The Wilding: A Novel

by Benjamin Percy

  Karen made a pan of sweet rolls and they eat some now and drink from a thermos of coffee, when they drive this arrow-straight road. The desert is dotted with sagebrush and stunted juniper trees and little else. Under the sun everything looks faintly yellow, like something jaundiced. Every now and then they pass an unincorporated town or a trailer park called Frog Bottom or Pine Hollow. Each doublewide has a satellite dish mounted on its roof. And in the front yards Justin inevitably spots a collection of weeds and red cinder, soggy-diapered children, dogs choking on their chains, snarling at every car.

  Then they pass through a region where no one lives. Lava, born out of some ancient eruption, stretches all around them like some vast black lake with wind chop making it rise into sharp edges. Here and there a bone white tree pushes up through its crust.

  His father walks the Bronco up to seventy, eighty, as if to hurry past this place, where the desert lies ahead and behind and to either side of the road. The engine shudders. The tires hum along the reddish blacktop. Clumps of sagebrush whip by. A red-tailed hawk roosts on a telephone pole. A bunch of Mexicans moving irrigation pipe. A tar-paper shack with its door gaping like a crooked tooth. Two coyotes sitting in the shade of a dead tree. All of this fuses together in the white-hot air. Their tires eat up the road and for a while their talk dies out and gives way to an uneasy kind of anticipation.

  Graham has recently developed an interest in computers and a few weeks ago announced at the dinner table he would grow up to become either a programmer or (his old standby) a photographer for National Geographic. Justin’s father is now trying to figure out what this means—to become a programmer—asking in a loud voice that carries over the noise of the radio and the engine—what exactly the Facebook is, what exactly an iPod does?

  Graham does his best to answer his questions, speaking with quiet assurance, using his hands to mimic typing. What Justin’s father doesn’t understand, he normally labels worthless and sweeps aside with his fist and a few select words. Which is why, when Justin notices his eyebrows coming closer and closer together in confusion, his knuckles growing whiter at the steering wheel, he decides to change the subject to one his father will enjoy.

  “How’s Boo working out for you?” Boo is the hunting dog he always wanted, a lab-retriever mix his father bought a year ago from an alfalfa farmer.

  “Oh, he’s a good boy.” His father smiles and adjusts the rearview mirror so he can spy on Boo where he sleeps in a horseshoe shape next to Graham in the backseat. “Boo?” he says. “Hey, Boo Bear?” At the sound of his name, the dog perks his ears and lifts his head from his paws and thumps his tail a few times. “You ready to hunt, Boo?” he says and Boo barks sharply.

  He then begins to explain at length how raising a dog is no different from raising a child. He claims a man who fails to sufficiently and constantly train his dog, to test it, to discipline it—from its weaning to its death—is in for a rude awakening. “Boo wasn’t even a month old when I first introduced him to water, to various types of cover, and of course to game birds,” he says and runs a hand across his beard, neatening it. “When it comes to dogs, you got to develop their obedience and hunting desire from the get-go or they won’t grow up right.”

  Here he gives Justin a look full of judgment and love and Justin pretends not to notice, knowing they have a long weekend ahead of them.

  His father tells them how he first coaxed Boo into water. “I took my fly rod, see?” His hand mimes casting. “And with a pheasant wing dangling from it, I shot it off into the shallow part of the pond and let Boo chase it and sight-point it.”

  Then he baited Boo with a dead bird, and then a live lame bird. “At first, my boy got afraid when he felt the bottom disappear under his legs, but I got in the pond with him and showed him how safe it was. Now he can by God hardly go by a puddle without wanting to jump in it.” Justin remembers his father shoving him off a dock and demanding he tread water for sixty seconds and laughing much as he laughs now when looking lovingly at his dog.

  “No,” his father says, as if responding to some conversation Justin wasn’t a part of. “Boo won’t be much help to us deer hunting, but he’s good company.”

  The green huddled shapes of the Ochocos grow larger before them as they pass through Prineville and then Mitchell and John Day and Justin continues to listen and his father continues to speak until the final distance—where the sagebrush gives way to juniper and then pine trees—becomes the near distance and the ground begins to steadily rise and the evergreens filter the sun into puddles that splash across the highway. At last the heat is gone, replaced by cool mountain air that makes breathing feel like drinking.

  Among the big pines crouches a minimart with two rusty gas pumps. Out front, a hand-carved sign with white lettering reads GAS & BAIT. For exactly what they advertise, Justin has been stopping here since he was a child. They turn off into its gravel lot and park next to a pump manned by a thin man in greasy coveralls and a clean white pair of Payless knockoffs. Justin quickly hums the banjo line from Deliverance before his father leans out the window and says to fill it with regular.

  The minimart is a sunken and derelict structure, constructed from a gray, salt-colored wood and asphalt shingles either ragged or missing. A neon Budweiser sign flickers blue and red in the window. On the porch stands a cigar shop Indian with a hatchet nose and a feather headdress. He stares woodenly at the men as they stomp up the stairs and under the drooping brow of a roof and push through the door. A bell jingles to announce their presence and they pause to orient themselves, blinking in the dimly lit space.

  There is a smell to stores like this—worms mixed with tobacco mixed with hydraulic oil—that is not Justin’s favorite smell, but close to it. Like the smell of cherry Coke or a plastic toy freshly torn from its package, it’s the smell of his childhood.

  The man behind the counter is built like a plow horse. He is something like thirty years old, but with that creased look that comes from too much time working under a hot sun, roofing or framing or holding a sign that reads, STOP. He wears a tank top that was once a shirt, the sleeves scissored off. His arms and shoulders roll with muscle when he lifts a dumbbell with one hand, and then the other, doing bicep curls. He exhales sharply. A hula girl tattoo seems to move when the muscle beneath her moves, sending her hips shaking across his deltoid.

  He does not stop his workout, nor does he turn to look at them, except glancingly, his eyes intent on a small-screen television tuned in to an old episode of Bonanza. It sits on a shelf behind him with cartons of Camels and Winstons stacked all around it.

  The paneled walls are busy with lacquered trout and skull-and-rack mounts of deer, elk, antelope. The gaps between the floorboards are wide enough to lose a quarter through and they groan as the men make their way up and down the aisles, grabbing a six-pack of Pepsi, a bag of Fritos, Oreos, beef jerky. A packet of Panther Martin spinners. Justin’s father says something about his filter being on the fritz when he grabs a gallon jug full of water.

  There is a waist-high wooden bucket in the back corner. A piece of paper taped to its top advertises ten minnows for a dollar. Justin lifts the lid and he and Graham peer into its water to see hundreds of minnows darkly swarming. Justin dips his hand in and Graham does the same and the fish make a writhing sleeve around their arms and their eyes widen with pleasure. Graham asks, “Can we get some?” and Justin tells him no, they are river fishing, not lake fishing.

  By this time his father has made his way to the counter and Justin joins him there, assembling the groceries on the counter. The man behind the register finishes his set before lowering his weights to the floor with a clatter of metal and wood. Justin can hear one of the dumbbells rolling along the uneven floor, finally coming to a rest—with a ding—against something metal. A shotgun or an aluminum baseball bat? Justin wonders. Something this man would curl his hand around before doing damage.

  The man regards them now with his square-shaped head, taking them in with what se
ems like a glimmer of anger—because they have interrupted his workout or because they are obviously not from here, Justin doesn’t know.

  “Gas, too,” Justin says and the man says, “Yeah,” in a voice that implies he already knows.

  The total comes to $53.35, a lovely palindrome of a number, and Justin pulls out his wallet at the same time as his father. They then begin the familiar game of tug-of-war they play whenever they go out, each of them insisting on paying, trying to nudge the other aside, until Justin finally says, “I want to pay. I want to.”

  His father holds up his hands in mock surrender and then grabs the bag of jerky and tears it open with his teeth. He pops a wedge in his mouth and passes another to Graham and they exit the store together, talking about the weekend ahead with their mouths full of rough meat.

  The cashier repeats the price and then lets his eyes wander to the television, where Hoss and Little Joe Cartwright spur their horses into a gallop and with pistols drawn take chase after a whooping throng of Indians they have surprised in a dry canyon. When the cashier looks back—Seth, his name tag reads—Justin lays a hundred-dollar bill on the counter. “I don’t have change for that.” His face tightens like a fist. “What makes you think I have change for that?”

  “Oh,” Justin says. “Sorry.” He pulls his VISA from his wallet. “You do take credit?”

  “Long as you got a driver’s license.”

  Justin produces the cards and with a huge blue-veined hand Seth snatches them and examines them side by side. “You’re from Bend.” He snorts. “That explains it.”

  Justin doesn’t need to ask what he means by that. He is talking about the network of streets growing ever wider and longer, forking off westward into the foothills and eastward into the desert, followed by telephone wires, their shadows lining the land like lines on music paper. He is talking about the ridges of condos, motels, big-box stores. He is talking about how steadily, incessantly, juniper trees come down and houses spring up, houses with whirlpool tubs and granite counters and rugged pine columns flanking their doors, and among these houses, as if some massive pen has flung green ink, will appear a golf course, each green splash mowed in long perfect strips of light and dark turf, constantly irrigated so that the grass will not fade to the blighted yellow found naturally here.

  It is common knowledge, the resentment felt toward Portland and Eugene and Bend, especially among the dairy farmers and cattle ranchers, the mountain towns. The money comes out of the cities. The votes come out of cities. They make a red state blue.

  Seth wears a ring on his index finger. It is a class ring—gold with a red gem surrounded by lettering that probably read John Day High, Class of 1992, or something like that. It catches the light and winks when he runs the VISA through the reader and stares carefully at the register as if he hopes it will announce the account stolen or closed. Only after the receipt spits out and Justin signs it does he return the cards.

  When Seth reaches beneath the counter, part of Justin expects him to withdraw the shotgun he knows waits there. Instead Seth grips a paper bag. With a snap of his wrist, he opens it and begins to fill it with groceries. “What are you doing out here anyway?”

  “Headed to Echo Canyon.”

  “Hunting? Fishing?” He pronounces these in a clipped-off manner, without the g.

  “Little of both.”

  “Expect you know they’re tearing it down, tearing down the canyon, come Monday.”

  “Yeah.” Justin makes a motion with his thumb, indicating the space his father filled a moment ago. “Actually, my old man is part of the crew. His company, this log cabin company, they—”

  “You say he’s part of the crew?” All of Seth’s muscles seem to tense at once and he leans over the counter, close enough so that Justin can feel his breath, can almost taste it, flavored with the ghosts of a hundred cigarettes. “That’s great. That’s just lovely. Tell him thanks for pissing on my porch, will you?” His smile is not a smile.

  After a stunned silence, Justin says, “I don’t understand.”

  “Course you don’t,” he says. “You’re from Bend.” He lays heavy emphasis on the word, as if to break it.

  Justin understands and doesn’t. He rolls his eyes at the way big-box stores sprout up like fungus, at the way Californians outnumber Oregonians, at the way MapQuest can’t keep up with all the development, but at the same time, he likes Gap and Starbucks, likes not having to drive to Portland for the things he wants. He knows he shouldn’t say anything more—he should grab his groceries and go—but his mouth is already stammering out a question. “I mean, in a way, aren’t you glad?”

  The word seems to disgust Seth. “Glad?”

  “You’ll get more business, won’t you? You’ll have people lined up at the pumps. It will bring you no end of good.” As Justin speaks, Seth’s eyes narrow, reducing Justin, so that his final sentence trails off into a kind of whimper. His face has contorted into an expression of pure hatred. Justin hasn’t been on the receiving end of that for a long time, and it sends him reeling back several steps as if the emotion has a palpable force.

  There comes from the television the noise of gunfire. Smoke swirls and parts to reveal dead Indians lying scattered in the sand. Justin’s eyes wander to observe the action, but Seth’s do not. They remain fixed on Justin. “No end of good,” he repeats, as if to make sense of the phrase.

  If Justin tells his father about Seth, he will react in two ways at once. He will be dismissive—“So he didn’t like you? So what? You were going to invite him to prom or something?”—even as he goes rigid, reminded once again of the reluctance he felt in his backyard, more than a year ago now, when he loosed arrow after arrow into a polyurethane deer, wondering if he has betrayed himself, this place. So Justin says nothing, though the conversation weighs on him heavily as they pull away from the station and continue along the winding mountain pass.

  Around a corner comes a Chevy Malibu, a tiny car with a big deer lashed to its roof. The wipers are going, cleaning away the blood that runs down the glass. The vehicles pass each other so slowly it is as if they are passing each other on a river. Justin’s father offers them the old fingers-off-the-steering-wheel salute and they return the gesture.

  The highway forks and they take the northeastern branch. There is a barricade here that during the depths of winter blocks entrance to the snowbound roads. It is swung open now, yawning like a mouth. When they pass through it, his father makes a noise and turns around in his seat to observe something.

  “What?” Justin says and puts his hand on the wheel, maintaining a straight course, while his father’s eyes focus on the world behind them. “What did you see?”

  “I saw—I swear I saw—though it couldn’t have been—a wolf.” He takes the wheel with one hand and combs his beard with the other. “Must have been a coyote.” He says coyote as many of Justin’s students say it, as if it consists of two hard syllables, the first rhyming with pie, and the second, goat.

  Justin looks but sees only forest, a wooded maze of shadow and light. Along the side of the road there are strawberries and green corn lilies and patches of snow and boulders encrusted with rough gray-green lichen, appearing as if they have been rolled across a cellar floor. They pass an old lumber camp, the sheds sunken, the equipment rusted over and forgotten. The trees give way every now and then to reveal a vale with a river running through it or a thin waterfall trickling in silence down a wall of basalt. “Are you seeing this?” Justin says over his shoulder, and when his son does not respond, he turns in his seat to observe him reading a book—Wildlife of the Pacific Northwest—a hearty softcover with plastic binding and slick pages the rain will run off. Justin picked it up at Gander Mountain, a last-minute impulse buy near the register. Its pages are filled with photographs and illustrations and descriptions of everything from sword ferns to mountain goats. Justin feels a small pang of irritation—as his son ignores the beauty all around him—but keeps from scolding him, knowing that he wi
ll hear in his voice his father’s.

  “Graham,” he says, loudly, his voice demanding his son’s attention.

  His face rises from the page, pale and startled. “Yes?”

  Justin nods at the window. “What do you think?”

  For a moment Graham stares off into the woods before saying, “It’s pretty.” As if to confirm this, he lifts his camera and it clicks and whizzes and captures the green blur of their passage.

  The pavement gives way to cinder, deeply rutted and soft where over so many years the snow melted and didn’t drain.

  At the top of the canyon, they pass a payloader and a backhoe and a collection of tractors, and his father slows and turns his head to study them as though observing the scene of an accident. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but then the road pitches at about forty degrees and he returns his attention to steadying the wheel. He downshifts. The engine flutters briefly before falling into gear. He feathers the brakes and adjusts the rearview mirror and glances into it.

  “You know, it’s good luck to see a wolf,” he says. “Or is it bad?”

  BRIAN

  From two wooden hangers he hung the hair suit, a clotted mess of mud and cheatgrass and pine needles. This morning the smell of it fills the room, a pungent mix of paint thinner and wet dog that has seeped into the sponge of his skin so that even after his shower, when he fingers shampoo through his hair and soaps his armpits, the smell lingers, reminding him of her, helping him keep his focus when three people call this morning. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Things are just crazy around here. So many locks to pick.” He gives them the name of a competitor and wishes them well.