Where the Forest Meets the Stars

by Vanderah, Glendy

  “I know what you mean, and you’re right. She even said it herself. No one gets a mammogram at age twenty-four. If she hadn’t gotten sick and found out she carries the mutation, my cancer might not have been found until it was too late.”

  “I hope you don’t mind that I know, but I heard you made them take out everything.”

  “They didn’t take out everything. I kept my uterus. I’m pretty sure they left in most of my brain, too.”

  He didn’t smile this time. “Maybe you should have waited to make that decision.”

  He was probably expressing opinions exchanged between professors and graduate students during the two years she’d been away. “My mom’s mother and sister died of ovarian cancer before age forty-five,” she said. “I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for that time bomb to explode.”

  “Didn’t you save the eggs or anything?”

  “Why, so I can pass this misery on to a daughter?”

  “I see your point. But what about the hormones?”

  “What about them?”

  “Doesn’t having no ovaries make you go into menopause?”

  He’d definitely been discussing her medical decisions. He’d probably never uttered the word menopause before she’d been diagnosed. “I’m on hormone replacement therapy,” Jo said.

  “Does that make you feel normal?”

  She supposed kicking him in the nuts wouldn’t appear very normal. Instead, she said, “Yeah, I feel great.”

  He nodded, tipped the bottle to his lips, and drained it. “You know that actress”—he tried to remember the woman’s name, but his brain cells were too pickled—“she had one of those mutations, too, and she had everything taken out. She had reconstruction, and they say she has really nice . . . you know . . .”

  “She has really nice tits because she’s rich enough to make her body any way she wants it. And she never had cancer. She could save her nipples and any skin and tissue that wasn’t at risk.”

  He got brave enough to look at her chest. “But don’t you think someday you’ll—”

  “No! Get over it! If I’m happy with what I look like, you should be happy with it. Do you get that, Tanner? Is it even possible for you to see me as a whole person anymore?”

  “Shit . . . Jo, I’m sorry . . .”

  “Go back to Carly. And you two can quit pretending you aren’t together to spare me the grief. There isn’t any.” She walked away into a numbing black cloud of cricket and katydid noise. It was like going under anesthesia, the darkness driving deeper and deeper the farther she walked. When she came out, she was standing next to the creek. She’d been crying.

  “Jo?”

  She turned around. In the shadowed moonlight, the girl looked like a changeling again, her pale face marked with the veins of forest branches.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Jo said.

  “I think you’re lying.”

  The sound of Little Bear lapping water from the creek filled the space between them.

  “Ursa, you have to—”

  “I know. I’m going,” she said.

  “You’re going home?”

  She unscrewed the lid of the jar and held the glass in the air. Her fireflies discovered their freedom one by one, an expanding constellation in the dark forest. She put the lid back and gave the jar to Jo. “Come on, Little Bear,” she said.

  Jo watched girl and dog walk up the slope toward the road. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going where you want me to go,” she said.

  7

  Jo worked an exhausting fifteen hours in the Shawnee Forest the next day, as much to purge Tanner Bruce from her mind as to make up for lost time after the rainy day. Maybe she also did it to prove she wasn’t sick. She monitored and searched for nests in all of her “natural edge” study sites, the most difficult to work in because they had to be far from human disturbances, and once she reached them, she often had to wade through riparian thickets of catbrier and stinging nettle.

  The sun had dropped behind the treetops when she, and the variety of creatures that had attached to her, climbed into the Honda. Exercise and the green world had rejuvenated her, as they always did. Tanner and his loutish opinions were still with her but ignorable, like a malfunctioning idiot light on a car dashboard.

  But she couldn’t clear the little alien from her thoughts. From the moment she awoke, Jo had chastised herself for not seeing the girl to her door, though she doubted the girl had gone home. When Ursa walked away she’d said, I’m going where you want me to go . The more Jo tried to interpret what that meant, the more ominous it sounded. Yet she’d just stood there and watched the girl disappear into the night.

  She turned onto Turkey Creek Road, certain the girl would be at Kinney Cottage waiting for her. Then she would wish the girl had disappeared. In the last bit of gray twilight, she pulled up the gravel driveway. She looked at the hickory in the front yard. No girl. No dog.

  She dropped her gear on the screened porch and walked to the fire pit. “Ursa?” she called. The only reply was the peent! of a nighthawk foraging over the field behind the house.

  A car was coming. No one drove that far down the road unless they were lost. A NO OUTLET sign at the start of the road prevented most people from mistaking the road for another. Jo strode out front as Egg Man’s white pickup, barely recognizable in the late twilight gloom, rounded the corner. His tires crunched to a stop behind her car, and he turned off the motor. Whatever he had come to say would take some time.

  Jo walked out to meet him as he stood out of the truck.

  “I heard you come down the road,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  She kept distance between them. “What’s up?”

  He stepped closer. “I think you know what. You’ve dumped the alien on me.”

  “I didn’t tell her to go to your house!”

  “Why didn’t you take her to the police?”

  “Did you?”

  He walked nearer, close enough that she scented strong cooking aromas. Whatever he’d had for dinner smelled good enough to make her hungry.

  “You should get this light fixed,” he said, looking up at the utility pole.

  “It went out two weeks ago, and I decided I like it better dark.”

  “It’s not better when some hooligans decide a dark house is an easier target than a lighted one.”

  Hooligans. Who used words like that anymore?

  He rubbed his hand back and forth over one bearded cheek. “This girl is a real piece of work. You know what she’s doing right now?”

  “Reading War and Peace ?”

  “Then you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “How weirdly smart she is.”

  “I told you that the day we talked about her.”

  “Yeah, but now I’ve seen it up close. My mother thinks she’s really bright, too.”

  “Your mother?”

  “I take care of her. She’s sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, echoing what so many people had said to her.

  He nodded.

  “Did the alien tell you her name?” Jo asked.

  “She calls herself Ursa Major because that’s where she’s from.”

  “Same name she gave me. I’m thinking Ursa might be her real name.”

  “So do I,” he said. “I looked all over the internet for a missing girl called Ursa.”

  Jo moved closer to him. “Did you see that Missing and Exploited Children website?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “Did you see the picture of the shoes?”

  “You saw that, too? How can that be? How is it no one misses that dead boy?”

  “Sounds like you’ve been going through the same process I did,” she said.

  “At least five times I nearly called the sheriff’s office. But I decided to talk to you first.”

  “I have no advice,” she said. “Unless you’re willing to lock her
in a room.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. I called the sheriff the night you and I talked. She didn’t tell you about that?”

  “No. What happened?”

  “She ran away, like she said she would. The deputy never even saw her.”

  “Damn,” he said. “I had a feeling that would happen if I called. What did the deputy say? Did he know of any missing kids?”

  “He didn’t. He acted like I was wasting his time. He didn’t say he’d try to find her—even when I told him about the bruises.”

  His body visibly tensed. “She has bruises?”

  “On her neck, arm, and leg. They’re covered by her clothes.”

  “Jesus. Do the bruises look like they’re from abuse?”

  “There are finger marks in one of them.”

  “Did you tell the cop that?”

  “I made it clear I was certain someone had hurt her. But the guy is biased against kids being taken out of their homes. He told me a story about his friend in middle school. The kid was put with abusive foster parents, and he ended up killing himself.”

  “He told you not to turn her in?”

  “Not exactly. But he said people often take foster kids for the money. He said even if Ursa’s bruises were from abuse, she would lie about how she got them. He said a foster home might be as bad as where she came from, and she would know that.”

  “What kind of screwed-up advice is that for a cop to give?”

  “Is it?”

  “You agree with him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t had time to think since I talked to the guy. I had visitors yesterday . . .”

  “Ursa told me.”

  “You know what I figured out yesterday? I don’t think she’s from around here.”

  “Strange that you say that . . . ,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I had the same thought today. When I showed her newborn kittens, she went nuts. She said they were a miracle. She’d obviously never seen small kittens, and country kids see lots of them.”

  “She had another miracle?”

  “Only three to go, she says.”

  “Her first miracle was baby birds.”

  “She told me,” he said.

  “Like you said, a country kid would have seen baby birds at least once by her age. I think she’s from a city and maybe got dumped out of a car.”

  “She talks like she’s from around here.”

  “Maybe Saint Louis,” Jo said.

  “They don’t have that much country twang over there.”

  “Paducah?”

  “I searched every southern state that might produce that accent, even as far as Florida,” he said. “She isn’t listed as missing.”

  “If her caretakers dumped her out of a car, they obviously won’t report her missing.”

  “Maybe she ran away,” he said. “She’s too smart for whatever idiots would do this to her. I never told you what she’s working on.”

  “What?”

  “She saw some books about Shakespeare on our shelves and asked if I liked him. When I told her I love Shakespeare . . .”

  Jo lost his next few words while she absorbed that Egg Man loved Shakespeare.

  “. . . she was going to name the six kittens after people in Shakespeare’s plays. She asked to use my computer to read about Shakespeare’s characters so she could decide which names to use. That’s what she’s doing right now, studying the plays.”

  “She did this with me, sort of plugged in to my interest in birds—even read some of my Ornithology textbook. I think she does it to make people attach to her.”

  “Maybe that’s how she survives her screwed-up family.”

  “They obviously aren’t attached.”

  “No shit.”

  Jo leaned against the front of his truck and pressed her hand to her forehead.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “I’m too tired to deal with this right now.”

  “You look like you need to sit down.”

  She stepped away from his truck. “I put in a fifteen-hour day. What I need is a shower, dinner, and sleep.”

  “First, would you talk to her?”

  “About what?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “I have a confession. Ursa and I came over to look for you twice tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s worried. She says you have cancer.”

  “God damn it! Let’s just broadcast it from every cell phone tower.”

  He uncrossed his arms. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “I don’t think it is, but the graduate students and my advisor have been thorough enough.”

  “Are you in remission?”

  “I guess that’s what they call it.”

  “Would you let Ursa see you’re okay and maybe tell her that? She’s afraid you’re going to die.”

  “We’re all going to die.”

  “Let’s do a nine-year-old version.”

  “Yeah. I have to talk to her anyway. I felt bad about sending her away last night.”

  “You had to. She said you were going to get in trouble with your advisor.”

  “Is there any detail of my life you two didn’t discuss?”

  “We never got into your choice of undergarments.”

  Undergarments. His mother must be influencing his vocabulary.

  “I’ll drive you over in my truck,” he said.

  “I’m a mess.”

  “So’s my truck.”

  She knew nothing about Egg Man—a.k.a. Gabriel Nash—other than that a guy who loved Shakespeare should be too educated to sell eggs on a country road. She remembered his sudden display of anger after Ursa asked him if he was getting a PhD. And Jo had seen no evidence of his alleged mother. Maybe he’d killed Ursa and he was using her as bait to lure Jo into the same trap. For the hundredth time that day, Jo berated herself for letting a nine-year-old go off into the woods alone.

  He saw her hesitation. “Follow me in your car, if you prefer.”

  “I think I will.”

  “You’re smart to be cautious,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  He considered how to answer. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’ve had plenty of opportunities since you’ve lived here.”

  “So have I, if I wanted to hurt you,” she said, because he had no right to see a woman living alone in the woods as an invitation for violence.

  He smiled slightly, a hint of white teeth in the darkness. “Usually more than one person rents the house. Why is it only you this summer?”

  “It’s just the way it worked out,” she said.

  The truth was, a graduate student who studied hill-prairie insects had planned to live in the Kinney house that summer—until he heard he would be sharing it with Jo. He used his research money to rent another house, claiming he wanted to be nearer to his study sites. But Jo suspected he didn’t want to live in close confines with a woman who wasn’t exactly a woman anymore. More than a few of the male graduate students had been awkward around her since she’d returned, especially the ones who used to flirt with her. Her psychologist had warned her of such reactions from men, but the injury of it couldn’t be alleviated by any number of therapy sessions. Dealing with the pain was a day-by-day ordeal. Nature and her research were some of her only respites.

  “That’s too bad,” Egg Man said. “Must be kind of lonely.”

  “It’s not,” she said. “I prefer to live alone when I’m doing research. Having people around is distracting.”

  He opened his truck door. “I guess that was a hint. Follow me over.”

  8

  The furrowed lane that led onto Egg Man’s property hadn’t been graveled for years, and only the width of his truck kept the forest from conquering it. Jo took the road slowly, the Honda rocking and squeaking as its tires dipped into deep troughs. She heard loud woofs before Little Bear’s
eyes appeared, glowing in the headlights. He continued barking, running between the truck and SUV as the press of dark forest opened into a yard lit by a utility light.

  Egg Man sprang from his truck and tried to shush the dog.

  “I see you’ve inherited Little Bear as well as Big Bear,” Jo said, stepping from her car.

  “I told Ursa he can’t stay on my property.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I know,” he said. “I let her feed him.”

  “I’m seeing a pattern here.”

  “I had to. I didn’t want him to have a hungry belly around my chickens and piglets.”

  “You have pigs?”

  “Haven’t you smelled them?”

  “I wouldn’t know the smell of a pig from a horse.”

  “Like most city folk.”

  City folk pricked her ears again. “Do you eat your pigs?” she asked.

  “Actually, I read Shakespeare to them.” He smiled at her. “Yes, I eat them. We live off the land as much as possible. I hate going into grocery stores.”

  “Problematic aversion.”

  “You have no idea,” he said, but she didn’t get his meaning.

  He glanced at the lit windows of the cabin. “The story with Ursa is that she lives around here, but her parents have issues. That’s what my mother thinks, but she’s still not keen on her being here.”

  “Didn’t Ursa tell her the alien story?”

  “Yeah, but that only made my mother feel more sorry for her. She says Ursa is creating a fantasy to escape her reality.”

  “Which is true.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he said. “Ursa doesn’t believe that crap.”

  “Then why does she stick to it?”

  “Because she’s smart.”

  “How is it smart to pretend she’s an alien?”

  “I don’t know. I’m too stupid to figure it out yet.”

  Ursa bounded out the front door, ran across the porch, and jumped over the three steps as if she’d been doing it for years. “He found you!” She wrapped her arms around Jo’s middle and laid her head on her belly. “I missed you, Jo! And guess what? I saw another miracle!”