by Summer Wood
Len finished helping Meg struggle out of the loose clothes she wore over her swimsuit and watched her waddle toward the water. He squatted on his heels at the riverbank. “Fine the way I am,” he called back. “I’ll stay dry.” He could see in his mind’s eye the look Meg wore on the faded palimpsest of her face. Her head was oddly shaped. Flat in the back, and her forehead a perfect reclining rectangle lined in creases almost straight across and crosshatched lightly: it had been written once and then erased. But she would be happy now, and shining the broad flat beam of her glee at the boy. She shrieked as her toes got wet. He watched Wrecker tread water, his arms extended to sit on the river surface, palms cupped like hydroplanes ready for takeoff and the water streaming from his hair and glistening on his shoulders. His skin was a darker gold than his mane and his chest was still smooth, hairless. He could work like a man—like the best of men—but he was still a boy. Melody’s boy. Ruthie’s boy. Even Meg’s boy. But not Willow’s. And somehow, through something that felt to Len like failure and loss, not his either. Len heard the sudden unencumbered peal of Meg’s clear laughter. And then Wrecker surfaced, smiled, and swam toward her.
Wrecker did his growing in bed. When he turned eleven and Johnny Appleseed went away—for good, it seemed, although they’d still receive reports from the tree huggers who came by (Johnny in Alaska, Johnny doing time for resisting arrest, Johnny Appleseed busted loose and living in the broad arms of the trees, vowing never to touch ground again)—Wrecker moved from the sunny space Melody had carved out for him in the barn back to the ramshackle cabin. To celebrate his independence Willow pieced him a quilt. It was navy blue and white, with sails and waves in alternating blocks, and he fell asleep under it to the soft snores of Sitka and her pups. Then Sitka died and the pups themselves got old and slow, and Wrecker stitched them up some fluffy pillows to ease their arthritic bones. Evenings Ruth cooked and Wrecker helped and the four of them—Ruth and Wrecker and Melody and Willow—gathered in the farmhouse to eat. Melody took up the oboe. Willow bought a TV. Wrecker studied algebra and Greek mythology and the comparative ecosystems of tundra and steppe through the flimsy pamphlets the home-school company provided. They all tried to help him learn to spell, and they failed miserably; still he passed eighth grade. He passed ninth. He studied with them and ate and laughed and told stories of his days with Len and argued over which programs to watch and suffered through Melody’s interminable practice sessions and washed dishes and did something that really fouled up the washing machine that Ruth had to fix. In the summers he grew cabbage and cauliflower in Ruth’s garden. He let the screen door slam every time and clattered like an elephant when he bounded down the porch stairs and plucked an armload of wildflowers, guiltily, the week after Mother’s Day and argued unsuccessfully for permission to ride his motorbike into town after dark. But he grew at night, alone, in his bed.
And he dreamed.
Sometimes he dreamed of cutting the wood, just that, and the sweet intoxicating odor that rose up to greet him. His body added inches in length and girth, and muscles swelled onto his bones, and the texture of his skin changed as he grew hair places it had never grown before. He dreamed of speeding through the forest, his face whipped by twigs as he dodged trees and his body a forward hurtle faster than the bike could ever take him. He dreamed of dog faces and half-caught conversations; his fingers stretched along their callused lengths and the bones of his face asserted themselves more ardently, and he dreamed of the dark-haired girl who camped on the banks of the Mattole every summer. His body went looking for her in his sleep and found itself, and he woke laughing.
Also he dreamed that dark disorienting dream. He felt something inside himself shrink. He felt part of himself leaving and was afraid of that. Sometimes the future felt like something he could wrap his arms around and lift with ease and sometimes it was a shape he couldn’t quite make out that waited for him in burned-out buildings in distant cities he found himself lost in. The ropy muscles of his trunk felt puny then, and his hands reached to catch himself. Always the fall was faster than he could stop.
He grew a downy mustache, sparse but insistent. His skin rebelled. An Adam’s apple rose in the flatland of his throat. His voice was husky to begin with, and though it tumbled two notches, it held on to the sweet color that distinguished it.
Wrecker knew there were parts to himself he would never retrieve.
One night he lay awake and was still. He heard the door open and felt the draft of cool night air cross his face. He listened for the dogs to stir. Heard the thump of a tail and the sandpaper scratch of wet tongue on skin. He listened for footfall but heard none. The night was dark. He waited for the flare of a match. “Johnny Appleseed?”
“Sshhhh.”
He shifted onto his elbows. His shoulders and chest were clear of the quilt. “What are you doing here?”
“I forgot something.” Wrecker heard his friend rustle through the piles of dirty laundry and stacks of odds and ends that cluttered the floor. Johnny was a vague shape at the end of the bed. And then the squeak of wood being pried up, resisting a nail. Something down there caught the light and shone but was quickly covered. And then the dull thud of Johnny’s fist pressing the wood back into place. He turned to Wrecker and there was just enough light for the boy to make out the familiar face, those bright eyes and that beard, a dense mat that covered nearly all his skin. He was smiling. “Don’t ask,” Johnny Appleseed warned.
Wrecker sat up with the quilt clumped around his waist. He shifted his legs to make room on the edge of the bed. “Where you been all this time?”
“Ah, you know. Places to go, people to see.” He squinted at the boy. “You got big. What are they feeding you?”
Wrecker felt a sharp pang. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed him. “Stick around and find out,” he said. “Ruth’ll put meat on your bones. You’re looking kind of thin.”
“Got to travel light.” Johnny paused. “Hey, Wrecker?” The corner of his mouth turned down, and then up, and then down again. “Keep this a secret, will you?” He watched the boy to gauge his response. “Don’t tell anybody I was here.”
Wrecker nodded. “You a fugitive from justice?”
Johnny Appleseed laughed. “A fugitive for justice, better. But probably both.”
Wrecker hesitated, and then he reached over to lift his friend’s shirttail. The polished stock of a pistol stuck up from the waistband of his pants. So it was true. People whispered that Johnny had turned Guardian. Whatever it took to stop the logging, they’d do it. Crazy-ass fools, Len called them. The worst kind of outlaws. “Who you planning to shoot?”
Johnny met his gaze. “I might have to scare some people to keep them away from the places they shouldn’t go.”
“I’m working with Len,” Wrecker blurted.
Johnny Appleseed nodded. Even in the dark, Wrecker could see a wave of sadness cascade down his face. “I know that,” Johnny said. “Len’s not the worst. Just tell him to leave the wildest ones be.” He walked around to the dogs, knelt down to stroke each one. He turned to the boy. “Sitka?”
“Last year,” Wrecker said. He still got a lump in his throat.
Johnny Appleseed nodded. “Take good care of yourself, kid,” he said, and walked outside and left the door open.
There was a sliver of moon that barely lit the grass. Wrecker dropped his feet to the floor and stood in the doorway with his quilt wrapped around him like a toga. “Johnny Appleseed!”
Johnny looked over his shoulder and lifted his hand to still the boy. Wrecker stood frozen. He had the terrible, wrenching feeling that this was the last he’d see of Johnny and he wanted to run at him, bring him down, force him to stay. But he couldn’t move. Johnny was going and his hand, raised like that, meant Wrecker had to stay.
Meant good-bye.
There was the barest shimmer in the shadows. There, again: a dark shape distinguished itself from the trees and approached the small man. From every direction, dark smudges
resolved into men moving silently, stealthily, toward Wrecker’s friend and surrounding him. Guardians. If Johnny went with them he would never find his way back.
Johnny stood patiently in the moonlight. He made the men wait. They waited until, at last, Wrecker lifted his own hand, and waved good-bye. And then, once more, they were absorbed into the trees.
Meg loved the water. She loved it for hours in a pan she could sit beside and stir with a wooden spoon; she loved it coming down day after night after interminable winter day to flood the yard and sop Len’s canvas tarps left hanging on the line. She delighted in the river, in the sea, in the brackish standing swamp of a lagoon where Len mucked about in waders and collected tubers for a feast. Anyplace wet was where she wanted to be. Especially in the bath, with Len’s lean economical body a prop for her own soft flesh. “The water lapped over her belly,” he sang, stitching his own words to the tune of “My Bonnie.” “The water lapped over her thighs. The water lapped over her ninnies,” Len’s voice a scratch more satisfying than the loofah he coursed over Meg’s shoulders and back, “which grew to incredible size.”
Every night they followed the same routine. Len came in from the yard or from town or dragged his weary bones home from the forest after felling trees with Wrecker and he stood at the stove and put together some concoction that would satisfy their need to eat. He flicked the switch on the propane boiler to heat the water for their bath. He unscrewed the faucet clamps he’d had to install; Meg was safe at home, days, so long as he kept her from emptying the cistern and flooding the place while he was gone. He whistled and sometimes he played the radio. Meg rearranged the lumber scraps he brought her. Some evenings she liked to lie under the table and peer up at the rough side of the planks. They ate together and Len scrubbed the dishes while Meg stood beside him with her hands in the soapy water and chased bubbles. And then they took their bath.
That morning Wrecker had found the gas tank empty on the motorbike and had to hike over to work. He was fifteen, now, and starting to fill out. Taller than Len by an inch or two and wide in the shoulders, not too narrow in the hips but every ounce of it muscle and more under his control than it had been in his gangly days. He could shoulder a wet log and walk with it, his footfalls thunderous under the weight. He swung an ax—tick, tock—like it was the second hand on the clock of the world: Paul Bunyan with a sharp blade and Len’s aging International, winch-outfitted, for his Blue Ox. Len handled the chain saw. All it would take was for the chain to break and the kid would be ribbons. Len shuddered to think of it. Wrecker was too young to work the woods, his focus not fully honed and the dangers too profound, but he was too good already to turn down. And God knows too bullheaded to boss around. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He’d go ahead and find some straightforward way to do what he wanted.
Straightforward: that’s how he’d asked Len for a ride to the dance the high school in Fortuna was throwing that evening. Len gave him credit for that. The boy had worked through every detail. Melody couldn’t take him; the hatchback she’d bought to replace the VW when it finally expired was turning out to be no more reliable than the van it had supplanted, but she was happy to come sit with Meg for the evening. Meg took a keen interest in the oboe and would listen, mesmerized, as Melody practiced her simple pieces. And for Len’s time, Wrecker pledged in return as many hours of work as he took Len away from his place. He planned to leave that night at seven. A few hours at the dance, the good hour and a quarter ride home—Len could be home by midnight. That meant five hours’ labor exchange. Would Len consider?
“Sure, I’ll take you,” Len said gruffly. “Forget about the rest.” He owed the boy at least this. With Johnny Appleseed gone there was no other man around to guide Wrecker and he was changing so fast, giving off a man’s odor, building muscle mass and sure enough bulking up in other ways, too. He showed a keen interest in the girls his age who gathered in occasional gaggles at the post office and general store. A keen interest and dubious social skills, from what Len could tell. Not that Len was expert in the field. He’d been nearly thirty and a virgin to love, if not to sex, when he’d fallen hard for Meg. He was certain Wrecker was a virgin on both counts. Ruth would have squeezed the information out of him and passed it on to them in subtle ways, but instead Ruth gazed at the boy with an expression that joined mirth with intense pity and a sense of impending doom. Len grinned, thinking of it. Poor sod, he thought. Not one of them could soften the blow, when it came. But Len could give him a lift to where the girls were. He could kick in his share to give Wrecker half a chance. And then his expression sobered. He was fifty-seven, himself. Old enough to be through with that kind of foolishness. And deep in the throes of the worst kind of want.
They’d worked hard all day and when the sun tilted toward four o’clock Len had quit early, run the boy home to get cleaned up for his evening out. Len had a parcel Willow had asked him to pick up at the p.o. in town and he wanted to deliver that, too. He drove in as far as the road would allow. Wrecker mumbled his thanks and slipped away. Len found Willow gathering her laundry from the line and he opened his mouth to shout across the meadow to her—but his mouth shut of its own accord. He stood and watched her free and fold the billowing sheets. All at once his insides lurched as though they had tired of him and decided to make a sudden break for freedom. He turned abruptly and hurried to the main house. He left the parcel with Ruthie. He got back in the truck and drove swiftly home.
In the tub, Meg splashed water onto her face. She chortled tunelessly. Len scrubbed a dirt spot above her elbow. He scrubbed harder and she slapped the water with the flat of her palm and moaned and he eased off. He looked closer. It was a mole he was trying to scrub off. The same mole that had always lived in that spot. He leaned against the tub back and slipped lower in the water.
His eyes shut, the water warm around him, Len’s mind lit with his memory of the afternoon. The line was strung high and Willow had reached above her head to unpin the sheet and carry its edge down to join the other. She’d stretched her arms wide to flatten the fold and then brought them together and halved the rectangle and smoothed the sheet against her body with her spread hand and then halved it again. And smoothed again. And folded again.
Len had never seen anything as breathtaking. It terrified him. He terrified him. He sat straight in the bath and he forced himself to forget what he’d seen. His hand found the plastic cup they kept on the tub edge. He gently touched Meg’s chin to persuade her to tilt back, and poured the water in a stream over her long hair. He kept one hand cupped at her hairline to protect her eyes. When her hair was fully wet he poured the shampoo into his hands and softly kneaded her scalp. He combed the suds tenderly through the long strands. He ran a delicate finger inside her ear and around its fleshy lobes to soap it clean and she giggled. He rinsed her hair and soaped her skin and rinsed that too and hurriedly scrubbed himself and stood for a towel and eased Meg from the tub and into the looped cotton. She hummed in his arms as he dried her, and he helped her into her flannel nightgown and robe to be ready for bed before dressing himself.
There was a knock at the front door and Len shouted from the bedroom for Wrecker to come in. The boy entered. Behind him sauntered Melody, her arms wrapped around the oblong leatherette case that housed her oboe. And behind her Willow.
Len glimpsed her through the half-open door to the bedroom and felt his heart jump. His cheeks flushed. He yanked his right arm from the sleeve of the threadbare chambray shirt he’d thoughtlessly chosen. The striped dress shirt was still folded in the bottom of the drawer; he shook that one free of its creases and awkwardly pulled it on. He stuffed the shirttails into the waistband of his jeans and forced his feet into his boots. He glanced at Meg. And then Len combed his hair.
“Hello,” he said, stepping into the room.
Willow wore the faintest curl of a smile. “I need to get out for an evening. Mind some company?”
“A bit tight in the cab,” Len said, to his instant regret. He
coughed into his hand.
Wrecker came to the rescue. “We’ll fit,” he said briskly. It was October and the air was cool but he was stepping out in threadbare jeans and a T-shirt with a Black Sabbath graphic on its front and a couple of quarter-sized holes gaping in the side seam. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”
Meg had opened Melody’s oboe case and was reverently stroking the polished instrument. “We’ll be fine, here,” Melody assured Len. She turned to her son. “Behave yourself,” she said fiercely. The boy blushed and she reached up and tucked the tag of his T-shirt under the collar. He was taller than her by a head. “Have fun.” Her eyebrows knit together as she reconsidered. “Not too much fun.” She glanced at Willow. “You’ll be sure he gets home fine?”
“I’ll tuck him in and turn out the light.”
“Good.” She tossed her sleeping bag onto the couch. “I’m no good at staying up late. Try not to wake me when you come in, Len.”
Wrecker gave a short huff like a bear rooting in downed timber for grubs. He tilted toward Melody and suffered a kiss, and then crossed to Meg and planted one on the crown of her head. “Let’s go, already,” he growled, and they did.