The New Wild (3 page)

I gasp,
startled, and crane my neck toward the speaker. My heart pounds. “Over here!” I
cry. I’m so relieved, my knees feel weak.

“Stop that!
Wait
!”

The voice is a female’s, loud and
firm. I whirl around to see a sixty-something woman emerging from the brush,
her eyelids pulled back in concern. I’m so surprised to see her, I drop the jar
on the ground. It lands with a
thud
and the water seeps into the grass.
I get so dizzy and numb in an instant that the earth starts spinning, and I
fall back against the dirt. Everything fades to black, and I pass out.

* * *

When I
come to after God knows how long, I’m strapped under my arms to something soft,
something furry. It’s moving slowly, ambling along the earth. Above me, the
tree canopy glimmers in the sun. Birds flit from branch to branch, chirping
sweetly.

The woman I saw earlier is tugging
whatever is holding me by its collar.

“Come on, girl, nice and easy,”
she says to it, as she stares up ahead. “Slow. Slow.”

She’s wearing retro clothes from
the 1960s: loose cotton dress, brown-fringed leather vest, turquoise earrings
dangling from her ears. Her hair hangs over her shoulder in a long braid of
shining silver and her skin has a deep tan.

“What…where am I?” I manage to
croak.

She whirls around and bends down
to look at me, halting my furry transport from moving another step.

“You’re awake again!” She says,
smiling. “You fainted, honey. My dogs are carrying you back to my house.”

“What… Who are you?”

“You just rest now. You’re very
weak, and we’re almost there. Don’t worry. I’ll get you fixed up,” she says.

Something in her voice calms me,
like my own mother’s would. My body seems unwilling to move anyway, so I just
lay there and let them carry me, like a leaf drifting down a slow-moving river.

* * *

When we
get to her house, she unties the straps and helps me up on my feet. I feel
woozy, but looking at her house perks me up. It’s set away in a clearing of
white oaks: a low-slung, brick cottage that must have been built in the 1800s. I’m
amazed to see it isn’t burnt at all. Chickens roam in a pen to the right,
clucking and pecking the ground. The pathways are made of crumbled pink shells
that crunch under our feet as we walk. Sunflowers, purple basil, and gooseberries
grow in neat little patches in the garden out front, and peas dangle off their
vines, twisting in the breeze. One of the dogs that carried me—a fluffy
Bernese—won’t leave my side. It licks my hand and nudges my leg, and I’ve
never felt more grateful.

 “I’m Deb, by the way,” she
says. “That’s Whitman,” she says, pointing to the one that stays by me. “And that’s
Abraham.” When he hears his name, Abraham jumps up and puts his front paws over
her shoulders, like they’re dancing. “Abraham, get down, girl!” she shouts.

“Girl?” I mutter.

“
Yes,
they’re both girls.
Why is everyone always so surprised by that?
A rose by any other name
.”

The interior of Deb’s house is
oddly bare, especially compared to the riot of color out front. She leads me to
the living room and tells me to lie down on the sofa. It’s not a sofa, really,
but a Victorian-looking fainting couch covered in purple velvet. I’m so weary and
it looks so inviting that I do what I’m told. The room is interesting—no
television, no computers, just antique prints and paintings lining the walls. I
notice the ceiling is painted blue with tiny puffs of clouds. There’s a glass
pie stand on the side table to my left, and its ball lid is covering a bird’s
nest complete with little broken eggshells.

I hear her rustling in the kitchen.
Shelf doors open and close, silverware tinkles against ceramic. I’m about to
pass out when she strides in with a plate full of food.

“I’m sure glad I came across you,”
she says. “Fridge burned up pretty bad last night, so Elmira would’ve gone sour
before I could finish her.”

“El
—
?”

“The
turkey
,” she
says as if I should have known. “Sit up, child. I’ll not have you choking to
death on top of everything else.”

Once again, I do as I’m told. All
I want is my mom to take care of me, and this is a welcome substitute.
Especially when everything’s literally crumbling around me.

The plate is piled with dark
turkey meat, skin glistening, and Swiss chard cooked up in oil and nuts. It’s
all room temperature—“stove melted to cinders,” she says—and a fly
is circling over it, vulture-like.

“Eat it slow,” she orders, and I
realize I’m digging in like a mongrel dog at a steak buffet. “
Chew
,”
she says again, sternly.

When I come up for air, she hands
me a mug of water. “Down the hatch.”

“Thank you,” I say, with a huge
exhale, “
so much
.”

“Like I said, you did me a favor.
Though, I guess my dogs’ll hate you for it.”

The evening sun shines through her
leaded-glass windows, throwing little rainbows across the walls.

When I’m finished eating, I instantly
feel better. I can think again. She watches me solemnly.

“Thank you so much.” I repeat.
“I’m Jackie, by the way. I was at Camp Astor when…it happened.”

Deb nods.

“What do you think is going on?” I
say. My stomach is in knots. “Did you get carried up into the sky last night?
Did you feel the fire?” I ask, more than a little afraid of her answer. “What
the hell is happening to us?”

“Yes, I did,” Deb says calmly,
which doesn’t make me feel better. “Look at the back of my legs. The hair got
singed right off!” She sticks one out to show me almost proudly.

The front of Deb’s legs look like
they haven’t been shaved in, well, ever. But she’s right: the backs are
hairless, and the skin is pink, like it’s sunburned.

“Well? What happened? What do you
think is going on?” I plead, looking straight in her eyes. “I heard some of my
favorite people in the world burn to their deaths last night, but today the
forest seems to be healthier and more alive than it’s ever been.”

Deb sits back in her chair, a
faint smile spreading across her lips.

 “Well, I’ve got a good hunch
it’s Mother Earth,” she says plainly.

“What?”

“I always thought we would destroy
ourselves with terrorism or nuclear war. But nope, I think it was her. She’s had
enough. She gave us this life, and she can take it back, lickety-split.”

I can’t believe my ears. She’s
really not thinking this through. I have a sinking feeling that the only other
living soul left is bat-shit crazy, and I feel alone again. “Let me get this
straight,” I say, nice and slow. “You think
Mother Earth
started a fire
that burned up all the Camp Astor kids and all the buildings and cars? You
think
Mother Earth
scooped us up into the sky and scared us out of our
wits? You think…” I stop for a second, for emphasis, “You think
Mother Earth
did that? You think
Mother Earth
is real?” The concept is so stupid and
silly it makes me want to laugh out loud.

She raises her eyebrows. “Yes,”
she says, emphatic.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say, because
this is finally clicking in my head. “Why would she do that? Is this it? Are
you saying that we’re going through an
—
?”

“
Apocalypse
? Yes, I guess I
am. But I don’t know why you’d want to call it that. The world isn’t ending;
it’s getting better,” she says.

“
Right
, better,” I scoff.
“That’s why I’ve been in tears all day.”

“You know what I mean. It
will
get better,” she proceeds calmly. “This is the next generation of Earth. First
there were the dinosaurs, then the Stone Age, then the people age, and now it’s
evolving into something different entirely. Something without so much waste,
where the earth can flourish as it was meant to.”

I snicker. Deb really is crazy.
She acts like she has it all figured out.

“So, why the hell are
we
here then?” I ask, incredulous.

“You know, I’m not sure. But
there’s something special about us, I suppose. I’ve always been ‘eco,’ even
before that word existed. I think she knew I was on her side and would remain
on her side, no matter what happened. I was always doing my part to protect her
and everything she gave us: the water, air, all the gifts of the earth. My
guess is you have, too, in your own way. Honest to Pete—I know it seems
terrible now, but in many ways, this is a gift! Mother Earth is giving us a
chance to help her get this planet back on the right track, before it’s too late
for all of us.”

I shake my head. This lady’s a nut
job. I want to tell her to put
down
the peyote and step
away
from the pipe.

“This morning I went out walking
to find survivors, but you’re the only thing on two legs I’ve seen, besides the
birds,” Deb says. “Listen, Jackie. You notice anything strange about what’s
happened?”

Are you fucking kidding me?
“What? All of it.”

“Everything modern and full of bad
chemicals dissolved in the fire. I’ve been thinking about this all morning, and
what’s interesting—and what makes me know in my bones it’s the great
Mother Earth doing all this—is that there are a lot of things that aren’t
burnt. Natural things, things you maybe made yourself. Things that wouldn’t
harm the planet.”

I don’t know if I can believe her,
but she sounds so sure in her convictions that she might as well be a preacher.
I think back to my plastic tent and my chemically made sunglasses. And then I
look down at my perfectly new-looking cotton shirt. Huh.

“Yes, there’s a rhyme or reason to
it all, I suspect,” she says softly.

“If what you think is true
—
and that’s a big
‘if’
—
why
is she doing it? I just don’t get why she’d burn her creations to shreds.”

Deb gasps. “Listen, kiddo,” she
says, her hands on her hips. “It wasn’t
her
creations she burned up.
Aren’t you hearing me? It was all the junk
we
made, all the useless crap
we were ruining the globe with.”

“She killed people,” I say
angrily. “People who had every right to live.”

“Yes, maybe they did. But maybe
those same people were eating and buying and shitting their way through life,
not doing a damn thing for anybody or anything. I mean, the whole world was
getting so screwed up, so unjust. Some folks were living high on the hog while
others couldn’t even eat, and we were sabotaging the whole earth and everything
on it with our
business
. You ask me, the whole globe was becoming one
big giant ball of inequity.”

Holy crap. I can’t believe she’s
talking this way. People are dead and she doesn’t seem to care. She’s friggin’
nuts, and what’s more, I was
one of those people. I
am
one of
those people. I love Camp Astor. And sure, I recycle. I even pick up trash when
we go to the beach. But I’m not some hippy-dippy, green living pioneer the way
Deb seems to be. If Deb is right about all this, then why am I still here while
my best friends are smoldering where they slept?

If what she’s suggesting is true,
people and things could be burnt up all over America. My
mom
. Bernard. I
start to feel my heart quaking in my chest.

“Do you think…?” I’m scared to ask
her this, but I just say it, rip it off like a bandage, quick and dirty. “Do
you think this happened all across the country?” I can’t stop picturing my
mother and Bernard. Oh God—what if
they
were burned to death? What
the hell will I do?

“No,” she says, and I let the
breath I’ve held baited out with a
whoosh
. But then she says, “I think
it happened all across the globe.”

For a second, I feel like I’m
going to pass out.
Wait… How could she know?
I’m supposed to believe her
crackpot explanation just because?

My fear and despair combine in a
more pressing issue.

“Do you have a bathroom?”

“Well, I did yesterday. This
morning, I found my toilet melted clear down to China. Been going off the back
deck, with the gals,” she says, pointing to the Abraham, who’s now stretched
out on the wooden floor in the kitchen. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to see you
out there. Just throw some dirt over your doings,” she says.

The last time I went in a hole was
at a concert in the Columbia River Gorge, and the Portaloos were so backed up I
peed behind some bushes. Even Camp Astor had little stations along the trails.

I’m about to head outside when
something out the kitchen window catches my eye, and I get distracted. It’s a
flower four times bigger than my head and so white it looks bleached, its
center yellow and furry as a cat. The scent wafting from it—a mixture of
daphne and lily—is stronger than any mega mall perfume counter. I
approach the window for a better look. Deb catches me staring at it.