Filching
CATHERINE SHUKLE
The campground was wild. Bikini bottoms, brown with lake sand, hung from the branches of Jeffrey pines, sticky with sap. Country twang sang like hip-hop out of truck speakers. Up high, the noon sun sat dry and light on a hot mountain sky. Satellite dishes teetered on top of campers with flags in the windows. “Stay away from the MAGA kids,” her mother had said to her, thumbing at the curtain flags that blocked out the light. “And the pot heads.” Franny had popped a gummy like bubblegum, laughed at the white cannabis flags turned gray, their green leaves ripping like basil. She loved her mother, sure, but there was just so much she could not imagine.
It was a Sunday in June, and Franny and her mother had driven through the night from Salt Lake, her mother behind the wheel wired up on adrenaline and gas station macchiatos, Franny nodding her head against the passenger window, chin bruising on the window ledge. She’d offered to drive, she was twenty-two after all, but she was glad when her mother grimaced. Shook her head no. “Let’s just get there,” she’d said.
And, they had. Nine hours under the stars to Twin Lakes, California. The Sawtooth Ridge rose sharp and silver above them; the deep blue lakes wavered in rhythm. Their faces hung and rimmed, they parked for the morning at the Ruby Inn, ten minutes outside of the campground. They would have slept the day away, probably, had it not been for housekeeping opening the door to their chain lock, knocking unanswered.
They were bleary, but the air crisped of hot dogs and buttered trout, and Franny was happy to be there, despite it all. When her mother had called her on Saturday morning and invited her backpacking of all things, Franny’s gut had said no, god no, but she’d had nothing else, really. Her roommate, Delilah, was moving out. Her boxes were half taped, leaking underwear and pillowcases and colorful magnets she’d stripped from the fridge. In one box, Franny had found the tiger-striped chopsticks she’d given Delilah for their two-month anniversary—broken in seven pieces, sealed in a sandwich bag. She should have been sadder, she supposed, but it was like she’d known it was coming. Delilah had been leaving in pieces since their first kiss: words replaced with emojis, the turn of the lock for a first-morning pee, long gaps after simple questions: Did you use the last of the mayo? Where did you put the mayo? Is there any mayo left? “Stop pushing, Fran,” Delilah would say, her hands on her hips, blue eyes rolling. But she’d never answer the question, and what was the reason for that?
Now, Franny waited on the strip of brown beach. Her mother was in the general store across the gravel lot, renting a pontoon. A woman in a red bikini was making eyes at Franny; she took long sips of orange soda from a bottle, thumbed her waistband up and down, up and down. On her left bicep, a purple teddy bear tattoo wobbled. She gave a wink, swatted at an insect that Franny couldn’t see. She had her bum burrowed into the sand, feet buried, and two young boys splashed in the shallows in front of her, squealing cold. Franny thought of Delilah back in Utah, loading boxes into her hatchback, driving off to god knows where. She thought of red rock and sunsets and all those particles of light that fizzle out and never reappear.
Franny smiled back at the woman. Flicked up her blue swim strap that was slipping off her shoulder.
“In your pocket,” her mother said, shoving something warm into her hand.
Franny looked down, and then back at her mother, quickly, but she had already moved on, jiggling a set of keys between her fingers, headed to the dock. “Orange stripe’s ours,” she called, not looking over her shoulder.
It was fudge. Cubed. Dark cocoa studded with nuts. Franny shoved it in her mouth, because she sure as hell wasn’t shoving it into her jean shorts. She wondered how her mother had managed that one, slipping her fingers into the plexiglass case when the cashier’s head was turned just right. Cradled it in her left fist, hung down by her thigh, as she grabbed her change with her right.
Filching, her mother called it, and Franny liked the sound of that, even though it had scared her shitless at first. Gum packs, tiny plastic princesses, sterling silver necklaces glassy with baubles. Once, she’d caught her with a mango under her shirt. A pack of jumbo marshmallows. It was only a matter of time, Franny had thought, before she’d be found out, before someone would stop her, one way or another, but it had been six years now, and she was still going strong. If she couldn’t consume it, she kept it. When Franny had returned to her mother’s house, briefly, after a sour breakup with a boy named Denver who’d refused to let her wear underwear, even when she was bleeding, she’d found her bedroom unchanged except for her closet. It had transformed into her mother’s filching closet, shelves lined like a whack-job rummage sale: plastic aquarium plants in all shades of neon, baseballs, sleek Hot Wheels racers with rainbow shells, a pretty pink bell weight, a single toddler sandal in glitter gold. Right foot. Size eight.
It had been six years since her brother, Noah, had gone missing, six years since her mother had started filching, almost seven since they’d last been to Twin Lakes as a family. They had been happy here once, the three of them. Franny pictured Noah stitched up in his lifejacket, the lake water blue and deep below them, the Sawtooth Ridge jutting up into the sky like it was going for blood. Once, they’d anchored near a spit of sand that butted up to a line of summer cabins, watched a big brown bear amble between trunks, walking through clotheslines flapping with towels. Noah had hidden behind her waist, tiny hands gripping her hips, peeking just his head out. Such awe, and then it was gone.
Franny watched her mother ready the pontoon. They didn’t fish, but she could see her mother pulling packages of lures from one pocket, Jolly ranchers from the other. A bright rainbow pile. She’d pulled three life jackets from the deck box, lined them up on the bench seats, but did not put hers on. Maybe she was remembering Noah too, Franny thought, as she watched her mother study a tiny blue one. She buckled the dirty yellow clasps and pulled the straps tight. Unbuckled, and did it again. Unbuckled, and did it again. Franny sighed. She dug the fudge from her molars with her tongue. Time to go. She glanced back to the woman on the beach, but she was gone, her boys were gone; there were two plastic pails in their place. Somewhere in the distance, a drunken cheer, a bird whistle. Silence, and then she watched as her mother stuffed the small blue lifejacket into her bag, the yellow straps flapping out like caution tape.
Grief was a funny thing that cut like a sawblade at times, cut you up bad, but missing was something gaping. A darkness, Franny thought, that sat heavy and wide. Noah had been missing five hours before his bike was found, five days before his body was found, facedown in a pocket of forest mud, naked from the waist down, a trail of blood, like a teardrop running, down his little right leg. There was a semen stain, partial DNA profile, on his blue underwear. It had been stuck high in a tree branch like a kite. Noah was five years old, starting kindergarten in three short weeks, and he’d called them “motherfuckers!” and “shitbutts!” before grabbing his purple lightsaber and his green bike and pedaling off, hard, down the gravel that spit dirt out behind him in a scream.
“What was that about?” Franny had asked her mother. They’d been in the kitchen, Franny chasing a fly with a swatter, their mother microwaving plates of bacon up crispy and black. The house smelled of grease and dust and her mother’s vanilla shampoo. Franny was sixteen, and it was August. Her mind was all swimming pools, and new school kicks, and hard lemonade on the tongue of her first real girlfriend, Mandy, who coached her high school junior volleyball team. She’d never heard Noah cuss before. He’d asked for cookies—strawberry wafers, just that kind—and their mother had said, “I’m making breakfast,” and Franny had said, “Real food first,” and then he’d lost it like that was what he was looking to do all along. Red-faced and foul-mouthed and feet stomping like he’d never even done as a toddler. And then he was gone. “Let him go,” her mother had said when Franny made to chase after him, and she had. Theirs was a dead-end road, lined with back-set houses with long dirt driveways and swaths of national forest land that undulated for acres in all directions. Green and red and brown for miles, topped by blue and white sky. All those years, before Noah, Franny had dreamed of disappearing, like she imagined all teenagers did. Where, it didn’t matter: subway tunnels under a city she’d never seen, the California coastline fogged up thick, somewhere out east, where carnivals sang on boardwalks with cotton candy sticks. Away, and free. After Noah, her mother filched, snatched silly things close to her because she couldn’t bear not to, and Franny hopped haphazardly rock to rock, avoiding the red dirt that Noah had died in, watched the world around her push up, up and away, leaving her in the wake.
At Twin Lakes, on the orange-striped pontoon, Franny and her mother anchored out in the middle of the water, far from shore. In a few hours, the trout would be biting and the lake would swell with fishers out aching to snag, but, for now, the lake sat still and quiet. They were far from shore. Her mother sat behind the wheel, sucking on M&M’s she pulled from her pocket, one at a time. Red, orange, green, blue. No yellow.
“What are we doing here?” Franny asked.
“Backpacking. Tomorrow,” her mother said.
“I know that, but—” They hadn’t been backpacking since that summer before Noah died. He’d only been four, but it had been Franny who’d complained the whole way up the mountain, not him. He’d carried a stegosaurus backpack filled with dehydrated spaghetti bags and chocolate chip granola bars. Franny wove the flowers he picked as they elevated—purple lupine, white mariposas, crimson columbines—into a crooked crown. At night, he curled his body into her spine, boney against the rock bed jutting through their sleeping bags.
Franny reached over her mother and cranked the volume up. The fish radar went wild. Long beeps like sirens blared into the quiet. On the small screen, Franny and her mother watched the fish vibrate and disappear, reappear—50 feet, 75 feet, 99, 100. It was hard for Franny to imagine anything so deep. Quick flashes of rainbow in darkness. She watched her mother, wondering: If she jumped now, could she catch one? If she sank, what might she find on the bottom of it all?
A MAGA hat would have been a deal-breaker, but this was just a bright red cap with the words Candy Floss in a cursive script, white threads gone gray. The woman from the beach was sitting in a camp chair, red cap pulled down low, red bikini and purple teddy tattoo poking out of a plain white T-shirt, long legs bouncing like she was on something, jittering funny. Beside her, a man with a bright orange beard, tight and curly, sat quietly, sipping a beer. Behind them, a big silver camper loomed. The two young boys were nowhere in sight.
Franny and her mother had returned the pontoon keys and sought out their campsite. They’d rented one far from the spit of beach and general store and ice cream stand and closer to the trailheads, back under the shade of the big, tall pines. A quieter space. They hadn’t imagined they would be alone, it was summer after all, but Franny had been surprised to see a camper back that far, even more surprised to see the woman out front, staring at Franny hard like she was annoyed she’d taken so long.
They’d pitched their tents. It was darker in the trees, and Franny knew that soon the sun would slip over the western range. If they were lucky, the Sawtooth would light up pink and gold with alpenglow. Fire risk was high, the Smokey Bear sign said, its arrow pointing red, so there’d be no campfire, but Franny had bought a bag full of snack cakes and jerky from the general store, so they wouldn’t go hungry. They hadn’t brought chairs, but they sat side-by-side on fallen logs in front of their tents, their backs to their neighbors, and licked the salt and sugar from their fingers. Franny remembered the way Delilah would stick her tongue into her SkinnyPop bag, swiping up every last kernel, leaving nothing behind. Utah seemed so far away. Her other life, impossible.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” her mother said, zipping her tent open. She tossed Franny a water-blue lighter, the words Twin Lakes Campground & Resort in white on the side. “In your pocket,” she said.
Franny snorted. There was a campground, sure, but no goddamned resort anywhere in sight. “How early?”
“Just go to sleep, Franny,” her mother said, and then there was the whir of her battery-powered fan, the rustle of her bag. Somewhere, a nighthawk swooped loudly, huffing like a bear. Sound was funny in the mountains, the traps and ricochets and echoes. It was hard to tell just how close it was.
She cringed when the crying started, low and muffled. This was why she had moved out of her mother’s house as soon as she turned eighteen. Not because of the wall she shared with Noah’s room, the thin drywall that separated her from his Vader sheets and picture books and the bright blue water bottle that had evaporated on his bedside table, spout open, growing dust. Her mother’s grief scratched into her own, cut her wider. So, she had a quick line of a different kind of sadness—Denver, Mikey, Asla, Mikayla—small apartments, open legs, sticky wounds that clutched together and then broke open. Until she met Delilah. So cliché, rollerblading in the park with a pair of black skates one size too small that her mother had left on her doormat, and there had been Delilah, sitting beautiful on a blanket, reading a paperback. They’d both been stupid, hanging out all willy nilly on a cold October morning, the clouds over the mountains brimming with snow, and Franny had taken that as a sign.
Something wet and hard hit her between the should blades. It splattered the back of her neck. Stung. Franny looked down to see another one hit the log beside her, bounce away. Rocks, smaller than her palm, but soaked with something. “What the hell?”
There was laughter, and she whirled around. In front of the silver camper, the woman crouched. Her hands were on her thighs, legs bare in just her red bikini bottom. It was dark, but the moon was bright, and Franny could see the potholes of her spine. She was topless, in a flurried state of undress, leaning over one of her boys. He was giggling, kicking his legs up at her. “He peed on rocks! He peed on rocks!” a younger boy squealed, wriggling behind them.
Franny looked up at the camper door, waiting for it to slam open, the man red-faced and mouthy, but it sat still. A single yellow light, a lantern maybe, blazed from a square window.
The woman stood and turned, and Franny tried not to gasp. Her breasts dolloped like pancake batter. They wavered in the shadows. “Did he get you?”
“No,” Franny lied.
The boy flung a rock up at his mom, caught her hard between the legs. Yelped and ran. His brother stared off in the darkness after him. “Go inside,” the woman said, and then she bolted into the campground after her son. They became movement instead of shapes, just rustles and breathlessness in the night.
Franny stood, frozen. In her mother’s tent, there was silence. The little boy had stopped laughing, but he didn’t go inside. “Go inside,” Franny whispered. “Go inside, go inside, go inside.” Amplified. “Go inside.”
And then he started to run. Without thinking, she ran too. He wasn’t fast like his brother, and she caught him as he tripped on a tent tie and went flying, grabbed him around the waist and fell, hard on her back. They lay together in the darkness, flayed up in the night. Shocked still. She could feel his heartbeat through his thin pajamas, thrumming under her fingertips. She held him like he was hers, like he was Noah, like she wished she’d done that day. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and somewhere out there, someone started to cry.
They were above the tree line when the bleeding started. In front of them, Quiver Lake sat like a bowl of blue moon ice cream. They’d hiked for six hours at a steady speed, navigating switchbacks and travertine crumbles and pinecones bigger than their heads. Lunch had been peanut butter sandwiches and trail mix with their backs pressed to boulders. They drank water from their bottles that had warmed in the sun. Franny could feel her nose starting to burn. From that first Saturday morning phone call from her mother, Franny had been wondering why backpacking of all things, why this trip, why now. She’d whittled it down to a few possibilities: a DNA match to Noah’s underwear, a minor shoplifting charge, some kind of money thing from Noah’s dad, Harvey, threatening the house, her monthly alimony. That didn’t seem like Harvey though. He was a family lawyer from Salt Lake who wore his sadness in his cheeks. He had soft droopy skin and a smile that leaked grief. Even before he lost Noah, Harvey carried the weight of more than Franny could imagine.
But, three hours into the hike, shoulders chafing from her pack, thighs aching, she’d thought: Maybe it was just the wild. Maybe her mother just needed the wide-open wild. In front of them, the trail broke open into a precipice. Indian paintbrush poked through travertine, coloring it red. Pikas skittered and eeped. In front of them, the sky stretched light and cloudless. Echoes of mountain ranges waved off like picot ribbons. It was beautiful and wide-open and it made Franny feel safe and wild.
“Blighted ovum,” her mother said, somewhere past that precipice. She was navigating them through a narrow switchback, hiking poles tethered to her wrists, pausing every minute or so to breathe. It was steep. Franny wished she’d bought proper hiking boots. Her pink sneakers were starting to rip.
“What’s that?” Franny said. “Where?” She studied the silver hairs threading down her mother’s ponytail, listened to the strain of her panting. Her mother was getting older. She was only forty-one, but she’d aged quickly since they’d lost Noah. Franny had too, sure, but she’d had to, hadn’t she? She’d only been a kid.
“It’s a sac with no baby,” her mother said.
Franny stopped. “Wait—you’re pregnant?” How was that even possible? Franny thought of Noah the first time she saw him. It was still in the hospital, and she was eleven. He’d been newly bathed, and his dark hair fuzzed up sweet and soft. She’d used both hands to shape it into a mohawk, giggled as it stood up straight. She’d loved him, even then, even if she’d hadn’t liked the thought of him at first, hated that this something new had chiseled into her life. It had scared her something bad, but she loved him.
Her mother kept climbing. Franny wanted to grab her by the ankles and shake her shitless. “No,” her mother said. “There was nothing there.”
Two hours later, at Quiver Lake, Franny helped her mother out of her bloody shorts. She emptied her pockets—dental floss box, two fifty-dollar bills, a pack of Life Savers candy rings, ripped open—and stuffed the contraband into her own pockets next to the stolen lighter. She’d washed her mother’s shorts out in the water, set them out to dry on a rock. They would dry fast up here, so close to the sun. The air was thin, and Franny’s nose was starting to bleed. They sat side by side on the water’s edge, her mother in her underwear with a pad stuck on, Franny in her swim bottoms for solidarity, and watched the fish ripple the surface. Feeding time, but they hadn’t brought rods.
“Nine weeks,” her mother had said. And, “Harvey, of course,” but she hadn’t said anything else, and Franny decided, for once, she would not push, and she did her best to shut it. They were the only humans this high, so high even the trees couldn’t grow here, but there was still so much life around them. They sat quietly and listened to the fish surface and the chatter of the mountain bluebirds and rosy finches. Sometimes, Franny thought, all the bad was so goddamned loud. But there was beauty, too, in the noise, in life. It just hummed right on, underneath the sharp crack of grief.
The silver camper was gone when they made it down the next morning. Franny found the red Candy Floss hat hanging with their bear canister at their campsite. On the backside of the bill, a phone number was scribbled in black. Franny tried the hat on, but it didn’t fit.
That night the boy threw the rocks at her, she’d carried his little brother up the camper steps and opened the door for him. He’d slipped in quietly, and she’d latched it behind him. She spent the night on top of her sleeping bag, listening for the sounds of departure or return, listening for anything. When her mother had woken her the next morning, backpack on, ready to go, the camper had been still and quiet.
Now, it was gone, and Franny was fine with that.
Their four-day, three-night backpacking trip turned into one sad night under the stars. They’d hiked down in half the time, fighting through a different type of pain, working those muscles that stopped the momentum. The tips of Franny’s toes were blistered something bad.
They would drive straight, they decided together, Franny behind the wheel this time. Franny didn’t know what she’d find when she got back to Utah. Maybe, just maybe, Delilah would be in her spot on the couch, feet in fuzzy socks because she liked to crank the air conditioner too high, lo mein dangling from chopsticks she’d never really learned how to use. Maybe the boxes would be unpacked, recycled away. Or maybe she’d be long gone, just a shadow of what could have been sliding black and wispy down the red dirt road. “I’ll never have another, you know,” her mother had said, and Franny felt her own truth in that.
“In your pocket,” her mother said. She slipped something soft and squishy into the palm of her hand. And, without even looking, Franny just popped it into her mouth. A thimbleberry, sweet and deep. They were growing wild in the parking lot, snaking toward the lake. Franny laughed. She watched her mother drop a handful into her bag. The blue lifejacket, if it was still in there, was stuffed so deep that Franny couldn’t see. Later, she thought, she’d pull it back from the depths, filch it back to where it belonged. But, for the moment, she just let the sweetness settle into her tongue. Thimbleberries, Franny laughed—she hadn’t expected that.
CATHERINE SHUKLE teaches English at Purdue University. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Brushfire, Unbroken, From The Depths, and Hoxie Gorge Review, among others. She lives in Indiana with her husband and three kids, Jack, Max, and Eleanor.
