“Picnic?” asks Teddy, and I nod and grin, showing all my teeth in a wolfish smile. Mine, mine, all mine.
I have not planned for a picnic today. No matter. Eggs, there are always eggs in the chicken house, and we “rustle” six, giggling and poking each other in the wild joy of theft. Back at the house, we make deviled eggs, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a thermos of Kool-Aid. We don’t have a basket, but a brown paper sack will do. At the last minute, an ancient memory surfaces, and I add a plastic mixing bowl and a small kitchen knife.
“What’s that for?” asks Teddy, but I shake my head mysteriously, and lead him out of the house. And across the cow pasture. And into the forest.
When I was twelve, I was a poet for at least six months. An ancient snatch of it comes back to me. “As the sun was breaking, I slipped down the lane. Back to the arms of my forest again.”
Back to the arms of my forest again, bringing my son. He follows behind me, as a fawn follows a doe, as porcupines the size of croquet balls waddle after their armored mother. He follows me down the narrow path, stooping when I do, slipping under the leaning branches, stepping over the fallen limbs. We move silently, as one. I glance back at him once, and his eyes are shining. I only wonder that I have never done this with him before.
We scarcely speak, except for my giving of names. “Show currant,” I tell him, and “Alder.” “Russian thistle, watercress, here, taste some, wild mint, taste this, too.” It becomes a litany of introductions, a presentation at court. “Club moss, fly agaric, Saint-John’s-wort, liverwort, witches’ butter, buttercups.” Pouring it into his head like cake batter poured into pans, to bake and set and live on for the rest of his life.
Soon he begins, “What’s this? What’s that?” and soon I am admitting that there are many here I do not know, and promising a trip to the library or even into the mall to a bookstore to find out.
We usurp Pan’s glen, spread our picnic on his moss by his stream. Does he watch us? I refuse to think about it. Instead, we eat, deviled eggs dipped into salt from a twist of wax paper, peanut butter and jelly, sharing the thermos cup of Kool-Aid, and it all tastes much better than it really does because it’s a picnic. Teddy rolls up his jeans and wades in the stream. Sediment swirls up around his pink bared feet and flows away. A startled fingerling flashes past him, brushing a scaled side against his skin and jolting an exuberant shout from him. He pursues the fish with much splashing and shrieking. It is midafternoon when he tires of the game and comes out, to eat the last deviled egg and stretch out on the moss for the sun to dry his bare legs. He falls asleep there on the bank, and sleeps limply as do all wild things on a warm afternoon in the forest. His pale hair and tanned face contrast with the moss that cushions his sleep. I sit and watch the water flowing, the birds flitting from branch to branch, and my young son sleeping. Restlessness and urgency depart me, and I breathe slowly, in a kind of open-eyed sleep. The glen has a wholeness to it that cannot be broken, so that I see it all when I look at one damp pebble, and see each stem of grass, each frond of fern, when I let my eyes go wide and unfocused.
And, of course, he is part of it.
I watch him come, stepping with ancient elven grace, hooves entering and leaving the stream without so much as a splash. Slanting sunlight through the branches gleams his flanks, polishes his high cheekbones, is swallowed in the darkness of his eyes. When he moves his head, light ricochets off his horns. I do not move or speak. It is not me he has come to see.
He steps all around my boy, his nostrils flaring and working as he takes in his scent. His cloven hooves cut deep into the moss, scoring into the rich earth below the green carpet. My boy sleeps before those sharp-edged hooves, and a stiffening of apprehension runs through my muscles. It is no longer the friend of my childhood who stands there, but the forest god, the hooved and horned one beholding an intruder in his domain. What rules bind one such as that? My breath slows in my lungs, pauses. He cocks his head as he studies my son, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest. I see Teddy as he does, the dark lashes of his closed eyes, the round curves of his cheeks, the small lips that move slightly in some dream conversation.
Pan lifts his eyes to me, then looks back at my boy, and I see him making the connections, finding the lines of my face traced in Teddy’s. Finding also the alien configurations of the man I have given myself to, Tom’s brow, Tom’s long lashes, Tom’s soft pale hair. He glances back to me suddenly, a harder look, but I take it calmly and hold my ground, returning it levelly. This is where we are, I think to myself, and also, perhaps, to him. This is how it is, and no changing that. For a long time our eyes are locked, and then his face changes, slowly, softening with both pain and acceptance of the pain. When he looks back to Teddy, I know he is seeing him differently, seeing him as a separate entity, as himself, as a young boy asleep in the faun’s glen. Teddy sleeps brown and gold as any offering, and I see Pan consider him. There is the place in Kipling’s Jungle Book when Mowgli is presented to the pack, and the cry rings out, “Look, look well, O Wolves.” When Pan nods slowly, and a curving smile bares his white teeth, I know my boy is free to both field and forest, and I am glad.
He looks to me once more, a look I cannot read, and then he turns aside. He leaves as he came, not a drop of water splashing at his passage, not a leaf rustling. Only the track of cloven hooves remain, and I touch them with one finger, feeling the realness of sheared earth.
Not even his scent remains in the dell when Teddy awakens. Teddy does not notice the tracks all around him, nor do I call his attention to them. Instead, we take the bowl and knife and venture deeper into the woods. “When I was little,” I tell him, “my mother taught me all about mushrooms. We’d go out every good damp morning and look for them. She showed me the ones I could eat, and the ones I couldn’t. And when we came to one we didn’t know, we’d take it home, and look it up in a book. Sometimes we’d make spore prints from the mushrooms by setting the caps down on white or black paper and leaving them there until they’d dropped their spores. Spores are like mushroom seeds, sort of, but very tiny. They make a lovely pattern on the paper, like the spokes of wheels or the ribs of an umbrella. There’s one. This shrivelly black kind is called a morel. They mostly like burned-over places, but sometimes they grow in the deep woods, too.”
We look for mushrooms together, and though we do not find many, we have a few morels, two shaggy manes, and six small puffballs to take home with us. As we pass back through the faun’s dell, we pick up our sack and thermos.
“My mother knew as much about mushrooms as anyone in Fairbanks. When the time came for the Tanana Valley Fair, she used to take me into the woods, and we’d gather moss and sticks and layers of fallen leaves, and cover a display table with them. Then we’d gather fresh mushrooms at dawn, for every day that the fair was open, and we’d set them up in the moss, with little signs saying what they were, and if you could eat them or not. I didn’t care much for the fair, but I loved the early mornings with my mother. We’d take the bottoms of beer boxes, and put a long string from one end of them to the other, and hang the strings around our necks, so the boxes stuck out like trays in front of us. We’d gather each mushroom whole, and carefully set it on the tray, so that when it got to the fair, it wouldn’t be bruised or crumpled. My mother knew so much about mushrooms that once, when someone had to go to the hospital after eating the wrong kind, the hospital phoned up and described the mushroom to her, so she could tell them what it really was and what kind of poison was in it.”
I think this is the first time I have ever spoken to my son about his other grandmother. I am surprised at how sharp the images are, how easily the words come. When I tell him, I can see her, wearing a baggy, hooded sweatshirt, the sleeves pushed up nearly to the elbows, the lines in her weathered face undisguised by makeup, proud of her years. A flood of affection washes through me for the woman who gave me to the forest. As now I give my son.
By the time we get back to the house, it is tim
e to make dinner. We clean the mushrooms and fry them beside the hamburger patties. Tom won’t eat any. He has never trusted my ability to identify edible ones, and plainly does not approve of my risking Teddy’s life by feeding him fungus things from the forest. Teddy and I pay him no mind, but eat well. And after dinner, I do not do the dishes, or even clear the table. Instead, we sit on the couch, and I tell him stories of what Fairbanks was like when I was a little girl. I tell him of duck nests, and baby rabbits so small they fit in a teacup, of chewing on the new green bundles of spruce needles before they turn dark green, of a squirrel nest made of someone’s old nylons, of moose walking past me by moonlight. He laughs when I tell him about how, for two months straight, I walked someone’s trap line every day and sprang every single trap, because I didn’t want anyone trapping so near my slough. Tom clatters the dishes a great deal as he clears the table. He dumps them into the sink, but doesn’t wash them. “Honey, where’s the coffee?” he demands a short time later, and I say, “In the bottom left cupboard,” but I do not rise to hurry over and make a pot for him. Instead, I tell Teddy about swimming in gravel pits, and unwinding paper bark from birch trees, of picking rose hips and stoning wasps’ nests. I tell him about Rinky, and our log house, and sword fighting with my brothers with the long icicles from the eaves. When he lies down to sleep, his eyes are full of stories.
I go to bed without Tom. He comes in later, and wants me, and I do not care. It is a simple coupling, with little foreplay and no whispered words or long kisses. No more difficult than doing the dishes or sweeping the dirt or washing the clothes.
“Sorry,” he says some moments afterward. “I guess I came too soon. Tired, I guess. Next time will be better.” Then he goes to sleep. I am somewhat surprised that he even notices that I did not climax. I had not paid much attention to it, myself. I have other things to think about.
The next day is more difficult, for I know it must be as good as yesterday was. Teddy helps me make a coffee cake for breakfast, with cinnamon and raisins. But it takes too long to bake, and Tom and Teddy both eat bowls of cereal before it is finished. Tom leaves early, and Teddy and I have a leisurely second breakfast of coffee cake by ourselves. I leave the dishes again. I know I will have to do them later, but I don’t want to risk Teddy getting bored and slipping away from me while I am washing dishes.
Houdini’s whole attitude changes as we approach him. Head and ears go up, and he shudders his whole coat as if to prepare himself for the bareback pad. Teddy slaps his shoulder with affectionate fearlessness, and saddles and bridles him with minimal help from me. This time I do not lead them out of the chicken yard, but merely open the gate and stand aside as Teddy reins him through.
Although my heart pounds, I force myself to lean casually against the gate as Teddy trots Houdini up the driveway toward the highway. I have to believe in him so he can believe in himself, I tell myself. And at the highway he turns him competently, then leans forward and I see his knees tighten, his small hand rise and fall. They come toward me at a gallop, growing suddenly larger like a locomotive in a cartoon, and then they are sweeping past me in a gust of horsy wind, going all the way to the end of the driveway before Teddy reins him in. Teddy turns him and rides him slowly back toward me. His face is flushed with pride and Houdini tosses his head willfully as if he were the Black Stallion. Little shits.
I hear the sound of clapping from the screened porch of the big house. Even before Steffie steps out, I know it is her.
“Well, Dad told me about it, but I just had to see for myself,” she exclaims as she crosses the yard toward us. Teddy halts Houdini beside me and sits grandly awaiting her praises.
“Your dad?” I ask bewilderedly.
“Sure. He said he saw Teddy riding yesterday and was impressed with what he could get out of that fat little hay-burner. Said he almost wished he’d bought Teddy a real horse instead of that pony. Dad and Mom both said Teddy’s inherited the Potter way with horses, and they’re right. That kid sits that pony like he’s been riding for years.”
Damn him! “Tom bought the pony for Teddy,” I point out quietly.
It goes past Steffie. “Well, sure, but you know what he means. Hey, Cowboy, you know what would be fun, now? Sign you up for 4-H with one of the horse groups. You get to learn all about horses, and when fair comes, you go to Puyallup and sleep in the barn with the horses and the other 4-H kids and show what you know and win ribbons and stuff.” Teddy’s eyes grow big.
“Oh, hey, you know what would be really great!” Steffie’s eyes are glowing too as she includes me in this wonderful idea. “I could borrow a horse from Clemmons down the road, and Teddy and I could go riding some of the back trails. The survey cuts go for miles, you know … hey, Cowboy, we could take a picnic and be gone all day, even.”
I’d like to drive a stake through her heart. I’d like to tell her, “Hey, go have your own kid instead of trying to steal mine.” But there is something in her words, a veiled sort of desperation. Steffie, so beautiful and perfect. So caged and so bored. Waiting to be a model, an interior decorator, an artist. Waiting for a handsome, rich young man to come into the equipment dealership, see her and marry her and take her off to raise horses. I don’t think she’s ever had a job in her life, other than working for Old Man Incorporated. Her high-school friends have gone off to college or gotten married. None of them have time for Steffie, trapped in the amber of an eternal Senior Sneak Day. Her makeup is flawless, there is not a chip out of her enameled nails, no two eyelashes are stuck together, all her hairs are artlessly but perfectly touseled back from her face, there is not a scratch or scuff on her long, tanned legs. The long-stemmed American Beauty has reached dewy, hothouse perfection. She has it all.
It would probably be the high point of her summer to take a little boy on a trail ride.
I can’t hate her like I hate her parents, and I know this is a chink in my armor. It is through Steffie that they will stab me dead and steal my boy away. But it is like the way I love Tom, a thing I cannot deny, and I find I am nodding up at Teddy, watching the wonderment in his face break out in his excited grin.
“Okay, now, okay!” Steffie says, a little breathless. “Don’t get too excited, Cowboy. It’s gonna take me a while to get this set up. I’m not sure who’s doing 4-H anymore. And I have to go down to Clemmons’s in person, if I’m gonna talk Dougie into loaning me a horse.”
Wickedly I imagine how she will look at that poor stump rancher, how she will smile and turn in her high white shorts as she asks to borrow the Morgan that is his pride and joy. She’ll get it, I know, for I’ve seen how he looks at her when he comes to the equipment dealership for parts for his old back hoe. It is pathetic to me that she will vamp that poor bastard to borrow his horse so she can go out with my five-year-old son. Pathetic, but at least human.
Impetuously she hugs Teddy, the pony, and me before I can sidestep her. Her little white sandals clatter over the driveway gravel as she races back to the house and the telephone, to find out who is 4-H’ing this year. Purpose replaces her usual languid stride with the scuttle of a banty hen. Teddy and I exchange looks. “Well. She certainly seems in a hurry,” I remark, and Teddy surprises me by giggling. “You want to go riding with her?” I ask, already knowing the answer, not even hoping he will say no.
“Sure,” he says, and by way of punctuation he reins Houdini’s head up and turns him up the driveway again. Off they go at a trot that becomes a canter, and he turns the pony in a whirl of mane and tail and brings him back. He reins him in smartly beside me this time, to ask worriedly, “After we ride today, we’re going back into the woods, aren’t we?”
“You want to?” I ask, a little surprised.
“Course.” He looks down at me as if I’m a little crazy. “To the stream,” he adds, as if fearful I would not know that.
He makes another trip down the driveway and back, pauses to ask, “Can I build a fort back there?”
He doesn’t even wait for my answer befo
re he is gone. I know the next question before he brings it to me, in a clatter of hooves. “Am I allowed to go back there alone?”
“Of course,” I say, feeling the Tightness. “There’s nothing back there that will hurt you.”
How could I have forgotten the fascination that moving water holds for small children? That afternoon I let Teddy lead, watching with a small sense of awe how easily he takes us by exactly the same route we used yesterday. He is not even conscious of having memorized it. The practical side of me makes him stop several times and look back the way he has come, see the stump with the broken limb, see the three madrona trees together, see the fallen trunk with three saplings growing out of it, to be sure he can recognize the way home. He is impatient with this, just as if I had asked him to turn around and look back down the driveway to the house. Of course he knows the way home; it is too simple to even talk about.
For now, the stream is all he asks of the forest. It is an incredibly rich place, brimming with life and movement and light. He enmeshes himself in the network of the glade, lying on his belly to let the stream flow over his hands and arms. The underwater plants that bow to the flow of water, the frogs that boldly stroke upstream against it, the water itself that is the movement, all this he touches and explores. He droops his head to the passing rush of water, opens his mouth to it and becomes one with the movement, the moisture, and the life. The sunlight breaking through the tree branches strokes his smooth browned back, bounces off his pale hair in the same dazzling way it breaks off the moving water. He has found his niche within the forest, beside this moving water, and now is part of the whole. I’ve done all I needed to do. It is all assured now. I could not tell what it is that is assured, but I know that it is safely accomplished. And that is a satiation of sorts. I lie back, the dappling shade against my thighs as soft and warm as a lover’s hand. I feel more at peace than I have felt in months.
Ultimately, this is what Teddy gives me. A peace at the center of things. Tom’s bitching becomes more overt, and before many days pass I am back in my routine of washing the dishes and doing the laundry and sweeping the floor. Steffie does borrow a horse and does take my boy riding. And he has a wonderful time. But the very next morning, long before the sun is high, he is gone again, back to his woods and stream. I know they will never hold him now, for like the giant who had no heart in his body, Teddy’s heart is hidden from his enemies under cool moving water in the depths of his stronghold. The forest teaches him, and I eavesdrop on his lessons when I empty the pockets of his shorts each night. An acorn, the delicate sun-baked skeleton of a frog’s leg, a water-smoothed agate, a curl of birch bark, an alder cone: all notes from the anatomy of the forest, all elements of the grand equation. I smile foolishly over them, and group them carefully on the glass-topped table in the living room, for him to do with as he will.
Cloven Hooves Page 19
