The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

  She settled in front of him, cross-legged, and tried to get leverage that way. But she was too far. So she knelt, her knees touching his knees, and leaned toward him and realized her face would have to be so close to his face for her to do this. She tried to pull back and wobbled, as though she might fall to the side, and he put a hand on her hip to steady her, and then kept it there long after she was steadied. His hand sat light and tentative, but still it was there warming her through her smock.

  Agnes held her breath, and when she absolutely had to, she exhaled slowly out of the corner of her mouth, careful not to hit him in the face with the old air from her lungs.

  She didn’t really know how to cut hair like his. What were bangs, anyway?

  She pulled his bangs taut, made small snips. Jake cast his eyes to the side, his mouth small and shaped somewhere between a smile and a frown, as though concentrating on something. As chunks of hair fell away, she wanted to tuck them into her pocket. She wanted to feather them across her face when they were dry.

  Agnes didn’t want the haircut to end. And when it did she said, “Oh no,” because now he would have to take his hand away and this moment would never happen again.

  “What?”

  Agnes tried to cover up her disappointment. “I did a bad job. You look weird.”

  “How weird?”

  “I didn’t realize your hair would stand up like that if I cut it so short.” It looked like a tuft of moss atop his head.

  He touched the stand of upright hairs, and Agnes felt cold air rush to the spot where he’d had his hand. She shivered.

  “I think it’ll be okay,” he said. He smiled. “Thank you.” He stood up and helped her to her feet. Some strands of hair lifted from his chest and floated away.

  “Make a wish,” Agnes said.

  “That’s kids’ stuff,” he said. “You can have it.”

  Jake began to walk away.

  Agnes blurted, “Don’t you need to swim to get the hair off?”

  “Nah, I’m good,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks again,” he said and turned to leave. He flipped his hair, the hair that wasn’t there anymore, and broke into a run.

  “Stop doing that,” Agnes whispered to his retreating body.

  Agnes took the long route to the cave rather than swing by camp. She didn’t want to be seen and pulled into work. She didn’t want to work today. She tried to think if she’d ever felt that way before. What was it about today that made her want to be apart from everyone? She’d felt an unfamiliar heaviness in her chest and when she reached the cave she dropped to the ground.

  She wondered why Jake had run away after a moment that, to her, had felt big, heavy, as though dozens of elk pelts were being piled on top of her. Her arms had been hard to move under the weight of whatever it was she had been feeling. Hadn’t he felt it too? Was it possible he hadn’t? More than possible, she thought. What if it was very likely he hadn’t? She tried to remember his delighted gasp when she’d grabbed his hand by the fire, or the warm tingling where his hand had lain on her hip, but now she saw them differently and wondered if she had it all wrong. Perhaps it was friendly, brotherly. The heat she had felt was her own embarrassment and not something between them. His gasp had been alarm. Discomfort. Far from feeling brotherly, perhaps he hated her. Perhaps she filled him with disgust.

  She startled to feel something brush her leg and looked down to see a cheeky squirrel picking at some crust on her smock. She hadn’t even noticed it approach. She’d been too preoccupied wondering what Jake had been thinking.

  “No more,” she said to herself. Thinking of him had become dangerous. Her feelings could get her maimed or killed.

  “What if you had been a cougar?” she said to the squirrel. “I’d be dead.”

  The squirrel squeaked at her, agreeing she had made a mistake. Yes, it chittered, it’s best to not think about the boy.

  “Thank you,” Agnes said. “I’ll stop thinking about him.” She brushed her hands off in front of her. “Done,” she said, and sighed.

  Agnes stood up from where she’d squatted, brushed off her legs, and went into the cave, to the back where her mother had hidden the pillow and magazine, but they were gone.

  The heaviness in her chest inched up to her throat. She guessed it had to do with being somewhere so familiar when such familiarity wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. Not for them. Not in this life. Wasn’t that part of the point? To kill off their sense of home? To have them feel at home anywhere? Or nowhere? Were they the same thing?

  When she returned to where she’d been sitting, she noticed a rusty red spot on the ground. She looked around, squatted to touch it, and felt something loosen inside her. She stepped away and saw a new drop on the ground. She touched the inside of her leg; her hand came away with a small smear of the same rust red. She touched the smear to her tongue. Iron, metal, winter. Blood. She squatted and pulled her smock up so she could see the ground between her feet. She watched small drops of red fall slowly. Drip. Drip. Like time passing. She watched the drop’s edge become ragged in the dirt. She felt the drops release from her with a light, wet tickle. One drop. Two drops. Three drops. To ten. And then it stopped.

  She knew what it was. She was excited to tell Val. A little embarrassed to tell Glen. She wondered if there was some special ritual they’d dreamed up for this kind of thing. Obviously, women in the Community got their periods, but she was the first to get her first period here. She felt wild. Useful. Right. She grinned and felt a bubble in her chest that she thought was excitement. But when it rose and burst in her throat, loneliness was what was left.

  Looking down at her smock, she noticed a few hairs. Long dark ones. They had to be snippets of Jake’s bangs. She carefully picked them off, collected them together like the tip of a very fine paintbrush, and stroked them across her cheek. She lightly dragged them to her neck, a touch so soft she had to concentrate hard to even feel it, but in that concentration her pulse quickened. She gazed down at the camp, watched the blurry shape of Jake stoking the fire. She moved the hairs over her lips and smiled. She smelled them. They smelled like nothing. She curled her tongue around them. They tasted like nothing. She put them in her mouth. Ground them down with her teeth. Then she filled her mouth with spit and swallowed them.

  * * *

  New cold winds had arrived and were charging the air around them, turning it buzzy and sharp. The Community built the campfire a little larger that morning and pulled their skins from their bed. Soon the animals would retreat to the mountain foothills and they would follow, congregating in the hollows until the snowmelt raised the rivers.

  They had been in this camp too long. It was too easy to stay in the Valley. The game was good. The river was close. To some of them, it still felt like home. They were avoiding making their next walking plan when they saw a figure approaching. Assuming it was a Ranger coming to tell them to leave, a few groaned, and they all went back to staring at the fire, eating their porridge.

  But as the figure got closer, they could see it wasn’t a Ranger. Too small. Not in uniform. No truck.

  The Originalists and Newcomers all touched the place on their bodies where they kept a knife or a rock, whatever weapon they held onto for safety.

  As the person drew closer, they could see it was a middle-aged woman, soft around the middle, with a sensible haircut under a deep brimmed hat and good hiking boots, the kind a Ranger would wear. The kind someone would wear who knew the kind of walking necessary in the Wilderness State. The exact opposite of the footwear the Newcomers had arrived in.

  The stranger’s face was in shadow, but she moved quickly around sage and rocks like she knew the terrain.

  “Is she one of yours?” Carl whispered to Frank.

  “No.”

  “Must be a new one then. Why didn’t they tell us someone was coming?”

  Frank shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

  Carl rose to greet the stranger, his hand on his
knife.

  Agnes slunk to a rock, ahead of Carl. She felt a need to get closer. She watched the stranger approach. Her pulse quickened. Her neck prickled.

  The woman finally overtook the edge of camp, her face obscured by the hat. She walked toward Carl, who had been briskly approaching, but slowed, suddenly full of uncertainty.

  The woman tipped her hat back off her face and then they could see her. The camp hushed. Even the birds hushed. The deer huffed, stamped, and bounded away.

  “Well, don’t all say hello at once,” said Bea, her hands on her hips. She laughed from behind a scowling smile, a kind of laugh they’d never heard from her. Her breath turned to smoke in the cold morning air.

  Part V

  Friend or Foe

  Agnes watched her mother that first day from the depths of a dream. At times seeing her felt as jarring as a nightmare.

  Bea had walked up to camp like a dangerous stranger. Like a Ranger. Laughing and gruff. Her back and neck tight. Ready to start citing violations, threats. Her breath fogged out of her mouth as though she were a furious winter animal. But Agnes had known before anyone else who it was. When they still had their hands on the knives or stones, Agnes was cowering, trying to disappear.

  Carl had greeted her mother first.

  “Well, look who it is,” he cooed, embracing her longer than necessary, laughing in her ear, then strangely listing with her as though they were slow-dancing.

  Her mother frowned. “Am I in the right place?” she said over his shoulder.

  “Yes,” he said. “Everything’s different now.”

  “No shit,” she’d murmured as she pulled away and looked around. People had begun to gather. Curious faces peered at her.

  Her mother ducked her head and lowered her voice as though to tell a secret, and it was in a way. Agnes could not hear it.

  “In off the waitlist,” Carl said, sweeping his arm toward the rest of camp. “We’ve doubled in size!”

  “That’s a lot of people to feed.”

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” he said, taking Bea’s hand.

  Agnes saw her mother frown again. She looked around the camp for something, casually at first, then frantic, as though fearful she wouldn’t find it. Then her eyes locked on Agnes. Flashes of emotions crossed her face. They quickly resolved into a frown. Then a tearful smile. But Agnes could only see the frown, her mother’s hand kneading Carl’s absently as she gazed at Agnes.

  Her mother floated to her, drawn like a magnet.

  “Hey, you look great,” Carl called after her, licking his lips. He looked famished.

  Agnes froze on the stone where she perched and willed herself to become the stone, or become stone-like, a wall of stone. Stony in the face of this person. Even as her heart thumped and her eyes watered as though she’d eaten something bitter and sour, unripe. Play dead, she instructed herself.

  Agnes felt a hand on her shoulder and realized Val was there next to her. Perhaps had been next to her the whole time, watching Carl and her mother, perhaps feeling as bewildered as Agnes did right now. Agnes looked up at Val. Her face was twisted, disappointed, no doubt, to be looking at Bea again. Val had a much clearer sense of her feelings. Agnes tried to conjure a similar clear disappointment, but she couldn’t.

  Her mother stopped a foot away from Agnes, her face a mask of emotions, none of which Agnes understood. Her mother didn’t reach for her. Agnes’s stoniness had kept her at bay. She shivered there perched on her lonely rock, her knees up and hugged to her, her toes gripping.

  Finally her mother cleared her throat, and Agnes instantly opened herself to whatever her mother would say after so long.

  “Why is my daughter so skinny?” she barked, eyeing Val.

  Agnes blinked. She is not even talking to me.

  Val squeezed Agnes’s shoulder hard. “She’s always been skinny.”

  Bea looked around at all the new faces gawking at her. Her face was accusatory, but her eyes were welling. “She’s skinnier than every single person here,” Bea choked.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” said Val.

  Bea nudged Agnes’s chin up with her knuckle. “Why are you so skinny? Are you not getting enough food?”

  Her voice lashed Agnes’s ears. Her nudge felt like a blow.

  Agnes pulled her face back down. She was embarrassed. Scared. Angry. She clamped her mouth shut.

  “What the fuck is going on here, Carl?” Bea was saying, walking away from Agnes.

  “Calm down, for fuck’s sake,” Carl muttered, all the warmth of his first greeting gone. “You sound like a damn lunatic. Agnes is fine.”

  Her mother’s voice had dropped, hushed to make her words private, though they weren’t. “So help me if you’ve been keeping food from her. Where is Glen? He better not be wasting away too. You motherfucker, Carl.”

  Agnes looked down at herself. She thought she looked normal. Like she always did. Her stomach growled as it always did. Didn’t everyone’s? She pulled at her smock and let it drape back.

  Carl grabbed her mother by the arm and leaned in close, hissing something into her ear, his finger at her neck, as though it were the point of something more cutting. Her mother’s face flickered through emotions, and then she gasped and recoiled from Carl, her face filled with disgust but also sadness. She watched Carl walk away, a slight tremble in her hand. She looked around at all the people watching her, all the new eyes. Agnes noticed the Originalists were pretending to be busy, their ears perked, their heads down, much like Agnes herself had been. But the Newcomers were at attention, their jaws slack, staring unabashedly at Carl and her mother’s exchange.

  Bea straightened and turned back to Agnes. Her face was bloodless. She moved slowly toward her. Breathed cautiously as though catching her breath. “But look at you,” she finally said, her voice pitched high. “You’re grown up now. I go away for a little tiny bit and you’re all grown up, I guess.”

  Even with feigned pleasantness, Agnes could hear accusation in her voice.

  “I guess—” said Agnes, faltering. She tried to steady her voice, but it was coming out haltingly, as though she might cry. Her throat was heating up, and soon, she felt, she might be sputtering and she did not want that. “I guess you’ve been gone awhile, Bea,” she muttered, and the tremble calmed slightly when she saw her mother wince. Even Val breathed in sharply. Or was she stifling a laugh?

  Her mother recovered. “I think I still prefer Mom,” she said, smiling again. “Besides it hasn’t been that long, has it?” She looked from Agnes to Val, then around to see if anyone was watching.

  Everyone was watching.

  Val said, “It’s been a very long time.”

  “No,” Bea said, her voice insistent and irritated. “Not that long.”

  But Agnes knew they’d seen snows right after her mother had left, then lived among blooms, then summer-dried grasses, turning leaves, and now the scent of snow was in the air again. It’s what they used to call a year, and that’s how long her mother had been gone. Her mother would never admit that, though. She might claim the weather could not be trusted. Agnes opened her mouth to speak, but her mother’s eyes prompted her to shut it. There was no argument to be had. The emotion of the reunion had already flared when their eyes had locked. If her mother felt bad or was sorry, then Agnes had missed the signal. And now it was a memory.

  “And your hair,” her mother said. “What happened to your beautiful hair?” She reached out and smoothed a hand over Agnes’s head.

  Agnes ducked out from under her hand.

  “Okay, that’s enough.” Her mother snapped her fingers. And Agnes begrudgingly brought her head back for inspection.

  “Who cut it?”

  Agnes shrugged.

  “Well,” her mother said, cupping Agnes’s head, “at least your skull is perfectly round. I did a good job turning you in your crib. You don’t see a skull that lovely and round every day. I guess I was a good mother after all, huh?” She laughed and looked to Val, who
flashed a false, sour smile back at her. “Well,” her mother said, “I love your hair short. It’s very you.”

  “I’m growing it out,” Agnes mumbled, picking the grime from between her toes and balling it with her fingers.

  Agnes’s mother stepped toward her. “Come here,” she commanded, wrapping her arms around her daughter, pulling her from her stone perch slowly so Agnes’s legs unfolded and planted beneath her. Agnes wiped the toe jam onto her mother’s hip as she lightly pressed her hands against her. She was offering an approximation of affection, a studied version of it. It felt like what her mother often offered. Then Agnes slid from her embrace, back onto the stone as though she had always been a part of it. Her arms lay across her knees, her head propped, bored, atop her arms. She watched the fire. She felt dizzy. She willed her mother to move on.

  “What are you doing back?” Val said, more accusation than question.

  “I was just wondering that myself,” her mother said. “Where is Glen?” But it wasn’t a question for anyone in particular. She knew where Glen was.

  Her mother grabbed Agnes’s arm and she tumbled off the stone. Agnes’s legs wobbled underneath her. She’d never felt as unsteady, knocked over.

  Her mother headed straight to the caves. It was as natural as if her mother and Glen had planned this meeting long ago. Her mother had a sense for Glen, as though she had sniffed him out. Would her mother still have had a sense for Agnes if she had been the one off in the cave? Agnes thought of her stormy face as she’d looked out among the new and old faces at camp and found Agnes’s. How her mother had spoken not to her but to Val. How stupid her heart had felt. How silly it was to want or feel anything. But she stopped her mind’s progression and rewound, tried to think again of the moment when their eyes had met. And hadn’t there been a momentary calm when the tumult, for both of them, had halted? If I could just stay in that, she thought. It was a thought, a yearning, that helped her gather her balance, get her feet right and under her. A thought that relaxed her arm and shoulder and allowed her to slip her hand into her mother’s as they walked.