Daddys Caliban | Page 4

giggling, but not me. This was the best
kind of service, on those rare weeks when they really got going like
this.
"When was it given to us?" Mother Arleigh called.
"When the end began!" they responded.
"When will we receive it?"

"When we have earned it!"
"And have we earned it yet?"
The women burst into such a lot of howling and cursing that it was fit
to 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.