Sheep and Salt and Super 8

Hey in the house! Dave! Your sheep are in the road again.

David pulled back the short curtain tacked above the trailer window. The thin mustard-colored cotton bespeckled with brown flowers, like most of the things he had pieced together since his wife left with the children, was not something he would have chosen. Not that he noticed the colors. He tried not to notice most of the things about his life now. You’ve got the kids back, he’d tell himself, that’s what matters. And the land here is nice. The twenty-eight acres on which the trailer sat really was beautiful. Two fields divided by a rocky copse of birches stretched away from the paved road that rose toward the mountains. Beyond the fields lay a forest, interrupted at times by bouldered glacial erratics and ridged eskers, between which ran a clear, cold stream where beavers had once taken up residency, damning a small waterfall and creating a wide, muddy pool. The swimmin’ hole David liked to say. Groves of sugar maples and american beech gave way to a rockier terrain of hemlock, bane of ancient wisdom, whose decomposing needles swirled in mountains of foamy ecru along the banks of the stream.

The sheep were still in the road. So much for homesteading. In the winters, snow and ice blanketed the land, echoes of the glaciers that once lay miles thick above. They were gone, the cold remained. Snowplows, attempting to stave off ice formation, saturated the asphalt with crystals of salt. Farmers knew to herd their livestock quickly across the roadways. If they discovered this great river of black streaked with yellow and white was a lickable surface of the salt they craved, they would stop at nothing to return to it. This was David’s dilemma.

Pulling himself up from the brown armchair, whose springs had broken years before, he navigated a path through piles of clothes, shoes, firewood, garbage bags, and books rising like cairns in the small living room. Brushing past stacks of untouched theologians, where the second edition of Raising Sheep the Modern Way mocked him smugly, he shouted to his children.

Sheep are in the road again! Rory heard the screen door slam against the green aluminum siding of the trailer as his father stumbled down the makeshift stairs towards the road. Sliding of the top bunk, he slipped Tevas on his socked feet and gingerly made his way down the hallway herd path between piles of accumulated junk hiding a carpet stained like overripe avocado. Hoarding had not become a household word, but Rory would remember picking his way along that faux wood-paneled trailer of detritus years later when, flipping through the channels, he came across a house tour that took him back to this moment. He assumed that his father behaved this way because they were poor – he could never resist an object on the side of the road that said “free” – but hadn’t they always been poor? When his mother lived with them, it hadn’t been like this.

Sorry, sorry Tom. I know, I know, but it’s the salt you know. I gotta fix the hole in that fence, getting right on it. Rory half-listened to his father as he lifted a flap on the broken skirting that partly lined the gap between the trailer and the ground. He half-filled an empty Maxwell House can with dogfood. If there was one thing the sheep liked more than the salt of the road, it was dogfood. Walking towards the road, he rattled the can. A shamanic rainstick. At its sound, three motley sheep lifted their heads, licked their lips, and scrambled back through a gap in the mesh fence David had hastily cobbled together.

Ok, sorry for the trouble, Tom, hope it won’t happen again. The subaru drove off and Rory dragged an old pallet to block the hole in the fence. David, sighing, went inside to nuke some tuna noodle casserole Rory had made the night before and drink one of the Bud Lights he hid from the kids in the cabinet above the fridge. The sheep were restless, having finished the dogfood, wanting more. They trudged in a tight circle around the trailer, shitting as they walked under grey skies. Over time, their excrement had formed a moat around the trailer. A bleating siege of the beleaguered trailer followed each sojourn to the salty road and dogfood rattle. Soon, Rory would add another layer of pallets to the walk from the front door, above those now sinking into mud and excrement. He did not wonder why that task would fall to him. That is how it was. Tonight he would make grilled cheese for dinner. He listened to the wind, watching the new buds sway on the birch trees, bark stripped bare by deer and sheep over the winter. There were still Kraft singles left over from the missionary lunch at church, and Wonder Bread bought just past expiration. He wondered if his father had remembered to get the tub of Country Crock. Could they use oil instead? Friday they would go to his mother’s. Jean’s parents had rented a small house for her in town, just off Main Street next to the railroad tracks. At their last visit, she said she was going to make baked ziti while she and Rory had laid warm mulch smelling of cocoa around freshly-planted impatiens. This mulch costs more, but I like the smell. The house was small and rattled when the trains passed, and there was no yard to speak of. But it, too, was warm and smelled like cocoa. And Yankee Candle vanilla, which does not really smell like vanilla.

Rory walked through the gathering darkness towards the trailer. The sheep bleated as the sun retreated towards the west and wood smoke began to drift down from the chimney pipe. He did not hate it here, though it was hard. One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it. Someday he would live differently, but here, now, he would enjoy the wind and the smoke and the big dipper glowing steadily in an inkblue sky.

In the motel room at the banks of the St. Lawrence, at the edge of the country, at the precipice of tragedy and transition, Rory could not see the sky. Even if the curtains were not drawn tightly shut, which they were, the windows faced a parking lot where Super 8 - Free Breakfast - Monthly Lets blocked the November sky. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and Rory should have been in school. They all should have been. Steps shuffled outside the door, followed by three short knocks, a pause, three long knocks, and another pause. Rory got up from the bed where he was reading and stepped over his brother and sister, who were crayoning monsters and hearts in their notebooks on the floor.

He stood on his tiptoes to slide the chain out of the latch and heard his mother fumbling for the keycard in her purse.

I said wait to the count of 10, THEN open the door. She whispered this against the door, still searching for her card. She found it, and cracked the door open, sliding along the wall and furtively glancing outside before closing it behind her. She wore a visor usually used when canoeing, and hoped that her sunglasses did not make her conspicuous. She didn’t know what she would do if she was spotted. Her picture was on the news. Next time she would send one of the children to the store, thank god privacy laws didn’t allow the local network to publish their pictures. She just needed more time, gather evidence, prove once and for all what a fucking cunt liar her husband was. Hitting the boys, she had seen the bruises, how dare he. But the final straw. Abusing their daughter. For fucks sake, their own daughter. She was only eight years old. But she knew, she knew it had been going on for years. Years. No one would fucking believe her. But she knew. That’s why she had to take them. She wished to god she had planned it better. Gotten the evidence. But how could she let that keep happening? That god damn social worker. He must be fucking her. Bet she likes that, the kids in the next room. Afternoon fuck. And shit fuck child protective services. Who the fuck were they protecting? Had he paid someone off to get them taken out of the safe house? SAFE HOUSE? They were supposed to be fuckin’ safe. The kids liked it there. They could watch tv, and they played with Janet’s two boys while she and Janet talked in the kitchen, a bag of peas pressed against Janet’s eye to stop the swelling. Jean remembered what that was like. He couldn’t fucking get away with it anymore. But that woman. That fucking woman. Coming to the safe house, telling the kids they were going home in the morning, just when they were getting used to the place after the first week. They were terrified. Couldn’t she fucking see that? They needed more rooms available, was that it? More beat-up women running from their fucked up husbands? So her kids would get thrown out? Back to their abusive father? You don’t want that kids, do you, you are terrified of going back there? Tell her, show her where he touched you. Isn’t that what they say? Show her your bruises, here, see this? Don’t tell me I’m hurting my kids you cunt, you fucking whore. And don’t tell me to calm down, Janet, don’t tell me to fucking calm down. You left, you left. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Fine, we’ll see you in the morning. Nine am sharp you fucking cunt. That’s why . . . that’s why I had, why I had to, why I had to leave. They know that, the kids know that. They’re better off here. Entenmann’s danish in the morning, cheese, apple, plain. The kids love it, they really do. This room is starting to smell. We’ll be okay. We’ll wait it out. We’ll wait, then we’ll go. Across the river, like the underground railroad Rory said. Yes, honey, just like the underground railroad. Feel the moss on the trees and know we’re heading north. Then just get across the river. It’ll freeze. It always freezes. And then just drive, just drive right across. People do it, right? People do it all the time.

Did you get the books from the library? Jean emptied her bag, books and pens, cheerios and lipstick, spilled onto the polyester bedspread.

I can’t go back to the library again for a little while, honey. So this book, it’s about Indians, right, it’s long enough, isn’t it? Rory inspected the book. Six hundred and sixty two pages. A woman with waist-length flowing blonde hair clutched a spear beside a bearded man clad in fur, surveying wooly mammoths marching before a distant shelf of ice. The last entry Rory had in his history notebook, three weeks before, was on the Iroquois confederacy. It would have to do. I don’t want you to fall behind.

Rory stretched out on the double bed. He hated sharing it with his brother. He hated more that he would definitely fall behind. In Ms. Shaver and Ms. Ward’s “alternative program,” seventh and eighth graders took all their subjects together. Everyone was mixed, so it was easy to tell the smart kids and the dumb kids. And there were dumb kids, but they weren’t supposed to call them that. They were special. Rory figured that they chose all the smartest kids in the sixth grade and put them with all the dumbest kids. The ones that needed Ms. Flores to sit with them at lunch and wipe the ranch dressing off their mouth when they stuck their face in the lunch tray. But that was only Sharon. The rest were just, well, dumb. Ms. Shaver would hold both her hands to the sky, her wrists wrapped in hemp bracelets and henna tattoos reaching to her hairy armpits, and remind them all are special when we come together. She taught English and History, where they studied native americans most of the time, or watched Pocahontas. In the next room, separated by an accordion screen, Ms. Ward rolled her eyes during the science lesson in a thirteenth answer to whether she had heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon. But Rory always brought his cafeteria tray to the classroom to eat, and they were always sitting at one of the many round tables and laughing together, so Rory figured they must be friends. Ms. Shaver wouldn’t mind him missing so much school, but Ms. Ward would definitely be angry. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He’d have to be one of the dumb kids now. He took out his notebook.

Title: The Mammoth Hunters

Author: Jean M. Auel

Main characters: Ayla, Jondalar, Ranec

Summary: Not about native americans. Descriptions of animals, and plants, and

About halfway through the book, Rory stopped taking notes. Lying on his stomach on the bed, the book open in front of him, Jean talking to herself in the corner and writing on her hand while his brother and sister played on the floor, Rory felt his pants press tighter against the sheen of the acrylic bedspread. His warm mouth . . . a flush of heat throbbing in his loins . . . his manhood . . . she pushed herself up to him, wanting, and shuddered when he answered with a deep pull . . . his manhood . . . He drew back and plunged deeply . . . He drove in again, and again, with unrestrained abandon . . .

Dinner! Jean opened two bags of potato chips. When Rory rolled over, his pants were wet, staining the bedspread. I’m not hungry. He wasn’t. You have to eat something. What had happened? Later. He didn’t care about the girl Ayla. He wanted to take her place. To be held like that. And his body felt achy thinking about it. Did he pee? He wasn’t scared, like the time he peed in his dark bed when he heard something scratching at the edge of the trailer. He sat on the bed, his butt hiding the stain and holding the large tome carefully over his lap. He would wait until it dried. Just let me finish this chapter.

The next morning, housekeeping was able to clean the room. Did you hear? The police had to break down the door. Sirens and handcuffs. This place is filthy. I mean, look at the stains on this bedspread. Jesus. At least those kids are back home.

Jean screamed as she was handcuffed and put in a squad car. All Rory noticed was the nightsticks swinging at the officer’s sides. And the bulge behind the zipper of the one who took his hand and led him out in the glow of the Super 8.