Stay

by Nicola Griffith

  Blowing Rock is a small town with a lot of money whose inhabitants had managed to keep the ugly face of tourism from their doors. We ate fettucini in a café under a bright awning, surrounded by window boxes spilling flowers; sun warmed those wood and fieldstone houses not sheltered by maple and poplar. Tammy spent more time watching relaxed, clean, happy people walk past the window than eating.

  “Is this real?” she asked eventually.

  I nodded, and for a moment I thought she would burst into tears, but she just shook her head.

  When we got back in the car, she watched the scenery more intently, and once pointed to a speck hanging high over the canopy. “What’s that?”

  “Hawk,” I said. “I can’t tell what kind.”

  She was silent the rest of the drive, and I left her to her thoughts, because now we were driving through the beginnings of Pisgah, and the air began to smell like home.

  An hour later we drove into Asheville and I parked in more or less the same place I’d parked when I got my hair cut, and when I climbed out of the truck into the slanting afternoon sun, I had the absurd urge to drop into the Heads Up Salon and see if Dree was there.

  Tammy was trying to get out of the truck and pull off her sweatshirt at the same time. She managed both, then just stood there holding the sweatshirt in a bundle in front of her, as though it were something dirty.

  “Is your house near here?”

  “No. It’s … some distance outside Asheville. We’re here to pick up food, and clothes for you.” She might be staying with me, but she wasn’t going to wear my clothes. “Bring your money.” She rooted around in her purse, then hesitated, still clutching the sweatshirt. “You won’t need that. It’ll stay warm for another hour or so.”

  Somewhere between the sidewalk and the first hanging garments, Tammy’s body language changed; her brows arched disdainfully; she sighed and shook her head dramatically at the offerings, then fingered a slippery rayon dress.

  “T-shirts and shorts and boots would be more appropriate for where we’ll be; some jeans; a sweater for the cool nights.”

  She swung the hair back from her face and eyed me sullenly, now the perfect teenager. Infant to child to teen in one day. With any luck she’d be dead of old age before we reached the clearing.

  “Your money, your choice.” It would only be for a day or two, anyway. And if she bought all the wrong things she could either suffer or drive herself back here. Nursemaid was not part of the job description.

  Tammy remained in teenage mode as we drove north and west along secondary roads which narrowed to gravel, and then took an abrupt turn left and hit the unpaved track up the mountain.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My cabin.”

  She sighed heavily and pulled her sweatshirt back on. After another ten minutes she rolled up the window.

  I took the last half a mile in second gear. Judging by the mess alongside the road, hogs had been through recently, and tree debris indicated high winds sometime in the last couple of days. For some reason my heart was beating high as we pulled into the clearing.

  It was all there, as I’d left it, cabin roof still on, tarps snug and tight across windows, trailer fast shut, but different. Forest litter from the wind or storm lay everywhere, and foliage that had been green had faded to yellow, what had already been yellowing was now gold, and the elder and dogwood and maple leaves had deepened to rich, winelike hues. I parked and just sat there for a moment, drinking in the smell, which was loamier, wilder.

  “This is it?”

  “Yes.” Even I heard the smile in my voice.

  “What happened?”

  “A storm. The wind must have really ripped through here while I was gone. We can use the deadfall for firewood.”

  “No. I mean the house. It looks … scabby.”

  “I’m rebuilding it,” I said shortly, and climbed out of the truck, but I looked at the cabin again, at the different colors of the old and new wood—that could, I supposed, look leprous to the uneducated eye—and the messy tarps, the gables. “It will look better when the windows are in and the new wood’s had a chance to weather.” But I wondered, which made me angry. “Did you pull the wings off flies, too, when you were little?”

  Her face changed abruptly, the same look a child gets when she breaks a parent’s favorite ornament and looks up, too frightened to even cry out that it was an accident.

  “This place means a lot to me. If you don’t have anything good to say about it, keep quiet.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”

  “You weren’t to know. Let’s get unpacked. We’ll be sleeping in the trailer.”

  We unloaded the food, then her things. I showed her where to stow her clothes, handed her sheets, which she accepted wordlessly, and pointed out the sofa bed. I left her to it, and went to start up the systems. There was enough propane for a while, but after Dornan’s visits and with Tammy here, I’d have to take the trailer out in a few days and pump out the gray and black water tanks. Refilling with fresh from the pump was no problem, but there was no point if the sewage tanks were full. That would be another new thing; I hadn’t had to pump the tanks since I’d arrived here, shell-shocked and more than half mad, not wanting to shower or wash dishes or use the toilet, not wanting to have anything to do with civilization at all.

  I went back into the trailer. “Tammy.” She was sitting hunched on the couch that was the sofa bed, as though she had been given permission to use only that piece of furniture. “Come sit at the table.” She did, cautiously. “I’m going to show you how everything works. Most of it’s simple, but if you have questions, ask. Tonight I’ll cook dinner, but from tomorrow you’ll take your turn.”

  She watched me as a crippled deer does a hunter.

  “Do you understand?” She nodded. “Good. But first I’m going to take the phone outside and call Dornan.” No reaction. “I won’t tell him where you are now, but I will say I found you, that you’re all right, but that you don’t want to talk to him at the moment. Would that be a fair statement?”

  She started to nod again, then said, “Yes.”

  “I will also tell him that either you or I will get in touch with him again within a week.” With luck, she wouldn’t be here that long.

  Outside, late evening sun pooled on the canopy like syrup and the air felt slow and thick. Somewhere a wildcat would be crouching on a maple limb, waiting for a turkey to strut by; newly fallen leaves would rustle with the beetling of shrews and chipmunks; flycatchers would start swooping through the invisible insect towers hovering above the leaves, snipping up their dinner. It was just after six o’clock, a busy time at the coffeehouses. I called his home phone; this would be easier for everyone if I talked to his machine.

  “It’s Aud. I found her and have her somewhere I can keep an eye on her. She won’t be running off anywhere anytime soon. She’s fine but doesn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment. We’ve agreed she’ll call you in a week, if not before.” I lowered the phone, not ringing off but not knowing what else to say. For months, Dornan had been having god knows what nightmares about Tammy maybe sitting in seven separate garbage bags in a ditch alongside some dirt road in Alabama, or getting married to a red-haired, pompous psychologist, or wandering New York in an amnesiac daze. And he had helped me. I lifted the phone again. “Dornan, she was glad to leave. I think she’s been through a bad time, emotionally, but I think she’s going to be just fine. I’ll make sure she talks to you soon. And Dornan—she hasn’t thrown away your ring.”

  I closed the phone up and resisted the urge to walk into the trees.

  Inside, I set about showing Tammy the dos and don’ts of trailer living. I began with the stove and refrigerator, then took her outside to show her the propane hookups. I didn’t want to get blown up in the middle of the night just because she wanted a cup of coffee and the pilot light was out. “The fridge operates on propane, too. Here’s the shower. Gray water capacity is only sixty gallons,
so you won’t be using it often. You turn the hot water on here, like so, but again, you won’t be using that much. The toilet is pretty self-explanatory and I’m expecting you to use it as little as possible.” Black water capacity was only forty gallons, and there were plenty of trees to use as screens. “We’ll get most of our freshwater from the pump, and there’s a stream we can use while the weather is good.” Ah, but how much longer would that be? “When you use the stream, use only the shampoo, soap, and toothpaste on this shelf. I don’t want you killing the trout. Over here is the TV. Music. Again, use sparingly. We can prime the batteries anytime, but it’s noisy, and I like my peace and quiet. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to use the generator. Crockery down here, bigger utensils up here, tins in the pantry. Dry food and other staples in the hogpen. No open food to be stored in this trailer except in the fridge.” Which was airtight. Telling her about the bears could wait for tomorrow. “Beer in here.” I took two bottles from the fridge and opened them, but didn’t hand her one. “Which reminds me. You have a decision to make: you can drink, or you can take sleeping pills. It’s reasonably safe out here, but not if you mix and match your poisons.”

  She nodded. I sipped my beer with obvious appreciation but didn’t hand hers over.

  “You’re saying I have to decide right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Jesus. You’re not my mother.”

  My mother wouldn’t have cared. “My land, my rules.”

  “I’ll take the beer.”

  I took another sip from my bottle.

  “Jesus!” She rooted around in her bag, handed me both bottles of pills.

  I handed her the beer. “What do you want for dinner?”

  I lay in bed and watched moonlight inch its way down the wall by my side. Tammy had been asleep for over an hour; the whole trailer hummed with her presence.

  After giving me the pills, she had eaten her dinner quietly and cleaned up without being asked. Even after she was in bed I felt her cowering, quivering, afraid to make a noise in case I disapproved and did to her whatever had been done to her in New York.

  When someone cowers, their body language says, essentially, Hit me. The permission is there, they are telling you they will not retaliate, and I could feel this terrible urge to throw aside my duvet, stride down past the galley, and drag her outside by her hair into the moonlight. Her shirt would ruck up around her waist, her eyes would be black in the silver light, she would look up into my face and see hard bone and shadow, wet strong teeth, and she would tell me everything. Then I could take her somewhere else, get rid of her, tell Dornan, I found her, here’s what happened to her in New York, and I would finally be alone again, and safe and quiet. It was tempting, and I resented the temptation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I surged upright, then realized it was morning, and that the noise that had woken me was Tammy leaving the trailer. I knelt on the bed and watched through the window as she took a pan to the pump and filled it, then studied the pile of firewood by the pit. She stood there for a while, then looked around. I’d put the hatchet away before leaving for New York. She went to the hogpen, hauled open the door, and disappeared inside. I imagined her studying the different axes. She reemerged with the hatchet.

  “Promising beginning,” Julia said, joining me at the window.

  Tammy glanced around again, as though she thought someone was watching from the trees, then lifted a log onto the chopping stump. The swing needed improvement, but she got the hang of it after a while and soon had a small pile of kindling at her feet. She took off her sweatshirt.

  “Interesting. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I meant the fact that she has a clue how to build a fire.”

  “She hasn’t built the fire yet,” I pointed out.

  “She has lost weight, though.”

  Tammy was about five foot six. When I first met her, I would have guessed her weight at a lush hundred and forty-five pounds. With her dark hair and eyes and golden skin she had been as sleek as a seal. Now some of the luster was gone, and about fifteen pounds of fat. On another woman it would have looked fine, but on Tammy it was all wrong. Her breasts no longer plumped out her T-shirt with soft weight; the seams of her jeans did not strain over hip and buttock as she knelt on the turf by the fire pit; the bones of her face, once softened with subcutaneous fat, stood out sharply.

  She had her back to the trailer, face to the woods, but I could see enough of what she was doing to know that her first attempt to light the fire would be a failure. The kindling sputtered and went out. She looked around again. Perhaps it was some kind of tic. She pulled the pile apart, rebuilt it along much the same lines as the first, and tried again with the same result. This time she took everything apart and thought about it for a while, then carefully made a pyramid of twigs and dry grass surrounded by the seasoned kindling. It caught at the first try and she watched it with quiet pleasure. Too late she realized she should have brought more fuel, and the brave little blaze died to nothing.

  Julia lay down and stretched luxuriantly in the pool of sunshine on the bed. “Are you going to let that poor girl struggle out there for hours to get a fire going?”

  “Let her do her learning in private.” Even as I watched, Tammy assembled what she would need: grass, twigs, seasoned kindling, green wood as fuel.

  This time it worked. I watched long enough to see the fire blaze up merrily and Tammy carefully hang the water over the flames, then turned back to Julia. She was gone.

  I dressed in boots, shorts, and tank. The soap and toothpaste and towels in the bathroom were undisturbed. I thought about that for a while, then brushed my teeth at the sink, used the toilet and flushed it, and went outside. The air was cool and still, and my boots left tracks in the dew.

  “That looks like a good fire.”

  She scrambled to her feet. “I thought you might want some coffee when you woke. Or some cooked breakfast.”

  “Thank you.” The fire wouldn’t be much good for cooking until it had been burning long enough to produce coals, but there was no point in spoiling her triumph. “Don’t make my coffee too strong.”

  We sat in the sun and sipped while the dew burned off and the fire snapped. She held her mug in her left hand and the right hung empty and relaxed from the wrist resting on her knee. It was the first time I had seen her neither tense nor posed.

  “I’ve decided to take the trailer into town today and get the wastewater tanks drained and the freshwater filled. That way you’ll have showers and other indoor plumbing conveniences for the few days that you’re here.” And I wouldn’t have to live in a small space with the smell of an unwashed, unbrushed guest. I finished my coffee, which wasn’t bad. “I shouldn’t be longer than four or five hours. Don’t play with any of the edged tools while I’m gone.”

  “You’re going to leave me here?” Both hands were now wrapped around her mug so tightly that her fingertips were white.

  “I had planned on that, yes.”

  “What will I do?”

  “Whatever you want. Go for a walk. Take a nap.”

  “Where?”

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Well, right here. The grass is comfortable, and it’ll be warm all day.”

  “But—out in the open, all exposed?”

  She was genuinely frightened. I opened my mouth to tell her she could always lock herself in the hogpen if she was afraid of bears, but I doubted she had even considered that possibility. I shrugged. “Well, come with me if you’d rather, but don’t expect to be an idle passenger. There’ll be time for you to take a shower.”

  I banked the fire and cut more firewood but was still done before Tammy emerged, hair wet, smelling clean and young.

  “Come help me get the rig ready for traveling. I don’t want a single loose item by the time we leave. Start with your bed.”

  It always took longer than I thought. Everything that was on an open shelf or countertop had to be stowed and secured, a rubber band snapped around th
e roll of toilet paper, the water heater turned off, food in the fridge and cupboards cushioned against breakage, rugs rolled and furniture moved to pull in the living area and wardrobe slide-outs, awning stowed, and all the carefully reconnected propane appliances disconnected again.

  I used a hitch with an adjustable quick-slide base, so it didn’t take too long to hook up the truck, but then there was the rig’s tire pressure check, a last check to make sure all doors, interior and exterior, were dogged and/or locked, and, finally, unchocking the rig’s wheels. I threw the chocks onto the rear seat of the truck and Tammy got into the passenger seat. I looked around the clearing.

  I had no memory of getting here, all those months ago, and it was a minor miracle I hadn’t ended up in the natural ditch that ran along the northern edge of the track. I’d have to fill that ditch sometime soon. Meanwhile, I wasn’t alone.

  I leaned in to the open window. “How are you at guiding drivers?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Why?”

  “I need the truck and trailer to be lined up dead straight before I hit the top of the track, otherwise the trailer wheels might cut across and end up in the ditch. And I’d rather not flatten the well pump while I’m backing and filling.”

  “I could try, I guess.”

  She did an excellent job, and after ten minutes we were creeping down the mountain. I kept an eye on the dash readouts; engine compression holdback was excellent, even on the steeper grade halfway down, and I began to relax. It’s a forty-minute drive down Highway 25 to Naples. We kept our thoughts to ourselves.

  The service station was empty except for two coverall-clad workers: a tall, soft-faced boy who could not have been more than eighteen, and a wizened, bowlegged man who came up to his shoulder and had probably been born before cars were invented.

  I pulled in and leaned out of the window. “Hey there.”

  A nod and “Ma’am” from Bowlegs, just a blush and a bob of the head from the boy. In my peripheral vision Tammy began to rearrange herself subtly in her seat, sitting up straight, tilting her face so her dimples showed, pulling back her shoulders to push her breasts up tight against her shirt—and then her pupils irised down to points and her focus turned inward and something in her sagged. She slumped and pulled herself in and down.