In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  “Join me in some lunch?” He broke off two tiny pieces of the cookie and tossed them beneath the tree. The birds remained motionless, their eyes glowering straight at him.

  “Picky little bastards, aren’t you?” Brank stuffed more Moon Pie in his mouth and chewed vigorously. Tossing them two crumbs had already been extravagant; he was not going to further waste his Moon Pie on such ungrateful creatures.

  Their gaze stayed on his face. His cheeks grew warm and he began to feel slightly uneasy, as if the birds knew something he didn’t. He patted the barrel of his gun.

  “Don’t forget who’s got the gun here, pals,” he muttered through his food.

  The larger buzzard folded its wings but continued to stare, its scrutiny sharp as the point of a knife.

  Brank was about to throw one of the loose chimney rocks at them when something else caught his attention. A new sound suddenly whispered through the woods. A step. Then a pause. Then the faintest rustle in the grass.

  “Ahhhh.” He continued his conversation with the buzzards as he shifted his hearing to the woods. “I get it. You boys are hanging around because you figure you’ll soon be getting some meat to eat.”

  He kept his eyes on the birds, but dropped his food back in his sack and eased the gun onto his lap. He shoved a new shell in each chamber, then turned by inches to the right and peered into the surrounding forest. Tree trunks stood festooned with gold leaves while black grapevines dangled down like serpentine. Nothing unusual for a mild autumn day. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

  Then he heard it again. From deep within the trees, the long, slow rumble of a bottle being rolled down a hall. The hair rose on the back of his neck. He’d heard that sound before. Trudy was here.

  Brank’s heart began to race as he squinted into the underbrush, trying to catch a glimpse of her huge amber eyes. “Here, Trudy, old girl,” he crooned softly as he curled a finger around both triggers of his gun.

  Again he heard the low, menacing rumble. He drew his legs up and balanced the gun on his left knee, waiting for her to make a move. Was she brave enough to attack him in the daylight, he wondered as his heart tripped and his hands grew slippery on the gun. He didn’t think so. Trudy, like the trolls, preferred to prey on him at night, when his eyes couldn’t pierce the darkness and his imagination made up the difference.

  Brank tried to keep the gun steady on his knee. It occurred to him that just as he had followed other buzzards in times past, this particular pair must follow Trudy, waiting for her scraps. With a sick lurch of his gut he realized that for the first time in his life, he himself was, at this moment, the short end of the food chain.

  “If you’re thinking I’m gonna be lunch, you’re mistaken, old sis,” he whispered to the fiend hidden in the forest.

  He held his breath and concentrated on the trees. Gold and russet, the leaves shimmered in front of him, rustling like a woman’s gown. He sat rigid, waiting. The minutes dripped by. Sweat began to run into his eyes. He could hear the rapid thud of his own heart. His hands clutched the gun so tightly they began to shake. He’d just begun to think that maybe he’d imagined the whole thing when the weeds beneath a yellow buckeye gave a single swift shudder and a roar enveloped him like a freight train. All at once Trudy stood in front of him, not ten feet away.

  Huge hungry eyes now more green than amber pinned him where he sat. She was far bigger than he remembered. She crouched with her tail twitching, gauging the distance to him just as a house cat might measure a leap to a kitchen table. Shiny black lips curled away from long yellow fangs. Brank began to tremble. When he’d last shot Trudy, she hadn’t looked nearly so scary as this.

  EEEOOOOOOOWWWWW!

  Her scream filled the universe, ricocheted through his head. He had half a second to get his shots off before those fangs sank into his throat. Mad, mad, she was so mad—he had killed her so many years before. Now he was going to kill her again. With shaking hands he aimed at her broad breast. He drew a bead on where he guessed her heart would be, then sucked in his breath and pulled both triggers.

  The gun bucked as it never had before. The double recoil knocked him against the chimney. Brank’s head snapped back into the sunbaked rocks, sending grit and dirt stinging into his face and eyes. For a moment he couldn’t see, then when he’d wiped away the dirt, he opened his eyes. Trudy should be stretched out and bleeding like a sieve, her pink tongue protruding from those nasty black lips, but the ground was empty. The clearing was as vacant as it had been when he’d arrived.

  “What the hell?” He jumped up and walked to the spot where Trudy had been. Surely he had wounded her. Surely there would be a path of blood leading to wherever she’d fled. He’d fired two loads of triple-aught buckshot from point-blank range. But there was nothing. A slight indentation in the long grass was the only sign that Trudy had ever been there at all.

  Brank’s gun sagged downward as he stared at the ground. All these years of tracking. All those nights that awful unearthly cry had pierced the darkness and pulled him from the edge of sleep, twisting his stomach and turning his bowels to brown soup. Always, he’d gotten up and hurried out with his gun, only to come back empty-handed. Today she’d practically presented herself as a gift and still he couldn’t kill her. He felt sour inside, as if something within him were spoiling. He looked over at the tree. The buzzards stared back at him, their wings seeming to droop with disappointment.

  “What the hell are you looking at?” he cried, rage boiling up inside him. “Miss your damn meal ticket?”

  The buzzards did not move.

  “Here.” Brank shoved another shell in the gun and raised it to his shoulder. “See if you like this.” He aimed at the smaller vulture and fired. The elm branch shattered as the bird exploded in a mist of blood and feathers. The other bird leaped into the air, spreading its broad wings and lifting over the trees before Brank had time to shoot again.

  “Stupid sons of bitches,” he screamed, stamping back over to the chimney and gathering up his sack. “Stupid motherfucking sons of bitches!”

  He picked up his gear and strode off into the woods. Trudy would be ahead of him now, slipping through the trees, watching and waiting for the next time he let his guard down. He would just have to try twice as hard, Brank told himself as his legs began to shake and sweat rolled down his face to cling like raindrops to the end of his beard.

  “I’ll get you before I leave here,” he vowed to Trudy as he pushed through a laurel thicket. “By God, I will.”

  EIGHT

  Mary stared out the window as Alex drove to the trailhead. So that’s what Little Jump Off looks like now, she thought as the woods sped by the car in a dark blur. The same fireplace, the same bait cooler, the same knotty-pine floor where your mother died. Only now your ex-lover is the proprietor, and you want him just as badly as you ever did. The words swept through her brain like wind through parched grass. As much as she longed to sit still and sort it all out, she would have to do that later. She’d promised Alex that she would devote herself to having fun after Little Jump Off, and she never welshed on her deals with Alex.

  “There’s our turn.” She pulled herself out of Jonathan’s grasp and pointed at a battered sign that read War Woman Road.

  Alex turned left onto a gravel path that led to a small unpaved overlook, where she braked beside a tangle of wild honeysuckle. Thirty feet to the right, a tiny footpath seemed to plummet off the edge of the world.

  The three women got out of the car and walked to a crumbling stone wall that skirted the overlook. Alex hopped up on the wall, putting her hands on her hips as she surveyed the expanse below.

  “Holy shit!” she exclaimed. Her cry floated out over the mountains like a bottle launched upon an ocean.

  For miles, a sea of trees undulated away from them. Still green at the lowest elevations, it swelled to red and gold and brown until distance tinted it mauve, then lilac. Finally it disappeared, miles away, into a hazy blue nothingness. As they watched two fa
raway hawks glide on a high thermal, the only sound they heard was the breath that rose from the forest itself. Cool and unwavering, it carried the fecund smells of growth and decay and made the fine hairs on their arms stand erect.

  “Jeez,” Joan murmured, standing beside Alex. “And I thought Central Park was something.” She fumbled for the disposable camera she’d stashed in her purse. “I gotta get a picture of this.”

  Mary watched as Joan snapped away. She knew from experience that her pictures would come out disappointing—the colors would be flat, the scope less majestic. Photography was frustrating that way. Only the images etched in your memory remained crisp, with colors undiluted.

  “Can you imagine how the pioneers must have felt the first time they saw all this?” Alex spread her arms, as if all the acres below were a wild empire that belonged only to her.

  Mary smiled. Alex’s imagination had always been able to soar at the slightest provocation, thrusting her back into history or forward into some crazy future. Though it made for interesting conversations, sometimes when she stood next to Alex she felt as dull as a stump.

  “If we got lost could we follow those electrical wires out?” Alex pointed at a phalanx of power lines that stretched over the trees like strands of some giant spider’s web.

  Mary squinted at the TVA cables linking the Cheoah and Calderwood dams. “I suppose, if we could climb a high enough tree to get a fix on one. It’s probably a day’s hike from pole to pole, though.”

  Joan stared at the vastness before her and frowned. “Mary, are you sure you can find one little Cherokee hot spring in the middle of all those trees?”

  “If this were New York could you get us to Coney Island?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay,” said Mary. “Then just think of this as my Manhattan.”

  “Great, but when you take the subway to Coney Island, all you’ve got to deal with is muggers and street gangs and your basic New York loonies. Here you’ve got a jillion acres of God-knows-what hiding in the trees.” Joan pushed her Yankees cap back on her head. “I don’t know if I’m up to this, guys. I smoke, remember? I don’t know a fox from a ferret and I don’t jog every day like you two.”

  “I haven’t jogged in six months,” Alex told her. “Anyway, I’ll take care of you. You’ll be back at the office Tuesday raving about the fun you had.”

  Joan scowled. “If I pass out, will you give me CPR?”

  “In a heartbeat.” Alex’s laughter was rich and genuine. “I swear you’ll have a good time up here.”

  “Well, okay,” Joan sighed. “But just remember I’m supposed to have dinner with Hugh Chandler next Saturday. I don’t want to have a broken leg or poison ivy or anything.”

  “All you’ll have is thrilling tales of hiking through Appalachia,” Mary assured her. “Hugh will think he’s eating with Superwoman.”

  Joan shot Mary a dubious glance, but she followed her two friends to the car and watched Alex unlock the trunk.

  “Good grief!” Alex cried, hoisting Joan’s backpack out onto the ground. “What in the world did you pack? Free weights?”

  “No.” A flush of embarrassment pinkened Joan’s cheeks. “Just my things. Clothes. Makeup. Wine. Something to read.”

  Alex shook her head. “It feels like most of our law library. Unbuckle that pack and pull out everything that’s not absolutely vital to your survival.”

  Grumbling, Joan knelt and unbuckled her pack. Moments later she’d fished out three pairs of jeans, two wool sweaters, five cans of soup, a Coleman lantern, two bottles of Chianti, two extra pairs of shoes, and a hard-back biography of Beverly Sills.

  Alex looked at Joan’s supplies and started to laugh. “I’ve seen less junk crammed on a moving van. You’ll have to ditch about half that stuff.”

  “Half my stuff?” cried Joan. “What about half your stuff? Your trunk doesn’t exactly look empty, Alex.”

  “You guys sound exactly like you did three years ago when you had to share that office,” Mary reminded them. “Why don’t we all ditch half our stuff? Then we can fit everything into two big packs, and one of us can always be traveling without any extra weight.”

  “Well, I will if she will,” agreed Joan grudgingly. “But are you sure you wouldn’t like some wine tonight?” She held up one raffia-covered Chianti bottle.

  Mary shook her head as she discarded a bulky sweater from her own pack. “Not enough to carry it uphill all day. Anyway, I brought some brandy in a plastic flask.”

  They each pared their supplies in half, then Alex helped Joan repack her gear. As Mary attached the tent to one pack frame and the stove to the other, Joan held up a tiny cell phone.

  “Shouldn’t we take this? In case of an emergency?”

  Alex smiled. “We won’t need it. Charlie already put one in my pack.”

  “Can I make a call on it?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “Cool,” said Joan. “I’m going to call my mother as soon as we get there and say, Hey, Ma, I’m in the middle of Nantootlah!”

  “Nantahala,” Mary corrected.

  “Okay, okay, whatever.”

  When they got everything repacked, Alex locked the Beemer and shoved the keys deep in her pocket. She shouldered the heaviest pack while Mary carried the other, giving Joan the first easy shift. For a moment the three friends grinned at each other like children who’d managed to play some incredible piece of hooky; then Mary led the way down into the leafy green sea.

  To Mary’s great relief, the Little Jump Off Trail had escaped the notice of both the current timber barons and the latest crop of Cherokee teenagers. The ancient oaks that towered above it had not been clear-cut and planed into coffee tables, and no discarded condoms or flattened beer cans littered the path. The trail cut through the mountains as rough and rutted as it had been when she’d first walked it with her mother. Back then she hadn’t wanted anything to do with the forest. She hated it here, with these strange people who ate something called bean bread and used words she didn’t understand. She missed her father and french fries and wondered why they couldn’t go back and stay with the Andersons at Fort Bragg. The Andersons had offered. But her mother said no. “Sometimes we have to be brave, baby,” she had whispered, holding her tight. “As much as we want to stay put, sometimes we just have to go forward.” Then her mother had smiled, and helped Mary put on her jacket. “Go get your crayons. I’ll take you to a magic place and we can draw some pretty pictures.”

  “Hey, Mary! What do you think happened to those missing people on that bulletin board?”

  Joan’s question came out between little gasps of breath. The trail from the highway had bottomed out in a stretch of wild ginger, and they were at the foot of a trail that twisted steeply through tall sweet-gum trees, ascending one of the minor Unicoi Mountains. Beads of sweat decorated Joan’s and Alex’s foreheads and Mary could tell by the trudging way both walked that they were already beginning to feel the hike in their legs.

  “I don’t know.” She stopped, removed her pack, and sat underneath a tree to allow her friends to catch their breath. Alex pulled off her pack and flopped down beneath another tree while Joan rummaged in her pocket for a cigarette.

  “Got lost, probably. It’s easy to do.” Mary opened her paint box and dug out her sketch pad and a small piece of charcoal. “I mean, look at how thick these woods are. If I walked ten feet off this trail you probably wouldn’t be able to see me.”

  “That’s why I’m not letting you out of my sight.” Joan sprawled beside Alex, her cigarette bobbing in her mouth as she talked. “Consider us joined at the hip until we get back to Atlanta.”

  Mary looked down at her sketch pad. The image of two people joined at the hip brought Jonathan Walkingstick back to mind. A wife in England. She tried to picture the woman’s hands, her mouth. What had she cooked for Jonathan? How had she made love to him? Stop it, she scolded herself as she felt a catch in her throat. Don’t think about that now. “Sit sti
ll, Alex,” she commanded as she grasped the charcoal and started to sketch.

  “Not a problem.” Alex lay collapsed against the tree. “Work as long as you want. Draw a masterpiece.”

  With a sudden yelp Joan leapt up as if she’d sat on a pin. “Is that poison ivy?” She pointed to a scraggly green vine curling up the tree trunk.

  “Has it got three leaves?”

  “No.” Joan squinted at the plant. “Five.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably Virginia creeper.”

  “You wouldn’t kid me, would you?” Joan frowned as Alex snickered.

  “Honest Injun,” Mary reassured her. “That one particular part of the forest will not harm you in any way.”

  Joan folded her arms across her chest and looked nervously around the woods. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many trees in my life. It’s spooky—almost like they’re alive.”

  Mary laughed. “They are alive, Joan. They’re breathing in carbon dioxide right this very second.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant,” Joan whispered as she peered into the shadows.

  Altering her pose for a moment, Alex pried up a spiky brown sweet-gum nut. “Hey, Mary, did your mother teach you woodlore and herbal medicine and stuff?”

  “Some,” Mary answered, bent over her drawing. “Things like what plants are poisonous and how to splint a sprained ankle.” She shrugged. “At the time I thought the whole Native American thing was pretty hokey. Now I wish I’d asked her more.”

  Joan inhaled greedily as a yellow maple leaf spiraled gracefully to the ground. “My great-aunt in Sicily used to brew up some pretty weird cures. I wonder, though, if all that herbal medicine stuff isn’t just wishful thinking.”

  Mary looked up from her drawing. “Beats me. My mom and I just took aspirin.”

  They switched packs and climbed higher. The trees grew more intense in color—red sourwoods mingled with gold poplars and crimson black gums, all standing stark and vibrant against a brilliant sapphire sky. They stopped often at streams, where Joan would sit and smoke, Alex would dangle her bare feet in the icy water, and Mary would lie back in soft, mossy beds of galax, the old smells and sounds of the Little Jump Off store fresh in her head. After they climbed one of the higher ridges, the trail split in two directions. Mary stopped and shrugged off her pack.