Hard Mouth

by Amanda Goldblatt

  Without knowing what I was doing I all but tumbled down the tower. No decision or resolve necessary. In the rush I was lucky to remember to scoop up my hummingbird knife and my compass. Leave the jug and the eats to the birds, I thought, descending. My carbon steel blade in the beam, forget it. I had a cat to catch.

  As I wrenched downward I could tell something indecent was happening in my shoulder and trunk. My body revealed a thin, deep ache with each utter of descent. No rope, no net. I shimmied like a bear. The metal caught me when it could, but its effects were just minor entries into my body’s sorry tabulations.

  The earth when I met it was mud. At last, I was down. After how many days? Could’ve been that I’d a broken rib. My medical knowledge was dodgy, limited to cancer-patient relief. I was therefore happy to be back on the ground. However the switching shadow was now not anywhere. I kicked the plastic tub. Its water trembled. I left it where it was, a dull monument to a couple of desperate days. I was doing the best I could.

  That’s a lie, but: I let the ground support me. By this I mean I sunk into the mud, butt first, and crossed my legs onto themselves. The mud was cold but there was a bottom to it, so I sat, secure, and reminded my lungs to march in line. I closed my eyes and pretended I was preparing to die. Then I got up, because I was no one to anyone but myself. I could not stop thinking this.

  I WALKED FOR quite some time. I can’t say how long. My use of the compass was bungling: I stumbled one way, and then another, until by some dumb magic I ended up at a wide, deep lake in a valley. It was not any lake. It was mine, swollen with rainwater. All its marginal greenery was tamped down and washed sideways. I skirted the shore until I came to the blonde meadow.

  There were large birds surfing the sky overhead as I made my way across it. There were red-winged blackbirds, slight and darting, flashing their hot markings outward. My steps made crunching and sucking sounds alternately. I was either breaking through mud crust or wading through vegetal sludge.

  Every tree was a duplication of the next. I am not a naturalist; I’d wanted only to leave. In doing so I hadn’t suddenly become a Goodall, an Audubon, a whomever. So even after everything—the up-the-tower and the down-the-tower—this wilderness walking was just an unremarkable commute. There was a greenish vestibule, a gray and gray and brown vestibule. I moved through this landscape like a mall-walker in poor condition.

  Though I was not entirely resistant to nature. I heard a bit of a crash and a significant movement of grasses. “Hello?” I said. Because you can take the fool out of the suburbs but you can’t take the fool out of her.

  And then! The grasses drew back to accommodate my friend, brown and matted and skinny and indigent, moving like a trusty river towards me: the Thing. “Hello,” I said again and quickly scooped it up. In my arms it wound itself into a dumpling, a donut shape, and then was stretching, ferrety. It pawed at me in greeting, and went on scrabbling. For a moment I thought, is this indeed Thingy? It was. Or it was as good as—no. It was. Its eyes were warm lime gems; I grinned terribly into the buggy wild light. I did not wonder where the cat had been, was not compassionate or curious in this regard. I registered only the cat’s return.

  I was once more something to something. It felt okay. I sat to make a lap. Then, unbuttoning my shirt from beneath the overalls I removed it and then fashioned it into a sling for the Thing, as I had when I had injured and then rescued it. I lifted up the darling, struggling to get vertical, hurting a bit. Around the furry body I resecured the overall bib. The cat slapped its paw around my wrist like a bracelet. I was now topless except for the bib and my cat, but who was my modesty for? I was an animal with an animal, anonymous, homeward. I had pushed through to a new kind of nakedness. Or so I believed. I was not a person, anymore, who need close any door behind me.

  I pressed my face downward against the soft tickle of cat fur. I blushed with quick joy and said, “Welcome to our new lives!”

  On we went, walking in one direction, waking to our new days. As we moved my nipples snagged the breeze. Otherwise I was not thinking about nakedness, or what nakedness had formerly meant. I was thinking about how I might intuit myself into a knowledge of carpentry. How perhaps I could fix the roof. Of course I would not go and try to find people or a phone. I accepted to myself that I was feral now, that in escaping I had made a choice that would chart my future days and death.

  While walking I did idly wonder what animals I would find in the cabin, what disarray. It would be good, I thought, to confront the entropy. To embrace a surprise, to discover, to not know till.

  I could live among the animals I would find there: the deer whose tracks I’d never seen, nestling with bears behaving benevolently as sofas and recliners; foxes and mice mincing along the woodpile, spiders weaving in the corners impressive silver warps and wefts; did the foxes go after the mice; yes; did the mammals note the weavers; they did; were the fawns wary of the bears; they were; and there was the Thing; yes; the cat, safe and purring demurely, tail tapping lightly on a molding, or in the folds of the bedclothes, snoozing, batting its paws on the bark of the fallen tree above, snoozing more, snoozing in peace, snoozing in satisfaction and satiety. How pretty my brain had become. It made me want to spit.

  Moving through the meadow I started to feel a great relief, convinced that I would find a way to fix the roof or to live beneath its rupture. I thought about whistling. I didn’t whistle.

  The cabin came into view. From my vantage, through pines, it looked just as I had left it. The front porch was clear of branches, creatures. My teeth were grinding but I did not register this as a sign. I found that holding my arm kept my shoulder from aching so I held the meat of my bicep, pressing it close to my sternum, the kitten along with it.

  As we moved closer to the cabin, I saw movement through the trees. I had my pet safe in one arm and snatched my hummingbird knife into the other. I advanced like this. I took care not to break branches underfoot. I crouched behind a high wall of brambles. There was a man dragging a large branch with dead leaves attached, across the cabin’s dirt yard. He was tall and thin and wore a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of ripped jeans. His hair was curly and hung to his chin—thick, a dormouse color—and his eyes were set far apart, koi-like. His limbs gangled, or, they hung there, dragged by his long thin trunk. He was some woodsy methed-out young Jagger, with a misplaced, unuseful cool. For no reason I thought of the man on the train, how he hadn’t moved to give up his seat. The trespasses felt somehow twinned; inside me the same blaze raged.

  I did not immediately say hello, nor did I approach. Rather I watched this lean, ugly man invade my little yard, dragging more and more branches and stacking them in a pile. Then I watched as he knocked his boots on the edge of the porch steps and went in my cabin like he owned the place. Only once he was gone from sight did I belatedly jump. This startled the cat, who bit into the softest part of my chest and so I yelped in pain—loud and high enough to peel the bark off every goddamn tree. I held fast to the cat despite this, though it bucked and squirmed.

  I trapped my breath in the chamber of my throat. It pressed against my lips. I waited to see if the man would emerge from the cabin, to investigate the noise. I patted the Thing to see if it would calm, and it did. I watched it nuzzle as my body hummed with sudden fear, with the knowledge of my situation: a young woman about to be confronted by a strange man.

  Could he be a reasonable person.

  Could I go up there and say to him: Hello, this is the cabin I have rented from an older man who seems a little disappointed in life but generally happy, who gave me these very overalls as a gesture of care and custody.

  Could I offer to share the cabin.

  Could we two rattle around this small corner of this big world, never subscribing to any messy emotional attachments, never looking for a high, never broaching a low—

  I began to imagine a hammock of a life, with this lanky companion.

  Then, I thought: Stop! Stop charming yourself out of the ser
iousness of the situation.

  He was an invader, plain. A burglar-vagabond-usurper. And here I was now, charged with the task of recapturing my haunt.

  I closed my eyes a moment to gather myself. To gather and then surge.

  When I opened them, the man was square in front of me, pointing a pistol at my chest. Fumbling, I extended my knife’s blade into the light, a dancer holding her hand to waltz. The Thing shifted its weight and then through some wriggle managed to jump away. Momentarily the man followed the motion of the cat with the gun. “No!” I squealed.

  This was the first pitiful syllable I’d said to any human in some time. For even then I was not so deluded to think that Gene might count as a conversation partner. I was just a shoestring escapist, weak from my travails, out of practice and alone. And this stranger was an invader on my little isle of non-man.

  I stood up like a bully because what was there to do. Though doing this I was aware of my tits, flagrante. I did not celebrate this but rather bore the fact, then said with more self-surety: “That’s my house. And that looks a lot like my gun.”

  “You some kind of yeti?” he joked, leering loosely. “Some kind of mountain man?”

  “Is that my gun?” I asked.

  “You leave your gun on the ground back in the woods?” he asked. His words slipped from his slash mouth. He looked as forgotten as I hoped to be.

  Had it been, then, a week, or two, since I had heard the baby wailing, the baby that had been in the end poor Thingy? Longer? I felt a vertiginous slosh, as I had in the tower, as I had at Omar’s. I was always higher and lower than I wanted to be, then. Spare me the finer points of wanting to live on a mountain. I did it anyway. “Maybe.”

  “Then, yeah. This is probably your gun.”

  But looking at him, I saw the gun had found a more rightful owner. The way he held it now at his sharp hip, with confidence. His stance was something from a film; I wondered had he learned it somewhere. I wanted the gun back, but knew I couldn’t ask. “My mother has a shop down-mountain, sells pieces like these.”

  “That outfitter?”

  “That’s my mother you bought it from, then.”

  “Skinny, like you.”

  “Yeah I guess.”

  “Your mother was specific about its handling.”

  “My own father died at a shooting range, is why she’s like that,” Haw said. “Shot himself through the teeth with a .45, which his buddies cleaned up.”

  Of course I didn’t believe him. Would anyone? I tried to imagine a man romantic and mad enough to off himself that way, a son who would so eagerly disclose. I couldn’t. “But she still sells guns?”

  “Wasn’t the gun’s fault.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  He looked at me like I was a banana peeling itself. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m just wondering what you’re doing here,” I said, straightening myself up. The Thing was on the porch now, stalking back and forth, as if nothing was different. What cruelty.

  “I come up here sometimes,” he said, putting his gun-free hand up in the air.

  “But I’m here now. I rented this place. Paid money.”

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, and put his narrow back to me, sauntering toward the porch and the cat.

  I freed my boot from the brambles and followed him in. Let myself take big breaths as I climbed the stairs.

  Once inside, I looked around and saw all of my possessions rearranged. The kitchen table was neat, chairs orderly, and the firewood that had been thrown to the floor was nowhere to be seen. The sun-shaped trivet had been replaced upon the table, I noted. It was not any anarchy, what had befallen here. There was a small heap of clothes and blankets in the corner of the front room. I nodded at it. “My name is Haw,” the man told me. Then I told him my name though I wished I hadn’t.

  “Sit down, Denny,” he said, walking to the table in the front room. I didn’t, though I was exhausted. I had to make a demonstration. Sure: a stand. It was in these moments that I was feeling the vagaries of the whole foolhardy, outdoorsy spiel. Not when I shot the cat. Not when the tree fell. Not when I lost the cat. But now, with this man here, spoiling the view.

  Seeing I was to remain standing, Haw began to give me a brief tour of his alterations. For in all of his homeliness and stray-cat manners, he was yet that kind of man. “See, I fixed the roof,” he said. “So, you’re welcome for that.” I saw that I was supposed to be grateful. I did not make any particular expression. Inside I steamed.

  Across the hole there were rough split logs nailed and making a serviceable patch. I saw that the hole was in fact not so large, perhaps three feet in diameter.

  “Uh,” I said at last. “Oh,” I said. I felt unreal, half-naked, conversing with this stranger. I did not feel like myself at all.

  “And the stove, see?”

  I looked over to see the pipe all hammered out, a flame inside. “I do.” The fire felt accusatory. The cabin was no longer on my terms exclusively.

  “I reset the pump, too. This place was a mess when I got here.” He crossed his arms over his chest loosely.

  In gestural response I pulled at the bib of my overalls. “Yeah?” I did not feel comfortable but discomfort was hardly the worst thing I had recently experienced.

  “Where have you been, anyway?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment. “I was out in a tower a few miles out, an old lookout or something.”

  “You were out there through that whole storm going across the range?”

  “Yep.”

  “How’d you even get up there?”

  “Climbed.”

  “Climbed! No wonder you’re so banged up.” He had the nerve to laugh so I laughed along with him—the old school trick of laughing-with. It was mania. “You’d think a girl could climb up the tower could maybe just stay and fix that roof.”

  “What can I say,” I said flat.

  “It was tricky to fix that roof but I split some of that wood you had and covered it. For EJ’s sake. The stuff that wasn’t green at least. It’ll do for now.”

  So he knew Earl John. I felt like I was supposed to be impressed. He walked around the perimeter, preening, looking at me from angles only.

  I shrugged. “Did you call Earl John already? I’ve got his number.” Indeed it was there in my memory still, summoned by cue.

  “You think there’s phone reception out here?”

  I shrugged again.

  “I’ll let him know when I get back down-mountain.”

  “When’s that gonna be?”

  “You that eager to get rid of me?”

  I walked over to the bracing beam and examined it, tested it. “Seems a little wiggly.”

  “Wiggly my ass.” He ape-smiled. “Wonder if you’ll help me finish up on the roof? There’s actually a little leak I was noticing.”

  I nodded. “Can you give me a sec to rest?”

  “Sure can. Sure can.”

  Then like a host he got us both water. We sat down across from one another at that kitchen table. Once I had wanted just this, this sitting, though solo. We drank the water and looked at each other. It was the most domestic I’d felt in these weeks on the mountain. He laughed a little unhinged laugh and I saw that his teeth were bad. There was a missing one. A front tooth half-gray. And along the bottom, up front, they overlapped as if in a huddle. I did not put a value on this. It merely filled out the portrait.

  “We alright now?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said slowly.

  “Of course we are.” He snarled soundlessly. “Where’d you get that knife?” The hummingbird knife was sitting beside the gun on the table, beside the trivet, all casual as condiments. I supposed he would try and steal it. He seemed that way, a cur slinking around for anything to snatch. I told him that my friend had given it to me.

  It was quickly I decided that he would know nothing or at least very little about me. Busily I was trying to set up a new thread of life. It w
as separate from the old thread—one that had been, with his appearance, snipped. For who could forgive a daughter who had done what I had. In preserving this man’s ignorance there was no need for self-forgiveness. I sipped my water across from him. I felt in a new way monstrous. I looked at this man and I wondered what would become of me.

  “Come on over here,” Haw said. “Help me with this and then I’ll make us some dinner.” I looked out the dirty window to the land. This man was working on something. “Hey,” he said, calling me like a dog. “Hey.” I looked up, back at him. He had a ladder under one arm and a cardboard box with some jangly hardware under the other. “Let’s go.”

  I didn’t want to obey him but I did, following him out back. The wind was blowing across the outer wall of the cabin. The woods beyond were water-darkened, cold and glistening. He slammed the ladder against the gutter and it shuddered, splayed out to a semistable position. Its feet belched into the wet ground. “Now hold it there and there,” he pointed. I gripped my fists around the gritty ribbed metal and held fast. I could feel my chest and shoulder pulsing painfully, endured it.

  The man did not provide any commentary on the state of the roof or the visible reasons it might be leaking. Rather he made soft hums and every once in a while made a diagnostic knock or huddled down to see the roof flush. “Yeah,” he said under his breath, as the colder wind pushed its way past my overalls and into the core of anything in my body that had ever felt warmth. “Mmmhmm.” There were no noises in the trees. I was aware that if he wanted to kill me—with his long sugar-rope limbs, and his blady disposition—there was not a person could stop him. I felt sticky and delicate as pudding skin.

  But then I remembered I could kill him too, given surprise or a hefty-enough desire. In my old life the only person I’d ever imagined killing was myself: a thought experiment, a stripe of escape.

  As Haw stretched upward to begin the repair there was revealed, between his beat-up dungarees and his thermal shirt, a strip of skin pale and downy. I found I wanted to touch it. Though I was not reaching outward, toward it, I found I was imagining in vivid and close-up detail my nicked fingertip discovering this soft place to land. This isn’t symbolic, but rather an image of possible intimacies.