Black Helicopters (2 page)

We are sitting at the table. I am eating peanut butter and jam. Da is teaching Bo some numbers. We all hear the helicopter. Pock-a-pock-pock-POCK-A-POCK! Pock-pock-pock. It is right over the house where we sit at the table. I am eating peanut butter and jam.

Mabby is outside, in the garden, picking beans. The sun is high, and it is the best time to pick them. I am going to help. I must pick them carefully, each bean. I must not tug and tear the vines. I must leave the tiny beans to grow until the-day-after-tomorrow.

First, I must eat my peanut butter and jam and show Da how I can read: “He, me, be, we,” I can read, “my, try, sky, fly.”

Now Mabby, the garden, the beans — the tiny beans for the-day-after-tomorrow.

But the-day-after-tomorrow doesn’t come.

Mabby is sleeping in the dirt.

Da runs to Mabby in the garden. He turns her face to the sky, but her eyes don’t blink. He puts his finger on her throat. He pulls his hand back like Mabby is a stove full of fire. There isn’t a mark on her — no blood — no cuts. The beans spill out of the colander. The vines are mashed and broken where she fell. When she wakes up she is going to be angry about the beans.

“Git to the house,” Da says. Then he picks up Mabby and carries her to the truck.

When it is dark, Bo makes me drink some milk and go to bed.

In the morning, Da is there, but Mabby isn’t. Mabby never again.

When a piece is gone from the game, the whole game changes. That’s how it is for us.

Mabby was a really important piece.

We used to eat vegetables from the garden and eggs from the chickens. We used to drink milk from the goats. But the garden, the chickens, the goats — those were Mabby’s deal. She took care of all that. She planted and weeded and picked. She fed the chickens and gathered the eggs and butchered the chickens that didn’t lay eggs. She milked the goats, morning and evening. Now Mabby’s gone, those things don’t happen.

Da can’t do that stuff, because he has to go to work sometimes.

The goats go first. Da loads them in the back of the truck and they go away. After that, we drink milk out of cans. That milk isn’t good. It is gloopy and yellow and smells funny. Da says we have to drink it anyway or our bones will get soft.

Bo and I tried to help with the chickens, but we let them get out. That’s OK for a while, but then they wandered away or coyotes stole them. No eggs. Da said that didn’t matter. Meat is as good as eggs. Meat makes muscles.

Then the snow comes and covers the garden. We still have jars of food that Mabby made, but when they are emptied, we never filled them up again. Da just throws them out into the place where the garden used to be. Sometimes the jars break. Da says we should never go in Mabby’s garden, because we might get hurt on the broken glass.

After a while, we never eat Mabby food anymore. We eat survival food and MREs. Da lets us put ketchup and syrup on it. That makes it better.

“Come out here,” yells Da.

I wonder what we did wrong. I don’t want to get hit. When Da yells, sometimes he hits too. I hope it was Bo, not me. But if Bo did it, I probably did it too.

Da dumps a lump and rag of blood and fur out of a bag. It’s a coyote. It was a coyote. Now it’s an empty body, a tail, paws pacing without moving. It has teeth, a tongue, and a bullet hole in the gut.

Da picks up the coyote and hangs it over the wide, black post by the gate to our property. “Get me the hammer and a big nail,” says Da. We run. Bo carries the hammer. I carry the nail. “Hold this here,” Da says to Bo. He means the dead body of the coyote. I hold out the big nail before Da asks.

Da adjusts the coyote so the head is right on top the post and says, “Keep it right there.” I step up to help Bo, but I’m careful not to get in the way. I grab the fur on the coyote’s shoulder and push it hard against the fence post. I’m doing my part. Da shoves the spike into one of the coyote’s eyes. When he brings the hammer down, bone crunches and blood spatters. I turn my head and shut my eyes. I don’t want coyote blood in my eyes.

“It’s done,” says Da. “When you see this, I want you to remember: Those People will kill us like coyotes. We are nothing to them but coyotes.”

That is why we must stay in the den when he is away working.

Otherwise, Those People will kill us like coyotes.

“What do you do if black helicopters come?” Da asks.

“Hide,” I say.

“Hide where?” Da asks.

“In the den,” I say.

“What do you do if you hear a helicopter while you’re outside?” Da asks.

“Hide,” I say.

“Hide where?” Da asks.

“I hide in mineral,” I say.

“Be specific,” says Da.

“Under truck, metal roof, cut bank, big rock.”

Da falls silent. I know he’s thinking about Mabby. He will never forget about Mabby. He reaches out and pets my hair. “Good girl, Valley. Good girl.”

The den is a safe place Da made for us under the floor. It is big enough for one bunk. Bo and I have to sleep heads to tails, but we each have our own sleeping bag. I say Bo’s feet smell. He says mine do too. Sometimes, we have kickfights, but that isn’t fun for very long.

I am surprised sometimes that Bo isn’t me. I’m the girl. He’s the boy. I
know
that. Different bodies. I
know
that.
We
know that. We sleep in the same bunk. We know.

Da gives us books and clocks to make the time go faster when he is away. We read the books: fox, socks, box. And the clocks? While he is gone, we use tiny screwdrivers and tweezers to take them apart. Sometimes we work together, four hands on one clock.

“Put this together again,” says Da. “See if you can make the pieces fit and make it tick.” So then that is what we want to do. We take them apart to see how they tick. We put them together and listen to them tock. Da is very proud of us.

Tick, tick, tick.

Tock, tock, tock.

Bo is Bo. I am me. And together we are we.

We fix clocks. We wear socks. We fix clocks while we wear socks.

We each have our own expertise. Eva’s is putting on mascara.

“Look up, honey, don’t blink.”

I don’t flinch.

“I shoulda put this on last night. It really makes your eyes pop. But then you woulda woke up a mascaraccoon. You know what that is, honey?” Eva pauses and licks her finger and moves to scrub a mistake off my skin.

“Sssst!” I say. Eva freezes. I can’t believe she was actually going to put her spit on my face.

“Lip gloss?”

I say nothing.

“I’ll just put it in your coat pocket. Put some on before,” says Eva. “What’s this?” She’s found a wool sock in my pocket. It is full of chocolate left from last night. My other pocket is full of wool sock and smoked salmon.

“My feet get cold in these shoes,” I say. “I can wear the socks in the truck.”

Eva opens her mouth to talk about that, but Wolf cuts her off. “Doesn’t matter. It’s time to leave.”

“Where’s Bo?” If we need to go, I need Bo now.

“He’s sleeping it off, honey. Dolph will be the driver. It’s not a problem,” says Eva.

“Bo drives. That’s the plan.”

“The mission is still the same. It’s just Dolph will be driving. That’s all. It’s no big deal.”

It kind of is a big deal. Dolph is a mouth-breathing idiot.

“I want to talk to Bo.”

“He’s still sleeping, honey.”

“I want to talk to Bo.”

Eva looks at Wolf. Wolf looks at Eva. Wolf tips his head. Eva sighs. “OK, honey. Let’s go see. He’s at the guys’ trailer.”

There’s a path through the woods from the Quonset to the faded green and white single-wide where the guys sleep. The pine needles are slippery under the little silver shoes. I have to make my steps small and watch where I put my feet. My feet are almost naked, cold and skinny as trout. I shouldn’t have to look at them. Stupid shoes, they make me look at my feet like a slave.

Bo is belly down on one of the couches at the front of the trailer. His face is turned to the back. The couch and carpet look wet. If he really was drinking, maybe he spewed. The whole room smells like spilled beer, old puke, and patchouli.

“Bo.” He doesn’t move. I shake his shoulder. Nothing.

“He had a real lot to drink, honey. He just needs to sleep it off.”

I shove his shoulder harder, but all I get is a little noise he makes when he sucks in his breath. He doesn’t even reach up and try to swat my hand away. If I could rouse him, he still wouldn’t be in shape to drive. He’s fucked up the mission. I can’t wait for him to get his shit together. I lean over and kiss him on the cheek. His face doesn’t smell like puke; it smells like sweat and iron.

“Bye, Bo,” I whisper in his ear. There’s some dried blood inside, and a dark little track dribbles down by the back of his jawbone. He’s not fit to drive. “
Abalu, gree-ah.
Bye, Bo.”

We can play chess.

“This is the queen,” says Da. “She can move all of these ways.” He slides the piece along the board, back and forth, side-to-side, and corner-to-corner. “She is the most powerful piece on the board.”

“This is a pawn. He’s kind of a little guy.” Da taps the little round head of the piece. “The first time a pawn moves, it gets to take two baby steps, one, two. But mostly they just march along, one step at a time. If another piece is in front of him, he’s just stuck. He can fight, but only if the other piece is right close, kitty-corner.”

“You aren’t reading,” says Da. “You are just looking at the pictures.”

“I am too reading. I know the words.”

“You just got it memorized. That’s not reading,” says Da.

I look at the pictures. There are mice dressed up in beautiful clothes. They live in a house. When I look at the pictures, I hear the words in my head. It sounds like my Mabby.

“You need some more books. Some books without rabbits with clothes on. Rabbits don’t wear clothes, Valley,” says Da. Then he walks over to the cook stove and shoves my book in the fire.

“They wasn’t rabbits,” I say. “They was mice.”

“Mice don’t wear clothes either,” says Da.

In the morning, I sneak and check to see if the book is all burnt up. It is ashes, mostly ashes, but there are some pictures that didn’t burn all the way. The edges are black, and the paper is brittle and brown, but I still have a mouse in a blue dress.

I hide the bits of pages in the den.

Bo knows I have them, but he doesn’t care.

We are so, so happy to hear his truck tires on the gravel. We don’t climb out of the den, but we are so, so happy. Da says we can’t trust our ears; that one truck sounds like another; that we should never come out until we hear his voice give the all clear. But our ears know the sound of our own Da, and our bodies are so excited we almost squirm out of our skin.

“Pickled beets.” It’s Da’s voice. It’s the all-clear words. Bo and I both hit the ladder at the same time, and we are fighting a little bit to see who gets up first, but it’s both of us really since our arms and legs are so tangled up together.

“Did I say pickled beets?”

We nod. We are sure he did. We heard it. I’m maybe a little afraid I made a mistake, but no, Da’s face is happy. We got it right.

“I should have said cherries.” Da points at the table. There’s a whole big flat box of dark cherries.

“The job was up at the big lake,” says Da. “And I thought about how much my pups love cherries.”

We do love cherries, but we never had so many before. Who knew there were so many cherries in the whole world? Da carries the box out onto the back porch. The summer heat smells like pine needles. The summer heat tastes like cherries, black as blood blisters, but juicy and sweet.

Bo and I sit on the porch with the box of cherries between us and crush them into our mouths so fast the juice runs down to our elbows. We spit the seeds like target practice. Then we spit at each other — not just the seeds but chewed-up cherry juice jam. It spatters us both. Then we rest. We stretch out on the porch boards and slowly, slowly eat cherries while the big white clouds scoot across the blue glass sky.

I’m the first one who has to run to the outhouse. My insides are full of growling cherries, fighting and biting to get out. The door bangs open. It’s Bo. The cherries are eating him, too. Then I don’t do anything except hunch over and hang on until I am just a shaking skin full of nothing at all. I’m afraid to stand up and pull up my pants. I’m afraid the cherries aren’t done with me yet. So I just sit there on one hole and Bo sits on the other while the shiny, droning flies bang against the screen on the outhouse window. They sound like cherry pits spit out so hard they buzz before they hit.