His Illegal Self

29

His dad’s features existed in his mind like a face made by a windblown tree, but he did have one stable picture and this was in his back pocket and sometimes, in the hot afternoons, he went down into the rain forest to look at it in private. There, in the abandoned dusty little hut with the spooky sculptures by its door, he lay on the sneezy floor together with all his papers and rubber bands. Even in this gloomy place the light shone through his father’s curly hair. Angel-headed hipster, Cameron said.

Not the man in Seattle. Not the man with the hose. That man had a mustache which lifted and shivered as if disgusted by the life in front of him. He bore no resemblance to the photo on the floor.

The afternoons were slow and thick as ants. From the door of the abandoned shack the boy could see the melancholy clouds above the ridge as they folded and dissolved and changed from old men into pretty girls into weeping women, growing warts, losing teeth, a mess. He thought he liked this, but he didn’t. He packed up his papers and secured them one more time with the rubber band. Under the front step he found a rusty tomahawk and he chopped angrily at what they called a wattle tree and watched the black blood come out of the wet white. He hated where he was. He had stolen a clasp knife from Adam’s box and now he whittled at a stick, and although he never felt it cut, the knife slipped, maybe twenty times, and sliced up his fingers. Not really blood, just sticky, sour, no real difference from the sweaty heat, everything smudging into everything else.

He stayed in the forest, hiding from Dial in case she wanted him to walk into Yandina once again.

Dial did not like to drive. They had to walk four miles along a dusty road, four miles back. The heat would kill a spider. Hippies did not stop for them. When they got home, Trevor did not visit. All the single mothers could have said how weird that was, but no single women talked to them. They did not like Buck. They’ll get used to us, he said.

In the town he had a sneaky traitor’s heart and he would stare like a maniac at anyone who glanced his way. Not having been arrested, he trudged back out along Remus Creek Road. It was not home no matter what she called it, but sometimes he saw how it contained the parts of home he would rather have forgotten-the color of sadness, the same light on the moss side of the trees.

They weeded, Dial and he. They slept when the day got too hot. They found wild cherry tomatoes twining through the knee-high grass. The tomatoes burst inside their mouths, hot and wet, like vegetables from outer space. She was kind to him, but teary in the mornings.

The forest around the huts was laced with narrow winding trails, like veins in a creature as yet unnamed. When the boy discovered the first of these he did not mention it to Dial. Sometimes he heard children’s voices echoing, clear as hammer blows or saws, but no child appeared to play, nor did he want them to. He was not used to children, having been brought up alone, Victorian.

In the banana groves he found blue plastic bags the same exactly as the one Trevor used to hide his stash. They were tied around the high fruit, to stop birds’ pecking, he assumed. The banana tree was high and curved, dying like a sappy weed. He grazed his thighs and bloodied up his knees until he tore the blue bag from the fruit and then, in the grassless, shadowed banana grove, he carefully refolded his papers and tucked them safe inside.

His father would come for him, along the lacework paths. The boy was too timid to walk these paths himself so did not know the one that led to the big old dogleg bend on Remus Creek. If it had not been for Buck, they would have known about the swimming hole. They would have had hippies drifting in for herbal tea all day.

Dial definitely did not want to see any hippies. She would not even ask for help. When the boy found her trying to saw a piece of four-by-four along a pencil line, he said she should ask Trevor or the Rabbitoh to come and help.

Then she cried outright. She wanted to live somewhere pretty but she did not know how. All she was doing was building a shelf to hold the rice and lentils. It stressed her too much. She made sketches early in the morning. She made him shop with her at Day and Grimes, the hardware store, trying to make up her mind about brackets and screws.

The strawberry-nosed men in white coats asked, Can I help you, missus.

No thank you.

She did not get it-neither did the boy, not yet. She was a hippie, therefore she must be shoplifting. Also, the drunk-nosed men were thinking of the naked bottoms of hippie women at the swimming hole. They had been there after work, those good daddies, parking their utes off the fire trail.

At night Buck returned to lie beneath the roaring propane lamp, and the mother and the boy pulled his ticks off one by one. There were cattle ticks, on his back and stomach, and tiny grass ticks which lined up along his ears like babies feeding at their mother’s teat. They used tweezers, a little kerosene. How they were together was more fine and tender than this sounds.

Dial read Huckleberry Finn out loud and the air was muggy as Jackson, Mississippi, white ants swarming around the hissing lamp, everybody running for their lives.

It was not until the end of the wet season, in early March, that their first visitor came knocking at their open door, not the Rabbitoh, who Dial had been prepared for, but Trevor. He squatted at the table, and his big new belly pushed against the buttons of his Hawaiian shirt; the boy was pleased to see him. He had gotten all bright and shiny, a whole new layer of fat beneath his skin.

I’ve been away, Trevor said.

You were on vacation?

Most likely Trevor had been in prison.

Yes, he said, his eyes roaming the room until they settled on the shelf.

I know it’s not level, Dial said.

Trevor shifted his attention to the curtains and his face split open in what was a real big grin for him.

The mother ran her banged-up hand roughly through her hair. Fuck you, she said. I’m a homeowner now. She did not know whether to be pissed or pleased.

Pretty, Trevor said, not looking at the curtains anymore.

Thank you, said Dial, going pink along her neck.

And what about his nibs here? asked Trevor, not looking at the boy.

Well you can ask him, she said, smiling so much she was embarrassing.

Would he like to come and help me in my garden?

The boy had been pleased to see Trevor, his visit being the first event to break through the endless veil of heat and flies. He certainly did not mean to sneer at him. He was not aware he now curled his lip at him, showed all the pink shiny gums and square white teeth.

Some other time, said Trevor.

Jesus, said Dial later, we don’t have to be at war with everybody.

I’m sorry, Dial. I didn’t know. But he had that nasty jealous feeling, so he did know after all.

Be interested in his goddamned garden.

The boy was frightened when she yelled at him.

He said, Will you read some more?