In Wilderness

by Diane Thomas

  Weeds and Wildflowers of the Southern Mountains. She sits on the cold slate floor, leans against the sharp-edged wooden box. Weeds with pink flowers. Wildflowers that bloom in April. Types of mints. Here it is. Pennyroyal. Mentha pulegium. A plant in the mint genus within the family Lamiaceae. Grows in moist, sunny soils, often near creeks or bogs.

  Among the cattails on the far side of the pond.

  Useful as a mild tea against fainting or to settle the stomach. Fat chance. Emmenagogue. Abortifacient.

  She reads the words again, moves her finger under them to make sure she has read them right.

  Memaw swears by it. It heals you all at once. Abortifacient. Abort. Abortion. An herb to induce abortion.

  What Memaw knew.

  She drops the wildflower book back in the wooden storage bench, returns the mint sprig to its place beside the sink and stands there staring at it. She is cold, cold through and through. Did not know such a cold calm was possible.

  Abortifacient.

  What Memaw knew, what Danny knows. Might he know what she doesn’t? Might the thing be true?

  They tried, she and Tim, after that first baby. Tried with thermometers and calendars. Nothing. Like trying to relight cold, gray ashes. “You can’t. Won’t. Never again.” What all her doctors said.

  Don’t hope.

  Those same doctors who said more than a year ago she wouldn’t live six months.

  Everything is a gift. Everything.

  Her heart pounds so hard she’s sure she hears it. What if Danny’s right, can see it, smell it, divine it with a ring tied to a string, boy if it sways, girl if it spins? What if he truly knows what Memaw knew?

  “I don’t want a baby. I want only you.”

  Whether the baby’s real or not, the act’s the same. And only one thing matters.

  She runs into the front room to drag the bench across the floor where she can reach the gun on the high shelf. But before she pulls the heavy seat an inch, before she even stoops to grasp it, the door slams.

  “How’s my girl? It’s time for tea.”

  He hasn’t left her after all. How could she think it? Did she confuse thoughts with wishes? Has to slow her agitated breathing down so he won’t see.

  Even the odor of the brewing pennyroyal makes her belly cramp. It heals you all at once. The last cup of the day, tea and then bedtime. She has to do it this once more, there is no other way. Has to take this one last chance this isn’t Memaw’s “healing cup.” That her tiny baby, if there is a tiny baby, will survive this one last ritual. Because their evening, hers and Danny’s, must end like any other of their evenings. With him asleep beside her in their bed.

  She drinks the foul tea, can hardly keep from gagging. Each swallow’s a small, sidestepped death sentence, down to the last one, which she pours out on the floor. Because she can, because he isn’t looking, will not look in that far corner. Because she should have poured out every cup from the first one on, not drunk it like a ninny who takes candy from a stranger. Because that’s what he is. A stranger. No one she ever knew.

  NEAR MORNING HE CRIES out in a dream and she awakens, hadn’t meant to doze, not for a moment. She lays a warm and gentle hand on him to calm him, although inside she feels as strong and hard as iron. When he is quiet once again and breathing rhythmically, she makes her way downstairs without a sound. It’s so close to the hour he usually wakes, she does not dare to drag the bench across the room. She picks it up instead, then silently puts it back down. Two inches, four inches, all she can manage at a time. The dark sky growing lighter all the while. It’ll be full dawn before she can stand on the bench, reach up, take the gun. And the bullets, each one so heavy in her hand. Oh, please, she must not drop them, they might rattle. Might even explode.

  One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Each click of the cylinder deafens her. He’s bound to hear, know what it means. But he does not, sleeps on. So now the bench, the bench he made. For her. Back to its place beside the table. Three inches, six inches. Again, again, again. At last she sits on it, waits. Tries not to think of him so long ago, a fierce angel there outside her garden. Or that night in the storm, that night she took him in. And in the morning begged him not to go. This changeling who would kill her child.

  Groggy with sleep, he makes his way downstairs. Smiles at her, then sees the gun.

  The look on his face, as if he must still be dreaming, squeezes her chest so tightly she can hardly breathe. But he is exactly where she wants him. Midway between her and the door.

  “Get out.”

  “What th—I haven’t got my boots on.”

  “I know what’s in the tea. And what it does. Get out.” Her voice so level, and so calm.

  “Now look—babe? Wait just a minute. Put down the gun.” He shakes his head as if to clear it, comes fully awake. “You lied to me, you goddamn bitch. You told me you couldn’t. If you’d told the truth I could have done things, things I know from Memaw, so this shit would never happen. Stupid, lying whore.”

  His hands jerk as if he’s a wind-up toy, toy soldier.

  “I didn’t lie. It doesn’t matter. Just … please … go.”

  She is so cold inside she can look at him standing on her sun-warmed floor, look even at his vulnerable, sharp shoulder blades, his tangled hair—and not go to him.

  “I don’t want a baby. I want only you.” Sheets of silent tears slide down his face and he is trembling. “I love you so much. I just love you so much I can’t ever stop.”

  “Get out.”

  “Women die having babies. If you die I’ll die, too. I can’t live without you.”

  It was not supposed to be this hard. He was supposed to see the gun and run. Out the door, far away, and never come back. Run, Danny, run. Please. Now.

  He doesn’t move. “I smashed up your car so you would never leave me. I love you so much. Come on, babe, you’re my good girl. Come here, give me the gun.” He reaches out his hand, palm up like a serving tray, for her to lay it on.

  She pulls the trigger hard and quick. The sound deafens her; the recoil wrenches her right arm.

  You’d best aim low, the granny woman in the store had said. She didn’t hit him, shot too high, shot only to frighten him. Why, then, is his right hand clapped tight onto his left shoulder? Why is blood oozing out between his fingers?

  She cocks the pistol once again, before she can think to go to him. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” Fires at the ceiling.

  He backs away, wide-eyed and openmouthed. Turns, struggles one-handed with the door. Jerks it open, looks down at the thick, dark blood that drips onto the floor. Then runs unsteadily across the clearing and is gone.

  Katherine stands with one hand splayed across her belly, the other wrapped around the gun.

  44

  A Good Woman’s Love

  HURTS. HURTS. BITCH SHOT HIM IN THE FUCKING SHOULDER. HE squeezes his eyes tight against the pain. All the way up the mountain. Sometimes crying, sometimes grinning like a silly fool.

  Shot him. How bad she must love him to just take a gun and fucking shoot him. Golden girl “you-can’t-go-below-the-waist” Janelle would never do a thing like that. Shit, no. But his Katherine, that one’s a whole other story. Loves him so hard she fucking shoots him.

  Goddamn. Got to laugh at that one.

  Wild yarrow flowering white all through Gatsby’s waist-high lawn grass. Danny yanks up an armful. Thank you, Jesus. God bless you, Memaw. Yarrow’s good to stanch a wound. Might live after all.

  The house, same as always. Only, Dog’s come back. She bounds out to greet him, looks only a little puzzled when he draws back favoring his shoulder. There’s love for you. Dog’s come back.

  “No, I ain’t brung you nothing. You’re on your own and so am I.”

  Get to the bed and lay there. Oh, sweet Jesus, how it hurts. Whole left side. Both sides of his mind—can’t think of nothing else. Pokes his finger in the hole till he feels the bullet as a hard, mean lump. Listens with disinterest to his screams
, shoves silver yarrow leaves into his mouth to stop them. Chews. Bitch’s got no idea all the trouble she’s brought.

  Got to get it out of there. The bullet. Leave it and he’ll surely die a mean, hard death from poison in his blood. Pincers, that’s what’s needed. Pinchers. Grab hold of the fucker. He lies back, stares at the ceiling, how it drops close, then backs away in rhythm with his heartbeats.

  Pincers. Stops his mind on that and leaves it there awhile. Pair of springy twigs? Too soft, too slippery. Pincers. Look like scissors, scissors he carried off out of the hospital. Scissors don’t pinch.

  Pliers. Danny gets up, staggers around the room, rummages in each little pile of his possessions stuck in crevices and crannies till he finds the needle-nose pliers he bought for pulling rusted, headless nails out of the wall lath. Yeah, these ones will do just fine. Holds them in his lighter flame. Jams them in his wound.

  Oh, JesusmotherfuckingChrist, goddamn. Spits out yarrow leaves. Digs around inside the hole with the pliers, can’t stop screaming. Pokes at the bullet. Once, twice, scrapes against a bone. Oh, sweet Jesus. Finally gets hold of it and pulls like hell. Screams without ceasing till he’s got the bullet in his hand. Slaps yarrow in the gushing wound. His work is done.

  It’s either good work or he’ll die. Right now he doesn’t give a shit. Right now just, please, dear Lord, let him pass out.

  Pass out with her cool hand on his forehead, her long hair fanned across his cheek. His Katherine.

  SOME MORNING. MAYBE THE next one, maybe several mornings past it, who the hell knows. Sky pulses in his eyes. Dog lies beside him. Something’s carcass on the floor—she’s eaten. Maybe he’s got a fever, maybe not. Shoulder hurts, sweet Jesus, aches, but he can move it. Just a little. Lord love you, Memaw. He is still alive.

  Takes lying there awhile to recognize the gnawing in his belly by its rightful name of hunger. Room whirls when he stands, hands flat on the damp wallpaper, steadying himself. Meat, that’s what he needs. Moves to the middle of the room, stands still to gentle down its spinning. Meat. And see what’s up with Katherine. Meat and Katherine, only shit that’s real.

  Checks the carcass on the floor. No meat there. Just feathers and bones. Picks up a handful of the feathers, holds them in a bar of sunlight so they’ll shine. Seven turkey feathers gleaming gold, indigo, turquoise. Big and pretty as an eagle’s. Ka-ther-ine. Every pretty thing he’ll give to her.

  Stuffs the feathers in his shirt. Staggers outside and drinks some water at the stream, splashes his face.

  Heads toward the cabin.

  It hurts worse climbing down than up. He grabs hold of little saplings, points of rocks. Swallows his screams. Making too much noise to sneak up on a rabbit or a squirrel. Want meat, you got to hike out to the store and buy some Slim Jims.

  Ka-ther-ine.

  It’s slow going. He gets the shakes in shady spots. Gets them in the sunshine, too. Then sometimes they go away and he feels fine. Feels fine under his hanging rock. Always feels fine there. Meat can wait till he’s seen Katherine. She’s more real than meat. If he’s Odysseus, she’s his Penelope.

  He eats some leaves, little ferns far back in his cave. The sun sinks into afternoon. Fire in his blood, fire in his wounded shoulder. Then comes a godsent rabbit, rabbit still as he is, just outside. Danny uses everything he’s learned of quiet to sneak up on it, inches at a time. His stomach knots, spit rolls into his mouth. You only get one chance, one try. His good right arm shoots out. Grabs the rabbit by its neck.

  One dead rabbit. Danny sits there holding it and drooling.

  Ka-ther-ine.

  He creeps farther down the mountain, rabbit’s back legs hooked into his belt, turkey feathers tickling, scratching at his chest. Sun whirls around his head, sinks low. Can’t go back up the mountain, grill the rabbit, till he sees her. First she shoots him, then she starves him. Can’t beat a good woman’s love.

  Inches. All the farther he can go without making a sound. Every inch gets him closer. Then at last he’s close enough, as close as he can get. Reach-out-and-touch-her close. Settles himself behind a rock, rabbit still tucked in at his waist, limp little rabbit paws so soft and scratchy. At last, when the setting sun’s rays fall blood-red onto his hands and feet, Danny hears that sweetest of all sounds, that little bang the door makes when it’s opened, when it hits the outside wall.

  Door might as well have hit him in the gut. All his wind’s knocked out. Just seeing her, being close enough to smell her hair. All his longing narrows down to that. Wrong to ask for more. Bad business.

  Oh, here she comes! Just look at her, how beautiful she is. His Katherine.

  She passes so close he can see the sun’s red rays reflected in her eyes. See how she wears her shirt outside her jeans now, leans ever so slightly back, body already shifting for the baby. Wonders why he hadn’t noticed it before.

  Baby’ll change her like he never could. Should have figured that out long ago, saved himself a lot of trouble. With him, she could always walk away, turn her back, take up her fucking weaving. Baby won’t let her walk away. From it. From him. From anything.

  His baby. Baby made out of their love. Just like he dreamed about with old Janelle. With Katherine, it’s real.

  He unbuttons two shirt buttons, slides the feathers out one at a time, stands up with great difficulty, right where she can see him if she’ll only turn around. Fans out the feathers in the path for her to find them—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So pretty there. Then he scuttles back into the undergrowth. Waits with his heart up in his mouth. Where he can taste it. Suck on it. Chew it into little pieces.

  Fucking whore! She sees the feathers in the fucking middle of the path, doesn’t even look around. Knows seven feathers are no accident. Knows he’s the one had to have left them. Knows he’s close, so close she can call him with a whisper. Danny. Danny. Oh, how he listens for it, her calling his name. Thinks even that he hears it, like a whisper in the trees.

  But that’s all it is. Bitch doesn’t want it, not any of it. Steps over his feathers and moves on. Runs. Slams her door and shoots the bolt.

  Come back. Open your door. Call out my name and take me in. I need you, need to lie beside you, feel the hard knot of my baby in you. Hard knot with a little bird-size beating heart. He screams it with a voice that’s silent as the rocks that hide him.

  DANNY SITS IN HIS shallow cave, tries not to think about his shoulder. Skins the rabbit with his sin-cleansed knife, pulls away its soft fur from the glistening flesh. Fur so soft he’ll keep it. Make a cover for his baby son. Bring a little rabbit skin to wrap his baby bunting in. Where’d that come from? Memaw? Someone, his mama, before that? What the hell’s a bunting? He makes tiny cuts into the rabbit’s fur. Scrapes the skin, gentle as a caress.

  He’s finished now. Puts the skin carefully aside. Holds up the rabbit by its ears and grins.

  Bitch doesn’t want him?

  Maybe not right this fucking minute. But she will.

  Oh, yes. She will.

  45

  Katherine’s Bargain

  IT’S A BARGAIN SHE HAS STRUCK. WITH WHATEVER ONE STRIKES bargains with. If she locks the door and bolts the shutters and only goes out when she can’t do otherwise, nothing bad will happen. Danny will not die from her bullet in his shoulder; he will go away before long to some other wilderness and she can have her baby and not be afraid.

  Because there is a baby, she is certain now. And she is afraid.

  If he does not go away, she has the gun.

  It has all worked quite well so far. Except for the part where she rarely sleeps for hearing him in every little night breeze, every snapping twig, seeing him between the shutter slats in every moon shadow. And the part where she spends all her days with her heart pounding, starting at the slightest sound. The problem is the light’s too dim to weave, to read; she has no distractions, only fear.

  The problem is her food is running out.

  Today, with her tiny knife, she makes one mo
re. She has started gouging marks into her wall again, near the entrance to the kitchen. Fifteen, the number of days she has spent hiding in the cabin. She hasn’t seen him, but she can feel his presence all around her, the way a gathering storm charges the air. Meanwhile, honeysuckle scents the breeze, spring’s almost gone.

  She folds the knife and puts it in her pocket, where it lives now. Sits in the rocking chair he brought her. Her heart hurts from missing him, as if she has an actual physical pain inside her rib cage, and it makes no sense. Makes no sense, either, that every night she rolls up two of their three quilts to simulate his body and lies there pressed against them, smothering her face in them to catch his scent; it’s bitter, like the hulls of walnuts.

  Her memories come then, not thoughts or images but pure sensations that spin and shake her. In dreams his face floats toward her as if he’s traveling through fog. But who is it she misses, dreams of? Who does she remember? Not the man who smashed her car, not the man who bound her to him in ways no one should bind anyone and knew all the while what he was doing, not the man who tried to kill her child. No, it’s the boy. The boy who stood that day beside the garden oak, so fierce and thin and frightened, he is the one she misses.

  But which of these is real? The man? The boy? Neither? Both? It doesn’t matter. It all comes down to the same thing. That’s why she’s shut herself in where he can’t get at her. And will stay however long she has to, won’t allow herself to think that far ahead.

  She’s gained strength as the days have passed, and her morning sickness is largely gone. Yet her confinement forces her to spend her hours drinking strong teas, eating thick soups, rocking and staring through a crack between closed shutters like a convalescent. Five days ago, she heated water on the stove and took a sponge bath. It felt like a celebration, a religious rite, her scrubbing away the ten days’ worth of grime caked on her skin. She can’t do it often; heating water wastes wood she has to bring in from the shed. The day before yesterday her body started once again to itch and stink. When she shifts position in the rocker, small puffs of foul air rise up from between the layers of her clothing. She sniffs—disgusted, fascinated—at the wildness she exudes.