In Wilderness

by Diane Thomas

  “Isn’t she a beauty!” Pride’s got him bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “She’s—how did you—?” Can’t think what to say.

  “I bought a bow.”

  He squats beside the animal, runs his hand along her neck, as if she is alive and he is petting her.

  “Wound’s on her other side. They got such pretty eyes, does. I love looking at them. Love watching how they leap and run. They run so fast.”

  He says the words as if he’s talking to himself. His legs tremble slightly from the strain of carrying the animal. When he pulls Katherine to him he transfers a wild, damp deer smell to her clothing; she inhales deeply, fascinated. Then he is hauling her by the hand to the shed, filling her arms with wood. Soon a bonfire blazes in the clearing, flinging its orange glow out through the humid night. Danny drags the deer into its circle, a ground fog of golden smoke curling around them. His movements have the economy of things done many times.

  “Bring a pan.”

  When she returns with the kitchen dishpan, he slits the doe’s throat. His work is quick and clean, for which Katherine is grateful. In the firelight nothing seems what it is. The blood’s a thin syrup collecting in the bowl. Katherine holds her chilled fingers in its stream to warm them. Danny bends and fills his cupped hands with it, raises them to his mouth and drinks, then grins at her.

  “Makes you run fast like the deer. I bet you won’t drink it.”

  It’s a dare; he’s smiling. She dips her right hand in the bowl, fills her palm. Drunk fast, it’s not repulsive. Don’t think about it. Any of it. When she looks up he is no longer smiling. He dips his own hand in the bowl, touches a sticky finger to her forehead, paints a bloody cross that drips into her eyebrows. He undoes the buttons of her shirt, pushes her jeans down off her hips. His breath sounds like the hissing flames.

  He bloodies his fingers in the bowl again, touches between her eyes. Traces a line straight down, over her nose, the cleft at the center of her lips, the hollow in her throat. Dips his finger yet again to trace between her breasts, past her small, round navel to end in the triangle of coarse black hair between her legs.

  He steps back, looks at her. In the fire’s flickering shadows she can’t read his face.

  “You are more beautiful than the deer. More beautiful than all the world.”

  His words come gravelly and slurred, and his eyes burn with small, reflected flames. A sudden terror flashes through her, bleaches everything around them white as bones, then disappears.

  He bends down, grabs her flannel shirt up off the ground and thrusts it at her in a wad.

  “Put your shirt back on, pull up your jeans. It’s cold and I’ve got work to do.”

  Why does he sound so angry? Why did he start the thing if he did not intend to finish it? She buttons her shirt along the trail of the doe’s drying blood, pulls her jeans over the last of it. He has turned back to the deer as if she, Katherine, had never been there.

  The fire leaps higher. He strings the animal up on a low limb at the clearing’s edge, where it sways like a hanged man in the eerie light. Danny’s shirtless body shimmers, godlike, in a golden steam, as he works with his skinning knife.

  When the deer’s roasting heart sizzles in the flames, he slides it off its green spit, cuts a slice, turns back to Katherine and offers it to her on the flat of his knife blade. “It’s a ritual, what a boy gets fed on his first hunt.”

  “I wasn’t with you when you killed her.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  They share the heart between them, him gazing at her all the while. When they are done, he goes back to the swaying carcass, a scene surreal in the firelight.

  Suddenly, what she has eaten rises in her throat. She whirls around and retches in the brush behind her. It feels almost comforting, this familiar thing that has not happened since she lived alone here and felt safe. She wipes her mouth and turns back to the fire, and to Danny.

  Winter

  35

  Three Presents

  THEY SPEND LONG HOURS UNDER THE HEARTH QUILTS NOW; IT’S gray outside.

  “What day is it?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I thought you made marks on the wall.”

  “I quit.”

  They have lost track of dates, recall days only by their small events, and not in sequence. Was it three days ago or four he caught the trout? Was it yesterday they walked out to see the frozen cattails by the pond? How many days ago was the full moon? Their order doesn’t matter. They all run together, watercolors on absorbent paper, to produce the dreamlike whole that is their life now.

  Winter isn’t so much blowing in as falling on them in a stillness, like the last brown leaves. Some mornings she wakes late to woods that have been lightly brushed with snow. There’s less reason to go outside. Some days Danny even forsakes his time up on the mountain. They are two against the cold. He’s brought a book. They read aloud from it to each other in the gray afternoons. The Last Days of Pompeii. An odd choice, poorly written, boring, but he will not skip it—“It comes next on the shelf.” After it there’s Catcher in the Rye.

  They know each other’s ways by now.

  “I never loved anyone,” he tells her late one evening, the room luminous with snow-light.

  He’s turned away and she can’t see his face, holds her breath for him to finish. He does not, there is no need.

  Yet one morning when she goes out to the garden early, while he’s still asleep, to dig the last of the Jerusalem artichokes before a bank of dark northerly clouds rolls in, she returns to find him pacing on the tiny porch, his hands jammed in his pockets.

  He wheels around, blocking her way.

  “Goddammit, you weren’t anywhere in this whole fucking house.” He grabs her shoulders, shakes her hard. “You can’t just leave like that.”

  She steps back, stares in unbelief. “You were sleeping. I went to dig the artichokes.”

  He stands silent, doesn’t move.

  “It’s cold. Let me in.”

  His mouth clamped tight, he opens the door.

  When she goes in the kitchen to put the artichokes away, a window rattles. Suddenly their sturdy house seems frail.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, AS if to make amends, he brings home a cut tree. To shake off the snow, he knocks its trunk hard on the porch step. Once, twice, three times, until she flings open the door.

  “Tomorrow’s Christmas.” He’s grinning like he’s known it all along and kept it back for a surprise. Or for some unknown other reason.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure. Aren’t you? It’s cold enough.”

  He drags the tree inside, a gorgeous cedar that’s a good three feet too tall, lops off its excess height, chops up the fragrant waste and throws it on the hearth fire. She rolls and ties small balls of brightest-colored yarns as decorations, shapes a larger one into an angel, gives it a pair of delicate green cedar wings. Believes she doesn’t miss her mother’s ornaments, or the trees she had with Tim: She and Danny are making traditions of their own to last them all their lives.

  Their Christmas morning threatens rain. He presents her with a set of kitchen implements he’s carved. Spoons, forks, spatulas, all of warm, red cherry wood. They are plain and perfect.

  “They’re beautiful,” she tells him. “Like what the Old Man might have done.” He smiles shyly, looks down at his hands.

  When she brings out the poncho she has woven, hands it to him, he stares at it as if he’s not sure what it is.

  “It’s the colors you like. I asked you once to get them.”

  His face crumples like a wad of paper. “Nobody ever—” He composes himself with visible effort, frowns. “What in hell did you go to all that trouble for? You never should have done it.”

  He turns away, but not so fast she doesn’t see him pinching at the corners of his eyes. She stands quiet until he turns back to face her.

  “What do I do now?”

 
“Put it on. The slit goes over your head. Depending on how you wear it, it’s quite warm.”

  He drops it down over his head, wraps it around himself.

  “Shouldn’t have fucking done it. All that secret shit when I was gone.”

  “I wanted to.”

  He flings open the door, goes out, slams it behind him.

  Katherine sits on the cold floor beside the tree, removes one of its yarn ornaments hung low and holds it in her hand, squeezes it rhythmically, in time with her beating heart. She knows this small house as she knows the lines in her own palm and as she knows this boy-man’s body, inch by inch, completely. Yet lately she sometimes feels as though she’s stepped into a mirror, where everything’s its opposite, glittering and strange.

  Something is bumping on the porch, scraping against its stones. The door bursts open and he stands there with what looks like a half-made table. Large, maybe five feet square, and with no slats across its frame.

  “It’s a loom.” His voice is proud and quiet. “I made it for you.”

  He has changed so quickly it’s put her off balance, as if the cabin has been tipped an inch or two. She glances toward her weaving wall. The nails are gone. They were there yesterday afternoon. He must have pried them out this morning while she slept. Without them, the room feels over-large and empty.

  “I got ’em all, don’t worry.” He’s fidgeting, the way he does when he’s nervous, bouncing his weight from one foot to the other. “I’ll hammer ’em in this afternoon. I made a chair for you to sit in, too. When you make your weavings. That way I can always see your face.”

  Tears well up from deep inside her and she shakes with soundless sobs.

  Because she is surprised and touched.

  Because he has taken away her wall that was essential, that enabled her to shut out everything except the patterns, colors, she was working with. He might just as well have knocked down every one of her imaginary room’s imaginary walls, dispersed the peace it had enclosed. A silly, self-centered thing to cry over—he meant only to give a gift. But she can’t stop.

  Danny sits beside her on the floor, takes her in his arms and strokes her hair.

  “Looks like nobody gave you presents neither.”

  She shakes her head, conscious of her silent lie, burrows against his chest. He wraps the poncho tight around the both of them. Together they stare out the window at the winter rain.

  36

  Memaw’s Nightgown

  THEY RECOGNIZE HIM AT THE HARDWARE STORE, BUT THEY DON’T know him. Not even his name. They rush to serve him anyway, the deep-voiced man with the wad of bills shoved in his pocket. Even so, he’s a man careful to get exactly what he wants for his money.

  “I just need half that fifty-pound bag of plaster.”

  “It’ll keep. Cool, dry place.” Adenoidal little shit. Adam’s apple swooping like a sash weight.

  “I only aim to carry twenty-five pounds out of here. Twenty-five pounds or nothing. I’ll come back next week for the rest. I need an empty bucket with a lid. That there one.”

  “It’s full of Sheetrock mud.”

  “Well, dig it out. Only way that bucket’ll get empty. I’ll pay you for it. Cash money in your hand. For everything. How much?”

  “Eight dollars.”

  Danny peels off a five and three ones. “That’s for twenty-five pounds of plaster, one bucket of Sheetrock mud, you digging out the Sheetrock mud, and you washing and drying out the bucket.”

  “Ten. You didn’t say about the washing out and drying.” Skinny shit whines like a mosquito.

  Danny doesn’t even roll his eyes, gives up two more bills. “Make sure you dry the inside good. I’ll be back before an hour.”

  Time enough to put away three cups of coffee, two pieces of cherry pie at the Elkmont Diner. Time to stare into the window of the clothing store. Dress models with black electrical tape wound on their feet for shoes. One’s got a red flannel nightgown on her just like Memaw used to wear. Little ruffles at her wrists. Nightgown for a fine and proper lady.

  Lady like that Lady Chatterley. Oh, yeah.

  “I’ll take that red nightgown in the window yonder.” Can’t help the little smile that slides around his mouth. Nightgown to keep his own fine lady from the cold.

  “We just put that one on sale for Valentine’s.”

  The pinched-up lady store clerk gets a gown just like it from the back, folds it between tissue paper, slides it into a green bag. One more thing to carry.

  “You staple that thing shut? I got a ways to go.”

  She wrinkles up between the eyes but still does what he says, her with her skinny hands, all brown spots and ropy veins. Someday their hands’ll look like that, his and his Katherine’s, their fingers intertwined. Like his mama’s and his daddy’s should have been.

  He trudges back from town, taking the high trail up the mountain under a weak winter sun. The handle of the plaster-filled bucket cuts through his glove into his calloused palm. What is his house now, Gatsby’s house, will be their house someday. House where he’ll be King of the Mountain and she’ll be his queen.

  Back at the cabin, with the hearth fire built up to a roar, she takes a year unwrapping the damn package, long fingers worrying out each staple like she’s got some further use in mind for the bag. When she’s finally done and shakes the gown out from its tissue paper, she’s so surprised she doesn’t even smile. Just looks at him.

  “You like it?”

  She nods. “We need another blanket more.”

  “Goddammit! I’ll buy you all the damn nightgowns I care to. And all the fucking blankets you could ever need.” He likes how saying it makes him feel strong, tall, a man of substance. “Put it on. I been picturing you in it the whole afternoon.”

  She slips the gown on like a tent and takes her clothes off under it, one way to keep out the cold that creeps in two, three feet beyond the fire. Her hair lays dark and shiny against the red flannel. He grabs thick hanks of it in both his fists and pulls her down onto the quilts. The firelight flickers in her startled eyes. He jerks the red gown up and off her, wads it behind her head, can’t hold off any longer.

  Oh, how his fine lady always wants him.

  He screams when he comes. Scream that trails off like a hawk’s scream with a dying fall. Afterwards, he wraps himself so tight around her she can’t ever go.

  Yet he still falls and falls.

  37

  Lullaby

  THEY LIE UNMOVING IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, HIS ARMS STILL coiled around her, the new red gown still bunched behind her head. Through the partly open window she can hear the winter birds settling themselves for the night, even their smallest sounds.

  He breathes softly against her breast, cups his hand around it. “If you gave milk I’d suck your titties all day long.”

  She hates how he says “titties” like a nasty little boy. He is holding her too tight, his other arm biting into her side.

  She squirms. “If I gave milk, there’d be a baby.”

  “You giving milk don’t mean there’s got to be a baby.”

  She can tell he wants her to ask why, but she won’t do it. Instead watches the patch of sky outside the window darken to deep blue, ignores his hand playing between her legs.

  “Tell you a story.”

  She doesn’t want a story, wants them both to lie still now and listen, as the near, clear day sounds give way to the distant, deeper sounds of night.

  But he won’t be stopped, angles his head to look at her.

  “Not long after I came to live at Memaw’s, she took me with her to this one-room shack where a new little baby had just died. She came to bind the woman’s tits with cotton cloth and give her herbs to make her milk stop coming. Inside, the place smelled like a cow barn. Like there was pails and pails of milk and cream all over. Only thicker, sweeter. Like my mama’s milk I still remembered.”

  She is ashamed that his deliberately bad grammar irritates her. And she doesn’t want to hear his
story, not any story that includes a baby that has died. Readjusts her nightgown, tugs it down around her.

  “All of it, all that sweet milk smell, came from this one woman lying in a corner on a rope bed. Her covered halfway with a blanket. And her titties hanging clear out of her gown they was swole up so big with milk.”

  He looks up at her, his eyes wide and innocent.

  “While Memaw got out her cloth strips from her midwife bag, I went over to the woman, really close. I tried hard not to look down at her titties, tried to pretend I wasn’t interested. Looked her square in the face instead.

  “ ‘Memaw brought me to drink up all your milk,’ I told her.

  “That woman smiled at me, such a sweet smile, and didn’t say a word. Just lifted up her titty closest to me, squeezed its huge brown nipple to where I could see the milk bead on it, and held out her other hand to pull me in the bed. I reached out both hands toward her, licked my lips. A drop of milk fell off her nipple onto the dirty sheet, and I wanted it so bad I could have bent my head and sucked it up. I scrambled onto that bed quick as lightning, knowing the next drop, and all that milk forever from those two enormous titties, would be mine.”

  Katherine doesn’t like his story, wishes he would stop it. Knows it’s bound to come to a bad end.

  “I spread my fingers wide to take that titty in my open mouth. But before I even touched it Memaw yanked me back and whacked my butt. Hard.

  “ ‘That milk was for the baby,’ she hissed in my ear. ‘It wasn’t meant for you.’

  “I yelled bloody murder and she shoved me out onto the porch and slammed the door. I was so angry the whole world turned red. I wanted that milk more than I’d ever wanted anything in the good Lord’s power to give me. That woman’s baby’d gone just like my mama, so I knew God meant that baby’s milk for me. Knew it sure as if He’d told me.