In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

  I start to speak, but Mamaw cuts me off. “Now, hang on and let me say my piece. We’ve tried to give you everything we could, and it hadn’t always been much. Now along comes a chance for you to have something that we could never give you. Falls right in your lap.”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t deserve this.”

  Mamaw sits forward in her chair, energized. The exhaustion has melted from her. “No, you didn’t deserve to lose your mama. Plenty’s fallen in your lap you didn’t deserve. This isn’t one of those things. Let the Lord bless you with one good thing to make up for all the rest.”

  “What about y’all?” I ask.

  “We’ll get by. Wasn’t you planning on college in a couple years anyhow?” Mamaw asks.

  “East Tennessee State maybe.”

  “There you go.”

  “But ETSU is close. I love it here. I love the river. I love y’all.”

  Papaw coughs and spits off the edge of the porch. “And you can still love all that while you see more of the world. If I’da had the chance? I would’ve. Donna Bird, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would indeed.” Mamaw drums her fingers on her armrest for emphasis. “You know Aunt Betsy’s grandbaby, Blake? She moved him to Nashville so’s he could go to a good performing school.”

  “That didn’t turn out well.”

  Papaw says, “How about Tess? We ain’t talked about her yet.”

  “Didn’t you say Delaney got you the scholarship offer?” Mamaw asks.

  “That’s right.”

  “I imagine she’s scared stiff to go to that school alone.”

  “What if she don’t go because you don’t? Or she goes and can’t concentrate on her studies because she’s too lonely?” Papaw says. He takes a couple of moments to catch his breath. “That girl’ll cure cancer someday, she gets the chance. But that there’s the key.” He pauses to cough. “The chance. Sounds like she thinks she needs your support. Else she wouldn’t have wheeled and dealed for you.”

  “Wouldn’t you miss her?” Mamaw asks.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You got an opportunity to do something great for yourself and your best friend,” Papaw says.

  “I know,” I murmur. I stare off into the darkness.

  “I can always tell when you’re thinking about something without saying it,” Papaw says after a long while.

  “What about your situation?” I ask quietly.

  He wheezes, coughs, and spits off the porch. “Something the matter with me?”

  We laugh. But our laughter quickly subsides. “I need to be here,” I say.

  “ ’Cause I’ll live forever if you stay?”

  “I owe you.”

  He snorts. “For what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Tell you something, son.” He pauses to take a few shallow breaths. His voice is sober. “I love you. But I’ll be damned if I’m why you let a chance like this go.” Pause to breathe. Wheeze. Cough. “Death’s all around us. We live our whole lives in its shadow. It’ll do what it will. So we need to do what we will while we can.”

  With that, our conversation dwindles.

  I rock and feel on my face the caress of the cool evening air, scented by the damp green of broken vines and cut grass. Beside me, Mamaw and Papaw hold hands but don’t speak.

  Above us is an immaculate chaos of white stars and drifting moonlit-silver clouds. I remember how I would sit under the sanctuary of the night sky, into the late hours, waiting for my mama to get home. Or to escape her dopesick moaning and thrashing. Or to avoid the red-rimmed, whiskey-fogged glare of a new boyfriend. Or because I needed to feel like there was something beautiful in this world that could never be taken from me.

  Papaw coughs and coughs. Eventually, he collects himself.

  I listen to his shallow, uneven respiration. Ask me to number the breaths I wish for you. One more. Ask me a thousand times. The answer will always be one more.

  For a while it seems like Papaw’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. Finally, he says, “Welp,” and leans forward.

  I help him out of his rocker and into bed.

  I didn’t even know she was there.

  She came and went at such unpredictable times. I had gotten home from school and watched a couple of hours of TV, waiting for her to get back from wherever she was. We didn’t always have a TV. It would disappear mysteriously and be replaced some time later with something worse than what we had. Also, we had just gotten our electricity turned back on, and I had to take advantage.

  It was only when I got up to pee that I discovered her. She had collapsed in the cramped and squalid bathroom of our cramped and squalid trailer and fallen with her body wedged against the locked door. I knocked, and when no answer came, I pounded and screamed, yelling “Mama” and also her name. I was afraid to call 911 because I didn’t want her to go to jail, the evidence of her drug use so plainly on display. I was afraid of going into foster care.

  When I jimmied the lock and tried to enter, I encountered the organic weight of a lifeless human body. She wasn’t large, but I didn’t know her condition and I was afraid of hurting her more, so it took me some time to open the door. The feral stench of shit and imminent decay pummeled my nose upon entry. It was the only thing alive in that room.

  I spent two hours in a tomb with my mama.

  I tried to call her from death to open a bathroom door.

  So now I dream sometimes of an endless hallway of identical doors. I try to open them for some reason. Behind each is that awful slack weight of death. I try to scream in frustration but manage only a hoarse dreamcroak. I awake from that nightmare, cold with sweat, warm tears drying on my face, my jaw muscles sore from grinding my teeth.

  I glance at my phone: 3:36 a.m. There won’t be any more sleep for a while. Not until my brain has temporarily purged itself of whatever poison causes this particular nightmare.

  I put on a T-shirt and some pants and creep past my grandparents’ bedroom. Papaw’s CPAP machine hums behind his door. Punkin patters behind me. I sit in one of the rockers. Punkin curls up beside me, nose to tail, and immediately dozes off. The moonlight is so radiant it looks like daylight’s ghost. The cool and damp air is asleep, with no breeze, and smells like dew and the faint musk of skunk. It’s one of my favorite smell combinations. Delaney thinks if you could dilute down the smell of skunk by about a million, it would be the best-selling perfume on the planet. She thinks humans are secretly attracted to everything that repulses us.

  I would miss her if she left. Terribly.

  I would miss Mamaw and Papaw if I left. Terribly.

  After I found my mama, the next memory I have is the police bringing me here, nearly catatonic. Papaw held me on his lap. I was too big for it but I fit somehow. He wept into my hair and I sobbed into his chest.

  This porch, with them, is the only place in my life I’ve ever felt truly safe.

  I try to envision not having this. My life is small and simple, but it’s a better one than I ever thought I’d have. I have what I love: my grandparents, the satisfaction of working with my hands to bring a lawn into perfect order, the rhythm of paddling my canoe. I’m not keen to trade it in for some vague promise of the unknown.

  Then I envision Delaney, dressed in a plaid skirt and a white blouse, walking timidly up to the imposing wrought-iron gates of an ivy-covered school. Her thumbs are ragged and bleeding. The end of her ponytail is frayed like a busted rope from her worrying at it. No one tries to befriend her. They resent what comes so easily to her, what their family’s money couldn’t buy them.

  She folds in on herself, looking for some refuge. Maybe she surrenders and returns, goes back to work at Dairy Queen. Doesn’t realize the potential of her great mind, at best. At worst, she follows her mama’s path and looks for things to numb the pain of se
eing the world in a way no one else understands.

  I think about the time Jaydon Barnett started a rumor that Delaney’s mama was pimping her out for drug money and he knew because his cousin had banged her. I found him in the school parking lot. Told him to apologize. He told me to stick it up my ass. Something in me flashed and went dark, the way a light bulb sometimes blows out in a bright burst when you turn it on.

  I swung on Jaydon reflexively, as someone flinches from a flame. Caught him hard on the side of the head and dazed him, sending him staggering sideways. Before he could mount any punch-drunk counterassault, and before a crowd could even form, I’d thrown him down and rained blows on his face, blacking his eyes and bloodying his nose.

  I was a good fighter. I was strong from working, and I had honed my skills in elementary school, where I took a lot of shit. I often showed up for school unbathed, in filthy clothes or clothes washed haphazardly in a sink with whatever we had at hand—dish soap sometimes. I had bad home haircuts with clippers. Strange bruises. I would fall asleep in class. I learned to take only the beatings I couldn’t prevent.

  The principal told me I could avoid a longer suspension if I apologized. I refused. Jaydon was popular and I wasn’t, even before our fight. My social standing sank even lower as a result.

  I couldn’t say exactly when Delaney became the sort of friend for whom I’d go to battle. It just happened.

  Inside, I hear Papaw hacking and struggling for breath. If I leave, what will be left of him when I get back? Every inhalation of his is like the tick of a clock counting down. That I got to experience a seminormal childhood for the last few years, with something like parents, seems like enough good fortune for one lifetime. It feels greedy to desire more.

  I thought the predawn tranquility would help me find some peace. But the quiet is just another clamor in my head, calling me in every direction I can’t choose between.

  Lydia Blankenship: You’re listening to Morning Edition from NPR, National Public Radio. I’m Lydia Blankenship, special youth and culture correspondent to Morning Edition and, for today…special small-town Tennessee correspondent.

  Earlier this week, Vanderbilt University microbiologist Dr. Bidisha Srinavasan announced the results of her six-month-long study into the antibiotic properties of a new strain of penicillin mold discovered in a cave outside of Sawyer, Tennessee. Her findings are astounding. It kills every known antibiotic-resistant “superbug,” and does so with a ferocity that makes it almost impossible for the bacteria to evolve to withstand it, at least for now. It’s a momentous discovery in the war against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which scientists are calling as important as the original discovery of penicillin.

  But Dr. Srinavasan, whom we heard from yesterday, had help discovering the mold and its properties: a high school sophomore named Delaney Doyle from Sawyer, Tennessee. We have her on the line with us. Good morning, Delaney.

  Delaney Doyle: Hi.

  Lydia Blankenship: Now, many of our listeners might not have heard of Sawyer, Tennessee. Can you tell us where it is?

  Delaney Doyle: Um. Yeah. It’s just east of Knoxville. Near the Smoky Mountains.

  Lydia Blankenship: Let’s talk about this discovery. How did you come to find this mold?

  Delaney Doyle: Well. Um. Sorry, I’m super nervous.

  Lydia Blankenship: You’re doing great.

  Delaney Doyle: So my friend Cash Pruitt and I like to go canoeing on the Pigeon River. And there are all these caves along the river, and I asked Cash if he could take me inside them, because I figured that one of the only natural threats to mold in a cave would be bacteria, so I thought it’s probably evolved to meet that threat. Cash’s grandfather used to be a volunteer firefighter and would rescue people from caves, and he had some gear that we used to explore. I guess Cash’s grandfather taught him a lot about caves and stuff. So we found the mold in one of the caves, growing on the wall. This was summer between ninth and tenth grade.

  Lydia Blankenship: So you two went in this cave and came out with a sample of the mold?

  Delaney Doyle: Bunch of different samples, yeah. To test. See which worked.

  Lydia Blankenship: Talk about that.

  Delaney Doyle: I’m, um, sorry. So I used to hang around in the science lab at my school, and my science teacher, Mr. Hotchkiss, would let me come in and use the lab. Our school doesn’t have much money, so he used his own money to buy a good microscope.

  Lydia Blankenship: I went to public school in a town of five thousand in Tennessee, and that sounds familiar.

  Delaney Doyle: Yeah. It sucks. So Mr. Hotchkiss got me some petri dishes and helped me get some bacteria samples. I started testing the mold on bacteria, and I saw that the mold was killing every bacterium it came into contact with. I even tested it on some MRSA, and it worked.

  Lydia Blankenship: For our listeners who may not know, MRSA is a dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria. How did you get a sample of MRSA?

  Delaney Doyle: I probably shouldn’t tell. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble.

  Lydia Blankenship: We’ll move on. Now, how did Dr. Srinavasan enter the picture?

  Delaney Doyle: I googled scientists who study antibiotic-resistant bacteria and emailed them. Dr. Srinavasan was the only one who responded. She’s at Vanderbilt, which is only a few hours away. Good luck, I guess. So Cash drove me and my samples and the records I made to meet with her. A few days later, she sent a couple of grad students to Sawyer to collect more samples and bring them back…Sorry, hang on a sec…Okay, thanks. Sorry, I’m at work.

  Lydia Blankenship: Where is work?

  Delaney Doyle: Dairy Queen.

  Lydia Blankenship: Does Dairy Queen have any idea that one of their employees made one of the major scientific finds of the decade?

  Delaney Doyle: I think so, because when I clock in, I’m the only one they make wash my hands twice.

  Lydia Blankenship: [Laughter] We’ll let you get back to work, but one more question: Dr. Srinavasan told us the name she gave this miraculous new mold, but we’d like to hear it from you too.

  Delaney Doyle: Penicillium delanum.

  Lydia Blankenship: I can hear you smiling even over the phone.

  Delaney Doyle: [Laughter] I am.

  Lydia Blankenship: Delaney, on behalf of young women everywhere, and especially young women from small towns in Tennessee, thank you and keep up the great work.

  Delaney Doyle: Thanks, I will.

  It’s a lie that water is odorless. Water smells like water. The way wind smells like wind and dirt smells like dirt.

  The mossy, metallic fragrance of the river wafts around us in the syrupy humidity, mixing with the flinty scent of wet stone and the yeasty tang of mud. The sun bakes the river water into our clothes, making them stiff, and onto our skin, leaving a taut film that feels like dried tears.

  Delaney reclines gingerly on the fallen log where we sit. She shields her eyes against the late afternoon brightness. “I don’t think a dog qualifies as a critter.”

  “Course it does,” I say. “When’d you put on sunscreen last?”

  “Doesn’t. And I forget.”

  I toss her the bottle. “You’ll burn. Why doesn’t it?”

  “Because a domesticated animal can’t be a critter.” She shakes the bottle of Dollar General brand sunscreen and blats out the last few dregs into her palm, then slops it on her face, neck, and arms.

  “Says who? Any animal can be a critter. Come here,” I say. She scoots closer and I rub the sunscreen in where she missed.

  “Would you call a cow a critter?” she asks.

  “Maybe.”

  “Bullshit. Is a whale a critter? Say the sentence ‘A whale is a critter’ out loud. See how dumb you sound.”

  I smile, knowing I’ve walked right into Delaney
’s trap. She always wins our debates.

  She props herself up on her elbows and pushes at my thigh with a muddy toe. “Huh? I see your guilty little grin.” Few people see this teasing, playful side of Delaney.

  I grab for her toe but she jerks it away. “Whales aren’t domesticated,” I say.

  “Still not critters.”

  “Let’s look up the definition in the dictionary.”

  “Waste of time, because either it’ll agree with me or it’ll be wrong.”

  “Then you define critter.”

  She lies back down, resting her forearm over her eyes, dangling one foot off the edge of the log. “A critter is a nondomesticated animal that weighs under twenty-five pounds.” She says it with finality and certainty. Another piece of the natural world understood and catalogued—her never-ending quest.

  I pull one knee up to my chest and hug it. “So that’s it, then.”

  “That’s it. Possums and raccoons are critters. House cats aren’t.”

  She’s right. It makes perfect sense. And I would definitely rather be wrestling over this than the topic we could be debating but haven’t broached yet today.

  Delaney pulls out her phone, kept securely in a sandwich bag, and starts typing as if texting. I know it’s more likely she’s recording some observation or writing down a question to research later. We let minutes drip past and listen to the burble of the river. Insects dance just above the surface of the water, catching the sunlight like tiny flecks of gold. We’re on a small island in the river, where it flows through Sawyer. Not far from us is a bridge to downtown. Cars hum by occasionally.

  I lie back on the sun-warm log. There are days when your heart is so filled with this world’s beauty, it feels like holding too much of something in your hand. Days that taste like wild honey. This is one of them.

  When you grow up with ugliness and corruption, you surrender to beauty whenever and wherever you find it. You let it save you, if only for the time it takes for a snowflake to melt on your tongue or for the sun to sink below the horizon in a wildfire of clouds. No matter what else might be troubling your mind. You recognize it for something that can’t be taken from you. Something that can’t die with its back against a door, shutting you out in its final act.