In Wilderness (29 page)

She steps out of the line, goes to the dusty window that looks out onto the street, tears the envelope open carefully along one of its short ends, reads silently, then looks at him and shakes her head.

“They want to buy the cabin. And all the land around it that I own.”

Her words start something churning in him, some flywheel in his gut.

“Hey, maybe there’s gold on it and we can dig it and get rich.”
Him grinning like the whole thing’s a big joke. Which it’s got to be. “You’re not going to sell it, are you?”

“No.” Frowns. Looks back down at the typewritten sheet.

Got to get out of here, change the subject, get some kind of new reality. Got to keep that churning blade from slicing through his flesh.

“Hey, tell you what, let’s get some burgers at the Rexall.”

“You go. I don’t want one. I’ll wait in that little courthouse park.”

Little park where he sat on a bench and watched her on that other scary day, day when he thought she’d gone away for good. Turned out okay then, going to turn out okay now. Got to.

“I can’t go off and leave you. Your old buddy from Atlanta might show up and carry you away.”

“He’s not my buddy.”

Won’t she ever laugh? Anymore, her mouth’s only a tight, thin line for keeping puke inside.

He pulls their cart one-handed, grabs her upper arm.

“Come on. I’ll buy you anything you want. Egg salad sandwich, tuna fish. Buy you an ice cream sundae, soda, anything. ’Cause you’re my girl.” Like pushing a huge rock up a goddamn mountain, getting her to do stuff anymore.

He jerks the cart inside the drugstore, sits them down in a red vinyl booth, orders himself a double cheeseburger. She gets a vanilla soda, sucks the liquid through her straw, won’t touch the ice cream. Finicky bitch. Danny dumps his coffee over it, finishes it off. No point letting ice cream go to waste, even vanilla. Through the drugstore’s plate glass he can see the church, its stained-glass windows, where sometimes he used to hide. Wants to look at her, except her eyes are spooky and her jaw’s all clenched. He stares down instead at the gold flecks in the Formica tabletop. Who’d want her piddling little land?

In line at the bank, he slips his hand in her back pocket, waits to feel her fingers’ little warmth slide into his, but nothing doing. Won’t look at him either. In the grocery store they walk down all the aisles. She puts shit in the cart he’d never think of. Early greens, late winter squash. Going home, he pulls up by the gallery and stops. Plays his nervous fingers on the cart handle.

“I said I don’t have anything.”

“Never thought you did. Just thought you might like looking in the window.”

She nods, stares like she can’t see past the glass.

“Thought you might like seeing that weird square-shaped teapot there, that black and red and green painting of who-the-fuck-knows-what.”

She nods again.

He grins. “Thought you might like stepping over in that alleyway and standing on that concrete stoop and undoing your jeans.”

She’s staring at him like he’s crazy.

“Come on. Just do it, for God’s sake. That’s why we’re here. So we can have a good time like before.”

Like an obedient child who knows to not ask questions, she backs into the alley, climbs up on the concrete step. He follows her, pulls the cart in behind them. The button’s tight. She struggles with it.

“Here, let me at it.”

He yanks hard at the waistband, pops the button off and slips his hand inside her jeans, kneads down along her soft, smooth belly toward the warmth between her legs. Oh, yeah, that’s what he needs, what he’s been wanting. All the rotten parts of his day slide away and he feels good, like he’s the king of everything.

“Talk to me, babe. Talk to me like before. Tell me what’s out there in the street. And I’ll make you feel so good you won’t want me to ever stop.”

She starts in talking, Danny’s good girl.

“There’s a blue car and a green car, both driving around the square. There’s a man in a straw boater hat.”

Fuck. What’s wrong? It’s not coming out right. Coming out of her like some kind of scared-little-kid shit. Scared-little-kid up on a stage at school or something.

“A woman in a black dress is walking past the hardware store. I’m sorry, I can’t …”

She claps both hands over her mouth, heaves into them. Stands there staring at the dripping puke. A clot of it’s splashed on his boot.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please believe I never meant to.”

“Shit. Goddamn. Goddamn it all to fucking hell.”

Danny yanks the shawl off her shoulders, wipes her hands and face, their shoes. Balls it up and throws it in the alley.

And sees down to the bottom of his small, round snake hole. All the way to that dark truth his mind would not give up to him till now.

Goddamn lying fucking bitch. Her shaking her head back and forth, like that’ll rub it all away.

“Fix your jeans back.”

He grabs her wrist and pulls her out onto the highway. One hand for her and one hand for the cart. Not a lot of difference anymore between them, is there? Both of them a drag.

But as they walk along, a strange peace falls on him. Lays soft on his shoulders. Because he hasn’t lost her, isn’t going to lose her. Because now he knows what’s wrong and knows how to take care of things. Like Memaw did when she got asked to. Yeah, Memaw’s Danny knows what’s going on.

He knows what’s going on—and he knows what to do.

H
E IS SO KIND SHE WANTS TO WEEP
. T
HESE PAST FEW DAYS HE
’
S
stayed by her almost constantly. Just once each morning he goes out, comes home with pockets full of mint leaves he brews into a tea and brings her every couple hours to drink.

“It’s from Memaw. It’ll make you well.”

He says it with a kind of reverence every time, as if it were an incantation, then looks down shyly at his feet. He’s even made a small, beautiful side table with gnarled dogwood legs to hold her cup. He sits on the floor at her feet, watching her drink. Reads to her about poor Holden Caulfield, who has his whole life ahead of him. Sometimes when she’s too tired to finish, he holds the cup in both his hands and brings it to her lips.

It’s too early for mint from the garden. This mint, the mint for Memaw’s tea, grows wild on the far side of the pond. Its spearmint smell is sweet on his clothing, sweet on his skin and in his hair. Sweet
in the walls and floorboards, for it is everywhere changing the character of the cabin, making it one with springtime just outside the door.

She is less fond of its wild, gamy taste that slides along the roof of her mouth and makes her queasy. And thus far it hasn’t done much good. She’s tried to tell him but he doesn’t listen. And she doesn’t press too hard, he means so well.

“Maybe I should only drink it in the morning. Or in the morning and at night,” she suggests the second—third? fourth?—day.

“No!” It bursts out like a gunshot. “I got to do it just like Memaw did.”

She nods and drops the subject.

There’s so much of it to drink, and so often, they’ve marked the times according to the sun’s position, made a game of it. First cup at dawn’s light, second when the sun hits the low branches of the eastern pines, and so on until the last cup before bed. Six cups in all. He is so good with it, always. Reminds her when it’s time, brews it himself and brings it, watches so intently as she sips, his faith in its efficacy as touching as a child’s.

But it isn’t working. True, the vomiting’s some better, but now there are the headaches, and this willingness to spend all day in bed in a half stupor. Her stomach cramps each time she drinks it, yet she dutifully downs each cup, will not refuse him his illusion of control. If he’d leave the room, she’d throw it out a window. But he never leaves.

“Drink your tea. It’s only for another week or so. Then you’ll be well.”

“Will I truly? Be well?” It comes out harsher than she intended.

“Memaw swore by it, said it worked every time.”

It’s all come back, just like before. Only faster, so much faster. She is ill, she is dying. At this rate she’ll be dead before the leaves fall.

And he hopes to fight it off with tea. If all of Western medicine can’t cure her, how can some granny woman’s potion?

“C
OME ON
,
NOW
. D
RINK
the goddamn stuff.”

There’s been eight days of it. His voice now is rarely kind.

“I don’t want any more, it’s no use. I’m hardly strong enough to sit
up at the table. Everything I put into my mouth tastes bitter. Even Memaw’s holy tea.”

“Drink it anyway. It’ll make you well.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s not gradual like you think it’s supposed to be. The healing happens all at once.”

“Just, please, let me try a day without it, an experiment, to see if I feel any better.”

She rises with the teacup in her shaking hand, heads for the sink, pictures the greenish liquid curling down the drain.

“No!” He jumps up as if he’d seen into her mind, slams both his hands flat on the table. “You quit one day, you got to start all over. You don’t want that, do you?”

“No.” The word comes out a small, defeated syllable.

She sets the cup back on its table, lowers herself into her rocking chair, squeezes her thin hands together at her waist.

At night he curls beside her on the quilts, kneads her belly under Memaw’s red gown she’s taken to wearing once again to ward off chills, kneads her belly to take away her cramping. Let him believe a few more days of Memaw’s tea will cure her. There’s no harm in it. She’s not got strength to argue.

O
N THE MORNING OF
the eleventh day, all the little bird songs whirl around her head as she drags herself into a sitting position on the quilts. The bright sun on the floorboards looks like panes of brittle glass. She has to ask his help to climb down from the loft. His fingers are so strong around her wrist, like that first night—“Take me in.” She knows by rote the stages of her illness, its peculiar Stations of the Cross. Wishes she could hasten them, wishes she could go ahead and die. Today is the first day that she has felt shame.

Shame for calling out to him to help her down the stairs. Shame for resting her head on her arm to get through breakfast. Shame that she has not started the tomatoes, peppers, hasn’t planted squash seeds, doesn’t know how many days it’s been since she’s been to the garden, doesn’t care.

Shame most of all that she has to beg him to go with her to the privy because she fears losing her way. He takes her elbow as if he were helping an old lady cross a street. When they get there she shuts the door. Because she is ashamed. When finally she opens it and doesn’t see him, cries, “Danny, Danny,” and he doesn’t come, she sits down on the step and heaves dry sobs into the quiet air, ashamed to need someone so desperately.

Then he is there, grinning like a Jack-in-the-box. “I just went behind some bushes, gave the weeds a shower.”

The idea, image, both disgust her—and that he takes pride in it, as if it were some great manly accomplishment. He moves to take her elbow, but she pulls away. Doesn’t want his hands to touch her. Doesn’t want to need them, need him. To need him is defeat.

“I can do it.”

“But I got to keep you safe.”

“I’m safe enough.” At the cross-path, she turns, hopes she is facing in the right direction. “I’m going to the garden.”

He surveys the sun’s slant through the trees. “You can’t. You need to drink your tea.”

“I won’t drink it anymore.”

He grabs her upper arm, turns her toward home. “You got to.”

His eyes glitter like a reptile’s. His fingers bite into her flesh as he propels her toward the cabin. He yanks the door open and drags her inside, pushes her down in her rocker, brews the tea and slams the cup onto the table. How can this be love? And yet it must be. He must be so afraid of losing her.

“Now drink it. I’m going to sit here till you do.”

He spits the words out, plops down on the floor, watches until her cup is empty. Then he bangs the door behind him, leaving.

S
HE SITS ROCKING SILENTLY
. I
T
’
S ALL HAPPENING JUST LIKE BEFORE
, when Tim left. Soon Danny, too, will go. May have already gone.

Yet there’s a quiet in her heart she doesn’t understand, as if she were meant to sit and rock until she knows whatever it is she must do. Outside, woods sparrows and pine siskins chirp in the trees at the clearing’s edge. Through the window she can see again those wild, green rooms that beckoned to her that first day. Beckoned her until he came and she quit looking at them—the beings she imagined lived inside them, watched her every move, had been neither animals nor trees nor spirits, only him. Someday she will step off the path and enter them, room after room, until she disappears. She’ll soon be free to do it. Anything. Free to take down the gun.

Because, like Tim, Danny isn’t coming back. Why should he?

He’ll climb down the far side of Panther Mountain to whatever’s
there and stay there, the same way Tim boarded a plane and got off somewhere else. Already, after so few minutes, there are parts of Danny she’s forgetting. The exact blond color of his hair, the way his deep speaking voice sounds high as a young boy’s when he whispers. How long before she will forget the rest? All she remembers now of Tim is one gray suit, maybe a smile. And Michael? Does she remember anything at all?

She should get up, she’s been sitting here so long. Maybe that’s all she needs to do for now. But it’s a laborious process straightening stiff joints, pushing herself upright from her chair only to walk tentatively along the edges of the room, bracing herself against the wall, touching things as if she’s just arrived. She should go to the garden like she used to. Then to the pond, sit with the turtles on her sun-warmed rock, look down into the silt-black water at the fishes. Come back and pull the nails out of the loom he made, pound them back in the wall where they belong. Live here alone, take her comfort from the gun. He isn’t coming back.