In Wilderness

by Diane Thomas

  He quivered in the darkness, jerked with every lightning flash, jerked again with the ensuing thunder. She settled her body full against his knees in the hope that this might ease him, and it seemed to. Then she let the facts and implications of his words come into her with all their ugly strength, until at last she couldn’t take in any more of it or else there was no more to hear, and so she slept.

  She woke once and found he had let go of her and they had turned the other way and she was holding him. Such an easy way to lie. The comfort of it spread in her until she could have cut the word “fulfilled” out of whole cloth if it had not yet existed. With this thought she fell back into sleep. All this she remembers.

  Because now it’s day and she’s fully awake and he has gone away from her, left her belly to resume its emptiness, left her hands, like his, in need of some live thing to hold.

  Of course he would go, and without waking her, ashamed both for needing her and for the things he said, this boy so feral and shy he might not come to her again. The possibility brings her close to panic. She can’t see any of his clothing, any sign he has been here, not even an imprint where he lay. Yet the house still holds his damp-earth smell, much as it holds her odors and its own, as if they’re in some three-way conversation.

  It’s then she hears small noises coming from the kitchen—rasping, clinking, scratching. Quickly, quietly she gets up, pulls her jeans up underneath her nightgown, throws the gown off, shrugs into her cotton shirt with all its time-consuming buttons. Barefoot, she tiptoes toward the sounds.

  He is squatting on the kitchen floor, the brass sink-faucet in pieces at his feet, working a bit of her steel wool scouring pad over some small, round part of it. He looks up when she comes into the room.

  “Your water wasn’t running right.” He flicks his fingernail over a patch of gray-green corrosion on the piece he’s holding. “I’m almost done cleaning it. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “I … thank you. You didn’t need to.”

  “I know. Figured it’s the least thing I could do.”

  She nods, goes to the stove and feeds the firebox, stirs the coals to steady her trembling fingers. Don’t go. Not so early. Not before I look at you in sunlight. Not before you say my name.

  She smiles at him. “Would you like something to eat? It’s rice and beans. Not what most people think is breakfast.”

  “It’d sure be breakfast to me.”

  He sits on the floor, bends over his work, has found both pairs of pliers and the small iron file on her tool shelf. She sets the beans and rice in the warming oven, goes back to the front room, pulls one of the picnic benches close enough that she can see him through the door but far enough away he can’t affect her. She wants only to look at him without speaking, at the way he moves. After he has gone she’ll weave him, his thinness, his concentration, his hands working with the faucet pieces. She’s never put even a suggestion of a human figure into any of her work; he’ll be the first. It’s how she has to think about his leaving, make art of it so she can bear it. She has become a foolish woman overnight. For no other reason than that he held her with strong arms against his thin, hard knees.

  After she dishes up the food they sit across the table, both bent too earnestly over their plates. Everything she starts to say seems trivial and so she doesn’t say it.

  He is the first to speak. “I’m glad you were home last night.”

  “I’m always home.”

  “I know.”

  His words dart through her. She looks at him with a bit more care. For the first time since he pulled her down onto her sleeping bag last night, she feels perhaps she ought to be afraid, wonders why she is not.

  “I’m sorry if I bothered you. I won’t do it again. I’ll get my dog back, get another one. There’s a whole pack roams these mountains. Won’t be hard to tame one, it’s what I did before.”

  “It’s all right. You didn’t bother me.”

  Some bright flame lights his eyes, extinguishes itself so swiftly she doubts what she saw.

  “It’s more than enough thanks to get my faucet mended. I was afraid the outside pipe had sprung a leak. The one that brings the water from the spring? I had no idea what I was going to do. Wasn’t sure if I could even find it. The leak, I mean. The pipe’s buried.” You’re babbling, Katherine. Oh, please shut up.

  “From now on you can call on me, that’s what.”

  Him there with his grin, his chest puffed out like a male robin’s. She laughs, blushes, stares down at the table.

  After too long a silence she looks up. “You live on the other side of Panther Mountain.”

  “Yeah. Yes, ma’am. I’m working on that house up there. That mansion. The one that burned. Rebuilding it, you might say.” He takes a conscious, prideful breath. “It’s slow going. Road’s washed clean away, so it’s not like I can drive a truck of lumber up. I got to carry everything by hand.”

  “Oh, my. That must be a huge undertaking.” More words so silly to her ears she’d rather not say anything.

  “Yes, ma’am. It is.”

  “You don’t need to call me ma’am.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He grins.

  Too soon he’s finished eating, gets up from the table. He picks up the faucet off the floor, screws it back in place, turns the water on under the sink. Then he opens the faucet, cups his hand under its stream to test the force.

  “There.” Drying his hands on his jeans. “Good as the day the Old Man put it in.”

  “The old man?”

  “Old Man that built this house. Died and left his homeplace empty. Jimbo told me how to find it, his daddy and him used to sleep in it when they went hunting. That’s how I come to be here.” Danny smooths a hand over one of the kitchen shelves, along the grain. “Best carpentry work I ever saw. So good you know he had to be that way clear through.”

  She gets up from the bench, wishes he would touch her, even just her hair.

  “Don’t go.”

  Her own words shock her. How has she come so soon to letting them fly out her mouth? Become unable to imagine being in this room, this house, without this boy she barely knows?

  But it’s true. He should stay here with her. She can make a place for him, knows this. For this poor boy condemned, as she is, to a life alone. No one but she can do it, would do it. Because she’s not afraid of him, not really. If only he would touch her hand, her upper arm, her hair.

  His eyes fix on her a moment, as if to remember for all time what she looks like. Then he closes them, throws his head back, grimaces like he’s in pain.

  “Oh, lady. Oh, goddamn you, lady. You’re so good. You got no idea what you just said.”

  He opens his eyes then, and they show so much of him it hurts to look at them. Yet she can’t turn away.

  “I made that table months ago because I knew someday you’d come. Tore down the smokehouse for the boards the way the Old Man would have done it. Two benches I made. One for me and one for you. Oh, lady, Katherine, I dreamed you long before you ever came.”

  She sways, can barely stand. How can anyone confess a need so strong?

  He stares into her face. “There’s something I got to tell you.”

  She doesn’t want to hear, not now, knows this already from the way he’s said it. Fights an urge to clap her hands over her ears.

  “There was this girl in San Francisco my first night back. She had long blond hair like my mama’s and I put my hands in it and don’t remember after that. Most times I think I killed her. Yeah, maybe I did.” He looks down at the floor, then back at her. His eyes hold more pain than she can bear to see. “I promised God I’d never touch another woman. My whole life.”

  A blue jay shrieks out in the trees. All her familiar things—her cotton nightgown on its peg, her warped loom, her pewter plate and cup—look strange to her, as if she’d gone outside and come in through a different door.

  “You touched me. Last night.”

  “Not really. Not that way. That�
��s why I laid us down together how I did. So I never could get at you, never hurt you. Not even in my sleep.”

  “It isn’t true about that girl.”

  She has to stop this story while it’s no more than a tightness at her temples, beat it back before it starts to throb and spread. Before everything between her and this boy unravels, comes to nothing.

  “You only told me that to frighten me. Like some sort of test.”

  He stays silent a half second too long. “Yeah, that’s what it was. A test.”

  “Did I pass?” One learns in an instant how to feign lightheartedness.

  “Yeah. You didn’t run.”

  He says it with that downturned smile. But with an edge, as if he wished she had.

  “Goddammit, lady. I used to stare down at your lamp in twilight from up in the rocks. I’d wait for you to blow it out so I could come and hold you through the night outside your bedroom wall. Lady, I know how you fucking breathe. You got no idea how bad I want to stay.”

  “Then do.”

  She speaks the words as if she’s in a trance. Saliva pours into her mouth.

  “Oh, lady, lady. Goddamn you to hell.”

  He backs away and doesn’t take his eyes off her until he’s out the door. Until he turns and runs.

  HE’S COMING BACK, HE has to. So much has changed so quickly she doesn’t want to move even her hand or foot for fear she’ll make it worse. He’s run down to the privy, gone to have a look around outside, something. People don’t just leave like that without telling you why.

  But he does not come back, so her standing in her front room, waiting in a patch of too-bright morning sunlight is only foolish. She goes in the kitchen, turns on the sink faucet, stares at the good stream of water coming out, this gift he’s given her. She flexes her splayed fingers under it, lets it pour through them, but it’s not enough.

  In the front room she runs her hand over the table, bends down and peers at its underside, at the cross brace where he nailed the planks—I made this because I knew you’d come. Sits on his bench, where he sat, imagines it still holds his warmth. Picks up his empty plate but cannot bring herself to wash it. Instead, seeks comfort in her loom. Her unfinished forest weaving lacks an inch or so of sky. She holds up first one yarn and then another.

  Nothing works. Where is he?

  She paces from window to window watching for him. When she goes outside it’s worse, he could be anywhere. She keeps turning this way and that looking for him, takes forever to split such a tiny pile of kindling, overlooks half the day’s harvest in the garden. What is the least she wants from him? If he lives with her for her whole life and never touches her, will it be enough? He can sleep in the loft and in a few nights, seasons, years, she might quit listening for him, quit hoping he’ll climb down the stairs and come to her. They will live like brother and sister, mother and son, and it will be all right.

  She runs a fingertip over the flaking leather on the book he brought her with the peaches. Wonders why he chose it, what it means. It was a test, he said. She passed it. There was no San Francisco girl. Strange it bothers her more thinking of him lying with this girl than that he might have killed her. Was this the thing he had to know?

  She can, will, make a place for him.

  Night. Sleepless, she gets up, sits on one of his benches and looks out the window. Hates the full moon for showing her a forest that does not contain him.

  28

  Endlessly Rocking

  DANNY CLIMBS DOWN TO THE CREEK, TAKES OFF HIS WHITE GOOK suit and washes it in the cold, flowing water, walks back up the hill and spreads it on a privet hedge to dry. Naked, he stalks through his burnt-out house. Even like it is, it’s the most magnificent house he’s ever seen. He can lose himself in any of its details. The rosettes in the corners of the walnut window frames. The leaping deer carved into the marble mantel in the parlor. The hundreds of tiny black and white tiles that make up the single geometric design on the foyer floor. Things he’d had to search for in his shelves of books to know what they were and what needed to be done to them. If he took the whole rest of his life bringing this one house back to how it was, then it’d be a life well spent.

  He gathers all that’s his, brings it and lays it on his mattress in neat rows. Razor, nail clippers, hospital scissors, comb. The block sander he used on the floors, the hammer he bought in Elkmont at the hardware store, two fistfuls of nails. His old, broken-in boots, new boots, new mocs, new jeans, old jeans with both knees worn out, the rotting jungle camo he should throw away and can’t. And the rucksack he learned how to fill with everything he owned.

  He owns less now. No rifle, sidearm, tarp to shield him when it rains. No lots of things he used to own. Today’s packing doesn’t take long and he’s sorry when it’s done. Likes the order the rucksack forces on him. Place for everything, everything in its place.

  He spends a good half hour calling for the dog, although he’s sure she’ll never show. His fault. He never did do right by her. Maybe he was testing her. Would she stay by him if he didn’t feed her? Stay by him just out of love? Maybe he’ll get dressed and head out with his rucksack, try to find her. Go to that little highway store, buy her some Slim Jims.

  Fuck that, she’s killed more meat in her short life than he ever will. Let her get her own damn meat, trot back with some for him.

  He can’t leave yet, his white clothes haven’t dried. Or else he should have left a while ago, before the sun dropped down behind the trees.

  Truth be told, he’s not sure where he’s going. Only that he can’t stay here, so close to the Dead Lady and yet never close enough. He’s either got to go down there and work it out to live with her, or live without her someplace far away.

  He brings his damp clothes in, drapes them over a cane chair with a busted seat. Sits cross-legged on his mattress and stares at his rucksack. Wants only to go back to the cabin, mix his life up with the Dead Lady’s in every way. He told her about San Francisco and she said to him, “Don’t go,” like it’s God giving him a perfect sign.

  Yeah, God, you made it so every goddamn thing I think is about her. I see a tree and wonder does she know its name. I feel a breeze and think how it’s just come from sliding off her skin. I can’t sleep nights for thinking about her.

  He throws his head back, stares at the stain-splotched ceiling. God, tell me—what the fuck am I supposed to do?

  Next thing, he’s rocking, pitching violently on his moldy mattress, arms around his knees. Can’t do it, can’t do it. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. He is in control.

  He will not go down the mountain on the trail that overlooks the Old Man’s cabin. Will not hide under the overhang and watch her. Will not smile at the girly way she splits her kindling with her arms stuck out like chicken wings. Will not see her little light wink out and know it’s safe to stay beside her through the night. Will not feel her soft breath spreading through him till he wants to fuck her brains out for whole days and nights.

  No, wants so much more than that.

  Can’t do it, can’t do it. Rocking furiously to stop the tears.

  He promised God he’d never touch her. Did his part, upheld his end. He warned her. Came right out and told her about San Francisco. Like talking to a goddamn wall.

  “Oh, Danny, Danny, please don’t go. Fuck me, love me. Make me have your babies.” Because that’s what this shit boils down to. Memaw said dreams don’t come true.

  Don’t go.

  He rocks now to Dead Lady words, a fast, hard rhythm he can’t stop. His tears run down his naked chest onto his belly, where they burn and he can’t quit rocking to wipe them away.

  Don’t go.

  So long as he keeps rocking, all his present world will stay the same. If he stops, he’ll have to do something. And that thing, whatever it is, will make his world spin out in one direction or another. The setting sun’s turned everything around him red. He’s thirsty and his vision’s growing dim. His rocking’s slowed. Sometimes he lurches to
one side and has to right himself, regain his balance, start again.

  Only, this time he doesn’t. This time he falls over on his side and stays there. Closes his eyes, lets his whole world go black.

  And cool.

  And still.

  Don’t go.

  29

  Quilts

  SHE EXPECTED HIM TO COME BACK ANY MOMENT, BUT THOSE MOMENTS passed. Now, with the sun so low once again that shadows cover all the ground, she sits on her porch and gazes across the clearing at the trees. She has lived these last two days outdoors on any pretext, staring always into the thick forest looking for him. Because it is unthinkable he might not come.

  He saved her that day in the snow, brought her inside and built a fire; she thought it had been all her doing. The knowledge frightens her, thrills her—that she needed him then for her very life and he was there.

  But now she knows better than to lie down in snow. Knows better, even, than to give in to her loneliness. Yes, she can make a place for him. But she has lived alone and she can do it still. Life alone, like other life, is only a succession of events. You swing from one to another to the next, like you’re crossing a chasm on a vine bridge. These everyday occurrences suffice to carry you. Long as you keep moving. Long as you don’t look down. Long as you don’t contemplate alternatives. How lovely it would be to have a lover; how glorious to have a child. She is a foolish woman and deserves what she has gotten. He is a boy too young to grow a decent beard. What she has been contemplating is unnatural.

  Yet she can’t stop it, lacks even will enough to try, as if he’s one last sickness and she’s got no strength left to fight. Or as if he’s God’s gift and she deserves him. Because she didn’t kill herself. Because she didn’t die. Because she’s forced by circumstances to give up what passes for everything. She goes inside to her loom and tries to weave what these two days have been. A rectangle of mournful grays, dark, lonely greens and dry clumps of weeds hurtful to touch. She works furiously, in a race to put this obscene longing behind her. She will not weave a thread for his white clothes in all that darkness.