Klickitat (8 page)

“Okay,” Audra said. “It's all right, now. Klickitat. Everything's fine.”

I heard a click and then a pale light came on, a little lamp with masking tape wrapped around the bulb to
make it dim. I saw then that Audra's hair was bleached, that it was blond.

“Try to breathe more quietly,” she said. “You're gasping. Take it slow, Vivian.”

In the shadows, as my eyes adjusted, I could see that the lamp was wired somehow into a square black box, the battery from a car, and I could see other car batteries stacked up against the brick foundation that was one wall of the space down there. The other three were lattice, but the inside of the lattice was covered in black plastic, so light didn't shine out.

Other cords stretched from the batteries, plugged into blankets, electric blankets, to a white-faced clock that hung from the wall. There were notebooks, there were Audra's books, library books. The ceiling was low—sitting there, I could reach up and touch it, close to the top of my head—and empty egg cartons and pink insulation were tacked to it, to muffle any sound we might make.

Beneath the twisted blankets were foam rubber mats, and a wool blanket hung down, separating the space. On
the other side was my bed, my area, my clothes stacked there, waiting, even my orange life jacket, all the things that had been collected for me.

“I didn't panic,” I said.

“I knew you wouldn't.”

“I got the knife you left, but I left it, forgot it. I didn't know.”

“We have plenty of knives,” she said.

“I'm so happy,” I said, hugging her.

“Enough,” Henry said, behind us. “That's enough talk for now. We generally don't talk, here. And we don't use the lamp, really, unless it's an emergency.” In that dim light he looked like he might be our age, or he might be ten years older, or even more. Somewhere between a boy and a man.

Audra reached out then, and touched his hand, just before he switched off the lamp, and the blackness was thick around me. In the darkness, I felt Audra shift past me, and then I heard a rattle, then a sound, the soft scratching of her writing, as she began to explain to me, writing down how things would be.

ELEVEN

That first morning I could already hear the
two of them when I opened my eyes, the rustle of them on the other side of the wool blanket. I pushed it back and Audra was sitting there wearing only a black bra, a beige skirt. Henry sat next to her in a white uniform shirt with a patch from the QFC supermarket on his chest. He put on a blue apron, his black shoes in his hands.

“Audra,” I said, and right away her hand was on my mouth, pressed against my teeth, and they were both looking at me like I'd done something wrong.

Then Audra took her hand off my mouth and picked up a spiral notebook—the one with the blue cover, one I still have, so now I can just copy down the conversation
we wrote. She took a pencil from a jar, licked its black tip with her tongue.

Good morning
, she wrote.
We're about to go to work.

She handed the pencil to me, then pulled a blue blouse over her head while I wrote. She buttoned the blouse, pulled on a gray sweater.

I wrote:
Work? What am I supposed to do?

Wait. We'll be back in the afternoon. Sleep all you can. There's a lot to read, to get ready for. I'm so happy we're together.

I can come with you. Where do you work?

Wait. Trust me.

But what am I supposed to do?

Trust us.

Henry had put on his shoes, now, tied the thin black laces. Audra pointed to a white plastic bucket with a lid snapped on, and then she wrote again.

That bucket is the toilet. There's food, everything. Just look around.

So I just wait?

Yes.

When she finished writing that, she didn't hand me the pencil. Instead, she put it in the jar, and reached for a pair of black shoes. Leaning close, she kissed me on the cheek. Behind her, Henry had moved the lattice aside, and she turned and crawled out after him. There was a glimpse of the bright morning, her hand waving, and then the lattice slid back across and I was left in the dimness, my eyes adjusting.

I opened the blue notebook. On the first two pages were the questions and answers between me and Audra that I'd already written down, and then more words, which she must have written after I fell asleep.

Vivian, we have been living in this place a short time and will live here a short time longer. We need to work to make money so we can leave, so we can move far, far away from here. We'll live in the wilderness. We'll be our own kind of family. You'll see we can trust Henry. He knows so many things that we don't know.

In the notebook's wire spiral were white snakes of paper where pages had been torn out. Pages where maybe Audra and Henry had written to each other, back and
forth, but now they were gone, words I'll never know.

The pages after where I'd written with Audra were blank, but I shuffled all the way to the back. I turned the notebook over, and that's where I found a list, in Audra's handwriting:

Gym Membership (showers, training)

Bank w/Alaska Branch

Seattle → Ketchikan

Get V

Hand strength

Snare Training Ropes Duct Tape

Get New Name + SS# for V

Laundromat

Practice Knots

P.O. Box?

Picnic?

Socks/Underwear

I took out the pencil and crossed out
Get V
so it read
Get V
. Then I closed the notebook and leaned it against the others in their box.

I don't know if it was a lonely day. There was so much to read and think about, and I was simply happy to be with Audra again, yet impatient to see what would happen next.

That first morning, I slid the curtain of the wool blanket to one side and looked around. The stack of car batteries, the cords stretching from them to the electric blankets, to the toaster. Three black plastic bags of clothes—I looked in them, and found that one bag was for me. Some of the clothes I recognized, Audra must have stolen them out of our house, somehow. Others were new, with tags still on them, my size.

I found a blue passport in a box. The picture of the girl looked a little like Audra, with her blond hair. The name of the girl was Janine Osgood.

Against the far wall was a kind of bookshelf, a board and two bricks to keep it off the floor, and on it the books missing from Audra's room. Near the toaster, a plastic bag of bagels that weren't too stale, and jugs of water to drink. There were some bananas, I think. We only ate food down there that didn't make any sound.

I lay back, closed my eyes, opened them. A little
morning light slipped around the edges of the black plastic, where it was attached to the inside of the lattice. I could see the beams of the floor of the house above, and all the egg cartons and insulation attached there to hide any noise we might make. I could sit up, crawl, roll back and forth. Back on my side of the space, I rested with my head on the orange life jacket.

I read, I slept, I dreamed and daydreamed.

What did I read, on that first day? I picked up
Journey to the Center of the Earth
, but I couldn't get into it right away. Instead, I read
Swiss Family Robinson
, slowly, from beginning to end. I liked the boat part, the wreck, and the special collars they made for the dogs, even though they killed so many things and even if all the brothers were hard to keep straight in my mind. I liked the animals, too, all the different kinds of animals they tamed and rode. They named the ostrich Hurry, which is a good name for an ostrich. It reminded me of the Boxcar Children's dog, who is named Watch.

That was what I was reading when I heard the footsteps. I stopped reading, like reading could make a noise, my thoughts might give me away. I held my breath, listening.
Right overhead, they were coming nearer, then wandering away, standing still. Moving again. Could I hear a voice? A radio playing? I tried to imagine the person in the house above me, walking back and forth, but it was hard to know where to begin, with only the sounds. It could be a man or a woman, not a little child. Only one person, who might live alone. I listened for a long time, until I was certain there were no more sounds, that the person was gone.

As the day went on, thin stripes of sunlight shone in, narrow and bright along the edges of that space, and that's how I read, leaning close. If I pressed my eye against the edge of the lattice, I could see the green grass of the yard, bright yellow dandelions. A rusty shovel leaning against the wooden fence that was old and faded, some of the knotholes fallen out. Bright blue sky, just a triangle that I could see, clouds drifting past.

Inside, I followed a spider along the blankets, across the lattice and up, back and forth, watching all the time it took to make her web and also wondering what she hoped to catch, in this small, dark space.

I imagined Henry stacking boxes at the QFC, wearing
his blue apron, his large pale hands going, and Audra out somewhere, hard to imagine because I didn't know what her job was, yet. Those two were out there working and they were the only people in the world who knew where I was. I wondered about my parents, about Mom and Dad, and it did not make me feel good to imagine them waking up and finding that I was gone. Were they walking and driving through the streets right now? Trying to talk with my teachers or the kids at the school? Making posters with my face on them and hanging them all around the neighborhood?

The lattice shifted, startling me, and slid aside. All the light shone in, in my eyes. It was Henry, coming back first. I slid back, out of the way, so that he could get through the opening.

He didn't say anything; he hardly glanced at me. He unlaced his black shoes and set them to one side, then took a comb from his bag and combed his hair, even though it looked the same when he was done. Reaching out, he picked up a book called
The Search
, and began to read. Later Audra would tell me that Henry could see in the dark, but that was the first time I saw him do anything
like that and I wasn't sure he was really reading. I thought he might just be pretending.

Next, he set his reading aside and began to do a series of stretches and exercises. Audra would tell me that it was yoga, but that first day I just watched as he lay on his stomach, lifted his head and shoulders. He reached back to grab his ankles, his face pointing right at me and not looking. He twisted his arms behind his back, his neck all the way around so he could see behind him. He balanced on his hands, his knees on his elbows, his butt sticking up near where the egg cartons were attached.

I watched him. I didn't know if I was supposed to do something, to copy what he was doing, or not to watch him. And then he settled, again, and took out the blue notebook, and began to write. He handed it to me when it was finished.

His writing was all capitals, so small:

WHERE I COME FROM THERE WAS

A MAN WHO TALKED TO PEOPLE NO

ONE ELSE COULD SEE. HE PUT HIS

EAR TO THE GROUND AND TOLD US

SHIPS WERE COMING, OUT ON THE

SEA. SOMETIMES HE MADE SENSE

AND SOMETIMES HE MADE NO SENSE

BUT HE COULD READ THE ANIMALS

AND WAS THE BEST HUNTER AMONG

US. ONCE HE WENT ON A HUNT AND

DIDN'T RETURN. THAT'S WHEN OUR

LUCK BEGAN TO CHANGE, WHEN

EVERYTHING STARTED GOING

WRONG AND NOW THERE ARE SO

FEW OF US.

“What?” I said, after I read it.

Henry only put his finger to his mouth, which I took as a sign to be quiet but also that what he'd written was a secret.

And then there was a sound, the scrape of the lattice, and he tore the page from the notebook and folded it away, hidden in his pocket, just as Audra crawled in.