Into the Forest

by Jean Hegland

  It was a glorious morning. The air was cold, but the distant sun was bright. My eyes watered, and my breath left my lungs in glowing puffs. When we reached the edge of the clearing, at the point where my mother’s withered ring of tulips intersected the road, I stopped, turned, lifted my arm to wave good-bye.

  Eva stood in the open door, her face serene. Smoke seeped from the chimney on the roof above her, and the air around it seemed to thicken and tremble. We faced each other across the clearing for a full moment and then she raised her hand to me. Behind that simple gesture was all her dancer’s grace and prowess, and when I turned away, my eyes were hot with tears.

  But I caught those tears before they fell, and their sting seemed only to intensify the keenness of the moment. In that instant I was a bride, an adventuress, a pioneer. The trees blazed with light from the freshly risen sun, and bright phantoms of steam rose from the road. The forest smelled of bay and fir, and we could hear the tidy chirping of birds. Beyond us I could see the mountains rising blue and hazy, and I knew I had only to cross them and keep on walking to catch up with all my dreams.

  When we reached the bridge, I stopped and looked down between the splintered boards to the trickle of water far below. For a moment time itself seemed to become fluid—wavery and dreamlike as the air above the chimney. I remembered how, when I was little, that bridge had been the boundary of my world, and I paused.

  “It was sturdy enough when I came up,” said Eli, and I nodded and crossed, though I felt as if quiet hands were nudging me back.

  Then I was on the other side, and every step took me that much farther from the source of all my ghosts, that much nearer to all I had ever been promised. I had followed that road for seventeen years, yet never before had I traveled it on foot. It felt as though Eli and I were already exploring new territory together. Each bend revealed a place it seemed I had never seen, and everything was glowing with sunlight and green with rain and so beautiful I couldn’t keep in mind that I was walking through it to leave it behind.

  Eli set a fast pace. Mother’s boots felt foreign on my feet, and I was soon sweating to keep up. But even so, it was a pleasure to try to match his steps, to finally be working for something again. I felt, as we reached and passed each new place, that I was getting somewhere at last.

  The winter had been hard on the road. Without my father to keep the ditches open and wrestle the blackberry brambles from the culverts, the rains had gouged deep channels into the roadbed. There were places where the hillside had slumped across it. At one spot, a section of road the length of our house had eroded away, leaving a car-wide trail that hugged the hillside.

  “I wonder if our truck could even make it out,” I said, peering down into the gorge where the road had once been.

  “Hard to tell,” answered Eli, striding on ahead.

  We passed the Colemans’ house while the air was still almost cool, and we reached the county road before midday. It was a little unsettling to see asphalt again, and I found myself speaking more quietly, glancing over my shoulder, and occasionally hushing Eli to listen for the car I was certain I had heard—but which never came.

  At lunchtime, we stopped for a few minutes to drink stream water and eat some of the beans I had cooked the day before. As soon as we had eaten, Eli jumped up, picked up the rifle, swung on his pack, and led off again. All afternoon we walked, while Eli planned aloud what we would do once we got to Redwood, and I nodded and dreamed of Boston, and my pack straps rubbed raw spots on the skin above my clavicles.

  Eli was right—the houses we passed that day were empty, and as we neared them, it was I who picked up the pace, who averted my eyes and hurried us past, trying to ignore the threat of their blank windows and untold stories.

  We camped in the forest that night, in a little flat we found between the road and the stream. Eli built a stick fire, and I heated the rest of the beans, which we ate with a sprinkling of powdered cheese. Afterwards, I rinsed our forks and our cooking pot in the stream while Eli made a nest of our sleeping bags beside the fire.

  Side by side, we lay back on our bed, and watched the stars bud in the moonless sky. Eli wanted to talk about the trip—about what sort of wheels would work best for the handcart, how we could get more ammunition for my gun, where it would be easiest to cross the Rocky Mountains. But I found I was yearning to talk about what it was I had just left, about all I was walking away from. I think, too, I was hoping we would make some kind of ceremony there beneath those blossoming stars, something to acknowledge what it was I had just done. But the words I wanted us to say to each other never came, and we talked instead about how long my mother’s boots might last, what kind of roads it would be best to follow, and when next winter’s snows might first hit Ohio.

  Our talk dwindled as the fire died, until finally we were left staring in silence at the full-blown stars. My thoughts were my own then, and they turned to Eva. I figured she would have eaten by now. She would have locked the doors and stoked the woodstove, and I imagined her sitting in the dark house, watching the burn of her solitary fire. I wondered what she was thinking, how it felt to be so alone.

  I felt my resolve to leave her waver, and to bolster it, I reminded myself how distant and different we had become, how it was best for both of us that I had gone. I reminded myself of all of our disagreements, remembered indignantly how chilly she had been to Eli, how harshly she had warned me not to get pregnant.

  That reminded me of something else. Turning towards Eli, I said, “You’ve never said anything about birth control.”

  He lay silently beside me for so long I was beginning to think he hadn’t heard. Then he sat up, reached for a stick, and stirred the fire, poking at the embers so they seethed and crumbled. When he answered, he sounded almost wary. “I thought you’d take care of it.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I don’t know. You did, didn’t you?”

  I found I, too, was sitting up, prodding the fire with a redwood branch, and watching intently as the foliage sizzled and curled. For some inexplicable reason my first impulse was to pretend that it had only now occurred to me what might result from our lovemaking. Finally I said, “When we first got our periods, our mother showed us how to figure out when we were ovulating. I think it’s been pretty safe.”

  “Good,” he said, patting my thigh. “I thought you’d be careful.”

  “What would you have done if I hadn’t? Or if it doesn’t work?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “But I don’t think you could make this trip with a baby.”

  He leaned towards me, kissed both my eyes so that the warm pressure of his lips against my eyelids relieved me of all my need to see. Then he kissed my mouth until I felt no more urge to speak.

  When we made love it was so dark I could not make out his face, though it was only a breath above my own. I watched the stars instead, saw them grow brighter and swoop nearer until it seemed they were just above us, that if I wanted I could lift my hands from Eli’s shoulders and sweep them into new patterns. But suddenly what was happening on earth demanded all of my attention. I closed my eyes, felt a new galaxy of stars blossom inside me.

  Later, we roused ourselves to check the fire and rearrange our rumpled bags and then, huddled against Eli, I slept.

  I dreamed I was back at my father’s grave. It was exactly as it had been on the day we buried him—there was the hole I had dug with Eva’s help, there were our two shovels, the bloody chain saw, even his shirt. I could see his blood on the earth beside the open grave, and I walked helplessly towards it, dreading what I would have to see next. But what I saw was even worse than what I feared—the grave was empty.

  Frantically I called for my father, searched the woods, desperate to find even his mangled body. But he was gone. I must tell Eva, I thought. But although I hunted and shouted until my throat was raw, I could find no trace of her.

  I woke at dawn with tears streaming down my cheeks—a
nd no sister near to promise I had been dreaming. Eli was still asleep beside me, beautiful and remote as an Olympian.

  I rose without disturbing him, dressed, went behind a tree to squat and pee, and then down to the stream to splash cold water on my tears. He was sitting up when I came back, stretching and yawning in the strengthening light.

  “If we make as good time as we did yesterday, we’ll be in Redwood by midafternoon,” he said. “How’s that sound?”

  I gulped air, and said what I had been dreading. “I’m not going.”

  “What?” he asked, rising abruptly from the tangle of our sleeping bags.

  “I’m not going,” I repeated.

  “You’re not going?” he asked, his face clouding with disbelief.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t.”

  “You’re afraid of the trip?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not that.”

  “You don’t want to be with me?”

  “No, I do—”

  “Then what?”

  “I guess I can’t leave Eva.”

  “She said she’d be okay.”

  “I know.”

  “Nell—she’d leave you.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t come with you.”

  “That’s different,” I said helplessly.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Look—you’ve already left her. You’ve come with me. You can’t go back now.”

  “Oh, Eli—”

  “I’ll tell you what. We’ll go East and get established and send for her. It won’t take long.”

  “How long?”

  “By summer after next you’ll be together again.” I thought of how much time that was, thought of how little was certain and how much could change.

  “I want to,” I answered, “but I just can’t.”

  “Of course you can. You’re saying that you won’t.”

  “No, I—”

  “Nell,” he said, “you’re saying that you won’t.”

  “Well, then—I won’t,” I said, almost grateful for the challenge in his tone.

  I could see him mustering fresh arguments. But suddenly he stopped and looked at me as though he were seeing something new. When he spoke his voice had lost its edge, was flat and quiet. “Like Eva said—you’re your own person.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, but he had turned away, was already gathering his clothes. He dressed in silence, and in silence we rolled our sleeping bags, loaded our packs. In silence he kicked dirt over our dead fire.

  Finally there was nothing left to do. He swung his pack onto his back, handed me the gun. “Good-bye, Nell.”

  “Good-bye,” I echoed, holding the gun awkwardly between us. Then I pressed it towards him, adding, “Why don’t you take it?”

  He hesitated for a moment, and answered firmly, “No. The gun stays with you.”

  He reached to touch my cheek. “Take care,” he said. “I’ll love you however I can.”

  He turned and strode away, left me standing beside the char of our fire with the words I had been longing to hear ringing in my ears, so that I had to clamp my lips shut with my teeth, bite them until I tasted blood, to keep from calling after him.

  Much later, I turned back up the road. Shivering from the chill, and squinting through my tears against the brightness of the morning sun, I began the long walk home. Mile after mile I stumbled, the pack heavy on my back, my mother’s boots leaden on my feet. I walked all day, stopping for nothing but water, while the boots chewed blisters into my heels and toes and my mind grew blistered, too, rubbing and rubbing against the same rough surfaces.

  It was dusk when I finally reentered the clearing. The house was a monolith against the darkening forest, and in the open doorway stood my sister, her tears shining on her face like a gift.

  So he’s gone, walking all the way to Boston, and who can tell what he will find, whom he will meet. Who knows what miracles it would take for me to see him again.

  Now the days ring an ever-widening silence. Now the nights are longer than ever. Sometimes my despair at the thought of having left Eli is so enormous I can hardly breathe. Other times I feel a flush of shame for having loved him at all, for ever having writhed and wriggled against him. Then that passes, and I long for him again.

  The only thing that returns is the rain, unseasonable and unwelcome. Outside the buds huddle coldly at the ends of their twigs. Inside, Eva dances and I try to study, plugging on into the L’s. The fire smolders sourly on wet wood. In the pantry, the sacks flatten, the cans disappear, the jars empty.

  I think it has been like this forever.

  Today I discovered a spot of blood in the crotch of my ragged underwear, and I felt a wash of relief so intense that for a moment I thought I would faint. But along with the reprieve I felt at the sight of my own blood, I have to admit I also felt regret, for now my body has sloughed off all traces of him.

  My blistered feet have healed. Eva took them into her dancer’s hands and tended them so carefully that already I have fresh pink skin on my heels and toes. These days Eva and I are kind to each other, but it’s a distant sympathy and seems to be born more of remorse and loss than any current connection. We don’t speak much, and although I long to talk with her, I feel too timid or too tired to interrupt our silence.

  Somewhere, in a book I have long since returned to the closed library, I read that the peasants in China who grow tea cannot afford to drink it. Instead, they drink cups of hot water that they call white tea. Tomorrow our tea, too, will be white.

  Tonight we drink hot water made tea by the final scraping of dust from the bottom of the Fastco box. It imparts a tint and scent and taste so frail to the steaming liquid in our mugs that a person who didn’t know she was drinking tea might think it was only water.

  But we know this is tea. And we know tomorrow there will be no more.

  Now it seems as though all of life is a series of lasts—this last cup of tea weaned to the clarity of water, the last quarter-spoonful of sugar rubbed between our tongues and the roofs of our mouths until each grain has dissolved and the syrup has seeped drop by drop down our throats. The last slivers of macaroni. The final lentil.

  We ate the last jar of applesauce for lunch today. When Eva wasn’t looking, I buried my face in my empty bowl and licked it clean. I hate to use anything now. Each sip, each bite, each scrap is agony, a needle-prick tattooing my awareness with an indelible image of loss and need. These days entering the pantry is an act of courage. The arithmetic, the simple multiplication and subtraction that will show how much we eat in a day, how many days’ food we have left, is an equation I can’t face. My mind stiffens and goes blank when I try to figure out how many cups of flour in fifty pounds or how many meals are left in the last sack of pinto beans.

  I never knew how much we consumed. It seems as if we are all appetite, as if a human being is simply a bundle of needs to drain the world. It’s no wonder there are wars, no wonder the earth and water and air are polluted. It’s no wonder the economy collapsed, if Eva and I use so much merely to stay alive.

  I sometimes think how much better it would be if we were to still our desires, slough off our needs for water and shelter and all this food. Why do we bother? What purpose does it serve? It just keeps us gasping a little longer.

  Eva and I have been teetering on the edge of argument all day, snapping and poking at each other as though we have both already forgotten what I abandoned to stay with her. Part of me longs to snarl at her, tear into her, to blame her for the bare cupboard and the eroded road and all my loneliness. But another part cringes at the thought of a disagreement, wants desperately to get along with the only person I have left.

  Last night Eva wanted to open the final jar of tomatoes to flavor our rice. But ever since I read about limes in the encyclopedia I’ve been worrying
about scurvy.

  “I think we should save it,” I said. “That jar of tomatoes is the only significant source of vitamin C we’ve got left.”

  She gave me a withering glance and opened the pantry door, saying over her shoulder as she entered, “Save it for what—our funeral?”

  “Save it till we really need it,” I answered, following her into the pantry. “We don’t know how much longer we’ll be here.”

  “Exactly,” she said, reaching for the lone jar on the shelf above her head. “That’s why we need a treat every now and then.”

  “Eva!” I cried and caught at her arm, and in that second of imbalance, the jar slipped between us, exploding on the floor in a welter of glass and fruit.

  For a long moment we stared at the tomatoes that might have cured us—or at least lessened the monotony of a meal—now larded with shards of glass, their juices pooling like blood.

  “Smooth move,” Eva hissed, and suddenly my shock and remorse were supplanted by rage. I found myself scanning the pantry shelves, looking for something hand-sized and hard—something to hit her with.

  I had already grabbed a bottle and was savoring the heft of it in my fist, when the meaning of what I intended to do struck me like another blow.

  I sank to my knees beside the shattered tomatoes.

  “What are you doing?” Eva asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know.” “What have you got in your hands?”

  “What have I got?” I repeated, dazedly. The bottle was brown and cool and slightly tacky with age. I turned it in my hands and read its label.

  “Grand Marnier,” I answered.

  “You’re going to clean up with Grand Marnier?”