Nightmare Country by Marlys Millhiser

pressed against the window. Tamara joined her.
    Across the playground, in front of the attached house trailers, a man bathed in the old-fashioned bathtub that stood on little paw feet. His lips were pursed in a cheerful whistling which they could just hear. Even through panes clouded with dirt, he was amazingly visible.
    Sunlight caught brief sparks off water droplets flying from the end of his washcloth. Short dark hair curled to his head and grew all the way down a husky neck. Reaching over the side, he took a tough-bristled toilet-bowl brush, rubbed it across a soap bar, and scrubbed his back.
    â€œGod, Mom, stare, why don’t you?”
    â€œI just can’t believe what I’m seeing. He must be wearing a bathing suit or … something.”
    â€œNo, he’s not. I saw him get in.”
    He pulled the plug and used the brush to clean the sides of the tub while water ran downhill toward the sofa that leaned against a trailer. And then he stood up.
    Tamara had hard-boiled some eggs for a casserole but packed them now instead with tomato-and-cucumber sandwiches, carrot and celery sticks, and oranges for a picnic lunch. In les than an hour she was dragging it and her daughter up the creek and away from Iron Mountain, hoping the excursion would take Adrian’s mind off the bather. They struggled over hummocky ground in the full glare of the sun, because the short trees and bushes along the creek were too dense. When the stream branched, both rivulets wandered off at a different angle, naked across rolling treeless country.
    Tamara chose the branch that led to a rock-strewn hill, expecting to find some shade there, and, without realizing it, slipped into a dream situation in which Adrian became lost in just such a vast place. Gilbert Whelan led a search party, but Tamara went off on her own and found their child where he couldn’t, because, as she later told reporters, her mother instinct and basic knowledge of her daughter (which Gil didn’t have because of his long separation from her) had told her where to look.
    â€œHis name’s Augie Mapes. Mrs. Hanley told me.”
    â€œWhat? Who?”
    â€œThe faggot in the bathtub.”
    â€œAdrian, I want you to forget all about that!” She turned to find the girl sweat-soaked and puffing, her nose and forehead reddening.
    â€œLock me up in this perverted place. And then not let me talk. Try to tell me what to think or not. I can think whatever I want, and you’d never know.” Adrian waited, teeth clenched against the threat of tears.
    Tamara felt the cutting edge of panic. It always told her she couldn’t cope alone, made her say the wrong things, or kept her from saying the right. “I’m sorry, honey. I want you to be able to talk to me always. It’s just that you use certain language to shock me, and it does. Puts me on the defensive.” She reached an arm around Adrian’s waist. “What else did Mrs. Hanley say about this Augie Mapes?”
    â€œNothing.” Adrian moved off along the creek.
    â€œYou see? I try, and you … make me feel like a child batterer.” Tamara picked up the grocery sack and hurried to catch up. “Your face is getting red. Let me soak some Kleenex in the creek and cool it down.”
    â€œPampering doesn’t work anymore.” Adrian trudged on.
    â€œI read somewhere that children—I mean young adults—”
    â€œYou mean zitzy adolescents.”
    â€œThat they use foul language to get attention. I must not be giving you enough. I thought maybe we could discuss how I might give more.”
    â€œOh, crap.”
    They walked on in silence; the hill with the shading rocks seemed to move off ahead of them. When they finally reached it, it was far past lunchtime. Adrian was limping. They had to search out a rock with enough shadow to accommodate two. The juice had heated out of the tomatoes and cucumbers and soaked into the bread so that the