so we slept in Erik’s car, the one we took when we left, just grabbed the keys off the floor near the pile of clothes and empty bottles like they belonged to us and didn’t slow down,
never looked back. Sleeping in the car was the worst. Toyotas might get good gas mileage and run really well, but they don’t have much room.

Trying to sleep in the car was even worse than sleeping in the booths at the Burger Barn, which we did for a couple of weeks last winter. We were warm and dry, sure, but we reeked of old French fries and cleaning solution.

We’ve been staying with Trudy for about a month now. That means dropping our stuff in a corner of her living room and sleeping on her floor. Tru’s the ex-girlfriend of the garage manager where Erik works and I think she’s just letting us stay with her to make Carl mad. I know we won’t be here long.

Erik’s Rule #2: We keep clean, we keep quiet, we keep moving.

Erik is trying to scrape together enough money for an apartment, but you’ve got to have three months’ worth of rent—first, last and deposit—to get a place. We never manage to save enough.

It’s not that he doesn’t work hard, because he flips burgers during the lunch shift after he’s spent the morning doing oil changes at Dwight’s garage and before his job as the after-school custodian at a Catholic grade school. Everyone pays him cash, under the table, they call it, which means no checks or paperwork.

Erik keeps track of our money in a little notebook—he writes down what he makes and what we spend and
what he saves in the zippered pouch on a cord around his neck under his shirt. I hate that little notebook because Erik always looks worried when he studies it.

We shop at the Goodwill for clothes and only go to the Laundromat every couple of weeks. But the Toyota needs gas so Erik can to get to work and he makes us take vitamins every day because he says the last thing we need is to get sick. The fake ID he bought from a guy who hangs out at the garage cost a ton, but he needs it in case he ever gets stopped on a traffic violation. And then there’s all the money Erik needed to pay this shady guy Digger he met at the garage. Digger painted the car we stole and did something with the paperwork that made it look like it was legally ours so no one would know it was hot.

Erik gives me a buck or two every day for breakfast or lunch; I know he hates that it’s either/or, but he doesn’t eat both meals either. He says he’s never really hungry until after he puts in a good day’s work, but I can hear his stomach growling.