McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [60]
She comes the next morning, bringing fried rattlesnake and dried crawdads. She sneaks in. I had my eyes shut, my face to the rising sun. I was chanting, Jolly, jolly, joll, joll. My secret words for my aunt June Harvest. When I open my eyes, there’s Loo, watching. She’s not surprised. Not wondering that I’m sitting cross-legged, nodding, muttering to myself.
I show her the doll. She receives it as though she’s never known about dolls before. Perhaps she hasn’t. She doesn’t say a word, but I see her pleasure on her face. How nice to give something and have it so well received.
I sit on my porch stone. There’s room for two. “Come, sit with me. Eat some yourself.”
“I’ve had.”
She examines the doll as I eat.
I had made it a dress out of pieces of the clothes I’d stolen. I hooked the arms and legs on with threads. “When I get some fishing line I’ll put the arms and legs on in a stronger way. I’ll find better cloth for a nice dress.” (Too bad I hadn’t saved a little piece of my orange suit.)
“I like this cloth,” she says, even though it’s a piece from the leg of my long underwear.
We sit quietly for a while; she turns the doll this way and that. I did a good job carving the face. It has a nice smiling look. I was always good at such things.
And then I ask what I’ve been waiting to ask. “Your father? Are those his clothes hanging behind the door? Is he all right?”
She starts to cry but turns away and stops herself.
I say, “I know. I know.” And I do know. I wonder if, as I did, she had to watch it as it happened. I wonder if I dare reach out to her. I’m not used to touching people. My awkwardness would show all the more clearly to a child.
But she comes to me of her own accord, leans against me, still not crying. We hold each other. All I can think to say is, “I know, I know, I know,” though I wonder, What good does that do? It’s like another of my chants. So I chant, I know, and rock her.
I can feel there’s not much to her. Skin and bones. Take off all these clothes and she’d look like a wet cat inside there. Grandma is probably about the same under her wooly petticoats and shawls. I could easily see to it that they got enough to eat. If I’d be let, I could live up here for the rest of my life. Wood gatherer, gatherer of acorns and pine nuts, trap setter, fisherman . . . I could make a bigger, better doll. I’d look out at mountains. I never knew . . . or never let myself know how much I’d like a quiet life.
Then I see the search and capture squads on the path below, three groups of three. They’ve passed the cottage. I’m afraid for Grandma. I don’t think they would hurt an old woman, but Grandma might have said something, or there may have been some sign that I’d been there. Even a larger woodpile might be suspicious. She’d be in as much trouble as I am.
Loo feels my fear. I must have suddenly held her tighter without knowing it. She turns around and looks, too. Then looks back at me as if I’d know what to do. “Loo, is there a back way?”
But she should stay up here, safe. She wouldn’t. She should lead me. “I’ll go down with you, but first I have something that needs doing.”
At least they’ll have a harder time coming beyond this point. Why didn’t I think of this before?
We had brought him up as one of our own. Spared no expense. And now look. He has worn us out. Fooled us. Played tricks. As if climbing a mountain peak were a game and he won. They say, Once a savage, always a savage. And now yet another game. He has rolled boulders down and started a landslide. Our second team had to rescue our first team out from under gravel and dust. It could have been worse; they only received a few bruises. But that slide shut off the upper part of the trail. That will be proof he’s gone on higher. We’ll drop our squads off above the slide