The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

  “Maybe he’s dying,” Agnes said.

  Her mother’s face burned. “What did you just say?”

  Agnes swallowed. “Maybe he’s dying,” she said, quieter, afraid. She said it because she believed maybe he was. It’s what many animals did when they were dying. She prepared to continue with these explanations. But Bea turned to her, her face wild, not with anger but with fear, and every part of her advanced as if to slap Agnes. Agnes cringed, certain she could feel her mother’s hand just at her cheek. But the slap never came. Agnes opened one eye and saw her mother walking away from the light of the fire, directly toward where Glen was, as though he were true north. She did not return to camp before Agnes went to sleep. And she was not there when Agnes woke in the earliest silver dawn.

  Agnes found them huddled just far enough that the light from the campfire would be visible as a glow on the horizon, not flickering flames. She squatted just an old pine’s length from them, but if they saw her, they did not acknowledge her. They behaved as though they were alone, somewhere private, not under the open sky.

  Glen reclined on his belongings. Patches of his beard were gray, and it covered what Agnes knew were sunken cheeks. He looked like a scrap of hide too small and ragged to do much with.

  Bea sat beside him, leaning over him, lounging almost. She had a brutish wooden bowl next to her and a rag in her hand. She dipped it into the bowl, and it came up dripping. She ran the wet rag down the center of Glen’s chest.

  Glen sighed, and his shoulders released apart, as though she’d unlocked them from his breastbone. He laid his head back.

  Agnes watched, perplexed. How could he feel relaxed in her hands after she’d disappeared and now abandoned him for Carl? How could he accept her love? Tenderness needed to be accompanied by something else to matter, something like loyalty.

  After Bea joined Carl, she made sure Glen was cared for. But as far as Agnes had seen, she did none of the caring herself. Until now, Bea had kept her distance. If she observed Glen at all, it was from afar. Perhaps her mother’s privacy had made it feel as though her love for Glen was over. But now, here, that was clearly wrong. Sometimes Agnes doubted her mother’s motives for things, assuming she held onto quieter additional desires. But there was nothing ambiguous here as Agnes watched her mother kiss Glen tenderly on the cheeks, the temples, his closed eyelids, his forehead, as he smiled blissfully and sadly; then, when she kissed his mouth, his body reached for hers. He was in love. And so, it seemed, was her mother. Agnes thought back to all that time without her mother after her mother had abandoned them. She couldn’t remember Glen showing a moment of anger. As though he was certain she had only acted out of necessity, and therefore he could cast no blame.

  She watched from the shadows as Bea lay in Glen’s arms, her head on his bony chest, lifting slightly with each breath. Their eyes were closed, but they were not asleep. Agnes felt warmth in her chest, and she remembered that this was how they’d slept for years. Her mother and Glen in each other’s arms and Agnes at their feet. Watching them together, Agnes felt heartsick. She wanted to be a part of that family bed again, to be the one they wanted to share tender time with. Did they miss her right now? Did they miss the feel of her hands around their ankles?

  * * *

  The Community stayed put for a few nights and processed the pheasants the Hunters had rustled up.

  Bea joined Agnes at bedtime now that Glen was off in the outskirts. But her mother curled much too tight in a ball, on purpose, Agnes thought, and it left Agnes restless and cold throughout the night. She didn’t want to sleep like that again. One night, Agnes left the warmth of the fire in search of Glen.

  It looked like he had a fire going too. But she realized that what she thought she saw, a glow on the horizon, a little black snake of smoke slithering up the dark blue dusk sky, was much, much, much farther away and must not be a fire at all. Maybe it was some remnant of sunset. The smoke nothing but an illusion.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she heard Glen say.

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I could tell from the sound of your footsteps.”

  Agnes was proud of Glen for discerning her approach, but she was also embarrassed that she’d been detected so easily.

  “Don’t worry,” Glen said, sensing her disappointment. As she got closer, she could see him smiling. “I only know your footsteps. And that’s only because I spend a lot of time listening for them. No one else would be able to hear you.”

  “Good,” she said and squatted down next to him. “Can you come back to camp?”

  “I’d prefer to stay out here.”

  “But I’m cold when I sleep.”

  “Isn’t your mother sleeping with you? She said she would.”

  “Yes, but she doesn’t keep me warm. She doesn’t like me to touch her.”

  “Of course she does.”

  “No, she pulls away when I reach for her foot.”

  “Maybe she’s just asleep.”

  “No, she’s awake. She’s doing it on purpose.”

  “Agnes, I find that hard to believe.”

  “It’s true. She doesn’t want to be with me. She doesn’t like me.” Agnes felt a surge of pressure in her chest, as though she might sputter into coughs. Her eyes watered.

  “Your mother loves you very much. Everything she does, she does for you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It’s mostly true.”

  “She does a lot for herself.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Agnes thought that counterpoint was unfair. She wasn’t someone’s mom. But she didn’t say that. “You don’t,” she said.

  “Sure I do.”

  “No, you don’t, and you certainly wouldn’t if you had your own kids.”

  “Oh,” Glen said and frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought I had my own kid. She’s this funny little girl who says dumb things sometimes. Like how her dad doesn’t have any kids.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re not my actual dad.”

  “I feel like I am,” he said.

  “I know. I just was thinking about Madeline.”

  Glen looked slapped. “Oh.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s nice to hear her name. I didn’t know you knew it.”

  “I do.”

  “Did your mother tell you?”

  “No.”

  “But you heard it.”

  “Yes.”

  Glen smiled. “You hear everything, don’t you?”

  Agnes smiled and bowed her head proudly. “It’s my job.”

  “No,” he said, frowning again. “Your job is to be young.”

  “I’m sorry I said her name.”

  He chuckled. “You can say her name. It’s nice to hear it—I wasn’t lying.” He smiled. “I don’t talk about her because she’s not here. And you are. And you’re my girl. But if she were here, I would treat Madeline like I treat you. Like your mother treats you.”

  “Hmm,” said Agnes. She was unconvinced.

  In front of them a pair of amber eyes blinked near to the ground.

  “Mouse or mole or vole or troll?” Glen said.

  “Troll,” Agnes said.

  “That’s what I thought too. Scoot, troll,” he said, and the creature scampered away. Glen coughed. Then said, “Sometimes I feel bad for keeping you here. I think maybe we should have left when you got better.”

  “Don’t.” Agnes said this forcefully.

  “Oh?”

  Agnes wanted to say more, but she found that when she opened her mouth to speak, she only choked on a rising feeling. She looked around at the black sky, the near-invisible line of the horizon. She listened to the bats clicking their whereabouts and finding her. The breeze cooled her skin after such a hot day. Sitting alone next to Glen, her dad, in the open air among the animals and the Community. Who would she even be now if they hadn’t come here?

  “I never want
to leave,” she said.

  Glen pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “I know you don’t,” he said, still frowning.

  “Will you please come back to camp?” Agnes said. “I’m lonely at night.”

  “But your mother.”

  “She’ll go sleep with Carl. It’s where she wants to be anyway.” Agnes flinched a bit at having said such a thing to Glen. It was cruel.

  But Glen laughed, a reedy empty laugh. “Oh, Agnes. What you don’t know about your mother could fill a canyon.”

  “I know more than you think.”

  “Oh?”

  “I know that she thinks she is protecting us.”

  “But . . . ?” Glen asked.

  “I don’t need her to protect me. And neither do you. Even if we needed help, there are other ways.”

  “Your mother knows what she’s doing. And I know what she’s doing. We’re a team.”

  “How can you say that when she’s with Carl?”

  Glen’s voice became slow and emphatic. “I know what she’s doing,” he said again, trying to make it true. “She knows what she’s doing. We’re a team.”

  Agnes looked at Glen. “You’re a fool,” she said quietly. Though she knew it was unkind, she could think of no other way to say it.

  Glen blinked. Agnes thought his eyes got wet for a moment, but nothing escaped them. “Maybe,” he said.

  They were quiet. A ground owl filled in the blanks. A cloud rushed to hide the moon. Agnes shivered.

  Glen stretched dramatically, then slapped his thighs. “But,” he said loudly, with forced cheer, “to answer your question, yes, I will come back to the sleep circle. My feet were getting awfully cold out here.”

  Agnes smiled. She helped him up, noticing the way his knees trembled. But he steadied himself without her help. She gathered his bedding, and they walked. She felt like she was the youngest member of a herd and he was the eldest, the most important. She knew no one else thought of him that way, but she felt proud beside him. She didn’t think he needed to be the leader to still be important, though she understood that wasn’t the way of the herd. She threw his pelts over her shoulder to free her hand, which she slipped into his.

  Agnes smiled as they walked and kept her smile even when she noticed her mother watching them approach, her face pinched and disapproving. As they got to the edge of camp, Bea rose from her seat and went to the bed she’d been sharing with Agnes. She picked up her own pelt just as they arrived at the family’s spot in the circle. She gave Agnes a tight smile. Agnes tried to mirror it, to mock her mother. But instead of feeling mocked, Agnes thought she saw a laugh behind her mother’s eyes. Her mother did not acknowledge Glen. She walked over to where Carl was lounging and put her skins down with his.

  Agnes looked up at Glen and was surprised to see he was not watching her mother walk away. He was smiling down at Agnes. He pinched her cheek.

  “It’s bedtime. Ready, Freddy?” he asked.

  “My name’s not Freddy,” she said.

  “It isn’t?” He scratched his head. “I could have sworn . . .” It was a thing he used to say to her whenever they were preparing to leave the apartment. Back so long ago when she was a little girl and he was her mother’s boyfriend and they were about to step into the harsh, crowded world outside their cozy home.

  * * *

  As the Community ate their supper and the horizon devoured the sun, Agnes’s hackles rose. She looked around the fire and saw that most of the others were still, alert, listening. Each of their heads whipped toward the sound of a single crunch.

  They peered into the growing dusk. Agnes saw the shadow of a man, shoulders hunched. It looked as though his hands were thrust into pockets. But his details were lost in the murky light and sage surrounding him.

  “Who the hell are you?” Carl yelled at the shadow.

  The shadow flinched, lowered himself into a cowering pose. His hair caught the sun’s thrown blazes of red.

  “Fuck off,” Carl yelled.

  The shadow loped away, looking back every few paces, the sad whites of his eyes shining, his tongue drooping from his mouth.

  “He needs water,” Debra said.

  “We need water,” Carl said.

  “We have water.” Debra looked at Bea.

  Bea said, “No water.”

  The Community pretended to turn attention again to the fire, where the flames rioted. They kept their hands on their primitive weapons.

  “Juan and I will keep watch till morning,” said Carl. The shadow retreated and was not sensed again that night.

  The next day the Community was on edge, everyone disrupting their work to scan the horizon for a return of the slinking shadow.

  The next night it came. This time closer and more reminiscent of a man. A man with the kind of mangy beard found on corpses. Like the dead man on the ridge and his dead beard. Brad’s uncle. Agnes sneered at the memory. This man in front of them wore madras shorts and thin-soled City shoes. A water tube slung around his torso, deflated, empty. He knelt. He thrust his hands out, palms upraised. His eyes were low and averted.

  “He needs water,” Debra said.

  “We need water,” Carl said.

  “We have water,” Debra said. She looked to Bea again.

  Bea sighed. She flicked her hand. “Give him a cup of water.”

  Carl punched his hand against his thigh, his lips tight and bloodless. But he stood up and found a wooden cup that had been tossed into the dirt. Without brushing it off, he filled it with water and walked it away from the fire, not toward the man but far to his right, to make the man have to crawl to get it.

  The Community turned their attention back to the fire. They heard rustling, the grunt of exertion. They heard a slurp, a gasp, a cough. Then they heard nothing. When they bedded down, they assumed he bedded down as well, right where he’d drunk the water. Frank and Linda patrolled that night.

  In the earliest part of morning, they woke to a shriek. Debra’s. She was standing, a pelt clutched around her. The man in the madras shorts was in her bed, curled up like a pill bug. His eyes bulged and his muscles tensed in preparation for an escape, though he didn’t move.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Carl said. “Get up.”

  “I’m sorry,” the man said into his hands.

  “Get up.”

  “I was cold,” the man said from the ground.

  “Get up.”

  “Can I have some soup?”

  “Get. Up.”

  “I’m a good worker.”

  Carl pulled the man up by his armpits, and for a moment the man remained curled, his legs pulled to his chest, his whole body hovering over the dirt. Then he slowly let his legs down and they saw that he was very tall, stringy. Carl appraised him. He might be either very strong or very weak.

  “Let’s go,” Carl said. He marched the man back out into the bushes.

  When Carl pivoted to return to camp, the man in the madras shorts reached for him. It was a plaintive reach, one of desperation, sorrow even. They could all see that. But Carl took it as aggression, and he grabbed the man’s arm and lunged at his throat. Carl and the man slapped at each other’s faces. Their hands and fingers clawed, but their wrists broke form and rendered every move ineffective. They had never seen Carl fight before. It turned out he wasn’t very good at it.

  The men spun in a circle, their feet shuffling, as though dancing, slapping at each other to avoid getting slapped. Finally Carl landed a punch in the center of the man’s face and he went down to one knee holding his nose. Carl kicked the man’s foot out from under him, and the man fell to the side, his hands at his face, his knees tucked again. He stayed down.

  Carl returned to camp and the Community went about their day.

  They cleaned up from breakfast. They did small tasks, tidied as though guests were expected. They turned the meat in the smoker, stretched skins. The Gatherers went out in small groups to gather. They did what they could to distract themselves from the presence
of the man. But, nervous, they did their tasks poorly. They scraped a hole into one of the skins. Meat fell into the smoking fire. A batch of pine nuts was ruined.

  During supper, the man crawled closer, his tongue hanging out, dirt crusted. Carl walked to him, grabbed him by the collar of his fleece pullover, and dragged his limp, long frame back past the edge of camp.

  He sat between sage bushes, exactly where he’d fallen that morning. He broke off the leaves and slowly ate them. It was not sustenance and would eventually make him ill. As they fell asleep, they heard him crawl away. They heard the wet slap of diarrhea against the dirt and the man whimpering.

  In the morning, Debra woke again to find the man tangled in her skins, and Carl pushed him to the boundary and fought him again. They did the same dance they had done, but for a much shorter amount of time. Carl landed a punch after only a few turns on their dusty dance floor, and the man crumbled.

  This cycle repeated itself over the next two nights and mornings. Debra began to sleep in Juan’s bed. In the morning, the man would be found in Debra’s bed, luxuriating in the comfort and space. And Carl would drag him away from camp.

  On the third night, around the fire, Debra said, “I brought him scraps yesterday.”

  “That’s not allowed,” said Dr. Harold bitterly.

  “I don’t care,” said Debra. “And I’m going to do it again tonight.”

  “Debra, why?” Bea asked.

  “Because I want my bed back,” she said. Juan scowled at her and she scowled back. “He kicks in his sleep.”

  “She steals the covers,” he said. They each pawed at their own bleary eyes.

  “He’s not going away,” Glen croaked. “Maybe we should discuss what to do?”

  “Let me handle it,” said Carl. The conversation ended there.

  As people retired to their beds, Carl walked to where the man crouched and kicked him. They saw the man trying to flatten against the ground as Carl lifted him with kicks to his abdomen.

  “Stay down,” Carl demanded, though it was clear the man had no intention of fighting back. Carl kicked him over onto his back and straddled him. He pulled his head up by his hair, and he landed four punches to his face. When he let go of his hair, the man’s head fell back to the ground, as if returning to where it belonged. Carl leaned toward him, secret-telling distance, and stayed like that as everyone else held their breath. Then Carl walked back to camp and crawled into his bed, where Bea lay waiting.