In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  Joan pulled her sweatshirt back on. Mary watched her, searching for some better words of comfort to offer. Everything she came up with sounded so inadequate. All my words are weapons, she realized. They condemn.They convict. Comfort is not an active part of my vocabulary.

  “I’m hungry,” Joan announced, staring into the spring.

  “Drink some water.” Mary pulled on her sweatshirt. “It’ll fill you up.”

  Joan eyed the pool. “Is that safe to drink?”

  “It’ll probably give us diarrhea.”

  “Terrific.”

  As Joan began to slurp handfuls of water, Mary studied the boulder where Alex had lain. It stood there as unrevealing today as it had yesterday. Atagahi had divulged all the clues it was going to reveal, but the trail was something else. With a quickening of her pulse, she turned and looked again at the trampled grass that beckoned into the forest. All at once she knew what she must do.

  Bracing herself, she turned. “Joan, I need to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going after Alex.” She blurted the words out quickly, as if she were confessing something shameful.

  The spring water dribbled from Joan’s hand as she turned to look at Mary. “What did you say?”

  “I’m going after Alex. There’s a trail. I can follow it. I’ll build you a little nest under that boulder over there. You’ll be safe here until I come back.”

  Joan squinted her good eye. “That’s not funny, Mary. The man who took Alex is a monster. He’ll smash your face to pulp, then he’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Mary told her steadily. “And I’ll take a rock or a stick or something to use as a weapon.”

  “Hey, that should really shake him up,” giggled Joan. “Mary Crow and her big, bad rock.”

  Mary blushed. Her words did sound ludicrous. Women with rocks didn’t subdue men armed with knives. “It doesn’t matter about the weapon. I’ll be careful.”

  “You’ll be careful?” Joan’s brows lifted. “I’m so glad, Mary. I’d hate for anything to happen to you.”

  Mary blinked at Joan’s sarcasm. Yesterday she’d been a trembling, dazed victim whom she’d warmed in her arms. Overnight she’d grown a hostile edge that she swung like a scythe. Mary felt like she was talking to a stranger.

  Joan broke the painful silence between them. “Can I ask just one question before you leave?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about me? That man hurt me. I haven’t eaten since yesterday and I’ve shivered all night in a leaf-lined grave not fit for a rat. Any chance of my seeing some kind of doctor?”

  “I’ll take you to one when I get back.”

  “But I need to go now!” Joan cried, a deep red flush crawling up her throat. “I need food. I need clothes. I need to wake up in a bed that’s in a room with a door that has a lock on it.” She buried her hands in her thick, snarled hair. “I want to go home!” she wailed.

  “If I take you back,” Mary said, “we’ll never see Alex again.”

  Joan raised her head and blinked, incredulous. “Mary, Alex was kidnapped by a madman. You don’t seem to understand . . .”

  “No—”

  “Mary, she’s already dead! She was probably dead yesterday, before the sun went down—”

  “Shut up!” Mary raised her hand as if to ward off a blow. If those words touched her, they might come true. “It doesn’t matter, Joan. I’m still going after her.”

  “And what am I supposed to do while you’re gone?”

  “Rest here. In three days they’ll miss you at your office, and Jonathan knows where we went. Somebody will show up looking for us. And I’ll be back.” She looked into Joan’s savaged face. “I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t think it would work.”

  “Of course you would,” Joan sneered. “Don’t you think I know that Alex is the only thing you care about?”

  “That’s not true, Joan.”

  “Yes, it is. Everybody talks about it.”

  “It’s not like that, Joan . . .”

  “You two are worse than an old married couple.” Joan’s mouth puckered into a vicious line. “You’re disgusting.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Her face burning, Mary bent down and began to tighten the laces on her boots.

  “So you’re just going to tie your damn shoes and go?” Joan’s taunt crackled with anger.

  Mary concentrated on her boots. “I’m sorry you’re hurt. I’m sorry you’re upset. But right now, you need to stay here. And I need to find Alex.”

  “No!” shrieked Joan, her fists clenching. “I won’t stay! Look what happened the last time you left me alone! If it wasn’t for you, none of this would have happened!”

  The trees, the mountains, the universe itself seemed to reverberate with the words Joan had uttered. Had they been a lie, or even an exaggeration, Mary could have shaken them off. But she knew too well the truth of them, and the weight of that truth felt like shackles clamped around her heart.

  “That’s a pretty heavy load, Joan,” she finally managed to utter.

  “Oh, yeah?” Joan ran her fingertips along her mauled nose. “Well, why don’t you try wearing my new face for a while? See what kind of load that is.”

  Mary sucked in her breath. “Okay.” She glared at Joan, trying to squelch a sudden fury of her own. “Here’s the deal. I’m going after Alex. You can either stay here and be safe, or you can come with me. It’ll be uphill the whole time, through country far rougher than this. You’ll be colder and hungrier, and you might just come face-to-face with that scary old barefoot man again, but if you’d rather do that, fine.”

  “I would rather lie in hell with my back broken than stay here another second,” Joan snarled.

  “Terrific,” snapped Mary. “Then let’s go.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  They started from the willow tree, Joan wearing her own sweatshirt and Mary’s jeans, Mary clad only in her sweatshirt, underpants and hiking boots. Before they left they both scribbled notes in charcoal on an Atagahi boulder. Mary explained what had happened and where they were going; Joan wrote an odd, disjointed letter half in Italian, saying good-bye to her parents in Brooklyn, her brother in Chicago, her sister in Washington, D.C.

  “Here.” Mary opened her paint box as they started to follow the trail. She handed Joan a small silver tube. “I’ve got a job for you.”

  “This looks like toothpaste.” Frowning, Joan uncapped the tube and squeezed out a dot of bright yellow pigment.

  “It’s oil paint,” Mary answered. “Cadmium yellow light. I want you to put a dot on the trees as we pass.”

  “Hunh?” Joan wrinkled her nose as if the paint smelled bad.

  “Dot the trees with this paint as we go.” Mary held the open end of the tube against the bark of a pine tree. “That way, if we get lost, we can at least find our way back here.”

  “But I didn’t think you ever got lost, Mary,” said Joan, her hostile side swiftly returning. “I thought you knew these woods just like I know Manhattan.”

  “Not all of them, I don’t.” Mary fought another flash of irritation with Joan. “Look, if you don’t want to do this, just say so.”

  “No.” Joan grabbed the paint. “I’ll do it. God forbid I not help save your precious Alex.”

  With Mary leading, they turned away from the spring and began to follow the narrow trail that twisted deep into the mountains. They trudged single file, Joan hobbling close behind Mary, complaining and berating her, until they came to a dirt path that snaked through a stand of cedars. Far beneath them to the right, Atagahi glittered through the trees. Mary stopped for a moment, as if she were bidding farewell to an old friend, then she turned and gazed into the forest. She was certain that Alex was still alive up there, somewhere. But who or what else was up there with her?

  “Walk quietly,” she cautioned Joan as they started to climb. “You never know how close they might be. And be careful not to step on anything s
harp.”

  “If he catches us, he’ll hurt me again,” warned Joan. “He’ll hurt you, too.”

  Mary closed her eyes. “I know,” she said wearily.

  The sweat began to trickle between their breasts as they started their ascent through a series of switchbacks. Though Mary walked through the woods barely whisking the grass, Joan crashed along behind her, limping off the trail to dab paint on the trees, her breath wheezy as someone on a respirator. Every bird-chirp and twig-break made her jump, and sometimes, for no apparent reason, she would cry aloud.

  “What was he like, Joan?” Mary asked softly, finally sitting down on a fallen walnut tree. Maybe if Joan caught her breath she would walk with less commotion.

  “Who?”

  “The man who hurt you.”

  Joan slumped down beside her, gulping air through her mouth. “Tall. Filthy black hair and beard. Old Army uniform. Awful fingernails.” She shuddered. “He smelled like veal gone bad.”

  Mary frowned. “What do you mean, old Army uniform?”

  “Those green-spotted suits they wear in the jungle.”

  “Did he wear anything besides that?”

  She gave a thin rasp of a laugh. “Just his pet rattlesnake.”

  “That’s not possible.” Mary wiped the sweat from her brow. “Nobody keeps a rattler for a pet.”

  “He did. The thing had diamond shapes on its back. And it swelled up like a cobra.”

  Clever, Mary thought. Barefoot had commandeered Joan and Alex with a hognosed snake, a benign creature whose chief defense was its resemblance to the poisonous timber rattler. “Did he say anything?”

  “He said That’s about enough from you. Then he smashed my nose.”

  “Did he say anything to Alex?”

  Joan laughed as if Mary had told her a joke. “Sorry, Mary. I didn’t eavesdrop. I was too busy trying to stay alive.”

  A pine-scented breeze chilled their faces while the hot sun drilled into their scalps. As they hiked higher, the air grew bright and humid, and droplets of sweat clung like dewdrops to the ends of their hair. Though Joan dotted the trees with paint as Mary had asked, she still careened through the woods, sometimes sullen with anger, other times giddy, singing Italian songs.

  We’re thundering through here like a troop of scouts, Mary thought. I hope the barefoot man isn’t nearby.

  “It really burns when I pee,” Joan complained when they’d stopped to rest beside a stream. “That man hurt me a lot down there.”

  “Maybe we’ll find a creek deep enough for you to sit in for a few minutes,” Mary told her. Wonder what the Cherokee remedy for savaged vaginas was? Something her mother had surely never dreamed she would have need of knowing.

  Slowly they made their way up-country. Mary led by her instincts when the trail became hard to read; Joan laughed every time she dabbed the trees with paint. At midafternoon Mary spotted a cluster of oyster mushrooms growing out of a fallen limb.

  “Oh, look!” she cried, tearing the fungi off the bark. “Slicks!”

  “Ugh.” Joan sniffed the delicate pink underside of the mushroom Mary handed her. “What did you call these?”

  “Slicks,” replied Mary, her mouth full. “Oyster mushrooms. They’re delicious.”

  “Aren’t they poisonous?”

  Mary shook her head. “It’s the only mushroom I can absolutely guarantee. Try some. They won’t hurt you.”

  Joan took a tiny nibble. “Funghi trifolati,” she announced, starting to laugh again.

  When they’d eaten all the mushrooms they could find, Joan tapped Mary on the shoulder. “Do you think we’re on the right trail?”

  “It’s the only fresh one up here,” Mary replied, remembering a game she and Jonathan had made up. Search and Destroy, they’d called it. One of them would run through the woods for thirty minutes, then stop and hide. Then the other would start tracking. Jonathan was always much better at the game, but eventually Mary had become adept at reading the almost invisible signs that betrayed where a person had passed.

  Joan chuckled. “You know what I can’t figure out?”

  “What?”

  “Why he didn’t kill me.”

  Mary glanced at Joan’s brutalized face. “Maybe he thought he already had,” she answered softly.

  They pressed on, wading through a creek where yellow beech leaves floated brilliant against a dark mirror of water. Mary pointed to a spot higher up on the tree where long strips of bark had been ripped away. “Bears have been here. That’s how they sharpen their claws.”

  “Terrific,” shot back Joan. “Now we can worry about bears, along with everything else.”

  “They shouldn’t be a problem,” Mary explained. “They’re holing up to hibernate now.”

  Once when they crested a rise Joan grabbed Mary’s arm.

  “Did you hear that?” she demanded, her eyes wide and terrified.

  “What?”

  “Alex!” Joan cried. “Her cowboy yell. The barefoot man’s coming! Hide!” Turning, she thrust herself into the cover of the trees.

  Mary did not move. Had Alex escaped? Was she headed back to Atagahi as fast as she could, the barefoot man behind her? She listened carefully for what seemed like hours as Joan crouched fearfully behind a log, but she heard nothing that sounded anything like Alex’s famous yee-hiii. Finally she realized that Joan had been tricked by the mountains—the faraway shrill of some hawk or even some tall sycamore branches, scraping together in the wind.

  “Come on out, Joan. Alex isn’t here.”

  “She is, too, Mary,” Joan insisted fiercely. “I heard her cowboy yell. I’d know it anywhere.”

  “If you say so,” Mary agreed, realizing that Joan had zoomed through three different personalities in the past three minutes. “But she’s gone now. We’ll have to keep following her trail.”

  They hiked on in silence, Mary studying the grass, wondering which Joan was going to pop out next. At length they came to a narrow, overgrown track that cut across the contours of the land. Mary reached down and pried up a small dark rock embedded in the grass.

  She remembered a long-ago afternoon when she and her mother had carved a pumpkin for Halloween. Her mother had sold one of her tapestries and splurged at K-Mart on a store-bought costume for Mary. Impossibly proud and resplendent as Wonder Woman, Mary had watched as her mother’s sharp knife coaxed eyes and a grinning mouth from the blank orange face of their pumpkin.

  “There’s a place you must never go,” her mother warned, her luminous eyes serious. “It’s called Wolfpen, and it’s where men came long ago and cut down all the trees.”

  “Is it haunted?” she’d asked, hoping for another of her mother’s crazy Cherokee ghost stories.

  “No. Just dangerous. Rotten floors, rusty nails, broken glass. You could get hurt.The place was falling down when my grandfa ther was a boy. A man named Babcock built it.”

  Mary looked at Joan, who now stood trembling beside her.

  “See this?” Mary held up the black rock.

  Joan nodded.

  “It’s coal. There’s supposed to be an old logging camp up here,” Mary explained quietly. “This is probably the railroad bed that led to it.”

  “Does anybody live there?” Joan’s voice rose with hope.

  “No. They logged out this part of the forest after the First World War.”

  “Too bad,” Joan said glumly, but Mary didn’t hear her. She’d just noticed a tall purple-headed thistle on the verge of the path. The stalk was bent. Someone who wanted to conceal their trail would never leave such an obvious marker. But somebody who wanted to be found would. She let the piece of coal fall from her hand. If the trail they had followed since morning really was Alex’s, then they were still on it. Barefoot had made no effort to cover their tracks. Figures, Mary thought. He feels safe. He doesn’t know about me and he thinks Joan is dead. Who else would be up here tracking him?

  “We’re going to follow this road from along the bank on the other si
de,” she told Joan. “That way we’ll be going in the same direction, but still stay hidden.”

  They darted across the exposed roadbed and scrambled up the bank, plodding on.

  As the afternoon shadows grew long, a feeling of dread began to churn in Mary’s stomach. She felt as if every tree or bush or fallen log might reveal something she didn’t want to see—Alex raped, Alex strangled or Alex dead, gutted like a field-dressed deer. But the forest held no such surprises. All she and Joan saw were trees and leaves and an occasional bird. The only sign of Alex lay twenty yards to their right, where the thin trail of trampled grass continued to bisect the old narrow-gauge railroad bed.

  “Shouldn’t we stop soon?” asked Joan, her face wan in the shadows, her swollen nose angry and purple. “Won’t we need to find a safe place to stay before dark?”

  Mary looked up at the fading sun, then nodded. “You’re right. Look for a fallen tree, or one with big roots. We can dig a trench like we did last night.” She ignored Joan’s complaints.

  They walked on, scouring the forest, when suddenly Mary’s gut shriveled. She dropped to the ground, pulling Joan down behind her.

  “Is it the barefoot man?” Joan cried. “Do you see him?”

  “No! Hush!” Mary pointed. “It’s Alex’s shirt!”

  In a small clearing in the old road below them, a red plaid shirt lay rumpled beneath a blackberry bush. Alex had worn a similar one yesterday, laughing about how garish it had looked against her orange safety vest.

  Joan frowned through the shadows. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. You stay here and be quiet. I’m going to go have a look.”

  “Wait! It might be a trap!” Joan grabbed Mary’s sweatshirt. “What if this is just a way to get us someplace where he can hurt us some more?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary replied bluntly. “You stay here and watch. If anything happens, run like hell back to Atagahi.”

  “And then what?” Joan snarled. “Call 911?”

  “You insisted on coming with me, Joan.”

  “Just go and see if it’s Alex’s shirt.” Tears leaked from Joan’s eyes as she shrank back timidly into the weeds.

  Mary crept down to the road. Shafts of hazy sunlight slanted through the silent forest. Nothing seemed to have followed them, and nothing seemed to await them ahead. From where she crouched she could see no lifeless body pulled behind a rock, no shadowy figure in camouflage waiting to pounce upon her. She took three deep breaths, then sprinted across the roadbed, dropping to her knees beside the shirt. The soft flannel still bore the faint aroma of sage; the faded label read “Abercrombie & Fitch, Size 10.” Alex’s size from Alex’s favorite store. Mary pressed the shirt against her face, inhaling Alex’s smell, her alive-ness. For once she’d guessed right. They had found Alex’s trail. This was her shirt, and maybe, just maybe, Alex might still be alive. Thank you, Mary whispered to the Old Men as she held the shirt aloft and motioned for Joan to join her.