If You Find Me(67)

As we get closer, I start to remember the oddest snippets, like patchwork quilt squares tellin’ me their stories.

Mama blows meth clouds at Nessa and me, laughin’ so hard, she pees her pants. I scoop up my sister and tote her outside, proppin her on a log by the campfire, the flames jump-started with a few handfuls of kindlin.

Ness keeps almost fallin over, catchin herself with a jerk. It’s two in the mornin, after all. I’m flat-out annoyed, cold and tired myself. Only, annoyed at Mama. Never at Nessa.

I rest my face against the window glass, cool and smooth, and watch the signs go by, the trees growing thicker, the road older, other cars fewer. I think of that night, the one haunting me every day since, no matter how hard I’ve tried to exterminate the memory. When we left the woods, that night came with us as sure as our breath, our shadows, our eyelashes.

“It’s gettin dark, Ness. No more fairy huntin’ for tonight, okay? Nessa?”

“Okay,” she says with a long sigh. “I’m comin’.”

I’ve spent the last half hour buildin up the fire, not just to keep us warm, but to cook over. My mind is elsewhere, itchin to get back to the violin. Mama’s been gone for five weeks; I started markin’ the days with notches carved into the dyin walnut tree at the edge of the clearin’.

“What we havin’for dinner?”

“Food,” I tell her. The point isn’t lost on my smarty-pants sister.

Jenessa wrinkles her nose, her eyes accusin. “Beans again? Ain’t there other things in those cans?”

“You ate rabbit for breakfast and the last can of ravioli for lunch. If we don’t eat the beans, there’ll be nothin’ left but beans, and then you’ll be eatin ’em three times a day.”

Ness huffs and puffs her way over to the two-by-four swing. It took scalin a hickory like a flyin squirrel and loopin’ and tyin thick rope around the crotch of the fattest branches to make it work . . . to give her a piece of childhood.

Ness had watched the process from the leafmeal below, her eyes shinin. By the time I was through, I had her believin Saint Joseph had left the rope and plank in the forest just for her.

Little kids need to somethin’ to believe in. For them, it’s as important as breathin. And when Mama never fit the bill, Saint Joseph made a right good substitute.

“Here.” I hand her a bowl with water and give her the rag from the table. “Clean your hands and wipe your face.”

“Why do I have to? No one sees.”

“I see. Just because we live in the Hundred Acre Wood don’t mean we have to live like savages.”

“Rowr!” Jenessa growls.

I watch her wipe herself down, face, neck, and hands, while I clear the foldin’ table for dinner. I pile up my poetry books, our schoolbooks, and her Pooh books into a jagged tower; a tower I carry into the camper and spill onto the flimsy table that folds out from the wall, all the size of a doll’s ironin’ board, as Mama said. I yell to Ness through the open door.

“Get those other two rags and fold them on the table. You know how to set the table. You’re no baby, right?”

I scold her gently. She’s just turned five, after all. But that’s no excuse to be useless.

Back at the fire, I load up our bowls with baked beans, the kind floatin’ in a sweet brown sugar sauce. Into Ness’s bowl, I ladle the three chubby squares of pork fat I find in the mixture.

I know Jenessa’s too skinny. We’re both too skinny, and although our mama is also skinny, and perhaps it’s partly genetic, I know it has to do with our nutrition; with the careful rationin’ of canned goods and the slim pickins of bird, rabbit, and squirrel I’m lucky to shoot. I constantly salivate over the thought of wild turkey, but trackin’ those noisy birds leads me too far from the camper and Nessa.

We sit at the table and eat quietly. The truth is, we’re both ravenous, no matter the complainin’ we do or what food we’re sick of. We’re luckier than some, Mama says. I reckon she’s right. We have a bed, roof, clothes, food. I reckon we’re crazy luck. It’s hard to imagine not havin’ the essentials.

Finishin quickly, I pick up my violin, gettin bean sauce on the neck, but that won’t hurt it none. I play in spurts, the notes clunky, determined to git it right.

Crack!

There’s a feelin that comes before danger falls. You can see it in the eyes of the deer or pheasant moments before the shot. Synapses firin’ the instincts on, I reckon. Knowin your life is about to snuff out, moments before the inevitable bang. I don’t even remember settin my violin and bow on the empty chair next to me.

Jenessa jumps up and freezes, her eyes widenin’ until the whites show, her forgotten spoon drippin beans onto the front of her patched pink dress. I place my index finger to my lips. Immediately, two fat tears pop from her eyes. We both watch the urine run down her legs, fillin’ her sneaks and coatin’ the leaves. We don’t have time to hide before he stumbles into the clearin’, his heavy boots makin suckin’ sounds as he tramps through the mud to our table.

I wrinkle my nose. From a few feet away, I can smell the moonshine, and lookin’ into his eyes, bloodshot and unfocused, I feel goose bumps colonize up and down my arms.

“Where’s Joelle?”

The tears flow fast and furious down Ness’s face. I watch her spoon in free fall, bouncin against the leaves.