Just as it is with you, when I reach for him he slips away, like all the mysteries of childhood. He comes back to me only in snapshots, yellowed and faded with age, grainy. Always a stranger, like the boy in the photograph I found.
I am always chasing him.
twenty-four
Then
“Little bird. Get up.”
My father’s voice, his touch on my shoulder, drew me up through layers of deepest sleep. When I woke, he stood over me, dressed, a heavy pack on his back.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling the jangle of alarm.
Jay stood over by the door, also dressed, also burdened by a heavy pack. He looked dead on his feet, hair sleep tousled, eyes blank.
“If they come,” my father said, eyes shining, “they’ll come in the night.”
“If who comes?” I asked, looking past him. The bright full moon washed in through my window, casting him in an eerie white glow. “Where’s Mom?”
Behind him, Jay shook his head quickly. I read his thoughts: Shut up. Do what he says.
“Get up,” my father said more sternly. “I need you to be strong.”
I climbed out of bed, pulled on my jeans over my nightgown, grabbed my sweatshirt—a hand-me-down of Jay’s that I wore pretty much daily. I slipped into my sneakers.
“Where are we going?” I asked. I knew I could push him further than Jay could. Too many questions could earn Jay a crack across the face. The youngest, the girl, my father’s clear favorite, I had more leeway. But he didn’t answer me.
Out in the hall was another big pack, smaller than those that Jay and my father had on their backs but still huge. “When they come, you grab this pack. See? It’s red. Mine’s blue; your brother’s is black.”
I shifted it on.
“What about Mom?”
“Your mother has another job to do when they come. She knows what it is.”
What was in these packs? Where had they come from? Where would I find mine when “they” came in the night? There were always big plot holes in my father’s stories. Better just to go along. Especially when he had that tension coming off him like electricity, when his tone was pulled taut and excited.
He helped me heft on the pack, and I nearly buckled under the weight.
Where was Mom? Luke, she’d say, it’s too heavy for her. But their bedroom door was closed. I felt tears start to well from a place of helpless anger and deep fatigue.
“Let’s go,” said my father. “We won’t have this kind of time. Keep up.”
Outside, he took off in a jog, Jay following suit. I could barely walk, the pack was so heavy. I moved as fast as I could along the trail trying to keep up with Jay, who I could tell was purposely slowing his pace for my benefit. It was more than a mile from the house to the bunker. And by the time I got there, I was breathless, every muscle in my back and legs screaming. The moonlight was so bright, washing everything in blue-white.
Resting a hand against the concrete wall, I leaned over and threw up.
My father lifted the pack off me. “You’re going to have to do better than that. You need to get stronger. Faster.”
I nodded, always eager to please, willing myself not to get sick again. “Okay. I will.”
As my father unlocked the bunker door, I recognized the look on Jay’s face. It was just like my father’s—a mask of buried rage, just waiting for a moment of ignition. Jay’s eyes were dark with hatred, but it was that terrible hatred undercut by fear and longing we can only feel for the parent who is abusing us.
“When they come, you bring those packs here. I’ll either be with you, or I’ll be waiting.”
“When who comes, Dad?” asked Jay, voice sizzling with anger. “Who’s coming? I mean really. Who is coming?”
But my father didn’t answer, just unlocked the door and pushed inside. We followed him down the staircase to the interior door.
“You lock the outer door behind you,” he said. “Then when you get to the bottom, you unlock this door.”
Inside my father shifted off his pack, and Jay did the same; they sagged heavy on the floor. What was in them? I didn’t even know. The orange lantern light flickered. I wanted to lie down on the old plaid couch and fall asleep, but I stood, pushing my body in close to my brother’s, taking his hand. I expected him to push me away. But he didn’t, squeezing my hand tight.
How would the world end? I wondered. Disease, my father said sometimes. Global financial collapse. Famine. Climate change. There were myriad ways, and we’d survive them all, isolated as we were, able to live off the grid.