A Clearing in the Forest

by Gloria Whelan

“There’s a big buck in there, Wilson. He’s been around for years. Thinks he owns the woods—and maybe he does.”

  “I’d like to see him when the hunting season comes,” Wilson said, excited now at the possibility of hunting the buck down.

  Frances looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know that I’d want to go after him, Wilson.” She thought of an old Indian legend of an enormous buck that would appear to the tribe’s most accomplished hunters, leading them so deep into the woods they were never seen again. But she didn’t want to spoil Wilson’s excitement. She kept the story to herself.

  11

  After being shut up in the cabin by a gloomy week of August thunderstorms with nothing to do but watch the bread go moldy and the milk sour, Frances Crawford was elated to be outside.

  The rain had stopped, but everything was drenched; it was like walking under water. Ferns and grasses and trees swam by. The wild asters and goldenrod were awash. A crop of early-fall mushrooms had popped up through the moist earth. Yesterday’s paper reported the death of two people who had eaten poisonous mushrooms, probably the very species whose orange and yellow lollipop colors she was admiring—amanita, the destroying angel.

  Tracks on the rain-washed sand told her she was not the first to travel the road that morning. A row of evenly spaced tiny paw prints followed by a slender rippling line suggested a meadow vole had been out hunting seeds. She had seen a hawk circling nearby and was surprised the vole had risked the danger of venturing out of its runways in the grass. A rose-breasted grosbeak sang from a branch high in a maple tree, the sun illuminating its red throat and breast.

  Two deer had walked along the road. One pair of heart-shaped tracks were large, the other small: a doe and a fawn. When the tracks reached a large puddle, the doe fastidiously avoided it while the tracks of the fawn sloshed right through. At a clump of Juneberry bushes the tracks made a circle. Several tall branches had been tugged or knocked to the ground so the deer could get to the berries at the top of the bushes.

  The dog sniffed; his nostrils quivered. She saw two brown shapes spring up. The large shape took off in one direction, the smaller shape in the other. Although the deer moved quickly, the effect was one of slow motion because of the way their bodies rose up in the air and seemed suspended there for a moment. They rose and fell in graceful arcs. The dog started after the doe, then changed his mind and was after the fawn.

  Frances screamed a command at the dog, threatening him with terrible things. At first her voice was harsh, authoritative, with only a thin edge of disbelief. Then it became shrill, hoarse, until she could hardly get words out. She ran after the dog, but her ankle had not healed completely and slowed her down. Ahead of her she saw the fawn’s tail like a white flag; close behind it and straight up in the air was the dog’s feathery tan brush. Finally there was no breath left for screaming at the dog.

  A raw pain of exhaustion built in her throat. The tall grass was wet and her clothes were soaked. Her shoes were like wet cardboard. She tripped over a log and fell onto the drenched ground. As she tried to push herself up, her hand sank into a sodden patch of dead leaves. By holding on to a tree, she got back on her feet. There was nothing to see. The fawn and the dog were gone.

  Stopping to rest every few minutes, she headed for the road. Her hair clung to her forehead in wet points that dripped down her nose and cheeks and mingled with her tears. On winter nights when the dog lay in front of the fireplace asleep, his legs moving as though he were running, little yelping sounds coming from his throat, what had he been dreaming?

  When she reached the cabin, she sensed something behind her and turned. The dog was there, his breast a bright red, like some exotic four-footed bird. At first she thought the blood was his, that in protecting the fawn, the doe had kicked the dog, slashing his chest with her sharp hoof. Frances started to run toward him. But, no, he was padding along briskly, his feet barely touching the ground, panting from the run, mouth open into a wide smile, tongue lolling out and dripping saliva. He stood before her, his tail wagging. It was not his blood.

  She grabbed him roughly by the collar, tied him to a tree, and washed off the blood by pouring buckets of water over him. His outraged yelps pleased her. She took longer than necessary. Little puddles of reddish water lay on the ground. Just as she finished, Wilson, driving his father’s truck, rounded the curve in the trail. The truck rose and plummeted in the deep ruts like a small boat on a stormy sea.

  Wilson climbed out of the truck. From a distance it looked as if she were giving the dog a bath. Then he saw Frances’s dirt- and tear-streaked face and the pools of red-tinted water around the dog’s feet.

  “The dog ran a deer. A fawn I think. We’ll have to track it down, Wilson.” Before they started off after the fawn, Frances went to the closet where Tom’s hunting and fishing equipment were kept. Lately she had been thinking of giving it all to Wilson. He was becoming a competent fly fisherman and the gun he used for hunting was not as good as Tom’s. She found the rifle, loaded it, and handed it to Wilson, avoiding his eye. They walked past the dog, who was straining at his rope in a frantic effort to go with them. Neither looked at him.

  They followed his tracks in the sandy road to the point where he had left the woods. In the forest the trail was harder to find. There was often nothing more than a leaf tinged with red or a bracken stem broken in half. Sometimes they lost the trail, turning off the wrong way, and had to double back. Then Wilson saw a streak of blood like a scarlet ribbon along the ground and knew the fawn couldn’t be far away. They found it lying on its side, blood oozing out of its torn throat. It’s fearful eyes followed their movements.

  Wilson had thought if the fawn were badly injured he would have no trouble killing it. It would not be the first deer he had shot. But in hunting he had fired in the excitement of the chase. The deer was just lying there, the whites of its eyes turned up, its belly heaving.

  Frances saw Wilson’s face and reached for the gun, but Wilson shook his head and fired. It took two shots to kill the fawn. With the first shot the deer made some little scrabbling motions with its legs as though it were trying to get up. The second bullet went into its head and the fawn twitched for a moment and then went limp. Wilson handed the gun to Frances.

  “No,” she said, “you keep the gun. I’ve been meaning to give it to you.” She would be glad to get rid of it.

  Later, when Wilson returned with a spade to dig a grave for the deer, he found himself thinking of what the fawn would miss. It had died before its life had even started. Frances had told him not to be sentimental, that nature was little more than a series of predators preying on one another. She had warned him against attributing to animals the same feelings he himself had. But something about the deer’s death made him value his own life. As a child he had been close to death and he had lived.

  It took Wilson nearly an hour to bury the deer. His clothes were still damp from the sodden woods. Deep in the forest there was no sun to dry him. Even with the strenuous digging, he found himself shivering with cold.

  He was grateful to turn onto the open trail and feel the warm sun. His sadness over the fawn’s death disappeared. Everything around him seemed important. He noticed how many shades of purple there were among the wildflowers that bloomed this time of year, the asters and vervain and knapweed. He found a translucent green stone, still wet from the rain. It looked like a small piece of deep water that had solidified. He slipped it into his pocket, not caring that when it dried it would look like an ordinary stone. He would remember what it had looked like now. A turtle was crossing the trail. Wilson stopped to admire the intricate red and black design on the margins of its shell. When he finally reached the cabin the dog, free of his rope, ran to meet him. Without thinking, Wilson reached down and ruffled the dog’s fur.

  12

  Because the night crew was short of drillers, Pete had taken Wilson off the engines. Nearly every night now he had to steel himself to scramble up the ladder to the platfor
m where he wrestled the length of pipe in or out of the slots where they rested while a new bit was attached or the well logged.

  For a while Wilson had considered quitting rather than face another night on the platform, but Frances had encouraged him to stay on. “Surely you haven’t saved enough yet to see you through school, Wilson?”

  In a way he would have been sorry to leave the other men on the rig. After weeks of working together they had grown close and were proud of how quickly they could draw out the thousands of feet of pipeline or send it back down. He liked spending time with men like T. K. Dorp, who always seemed to have some wild story to tell.

  T. K. got away with a lot because he was so experienced. He had been everywhere: up on the North Slope of Alaska and in the Middle East. He had taken a dislike to Lyle Barch, who was never fast enough to suit him. When he wasn’t harassing Lyle, he was bickering with Pete, the tool-pusher.

  Tonight things were going smoothly. They had made their connections in record time, and the four of them, Pete, Lyle, T. K. and Wilson, were sitting together eating pizza just delivered by the sandwich van.

  The August sun had beaten down all day on the metal roof of the doghouse at the base of the derrick, where the tools and records were kept. Even though it was one o’clock in the morning, it was still stifling in there, and they were happy to be sitting outside in the cool night. The glare of the fluorescent lights made the location as bright as day, but beyond the lights the dark forest encircled them. Wilson wondered if raccoons and skunks and other nocturnal animals came to the edge of the clearing to watch them. Several times, just before daybreak, when they were up on the platform, they had seen a large buck wander down the trail that led to the location. It reminded Wilson of the old buck on Frances’s land, the one he meant to go after when the deer season opened.

  T. K. said, “Where we headed for after we finish this job up?”

  Pete said, “I hear we’re going to be drilling over near the Oclair River.”

  Wilson asked, “Where?”

  Pete did not notice the alarm in Wilson’s voice. “I heard there’s some little old lady got some property along the river. Guess she’s not going to be too happy about our drilling there.”

  Lyle was watching Wilson. He knew whose property Pete was talking about and asked, “Don’t you know old lady Crawford?” He was enjoying Wilson’s discomfort. Lyle resented the fact that Mrs. Crawford chased him off her property while she allowed Wilson to fish there.

  Pete and T. K. looked at Wilson. “I been fishing down there a couple of times,” he said in what he hoped was an offhand way. If they thought he was friendly with Mrs. Crawford, they might not tell him what information they had about the well.

  Pete said, “Well, once she hears we’re drilling over there, you aren’t going to be welcome on her property. “Hey, Barch, where you going?”

  Lyle had started off across the location toward his car. “Be back in a couple of minutes,” he called over a shoulder.

  T. K. spat a jet of tobacco juice. “Laziest guy I ever worked with. Don’t know why you keep him on.”

  Lyle was taking a gun from his car. They watched him disappear into the woods in the direction of the trail, carrying the gun and a flashlight. They could follow his progress through the darkness by its beam.

  Wilson took advantage of Lyle’s absence to get more information about where on Frances’s property they planned to locate the well.

  Pete was in the midst of explaining when suddenly he jumped up. “I believe that son-of-a-gun is shining deer! Trying to attract that buck to the light. Doesn’t he know he could get slapped in jail for having a deer rifle in his possession out of season?”

  “He’s lazy, but he’s not dumb,” T. K. said. “That’s a shotgun. Anyone catch him, he’ll say he was after raccoon.”

  “But using a shotgun on a deer?” Wilson was disgusted. “Half the time you just injure the deer and it gets away and bleeds to death.”

  “That’s right, son, but Lyle isn’t thinking about the deer, he’s thinking about number one.”

  They sat watching the light move through the woods. With Lyle’s figure invisible among the trees, the light seemed to have a life of its own. Finally the light moved back toward the location. If the buck had been out there, he had been too smart to expose himself.

  Pete and T. K. exchanged glances and then winked at Wilson. As Lyle walked toward them, Pete said, “There’s so much sand and mud around this doghouse someone’s going to slip and break his fool head. Wilson, you get the hose out and clean up some of this swill.”

  The mud they used to lubricate the drill and keep any gas from escaping through the deepening hole was slick and slippery. Every so often they dragged out a big hose and cleaned off the metal steps and floor. On an especially hot day they’d turn the hose on each other to cool off, but you had to be careful, as it carried a great force.

  Wilson held the nozzle firmly and called to T. K. to turn on the water. The nozzle was pointed away from Lyle, who was just starting up the stairway. When Wilson felt the hose stiffen with the full force of the water, he suddenly turned it on Lyle, who tripped over the bottom stair and fell back onto the ground, fuming and sputtering. His clothes were drenched and water ran in little rivulets down his angry face.

  T. K. walked over and looked down at Lyle. “Hell’s fire, Lyle, what are you doing down there?” he shouted. “We’re already ten minutes behind schedule.”

  13

  Abruptly, before Frances was prepared for it, autumn arrived. In the morning she was out under a hot sun picking tomatoes, warm and solid in her hand. By late afternoon the day turned from summer to fall. The sky was still intensely blue, but large swatches of white cloud rolled in ahead of a chilling northwest wind. Bright sun and deep shade followed one another. A goldfinch rode a swaying mullein stem, picking out seeds where only a few weeks before there were yellow blossoms.

  After a week of rain the blackberries were plump with purple juice. They only had to be touched and they plopped softly into her basket. She saw that something had been pecking at the berries and solved the mystery when she came upon a buff-colored feather, dappled with brown. She stuck it in her hatband. A ruffed grouse was sharing her territory.

  While she picked, two motorcyclists gunned down the trail not more than fifteen feet from where she was standing. Had they seen her? She disliked their obtrusiveness. In the woods you ought to behave like well-mannered guests who find themselves momentarily in crowded quarters. You slipped by one another, politely making room, lowering your voice, adjusting your schedule for the convenience of others. A thousand creatures might make their home in one square foot of ground, but they managed to go their separate ways. Even the small murders that constantly went on in nature were carried out with discretion; for all the carnage, you never heard cries of fright or the sound of jaws working.

  After she had stripped the bushes that grew like a hedge along the trail, she moved deeper into the woods where the brambles were tangled into thorny arches that reached well above her head. They caught at her clothes and hair and left long red welts on her hands. Overhead clouds obscured the sun. For a minute, in the dark woods, she felt something close to panic and turned to be sure the dog was close by.

  The clouds rolled away from the sun. She began to pick again. She set a limit for herself. She would stop picking in half an hour—an hour. But she picked on, compulsively. The bracken had turned to brown; its fronds constricted into shriveled. hands. This morning she was awakened by acorns pelting the roof. With all the signs of fall around her, each berry was summer in her hand.

  Finally she turned toward the cabin, the dog and darkness at her heels. Lights were shining in the cabin windows and wood smoke rose fragrant from the chimney. She saw Catchner’s car parked on the road and was about to call out to Wilson when the two motorcyclists came racing down the trail, shooting past her. In a moment they were back, making a wide circle around her. The dog watched the bikes,
hackles up, his tail straight out, teeth bared. A low growl was growing in his throat.

  Frances tried to see who the cyclists were. It bothered her that in the growing darkness she could not recognize their faces. In helmets and goggles, they looked otherworldly and menacing. She shouted at them, but the sound of her voice was drowned out by the rasp of their engines. One of the riders threw an empty beer can at the dog.

  They made a second circle around her. This time they were much closer and she could see their grinning mouths. The most frightening thing of all was that they should enjoy what they were doing.

  The next circle was no more than a few yards from her. Sand and gravel flew up from their wheels. A small stone ricocheted against her leg, making her cry out with pain. She dropped her basket and tried to call the dog to her. He was running back and forth, inches from the motorcycles, barking furiously. She thought of how wolves would cut off an old caribou and circle it before they moved in for the kill. The black jackets and black helmets of the cyclists blended into the darkness; only the lower part of their white faces was visible. Their disembodied grins swirled around her. “Dear Lord,” she prayed, “don’t let Wilson come out here.” What could he possibly do against two of them?

  The moment he had heard the motorcycles Wilson had turned off the cabin lights and rushed to the window. Even in the darkness it took him only a second to recognize Lyle’s motorcycle. The second bike must belong to Steve Brathen. They had probably followed his car to Mrs. Crawford’s with some idea of getting back at him for the hosing down he had given Lyle the night before. Wilson was sure Lyle wouldn’t go away until he went out. But fear kept him at the window.

  The motorcyclists turned on their headlights. As their circles grew smaller and smaller, Wilson could see Frances standing huddled in her old army jacket, the basket of spilled berries at her feet. Suddenly the dog lunged out at one of the cycles and the cycle swerved toward the dog, sending him flying. The dog yelped and Wilson ran outside.