Russell Banks - Trailerpark

The child looked about in bewilderment, and when she got to the edge of the ice, she stopped and faced the crowd.

“All right, honey,” her mother said. “Go ahead. Go on and visit Uncle Merle, honey. He’s out there waiting for you.”

They could trust the child. Merle, they knew, would tell her the truth, and she in turn would tell them the truth.

“Go on, sweets,” Doreen coaxed.

The little girl looked up at the adults.

“Merle’s probably lonely,” Nancy Hubner said. “He’ll love you for visiting with him.”

“It’s not very far, you’ll have fun walking on the ice,” Terry assured her.

“She doesn’t wanta go, man,” Bruce said to Terry in a low voice.

“For Christ’s sake, make the kid go!” Claudel told Doreen. “I’m getting cold standing out here in my shirtsleeves.”

“Shut up, Claudel, she’s just a little nervous.”

Marcelle snorted. “First time I’ve seen her nervous about playing on the ice. Usually you can’t get her to come in off it.”

“Go on,” Doreen said, waving good-bye.

The child took a backward step and stopped.

“G’wan, honey, Uncle Merle’s waiting for you,” Carol said with obvious impatience. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

“You’re the child’s mother,” Captain Knox reminded Doreen. “You tell her what you want her to do, and if she doesn’t do it, punish her. It’s her choice.” He turned and stepped from the group, as if all this fuss had nothing to do with him.

“If you don’t march out there and visit Merle Ring right now, young lady, I’ll… I’ll … take away TV for a month!”

The little girl looked angrily up at her mother. “No,” she said.

“I will too! Now get out there! He’s expecting you, dammit!”

“You come, too,” Maureen said to her mother.

“I can’t… I … have to do the laundry.”

“He only likes kids,” Terry said. “Grownups like us just bug him. You’ll see. He’ll be real glad to see you come all the way out there to visit him.”

“He might have some candy for you,” Bruce said.

The child turned and started waddling away.

“Don’t forget about the money!” Noni Hubner called.

The child turned back. “What?”

“The money! ” several of them bellowed at once, and the child, as if frightened, whirled away.

The adults stood for a moment, watching the blue hooded figure get smaller and smaller in the distance. The ice was white and smooth and, because of the constant wind, scraped free of snow, so that the blue figure of the child and the red bobhouse way beyond stood out sharply. The sky, the color of a dirty sheet, stretched over the lake, and lumpy gray hills lay like a rumpled blanket between the ice below and sky above. Slowly, the people drifted back to their trailers, until only the child’s mother and her friend Marcelle remained at the shore. Once, the child stopped and turned back, and the mother waved, and the little girl went back to trudging toward the bobhouse. Then the mother and her friend walked to the mother’s trailer together.

“Kid’s got a mind of her own,” Marcelle said, lighting a cigarette off Doreen’s gas stove. “Just like my kids used to be.”

“Why do you think I let her go all the way out there alone?” Doreen asked.

“You can only protect them so much.”

“I know,” Doreen said sighing. “Otherwise you got ’em clinging to you the rest of your life.”

“Yeah.”

The child Maureen Tiede pushed the door of the bobhouse open an inch and peeked inside. The wind had come up sharply and the snow was beginning to fall in hard, dry flecks. Maureen’s face was red and wet from tears. Outside, a rag of smoke trailed from the chimney, but inside the bobhouse it was as dark as inside a hole in the ground and, except for the howl of the wind, silent. The little girl let the door close again and backed away from it as if there were no one there. For a few moments she stood outside, looking first across the ice to the trailerpark, then at the closed door of the bobhouse. At the trailerpark, the frozen beach was deserted. The trailers, their pastel colors washed to shades of gray in the dim light, sat like two parallel rows of matchboxes. Finally, Maureen moved toward the door and pushed it open once again, wider this time, so that a swatch of light fell into the bobhouse and revealed the hooked shape of the old man seated at the end of the bunk. He was squinting out of his darkness at the open door and the child beyond.

“Come inside,” Merle said.

The girl stepped carefully over the high threshold and, on closing the door behind her, realized that, while she could no longer make out the old man, the place was not entirely dark, for an eerie green light drifting from circles cut in the ice was bright enough to cast shadows against the ceiling and walls. Immediately, Maureen backed up to the bunk, and holding to it with both hands stared down at the holes in the ice, looked through the ice and saw the fluid, moving world there — tall, slender weeds and broadleaf plants drifting languorously back and forth, schools of minnows and bluegills gathering, swirling skittishly away from one another, then, as if at a prearranged signal, quickly regathering. The little girl was mesmerized by the sight, possibly even reassured or comforted by it, for she seemed to relax. She pulled off her mittens and stuffed them into the pockets of her snowsuit, then untied and pushed back her hood, all the while keeping her gaze fixed on the world beneath the ice, the world that moved beneath the cold, granitic, wind-blown world here above.

“All by yourself today?” Merle asked quietly from his corner by the stove.

Maureen nodded her head and said nothing.

Merle queried the child for a few moments, discovered that she was not lost, that her momma knew where she was, and that she had never seen anyone fish through the ice before. “Well, you just sit still with me,” he told her, “and before long your momma or somebody else from the park will be out here looking for you. It’s snowing here and ought to be there, too. That’ll bring ’em out to get you.”

By now she had her snowsuit off and was seated cross-legged on the bunk. She had said very little, answering Merle’s questions with yes or no and nothing more.

Her silence seemed to please him. “You’re a nice kid,” he said, and for the first time in months, he smiled.

After a while, Maureen lay back on the bunk against the old man’s blanket roll and fell asleep. Outside, the wind moaned and drove the snow against the ice and across the ice, piling it in long, soft drifts along the shore. The sky had closed in, and even though it was still early in the afternoon, it seemed like evening. Every now and then, Merle tossed a chunk of wood into the stove, lit his pipe, took a sip of whiskey, and checked his lines.

It was dark outside and snowing heavily, when the door was suddenly shoved open, and Maureen’s mother, her boyfriend Claudel right behind her, stepped into the tiny chamber, filling the crowded space to overflowing, so that Claudel had to retreat quickly. There were others outside, their heads bobbing and craning behind Doreen for a look the instant Claudel could be got out of the way.

Merle had lit the kerosene lantern and had prepared a supper of fried bass filets, boiled greens pulled from the lake bottom, and tea in his only cup for the child, whiskey from the bottle for himself.

Doreen, in her hooded parka crusted with snow, embraced her child. “Thank God you’re all right!” The little girl pulled away. “I don’t know what got into me!” Doreen cried. “Letting you out of my sight for a minute on a day like this!”

Maureen stared down at the holes in the ice, which were dark now.