The Inverted Forest

by John Dalton

  They made no effort to hide the clamor of their arrival: the squawking car doors, the stomp of their footsteps across the cedar-board front porch. Captain Throckmorton knocked on the door and knocked again. “Caroline Huddy!” he called out. No answer. And no sounds or movement from the inner precincts of the house. After several minutes of waiting he shrugged and turned the doorknob.

  “Wait a minute now,” Rachel Young said. She’d been wavering on the lip of the porch and had turned to them with a blanched expression. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “When the document’s ready, you holler and I’ll come on in with my stamp.”

  They gave her a sympathetic nod. Captain Throckmorton pushed open the door.

  Inside they discovered a living room thronged with debris: piles of scuffed secondhand furniture, great mounds of wadded-up plastic bags and bundled clothing. Pathways had been cleared from one room to the next. In the kitchen a large dormant portable generator had been set up on cinder blocks near an open window. A bright orange extension cord ran out from the generator, across the floor, and into the hallway.

  They followed the cord up a cluttered staircase to the second-floor landing and finally to a closed bedroom door. “Anyone home?” Captain Throckmorton inquired. “Caroline? Caroline Huddy?” Propped against the doorframe was a twin-barrel shotgun, which Ed McClintock hoisted up with one hand. He snapped open the chambers and removed both shells and set the gun back in its place. Then he eased open the bedroom door.

  Caroline Huddy was propped up waiting for them in a bed full of scavenged sofa cushions. There was nothing haphazard about the arrangement of these cushions; they’d been stacked in careful layers at the rear of the bed so that they rose up thronelike and supported her broad back. Each of her plump forearms had its own plaid cushion. Arrayed across the quilt were dozens of essential items in sealed Ziploc bags: candy and nuts and various breakfast cereals, tissues, lip balms, remote controls for the television and VCR.

  She looked up at them from the encampment of her bed. The best that could be said of her, physically, was that she had clear hazel eyes edged with vivid black lashes. (No mascara on those lashes; their thickness and length and curled ends appeared to be natural gifts.) Otherwise her features were blunt and heavy, her face hinged with an overlarge jaw—an old-time boxer’s jaw—and her mouth set in one long, thin, inexpressive line. It was hard to see any clear resemblance to Wyatt, except maybe in the general stockiness of her build and in the size and roughness of Caroline Huddy’s resting hands.

  “Did I invite any of you into my house?” Caroline Huddy asked. “Did I?” she insisted. “Any of you?” Each time she uttered the word any, in her wispy, unused voice, she stared directly at Harriet.

  “We had no choice but to let ourselves in,” Captain Throckmorton said. “I apologize for that. But we’re here to talk over some important matters.”

  She sat up straighter against her wall of layered cushions. Again she lifted her gaze and studied each of her three visitors: Captain Throckmorton, Ed McClintock, Harriet. There was a murky, hard-to-determine quality in Caroline Huddy’s posture and blunt expression, but if Harriet had to guess, she would say she was seeing a woman marginally pleased to have uninvited guests in the doorway of her bedroom, a woman ready to be included in the serious talk.

  “There are decisions to be made,” Captain Throckmorton said. “Regarding your brother, Wyatt.”

  Caroline huffed air through her broad nose and then, patiently, lowered and raised her thick eyelashes.

  “You’re aware of what happened to Wyatt last summer at Kindermann Forest?”

  “I know you sent him off to camp,” she said. “And I know he squeezed the stuffing out of some dumb son-of-a-bitch counselor.” All this she recited matter-of-factly; her words might have been barbed, but the delivery was dispassionate.

  “Yes,” Captain Throckmorton said. “I did send him off. And there was a tragedy at camp. You probably also know that Wyatt is being prosecuted in Shannon County, Missouri, and the prosecution will go forward one of two ways. That’s what our friend here, Harriet Foster, has come to talk to you about.”

  Harriet stepped forward. It would be a mistake, she knew, a grievous insult, to sit on the edge of Caroline Huddy’s bed. Fortunately, there was a seamstress’s stool in the corner of the room. “May I use the stool?” she asked and, having received permission from Caroline Huddy in the form of an indifferent shrug, Harriet took the stool and sat at the bedside.

  “I’m a friend of Wyatt,” Harriet began. “I worked as the camp nurse last summer at Kindermann Forest.”

  “A friend?”

  “That’s right. A good friend, I hope.”

  Caroline Huddy gazed at her somberly. “You Negro girls will go with anyone, won’t you?” It was voiced with such mildness, this remark, as if it, too, were a kind of uninvited guest, poised on the threshold, wondering shyly if it could come in. “I bet you don’t like the word Negro, do you?” Caroline Huddy asked. “There’s another name I could use.”

  At this Ed McClintock let out a gruff sigh and stepped back out of the room. They could hear his creaking footsteps on the landing, then the stairs.

  “People use all sorts of names,” Harriet said. “Here are two names I’m willing to accept from you. You can call me Ms. Foster or Nurse Harriet. Anything else and we’re going to have trouble.”

  There was from Caroline Huddy a softening of her blunt expression. “All right then, Nurse Harriet,” she said. For the time being she seemed pleased to have made this concession. More so, there was an even stronger sense of what Harriet had first noticed upon entering the bedroom: Caroline Huddy was eager for camaraderie. How very odd and impossible this was. She seemed to want to say the most poisonous things. And she wanted someone—anyone, a black nurse even—to be her dearest friend.

  “What I want to tell you,” Harriet explained, “is that your brother, Wyatt, will be tried sometime next summer. The prosecutor wants to seek a second-degree murder conviction, which means—”

  “He’ll be put in the electric chair.”

  “No, no. They won’t be seeking a death sentence. But they will ask the jury for life in prison. There’s another way to go about it, though. We can make it clear to the judge that instead of prison Wyatt should be put in a state hospital or group home. He shouldn’t stand trial at all because of his diminished intelligence.”

  “Diminished intelligence,” Caroline Huddy repeated. She seemed to think it a marvelous term.

  “Because he’s mentally retarded.”

  “Wyatt?” she said. “Retarded? He may look that way, Nurse Harriet. But it’s a condition he has.”

  “I know about the condition. Some people with Apert syndrome have a normal IQ. And others suffer from mental retardation. It’s much better for Wyatt if we make it clear to the judge that because of his diminished intelligence he didn’t know what he was doing at the time of the murder.”

  “Didn’t know?” Caroline Huddy said. She shook her head in dumb wonder. “He squeezed a man to death without knowing?”

  “In my car I have a typewriter. It’s electric. I’m guessing that Captain Throckmorton or Ed McClintock can start up the generator in your kitchen. I can sit here by your bedside and type a statement that explains how you saw plenty of signs of Wyatt’s diminished intelligence when he was growing up. When it’s done, we’ll call up a woman we have waiting on your front porch, a notary public named Rachel Young. You’ll sign the statement in her presence and she’ll put her notary stamp on it.”

  “Rachel Young? I won’t sign anything in front of that bitch.”

  “There’s no time to find anyone else. It’ll have to be Rachel.”

  Caroline Huddy sighed wistfully. “Too bad for you then. My answer is no.”

  “A statement from you could make the difference for Wyatt,” Harriet said. “The difference between a lifetime in prison, which we both know would be awful, and a life being cared for in a state mental health fac
ility. If he went to a state facility, he’d have a chance of getting out someday. I’d like you to think about that a minute, please, Caroline.”

  To this Caroline Huddy tipped back her head and narrowed her features in mock deliberation. While she performed this act, they could hear Ed McClintock climbing the stairs again. A moment later he was in the bedroom doorway holding an object behind his back.

  “I’ve thought it all through,” Caroline Huddy announced. “And my answer— Are you ready, Nurse Harriet? My answer is still no. No and no again. There’s a reason for it, too. I’m saying no because there’s a big difference between retarded and stupid. Wyatt’s always been stupid. And if you do a stupid thing, Nurse Harriet, then you pay the price.”

  “Have you paid the price? For the stupid things—”

  “Shut your face,” Caroline Huddy said. “You don’t know a damn thing about what I’ve done.”

  “Excuse me, ladies,” Ed McClintock said. He’d taken a few steps forward into the bedroom. To Caroline Huddy he tipped his head in a tepid nod. “Look here, Caroline,” he said, and from behind his back he produced what looked to be a steering wheel, thin and overlarge and chipped along its outer edges. “When I was passing through your living room, I happened to see this little gem. From an Oliver 70 series farm tractor. A model from the nineteen forties, or maybe fifties. I’m not sure. You know I collect old tractor seats and steering wheels, and so I thought—”

  “Put your twenty dollars on my dresser and get out of my room.”

  “I will,” he said. “But I think it’s only fair to mention that this steering wheel is a real gem to me. To another collector it might only be worth twenty dollars. To me, though, it’s worth more.” He freed his wallet from his back pocket and held it open so that Caroline Huddy could see the layered bills in its fold. “The fairest price I can think of, for me personally, is all the money I’ve got here in my wallet. That would be two hundred dollars even.”

  She was, for the time being, frozen in a state of surprise that looked entirely genuine.

  “I’ll go ahead and put this two hundred dollars on the dresser for you, Caroline,” Ed McClintock said. “I’ll do it once you and Ms. Foster have sorted through your difficulties . . . once the statement’s been typed up and Rachel’s had a chance to put her stamp on it.”

  It was hard to imagine what a smile from Caroline Huddy might look like, but here it was: a sudden creasing of her long, thin mouth, and a blossoming in her cheeks that was almost girlish. “You’re as worse as the rest of them,” she said. “You come into my house thinking you’re better, but you’re worse. Truly you are. Someone should report you,” she said gamely.

  “Nothing to report,” Ed McClintock said. “All I’m doing is paying fair money for an item that’s important to me.”

  “Hell you are,” she said. “God damn hell you are.” She appeared to be on the verge of a strange, eruptive laughter. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ed,” she said. “Know what I should do? I should call out the authorities on you.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Should I fetch you the telephone?”

  “I should throw that money right back in your fat face.”

  “Maybe you should,” he said. There was an acute, mocking humor in his sidelong gaze. “Then you can sit up here and wait for the next collector to come by and offer you two hundred dollars. That’d be something, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well it might . . . It would. God damn it.”

  “It sure would. Because I looked through your kitchen cupboards downstairs, Caroline. Ain’t a damn thing in them. Everything you have to get by on is right here on your bed.” He stood back and surveyed her Ziploc bags of cereals and nuts—her various luxuries.

  “You go straight to god damn hell, you bastard. You don’t know a thing. You don’t know anything, you fucker.” Caroline Huddy was beyond herself then, rocking back and forth against her cushions, crying out half-strangled phrases that were crude and bitter one moment and loaded with self-pity the next. She said she’d been treated badly all her life. Everyone in Jeff City knew it, too. She’d had a sick mother, a worthless father. And Wyatt. She’d done the best she could with Wyatt, spoiled him, loved him too much.

  “The god damn shame of it is this,” she said. “I’ve taken care of people all my life and now there’s no one round to take care of me.” She wagged her head back and forth, amazed that she’d spoken this truth aloud. Her face was covered with a film of tears and mucus, which she wiped at with the underside of her forearm. “God damn it. God damn it. God damn it,” she cursed. Then she gave a slow nod of acceptance and a long, deep steadying breath. “Run and get your god damn typewriter,” she said to Harriet. “I’ll tell the judge about Wyatt being dim-witted.”

  “About his diminished intelligence,” Harriet corrected her.

  “Yes, God damn it. About his diminished intelligence. His mental retardation. But I’ll do it in my own words, you understand? You’ll type it out just like I say it.”

  It took time for Harriet to retrieve the typewriter from her car, more time for Captain Throckmorton and Ed McClintock to find a canister of gasoline and prime the generator in the kitchen. There were long minutes when Harriet waited at the bedside for a steady current of electricity to power the typewriter on her lap. It wasn’t a matter of feeling awkward. She’d grown accustomed to that. It was the prospect of being the lone witness to Caroline Huddy’s life in this bedroom: the way she sat propped up in her bed, blinking her long eyelashes, looking out the window and reaching into a bag, now and then, for a handful of cornflakes. A gaze out the window. A handful of cornflakes. A blinking consideration of the stacked boxes and bags on her dresser and bookshelves. The sum and substance of her life. Horrible to imagine it going on like this day after day.

  Yet Caroline Huddy seemed to have developed a supreme patience for it. She chewed her cornflakes and let her gaze drift across the room and settle on Harriet. “Hey, Nurse Harriet,” she said. “Let me ask you something. The times you’ve gone to see Wyatt locked up in jail, does he look sorry? Sorry for what he’s done?”

  “Yes, he does. Very sorry.”

  She parted her thin lips. Her unlikely smile presented itself. “All right then. Let me ask you this. The counselor boy that Wyatt squeezed to death. Did you know him?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Well enough to know what kind of person he was.”

  “And what kind of person was he?”

  “The very worst kind.”

  “Really?” Caroline Huddy said. Clearly, she’d not expected this reply. The surprise of it, the novelty, made her overlarge jaw hang open. “The very worst kind?” she repeated. She needed some private time, apparently, to sort through this riddle, and so she turned again and surveyed the view outside her window. Her hand burrowed into the bag of cornflakes. After a while she grew absolutely still. Then she turned back to Harriet with a face purged of its anger and gruff confidence. Caroline Huddy’s voice wavered. “Worse than me?” she asked.

  It might have been the most sincere and pleading inquiry Harriet had ever heard. She sat and considered her answer. “Yes,” Harriet said. “He was worse.” After all, she still needed an affidavit from the one remaining member of Wyatt’s family.

  But her private, unspoken answer would not have been so different. Yes, Christopher Waterhouse was worse, she might say. Worse because he seemed to Harriet to be entirely self-satisfied, an untroubled young man with a terrible selfishness and a sharp eye for the next opportunity. Caroline Huddy, on the other hand, was full of misery. Not regret. She wasn’t sorry. Neither of them was. But at least Caroline Huddy was miserable.

  Moments later the typewriter thrummed to life. Harriet rolled in a fresh piece of paper and recorded, as faithfully as possible, Caroline Huddy’s terse remembrances and opinions. Rachel Young was called up to witness the signing of the statement. And once this was accomplished, the only reason for being at the Huddy farm dissolve
d and they were all—Harriet and Rachel and Ed McClintock and Captain Throckmorton—eager to be gone. The generator was shut down, the typewriter packed away. A stack of twenty-dollar bills was left on the bedroom dresser.

  All the while Caroline Huddy, who’d crawled out from beneath the quilts of her bed—she could walk well enough it seemed, or at least shamble along the cleared pathways of her house—was calling out curses and insults and other provocations meant to snare them in an argument and delay their departure, if only by a minute or two.

  No one bothered to answer her. They would not be delayed. Hurriedly, they climbed into their cars and away they went, out along the crumbling dirt roads to the prettier blacktop lanes and finally a convenience store parking lot where Harriet climbed from her car to say goodbye. But how exactly to thank Captain Throckmorton and Ed McClintock for their help? “Thank you,” she said and patted their hefty shoulders, though this gesture seemed only to embarrass them. She would have to find a better way, she told herself, when they met up again for the trial next summer. But the trial didn’t happen. She never saw or spoke to either man again.

  Halfway to St. Louis she stopped at a rest area and couldn’t resist pulling Caroline Huddy’s affidavit from its manila folder.

  I raised Wyatt up after the death of our beloved mother, Florence Huddy. He was not a smart or reliable child. His attention wandered. He had to be told again and again and again what work to do and what was right and what was wrong. I always knew Wyatt to be slow and stubborn, and some people say this falls in line with having a diminished intelligence. I’m not trained in this area. I can’t say. But maybe so. In my opinion he was fine and could be controlled here in the relaxing environment of our farm. But once he left and was under the supervision of others, he ran into a lot of trouble. As for the tragedy, who knows how much he understood or didn’t understand? I always taught him to behave better. It’s also my opinion that queers and Negro nurses should keep with their own kind and quit putting their noses in other people’s business.