Legal Studies Forum
Volume 29, Number 1 (2005)
reprinted by permission Legal Studies Forum
KATE NACE DAY
________________________________
THE LAST HIDING
PLACE IN SNOW
There was Bertie sitting in the dirt yard.
He was rocking slowly back and forth and held an old orange life preserver
in the crook of his right arm. The life preserver was torn and rust-stained.
In big black letters it bore his grandfather's name, James. Bertie was
imagining himself on Grampa's boat. He rocked harder. He gripped his knees
like gunnels and pushed his face into the wind. His white blond hair stuck
straight up and he held his breath. Back and forth, the waves thrilled
him. It was the beginning of the first summer when he was aware of time
and things changing. Bertie was six.
He lived in the little house across the yard
with his mother and half-sister Edith. They all looked a little alike,
but he and Edith had different fathers. Her father had died before she
could remember him and his father had run off no one knew where. Costa
Rica, probably. Maybe, Panama. Bertie could see them both-his mother and
Edith-through the screen door. Edith was moving about the kitchen and their
mother was standing at the ironing board, watching the news. The television
news was wavy and ever-present.
Bertie had just run down the backhill and
had been there just a few minutes waiting for Edith to take him to the
beach at low tide. She had promised. When she had asked why low tide, he'd
told her it was for the puffer fish, which was not true.
"Puffer fish," she had said. "That's certainly
unusual."
"Yeah," he said. "Puffer fish hate the beach
at low tide."
There were three beaches at their end
of the island, but Bertie's favorite was the one with the big flat rock.
The rock was out deep where he couldn't touch bottom, but at low tide,
he thought, maybe, there would be another way out. And one side of the
rock would have smooth footholds and its top would be warm and high. The
bigger boys would sit with him and make loud noises with assurance. He
would be one of them! He would learn to swim!
Bertie called to Edith. For some reason, maybe
the patterned sounds from the television, she didn't hear what he said.
"What?" she said. The screen door creaked
and slapped back. She was a pretty girl; narrow like Bertie but with thick
dark curls that fell forward over her face. At fifteen, she had begun looking
out at the world through her hair. It had given her a peculiar squint.
Bertie gathered himself up as Edith came out
to him.
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"Hi," he repeated, and then he tucked in his
chin and gave out a low roar. "Rar-rrr! Do you know what I am? Granny thought
I was a broken airplane!"
"You're not an airplane," she said. "That's
for sure. Certainly not an airplane in need of repair. Maybe, an orange
that's washed overboard."
Bertie puffed out his cheeks and gave Edith
his best fishy look, then held the life preserver up for her to see. "It's
mine. It used to be Grampa's."
"Yes," she said. "That's his name, James.
J-a-m-e-s."
Edith liked to spell. She spelled hard words
like quotidian and syzygy and simple words if she thought they were important.
Bertie never knew what words were important.
"I'm not sure about the tide," Edith said,
"but whatever. Just leave that thing here."
Bertie held the life preserver up to his face,
pretending it smelled sweet. In truth, it smelled like cat piss. Everything
from Granny's barn smelled like Granny's barn cats or Grampa's old black
dog Lightning, or sometimes, there were other animals. Like the wounded
crow Granny found that flapped its wings and died. Or, the racing dogs
waiting to be adopted, or monkeys and rats that Granny rescued from scientists.
"Do rats blink?" Bertie had once asked Granny.
"Not when scientists give them tumors in their
eyes," Granny had answered. Granny hated scientists. Granny hated tumors.
Tumors, she'd explained, were gray oozing lumps that make animals die.
"Do all the animals die?"
"Yes," she's answered. "Scientists give them
tumors and they die."
Bertie and Edith cut through the back hedge
toward the beach.
"Granny called Grampa old junk," he said in
a low voice when they walked below Granny's barn.
Edith just shook her head, took Bertie's hand
and pointed out little things-a gull wing, a cloud, maybe a sail set to
sea-and when they got to the beach, she squatted down next to him in the
sand.
"I've got news, Bertie," she said, and she
told him that she was going away to school. "A private school in the mountains.
I got a scholarship, so there'll be money for you to come visit me."
Bertie just pulled away and ran hard down
the beach.
"It'll be like running away," Edith called
after him. "We'll board a bus and go hundreds of miles. Deception! Organization!"
"No," he shouted back. "No, you can't go."
When he reached the far end of the beach,
he was in tears. The tide had made pools in the rocks and puffer fish were
caught there. Bertie knelt down and scooped up an empty hermit crab shell
and threw it into
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the open water. Then, he moved one of the rocks and watched the puffer
fish swim free.
* * *
Bertie was hiding under the kitchen table
behind the chair legs and extension cords and wires. He wouldn't come out.
Edith had brought him the life preserver and made many promises, but he
just curled up with his cheek pressed to the wood floor. He liked the coolness
of it. That people could walk in and just be voices in his ears. When Edith
left for work, his mother came in and sat down at the table. He could see
her knees. He didn't know whether her knees looked old or young, worried
or sad. He shifted his head. The TV was on the counter and there was news
about a young woman who had tried to kill herself by driving off a bridge.
The camera had been set up in front of a church. There were people crying.
The reporter began an interview with a priest.
"I find myself without surprise," the priest
told the reporter, "there is sadness here today. One can only bear so much."
The national headline news came on. The Dow.
Fires in Mexico, another mysterious disease on board a cruise ship, and
three more Americans kidnapped and executed. The dust, the endless war.
His mother put the TV on mute.
Bertie stayed still, very still. He closed
his eyes and listened for his mother's breathing. He knew that sometimes
when she was alone, she cried. Sometimes she talked to herself, things
about the garden she used to have-roses and green grass-and Edith in her
baby basket.
Something was wrong with their mother, Edith
said, something fuzzy about her, disembodied. When Bertie tried to look
at her, it was easier just to look at her hands or feet. She didn't like
to leave the house, not even to take him to the beach. Edith said Bertie's
father used to take them to the beach. His name was Jack and Edith said
he was handsome. He had worked in the garage in the village, but he was
always talking about something higher. Moving on, heading out!
"I'm leaving," he said one night.
"Jack the Rat," Granny called him.
Edith said it was vulgar for Granny to talk
that way, like the sound of dirty water down the hole in the bathroom sink.
"It's vulgar," Edith had said, "to know that
something you might say will hurt someone, and then say it."
Bertie sighed. The kitchen was quiet as it
ever was. He stuck his head out, leaving most of his body under the table,
still covered with the tablecloth. He placed his chin onto the seat next
to his Mother and
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looked quickly around. When she looked down at him, he smiled and slipped
back under.
"You're an invisible boy," his mother said.
"Invisible people must be very quiet."
Invisible people, Bertie thought, must have
super powers. Invisible people don't need hiding places. They can't be
hurt. They can always escape, follow clouds and high white smoke and always
find their way home. They would always come into something new, where no
one else had ever walked. Invisible people left no tracks in the snow.
* * *
The next day, Bertie walked into the village
with Edith. She had a job in the pale gray steepled building next to the
village Post Office. The building had once been a church, but that summer,
it was The Green Barley Bookstore and Adonis Café. The bookstore
was downstairs and upstairs, in what had once been the choir loft, was
a little café. Bertie sat in the corner by the window, while Edith
served herbal teas with teacakes and pomegranates and strawberry tarts.
After tea, he watched her wash lettuces and chop vegetables. Edith selected
bright little fruits.
When the Café was really slow, they
went downstairs to the bookstore. She shelved books and watched for shoplifters.
He was happy to sit behind the counter. After a bit, Edith sat and read
to him.
"I think poetry functions like photographs,"
she told him, then read from one of her books. "'The same triple conjunction-a
little thing observed, a little thing remembered and the observing mind.
The unclouded mind. And finding the hidden similarities.' They call that
consciousness, Bertie."
He pretended to listen. That was his job,
to listen.
"There's more than one way to read," she would
tell Bertie. "If you read rigorously."
Edith had a discount on books. Her first purchase
was a red leather photo album that she quickly filled with photographs
of her father and mother-her father waving from an old car, her mother
sitting at the beach, then one of both of them in the snow. Edith had a
favorite. She was just a toddler and her father was standing in the background
of the picture with a snow shovel. He had just shoveled the path to the
kitchen door and Edith was sitting high on the mound of snow he had made.
She was wearing red boots and an orange snowsuit.
"Where am I?" Bertie asked when he saw the
happy picture of Edith in the snow. "Is that me?"
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Bertie leaned his head on Edith's shoulder
just as he had many times before. In that instant, she decided to share
her dead father with him.
"Yes," she declared. "That's you."
She invited him to tell her what made each
of the pictures interesting. They each pointed out little things. They
imagined the father's favorite things. A big old chair. A pipe rack, maybe.
Sunday rides in the country. They imagined songs about a night bird, rising
and falling in the moonlight.
Bertie moaned and cried out in his sleep.
Edith walked across the hall to his room and woke him.
"It's just a dream," she said. "Things can
happen in dreams, even bad things."
"Wild forests," he said. "I'm lost."
"Sssh." She put her face onto the pillow beside
his head, and after a while his breath returned to normal. "You're not
lost. There's a path in the grass, grass as green as short grass in summer."
"But there are baby rabbits in the grass,"
he whispered, "and they're dead. I find them in the grass by a half-dry
puddle. They have white fur and pink spots. I counted the spots. When it
gets dark, I run home. Granny tells me to wash my hands because there are
little things that live off the dead."
"Hush, you're not lost," she repeated, and
watched until he fell asleep.
* * *
Every year, Granny and Grampa had a big party
for the Fourth of July. Someone hung a flag off the front porch and people
came and went all day. Granny served hot fudge sundaes with strawberries
and blueberries. Grampa stood in the yard passing out beers to his friends.
One friend had brought his son with him, a young soldier home on leave.
He was in his uniform, and had several badges and ribbons and wore shiny
black boots laced up high over his fatigues. Bertie watched the soldier
take a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. His fingers bumped against
one another and a warm colorless light filled the yard around him.
"Honor a veteran," the soldier called to Bertie.
"Honor a hero."
Bertie took off up the hill with Lightning
chasing right after him. Lightning skirted around him, dashed in circles,
then madly ahead, round and round up the slope. At the top, they were both
panting. Bertie sat on the concrete apron of the barn and Lightning lay
panting at his
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side, her head resting gently on his lap. He kept stroking her head.
He wondered whether Lightning worried about what would happen next. He
pressed his face against her.
"I don't understand, either," Bertie said.
It was twilight. When Bertie looked up, there
were red and orange swirls in the sky and his Grampa was walking up the
hill. Lightning jumped up to meet him. Bertie watched them make their way
up the rest of the hill. He was worried about the life preserver, about
whether he should ask his grandfather if it really could be his.
"Red sky in the morning," Grampa said. "Do
you know that one, Bertie?"
Bertie reached out for Lightning and buried
his face in her neck. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what
would be a lie. Lightning wagged her tail and sniffed Bertie. He closed
his eyes and felt Lightning's whiskers on his cheek.
"I hear you're interested in puffer fish,"
Grampa said.
"Uh, huh," Bertie said slowly, realizing that
Edith must have talked.
"Well," Grampa said. "Why don't you come with
me and Lightning in the morning? And why don't you wear your bathing suit?"
Bertie got up. There was music from the party
and the sound of Granny's laughter. Bertie did a clumsy little dance.
"Do you know who I am?" Bertie asked. "Do
you, Grampa?"
Before his grandfather could answer, Bertie
spread his arms and ran furiously across the lawn, landing belly-first
in the grass. Lightning had followed him, jumping excitedly, trampling
Bertie's body, and butting him with her muzzle. It struck Bertie as unbearably
funny. They both yelped.
"Do you know, Grampa?" Bertie called out,
and then he was up again, limping wildly, like a drunken pirate on a pegleg.
"That's fine, Bertie," Grandpa said as he
watched. "Just fine."
* * *
The alarm went off at six. Bertie awoke with
delight, a simple amazement at the discovery that he was going to the beach
with his grandfather. He was sincerely happy and waited impatiently at
the screen door. Grampa came down the hill with Lightning trotting alongside
on her leash. Grampa suggested they take the long way to the beach, and
when they reached the path through the salt marsh, Grampa passed the leash
to Bertie.
"How old are you now, Bertie?"
"Six," he replied, being tugged along by Lightning.
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"Six," Grampa repeated. Bertie thought it sounded
older in his grandfather's voice. "There's an age for you. When I was six,
life was pretty simple. I had chores. One of my chores was to walk our
dog. He was a black dog like Lightning, but a very slow moving dog. He
had one green eye, as I remember."
At the ball field, they cut down the lane
to the soft path that led to the sea. Some ways down the path there was
a narrow, wooden footbridge arched over a small tidal pond. Bertie loved
the footbridge. Getting to the footbridge meant they were almost there,
where he could jump onto the sand.
"Haven't been down here in years," Grampa
said. "This pond used to be a favorite nesting place for swans. I remember
one spring when I was just back from the war, still getting used to things,
and I walked a lot. I walked down here and came upon some young boys, nine
or ten year old boys. They'd cut the head off of one of the swans. The
other swan was giving out such a sad croaking noise and the boys had run-
boys like that tend to run off."
Bertie was happy to get to the beach. It was
low tide and it was just them. Grampa let Lightning off her leash and she
headed straight into the water, barking, waiting for Grampa to throw some
driftwood out. Bertie waited. After a while, he spoke up.
"I have your life preserver," he said. "Granny
gave it to me. She said you were old junk."
Grampa just laughed. Lightning was out of
the water, shaking the water off in a wide arc. It looked for a minute
that she might make a rainbow.
"Time for a swim," Grampa said. He took
off his shoes and shirt, helped Bertie out of his shirt and quickly took
his hand. They walked into the water together, wading in slowly. The water
was cold, but Grampa kept a steady pace until they were out where Bertie
couldn't touch. Bertie splashed, trying to paddle like Lightning, but Grampa
just scooped him up and turned him onto his back. "Have to float first,
son."
* * *
As they headed back up the hill, Grampa let
Lightning off her leash.
"Did I ever tell you that I taught your mother
to swim?" Grampa asked, "and Edith, too. She's a strong swimmer."
Bertie's mother was watching from the screen
door.
"Did you two have fun?" she called.
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"Yawp, we sure did," Grampa said, scratching
the top of Bertie's head. "We talked about the weather and the ruination
of the fishing grounds. I think I sounded like an old fog horn."
"Grampa told me lots of things," Bertie said.
"We walked through the salt marsh and Grampa told me all about the grasses,
the way they die and smell rotten and become home to all sorts of animal
life."
Bertie waited until Grampa and Lightning had
left the yard, then ran inside. He pulled the life preserver out from under
the table, then dashed upstairs and right back down. He had Edith's photograph
album.
"I can read you a story," he said, putting
the album on the table for his mother to see. "Edith taught me how to read
her pictures-they tell lots of stories-and I want to tell a story."
"A story about Grampa, maybe?"
"No, a story about a monkey," he said as he
opened the album.
The first picture was of his mother in a blue
summer dress.
"Today's story is about a perfect little monkey-an
old monkey, old like Granny."
His mother almost laughed. "As old as all
that?"
"Old like . . . the whole earth! And he's
been captured and taken to a bad place and the room where he lives has
that warm smell that Granny calls science."
The next picture was the one of Edith in her
orange snowsuit.
"I'd forgotten this," she said, catching her
breath with her fingertips on the faces in the photo.
"There is a boy in my story," Bertie said
quickly. "The boy went to where the monkey lived and he never came back
because he saved the monkey from being . . . trapped in this mean cage.
The monkey was scratching a big gray lump on his side and he threw his
food all over. Raw eggs and . . ."
"Do monkeys eat raw eggs?"
Bertie wasn't sure, but then remembered Granny's
sundaes at the party with the strawberries and blueberries.
"Yes," he said, laughing to remember. "This
monkey liked eggs and ice cream! When the little boy went in, he walked
tiptoe around the monkey's mess and then the monkey looked up and they
both blinked. The little boy laughed. Then he sat down and he took off
his snowsuit and . . ."
". . . snow?"
Bertie tapped the photograph of Edith in the
snow.
"Lots of snow. The little boy had red boots
and orange socks and a warm scarf from his mother but the monkey didn't
have any clothes, so the little boy took off his boots and pulled his socks
way up and walked right over and opened the cage. He wasn't afraid. He
just took the
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monkey's hand and they snuck down all these hallways and opened all
the doors and they walked out right out into the snow."
Bertie slapped the album shut. "And the little
boy told the monkey that there was a hiding place in the woods, the last
hiding place. The End!"
"A lovely story!" his mother said. "The brave
little boy and the snow, the footprints like your bare feet, running in
summer, and then snow covering everything."
Bertie took a deep breath and looked up at
his mother. He looked in her eyes and thought maybe she really saw him.
"Can you see his orange socks?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "His orange socks, I
can see it all."
"Can you see the snow?"
"Oh, yes."
And Bertie closed his eyes and saw it too-the
snowfall blew lightly, softly falling on spruces and white birches. The
monkey pressed its little thumb into the soft of the little boy's hand
and they climbed the entire hill. At the top, they stopped and looked out
over the open field. They listened, and all they heard was the wind playing
through the open field. The wind was cold. The little boy unwrapped his
blue scarf and put it warm around the monkey's neck. The monkey gave a
little dance, and then the little boy felt his hand become empty. He let
the monkey run ahead.
* * *
It was the end of summer and the weather had
turned luxuriantly dry. Bertie's mother planted a few seedlings in the
yard, but she forgot to water them and they died in the sun. Edith took
some pictures of them while they were still green, and a picture of Bertie,
too. She tucked the picture of Bertie into a book of poetry and took it
with her when he went away to school. Years later, she went looking for
a poem, and there was Bertie sitting in the green yard.
Before Edith left for school, Granny was arrested
for breaking into a laboratory on the mainland and releasing the research
fish. Grampa said he thought the whole family was getting odd, but he and
Bertie took on the habit of taking Lightning for an early morning walk.
"I don't like the way she's running," said
Grampa one morning. Lightning was limping on a hind leg. Grampa bent down
and felt all along the hock. There was a small lump. He took Bertie's hand
and let him feel it.
"Gently," Grampa said. "Feel that lump."
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Bertie knew that word lump meant tumor, and
as much as he wanted to pull back and hide, he let Grampa lead him, searching
gently with his fingertips until he felt the small spot. It was hard and
pea-sized. It was worse than what Granny had said. This was inside, not
something you could see like a cut that oozes. Lightning started whining.
"Could be nothing," Grampa said when they
reached the footbridge. "Could be something. We'll have to get her to the
vet."
When they got to the beach, Lightning ran
straight in. Bertie let out a whoop and ran right in after her while Grampa
stood and watched. It was a great moment. The first time Bertie swam all
the way out.
"How old are you now?" Grampa asked on their
walk home.
"Six," he said. "Almost seven!"
"Seven," his grandfather said. "Now, there's
an age for you."
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