Penn's Woodland

by David Connor

  “I cannot reveal my wish,” I told her aloud. “For then it shall not come true.”

  “One with the stammering of a toddler will never get a grown man’s wish besides,” Virginia said, her sneer quite cutting, her tone most demeaning.

  I decided then I would no longer put my words to sound. They flow so easily from the pen. My halting voice destroys them.

  “Your Auntie Virginia sounds like a wretched cur,” Ewan said. “I am not too fond of Georgia, either. If she treats you well, however, I can overlook her shortness.”

  Georgia loves me. I wrote it large on a fresh leaf, fast and haphazardly to convey my anger at his rude declaration.

  “I hope so, Pennsylvania, but I cannot yet believe it. Just as I will never be convinced someone who writes so eloquently chooses not to speak. Try. Try for me.”

  I was still crouching forward, and Ewan touched my unsteady knee. The angle into which he bent himself necessary to do so looked quite uncomfortable. This time, perhaps due to pity, as I saw the pain in his face, I did not retreat.

  “To hear your voice would give me great pleasure.”

  Desperate wanting vied with reluctance inside me. If this was how torn I was about speaking, heaven forbid he ask of me anything else.

  “Please, Pennsylvania?”

  “I…do not know…what to…say,” I stated in time, barely above a whisper.

  “Tell me of your name.”

  “Auntie…Virginia called…me Pen…ny.”

  “Oh?”

  “Be…cause…it is…a girl’s…name. Auntie Virginia…prefers…female…children. She read…to Abee Mobley. Never…to me.”

  “What type of stories do you wish to be told?”

  “Not the kind…read to Abee. Tales of creatures half…human, half…animal…that hurt each other in darkened woods. Whenever…Auntie Virginia noticed…me listening…enraptured in…the spectacle…more so than the tale…she would cease at once.”

  I slapped my hand over my mouth as I finished my sentence. My first words in such a long time should have been used for something more pleasant. Ewan stretched, quite uncomfortably his groaning told, to gently pull my fanned fingers away.

  “She seems a horror, that woman. And you’re doing fine. Your voice is a treasure. Does it hurt? After so much time? How many years did you go without speaking?”

  I touched my throat, then held up seven fingers, like Judah once had when asked his age as he first learned numbers. My brows came together and I slowly reconsidered, adding another, for a total of eight.

  Ewan laughed. “What they have missed!” he said with apparent glee. “Thank you so for sharing it with me.”

  “Judah…” I cleared my throat, discomfort, yes, but also emotion as I’d brought myself to him a moment ago in my head. “Judah…called me…Penn.”

  I spoke more slowly than I wrote, and my words were distorted to my ear, the stuttering apparent there too, though not in my mind.

  “That shall remain special between the two of you,” Ewan declared. “I’ll use Pennsylvania, because the commonwealth name means ‘Penn’s woodland.’ William Penn. Did you know that?”

  I nodded.

  “Of course you did. You crave knowledge and obviously absorb information with ease. The woodland is why we met, isn’t it? It is why I am here, to take you there.”

  I tensed.

  “Notions you have conjured and falsities fed as fact keep you frightened, I believe. There is no evidence of you harming that lad.”

  “You knew…of me…before knocking…at the door. People…told you—”

  “One gossipy innkeeper’s wife spun fabricated tales.”

  “You…do…not know.”

  “Nor do you. You have written so yourself.”

  “Georgia…and Auntie Vir…ginia—”

  “Harm you through dishonesty. Break you with disparagement.”

  “Not…Geor…gia!” My objection grew harsher each time Ewan dared to impugn Georgia’s devotion.

  “Fine. Perhaps not as badly. Though she does not combat the notions of the other nearly enough, t’would seem. Neither, I feel, are truthful with you, lad.”

  “Perhaps…your own duplicity…with the…woman’s heart…has you seeing…everyone else…in a similar insincere…light, Mr. Parish.”

  “Your insight and harsh words speak in my defense even as you impugn my good name,” said Ewan, first wincing, then smiling. “Your sisters should praise you as brilliant, not declare you slow-witted. From where does such knowing come, Pennsylvania?”

  I shrugged.

  “Self-taught, your written history pronounced. Even more reason to hold yourself in high esteem. You are a dichotomy, Pennsylvania Dupree, in so many ways—your primitive beauty, your sophisticated gentility. Though you hold yourself lowly, you present yourself in a way deserving admiration. Though you see yourself as hideous, you strike a lovely picture to the eye. Your voice, even, tells of opposite things. Your lilt indicates your Southern US ancestry, yet your style and intellect has you reared by the Oxford dictionary and Shakespearean sonnets. As I look to your bookshelf, I witness this might not be untrue.”

  One entire wall in my chamber was made up of row after row of colorful book spines.

  “My encyclopedia…never tires of…my company,” I said.

  Ewan’s smile broadened. “Nor will I. You seem oh-so-worldly, though your world has been this home and this room. I—”

  “Georgia has…not come by. I am worried.”

  “I saw her heading down the driveway just before I came to you. As far as I can tell, she is fine. Stressed, perhaps, by news of what was discovered in the woods. Otherwise—”

  “What…was found there?”

  “Come speak to me as two people were meant to converse, Pennsylvania. Eye-to-eye.”

  “Georgia would…not…be pleased.”

  “Georgia is not here. I just told you. Let me see you closer. Let me get more comfortable.”

  I turned full on to him. I sat cross-legged, crouching some and met Ewan’s sight, wearily at first. “Georgia is…”

  “Your savior. Yes. I will not argue that again. But do not fear me. Please. I know it is the first time you have looked any stranger in the eye in many, many years. Anyone at all, save for your sisters. I promise you are safe with me. I promise I find you completely wonderful.”

  I smiled shyly, because I believed him.

  “Aye. That’s better. And I promise to warn you before I touch you again.”

  “Touch…me?”

  “It is difficult not to. Because I know you must yearn for it.”

  I lowered my head.

  “I am going to now, Pennsylvania.”

  I lifted my sight back to Ewan’s.

  “It was simply to do that. To bring your scrutiny back to me. But now…” He touched my cheek, and then my neck. “It is truthfully because I wish to so very, very much.”

  “I…know not how…to behave…in social settings. And multiplica…tion troubles me.” I blurted the thoughts at the front of my mind, the ones that fought their way there through the others that scrambled about. “I am not an intelligent man. I am not…like Auntie…Virginia.”

  Ewan laughed. “Dear lord, I hope not. And rest assured, I myself loathe socializing as much vaccinations and pay a person to keep my bank records. Such does not make either of us stupid. We are all gifted in one way or another, not all. We all bend to our circumstance.”

  I turned toward the door. “What…if Geor…gia comes with…break…fast?”

  “Look to me.”

  I obeyed.

  “Are you hungry?”

  I nodded. I suddenly was.

  “I have a pastry. Would you like it?”

  “Thank you…sir. No.”

  “And manners to boot. We are equals, however. You may call me Ewan, as you do when you write.”

  I sensed my cheeks reddening again.

  “And I insist,” Ewan said.

  He reach
ed into his pocket and came up with a sweet roll wrapped in waxy tissue. He struggled to pull off one corner where the icing had melted from the warmth against his hip.

  “Please share with me,” he invited.

  I watched his fingers as he broke off a piece of soft, yellow cake.

  “May I feed it to you?” he asked.

  Our eyes locked again, with mine opened wide. I swallowed hard, even before tasting the fruit and spice confection. Our gaze held as Ewan brought his fingers to my lips and parted them, with a bit of the roll in between. I took it on my tongue, wetting Ewan’s rough, calloused thumb, sampling his skin, sensing the scrape of his nail on my tender taste buds and nerve.

  “Good?” Ewan asked, his fingers reclaimed.

  “Mmm.” It most assuredly was.

  “Do you want to get out of there?”

  I jerked away and scooted back. Suddenly petrified, I hugged my knees, shook my head, and spit out the chewed wad of pastry.

  “You’ve been wrongly imprisoned. How I know…? I just sense it, from your words and your touch.”

  I hurt Judah. I thought it, wrote it all but the last two letters, but did not show it to Ewan.

  “Perhaps it is Georgia’s illness that would have her want to keep you as a pet. Perhaps she cannot bear the thought of being alone, and the only way she knows to make you stay assuredly is to imprison you.”

  “My…eyes.” I brought my face so close to Ewan’s I felt his hot breath in the wet of my mouth. “Evil…shines there.”

  “I see nothing of it,” Ewan said forcefully. He took my chin between sticky fingers, the ones that had been in my mouth and on the Danish. “All I see is sadness, curiosity, and an abundance of confusion.”

  I pulled from his touch to reach for the paper.

  “Your voice is all we need. And your eyes.”

  I stood and began to pace then. I’d seen myself in his and my reflection authenticated what I’d been told my entire life. The trifling words of a stranger were the false ones, I determined.

  “All you need is a chance,” Ewan promised.

  “Leave…me. Go.”

  “You want to be free. Another prison, a different kind; that is all this walkway is. It’s a ridiculous cage that will keep you from…what? Running? Why can’t you run? Is it the fear that once you see life beyond this oddness you will choose to never return? That’s what I am bloody well starting to believe. The woods, nature, it is to be explored, touched, and sensed without encumbrance,” Ewan yelled.

  “Tell me more of…what was…discovered there.”

  “Bones. Once a corpse. Buried in a shallow hole.”

  My mind jumped to Judah. “Whose?”

  “There is no way to tell. Not at this point. Tell me your fear, Pennsylvania.”

  “You have read…my diaries. All…of them?”

  “Yes. Improper as it was.”

  “Can you find some…thing out for me?”

  “I can try,” Ewan told me.

  “I want to know…what became…of Judah Mobley.”

  “Your lover.”

  “We…mustn’t call…him that.”

  “Why?”

  “Be…cause I was…told.”

  “You’ve been spoken with so little, but told too many things.”

  “Go. Find out…for me…and come back.”

  “I will,” Ewan promised. “If this will bring you solace, I will bring you news of the one person who it seems may have truly loved you fully. I do not believe you brought harm to him, Pennsylvania. I cannot. Don’t ask from where this conviction emanates; I could not even say. Just believe that it’s true in all ways. I will prove your innocence, sweet, sweet Pennsylvania. I will do that and return.”

  Chapter 4

  Pennsylvania

  I began pounding on the door to the pass-through the moment I heard Georgia come through the kitchen door hours later. “Georgia! Georgia! Have you forgotten I exist?” Of course, I did not speak it. How surprised she would be at my voice, raised or otherwise. I’m sure though, through my hammering, she understood the urgency and strife.

  “Keep it down,” she scolded, upon her eventual arrival. “What on earth has gotten into you?”

  I’ll tell you what has not, breakfast, nor dinner last night or even lunch. The words stopped just before reaching my voice box.

  As Georgia slid up the outside door, I reformed my thoughts into similar words written out.

  “I brought you a tray at noon yesterday,” she claimed.

  “You…did not.”

  “I prepared it before going into town. Enough for both lunch and supper.”

  Then you forgot to bring it in. Should you check the kitchen, will you not find it there? Are you ill? Is your mind failing? I wrote.

  “With every moment that passes,” Georgia responded. “Age does that to a person.” She reached through the pass-through, toward my face or my throat. I thought she would touch me, but she didn’t. “Yet there is no need to worry,” she said. “I am sorry I was neglectful. I shall fetch you some nourishment at once.”

  What did the policeman want? I grabbed her to make her read it. She did, and froze in place.

  “It does not concern us. It is beyond our property line.” I could tell she was lying.

  “What…is?” I wanted to see if Georgia would be honest. I wanted to see if she would comment on words spoken.

  “Stolen goods. Buried. Like a plot from some sort of silly movie.” Georgia, who apparently still had no idea I had a way to eavesdrop on recent happenings, did not think to ask how I even knew of this one. She was not truthful, either, with her words or the chuckle that came when she waved off the foolhardiness of it all.

  “Oh.” I played along.

  I’ve forgotten what a movie is, Georgia, I told her in print.

  “You have awoken in an odd mood,” she responded in voice.

  What will become of me when you die?

  When I turned my back to Georgia, guilty about the shocking intent with which my question was purposefully delivered, she did the same to me.

  “It does no good to plan for the future, Pennsylvania. This I have learned.” And with those words, Georgia walked away.

  It was a warm day outside. I watched Ewan’s workmen pour the cement and place the posts that would construct the walkway. They toiled shirtless. Their sweaty backs glistened in the sunlight and their damp trousers conformed to equally sticky legs, thighs, and buttocks. That part of me that had been rekindled was unrelenting. Only when Georgia returned with food could I put it to rest a bit.

  There was a detailed drawing of the walkway with my fruit, and jam and biscuits, and also some soup that would be cold by lunchtime. Apparently Georgia had no plans to return before then. Most days I smiled as thanks when my sustenance was delivered. Today, I decided to act like the housecat she had recently come to treat me as and I guzzled my milk without the slightest acknowledgement to she who had set it before me.

  Georgia left and I set down my glass, shivering a bit as cold liquid trickled from my mouth to my nipple, because of the slovenly way I’d consumed it. I picked up the blueprint for Ewan’s project. Several inches one-dimensional, the pathway fencing looked as if it would go on interminably in actuality. There were two fences, actually, with a space in between wide enough for a pair according to the scale. I suddenly wondered if I was never meant to roam on my own. Perhaps it was a walkway for two persons only. Perhaps Ewan and I would walk it, as opposed to only myself and my keeper. More daydreams and folly, I quickly recognized.

  Twice the height of a normal wrought-iron enclosure, according to the numbers, with a roof made up of more panels turned on their sides and peaked from the center, it looked nothing like a recreational structure at all, but more like the plans for Alcatraz Island I’d once seen in the newspaper. As my head began to ache, I cursed Ewan for putting the idea of being free in the woods in my head. I also cursed Georgia for bringing him here to construct this heinous configuration o
f ugliness and incarceration.

  The day passed. I was still too groggy by late evening—or else out of sorts again, as it seemed to have lifted at one point. I picked up my soup, but decided at once against it. My head was as cloudy as it was. My gut was unreceptive to the congealed appearance at the perimeter of the bowl. I was desperately uncertain what was real and what was imagined, any of what that had taken place for days. I had not heard back from Ewan. As darkness threatened its descent, I listened in to one of his crewmen telling Georgia, as she returned from another of her suddenly busy days, that the gazebo had been fully erected, back in the woods. “It is beautiful,” she was told. I wondered if she’d seen it and in what beholder’s eye this beauty occurred. It surely was not evident in the plan. I thought I might ask her, but if she wished not to speak to me, why should I to her?

  The same worker said the group of them would not be back for two days, as to allow the cement around the posts time to dry. That meant I would not see Ewan for three. He broke his promise and I cursed myself now, as I had him, for allowing my foolish man-child hopes to be raised. I threw myself onto the bed, and like Abee would do on a regular basis when we were little, kicked my legs and pounded my fists. Recalling the folly of Celia trying to straighten the sheets around her daughter’s spectacle, I soothed myself into a smile, and then, once again, into sleep.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  I awakened to it, how much time later, I really had no idea. I was atop all of my bedclothes, still without any on my person and my room was pitch black. I could not see the watch, the one that was my father’s, many, many years old, that I kept on the table beside me.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  I had taken too long to answer back.

  Thump. Then I did.

  We arrived simultaneously at the opening behind the wallpaper. I only rushed—after I procrastinated—in case he had brought word of Judah. We met at the now two-brick opening, which I’d had the common sense at one point to close off some. We each pulled at it from opposite sides to make it bigger. Ewan breathed hard on his side, as if the effort was daunting.

  “I hated the thought of startling you,” he said. “Though it is not quite late night, it is in fact late. Still, I simply needed to speak with you at once.”