The Wildlands

by Abby Geni

  MAY

  1

  This is the story of the summer I disappeared. It all began on a warm spring evening. At the time, I was nine years old. I lay in bed, unable to sleep, as Jane snored against my shoulder, her breath tickling my skin.

  It was three years after the tornado—almost to the day. The window was open, letting in a faint breeze. The moon was high. With care, I extricated myself from the blankets and grabbed my flashlight. I shone the beam around the room—shabby curtains, empty hamper, clothes on the floor. There was a desk smothered in papers and a plate dotted with sandwich crusts. In the mess, my stuffed animals lurked like woodland creatures in the underbrush.

  I crept into the living room, where the shifting flashlight beam made the couch and TV look different—two-dimensional and lifeless, more like an artist’s rendering than actual furniture. Darlene was asleep on the sofa, a murky shadow, a huddle of blankets. I held still, listening hard, until she let out a whispery snore.

  The trailer had only one bedroom, which Jane and I shared. The rest of the space was open—part kitchen, part den, always immaculate and gleaming, the air rarified by cleaning solvents. This was Darlene’s doing. She had no room of her own, no door to close, no privacy. The couch was her bed, but there was never any sign of her presence there during the day. Each morning, she folded up her blankets and tucked away her pillow as though her sleeping habits were a guilty secret.

  Stepping outside into the night air, I inhaled a sweet rush of pollen. The sky was a chalkboard slate, the moon not quite full, a circle scribbled imperfectly and smudged. It was May, on the cusp of summer, the wind parched and slow. I turned off the flashlight to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The trailer park was a medley of gray. As I moved down the path, I heard the skitter of crickets in the grass, roused into motion by my presence.

  Darlene liked to say that we lived in a permanent mobile home, despite the obvious oxymoron. She thought it sounded classier than trailer. From the outside, our unit looked like a house in a board game: precisely rectangular and made of flimsy materials. It was ringed by a fence that came up to my waist. All the trailers in our row were more or less identical, though many residents had added a few individual touches—a fire pit, wind chimes, a dog chained to a spike in the ground, a NO TRESPASSING sign.

  We lived in No. 43, which sat beside a ravine that dropped into a dry riverbed and a tangle of brambles. This had been our home since the tornado left us dispossessed and broke. Our trailer was distinguished from the others by a certain quality of neglect. Some of our neighbors liked to grow vegetables in clay pots, but we didn’t have the time. Some of our neighbors liked to cook a hearty meal each night, filling the air with spices, but we didn’t have the energy. No. 43 bore the unmistakable signs of subsistence.

  Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled—a mournful, throaty cry. I was not supposed to be out at night. Darlene was a routinized and rule-bound person, both in her own behavior and her governance of Jane and me. The trailer was covered with handwritten notes taped up over the sink, by the door, in the bathroom. Wipe your feet. Hold down the toilet handle for fifteen seconds. Jane, stay out of my makeup. The coyote bayed again, hoping for an answer from one of its kind. Its hoarse melancholy hung in the air like mist. There was no reply. Darlene would have pitched a fit if she knew where I was, and Jane would have swatted my behind. I did not care. It wasn’t the first time I had gone out looking for adventure at night, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  Tucker would have understood. For a moment, I held still in the darkness, missing my brother. The sensation was as familiar as breath. For more than two years, I had lived in a world of women. I had learned the hard way that men were inconstant. Daddy died in the tornado. A few months afterward, Tucker ran away. My father had left us through no fault of his own, whereas my brother packed a bag of his own free will. But the result was the same.

  I did not remember much about my father, but I remembered Tucker. I remembered the physicality of him—all tumble and roll, tackling me onto the couch in a joyful greeting. I remembered him imitating the tornado that destroyed our home, whirling around the living room of No. 43 with his arms outstretched. I remembered him kissing my forehead when I awoke from a nightmare. My brave, ecstatic, beautiful brother. There was nothing to do for that kind of loss—no solution to it, no medicine for it. You just coped as best you could. The ache was dull but profound, like the unanswered call of a lonely coyote. Most of the time I could handle it, but whenever it grew too great, I would grab my flashlight and head out into the darkness.

  The moon and wind were a kind of salve. I strolled down the path, keeping the flashlight off. I could see well enough now, the ground painted with a dusty glimmer of moonlight. Each step was accompanied by rustling. Grasshoppers and beetles scuttled to make room for me, their metallic bodies clattering like applause. An owl screamed somewhere. A hunting cry. I passed No. 42 and No. 41. The trailer park was called Shady Acres, which was a misnomer. There were a few trees around, but their leaves were withered. The grass, too, was yellow and wilted. Greenery did not thrive in the arid Oklahoma climate. Even now, on an evening in May, the air held the incipient warmth of a teapot beginning to simmer.

  I tipped my head back, the wind swirling around me and touching my long hair. I always felt closer to Tucker outdoors. I could imagine that he was somewhere nearby, still here with me, momentarily out of sight. Behind that tree, maybe. Hiding in the ravine. Chuckling to himself. Before he had abandoned us, he took me on more than a few night walks. Darlene knew nothing of this; Jane had never been invited. It was a special connection that only Tucker and I shared.

  The first time it happened, we had just moved into No. 43. Four orphans. Disoriented and stunned. Heartsick and homesick. One night, Tucker and I snuck outside together while our sisters slumbered. I remembered tiptoeing at his side, holding his hand, giddy from the thrill of our transgression, awake and alive. I remembered Tucker murmuring in my ear, telling me facts about the bats fluttering overhead, their use of sonar, their curious bone structure, the elongated digits on their hands that comprised their wings. I remembered sitting with my brother at the base of a tree and leaning against his shoulder, his profile printed crisp against the moon. The only man left in our world.

  Now a sound beside me made me pivot. I tugged the flashlight from my pocket and spun the beam around. There was a flicker of motion. A scorpion was caught in the curl of a dead leaf, rocking and scrabbling. It freed itself and slithered toward me. I darted a few steps back, and the creature crawled past me, its tail raised aggressively. I kept it pinned in the light. I thought about trying to catch it; I could bring it to school in a jar for show-and-tell. But Jane had once been stung on the arch of her foot, and I remembered her lolling miserably on the couch, her entire leg swollen, vomiting into a bucket until the venom left her system. The scorpion scrambled away, its shell glistening in the glow from my flashlight. I tracked it until it was out of sight.

  Then I was alone again.

  I walked along the rim of the ravine, following the owl’s call. There was something breathtaking in my solitude—surrounded by lightless rooms and unconscious sleepers. I raised the beam of my flashlight to the nearest mobile home, No. 24, which had a skull and crossbones spray-painted on the side. The place belonged to the Grangers, a young couple Darlene could not stand—the man tattooed and toothless, the woman pigtailed and drug addled. My sister seemed to take their behavior as a personal affront, fulfilling every stereotype of trailer trash. I switched off my flashlight. For a moment I could see nothing at all; I might have turned off the whole world.

  Tucker was still on my mind. On our second night walk, we had traveled farther. He led me miles down the road to see the horses on a farm. The moon was a sliver that night, a fishhook lodged among the tree branches. Tucker and I had raced each other out of Shady Acres. I remembered the eerie weightlessness of his figure in flight, the way his feet scarcely seemed to skim
the ground. Once we reached the main road, he guided me through the brambles and bladed grasses. There was not much traffic, just the occasional truck lumbering along, splitting the night open with its noise and headlights. Tucker and I held hands as we walked, partly for company and partly to keep our footing on the inky, uneven ground.

  He told me stories about our family’s animals—the ones that had died in the tornado. Nine cows. A stallion, a mare, and a pony. Six chickens. The goat named Sweetie. My brother had loved them all, so I did too. He told me about grooming the horses, brushing their coats and watching the tiny earthquakes of pleasure that shuddered across their flesh. He told me about visiting the cows, who followed him wherever he went, drifting behind him through the prairie, trusting him to lead them. He told me about the floury smell of the chickens, the spill of their feathers, their beady, intelligent eyes. He told me that the loss of the farm was tearing him in half. A house was not a home without animals.

  We heard the horses before we saw them. They seemed to be playing in the darkness, snorting, their hoofbeats echoing. At my side, Tucker froze as though hearing music. Then he laughed. I loved his laugh. We approached the fence and he lifted me over, helping me into the paddock before climbing in himself. The horses were shadows against shadows—maybe three, maybe four, all with dark coats, all in motion. They darted away from us, melting into the landscape of gray and prancing closer again, tossing their heads, a flash of teeth in the moonlight, a nervous whinny. Their curiosity gradually overwhelmed their unease. They spiraled around us, filling the air with an earthy musk. A tail brushed my shoulder. Tucker was no longer laughing; instead he seemed to be vibrating with ferocious joy. He held still, letting the horses grow accustomed to our presence. He gripped my hand so tight it hurt.

  We stayed there a long time. The horses investigated me, one shoving a bristled snout into the hollow of my throat, another poring through my hair with a spongy tongue. They backed away and strutted forward again like dancers in a tango. One by one, they fell in love with Tucker, surrounding him, four black heads competing for his touch. He stroked their manes, murmured in their ears. In the darkness, the horses seemed too big to be real—mountains on the hoof, volcanic breath. Tucker said he would steal them. He said he would free them. He promised them, and he promised me.

  I did not remember coming home that night. I had grown drowsy after a while, sinking into the grass beneath a bush where the horses could not trample me. I watched them shift and stamp in the breeze, and then I watched the constellations burn, and then Tucker was carrying me, my head on his shoulder, the rhythm of his stride lulling me into a dream.

  2

  I woke to the sound of banging on the door. For a moment, I was disoriented, unable to place myself. Sunlight tangled in the curtains. Drool on my cheek. I did not remember making my way back to No. 43 the night before.

  “Y’all are going to be late,” Darlene called.

  It took force to extricate my arm from beneath Jane’s torso. She went on sleeping as I sat up. Somewhere in the distance, a lawn mower buzzed. I could smell cut grass and cigarettes.

  Today was the three-year anniversary of the tornado. As I remembered this fact, I groaned aloud. I knew what to expect: a memorial service at school, a forced mournfulness that bore no relationship to my private, genuine sorrow. I climbed out of bed and fished through the pile of clothes on the floor, looking for something relatively clean. I tugged on a T-shirt, realized it was Jane’s, and removed it. Outside, the lawn mower sputtered and stalled. The next-door neighbors were arguing in their way, cawing back and forth like crows. I caught the faraway squeal of a baby crying. You could hear everything that happened in the trailer park if you just took the time to listen. I knew more than I was supposed to know.

  In the kitchen, the smell of coffee was overpowering. I sat at the table, and Darlene handed me a bowl of cereal. Sometimes I liked to pretend that No. 43 was a train car. Same shape, same size. It wasn’t hard to imagine that any moment now a whistle might blow, wheels might turn beneath us, and we might be carried away to somewhere else—somewhere better.

  Darlene sipped her coffee. Her hair was swept up in a severe ponytail. She was dressed for her job at the supermarket, her beige uniform freshly laundered but still smelling vaguely of onions, adorned by her name tag and a broach that had belonged to our mother. Her face was angular and unbeautiful. Boxy glasses offset the jut of her cheekbones.

  “We’re going to the cemetery this afternoon,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I’ll pick you up at four. Right at four. No dawdling.”

  I knew better than to argue. I nodded.

  AT TWO O’CLOCK, ALL OF Mercy Elementary School poured into the gym. The windows were smeary with sunlight, the stink of sweat singeing my lungs, too many bodies crammed into the space. The fluorescent lights blanched us all with a porcelain glow. My class sat at the back of the gym beneath the basketball hoop. Ms. Watson stepped cautiously over our legs and backpacks, reminding us to be quiet, to sit still. She was a big woman with a sweet, generous face.

  She sought me out, as I had expected she would. Of all the families affected by the tornado, mine was in a category by itself, and everyone in Mercy knew it. Ms. Watson was discreet about her sympathy, touching my head gently in passing.

  Third grade had been kind to me. The school year would end in a few weeks, and I was expecting to miss Ms. Watson over the summer. As she shuffled away, I closed my eyes, imagining that I was back in her classroom now—the walls painted friendly colors, a mobile of the solar system swinging from the ceiling, a feeling of safety and ease—rather than here, preparing once again to remember our loss.

  A hush fell over the gym. The principal stood up, holding a stack of notecards. His tie was crooked, his voice hoarse, not quite carrying. I did not mind. I had no interest in hearing his platitudes. I had heard them all before.

  “Welcome,” he said. “This is a sad day for us all.”

  The word sad was a kind of trigger. Several heads turned in my direction, teachers scanning my face, kids nudging each other. Even the principal shot a glance my way before continuing his speech. I felt myself blush. I was used to pity, but that did not make it any easier to take.

  The tornado that struck the town of Mercy had been Category Five. Technically it was Category EF5: E for “Enhanced” and F for “Fujita,” the scale on which all tornadoes were measured. Mercy had become infamous overnight. Everyone in Oklahoma—maybe the whole country—was aware of the extent of our town’s tragedy. There was a national obsession with what Darlene called weather porn: the sensual, exhaustive analysis of a natural disaster, complete with lurid photographs. Three years ago, Mercy fell into its spotlight.

  At two and a half miles across, the tornado crashed into my old neighborhood like a baseball bat into a wasp’s nest. It reduced our house to kindling. It flung my family’s belongings across the landscape. Only remnants had ever been recovered—Darlene’s bike jammed beneath a mailbox, our stove smashed in a swimming pool, Daddy’s hammer embedded six inches into an oak tree. My brother’s gym bag had been found twenty miles away. The tornado flattened buildings and crumpled cars like soda cans. It peeled asphalt from the sidewalks and yanked plumbing out of the ground. It killed twelve people in all, including my father.

  “Now we’ll sing,” the principal said. He lifted his chin, and in a surprisingly deep bass, he began the first verse of “Amazing Grace.” All around me, the other students joined in, crooning the words in the cautious mumble of children singing out of obligation. Ms. Watson dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  I wanted to raise my hand and complain. It made no sense for me to attend a memorial service, since I could not remember anything. The tornado was the starting point of my conscious life. Everything before it was an empty space. I knew the numbers that belonged to the storm: wind speeds of three hundred and twenty miles per hour, forty people injured, twelve dead. Houses picke
d up and dropped. Trees debarked. Cars thrown. The technical phrase was incredible intensity.

  For me, however, the tornado had been something else. Something personal, internal. My first recollection of my father was also my last. Big belly. A worried expression. Strong, calloused hands. I remembered him carrying a box that clanked. I remembered him shouting for us all to hurry. I remembered his absence in the shelter, his absence when the storm subsided, his absence every day that followed. I could not mourn him—not really. Even in death, he was a mystery. His body was never found; he was one of several to perish that day without a trace, sucked up into the sky. Presumed dead. Nothing to bury.

  All that was left of him were pictures, anecdotes, and secondhand information. I gathered what knowledge I could. I had asked Darlene and Jane for stories—and Tucker, before he ran away. I had looked through the photograph albums Darlene saved. Flipping through the pages, I hoped to spark some latent memory, but the images—my parents at their wedding, my sisters in their infancy, a group of blurred figures on a picnic—seemed like illustrations from somebody else’s past. To me, they were empty of meaning, but Darlene and Jane treasured them. Along with the framed snapshots of our mother, Darlene had preserved these albums from the storm at the expense of her laptop, her jewelry box, and her nice leather jacket. (She had told me this many times. In the moments after the siren sounded, she made her choice. Only a couple of minutes. Only so much she could carry.) After transporting the family photos to No. 43, she even spent precious money to replace Mama’s cracked frames with new ones—a devotion I did not understand.

  For me, the tornado had been something beyond a force of nature. The havoc it wreaked on the physical landscape was echoed by an equal measure of devastation in my mind and memory. As far as I was concerned, we had always lived in No. 43. As far as I was concerned, we had always been poor. Darlene was always hard, Jane always vague. And I never knew my father.