In Wilderness (31 page)

He unbuttons two shirt buttons, slides the feathers out one at a time, stands up with great difficulty, right where she can see him if she’ll only turn around. Fans out the feathers in the path for her to find them—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So pretty there. Then he scuttles back into the undergrowth. Waits with his heart up in his mouth. Where he can taste it. Suck on it. Chew it into little pieces.

Fucking whore! She sees the feathers in the fucking middle of the path, doesn’t even look around. Knows seven feathers are no accident. Knows he’s the one had to have left them. Knows he’s close, so close she can call him with a whisper. Danny. Danny. Oh, how he listens for
it, her calling his name. Thinks even that he hears it, like a whisper in the trees.

But that’s all it is. Bitch doesn’t want it, not any of it. Steps over his feathers and moves on. Runs. Slams her door and shoots the bolt.

Come back. Open your door. Call out my name and take me in. I need you, need to lie beside you, feel the hard knot of my baby in you. Hard knot with a little bird-size beating heart. He screams it with a voice that’s silent as the rocks that hide him.

D
ANNY SITS IN HIS
shallow cave, tries not to think about his shoulder. Skins the rabbit with his sin-cleansed knife, pulls away its soft fur from the glistening flesh. Fur so soft he’ll keep it. Make a cover for his baby son.
Bring a little rabbit skin to wrap his baby bunting in
. Where’d that come from? Memaw? Someone, his mama, before that? What the hell’s a bunting? He makes tiny cuts into the rabbit’s fur. Scrapes the skin, gentle as a caress.

He’s finished now. Puts the skin carefully aside. Holds up the rabbit by its ears and grins.

Bitch doesn’t want him?

Maybe not right this fucking minute. But she will.

Oh, yes. She will.

I
T
’
S A BARGAIN SHE HAS STRUCK
. W
ITH WHATEVER ONE STRIKES
bargains with. If she locks the door and bolts the shutters and only goes out when she can’t do otherwise, nothing bad will happen. Danny will not die from her bullet in his shoulder; he will go away before long to some other wilderness and she can have her baby and not be afraid.

Because there is a baby, she is certain now. And she is afraid.

If he does not go away, she has the gun.

It has all worked quite well so far. Except for the part where she rarely sleeps for hearing him in every little night breeze, every snapping twig, seeing him between the shutter slats in every moon shadow. And the part where she spends all her days with her heart pounding, starting at the slightest sound. The problem is the light’s too dim to weave, to read; she has no distractions, only fear.

The problem is her food is running out.

Today, with her tiny knife, she makes one more. She has started
gouging marks into her wall again, near the entrance to the kitchen. Fifteen, the number of days she has spent hiding in the cabin. She hasn’t seen him, but she can feel his presence all around her, the way a gathering storm charges the air. Meanwhile, honeysuckle scents the breeze, spring’s almost gone.

She folds the knife and puts it in her pocket, where it lives now. Sits in the rocking chair he brought her. Her heart hurts from missing him, as if she has an actual physical pain inside her rib cage, and it makes no sense. Makes no sense, either, that every night she rolls up two of their three quilts to simulate his body and lies there pressed against them, smothering her face in them to catch his scent; it’s bitter, like the hulls of walnuts.

Her memories come then, not thoughts or images but pure sensations that spin and shake her. In dreams his face floats toward her as if he’s traveling through fog. But who is it she misses, dreams of? Who does she remember? Not the man who smashed her car, not the man who bound her to him in ways no one should bind anyone and knew all the while what he was doing, not the man who tried to kill her child. No, it’s the boy. The boy who stood that day beside the garden oak, so fierce and thin and frightened, he is the one she misses.

But which of these is real? The man? The boy? Neither? Both? It doesn’t matter. It all comes down to the same thing. That’s why she’s shut herself in where he can’t get at her. And will stay however long she has to, won’t allow herself to think that far ahead.

She’s gained strength as the days have passed, and her morning sickness is largely gone. Yet her confinement forces her to spend her hours drinking strong teas, eating thick soups, rocking and staring through a crack between closed shutters like a convalescent. Five days ago, she heated water on the stove and took a sponge bath. It felt like a celebration, a religious rite, her scrubbing away the ten days’ worth of grime caked on her skin. She can’t do it often; heating water wastes wood she has to bring in from the shed. The day before yesterday her body started once again to itch and stink. When she shifts position in the rocker, small puffs of foul air rise up from between the layers of her clothing. She sniffs—disgusted, fascinated—at the wildness she exudes.

Through the crack between the shutters, moisture from last night’s rain still sparkles on the violets and young dandelion spears covering the ground. Saliva pools under her tongue. Later, she will dash outside and pick enough to fill the pewter mixing bowl, run back in and eat them raw. Only, the bowl is not on any of the dark shelves in the pie safe. Nor is it in either of the wooden storage bins that flank the fireplace. There’s no place else to look but one. She climbs onto a bench and peers along the top shelf where she used to keep her gun. The bowl is not there either. It’s nowhere.

She chafes her arms against a sudden chill. Did he somehow get in the house while she was sleeping? If that’s what happened, why, of all things, did he take the pewter bowl? To make her see he’s been here, been that close to her? She always thought she’d know this, sense it, with no sign from him. Will she wake one night to find him sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her, the full moon flinging blue-white light across his nakedness?

And if yes, what will she do?

Her last memory of the mixing bowl was two days ago. She was sitting just inside the open door, her gun beside her, picking clean some creasy greens she’d yanked up from the stream bank where the moss smells rank as a dirt basement. She had the bowl in her lap, would not have left it outside on the porch—outside is where he is. Nonetheless, she cracks the door, peers out.

And there it is. Last night’s wild wind blew it back along the railing where she couldn’t see it.

Or was it something else? The thought provokes a tightening in her throat, equal parts terror and desire. How long before she’s rid of it, this wanting him no matter what? She must remember where she puts things. Some night he truly might break in and take something. She’ll need to know.

She grabs the bowl, hurries in and bolts the door, settles herself once again in her rocker, in the half-light from the shuttered windows. It isn’t pleasant in the house, it stinks. Once each day she empties the slop bucket, always at a different time so he can’t anticipate it; something he taught her, something from the war—to excise him from her mind will take a lot of little cuts, not one big slash as she had hoped.
Yesterday she went outside in early morning, so today she’ll go out in late afternoon. But it’s always the same place, a sharp gouge of a ravine out past the privy, which is probably not wise. She’s made a holster for the pistol from one leg of a pair of jeans already grown too small, ties it around her waist, nestles the gun inside it every time she leaves the cabin.

The sun is sliding low, but there’s still time. She takes measured swallows from her teacup on the dogwood side table—the first peppermint leaves from the garden, delicate and with no pennyroyal aftertaste—tries to will herself calm.

The air outside is not as warm as she imagined. On the privy path she knows his presence as a prickling of her skin, a stillness among the trees. She runs with the bucket, nearly trips over a gnarled root, hurls the slops into the ditch and leaves with one hand clapped over her mouth.

Heading back, she veers from the path, skids down the slick bank where the stream rushes over rocks flung there like afterthoughts, and squats to rinse her bucket. He could be anywhere. She hastily sloshes water in the bucket, starts toward home. One more day he has not shown himself, did not sneak up from behind to cinch his arms around her when she couldn’t see—sometimes fear can be confused with longing, regret with desire.

He tried to kill her child.

The path is all in shadow and the sun has nearly set. She used to long for sundown in this place, because that’s when the sky looked capable of lifting her high up into itself, swallowing her into its afterglow; because on each side of where she walked the green rooms beckoned. Now she fears sundown because of Danny and she knows neither the sky nor the green rooms will save her.

Not looking at the ground, she almost doesn’t see the seven turkey feathers, iridescent in the fading light, fanned out in the center of the path. She nearly steps on them, lets loose a startled “Oh.”

He’s left them. Put them there while she was gone. He came that close.

Danny! Her heart calls out to him so loud there is no damp, far, sun-starved cove that doesn’t hear it. Yet her mouth makes no sound.
The feathers are beautiful and intricate. Their colors change like facets in a mirror ball when she steps over them, walks on.

She slides the gun out from its makeshift holster. It lies heavy in her hand. What if he’s there when she gets back to the cabin, waiting for her? She’s locked her door, but locks don’t mean a thing to him. Clammy sweat crawls down between her breasts. She doesn’t see him on the path. Inside the cabin she looks everywhere, even up the dark mouth of the hearth. He isn’t there, he isn’t anywhere. Relief masquerades as disappointment.

Or is it the other way around?

This night, even with the gun beside her, she falls into a broken sleep, unsure when she is dreaming and when she is not. Wakes wanting him, as she might wake from a sudden pain, and then remembers all she needs to, hates to, must. There’s a cacophony out on the porch. Birds. Screaming. She reaches for the gun. Her mouth is filled with fear, the taste of metal. How has she come to be afraid of birds?

She jerks open the door. A pair of jays arc toward her, shrieking, dive-bombing her so she will back away. They’re guarding something.

Then she sees.

Hanging from the porch rafters, trussed up by its feet and turning slowly, a membranous form glistens in the new light. A small, elongated baby with slick, pointed ears that stand out from its head.

That’s what the jays have come for. They’re flying at it, picking out its eyes. The birds have pecked the baby’s eyes until they’re bleeding. Just like in Memaw’s lullaby.

Katherine screams and screams. Aims her gun and shoots. Once. Twice. First at the birds heading toward the baby through the air. Then at nothing but the dark trees.

A
GAIN
,
HE SITS ON HIS HEELS UNDER HIS ROCK OVERHANG
. S
HE
’
S GOT
to come out sometime. Got to. If a blue jay shrieks four times in a row. If he sees an animal bigger than a squirrel. He wants her so bad he’s trembling. Wants even just to look at her again.

You get used to things. How her skin smelled fragrant like the garden, even in winter. How, nights, he lay always with one hand coiled in her long, dark hair and the other warm between her legs. You get used to things, they’re yours. Take them away, it’s like gouging out pieces of your flesh.

Blue jay screams three times and flies away. Fuck that. How many bird screams, how many possums and raccoons rustling the bushes will it take to bring her out? Even with his bunged-up shoulder, he can run on four legs like a wolf. Quieter that way, safer. Less of him to see. Runs down to the clearing’s edge, end of the trees. Bitch shot him in the fucking shoulder. Loves him so much she’ll shoot him in the head
next time. Didn’t like his trussed-up rabbit-baby, though, not even with its little diaper.

Long after his feet go numb, the door opens. His heart pounds like a piston. He follows her down the privy path, just like that first evening. That’s how far back he wishes he could go. Look there, she’s still got the baby in her. Memaw taught him how to tell. That little paunch where she’s tucked in her shirt to keep the bugs away. Weird how he can’t take his eyes off it. Little shit got past all Memaw’s tea. Kid’s one tough little motherfucker, hard to kill. Like Danny.

So many tears you wonder where you’ve carried them, how you’ve borne their weight.

He follows close beside her all the way back to the cabin, his vision blurred, his sounds covered by a ruffling breeze. Watches her go inside and light a lamp. Watches her lamp move from window to window as she closes shutters, its glow nothing then but horizontal lines. The shutters tremble when she bolts them.

Cold now, dark. Night’s a gook. Kill you when your back’s turned. He climbs up to his overhang, sleeps curled into himself, fist jammed in his mouth to keep from crying out in dreams.

M
ORNING
. S
KY
’
S RED
. G
OOD
day never starts with a red sky.
Red sky at morning, the sailors take warning
. Pawpaw’s teaching, learned it in the Navy.

Got to get himself some reefer, reefer’s good for tears. Won’t dry them up, just makes it so you never give a shit. Sit and play with them. Wipe your hands in them. Use them to clean crud off your knife.

Reefer. The word pings off the insides of his skull as he climbs over rocks and scrubby saplings. Reefer, so he can watch her like that first day, come to her like that night in the storm. Reefer. Because stepping out where she can see him is like kicking in a plate glass window, walking through its rain of shards. Reefer that’s in his orchard—and his mattress—in the house where he and Katherine will live someday.