The Inverted Forest

by John Dalton

  Not just the fact of a violent death; the pricey sneakers and blue jeans and haircut made it clear the body wasn’t local. The man dragged his whining dog back through the forest. At the clearing he climbed into his pickup truck and drove to the Ellsinore Police Station. He told the sheriff he’d just found the body of a summer camp counselor.

  An hour later a caravan of three white state hospital buses rumbled past the front gate of Kindermann Forest and made their way along the camp road before rolling to a halt in the open meadow. The bus doors swung open. Out marched a regiment of uniformed attendants. They paused in the bright sunlight and considered the crowd of campers and counselors waiting for them in the meadow. It was a sobering moment for the attendants; their hundred and four state hospital patients were returned to them. The hard work of it couldn’t be avoided any longer. Soon they began hefting bags of reeking laundry into the rear hatches of the buses and walking among the throngs of waiting patients, checking off names from a list.

  Down the steps of a bus came a stout and ferocious woman, Nurse B. Colette Dunbar. She’d already worked herself into a state of scowling anxiety. “Leonard?” she huffed. “Leonard Peirpont?” She stomped across the grass and pushed her way into the thickest folds of the crowd. Eventually she found him propped against an elm tree. “Leonard,” she said, incredulous. “Look at you. Look at you, Leonard.” She leaned close and inspected his arms and elbows, the nape of neck, his handsome face. No injuries. No rashes. He’d not changed at all in the twelve days he’d been away. “Leonard,” she said, overcome by the welcome sight of him.

  In time and with great effort the buses were loaded, the state hospital patients ushered to their seats. The diesel engines roared. With a heavy lurch the caravan embarked from the meadow and rolled along the camp roadway until at last they passed through the gates of Kindermann Forest and were gone forever.

  In their absence an odd and clarifying quiet: the camp dogs could be heard yelping along the edge of the forest. The mess hall screen door let out a long, slow squawk. And beneath these sounds the kind of silence that fills a tunnel after the passing of a hurtling freight train.

  For a moment the counselors were too stunned and exhausted to move. It felt like a weighty absence, as if they’d just said farewell to the dearest of friends.

  Chapter Eighteen

  On Sunday evening at 8:00 P.M. Harriet phoned the on-duty manager of Living Cottage No. 8 and reported that she and Wyatt Huddy had gone grocery shopping in the morning and in the afternoon had attended an employee barbecue sponsored by the hospital where Harriet worked.

  “A barbecue?” the cottage manager marveled. “That must have been nice. How did Wyatt do? With the other people, I mean. Did he interact?”

  “Yes, he did,” Harriet said. “He talked with a few people.” By this she meant that he’d edged up close to a circle of her friends, lowered his head, and said, “Thank you for inviting me. My name is Wyatt Huddy.” Her nurse friends had been charmed by his shyness. (And no doubt they’d wondered, too, what disability might be the cause of his awkwardness and disfigured face.) Throughout much of the barbecue he’d sat in a foldout chair next to a portable radio and scored each inning of the Cardinals–Dodgers game. Had he enjoyed himself? She guessed that he had, though it probably wasn’t the social interaction at the barbecue that had brought him contentment. It was the chance to sit outside on a beautiful summer day and be surrounded by a lively crowd.

  “As far as you know, Ms. Foster, has Wyatt been eating and sleeping well this weekend?”

  “Very well, yes.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Can we talk just a minute about tomorrow, please?”

  “All right.”

  “I’d recommend that you speak with Wyatt tonight and let him know the plans for tomorrow. The exact plans—when you’ll need to pack up and leave your house. Let him know the check-in time here at Gateway. It’ll be easier for him, you understand, if he can anticipate how the day will unfold.”

  “I’ll do that, yes.”

  “They go by quick, these weekend furloughs. We’ll see you both back here tomorrow at the living cottage.”

  “Yes. Tomorrow afternoon. See you then.”

  She turned off the lights in the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor. In the guest room she found Wyatt sitting cross-legged on the bed. He’d taken his shower and shaved and had dressed in cotton pajamas. With his stiff, black glasses and damp hair combed back from his forehead, he looked prim and bashful and vaguely handsome.

  “You look comfortable,” she said. “I’m guessing you like sleeping in this bed?”

  His only reply was to stare at her patiently. With Wyatt she could make all the homey observations she liked. Few of them would result in an actual conversation.

  “So I thought we should talk a minute about the plans for tomorrow. What we need to do. And when we need to do it.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Okay, Harriet.”

  “We’ll get up and have breakfast,” she said. “I have a friend named Sarah Mitchell, who’ll drop by and visit for a little while. She’ll come at ten in the morning. After she’s gone we’ll have lunch and go for a walk. Then we’ll need to pack up your things and head back to Gateway.”

  He seemed to be picturing this sequence in his mind. A visit from a friend. A lunch. A walk. Then the return to Gateway.

  “Your check-in time is two o’clock, but I think we should get there a half hour early. To show them we respect the rules.”

  “The rules,” he said. “Yes, all right.”

  “I want you to understand something, Wyatt. This weekend furlough is just the start. We’ll go back to Gateway tomorrow and show them we can be trusted. Then we’ll ask for more. I’ll file a request to get you furloughed for a weekend in October. After that we can look forward to Thanksgiving. We’ll ask for five days at Thanksgiving. At Christmas we’ll ask for a week and half. Each time you’ll come here and stay with me, and each time we’ll follow the rules. I’ll keep at it, Wyatt. I’ll keep asking for furloughs, and as long as we do things right, they’ll keep giving them to us.” She eased down onto the foot of the bed. “When next spring rolls around,” she said, “I’m going to ask the physicians’ board to release you into my care. Release you permanently. They’ll say no at first—once or twice or maybe three times. But soon enough, they’ll say yes. You’ll be out of Gateway for good. And when you leave Gateway, you can come here and live with me. I’d be glad to have you, Wyatt.”

  He turned suddenly and gave the furnishings of her guest room—the dresser and wallpaper and window curtains—a fresh consideration. “I’d stay here in this room?” he asked.

  “Yes, you would. You’d stay here. We’d find you a part-time job somewhere. You’d go to work. The rest of the time you could do what you pleased. You could come and go as you like.”

  “We’d live together in this house,” he said as if testing the soundness of the idea. He lowered his head and for several long moments seemed frozen in his concentration. Then he said, “Would we live together like married people do, Harriet?”

  What stunned her most was that he’d found the courage to ask such a question. There’d been occasions throughout the years when her affection for him had spilled over the boundaries of friendship into something else. Had she been flirting with him? No, not exactly. But sometimes, when he’d been at his lowest, she’d used an imploring look to raise his spirits. She hadn’t been shy about reaching out to touch him when the moment seemed right. All along she’d believed he’d been unaware of the implications.

  Somewhere in the inner workings of the mattress a metal coil chimed softly. She could hear the slow whoosh of air passing through the floor vent. Each of these small sounds seemed to be making a fierce demand on her attention.

  “I wouldn’t know how . . .” she said vaguely. “But there are ways . . . There are times when . . .” She shook her head, at a loss.

  Then she stood and crossed the room
and turned off the overhead light. The result wasn’t darkness; there was still a strong dusky glow filtering through the window curtains. She kicked off her shoes and pulled back the bedcovers. “Here,” she whispered. “Crawl beneath the covers, Wyatt.” He did as she asked—without hesitating, without the awkwardness or trepidation that might have ruined the moment.

  Harriet slipped beneath the covers and embraced him. It was a precarious thing to do: to lie close beside him and try to explain with her body something so complicated and so fraught with potential misunderstanding. The best she could hope for was that he harbored only modest expectations. Not a married life together; she couldn’t bear that. She wasn’t patient or accepting enough to be tethered to him day and night. But if he wanted sometimes to lie in bed with a woman, with Harriet, then she wasn’t going to deny him comfort.

  She pressed her face against his neck and welcomed the pressure of his warm hands on her hips and eventually her breasts. What occurred between them—what was occurring now—wasn’t the reckless variety of sex that all those years ago at Kindermann Forest had been an unrelenting current passing through the counselors and campers. Instead, she and Wyatt were slow-motion lovers. His body was firm and strong. There were rich pleasures to be had here: to be the first person to lay his body bare and attend to it, lovingly, with her hands. How grateful and astonished he was. It didn’t at all matter to Harriet that he wasn’t yet a practiced enough lover for intercourse. The real pleasure, the deeper pleasure, was to witness him trembling and shy. Afterward they folded themselves together. She kissed his cheek and placed a hand on his beating heart. It amazed and gladdened her. What had seemed audacious to Harriet at the outset was now warm and tender—elemental.

  By seven-thirty the next morning they were up and washed and finished with breakfast. Outside, the dawn light was falling in velvety strips across the fenced backyard. How welcoming it looked: an altogether beautiful Labor Day morning. They took their steaming cups of coffee out to the yard and settled into wrought-iron patio chairs.

  For a half hour or more she could do nothing but sip her coffee and watch the yard fill with light. Outwardly she was calm. Inwardly a potent collision of feeling kept her from speaking. Where to begin? She was glad, even grateful, for what she and Wyatt had shared last night. And yet she’d not been entirely honest with him. Certain information she’d kept to herself. Each time she glanced at him now, she fought back the need to apologize.

  Better to say it as simply and clearly as she could. “Wyatt,” she said. “My friend Sarah Mitchell will stop by this morning. Sarah is a professor at the University of Missouri. A professor in the education department. She teaches teachers. She’s an expert on how to give tests. All kinds of tests.” Harriet waited. On the opposite side of the patio table Wyatt had lifted his gaze to her. He seemed to be holding his breath. “What Professor Mitchell is especially good at,” she said, “is a particular kind of test. An IQ test.”

  He set his coffee cup on the patio table and pulled the glasses from his face. With the hem of his T-shirt in his hand, he began scrubbing away at the lenses.

  “Professor Mitchell and I know each other a little. I helped her gather health data for a project she was doing a while back. But she doesn’t know you, Wyatt. Not at all. Not a single thing about you. I’ve asked Professor Mitchell to do me an important favor this morning. I’ve asked her to come to my house and give you a—”

  “A test,” Wyatt said. “A test.” The word seemed to unnerve him. He clenched and unclenched his jaw as he scrubbed away at his glasses.

  What else could she do but try to explain? She said she’d thought long and hard about it, and she’d come to the conclusion that this was a test he needed to take. He’d been a silent witness to most of the preparations she and his defense lawyer had made, and he knew about the affidavits that Harriet had gathered on his behalf. He’d heard most of them read aloud. And the first time he’d taken an IQ test for a court-appointed psychiatrist he’d done so under special instructions from Harriet. She’d told him that when the psychiatrists asked him to give as many answers as he could, Wyatt should only give one or two. No more than that. All of these measures had been necessary in order to get him sentenced to a state hospital facility. “But they’ve taken their toll,” she said. “Over the years I can tell you’ve grown unsure of your abilities. And that’s a shame,” she said. “Because I know for certain you don’t have a diminished IQ.”

  He frowned severely and squared his shoulders as if he’d just been gravely insulted. “It’s not fair to say that, Harriet.” His voice was heavy and low. “You’re not the one who’ll be taking the test.”

  “I understand that. You can say no if you like. You can refuse. But I think you should take the test. It’s something that would put your mind at rest.”

  “No,” he said. “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “Why on earth wouldn’t it? Why not?”

  “Either way. If I pass the test. Or not. Either way, there’s something to feel bad about.”

  “That makes no sense to me, Wyatt.”

  He glared out at the yard. What a face he showed her—lopsided and trembling and pinched with raw feeling. “There are times,” he said, “when I like to think I was confused. Confused or . . . retarded. There are times when I like to believe I didn’t understand what I was doing. Back then. When I did what I did to Christopher. When I killed him.”

  “That was a special circumstance,” she said. “You were upset at what you saw Christopher doing in the van. Because he was an awful person.”

  It was a line of reasoning that didn’t seem to have the power to persuade him. He shrugged.

  “You don’t believe he was awful?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “So?”

  “I did an awful thing, too.” He held up a hand and stretched open his fingers, which were stubby and blunt and still bore the faint scars of having been separated by a scalpel. “I touched Evie Hicks,” he said. “I was alone with her in the van and I touched Evie.” He cupped his hand and placed his fingertips on the right side of his chest. “Here,” he said. “I touched her here.”

  She did her absolute best to stay calm, to maintain a neutral expression. “You touched Evie on her chest? On her breast?”

  He nodded mournfully. Then he gasped loudly and wetly though one side of his mouth.

  “When did this happen, Wyatt?”

  “It happened before I did what I did. Before I killed Christopher.”

  “Before? I don’t understand.”

  “Some things were said to me. That Evie wouldn’t mind. That I should spend some time alone with her. Because a person like me—with my condition—I wouldn’t get another chance to be alone with a girl.”

  For a decade or more her feelings toward Christopher Waterhouse had been resigned, some days even ambivalent. He was dust and bones after all. Fortunately so. But what a surge of rage and anguish shot through her now. If she could, she’d dig up and set fire to those dusty bones. Or she’d launch a campaign—letters and newspaper ads, billboards for Christ’s sake—to let the world know how petty and cruel and worthless he’d been. “God damn him,” she said through clenched teeth. She shook her head steadily back and forth. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong,”she hissed. “That shouldn’t have been said to you, Wyatt. The things Christopher Waterhouse did were bad enough,” she said. “But the things he said to people—not just you, but other people at camp—were a kind of poison. God damn him for saying those things.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and concentrated. “So,” she said. “Wyatt. You reached out and touched Evie Hicks . . . on the breast. And then?”

  “She knew what I was doing. She didn’t like it.”

  “Did you touch her anywhere else? I’m asking this because . . . If it’s worse than that, if it went farther . . . It would be better, for your sake, to tell me everything that went on. I’m not going to hate you. I’d understand. I’ve made mistakes, too. Did you touch Evie on her
bottom? Or between her legs?”

  “No.”

  “Did you— Wyatt. Did you take any of your clothes off?”

  “I didn’t. I touched her one time. Then I stopped. Then I got angry at myself. After that I went looking for Christopher.”

  It was somehow enough, this terse explanation. He touched Evie Hicks. He got angry with himself. Then he killed Christopher Waterhouse. Harriet believed she’d just heard an accurate account of what had happened.

  “Listen,” she said. “Listen, Wyatt. The mistake you made doesn’t compare to what Christopher Waterhouse did to Evie. That was far worse. And would have been even more awful if you hadn’t found the van and stopped him. You understand that, don’t you? Damn it, Wyatt. I need a response. You can’t just hang your head and ignore what I’m saying. What Christopher did was worse, wasn’t it?”

  He lifted his head and nodded. “Yes, it was worse.”

  “Listen. We’re all flawed. We all make mistakes. But most of us, thankfully, aren’t willing to harm another person. The idea is too upsetting. Inside us an important shift occurs. We stop ourselves. That’s what you did, Wyatt. You thought of the harm that would come to Evie Hicks. You stopped. You will always be a good person,” she said.

  He sat perfectly still in his chair. After a while he slipped his glasses back on his face.