Finally, having put it off, I set my eyes on my parents’ house.
No one had turned on the lights, which was nothing special. My father, no doubt, was drinking beers with Quiet in the shed. Most nights my mother stitched her quilts at the table by the stove until it was so dark she nearly stabbed herself with the needle. And then, as if surprised, as if shocked by another day ending—yet another day handed over—she usually lit a lantern or started the generator out back, which turned on the lamp in the kitchen. She did this as if affronted. “Why didn’t you tell me it was so dark?” she’d ask if I were there, if I were huddled over some last bit of homework. I don’t know why it pleased me so much to let night sneak up like that. I don’t know what it had to do with me at all—but it was true, I almost always did know it was dark, and so it felt like luring her into the same trap over and over.
Got you, I thought.
Though the lake was very narrow here, it was two miles around by foot—an hour’s walk through the woods—to my parents’ cabin. There it stood: half-shingled, sided with woodpiles, dark behind the pines. A muddy black path wound from outhouse to toolshed to cabin door. It was sixteen-by-twenty feet inside, including my parents’ room and the loft, including the living space with its iron stove and scrap-wood table. I’d measured. In the darkening evening, I could just make out a thread of smoke pulling up from the pipe chimney. I could just barely see the shadows of dogs swimming through the shadows of pines.
Behind me, I could hear voices clearly. Forks clawing plates, dinner getting cold.
I punched some random buttons and held the phone to my ear. I imagined Patra watching from behind, so I took a big breath.
“No, Mom! I’m fine. I’ll be home in a couple hours. No, they’re nice! Patra and Paul. They’d like me to stay after dinner. They’d like me to play Go Fish. They’d like me to read the kid a story and watch The Wizard of Oz on a DVD. They’d like me to stay and eat popcorn. No, I don’t know what they’re doing up here. She’s an astronomer or something, or her husband is. No, that’s not mysterious, it’s very scientific, it’s the definition of science. It’s stars. No they’re not going to kidnap me, they’re a mom and her son, not a cult, not a hippie commune or anything weird. Oh, they’re pretty innocent, actually. They need guidance and help. They need someone to teach them about the woods.”
4
WHICH I DID. In April, I started taking Paul for walks in the woods while his mother revised a manuscript of her husband’s research. The printed pages lay in batches around the cabin, on the countertop and under chairs. There were also stacks of books and pamphlets. I’d peeked at the titles. Predictions and Promises: Extraterrestrial Bodies. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The Necessities of Space.
“Just keep clear of the house for a few hours” were Patra’s instructions. I was given snacks in Baggies, pretzels wound into small brown bows. I was given water bottles in a blue backpack, books about trains, Handi Wipes, coloring books and crayons, suntan lotion. These went on my back. Paul went in my hand. His little fingers were damp and wiggling. But he was trusting, never once seeming to feel the shock of my skin touching his.
He wasn’t like animals. I didn’t have to win him over.
Ten bucks a day, Patra offered, so I quit my part-time job at the diner, where I’d had to wear a paper apron pinned like doll clothes to the front of my sweater. I’d always felt an ache of reluctance, anyhow, when diners left me their mugs and plates, their half-eaten sandwiches. They left behind wet dimes caked in tiny crumbs. Patra paid in crisp ten-dollar bills.
After school I took Paul to a place on the lake where the granite was striped in great glistening tracks of quartz. A few slabs of ice still shingled the shore. Superior gulls swooped over us. We settled on the reindeer moss and ate our pretzels in silence. Usually, Paul went through his bag in seconds and then, turning the bag inside out, licked salt from the plastic. Sometimes I smoked a furtive cigarette and tossed it quick in the open water. After ten minutes or so, our butts were wet, so I ditched the backpack behind a tree, and we set off.
Away from the sun-warmed rocks, the afternoons got pretty cold by five o’clock. But it was April. Though the buds were still hard as arrow tips on the trees, we could smell the syrupy resins from the pines. We could smell the rot of leaves beneath clumps of snow in the ravines. I no longer held the boy’s hand. This time of year, the woods were very empty and soft, very accommodating to little boys who wanted to jump off rocks and logs. I would go on ahead a few paces, scouting out a path through the mud and brambles. Paul usually brought along the leather glove—he only ever had the one—and he filled it now with stones, now with pine needles. Now with shiny black pellets.
“Oh, gross,” I said, looking back.