In Wilderness (11 page)

He’s later than he means to be; the brassy sun’s already showing through the trees along the ridgeline. He sets up watch high in the rocks, but as he stares down at the pitched roof of the little cabin, that cold inside him gathers strength. She must still be sleeping—sick people sleep a lot. He tests the wind, fires up the half-smoked joint. Time to wake up, bitch, Dead Lady, Dead Lady Ashley.

But there’s nothing. Nothing when the sun silvers her window-panes, nothing when the jays swoop down raucous and hungry. No privy trip, no chimney smoke, no breakfast on the porch. The cabin’s emptiness rolls into him. Where the hell is she? Where the hell can she go?

Then it hits, tears out of him a wolfish howl his hands over his mouth can’t stop. The Dead Lady can go anywhere she goddamn wants. She’s got a car.

A goddamn, fucking car.

He runs along the trail with no thought now for silence or for cover, snuffs out the joint on the move. Looks for her car so hard, that
spot of yellow with its ass end backed into the laurel, he runs past where it ought to be. Gets halfway to the highway before he knows it’s really gone. Then he’s shaking so hard he has to sit down in the middle of the road.

She hiked out to her little yellow car and drove away. Left him, just like that.

Weird how he’d quit thinking she might do it. Quit thinking about her dying, even. Like she was going to be right there in her little cabin for the whole rest of his life. He takes the roach out of his shirt pocket, cups his hands and lights it one last time, sucks frantically. A red ash falls into his beard. He swipes at it in a panic—burning hair smells like a lot of shit from over there. Worries a thorn in his big toe with a thumbnail. Fuck. The roach has burned a blister on his lip. Her gone, it’ll be just like before. Endless string of days stretched out ahead of him, each one no different from the rest.

He grinds out the last of the jay on a rock, scatters it on the ground. He is a ghost, is Danny. Leaves no sign. Stands up, the thorn still in his toe, and sets out running back the way he came. Just like with the fox cub, just like with the she-bear, just like with the panther, squirrel, blue jay, fat-ass woodpecker bigger than a goddamn hawk. Except this time she isn’t there.

He got used to it, is all. Used to his mind’s eye seeing her inside the Old Man’s cabin, cooking her little meals, eating them at Danny’s picnic table, sitting on the extra bench he made just like he knew she was coming, knew she was already on her way, just like some kind of prophecy. Bench for him, bench for her. Surely she won’t leave him.

Daisy did. Left that Gatsby fucker flat. Him and his whole house full of goddamn shirts, yard full of people, vault somewhere full of money, too, most likely. Bitch just up and split. Who’s to say this one here hasn’t done the same?

Got to know. Got to know
right now
.

He skitters, wolfish, to the cabin, hiding first behind the pointed rock, then behind the two-trunk chestnut oak, then flat on his belly in a dry wash. Finally, the heart-pounding run across the clearing at a place where she can’t see.

Presses his hot face against the mortar chink in the cold stones
beside her bed and listens. Nothing. No Dead Lady breathing. No Dead Lady feet pad-padding through the house. No sound of any Dead Lady at the table, clinking her spoon against her bowl, setting down her cup. No sound. Safe to go in, take a look-see. Find out where the hell she’s gone. But first, one major, unavoidable precaution—reefer stinks up your clothes. He sheds his shirt and pants, kicks them beneath the porch, stands naked in the dappled light. Climbs onto the porch the Old Man made, but even this can’t soothe him.

He gets past the shiny brass door lock with a few flicks from the sharp point of his trusty utility knife—“leave no mark”—shuts the door softly behind him, stands still, breathes deep.

He can smell her everywhere, same as if she was here beside him. The acrid odors she came in with that first day are gone. In their place are smells of air and sunshine, clean-scrubbed wood. Memaw’s smells. He knows now the real reason he left his reefer clothes outside. Stays there a long time, eyes closed. Not till he’s got her scent all through his blood does he open them, start moving through the house. “Fuck you to hell, Dead Lady.” He presses his thumb and forefinger in the wet corners of his eyes. He is Odysseus, Natty Bumppo, Jake Barnes. He is
in control
.

The midmorning sun shows everything inside the cabin. The Dead Lady left a lot of shit behind. Tin plate and cup on the table, book about weeds, one of those little notebooks secretaries use. Shirt and jeans folded just so on a shelf. Everything so neat and orderly his heart hurts from it. Sleeping bag unrolled in its corner, something, a nightgown, folded, laying there on top. White with blue flowers no bigger than his pinkie nail. Its bright afterimage lingers.

Her pots and stuff take just one kitchen shelf. The rest are bare, except for two near-empty paper sacks. One holds half a handful of beans, the other about the same amount of rice. Enough for a day, maybe. Burnt-down coals in the firebox, but the nearest stove eye is still hot to touch. The warming oven holds a plate piled with cooked beans and rice, slices of some kind of deep-gold squash.

She’s coming back! She left herself a meal!

“Bitch went to Elkmont to buy fucking food.”

He flings his arms out, head back, grins wide at the ceiling.

Stops.

She might still be gone for good. Just up and left, like on a whim or something. Anyhow, she got away without him knowing. Can do it again, just hike out to her little pissant car, crank it up, take off. Someday soon she’ll go for good. If not today, someday.

Or maybe not.

Back in the front room, he sits down at his table, picks up her little notebook. Her handwriting’s hard to read, like it’s some foreign language that’s a lot like English. Name: Katherine Reid. “Ka-ther-ine.” He says it out loud, sounds it out, the Dead Lady’s name. Ka-ther-ine. All wrong for her. She wants a simple name. Rose, like his Memaw. Blanche, his mama’s name. “Age: 38,” same age his mama’d be. He presses the open notebook hard against his face. It smells of the cabin and the wood in his table. Smells, too, of her hands, her skin.

“Ka-ther-ine.”

In the corner, a shaft of sunlight falls across her sleeping bag. He goes to it, his bare feet on the slate floor make no sound. Kneels on the canvas, picks up her nightgown, buries his face in it. Ka-ther-ine. Keeps hold of it, traces the throat of the sleeping bag with his right index finger, stops at the zipper, works it slowly down till there is room for someone, Danny, to slide in. He zips himself inside, then curls up like a baby, clutches her thin cotton nightgown close. Her clean-washed smell is all around him till he wants to fucking weep.

Get up, Danny. You can’t feel anything for them. You’re nothing but a ghost that watches. Go put your clothes back on. Get your ass out of here. Lay her fucking nightgown down and back away.

Before he leaves, he takes a small stone from his pocket. A white oval with one deep ochre vein that sometimes means there’s gold nearby. He got it at the pond his first day in the Old Man’s house, kept it. Now he pushes it gently into the ground beside the porch step, close to her but where she’ll never find it. He has deliberately violated one more of the cardinal rules of watching: Leave nothing of yourself behind.

He laces his boots, sets out in a run, shocked back into what he has to do. Runs through the woods to where her car should be, then
on. How could she leave and him not know? He knows how she fucking breathes, for Chrissake. Running along her tire tracks now, his head large as a pumpkin, aching how it used to when some shit exploded right above him in the air. Then there’s nothing, not pain nor any sound except the wind, no thought but words that mark the cadence of his running.
Fuck you, dumb whore, fuck you
. And whatever things his eyes see do not register. His mind’s gone to some other running long ago.

Him running home from his first day of school on chubby six-year-old legs, Memaw at the door. “Your mama’s gone.” Him, sure she’s just walked into town, starts in running to catch up. Only, his Memaw ran faster, caught him, lifted him high in her old arms, his little legs still churning.

“She couldn’t stand not being with your daddy.” That was all she said.

He didn’t cry, not even at the funeral. Because the coffin had its lid on and he didn’t know it was his mama in there till days after.

Fuck you, dumb whore
. Runs like an animal, not making any nonessential sounds.

Stops, finally, at the “Elkmont, pop. 4,017” sign to get his breath. Strolls along Main Street trying to look normal. Stares up at the sky, down at the street—he’ll blow it if he meets somebody’s eyes, they’ll see him for the spook he is. Just walk around the courthouse square, past the gun-colored parking meters. And, yes, there it is, her dumbass little car. Yellow. The Golden Fleece.

He has to sit down on the nearest bench from how the Mustang’s brightness slams into him, weakens him in the knees. Although finding it’s no more than he expected. Yeah, expected. A world ahead of “hoped.”

He stares into its window-glass reflections. Granite courthouse, too-blue sky, maples with buds swelling on their twigs, Danny himself sitting on the bench. Bitch’s got no idea what he looks like. He can wait here in the open till she shows up and drives away. Rarely do you get to watch where they can see you. It’s as much a luxury as good food or a clean, soft bed.

Except not this time. Because it isn’t over yet. The highway leads in two directions from the courthouse square. North toward the turnoff to the cabin, south to the freeway and gone. He sprawls out on the bench, arms stretched along its slats, his eyes half closed. Sits where he sees both halves of the highway. Sits so relaxed no passerby would ever guess he’s got a pile driver inside him where there ought to be a heart.

T
HE SQUAT BRICK POST OFFICE SMELLS OF STAMP PADS AND STALE
cigar smoke. A round-faced woman behind the counter looks her up and down as if she doesn’t often see a stranger.

“May I help you?”

Katherine ponders each syllable individually, as though it were a perfect swirled-glass marble falling from the woman’s mouth. They are the first words anyone has spoken to her since she walked into the forest.

“I need to rent a mailbox.” She shapes her own syllables precisely.

The woman hands her an application and she completes it in a shaky hand. The clerk looks it over, checks her driver’s license, and hands her a key. Katherine stares at it. P.O. Box 2609. She has an address now.

Even if she’s never coming back, she’ll need it. Everybody comes from somewhere and she’ll need it to show where she’s been. With the
cracked ballpoint pen chained to the counter, she draws a line through the first item on her list. Her headache’s growing worse.

The Elkmont National Bank’s institutional blue-green walls and carpet, coupled with muffled voices that set off a roaring in her ears, make her feel as if she’s under water, drowning. On the lapel of the teller’s dark blue jacket is a small red enamel pin shaped like a drop of blood. A sign on her counter says she participated in the bank’s annual blood drive. “I gave life. I gave blood.” Katherine tries hard not to stare at the sign or at the blood drop. She is dizzy, feels unwell.

“I need to open a savings account.”

Yes, even if she’s leaving on this very day. Because the cashier’s check clutched in her hand is all the money she has in the world and it is for a fairly large amount and she might lay it down somewhere and just forget it. She is capable of that. She meant to deposit it on the drive up and forgot. She will deposit the check here today and transfer the money when she gets down to Atlanta; that way she won’t lose it. All this was clearer on the trail; now it’s all jumbled.

Except that soon she’ll climb back in her car and drive back to Atlanta, that much she is sure of.

Isn’t she?

During the transaction she stares at the teller’s nimble hands, her stubby fingers so like, and yet so different, from her own, these first hands that are not her hands that she has seen in weeks.

Her next stop, the grocery store, is old and dark, with cracked linoleum that stinks of Pine-Sol, rotting vegetables, and an unpleasant suggestion of dry-cleaning fluid from the laundry next door. Her list says
dried beans, rice, cabbages, winter squash, cornmeal
. Staples; they’ll all travel well. At the last minute she grabs a can of salted peanuts for the trip. She’ll tell them at the agency that California didn’t suit her, something, couldn’t stand the air. They’ll hire her back, to do illustrations if for nothing else. While she waits for the garrulous woman in front of her to charge her week’s worth of supplies, Katherine crosses “bank” and “grocery” off her list. She could just throw the thing away.

Except she took the time to make it, this list of tasks she needs to take care of. Because when its words are all crossed off she’ll have completed all her business here and can go anywhere she wants. Because
for now it comforts her to feel it in her pocket, clutch it in her hand.

At Nora’s Dress Shoppe, which smells like artificial flowers might if artificial flowers had a scent, the white-haired saleslady addresses her as “dear” in a soft, musical voice that makes her want to stay, maybe ask if she can organize the clothes on the sale racks, which really don’t need organizing. Maybe the saleslady will ask her to stay for lunch, join her at that round table with the two chairs in the back room behind the not-so-carefully-pulled curtain she can see from where she’s standing. Katherine can talk with her and eat the food she brought. She is suddenly so tired of eating lunch alone.

But the white-haired saleslady does not ask her. And Katherine has other errands, needs to finish them.

The bookshop down the block is narrow, dark, and quiet, with a side room given over to a weaver’s studio. Katherine peers at it through the open door.

“It’s okay, go on in. Have a look around.”