The Shelter Cycle

by Peter Rock

  “Come in.” He stepped aside. “Here.”

  “I tried to come, before,” she said. “I got your message at work, but you weren’t at the motel when I got there. It was a different motel.”

  “Sit down,” he said, closing the door. “There, at the table. Please.” He rolled up the yoga mat, set it out of the way, then settled on the chair across from her, with the table between them. Now that he was actually talking to her, he was less certain how to begin. He glanced up; the lines of her face were softer, her nose still straight and thin, her eyes drifting and then back in focus. She looked down at the table, up at him again. Her hand resting there was so close that he could reach out and touch it.

  “Hi,” she said, after a moment.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Are you nervous? You seem nervous.”

  “Not really,” he said.

  “I am. I don’t know why.”

  The table hid her stomach—he couldn’t see that she was pregnant, and yet he couldn’t forget the fact of it, couldn’t not feel it. Another person, inside her body and awaiting its soul, almost ready to come out to breathe air, to do all the things it would do.

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I hardly know what I’m going to say. So I try to slow down. The other night at your house, I could tell it was too much.”

  Voices, shadows passed on the other side of the curtained window. Headlights wheeled around the narrow motel parking lot. Colville waited for the voices to fade, for the cars to drive away.

  “Did you read the books?” he said.

  “I looked through them, a little, and it was interesting. Some of it. But most of it just seemed so far away from my life, now.”

  “I studied them before I gave them to you. I think they’ll help, if you pay attention.”

  As he spoke, he felt her looking past him, at the candle on the chair, the white plastic cooler. The television, unplugged and turned to face the wall. In the shadowy mirror above the sink, at the back of the room, he could see her and himself, both sitting at the table in these chairs, not quite facing each other.

  “I look so small,” he said. “And my hair’s almost gone. I must seem totally different to you.”

  Francine smiled as she looked to the window, the curtain, then back at him.

  “What?” he said.

  “I was thinking of you,” she said. “Of back when we were kids. Even before you came to my house the other night, I mean. I was thinking of that broken cabin we played in, and how we put crystals in the little caves, for the Elementals.”

  “You see how it is?” he said. “You were thinking of me, and then the raccoon—”

  “I’m not sure it works like that,” she said. “But it’s something about having the baby that reminds me of how it was, growing up, and my parents and everything—how it was back then. When you came to my house and we were talking, I was thinking how nice it was to not have to hide anything, not to have to explain everything.”

  “And still,” he said, “that night, I felt maybe your husband, that you couldn’t quite say what you wanted to tell me in front of him.”

  “I was just surprised,” she said, “to have you suddenly there. I didn’t expect it. He was surprised, too.”

  “I didn’t warn you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I saw him,” Colville said, “your husband. I talked to him a little, just earlier today. He’s a good person, I think. He’s worried, and he doesn’t want me to bother you, I guess, so he’s been watching me.” Colville glanced up; Francine nodded, listening. “Not that you can blame him,” he said. “The way I showed up, the way I talked. It was fine—he’s fine. It’s not like he could really understand everything.”

  “He does worry,” she said, after a moment.

  Reaching back, Colville lifted the lid of the cooler beside the bed; he picked up a piece of ice, dropped it again, closed the lid.

  “Do you remember,” he said, “the time we ran circles, around and around the shelter?”

  “We shot pieces of that pink insulation through the vacuum tubes,” she said, laughing, “all the way from underground out into the sky.”

  “Then we ran outside and found them,” he said. “And how about the periscope?”

  “When we sneaked into the lookout room and spied on Maya walking past?”

  “And her friend, too.”

  “Courtney,” Francine said. “That was her friend’s name. Courtney Stiller.”

  “I always thought,” he said. “I see now how I always felt I’d know you—and then you moved away and I forgot, I tried to forget, but now it seems the same, like the time wasn’t a problem, really, that we shouldn’t worry, that it’s like the Messenger said. We’ll help each other.”

  Francine rested her hands flat on the table; she didn’t interrupt.

  “And you can’t not feel it,” he said. “You must feel it, the difference. You came here to meet me, after all.”

  “You kept leaving me those notes,” she said. “I was curious.”

  “It had to be more than that—you must feel how everything’s changing, how it’s about to change.”

  “Of course.” Francine laughed again, her hand on her belly. “Of course I feel different, of course things are changing. I’ve got all these hormones, I’ve got all sorts of preparations.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That’s the Light, and the Teachings—the Messenger left so many behind.”

  “The Messenger’s dead?”

  “No,” he said. “Yes. I mean, she’s not the Messenger like she was.” He pointed to the tape recorder, the line of cassette tapes on the dresser. “Just last night, I was listening to her—she was dictating from Saint Germain, all about the mountains, as the place where pilgrims go, holy mountains. That was really helpful.”

  “But she’s alive,” Francine said.

  “In Bozeman,” he said. “That’s what I heard—at Murray Steinman’s place. Her body’s there; her soul, I don’t know. The Alzheimer’s, my folks said, but they could be wrong. They’re not really involved in the Activity anymore. They drifted away from it, too, just like I did, just like you have.”

  “But you drifted back,” she said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I forgot,” he said. “I tried to forget. I tried to believe other things, even. But then after Moses died, I started feeling the Light again.” He grasped the wooden arms of his chair, slid it closer to the table, closer to her. “If you had seen me six months ago, you’d see how much happier I am now. Things are starting to make more sense again.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “It’s hard,” he said, “all the things they told us, to see how we could end up where we are, but we feel it again now. That’s the important thing. I see how I was brought here to remind you, to help you prepare.”

  “I’m doing okay,” she said. “I’m fine by myself—with Wells, I mean.”

  “Of course,” Colville said. “That’s not what I’m saying, not exactly. For now, I’m just reminding you. I have to go, in any case.”

  “Where?”

  “Did I mention the mountains?” he said. “That’s next, I believe.”

  “I thought you came here to find the girl.”

  “I thought that, too.”

  Francine leaned back, closed her eyes for a moment, rubbed at them.

  “I should be home,” she said. “It’s late.”

  “Right,” he said, standing. “You have to rest, that’s right. You have to take care of yourself, of the soul that’s coming.”

  But Francine didn’t move, didn’t get up to go. Colville sat down again.

  “Think of your baby’s soul,” he said. “Waiting. Watching us right now, and all the time before, back in Glastonbury and you drifting away, meeting your husband, the two of you preparing a body for it, a new embodiment for the soul to take in this plane.”

  “The language,” Francine said, laughing. “
I’m sorry, the terminology, I mean. I would never remember it, but when you say it, it’s so familiar—”

  “See?” he said.

  “I missed you,” she said. “That night—”

  “I missed you, too.”

  “I mean that first night,” she said, “when I was in our shelter and you were down in the big shelter at the Heart, I missed you. I imagined you burrowing all the way to me, you know, digging for years. And then, when a hole opened up in my wall, you would tumble out, and you would be all grown up.”

  She laughed, and he laughed with her, both looking at their hands on the tabletop, their voices dwindling to silence.

  “But isn’t this the same,” he said, “right now, how I found you? That’s what you mean, right? I came back through all this time.”

  “It’s just something I imagined.”

  Now Francine pushed her chair back, looked toward the door. She fit her feet into her white clogs. When she stood, Colville hurried to unlock the door, to hold it open. She touched his shoulder, stepped past him, outside.

  He stood there watching as she drove away; then her car turned a corner and he couldn’t see it anymore.

  6

  HAD HE SLEPT? It didn’t matter. He felt rested enough, full of anticipation, setting out deeper into where he was going. His skin prickled; he turned a slow circle: houses below, mountains, bare trees. No faces that he could see, looking back.

  He’d left the motel room at dawn, hiked across town, through neighborhoods and parking lots, beside highways. He’d stood on traffic islands as school buses rolled past, children’s faces looking out.

  He’d found himself inside an enormous sporting goods store with a complicated taxidermy display in its center—bears and bobcats, a mountain lion eating a rabbit, raccoons climbing a tree—where he bought the tiny tent and the subzero sleeping bag he carried now, attached to his frame pack. He bought hiking boots and gaiters, wool socks, snowshoes, freeze-dried ice cream and buffalo jerky.

  Now he carried it all, along with everything else. Sweating, he paused to rest; he stepped off the road, past the half-built houses, up into the foothills where he had searched so many times. He checked Francine’s house, far below, every few steps. Eventually, there was movement there—the black dog, let out into the back yard by Wells. Many mornings, Colville had watched as Francine herself came out. From here, he’d watched her car make its turn at the corner and slide away toward downtown, aiming at the hospital. This morning, her car was already gone.

  Frost lined the shadows white, the ground wet where the sun had reached. Colville zigzagged through the scrub, higher, then along a slight ridge, into some taller bushes. The ground slanted down unexpectedly; he slid along a gravelly slope into a hidden depression about ten feet square. A few old beer cans rested amid charred logs in a circle of blackened stones. A low cave had been cut into the slope; in its mouth rested a metal pipe with rough concrete around each end. Colville set down his pack and tried to lift the pipe—it looked like a barbell—but it was far too heavy. He couldn’t move it at all.

  Next he began unpacking. The three green books of the I AM activity, others by the Messenger herself: Saint Germain’s Prophecy for the New Millennium; Violet Flame to Heal Body, Mind and Soul; How to Work with Angels. He took out the tape recorder—he felt the energy coiled in the cassette tapes, those dictations, the Messenger’s voice still echoing, vibrating inside him—and wrapped it with everything else in heavy plastic garbage bags, two layers. Tying the bags tightly, he pushed them as deep into the cave as they would go.

  A sound, above. Gravel slid down the slope, out from under the bushes. Slowly Colville straightened, turned, one arm up to hold back the glare and to protect himself. Then another noise, more gravel sliding; he saw the side of her face there, turning, the back of her head.

  “Wait,” he said. “Don’t go. Talk to me.”

  She kept climbing until he could no longer see her, only the tall bushes still shaking as she went.

  “You don’t have to come down here,” he said. “I’ll come up, out in the open.”

  His pack lighter now, he scrambled back the way he’d come, sharp branches in his face, against his hands. He stumbled out onto the slope, his eyes already searching for her retreating figure, but the girl was just standing there, ten feet away. In jeans and tennis shoes, a blue sweatshirt. Her blue eyes were sharp and wary, her dark hair loose and tangled.

  “What?” she said. “Don’t stare at me.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “My sister’s not dead, you know. If that’s what you think.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  “I’ve seen you before.” The girl looked up at the sky, then back down at him. “Out here. I’ve watched you.”

  “I believe it,” he said.

  “No one else is searching anymore,” she said. “Do you know where she is?”

  “What?” he said. “No, I don’t.”

  “Are those snowshoes? What’s your name?”

  “Colville,” he said. “Colville Young.”

  Neither of them moved. The wind ruffled the bushes behind him, a soft-edged sound. The sky turned lighter and the clouds slid across it, their edges barely visible against each other.

  “Did your tooth fall out?” she said. “I can see your tongue.”

  “Kind of,” he said. “Yes.”

  “Is a new tooth growing?”

  “No,” he said, feeling the gap with the tip of his tongue. “I don’t think so.”

  “Your adult tooth fell out?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  The girl paused for a moment, her blue eyes on him. She looked away, down toward the houses, then back.

  “What were you doing down there?” she said.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “You were hiding something,” she said. “I saw.”

  “I was leaving some things behind,” he said. “Things I don’t need anymore, that I don’t want to carry anymore.”

  The girl looked doubtful, glaring past him at the bushes. “So why’d you carry it all the way up here if you don’t need it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I’ll need it some other time.”

  “Maybe it’ll be gone, by then.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Seven.”

  “Does anyone know where you are?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m supposed to be at school.” She glanced away, down the slope, as if expecting to see someone coming after her.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “You were supposed to ask me that right after I asked you.”

  “I was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your sister,” he said. “When I came here, a week ago, I was certain I would find her.”

  “And you didn’t.”

  “I don’t think she’s dead,” he said. “She’s alive—she’s just not here.”

  “Is she coming back?”

  “I lost a brother,” he said. “His name was Moses. But the thing of it is, I didn’t really lose him. Not really, exactly. I carry him around with me, wherever I go.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes, in a way.”

  “You carry him?”

  “Inside,” he said.

  “My name’s Della.” She kicked a pebble without watching it skitter away. “I have to go.”

  “All right,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Della. I’m glad. I’m glad we agree about your sister.”

  “But you don’t know—”

  “No,” he said. “But there’s plenty of things I don’t know that I’m trying to find out about.”

  “Bye,” she said, turning away.

  He expected the girl to head down the slope toward her house, but she went in the other direction, climbing along the ridge, not looking back. He didn’t follow her; instead he turned and looked down over the city, the neighborhoods stretching up toward him. It took a momen
t to locate the girl’s house—usually he looked for the round black shape of the trampoline, but it was no longer there. Taken away. Now her house looked so much like the other houses on the block, it was hard to distinguish. Two houses over, Francine’s driveway was empty now, the blue truck gone, the back yard surrounded by fence. And there, on top of the picnic table as if trying to see higher, to get his attention, stood the black dog.

  Colville tightened the straps of his pack and began to descend in long switchbacks, careful not to trip or lose his balance. The wind sliced around him; it felt colder now than it had on the way up.

  The dog did not bark as he approached. It saw him and wagged its tail, leapt down from the picnic table so he could no longer see it.

  Now he was against the fence. He could hear the dog whining, see its wet snout pushing through the narrow gaps in the boards, its tongue trying to lick at his fingers.

  “Yes,” he said, whispering. “Good boy. You recognize me, don’t you? Don’t you, boy? You were calling me? Here I am. I understand.”

  He did not want to climb the fence, to draw attention. Setting down his pack, he took out a tent stake and carefully bent the bottom of one board, then another, the nails groaning a little as they pulled out. He peeked through the gap; the dog sat watching, waiting. As soon as the space was wide enough, he slithered through, then licked at Colville’s hands, scratched at his boots, whined quietly.

  Colville pushed the boards back flush, tapped at the nails. “Yes, yes,” he said. “We’re going now, we’re going to do it.”

  He climbed again, the dog darting ahead and then returning, always checking where he was. Once they crossed the first slight rise, they were out of sight of the houses.

  “Come!” he shouted, and the dog leapt back, leaned against his thigh as he unbuckled the leather collar. He read the metal tags, then threw the collar away into the scrub as hard as he could; the dog began to run after, to fetch it.

  “Kilo! Leave it. Let it be.”

  Colville liked the feeling of it, not walking alone. He wondered, as he went the long way down, around the houses, whether the girl was somewhere on the ridge above, still watching him.

  7