Shelter

by Jayne Anne Philips

  "It's a fact," said Mrs. T. quietly. "I've told you before and it's true: the furnace of the Russian embassy burns at temperatures hot enough to cremate human bones."

  The girls sat rapt. In the wake of their stillness came a sudden onslaught of noise as the catch on the film screen gave way and the screen rolled down into its metal tube with a rasping mechanical shriek. A few girls yelled short, nervous screams. The screen, reduced on its metal stand to the stature of a lowercase t, seemed to tremble before it fell with a final resounding crash. Heritage class was over.

  PARSON: MEANT TO DO

  Walk, keep walking. Back toward camp, find the others.

  Lenny falls asleep inside him; he walks along the river trail and she is still falling asleep, leaning forward to get as close into his neck as her face can push; and when he's walking he's not afraid of letting her fall away, he feels her mouth, sentient, asleep, on that pulse point in his throat, as though she won't ever leave him, and there are sounds in the woods that echo the rushing warble of the river, as though it all draws up around him, a tunnel of sound meant for passage, his passage, what he's meant to do. Dreaming and walking, he feels the weight of the coiled snake in his arms as the perfect form of her head, as though he carries her sleeping face, contents of a basket, carefully, not to wake her. Know what it's like to kill someone, kill them with your hands? I killed her and I'd kill her again. Carmody had laughed, squeezing the sponge over the bucket in the bathroom; those days they cleaned latrines in D block, he'd talk on and on and Parson mostly kept still. The sponge moving over the gray tile was a dull yellow, and the medicinal smell of the bright green disinfectant was on Carmody's hands and chest while he talked; Carmody knew about Proudytown, knew Parson had done time there too. He jeered and teased when he heard about the "resident rooms," the "counselors," the "library" whose dull windows were barred with ornate iron. Yeah, an when I was there in the forties they called it a home. Prison for kids, some fuckin home. And kids do get fucked, right? Thing I could never figure out, how do they decide which ones? Carmody, leaning closer to wink, bat his eyes, blink like Parson's own shuttered memory, making blocks of pictures that floated in slants of moted sunlight. Baby flesh, so tasty. So many of those guys, they can't resist. Who can blame them, eh? The urinals were a long-necked row of cracked porcelain forms, laced with shadow, supplicant, open-mouthed. Carmody swore, wielding his long-handled brush in and out the bucket of bitter potion, cleaning up piss, all my life I been cleaning up piss. Shoving the bucket along on its squeaking wheels: I get outa here, I'm gonna piss on the world. The wheels squeaked and Carmody said about his mother, how she smelled like piss, drunk in bed and he hated her, he was a little kid in diapers, then a big kid who couldn't wake up and pissed his own bed, both of them smelling like piss, how that made him know he was really her kid, worthless, and from the time he was eleven or twelve he could knock her around, he could throw the bottles by her bed out the window or against the wall. A bottle could shatter and spray the couch, the rug, till the place smelled fermented, pissed and whiskied, her bed a sot's padded nest, which is what she was, a sot, a whore and then a sot, and when she was a drunk and not a whore he said he hated her worse. Men knocked her up and knocked her down and none of them could hit her hard enough. Finally I took over. Then he'd smack the toilets one after the other with his wooden brush, walking up and down till the long row rang out like a dull xylophone. Which ones. The tiled room seemed to spin along in a death orbit or free fall Carmody directed. Pictures tugged at Parson: limited frames, like glances through the slats of a broad Venetian blind. Parson ain't no name. What was your real name, Bobjimbill? Uh, Mike? You know, the name your mother handed over when she dropped you on the trail. Sure as hell dropped you, your head is so bent. Don't know, do you, don't even fucking know.

  It was like Parson had floated a long time in the shadow where Carmody lived. Parson was a curled form that slept and grew, hurtling through a dark space in which Carmody hit his mother till she was nearly dead, and Carmody, sent to Proudytown, got fucked, fist-fucked, fucked with brooms, still his mother's child. Carmody, a sixteen-year-old private, lied to get to Korea, posed with a gun he didn't have to steal. Then Carmody in a cage, his first real cell, the cold mountains east of Manchuria, where certain phrases got him rice and bread crusts. These were pictures, memory transplant; they were Carmody's. Other pictures, more fragmented, far less detailed. Whose were they? Flashes that were only the angles of objects. Big objects rushing and falling, sharp or cold, muffled in a world of giants. Like Parson had lived in that world, asleep and curled up tight, and the orphanage in Huntington was what he saw when he finally opened his eyes. Orphan kid. Just as well. Why know? Wish I was like you, big strong zombie blank. But it wasn't blank, it was the wall beside Parson's bed, printed with a cracked thirties wallpaper of fish with legs and top hats, fish with parasols. The paper was blotched, water-spotted, and the faded patches were the pools into which the fish disappeared. Four years old, Parson would get out of his bed in the dark and walk straight along the back wall, one forefinger tracing the paper to where it disappeared altogether in the far corner. The matron would find him there, standing in the corner where the fish had vanished, and lead him back to bed. There was something warm beyond the wall, a place the fish went, and the enveloping sagged mattress of his own bed was a sliver of that place in his dreams. You got a few tricks though, zombie, do the heat trick. No kidding, I'll wait, just do it. Carmody standing in the prison bathroom and Parson could close his eyes, see the pattern of that paper with the fish, and the objects and fragments of the other echoes all fell into the pools of white fade he remembered on the orphanage walls. He'd stand an arm's length away and extend his hand, hold still. He could feel Carmody as a murky, cold smoke, see inside that face, peering out, a devil-child, evil and wet, whimpering, with eyes that bled. Parson would have to pull back into the fire of the spirit. He'd feel the heat in his chest first, like a weight he balanced by focusing, until the liquid heart of it overflowed and fused down his spine in a circular ripple. The same heat coursed down his arm, into his hand, and Carmody's devil-child drew back, opened its black mouth and turned away. The points of its teeth glittered in a bright sweep. Then there was darkness, purely, the starry drift of the Devil's light fading, lonely and beautiful. The surge of heat seemed to burst in Parson, easing, an emergence through pressure and weight. Like a fuckin furnace out of your hand. You crazy loon. Parson would open his eyes to see Carmody staring, very near, his face screwed up in a tearful grimace. Sobbing, the sobs wrenched out of him. Cursing, always cursing, fallen down in what the Devil kept at bay. Sonofabitch. Too bad you can't get some sparks going, get yourself on TV. There were no sparks. But there were colors Carmody couldn't see, colors darting off around the dark shell encasing his empty form. The Devil, beaten back, beaten in, small and disappeared, left a black, sucking space in the shape of Carmody, in the sound and smell of Carmody. The space yawned, emitting a neutral hum. Carmody's voice talked through it. I ever tell anyone about your crazy shit they don't believe me you fuckin asshole you don't prove nothin with all your bible crap you fuckin maniac. Carmody weeping, shaken with effort and rage. Spirit my ass you're just a fuckin nut like everyone else. Carmody's long fingers tinged brown with nicotine. Tales of what he'd do to get cigarettes in the joint, like his body was nothing, he was nothing but the need to breathe, smoke, keep walking, drink whatever rotgut he could find. Then how do you do these fuckin tricks you sorry loon. Carmody, eating the prison slop, sucking up to whoever for cigarettes and whiskey, getting his workload reduced, scrambling like a rabbit jerked through holes. Parson knew him, saw him: Carmody was a pit the Devil had filled, a pit to drown whatever touched him. When he pushed at Parson, jabbed at him, sharp elbows, knees, his long thin frame pushed close, mouthing offers and taunts, Parson had to flatten him, walk over him. And still Carmody got what he wanted, the touch and the push, the damage piling up. His tears would burn and sting on Parson's hands. Carmody
cried like something squeezed.

  Not like her.

  Keep walking.

  In the river weeds, cicada vibrato. The water a long form holding still. Here, cut through woods. Safer now, walking in the shelter of the trees. At the work site near the bridge, men are digging. How the dirt flies up. Warm loamy smell of something old, folded in for eons. Foreman standing over the mounded earth, the rest of them gathered in a knot for cigarettes. Leaning on their shovels and pickaxes. Not like prison, where the men empty out and time all around them swells up, ripens fit to burst. Time here is different, a level plain. See things coming from a long way off. The men on the camp crew brag like kids, laugh with their eyes closed. Full of plans.

  The snake moves in the bowl of his arms. Careful not to spill it.

  Sorry fuckin loon ain't you full of yourself.

  She's full. Densely near him. Like he keeps walking in the shaded heat, moving through a pulse of aura she has lent in her touch. Holding on to him, her eyes swimming up. Some cousin to the one he watched in Carolina those nights, swimming the darkened main corridor of the cellblock. That one a figment, a wisp he couldn't feel; sometimes she was only light, dark neon turning like an eel. But Lenny grabs on to him. He walks and feels her hands. Her eyes fill, washed clean in her open, knowing face. Her tears must taste of salt but his face against her comes away glowing. She smells of milk, sweet and strong, but she is not so pure. She carries some damage around, holds it out from herself. Damage as dead as the moon. Parson tastes her now and walks; just here the earth is dense with golden needles, second-growth pine and balsam grown close together, so he moves between slender forms. Air smells of pine, no sound but his footsteps. She lies on the grass, back near the shack: he feels her lie there still. Old weight of the snake in his arms. Moving away from her body, the ground her body graces. He sees his own work boots, step after quiet step, but he feels himself floating, following the course of his body. The boots muddy, scarred, same boots from a world ago, boots issued him in Carolina. They called it work detail, short-timers and trusted convicts saving state money. Cutting brush. How the scythes sounded along the roads, men fanned out, swinging long knives from their shoulders. Like a line of clocks. Time cut up in airy whistles. The tall grass flying, the wet, cut smell.

  Camp smells like that, only sweeter and bigger. So many children, and Carmody's big wife cooking food whose odor wafts even to the far ends of the trails. Here in the woods, leafy bower, Parson can still smell the fried lunch meat, smoking American cheese, toasted bread. The quad so open he stays in the shade, and the boy, Frank, angles toward him, calling out.

  "Hey there," Frank says, "you guys on a break?" He walks closer, nearly as tall as Parson, a stringy kid still filling out.

  "Yeah," Parson says, "lunch break." He lets the snake wind out, drop its length down.

  Frank whistles in admiration. "What you got there?"

  Parson doesn't answer yet. Just at the rise of the trail, he sees the little girls, their shapes moving toward him like shadows. Carmody's kid follows them, drifting behind and between them like he's hiding till the last second. Like he knows there are black streaks in the air around his head, like he's ashamed to breathe out what Carmody has poisoned.

  "What you got there?" Frank says again.

  And the little girls draw near.

  ALMA: INTO THE TREES

  "Alma, come with me to get mail." Delia moved the benches back in place. "Sweeping is the worst job in the jar. You have to wait till nearly everyone else is done, and then pick up all the food people have walked on."

  "You go ahead. I never get much mail anyway." Alma dragged the wide push broom back to the kitchen. She shoved open Mrs. Carmody's swinging door and propped the broom in its place. The cooks were loading scraped plates into the big dishwashers and one of the machines was already running, whistling its shussing, watery noise.

  "That's not true," Delia called after her. "Anyway, there's no line. Look."

  Alma walked back over to look out the big front window onto the porch. Everyone was allowed to check mail drop after lunch. Mail drop was really just a series of alphabetical plyboard slots mounted on an old door. The door itself was attached to the stone wall of the dining hall porch with metal hooks; across the top, someone had scrawled "Instant Post Office," but Mrs. T. had painted that over with the neatly lettered legend "Shelter Missives." Alma wasn't sure what "missives" meant, and if she didn't know, the other Juniors and Primaries wouldn't either. Possibly it was some play on "Miss," some British way of saying the messages were for girls. The mail slots were arranged by cabin or campsite, then alphabetized by last name, except for Mrs. Thompson-Warner's and Frank's. Alma supposed they had their own slots because they had no campsite. It was funny, Frank and the directress, side by side as labeled slots. Mrs. T.'s read "Mrs. C. W. Thompson-Warner" in little typewritten letters, and Frank's was just scrawled on in pencil, with his first name. Frank's handwriting, Alma assumed. Sometimes she saw the image of his penciled name when she closed her eyes, as though the letters weren't really a name at all but a drawing or a gray and white painting that shimmered in and out of focus. The image was so restful that she'd begun to use it to fall asleep. If she was awake and walking around, the image wasn't strong enough to counter her other thoughts, but in the dark, the careless letters enlarged and relaxed and crowded out the other pictures. But now it was daylight, just after burnished noon, and the nearly empty dining hall still seemed crowded with the fading vibrations of girls' jostling, high-pitched voices.

  "Hey," Delia addressed her impatiently, "you're finished, aren't you? Let's check the mail before we run out of time."

  "Go ahead, am I stopping you?" Alma pretended to be peevish, but she smiled. "Remember the note we wrote Frank, and how we were too chicken to put it in his box?"

  "Don't remind me." Delia rolled her eyes, as though the memory were long ago and utterly sophomoric. In fact, so many girls had written Frank notes that Mrs. Thompson-Warner had outlawed notes and announced that only stamped mail would be put into the mail slots for pickup. She said the girls were really much too busy to find time to write notes to each other, or to anyone else, and if they found a moment they might write to their parents, many of whom had scrimped and sacrificed to send their fortunate daughters to Camp Shelter.

  "Fortunate daughters," Alma stage-whispered now. "Find a moment."

  "Come on," Delia whispered back, "no one's around now to see if you got anything. And anyway, so what?"

  Alma shrugged. Usually she refused to join the lines of girls formed across the broad porch every day; she often received no letters, and she allowed herself to check only if she happened to get out of lunch chores late. Then there was no waiting and no one but Delia to know. Who would write her? Certainly not Wes. Alma had never seen him write on anything but his business papers. She hoped for another box of chocolates and gum from Audrey, but didn't look forward to her letters. They weren't normal letters like Delia got from Aunt Bird or Mina. Audrey sometimes sent blank pages with pieces of grass or pressed flowers folded in them, or a poem she'd copied from somewhere. Her last "missive" had been some pages torn out of National Geographic, an article about Italy with pictures of mountains and a walled town. No message at all, no scrawled comment in the margins. Alma had stared at the images, intrigued, until she remembered one of Audrey's comments from last winter. He speaks Italian beautifully, Alma. He says it's a language for shouting or whispering. He wants to go back there so badly, but Mina says it's an insane way to spend money and too far to travel with the kids. Can you imagine? How we'd love it, you and I. Siena. It was the town where Nickel Campbell had lived in a villa before he was married, before he knew Mina. Where had Audrey gotten those pages? She must have gone to the library and found them. Is that how she spent her time, with no one home and the weather so hot? Quietly ripping pages out of library magazines? She'd included a stamped, addressed envelope so Alma could send the pages back, and Alma had, immediately, folding the
m up and sealing them in the minute she realized why her mother had sent them.

  Now she let Delia link arms with her and propel them through the heavy screen door onto the broad porch of the hall. Even in shade afforded by the deep eaves, the heat of the day enveloped them. Alma sighed, peering across the quad while Delia checked through the C box. The grass seemed a yellower green by noon, dried out, and the dirt track bordering the woods appeared to waver. She let her gaze rein in and quickly peruse the wall of mail slots: there was Frank's name, the familiar picture of his hasty scrawl, and in the slot below was a single pink onionskin envelope. Lenny's stationery. Like Alma's, except Alma's was blue. Without even considering, Alma angled her body slightly and leaned against the mail slots. Watching Delia, she deftly slipped the thin envelope into her back pocket.

  "I checked yours for you. See? You got two things." Delia looked up, distracted and triumphant, holding out the envelopes. "One of them is just from Aunt Bird. I can't even read her boring letters. But who sent you this?"

  "I like Bird's letters. At least she tells us how Johnny is." Alma took the white legal-size envelope Bird always used for her notes about the weather and the shop. The other letter was stamped and addressed too, but again, Alma recognized Lenny's stationery, and her heart lurched gently. Lenny had sent her a note, and Frank too.

  Delia held out the pale pink envelope. "Who's this from?"

  "It's from Lenny."

  "Lenny? Lenny wrote to you?"

  "With a stamp and all, so they wouldn't confiscate it." Alma took the envelope and slipped her finger into the fold. It was barely glued down.

  Delia stepped back. "What does she say? If it's secret, don't tell me."