The Shelter Cycle (22 page)

It took a moment to find the loosened boards in the fence where Colville had taken Kilo, but when he did he worked them free from the ice and pried them out again. Just enough so that, on his hands and knees, twisting sideways with a nail snagging his sweatpants, his bare hip sliding, cold, he could pull himself through, into the back yard. He remained on his stomach, spread out on the white snow. No sounds, no voices, no lights turning on. Next he held the boards back and took Kilo by the scruff of the neck, helped him through. He held the black dog close, hugged him tight, whispered in his ear: “Thanks, boy. You're home again. Remember what to do.”

Kilo whined once as Colville dragged himself, then crawled away, past the picnic table, standing very slowly to open the gate that led to the driveway. Once there, he crept around to the other side of Francine's car, knelt down, and waited. A light on the garage, attached to a motion sensor, switched on. Brightness, black shadows suddenly everywhere. After a moment the light switched off again. Silence.

And then Kilo began barking. Tentatively at first, and then, as lights came on in the house, more loudly. Colville could hear him running in circles, tearing around the yard as he barked, his claws scratching the wood of the fence as he reared up on his hind legs, as he changed direction.

The door opened at the side of the house, twenty feet from Colville.

“Kilo?” Francine said. “What?”

Colville squinted through the window, across the inside of the car and out the windshield. It was impossible to see her clearly, only the shape, the blue of her robe and then a blur of red as Wells came out behind her.

“Is it really him?”

They rushed down the stairs, so close to Colville, then opened the gate to the back yard. Kilo was still barking, still running, unable to calm down. When the wooden gate swung shut, Colville could no longer see Francine and Wells. That meant that they could no longer see him. Now was his moment.

Moving quickly across the narrow space, up the few stairs, Colville opened the door, slipped into the kitchen. Staying low, out of sight in the windows, the house now all alight, he crawled past the table, past the sink full of dirty dishes, the refrigerator with a card that said “Congratulations on Your Baby Daughter!” attached by a magnet shaped like the letter
F.
He stood up when he was in the hallway, pausing once to listen—Kilo still barking, the voices still outside—and he opened the door slowly, squinted into the bathroom. No. Backing up, he opened the door he'd passed. The sound of wind rose up, startling him; it came from a small round machine on the floor, plugged into the wall beneath a growing green nightlight. His eyes slowly adjusted. He stepped over the cord, around a laundry basket, to the crib.

The baby's eyes were closed. She slept. Colville lifted one blanket and saw that she was swaddled in another, wrapped tightly. She wore a stocking cap, striped, with a tassel. Only her small face was exposed.

He hesitated. The air buzzed and shuffled; the sound of the wind was everywhere; it covered any sound he might make, would muffle the baby if she cried, but it also deafened him to what has happening outside. He'd have no warning if Francine and Wells began to return.

The baby pursed her lips, whimpered slightly as he lifted her—she was lighter than he expected—but she did not awaken. On the way out of the room, he took a handful of clothes from the laundry basket, another blanket from the shelf beneath the changing table.

A sound, the kitchen door opening. He stepped sideways from the hallway into the living room, past a baby swing and a stack of cardboard boxes. He breathed silently. He tried to hold himself invisible, to believe it as he heard Kilo clatter into the kitchen—claws on the linoleum, tail slapping the cabinets, the refrigerator.

“Settle him down,” Francine said. “Keep him quiet.”

“Here you are,” Wells was saying, the pitch of his voice rising. “We didn't get rid of your bowls. No, we didn't. We wouldn't do that, Kilo.”

As Colville stood there in the living room, holding the baby, Francine came down the hallway. Her lips were moving but she was not saying anything aloud; her hair was pulled loosely back, a strand hanging in front of her face. She looked tired and strong and she did not notice him, standing so close.

Once she was past, Colville glanced at the baby in his arms. Her eyes were open, gazing up at him as if she recognized and had been expecting him. He felt her breathing, her heartbeat, the vibrations so calm in their rhythm together. Still she made no sound.

He took two steps and carefully turned the knob of the front door. The hinges squeaked only slightly as he eased it open. The storm door, next, the laundry held in his armpit and the baby cradled as he carefully stepped off the porch. Across the icy walk they went. Up the street, under the bare branches of the trees.

His pack leaned against the fence where he'd left it, and he opened its flap with his free hand, pushed the laundry into a side pocket. The main compartment was lined with his down sleeping bag, open, soft, and warm. In the faint light he could see that the baby's eyes were closed again. Her mouth seemed to curl in a faint smile. Gently, he eased her into the pack, then wrapped the sleeping bag around, pulled down the flap. Next he took out his black poncho, pulled it on, and carefully lifted the pack to his shoulders.

Colville listened; he heard nothing. No voices, no sirens. He began to walk through the dark streets, back toward the motel. Perhaps Francine had been going to check on the baby, or perhaps she had gone to the bathroom, or back to her bedroom to sleep. She had not seen him, and she had been so close.

He heard a car horn, distant traffic. No sirens, no shouting voices. A television glowed blue through a curtained window. A cat slipped quietly past, leaping a stretch of ice. Colville listened to the baby's soft, sweet breathing as she slept in the pack, her mouth so close to his ear.

T
HE BABY SLEPT
. Colville had changed her diaper twice, careful to memorize the folds of the blanket that swaddled her. When she was awake, she kicked her legs, grabbed hold of his fingers; he had worried about her crying, that it would draw attention, but she'd hardly made a sound.

She slept on the queen bed farther from the door of the motel room, closer to the kitchenette. He rested next to her,
Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care
open on his chest. The bottles and nipples he'd boiled stood lined on the kitchenette counter. Next to them, the tins of formula, the glass jars of baby food. Squash, green beans, bananas, all pureed.

The room was dim, the only light from the digital clock—2:45—and the sliver from the bathroom, that door ajar. Colville believed that he could feel it, the purity of energy that Jeremy mentioned, the clear vibrations that spun out from the baby. She shifted a little. Her chest rose and fell: she breathed.

He should sleep also, but he could not sleep. There was too much he didn't know, too much he had to figure out. The information about how to care for her physically—that he could learn, he could read about. He could watch her closely and react. It wouldn't be easy, he didn't want it to be easy, but he knew he could do it. Otherwise why would he have been led on this path, entrusted with her? What he needed to know was how to protect a baby's Light, how to prepare her. He remembered how it had been with Moses—one rule was that no one was allowed to touch the top of the baby's head; another was that no one outside the family was allowed to hold the baby for the first six months. These were the kind of Teachings he needed, and he had given Francine all the books that contained them.

Then, a pale band of light. Along the dark, wood-paneled wall, three feet from the bed. Colville thought of headlights, checked the curtains—they were closed; it was dark at the window.

Careful not to wake the baby, he sat up and swung his legs around, put his bare feet on the floor between the two beds. He stood and walked around to the baby's side of the bed, closer to the wall. As he turned, he felt and saw the pale light on his dark T-shirt, flickering across his chest. He checked the dark window again.

The light was coming from the baby. She still slept, but the skin of her face, turned toward the wall, cast an even glow. He felt every hair on his head tighten, pulse. He pulled his hand out of the light, rubbed it against his shirt.

“Colville,” a voice said.

He froze, glanced toward the door, then crept along the carpet, moving on his toes, on his fingertips. He checked the dead bolt, the chain. Everything was locked. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard nothing. Had someone really said his name? He still did not stand up; he stayed low as he moved past the window, as if there were a gap in the curtains. There wasn't.

Once he reached the bathroom, he pushed the door gently open, leaned in, looked into the bathtub. Nothing, no one.

“Baby food?” the voice said, everywhere in the room at once. “I can't even roll over yet and you expect me to eat baby food?”

Colville stepped back into the room. The dark shape in the mirror, his own body, startled him. The back of his hand brushed the television's dark screen and it crackled, a sudden shock.

“I'm surprised you hesitate to see,” the voice said, “you who believed your childhood friend came back to call on you in the form of a badger.”

Colville stepped into the space between the two beds, closer to the baby.

“Don't look at me while I'm talking,” she said. “Not my face. Don't look at my face.”

Colville sat on the other bed, his eyes closed. He tried to slow his breathing, his heart.

“Better,” she said, after a moment.

“It was a raccoon,” he said. “You know that, you have to know that.”

“A raccoon? Was it? You're probably right.” The baby made a noise like a laugh, an intake of breath that sounded like tearing paper.

“You have to tell me,” he said. “I know I'm not supposed to touch the top of your head. I don't even know if I'm supposed to even hold you.”

“There are exceptions,” she said. “How am I going to move anywhere if you don't hold me?”

Her voice was low, breathy, somewhere between a man's voice and a woman's voice. It didn't so much echo in the room as appear suddenly in his ears, and as she spoke her words came more slowly, more softly, as if she were drifting off to sleep. Colville sat in silence; carefully, he opened his eyes. The baby still lay there, swaddled. He could not tell if her eyes were open, as her face was tilted toward the wall.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Who have I been, or who will I become?”

Without warning the baby let out a little cry, a rising squall. The surface of the blanket moved as she tried to get her arms free.

“What should I do?” he said.

“I have to sleep,” she said. “Don't look at me while I'm talking. Remember that. My diaper's wet, too. Change it, please, so I can sleep. I get tired so fast with this talking, it's ridiculous.”

He stood, his legs unsteady beneath him. Reaching into the packet for a new diaper—they were a little large, but his guess had not been far off—he began to unfold the blanket that swaddled the baby. He was still anxious about looking at her, afraid she might begin speaking again; this made the operation impossible. She began to cry as he fumbled, and he hurried, trying to stop the sound. Her lips curled back over her gums, her toothless mouth. She turned her head to watch what he was doing, and her dark eyes didn't seem to quite focus on him. They drifted, cloudy, they rolled, and they closed again as he snapped the sleep suit back on, as he wrapped the blanket tightly around her.

He laid her down, stretched himself alongside her, as they had been before. There was only the slight sound of her breathing. It sped up, it slowed down. She sighed in her sleep. The pale light still shone from her, a band of it glowing along the paneling of the wall.

Colville tried to settle his body, his emotions inside it, and also his thoughts. This baby he'd been given, she was an honor and a responsibility at once. She seemed to know so much, and yet there would be so many things that she couldn't do, so many things that could happen to her that she wouldn't be able to prevent. In his notebook he'd copied a passage that the Messenger had written, how at her birth and in her early years she had been aware of the realms of Light from which she'd descended, had been able to recall her previous embodiments, but that this awareness faded as the soft spot at the crown of her head closed over and as the adults around her discouraged such talk, calling it fantasy. With this baby, he would encourage her to remember, to stay in contact with the Light so she could bring it more fully into the world. This he would do.

He thought of the Messenger, her body still alive, walking and talking in Bozeman, and her soul adrift and traveling, perhaps finding a home, a return in this baby sleeping next to him. He looked down at her, tucked against his ribs, her skin so smooth and faintly glowing. The soul moved from one to the next, necessary shelters and vehicles on its path.

“Colville? Are you awake?”

Had he slept? The clock now read 6:20.

“I'm awake,” he said.

“You're doing the best you can, I know that.” Again the tearing laugh, the baby's body trembling slightly. “Jeremy didn't tell you to steal me, did he? His ideas, sometimes—”

“No,” Colville said. “That was me. I thought, after the girl—”

“It's all right,” the baby said. “It only complicates things—it wasn't the simplest way to proceed. It's not. Of course, you and I had to be brought together, to talk, so someone could tell you what to do next, where to go. You might say you don't need instruction, but you know you do.”

Colville was still waking up; he watched the baby speak before he caught himself. Her lips moved, her mouth jerked slowly as if she were chewing, sucked as if she were nursing, but the motion, the shapes didn't match up with the words he heard. It was as if the voice had been dubbed, somehow, over the sounds a baby might make.