Lamb

by Bonnie Nadzam

  It was hot. Everything bleached white and yellow in the punishing heat. When Lamb turned and saw the girl working her legs and sweating and squinting into the sun—Christ, what can a man say? It was like his bones had been wired tight all his life, and seeing her that way, everything suddenly went slack. His mind unwinding like a spool of loose thread. What a man she rendered him, simply by being a girl who could be picked up and moved: what he wanted to be, what he ought to be, what was most unintelligible and unplanned and true in him when he carried her out of her fettered world to this. How powerful she was as long as she asserted no will of her own.

  “You okay back there?” he called into the open blue before him.

  “Yep.”

  “Strong girl.”

  “It’s from swimming,” she called up.

  He stopped. “Jessie really took you swimming?”

  She put her hand to her forehead. “Every morning at five in the goddamned morning. He makes me do a mile in his lane, then he does another one.”

  He stared at her. “Did he take you swimming on the mornings I picked you up and took you for pancakes?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well.” He nodded. “Good for Jessie.”

  “Yeah,” she snorted. “But not so good for me.”

  He turned around and increased his pace. “I am not going to have any sympathy then,” he said, “knowing you can swim a mile.”

  When they came into the trees they were surrounded by white legs of aspen, yellow leaves flashing like golden coins above them. Sweet clover and Queen Anne’s lace, cow parsnip and yarrow and stemless white flowers in pretty green-and-white whorls at their feet. Clouds came up above the canopies of trees and the wind swept them across a sky so simultaneously bright and dark it stopped David Lamb’s heart and he thought, this is it, this is the limit of all of it, right here: me and this child and all the money and progress that’s brought us here. This is the limit. And he smelled the sunblock and his own sweat and knew that the end of the story had already begun.

  They sat cross-legged on the earth. Lamb took off his father’s ball cap—because I’m sitting down to a meal, he said—and opened his pack and removed the potted ham and butter sandwiches and the girl took the apple juice out of her pack.

  “Oops,” he said. “We forgot cups. You don’t mind sharing?”

  “Nah.”

  “What if I have cooties?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “What, you don’t care?”

  “I don’t believe in cooties.”

  “That’s dangerous thinking if I’ve ever heard it.”

  “Well, I’m thirsty.”

  A big wind moved through the bunched tops of spruce and fir, and the long white aspen swayed like wooden pins. The girl’s hair blew across her bluish face.

  “You look like a dead girl.”

  “I do?”

  “Your face is all white. It’s a little unsettling. Did you eat that flower?”

  “No.”

  “You look very, very strange. Your skin is iridescent.”

  “I wish I could see.”

  “Here. I have an idea.” Lamb set his half-eaten sandwich on the top of his pack and ran a fingerful of dark, greenish-black dirt in three stripes across each of her cheekbones.

  “Was that a cow patty?”

  “Probably at some point.”

  “Sick, Gary.”

  “But it looks beautiful, Em. You look beautiful. I wish you could see.”

  “How does it look?”

  “Like you’re some wild stray piece of earth that took the form of a girl.” He looked at her. “I’m going to tell you something very serious, but you have to promise not to take it the wrong way.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you listening with all your ears?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just this, Tommie: you will never look so beautiful again in this lifetime.” He opened the apple juice and handed it to her. “Drink that.” He picked up his sandwich. “I don’t want you getting dehydrated. You’re a great little hiker. I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks.” She lifted the bottle to her mouth.

  “If you were in Lombard today, what would you be doing?”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked up into the tree branches. “Probably be going home from school.”

  “All alone?”

  “I’d check my computer. Or watch TV.”

  “When you get back home, will you make yourself potted ham and butter sandwiches and think of me?”

  “Sure.” She leaned back on one hand and took a bite. “If you can get this stuff.”

  “You can find it at the 7-Eleven.”

  “I’m not supposed to go in those.”

  “The 7-Eleven?”

  “Mom says weird people hang out there.”

  “That’s a good mom.”

  “I guess.”

  “So I’ll send you boxes of potted ham. No return address. It will be very mysterious. And when you open a can you can pretend it’s a love letter.”

  “Gary!”

  “Oh, ignore me. You should ignore everything I say.”

  She made like bearing her fangs when she noticed him staring at her. They finished their sandwiches and juice, and Lamb took a chocolate bar out of his pack and broke it in half.

  “Know what we need to really make this perfect?”

  She took half the chocolate.

  “Binoculars.” He nodded up toward the north end of the plain. “I bet we could see all kinds of mule deer and pronghorn.”

  “Those dots?”

  “If we go back into town, we’ll get you a pair. They’re expensive.”

  “Like how much?”

  “Hundreds. Tell you what. We get a pair, they’re yours to keep.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re going to need a moving truck to get all your new stuff back to Illinois.”

  She laughed.

  “Where are you going to hide all of your presents when you get home?”

  “My closet.”

  “You’ve already figured it out.”

  “Yep.”

  “Doesn’t anybody go in your closet?”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even your mom on Saturday mornings when she’s gathering the laundry.”

  “I do my own laundry.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yep.”

  “No, really?”

  “For serious.”

  “Do you separate the whites and the colors?”

  “Whites get hot, colors get cold.”

  “You’re a resourceful girl, you know that?”

  When they finished and packed up their things, he stood. “I’m going to see a man about a horse. You stay put.” The girl waited and Lamb watched her from a distance, zipping up. When she looked up, he held up his thumbs and index fingers in a rectangle as if he were holing her in the frame of a photograph. He could see the little white flash of her smile, and when he reached her, he went into his pack and handed her a little tuft of toilet tissue. “Your turn. That man wants to know what you think of a red pony.”

  “Huh?”

  “After you wipe, put this under a rock or use a stick to put some dirt over it.”

  “Gary!”

  “Don’t get squeamish on me. This is just our bodies, right? Don’t you know how a male body works?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. And I know how a female body works. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. I’m glad we got that out of the way. Now go on and take care of business.”

  They hiked in through the valley side by side, two dark figures tracing the grassy inside slope of a pale green parabola, their shadows lengthening before them, the girl in a wreck of sweat and dirt and dust and sunblock and cow shit.

  They reached the shop again in late afternoon, the girl carrying the empty canteens, one over each shoulder, canvas stra
ps marking her chest. Lamb was bare chested, his blue work shirt tied into a turban over the girl’s head. He hadn’t known about skin like hers. Even sunblock couldn’t help. He should have spread cow shit all over her face.

  “We’ll help you rinse off with cool water and soap you off before it hurts to the touch.”

  “It doesn’t feel bad.”

  “It will.” He ran his hands under the hose faucet and back through his hair. “If we were out working we’d rinse our hats and shirts in the river and put them back on.”

  “Can I get a root beer?”

  “Good idea. Get me one of those other beers will you?”

  “Do I get a sip?”

  “One sip. Take it right off the top and bring me the rest. I’ll get the soap.”

  Lamb went into the cabin for towels and bath soap and on his way out saw a flash of Alison Foster’s white hair in the doorway of the shop. In two steps Lamb was through the door, filthy, old ratty towels rolled up beneath his arm, and just in time to see Tommie—her face a terrific ruin—turning around from the workbench and lowering the open beer from her lips, her little mouth pursed in a conspiratorial grin pointed mistakenly at Foster, whose presence she’d taken for Lamb’s.

  Lamb stepped past the old man, took the beer from her hand, and slapped her full across the face. His hand stung and for a moment he was afraid she was going over. It was too much. He’d never hit anyone so small. She looked up at no one, stunned. She raised her hand to her face. She made no sound. He loved her for it.

  “Go inside.”

  “I hate you.” A shaking whisper.

  “No you don’t.”

  She looked from Lamb to the old man and back again and ran out. Lamb stood still, blood beating hard in the sides of his neck and inside his thighs and rushing hot through his face and the palms of his hands. It was the sun working in him. He let his eyes shut halfway and took a deep, steadying breath. She’d go off in the grass behind the shop, or beyond the outbuildings or to the river. She’d be back. There was nowhere for her to go. He set the full beer on the workbench. The breeze from the open window was cool and the blue sky was beginning to darken. Shadows were already capturing the trees at the river. Box elder leaves paler than they’d been two days ago.

  Lamb exhaled. “I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

  “Well.” Foster widened his small eyes and looked at the floor. For half a minute neither man spoke.

  “She’s never done that before.”

  “I guess a little taste of beer never hurt anybody.”

  Lamb said nothing.

  “You went for a walk,” Foster said. It was not a question.

  “We had a little snack out there behind some old homestead.”

  “Thought I saw you going north.” Lamb envisioned the old man on his rooftop with binoculars. “You shouldn’t,” Foster said.

  “We didn’t. Well, initially we did. But we crossed back and went out that way.” He looked off beyond the old man as if he were pointing through the wall. “How far does that go?”

  “Ninety mile.”

  “All BLM?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Not much out there.”

  “Beef cows.”

  “We saw signs of that.”

  “You don’t want to go north,” Foster said again.

  “Some unfriendly landowners that way, what?”

  The old man watched Lamb. “Ed Granger. Had a metal plate put in his head in eighty-one.”

  “That right?”

  “Never been right since.”

  “Where’s that property start?”

  “And he doesn’t like children.”

  “I see.”

  “Maybe you ought to go see about her.”

  Lamb looked up. “Who? Em?”

  Foster returned the gaze.

  “She’s okay.” Lamb gestured with his head toward the cabin, wondering if Foster had seen her outside, through the window behind him. “She’s got a lot to deal with right now. Her mom gone and all.”

  Foster looked at him with eyes Lamb couldn’t read.

  “Her own mother was the drunk in that wreck.”

  “Shame.”

  “I know it.”

  “But this is no place for a girl.” The old man surveyed the steel beams crossed above them. “Helped my brother-in-law Calhoun put this place up in seventy-four.”

  “I remember you saying.”

  “He had a godchild running around here back and forth all over the goddamned place. Just about lost her arm on a square of sheet metal.” He made a slicing motion across the belly of his forearm. “She was just a little thing.” The old man shook his head. “Kind of picture you don’t forget.”

  “No, I’m sure.”

  “Seventy-eight miles to a hospital. As you would know.”

  Lamb looked out the window behind him toward the river and tree line, as if he might find the correct response out there. “I didn’t think things through too well, I guess. I’m not used to having a child around.” He turned back to Foster. “But if that’s the closest hospital, that’s something I should have taken into consideration.”

  “You ought to take her home. Your home. Somebody’s home.”

  Lamb said nothing.

  “Pardon me if I’m speaking out of line.”

  “No,” Lamb said, “you’re right. I guess we’ll head back in a couple days. I was just … we’re expecting company. A friend.”

  The old man held his chin up. He raised a palsied, spotted hand. “I’ll leave you to your troubles.” He made for the door.

  “Was there something you wanted, Foster?”

  “Just see how you’re getting on. Let you know snow’s on its way.”

  “We’ll be all right. You’re welcome anytime.”

  “Pretty night coming on.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  When the old man left, Lamb leaned against the workbench, his back to the window, and drained the beer as the shop darkened. He waited. He moved the lawn chair from beside the woodstove to the far corner of the shop and sat on the floor, his legs stretched out before him. He sat there an hour, then went out through the bunk room door and pissed in the weeds. It was dark but he could still see the green of the grass. He waited. Listened. He had no sense of where she was, so he walked back into the shop and left the door open behind him—that was as far as he’d go. She must have been waiting for it, because soon after he heard the main door swing open. She caught it to keep it from slamming, but he knew she was coming. When she stepped into the doorway the night was lit up blue-black behind her. She stood still looking in. He could tell she’d washed her face.

  “You were supposed to be the lookout,” he said from the floor across the room.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You have to pay attention to everything now. Do you see? Everything depends upon it. Our friendship depends upon it. You have to be awake.”

  She was crying. She’d been crying for some time. She came to him.

  “Tell me what it is,” he said.

  She nodded and made little choking noises back in her throat. It was big crying. She ran her arm beneath her nose and Lamb reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. “Here,” he said, but she let it hang loosely in her fingers and fall from her hand. He picked it up and she took it, wiped her nose. “What’s the worst of it? That you feel bad like you ran away?” She shook her head. “That I slapped you?” She shrugged. “That you feel stupid. You feel like I tricked you into liking me then I turned around made you look bad in front of Mr. Foster.” She nodded. “Well. That makes sense. And I’m not surprised. But I want to say something about that, okay? When you calm down. Will you sit down here beside me? I’m not going to touch you. Right here. Good. Okay.” She sat on her feet a few inches beside him. “Now take a deep breath. That’s not a deep breath. Come on. I’ll do it with you. Ten of them, okay? Inhale,” he said. “All the way, nice and slow. Let it out. Nice and slow. Again. Big deep brea
th. Okay. Nine. Big breath. Again.” She breathed and listened to him breathe and counted backward to zero. “Better? Do you feel better?”

  She shrugged.

  “You’re shrugging at me.”

  She shrugged again.

  “You must be very upset.”

  She stared at the floor.

  “Can you listen to me even though you’re upset? Good. Now. Come over here. I can touch you? It’s okay if I touch you? How’s your skin? All burnt to hell, huh?” She smiled, and he put his arm around her and drew her in. “Come here, Tom. That’s all. Good.” He combed back her greasy hair with his fingers until his hand was behind her head. “Now,” he said, “I know that you’re upset. But what we’ve just done, my dear, is protect our friendship exactly the way we’ve been saying we’d have to. Right?” The girl did not move. He spoke very low, very gentle. “Imagine if I had not reacted like an angry uncle. What do you think Mr. Foster would have done? What do you think he would have made of a man letting his niece drink beer?”

  Shrug.

  “It’s child abuse, Tom.”

  “It is?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “He might call the police then,” she said, her voice hoarse from crying.

  “Maybe. Although—and I’m not sure if this would be much better—he might just start stopping by a lot, right? Checking in. Ruining the week.”

  “Oh.”

  “But at worst, Tom, eventually he probably would have called somebody. Then I would have gone to jail, the police would have found out who you are and where you belong, and how do you think they would react to that back in Lombard?”

  “Not good.”

  “That’s correct. Not good.” They looked each other in the eye. “And what do you think Mr. Foster is actually thinking now?”

  She stared down at the concrete floor.

  “Out here you step out of line your dad’ll whip off his belt and bend you over and give you hell and high water.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I’ll tell you what’s happening right now down the road in that little white-painted house. Mr. Foster is mixing a basin of warm soapy water to wash his sick wife’s face with, and he’s thinking only about her, and about the temperature of the water, whether it’s too hot or too cold, and of her wrinkled face, and of whether she knows it’s him washing her. Maybe he’s crying over her face. Maybe he’s over crying about it. But I’ll tell you one thing he isn’t thinking about: you and me. Because on his walk back through the evening he would have already decided that in terms of us, everything is as right as rain. Wouldn’t he?”