by Karen Dionne
I find the bathroom and move a stack of boxes off the toilet and do what I have to do and go back outside and head for the barn. There used to be a couple of missing boards on the back side that my mother was always nagging my father to fix. If I’m lucky, he never got around to it.
The opening is as I remember. I slip inside. The barn smells musty and old. Overhead, a piece of tin roofing bangs. I head for one of the horse stalls and break apart several hay bales and score an old horse blanket to spread on top, then tug off my boots and strip off my jeans and socks and spread everything on the hay to dry and roll the blanket around my legs. As I lay down and pull my father’s jacket’s hood over my head and put on my mittens, I try not to think about the mice and other creatures who might be sharing my bed. Just because I can talk to animals doesn’t mean I want to sleep with them.
I fling myself this way and that. The hay pokes and tickles. I’m exhausted, yet it’s impossible to get comfortable. It doesn’t help that I accomplished next to nothing today. Reenacting my vision in the gun room was a bust. So was the time I wasted in the woods. And it isn’t only the fact that I got lost that’s left me feeling so unsettled. It’s that I was afraid. I didn’t want to admit how frightened I was as I was floundering around the forest because I know how paralyzing fear can be, but the terror I felt in the place that I used to love was all out of proportion to what actually happened. I have no idea why I experienced such fear. I’m not sure I want to find out.
All I know is that something very terrible once happened in our woods.
SEVENTEEN
THEN
Jenny
We buried our son in a small natural clearing on the hill behind the barn. In spring, the hill is covered with thousands of tiny blue forget-me-nots—a non-native species that Peter’s ancestors planted long before anyone knew there was such a thing or that this might one day be a problem. Now their choice seems prophetic. In summer, hay-scented ferns grow up through the flowers so thick and tall you can barely see our boy’s headstone. It’s a nice woodland glade, certainly a more peaceful resting place for our son than a commercial cemetery could ever be, though I can’t help thinking how much nicer this clearing would be if our boy were playing in the dirt instead of lying beneath it.
When I first got the idea for establishing a family cemetery on our acreage, I wasn’t sure if we would be allowed to do this. I’ve seen these tiny family plots alongside highways in rural areas or surrounded by homes and businesses after urban sprawl has overreached them, and while I always thought they were intriguing and even charming with their rusty wrought iron fencing and tilting headstones, I assumed that they were remnants from the past. I had no idea that people might still be using them.
But it turns out, burying someone on your property is perfectly legal in all fifty states as long as you comply with local requirements—something I imagine the funeral industry would rather people didn’t know, since choosing between spending two hundred dollars for a simple pine box in which to bury your loved one on land you already own versus thousands for a typical funeral and a purchased cemetery plot would be a no-brainer for a lot of people if they knew. Obviously, your circumstances have to be just right. You wouldn’t want to bury a loved one on your land if there was a possibility that you might one day move, and you’d have to leave them behind. (While exhumation and reburial are certainly an option, there are many more regulations involved with these than there are with burying a body in the first place, to say nothing of the cost.) And if you ever wanted to sell your place, you’d have to tell prospective buyers there’s a body buried on the property and where it is, which would obviously affect your property’s resale value. But Peter and I aren’t going anywhere, and we’re not about to sell off so much as a square inch of the land that has been in his family for generations. I like that our son is close by, and that I can visit him whenever I want, and that one day in the far-distant future, I will join him.
During that first year I visited our son’s grave every day. I’d sit on the concrete faux bois bench I bought at an antiques shop because the bench looks as though it’s made of twigs and branches and fits perfectly with its surroundings and tell our boy funny little stories about my bears, or his father’s frogs, or something sweet or smart or silly or funny that one of his sisters said or did. Other times, I’d just sit.
I come a lot less often now. Not because after seven years I have forgotten my boy, or because I am too busy juggling the disparate needs of my growing girls to spend time with my son, but because I’ve come to understand that the hours I spent beside his grave in those early weeks and months were my futile attempt to mend the hole in my heart that was never going to heal. Everyone says I am lucky to be alive; that falling fifty feet off a cliff onto a pile of rocks should have resulted in far worse than myriad cuts and scrapes and bruises and a badly shattered left leg that gives me trouble to this day. A few inches to the left or to the right, and it would have. The deep snow piled up against the bottom of the cliff saved me, but it didn’t save my boy.
Peter says the accident was not my fault; that no one could have foreseen what was going to happen, and therefore nothing could have been done to prevent it. But the sad truth is, if we had stayed home that day, our son would be alive. Peter says all that matters is that I am okay, and that as terrible as it was to lose our son, he doesn’t know how he could have gone on if he had lost me as well. I know this is his backhanded way of telling me how important I am to him, but I don’t like hearing it. How can I take comfort in the idea that if something happened to me, his life wouldn’t be worth living? What about our daughters? How could he leave them behind at the very time when they would need him the most? At any rate, I was the one who wanted to bring Diana out to the west cliff to show her how beautiful our valley is in winter. I am the reason our son is dead.
I close my eyes and lean back against the bench and tip my face to the sun and drink in the sweet smell of the ferns. Lately when I visit my son’s grave, I’ve been making a conscious effort to leave the past where it belongs and to reflect on all the good things I have so as not to take the second chance I’ve been given for granted. Sometimes Rachel comes with me and we take turns naming something we’re grateful for, which as it turns out is actually a pretty good way to get inside the mind of a ten-year-old. Charlotte’s baked goods rank high on Rachel’s list, as does me tucking her in at night and reading her bedtime stories, her father doing art projects with her, the smell of her grandpa’s pipe (I had no idea that Peter’s father smoked around her when he came to visit), and of course, White Bear. Rarely does she mention her sister. Rachel knows she once had a brother and that he was killed in an accident and is buried in this clearing and this is why we come to keep him company, but she doesn’t know what happened. I might tell her when she’s older, or I might not. Sharing the details risks opening the door to too many questions. How did my brother die, Mommy? Mommy fell off a cliff while your brother was growing inside me and he got hurt. Why did you fall off a cliff, Mommy? Mommy fell off the cliff because your sister pushed me. No thank you to that.
Because Diana did push me. Diana will never admit it, and Peter didn’t see me fall because his back was toward us as he was building our bonfire, but I know what I know. I can still feel Diana’s hand pressing against my chest and shoving me backward. I don’t think she meant to kill me, though I do believe she wanted to kill her brother. I don’t know why. Dr. Merritt says Diana doesn’t experience jealousy, so it can’t be that. All I know is that she wants what she wants and will do whatever she thinks is necessary to achieve it, which is hardly a logical or satisfying explanation for what could legitimately be considered premeditated murder. I’ve never told Peter.
Peter has been hinting lately that he’d like to try again for a son, but I told him I’m done. Two children are more than enough, especially when one is as damaged as Diana. Diana is twenty now, still living at home, still doing taxider
my, though her focus has shifted from mammals to birds. Lately she has also begun to paint. I’m glad she’s found something that makes her happy. Then again, “content” is perhaps the better word, since Diana never feels happiness or any other emotion. I’m just grateful that the satisfaction she gets from painting and taxidermy seems to have tamped down her rage. She uses words as weapons now, or silence. She still sees Dr. Merritt once a month, though now that she has her driver’s license, she goes alone. I have no idea what they talk about. The sessions must somehow serve her needs, because Diana never does anything unless she gets something out of it. I think of the visits as putting a Band-Aid over a scar that has already healed. Talking to Dr. Merritt isn’t going to help, but there’s no harm in it, either.
The one thing that seems certain is that Diana is going to live at the lodge for the rest of her life. She doesn’t need people, never experiences loneliness, never yearns for companionship, and would be horrified at the thought of investing the time and energy required to maintain a steady relationship or, God forbid, a marriage, which is, in truth, a relief, because what would happen if she had children? I remember thinking when we moved to the lodge that this would be a place where she would be able to thrive and grow. I guess I was right.
Rachel, of course, is an entirely different story. It’s no exaggeration to say that every moment I spend with her is pure joy. Rachel is the exact opposite of her sister in every way; a kind, considerate, deeply caring child who loves all living creatures with a passion even I didn’t have when I was her age. I swear I didn’t create this love in her intentionally, though I probably would have if I could. I can see her living with us at the lodge on into the indefinite future after she gets a biology degree and joins me in my research. I’m not pushing her in this direction, because ultimately, what she does with her life is up to her, but I’m pretty sure this is what she also wants. Like me, she’s crazy about bears.
A whiff of smoke brings me back to the present. I open my eyes and sit up straight. If there is one thing that I am well and truly afraid of, it’s fire. It’s bad enough that the lodge is four miles from the highway down a rough dirt road that I’m not sure an engine truck would even be able to navigate; the nearest town with a volunteer fire department is thirty miles away, never mind that we’d have to drive out to the highway and who knows how much farther after that before we could even call for help. Peter and I have talked about this at length and concluded that if a fire ever broke out in the forest, or if the lodge or one of the outbuildings started to burn and we couldn’t quickly get it under control, we may as well pile into our vehicles and never look back for all the good it would do us to try to fight it.
I sniff again. Something is definitely burning. My first thought is that Peter and Max are burning trash in our burn barrel, though the smoke doesn’t have that toxic plastic smell that comes from burning garbage. I stand up and close my eyes and turn a slow circle and determine that the smell is coming from the forest.
I head out in its direction. At times the odor is so faint I think I only imagined it. Then the wind shifts, and the smell gets stronger again. Briefly, I consider going back for Peter. But if the fire has only just started, or if it is very far away, which I suspect is likely the case because the smell is so faint, then the quicker I can figure out what’s going on and determine what we need to do about it, the better.
And there’s another reason I don’t want to waste time by doubling back—a far more important one: Rachel is somewhere in these woods.
That my ten-year-old daughter is exploring the forest by herself is not unusual; Rachel has been tagging along with her father and me since she was a toddler. She knows her way around this forest almost as well as we do. She also knows what to do in the event that she gets lost, which is to stop walking, find a dry place to shelter, and stay put and wait for us to find her. We’ve taught her other wilderness survival skills—how to read a compass, how to build a fire, where to find water, which wild foods are safe to eat and which she should stay away from, and she always carries a length of rope, a pocketknife, a Mylar ground sheet, a compass, waterproof matches, and a day’s worth of food and water in her backpack. She also asks our permission before she heads out, and tells us which direction she’s planning on going, and whether she’ll be gone for just a morning or an afternoon or if she’ll be out for the entire day, so it’s not as though we let her randomly wander. Besides, she’ll be eleven in two weeks.
But suddenly our thinking seems horribly foolish.
I push through the trees. This part of our forest is mostly hardwoods, which means there are a lot of deadfalls to climb over and undergrowth to work through or walk around. I take stock of the rest of my family’s whereabouts: Diana was in her taxidermy studio the last time I saw her; Charlotte was packing up her jewelry, getting ready to set up at an art fair this weekend in Marquette; Peter and Max were doing chores in the vicinity of the lodge. Worst-case scenario: if it turns out the forest is on fire, I’ll find Rachel, run back to the lodge, tell the others what’s going on, and we’ll toss our go-bags into the Suburban and Max’s pickup and head out. Maybe grab a few valuables if it looks as though the fire isn’t going to be imminently upon us, though I can’t begin to think of which items we should prioritize, and it probably wouldn’t be wise to take the time. Nothing is worth saving more than our lives.
“Rachel!” I call every few seconds. She can’t have gone far—we ate breakfast only an hour ago. I detour around a blackberry patch because the barbed canes are so intertwined there’s no way I’m going through them, climb over a fallen tree trunk that’s as high as my waist because the trunk is so big that crawling under it is not an option, slog through ankle-deep mud because it rained yesterday and the ground is so saturated there’s no way to avoid the wet places. Each time my boot gets stuck, I imagine the Marsh King of one of Rachel’s favorite fairy tales reaching up through the muck to grab my ankle and pull me under as he did to the princess who bore him the daughter of the story’s title. Peter thinks these dark and gruesome fairy tales are completely inappropriate for a ten-year-old, but I loved the original versions when I was her age, and I don’t think that reading them hurt me.
I cup my hands. “Rachel!”
Still nothing.
I push forward. The smoke smell grows stronger. My boots are caked with mud. My arms are scratched and bleeding. I’m sweaty and thirsty and my voice is hoarse from shouting, but none of that matters. I have to find her. I have to know that she is safe.
When I come upon an opening in the underbrush that marks a game trail, I take off running down it, expecting to see flames licking the treetops at any second. Instead, as I splash through a mucky area and look down to check my footing, I see footprints. Or more accurately, shoeprints. Two sets, an adult’s and a child’s, traveling straight up the middle of the trail, neither making any effort to hide their tracks.
I stop. The child-sized set has to belong to Rachel, but this doesn’t explain the adult’s prints. I have no idea who could have made them. Did Rachel happen upon these prints and decide to follow them? Or is someone following her? The mud is so fresh, and the prints are such a jumble, it’s impossible to tell which set was laid down first. I take off running again, trying not to imagine all the myriad and terrible ways in which my daughter might have come to harm at a stranger’s hands.
And then in a clearing so small I almost run past it, I see the source of the smoke: a campfire, carefully constructed and conscientiously crackling away inside a ring of stones. A piece of metal grating has been laid across the top. On the grating sits a large pot. Whatever is in the pot is steaming. The sight is so incongruous and unexpected, I hardly know what to think. This campfire has to have been built by the stranger who laid down the footprints. The fact that the fire is going strong says that he or she can’t be far.
I resist the urge to call Rachel’s name and hang back in the trees. It isn’t on
ly the campfire that warns me to be cautious. On the other side of the clearing is a hunting blind, built six feet off the ground among a cluster of slender maples using the trunks as supports. The sides and top are camouflaged with branches. If not for the fire, I probably would never have seen it.
My anger burns. Hunters, trespassers, right here on our land. People audacious enough to build a hunting blind, to make a campfire, to use our property as if it were their own. I’m not naïve. I know people trespass all the time. The Upper Peninsula is so vast and underpopulated a person could squat in an abandoned cabin for years without detection if they chose. I’ve sometimes worried that something like this might happen to us, mainly because of the impact such an intrusion would have on Peter’s and my research. The security gate does a good job of keeping people out from the east if anyone gets curious and decides to see what’s at the end of our road, and our acreage is posted with NO TRESPASSING signs all along the highway, but the west side is bordered by state forest. Anyone hiking east from that direction could make their way down our cliff the same way Peter and I used to climb up it and continue onto our land with no idea that they were now on private property.
But there’s a big difference between wandering hikers inadvertently passing through and hunters setting up a full-blown camp. Worse, this time of year, there is no game in season because all the game animals are busy having babies. Which means these are not hunters, they’re poachers.
Poachers. Using our property, burning our wood, damaging our trees. Killing our wildlife. Doing who knows what to my daughter. Did Rachel follow the game trail as I did and discover the campfire and the hunting blind while the poachers were here? Did she innocently walk up to them and say hello, not realizing that what they are doing is illegal, and that making herself known could get her into trouble? Did the poachers run away after she found them, and is this why the fire is burning with no one around to tend to it? Or did they take her with them so she couldn’t tell what she’d seen? Are they hiding nearby at this very moment with their hands over my daughter’s mouth so she can’t cry out to me?