In, apparently, Audra’s backyard.
It’s so quiet. I turn and find Audra staring at me. Her face is blank, just like mine. But her eyes are keen. I wonder how long she’s been looking, watching. I wonder, suddenly, with a jolt of fear, what she might have been looking for. Watching for…what? What does she know? What could she know? A false smile comes to her face now—a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. A stage smile.
What happened here, what I did here—what we did here—Audra would never understand. She would not be the type to understand something like that. She is the light that cuts through the fog. She is a woman without shadow.
I look at Audra and feel I am looking at a stranger. Boston has never felt so far away. Why are you doing this to me? I want to grab her and shake her and make her…what? Admit something? Admit what? That she somehow knows what I—we—decided here all those years ago? It’s ridiculous. Ludicrous.
We look at each other, and then her eyes fall to the knife in my hand. I must have taken it from my pocket. I don’t know when. I’m startled to look at it. I close my eyes as a shoot of pain rifles through my ankle. I see the gun and the moose with its shattered legs, and I see the blood in the brown bristle. I see Audra. I squeeze the knife tighter. The pressure of the knife handle against the scrape in my palm is like a yellow-black sting. I see Lover’s Tree. The cuts, the marks, the letters. MFD + AGC. MFD + CCD. The pinprick that expands to encompass everything.
Then in my mind I see the other tree. Her birch tree. Somewhere else, not far from here.
And then I see her. The woman haunting the woods.
CCD.
Coral.
Audra
Sunday, October 21, 2018
I watch Max circle the perimeter of the field slowly, looking at the cabins that peek through the trees here and there like a paleontologist at a dig site. He can’t stay away. The pull is too strong now. He’s in a trance. He’s somewhere else. I’m sure every instinct is telling him to run. To get out of this place. But destiny is bigger than any of his petty desires. Much bigger.
My body is almost trembling with the electricity of the situation as the sun continues to sink in the sky. I am on the precipice. I must not fail. He is gravely shaken. Agitated. In pain. An explosive man at the culmination of a years’-long vigil. I will not fail. Not now.
When he comes to an exhausted halt in the middle of the commons after all his examining, studying, silent reminiscing—bewildered and still as a spent wind-up toy—I tell him I want to walk him nearly a mile and a half down to the lake. I tell him I want him to feel the amazing stillness, to hear the perfect silence, to see the myriad shades of blue and black that constitute the darkness, to feel the otherworldly moon glow glittering on the water as the light fails and leaves us. A tightness comes to his face.
“I’m tired, Audra,” he says, voice trembling. But he looks wired. “My ankle.”
We stare each other down and work out secret calculations within ourselves.
I explain that there are lights to help guide us. Every fifty yards or so is a solar-powered light on a tree on a sunset-to-sunrise timer, all the way down the rough path to the lake. Some do-gooder did it a few years ago, as a kind act for the community who uses the land, which is private, even when we technically shouldn’t. I tell him there is nothing to be afraid of—that we’ll just follow the lights, a straight shot. That I’ll hold his hand if he’s nervous. His face flushes at that, and he spits that he isn’t scared. But he is.
I also promise him a warm beverage for his trouble: spiked hot cider in a thermos from my backpack, a virgin one for me. But I don’t tell him mine is virgin; I don’t tell him I need my wits about me more than ever.
The look on his face seems to say, Do I really have any choice? I don’t tell him the truth. That no, there is no choice left for him anymore. And by now, I think he almost wants to go. He must know where we’re heading.
Which makes me wonder when Max will stop pretending. I know he knows this place. I know he’s been here before. Despite the moony, wide-eyed City Boy in the Country act he’d performed for me when we were first discussing the trip. But Stoned ’Em Bog rattled him. The paintings in my home, in my studio rattled him. The emails to Moss, sent by me, on timers from an anonymous server, rattled him. Lupine Valley, the Ledge, Lover’s Tree are shaking him. Proving that I’m right. That I’ve been right. About everything. I just wonder, what will it take to break him?
I hand him his thermos. He takes it slowly. Everything has slowed down half a beat with him since being here. I must watch that. He’s thinking. Processing.
“You do know I—I…that I care for you? Despite whatever foolish things I may do?” He looks me square in the eyes. We look at each other for a long moment, trying to see each other. Figure each other out.
“Yes,” I say. “I think so.”
“You think so?” he says with some disappointment. He cups my jaw with his hand.
“You admire me, you care for me.” I nod with acknowledgment. “In your way.” His lips purse a little, but it is not in anger. It’s more like regret. My favorite scarf around him. Coral’s scarf. Cindy’s scarf.
“In my way,” he repeats. “How else could it be done?” But the question is hypothetical.
“Come,” I say, holding out my hand to him. “Let’s go.”
I take special note of how he slips his knife from his pants pocket into his right-hand coat pocket as we trundle off. This will be important for me to keep track of, too. It’s not a factor I had anticipated being in the mix, and so I must be supremely cautious in everything that I do, now more than ever.
In ten minutes we are deep into the tree line, my heavy, old, brown enamel lantern casting a bright orb of light around us, saving us from bursting roots and rocks cropping from the earth. I’m sure-footed as we move, and occasionally Max reaches in my direction for support, but I stay just out of his grasp. He lilts gingerly on his bum ankle.
We pause at the bases of trees, lean, rest, and drink as we go. “You made these pretty strong, Audie.” He coughs a little but does not indicate that he doesn’t like it. He needs it. I think he senses that.
“It’s good for you.” I smile.
“Undoubtedly,” he says. He finally lifts his eyes and looks at me. I look into the sky.
“Ready?”
We pick our way slowly down the well-worn path that campers and locals like me have made through the years, moving from one glowing orb of light to the next, each one seeming to reveal itself just in time, right before all light is consumed by the almost perfectly still and dark forest.
An owl hoots from somewhere off to our right. What breeze rustles in the boughs of the ancient trees is gentle and intermittent. A few minutes later, I can hear the distant yodeling call of a coyote. Max and I walk in silence for most of the way, his gloved hand now in my gloved hand as I guide him through some of the trickier terrain. The path is beginning to slope more aggressively down toward the lake. He hisses and winces and sometimes asks me to slow down, sometimes asks me to stop, but I don’t relent. I tell him it will be fine, it will be worth it, keep drinking, keep walking, keep looking for the next mysterious light floating in the blackness guiding us to the glittering moonshine. He barely speaks the last quarter mile. I can tell he’s pissed. In bad pain. I can tell he’s thinking that he will have to do this all again on the way back.
Eventually we emerge into openness; the lake sprawls before us in navy-midnight sparkles under the light of the moon and stars that are a perfect reflection of each other. A beach lines the stretch of shore just ahead. The grass, soil, earth fades into roots, rocks, sandiness as we move from the pitch of the forest. I turn off the lamp. We don’t need it now, not with this moon glow. There are a few fallen trees at the shore. There’s a rowboat lying upside down on the beach, waiting to be put away for the season. I watch his eyes scan all
around the further shoreline, across this cragged little inlet of Moosehead Lake.
“Isn’t it something?”
“Incredible,” he says, his voice tremulous with wonder or fear. “Incredible.” His eyes are suddenly glassy with tears. He turns to my dormant lantern sitting by a fallen log. The ripped sticker on the lantern reads a ragged BAH HAHBAH. He looks at it for what seems like a long time. I feel jittery. On fire. I scan the shore around and across from us; no light. There are one or two camps positioned around the inlet just off the water in this little neck of the woods, but they are summer spots, owned by out-of-towners. The Penley place. The Berrigan place. The Klimas place. I listen, and there is not a sound but the gentle lapping of the lake and a feather-whisper of breeze at my ears. There may not be anyone for three or four miles. Maybe more.
Max and I stand beside each other on the shore. We drink deeply, hands wrapped around our thermoses. His hand is shaking. The hand holding the thermos. Is it cold? Is it nerves? Is it fear? Does he finally understand? He’s looking up into the stars, clearly quite toasted. Somewhere dark and far away.
I tell him about memory after memory of myself down on this very beach playing, dreaming, adventuring. I take deliberate breaks as I talk to give him the chance to say something but Quiet, Pensive, Serious, Drunk Max is in full effect. He nods or grunts. He looks very sad and…something I’ve never seen before…remorseful? Something. Something is stirring in him. He finds his way over to the fallen tree on the beach and takes a seat, tripping a few times over rocks as he goes. He looks down at my old enamel lantern again. Just keeps looking at it.
“I used to know someone who had a lantern just like that,” he says, his glassy eyes tracking up to mine. We lock on each other. My heart races in my chest. Have we arrived? Are we ready? I study him, but his eyes fall back down onto the beach. I swallow.
I move past him to the little rowboat, turn it over myself, barely able to look at him.
“Sit in here. More comfortable.” I help him to his feet then to sit down inside the rowboat, which is by now a third in the water. Max looks relieved for the bench. I take a seat opposite him in the boat. We both look out to the lake, or up into the sky, or both. The stillness and silence are daunting.
“Had a fishhook clean through my thumb once,” I tell him, my voice quiet in the freezing night.
“Jesus, Audra,” he breathes. I look over at him. These are the first words he’s spoken in several minutes. He looks harrowed. His voice is rough.
“Lots of blood.”
“Jesus. Audra. Jesus.”
“The pain was incredible,” I say, turning my gaze away from him, back out toward the water. “I was young and thought of tetanus and was afraid they’d have to clip the end of my finger off.”
“Ah, Audra. Jesus.” He takes a few more sips. He slides himself down off the seat to the boat floor with a wince so he’s resting his sprained ankle up on the bench beside me. He pulls his coat tighter around himself, takes out the switchblade from his pocket, and starts flicking it open and closed. Snick, snick. “But the color,” he says now, words slurred, smeared. I turn to look at him. “Summer, was it?” he asks, snick, snick.
“Summer,” I affirm. “Fishing with my grandfather.”
“Deep, healthy blue. The water. Right?”
“That’s right,” I say. His eyes are on the blade almost unseeingly.
“Vibrant, lush green in the trees. At the shoreline. Something…more lime the closer to shore. Low brush. Gray and tan rocks. And the sun?” He is painting me a picture.
“Golden. Diffuse. Embedded in everything.”
He nods like we are seeing the same thing. “And then the red,” he breathes sensually.
“And then the red,” I reply in a whisper.
He almost winces at the beauty of it, at the pain of it. Snick, snick. “Like when you were lost. Small and lost in the woods with your knife and your gash and your smoke signals.” He shakes his head. “And you must have cried.”
“Yes.” I nod.
“Diamond on your cheeks. Salt. Tears. You must have looked so beautiful then. I would have loved to have seen that. Young Audra. Crying.” My eyes are ice on him. “This pain at the very tip of you. At a literal extremity, on this young, beautiful girl. Supple and perfect and young. And then the red.”
“And then the red.”
Snick, snick. He downs the rest of his thermos. He is sloppy getting the cap back on. I hold out my hand as a way of asking for the knife. He closes it and hands it to me without question, without thinking.
It worked. I want to yelp with relief.
I look at the knife casually for a moment and then climb from the little boat. Max watches me, sleepy, slumping down farther, clutching his coat, as I kneel beside the log next to the boat and begin to carve. I carve and scratch, and Max sighs and watches me, half-awake. “Kress Beach,” he murmurs, just barely audible.
A shiver runs straight through me. An electric shock. He’s getting here. He’s arriving. He’s joining me.
I steady my hand and carve a heart shape around the letters I have just scratched out.
“Kress Beach,” I whisper back, so, so soft. I nod gently at him. I move away and slip the knife into my jacket pocket, hoping he won’t notice. “Look, Max,” I tell him, gesturing to the spot on the log. He arches his back and neck to see, squinting, trying to move as little as possible from his cocoon.
“E—A—D and…M—F—D.” He says the initials neutrally, uncomprehendingly. “EAD and MFD?” He looks up at me. “What does that mean?”
“It’s us, of course,” I say, and I look him right in the eyes, and for the first time, I see something, deep down and far, far away shift. Like a twig breaking underwater—the infinitesimal ripple of molecules that might occur at the surface. He almost has it. He has most of it, I think.
“I don’t get it.” He laughs gently, thinly as he shuts his eyes as if out of protection. “I don’t…get you, sometimes, Audra,” he murmurs. He breathes in through his nose and seems to settle himself. He lies in the boat. I take a seat on the stump next to it. I listen to the ripples on the water. I listen to Max breathe. At first, lying there, he rests gently. Before long, he’s far from the world, deeply asleep.
Juniper
December 14, 1988
It’s the shouting that leaks through the quiet space between Guns and Roses’ “Night Train” and “Out ta Get Me” that makes me stop painting. I pull my Walkman headphones from my ears and listen.
Barking, enraged voices. High, keening sobbing. Words clash and overwrite each other in the air, a tangle of fury.
I stand up and go to my window, pull the curtains back. Across the commons I see three people outside of Focus—two men and a woman. The men are shouting. The woman is screaming and crying.
Moss, Brady, Coral.
Shit.
I yank on my boots and heavy sweater and go out into the frigid air.
“She belongs at home!” Brady yells. Moss yells something I can’t make out. From Coral I hear shrill, panicked tatters: No!…let me…can’t…no idea…Brady! I trudge as fast as I can toward them.
“Hey,” I call. They keep shouting, oblivious of me as I draw near. “Hey!” I shout, air misting before me in my efforts through the snow. They turn to look at me, but Coral is still screaming words I can’t quite make out.
“You running a fucking cult up here?” Brady demands. His ferocity surprises me; I didn’t think he had it in him. Moss is barefoot in the open maw of his cabin. Coral is on the slick, snowy steps leading down from the cabin wearing canvas tennis shoes, high-water pants, and a slouchy sweatshirt. “You can’t keep people here for days on end!”
“She wasn’t being held captive here,” Moss growls, annoyed. “She wants to be here!”
Brady rounds on me. “Cindy’s been run off for four days, o
r didn’t you know?” he spits, his eyes challenging. “No word. I came up here the other day and asked that old fuck Gus if he’s seen her, and he was useless. I’ve been looking for her everywhere. I finally heard from my favorite person, Mantis, that your boy here probably had her stowed away in his fucking cabin.” Brady is gesturing with his thumb back toward the parking lot. I can see Brady’s truck; there’s someone in the passenger seat. A hulking figure. Is Mantis here?
“He’s not supposed to be anywhere near—” Moss starts, angry and pale.
I’m so stunned, it takes me a moment to figure out where to start. I turn to Coral.
“You’ve been here for four days?” I ask in disbelief, looking at the small, hunched girl with the growing belly.
“This is my home.” Coral’s face is wet with tears. The tip of her nose is red.
“Your home is with me, Cindy,” Brady says, trying to control his temper, but it’s barely working. “You need to be home with your boyfriend. Safe. You’re six months pregnant and things are falling apart. We were doing so good, Cindy! You were doing everything right. Feeling good. Happy. What happened? What kind of spell are you under out here?” Brady’s voice is almost a plea. He’s scared. Exasperated. Coral starts crying again. “And you’re not as slick as you think you are, honey. I find the pills stashed around the house. Like a squirrel with acorns.” Her hair is wild and tangled. Her eyes are as tameless as I’ve ever seen them.
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