Daddys Caliban | Page 4

deafen me. 'Caterwauling,' Daddy called it, which was why he mostly went down to the Switchman's Rest and drank with the rail workers on Saturday morning. He didn't hold with mixing with his mill workers.
I watched Mommy, who sat still smiling as the rest of the women were on their feet, shaking loose their hair and tearing at their clothes, wailing death chants and curses. Mommy seemed bigger then, right before my eyes instead of in their corner, but at that moment Peggy the altar girl tugged the curtain into place and shooed us all out of the men's gallery while the women practiced their ancient mysteries to much screaming and howling hidden from us below.
Danny Elphinstone had tried to peek in the church windows once, when the services had gotten hot and heavy like today. He'd been struck blind and dumb and had to be sent away for three months to recover. When he came back he didn't remember none of his friends. Like a whole new kid, with blank spots.
Me, I scampered home to Cameron to plot against the river. When I got back, there was note on the nail on the back door, in Mommy's handwriting.
Henry -- Baked potatoes in the bucket on the stove. Make the best of your day. Don't go near the Old Tower.
*
"Rowboats," Cameron said as he gnawed on a scrap of potato skin.
"Rowboats?" We'd been counting the fish jumping on the river, in between straining our eyes for the distant, snow-capped peaks that could sometimes be glimpsed rising above the hills on the west bank when the weather was just right and the air was heartache-clear.
"We could get across in a rowboat."
"That ain't no different than a raft," I complained.
"Sure it is." He grinned, his clever-ape grin that let me forgive him any annoyance, then held up two fingers. "First, we don't have to build it like we'd have to build a raft. Second, rowboats have oars. We could get across the current."
"And where are we going to get a rowboat?"
He just stared at me, still grinning. It was something obvious, something he knew and I should have known.
Then I shivered. The mills.
Some of the mills, Daddy's Caliban included, kept little boats for inspecting their discharge pipes and checking the surviving old waterwheels that sometimes still creaked like the walking dead.
"We can't do that," I said.
"Why not? We stole Timmy Grapevine's scooter last spring."
"Yeah, but we gave it back three days later. And Daddy doesn't work at Timmy Grapevine's house."
If we stole from the mills, any of them, not just Caliban, and got caught... I couldn't even imagine the shame. Or the beating Daddy would give me. And for something like that, Mommy wouldn't stir to stay his hand. She'd just smile and shake her head. I could foresee the consequences of failure with the same certainty that I could foresee the sun rising tomorrow.
"So you're soft now, Henry?" Cameron leaned close, until I could smell the sour milk and coal dust on his breath. The warmth of him made the little hairs on my arm tingle. "River's too much for you, got you scared."
"No." I pushed him away, hands to his chest. A spark popped between us, like winter static, a tiny glare of blue that surprised me though he didn't seem to notice. "I ain't scared. I'm sensible. Besides, we can't take a boat from the mills. We'd have to haul it two or three miles upstream to be sure of getting across before the current took us down to the mill dams and waterfalls."
Cameron's grin stretched so wide it threatened to split his face in two. "Bluff'll hide us from view, once we get away from the mills."
"We don't have the keys," I said. My ground was getting weaker, I knew. "Those fences are topped with razor wire."
"Your Daddy's got the keys to Caliban."
Our Daddy I thought. On days like this, Cameron was like me in a black mirror, every nasty thought I ever had seeming to fill his head.
"We'll be lucky if he kills us."
"Then we just won't get caught, will we?"
The other side of the river. I looked across the water. The fields gleamed in sunlight, the forests beckoned with their cool green halls. Above it all the Old Tower rose like a finger pointed toward Father Sun. In that moment, I could even see the crisp snowcaps of those distant mountains to the west. Something glinted from high up in the Old Tower.
That decided me.
"I know where Daddy keeps his work keys on the weekend," I said.
Cameron hugged me. "That's my Henry."
Did I love him or hate him, my almost-brother? I couldn't say as I gathered the pail and the napkin and picked my way down the slope, through the scrubby forest of little, twisted pines