Legacy Read online

  Shockingly, he does what I say. He walks closer, quieter than I’ve ever seen him, and when he gets near enough to spot the deer, he stops.

  Then he sees Legacy. I watch him look up the trunk, all the way into the sky. I can’t read his face. If he thinks it’s stupid, or it’s just a tree, that will mean he doesn’t understand me. That I can’t have the feeling I have out here and still be with him. That I have to be with someone else. But there isn’t anybody else, not anybody I can have. My heart pounds. I wish I could make him feel how I need him to feel.

  “Hey,” he finally says, after a long, long time. “Thanks for leaving school and coming back with me. I know you didn’t have to.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Thanks for bringing me,” and for a minute I realize: maybe this is that thing I felt the day we met in Point Defiance Park. That he could take me somewhere else, away from my life and someplace better. Someplace more real. Maybe this is that. Some small voice in my head says, But you’re the one who brought him out here to the tree, but I push that down, and then he pulls me in to him, and I lay my head on his chest, his hoodie zipper cool against my cheek, and we stay like that a long time.

  CHAPTER 10

  The next week I spend my days working hard, hauling and building and carrying, my muscles used up and aching by each night. It helps keep my mind off my mom, the sound of the front door slamming behind me, the last time I’ll ever hear that sound. I do things I’ve never done: lug water, cook food, build fires. I’ve never really worked before, not with my body, not like this. I’ve done homework and made people coffee, and that’s not the same. This is something we can hold in our hands, that feeds us, warms us, keeps us safe. Like Andy and his Scout troop, everyone working together to get through the woods. I’m good at it. When I get tired, I remind myself, This is what you wanted. You wanted something real, and I believe it.

  We’re all supposed to work; the agreement is that the whole camp comes to meetings every morning and we divvy up chores for the day—building barricades, cooking, dishes, firewood. The reality is more like: Sage, Aaron, Nutmeg, Exile, and me do stuff, and the other people smoke pot and talk about being radical a lot. Aaron says it’s better to “lead by example, not coercion,” and I kind of see what he means: I certainly don’t want to be the one telling guys with face tattoos to help with the dishes.

  I do wish Jeff were with me working, though. He’s mostly with those bus kids now, especially Stone and Goat; it’s like they’re his people, like he’s got a pack. He always talked about his band that way, too, and I remember being jealous of that feeling: like you had people who you knew were yours. Like you belonged. I like the work here, cooking for people and building with my hands, but I want to be with Jeff. I wish I didn’t have to choose.

  * * *

  • • •

  One night I’m on cleanup duty after dinner, scrubbing a rice pot, steel wool scraping under my fingernails, when Jeff comes over. “Just let it soak,” he says. “Come hang out on the bus.”

  I look at Aaron and Sage, both stacking up supplies, then over to the bus. Sage catches me.

  “It’s okay,” she hollers over. “I got it. It’ll be easier after it soaks a while anyway.” I feel kind of bad, like I’m flaking on them. I need to earn my right to be here, the food I eat. My mom never stopped reminding me of that: how hard she worked, how much she sacrificed for me. I don’t want to be a freeloader.

  Jeff looks at me. “C’mon,” he says. “Live a little,” and he smiles. Like a punk show in Seattle, a late-night drive with the windows rolled down. Like there’s some adventure he’s not afraid to have. It’s always been my favorite thing about him.

  “Okay,” I say, and we head to the bus as the sun sets.

  Inside is pretty awesome, I have to admit. It’s a school bus, like the kind I rode in elementary school, driver’s seat up front and the black ridged rubber aisle down the middle, but the seats are all ripped out, and in their place are these skinny wooden bunks built into the walls. Below each bunk is a row of milk crates, dirty clothes stuffed in with old half-shredded issues of The Stranger, typewritten Xeroxed zines, dog-eared books with titles like No Gods No Masters and Pussycat Riot. In the back by the emergency exit there’s even a little kitchen: a sink with plastic tubing and a mini-fridge, dirty dishes and spilling bags of rice. It’s a lot grosser than the one at camp, but it’s still cool to see that someone built a kitchen in a bus.

  We turn the corner off the stairs, standing by the vinyl driver’s seat. Naya and her boyfriend, Bender, are lying in the farthest bunk, back by the kitchen. I think they’re sleeping when I first see them, and look to Jeff—maybe we should go? But Jeff says, “Hey,” and Naya lifts her head.

  “Hey,” she says thinly. “’Sup.”

  “Where is everyone?” he asks, and Naya chuckles. I’m pretty sure her boyfriend is actually asleep.

  “Probably off starting fires or some shit,” she says and then lies back down, cuddling into her boyfriend.

  It’s awkward for a second and I look at Jeff again like We should go? but then the emergency door clatters open and the other guys tumble in from outside.

  “What’s up!” Stone says, loud, and I guess it doesn’t matter to him that anyone’s trying to sleep. Jeff smiles when he sees him, and the guys come up and clamber on the bunks near us. Stone sits and starts rolling a cigarette, muddy boots on the sheets. Dirtrat sits beside him, watching over his shoulder, and Stone chucks his arm. “You’re not getting any.”

  Goat sits on the bunk across from them, and Jeff plops down beside him. There’s not really enough room for me on the mattress, too, so I just stand there.

  “Where’s Cyn?” Jeff asks Stone.

  “Ah, her hair was fading, so she went down to the stream to dye it again.”

  Not that I’m a biologist or anything, but it seems weird to me that you’d put a bunch of purple hair dye in a stream if you’re out here protecting the forest. It can’t be good for the fish. I must make a face, because Stone goes, “What?”

  “I mean. Isn’t that kinda not ecological?”

  He laughs and does the bicep smack of universal brotherhood on Dirtrat. Stone’s strong, I think; Dirtrat kind of recoils. “Ha!”

  I just look at him.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “She’s kidding,” Jeff says. I fucking hate that shit.

  “Not really.” I shoot Jeff a look. “It’s purple hair dye.”

  “Okay, hippie police,” Stone says.

  I just stare at him. I’m not the police.

  “Chill, Alison, it’s vegetable dye,” Stone says.

  “That shit is vegan.” Dirtrat laughs, shoveling stale tortilla chips into his mouth.

  I look at Jeff. He’s laughing along with them. I don’t want to be the lame girlfriend. And anyway, maybe he’s right. What am I, the hippie police? The fish will probably be fine. “Whatever,” I say, and crack a grin. “Fuck the fish.”

  Jeff pulls me down onto his lap. The sheets smell like unwashed body now that I’m down here, but I’m glad to be close to him. He wraps his skinny arms around my waist, claiming me, and it helps me feel like I belong.

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour later it’s dark and all the guys are drunk. Crass is blaring from a tinny-speakered boom box, and astoundingly Naya and Bender have continued to sleep through it all. Cyn still isn’t back from dying her hair, which is fine with me. We’ve never even talked, but the way she looks at me makes me feel like Naomi Gladstone and her posse do, her cheekbones sharp, that mean-girl harshness pointing from her eyes. I’m glad to stay away from her.

  Stone, Goat, Jeff, and Dirtrat are embroiled in a noisy debate about property destruction versus violence, and whether there’s a tactical difference between monkey-wrenching an engine and punching a logger in the face. Personally I haven’t seen any of th
em do either one, and I don’t know about these other guys, but Jeff and Dirtrat didn’t have the balls to even stick around that first night, much less punch someone. But whatever. I think they all just like to use the word tactical. Every once in a while I’ll jump in with a snide remark. If I stay mostly quiet, my timing is good, little sister mostly listening, sometimes serving up a zinger. I know how to do that in a group of guys; I make them laugh. I didn’t realize I’d remember how to do that.

  Goat and Dirtrat are laughing at some dumb thing I said, and Jeff’s looking at me, proud. I look around the lightbulb-lit bus and I think, This is pretty okay. The music on the boom box is hard-core punk, not Zeppelin, and it stinks a little more, but it kind of reminds me of the van. I relax back into Jeff, leaning on him, and close my eyes. The throng of guy voices around me blur into a haze of rowdy laughter, and it doesn’t matter what they’re saying, just that they’re here and I’m included and I have someone to lean on, someone looking out for me. For a minute I let myself feel young again, like the girl before things happened, before I knew the things I know. I reach for her, that kid, the one who felt safe, who wasn’t by herself. The one who was on the inside, not outside alone. I can almost reach her.

  Then, “Alison,” Stone yells, jolting me out of my reverie. I open my eyes. He’s holding out the plastic bottle of Popov vodka—“the brand of bums,” Jeff calls it—pushing it too close to my face. “You dind’t have any,” he slurs.

  “I’m good,” I say, the sharp smell coming off his skin, cutting through the thick of male stink.

  “Aw, c’mon. It’s capitalist not to share,” he says, and I mean, I could see what he means if it were my booze, but I don’t quite see the political problem with not taking his.

  “Yeah, I’m not a capitalist,” I say. “I just don’t drink.” Jeff is arguing with Goat and Dirtrat about some shit about British skinheads in the eighties. His arm’s not on me anymore.

  “Come on,” Stone says. “Help you loosen up.”

  He holds my eyes too long, the way Brandon did in the van the first time, after Andy died; I recognize that look. It means I want something from you. I hate that look.

  “I’m loose enough,” I say, trying to fend him off, and the second I hear the words come out of my mouth, I regret them. Shit.

  He smiles. “Y’are, huh?” He looks at Jeff. “She is?”

  Jeff’s halfway through a sentence about the ideology of some band called The Oppressed; he’s not really listening. “Sure,” he tells Stone. “Whatever.” Then he turns to Goat and says, “See, that’s what you get when you let people in who aren’t on board for the mission, man—”

  Stone looks at me too long again. Jeff’s not paying attention. “So you don’t think you need to loosen up,” Stone says. “I think you do,” and now he reminds me of John McDonnell in the hallways, that up-and-down that wants something and hates you at the same time, and Jeff is laughing with the other guys and doesn’t even notice, even when I take his hand and put it on me, saying, Claim me, make him stop. Naya’s snoring in the back bunk and there’s no other girls in here, just a tangle of testosterone and sweat, the loud male laughter that an hour ago felt safe, felt almost like a home I used to know, but now with the vodka and the smoke and the too-grown-up-ness feels like the exact opposite: like that home going away, like it turning dangerous. The walls feel too close and the bunks feel too narrow and the smoke is clogging my eyes and Stone is still staring, waiting, challenging me to come up with a comeback that I know he’ll turn against me.

  He blinks and I blink, and I can’t think of anything brave to say. He grins at me, winning, and I finally can’t stand it. I stand up and touch Jeff on the shoulder. He’s talking and he doesn’t turn around. I lean down and say in his ear, “Hey, I’m going to bed,” and he turns halfway back and goes, “Cool, cool,” and goes back to whatever he was saying.

  I just hang there for a second. It’s fucked up to me that Jeff’s all weird about Aaron, who doesn’t want a thing from me, who’s actually my friend, and yet he doesn’t even notice when his drunk buddy hits on me. It makes me feel like maybe Jeff’s whole jealousy thing isn’t even about me. Like it’s more about guys and how they are with each other. Aaron’s the leader of the whole group here; Stone’s the leader of the bus. But Aaron doesn’t even want to be a leader; he’s just powerful. He doesn’t believe in climbing that whole ladder, he believes in something else. Something about people doing things together, not who’s on top and who’s beneath. Whenever Jeff tries to climb up to where he thinks Aaron is, Aaron just looks at him like, Why are you climbing. Just come be on the ground with us and work. But Stone is on the ladder. The same one that John McDonnell’s on, the one that Jeff and Dirtrat understand, the pyramid of guys jockeying for position, trying to get closest to the guy at the top. Stone says something to Goat, and Jeff laughs the loudest; Stone hands the bottle of Popov to him and Jeff drinks, looking like he feels safe, looking at home. It’s not about me. It’s about guys and who they are to each other. My body just happens to be between them. I slip out the school-bus doors and no one even notices.

  * * *

  • • •

  When I step out, the air opens back up. The walls dissolve and the thick stink of the bus dissipates into fresh air. The forest breathes around me; I feel safe. Everyone else is sleeping already, the camp put away, the embers burned out. I make my way to our tent and nestle down in Andy’s sleeping bag, the nylon smooth against my cheek, the twigs pressing up beneath my body. I’m alone here, but it’s better than being in that bus. I can hear their voices echo through the woods, far away but still loud against the silence of the forest, and I wish they would shut up, and I wish Jeff would leave that bus and come back into the quiet with me.

  * * *

  • • •

  After that, Jeff starts staying on the bus till late every night. I don’t go back there with him; I don’t want to. During the day, there’s always stuff to do, so Stone and them don’t bother me: they can help if they want, or they can talk about stupid punk bands and the revolution, it doesn’t really matter. I keep focused on my work, the calluses growing on my hands, the muscles in my legs, and I don’t let Stone get close to me again.

  At school I could never figure out how to do that, keep people away if I didn’t want to talk to them: we were all together in the halls, you had to be in certain places certain times, there was no escape. But here there aren’t those rules, there’s just work to do, and I get to decide what I do and when, how I contribute, and who I want to see. It makes me feel strong. Like I get to choose who I’m with, but I don’t have to hide from anyone.

  I miss Jeff in the tent at night, though. I never ask him to come back early; it would just annoy him. I go to bed when the work is done, when the fire is out, when the forest quiets down and everyone else in the tents turns in. I fall asleep alone as the drunk voices echo far away in the bus, and he always comes back eventually. When he unzips the tent door, I stir, open up my arms to him, and he rustles in with me. I pretend to be sleeping so we won’t have to talk, and we hang on to each other till dawn.

  For those few hours every night I focus on the things that are still the same. I hold on tight and drink him in, trying to match our edges up again. He falls asleep while I lie there, waiting for sleep to take me back again. I listen to the voices start to slow down on the bus and try not to think about all the things that I can’t talk about: the tug in my gut when I remember my mom, the anxiety about dropping out of school, the creeping nerves of knowing I’m going to have to do something after all of this, the knot of dark guilt about Andy, the feeling Aaron might know things that could set me free from all of that.

  CHAPTER 11

  One morning Jeff’s still sleeping in our tent and I’ve been up since dawn, watching the light go from navy to pink to golden through the trees, making a huge vat of gluey oatmeal. I had to scrape it together from a few diffe
rent tubs, and there’s no maple syrup or honey or anything left to add to it. Local hippies have been bringing food up here since we came: castoffs from the food co-op, bulk rice and wilted broccoli. But this week no one could come, and there are a lot of us now. We’re running out of food.

  Aaron comes to the kitchen as the pot is bubbling, another early riser. “Hey,” he says, and I smile at him: “Morning.”

  “I’ve gotta make a food run,” he says. “I could use an extra set of hands; Sage is helping Nutmeg with the barricades today. You up for it?”

  I hesitate. The whole weirdness with Jeff started when I went hiking with Aaron. And that was basically right here, near us, in the woods. A food run would mean driving off the premises, away from the forest, back into the world. Together.

  But then: “C’mon.” Aaron smiles. “It’ll be fun.” And his green eyes crinkle, kind, and my heartbeat speeds up, and I say, “Okay.” As we walk away from the clearing, I see Jeff come out from our tent, rubbing his eyes. I don’t turn to find out if he sees me leaving, but I think he does.

  * * *

  • • •

  The car is rickety and super-old, like from 1985 or something. The tape player doesn’t work. It’s weird to see Aaron driving; I’ve only ever seen him in the woods. He grips the wheel in his tan Carhartts and navy hoodie, a burgundy stocking cap over his head. In the car, away from the forest, he looks like a normal person, just regular like everyone else.

  We bump over dirt roads and the rocks in them until finally we get to the paved parts. I’m embarrassed to find myself relieved at the ease of the asphalt, a hint of civilization smoothing things out, softening the ride. The last time I made this drive the asphalt almost made me cry, but now it’s nice for things to feel easy for a second. My shoulders drop and I start thinking about gas station bathrooms and sinks with running water and I’m glad I came on the supply run.