My Abandonment by Peter Rock

Author:Peter Rock [Rock, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Four

The headlights grow wider and I stand alone at the stop. I climb on and pay my fare and just then Father comes running up slapping the side of the bus like he almost missed it and like we aren't together. He sits in the back of the bus and I sit in the middle, on the right side.

Outside the sky is darker than the clouds and inside the bus the lights flicker on and off. I see my face in the window's reflection, then the dark fields, then my face again. On my head I wear a stocking cap with all my hair pushed up inside it so maybe I look like a boy. I close my eyes to rest since Father told me at the bus stop that it might be a long night. I open my eyes and we come down through the curving streets, into the lights. I recognize some of the buildings' shapes and the names of the streets: Salmon, Jefferson, Oak.

Father walks to the front to get off and I go out the back door. We're downtown in the city of Portland and I'm excited and afraid and a little disappointed. We might sleep in a doorway or down along the river which we have done before a long time ago.

"What?" I say to Father, whispering without really facing him.

"Did you hold on to your transfer?" he says. "Good girl. Now we catch one more bus. Here goes."

We're not even downtown for ten minutes and we don't talk to anyone. We climb onto the next bus, careful that others get on between us so it looks like we are not together.

We're out again in fifteen minutes, past dark houses and parked cars. A dog barks. Father and I walk on opposite sides of the street, walking at the same speed. The rain barely starts and we are across the mowed park then on the little trail along Balch Creek, safe under the trees.

An owl calls hollow from one side then the other. We're not talking. We turn right at the stone house and it is harder to walk and find our way than I remember, like the trees have grown up in new places while we were gone and thickened the dark. I feel like I'm back where I belong and then something else sharp I'm not sure what.

Father is careful. His headlamp is around his head but he doesn't switch it on until we're close. Our feet find the old stepping stones.

The circle of light darts and settles. I am glad I can't see all this at once even if every sad thing adds up the way I see it so later I will remember them lit up and lost. Part of the roof has been torn off our old house so the plastic and tarps show. There's a hole where maybe someone's foot went through and I think how that would be, to be reading a book or playing chess or lying in bed when a foot comes punching through the ceiling.

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