In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

  She plants another piece of twig in my hair. “You don’t talk about your parents.”

  I don’t answer until I’m sure I can do it with complete nonchalance that won’t betray me. “Nah, not really.”

  “What are they like?” Another section of twig in my hair.

  “You know. They’re cool. They’re just…parents. They love me. They want me to do well.” Every lie feels like holding a hot pan handle, but I’m too far from anywhere I can easily set it down without making a mess. Please change the topic.

  Blessedly, Alex calls over. “Anyone catch what kind of apples these are?”

  “Pink Lady,” I say. “Sounds like a strip club.”

  “These are a thousand times better than Red Delicious apples,” Alex says. “ ‘Red Delicious’ is half a lie.”

  “You gonna call out Red Delicious apples like that?” I say.

  “I just did. Red Delicious apples can bring it.”

  “Damn, son.”

  The three of us talk for a while. After this we’re going to a corn maze. Neither Alex nor Vi have ever been to one. We’ll have doughnuts and cider and go on a hayride. We’ll get back in time to catch Midnite Matinee.

  Our conversation subsides, and I look up at the sky and think what a wondrous color it is. Delaney told me once that some scientists think humans only started seeing the color blue about 4,500 years ago. Or maybe they didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. She said that in ancient writings, like Homer’s Odyssey, the sea is described as being the color of wine. I miss Delaney and her facts.

  Vi and I turn to each other. She selects two more apples from her basket and hands me one, keeping the other for herself.

  “You’ll get sick if you eat too many,” I say.

  “I’m not afraid.” She reaches over and gingerly plucks out the twigs she placed in my hair, one by one.

  “Did you change your mind about wanting to grow apple trees on my head?”

  “Yeah. We can just come back here for apples.”

  “Works for me.”

  She scans the orchard, looking at the blaze of sugar maples in the distance. The wind breathes through the orchard’s laden branches and dry leaves. “I like autumn in Connecticut,” she says softly.

  “I do too.”

  We eat our apples and let the juice dry sticky on our fingers. It’s late in the afternoon, and she glows like something holy in the golden, waning light.

  I think of her touching my hair, the warmth of her thigh against mine.

  I guess apples aren’t the only sweetness that can consume you.

  I’m jumpy as we wrap up our analysis of a Marie Howe poem. I hope Dr. Adkins won’t think I was being a smart-ass by turning in a poem that’s half the length of my already-terse first effort.

  “Okay, we’re out of time. Tonight’s reading is amazing. I know I always say that, but this is not empty hyperbole. Go eat lunch.”

  I stand to the side of the door while everyone streams out.

  “Come, sit,” she says, walking to her desk to get my poem. I sit. She returns and sits across from me.

  I’m angry with myself for failing a teacher I like so much, who’s taken such an interest in me. I try to get out in front of things. “I’m just not a poet. This one sucks more than my first try.”

  Dr. Adkins crosses her legs, looks down at my “poem,” and then back up. “I beg to differ.”

  She reads. “Ask me where I’m from. Wanna know why I think this is an improvement on your last poem?”

  “Why?”

  “Because your first poem didn’t invite dialogue. This one is shorter—and I don’t think it’s complete—but it invites engagement.”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s totally what I was thinking when I wrote that. It definitely wasn’t that I just got stuck and had to turn in something.” We laugh.

  “So, Cash Pruitt,” Dr. Adkins says, clasping her hands around her knee. “You told me to, so I’m asking. Where are you from?”

  “Sawyer, Tennessee.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a town.”

  “But it’s more, or that line wouldn’t have come into your mind. Why did you invite me to ask you where you’re from?”

  “I guess it’s important to me. It’s home.”

  “So?”

  “So I think people don’t understand why it’s beautiful and special to me.”

  “Would you like to tell them?”

  I shrug.

  She picks up my paper and holds it in my face, pulling the edges taut as though to tear it in half. “Yes! You would! It’s right here! What does this place mean to you?”

  “Um.”

  “Think. What do you love?”

  “The quiet. The stillness.”

  “What image represents that quiet and stillness in your mind?”

  I ponder for a few beats. “Intersections with no cars. The yellow lights blinking for no one.”

  Dr. Adkins pushes my paper back to me. “Write that.”

  I do.

  She must be able to see the steam rising off my head as my brain labors. “Disconnect yourself from literalism and concreteness. This sometimes gets you closer to the reality of an idea—the essence of an idea—than a more concrete representation.”

  I keep thinking. I write a few more lines. I gaze at what I’ve written.

  Ask me where I’m from

  I’ll tell you about yellow lights

  blinking at intersections

  like the last heartbeats

  of the drowning

  downtown hardware store

  Dr. Adkins stands and beckons me to fellow. “Let’s grab lunch and keep working. Good things are happening.”

  When we get in the dining hall, she gets in line for food while I run over to Vi and Alex to tell them I’m working on a poem with Dr. Adkins.

  “Wooooo,” Alex says. “Look who’s fancy now.”

  “More like she’s putting in the time to help the kid who can’t keep up,” I say.

  “I doubt that,” Vi says. “I want to read it when you’re done.”

  And I gleam inside, even though I don’t have the slightest intention of letting her do that.

  I grab a plate of pad Thai and join Dr. Adkins at a table not far from my friends. It’s strange to see her in this setting. It occurs to me for the first time that we’d probably have been friends if we were in high school together. It reminds me of Delaney and it pierces me with regret.

  “So,” Dr. Adkins says. “We were at ‘drowning downtown hardware store.’ You could move on or you could comment on the store, use it to develop a theme. Do you have some memory or sentiment attached to the store? What would you buy there?”

  We press on like this, exchanging ideas between bites. Vi and Alex drop by our table as they’re leaving, and I introduce them to Dr. Adkins. I’m proud for her to see I have cool friends, and I like that they got to see a teacher taking a special interest in me. I wish I could introduce her to Delaney.

  We push through my lunchtime and into my free period, working. She prompts me and prods me with questions and suggestions. What do you think of when…? What do you feel when…? What does it smell like? What does it look like? What do you love about it? Why do you love that? What’s a word you can use to describe that? What if you tried saying…? What’s something you can compare it to? What does it remind you of?

  I sit back and read what we’ve written.

  “How does it feel to have written this poem?” Dr. Adkins asks.

  “I didn’t really write it.”

  “Cash? You wrote it. I wouldn’t let you quit or convince yourself that you don’t have the language to express what’s inside you. That’s it. How does it feel?”

  I look at the page agai
n. “Really good,” I murmur, and I’m not just saying it to mollify her. It’s the same abiding peace I experience after being on the river. The time we were working slipped past me without my even noticing. For that little while, I didn’t hurt. Nothing gnawed at me. Not my distance from Papaw and Mamaw and home. Not my distance from Delaney. My mind was quiet.

  “I feel like I know the part of you that’s proud of who you are and where you come from much better after reading this poem,” Dr. Adkins says.

  “Thanks for helping me.” I want to tell her how happy it makes me to see her so obviously pleased with me. “So I guess I can go back to the normal homework assignments?”

  “Nice try. Let’s see if they have Middleford bars today.”

  They do.

  Where I’m From

  Ask me where I’m from

  I’ll tell you about yellow lights

  blinking at intersections

  like the last heartbeats

  of the drowning

  downtown hardware store where you buy

  bolts to fix another thing

  that time devours

  afternoons so still, you hear the breath

  of wind over your own

  breathing and the rush

  of a river over your own

  blood rushing

  leafsmoke autumn days

  and train-whistle winter nights

  aching backs

  and aching hearts

  and cracked hands

  and rusted bodies

  in rusted pickups with

  cracked windshields

  decaying houses housing

  decaying hopes

  this is the harvest

  of the forgotten

  everything dies

  but some places live

  closer to bone

  but also starlings rise

  from a spirit-white field, breaking

  the silence that rejoiced

  in your praise-clasped hands.

  I think about the poem for the rest of the day. It’s taken root in my chest and sends out green, flowering shoots as the hours wear on. I keep remembering the calm satisfaction I had after finishing it.

  I try to carry that feeling through crew practice. It’s not easy. We’re back on the ergs because it’s too late in the year to be on the water. But I manage. I carry it through dinner with Vi and Alex. And then seeing Vi adds another layer to my high spirits.

  I haven’t yet summoned the courage to tell her how I feel. I’m not in a rush. I figure I’ll know when the time is right. Until I do, there’s nothing but possibility, and I’m not ready to give that up. Based on the smiles she gives me, the way she lingers on my eyes a second or two longer than she needs to, how she finds excuses to touch my arm—I think I’ve got a shot.

  After dinner, I sit by the lake and call Mamaw and Papaw.

  Papaw answers. “Howdy, Mickey Mouse!”

  “Hey, Papaw, I missed you the last couple days.”

  He hacks and wheezes. “Missed you too. Hit a rough spell, but I’m back now. How’re things?”

  “Real good. Went to a football game Friday. Went apple picking with my friends on Saturday, went to a corn maze. That was fun.” Then, something comes over me, and this spills from my mouth: “Hey, kinda had something to tell you, man to man.”

  Papaw gives me an amused look. “Well. Go ’head.”

  “I think I’m starting to fall for one of my friends here.”

  Papaw’s eyes twinkle. “Do tell.”

  “Remember that new friend of mine I told you about? From Brazil?”

  “Vicki?”

  “Viviani. Vi.”

  “Okay. I recall.”

  “It’s her. We’ve been hanging out a lot lately and…I don’t know. Something’s different between us. There’s chemistry there. Or something.”

  Papaw chuckles a little—it sounds like his heart’s not in it—then he goes quiet. “What about Tess?”

  I’m taken aback. “What about her?”

  “She okay with this?”

  “I don’t know. Remember how I told you the other day that we were fighting? We still are. And why would she care?”

  “Ain’t she sweet on you?”

  I laugh incredulously. “Papaw—no. What? No.”

  Papaw coughs. When he catches his breath, he says, “You sure ’bout that, Mickey Mouse?”

  “We’re just friends.” I consider telling him that Delaney and I had already worked out what we were a long time ago, while we were still talking.

  “You best make sure of that.” He stumbles into another hacking fit.

  “Geez. You even happy for me?” I can’t mask my irritation anymore.

  He clears his throat. “Now, listen, bubba. I might be saving your damn life here.”

  “I’m good. I promise.”

  “Didn’t you tell me once this gal is Tess’s roommate?”

  “Yeah.”

  Papaw whistles through his teeth. “That makes things double tricky. Like trying to date your best friend’s sister.”

  “You sound like you’re talking from experience.”

  “I’ll never tell,” he says, grinning. He turns serious again. “Now, you wanna take things slow. Don’t charge in.”

  “I know.”

  “I really am happy for you, Mickey Mouse. Just wanted to make sure everyone was square on the situation and wasn’t nobody about to get hurt.”

  “I appreciate it. Vi’s…fun to be around. I don’t know. Feels good to be near her. She’s smart and beautiful. She smells amazing. She has a pretty laugh. She’s sunshine.”

  “You said you and Tess was fighting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go make that right before you go chasing after this Vi girl. Apologize even if you think you didn’t do nothing wrong. Tess is someone you want in your life.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  Pitching around in my head for something to change the subject from Delaney, I make a connection I hadn’t made before, for some reason. “Hey, let me ask you something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You know how you did woodworking and chain-saw sculptures?”

  “Miss it ever’ day.”

  “What made you do it?”

  Papaw looks at me for a second and scratches his beard. “Ain’t nobody ever asked me that before. I’ll have to think on it.” He ponders and coughs. His oxygen machine hisses. Finally, he says, “I don’t know’s I can answer that. All’s I can say is I felt driven to do it.”

  “Okay, how about this: What did it make you feel to do that stuff?”

  “It felt real, real good.” He pauses to collect his breath before continuing. “I ain’t never told anyone, but since you’re asking: I used to think about this tree growing out there in the woods, collecting the sun and wind and rain and using all that energy and nutrition to grow up. Then, we’d cut down the tree, and I’d transform that wood into something else with my hands. Kinda like I’m releasing the energy of the sun that that wood soaked up and shaping it into a black bear sculpture or a table for someone. I ain’t really got the words for it. But when I was done, I’d feel pretty darn satisfied.”

  I nod and absorb what he’s saying. “Yeah,” I murmur. “That sounds familiar.”

  “What put you in mind of all this?”

  “I finished my first poem today.”

  Papaw beams. “Did you? For your class you was telling me about?”

  “Yessir. The teacher picked me out to start writing poetry. Guess she saw something in me. Who knows.”

  “That don’t surprise me. I’d love to read that poem.”

  “I’ll email it to you. Anyway, I felt pretty darn great afte
r finishing it up. Peaceful, you know?”

  “I do surely know. Hey, your mamaw wants to chat. I’m gonna sign off.”

  “Love you, Papaw.”

  “Love you, Mickey Mouse.”

  Mamaw appears onscreen, and I see she’s walking outside with the tablet. I hear her tell Papaw, “It’s a pretty night; I’m going to sit out on the porch while I talk to Cash.”

  “Hi, sweetie,” she says once she gets settled in.

  “Hey, Mamaw. How’s work?”

  “If it isn’t one thing going wrong, it’s another.”

  “I know that’s right.”

  “Hey, I needed to talk to you about something.” Her voice is suddenly fragile. I feel a hot surge of adrenaline in my solar plexus.

  “Okay,” I say weakly.

  “Your papaw took a bit of a turn this last week, and we ended up spending a couple nights in the hospital.”

  “What?”

  “He bounced back but—”

  “Y’all didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, no. Pep thought we ought not worry you with it. Let you focus on your studies.”

  “Mamaw, I need to know this stuff. What if everything hadn’t been okay?”

  “And that’s what I told him. But you know him. Like a mule.”

  “I know, but.”

  “Anyway, the thing I had to talk about—”

  “There’s more?”

  “I had to miss a few shifts dealing with all this, and it’s put us behind on the bills. So we were thinking we’d just have you come home for Christmas and not Thanksgiving too.”

  My last Thanksgiving with Papaw. For sure. But I can’t bring myself to say it. “I was really looking forward to seeing y’all soon.”

  “We’ll still see you soon at Christmas.”

  “I have enough for the bus ticket.”

  “Hang on to it. We both need to be saving up money for a rainy day.”

  Then I realize what she’s saying. Saving for a trip home for a final goodbye. Saving for a funeral.

  I’m silent for a while, and Mamaw says, “We weren’t going to make a to-do of Thanksgiving this year anyway. Pep’s not feeling up to big shindigs lately. Just a little get-together with Aunt Betsy and Mitzi.”