In Wilderness (33 page)

Afternoon thunder grumbles in the distance. Danny hides from thunder—yet she knows at the same time that this safety’s an illusion. If he were truly gone, she would feel his absence as she would feel air in an empty room. Around the next bend she will see the cabin. Soon they will be home and safe. She bought seeds today, from what sad, dog-eared packets remained. Eggplant and other vegetables nobody wanted. If he’s gone … If—when—he’s gone, she’ll plant them. Pictures tiny, chubby hands splayed around a ripe tomato, small fingers digging deep into a basket filled with beans.

“Hello, Katherine.”

He steps onto the trail, perhaps ten feet in front of her, and blocks her way. She knows it now—he was ten feet away from her in town, ten feet on the highway, ten feet on the trail. Ten feet ever since she left the house this morning. Ten feet every moment of her every day. Her heart, her breath, everything stops. Except for her right arm, which shakes obviously and uncontrollably as she reaches for the gun.

“Go away from here. Leave us alone.” Her words have hardly any sound. The gun shakes violently in her hands.

“I came to see my baby.”

“You’ve seen all there is to see.” The space between them is choked with her forbidden memories. “Please go.”

“I came to feel it move.” He takes a step toward her.

His voice is calm, steady, as if this were an ordinary conversation. He takes another step.

“I’ll shoot you.”

“No, you won’t.”

He smiles, reaches out his hand in which she is supposed to lay the gun.

She looks only at his face. The head’s a messy target, the gun shop grandmother had said. Her entire body trembles. She sights down the gun’s short barrel, pulls the trigger. Hears only the click of an empty chamber. Oh, dear God.

He smiles. “See? You can’t shoot me. I’m U. S. of A.–certified magic.” He takes another step toward her, oblivious to the growling thunder.

Again she pulls the trigger. Another click. Where are the bullets? Surely there are two left in the cylinder, she’s seen them. She pulls the trigger once again.

Click
.

Three clicks. All empty chambers. One more empty, then the bullets. That’s how it will be. Worst-case scenario.

She pulls the trigger one more time. Once more the chamber clicks, its sound muffled by his hand.

His arms are around her now, fingers prying the gun away.

All this time her greatest terror was what would happen if he touched her. But she feels only the struggle, and that she must prevail. Under their scuffle, she hears again the rumble of the distant storm.

The gun barrel is a cold ring pressed against her temple. His other hand is spread over her belly.

He gazes at her, his smile filled with sadness.

“You could just have let me feel my baby move. You didn’t need to try and shoot me.” That familiar voice low in her ear. The wind rustling the trees. All of it so terrifying. And so peaceful.

Then in an instant everything is changed. His voice, his sad smile, vanish and there is only fury in their place.

“I’ll kill you. Don’t think I won’t.”

Their baby gives a small shudder beneath the hard warmth of his palm. He snatches his hand away. Shoves the gun’s cold mouth against her belly where his warm fingers had been.

“No. Please, no.”

She’s somewhere in the treetops looking down. At herself. At him. At the gun pointed at her baby.

“I’ll kill you. The same way you killed Jimbo.”

“Danny, no! I’m Katherine!”

He stands quite still. Every emotion moves across his face, as if he were the keeper of them all for all the world.

Another thunderclap. Closer. Danny raises his arm then, points the gun up toward the sky.

“Katherine, look there.”

She whimpers, turns her face up to the gathering clouds, looks back and he is gone.

D
OG BOUNDS OUT TO GREET HIM SOON AS HE NEARS THE HOUSE
. Jumps, wags her tail. He squats and puts his arms around her neck, buries his head in her warm fur.

“I didn’t bring you anything.”

He wipes his eyes. She licks the salt tears off his hand.

“I’m sorry.”

Kicks at her, not very hard.

“Now git. You need to go away.” She doesn’t move.

In Gatsby’s library, the room where he, Danny, has lived, he starts pulling books off their shelves, stacking them into pillars at the corners of his mattress. Books he has read, six shelves of them, not near as many as he wanted to. Books he had meant to read. Books he had thought to read with her. Books about places he has never gone and people he has never met.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Tender Is the Night
,
Anthony Adverse, Daisy Miller, On the Beach, Animal Farm
. So many more—
As I Lay Dying, Peyton Place, The Odyssey, Fahrenheit 451. The Big Sleep
. And
Gatsby
. Stacks so high they waver when he takes his hand away. When they played
Three Musketeers
, Jimbo always played D’Artagnan; since they were only two, Danny could be any of the other three he wanted. He always told Jimbo his Musketeer was stronger than D’Artagnan; Jimbo always went along. Danny shifts the larger books to the bottom for stability. Dog follows after him, her nails scratching the walnut floor. The floor he’s finished sanding. Thunder rumbles. Danny’s body jerks.

“Go on. Get on away.”

Janelle’s hair was gold, but Katherine’s was almost black; he loved to look at it against the whiteness of the quilt with its tiny blue flowers. Danny shoves the dog toward the door. She backs up and looks at him.

“Shit. This’ll get you.”

He pulls out his Zippo, flips it open, dials up a foot-high flame. Grins at her through it. She backs out the door and stares.

“Yeah, you’ll be gone like a flash.”

He squats beside a dusty panel of the faded velvet curtains that hide the west windows with their missing panes. Holds his flame against the fabric. Till it starts to smoke, till the smoke breeds small licks of orange fire. Danny used to ride on Pawpaw’s shoulders when they went out hunting, like a boy riding a bear.

The dog watches, puzzled, wary, as the curtain starts to burn. Backs away another foot or so.

Danny hears the thunder, but it’s nothing to him now. Lights the second curtain, watches the flames climb, satisfied only when they engulf the window moldings. Wood floors, roof timbers, beams, lath, lots of shit in this old limestone house to burn. Collapse the whole damn thing this time. No clubhouse, no parties on Gatsby’s lawn. Nothing for Carlisle-Colorado Mining and Development, all of it for Katherine. He should have bought an orchid for her. White orchid with tiny pearl-tipped pins.

Danny lies down on his mattress, the gun by his right hand. Dog comes running, jumps onto the bed beside him.

He shoves her hard, but she won’t budge. Except to lick his hand. Glances from him to the burning curtains and then back, as if asking what the two of them should do.

“Aw, shit. Get the fuck out. Go find some other dude to hunt with, other dude who’ll let you lick his hand.”

The far wall has begun to flame, bright patches crawling toward the ceiling, flames licking at the shelves still stacked with books.

“All right, get up. This is your last chance.” Danny shoves the dog off the bed. “Get the fuck out! Now!”

Sends a bullet singing inches from her ear.

Dog yelps, hightails it out the door.

Danny lies back down. Thunder getting close. Sixteen kills, every one he got sent out on. He was a good soldier, no matter what they said. Eight years old and he could hit a squirrel square in its eye.

He got to see his Katherine, touch her. Got to feel their baby move. Homecoming Day he ran the ball, so far they all stood up and cheered. Yeah, today’s turned out a good day. All of it. Clear through.

He jams the gun’s barrel in his mouth. Gatsby loved his Katherine more than he loved life itself.

It’s.

All.

Right.

S
HE SITS MOTIONLESS IN THE ROCKING CHAIR HE BROUGHT HER
,
IN
the heat and distant thunder. Unsure what to hope for, trying to smother the little bud of panic that keeps wanting to bloom inside her.

He held the gun on her so he could feel their baby move. His baby, too. And then he would have killed them both. What demons has he given shelter to? And for how long? And why did she know so little of them, she who had loved him?

She gazes straight ahead, at the corner he so long embraced outside the cabin, his arms and legs hugging its cold stones. Gazes out the same window where that first morning snow clung to more trees than she had ever seen all in one place. She tries to think of nothing, listens for what will happen next.

It isn’t long in coming. A faint, innocent popgun sound from the far side of Panther Mountain sets her trembling. She sits straight, poised. Was that the end of it, of him? There were two bullets in the
gun. Where is the other? Is he still alive and is it meant for her? She rocks now, her shallow breathing in time to the chair’s rapid movement. Danny. Danny. Danny.

With the second shot her rocking stops. He is dead. She knows it now, as surely as if she had been there. Feels it as if her mind, her heart, had suddenly been numbed. Outside herself it manifests as emptiness, as if suddenly the wilderness holds too much open space, too many vistas. She sits quietly with this new knowledge, so that she might grow accustomed to existing in that openness. Accepts that he is dead but she is still alive and once more free to move about, that she no longer needs to watch for him, fear him. Understands that she will no longer feel his eyes on her, no longer hear his even breathing in the night, and that perhaps never again will she be watched by anyone in the consuming way he watched her, perhaps not watched by anyone at all—that she might become invisible, white smoke in a white sky. Right now, if there were not a baby, only she would know that she exists. If there were not a baby, this gift he’s given her, she would have no one other than herself to love.

But white smoke, in truth, does not long remain invisible. What billows from the other side of Panther Mountain in playful whorls soon drifts to form a brown gauze curtain with a deceptive hearth-fire fragrance. She is glad for her distance from it, will not let herself picture him at the smoke’s origin, his pyre. Imagines instead him hiking back that day from Elkmont carrying the rocking chair she sits in now, how perhaps he smiled and held it upright by its rockers, on his shoulders where it swayed above his head like a sedan chair on an elephant; or perhaps he held it by its arms, inverted, its back making a turtle’s shell. Pictures again the first time she saw him, standing in the shade of the huge chestnut oak, while the oblivious tomato plants exuded their astringent perfume; that deep voice—“Unbraid your hair”; and that night in the storm, in the electric air, his hand hurtfully circling her wrist—“Take me in”—and how she knew a need that strong would put an end to loneliness. They come crashing in, these memories, after the long, parched time she’s forced herself to live without them.

She barely notices the coming of the promised storm, its violent lightning, sheets of rain no more than an extension of her grief. Why
did she so desire him, desire him far beyond all reason? Had he shown up on her front porch in the city, demanding to be taken in, she would have called the police. Had she met him as an equal, sat at his table at an Ad Association dinner, say, they would likely not have felt the smallest spark of primitive attraction. She should have feared him, should have feared the depth of her desire that bordered on insanity. She wanted him the way a starving animal wants food; had he not met her halfway with his own desire, she would have torn him into pieces.

She should have stopped it, never let it start. She could not do it.

Near late afternoon, when the rain has passed and the sun’s low edge touches the tallest trees and she has no tears left for crying, a dog that must have been his dog trots onto the porch, a dog she’s never seen but only heard about. She opens the door for it. The animal comes in, stands still and looks around. It’s a middling-to-large female, with a deer-colored coat that’s full of burrs and smells of smoke. Her gaze at first seems wary. She looks Katherine up and down, then cautiously approaches the rocker. When she gets close enough, Katherine grabs a handful of her fur, holds on until the dog sits beside her on her haunches, then eventually lowers her head, rests it in Katherine’s lap beside the baby.

They three sit like that for what seems a long time. Then the dog gets up, goes to the door and stands there, as though she wants to be let out. Katherine opens the door, follows the dog outside. The animal circles the garden, stops beneath the oak that shaded Danny that first day, lies on the ground and peers into the wilderness beyond. Katherine follows the dog’s gaze, stares long. Stares until, as if in a trompe l’oeil painting, the jumbled mass of trees and undergrowth that’s the beginning of the forest arranges itself into those beckoning green chambers she has yearned toward for so long. Rooms opening one into another, endlessly. Rooms that must reach to the forest’s heart.

Katherine circles the garden and moves toward them, as if pulled by some invisible cord. Looks once over her shoulder, but the dog has not followed. She wades alone through a thick tangle of fleabane daisies at the meadow’s edge, their feathery blooms filled with soft-spoken bees that do not make a move to sting her; then she walks into the wilderness, that dark, high-ceilinged green, where sun sifts in
aslant, as through cathedral clerestories. That she might lose her way, should perhaps turn back, does not deter her. She walks on, creating her own path, as if she has a destination.

The air, fragrant with moss and damp bark, grows cooler. Katherine turns slowly in a full circle. She’s not gone far, she’s certain of it, but can no longer see the garden, surely a trick of the peculiar light. A small wet-weather stream gurgles noisily near her feet. She continues alongside it, follows it deeper into the wilderness, whispers names of trees she passes, trees whose shapes, leaves, bark textures she memorized her first days in the cabin: red oak, white oak, chestnut oak, chinquapin, red maple, sweet gum, locust, beech, poplar, white pine, cedar, dogwood, serviceberry, a single princess tree.