The Inverted Forest

by John Dalton

  “Remind me again,” Schuller said. “Who is Wyatt Huddy?”

  “One of the counselors.”

  “Which one?”

  How best to identify Wyatt? She might say, The one who is large and strong. Or The one who, with just a little encouragement, just a few affectionate gestures, can be persuaded to do what I want. She said, “The one with the distorted face.”

  Schuller nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I remember now.”

  “He shouldn’t be the only one out there, Mr. Kindermann. We need help from the outside. From the police,” she said. “The police in Ellsinore should be called out to camp.”

  He stood and weighed this suggestion while rocking back and forth on the heels of his loafers. “The Ellsinore Police,” he said. “You think they’d be able to help us?” He shook his head, mildly. “Maybe we should just wait awhile. Sometimes these problems work themselves out.”

  “Not this problem,” she said. “It’s a call that has to be made. I’ll do it if you like.”

  He shrugged. “Well, I’m too . . . tired to be making phone calls tonight,” he said. He turned and surveyed the tidy arrangement of furniture in his cottage. He raised his eyebrows wearily. “If a phone call is going to get made tonight, you’re the one who’s going to be handling it.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “And when the Ellsinore police chief comes to camp, you’ll speak to him. Can you do that, Nurse Harriet? Can you be the . . . director of this emergency?”

  “I can. Yes.”

  “Well, that’s good to know,” he said. “But tell me this, please. If you had a place like Kindermann Forest, if you were the director . . . what kind of camp do you think it would be?”

  She could do nothing but stare at him perplexed. “I don’t know, Mr. Kindermann,” she said. “I’m sure it would be a hard place to manage. But the first thing, I guess, is that I’d try and make it as safe a place as possible.”

  He gave her answer a cool nod of appreciation. “Well,” he said. “I always had it in my mind that I’d make a camp for children who liked to sit someplace quiet and make beautiful things. A camp for a boy like your son, James. That was my idea. But it hardly ever works out that way. You can’t pick and choose which kids come to your camp. You get all sorts. All kinds of campers. All kinds of counselors.” He shook his head, dismayed. “You can’t control it as well as you hoped,” Schuller said. “After a while, it all gets away from you. It all goes . . .” He held out his thin arms. “Beyond your reach.”

  She hoisted James onto her back and carried him in a stooping walk across the meadow toward the infirmary. He wasn’t often awake this late at night, and from his high perch on her back she could feel him turning about and raising his head to take in his surroundings: the clear, star-crowned, temperate night.

  She plodded along. Her son’s bare feet bounced against her hips. In time they reached the infirmary yard and climbed the steps. It was easy to believe in the first few moments of their arrival that her two patients, Nancy Klotter and Mary Ann Hornicker, had fled into the night. She stood with James still clinging to her back and squinted into the shadowed darkness of the infirmary. In the back of the room were two mounded forms: Nancy and Mary Ann. Both women had crawled onto bunks and pulled their blankets up over their heads. From the veils of these blankets, they peered out at Harriet, awaiting her wrath.

  In the living quarters she placed James in his cot and tried to explain, without scolding, the panic she’d felt when he ran off. “It’s a terrible feeling not to know where you are, James.” Could he, at five years old, fathom this feeling? Maybe not the exact dread that she’d felt, but some version of this fear had sent him running after her in the first place.

  She fetched a damp cloth and rubbed down his ankles and bare feet. Tomorrow he’d pay a price for his wandering in scratches and chigger bites. He’d be tired, too. Already his gaze was weighted and slow. He lay back on his bunk and considered his mother. In a short while his eyes fluttered and he turned his face to the pillow.

  She went to the infirmary cabinet and found the list of emergency phone numbers. She put the telephone receiver to her ear. A simple matter, really, of dialing a number and offering a few instructions—and yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she moved out onto the infirmary steps and listened for the sound of an approaching automobile. After a few quiet minutes the sound she was waiting for began as a low hum in the distance. Hundreds of yards up the camp roadway there was a flicker of brightness and then, soon enough, the full wash of approaching headlights. A vehicle was rolling along the camp roadway at an almost inchmeal pace.

  She stood there on the steps, and the thing she’d been waiting for, the Kindermann Forest camp van, pulled close and stopped before the infirmary. From the van’s stilled engine came a wet clicking and beyond that, from the far corners of the woods, a steady thrum of insects.

  The driver’s door creaked open. Wyatt Huddy slipped out and leaned back wearily against the side of the van.

  She stepped down into the infirmary yard. “Wyatt . . . ?” she said. Through the windows of the van she could see various shapes still and dark. Otherwise it was hard to determine what the interior might hold. “Wyatt . . . ?” she tried again. “What happened?”

  He placed a hand to his forehead and wiped away a smear of sweat. After a moment he cleared his throat and said, “I’m not used to . . .”

  “What?”

  “Driving at night. The only time I’ve driven is in the daytime.”

  “You did all right,” she said. “You made it back. Wyatt, what happened?”

  In answer he stood straighter against the van and pointed to the passenger door on its opposite side.

  Around the van she went, to the sliding door. She turned the latch, swung it open. There, strapped into the first bench of the van, was Evie Hicks, stripped naked and roused into a flailing state of panic by the sudden loud squawk of the van door. She shook her head wildly back and forth and pedaled her bare legs. This was for Harriet an altogether traumatic sight. She’d spent a frantic portion of the night stumbling bewildered across the grounds of Kindermann Forest trying to prevent an imagined attack on Evie Hicks. Far, far worse now to be presented with the evidence of that attack: the girl’s startled expression, her bare body straining against the seat belts.

  It took time to settle Evie down. From Harriet it required not just a calming voice but a willingness to keep her distance. She sat on the running board by the open door and stared out into the darkened meadow. Eventually she said, “All right, Evie. All right now. It’s getting late, isn’t it? We should see about getting you out of this old van, shouldn’t we?” She reached out and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. At once there was a quick pulling away, an awareness.

  And so Harriet sat awhile longer, and the next time she reached out and touched Evie’s shoulder the reaction was less severe. This allowed Harriet certain privileges. She leaned over the girl and gathered up her clothes and underwear. Then she unfastened the seat belt and guided Evie out the door and onto the roadway.

  A few careful steps and they were moving across the infirmary yard. What a sight this was, what a singular vision: a naked Evie Hicks plodding in her usual pigeon-toed shuffle across the moon-brightened grass. Not beautiful exactly. Not alluring, either. Not under these terrible circumstances. But with the stark whiteness of her skin and the loose assembly of her long-legged body, she looked rare and otherworldly, as if she’d stepped out from behind the curtain of a blindingly strange play.

  Inside the infirmary they went straight to the bathroom, where Harriet turned on the overhead light and began her careful inspection of Evie Hicks’s body. No bruises on the girl’s arms or neck or chest. She’d not been hit or scratched. If her skin bore any marks at all, they were the minor indentations of the seat upholstery and safety belts.

  A more delicate inspection needed to be made, but the girl would not part her legs for Nurse Harriet. “Evie,�
�� Harriet said. “Evie, please. Let me take a look.” In response Evie squeezed her thighs together. No matter her position—standing at the sink, sitting on the toilet—she could not be persuaded.

  It was one of the more pitifully sad refusals Harriet had ever witnessed. She dressed the girl in an infirmary nightgown, led her to a bunk, took her temperature and blood pressure, and wiped her face with a cool cloth. At least there was one consolation: whatever Evie had endured tonight, she would not become pregnant. For the past eleven days, Harriet, in her morning round of medications, had made sure that each female state hospital camper with a birth control prescription had received her pill. Each woman. Every morning. Evie Hicks included. Without fail. All the while there was a brown paper bag somewhere in Schuller Kindermann’s office—one he’d opened or not—full of throat lozenges.

  She was aware of her other two patients, Mary Ann Hornicker and Nancy Klotter, watching her from their bunks at the rear of the infirmary. “Ladies,” she said. “We should try and get some sleep. It’s been a very . . . We’ve had a very hard night.” These were, Harriet hoped, soothing words, if not quite the apology Mary Ann and Nancy deserved. Once she saw that they were settled and on the pathway to sleep, she stepped out the infirmary door and found Wyatt Huddy waiting for her at the picnic table.

  Certainly he looked tired. He had the stooped posture of someone who’d been humbled by a tremendous physical effort. His head hung a degree lower than usual. He flexed his large shoulders and placed his forearms out across the table. Gingerly, he opened and closed his hands.

  He had reason to do this: there were thick, red scratches across those forearms. She took a seat at the table and held his wrist and considered his injuries. They were the kinds of markings she’d expected to find on Evie Hicks: long, angry abrasions caused by a clawed hand. And there were other markings as well: a red welt on the side of his face, a lengthy tapered scratch across his collarbone. Was she startled? Was she shocked? Not quite. The events of the night had dulled her capacity to be taken by surprise.

  “You were in a fight,” she said. “A fight with Christopher. I can guess that much, Wyatt. But the rest I don’t know.”

  He sat with his head lowered. He made no acknowledgment that he’d been spoken to, but at least he hadn’t pulled his arms free from her grasp.

  “I don’t know the circumstances,” she continued. “And I have to know, Wyatt. I’ve had an awful night and I can’t do another thing until I know.”

  He began to stir, a slow back and forth tilting of his head. He sealed and unsealed his lips, raised his face to her, without looking her in the eye. For several moments he did nothing but try to arrange the distorted features of his face into an accommodating expression. Then he let forth a long, huffing sigh and said, “All right, all right, Harriet.”

  He said he’d gone out looking for the camp van. And after a while he’d found it off the side of the road. Not so far from Kindermann Forest. Evie was inside, buckled into the seat. Without clothes. And Christopher was there with her. Touching her between the legs. Putting his face there, too. Pushing himself against her.

  She made herself ask the difficult questions. “Did Christopher have his clothes on? Was he having intercourse with Evie? Do you know what that means, Wyatt? Intercourse?”

  He said that Christopher had his clothes on. But they were undid. Unfastened. As for the word intercourse, Wyatt said he knew what it meant. It might have been the thing Christopher was doing to Evie Hicks. Or maybe not. Either way Wyatt had made Christopher stop.

  “And then?”

  Across Wyatt’s uneven face came a clenched tightness, a kind of grief. “I got mad. Christopher, too. There was a fight. It went on for a while.”

  “But you’re all right, aren’t you?” she asked. “You have some scratches, but nothing worse than that?”

  “Just scratches.”

  “And Christopher?”

  “Same thing. Scratches and bumps.”

  “And what did Christopher do after the fight?”

  A long pause. “He was still mad. He said he didn’t want to come back to camp. He said he was quitting his job.”

  “Quitting?”

  “Yes.”

  “But where is he now, Wyatt? Because if he’s out there, then we should call the police. So they can find him. So he doesn’t attack someone else. Another girl.”

  “He won’t do that,” Wyatt said. “He’s gone off on his own.”

  “Off where?”

  “Off to be alone.”

  Off to be alone? She could picture it as well as feel it. Not just a lone body, but the wave of dread people would feel when the news came to them. Lives were going to be overturned. It would be no simple matter to set them right again.

  “But . . . where?” she asked. She held him hard by the wrists. “Where did he go?”

  From Wyatt there was a moment of calm reflection. “Into the woods,” he said.

  How much better would it have been if she’d called the Ellsinore Police? Some things would surely have been easier. They could have told the authorities about Evie Hicks’s assault before rather than after.

  That, clearly, would have been the better choice. But the call hadn’t been made. Instead Harriet retired to her living quarters and lay on her bed turning and agonizing and sometimes even sleeping for short stretches of time. In the morning she rose and pressed on with the last full day of the State Hospital Session.

  She wasn’t the only one. The Kindermann Forest counselors were up at seven-thirty urging their campers to wash and brush their teeth and hurry to breakfast. In the mess hall there was the usual clamor and chaos, but something else also—a renewed liveliness and sense of relief among the counselors, this being the last full day.

  By midmorning certain questions began to circulate; mainly, where the hell was Christopher Waterhouse? His fellow lifeguard, Marcy Bittman, had to work the pool all morning by herself. It wasn’t safe, she insisted, to have just one guard on duty. She knew for a fact it was a violation of YMCA lifeguard safety regulations. She managed as well as she could through the morning, and after lunch, with no sign of Christopher, she closed and locked the gate and declared the pool off-limits.

  Fortunately there were other activities to occupy the campers: canoeing and arts and crafts or a visit to the horse stables. There were also preparations to be made for the evening activity: the Kindermann Forest Talent Show Extravaganza and Farewell Dance. Some counselors took the assignment more seriously than others. Ellen Swinderman stitched together grass skirts for her four campers and spent the afternoon coaxing her ladies to sing “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy” from South Pacific. But for most of the counselors it was easier to rely on things the state hospital campers already knew, the sudden and often incomprehensible sight gags and pantomimes they’d been performing since they arrived. And if not that, then always and forever, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” sung in any register, in any odd accent or with any garbled voice.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that it dawned on the counselors: Where would the talent show take place? Who would decorate? Who would set up the microphone and sound system? Not Christopher Waterhouse. He was still missing. Out sick, they guessed. Sick or hungover. Lying low.

  His absence didn’t dampen their enthusiasm too much. At seven-thirty they convened in the mess hall and began moving the heavy tables off to the side of the room. A three-piece stereo system was carried across the meadow from The Sanctuary and installed along the mess hall serving counter. In spite of their best efforts, no one could locate a microphone. But it hardly mattered. When had the state hospital campers ever needed a microphone to be heard?

  Once the Kindermann Forest Talent Show Extravaganza and Farewell Dance began, it was clear to the staff that they’d embarked on one of the better evening activities. Perhaps the best one of all. They hadn’t expected it to mean so much. But what an obvious rush of good feeling it brought the campers to march up in front of
the mess hall counter and perform their acts. Not just a good feeling. Pride. How justifiably proud they were of themselves. It didn’t at all matter that the song they planned to perform had just been sung by the previous group. When their time came, they stomped up to the mess hall counter bursting with eagerness. I’ve been working on the railroad. All the livelong day. What a sight to behold! Portly Jerry Johnston, crooning high and sweet. Thomas Anwar Toomey, his thin, haggard body shaking right along with his wavering voice. Leonard Peirpont, holding fast to the counter’s edge and singing for all he was worth. And their counselor, shy, somber Wyatt Huddy, watching from the sidelines and nodding his respect.

  After the last group had performed, the stereo was turned on. The campers needed no prompting; they took to the floor gripping one another or their counselors hard and close and swaying with an energy that was raw and contagious. Who would have guessed how much they loved to dance? One more song, they begged. One more, please. One more.

  At ten-thirty they all stumbled back down to the sleeping cabins. The campers hadn’t been allowed to stay out this late before, and as a result their bedtime routine suffered. Few of them could be bullied into a shower or made to brush their teeth. Instead they stomped into the sleeping barracks and tossed and turned in their bunks. The counselors stood on the cabin porches watching them and feeling a surge of astonishment. They’d managed somehow to reach the end of the State Hospital Session. All that was left tomorrow morning was a breakfast of cereal and fruit and the shuttling of the campers and their bags back onto the state hospital buses. After that the Kindermann Forest counselors would have forty-eight hours to rest and do their laundry and await the arrival of children who were blessedly healthy and normal.

  But there were other things happening beyond the borders of Kindermann Forest, too. Early Saturday morning a pickup truck pulled off County Road H onto a clearing of rutted grass known to local hunters and fishermen as a staging ground from which they could set forth into the woods. A man stepped out from the truck along with his dog, a boxy and energetic black Lab retriever. They set off along a thin path into the woods. The man had a notion to try his luck fishing some of the deep sinkholes along the creek that led to Barker Lake. Too bad his dog wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t follow along quietly at his heels, wouldn’t even keep to the path. And what an awful shrieking howl the dog let out. It was impossible to fish with such a clamor. The man had no choice but to follow the dog through the brush and down a steep creek bed until they arrived at a mound of flagstones. He pulled back a few stones and made a discovery.