wine bottle. Water spilled down a rock face into a pool bounded by ferns and moss. My father gasped out the story and together they hovered over me, making me drink from the bottle again and again. "That's good," they said. "You're doing really good." My father stroked my hair. And though I was full and wanted to stop, I tipped my head back and drank for him.
That night we stayed in the main house. My lips and throat were chapped and burning. I began to have visions. A crowd of ghosts led by a goateed figure marched with torches through the room. I told this to the grownups and they seemed alarmed. Some of the other people staying at the house lit extra kerosene lanterns to soothe me, but I could still see the figures. The leader looked furious, driven, his whole body straining forward toward some unknown mission.
My father moved with me to a bedroom upstairs and held me in a worn corduroy armchair, talking softly, telling me stories of what we would do together when it was light. The vagueness I felt in him during the day had disappeared. He was dense, focused, his legs pressed long against the sides of the chair, his arms around me heavy and still. I sat in his lap, leaning into the rise and fall of his chest. In my last moments of delirium, I closed my eyes and saw his body supporting me like a chair, the long, still bones, and under him the real chair, fabric stretched over wood, and all of this twenty feet above the ground on the upper floor of the house, held up by the beams and foundation, and beyond that the quiet fields, silver under the moon, alive with animals, the punctured cans lying still by the stump. I saw us perched in the center of this, neither safe nor doomed, and in this unbounded space I fell asleep.
Â
When he dropped me off after the commune visit, my father never mentioned the business with the gasolineâworried, I'm sure, that my mother wouldn't let him see me again. And since he didn't mention it, neither did I.
But if I felt at times undersupervised, it was this same freedom that stands out as one of the pleasures of my childhood. On the weekends, Mother let me ride my bike down Spring Street and didn't expect me back until dinnertime. The whole town knew me and would haul me home if I was in trouble. One Saturday, when Alison and I tried to shoplift from the corner store, we found out what a fishbowl we lived in. We had already succeeded in filching penny candy on a few occasions, and we were ready to try for bulkier goods. While Alison asked a question of Mr. Shepherd at the register, I pulled a package of beef jerky from a peg below the counter and tucked it under my shirt. My gait went stiff as I headed for the door, my shoulders curled forward to hide the package. Somehow, I managed to slip by unnoticed. It never occurred to me that Mr. Shepherd might follow me out. I crossed the sill and stood there in the sunlight feeling invincible, already planning my next theft, when a hand clamped down on my shoulder and wheeled me around. I'll never forget the look on his face. Not anger, but a tight-faced weariness.
"Do you have something of mine?" he asked.
His.
I had never thought of it that way. I had been stealing from the store, not Mr. Shepherd, who called me honey and smoothed the front of his immaculate butcher's apron while he talked. He had helped my mother and Jim, that first day in the valley, avoid a real-estate pratfall that would have landed me out on a dry mountainside without a friend in sight.
I pulled the jerky out from under my shirt and held the package up by one corner. The meat looked like tree bark in its shrink-wrap casingânothing worth eating.
"Go on home," Mr. Shepherd said. Home had never sounded so good. I hopped on my bike and raced down the sidewalk, trying to rid myself of the vision of Mr. Shepherd's pinched face. But then I saw Mr. Shepherd pass by in his Bronco, headed toward my house. His arms were ramrod straight on the wheel, and he didn't so
That night we stayed in the main house. My lips and throat were chapped and burning. I began to have visions. A crowd of ghosts led by a goateed figure marched with torches through the room. I told this to the grownups and they seemed alarmed. Some of the other people staying at the house lit extra kerosene lanterns to soothe me, but I could still see the figures. The leader looked furious, driven, his whole body straining forward toward some unknown mission.
My father moved with me to a bedroom upstairs and held me in a worn corduroy armchair, talking softly, telling me stories of what we would do together when it was light. The vagueness I felt in him during the day had disappeared. He was dense, focused, his legs pressed long against the sides of the chair, his arms around me heavy and still. I sat in his lap, leaning into the rise and fall of his chest. In my last moments of delirium, I closed my eyes and saw his body supporting me like a chair, the long, still bones, and under him the real chair, fabric stretched over wood, and all of this twenty feet above the ground on the upper floor of the house, held up by the beams and foundation, and beyond that the quiet fields, silver under the moon, alive with animals, the punctured cans lying still by the stump. I saw us perched in the center of this, neither safe nor doomed, and in this unbounded space I fell asleep.
Â
When he dropped me off after the commune visit, my father never mentioned the business with the gasolineâworried, I'm sure, that my mother wouldn't let him see me again. And since he didn't mention it, neither did I.
But if I felt at times undersupervised, it was this same freedom that stands out as one of the pleasures of my childhood. On the weekends, Mother let me ride my bike down Spring Street and didn't expect me back until dinnertime. The whole town knew me and would haul me home if I was in trouble. One Saturday, when Alison and I tried to shoplift from the corner store, we found out what a fishbowl we lived in. We had already succeeded in filching penny candy on a few occasions, and we were ready to try for bulkier goods. While Alison asked a question of Mr. Shepherd at the register, I pulled a package of beef jerky from a peg below the counter and tucked it under my shirt. My gait went stiff as I headed for the door, my shoulders curled forward to hide the package. Somehow, I managed to slip by unnoticed. It never occurred to me that Mr. Shepherd might follow me out. I crossed the sill and stood there in the sunlight feeling invincible, already planning my next theft, when a hand clamped down on my shoulder and wheeled me around. I'll never forget the look on his face. Not anger, but a tight-faced weariness.
"Do you have something of mine?" he asked.
His.
I had never thought of it that way. I had been stealing from the store, not Mr. Shepherd, who called me honey and smoothed the front of his immaculate butcher's apron while he talked. He had helped my mother and Jim, that first day in the valley, avoid a real-estate pratfall that would have landed me out on a dry mountainside without a friend in sight.
I pulled the jerky out from under my shirt and held the package up by one corner. The meat looked like tree bark in its shrink-wrap casingânothing worth eating.
"Go on home," Mr. Shepherd said. Home had never sounded so good. I hopped on my bike and raced down the sidewalk, trying to rid myself of the vision of Mr. Shepherd's pinched face. But then I saw Mr. Shepherd pass by in his Bronco, headed toward my house. His arms were ramrod straight on the wheel, and he didn't so
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