In the Wilderness

by Kim Barnes

  Here were these lovers of God. I could never again be one of them. In this I found a dark and fitting comfort in place of absolution. I opened my eyes to the gravy bowl and ladled the congealing sauce over white bread, took more salad than I could eat. My first bite of deer steak brought another tremor of memory: sitting on the dark stairs while the women made dinner, taking in Luke’s breath with the smell of hot grease and browning venison. I’d not tasted wild meat since we left the woods, and now it was all coming back and I couldn’t stop it: the church in Cardiff, the late-night games of basketball, the wonderful float of near-sleep as I lay on the couch listening to the stove pop and the men play their music; the night they didn’t find Matthew. My friends in Lewiston hadn’t known me then, but these people had. They’d seen me that way, they knew who I really was. I shoved myself from the table so hard my iced tea rocked and spilled.

  “I need to use the bathroom.”

  Brother and Sister Lang glanced at each other. Sarah pointed with her fork down the hall.

  The room was still moist, the mirror streaked with condensation. My face looked disfigured, melting down the glass. Luke’s clothes lay in a heap near the tub. I gathered them up and held them to my face, breathing in the dusty sweat, believing I could still feel the heat of his body.

  I no longer knew what sin felt like. Guilt had been replaced by a simple and practical aversion to consequences. They would never know what I was doing—a thief, stealing this intimacy. They might never know what I wanted from Luke; I wasn’t even sure I did. I knew I wanted his hands to touch me and could not imagine what I wouldn’t let him do.

  The boys at school had tried, snaking their fingers between the buttons of my Levi’s, trailing their sharp tongues down my neck. I disliked their urgency, their little moans and pleadings. What I wanted was to feel again that which had possessed me in the church’s dusky sanctuary: seduction, a pure longing so painful I bit my tongue to draw blood penance. It was still in his eyes, it might still happen. And what was that worth, to have him finally take hold of me in a real embrace? We were older, could plan a place, a time. Maybe then I’d leave, make my run for California.

  The thought cleared my head. I’d never go back home to my parents, or even my friends. Why would I? I could be as free as I wanted to be. I could choose to go or stay. If I hid out long enough, even the cops would give up. I’d learned my lesson about hiding in small places. No more closets or apartments. I’d go to a big city, where I could run and be swallowed up by thousands of people who would never recognize my face.

  I relaxed and flipped on the exhaust fan. The cigarette was nearly crushed, and I carefully reshaped it. The smoke lifted toward the ceiling. The last lungful I blew into the pile of cotton and denim like a good-bye kiss.

  They didn’t ignore me. They simply went on with their lives, offering me no opportunity or reason to object. Everything seemed absolutely reasonable: the errands and chores, the meals and after-dinner excursions into town for ice cream. The isolation from my friends served to remove both empathy and influence, and I no longer had my parents’ constant suspicion to react against. If I acted sullen or shut myself in my sparsely furnished room, nothing changed—no one commented or demanded an explanation. Whatever void my emotional or physical absence created was filled with the camaraderie of family that existed whether I did or not.

  I lay at night in my bed beneath the window, savoring my few remaining Marlboros. I thought of Patti and the others, imagining their encouragement: “They just want you to be their good little girl. They don’t really give a shit about you.” I wanted to hear Patti’s gravelly voice, but I wasn’t allowed to use the phone. I had to stay smart, be patient, or I’d end up in a place worse yet—St. Anthony. (I never doubted this consequence and still cannot bring myself to ask the question: Was it only a threat? Would you have sent me there, locked me in a place so far away I could never return?)

  Evenings, we’d cruise through town, hot summer wind rushing us through our Dairy Queen treats. It was like this with the Langs: unrestrained in little ways, spontaneous, childlike. And maybe that’s what I found with them, that lost part of myself. I was fourteen, and it wasn’t the drugs or the music or the potential sex that drew me to the world; it was something else that even now I can only attempt to articulate.

  My parents loved me, within reason, and that reason seemed dependent upon my obedience. They loved me, of course, even in rejection, and perhaps saw in their rejection the absolute and logical progression of their love. But such love is not unconditional, and what I yearned for was unequivocable acceptance, for the familial walls to prove themselves strong, beyond fracture.

  I risked little with my peers, love never being part of our fragmented equation. Unlike my parents’ love, the Langs’ was not inherent nor assumed. If they were willing to take me in when my mother and father were unwilling to keep me, did it mean that their love was greater? If they accepted me without derision the way I was—bad girl, delinquent, unrepentant—then there was little more I could do to turn them away from me.

  They still acted as though I were that timid, backwoods girl, lapping up praise like a puppy. And wasn’t I? Brother Lang smacked over the French toast I made him for breakfast. Luke winked and grinned when I served him his coffee thick with Cremora. Sister Lang and Sarah assumed me capable of working beside them, and I forgot to resent their assumption. Terry took me to see osprey along the river, their huge nest a crisscross of sticks. I could not imagine why he wanted to share with me their graceful flight and pinioned dives, nor could I make sense of the joy I felt watching them rise with trout spasming in their talons.

  I can believe it was the land I missed, that part of me was still fused to cedar and lupine. A tree will weave its new fiber through strands of wire, lock its heart tight around a stray bullet. I had left the woods wounded, wrenched from what had sustained me since birth.

  Some are born to the wilderness. Some come to the wilderness to be reborn. It was where my parents first found their salvation, and where I would once again find mine.

  We went to the river, the men to fish, the women to watch from lawn chairs, their crochet hooks glinting over pale green thread. How long since my parents had left? Two weeks? Three? Soon the Langs and I would be moving to Spokane, an hour away, where Brother Lang had been given the pastorship of a small church and its depleted congregation. Terry wanted one last chance at the big trout, so we made a day of it: fried chicken, potato salad, thick wedges of watermelon.

  There was a rod for me. I rigged it without comment, still unwilling to offer any semblance of gratitude. The river cut deep in front of us; beneath my feet, I could feel the familiar and delicate vibration of water. I cast and reeled in too quickly, then cast again, farther this time, relaxing into the rhythm and pull of the current.

  Trees moved lightly in the breeze and I closed my eyes to listen to the murmur and shush of branches. The river’s low thrum, the trees brushing—all I could hear or want to hear that summer afternoon with a family both mine and not mine. When the fish hit, I startled as though from sleep. The heaviness drew my line taut, then the reel began unwinding, playing out too fast.

  “Tighten the drag a little.” Terry was at my elbow. I did as he said, fearing that any more tension would cause the line to snap. The steady pull weakened and I regained a few yards, but then the fish turned, headed with the current downstream.

  “Just let him go. He’ll tucker out.” I glanced at Terry, arms crossed, feet planted solid in the sandy soil. Luke and Brother Lang reeled in, and I registered their thoughtfulness, their desire to give me every advantage.

  I steadied the butt of the rod against my hipbone and pulled the tip skyward before taking in the slack.

  “What is it?” I asked, knowing I had never felt such weight in a rainbow or brookie. Terry shook his head.

  “Sturgeon.” Luke stood close behind me.

  Terry grunted. “Don’t think there’s sturgeon in this river. Channel
cat, maybe. Big, whatever it is.”

  The fish began another run. I was sure he’d take all my line, strip the spool clean. I worked the rod against my belly, arms already trembling with the fight. The force of his pull surprised me. Where was it he was pulling for? What place did he hope to gain? I imagined his passage deep in the river’s cleaving. The line he drew seemed dead straight, as though the boulders and snags were impermanent, themselves fluid. I knew some fish would sound—nose down against a rock—and I half-expected the sudden cessation of movement, the stubborn, impossible draw.

  But the fish did not stop. It ran until exhausted, then allowed me to exhaust myself hauling its weight upriver a few feet at a time until, rested, it could again make the air above its world sing. I didn’t hear the men anymore, nor the women, whose quieter dialogue blended with the wind. I focused on the line, waiting for the fish to break surface, to give up some secret of itself, but in all my vision there was nothing save water and this invisible, incessant pulling.

  Pointed shadows darkened the river. Nighthawks zigzagged the sky, their sharp calls distant, peripheral. No one moved to pack the food, fold the chairs. No one moved to take the rod from my hands. They stood with me, Sister Lang pulling her sweater across her shoulders, Sarah leaned against Terry. So patient and clear, our seeing of nothing, as though that which we watched for expected our welcome.

  Shade became darkness and still my line kept the light, reflecting the moon in a silvery strand. I could no longer see the spool itself and had no sense of what was left, how many yards of filament played out downriver. When the fish pulled, I gave. When he rested, I reclaimed what distance I could, my motions perpetual, uncalculated. I ceased to consider options, strategies. Time sank with the line and disappeared without end.

  Near shore the water shallowed. How long had the fish been settled there, working his slow respirations, rocking in silt? A log, I thought. A trick of light. I lowered the rod and saw the shape disappear, then resume its place. I stepped back, stumbled, felt the line tense. Only then did I know my own exhaustion, the pain in my groin and arms. I straightened and began walking backward, afraid to take my eyes from that spot, intending to drag the fish from the river. Luke caught my shoulders from behind.

  “You’ll lose him. Use the rod. Use your arms.”

  I leaned against his chest, aware that I was groaning with each attempt to pull the rod vertical. The fish would not give, so solid I believed I had dreamed him, that it was stone I imagined undulating at my feet.

  Then the line snapped, spitting back against my hands and face. Luke stood steady. I could feel the warmth of his stomach and thighs and knew he watched the river as I did, as though we might see the fish jump once, stitching the night down with its moonlit thread.

  Brother Lang eased the rod from me and gave it to Terry. My fingers stayed curled like the hands of a hag.

  “You were great, kiddo.” They were all smiling, and then Brother Lang broke into a full laugh. “That old fish is going to remember you for a long time.”

  They walked with me slowly, matching their steps to my stiff shuffle. Already they were polishing the story—my story—of the battle. I heard told for me the length of my endurance, how the night came on and I stayed, never complaining, rock-solid against the fish. I crawled into the backseat, the soreness dulling to a kind of comfort, soothed by the warmth of their praise.

  Pain is nothing that cannot be reinvented. Like so many things, it’s a matter of perspective. The fish was a log or it wasn’t. The rawness of my hands and the bruise in my side were wounds, or they were badges of courage. So many things depend on the stories we tell ourselves, or on the stories that others tell of us. The story itself can change, be enlarged, be diminished. I had already begun the story I would tell my friends of how I tolerated that summer with the Langs and came back unchanged: it was a map I intended to follow. But now my story had been interrupted. How did this fit in? It would sound foolish in the telling. I tried to revise what had happened to fit my narrative, but no matter how many ways I recited it, it came out the same: something had changed. I listened, and although it was all about me, it had nothing to do with the untidiness of my hair and clothes or how polite I was. What mattered was that I had stayed tough, fought it out. They were proud of me for doing this thing that I could never not do: dig in, hold on, fight the pull toward home.

  That night, the air came in cool and silent through my window. I held the last of the tattered Marlboros, closing my fist harder and harder, then dropped them to the ground outside. Such a small and pathetic gesture, as though every sin could be rolled tight as tobacco and dropped a few feet into another world.

  I lay back in my bed and allowed my bitterness its exit, with a breath let out the hate, let it drift from the window and into the dark. Believe that it is this easy. Believe that a young girl felt her new self descend like a cloak, a smooth and unblemished skin—cool, like a dampened sheet against fever. This is God, I thought. I whispered, “I am done. Forgive me.”

  The next morning I woke as I knew I would: joyful, radiant, washed in the blood of the Lamb. Surrender is no less sweet than the fight: absolution, pure submission, bliss in having no will that cannot be consumed, floating like Ophelia in the lovely waters.

  I announced my conversion at breakfast and welcomed without self-consciousness their prayers. They laid their hands on my head and shoulders and gave thanks, and I felt the last of my old self spill out. I cried, great, gulping sobs that wrenched my guts, and they said this too was as it should be.

  That day was no different in some ways. The men worked, the women cleaned, shopped and cooked. But I felt the prayers coming back to me and the songs filled my head. I tied my hair back and hummed. When I looked at Sarah, she smiled and I flushed with pleasure. I became once again reflective of the wishes and expectations of my elders, a steady moon of a girl.

  I don’t remember speaking of my parents then, though it would seem natural to assume we would have called them. What better news could they imagine? Their daughter had been reborn, had come back into the fold. Perhaps I could have gone home. But I did not call, nor do I know if the Langs did. I did not want to leave. I wanted to stay in this new life with these people who had made a place for the prodigal at their own table.

  The church in Spokane sat directly across the alley from the parsonage. Dandelions and morning glories tangled thick around its foundation. Paint peeled from the siding. The remaining parishioners—five or six elderly women and men—hoped the Reverend Lang would crowd the foyer with newcomers and kindle a spirit of revival in their midst.

  We polished the old oak pews and mended the hymnals with tape, cut the grass and trimmed the roses. I worked beneath the late summer sun, modest and hot in my long sleeves and borrowed, sagging skirt. The sanctuary held little light, and when I stepped into the shadowed room to escape the heat, the air was heavy with the coolness of wood.

  While Sarah, pregnant with twins, took her afternoon nap and Sister Lang attended Tupperware meetings, I found once again the plain chords they had taught me at Cardiff and played for hours on the old upright. They granted me this time alone, but little other. My privacy was a commodity I bartered for their trust. I had no money and was dependent upon them for my toothpaste and tampons (Sister Lang shaking her head), for the antihistamines I needed to subdue my allergies. Except for the church, I was allowed to go nowhere without them, but where would I have gone? I was no longer a runaway. I had no other friends. Even my parents seemed dead to me. Yet the more obedient my behavior, the tighter their surveillance. I accepted this, expected it. I had much to pay for. My debt was great.

  Even greater was my need for Luke’s approval. He had become more attentive, taking my hand when we walked to the store, reminding me to cover my knees when I sat. I had forgotten the modest ways and now I must relearn them. I shuddered at the memory of my first night with the Langs, at my grotesque desire for Luke, at my act of inhaling his smell. But the guilt could
not override the stir of pleasure I felt even in memory: the warm musk, the dusky odor I associated with strong men and hard work.

  Once again I spent hours on my knees, pleading with God for strength and purity of thought. Often I’d find myself, still kneeling, my head resting against the altar, surfacing from a dream of Luke. Even my prayers deceived me. Satan surely knew my weakness and found me unguarded even in this sacred place. I denounced His evil presence. My salvation lay in virtue, and virtue was never true if not tried: in the trial itself lay the merit. I pushed my thoughts forward, imagining our wedding night, when with the blessings of God and our elders he would draw from me a sacred and binding blood.

  And I gave thanks for this: that somehow my virginity had remained intact. I believed that even when I was lost to the world some part of me had resided in grace. Perhaps, all along, I had been saving myself for Luke.

  “What’s the answer?” I tapped my pencil against the table. “Do you remember the equation?”

  Luke stared blankly at the paper, chin resting in his hand. He shrugged his shoulders and grinned.

  I released a dramatic sigh of exasperation, then began ciphering in the margins. “If X equals seven, then …” Luke’s index finger traced small, ever-widening circles on my knee, “then Y must be … Stop!”

  “What?” One corner of his mouth curled into a weighted grin. I pushed his hand away. He slid the pencil from my fingers, so slowly the room darkened before I remembered to breathe.

  It had been this way for a week. Each night we stayed up late and strangely alone, he a student of home correspondence schooling, I his tutor.

  Each night he scooted closer until our shared breath lifted the book’s pages. When his leg first brushed mine, I shifted, conscious of the heat between us. But this too became familiar, safe because it went no further. His hand on my knee I knew trespassed the boundaries of virtue, yet each night found it there again, until finally I gave in and reset my boundaries: no higher.