Tammy and Marian had spent the afternoon together and had stopped for dinner in Whitefish. And over dinner, Tammy had given Marian the title to Tate’s vehicle. She wasn’t sure the vehicle would make it back to Omaha, she’d said. And she didn’t want to turn it over to a dealership. Marian had never owned a car and couldn’t believe Tammy’s gesture. She drove Tammy to a hotel in Kalispell, about a half-hour drive south of Whitefish. After she pulled into a parking space by the front door, Tammy said, “You really loved my brother, didn’t you?”
Marian’s eyes glazed over with tears. “I really did.”
That was when Tammy asked Marian if she would spread some of Tate’s ashes in Montana. “I think he would have liked that.”
There was an empty coffee tin in the back of the vehicle, which Tate had used to water the dogs. Marian brought the tin with her up to Tammy’s room. Tammy carried the wooden box with Tate’s ashes. She unscrewed the bottom of the box using a coin and removed the bag.
Marian took the plastic covering from the hotel’s ice bucket and placed it inside the coffee can. Then Tammy carefully poured about a third of the ashes into the container. A cloud of fine dust wafted into Marian’s eyes and stuck to the tears on her face. How could this be the man she had loved? How could this be what was left of the body she had held on to?
* * *
• • •
Marian had chosen a three-mile route and was approaching the final mile. She pushed back her thoughts and concentrated on her thighs, like slow-moving pistons. The road pitched uphill. Her breathing became shallow. Her sweat turned cool on her skin. She hadn’t paid much mind to the three or four vehicles coming or going, until a green SUV passed her from behind, moving at a crawl, and now remained at a slow speed, within fifty feet in front of her. Marian could feel the man watching her from his side-view mirror, though she could no longer see his face, nor could she read his license plate. A clean rush of adrenaline moved through her blood. She slowed her pace, hoping the driver would move on, but he kept creeping in front of her. Then another vehicle approached, again from behind. Marian looked over her shoulder at the light green truck that she recognized as belonging to the Forest Service, and when she turned back around, the SUV had sped on.
13
March 2017
MARIAN
Oil sands, Alberta, Canada
After Noah had returned to North Carolina, taking Chester with him, Marian had moved into his room, in the same trailer as Jenness. For the next three weeks she had worked alongside Tate and Arkansas, as Tate trained Marian to become a handler. And at the end of each day, she’d lie with Tate on his bed and listen to his stories of dogs and wilderness and danger, and she’d inch herself closer to him, to the smell of fresh air that still clung to his skin and the sweet musk of a Labrador’s coat and the piney tang of his sweat. And sometimes they would take Arkansas out of her crate and let her join them on the bed, and Tate would praise Marian for her natural way with dogs and tell her how much Arkansas loved her. “You have the gift,” he’d say. “It’s like you can look inside their souls. You were born for this.” Marian’s full name was Marian Whelan Engström, and she told Tate her middle name meant wolf, and Tate called her she-wolf and said no wonder she was so good with the dogs. Other times Tate would tell Marian how smart she was. “I think you’re brilliant. Seriously brilliant.” He’d run his fingers through her long hair and tell her she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
Marian loved the things Tate saw in her and the stories he would tell and the way his body reached for her. He’d given her the kind of admiration no man or woman ever had. He’d described her best self. He’d done more than that; he’d described the kind of woman she wanted herself to be. And after they made love, it would be everything she could do to pull away from him and return to the other trailer, where she and Jenness and two of the other handlers were staying. And did she sense something awkward in the air each night when she returned, the kind of awkwardness that made her feel like she’d done something wrong? None of the others were in relationships together, and Jenness had warned Marian about the difficulty of two people dating in the program. Marian would close the door to the trailer quietly behind her, because the others would have already turned in. She’d remove her boots and walk on the balls of her sock feet to her room. And as she passed by Jenness’s room, Marian would notice that there was always a light on, a thin slice of golden yellow beneath the door no matter what time Marian turned in.
On one of those nights, Jenness was just stepping out of a steam-filled bathroom, her body wrapped in a towel, her long wet hair trailing down her back. Jenness stopped and said, “Oh, there you are,” and Marian stared at the magnificent falcon tattoo on Jenness’s left thigh.
“Let me throw something on,” Jenness said. “I want to talk to you.”
Jenness disappeared behind her bedroom door and within a few minutes reappeared, now dressed in a pair of sweats and an oversize flannel shirt.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Jenness asked.
In less than eight hours, Marian and Tate and Arkansas would be taking a helicopter into some of the most remote territory in the boreal forest of the oil sands. “I can’t wait,” Marian said.
Jenness pushed her door open wider. “Come on in,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Jenness picked up her camera from the bed. “It’s really not very difficult to use. It can be cumbersome, that’s all. I line the case with thermal packs when heading into the field, and there are extra batteries.” Would Marian mind taking pictures and maybe some video the next day, Jenness wanted to know. And of course Marian wouldn’t mind. And so the two of them sat on the bed as Jenness gave Marian a crash course on how to operate the camera. Then she made sure the extra batteries were charged. “Just warm up the packs in the microwave before you head out. The case is insulated. It will keep them warm.”
* * *
• • •
Marian had never flown in a helicopter before, and the next morning when the small utility Airbus floated skyward, she felt her stomach float skyward also. Then the aircraft lurched forward, and Marian clung to the window. Tate laughed amusedly, as if flying in a helicopter were something he did every day. Marian took out the camera and began to snap pictures, and then through the lens she spotted a caribou herd.
“Tate, look!” Marian yelled above the sound of the twin engines and the main rotor.
“That’s a small herd,” Tate yelled back at her. “There should be more.”
Marian turned the camera toward Tate. He was still looking out his side window, and the way the cloud light shone on him, and the pensive look on his face, made her breath catch somewhere deep inside her. He’s beautiful, she thought. He’s the most beautiful man I have ever seen.
“They’re the only species where the males and females both grow horns,” he said. “It’s quite remarkable.”
Tate and Marian hadn’t brought the crate. A nervous Arkansas was wedged between them. The dog jumped up with her back paws still on the floor and stretched her torso across Marian’s lap. Marian hugged the warm dog and let her lick her face.
“Should I be jealous?” Tate said. Marian looked at him sideways and smiled.
“If anything ever happens to me, take care of her for me, will you?” Tate said.
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Marian said.
Sometime in the afternoon, after four hours of collecting samples in woods as dense as night, they came upon a clearing, about a hundred-square-foot area that their maps showed to be a pond. And in the moment they stood in the center of that clearing, the white cloud cover dissipated and the sun shone through, and the air felt as clean and crisp as fresh starched sheets.
“Well, I’ll be,” Tate said. “The heavens are smiling on us.” And he laughed at what he said, and Marian laughed, too. They still ha
d a couple more hours before the helicopter would pick them up, and they had additional ground to cover, and so they moved on, stepping into woods again, though the trees seemed to stand farther apart from one another than in the previous areas where they had been.
“It’s beautiful,” Marian said. “And I’m not even cold.”
But then the wind whipped up around them and threw snow debris in their faces, and they raised their arms against the remaining gust. “I didn’t see that coming,” Marian said. They trudged on, and because Marian was collecting the samples and taking pictures each time she stopped, she fell a little behind Tate, maybe thirty yards or so. The wind sent another microburst through the trees and scattered the snow in eddies that covered their tracks.
“Over here,” Tate yelled.
Marian realized she’d gotten somewhat off course, and when she turned to redirect herself, she saw the mound of flesh and snow a few feet from her, the deer’s brown eyes half open, as if the animal had literally curled up into itself to stay warm and had frozen to death before falling asleep. She knelt to touch the body, laid her hand against the deer’s chest, and found that it was warm, which startled her momentarily because she thought the animal was alive. But its eyes did not move, and the rest of the animal’s hide was cold and rigor mortis had indeed set in. Marian knew that the muscles of a large animal could continue to hold warmth even hours after an animal had died. And yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that this animal’s life had just ended within only an hour or two of Marian getting there.
Tate and Arkansas were still farther ahead. She should get going, but for now she stared at the animal a few seconds longer. She felt that if there was warmth in the animal’s body, its spirit was still there, and that by remaining with the animal, Marian could somehow bring it comfort.
She heard a snap in the woods behind her. At first she thought it was Tate. Maybe another animal. Maybe a limb breaking from the wind. She stood and hurried to catch up.
“Everything okay?” Tate said.
“Fine,” she said, her breathing heavy. “I thought I saw something.”
“What was it?”
The air felt trapped in her windpipe. She coughed a couple of times. “It was nothing,” she told him, because she wanted to keep the moment to herself for a little while longer. And she was tired. She hadn’t been sleeping well and every muscle in her legs burned with fatigue. This had been her most difficult transect yet. Tate said, “All right, then.” He continued to break trail. Marian followed behind Arkansas, the dog’s bell ringing through the cold.
The remaining two hours felt automatic to Marian. Her mind was elsewhere, and her spirit had dampened with the perspective of life and death and a night eight years before when she was a freshman in college. Even if Marian had gotten there earlier, the man would have died, people had assured her—well-intentioned people like her father, who’d brought Marian home that night and had sat up with her when she couldn’t sleep, and an overweight policeman who was chewing spearmint gum, and a chaplain from the college. “Yes,” Marian had said. She understood that, but at least he wouldn’t have died alone.
It was the end of January, the temperature just below freezing, with a couple of inches of fresh snow on the ground. Marian had gone for a run to give her mind a break from studying. She was almost back to her dorm when she found the man lying on the sidewalk in front of First Congregational Church. His belongings were in a plastic bag that he’d used for a pillow. She’d stopped to see if she could help him inside the church. Maybe a door would be open. Maybe there was a place where he could get warm. But when she knelt beside him, she saw the white pallor of his skin. She slipped a hand inside his coat collar to feel for a pulse, and though she could not find one, she was sure his skin felt warm, and so she’d rolled the man over and placed her mouth on his to resuscitate him, his lips as blue as stone. She continued to breathe air into the man’s lungs and intermittently give compressions to his chest with her palms stacked on each other, until she felt a gloved hand on her back and heard a voice say, “He’s gone.”
* * *
• • •
Tate and Arkansas and Marian had completed their transect and were back at the drop-off location when they heard the loud thwop thwop thwop of the helicopter. Tate leashed Arkansas and within minutes Marian felt the gusts of the propellers. They were quiet after they climbed into the aircraft, spent from the long day and the physical exertion. Even Arkansas was tired out, lying on the floor with her head on her paws. The sun was just beginning to set, casting a golden glow over the dark evergreens below, and Marian said how beautiful everything was. “It’s a miracle, really,” she said, and she told Tate she was thankful for so much, and Tate said, “I’ve never bowed to anything.” And Marian was taken aback, not so much by what Tate said, but by his eyes, wide and empty, as if the air between them had suddenly turned colder. Marian realized how little sleep Tate must be getting. He was tired. That was all. He was in the field most days, and working each night, sometimes even after Marian had left his room. She wouldn’t visit him that evening, she decided. She would let him get his rest.
* * *
• • •
When Tate and Marian got back to the compound, and the sky was becoming dark, Jeb and Liz and their dog, Tucker, were just getting in. They’d taken the sleds into an area a good hour and a half southwest of the oil company.
“I’m going to get her squared away,” Tate said about Arkansas, which Marian knew meant not only getting the dog settled and fed but also drying her neoprene jacket and boots, checking and treating her paws and moisturizing her pads, checking the dog’s hips and knowing if she needed a day off, brushing the dog’s teeth and inspecting her gums, and making sure her coat was brushed and dry.
“I can do that,” Marian said.
“No, I got it.” Tate turned his back and began walking toward the trailer.
Marian then called out to Jeb, who was unloading the machines.
“How’d it go?” she said when she caught up to him.
“Not bad. How about you? You get a good bird’s-eye view?”
“Yeah. Saw some caribou.”
“No kidding.”
They were standing at the back of the trailer. Tucker and Liz were beside the open cab, where Liz was leaning in to gather the rest of her things.
“You need a hand?” Jeb asked her.
“All set,” she said. She leashed Tucker, threw her pack over her right shoulder, and walked over to join them. “How was the flight?”
Marian told them about the small herd and the caribou samples they’d found.
“God, what I’d give to have a day like that. Maybe before we pack out of here, Jeb and I will have a go on the helicopter. What do you say, Tucker?” And Liz reached down and gave Tucker a rowdy pat. He was a high-strung blue heeler who, like all blue heelers, loved to work.
Then Liz walked away, the air punctuated by the crunching and squeaking of her boots against the frozen parking lot.
“You got a minute?” Jeb asked.
“Of course.” Marian walked with Jeb back to the orienteer housing. They left their boots on the drying rack and then headed down the hall to his room. They unloaded their packs, took off their coats, and sat on Jeb’s bed, which was pushed up against the wall.
Jeb grabbed one of his pillows, scrunched it up, and wedged it between his back and the headboard. He tossed Marian the extra pillow. “I got turned down,” he said.
She held the pillow in her lap and leaned against the wall. “From Pacific?” Marian knew Jeb had been applying to graduate schools to study creative writing, and she knew Pacific University was his first choice.
He stared past her and nodded.
“It’s just one school. There are other programs.” Jeb’s applications required writing samples. Marian said she’d look over his essays if he wanted, and Jeb said h
e wouldn’t mind taking her up on the offer.
“So tell me more about seeing the caribou herd,” Jeb said.
“It was a really small herd. No more than ten. There should be more. But that’s why we’re here, right? To find out what’s going on.”
And then Marian told Jeb about the deer she’d found that afternoon. “He was still warm,” she said. “I knew he was dead, but I didn’t want to leave him. Tate was getting farther ahead. I couldn’t stay there long.” Marian became quiet. Jeb was quiet also.
Marian continued. “When I found the deer, I thought about this night when I was in college. It was my freshman year. I’d gone for a run and had come up on this homeless man lying on the sidewalk. He wasn’t breathing. It was really cold. There was snow on the ground. The man had frozen to death. I tried to save him. And you know what I thought after that night? This is going to sound really weird, and I know it’s weird, but I thought he was the first guy I’d kissed. He was this old, homeless guy. I tried to resuscitate him. I gave him mouth-to-mouth. And that night I thought, This is what a man’s lips feel like.”
“That’s not so weird,” Jeb said. “And I think it’s really cool, you trying to save him. That sounds exactly like something you would do. You would have saved that deer, too, if you could have. Just imagine giving a deer mouth-to-mouth.”
The Last Woman in the Forest Page 13