The bag is not that heavy on my shoulder. I have taken no money, other than a few odd bills and change already in my jeans. There is no money to take, it has all gone for the funeral, even the savings account in Alaska has been drained. Somehow that is fitting. I don’t really care.
I shut the door firmly behind me.
I don’t take the car. Mother Maurie would not hesitate to report it stolen. I’m not going to the airport, anyway. I’m not sure where I am going, but there are two places I am not going. One is the airport and one is the little clearing beside the stream. Because Teddy’s death has ended that, too.
I reach the end of the driveway and head out up the highway. North. As good a direction as any, I suppose. It’s a blacktop two-lane highway, ditches and brush at the sides. No sidewalks, no paths. Not the best place for walking. Broken bottles, litter, slipping gravel. Without thinking, I settle into an even swinging stride. The overnight bag on my shoulder thumps lightly against my hip with every step. Cars whisk past me, and occasionally a semi booms by me in a blast of wind and thunder. I don’t think about what they must think, I don’t wonder if any of the passengers turn to another and say, “Hey, wasn’t that Potter’s boy Tom’s wife? Why isn’t she at the funeral?”
The day is hot and soon I sweat through my shirt and the bag strap begins to chafe. I transfer it to the other shoulder and keep on going. I wonder how many miles I can cover a day. I think briefly about food and sleeping, but right now I cannot imagine ever being hungry or sleepy. Only driven, as I am now, to physical exertion and distance making.
I am able to not think. This is very good. Even if what makes me able to not think is a splitting headache from the heat of the sun on my bare head and the bright light bouncing off the bare road ahead. Soon I am thirsty, too, and the dry dust that whirls up and coats me in the wake of each car doesn’t help. It coats the edges of my eyes, dries out the lining of my nose and mouth, itches in my ears. I keep walking, concentrate only on what my body is telling me, on planning for only the next few hours.
I should have brought a canteen of water. I should have brought a blanket, too. I think about sleeping under an overpass, as I have heard about people doing, but it isn’t for me. Sleep in the wash of headlights and the surf of passing vehicles? No. I will not go out on the actual freeway, will not ignore the NO HITCHHIKING signs that warn pedestrians back from the on-ramps. No. I think I will travel by highways like this, going north, until I reach the Alcan, and then I will follow it. All the way back to Alaska.
Part of me knows that is too immense a journey for me. Part of me is aware of buying food and sleeping somewhere and bathing somewhere. Part of me knows about crossing the border taking at least $200. Part of me knows all that stuff but it is a part I am not speaking to, because it is also the part that knows my son is dead and my husband no longer loves me and that there is no way to undo any of that.
I walk all day. Twice cars slow down to ask if I need a ride, but I just wave them on. In the evening I am still walking. I can feel blisters on my heels, and I am so thirsty I think my throat has dried up and cracked inside. When people start to use their headlights, I know it is time to move off the road. I wait until there are no cars in sight, and then I leave the road, clambering up the loose gravel wall of the ditch and through a barbed-wire fence.
I don’t know why the land here is fenced, it is all replanted forest. The young trees are all Weyerhauser Spruce, no taller than my shoulder, most of them. But back from the road the old stumps still linger, showing how huge the giants were that once grew here. Some fallen trunks, rejected God knows why, still sprawl lengthwise. They have gone green with moss, soft with rot. They would make a good place to shelter for the night, sleeping up against one, but I am too thirsty.
I wish I had a dog’s nose. I wish I had a wolf’s eyes. It is getting dark, I am tireder than I knew, and eventually I know I am not going to find water as easily as I had hoped. Tomorrow, maybe. I sit down right where I am, it is as good a spot as any. I take a heavy denim shirt from my bag and put it on, and then use the bag for a pillow. I lie down, then sit up and toss a few twigs and sticks aside. I lie down again, pulling my knees up against my chest so I am curled up small. I close my eyes and try to sleep.
After a while, I open them again. I have not been asleep, only very still. It’s dark, but not much time has passed. Sweat has dried cold and stiff on my skin, as if I have been damp-rolled in salt. I’m thirsty. The stars are out, looking at me. I distract myself by looking for the Dipper and the North Star. I find them, and then think about how they point the way home, and how far away that is. Impossibly far.
This has been childish. This whole thing. I cannot walk back to Alaska. And even if I could, then what? Walk into Fairbanks just as winter’s settling in, no job, no money, no home? Beg Annie to put me up, give me work? No. It’s stupid.
I have to go back. It’s a matter of survival. What else can I do, wander around in these woods until I collapse of hunger or exposure or get shot for trespassing? I’m not a kid anymore. This is real life. I’ve had my tantrum, run off from my own child’s funeral, quarreled with my husband, and packed up and run away like a little kid. Okay, so now what is left is reality. How long do I think I can hike cross-country with no food or supplies? Five days? Seven? Hell, I don’t even have a road map.
I have to go back. Back to Tom and the whole mess, back to Teddy being dead and his family hating me. Back to Tom knowing I’ve been unfaithful. I have to go back and beg for help, for shelter, for food. Beg them to give me enough money to go home. What will they do? The family lawyer will come in. The family lawyer went to school with Tom’s father, Tom calls him Uncle Kenny. He won’t let Tom make any merciful mistakes. That’s what lawyers are for, I’ve heard Mother Maurie say, to watch out for your best interests even if you don’t know what those are. It will be hard for him to figure out what he can take from me, but I’m sure they’ll think of something. I have to go back.
I have to go back.
I can’t. And that’s a matter of survival, too.
I don’t even want to think about any of it. Because the final conclusion is always the same, that I don’t have anything anymore. No home, no child, no marriage. Nothing.
Except a faun.
No. I will not go back to him because …
My mind loops and runs like a rat in a cage, refusing to stop at an answer. At any answer.
Because I was with him when Teddy died.
Because I don’t want to tell him about Teddy.
Because I want to go to him so very badly, because I think he could make me feel good again, and I know it would be wrong to feel good again when my child is dead. Because I want to feel bad?
What do I want?
I want Teddy.
Well, you can’t have him. He’s dead.
And finally I grieve. Weep the crying that shakes me and exhausts me. I cry myself to sleep. A fat lot of good it does me.
EIGHTEEN
* * *
It is raining. The cool drops are falling lightly on my face, washing away the salt and sweat and dust. I do not turn away from it or open my eyes. The shower ends, but a few seconds later it commences again, a light pattering on my face. I should get up before I am soaked. I open my eyes to Pan standing over me. The water is falling from his hands as he flicks wetness at me. He is not smiling.
I wave him away and sit up slowly. All the pains of yesterday come back, complete with yesterday’s headache. I put my face in my hands, but he plucks at my elbow, pushes a waterskin into my hands. On the leather side it says BSA. Once that would have made me grin. I undo the plastic stopper and drink, then awkwardly spill some into my hand and smear it over my face. I sigh heavily, and Pan offers me a T-shirt from my pack for me to dry my face on. I take it, wipe my face, and drink again. I blink around at a day that is not quite here yet. Dark grey still.
He crouches down before me. He puts his elbows on his knees and rests his chin in his hands. It is a stance I re
member from our childhood and I know he can hold it for hours. His cloven hooves are sunk deeply in the moss. I stare at them for a while, at the lines of grain and growth in the pale hooves, then look up at his face. His dark eyes meet mine unflinchingly. He looks so young to me suddenly, young as animals are always young. Sound of limb and lung, free of heart, immune to the things that follow humans from day to day to day. He waits in my silence, for a long time.
Finally, I say, “My son is dead. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. I’ve run away.”
He looks down, pursing his mouth gravely. When he looks up his eyes meet mine. No judgement. Simple comprehension, without questions.
Then he says, “So you’ve come to be with me.”
“No,” I say.
He continues to look at me. His nostrils flare lightly, as if reading the air. I feel my jaw set, feel the pain of my headache tighten into a sort of anger.
“Of course you have,” he says, watching me, daring me to deny it. I think perhaps he is deliberately provoking me.
“Go away,” I tell him, my voice gone harsh on the words.
He cocks his head and looks at me, as puzzled as Rinky had been when the recorded voices of wolves came out of the stereo speakers. He gets up and walks around me slowly. I see his nostrils flare as he takes in my scent, and for some reason that makes me even angrier, it is as personal as if he had laid hands on me, that kind of a touching.
“Leave me alone!” I roar at him, and it startles him into a goat leap, a sideways jerk of motion. His puzzlement wrinkles his brow.
“But you don’t want me to,” he protests. “And I don’t want to go. I want to be with you.”
There are many ways to interpret his words. I choose to take them sexually, to be righteously outraged by them.
“Get away from me!” I explode, shrieking. “I don’t want you. I don’t need you!” I fly at him, fists going, not the wildly flailing slapping hands of girl fights, but the short driving body punches learned a lifetime ago as the quickest response to my brothers. I actually land two on firm belly muscles before he leaps back out of my range. His eyes are as wild and white-edged as those of a kicked dog, teeth show in his mouth, he is breathing through flared nostrils. Not fear, not aggression, though. Animal bewilderment, the fight-or-flight response kicked in. I am panting, wild, disheveled. “I don’t need you!” I scream again. “I can live in the real world anytime I want to!”
We face each other across a great gulf and the smallest of distances. I think perhaps he will come at me, hit me in the face, grab my hair and throw me down, hurt me, hit me, batter me into submission, be an animal to me. Part of me wants that, but it is not a sexual thing. I want him to be bestial and savage and low, so I can justify all the anger and hatred I am feeling. So I can somehow make everything be all his fault, and I can be poor, poor Evelyn, deceived and mistreated.
Like Tom, pops the thought, sudden as a firecracker. I want someone to blame, someone to hate so it can’t be my fault. The realization is scorching, but I quench it with anger. I am not like Tom, I was deceived and tricked.
I really was, blinded by lust brought on by his goaty pheromones, used by him, that wasn’t me, I wouldn’t do that, I’m better than that. I’m a good mother, I would have known my child was dying, if it weren’t for him. I loved my husband and child, I didn’t wish for this, I didn’t want to be free of them so I could follow the faun. It wasn’t my fault, I didn’t break some sort of magic circle of protection by opening my life to the faun. Betraying Tom couldn’t have killed Teddy. “I don’t belong to you,” I shriek at him, my voice cracking on the words. “There was never any promise between us.”
A great stillness comes over him. I can see it happening, it is like he was a painted image, and the watercolor artist has put a wash over him. A distancing that doesn’t involve moving. “I’ve always known that,” he says softly. And backs away, one cautious step after another, until the forest fades in around him and he is gone.
Again. So much like the last time.
And I am left alone, breathing hard, standing bolt upright in the forest of not-yet-dawn. I feel dizzy and woozy, as if awakened suddenly from a dream. Slowly I sink back down, find the warm spot on the earth where I had been lying. I pull the blanket back up over my shoulders and fall asleep again, sinking into blackness like a feverish child, fleeing these too intense feelings.
I awake again, later, to what seems like a different day. The light is clear and mild, high cloud cover gentles the sun. The air is moving over the young forest around me. Insects are chirring, birds calling. Life goes on, ignoring all questions and hesitations.
The waterskin is still beside me, and I drink from it. The blanket that has covered me is an odd thing, felted animal hair and wool in an uneven pad. Grass seed heads and a few burrs and twigs cling to it. Warp and woof of it seem to be some sort of reed or straw. It rolls up rather than folds, and a leather thong at one end seems to be for tying around it. I put the T-shirt back into my pack, and stuff the denim shirt in on top of it. I look around. Now what?
Logic rings up three choices. Go back to Tom. Go north. Wait for Pan to come back.
Would I come back? I ask myself. Repulsed, rebuked, would I return? No. But I am not Pan. He might come back. And if he did, what then? I have too many answers to that. I want to slap him, kick him, beat him bloody; both for what happened that day, and for the way he left last night. Perhaps for the way he left that summer day so long ago. But I also want him to hold me and comfort me, to make love to me, to curl up in his arms like a small child and be sheltered by him. There are too many things I want of him, too many things I want him to be. To be and not to be. To be part of my life. To be all my life.
Or to be nothing to me. To be free of him. To have him never have been real at all. As if that would make me free of everything else, of Tom, of Teddy, of death itself.
Like some awful trade. I’ll give up the things that felt the best if you’ll take away the things that hurt the worst with them. A kid’s deal with God. Only God never believes in those trades.
For a time, I wait. I rise, I pace, and I settle again. Waiting. Then, without really making a decision, I take the waterskin and the blanket and sling them onto my bag. And I go. Not back to the road. Deeper into the woods, following what the night sky showed me last night, going true north.
About noon I leave the Weyerhauser tree plantation and its shoulder-high trees, cross a small road, and enter true forest again. The shade is welcome. At a stream, I stop and refill the waterskin. I eat as I go, odd bits of things, not really enough to sustain me, not even because I really feel hunger compel me, but because it is what one does. Take food when you find it because you don’t know when you’ll next see it. So I eat a morel, a handful of fireweed shoots, a few wild strawberries no bigger than the tip of my little finger. My foraging does not take me aside from my path. Few things do. When I break out onto roads, sometimes I must veer to left or right to avoid houses and yards. But I cross pastures fearlessly, ignore NO TRESPASSING signs, and push north. Like a migrating animal, or a lemming in search of the sea, I don’t pause to consider what I am doing, I simply do it. And I think. Because today is for thinking.
Thoughts go so fast, when you let them. Like a high-speed projector, they flicker uninterrupted, continuous, undisrupted by my eating a mushroom or stopping to crouch and pee. By the evening of the first day, I have replayed my entire childhood. My memories are like a melody atop the deep chords of my grief. The loss of Teddy is a constant pain, a theme that directs the way I recall my days. At the end of the day, I have considered things I have forgotten for years, the color of a crushed robin’s eggshell, the necessity of my mother’s hands, the smell of my father’s pipe smoke in the intensely cold air of winter. All the small things that are so much more important than the big things because they are the true constants; these are re-possessed by me.
I am back in true forest by the time the sun is going down, moving among tre
es older than our country’s name. Trees scoff at such human trivialities as giving names to areas of land. As if drawing a shape around something and giving it a different name makes it any less a part of the whole. As if renaming me wife or daughter-in-law or mother could redefine me, cut me off from what I had always been.
These are how the thoughts flow, how the passing connections are made. By the time I find a sleeping place between the root hummocks of a resinous pine, I have reassessed my foundation and settled my life atop it once more.
The next dawn I do not hesitate when I arise. I tidy myself and my belongings and leave this temporary space. Today it is my adolescence that replays itself in all its pimply splendor. Sullen boys lurking in the corridors of my past, motorcycles on cool summer roads and locker-room slurs, the proms I never went to, the lies I told and almost believed myself. I come out of the forest in midmorning, onto another blacktop highway, directly across from a 7-Eleven. I wait until there is no traffic in sight before I climb through the barbed wire and out onto the road. The NO TRESPASSING sign that swings from the top wire tells me that I have been traipsing through a military reserve. It makes little impression on me. It was merely land to be crossed.
At the little convenience store, I use the rest room, tidy up myself, and then spend the bulk of my cash on candy bars. The glance I get from the cashier is only mildly curious. I offer no explanations. When I leave, I strike out down the road and have to travel some miles before there is again a wooded stretch that offers me northern escape. I eat a candy bar as I walk, and the sugar in my mouth is good. I have been hungry, but the chocolate is enough to make it less noticeable. Instead of being a pain in my gut, my hunger becomes a lightness I feel, a springiness to my joints, a bubble between the top of my brain and my skull. And all the while, I am reliving high school and college, examining crossroads and decision points of my life, saying if not this, then what?
Cloven Hooves Page 25
