In Wilderness

by Diane Thomas

  She is so deep within her work she can’t hear any sound outside her own sharp breathing. How else to explain how he gets all the way onto the porch, up to the open door, and she turns only when he blocks her light?

  “I came back.”

  He does not smile.

  She nods, needs suddenly to brace one hand against the wall. A thorn from the sharp weeds crosshatched through her weaving nicks the outside of her thumb, spreading a drop of blood in the gray wool. He sees it, sees everything. Wearing a backpack and carrying a huge bedroll on his shoulders, he has to turn sideways to get through the door. Once in, he drops the bedroll in the center of the room.

  “I got as far as Elkmont and I bought these quilts, so I reckoned I was coming back. If I was you I’d get out while you still can, grab your little gun and run. Maybe wing me on the fly.” He’s grinning.

  It’s as if the floor has tilted and she’s sliding off one end with nothing to hold on to.

  The boy, Danny, rocks back on his heels. “Yeah, I broke into your house one day while you were gone. Walked all around, touched all your stuff. Held some of it a long time in my hands. It felt good, doing that. From the start I been watching over you just like you were my family.”

  Heat rises in her face. It seems suddenly important that she be afraid, that she keep her feet planted firmly, so she can maintain her balance.

  But none of that is possible.

  “Don’t go.”

  His jaw muscles tighten. He bends down, unties the ropes that held the bedroll and unfurls it.

  “The brown one’s mine, the white’s yours. I’ll spread mine out up in the loft. Yours, too, if that’s the way you want it.”

  She nods once, afraid to seem too eager. If he doesn’t see it, then that’s that.

  He climbs to the loft with both the quilts and she’s left standing there, hands crossed against her chest. Why should she care what he thinks of her? If that’s even an issue—perhaps he only wants them to lie with their knees drawn up, like before.

  In the kitchen she feeds wood into the stove, stokes its embers into flames, pays careful attention to all she is doing. Her hands shake when she measures out the rice. They will eat supper like normal people. All she’s done is take him in. Who can say what will come of it?

  “Faucet work all right?”

  She starts, nods. He’s come back downstairs, but she can’t look at him. Instead she turns her back, takes two garden cucumbers off a shelf, slices them at the sink.

  He drags a bench into the kitchen. She can hear it scrape against the floor, the creak it makes when he sits down behind her.

  “You don’t talk much.”

  She shakes her head.

  “It’s nice. Most of what folks say’s not worth the hearing.”

  His odd speech, a mountain dialect, but tempered. She smiles then, lets herself turn toward him, catches him gazing at her as one might a racehorse, an animal one watches for one’s own delight. She looks away. The cabin suddenly seems overcrowded with their movement, forcing them too close, too soon. She makes a small involuntary sound; he draws a quick breath like an answer, then climbs back to the loft. What is she doing with him here? Why can’t she make it stop?

  The rice has come to a slow boil the way she wants it. She slices tomatoes, cucumbers, conscious always of the sounds he makes above her, quiet and orderly, setting out his things. Her throat’s dry and her face is hot, as if from fever.

  Sitting across from each other at the table, they eat silently, can’t meet each other’s eyes. When they’ve finished, she washes their plates and forks. Then there is nothing left to do.

  She comes back from the privy, runs a pan of water, sponges off in a corner of the porch, puts on her nightdress. When she passes him beside the stairs she cannot look at him. In the loft, he has spread the two quilts side by side, the plain brown one and then the white one with its fingernail-size flowers. No, this is a good thing, his being here. It will all be all right. She pulled that baby from the street and felt his small heart beat against her breast.

  Downstairs, the front door closes and he shoots the bolts. In the loft, she lies on her white quilt in her white nightdress, arms folded over her chest, hears him cross the room, his bare feet on the first stair, then the next one.

  Now whatever is going to happen will begin.

  30

  All of It Burns Him, Even Air

  WHATEVER HE DOES, HE WILL NOT HURT HER.

  Danny grabs a fistful of mint out of the garden, stuffs it in his mouth and chews. On the porch, with the bucket of cold water, he washes himself clean. Inside, he takes the lantern from the table. Stands still a moment to quiet his shaking.

  “A right-broke horse won’t lose its wildness, keeps it all for you.” From a disintegrating paperback midway along his second shelf. That’s how Danny wants his Katherine to love him, strong as his mama loved his daddy. The thought boils inside him as he climbs up to the loft.

  She lies there in her white, flowered nightdress on his white, flowered quilt. In the dim light her eyes are enormous, their pupils large and black. Her gown comes all the way down to her ankles, where her feet poke out small and helpless looking. He needs to touch her. Somewhere. Now. Needs to begin the thing. Kneeling beside her, he captures her right ankle in the circle of his thumb and forefinger. Feels her tendons slide over her bones, like with her wrist bones that night in the storm. It’s like he’s looking at an X-ray, learning her clear through. He lets go of her ankle, traces with his index finger the thin bones that lead off from her toes.

  He wants every part of her with equal intensity. Her foot is just the first part that he came to. It’s strange to him, elegant, somehow. Different from anything he’s always thought about as feet. He bends down, rests his cheek against it. She watches him and doesn’t move or make a sound.

  Danny lays her foot back on the comforter, looks in her huge eyes again. “I’ve never done this before, not really. I want us to do everything there is.”

  It’s true, looked at a certain way. He couldn’t get it up with that hippie girl in San Francisco. Should have done it earlier with some slant-eye gook girl who would not have mattered, except he thought Janelle was waiting. Over there it’s all they ever talked about except the war. The perfect fuck. The perfect girl. Back home.

  The Dead Lady, Katherine, lets out a tiny sigh and he can feel some caught-up thing inside her letting go. He takes the hem of her gown in both his hands, lifts it gradually and just looks at her, one part at a time. The offset bones beside her ankles. Soft flesh on the insides of her knees. That dark mystery between her legs that’s no more and no less than all the rest. Her navel that’s a small, dark hole.

  He stops there. Wants to see her all at once.

  “Take it off the rest of the way yourself. Your shift. Pull it off over your head.” His words slur together like his mouth is full of mush. He will never hurt her.

  She moves to do the thing he’s asked. He looks away. When he turns back, he draws a hard breath through his teeth from just the sight of her. She lies with her arms above her head and the gown still twisted in them, like some woman in a painting. The tips of her small breasts are red as fire-pink blossoms, her dark hair’s fanned over the quilt. All her separate parts call out to him, no one part louder than the rest. He aims to learn the ways of all of them, what each wants most.

  Danny slides the gown off her arms without touching them, makes it a pillow for her head. He can do anything he wants with her and she will let him. It’s. All. Right. The knowledge whips through him, muscular as a caught snake.

  The sun has set and the first star has come out. Lone and bright, as if its being in the window, centered there, means something. He holds a match to the lantern he has brought. In its sudden glow she looks like a young girl, a girl his own age. He sits beside her, runs his hand slow-motion down the whole length of her body maybe an inch above it, watching for changes in her eyes, the rhythm of her breathing. Watching to see wh
at he can know.

  Sometimes he stays his hand a moment.

  “Here?”

  She nods.

  “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here?”

  “Please. Yes.”

  “Not yet.”

  When he does first touch her, except for when he held her ankle, it’s the soft skin inside her forearm, nothing more. She closes her eyes, draws a sharp breath. It’s what he wants to happen, how he’s dreamed it. He touches her in other places, holds his right hand flat against them, cups them in his palm. He runs a finger slowly from her throat down to her navel and her body arches into it. He has dreamed this, too.

  “Here?”

  “Yes.” Less like a word than like an exhalation.

  He brought a tin cup of water, same as he brought the lantern.

  “You should drink.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Yes, drink now.” It’s happening too fast. He needs to slow things down.

  He holds her head up, brings the cup up to her lips and tilts it. She takes large, thirsty gulps. Yeah, he knows what she needs even before she does. He drinks after her, puts the cup down empty. She rocks herself, her hips, against him. Gently, like maybe she’s not aware of it. Like maybe it’s something she can’t help.

  “Lie back now, that’s a good girl.”

  He brushes her damp hair out of her eyes, loves it how she’s like a child there on the quilt and he’s her daddy. He can touch her now and does so. Does things to her he’s only heard about, which is most things. Does new things he makes up on the spot.

  “Don’t do that, it hurts. I don’t like it.”

  Loves how her words come all thick-sounding.

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t want to like it.” He’s heard talk that that’s the way of it with some things at the first. “Or you don’t want me to know you like it.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Want me to stop?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “Which is it then?”

  “Don’t stop. No, please don’t stop.”

  Her face is ugly and contorted and her hands are claws that dig into his shoulders. He loves her so hard right now he dares not think of it. Knows he must not, will not hurt her.

  Inside, she’s so hot it burns him, burns all through him. Makes it so everything he touches burns him, even air. Him dying from it, that will be all right.

  No, not all right. It will be beautiful, more beautiful than he can ever say. So beautiful to die from how his Katherine burns him.

  “Be still,” he tells her.

  “I am.”

  “Be still inside, too.”

  “I can’t. Can’t be still there anymore.”

  Her face twists up and her whole body arches hard and quick, like some animal hit in the road. Her eyes fly wide open and she stares at him like she might kill him to get all of him she wants. Wants him that bad. Wants Danny.

  And he is made of glass that’s going to shatter. Sees outside the window that bright star, knows it must fall because he can feel inside himself the arc it’s going to make, how it will burn.

  All stars must fall into place.

  All.

  Right.

  Now.

  THEN IT’S OVER. HIS head rests against her breast and he is in a strange and unknown world where he has everything he’s ever wanted. He stays a long time there, afraid to move. Her body is this new world’s hills and valleys and his breath’s a breeze on her moist skin to cool her.

  He runs a finger down her belly and she squirms beneath it.

  “Want to.” Her words come slurred inside a whisper.

  Truly, his heart stops beating. He draws her close to him again. “Me too.”

  This time is different. As are the rest, each from the others. Different in the way all clouds are different. Or all people. Or all fingerprints. He knows that that’s the way of it, no two will ever be the same.

  At last, when Danny’s bright star has become the morning star, he folds her in his arms and gazes at her face until she sleeps. Knows this is how he’ll hold her all his days.

  31

  The Way It Is and Will Be

  SHE LIES IN THE LOFT, WITH THE NOON SUN HIGH AND A FLY BUZZING at the window to get out. She has slept much too late. She has not gone to the garden. She is sore and sticky and her mouth feels bruised and swollen. The quilts, her gown, her body, the entire loft, maybe the whole cabin, the surrounding forest, reek of their lovemaking. Irrelevant, all of it, this morning’s word to live by. Irrelevant when weighed against all that took place in last night’s darkness, how she wants it all again. Irrelevant against this morning’s fact she did not wake—will never again wake—alone.

  He’s downstairs doing something with the stove that makes its iron eyes clank, a warlike sound if you’re not the one making it. Frying something. Fish. And she wants him so soon again. Wants him beyond shame. Even beyond hunger—the fish smells awfully good. Wants to lie up here and think about the night before, relive it, revel in it, wallow in it. Until he comes back and starts it all again.

  In one night he’s made her thoroughly a whore. She wants him, this boy, even though she can’t remember what he looks like, can remember only that he looks like what he is, barely out of his teens. Beyond that it’s bits and pieces. His scraggly beard that day in the courthouse park, not sun-bleached like his hair but red, the color of his pubic hair. His eyes, how their clear gray films over in desire. Thin lips, a mouth that tastes of mint. A body leaner than hers, stronger. That’s all. Not someone she could pick out in a crowd.

  Or want to.

  But that doesn’t matter, none of it. What he looks like is just one more irrelevance; she knows all of him she needs.

  Because that’s what it is. A need, like food or water. No, like air. She’s never known a need so strong, her mommy’s little good girl who never once did anything she shouldn’t have, who made Phi Beta Kappa and learned how to draw so very fine. Oh, there are many explanations for why she squirms down in the quilts, wants him before she’s even washed herself. But they all pale beside the strength of her desire itself. Last night. Some things. Things he did to her, or made her do, or that she did unbidden. Shameful things she wants to do again—her mind lingers on them, even as it wants to move away. In less than twelve hours he has changed her into someone she no longer knows. Dazed, disgusting, disquieting. Someone who begs, “Please, please, don’t stop; don’t ever stop,” as tears run down her face.

  Before last night she could not have imagined it. That she, that anyone, might find themselves so thoroughly, exquisitely alive.

  Beyond that, what does she feel for him? She doesn’t know, perhaps doesn’t want to know. She was right that evening by the pond, there are great gifts in everything. For now that’s enough. She rises, slips on her gown, smooths it over her bruised body imagining his hands, and descends barefoot from the loft.

  He is standing at the stove, his back to her, wearing only the wrinkled linen pants that were the white thread in her weaving. His shoulder blades stick out like wings on a bird too young for feathers, bird far too young to fly. His youth, the pale skin of his back, repulse her: that she has done such things with someone still a boy and that this boy has mentored her. She stands quiet a moment, so she can know that seed of distaste nested deep in her desire, how one feeds the other, makes it grow.

  He senses her and turns. “Morning.”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Whatever.”

  That deep voice that always catches her off guard. He gives a lazy smile and looks her up and down, seems older now despite his innocent white back, more assured than even yesterday. Older than she herself. The daddy.

  She comes up behind him, circles her arms around his waist, pulls him against her.

  “Watch it. The grease.”

  “Sorry.” She backs away, her breath unsteady.

  “It’s almost ready.” He turns to face her, nods toward th
e table in the front room. “Sit down. There.”

  He looks at her differently than yesterday. If he were to look at her that way on a street somewhere, a street with other people, she would die of shame for how it makes her want him.

  He slides a perfectly fried fish onto her plate, adds to it sliced tomatoes. If she reaches out, touches his hand, his arm, it doesn’t count. He has to be the one. This boy young enough to be her son.

  He eats his fish and watches her eat hers. Watches her jaw grow slack from wanting him, until she has to gouge the tiny bones out from the sides of her mouth with her fingers.

  “When did you get them?” Can’t steady her voice.

  “I set the lines last night. Checked them this morning before you got up, and there they were. You like yours?”

  She nods. Wants him with fish bones dropping from her mouth. Oh, God, please let him touch me.

  She lays her left hand on the table, flat, and doesn’t look at it. He reaches out, traces along her finger bones.

  “Want to.” She can hardly mouth the words.

  “Eat your fish. And wash your hands after.”

  His voice sounds harsh, and yet he smiles at her. His eyes are filled with light.

  AND THIS IS HOW it is and will be, the sun so bright on everything it touches, the darkness a soft feather bed, and never anything to keep Danny and Katherine apart. Chores left undone, quick, guilty visits to the garden, kindling split in a race with the setting sun. Always knowing nothing matters but the two of them together.

  How they devour it—there is no better word. She thinks of nothing else but him, the two of them together. Are they the only ones to ever live this way? Surely they must be. If they were the norm, societies, economies, whole nations would disintegrate. No one to teach the children, heal the sick, collect the garbage—they’re all home in bed screwing their brains out.

  She’s changed, she feels it. How can anyone live constantly in such a heightened state and not be? She brought no mirror, thinking she would not live long enough to need it. One afternoon she tears herself away from him while he is sleeping, makes her way down to the pond to see her face reflected in its dark, still water. Sleepy, half-lidded eyes, a soft, complacent mouth—her very features cause her to desire him, that he has done these things to her and that it will continue. She runs her hands across her breasts and down her belly. Thinks how he sleeps always with one hand between her legs.