Safe Harbour

by Christina Kilbourne

  I hand Frankie a plastic bag of dog food that has been carefully measured out.

  “Don’t go eating Tuff’s kibble if you get hungry,” Lise says sarcastically. “There’s only enough for one day.”

  Tuff sniffs the bag in Frankie’s hand and knows something’s up. He ducks behind my leg and lowers his head and tail. When I hand over the leash, Tuff outright panics. His eyes dart between me and Franklin and he starts to dance and whine, as if he knows what it’s like to be left behind.

  “Why don’t you take Tuff inside and get him settled?” Lise suggests.

  “Sure thing,” Frankie says and heads for the garage. Tuff looks at me and resists, but Frankie gives the leash a little tug. “C’mon, Tuff. Let’s go, boy.”

  I point and tell him: “Go with Frankie.”

  Tuff whines but obeys me, as if his body is refusing the separation even though his mind is made up. We’re just climbing through the gap in the fence when his whining turns to yowls. It sounds as if someone is ripping his heart in two.

  Unlike Tuff, my mind is not made up and I stop in my tracks. But Lise grabs my arm. She has a surprisingly strong grip for such a slight person.

  “You promised,” she reminds me softly, but sternly.

  Then she tugs so hard I wonder if she’s capable of pulling my arm clear out of my shoulder socket. I’d complain if I could, if I could find or even form the words. But I remain mute because my throat has turned to stone: I can’t talk, I can’t swallow, I can’t breathe.

  “The leaves look pretty, huh?” Lise follows in a gentler tone. Then, without waiting for an answer, she starts to ramble the way the guy out front of the train station does when you sit too close to his turf.

  “Back home, where I’m from, the leaves are way prettier. I think it has to do with the colder weather. Or maybe the rain. It rains a lot out east, especially in the fall. But whatevs, the maple trees look like they’re on fire. I mean, seriously. Candy-apple reds and pumpkin-pie oranges. Whole hillsides just sick with colour. It never gets old. I always loved the fall in New Brunswick, even though it was a bit sad, too, because it meant summer was over and winter was coming. And winter bites when you’re poor. Five months of wet cold feet whenever you step outside. Five months of wind whipping up your jacket and down your back. Five months of shivering. God, you’ve never been miserable until you’ve suffered through a winter in Fredericton with just a pair of high-tops and a lousy jean jacket.”

  She pauses and looks over at me, but then rushes back into her monologue. I know she’s trying to distract me and I don’t care. I don’t have the energy to care and worry about Tuff at the same time.

  “You have to appreciate the leaves while you can, you know? They don’t last long. Maybe two weeks tops and only a few days at their peak. There’re a couple days in the middle of it all, when the ground’s carpeted with leaves, yet the trees still have enough coverage to turn the whole world some shade of orange. But then it only takes one blustery day and those last leaves start crying down from the trees and flying all over the place in the wind. Then that’s it. Then the trees look naked and kinda sad. All scrawny branches and bony twigs like a forest of skeletons reaching up to the sky, begging for sunshine again.”

  She stops and raises her arms with crooked, outspread fingers to illustrate her point.

  “Your camp won’t be hidden once the leaves come down, you know? Not like many people will be hiking through the ravine when the bad weather hits but, still, you’ll definitely be more exposed.”

  I feel the blood drain from my face and manage to utter one single, syllable: Dad.

  “Yeah, I know he’s gonna be here any day now. I get that. But what if his engine broke like completely down and he doesn’t get here for another month? You can’t sleep out once the snow comes. So it’s good that you’re trying out the shelter. You’ll see it’s not so bad.”

  When we get far enough away that I can’t hear Tuff any longer, the lump in my throat dissolves. I force myself to imagine him curled up by the fire or sprawled out on Frankie’s bunk enjoying a belly rub.

  We head straight for the theatre district and drag our squares of cardboard from behind the Dumpster. Then we sit, and for an hour I pretend I don’t exist. Instead I count the seconds in my head, then the minutes. When I get through thirty minutes I multiply by twenty-four, which is the time left until we head back to get Tuff.

  You can do this, Harbour, I tell myself. You’ve done twelve weeks without Dad. You can do twelve hours without Tuff.

  “Where’s your dog?”

  I look up to see a man standing in front of our cardboard mat. He isn’t one of us but he isn’t a theatregoer, either. I don’t recognize him, but he looks like he might work in the kitchen of one of the nearby restaurants. He’s not dressed well enough to be waiting tables.

  “He’s hanging with some friends,” Lise says.

  “That’s good. I was afraid he was sick or something.”

  “Nope. Just having a night off.”

  The man holds up a plastic bag. He speaks in a slow, deliberate manner. “I brought him some scraps.”

  Lise takes the bag and smiles. “This will make him happy, huh, Harbour?”

  I nod and mutter, “Thanksalot.”

  The man turns quickly to leave.

  “He’ll be back tomorrow night if you want to pet him,” I call after the man as he hurries away.

  But the man turns the corner without glancing back and I hope he gets a chance to pet Tuff another night. He seemed lonely and I know from experience that Tuff is the best antidote for loneliness. Even though the man will probably sleep in a warm, dry bed, I find myself feeling sad for him and wonder if we’ll see him another night. I feel I owe him something in return for his scraps, which are thoughtful even if they would have been thrown away.

  Lise opens the bag and pulls out a hunk of burger, then hands the bag to me.

  “Looks like some ribs in there if you’re hungry. Still a bit warm.”

  The thought of meat is so tantalizing, I don’t care that I’m picking through dog scraps. I pull out a rib and gnaw on it. At least Tuff will get the bones.

  A tall black lady is closing the front door of the shelter when we arrive. She scowls at Lise and me as we scurry inside, then she flips the deadbolt and turns to look at us.

  “You’re cutting it pretty close, Ms. Roberts,” she says with a hands-on-hips tone of voice.

  “Sorry about that, Joyce. Harbour here was draggin’ her feet.”

  I scowl at Lise for throwing me under the bus, but she avoids eye contact. Joyce turns to look me up and down.

  “So this is the friend you’ve been telling me about. The one who’s been making you miss curfew.”

  She reaches out her hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Harbour. Normally I’d do a formal intake, but I’m late for my son’s concert. So I’ll let Lise settle you in and we can talk in the morning.”

  Joyce disappears into a small room off the foyer. She re-emerges and hands me a bundle. I wrap both arms around it.

  “Clean bedding. Towel. Change of clothes. Some toiletries. I think you’ll find what you need.”

  “Thanks, Joyce,” Lise says brightly.

  “And I’m expecting a visit from you, too.” Joyce wags a finger at Lise. “You know the rules, and disappearing for a week at a time is not cool. You’re lucky I was on days or you might not have a room to come back to.”

  Lise mutters an apology and stares at the ground.

  “Don’t start pouting. You know I have your back. When you get this one set up, there’s some hot chicken soup and cornbread in the kitchen.”

  Joyce says goodnight before disappearing. Even though she was coming down kind of hard on us, I can tell her heart is as soft as the inside of a jelly-filled doughnut, and probably as sweet, too. Lise leads me up a flight of stairs, down a hall, and into a room with two beds. She flops onto one of the beds and watches me while I make up the other.

&nb
sp; “God, it feels good to be lying on a mattress again. It’s so soft. And the top of the tent isn’t three feet above my face.”

  I pull a pillowcase over the single pillow, then use it as a backrest when I sit on the bed.

  “And it doesn’t smell like wet socks,” Lise muses.

  “The tent doesn’t smell like wet socks.”

  “It so does. And wet dog and tuna. It’s kinda disgusting.”

  I ignore Lise’s comment and look around. The room feels like a dormitory and there are bits and pieces of someone’s life scattered around: a hairbrush on the dresser, a water bottle on the bedside table, a pair of boots peeking out from under the end of the bed.

  “Is this your room?”

  “Kind of. But only if I keep using it. Joyce wasn’t kidding when she said I was breaking the rules. I’m supposed to be here every night. They let me get away with a night out here and there in the summer, but I’ve been pushing my luck lately.”

  “I didn’t realize you had, like, your own room. With, well, with things in it.”

  “I told you it’s a good place. Now hurry up and let’s hit the showers before all the hot water’s gone.”

  Lise wasn’t exaggerating when she said the hot shower would feel good. It feels like heaven and I wash my hair three times just for an excuse to stay in the steamy stall. The soap smells like childhood bubble baths, and when I bury my face in the washcloth I forget I’ve been living in a tent for three months. After the shower, I pull on the crisp track pants and sweatshirt that Joyce gave me then find Lise waiting outside the washroom. She’s talking to a sullen-looking girl with shiny black hair. The girl is wearing the same track pants as me, but hers are stretched tight around her hips.

  “I was going to call the fire department if you didn’t come out soon,” Lise teases.

  The girl stares at me, but doesn’t show any emotion.

  “Relax, Lib. She’s cool. Harbour, this is Liberty. Liberty, meet Harbour.”

  I reach out to shake her hand, but Liberty just tilts her head back slightly and saunters away.

  “She’s friendly,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  “She’s okay once you get to know her. Lot of people come and go here, so some of the lifers don’t bother to make friends.”

  “Lifer? You make it sound like a prison.”

  Lise laughs. “I figure someone who’s here more than a year is a lifer. Believe me, it can feel like a lifetime. But not as long as it feels living on the streets. A month of street corners feels like ten lifetimes.”

  I stretch out on the bed across the room from Lise and stare up at the ceiling. It’s flat white with a brown water stain in the corner above the window. As I gaze up I realize it’s been years since I’ve stared at a ceiling, so many years that the person who last used my eyes for such a pastime had a fondness for pink princesses and magic unicorns. Where did that person go? I wonder. Was she left behind in the middle of the night?

  The room seems so open, the ceiling so high, that I miss the coziness of my forward cabin. I miss hearing Dad walking on the deck above and reaching up to place my palms where the soles of his feet would be. It takes me a few minutes to process the uneasy feeling and, when I do, I’m surprised to realize what I’m experiencing is vulnerability. I feel vulnerable the way a mouse must feel when it dashes across an open field or a fish when it darts between clumps of coral in a reef where sharks lurk.

  “Do you think Tuff is okay?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Lise says and rolls over on her side to face me. “He’s probably curled up with Frankie, snoring.”

  “Frankie or Tuff?”

  “Both of them.” Lise laughs.

  “Do you think they remembered to feed him?”

  “Absolutely. They aren’t completely irresponsible.”

  “I know.”

  I check my phone. The battery is already halfway charged.

  “Want to hear a song?”

  “Sure do,” Lise says and moves to join me on my bed. I adjust my position so there’s room for both our heads on the one pillow. “I love all the old classics.”

  I know exactly which song I want Dad to sing and flick through my videos until I find it. He sang his version one night when we anchored near Stiltsville and the moon was heavy and bright over Biscayne Bay. I filmed him with the moon as a backlight. In the corner of the screen the ripples on the ocean glow silver and beyond that the lights of Miami twinkle orange.

  I’ve been followed by a moon shadow

  My moon shadow, my shadow

  He sings softly and strums the ukulele with such tenderness I smile, knowing the song is just for me. He looks peaceful when he sings and even with him so far away in both distance and time, I feel warm and safe. When he gets to the second stanza and improvises, though, a wave of sadness washes over me, and I am left heaved over, swamped with too much emotion to process.

  And if I ever lose my girl

  If all her love runs dry

  Yes, if I ever lose my girl

  Oh, I won’t have to live no more

  The tears come rushing up my throat so fast they choke me and my body lets out a long low wail that startles Lise and scares me. It’s the same sound Tuff was making when we scurried away through the hole in the fence.

  Lise doesn’t flinch or miss a beat. She simply rolls over, wraps her arms around me and squeezes hard. I can feel my shoulders being compressed which makes it hard to catch my breath but the pressure relieves some grief as well. She rocks me back and forth and whispers into my ear.

  “It’s okay, Harbour. I’ve got you. I’ll always have your back.”

  She squeezes and rocks me. She murmurs over and over into my ear that we have each other and everything’s going to be okay. Eventually my tears run dry and my eyelids feel heavier than my heart.

  Lise is still curled on her side sleeping when I wake up. It’s not a slow rise to consciousness that welcomes me to morning. No. My eyelids snap open and I look immediately out the window to see the sun nudging the sky awake. I sit up and pull on my shoes before I even realize what I’m doing. Then I roll up my clothes, unplug my phone, and creep from the room as quietly as I can.

  “Hang on,” Lise mutters from across the room. Her voice is heavy with sleep.

  I pause and glance back. She’s curled in her blankets like a question mark, the pillow squished under her head.

  “You have to take the back door if you want to sneak out this early. There’ll be someone at the front desk asking a crapload of questions if you go out there.”

  She gets up reluctantly and rubs the sleep from her eyes. Then she leads me through the silent shelter to a back door that spits us out into an alley.

  “God, it’s early. The sun isn’t even up yet,” Lise complains. She zips her jacket when we hit the outside air and I duck deep into my sweater.

  “You’re gonna give those guys a heart attack if you go busting into their place this early.”

  “You can go back upstairs if you want. We can meet up later.”

  But Lise doesn’t falter or turn around. She trots at my side a few steps before she finally puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “Slow down a bit, Rushy McRusherson. God!”

  I don’t slow down and she doesn’t bother to complain again, though it’s clear from her pace that she doesn’t feel the same urgency I do.

  “The least we can do is take the guys a cup of coffee. Can you hold on two minutes?”

  Lise ducks down an alley and pounds on a solid metal door with her fist. I stand by the garbage bins and shiver.

  “Hey, Mick, you got any coffee you need to toss?” she yells at the door.

  The door opens and a skinny kid in a visor looks out. He smiles and shakes his head when he sees Lise shivering on the pavement. She flashes him a wide smile in return.

  “C’mon, dude. You must have a pot that you have to toss soon. If you pour it into a couple of cups with some milk and sugar I’d be happy to take it off your hands. Sav
e you feeling guilty for wasting it.”

  The door slams shut and Lise gives me two thumbs-up. She stares at the square of sky lightening above the alley and blows on her hands a couple of times before the door opens again. Mick hands her a paper bag and two cardboard cups with plastic lids.

  “Mick’s good people,” Lise says as she hands me a steaming cup of coffee. The heat soaks into my hands and it feels like relief next to the cool morning air.

  “Let’s share this one and save that one for Frankie and Josh,” she says.

  She takes a sip from the cup, then passes it to me.

  “Coffee and doughnuts will go a long way to making sure they don’t kill us for waking them up so effing early.”

  Mist is rising off the lake in the golden morning light and the grass is drenched with dew. If I wasn’t so anxious about Tuff, I’d stop to appreciate the beauty. But I don’t. I march across the abandoned lots and feel my shoes getting wetter with each step.

  “Frankie!” I call out when I straighten up from climbing through the fence. ”Josh! Sorry it’s so early.”

  “They’re probably still passed out,” Lise says from a few paces behind me.

  The fire pit is dead and cold when we walk past. It smells like the burned-out boat Dad and I found once in the Everglades.

  “Tuff! C’mere, boy.”

  I stop and listen, but I don’t hear a sound. I expect to at least hear him whining on the other side of the makeshift door, but there’s only silence and, in the distance, the sound of a siren wailing.

  “Tuff? Frankie?”

  I move the plywood and step into the darkness of the abandoned garage. A few shafts of light sneak through the corner of window that Frankie uncovered for the summer months and in the dimness I can see both bunks are empty. Tuff is gone.

  “Tuff! Tuff!” I scramble outside, screaming his name. The pulse in my temples pounds so hard I cover my head with my hands to keep my brains from exploding.