The End of the Wild

by Nicole Helget

  “Looked like he was just drinking coffee, right?” I ask Alkomso.

  She nods.

  “Sometimes I used to wonder about how he dealt with it,” I say. I kick a stone out ahead of me. “Not that I feel sorry for him or anything. But I wondered if he drank a lot or something.” I almost add like Toivo, but I don’t.

  “Adults do all kinds of dumb things to handle problems. But drinking coffee doesn’t seem like a dumb way to do it.” She stuffs her hands in her pockets. “My mom sneaks cigarettes. Don’t tell my dad!”

  My mouth forms a big O. “Wow, I had no idea.”

  “Adults can be sneaky,” she adds. “Very sneaky.”

  The boys push and shove one another out ahead of us.

  “Move it, fatty,” Abdisalom says to Alkomso.

  She points back at the apartment. “You do that again, and you are going home! Got it?” Abdisalom giggles but nods.

  “Move it, fatty,” Alexi says to me.

  I glare at him. I feel a little sorry for myself. It’s a tough-enough day the way it is, without my annoying little brothers. I wish Toivo had offered to take them partridge hunting with him. I understand the need to be alone, especially out in the wild, especially on a day like today. But I could use a break, too.

  Chapter 11

  I lead our caravan out of town and down the dirt road, which is slippery and uneven. The mud sucks at our boots. Alkomso holds her skirt high. Even so, it’s heavy in the back with the weight of muck.

  For a long while, no one complains. The snow has stopped, clouds have moved east, the sun’s out, with sun dogs on either side of it, and the temperature is climbing, melting the snow that’s already fallen.

  The boys dart back and forth between the road and the woods. They hurl snowballs at one another and swing at them with sticks. The little white bombs explode. Snowy shrapnel lands in my hair. They swipe at one another with the sleds.

  We all stop at Mark-Richard’s and stare down the driveway. The snow has completely covered everything, so that it’s hard to tell his house was ever there.

  “Gary!” shouts Alexi. “Gary, are you there?”

  “He’s not, dummy,” says Mikko. “He’s in a foster home.”

  “Well, when is he coming back?” Alexi asks.

  “To where, you idiot?” says Mikko. “His house is gone! You think he’s going to live in a snow fort or what?”

  “Knock it off, Mikko,” I say. “He doesn’t know any better.” I put my hand on Alexi’s head. “I don’t know when he’s coming back.”

  “That’s bull!” Alexi kicks me in the leg and runs off.

  “Ow!”

  Mikko and Abdisalom chase him. Pretty soon they’re playing and searching for bear tracks. When the boys describe their encounter with the bear, Abdisalom’s eyes widen and dart back and forth.

  “Don’t worry,” says Alexi. “That dog who kills ducks will come and protect us. He’s a SuperDog, and Fernny named him SuperRanger.”

  Alkomso and I stare at Mark-Richard’s old place for a while longer. Near the woodpile, I see a neat stack of branches. I remember what Mark-Richard told me about having to find more firewood for winter. Looks like he collected those branches before the fire. For some reason, it makes my heart hurt.

  When we pass our house, I notice that Toivo’s truck is gone. I wonder where he went. Usually when he hunts, he simply walks out into Millner’s woods.

  “Fern,” Alkomso finally says, “how much farther to the fracking site, do you think?”

  “It’s just a little ways yet, I think,” I tell her. Alexi packs a snowball and heaves it at me. It smacks me right in the head. I claw a wet mass of slush out of my hair, and Alkomso wipes a snow glob off my shoulder.

  We hear the grumble of a struggling diesel engine coming up behind us.

  “Come on,” Alkomso says. “Get into the ditch, Abdisalom.”

  Alexi scrapes the tip of his boot into a rut in the road. He’s creating a little pool.

  “You, too, Alexi,” I say. “Come on. Get off the road.”

  “Just a minute!” he shouts. I grab the collar of his coat and drag him out of the way.

  We wait. The first thing I notice is the crooked snowplow. As the pickup gets closer, my head gets hotter and hotter.

  “It’s Millner,” I whisper. “Don’t look at him!”

  “Why not?” asks Alkomso.

  “I don’t know. J-just don’t!” I stutter.

  Alkomso turns herself then the boys by telling them she thinks she saw a moose out in the woods.

  “There aren’t any moose around here,” Mikko says.

  “Well,” she says, “I don’t know. Maybe it was the bear.” She pushes them in the direction of the woods. “Let’s go see!”

  “Maybe we can find a big pile of bear poop!” says Abdisalom.

  The boys make binoculars out of their hands and fingers and peer into the grove. Then they kick through the snow and toward the trees.

  Millner slows down. His engine chugs and chugs like it might die, but it doesn’t. As he passes by, he leans over and gets a good look at me.

  I stand still.

  He drives on ahead a little ways, brakes with a squeak, and stops. The reverse lights on his truck go on as he backs toward me.

  My head is hot. Maybe he’s going to try and hit me with his truck. Maybe he wants to kill me, too.

  His wheels pass about a foot in front of my feet.

  I can’t move.

  Millner leans over across his bench seat. He rolls down the window, releasing the smells of chewing tobacco and leather and dust.

  “Ah,” he begins. “You kids,” he says. His voice is barely above a whisper. He sounds old, like a grandpa. I wonder for the first time if Horace Millner has a family.

  He blinks and studies my face for a moment, then puts his hand on the shifter and puts the pickup back into first gear.

  “You kids,” he says again. “Watch out for them big trucks. They drive too fast. Don’t look where they’re going.”

  I say nothing. My whole head is burning up.

  He concentrates on what to say next. “Ah,” he starts, “you’re Toivo’s girl, ain’t you.” He doesn’t pose it as a question. He says the words as though he knows the answer.

  I nod.

  “Yeah.” He looks over my shoulder toward where Alkomso, Abdisalom, Mikko, and Alexi are, raises a crooked finger and points. “And them two. They’re Toivo’s other little boys.”

  I nod again.

  “Good man, that Toivo.” He waves his finger out the window. “There’s poison ivy. Between the pines.”

  I stare down the road, not at him and not at where he’s gesturing.

  “There’s jewelweed out there, too. Works good for the rash.” He swallows.

  “I already know that” is all I can say.

  “Yeah. I’m sure you do.” He lifts his foot from the clutch, and the truck inches forward a bit. Even as the pickup moves, he says, “You the one who cut the duck from my dog?”

  I shrug one shoulder.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I thought so.” He steps on the gas and drives away.

  As he approaches his driveway about a quarter mile down, I say it. “You killed my mom. You killed my brother.”

  Of course, he can’t hear me. But somehow, saying the words and letting them float on the air feels like enough.

  The noise of Millner’s truck arriving draws the dogs. They run to greet him in a barking and howling swarm. As he drives out of sight down his long, narrow driveway, all the dogs follow but two—Ranger and a black Lab whose belly hangs low to the ground.

  When I raise my hand and wave, Ranger barks a short blast that makes me jump. He runs toward us a ways, then stops to look back at the other dog. The black Lab wags her tail wildly until Ranger trots back to her. Side by side, they saunter down Horace Millner’s driveway and disappear.

  Alkomso comes up behind me. “I think those two dogs are in love.” She links her arms
around mine. “Are you okay?” she asks.

  I shrug my shoulders. My heart beats a million times a minute. “I don’t know.”

  When we find the boys, Abdisalom is on the ground with his bare hand buried in the snow. His face contorts in pain. His lips go tight. His eyes are clenched closed.

  “We told him not to touch it!” Mikko says. He points to a small bush with gnarled red leaves and shriveled white berries. Poison ivy. In every season, every part of the poison ivy plant is toxic.

  “Nu-uh,” says Alexi, “Mikko dared him!”

  “I did not,” says Mikko.

  Alkomso kneels next to Abdisalom. She grabs his wrist and pulls his hand out of the snow. “Sissy’s going to fix it,” she croons.

  “No!” I tell her. “Don’t touch his hand! The oil might still be on him.”

  She calmly lets go of his wrist. “All right, all right.”

  Abdisalom moans and kicks his legs. “Owie, it burns.”

  “Put your hand back in the snow,” Alkomso says. “Right?” she asks me.

  “Yes. Keep it in the snow for a minute.”

  I kick aside snow, sweeping at it in broad leg strokes until I discover a patch of jewelweed. The tallest leaves of one plant stick out above the snow. Water drops glisten on it like jewels. That’s how the plant got its name. I pull it up and break the stem in half. A clear, sticky gel oozes from the plant.

  I rush to Abdisalom. “Hold your hand up.”

  He does. A tiny blister is already beginning to form.

  I rub the plant all over Abdisalom’s hand. “Get me another one,” I tell Mikko and Alexi. “And watch out for poison ivy.”

  “Duh,” says Mikko.

  Within a minute, they come back with jewelweed up to their noses. As I rub the plant gel on Abdisalom’s hand, Alkomso distracts him by talking about the dogs, what’s for dinner, and whatever else comes to her mind. Within five minutes, he’s calm and smiling.

  I apply the gel of two more plants until Abdisalom starts to protest, “I’m fine!” When I’m done, I stuff jewelweed leaves into his mitten.

  “That stuff is amazing,” Alkomso says to me. “Someone should write down all the wonderful things you can find for free out in the woods.”

  Someone should do that, I think, and I realize it’s not the first time I’ve thought this.

  Chapter 12

  We walk another half mile. Pine trees, thirty and forty feet tall, reach toward the sky. Sometimes when one of us would catch a cold or get a chill, Mom would come out here, cut a branch from a low-hanging bough, and use the needles to make us a cup of pine-needle tea. She’d put the rest of the branch in a vase to keep the needles fresh. That way she could make another batch when she needed to. “Pine-needle tea is full of vitamin C,” she would say. “And it’ll clear your nose right up.” I never minded getting sick, because it meant we could go out to the woods and get the needles.

  In spring, the pine trees smelled like robin’s eggs, ice melt, tadpoles, wild violets, and soaked pinecones. In summer, the pine trees smelled like cool shade and ferns. In autumn, the pine trees smelled like milkweed seed and drying bones. In winter, the pine trees smelled like hoar frost, oyster mushrooms, freshwater clams, and Christmas.

  And whatever time of year it was, when Mom brought the boughs inside, the house smelled like all the good things outside.

  As we continue on, suddenly the woods stop, as though the trees have simply been sheared from the land. It’s a shocking difference. One step back and we are in the woods. Right here, we are at the end of the wild. The earth is covered with branches and dead pine needles, but the huge white pine grove that used to be here is leveled. On one end is what looks like a parking lot for the workers. There are two ruts in the dirt, where the workers must drive, leading from where we stand all the way to the lot.

  Mikko turns around, confused, and then looks at me and says, “What the—”

  Up ahead, there’s a muddy earthen berm with an orange snow fence at the top of it. Huge NO TRESPASSING signs hang everywhere. PROTECTIVE HEADGEAR REQUIRED PAST THIS POINT, another sign reads.

  “That must be the work area,” I tell Alkomso. “This doesn’t look exactly like the drawings from the book, does it?”

  Alkomso doesn’t answer. I go over to a kiosk that says PERSONNEL ONLY PAST THIS POINT. A map behind a glass pane details the construction progress. On it, where Horace Millner’s property is, a blue rectangle is labeled PROPOSED WASTEWATER HOLDING POND.

  “There it is. Right in Millner’s woods.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet they offered him a lot of money for that land.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  The boys come up for a look, too. Mikko sounds out a word. “P-ON-duh. Pond?” he asks. “That sounds great! We can swim in it!” Then he works out the rest of the words. “Wastewater?” he asks. “What’s that?”

  “Sounds like a toilet exploded!” shouts Alexi.

  “Or dinosaur diarrhea,” adds Abdisalom.

  “Or frog turds,” says Mikko.

  While Alkomso and I look at the map, I notice an electrical sound humming all around us, but I can’t tell where it’s coming from.

  “Do you know what the wastewater is?” I ask. “Exactly?”

  “I read about it,” Alkomso says. She seems hesitant to tell me.

  “And?”

  “Um, water and sand.”

  “Anything else?”

  “And maybe a few chemicals,” she adds. “That’s all I remember.”

  “Huh,” I say. “Sounds… dirty.”

  She shrugs. “There are a lot of nice cars over in the parking lot. I bet the workers make a good living.”

  My face gets hot. “Maybe we should go and take a look inside the work area. You know… for your project.”

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to go in there,” she says. “We’ll probably get into trouble.”

  But I’m already walking, and the boys are following me. I don’t look back, but I think Alkomso is following, too.

  I approach the berm the company built. “Stay down here,” I say to the boys.

  I scramble up the dirt. Rocks and snow fall inside my boot. The knees of my jeans get wet and dirty. Soon Alkomso, soppy and muddy, is right beside me.

  When we get to the top, a variety of sounds become clear—the beeping of machinery as it backs up, the grinding of bulldozer tracks, the release of pressure from hydraulic pumps. We reach the fence and use our fingers to widen the small squares of the plastic. Then we align our eyeballs so that we can see inside.

  There’s a huge hole dug out of the earth and then smoothed over. Grandpa’s piping is stacked neatly at one end of the hole.

  “Oh!” says Alkomso. “It’s like a little city!”

  “All this used to be trees,” I say. “I can’t believe it.”

  Abdisalom is trying to get up the berm. “I want to see. I want to see. Help me up!”

  Alexi and Mikko tackle the berm, too.

  “I told you to stay down there,” I say.

  They don’t listen. Alexi tries to pull Abdisalom up, but they both go sliding back down the rise. Mikko falls forward, at the top, at my feet. He crawls to the fence and looks through it.

  “Holy cow!” he says. “What in the hell-o kitty happened to the woods?”

  There is a strange scent on the breeze, something that reminds me of when you crush an aspirin between two spoons. Alkomso puts the end of her scarf over her nose. The smell of pine is gone.

  “It smells like poison now,” I say.

  A few feet beyond the inside of the fence, a shallow cavity begins, big as twenty acres or so. Some of the trucks we’ve been seeing on our road are lined up in one area. Some are driving in and out of the work site over makeshift roads. Near where we are standing lie basic building materials—sheet metal and ready-to-assemble ceiling and wall frames. Small trailers have been placed side by side. Outside one of the trailers, work shirts and jeans are drying on a sawhorse.


  “Look over there,” says Mikko. He pokes his finger through the fence and points to the center of the work site. There, workers walk on the metal beams of something that looks like the skeleton of a pyramid. “What’s that going to be?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “The drill,” says Alkomso. “That’s going to be the drill.”

  Then I see something on the other end of the pit, right inside the entrance gate.

  Toivo’s pickup.

  I squint and scan the work site. Where is he? What’s he doing here?

  He said he was going partridge hunting.

  A job. That’s the only thing he could be doing here. Getting a job. I flip through my memories and try to remember exactly what he said. I thought we agreed that he would not work here. I thought he understood how I felt about it.

  I take off my mittens and throw them on the ground. I grip the fence and shake it.

  “Hey,” says Alkomso. “What’s wrong?”

  “Toivo’s in there.” I point. “Getting a job.”

  “What?” She looks to where I’m looking. “Are you sure?”

  “Why else would he be in there?”

  She grabs my arm and pulls me to the ground. “Get down! There he is!”

  Toivo steps out of a white trailer that says OFFICE and walks across a bunch of boards thrown down as a path and gets into his truck. Another man steps out of the trailer with a clipboard. They wave at each other. Toivo drives toward the gate, which opens electronically to let him out. Alkomso and I stay on our bellies, watching his truck turn onto the gravel road, which leads back home. We don’t move until his pickup is out of sight.

  “He told me he was going hunting,” I say.

  “Maybe he meant hunting for a job.”

  “No, he didn’t mean that.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad,” she says. “My dad’s going to work here.”

  “It’s terrible, Alkomso. Terrible!”

  “Why? People have to make a living, Fern. Maybe if Toivo got a job there, your grandpa wouldn’t be trying to take you away. Maybe you could get a better house.”

  I can tell that Alkomso thinks she’s being helpful, but her words make me so mad. “I can’t believe you want these frackers to put a poison pond in my woods, and you want Toivo to work for them just because your dad does!” My heart beats hard.