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Two

In an earlier time in another part of the state in a village sandwiched between the sea and the forest there once lived a poor woodsman and his wife with their two children. Since the goddamned ecologists and their goddamned spotted owls had closed the forests, the woodsman no longer had any wood to cut to earn his living and his company had laid him off. For a time, he and his family subsisted on unemployment compensation, but as the program had been axed by the state during budget cuts, soon that means of providing food for the table also ran out.

"Let's go to the city where I can find work in my former employment as a topless dancer," the wife urged, but the woodsman would not hear of it. He had married his wife to take her away from all that, and besides, he didn't like the city. But all the jobs in their hometown were taken by other people who were out of work and their families, and soon it seemed that following his wife's plan was the only thing the woodsman could do.

At first the woodsman's children were not unhappy at the thought of moving. "Oh boy! Sevenplex movie theaters!" little Hank cried with glee.

"Chucky Cheeses, Chucky Cheeses," said his sister Gigi, who was only four but remembered birthday treats at the children's restaurant with all of the big mechanical animals and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches right there on the menu.

"Not unless your old man finds another job, kids," their father told them. "It'll be slim pickin's otherwise."

But their mother, who had to listen to them cry when they left behind most of their toys at the yard sale the family had before moving in with their mother's sister in Seattle, was more encouraging. "Yeah, sure, it'll be great. We'll go to the zoo and the aquarium and the children's theater at Seattle Center. Okay, Gigi, Chucky Cheeses too. But you kids gotta be real good. Don't give your Aunt Bambi any grief. She works nights and sleeps during the day and prob'ly Mommy will too so you got to be real quiet and real good while we're there, okay?"

The children promised that they would. Hank, who was seven, was aware that his parents were troubled and his daddy particularly was very sad. His daddy loved the woods, even though he chopped them down for a living.

"Maybe I can get out on a fishing boat," Daddy had said. "Let me give it a shot, honey. I don't want you back in one of them places."

His mother had smiled and stood real close to his daddy, like she was going to kiss him. "Those places aren't all that bad now, baby. That's where we met, 'member?"

And so the family moved to the city, where they all slept in the living room in Aunt Bambi's apartment.

It was summer when they moved there, and Hank hoped that his father would soon get a job fishing. Maybe then he would take Hank with him. Hank had always enjoyed fishing with his father when they lived in the village. And indeed, every day while Aunt Bambi and Mama slept and Gigi played quietly alone, Father took the #17 bus from downtown Seattle to the Ballard Locks to look for work, and every night he came home as Aunt Bambi went to work and Mama went to seek work.

When he had been a woodsman, Father's homecoming was always a happy time of day, but when he came home from the Locks he was always sad and angry—and he smelled like beer. At first he was just mad at the ecologists and the owls and the company that laid him off and the goddamn politicians. Then he started getting mad at Mama.

"Hank needs lunch money for school," Mama told him.

"Where do you think I'd get lunch money?" Father asked. "You were the one who was going to get a job. Nobody in port is taking on unskilled hands right now."

"I'm trying, honey, but I've gotten a little old, you know, and—""Put on a little weight, haven't you? Too porky for the clubs anymore?"

"I haven't gained that much!"

"Don't worry about it, baby, 'cause if one of us doesn't get a job pretty soon we're gonna be starving and you'll get skinny enough then."

"What do you mean, gonna?" Mama demanded. Hank didn't want to hear them yell at each other, and Gigi just stared at them with her eyes great big, looking like she was going to bawl. Hank shook his head at her not to. "There's no 'gonna' to it, Matt. While you drink up what little bit we've got left, Gigi and me are eating one meal a day and that's pancakes! God, I'm sick of pancakes. Hank gets his meal at school, but if you don't give him the money, he doesn't eat."

"What happened to free school lunches?"

"They went out when the administration changed, you know that. Your buddy, the governor who was going to make the woods safe for industry again, decided that there shouldn't be any free lunches for the kids of people who were too lazy to work. Like us."

"Don't you get snotty with me!" he yelled and looked like he was going to hit her.

Aunt Bambi slumped out of her bedroom then, wearing just a T-shirt with a pair of titties on the front of it. "Hey, you two. Knock it off or find someplace else to crash. I need my rest, y'know?"

The next night Father didn't come home.

"Hank, I want you to look after your little sister while Aunt Bambi and I are gone," Mama said. "Just go to bed and don't open the door for anyone."

"Not even Daddy?" Gigi asked. "Where's Daddy?"

"You heard me," Mama said. "He can sleep it off in the gutter if he wants to. Tonight's amateur night at the club, and I think the boss has his eye on me. If I do good, things'll be better around here for a while."

"Where's Daddy?" Gigi demanded.

Mama let out a deep sigh and set down her purse to pick up Gigi. "Daddy's gone right now, sweetie. Maybe he found a boat to work on, eh? But I'll tell you what. If the nice man at Aunt Bambi's friend's work likes Mama's dancing, there'll be money again. We could go to Chucky Cheeses maybe to celebrate. Would you like that?"

Gigi nodded gravely, but after Mama left, she cried again for Daddy.

Daddy didn't find a boat after all, and two nights later he came home. His beard was grown out and scratchy and his breath smelled bad. Hank had to let him in, because Mama and Aunt Bambi were gone then.

"Hi, kids. Hiya, Gigi," he said in a slurry voice. "How's my little princess?"

Gigi started to cry.

"Aw, shut that shit up, baby," he groaned, and when she just cried louder he screamed at her and for a minute Hank thought he was going to hit her. Hank ran over to her and put his hand over her mouth.

"She'll be okay, Daddy. She's just kind of hungry. Mama didn't have time to make her pancakes and I don't know how. Maybe you could show me?"

"What the hell do I know about that? Cooking's your mama's job, not whorin' around all night."

"She's got a job—I think," Hank said. "She said she would bring home money."

"Well, that's something," Daddy said.

And for a few days there was money, but there never was enough to go to Chucky Cheeses, and Daddy always needed some to go to the Locks. Then one night Mama came home in the middle of the night, crying.

A few minutes later, Aunt Bambi came in too, and she was mad. "What the hell are you making such a fuss for? You know if you break the rules you get fined. You don't touch the customers. It's the law, Candy."

"That was a hundred-dollar bill, sis. A hundred dollars. Do you know what we could do with a hundred dollars?"

"Yeah, sure. Your old man could drink it all up in two days instead of one. Look, you're my sister and I love you, but I can't support all of us. The boss wants you to do that little favor for him. If you do it, he'll forget the fine."

"I don't traffic in drugs," Mom said coldly. "It's the law, sis. I'd get busted and I'd lose my kids."

"Fine. Great. We're going nowhere here. You'd be better off without these kids and they'd be better off without you the way you're going. And the sooner you lose that husband of yours, the better off you'll all be."

Mama cried and hugged them and said she loved her family, but things got worse after that. Daddy said he was taking a boat to Alaska and wouldn't tell Mama where he was going or when he was coming home. Mama cried all the time and went out every night and left them alone.

Then for a little while there was money, and Mama laughed more and bought some clothes and makeup and stuff and once took them out to Chucky Cheeses. But then one morning a man brought her home and she was laughing like crazy and smelled funny.

The man didn't like Hank and Gigi, they could tell. And he came home with Mama a lot. Mama was almost never home then, and Aunt Bambi yelled at the children whenever she was awake. Mama had no appetite when she was home and no longer cooked for Hank and Gigi. When Hank tried to make pancakes, he made such a mess that Aunt Bambi hit him, and when Mama came home she hit him too.

After that, she cried and said she was sorry and soon they would have their own place and everything would be better. But Gigi started crying for Daddy, and Mama got mad again.

The man brought her home the next morning, and this time she looked half mad, half sad, the way Daddy used to. Or that was what Hank thought, anyway. Then all of a sudden she got happy and said, "Instead of sleeping today, I'm going to take you to the mall. How would that be?"

They were very excited about going to the mall. They left Aunt Bambi's apartment, in a development where all of the apartments looked alike, and took a bus—not the #17, but another bus. They changed buses many times so that it took a long time to reach the mall, and Hank tried to memorize all the bus numbers, but it was too confusing. Finally, they arrived at the mall. They had only been to one mall before, but this one was bigger, with lots and lots of stores.

There were benches where you could sit too, and although Gigi and Hank wanted so much to find out where the tantalizing aroma of chocolate chip cookies was coming from, Mama wanted to try on underwear at an underwear store. "You kids sit out here and wait for me," she said. "I'll just be a minute."

But lots of minutes passed and Mama didn't come back. Hank told Gigi to sit very still and be very good while he went in to find Mama. He thought maybe she'd yell at him, but he figured at least she'd be there. She wasn't. The lady at the store said she'd gone to try something on and hadn't come back. There was nobody in the dressing rooms either. The lady looked. She said there was an employees' exit in the back of the store and maybe Mama had gone to check the car. But there was no car.

Hank ran out to find Gigi, but she was gone too. He searched and searched, frantic to find either his mama or his sister, and then he saw the top of his sister's little blonde head and the flash of her Ninja Turtles sweatshirt. She was running like crazy right toward him, her fists full of something.

"Gigi, where've you been? Whatcha got?"

"Cookies, Hank. Have one!" she said, and gave him crumbled bits of cookie.

"How'd you get 'em?" Hank asked her, for neither of them had any money.

"They were just sitting on a counter," Gigi said. "And I was hungry, so I took one."

"Gigi, you can't just rip off cookies," Hank said. "You've gotta pay for them."

"That's right, little boy," a menacing voice said from behind him. "You have to pay."

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Framed