In Wilderness (22 page)

Fuck that, she’s killed more meat in her short life than he ever will. Let her get her own damn meat, trot back with some for him.

He can’t leave yet, his white clothes haven’t dried. Or else he should have left a while ago, before the sun dropped down behind the trees.

Truth be told, he’s not sure where he’s going. Only that he can’t stay here, so close to the Dead Lady and yet never close enough. He’s either got to go down there and work it out to live with her, or live without her someplace far away.

He brings his damp clothes in, drapes them over a cane chair with a busted seat. Sits cross-legged on his mattress and stares at his rucksack. Wants only to go back to the cabin, mix his life up with the Dead Lady’s in every way. He told her about San Francisco and she said to him, “Don’t go,” like it’s God giving him a perfect sign.

Yeah, God, you made it so every goddamn thing I think is about her. I see a tree and wonder does she know its name. I feel a breeze and think how it’s just come from sliding off her skin. I can’t sleep nights for thinking about her.

He throws his head back, stares at the stain-splotched ceiling.
God, tell me—what the fuck am I supposed to do?

Next thing, he’s rocking, pitching violently on his moldy mattress,
arms around his knees.
Can’t do it, can’t do it
. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth. He is
in control
.

He will not go down the mountain on the trail that overlooks the Old Man’s cabin. Will not hide under the overhang and watch her. Will not smile at the girly way she splits her kindling with her arms stuck out like chicken wings. Will not see her little light wink out and know it’s safe to stay beside her through the night. Will not feel her soft breath spreading through him till he wants to fuck her brains out for whole days and nights.

No, wants so much more than that.

Can’t do it, can’t do it
. Rocking furiously to stop the tears.

He promised God he’d never touch her. Did his part, upheld his end. He warned her. Came right out and told her about San Francisco. Like talking to a goddamn wall.

“Oh, Danny, Danny, please don’t go. Fuck me, love me. Make me have your babies.” Because that’s what this shit boils down to. Memaw said dreams don’t come true.

Don’t go
.

He rocks now to Dead Lady words, a fast, hard rhythm he can’t stop. His tears run down his naked chest onto his belly, where they burn and he can’t quit rocking to wipe them away.

Don’t go
.

So long as he keeps rocking, all his present world will stay the same. If he stops, he’ll have to do something. And that thing, whatever it is, will make his world spin out in one direction or another. The setting sun’s turned everything around him red. He’s thirsty and his vision’s growing dim. His rocking’s slowed. Sometimes he lurches to one side and has to right himself, regain his balance, start again.

Only, this time he doesn’t. This time he falls over on his side and stays there. Closes his eyes, lets his whole world go black.

And cool.

And still.

Don’t go
.

S
HE EXPECTED HIM TO COME BACK ANY MOMENT
,
BUT THOSE
MOMENTS
passed. Now, with the sun so low once again that shadows cover all the ground, she sits on her porch and gazes across the clearing at the trees. She has lived these last two days outdoors on any pretext, staring always into the thick forest looking for him. Because it is unthinkable he might not come.

He saved her that day in the snow, brought her inside and built a fire; she thought it had been all her doing. The knowledge frightens her, thrills her—that she needed him then for her very life and he was there.

But now she knows better than to lie down in snow. Knows better, even, than to give in to her loneliness. Yes, she can make a place for him. But she has lived alone and she can do it still. Life alone, like other life, is only a succession of events. You swing from one to another
to the next, like you’re crossing a chasm on a vine bridge. These everyday occurrences suffice to carry you. Long as you keep moving. Long as you don’t look down. Long as you don’t contemplate alternatives.
How lovely it would be to have a lover; how glorious to have a child
. She is a foolish woman and deserves what she has gotten. He is a boy too young to grow a decent beard. What she has been contemplating is unnatural.

Yet she can’t stop it, lacks even will enough to try, as if he’s one last sickness and she’s got no strength left to fight. Or as if he’s God’s gift and she deserves him. Because she didn’t kill herself. Because she didn’t die. Because she’s forced by circumstances to give up what passes for everything. She goes inside to her loom and tries to weave what these two days have been. A rectangle of mournful grays, dark, lonely greens and dry clumps of weeds hurtful to touch. She works furiously, in a race to put this obscene longing behind her. She will not weave a thread for his white clothes in all that darkness.

She is so deep within her work she can’t hear any sound outside her own sharp breathing. How else to explain how he gets all the way onto the porch, up to the open door, and she turns only when he blocks her light?

“I came back.”

He does not smile.

She nods, needs suddenly to brace one hand against the wall. A thorn from the sharp weeds crosshatched through her weaving nicks the outside of her thumb, spreading a drop of blood in the gray wool. He sees it, sees everything. Wearing a backpack and carrying a huge bedroll on his shoulders, he has to turn sideways to get through the door. Once in, he drops the bedroll in the center of the room.

“I got as far as Elkmont and I bought these quilts, so I reckoned I was coming back. If I was you I’d get out while you still can, grab your little gun and run. Maybe wing me on the fly.” He’s grinning.

It’s as if the floor has tilted and she’s sliding off one end with nothing to hold on to.

The boy, Danny, rocks back on his heels. “Yeah, I broke into your house one day while you were gone. Walked all around, touched all
your stuff. Held some of it a long time in my hands. It felt good, doing that. From the start I been watching over you just like you were my family.”

Heat rises in her face. It seems suddenly important that she be afraid, that she keep her feet planted firmly, so she can maintain her balance.

But none of that is possible.

“Don’t go.”

His jaw muscles tighten. He bends down, unties the ropes that held the bedroll and unfurls it.

“The brown one’s mine, the white’s yours. I’ll spread mine out up in the loft. Yours, too, if that’s the way you want it.”

She nods once, afraid to seem too eager. If he doesn’t see it, then that’s that.

He climbs to the loft with both the quilts and she’s left standing there, hands crossed against her chest. Why should she care what he thinks of her? If that’s even an issue—perhaps he only wants them to lie with their knees drawn up, like before.

In the kitchen she feeds wood into the stove, stokes its embers into flames, pays careful attention to all she is doing. Her hands shake when she measures out the rice. They will eat supper like normal people. All she’s done is take him in. Who can say what will come of it?

“Faucet work all right?”

She starts, nods. He’s come back downstairs, but she can’t look at him. Instead she turns her back, takes two garden cucumbers off a shelf, slices them at the sink.

He drags a bench into the kitchen. She can hear it scrape against the floor, the creak it makes when he sits down behind her.

“You don’t talk much.”

She shakes her head.

“It’s nice. Most of what folks say’s not worth the hearing.”

His odd speech, a mountain dialect, but tempered. She smiles then, lets herself turn toward him, catches him gazing at her as one might a racehorse, an animal one watches for one’s own delight. She looks away. The cabin suddenly seems overcrowded with their movement, forcing them too close, too soon. She makes a small involuntary
sound; he draws a quick breath like an answer, then climbs back to the loft. What is she doing with him here? Why can’t she make it stop?

The rice has come to a slow boil the way she wants it. She slices tomatoes, cucumbers, conscious always of the sounds he makes above her, quiet and orderly, setting out his things. Her throat’s dry and her face is hot, as if from fever.

Sitting across from each other at the table, they eat silently, can’t meet each other’s eyes. When they’ve finished, she washes their plates and forks. Then there is nothing left to do.

She comes back from the privy, runs a pan of water, sponges off in a corner of the porch, puts on her nightdress. When she passes him beside the stairs she cannot look at him. In the loft, he has spread the two quilts side by side, the plain brown one and then the white one with its fingernail-size flowers. No, this is a good thing, his being here. It will all be all right. She pulled that baby from the street and felt his small heart beat against her breast.

Downstairs, the front door closes and he shoots the bolts. In the loft, she lies on her white quilt in her white nightdress, arms folded over her chest, hears him cross the room, his bare feet on the first stair, then the next one.

Now whatever is going to happen will begin.

W
HATEVER HE DOES
,
HE WILL NOT HURT HER
.

Danny grabs a fistful of mint out of the garden, stuffs it in his mouth and chews. On the porch, with the bucket of cold water, he washes himself clean. Inside, he takes the lantern from the table. Stands still a moment to quiet his shaking.

“A right-broke horse won’t lose its wildness, keeps it all for you.” From a disintegrating paperback midway along his second shelf. That’s how Danny wants his Katherine to love him, strong as his mama loved his daddy. The thought boils inside him as he climbs up to the loft.

She lies there in her white, flowered nightdress on his white, flowered quilt. In the dim light her eyes are enormous, their pupils large and black. Her gown comes all the way down to her ankles, where her feet poke out small and helpless looking. He needs to touch her. Somewhere. Now. Needs to begin the thing. Kneeling beside her, he captures her right ankle in the circle of his thumb and forefinger. Feels
her tendons slide over her bones, like with her wrist bones that night in the storm. It’s like he’s looking at an X-ray, learning her clear through. He lets go of her ankle, traces with his index finger the thin bones that lead off from her toes.

He wants every part of her with equal intensity. Her foot is just the first part that he came to. It’s strange to him, elegant, somehow. Different from anything he’s always thought about as feet. He bends down, rests his cheek against it. She watches him and doesn’t move or make a sound.

Danny lays her foot back on the comforter, looks in her huge eyes again. “I’ve never done this before, not really. I want us to do everything there is.”

It’s true, looked at a certain way. He couldn’t get it up with that hippie girl in San Francisco. Should have done it earlier with some slant-eye gook girl who would not have mattered, except he thought Janelle was waiting. Over there it’s all they ever talked about except the war. The perfect fuck. The perfect girl. Back home.

The Dead Lady, Katherine, lets out a tiny sigh and he can feel some caught-up thing inside her letting go. He takes the hem of her gown in both his hands, lifts it gradually and just looks at her, one part at a time. The offset bones beside her ankles. Soft flesh on the insides of her knees. That dark mystery between her legs that’s no more and no less than all the rest. Her navel that’s a small, dark hole.

He stops there. Wants to see her all at once.

“Take it off the rest of the way yourself. Your shift. Pull it off over your head.” His words slur together like his mouth is full of mush. He will never hurt her.

She moves to do the thing he’s asked. He looks away. When he turns back, he draws a hard breath through his teeth from just the sight of her. She lies with her arms above her head and the gown still twisted in them, like some woman in a painting. The tips of her small breasts are red as fire-pink blossoms, her dark hair’s fanned over the quilt. All her separate parts call out to him, no one part louder than the rest. He aims to learn the ways of all of them, what each wants most.

Danny slides the gown off her arms without touching them, makes it a pillow for her head. He can do anything he wants with her and she
will let him.
It’s. All. Right
. The knowledge whips through him, muscular as a caught snake.

The sun has set and the first star has come out. Lone and bright, as if its being in the window, centered there, means something. He holds a match to the lantern he has brought. In its sudden glow she looks like a young girl, a girl his own age. He sits beside her, runs his hand slow-motion down the whole length of her body maybe an inch above it, watching for changes in her eyes, the rhythm of her breathing. Watching to see what he can know.

Sometimes he stays his hand a moment.

“Here?”

She nods.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“Please. Yes.”

“Not yet.”

When he does first touch her, except for when he held her ankle, it’s the soft skin inside her forearm, nothing more. She closes her eyes, draws a sharp breath. It’s what he wants to happen, how he’s dreamed it. He touches her in other places, holds his right hand flat against them, cups them in his palm. He runs a finger slowly from her throat down to her navel and her body arches into it. He has dreamed this, too.

“Here?”

“Yes.” Less like a word than like an exhalation.

He brought a tin cup of water, same as he brought the lantern.

“You should drink.”

She shakes her head.

“Yes, drink now.” It’s happening too fast. He needs to slow things down.

He holds her head up, brings the cup up to her lips and tilts it. She takes large, thirsty gulps. Yeah, he knows what she needs even before she does. He drinks after her, puts the cup down empty. She rocks herself, her hips, against him. Gently, like maybe she’s not aware of it. Like maybe it’s something she can’t help.