“Are you ok?” Jamie touches your arm. You shrug.
“I’m fine. Help me pick up the cards. I want to play Old Maid.”
“June, it’s getting dark. How can you read that—scoot your chair over here before you hurt your eyes.”
“It’s ok. I can read it just fine,” you lie.
If there’s a sun left in the sky, you can’t see it from the makeshift campsite, a small flat spot Father found just off the one of the dead-ended offshoots of Hot Springs Road. He says that according to the map—his version of it—there’s a lake nearby, but it’s hidden from view—wherever it is Father has parked the camper, you get no sense of water or sloping hills, of the space a lake carves for itself out of hilly land. The earth is hard and flat, and piles of stripped logs lie in jumbled heaps at the edges, as though matchsticks tossed by a giant. The woods here seems weak and tired, as if it never quite recovered from whatever culling happened decades ago. You sit on a collapsible camp stool, watching Father set up a small table for the Coleman stove and lanterns. No fire tonight, this time. Father says there isn’t time, they have to be to bed early and up early. “It’s ready,” he says to your mother, as he lights the small stove. “I’ll be back in a bit.” He turns and walks off with the lighter, disappearing between tree trunks and the sickly tangle of ferns. His job is finished, and he’s off to smoke a cigarette or two, an ill-kept secret no one in the family is supposed to notice. There are so many other secrets to keep track of, he can afford to let slip one. Besides, it calms him down. You note that the map is in his back pocket, sticking out like a small paper flag.
Your mother has become thin-lipped and subdued over the past hour—you know what she’s thinking, even if she doesn’t. No matter where the family goes, a vacation for all of you is never a vacation for her, only the usual cooking and serving and cleaning without any of the comforts of home. Jamie knows how she feels, and as usual, he helps her. Beef stew and canned green beans tonight, and store-bought rolls with margarine. Chocolate pudding cups for dessert. If she was in the mood, she’d make drop biscuits from the box, or cornbread. She’s not in the mood tonight. It’s more than just cooking, this time. Father and your mother are divided over the vacation, over the destination. This is a first for them, and a first for you. Usually they are united in all things, as you and Jamie are, because so much is always at stake for all of you, because everything must be done in secret, away from the eyes of those who wouldn’t understand, which is everyone in the world. But things are off-balance, tonight. You stare up at the trees, trying to see past them to the heart of the mountains. Your mother couldn’t see the brown ink lines, the map within the map. Does he? You think you know the answer. Otherwise, why would he ignore his own vacation plans, his own map and dotted blue lines, why would he take you all here?
“June.” Your mother, her voice clipped and tired. “Go get your father. Dinner’s ready.”
You stand up, looking around. Nothing but trees. It’s peaceful here without him, brooding over everyone. You don’t see the need to change that.
“I don’t know where he went….”
“June, please. It’s been a long day. Just go get him.”
“I don’t even know where he went to!”
“Just follow the smoke,” Jamie says.
“Hush!” Your mother slaps at his arm, a playful smile on her face. For a moment, her dour mood has lifted. You use it, slipping into the woods unnoticed. You’ll follow the smoke only as far as you need to, before going in the opposite direction. He can come back on his own.
Five feet in, and the darkness seals up the space behind you, as though the cozy camper and the soft lights never existed at all. Up above, the sky is still blue, but starless and without light. There are no paths or trails here, only ground thick with fallen pine needles and cones, and large ferns that brush at your face as you push through them. No trace of smoke is in the air, you smell only wet earth and pitch and leaves. You should have grabbed a flashlight, but you’ve never been afraid of the dark before, so you push forward. After several thick strands of webbing lash your face, you raise your arm, holding the book up high before you like a shield. It’s a crumbling cloth-bound volume Father gave you years ago, for your seventh birthday. Mythology of Yore. Mythology of your what?, you’d joked when you unwrapped the book. Father stopped smiling: later, when you started reading, you stopped smiling as well. The stories are old, very old, and deliciously cruel, and when you touch the illustrations, red and silver bleeds off onto your skin. “This will explain everything,” Father had said when he gave it to you. “This will explain why we do what we do, and why it is not wrong. Why it is as old as mankind itself, beautiful, divine.”
He must not have read all the stories in the book.
“You know where we’re going, don’t you?” Father appears from behind the trees, and you let out a small gasp as you lower the book. He’s barely visible in the gloom, the red tip of the cigarette the only real part of him you can fix your sight on. Yet, you can tell, even in the dark, even from a distance, that some strange mood has seized him, morphing his face into a mask. He wants something, he’s seeking something. You remember what he told you on the piers at Port Angeles. Now is not the time for a smart-ass reply.
“We’re going to the mountains. Into the center of the Olympics, like you said.”
“We’re going into the center.” Smoke billows from his mouth as he speaks, and he crushes the remains of the cigarette with his finger and thumb, carefully so as not to create stray sparks. You watch him slip the butt into his front pocket—Father never approved of littering—and his hand is upon your throat, lifting you up and back into the solid wall of a tree. The book tumbles from your grasp, away into the dense brush. It’s gone, you’ll never find it in the dark. Once again, he places a finger at the center of your forehead. Small coughs erupt from your lips, wet with spittle, as you struggle to breathe, as your feet slide up and down the rough bark, trying to find some place to come to rest.
“And where are you going, where do you go?” Father asks. His voice is a whispered snarl, hard and tight. What little air your lungs clutch at is tinged with warm smoke and rank sweat. “Where do you go when I’m with you? Where are you when the light leaves your eyes and all that darkness pools out of them as you beg me to take you away? What do you see?”
“I—don’t—know.” The words are little more than croaks.
“You don’t know? You don’t know? I treat you like a goddess, like a queen, and you slip away like some backstabbing little whore?”
“No—never”
The finger at your forehead disappears, and you hear the rustle of paper. The map. “Is it here? Oh yes, I see it. I don’t know how you did it, when you drew it, but there it is. I drew my road to where I wanted to go, and she drew hers, and then your little web appeared, shitting itself all over our destinations. Except, I couldn’t figure out how to get my road to the center of your map, to that nice big space inside you, no matter how many roads there were, no matter how many times the lines crossed. I always lost the way to the center of your little Tootsie Pop. And it’s just a fucking piece of paper!”
“Guess—it’s not—you stupid—fuck.”
The map slams against your face, and there’s a crunch. Blood streams from your nose, and pain explodes like lightning through your skull. And then Father wrenches your shorts and panties down and off your legs in a single motion and his zipper is down and your legs up as he parts them wide and he’s against you and inside you in a single painful thrust, his cock spearing you against the tree like a butterfly.
For a moment he doesn’t move, only breathes hard against your face as the branches rustle overhead, catching the evening wind. It’s true night now, and there is no moon and there are no stars. What is he waiting for? You realize the map is still stuck against your face, stuck in the sweat and tears and blood. You move, listening to the rustling of paper so close you’re your open eyes, your open eyes that se
e only liquid primordial night, and he begins to thrust. Long, hard strokes slamming your back and head against the rough bark, in and out, again, again, and you can feel it but you can’t help it but you can feel it the old familiar vortex of pleasure forming somewhere deep down inside your traitorous thrusting body and you would give anything to not go there to not feel that and the words form silent in your blood-filled mouth take me away take it away take it all away, and even though you can’t see, you feel it, you feel the blood-brown word expanding, burning through the layers of map, burning through bone and skin. Somewhere, a chain is being pulled, a hole unplugged, and your muscles slacken as the dark of night whorls around, thickens and deepens, as the flat black void opens wide to take you back in, even as something begins to spill out—
The map disappears, and the hand comes down hard against your cheek. You’re back.
“I go everywhere with you. Everywhere! Do you hear me?” Your father’s grip tightens, and you spasm against the tree, struggling as he pins your arms back against the trunk with his hands. Tears and snot drip down your face, plop onto your breasts.
“I go everywhere,” he says. “You don’t get to leave me behind. And the next time, the next time?—I go with you. The next time, I see everything you see.” He leans in, kissing you hard as he thrusts deeper, harder, his tongue pushing into your mouth, filling it up until all you taste is him, all you breath is the air from his lungs, all you feel is what he feels, what he wants.
He lets go.
You fall, choking on your spit and pain, into the roots of the tree, your shorts and panties bunched at your feet. Father walks away, thin branches snapping under his feet as he zips up his pants. Then the metal rasp of his lighter, followed by the solitary blue-orange flame singing the tobacco into red. “Tomorrow night, when we get there, I’ll be with you. All the way to the end.” A moment of silence as he takes a deep drag, and exhales. You stay huddled in the knotted arms of the tree, hand at your throat, afraid to breath.
“Dinner’s waiting, June-Bug. Hurry up.” He walks away, crashing and cursing as he tries to find his way. It would be funny, if— When you no longer hear the sound of his footsteps, you crawl to your feet, clinging to the bark of the tree for support, then pull your shorts back on with trembling hands. The map is stuck to the bottom of your right sandal. You wipe the blood and dirt off with great care, then fold it small enough to tuck into your panties, small enough to not be noticed by anyone. He’s done for the night, and you’re not touching Jamie again tonight, not with your mother’s smell all over him.
Off to your left, that’s where the campsite was supposed to be, except, you don’t know what left is anymore, or where it used to be. You walk forward, toes curled and back hunched as if worried that a single noise will bring him flying out of the darkness at you again. Your sandals slide over blacktop, flat and smooth. Overhead, the stars, and a sudden feeling of space and distance: the road. It’s the same road Father drove down two hours ago, before he turned off onto the dirt road into the woods. You turn, looking back into the woods. All of the trees look the same, you can’t tell which one Father pressed you against. All you know is that when he first did, you and he were not at the side of the road, there was no road at all. You closed your eyes and you traveled. You escaped, but you took him with you, and only this far.
Is this what he was waiting for?
How much farther can you go?
Dinner is a dream. Your mother pinches your nose and wipes the blood away without a word, then gives you cold water with miniature ice cubes from the tiny freezer, saying nothing as she hands you the glass. She must know what father did. Maybe she made him do it. Father has two beers, and your mother doesn’t hesitate in bringing them to him. He’s mad at her, which is when he drinks. She’s subservient when she’s mad, which makes him angrier, because he knows she’s just pretending. Jamie’s eyes look a bit puffy, not enough for anyone except you to notice. Your mother did or said something to him, that he didn’t like. He touches his bangs constantly, keeps his head down. You eat your beef stew in small bites, careful to grind it down to a paste your tender throat can swallow. It all tastes the same. And as you force down your meal, you realize that all the things you know about your world, the normal things, aren’t the right things. They aren’t the things that are going to save you. You think of the book, lonely and cold, heroes and gods already festering in the damp of the undergrowth.
But the map…. The map is folded into a tiny square, shoved deep into your underwear. It’s your map now, it’s not his or hers, he threw it away, and besides, it was never his map anyway. It was never his journey, his destination. He had his own, and besides—isn’t what he gets from you enough? Does he have to go everywhere, see everything? Is there no place left for you and you alone? You bite down on the lip of the plastic tumbler. There’s nothing you can do, really. It’s not your fight, what they fight about. You, like any good map, can only point any number of ways. But if he wants to see everything, he’s going to be surprised. Everything is not where you’re headed. Everything is never where you go.
After dinner, it’s quick to washing up and then to bed. You and Jamie each get five minutes alone in the camper to change before clambering up into the camper’s upper bed. Father and your mother argue quietly in the front of the camper, behind a small plaid curtain your mother sewed. I can’t believe you lost the map, she says. We don’t need a map, I know where we are, and I’ll know when we get there, he says. That doesn’t even make sense, she says. We agreed to go to Windy Arm, we agreed to go where I wanted to go for once, she says. Wherever we go, we go together, he says. We do it for the family. That’s how
Mom and Dad taught us, it’s how we survive. We do it as one.
Jamie and you lie on your sides in a shallow imitation of spooning, his arm draped across your waist. At first you didn’t want him touching you, afraid they’d stick their heads up into the pop-top for a last good-night—you’ve long suspected that they know what you and Jamie do, what you are to each other. Still. You don’t need them to have it confirmed. Finally, the lights click out: the night is so dark in contrast, for a second it seems bright as noon. You slide your hand across Jamie’s, bring it up to between your breasts, as if to shield your heart. Your breath is shallow. Father and your mother zip themselves into their sleeping bags, and the camper settles into the ground, little creaks and ticks sounding out like metal insects. You wait. And, after what seems like half the night, gentle snores and deep breathing fill the small space. They’re asleep. Nothing more will be needed of you and your brother tonight.
Your lips part, and you close your eyes, letting anxiety sieve out through the netting into the cool night air. Still, though, you don’t move a muscle, and neither does Jamie. Let them fall asleep peacefully below, undisturbed. Let them lie together, like they should. Sometimes, after the school day was over, Jamie would whisk you into one of the crumbling old portable classrooms, unused for years since the new additions were build. There in the soft of the chalky air, he’d press you against the plaster walls, his body fitting neatly against and into yours. It was so different than with Father, it felt so good, so right. There was no need for the void with Jamie, no need to escape, because you wanted to be there, you wanted to remember every sigh, every moan. It’s like Jamie was made for you, made to fit you, made to taste and smell exactly how you like. He was made for you, though, he was a part of you once, inside your mother’s womb. Making love to him was the only way you could love yourself.
Jamie’s hand opens, slides down around your right breast, cupping it gently. You feel protected, safe. And yet. And yet.
Another hour passes, and another. Jamie drifts off, you can hear it in the rhythm of his breath, feel it in the dead weight of his limbs. Below, Father and your mother are lost in sleep. Do you dare? Even as your mind asks the question, your body is answering, your hands slipping up to zip, inch by careful inch, the hard mesh that surrounds the pop-top of the camper. Jam
ie stirs, turns over and away. You stop, listening. Somewhere in the woods, a branch cracks, sharp like a gunshot, and silky rustling follows. Here, in this part of the world, the moon is of little use to you, and the stars are nothing. Here nothing can penetrate the blanket of wood and branch and needles. You move forward, sticking your face outside. You see nothing. You are blind as a worm.
The zipper moves again, and now your entire upper body is exposed to the night. If you try to climb down the camper’s slick sides, you’ll only fall, and that will mean noise, unnatural human noise, the kind that wakens other humans. This is the most you can do, the most you can be free. Hidden at the bottom of your sleeping bag is the map. Your toes grasp the folds of paper, and you bend your knees up, reaching down at the same time. Slowly the map travels into your hands. You hold it out into the open air, outside in the world, your finger brushing across the bumpy ridges of the circles and into the center, where it once again rests on that strange, lone word. Is this truly the place you travel toward, when Father visits you in the night? Do you really hold the map to that invisible place, and if so, how and when did you draw it? Or was it you? Perhaps there is more in the flat black void than sublime nothingness. You move your finger back and forth, coaxing the letters to respond.
The brownish ink, invisible in the night, leaps against the whorls of your fingertip, as if tracing a route, an escape from the center and into the world. The paper crackles, and you stiffen, holding your breath in. Again, you listen. Silence. For a wild second, you imagine Father and your mother, awake and perched at the edge of the bunk, pupils wide and oily-black as owls as they stare down at you and your sleeping twin, younger versions of themselves, when they were brother and sister, before they were husband and wife. You ignore the cold fear as you send your plea, your command, out into the mountains, wherever in the night they are. Save me. Take me away.
Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors Page 18
