The Qualities of Wood

by Mary Vensel White

  The band finished their show and announced the next band, which was slated to begin in half an hour.

  ‘Want another beer?’ Lonnie asked.

  She nodded and Nowell waved him off. After he left, Nowell said, ‘Somebody has to drive.’

  ‘Would it kill you to have fun?’

  ‘I am having fun.’

  ‘Fooled me,’ she said. ‘But then, I probably don’t remember what you look like, having fun.’ She spotted Katherine and Max near a corn-on-the-cob booth. ‘Look, there’s Katherine.’

  ‘Do you want to go talk to her?’

  ‘Yeah, let’s go.’

  ‘I’ll stay here and wait for Lonnie,’ he said.

  ‘Alright.’ She maneuvered her way through the crowd, and Max saw her first.

  ‘Vivian, how are you?’

  Katherine’s chin was shiny with butter and in her fist she held a half-eaten corncob and a thick wad of napkins. She looked over Vivian’s shoulder. ‘Where’s Nowell?’

  ‘He’s waiting for Lonnie to come back with beer.’ She turned towards the beer stand and at the exact moment she picked Lonnie out of the crowd, she saw him fall backwards suddenly. He stumbled then lurched forward, gripping a red-faced man by the shirt. The crowd around them scattered like bugs as the men careened around in a tight hold.

  Panicked, she tried to signal Nowell but couldn’t find him in the broad canvas of indistinct faces. When she looked back, Lonnie was standing by himself, a trickle of blood running down his chin. A beige, wide-brimmed hat bobbed through the crowd towards the cleared area. It was Sheriff Townsend. On each side, people stepped back to let him through. Lonnie looked half-crazed, greedily scanning the crowd. Vivian had an urge to jump behind Max and hide.

  Suddenly, Nowell emerged into the cleared circle like an actor beginning his scene. He put his hand on Lonnie’s chest. Lonnie shrugged him off and walked rapidly in the opposite direction, and Nowell immediately followed. The whole episode lasted only moments.

  Katherine saw the distressed look on Vivian’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have to go.’

  Before either of them had a chance to respond, Vivian pushed through the crowd in the direction the men had gone.

  The sun was a mere amber sliver over the rooftops; a cool breeze swept down the streets. Vivian walked as quickly as she could through the crowd, which seemed to get larger and denser as it slowly became night. They’re coming for the fireworks, she thought. In a few minutes, she reached the Ferris wheel. She watched the tanned legs dangling from the top-most cars and the grinning faces as they swung around the bottom.

  It occurred to her that Lonnie had probably gone to the jeep. Vivian hurried across the street to the parking area and quickly found the spot where they had parked. The jeep was gone. As she stared, counting again the rows from the street to make sure it was the right one, a gray minivan pulled into the space. Slowly, she walked back to the street. There was no sign of them. Nowell wouldn’t leave without her, so Lonnie must have beaten him to the jeep and left. Nowell probably returned to the festival to look for her.

  As she weaved through the cars, the twilight sun cast long, weird shadows. All at once, she knew where Lonnie was. He went to the house, she thought, after drinking too much and picking a fight with a stranger. He made such a fuss about Mrs Brodie coming over. All this time, she’d been suspicious of Mr Stokes, but he was trying to tell her something, something about Lonnie. More than once, Mr Stokes found Lonnie in the woods, and he warned her about his temper. Lonnie left the same day she arrived, the day they found Chanelle Brodie. She shook her head. She had known Lonnie for years; he was bearish at times but harmless. Wasn’t he?

  The sun at the horizon line was liquid orange like lava. In the parking area, the cars smelled of burning oil and dust. Vivian knew that Katherine and Max were waiting at the festival, concerned about the way she ran off. She stood at the edge of the road, her mind racing as the lights of the temporary amusement park glared down. A group of people walked towards her, laughing and talking. She recognized the teenagers who had sat next to them on the grass. It’s action that matters, her mother had said. Vivian wondered what Pheola H. Roundtree would do, Pheola with the strength of a mountain range.

  The bare-chested boy led the pack, swaggering and talking loudly. Vivian asked him where they were going, and he started to smirk until he registered the troubled look on her face. He named a bordering town. As she fumbled with her purse, Vivian explained where she needed to go and offered them money to take her.

  The boy held out his hand, shaking his head. ‘We don’t need your money, lady. We’ll take you.’

  Over the vast fields and empty roads, and the areas that had been cleared for parking and amusement, the buzzing of night bugs blended in harmony with the telephone wires overhead. The two young girls exchanged amused looks.

  ‘Thank you,’ Vivian managed.

  Their car was crowded with five and they drove mostly in silence. Vivian’s mind raced and she felt queasy from the pizza and beer. She wondered if she should have found Nowell first. Rushing to the house suddenly seemed like a very foolish thing to do.

  They dropped her off at the mouth of the driveway. Perched on its white wooden stake, the metal mailbox gleamed in the moonlight. The door was slightly open; white paper peeked through the slit. She had forgotten to retrieve the mail that day.

  Behind the house, the moon was drawn on the navy canvas of the sky, a circle of chalk on a blackboard; it had gotten very dark since she left the festival. On the throne of the shallow incline, the house glowed from inside: yellow light seeped through its windows like a jack o’ lantern.

  Vivian walked past the jeep, which was parked halfway up the driveway. Underneath the hood, something whirred softly although the engine had stopped. In front of the jeep was Mrs Brodie’s red hatchback.

  31

  Yellow light blared from the kitchen and the two windows in front twinkled like eyes over the big, gaping mouth of the porch. The door was open. As she got closer, Vivian saw that the whole house was ablaze with light; every window glowed except for the triangular panes at the peak.

  Carefully, she pushed open the screen door, noticing where it had been bent at the edge, almost ripped off the hinges. The kitchen was loud with light and spent activity. Several drawers and cupboards were open, some of the contents spilled onto the floor.

  Vivian walked towards Nowell’s study, still dark, and her hand went to her mouth when she saw the scattering of paper and books. Through a crack in the curtain, a sliver of moonlight fell on the computer and over the center of the keyboard.

  In the living room, the pillows they had left in the middle of the floor had been kicked against a wall and the light was left on. In the bedrooms, it was the same: drawers opened, closets explored. In the spare room, the newspaper she had arranged for painting had been trampled and torn, the bag of supplies emptied onto the floor. Their bedroom was dimmer than some of the other rooms. The light bulb in the overhead lamp had a low wattage and they had sold the lighthouse lamps to Mr Stokes along with the dresser. He said they reminded him of a picture he saw on a greeting card once, a painting of a whitesailed boat perched on the back of a rolling, angry wave. He had kept the card tacked to one of his walls for years, he said.

  Vivian became aware of a dull pain in her elbow, the familiar warning of impending bad weather. The curtain was open; normally, she closed it in the afternoon to keep out the heat from the setting sun. She had forgotten most of her regular routine that day. The mail, the curtains. Walking to the window, she stumbled over her jewelry box, a pale, velvet-lined one that played a lilting song. A present from her parents, her father really, on her thirteenth birthday. She picked it up and turned it over. The slight tear in the blue velvet lining was now a long slash and all of her jewelry was gone, except for a silver hoop earring that had gotten stuck on the frayed edge of the fabric. Suddenly, she noticed the shiny fragments, not gone but sprayed ov
er the bed like mercury raindrops. There was one of her dangling heart earrings, and here was the star bracelet from Dot.

  Leaning her forehead against the cool window, she looked outside. A sharp mildew odor reminded her of the well outside, its brick lips open to the dark sky, and of the nights when her mother brought ice wrapped in a soft towel for her elbow, the times they sat in the quiet living room, listening to the thunder.

  A glimmer appeared in the trees. Vivian’s quick breaths clouded the glass. The light flickered, peeking out amidst the dense trunks, jumping haphazardly through the foliage. In a moment, it was gone.

  She found the spare flashlight in the drawer of her nightstand. The bulb stayed lit for only a few seconds before it faded. She tossed it onto the bed and rushed down the hallway. In the kitchen, she wasn’t surprised to find the other flashlight missing from the drawer near the pantry. Didn’t they have another one somewhere else? She couldn’t think straight. She called Lonnie’s name. There was no answer, only the rooster clock ticking loudly in synchrony with the blood pulsing at her temples.

  She picked up the telephone and listened to the dial tone. Sheriff Townsend was at the festival; he had seen Lonnie fighting. But this was Lonnie, big and childish but harmless, wasn’t he? She hung up the receiver. Lonnie threw some sort of fit and went outside to cool off. He’d been spending lots of time in the woods. Maybe it soothed him. She just needed to find him. She would clean up the house, clean up Lonnie, before Sheriff Townsend came.

  Vivian climbed the staircase so quickly that she almost hit her head on the trap door. Throwing it back forcefully, she peered inside. The attic was dark but she could make out the silhouette of the purplish bureau, the several boxes along one side.

  But Lonnie’s had so much to drink, she thought, and he didn’t want Mrs Brodie nosing around. He’s so unpredictable. Maybe I don’t know him, not really. And all this time, I’ve been thinking…

  She flew down the stairs, ran outside and around the side of the house. The night air was falling in shelves of temperature. Now and then she hit a warm pocket as she leapt through the high grass. Her feet made quick cuts through the blades. She didn’t know what was going on, but she sensed with every pore that it wasn’t good.

  Her eyes became accustomed to the moonlight. The woods were a very different place without the flashlight to guide her steps. She stumbled frequently, tripping over branches and stubbing her toes on small, jutting rocks. The way to Mr Stokes’s house had become familiar to her in the confused, uncertain way that a recurring dream is familiar. The moon was a paper lantern peeking in and out of the tree limbs; its glow was muted and grayish.

  The stories she had heard came alive as she ran through the woods: tales of love and loss, loneliness and death. The woods were the hiding place for Ronella and her lover and the secret route for Sherman to Kitty Brodie. They held the untimely graves of two people: Russell Gardiner and Chanelle Brodie. So many people had been influenced by this small piece of land, this chunk of wild kept safe from the asphalt road that now wound its way into town. Betty Gardiner wouldn’t abandon it, even when she was elderly and alone, Sherman returned to it again and again in his middle age, and Lonnie hesitated to leave now. Abe Stokes had spent a lifetime here, she thought. Even Nowell went into the woods, away from his veritable hermitage, his wife. Vivian was drawn as well.

  The trees rushed by, formless and aloof, like they did the summer she separated from her father. That afternoon, she stayed calm for a long time, moving between the thick trunks, jumping over soft, leafy spots and pushing off stumps and fallen branches. She would stay calm now. Soon, the trees drew back and Mr Stokes’s house appeared. Vivian felt a sense of relief and trusted it. Her suspicions about Mr Stokes were ungrounded. His house seemed warm and welcoming. Dark brown with darker trim, accented with reddish brick – the white marbling within just perceptible in the dark night – Mr Stokes’s house pulsed, a dim light from what she knew to be the living room, its heartbeat.

  Vivian passed the two stunted tree trunks in his work area, and the neatly trimmed bushes with their red blooms. The flowers had dulled and wilted; they hadn’t survived the heat wave. She neared the house. The curtains were drawn over the dining room’s wide window.

  There’s something about the woods, Mrs Gardiner, haven’t you felt it?

  The trees were still full and green but their leaves were dry, starting to fall. Vivian didn’t know much about nature, only the little that she’d read and the things she’d been told by her father and later, Mr Stokes. Somewhere, there were animals already preparing for winter, but some plants hadn’t yet flowered, late bloomers.

  When she knocked on the door, the sound reverberated. She waited a moment and knocked again. Feet padded along the creaky old floors. Stepping back, she waited for the doorknob to turn, which it did, slowly, before it receded into the house.

  A woman leaned into the opening, her long, black hair pulled over her shoulder like a shawl. She watched Vivian expectantly.

  Vivian looked around the front of the house, as though maybe she’d come to the wrong place.

  ‘Are you looking for Abe?’

  ‘Y-yes,’ she stammered. ‘I’m looking for Mr Stokes.’

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, not unkindly, and Vivian inhaled sharply. ‘You’re Miss Burnside?’ she asked.

  She turned towards the interior of the house, as if she would call Mr Stokes, then turned back. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘I bought a book from you last week, and took one of your brochures.’

  She nodded. ‘I remember now. Should I wake him?’

  ‘No,’ Vivian said. ‘I’m his neighbor, that’s all.’ She motioned vaguely with her hand towards the white house.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Miss Burnside glanced at her wristwatch.

  ‘What? No. We’ve had a disturbance, but it’s not his, he doesn’t need to…’ She thought about the two abandoned cars in the driveway, the disturbed state of the old, white house. I’ve had too much beer, she told herself. Maybe Mrs Brodie’s car wouldn’t start back up and she walked home. Lonnie threw his fit and ran off, like he always does.

  ‘What kind of disturbance?’ Miss Burnside gathered her nightgown around her neck and leaned slightly outside.

  Vivian started to back away. He’s got his own life, she told herself. It’s not what you thought. This is our problem, our family. ‘It’s nothing, everything’s fine.’

  She looked over Vivian’s shoulder and closed the door the slightest amount. ‘I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped by.’

  Vivian began to cross the clearing, feeling foolish and strangely, hurt.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Miss Burnside called. The door was opened wide again, and the light from the hallway passed through her sheer nightgown, tracing the outline of her long legs. ‘What was your name, so I can tell Abe?’

  ‘Vivian,’ she said. ‘Mrs Gardiner.’

  In the doorway, someone came up behind her. Vivian instinctively stepped backwards. Miss Burnside turned toward the other person and their faces almost touched as they spoke. Mr Stokes, she thought. Suddenly, his dark form had eclipsed the white gown and he was out on the lawn. He wasn’t what Vivian had thought he was, not at all. She imagined that he was lonely, suffering. She thought: his lop-sided grin and the way he kept showing up to flirt with her. She didn’t want his help anymore. Nobody was who she thought they were. She was blanketed amidst the tree trunks, camouflaged in darkness. She was sure he couldn’t see her anymore. Picking up her pace, she plunged into the woods, determined to put an end to things.

  32

  The trees seemed taller now, the sky a dark, uncaring abyss. Vivian heard the crackling of leaves and twigs, and dirt crunching like asphalt under a roller. Branches reached out to scratch her arms and tiny rocks infiltrated her shoes, digging into the soft soles of her feet. She looked back once in the direction of Mr Stokes’s house and saw only blackness. Kicking through small bushes and stumbling over dips and short
rises, she moved faster. It was Lonnie, she thought. His temper. When he left town after helping Nowell, the same day they found Chanelle, it looked suspicious, so he came back. He’s afraid. What’s he doing out here tonight?

  A branch snapped somewhere behind her, and she hurried to distance herself. What if Lonnie hears me and thinks I’m Mrs Brodie?

  She ran as she had on the afternoon she hid from her father. That day, she was calm at first, plunging into the trees, an excited giggle stifled in her throat. When her father turned away for a moment to spread the blanket for their picnic, she slipped away noiselessly. Pressing her body against the cold bark of trees, she wrapped her arms around the wide trunks, letting herself blend in. At first he called out in the same calm tone he always used, but his voice gradually became louder, more frantic. She found more trees to hide behind, farther away from him, deeper into the woods and just when she thought she’d had enough of the game, her body did something she hadn’t expected. She ran.

  ‘Vivie, Vivie.’ Her father’s voice echoed through the woods.

  Fearless, she ran until fast breaths puffed from her chest. She was testing him. From her mother she had learned how to treat him, and more than anything else, even though she was only nine years old, Vivian wanted to respect him. She wanted him to come after her, to bring her back.

  The minute something happens, that moment is lost forever.

  ‘Vivie!’

  She heard her father’s voice again as she raced through these woods, nearly twenty years later and hundreds of miles from that first forest. He must have been frantic, she thought. How could I have done that?

  Reaching a small clearing, Vivian scraped her shoulder on the rough bark of a tree. As she looked up from the scratch mark, a tall figure appeared in front of her. A large hand extended from the waist and closed around something shiny. She turned around and began to run back in the direction of Mr Stokes’s house. The leaves were slippery underfoot, and her blood throbbed painfully in her ears. A low voice said: ‘Wait.’ Her left foot collided with a hard object. She tripped and was catapulted through the air for a dizzying, protracted moment before she crashed into a large, flat rock. Her wrists bent back from the force of the fall, her arms crumbling against her chest. Sharp pain shot up her arm to the elbow. Once she was stable, she rested her face against the back of her hand.