The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

“It’s”—Bea looked at the key—“nothing important.”

  Val snorted. “I’ll bet you ten pine nuts it’s gonna feel pretty important when we’re in the middle of it.”

  “What’s your problem?”

  “What’s yours? You’re so into the map. Did you make it or something?”

  “Oh, come on, Val,” Carl said. “Now you’re just being stupid.”

  “No, you’re stupid,” Val shouted, her stance defensive, threatening even. Then she clamped her mouth shut and drummed her fingernails on her belly, as though to distract herself. Carl rolled his eyes at her. So Agnes patted her on the back, and Val, sniffling, grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. Val was not herself. Or on second thought, Agnes thought, she was a very extreme version of herself.

  “We need to find water,” said Bea. “Good water.” She poked her finger at all the spots on the map that looked blue between their position and the Caldera. “I think this is where we should head.” She jabbed at a large blue blob that looked like it would be a few days’ walk. “This blue line here must be a stream. It’s about halfway. Hopefully it won’t be dry.”

  “Well, we’ll definitely have water at the Caldera, so there’s that,” said Dr. Harold.

  “We need water before that, Harold,” said Debra.

  “Well, I know that, Debra.” He smiled aggressively.

  “Are we sure there’s even a lake at the Caldera? The map doesn’t show the very top,” said Frank.

  “There’s two lakes,” murmured Bea, measuring distances with her spread fingers.

  “How do you know?” Carl said.

  Bea looked up. “Oh, Bob told me. He said there was one good lake and one bad lake. And the good lake was good for drinking and swimming.”

  Debra squealed, “Swimming!”

  “When did he tell you this?” asked Carl.

  “Oh, gosh,” said Bea, standing up and stretching out her knees. “At intake? Our first day,” she translated for the Newcomers. “We could see it on the horizon. I asked him about it.”

  “And you still remember?”

  “Are you kidding? I think about it all the time.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the lakes,” Debra said in a scolding voice.

  “Debra, you would have run off that very day.”

  “Oh, I would have, you’re right.” They laughed. Debra loved lakes and was unhappy that they somehow never encountered anything more than shallow rivers and murky springs.

  Agnes looked over her mother’s shoulder at the map. It was clear to her, looking at it now, that these lakes her mother sought were no longer lakes. The evidence was in their outline. The outline of the lake was bolder and bluer than the interior, as though it were meant to be a barrier between different times, between then and now. She could see the same thing in the alkali lakes, though they were colored pale blue. Around that pale blue there was also a blue outline. A dark blue. A thirsty blue. That line between then and now. Or between what they were hoping to find and what they would find.

  Agnes began to see the map as a story rather than a piece of truth. Something that changed based on what their needs were. It wasn’t something to orient their lives to. It was a suggestion rather than a directive. They didn’t have to follow it. Did they realize that? She noted the location of the sun in the sky and turned in a circle, peering at each slice of land in front of her. She could name the places they’d been that lay in each direction. Corroborating it with the map, she was right each time. They had senses. So why did they still use a map that lost them as often as it oriented them?

  Because they’d been told to. Because it was in the Manual that they should always refer to the map. That’s why. Because the Posts were on the map and the Posts were important. But she could name where the Posts were in each specific slice of landscape. Couldn’t everyone? Even the new Caldera Post. If it was on the Caldera, she knew how to get to it. No, the map was useless, and more important, it was endangering them. It was the last hand of civilization they wouldn’t let go of.

  “We should just follow the animals,” interrupted Agnes.

  “What?” her mother said.

  “If we follow the animals, they’ll show us where the water is.”

  Her mother smiled. “That’s a good idea, sweetheart,” she said, patting Agnes on the head. “But we’ve got a solid plan here we’re going to follow. I feel really good about it.”

  * * *

  They expected to reach the lake in a few days, but by the time the moon had waxed from crescent to full, they still hadn’t arrived. They found and followed the stream for a day, but it was mostly dry. They rationed water. Agnes again suggested they follow the animals and her mother shushed her.

  They had to be close, she said.

  They were close. In fact, they soon realized, they were next to the lake. Had been walking along it for miles. It was an enormous lake, or had been at one time. Now it was just a lakebed. No, a former lakebed. A lake that likely hadn’t been a lake for generations or more. Filled now with nothing but tall, rippling yellowed grass. A grass lake. On the map it was a quenching bright blue.

  “I told you—the maps are always wrong,” Val cried.

  “Oh, shut up, Val,” Bea sputtered. “The stream was right!” She chewed on her fingers anxiously.

  “I guess we keep walking to the next lake on the map then,” said Carl. “Bea?”

  “I don’t understand how there’s no lake here,” she mumbled through her fingers, as if speaking to herself.

  “The map is old,” said Dr. Harold.

  “But this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”

  “Well, how was it supposed to be?” said Glen, gently.

  She blinked up at him, a worried look. “It said there would be water here.”

  “And it was wrong,” said Val valiantly.

  “Let me think,” Bea snapped. Then she breathed long and slow. “There needs to be water on this route. We need it.” She sounded defeated. “Let’s camp here tonight.” The Community got to work setting a quick camp. They couldn’t make a fire. Not here in this parched sea of grass. So they pulled out jerky for dinner. They unrolled beds. Most were too busy to notice when Bea murmured, “I’m going for a walk,” and then headed out into the high grasses. But Agnes noticed. She waited and then snuck away, catching her mother’s track, the subtly disturbed, parted grass she’d left behind.

  Her mother was circling the grass lake, taking a long arced path, but then, after a good while of walking blind in the high grass, Agnes saw a treetop peek above it all in the distance, and just past where she stood, she saw that the grasses ended. She moved stealthily to the edge and peered between the coarse shoots.

  Her mother stood before the tree with something in her hand, squinting at it. Then she dug into her bag and pulled out a little pad of paper and small pencil she’d brought back with her from the City. She jotted something, tore the paper from the pad, crumpled it up, and pressed it into a hole in the tree. She stepped back from the tree, looked up into its branches as if contemplating climbing it. Then she turned around and walked back toward the grasses where Agnes hid.

  “You can come out now, Agnes,” she called into the grass lake.

  Agnes flushed and slowly stepped into the open.

  “You know you can just ask me.”

  “But you won’t tell me.”

  “Well, you can still ask.” Her mother smirked.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Saying hello to a squirrel friend of mine.”

  “Mom.”

  “Agnes.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, and that is the truth. Sometimes I like to leave something behind. You never know who or what will find it. It’s one of the things that keeps me sane out here.”

  Agnes knew she would not get any further with this questioning and was angry at her mother for wanting to play games.

  Bea saw her anger. “When there is something
to know,” she said, “I’ll tell you.” She pinched Agnes’s cheek and said, “Don’t grow up too fast,” and laughed when Agnes swatted her hand away. She had known it would anger Agnes even more, and that was why she’d done it.

  She put a hand on Agnes’s shoulder and squeezed, and they walked back through the grass together like that. Her mother tried to make the gesture feel maternal, but Agnes knew she was being escorted.

  Her mother shared a bed with her that night, and whenever Agnes stirred and peeked to see if her mother was sleeping, her mother’s eyes would be peering at her, bright amber and in control. “Go to sleep, Agnes,” she would say, a singsong command. Eventually Agnes drifted into a frustrated sleep, and she would not have been surprised if her mother had stayed awake the whole night just to keep Agnes from slinking off to find what she had hidden.

  When Agnes woke, it was late. She felt groggy. Her body stiff. Water rationing was taking its toll. She lay trying to block the rising sun, which seemed intent to beam right into her eyes and her eyes only.

  The camp was droning. People were lethargic, dried out. When they were packed up, they gathered in a droopy circle. The places where they’d slept were flattened, and it felt like they were corralled by a grass fence on all sides.

  Bea said flatly, “I was doing some scouting of that cluster of lakes yesterday.”

  “And?” said Carl.

  “I think it’s a dead end. So I think we should do what Agnes said.” She turned to Agnes. “Follow the animals.” Bea smiled at her, her eyes gleaming with instinct. Agnes felt her heart flutter, tugging itself between pride and disgust, love and anger. Her mother was lying to the Community. But she was also putting Agnes in charge. Agnes smiled back, from deep inside. She couldn’t help it, even as her stomach began to ache. She hated how easy it was for her to love her mother. How hard it was to remain indignant when her mother hurt her. She would always love her mother. Even when her mother didn’t deserve it. It filled her with shame, and with yearning too. Agnes bit her smile to make it retreat back inside. She watched her mother’s smile retreat then too.

  * * *

  Agnes had known they were following animal trails for days before anyone else realized it. She’d seen them clearly branded into the sameness of the sage sea for a few sunsets. She saw the broken branches and, looking ahead, could see a phantom path made among their snapped-off ends. Trails like this beamed away from her in all directions. One trail crossed with another, and as she walked, they each funneled into some kind of wide avenue where hundreds of creatures had trampled through.

  When they came upon their first congregation of creatures, she stopped, put her hands on her hips, and said, “See?”

  A day before, a storm had come through, briefly dumping rain on them as they walked across the plain. They’d been able to collect a gulp of water by turning over cups and hats, cupping their palms or turning their open mouths to the sky. The earth sopped it up fast, though, and as quickly as it had rained, the ground felt dry again.

  But here, a depression had collected much of that storm. It seemed to be a dependable water source, well visited, thoroughly trampled. Barely any sage remained.

  The animals had been rendered languid by the water. Elk sat on the ground made cool by their wet bodies. Buffalo stood in the water flicking their tails. Birds dipped up and down in the air above, buoyed by the rising moisture. Rabbits cleaned behind their ears. All was quiet except for the regular chirps and squeaks of the sentinel animals keeping watch for predators.

  The Community set up camp a ways off from the water source to avoid potential trampling. They set about cooking and putting their beds together in silence to match the serenity of the watering hole at dusk. They heard the clicking of bats and the humming of insect legs. The bigger animals murmured quietly to one another as the night fell. And just as everything seemed to have bedded down, there was a momentary cacophony. Elk bugled; buffalo snorted. The ducks quacked. The small vermin squeaked, and far-off wolves howled. It was as though they all were saying good night. It felt strange to no longer be alone.

  When the watering hole became mud and the animals moved on, the Community packed up and moved on too. They stayed in water this way, migrating with the animals from watering hole to watering hole.

  Since the grass lake, Val had ballooned and become breathless. She kept her arms wrapped around her middle as though trying to keep everything in. She lost her words in the middle of a conversation as her body clenched, beginning to begin labor. Val scowling and smiling in equal measure that it was finally happening.

  She birthed Baby Egret amid the lows of the animals at their third watering hole. She called him Baby Egret as though to ensure no one confused him with one of the milk-white birds tiptoeing through the mud. The birth was easy and quick, and Val appeared very satisfied by that. Baby Egret was cleaned and wrapped in a new buckskin sling Debra had made for him. The camp bustled to make them comfortable, but soon everything calmed down and it was a day like any other. Only with a new voice in the mix. A loud, reedy one.

  Agnes noticed that the animals at that watering hole were very interested in the new sound from their camp. Females, mothers, approached the camp, sniffing the air, excited and alert. They swiveled their ears. Baby Egret sounded like their babies. Plaintive and needful and demanding. Agnes knew they wanted to help. To show Val how to soothe the infant. How to feed him. How to protect him. They assumed Baby Egret was one of them, and Agnes had felt a small pang of jealousy over that.

  But walking ahead of the Community, Agnes felt proud to be leading, just another kind of creature on a mass migration. Just creatures finding water the way all creatures must. It wasn’t that she didn’t always feel this way each day they’d been out here. That she was just another animal. But there was something about the scope of what she could see now. How massive it was. They often saw animals: a herd of deer, mating hawks, a wolf pack. The elk herd was the largest group of animals they ever came across all at once, other than flocks of birds. But flocks of birds didn’t have the same battered hooves as the elk, the same sweaty fur.

  Looking across the vast plain and seeing all the animals moving as one, in one direction, with the same needs, she felt a part of the place in a way she hadn’t before. She’d never realized she felt apart from it. But she guessed she had in some unknowable way. It was their reliance on the water spigots. On the maps. On the fact that they checked in with Rangers. They were never fully living on their own. Not like these animals were every day. Not until now. And she was leading. She thought about a conversation she’d had with Jake when he’d first arrived, when he’d asked how long she thought she would be staying. He had no concept that the Wilderness State would be forever, having just arrived, bewildered. But she’d never considered they would ever leave. When they left the City, her mother hadn’t called it a trip, or an adventure, or something temporary. She had said, “This is our new home.” At the thought of leaving here, her breath caught in her throat. She felt like that small girl again, listless and coughing, turning a handkerchief red. Unable to assert force on the world. But that was no longer her. She was no longer that small girl, curiously watching from a distance, from behind her mother or behind Glen. Tentatively reaching out to touch a wet deer nose, breaking through a spider’s new morning web, wiping dew and silk from her face with surprise. Now she was the head elk. The point of the V. The dominant doe. She was a part of it all. It all depended on her.

  Agnes sprinted ahead. She heard Val call for her to wait. Glen croaked for her to slow down. Her mother ordered her to stop. But she whooped in response and ran faster. She spooked the deer, which veered away. The geese above got smaller as they rose to retreat from such ecstasy. This was the last breath of that little girl. Agnes grinned. She did a cartwheel, whooped again. If she’d had something in her hands to dig deep into the dirt with, she would have buried her younger self. Instead, she made squishing sounds as she pretended to dig around in her guts. Then she dramatic
ally pantomimed pulling something out of her, the heart of that little girl, and with one last whoop she threw it up into the geese and they honked and veered off again, raining shit down around her.

  Then Agnes waited for the others to catch up.

  * * *

  The closer they got to the foothills, the greener and softer the world became. The weight of the air changed. There was water again in every breath, and soon they hoped they would find it running clean and easy from small springs and brooks. They passed solitary pinyons and collected the nuts when they could to process later. Pinecone asked to carry the bag. “Because of my name,” he said. He carried it with a seriousness that made Agnes laugh, a little unkindly, she realized when she noticed that others smiled at Pinecone’s focus. Finally, the tippy tops of the mountains came into view and the Community veered toward them. They left the migratory masses behind. The watering holes. The camaraderie. The safety of the group.

  Glen had become ragged, hoarse, weak again. He’d developed a limp from simple movement rather than from some traumatic injury. He hid it as well as he could. In the night, he was coughing again, and in the morning he gingerly stepped and winced, stepped and winced, as though pained by even small moves. The Community had water now, but the water rationing they’d gone through had taken a toll on Glen.

  One of the nights after they left the last watering hole, Agnes had seen him walking off at dusk, dragging a single blanket. Agnes tried to join him, but he forbade it. Agnes had begun to read Glen’s physical wavering like people read the weather signs in the sky. A halo around the moon meant rain. When Glen disappeared, something bad would happen.

  It took a few nights for Bea to realize Glen was sleeping on the outskirts of the camp again. That it took her mother so long to notice confirmed Agnes’s belief that not only was she a bad mother, she was a bad wife as well. As if I needed confirmation, Agnes thought.

  “Why didn’t you tell me he was doing that?” her mother muttered, throwing debris into the campfire.

  “I didn’t think you cared.”

  “Of course I care,” she said in a tense hushed whisper. “Do you know why he’s doing it?”