A Clearing in the Forest

by Gloria Whelan

  She awakened to a bright sky. At first she thought the lights had gone on, then she realized she had slept through the night and into the morning. Each ice-glazed tree glowed red, blue, and yellow in the sunlight, a feast of primary colors. Light glanced off the crust of ice that covered the snow. The view from the windows was dazzling.

  The fire had died during the night and every joint in her chilled body was stiff, the least movement painful. She was weak and lightheaded from not eating and had to hang onto the backs of chairs to get across the room. Years ago in the state mental hospital they had “untidy wards,” and she thought how well she would fit into one, with her wispy uncombed hair, twisted stockings and crumbled clothes. She understood the senile old women rocking madly in their chairs and shouting out obscenities. A time came when you were sick and tired of your body’s needs—shoveling in food, clipping nails, combing hair. Once you interrupted the routine, it was difficult to think of a reason to resume it.

  She settled into an armchair, legs tucked under her, and warmed by the sun she floated in and out of consciousness. The dog had resigned himself to staying inside. She had managed a trip into the kitchen to open a bag of dog kibble for him, but it had slipped out of her hands, spilling over the floor, and she had left it. Whatever happened to her, he would have enough food.

  Late in the day the sun disappeared and snow fell in thick silent flakes. Watching it made her dizzy. With the sun’s warmth gone from the room, an icy numbness touched her hands and feet. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering. Her whole body was shivering uncontrollably. She padded across the chilly floor to the fireplace and reached out shaky hands to pick up a log. Its weight surprised her, tipping her off balance. She fell against a chair, sinking into a darkness beyond the darkness of the room. Once, she awoke to feel an animal warmth against her, a rise and fall of heavy breathing. She tried to remember where she was, but there seemed to be no clues—only darkness. A moment later she drifted off again into the warmth of sleep.

  20

  Wilson had been home from the hospital for two days when the lawyer arrived. It was Wilson’s first day out of bed, and after the confinement of the hospital and his bedroom, just walking through the house to the kitchen was a trip to a new country. His mother had wanted to keep him in bed longer, but by managing the enormous task of eating everything she cooked for him, Wilson had convinced her he was much improved.

  T. K. had visited him nearly every day in the hospital, almost unrecognizable in a blue suit, pink shirt, and red tie. Only the old high-heeled, mud-splotched boots were familiar. Once he had come bearing a potted plant, holding it gingerly as if he suspected it might climb out of its pot and do something erratic. On the accompanying card were the signatures of all the men who had worked with Wilson on the rig.

  It was T. K. who had told him that Ffossco meant to “do something” for him. Wilson had not understood what that meant, thinking that perhaps they were going to send him a plant, too. T. K. also told him that Lyle Barch had been fired. Someone had seen him heading downstate on his motorcycle, a suitcase strapped to the carrier.

  The lawyer was Ralston Clifter, a member of their church. When he arrived at the door, the Catchners thought he was making a churchly visit. But Ralston Clifter carried a briefcase, and by the way he refused a cup of coffee and sat stiffly in his chair, they guessed the visit was official.

  “I’m certainly glad to see how well you’re looking, Wilson,” Clifter said. “That was a most unfortunate accident.” He emphasized the word “accident.”

  “I’m not sure it was an accident,” Wilson said.

  Clifter, appearing not to hear him, hurried on. “I want you to know Ffossco will take care of your medical expenses. As their legal representative in Oclair, naturally I want to see that the people who live here get every consideration.”

  Mr. Catchner, who had been looking rather puzzled, now leaned forward like a fisherman who thinks he has snagged an old tin can and, instead, reels in a big fish.

  “What I’m proposing—” Clifter carefully removed from his briefcase a sheaf of neatly typed pages arranged into three little bundles, each tucked into a blue folder—“what I’m proposing is that Ffossco take care of all your medical expenses and in addition—” He lingered over the word “addition,” as though it were a particularly tasty morsel—“we will give you the sum of five thousand dollars for any, ah, inconvenience the accident might have caused you.”

  Wilson was elated. Since the accident he had given up the hope of college, knowing his parents wouldn’t let him return to the rig. With what he had saved, the five thousand dollars would let him start school.

  But his father was scowling. He leaned toward the lawyer. “Inconvenience? Hell, that boy just about had himself killed!”

  Clifter concentrated on arranging the little bundles of paper from one neat pile into another. “Well, it’s conceivable we might go a little higher, though you ought to know expenses for that particular well have been way over the estimate and they just learned today that there was no pay—it’s a dry well. They’ve packed up the rig and pulled out.”

  “That well may be dry,” Wilson’s dad said, “but there’s plenty of Ffossco wells that aren’t.”

  Wilson stopped listening to the two men. Would Mrs. Crawford know the river was safe? Probably in this ice storm there was no way for her to get over and check the well each day.

  They were looking at Wilson now, and Clifter was laying the bundles of paper in front of him and handing him a pen. Wilson looked at his dad, who nodded approval. On each bundle was a place for Wilson’s signature. There was also an inked line through the sum of five thousand dollars. Written over it was the sum of ten thousand dollars, and next to the new amount were Clifter’s initials, neat as the three bundles.

  Wilson’s parents stood behind him while he carefully signed his name to the agreement that “released the above said party from any further responsibility in the above said matter.”

  When the agreement had been signed, Clifter had relaxed and agreed to a cup of coffee. “I had a terrible time getting up here,” he said, nibbling on a cookie. “The roads are slick as glass. Electricity is out in a lot of places. Heard there hasn’t been any power along the river for three days.”

  Wilson thought of Frances trying to heat the cabin with firewood. It would take a lot of logs to keep the drafty old place warm. The more he thought about it, the more he worried. He decided he would have to find a way to get to her cabin and see if she were all right. But that seemed impossible. His parents had been reluctant even to let him leave his room. He didn’t even dare mention Frances Crawford’s name in their presence. Why did he have to feel so responsible for her? Because, if he had not met her, he would have spent the rest of his life in his own front yard working on old cars. He would have lived in the world without even seeing it.

  It was after dark when Clifter left. His mother placed the dinner on the table, talking all the while. “That’s the first good thing to come out of your working on the rig, Wilson. Just think how long it would have taken you to save that much money.”

  His father had lapsed into thought, kitchen chair tipped back, hands folded over his stomach. “I think we could have asked for more, Wilson. I think we were a little hasty.” That moment of dickering with a big company had given him a heady feeling.

  But Wilson’s mother disagreed. “Ty, you wouldn’t want them to think we were greedy, that we were using Wilson’s accident.”

  Their discussion went on all through dinner, and by the time they reached the rice pudding it was becoming heated. They hardly noticed Wilson as he left the table, saying he was a little tired and would go up to his room and rest for a while.

  With his door closed behind him, he pulled on a heavy jacket and his boots, listening all the time to the rise and fall of his parents’ voices downstairs in the kitchen. Lumping up a blanket, he arranged the bed to look as if he were asleep in it and turned out his light.
The ice had seamed his window shut and it took all of his strength to pry it open. He stepped carefully onto the glazed roof and slid in a sitting position to the front of the house where two wooden posts held up an overhang that protected the front door. The wind blew through the neck and sleeves of his jacket and his hands were freezing from trying to get a grip on the roof’s slick crust of snow. He avoided looking down. If anyone had told him a few days ago he would be climbing along the crest of a roof, he would have said they were crazy.

  His ears began to ache from the wind, and the headache that had been so bad in the hospital returned. He thought of going back, but he was sure he could never crawl the distance across the roof to his room again. Lowering himself, he put his legs and arms around the pillar. It was slick, and instead of slowly shinnying down, he slid most of the way. With his feet safely on the ground, he began to shake. He realized he hadn’t regained his strength, but he made himself walk toward the car.

  It took only minutes to push the car down the driveway’s icy incline. Once it was on the road, he was sure his parents would not hear him when he started the engine. The road was slick and Wilson could not go as fast as he wanted to, but the heater warmed him and now that he was actually on the way to Mrs. Crawford’s his headache was gone. When the road became too icy, he drove with half of the car on the sandy shoulder for traction. The farther he drove, the stronger grew his urgency to see Frances. When he reached the trail into her cabin and found the car would not climb the icy rise, he abandoned it and set out the half mile on foot.

  Between the time he had left his house and arrived at Mrs. Crawford’s road, the wind had changed. It blew from the south now and the ice under his feet was covered with a thin film of water. Drops of water were falling from the icicles on the trees. It was a relief not to buck the icy wind. He felt as if a spell had been broken.

  The first thing he heard as he approach the cabin was the frantic barking of the dog. Wilson pushed the door open. The room was dark, the fire out, and it felt colder inside than it had outside. The dog was jumping all over him, barking and running toward the center of the room and then returning to Wilson. Wilson followed him in the dark to where Frances lay on the floor. Quickly he ran to the bedroom and, pulling the blankets off the bed, hastily wrapped them around her and lifted her onto the couch. He hurried out for logs and started up a fire. Frances looked so pale in the firelight Wilson wondered if he could manage to carry her to the car. Perhaps she ought to be in the hospital.

  Frances’s eyes snapped open. At first she said nothing: in dreams the cast of characters all spoke for themselves while you only watched. Then it occurred to her that it might not be a dream and she decided to test it by speaking. “Wilson, what are you doing here?” Her voice was real enough.

  “I just thought I’d look in and see how you were,” Wilson tried to sound casual, but he couldn’t keep it up. “I think I ought to take you to the hospital.”

  “The hospital!” Frances sat up. “Whatever for? I’m just fine. I think I must have fallen asleep.” But they both knew better.

  While they talked, the light suddenly went on, like a shade going up in a darkened room to reveal the sun. “Well, better and better,” she said. “I don’t suppose you would know how to make a cup of tea, Wilson?” She was starting to shiver again.

  He disappeared into the kitchen and she heard drawers and cupboards opening and closing. She listened to the hum of the furnace and the sound of the refrigerator. Lovely sounds, she thought. But there was an accustomed noise that was missing. The oil rig was silent. For the first time in weeks she could hear the river as it flowed noisily past the snag in front of her cabin.

  When Wilson came back sloshing a tea bag up and down in a steaming mug, she asked if he could hear the well. Wilson looked for a place to put the wet tea bag, finally dropping it into an empty vase. Rather proudly he handed her the mug. “It’s pretty hot.” He grinned, unable to keep back the news any longer. “The rig’s gone. They packed up yesterday.”

  She waited.

  “They didn’t get oil. There won’t be any well there.”

  Frances looked at Wilson. He probably expected her to let out a cheer, to get up and dance around. But the moment was too solemn. Who could say what had guided the giant drill in its long journey down into the earth? Whatever it was, she did not believe it was chance.

  The real joy, however, was not that the land was hers again and the river out of danger, but that Wilson had been restored to her.

  He had more good news. “I have enough money to go to college now.” He told her about Ralston Clifter’s visit.

  “Good for your father,” she said, picturing with great satisfaction the pinched look that must have come over Ralston’s face when Wilson’s father asked for more money. “I just wish I had been there to cheer your dad on. But will your parents let you use it for college?”

  Wilson was sure they would. “Since I had the accident, they think anything would be better than my going back to work on the rigs. All I have to do is keep on the right side of them and …” Wilson stumbled to an abrupt stop.

  “And stay away from here,” she finished for him. “I want you to know, Wilson, I don’t intend to let you in my door until you’re through with your first semester at school. Why should we ask for trouble? I don’t blame your parents for what they feel toward me. They’re absolutely right. And what about tonight? Why in heaven’s name did they let you out so soon after getting home from the hospital to come over here?”

  Wilson flushed.

  “They don’t know you’re here, do they?”

  She climbed out of her cocoon of blankets and pushed him toward the door. He laughed, reassured by the strength of her push.

  21

  The rats were a turning point.

  Wilson’s first weeks at college had been a disaster. Never having lived away from home before, he was uncomfortable among so many alien faces. Several times he thought he saw someone he knew from home crossing a street or walking down a hallway. But as they came closer to him, the person would turn out to be a stranger. Even the simple task of finding his way around campus on the first day of classes had defeated him. Too embarrassed to ask directions, he had been late for several of his courses. His roommate, Tim, had bought a stereo and a couple of hundred rock albums. He was expecting his drums any day. While he waited for them, Tim used his shoes or his books or tablespoons for drumming on the floor or the table or Wilson’s head. He papered the walls of their room with posters of the Stones and the Beach Boys and Led Zeppelin.

  While Wilson tried to study, Tim turned up the volume on the stereo and kept up a running comentary on the records: “Man, listen to those root chords. Get that chunka chunka guitar. They’re running in a subtle groove, now, man. No clobbery rhythms here, man. Listen to that heavy opening.” All the while punching Wilson in a friendly rhythmical way to keep his attention.

  By the end of the first week of school, Tim had found a boy who played a guitar and another who played bass. They sat around in Tim and Wilson’s room until two or three in the morning, jamming and practicing their reggae accents.

  Worst of all were their efforts to find a name. The guitar player wanted to call the group “The Creamed Rutabagas.” “Gorky,” said Tim. The bass player suggested “The General Store.” “Too yetch,” said Tim. Tim was holding out for “The Fly Swatter.”

  After a couple of weeks of this, Wilson found that, in spite of himself, everything he looked at turned into a name for a rock group: The Peanut Brittle, The Wallpaper, The Shower Curtain, The Dirty Sneakers, The Stalled Engine. But it was his own suggestion that the group finally chose. They became “The Igneous Rocks.” “Heavy,” said Tim.

  Something of Wilson’s dismay must have crept into the letters to his parents, for his mother launched upon a food offensive, shipping cookies and cake nearly every day. He had written to Mrs. Crawford, too, and one morning he received a call from Professor Hogue, the head of the biology
department, asking Wilson to come and see him.

  Professor Hogue’s office reminded Wilson of Frances Crawford’s cabin. Books were piled everywhere and skins of birds and animal pelts and rocks lay on top of them. The professor was slight, with thinning white hair that stuck out in tufts over the rims of his glasses, and a way of peering intensely at you as though he were trying to remember your Latin classification.

  Wilson had been nervous about the call, wondering if it was because of his poor work. With all the noise in his room he had trouble getting anything done. Still, it would be his own professor and not the head of the department who would call him in. Wilson waited while Professor Hogue replaced the point on his pencil with a jackknife, carelessly brushing the curls of wood shavings onto the floor.

  “Well, sir,” he said to Wilson, “I had a letter from an old friend, Frances Crawford. Never met her, you understand, but we’ve gotten letters up here from her for fifty years. She’s our man in the field, so to speak.”

  Wilson looked puzzled.

  “I don’t suppose you knew she was one of the first to discover the dappled warbler?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, yes, yes indeed.” He took a bag of marshmallows out of his desk and offered one to Wilson, who took it out of courtesy. For a few moments they chewed silently on the flabby little pillows. “She was the first one to write us about it, nearly twenty years ago, I believe. No, more like thirty. The warbler might have been extinct now if we hadn’t heard from her. We sent someone down and she tramped him around the nesting sites for days—wore him out. Oh, yes, we hear a lot from her.”

  It suddenly occurred to Wilson that Frances might have had something to do with his acceptance at Northern. But Professor Hogue was hurrying on between marshmallows.

  “I got a letter from Mrs. Crawford yesterday.” He fumbled amidst the clutter on his desk and held up a sheet of paper with Frances’s familiar writing. When he put it down, it stuck to the bits of marshmallow on his hands and he had to push it onto his desk with his elbow. “She thought you might like a job.”