Wilderness

by Lance Weller

  “If you’d rather not—”

  “Oh, it ain’t that,” said Abel. “It ain’t that. Just queer is all. People interested in a thing like that. From that long ago. Says to me that nobody’s got it puzzled out yet—just like I always thought.” He shrugged and grinned again. “But to answer your question,” he said, shaking his head. “Nah, I never did run. Not from them.”

  Outside, the day was clearing, and a single ray of sunlight slanted through the dusty window onto the table. Abel tilted his face from it but put his good hand into the light, fingers spread to soak up the heat. He squinted at Ellen. “But I’ll tell you,” he said. “There was plenty of times I walked away from ’em pretty goddamned fast.”

  Ellen shared his smile and stood from the table. With quick efficiency, she gathered the dishes and moved them to the counter where there sat a white enameled bowl filled with cooling water. Abel offered his help and half stood, but she bid him sit. Turning away, she put her hands in the water and began to wash. Without turning around, she asked, “What are you doing here, Abel?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Why are you here?”

  There was a long pause while he sought his answer. Ellen watched out the window, but Glenn was gone, and there was nothing to see but sunlight filtering through the trees and making sparkle like treasure the emerald moss and the last of the little jewel-winged deerflies flitting through the air. She uncurled her fingers in the water, trying to relax, trying to force heat up through her arms and into the dark, windy cavity where beat her tired heart.

  “I was out front of my shack where I lived,” said Abel, choosing words carefully. “I like to sit and watch the ocean of an evening. The way the tide comes in and the different colors the sun puts on the water when it sets. At any rate, I remember standing up one day just as the last light was going out, and when I turned round it was shining back in the trees behind like there was fire in them. I seen fire in trees plenty of times, of course, but this was … But this was like how it was in the Wilderness, in the war. The light and the trees and I could suddenly … smell things I haven’t smelled in more’n thirty years. I had to up and practically pinch myself to be sure of where I really, truly was.” Abel sniffed and sighed. “It greatly disturbed me, as they say.”

  He hushed for a moment. Ellen fisted her hands beneath the water, unfisted them again, and plucked a plate from the counter. She began to scrub it. When Abel spoke again, his voice wheezed softly as though his breath were coming from a place fallen into disrepair within him—as though his voice were an old, ill-oiled machine seized with neglect.

  “I was remembering how it had been when I realized how much I’d forgot. I don’t remember exactly what kind of trees there was back there. What kind of flowers there was. My wife, she planted us a little garden back behind our house when we was married, and I can’t, for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was she planted. Melons or corn or tomatoes or just a mess of flowers. A man ought to be able to remember something like that. And the color of her dress that day …” He faltered. “I can’t see it,” he said. “I can’t even see her face clear no more.”

  Ellen turned from the dishes. She looked at the old man where he sat slump-shouldered, warming his one good hand in a patch of sunlight on the table. “I didn’t know you were ever married,” she said.

  Abel nodded. His lips moved around the lower half of his face and he shook his head as though to chase away thoughts he’d rather not have. “I just figured it was time for me to go on back home while I still can,” he said, glancing up at her for a moment before looking away.

  Ellen pursed her lips and said slowly, “Glenn and I talked it over, and we’d be proud to have you stay on with us for a while. You’ll have your strength back by spring, and your trip will be easier then.”

  Abel smiled up at her. “Well,” he said softly. “Well, that’s right kindly and I do thank you, but I can’t do it. You folks is good people, but I need to keep moving while I still can, I reckon.” Poking his tongue thoughtfully to the inside of his cheek, Abel nodded and went on. “’Sides, if I can catch up with ’em, it sounds like them Chinese might need some help over the pass. And that’d help me, too.” He looked at her and blinked. “I reckon you know what it is I’m talkin’ about.”

  Ellen nodded and looked out the window where, within its frame, she saw a doe and its fawn nosing the dying grass and thistle at the edge of the yard. After a moment, the doe stepped with light, articulated precision into the trees and the fawn clumsily followed, until both were vanished in the shadows of the wilderness beyond the clearing.

  Abel swallowed as though it pained him and pushed himself up from the table. When Ellen asked if he was all right, he nodded and said, “I’m just not so used to talking to folk, I reckon. I’d forgotten what hard work it can be.” He grinned a little and looked at her. “Good work, though. Old numb-nuts there, he’s a good dog but he don’t answer much when I talk at him.” Abel looked down at the floor as though suddenly embarrassed. “If it’s no trouble,” he said softly, “I might go on into that room back there and rest a spell.”

  She nodded and watched as he shuffled across the room toward the hall, where he paused. “The dumb old cuss of a dog of mine’ll probably be running around out there a while longer. Could you, if you think of it, check up on him ’fore it gets dark? He don’t much care for bein’ out in the wild in the dark of night.” Ellen told him she would and told him not to worry and the old man nodded and walked on down the hall. She heard the door open and close again and then all was silent save for the birdcalls that drifted through the forest like happy, wandering spirits.

  Abel woke in the dark and lay quietly staring at the ceiling until he knew they were sleeping in their bedroom. It was a clear night, and bright moonlight washed the walls silvery and pale. A cold wind, near to freezing, breathed along the eaves and made the branches shudder. From somewhere on the hill behind the cabin an owl called softly.

  Abel rose from the floor, and beside him, the dog pushed itself up. The old man put a finger to his lips and gave the dog a look and it ceased panting and closed its mouth. Abel nodded his satisfaction and pulled his trousers on. He buttoned his shirt and put on his coat, then pulled on his socks and tied himself into his boots. He gathered his things in the cold dark but could not find his haversack. Standing in the center of the room, he rubbed his chin with his palm, frowned deeply, and swore. After a while, he went to the door and let himself out.

  By moonlight, he saw the haversack on the floor beside the front door and he went to it and slung it over his shoulder. He looked around the little room—the tables and cupboards and chairs, the enormous stove and the gun cabinet and the little porcelain figurines and found stones and other knickknacks about the shelves, the knitted quilt draped over the arm of a chair pulled close to the fire, all things around him that proclaimed hearth and home and life and love—then went out the door onto the porch.

  “I thought you’d be leaving, so I put some things in that sack of yours for you,” said Ellen.

  Startled, Abel jumped, swore, and turned. She stood by herself just within the shadows near the rain barrel, smoking with the hand-rolled cigarette held near her ear. He touched the brim of his hat. “Well, I’m obliged, ma’am,” he said softly.

  Nodding, she stepped out of the dark and crushed the cigarette into an old jelly-jar lid before crossing the porch boards to him. She wore a heavy robe against the cold, and she stopped before Abel with the moon lighting up her skin and caught up silver in her hair, so that she was ghostlike, all ashimmer. And even in the dark he could tell she’d been weeping, could smell the hot salt rising from her mannish cheeks like warm seawater. “I won’t ever have a child,” she breathed. “They took that away from me. They took it all away.” Her voice bucked and kicked against the grief that rode her and that she’d suddenly loosed from wherever she’d penned it.

  Abel stepped back, her naked misery disorienting and overpowering hi
m. The dog had scampered off into the forest, and for a moment he looked about for it as if it could help, give him guidance or good advice, but he could not find it.

  She came close, and he could feel the heat of her flesh. He wondered how long it had been since he’d felt such a thing. Her arms hung limply and her head was tilted forward so her moongilded hair fell past her face. She wore heavy, unlaced boots that set the boards to creaking.

  Abel put a tentative hand on her shoulder and could feel its round, firm warmth even through the robe. With a breath, he stepped to her and wrapped his arm about her so that the tough flat of his hand touched the center of her back. He closed his eyes and could feel the knuckles of her spine and her jutting scapulae like the knobs of withered wings.

  Ellen fisted her hands into the facing of Abel’s coat and pressed her face against his shoulder, shaking in his awkward embrace. He stood as best he could against her wild, salty grief, and when it was finally done she stood trembling and panting against him. He felt the workings of the wide muscles in her back and her small breasts against his chest as she drew breath, shimmering cones into the cold.

  Abel closed his eyes. He pressed with the flat of his palm against the small of her back. He breathed in the scent of her hair and her tears and her pale, shimmering flesh. For just a moment he allowed himself a dream and when the world returned he took her by the shoulder and pushed her away.

  He was panting a little and ducked his head to better see her face. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Ellen was quiet. She said nothing.

  “Well,” said Abel slowly. “Maybe … maybe it’s for the best.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wet.

  “What I mean is … if you-all had a child … It’d have a hard life, don’t you think? Harder, maybe, than it should, way I see it.”

  Ellen opened her mouth and shut it. The pink wedge of her tongue darted to her lips. “What—what are you saying to me?”

  “I’m just saying that any child you and Glenn have’d be mixed, wouldn’t it? That … that’s no—hell, I don’t know.”

  Ellen straightened and stared coldly at the old man. She took a step back and touched her wrist to her lips, then shook her head. “You son of a bitch,” she hissed. “You get on out of here.” She dug the heels of her palms into the orbits of her eyes and grimaced.

  Abel stepped back. He stumbled down the steps into the yard, where he could smell flowers rotting in the garden along the wall—little wilted rhododendron bugles fallen to the soil, sweetening it for the next year. Ellen stood at the edge of the porch, gripping the rail as though her grief and anger had given her a pale sort of strength. She raised her arm and pointed toward the uphill trail and Abel turned. He walked across the yard, then looked back at the cabin, where now their bedroom window was lit yellow. As he passed the shed, he smelled within the metallic scents of tools, fusty rainclothes with sap-treated seams, bottles of kerosene. Abel could see the outhouse in silhouette behind its hanging screen of moss, and he could see the square back of the Makers’ Acres sign on the fence post at the end of the lane. He smelled the good, rich dirt of their yard and the fresh, grassy stink of the horse in its little stable. As he ducked his head to enter the forest, he heard a creaking on the cabin porch and turned again.

  Glenn crossed the yard and Abel listened to him breathing in the dark and they stood together silently for some time. Finally, Abel said, “I’m sorry, Glenn. I said a thing I shouldn’t ought have. I don’t really think it. I don’t know why I said it.”

  “Well, whatever it was, she’s mad as a hornet. Hurt some, too, I think.”

  “She didn’t say?”

  “No, she didn’t. And I don’t want to know nothing more about any of it.”

  “Well,” said Abel, nodding and turning. He walked a short distance, then turned back. “I thank you for the hospitality. For the borrowing of the book.”

  “Abel,” said Glenn flatly. “If the snow catches you while you’re up there, you head for the flats up near Little Sugar Pass. Just beneath the saddle.”

  “What for?”

  “There’s a little trapper’s cabin where I sleep over some nights when I’m hunting. It hasn’t been used in I don’t know how long, but there’s firewood and a little stove. Not much by a long shot, but it’s shelter.”

  Abel nodded and turned back to the trail where it sloped up into the dark. The mountains stood black against the night, carving jagged pieces from the starlight and darkening the floor of the forest. When he turned back again, Glenn had become a small figure, diminishing constantly toward the cabin. Abel watched him go. A sudden rectangle of yellow light flashed magical and lovely as the cabin door opened and closed again. Abel turned again and started up the trail into the mountains.

  He’d walked a hundred yards or so before stopping and turning with a frown. Swearing softly, he put two fingers to his lips and gave a shrill whistle. And when he heard the dog racing up the trail toward him, Abel Truman turned and walked on through the night while an owl on the slope sang him mournfully on.

  Chapter Ten

  Through the Wilderness and After

  May 1864

  After Grant had gone, Hypatia stood for a time watching the road where he’d been. She watched the road until the sound of hoofbeats faded with distance and time and was replaced with the cracklings of the forest. Rain fell fitfully but did not seem to wet anything. She could smell wild roses in the dooryard, could hear the distant calls of whippoorwills and felt, for a moment, a soft cool breeze disturbing tree branch and vine. The wind moved with a quiet rustling, as though searching for something. After a while she went back inside, set the revolver on the desk, and settled down to sleep on the floor, not far from where the wounded soldier lay all ashudder and whimpering softly.

  She had no way to know how long she’d slept, for when she woke the sky was gray and the air wild with rain. To her bottomless surprise, she found herself spooned tightly to the rebel’s back with one hand caught up in his dusty hair and the other lying on the shoulder of his wounded arm, as though by touch she’d ease his pain. She lay without moving, listening to and feeling him breathe and smelling his scent—tarry powdersmoke and stale sweat and old terrors and the fearsome stink of warring all mixed up in his hair and coating his skin like a fine powder. Pressing her lips in a thin line, Hypatia slowly raised her arm from around him and in one fast motion rolled away and stood. She scooped the pistol from the desk and fumbled with it a moment before getting it pointed at the soldier.

  He lay awake, looking at her. His gaze was steadily tired, and he opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  Hypatia swallowed and tried to keep her hands from shaking. “You better believe I know how to use this,” she told him.

  The soldier blinked and nodded. “Good God,” he breathed, before closing his eyes and slipping away once more. “You’re pretty as a picture …”

  She held the pistol on him for a long time, waiting to be sure he wasn’t trying to fox her. When she could finally control her breath, Hypatia eased her grip and yelped with pain as her hurt finger un-kinked from around the trigger.

  Holding the gun in her off-hand, she stepped out onto the porch to look at the cut in the cool, gray, rainswept light. The soldier’s shattered elbow had cut the pad of her forefinger lengthwise, and when she flexed it the sides of the gash bent stiffly open and she saw a quick flash of pale bone. Gritting her teeth and shaking her hand, she went quickly through the cabin, gathering her few and various possessions. Wrapping everything in her thin blanket, Hypatia slung it over her shoulder, tucked the pistol into her dress pocket, and went out the door again.

  As her feet touched the porch boards the sound of riflefire to the south swelled abruptly and kept on in a noisome clatter, made more so by the rain, which had turned from a shower to a driving storm complete with a howling wind to clash through the branches round about. Hypatia glanced back at the rebel huddled against his hurts. Then she turned
and walked out into the storm.

  Soon enough she was soaked through, with rainwater running down her face in streams. It was fresh and cool on her lips, and she walked the road with her shoulders hunched, and by and by she came to a fork and in the center of the fork lay a horse-sized boulder cleft down its center as though by some long-ago and hopeful farmer with an eye toward clearing the land for fieldwork. Hypatia stopped before the stone. The air quivered electrically and the distant gunfire had neither ceased nor eased and neither had the rain. As though the weather itself had been afflicted by the violence. Hypatia stepped into the forest behind the stone and found there, in the dry, leeward side, a sack filled with flour, salt, a little pork, and a small glass bottle half full of molasses. A soldier’s dropped treasure, it lay as though left there for her alone to find.

  She thought to give thanks by prayer but did not have the strength for proper devotions so inclined her face rainward to murmur thanks then took the bag, stepped out of the trees, and turned back the way she’d come. The wind and the rain and the distant clamor of war followed her as she made her slow way back. It was evening when she opened the cabin door again. The soldier lay where she had left him and for a moment she thought him dead. But then he stirred and called out a name. Son, brother, father, comrade—she did not know. Standing there dripping in the doorway, looking at him, Hypatia shook her head with tired resignation. “I don’t know what it is I think that I’m doin’,” she said to him. “But there ain’t nothing else I know how to do, even if I thought I could.”

  She walked into the cabin and closed the door. And later, when he woke, they gave each other their names and Hypatia handed Abel Truman a cooked piece of pork and a biscuit with molasses drizzlings that she’d fixed in the hearth fire.

  They slept on opposite sides of the cabin. He lay before the fire to keep the chill away and she near the door, with the cool, dead weight of the pistol in her dress pocket. Numberless times she came awake to sporadic gunfire from the south or merely chased from sleeping by strange, hot dreams. In the morning, when she finally truly woke, Hypatia’s right hand ached sore from her cut finger to the pale base of her thumb, where the small veins ran straight as ill-tuned guitar strings through her wrist, each one vibrating with notes of dull pain as though recently plucked.