In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  Mary knelt beside her and hugged her. She kept forgetting how little Joan knew about the woods. “It’s part of nature,” she tried to explain, her own voice shaky from the suddenness of the bird’s attack. “Hawks are not herbivores. That’s how they survive.”

  Joan took no apparent comfort in Mary’s words. She remained crouched on the ground, not speaking, her body trembling as if she were freezing.

  Mary stood up and sighed. In the past few hours, Joan had grown a little more like her old self. The hawk, though, had reduced her to a quivering, barely articulate heap. It seemed pointless to press on any further now. The rain and fog were growing thicker and the nonexistent sun was about to set. She scanned the woods around them. A rotting sycamore, its trunk three feet wide, lay on the ground twenty feet away. For once, they would have good shelter for the night.

  “How about we call it a day?” she said to Joan. “You rest here and I’ll go over and dig a trench beneath that tree.”

  Joan nodded her head.

  Mary walked over to the sycamore and with one edge of her paint box started to hollow out a trench on the south side of the bark. She wished she could dig down deep and just pull the dirt back over them, but clay soil was a lousy insulator, and Joan refused to sleep in anything that looked like a grave.

  As she scraped the slick mud into her paint box she uncovered a colony of squirming white grubs. With her belly on a long, slow boil from hunger, she picked out three of the plumpest ones and popped them in her mouth. She swallowed them without chewing, then waited to see if her stomach would bid them welcome or send them back up. Nothing happened. Her gut did not recoil but neither did the glowing coals of her hunger abate. She shrugged and resumed digging. Three grubs, she decided as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand, do not a feast make.

  After a time Joan wobbled over. Her tears had made slender pale streaks through the grime on her face. Mary knew that she had been weeping for the little creature that had wound up as dinner for the hawk. Without thinking, she picked three more grubs from beneath the log and held them out to Joan.

  “You gotta be kidding,” Joan cried, horrified.

  “It’s protein,” Mary said. “You need to eat something.”

  Joan backed up a step.

  “Don’t chew them. You won’t taste them at all.” Mary grabbed Joan’s hand and dropped the squirming insects onto her palm. Joan stared at the fat pearlescent bodies, then she looked at Mary, her mouth curling in disgust. “Is this part of nature, too?”

  Before Mary could answer, Joan flung the grubs back at her and ran toward the riverbank. At first Mary started to run after her, but then she stopped. She was tired. This was the way things happened in the woods. If Joan needed to recover from the shock of seeing a hawk grab a rabbit, then she would have to do so. Mary had a trench to dig, and not much time to do it. She bent down and scraped her paint box harder into the earth, working double-time against the fading light.

  Suddenly, she stopped digging. She heard something— a cry of some sort, like a small animal in pain. Had the hawk returned? She stood and cocked her head toward the river. Above the muffled roar of the water, it came again. A sharp, plaintive ping of a cry.

  “Joan?” She frowned, searching the woods for her friend. Where had she shuffled off to? A thick copse of pines and sycamores rose from the very edge of the gorge. Mary dropped her paint box and broke into a run.

  Again, the cry came. This time louder. A desperate, pleading sound. Not a rabbit.

  “Joan?” Mary reached the trees but saw nothing. She scrambled through scraggly rhododendron that sprouted between the rocks of the gorge. Then, without warning, the ground crumbled beneath her feet. She tumbled— leaves, rocks, twigs and branches falling with her, bumping down what felt like the sheer side of a shale cliff.

  Protect your head, she thought as she rolled, but she was falling too fast. The earth passed by in a painful blur of rocks and bushes.

  I’m going to drown, she decided. I’m going to fall off this cli f and into the river. I’ll never see Alex again.

  She began to scramble, then, with her arms and legs, trying to break her fall against the roots of trees, clutching at the slick rocks as she skidded past them. Flint sliced into her bare legs, and as she fell she felt something pierce the fleshy part of her shoulder. Finally she came to a stop. Her back felt wrenched in a thousand directions, and her head spun dizzily as the rock and the trees and the sky all swam around her.

  At first she lay still, trying to figure out where she’d landed. Dirt and pieces of leaves filled her mouth, but she was afraid to move, afraid that the rock beneath her would crumble and the whole sickening plummet would start again. Finally she looked around and realized that she lay on a huge outcropping of solid limestone rather than the treacherous shale above.

  She spit dirt out of her mouth and checked to see if anything was broken. Her bare legs bled from a hundred scratches, but her ankles flexed, and her scraped knees bent. She felt a hard lump against her belly. Wynona, still miraculously nestled in the pocket of her sweatshirt.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “Now, where’s Joan?” Another cry floated up from the river. Mary looked around, but saw only the high, rocky gorge, speckled with scrub cedars and rangy stands of laurel. Scrambling forward, she lay belly-down on top of the big rock. From there she could see the whole ravine. “Oh, my God,” she breathed as she looked below her.

  The shale had tricked Joan just as it had her. Like Mary, she’d stepped wrong and fallen: only Joan’s tumble had been much farther and her landing spot far more perilous. Somehow she’d stopped just before she’d plunged into the river. Now her arms were wrapped desperately around the root of a tree that sprouted from a small, rocky ledge while the lower half of her body dangled in the air, twenty feet above the racing waters.

  “Mary!” she begged, her face pinched and white with fear. “Help me!”

  “Be calm,” Mary replied, trying to make her voice steady. “I’m coming.”

  “Hurry,” gasped Joan. “I can’t feel my arms . . .” Mary crawled off the boulder and eased herself down. Here the cliff face was mostly limestone—firm, but wet and slick from spray. Joan was wearing the boots, so Mary had to clutch the slippery boulders with her toes. Cautiously, she climbed down the cliff as Jonathan had taught her, keeping her hands and feet touching the rocks at all times.

  “Are you hurt?” she called, sliding as her fingers failed to grip a slimy rock, then biting into the earth with her fingernails to stop her fall. The mist from the river rose like an icy wet cloud; droplets of stinging sleet blinded her.

  “I don’t think so,” said Joan. “My arms, though. They’re numb.”

  “I’m eight feet away. I’ll be there in a flash.” Mary tried to sound reassuring, but even as she spoke her right foot slipped and she had to fling herself forward to keep from falling. These rocks are so fucking slick, she thought, remembering how she and Jonathan used to think how stupid people were who fell to their deaths at waterfalls. Now she knew how easily it could happen.

  She climbed on, like an elderly spider. One foot here, the other there. In the deep cut of the gorge, the cloudy daylight had faded to dusk. Ten minutes more and she would be climbing in the dark.

  “Mary?” Joan’s voice floated up, nearer, but closer to panic, too. It was hard to hear over the noise of the river boiling below. “Are you still coming?”

  “Yes. Look just above your head.”

  “Oh!” Joan cried. “I can almost touch you!”

  “Don’t let go of the roots, Joan!” Mary commanded sharply. “Keep your arms folded tight around them!”

  Joan’s response was lost in the water’s roar.

  Moving now by miserly inches, Mary lowered herself to the ledge above Joan. The tree roots she clung to belonged to a young sycamore, an errant offspring of the taller ones that clustered on the gorge high above them. Mary sat down and wrapped her legs around the trunk of the small tree, then l
owered the upper half of her body over the ledge. Joan clung just below her, hugging the slender roots while her legs dangled in the wet air.

  “Thank God.” Joan’s lips were blue in her ashen face. “I was afraid you wouldn’t hear me.”

  Quickly, Mary studied Joan’s position, trying to figure out the best way to grab her. The sub-ledge was too narrow for her to climb down and push Joan up from behind. She would have to try something else.

  “Joan,” said Mary. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to wrap my arms around you. Then when I start to pull you up, let go of the tree and grab on to me.”

  “Oh, Mary,” Joan whimpered. “Are you sure? I weigh a lot.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mary replied with a confidence she did not feel. “I’m braced up here. I can hold you.”

  Mary wrapped her legs tighter around the tree, then leaned over the ledge and grasped Joan under her arms. She took a moment to position herself, then breathed deep and closed her eyes.

  “Okay,” she whispered, knowing that if this young sycamore could not support their combined weights they would both drown in frigid water, shattered by the sharp rocks below. “Let go, Joan. Now!”

  As Mary pulled, Joan reluctantly loosened her grip on the roots. At first Mary feared she’d misjudged, and they both seemed to be sliding into the oblivion below. But she tensed the muscles in her legs and back and pulled with all her might. Joan edged up, slightly, toward her. Mary pulled harder. Finally Joan’s legs pushed up from the fragile roots and up she came, fast, tumbling over on the ledge on top of Mary.

  Gasping for breath, they lay without speaking. The cold, wet air that had before seemed like a shroud now felt good, cooling their sweat-soaked skin. Joan sat up and scrambled back from the ledge. Then she began to weep.

  “I thought I was going to die just like that rabbit,” she sobbed. “I thought I was going to drown.”

  “It’s okay.” Mary sat still, her breath coming hot and hard. “Once we climb out of this gorge, we’ll be safe.”

  “But we can’t climb out now!” Joan wailed. “It’s almost night.”

  Mary looked up at the slate-gray sky. “If we hurry, we can make it out before dark. The climb up won’t be so bad.”

  Joan gaped at her, unbelieving.

  “You can go first,” said Mary. “I’ll tell you where to step, and I’ll be right behind you in case you fall.”

  Joan did not move. Her tears and her body language betrayed the depth of her terror. She was so frightened, she could get them both killed, Mary knew.

  “We have no shelter on this ledge, Joan,” she explained. “If we don’t climb up now, the cold will kill us before dawn.”

  “I can’t do this anymore, Mary,” Joan sobbed, shrinking back against the rock face. “That man hurt me. He hurt me a lot!”

  Suddenly a rage enveloped Mary. “Don’t you think I know that?” she yelled, leaping forward at Joan. Longing to slap her stupid weak face, instead she grabbed her by her shoulders and pushed her hard against the rock. “Don’t you think I know exactly how that man hurt you? He beat you, Joan. He raped you. He nearly killed you.”

  Joan shrank back further from the blaze in Mary’s eyes.

  “I know all that, Joan.” Mary leaned in closer. “But I know something else. I know how strong you can be!”

  “No.” Joan shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can,” cried Mary. “Any little girl from Brooklyn who’s fought her way into opera and then fought her way into Emory Law and is now fighting her way up the corporate career ladder in Atlanta is plenty tough enough to climb one lousy cliff.” Mary tightened her grip on Joan’s shoulders. “Joan, you can do it!”

  “But I’ve never . . .”

  “Doesn’t matter!” Mary would not let Joan turn away. “I haven’t done it, either. But we’ve got to try. We may wind up breaking our necks in that creek, but we’ve got to try!”

  Joan peered at Mary through her tears. “You really think I can do it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Joan looked up at the rock face looming above her. Trembling more than ever, she looked back at Mary. Then, slowly, she got to her feet. “Okay,” she said, her voice like a child’s. “I’ll give it a try.”

  Mary stood, too, and studied the mass of dark rocks that rose above them. The limestone down here was stable, but dangerously slippery. The shale above crumbled like puff pastry. Now, in the dark, she had to figure out which rock was which. All she could do was guess, and hope her luck held. She rubbed her fingertip against Wynona, deep in her pocket.

  “Where do I step first?” asked Joan.

  “Put your left foot here.” Mary touched one flat plane on a rock. “Then put your right foot over there. Stay crouched down low, and use your arms as well as your legs.”

  “Okay.” Joan put her foot where Mary directed. “Here goes nothing.”

  With Joan going first and Mary following, the two women began to climb. Wearing boots, Joan had better footing, but the soles would often slip on the wet rocks, sending blinding showers of dirt and pebbles down into Mary’s face.

  “Where now?” she called tentatively after Mary had directed her halfway up the rock face.

  “Try that pinkish rock straight ahead.”

  “I don’t think it’s strong enough.” Joan’s voice wobbled. Mary knew she was on the edge of giving up again.

  “Try it anyway,” insisted Mary. “Everything else is shale.”

  Joan stepped forward. Keeping both hands and her other foot where they were, she shifted her weight timidly to the pink rock. Though a few pebbles tumbled off into the gorge below, the rest of the thing held firm.

  “It’s okay,” Joan called down to Mary, and Mary realized she had been holding her breath for so long her lungs burned.

  With the roar of the water diminishing below them, they climbed to the top of the gorge just as the last light died. In darkness they threw themselves down on the grass, trembling and exhausted, but grateful to be alive.

  For a long while Joan wept quietly. Mary knew she should apologize for her harsh words, but she was too tired. She relaxed into the hard, damp earth as if it were a feather bed. From now until sunrise her legs would not have to push her up over sheer mountains or out of rocky gorges; she was free to relish the exquisite pleasure of being still. As raindrops began to patter through the leaves above them, she felt Joan raise up and turn toward her.

  “You know you saved my life back there,” she snuffled.

  “Oh, you probably could have climbed out on your own,” Mary said, although she knew without a doubt that Joan’s lifespan had stretched no more than six inches beyond that narrow ledge.

  “That’s not true.” Joan shook her head. “Look, I know I’ve been a real bitch lately. But I would have died today if you hadn’t come after me. I just want you to know that I’ll try to do better from here on out.”

  Mary gazed into the dark, listening to the rain fall on a million trees she could no longer see. “It’s okay, Joan,” she replied. “Considering all that’s happened, I think you’re doing just fine.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Jonathan locked the front door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. Dusk had deepened into darkness, and Little Jump Off had dispensed its last six-pack of the day. He turned off the store’s overhead lights, then walked upstairs to the apartment. Lena Owle stood at his kitchen counter, having changed from her jeans and gingham apron into a tight black dress. She poured white wine into two slender glasses.

  “Something smells good.” Jonathan flopped down at the kitchen table, letting the heat from the small stove warm his backside. He stretched back in the chair and flexed his shoulders. Ever since the Harold Hobart helicopter fiasco, the day had soured like milk left in the sun. Nothing he’d undertaken had gone right, from refletching an arrow for Bill Landing to his mini-repair job on the wheezing ice-cream freezer. Now Lena stood here smiling, expecting him to be good company for dinner and even
better company afterwards. He sighed. He should feel lucky, he supposed. So why didn’t he?

  “That’s the cassoulet.” Lena handed him a wineglass. “As soon as the bread is done we’ll eat.” She nodded at a thick stack of newsprint on the table. “I brought you a Sunday paper from town. You can get started on the crossword if you want.”

  “Thanks.” Jonathan took a sip of wine and picked up the heavy Sunday edition of the Atlanta Journal-Clarion. He skimmed the front page, then turned to the op/ed section, where, according to the editorial writers, Atlanta should enact stricter handgun laws, Republicans should not think the state of Georgia is in their back pocket, and traffic snarls on 285 had better be addressed, and fast. Jonathan yawned, then a moment later snapped the paper to attention in front of him.

  “Hey,” he said. “Here’s an article about Mary Crow. She’s just sent up some rich guy named Whitman.”

  “Really.” Lena clattered a pan in the sink.

  “Yeah . . . It says that Atlanta’s lucky to have such a dedicated young assistant DA . . . ‘who comports herself with grace and passion in the courtroom. The recent Whitman case showed her to be a prosecutor of the first rank. It would be . . .’ ” Jonathan turned the page, “ ‘hard to find another like her, said District Attorney James Falkner.’ ”

  Lena sniffed the cassoulet and laughed. “Well, I hope it won’t be too hard for Billy. He needs the thousand dollars.”

  Jonathan looked up over the paper. “Huh?”

  “The thousand dollars that man’s paying him to find Mary.”

  Jonathan frowned. “Fill me in here, Lena. We must not be on the same page.”

  Lena smoothed a wisp of dark hair back from her forehead. “I thought you knew. Yesterday a man from Mary’s office drove up to Billy’s picture stand and offered him a thousand dollars to take him to Mary Crow. Tam was thrilled. It was all she could talk about last night at bingo.”

  Jonathan refolded the paper, then asked, “Was this man a cop?”

  “I don’t know. Tam didn’t know, either. She said Billy was packed up and gone in five minutes.” Lena bent to check the French bread browning in the oven. “Just think, Jonathan. Billy might finally be able to get his fiddle back.”