A Clearing in the Forest

by Gloria Whelan

  A Clearing in the forest

  Gloria Whelan

  To Joe,

  who looks through the same window

  This is what I believe:

  That I am I.

  That my soul is a dark forest.

  That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.

  That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.

  That I must have the courage to let them come and go.

  —D. H. Lawrence

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  About the Author

  1

  Frances Crawford heard a gun go off. She stopped what she was doing and looked in the direction of the shot. “No Hunting” signs, all patiently handlettered and firmly underlined, were posted around the perimeter of her land. For fifty years she had fed the animals who shared her woods and river. She put out corn for the ruffed grouse, the ducks and raccoons, greens for rabbits and woodchucks, apples and a salt lick for the deer. She didn’t coax the animals to her land only to have some fool hunter shoot them. Once or twice during hard times she had looked the other way when someone in town with a family and no job needed cheap meat; otherwise she enforced the signs, springing wrathfully out from behind trees like a wizened wood sprite, scaring hunters half to death.

  Taking his cue from her, the large black and tan dog stopped for a moment and lifted his ears. Then, diverted by a chipmunk, he took off into some Juneberry bushes that bloomed along the riverbank. Moments later he emerged covered with pink petals, which he shook off like drops of water.

  Frances went back to hunting wild mushrooms. Every year around the middle of May, people with bags and baskets slipped to their secret places in the woods to search for elusive morels that tasted, when cooked, like delicate perfume. There were as many formulas for finding the mushrooms as there were people seeking them: search the eastward facing slopes, around dead elm trees, in apple orchards abandoned by farmers gone to town. Frances’s own formula never failed. She looked for the morels where the wild leek grew, following the leeks’ rank odor through woods still boggy from the last of the melting snows. Showy white and pink trillium, yellow Dutchman’s-breeches and adder’s-tongues were blooming all around her, but the spring beauties which covered the woods only a day ago had disappeared, a sleight of hand that almost made her doubt what she had seen.

  The run-off of spring rains and melting snow had cut into the riverbank, exposing new layers of sand and stone. It was like turning over a new page in a book. A small bit of shale caught her eye. Holding it in her hand, she could just make out a delicate tracery of fern leaves that had been etched into the rock millions of years ago.

  The gun went off again, this time nearby. Ty Catchner’s son, Wilson, strode out of the woods. In one hand the boy held the bleeding carcass of a rabbit and in the other a .22 rifle; a second rabbit hung from his belt, looking like a child’s toy with all the stuffing out of it. Like father, like son, Frances thought. Ty always got his first deer the night before the season started.

  The minute he saw Frances, Wilson started back into the woods like someone who had stumbled into the wrong room, the dog at his heels, hackles up, tail wagging in a terrible indecision that went straight to the heart of his character.

  But Frances was ready for the boy: “Wilson Catchner, you get over here and tell me what you think you’re doing shooting up this place or I’ll set the dog on you!” Since the dog had made up his mind about Wilson and was now alternately licking the boy’s hand and sniffing the dead rabbits, it was an idle threat.

  If Wilson were not close enough to see the shingled white hair and the lined face with its faded tan the color of a fine old piece of mahogany furniture, he might have mistaken Frances Crawford for a boy of twelve wearing his father’s clothes. A field jacket hung to her knees, its sleeves covering her hands. Her boots were so large she had to shuffle to keep them on. She must be at least eighty, Wilson decided. He remembered her husband, old Doc Crawford, who had taken care of him when he was sick. The doctor had brought him strange gifts: an empty turtle shell, the papery thin skin a snake had shed like an arm pulling out of a transparent sleeve, and once a bottle of tadpoles. “When the tadpoles have two legs you’ll be out of bed; when they have four legs you’ll be running around good as new,” the doctor had said. And that was the way it had been.

  The doctor had come to see him in a wheelchair, arriving in the back of an old pickup truck driven by Mrs. Crawford. It had been nearly five years since Dr. Crawford had died; from some sort of crippling disease, Wilson’s parents had said.

  The whole school had been let out to go to the funeral. Dr. Crawford had delivered most of the children and their mothers before them. Wilson suddenly wished he had been hunting on someone else’s property. “I was on my way to the old Christmas tree farm and the rabbit ran in front of me,” he said. “I guess I got carried away.”

  Frances thought Wilson must be about sixteen or seventeen now. He was a chunky boy with sun-bleached hair. Though it was early spring, he had the beginning of a tan. Nothing about his appearance suggested a sickly childhood. The boy had been born with a congenital heart defect, and after several years of nearly perishing with every cold he caught, her husband, Tom, had persuaded his family to take him downstate to the university hospital for heart surgery.

  The surgery had been successful, but Frances never looked at the boy without the awe she felt toward someone who had been closer to death than she. No need to show him mercy on that account, though. “Where’d you get the other rabbit? I heard your rifle not five minutes ago. You must have been on my property. Can’t you read those signs?” At the thought of the rabbit’s tender flesh, something rather wicked occurred to her and she made her voice as firm as possible, “What are we going to do about this?”

  Wilson reached down and scratched the dog’s head. He wasn’t making any suggestions.

  “Those rabbits are off my land, correct? Suppose you give me one and keep the other.” She imagined all the rabbits on her property cowering in their warrens at her words. Accepting part of his booty made a mockery of her signs. But the thought of a rabbit simmering away with some fresh morels was irresistible. The truth was it had been weeks since she had been able to afford meat.

  “I’ll skin it out for you, Mrs. Crawford.” The boy had a broad smile on his face. Frances decided he was sharper than she had thought. No doubt she would see him during the deer season, but that might mean a haunch of venison to see her through the winter. She was disgusted with herself for being corrupted by the high price of meat. “Why aren’t you in school today?” Frances decided to resume the offensive.

  “School is a drag. I could stay away all week and not miss much. If I wasn’t graduating next month, I’d probably drop out.” He could hear his math teacher saying, “And now let’s go over this just once more.”

  “You certainly have to have your diploma.” Poaching rabbits was one thing; turning your back on mankind’s civilizing force was another.

  “I guess I’ll work for my dad. I don’t need a diploma for that. He doesn’t have one.”

  The Catchners’ front yard was strewn with cars and trucks. Anything with a motor that expired in the county was laid to rest on the Catchners’ lawn. N
othing was thrown away. Anyone who wished to see the development of mechanization during the last thirty years could not do better than to stroll through the Catchners’ yard.

  When Wilson saw her frowning at him, he knew she was getting ready for a lecture. To avoid it he took a sudden interest in what she was holding in her hand. Like any child who has been seriously ill, Wilson was used to people watching over him and arranging his life; long ago he had learned how to distract them. “What kind of rock you got there?”

  She handed him the fossil, and not abandoning his education altogether, advised him, “Those are carbonizations of fern leaves on there. Probably three hundred million years old, give or take a few thousand years.”

  “How do you know that?” Wilson was doubtful.

  “I have a book that tells you all about fossils, Wilson.”

  He wouldn’t mind reading a book like that. When he was sick for such a long time he had done a lot of reading. Every other week the librarian, Mrs. Walters, whose husband owned the bar on Dogtown Road, would stop by with an armful of books for him. His parents weren’t very polite to her. They thought that all of those books weren’t good for him, that too many words might clutter up his mind.

  After he returned to school, he got out of the habit of reading books. It set you apart from the other kids, and he had had enough trouble after his surgery when his mother had insisted he be excused from gym and sports even though the doctor had said it wasn’t necessary. At first he had thought he could make up for the fact that everyone regarded him as a weakling by showing them how smart he was, but it only made them dislike him more.

  Not until he was fifteen did things begin to change. All the boys in his class were going hunting and he had asked his dad for a deer rifle. His mother had a fit. She said he’d catch his death of cold or get shot. She went around for three days not talking to either of them, but his dad bought him a gun all the same. When the time came, all his mother could do was make him wear long underwear and lug a thermos of hot soup.

  He had hunted with two other boys and had been the only one to get his deer. His dad thought it was just beginner’s luck, but it wasn’t. As soon as he got the rifle, he had taken books and magazines on hunting out of the library. His dad would never believe you could learn anything practical from books, but that wasn’t true. While his dad messed around with an engine, trying one thing and then another, he’d get a manual out of the library for the car they were working on. When he figured something out first, his dad was half proud of him, half sore as hell. Wilson had learned to keep his mouth shut, but he already knew more about diesels than his dad. Yet it was hard always keeping quiet about what you knew.

  He said to Frances, “I’ve got some samples of cuttings from the oil wells, some from 7,000 feet down.” His brother-in-law, who worked on the rigs had given them to him. The cuttings were brought up by a special drill bit. The core told the drillers just where they were. One of the cores he had was pure salt.

  At the mention of the oil wells Frances frowned. She did not want to hear anything about the wells that had sprung up all over the county in the last two years. The very thought of them infuriated her. Oil wells belonged in Texas or Oklahoma, not up here in the woods of northern Michigan; certainly not a few threatening miles from her own property and the river. But she saw how the boy’s closed face had grown animated, so she asked, “Do you know how the oil is trapped down in the ground?”

  He didn’t.

  She bent over and picked up a porous rock to demonstrate how the oil migrated through the ground to rock that it could permeate. She showed him how water infiltrated the rock, too, and how the oil rose to the top of the water-soaked rock. She found some shale and told him how the oil gathered into pools under the shale, which the oil couldn’t penetrate. Just as she was warming up to the subject, illustrating how the rock strata were shaped into a dome to hold the oil, a dizziness like a sudden push made her stumble and drop to the ground. The last thing she remembered was the startled look on Wilson’s face.

  Wilson tried to think what you were supposed to do when someone fainted. Before he could decide, Frances Crawford opened her eyes and began struggling to get up.

  “Don’t just stand there, boy,” she said. “Give me a hand.”

  2

  Wilson helped Frances up, amazed at how light she was. It was like holding an abandoned bird’s nest in your hand. “Want me to walk you up to your cabin?” Wilson was embarrassed. If she passed out again, he would have to carry her. And she looked so old, brittle and dried up, he was almost afraid she would break into pieces.

  But she started toward the cabin with no difficulty. “You bring the rabbit for me, will you, Wilson?” This was awkward, she thought. The old heart was having trouble pushing blood through her clogged arteries—not a good sign.

  They walked along silently, following the river. Once Frances stopped and pointed. In the shadow of a log, a big trout lay suspended in water so clear it seemed not to be there at all. The trout’s head was pointed upstream. He was waiting for the current to sweep an insect his way. It took Wilson a minute or two to see the fish. He decided there was nothing wrong with the old lady’s eyes.

  The Crawford cabin stood on a small rise overlooking the stream. To one side of it was a vegetable garden covered with a thick mulch of leaves and straw. A path had been worn into the sandy soil from the front door to a ramshackle landing that extended out over the riverbank. On either side of the landing was a bench fashioned from split logs. On the opposite bank there was a stand of birch, maple and poplar trees. Behind it was an enormous Norway pine.

  “Listen to that river, Wilson,” Frances said. “Even in the worst winter it keeps flowing. It’s stronger than the ice.”

  Wilson was surprised that he had not heard the sound of the river until she mentioned it. He watched her stride up the path, her legs lifting in and out of her loose boots like two pistons. When they reached the cabin, Wilson saw that the front door was partially open; flies and bees were winging in and out like casual partygoers.

  “Can’t close the door,” she said to him over her shoulder. “Have to take it off its hinges one of these days and plane it.”

  Wilson followed her into the cabin. While she dropped into the nearest overstuffed chair, causing a little explosion of dust to erupt from the cushions, he looked around the room. Even the town library didn’t have as many books. But what a mess. Plants were everywhere: avocado saplings struggling up from coffee cans, African violets multiplying in styrofoam cups, and long tangles of ivy growing like snarled hair from blue milk of magnesia bottles. Had he asked, Frances would have told Wilson that even at the age of eighty she saw to it that there were still plenty of things that needed her. Furthermore, the green plants served as a leafy barrier between her and the snow drifts that seemed to lean heavier each year against the cabin.

  Newspapers and magazines were piled up in corners, dust lay on the tables and fluffy balls of it wafted around the room from the breeze that blew in through the open door. On the floor was a large water stain from a leak in the roof. There were stuffed birds, piles of rocks, an old hornet’s nest, small bleached white skulls, barrels of corn and sunflower seeds and rotting apples that smelled like cider. Snowshoes were lying on the dining room table and fishing rods were piled up on the davenport. Tucked under the chairs were old bones the dog had contributed to the decor. Wilson could hear the dog lapping water in the bathroom, probably from the toilet bowl.

  Frances heard him, too, and it reminded her that she was thirsty. “You might bring me a glass of cold water, Wilson.”

  Wilson looked through the cluttered cupboards in the kitchen for a clean glass and had to settle for rinsing out a dirty one. The kitchen floor felt sticky under his shoes, and the dish towel he used to dry the glass was covered with stains. In a corner a dried-out leathery mouse lay in a trap.

  When he handed her the glass and saw how her hand was shaking, he decided he’d better stay a little
while. It was not a bad feeling, this looking after someone instead of always being looked after.

  “Listen, if you’ve got some tools, I could fix that door so it would close.” In deference to her age he spoke loudly.

  “That would be fine, Wilson, but don’t shout at me.” She knew he was making up a ruse in order to stay and see if she were all right, and it pleased her. “Dr. Crawford’s old tool box is right there under the table. I could keep the mice down if I could shut the door. I saw a tail sticking out of the toaster this morning.”

  Wilson’s pounding and scraping cheered her. She had forgotten how pleasant it was to hear a man fix up a house. It was a lovely primeval sound that promised a snug cave with protection from lions and tigers—and mice. Wilson was a good boy. She would have to find some treat for him. From one of the kitchen shelves she took a dusty valentine box and tore off the cellophane. Hard to recall just how long it had been around. A patient might have given it to Tom, who hadn’t cared for candy. Unfortunately the chocolates were rather gray, but some hard candies looked quite respectable. She plucked them out and put them in a little dish, first giving the dish a quick swipe with her skirt.

  Wilson was putting the tools away when he noticed a large box filled with a number of perplexing things: straw, bits of string and yarn, unraveled sisal rope, dog hair combings and dust balls. It looked like something a witch might use to cast a spell. Before he could stop himself, he asked, “What’s that mess?”

  “That’s my nesting box, Wilson. I’ll put it outside in a few days and the birds will use the things in it to build their nests.” She pushed the dish of candy toward him.

  Wilson popped a lemon drop into his mouth. The flavor was very faint. He thought how different Mrs. Crawford’s cabin was from his own home, where you could look around a room and see everything there was to see in just a few seconds; here, you could look and look. Beyond all the things were the books. He decided it was the kind of home he would have himself one day, if he could avoid marrying someone as tidy as his mother.