In Wilderness

by Diane Thomas

  Through the crack between the shutters, moisture from last night’s rain still sparkles on the violets and young dandelion spears covering the ground. Saliva pools under her tongue. Later, she will dash outside and pick enough to fill the pewter mixing bowl, run back in and eat them raw. Only, the bowl is not on any of the dark shelves in the pie safe. Nor is it in either of the wooden storage bins that flank the fireplace. There’s no place else to look but one. She climbs onto a bench and peers along the top shelf where she used to keep her gun. The bowl is not there either. It’s nowhere.

  She chafes her arms against a sudden chill. Did he somehow get in the house while she was sleeping? If that’s what happened, why, of all things, did he take the pewter bowl? To make her see he’s been here, been that close to her? She always thought she’d know this, sense it, with no sign from him. Will she wake one night to find him sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her, the full moon flinging blue-white light across his nakedness?

  And if yes, what will she do?

  Her last memory of the mixing bowl was two days ago. She was sitting just inside the open door, her gun beside her, picking clean some creasy greens she’d yanked up from the stream bank where the moss smells rank as a dirt basement. She had the bowl in her lap, would not have left it outside on the porch—outside is where he is. Nonetheless, she cracks the door, peers out.

  And there it is. Last night’s wild wind blew it back along the railing where she couldn’t see it.

  Or was it something else? The thought provokes a tightening in her throat, equal parts terror and desire. How long before she’s rid of it, this wanting him no matter what? She must remember where she puts things. Some night he truly might break in and take something. She’ll need to know.

  She grabs the bowl, hurries in and bolts the door, settles herself once again in her rocker, in the half-light from the shuttered windows. It isn’t pleasant in the house, it stinks. Once each day she empties the slop bucket, always at a different time so he can’t anticipate it; something he taught her, something from the war—to excise him from her mind will take a lot of little cuts, not one big slash as she had hoped. Yesterday she went outside in early morning, so today she’ll go out in late afternoon. But it’s always the same place, a sharp gouge of a ravine out past the privy, which is probably not wise. She’s made a holster for the pistol from one leg of a pair of jeans already grown too small, ties it around her waist, nestles the gun inside it every time she leaves the cabin.

  The sun is sliding low, but there’s still time. She takes measured swallows from her teacup on the dogwood side table—the first peppermint leaves from the garden, delicate and with no pennyroyal aftertaste—tries to will herself calm.

  The air outside is not as warm as she imagined. On the privy path she knows his presence as a prickling of her skin, a stillness among the trees. She runs with the bucket, nearly trips over a gnarled root, hurls the slops into the ditch and leaves with one hand clapped over her mouth.

  Heading back, she veers from the path, skids down the slick bank where the stream rushes over rocks flung there like afterthoughts, and squats to rinse her bucket. He could be anywhere. She hastily sloshes water in the bucket, starts toward home. One more day he has not shown himself, did not sneak up from behind to cinch his arms around her when she couldn’t see—sometimes fear can be confused with longing, regret with desire.

  He tried to kill her child.

  The path is all in shadow and the sun has nearly set. She used to long for sundown in this place, because that’s when the sky looked capable of lifting her high up into itself, swallowing her into its afterglow; because on each side of where she walked the green rooms beckoned. Now she fears sundown because of Danny and she knows neither the sky nor the green rooms will save her.

  Not looking at the ground, she almost doesn’t see the seven turkey feathers, iridescent in the fading light, fanned out in the center of the path. She nearly steps on them, lets loose a startled “Oh.”

  He’s left them. Put them there while she was gone. He came that close.

  Danny! Her heart calls out to him so loud there is no damp, far, sun-starved cove that doesn’t hear it. Yet her mouth makes no sound. The feathers are beautiful and intricate. Their colors change like facets in a mirror ball when she steps over them, walks on.

  She slides the gun out from its makeshift holster. It lies heavy in her hand. What if he’s there when she gets back to the cabin, waiting for her? She’s locked her door, but locks don’t mean a thing to him. Clammy sweat crawls down between her breasts. She doesn’t see him on the path. Inside the cabin she looks everywhere, even up the dark mouth of the hearth. He isn’t there, he isn’t anywhere. Relief masquerades as disappointment.

  Or is it the other way around?

  This night, even with the gun beside her, she falls into a broken sleep, unsure when she is dreaming and when she is not. Wakes wanting him, as she might wake from a sudden pain, and then remembers all she needs to, hates to, must. There’s a cacophony out on the porch. Birds. Screaming. She reaches for the gun. Her mouth is filled with fear, the taste of metal. How has she come to be afraid of birds?

  She jerks open the door. A pair of jays arc toward her, shrieking, dive-bombing her so she will back away. They’re guarding something.

  Then she sees.

  Hanging from the porch rafters, trussed up by its feet and turning slowly, a membranous form glistens in the new light. A small, elongated baby with slick, pointed ears that stand out from its head.

  That’s what the jays have come for. They’re flying at it, picking out its eyes. The birds have pecked the baby’s eyes until they’re bleeding. Just like in Memaw’s lullaby.

  Katherine screams and screams. Aims her gun and shoots. Once. Twice. First at the birds heading toward the baby through the air. Then at nothing but the dark trees.

  46

  The Gook

  AGAIN, HE SITS ON HIS HEELS UNDER HIS ROCK OVERHANG. SHE’S GOT to come out sometime. Got to. If a blue jay shrieks four times in a row. If he sees an animal bigger than a squirrel. He wants her so bad he’s trembling. Wants even just to look at her again.

  You get used to things. How her skin smelled fragrant like the garden, even in winter. How, nights, he lay always with one hand coiled in her long, dark hair and the other warm between her legs. You get used to things, they’re yours. Take them away, it’s like gouging out pieces of your flesh.

  Blue jay screams three times and flies away. Fuck that. How many bird screams, how many possums and raccoons rustling the bushes will it take to bring her out? Even with his bunged-up shoulder, he can run on four legs like a wolf. Quieter that way, safer. Less of him to see. Runs down to the clearing’s edge, end of the trees. Bitch shot him in the fucking shoulder. Loves him so much she’ll shoot him in the head next time. Didn’t like his trussed-up rabbit-baby, though, not even with its little diaper.

  Long after his feet go numb, the door opens. His heart pounds like a piston. He follows her down the privy path, just like that first evening. That’s how far back he wishes he could go. Look there, she’s still got the baby in her. Memaw taught him how to tell. That little paunch where she’s tucked in her shirt to keep the bugs away. Weird how he can’t take his eyes off it. Little shit got past all Memaw’s tea. Kid’s one tough little motherfucker, hard to kill. Like Danny.

  So many tears you wonder where you’ve carried them, how you’ve borne their weight.

  He follows close beside her all the way back to the cabin, his vision blurred, his sounds covered by a ruffling breeze. Watches her go inside and light a lamp. Watches her lamp move from window to window as she closes shutters, its glow nothing then but horizontal lines. The shutters tremble when she bolts them.

  Cold now, dark. Night’s a gook. Kill you when your back’s turned. He climbs up to his overhang, sleeps curled into himself, fist jammed in his mouth to keep from crying out in dreams.

  MORNING. SKY’S RED. GOOD day never starts with a
red sky. Red sky at morning, the sailors take warning. Pawpaw’s teaching, learned it in the Navy.

  Got to get himself some reefer, reefer’s good for tears. Won’t dry them up, just makes it so you never give a shit. Sit and play with them. Wipe your hands in them. Use them to clean crud off your knife.

  Reefer. The word pings off the insides of his skull as he climbs over rocks and scrubby saplings. Reefer, so he can watch her like that first day, come to her like that night in the storm. Reefer. Because stepping out where she can see him is like kicking in a plate glass window, walking through its rain of shards. Reefer that’s in his orchard—and his mattress—in the house where he and Katherine will live someday.

  The noon sun’s a steel disc in a pale gray sky that quiets everything. Danny moves as usual, doesn’t make a sound. Hasn’t been home in some days. Worth coming in the front way, through the orchard. This time last year, just wanting to be near her, he ground one of its soft, ripe peaches against his open mouth, his teeth, till juice dripped off his chin and ran between his fingers.

  Ka-ther-ine. How can she stay apart from him, untangle herself so thoroughly from him, after living how they did? Might as well just rip him clean in two. Memory seizes him so completely he almost misses the invasive scent, a flower sweetness mixed with sweat that calls up cinderblock juke joints set far back on highways out of town. He stops still. Only his eyes move.

  There’s sound comes with the smell. Boots crunching on dry leaves. Someone whistling some old song off some long-gone radio. Fucker even trills it. Aftershave, sweat, some corny song.

  And blinding orange surveyor’s tape knotted around a nearby hickory. That’s when he sees the man. Skinny little gook in khakis skulking around outside Danny’s hooch. Moves sideways like a crab, like maybe his knees aren’t so good. Danny straightens, tucks in his shirt, pats the knife in his pocket. Approaches him without a sound. He’s five feet away when the gook hears him, or maybe only senses him, and turns. Frowns.

  Danny folds his arms across his chest, stares him down. “Excuse me, sir,” looking him straight in the eye, “what might you be doing on my property?”

  Gook’s shorter than he seemed. They’re all short, gooks.

  “I think there must be some mistake, sir.” Glares at Danny, gives back what he gets. “This house and all the land around it is the property of Carlisle-Colorado Mining and Development, the company that hired me to survey it.”

  Danny’s turn to glare. Important not to miss a beat. “You’d think they’d let the neighbors know. I’ve rented right beside them, kept care of this place up here going on two years now. Cared for it like it was my own.”

  Gook’s face brightens. “You live in the cabin, then.” He nods in the direction Danny came. “You must know how to get in touch with the lady that owns the place. That Mrs. Reid. Mr. Carlisle wants to talk with her.”

  “What for?”

  “Wants to buy her out. Good price, too.” He stops, considers, then goes on. “Mr. Carlisle means to turn this whole area, right up to the government wilderness, into some kind of big year-round showplace. Golf course, tennis courts, horse stables, even a man-made lake with a real sand beach.” Gook says these last words with wonder, like they’d won some kind of prize. “Lake’s what he wants the cabin for.”

  “Wants the cabin for a lake?” That’s crazy.

  “Wants the land.” Gook’s getting wound up now. “Lowest point around, creeks running through it. Dam them up, you got a proper lake. And houses, people living everywhere around it when it’s done. People living in big houses all around here, that’s what Mr. Carlisle wants.”

  The gook’s words buzz in Danny’s head, hard to translate.

  “She won’t sell. Tell you that right now.” The knife weighs heavy in his pocket. “No, she loves that place. She’d never leave it.”

  “Oh, he’ll make her a good deal. She won’t be one bit sorry.”

  “She won’t sell. Wouldn’t sell to me, won’t sell to you neither.”

  Gook’s got an axe stuck in a stump maybe thirty feet away. Second nature, scoping out the likely weapons.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  Son. How long since anybody called him that? “Danny MacLean. What’s yours?”

  “Lonnie Washburn.”

  “Well. Where you hail from, Lonnie, Mr. Washburn?”

  “I come from Wynne, other side of Elkmont.”

  “Wynne, huh? You’ve come a ways. You the only man out on this job?”

  “Am today. We’re mostly done. I’m just up here confirming where the house sits on the property.”

  “What’s Mr. Carlisle plan to do with it, the house I mean?” Danny waves his good arm at it. Gook hasn’t noticed the gimp one. Must not see too good.

  “They say this here’s going to be the clubhouse. Say he’s going to build it back just like it was. Velvet curtains, crystal chandeliers. Rent it out so folks can have their parties.”

  “Reckon he’ll keep the orchard?”

  “Orchard? Couldn’t say.”

  “He’d be smart to keep it. It’s beautiful in springtime. Summertime and early fall, it gives good fruit.”

  Gook nods.

  “Last year I did some work on it, some of the trees. My wife Katie and me, we picked the fruit. She canned a lot of it. Wish you could meet my Katie. Got that long, black hair down to the middle of her back. We got a baby coming in the fall.” Danny grins big and wide.

  Gook smiles. “Well, that’s great, son.”

  Danny wishes the gook hadn’t said that, about it being great about the baby. Wishes he hadn’t called him son again. It’s given him a sadness, a kind of wistfulness he badly wants to get shed of.

  “You seen the orchard yet?” he says.

  “Walked around it. Never really gave a look.”

  “Let me take you. Show you what we’ve done.”

  “I don’t want to put you out, son.”

  “No trouble. Only take a minute.”

  “Okay, I’ll have a look. Got a couple apple trees myself back in Wynne.”

  “This way, Mr. Washburn. Down that path right there, I’m right behind you. There’s thick blackberries growing alongside it. We picked gallons of them last year, me and my Katie. Best berries I ever ate.”

  The knife still fits his hand like it was made for it. Trees rustle with the same papery sound as palm fronds in the wind. Danny doesn’t need to think about it, grabs the gook’s chin and jerks his head up, cuts a deep, clean slice across his throat. Holds him like a lover while he spasms. Gray hair, blue eyes, pink skin.

  Shit. What has he done?

  Oh, sweet Christ Jesus.

  His own blood runs cold all through him. He lays the old man gently down and pulls him by his ankles to the orchard. Pain in Danny’s shoulder turning everything he sees to silver as he drags him to a gully by the peach trees. Kicks dirt over him, over his face, his head. Maybe enough to keep the buzzards off him, maybe not. Must have hiked up here, no way to bring a truck. Maybe no one’ll find him.

  But now everything’s all changed. Just like San Francisco, no matter how you look at it. A mistake. A jolt of memory. Could happen anywhere.

  With anyone.

  With her.

  Inside the house, Danny’s reefer’s still stuffed in his mattress where he left it, with some papers not too damp. He rolls a joint slowly, tries to think of nothing else. Flicks open his lighter, stares into its fire. The joint flames, its seeds crackle and spark. He takes a long drag, holds the smoke and feels a singing in his blood.

  Together forever.

  She shot twice at the rabbit. That leaves two bullets in the gun.

  Summer

  47

  His Baby, Too

  KATHERINE DIGS DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BURLAP RICE SACK, works her fingers into its ragged seam, comes up with eleven dirty and chewed-looking grains. All the beans are gone. She slides her hand along the grim edges of all the pie-safe shelves. Nothing. The weather is ho
t and dry, even for early June; what few vegetables she managed to plant this year are withering for lack of rain. There’s nothing else to do but walk to town. Otherwise she’ll have no food. Nor will her baby.

  It’s begun to move, the merest flutter, as if she’d swallowed live a small tropical fish. Just like that other baby. But this baby will move inside her every day and every night, until it moves in the wide world all on its own. Because she wills it so. Because she will go to town for it, get food for it, for her. Because she will pay attention. Because she will not be afraid.

  She goes into the front room, sits in the rocker, strokes her belly lightly through her jeans.

  “Dear little fish, my little fish, I promise you’ll grow up with singing grass and forest animals. And always have enough to eat.”

  She does not deserve this child, its innocence. Her fears for it arise from circumstances she created through her weaknesses, circumstances that already have endangered it. Yet these same weaknesses led to her child’s creation. What was the right of it? What was the wrong? She can’t unravel the one from the other. Would it make any difference if she could?

  Today she would love nothing better than to lie all morning on her warm rock at the pond’s edge, her shirt hiked up to show her belly. Would her baby feel its warmth, see its rays as the same deep, pulsing red she sees when she looks through closed eyes at the noon sun? But Danny is out there somewhere watching, so her lying with her baby at the pond’s edge will not come to pass.