The Shelter Cycle (21 page)

In the darkness, he leaned against the fence, its splintery wood against his lips, only his eyes peeking over the top, across the back yard, at the darkened house. It was after ten, still before midnight. A foot of snow capped the picnic table.

He'd left his gloves behind in the pack; with his hands in his pockets, it was difficult to balance on the bucket he'd found. The ground beneath the bucket was all ice, and icicles hung in the sagebrush on the hillside that stretched up behind him, that he had descended not long before.

Wells, that was the husband's name, and when a light suddenly shone in a window it was Wells standing there, just staring for a moment, rubbing at one eye. He was in the kitchen—Colville remembered the layout of the house, from the one time he'd been inside it; he'd drawn a diagram of it in his notebook. Close, maybe forty feet away, but with the light on, Wells could only see his own reflection. Now he looked down and turned on a faucet, began to wash dishes.

Colville's legs ached from balancing. He waited and watched, the rough fence against his face. This day had started so long ago—the same day that he'd found the girl, that he'd walked out of the mountains and found that he was in Oregon. He'd caught the bus in Baker City and a few hours later got off in Boise. And now here he was, watching Wells, who was squinting through the other window, over the driveway, out the side of the house. Wells switched off the kitchen light, so he could see out, and then Colville could follow his gaze, upward, two houses over, to the lost girl's house, where an upstairs window was alight in an empty room.

Were cats fighting, somewhere? There was a crying. A bird? Colville smelled wood smoke on the cold air. Headlights came down the street, visible in the gaps between the houses, then tailed away. Pulling a hand from his pocket, he steadied himself, listened. He heard only distant traffic.

Wells switched the kitchen light back on and another window went alight at the same moment. The bathroom, the narrow window of thick, textured glass: Colville could see only the silhouette, but he knew the color of Francine's hair, moving back and forth, her body growing smaller as she turned away. At the sight of her he inhaled the sharp, icy air; he tried to exhale slowly, in pieces, letting just a little steam escape at a time. The bathroom window went dark.

Colville glanced at the window of the other house. A yellow rectangle, high in the air, light spilling out across the roof of a garage.

Now, in the kitchen window, Francine appeared, wearing a blue robe, carrying something in her arms. Suddenly Colville felt as if a large, warm hand pressed flat across his chest, a deep vibration over his heart; all of his fingertips and toes felt grasped at once, pulled straight out and let go. His vision clouded white, returned just as the baby's red face, tiny, showed for a moment between the folds of Francine's robe. He could hear the squalling, the gasps between the wails.

Wells turned from the sink, held out his arms, but Francine smiled and shook her head, swayed her body side to side. She held the baby close as it quieted, as it turned its face away from where Colville could see. Climbing down, he picked up the bucket and carried it along the fence line, put it back where he'd found it. It was better to move while Francine and Wells were in a lighted room, where it would be more difficult to see his dark shape scurrying against the white slope.

He climbed, the cold growing sharper, tighter around him. When he reached the first line of brush, he bent down behind it and looked back. The kitchen light still shone, though he could see no shapes, no shadows inside it. The light in the other house was out, however, that whole house dark, the white snow a moat around it, glowing against the night. Looking down from this height, Colville expected to see the dark circle of the trampoline.

He thought of the girl, the lost girl's sister. He remembered her. He remembered that the time he spoke to her, they had been right at the same place where he stood now. This hollow in the thick brush, the small overhang where he'd left his books, his tape recorder, the cassette tapes of the Messenger's decrees. Earlier—an hour ago?—he'd returned to this place, stashed his frame pack before descending to Francine's house; now he pulled the pack from under the overhang, across the icy ground. Taking out his headlamp, he shone a beam back as far as he could. A few tangled strands of tape reflected back, plastic shards of broken cassettes. The tape recorder was no longer here. The books, probably burned into the ashes that blackened the rocks to one side.

Soon he approached a house under construction, perched on top of the ridge. Yellow plastic tape circled it, signs warned against trespassing. Shivering, he felt someone watching, eyes on him, then waited until the feeling passed. He walked around a bulldozer, its metal treads frozen in glassy puddles, and squinted at the house's new windows, all closed. A sheet of plywood had been attached across the front door, another
NO TRESPASSING
sign nailed to its center.

Circling the house, he peered down into the cement window wells. He lifted a metal grate, slid it away, dropped his pack to the gravel below, then lowered himself down. This window was locked. When he kicked it in, the glass shattered on the floor inside. He eased himself carefully over the sill, then reached back for his pack, fished out his headlamp. He held it in his hand, shielding it; he didn't want it to flash up the stairs, out a window, to be seen by someone below.

The metal ductwork shone overhead, but there was no furnace, not yet. The stairs that stretched up were rough, temporary, and the rest of the house, as he moved through it, seemed similarly unfinished. In some rooms, drywall had been hung, and in others the walls were only exposed studs, water pipes snaking here and there, the white zigzags of electrical wire strung from outlet to outlet. The air hung cold and still, thick with the smell of sawdust. The plywood subflooring echoed slightly beneath his boots. The kitchen cabinets had been installed, yet had no doors; the tile work in the bathroom was half finished. A toilet rested on its side in the hall.

There were signs of work, of workers—loose nails glinted along the floor, and a carpenter's belt was coiled in one corner, a 7-Eleven coffee cup on a windowsill—but it felt to Colville that it had been a while, that the money had run out or winter had slowed things.

He paused, held himself perfectly still, listened for one minute, two. Nothing.

The picture window in the front room overlooked the city, lights glowing in a sleepy grid. Closer, down the long slope, all the windows of Francine's house were now dark. Snow was beginning to fall. The girl's house, too, was all in shadow. Had he walked close by the lost girl and the man, when they'd been hiding up in these hills? He had not known, not seen or heard them. Perhaps he had missed them by days, or only hours, arrived in Boise moments too late. Finding her then hadn't been part of his path. If he had found the girl, back then, would he have returned to the shelter, or met Jeremy? Would he be freezing right now in this half-built house, uncertain what he was supposed to do next?

Dragging two sawhorses across the room, he stretched a blue tarp across them, making a kind of tent. He folded the edges around, weighed them down, then opened a roll of pink insulation, tore it into long pieces, and put it on top of the tarp. Next, he slid two more strips under the tarp, the pink side down, brown paper up. He kicked off his boots, unrolled his sleeping bag, climbed inside. The tarp sagged down, a slight pressure on him from above. He zipped the bag tightly against his chin, only his face exposed. He closed his eyes and slept.

 

•

 

A noise, somewhere in the house. Someone searching through the rooms, then a scratching overhead. Not exactly footsteps. Colville squinted out, along the floor. Were the sounds coming closer? He had to pick his moment, then crawl out, take his boots and pack, slip quietly down the stairs, into the window well. Had there been a ladder, in that space, a way to climb out? Or would he be trapped there, waiting to be discovered? The sound of breathing came closer.

And then, just as he had his arms free, as he began to reach for his boots, the black dog came skittering through a doorway at him, licking his face, whining. Colville scratched Kilo's neck, slapped the skin of his belly as he rolled over.

“Good morning,” Jeremy said, standing there. He wore the white quilted parka again, the blue moon boots on his feet. “Hot water,” he said, holding out the 7-Eleven cup that Colville had seen last night. “I remembered how you used to drink that some mornings. Here's a couple doughnuts, as well. Aren't you surprised to see me?”

“I don't know.”

“You were having such a good time, I know, making decisions on your own, all the responsibility. You were doing quite well.” Jeremy stepped to one side, reached out to touch the sawhorse structure, the tent of tarps and insulation. “But I realized that you very well might need Kilo here after all.”

The dog, sitting close against Jeremy's legs, looked up at the sound of his name. Colville felt the heat of the water through the cup in his hand.

“Did you bring the girl?” he said.

Jeremy looked out the window, at the pale sky. Colville just watched, sipped at the hot water, waited.

“I thought I made it clear that she can't come back here,” Jeremy said. “Not like that. I believe I suggested, at the very least, that she was following her own path. I asked you to learn from her, to pay attention.” He clapped his hands, opened them to reveal a roll of bills, held them out to Colville.

“I'll be all right.”

“Take it, just in case you need it. You can never be certain what will happen—”

“Yes,” Colville said, folding the money away. “I know that.” His boots were cold, stiff. He laced them tightly, rolled up his sleeping bag, then stuffed it into his orange pack. Crouching there, he tried to decide whether to take down his makeshift tent, whether or not it mattered.

“As you know,” Jeremy said, “it's up to you. I have every confidence, of course—no one else could do what you will, no one else would even know where to start. And you'll do it calmly, you know, as if it's already been done—”

As he spoke, Jeremy gave a kind of half-wave, stepping through a doorway, wandering into another room as if trying to understand the house's layout. His voice continued, difficult to hear, and then there was only silence. Colville waited. Kilo followed through the same doorway, then returned, sniffing the floor.

Colville stood after a moment, leaving the tent as it was. Slowly he walked around the dim, half-built house, from room to room. Jeremy was gone. It made no sense to call his name.

In the small room next to the kitchen, on the other side of the house, a glass door opened onto a wooden deck. Colville unlocked the door, slid it open, and stepped through; he waited for Kilo to follow before sliding it closed again. The houses on either side were built farther down the slope, their windows beyond where he could see. That meant no one looking out could see him as he stepped into the open.

In the new snow around the house, he could reconstruct the comings and goings of the night before. The tracks of two rabbits, then a coyote, not long after, slowing and then jogging away, up the ridge. Birds had settled, flown off again. Kilo's prints approached the front door—the plywood still nailed tight there—then stopped at once, as if he'd been lifted into the air. Jeremy had left no footprints that Colville could see.

“Come on, boy,” he said, and Kilo ran back, stayed close alongside him. The dog had to recognize where they were; so close to Francine's, to his old home. They did not walk in that direction, but over the other side of the ridge, down to a paved road that curved around, that would lead them back to the city. Colville's skin itched, probably from the pink insulation, maybe even from yesterday's haircut. The blacktop was icy, slushy; they stayed on the shoulder, though no traffic came past. This morning, he suddenly realized, Jeremy had looked the same as always—his blond hair smoothly swept back, his thick beard combed into a point. As if it had all grown back overnight.

C
OLVILLE TRIED TO IMAGINE
everything that could go wrong and how to make it right. He'd been preparing his whole life, especially these last few weeks, since the raccoon had found him in Spokane.

He'd spent most of the day planning and preparing, buying the things he'd need. He did his decrees and meditated in his motel room; he went over and over the passages he'd copied into his notebook:
Observe a person's or animal's routine, find the weak point in that routine, and then enter the weak point and move with it, thus becoming invisible to everyone. This dead space exists in both nature and the city. Even those people walking alone at night, fearful of attack or robbery, frightened and hypervigilant, still have countless dead spaces in which one can operate. Even those who stalk have this dead space.

Now energy radiated out, all around as he walked through the dark neighborhoods, returning to Francine's house. Kilo pranced down the icy sidewalk, running ahead and returning with his snout in the air. He seemed to recognize where they were.

Colville's frame pack was light, empty of almost all the things left back in the motel room. He swung the pack around, set it down in the vacant lot at the end of the block, in the dark shadows of the fence, then pulled off his black nylon poncho so he was wearing the white hooded sweatshirt he'd bought earlier; with the white sweatpants, he would be more difficult to see against the snow.

The sweatshirt and pants were silent as he crept along the fence behind the houses. Kilo stayed close; he didn't need a leash, he could sense by the way Colville was moving—arms out for balance, lifting his knees high and setting only the balls of his feet gently down—that this was no time to stray.

Colville reached to touch Kilo's neck, and the dog sat down, waiting, watching as Colville pulled himself upward, peeked over. Only one light was on, deep in the house, probably in the living room.