The Shore (3 page)

Renee spreads out on the floor on her tummy with a library book. The floor is cement, painted green so it's slick, and it bleeds cold like an ice cube all summer long. I settle on our bed instead, with a pencil and some sheets of paper with printing on one side I got from the library. There are sprickets in our room sometimes, and I don't like having the space under the bed looking at me, with the fluff from the box spring hanging down like Spanish moss. Even with the sprickets, downstairs is best—Daddy's room is upstairs next to the kitchen, and once
we've gone to bed he won't come looking for us. We can hear him walking back and forth up there, and the cupboard opening and closing, and the radio humming.

The light coming through the paper blinds turns blue-purple, and I get bored of drawing. Renee is falling asleep on her book, so I make her go pee before I pull our black plastic tape player and the little yellow flashlight out of the bottom drawer and let her choose a cassette. Mama bought some of them for us, from library sales, but our favorite one is the
Twelve Dancing Princesses,
and that one we have to keep checking out. Renee likes to whisper along with the story, but I punch her in the arm until she stops. Daddy is still walking around upstairs, but slower now. When the tape is over I make Renee go pee again—she's nine but she still wets the bed and I hate waking up in soggy sheets—and then we go to sleep.

It's gotta be midnight when Renee starts shaking me.

“Chloe?”

“Whaaaaat?”

“Do you think Cabel Bloxom is watching us?”

“What the hell, Renee?” I'm awake now. The moon is slanting through the rips in the paper blinds, bright white and cold-looking in stripes across our bed. She's up on one elbow and looking down on me, her hair falling in kinky ropes across her face.

“Like Mama said Aunt Ollie was watching us, when she died.”

“That's the most creepy-ass thing you've ever thought of,” I say. “And anyway, he can't watch us because he's in hell.”

“Are you sure of it?” she asks.

“I'm sure of it.” I roll over, and she's quiet. The moon drifts behind a cloud, and our room goes black. I'm almost asleep when I hear her again.

“Chloe? Am I going to hell because I'm glad he's dead?” Her voice is quavery, and I turn back over and try to stroke her face in the dark, like Mom would have done. I miss and poke her in the eye.

“Why're you glad?” I ask.

“He showed me a cat he shot once,” she whispers, and I feel a heat rise up in my belly. “It was a little stripy one. And after that I just wished and wished someone would shoot him like he shot that poor cat.” She starts crying now, but it doesn't last long.

“Well, you wishing didn't get him shot,” I say. “His own meanness got him shot.” She snuggles up to me.

“Who do you think did it?” she asks.

“Someone's daddy or husband, I reckon.”

“How come?”

I'm not really sure how to answer this one. The moon rolls out again, slowly, and reflects in fat bands off the big round thrift-store mirror hanging over our dresser.

“You know how the deer have harems, and if a buck comes after another buck's doe, they fight?” I ask her. “Like that.”

“Are you glad he's dead?” she asks, and I know she's thinking of what happened in the woods last year. Now I'm thinking about it too.

“Yeah, I'm glad,” I say. “Now shut up and go back to sleep.”

She flips over and wiggles her back against my chest, but now I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about Cabel Bloxom.

I heard him talking before I could see them. We'd been hiding in one of the little clearings there are so many of in the woods on the edge of the marsh, and Renee'd wandered off and made me come find her. He'd found her first.

His no-color hair was sticking out the holes in a John Deere hat, and his T-shirt was smeared with black car grease. He had his back to me, and was down on his knees so to be face level with her. One hand was on the back of her neck, the other was just a shape creeping up underneath the front of her dress, like a snake under a blanket. She looked like she was swallowing a scream.

I didn't feel my feet touch down when I ran at him, too fast for them to hear. I hit him with all my weight and bit as deep as I could at the side of his neck; it was fleshy and my teeth went in. He jerked back with a shout and sent Renee flying.

“Run!” I screamed, but she was already tearing off toward the house.

He flipped me over his shoulder and I hit the ground hard on my back, my air gone. His hand was on my throat, pressing in, and all I could see was sparks. He started shouting then, calling me a wild animal and other things and hitting with his free hand. In my head he'd been just an overgrown boy, with a beard like he'd forgot to wipe the egg off his face after breakfast. But then I'd realized that while I'd been growing, he'd been growing too, and had gotten full and solid like a man. That scared me. Just because I'd known him since I was a baby didn't mean he wasn't dangerous.

My knee went up on its own when he leaned over me, and
his body went rigid. I kneed again, harder, and this time a thin little scream came out. He bucked, and I rolled away and got up, dizzy with trying to breathe again. He gagged, then threw up on the pine needles.

“You bitch,” he spat. “You psycho bitch. You'd better watch your back.”

I wanted to tell him to fuck himself, that my daddy would snap him in half, that I'd tell his mama on him and then we'd see. But it wasn't that way anymore, we weren't kids fighting over popsicles and sand toys. So I left him, ran after Renee with my breath raw and sick in the stomach, and after that when we hid in the woods I was always looking over my shoulder, feeling eyes that weren't there.

That's why I'm glad he's dead.

The sunlight wakes me up, but it feels like I never fell asleep. Renee's all spread out like a starfish the way she does, and I'm balled up at the foot of the bed with one leg hanging off. The window faces north, so it's real early, and I lay there thinking of nothing until I hear Daddy walking around upstairs. His footsteps move back and forth slowly, but I can tell by the way the pan hits the camp stove that he's in a good mood today, and for a moment I think I might go up and sit with him for a bit. Instead I wait for the front door to shut and the crunch of his car tires on the oyster shells before I go upstairs. There's a chicken breast on a plate for us next to the camp stove, still steaming, but I wrap it in waxed paper and put it in the cupboard. Don't think me and Daddy have said more than ten words to each other since Mama.

Anyone that knows enough to wonder where she's gone
thinks she ran off to Atlantic City, to Norfolk, to anywhere that's not here. Not that there's many people who care; her mom broke ties with her family before she was born, and her sister, our Aunt Ollie, died of cancer when I was nine. Daddy doesn't talk to his family anymore, though sometimes when he's really drunk he talks about how much he misses his twin brother; I don't know if I believe that he has a twin brother, I don't want there to be two of him.

I wake Renee up and feed her potatoes from yesterday night, then make her wash herself. Our library books are due back today, but she's sleepy and quiet, and when finally I ask if she just wants to be left home alone she says yes. I don't like leaving her more than I have to, but it's miles to the library and I'm not about to drag her against her will.

There are deer in the potato field when I set out, walking because I don't have a bike lock and someone would steal it if I left it without one. They're not more than a stone's throw away, and for a moment I consider going back in and shooting one; they're damn tasty. But I can't field dress it myself even though I know how, and we don't have a freezer, so I have to let them be.

It's a breezy day. Skylarks are dipping over my head, and the sky is the kind of curved blue that seems to go on into forever. Raspberries hang dark and heavy in the underbrush, and I stop every now and then to shake down a handful and squish them between my tongue and the roof of my mouth so I can swallow them without chewing. There are no more raspberries once I turn off onto the gravel road, and I skip along fast until I come to Matthew's, where I have to turn again and follow the highway—two lanes each way, divided by grass. Locals drive carefully because there's no sidewalk so people and animals walk on
the sandy edge. I can tell who's just passing through on the way to the beaches at Chincoteague and Assateague Islands by the way they roar down the road and swerve just enough to make me jump into the ditch.

There are more farmers' fields and stretches of woods along the highway, with here and there big houses with driveways of their own, set back from the road a bit, where the richer people live, and even though I don't belong here I feel safer than I do on the walk to Matthew's. Everyone's inside, enjoying their air conditioning. There are turnoffs now and again, graveled tracks back to the marshes or real roads with more houses down them, and I take the ones I know are shortcuts, to get away from the highway for a bit. Cicada hum rises around me, and I get lost in the picture playing behind my eyes. That's why I don't see the other kids till the rock hits me in the side of the head.

“Listen when I talk to you!” John-Michael threw it; Gabby and Russ are behind him, caramel-colored because it's summer, but just as ugly as they were on the last day of school.

“I'll listen when you talk something other than shit,” I say, and Gabby and Russ get big-eyed. They'd gone after me the whole winter; I'd wanted to fight back, but Daddy had said that if he got called into school because of me he'd kill me dead and bury me in the backyard, so I'd taken it all lying down. Now, with no teachers around, I don't feel like being so accommodating.

“Whatcha bring your ugly face around here for?” He picks up another rock, but I dodge this one.

“It's a public street, dumbass. I can walk it if I want.” I can fight him, but then I'll have to fight Russ too, probably, and then Gabby will bring someone's mama, and she'll talk to Daddy, or the police, or both, and it will all go to hell.

“People walk on the street,” he shouts. “Get back in the ditch with the other stray dogs.”

“If I'm a dog then you're a pig, shit-for-brains,” I shout back. “Your mama must have fucked a prizewinning boar to squeeze you out.” That stops him for a moment, and I start running toward the highway, but the backpack weighs me down. Another rock hits me square in the back of the head, and I stumble onto my hands and knees.

“Shut your mouth!” John-Michael is screaming now, and I know his freckled face is all red. “You're nothing but trash, you should have been run out years ago!” I hear the pop of his sneakers on the road as he runs for me, and I stagger up. He's fast; he gets a handful of my hair and yanks, spinning me around. His other fist is cocked back. My knee jerks up reflexively, and John-Michael folds up with a scream. I don't wait to watch him throw up, like I know he's going to, I just run like hell.

They don't follow me, but I don't slow down till I find the highway again. My stomach is all giddy butterflies now, and I stop with my hands on my knees to get my breath back. There's no way Daddy's not going to hear about this.

The library is clammy and cold; goose bumps rise up on my skin while I drop our books in the return slot. The librarian smiles at me, and I notice how dirty my feet are, how my knees are all grass-stained and my shirt has butter down the front from dinner a few nights ago, how my hair is all tangled up, and I'm embarrassed. It's never till I'm standing in front of a stranger that I notice how awful I look, like when I'm alone I go a little blind.

No one's in the children's section, so I sit there for a few hours, enjoying the cold and flipping through picture books. I still like them, more for the pictures now than the stories, but it's embarrassing if Renee isn't here. When my head starts feeling muzzy from too much up-close seeing I fill my arms with enough to last us a week and go out to the front desk.