The Adventures of Flash Jackson (30 page)

I sat back on my heels and thought. How long would it take them to get here? Hours, at least. And it would be days before they could get enough crap back here to haul the plane out. Think of the uproar
that
would cause in the neighborhood. What would happen to me when they came? Would I be arrested? What should I do with myself in the meantime? What sort of preparations should I make? What kinds of things do you do to get ready for jail?

And when, I wondered, had I stopped thinking of myself as Flash Jackson and started thinking of myself as a forest woman? It had happened so subtly I hadn't even noticed. Maybe it was when Grandma disappeared. Or no—before. When we had spent that long, cold winter staring at each other across the little patch of dirt floor that we called home, as her teachings seeped into me. Just as Adam had seeped
into me. Seeds being planted. Things growing within. Was I never going to be anything more than a fertile field, a receptacle? When was I going to start making things
happen
, instead of letting them happen to me?

Umpf
, said something behind me, as if to punctuate my question.

I jumped up and spun around. It was Bear.

So finally we meet
, I thought.

He wasn't as large as I'd imagined he'd be, but he was large enough to make my heart stop. I'd never been this close to a bear before. I froze. The smell of fuel must have masked his odor as he came up behind me, but now his smell was as massive as he was. He was about eight feet tall, his eyes two black, intelligent beads, his nose wet like a dog's. He was only a few short steps away. All he'd have had to do was lunge forward and open his mouth, and I would be his.

“Oh, God,” I said, unable to help myself.

At the sound of my voice, Bear cocked his head to the side, again like a dog. He appeared to wait for me to explain myself. When I didn't, he shambled backward a few steps and then carefully made his way over to the plane.
The smell of death must have attracted him
, I thought. So he wanted them, not me. Yet he must have known who I was.

“Bear,” I said, careful to keep my voice calm.

He ignored me now. He stood up and nosed the nearer of the two bodies, prodding it gently. I had a better opportunity to admire him. His dark, thick coat shone in the dappled sunlight coming through the trees. His ears looked too tiny for the rest of him. Powerful muscles, strong enough to rip my head off with one swipe, moved in awesome waves under his fur as he poised himself on the cockpit doorframe. I could have sworn I saw his nose wrinkle with distaste as he examined the unfortunate occupants of the plane. Bears didn't like eating dead things—only live ones. I stayed exactly where I was, too fascinated and too afraid to run.

Bear finished his once-over of the plane and turned to the surrounding area, digging around under leaves, sniffing at the plane's tires. Every once in a while he looked up at me, as if to make sure I was still there. We locked eyes several times. I had read somewhere, long ago, that the last thing you should do with a bear is make eye contact with him. They take it as a challenge. You're supposed to drop to the ground and pretend you're dead. You let them paw you and maybe slobber on you a bit, and then they go away. But I knew that with two real dead bodies here I wouldn't fool him, and besides it was too late for that. Who knew how long he'd been following me? Maybe he was only toying with me. I didn't think so, though. I didn't think he wanted to hurt me at all.

“You better get out of here,” I said to him. “People are coming.”

Owf!
said Bear.

“If they see you, they'll hurt you,” I said. “Seriously. You better go.”

Mrap!
said Bear. He turned quickly and approached me again, moving at a trot. Terror overcame me once again. I felt a warmth on my thigh as urine trickled down my leg. I could only hope that he wouldn't want to eat me if I was covered in pee.

He stopped inches away, prodding my belly with his nose just as he had done to the corpse in the plane. Then he sat back on his haunches, and we locked eyes once more. His odor was so strong I nearly fainted.

Then, without another sound, he was gone. He got up and headed off at a good clip into the trees, and I knew he'd heard something.

“Bye,” I whispered. I felt something had been communicated between us, though I didn't know what. I was weak in the knees, and I collapsed in a sitting position, trying to catch my breath. I became aware that I was hyperventilating. I had just escaped death, for no reason that I could put my finger on. It simply wasn't my time today. Had he known there was a baby inside me? Could he smell it, and that was why he'd left me alone?

It didn't matter. I had finally met him, and it was a meeting I would never forget for the rest of my life, especially because of what happened next.

From far away, I heard a
whump-whump-whump
, like clouds colliding, softer than thunder but no less insistent. With astonishing rapidity the sound came closer, disturbing the air far above my head. I stood up and looked around. Panic grew in me, but I forced it down. I had to face up to this. I couldn't spend the rest of my life running away from things. I had to deal.

The helicopter appeared like a vision from one of my earliest nightmares, suddenly and without any more warning than that initial soft sound, and then it was over me and I had the impression that I had been picked up and thrown into a blender. The long, dark shape hovering overhead conjured up every dark fear I'd ever had. The noise was horrific. I could only stand and stare upwards, my eyes watering from the downdraft of the massive blades. It paused overhead, and then, like a spider, it produced two long strands of rope from its belly. One of them fell just at my feet, like a portal to another world. Other shapes appeared then—men, sliding down the ropes, landing silently on the forest floor, strange and unwelcome visitors to what had once been a peaceful place.
This was how the Tree People saw the first white men
, I thought.
This is how we will feel if aliens come to Earth
. They were in dark uniforms, which posed a stark contrast to the simple twine belt I wore. First there were two, then four, then six, all in the same clothes, eyes masked with goggles, weapons strapped to their hips, frames bulky with the bulletproof vests I knew they must have been wearing underneath.

They stopped and looked at me, and then at each other, and for the first time in a long time I felt naked. I covered myself with my hands and lowered my head. I would not let them see me. Too late, I realized I had made the wrong decision. I shouldn't have stayed. I should have hidden for as long as it took for them to forget about me.

I took off as fast as I could, but I was no match for the nearest one. He tackled me neatly by diving for my ankles, and I came down softly on the bed of decayed leaves and pine needles that formed the spongy forest floor, and felt my arms being pinioned, my ankles held fast by another pair of hands.

“Stay down!” he yelled.

“Fuck you!” I screamed. I kicked as hard as I could and got one foot loose, and I felt the delicious sensation of my heelbone connecting with someone's jaw. A cry of pain reached me through the roar of the rotors.
Good
, I thought.

I heard a
pop
then, followed by several more in rapid succession. Gunfire.

They were going to kill me.

“Oh, my God!” I screamed. “Don't shoot me! I'm pregnant!”

“We're not shooting at you,” said the man who was lying on top of me. He had to shout to be heard. When he heard the word “pregnant,” he took his weight off.

I tried to struggle out of his grasp and look up, but he forced me down again. There came a sustained burst of automatic rifle fire, a long
brraaaapp
that seemed to tear the world in two. The sound was so loud it made me gasp. I smelled gunpowder. Then the man on top of me got up and pulled me to my feet.

“Look,” he said, pointing. “That's what almost got you.”

All I saw was a second man, the one I had kicked. I hadn't known that two of them were chasing me. He was writhing in pain, holding his jaw.

“Him?” I said.

“No,
look
,” said the other man, and I looked farther and saw a great crumpled, dark heap laying next to a downed tree. The other four men were circling it, their weapons drawn, and when it stirred they opened fire again, pouring lead into it until it stopped moving.

“Oh, you fuckers!” I screamed.

“What is it with you?” said the man nearest me. “We just saved your life!”

“You saved your own life,” I said. “He wasn't coming after
me
. He was coming after
you
. He was trying to protect me.”

That crumpled heap was Bear, king of this forest and perhaps the last of his kind for dozens of miles. I knew then, in the same way I knew what trees thought, that he had come there to save me from the men in the helicopter that he knew was coming, that he had willingly given his life for me. I felt deeper shame than I ever had before, because I knew that if things had been turned around I would not have had the nobility to do the same for him. I would never know why Bear felt it was his duty to protect me, and not to eat me.

That was when I understood that I was no longer worthy of living in the forest. For that reason I didn't fight anymore when they lifted us up in the air in their machine, me and whoever was living inside me, and took us away. They gave me a blanket, which I wrapped around me to protect my naked body from their eyes. It was the first time since I'd shed my clothes that I felt like something was missing, and I knew it was because these men were looking at me. I felt hot all over, as though their eyes were exuding fire. The one I'd kicked in the face sat opposite me on the floor of the helicopter, holding his jaw with one hand and staring at me sullenly. I thought about telling him that St.John's-wort and hyssop would help with the bruising, but I knew his kind wouldn't listen to me. He would go to a doctor and take whatever he told him to take, and that was all he deserved. He would get nothing from me.

I looked down on the waving treetops as we passed overhead, sticking my head out the door as far as they would let me. I was trying to spot familiar places, but the forest was impenetrable from this angle. All I could see was a floor of green, and soon even that was lost to sight as we came over civilization again. Within minutes I was back in the world, never as far from it as I'd thought I'd been. I had been just seconds out of reach the whole time.

T
here are guidebooks for just about every kind of journey one can make through the outer world, but very few for the inner kind. I mean the journeys one makes to expand the soul, to plumb the depths of oneself and find out just how deep the well really goes. Maybe that's because so few people bother going on these kinds of excursions, and even fewer have the gift of words to express the things they find along the way. Not for the first time in my life, I found myself in need of instruction, for my return home from the woods was as significant to my spirit as it was to my body. How was I expected to adjust to life in a man-made box of tree flesh after life among the trees? From a life of rhythmic light and dark to a life where one can change the color of the air any time one feels like it, with the flick of an electrical switch? Where rain never makes you wet, where cold can't touch you, where food is stored in some miraculous, humming container that keeps it cold no matter what the outside temperature? How do you remind yourself that all these things were once familiar, that in reality you understand them perfectly, and yet only now do you see how unnatural they are? How far they have taken us from our rightful place in the world?

It was three days after my return before I would consent to being looked at by a doctor. Mother stood outside my bedroom and pleaded with me to eat, to speak, to at least unlock the door so she would know I was alive. It was my opinion that it was none of her damn business whether I was alive or not. I was going through some kind of forest withdrawal, wherein I did nothing but lie in bed—my soft bed, my warm bed, a bed that was admittedly so delicious I could hardly believe it. I was grumpy and sick, and furious with myself because secretly I was glad to be home. I did tap on the door to reassure her. That was all I had in me. She couldn't have understood—or maybe she had forgotten—how painful and harsh human speech can seem after so many months of silence, how every spoken word is a sneak attack on the senses. I needed time to get used to being in a room again, in a house, with clothes in the closet and running hot water and soap and a refrigerator with food in it. And I missed the smells of the forest, the scent of crushed leaves and pine needles and bark and soft dirt and the thousand other odors that existed there in symphonic profusion. Here, all smells were chemical—floor wax, laundry detergent, the formaldehyde in the carpets, perfume. The more she tried to push me into talking, the more I wanted to never say another word again.

I did feel a bit off, physically. There was some kind of bug living inside me—in addition to the bug that Adam had planted, I mean. I felt fluish and chilled. Whatever it was, I was sure I could take care of it myself. I knew how to handle my body. For example, I had recently shaved my head. Mother had shrieked when she looked at my locks, lying on the bathroom floor—they were crawling with lice. Of course I had noticed this earlier, but it scarcely bore mentioning until I came home. Lice had been a fact of life for the last year. Mother wouldn't touch my hair, even to throw it away. She made me throw it in the yard, and then she poured gasoline on it and set it aflame. Black clouds of greasy smoke erupted, like a signal to the rest of the world that part of my life had just ended in death and disaster…again. I sat and
watched my hair burn like I was keeping vigil over a funeral pyre, and when the fire had burnt itself out—in a matter of minutes—I went upstairs and locked myself away.

When I finally gave in to Mother—more to shut her up than anything else—the doctor came to the house and looked me over gravely, making notes on a pad. He took a blood sample and made me pee in a cup. He wanted to slip on a latex glove and stick a couple of fingers inside me, but I refused because I didn't want anyone to know that I was pregnant yet, and I knew he would be able to tell immediately by feeling my cervix. He was going to find out from the urine sample anyway, but I hoped to have worked up the courage to tell Mother myself by then. Then he had the nerve to ask for a stool sample.

“I really have to have one,” he said. “You might have parasites.”

“If I do,” I said, “I know how to get rid of them. I don't need your help.”

He smirked, the smug bastard. “And how would you do that?”

Ointment of aloe, applied on the anus
, I thought.
Tinctures of garlic and wormwood
. But I didn't say anything. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction.

The doctor was a youngish, earnest man with slight flecks of gray at the temples, and he stood in my room with his stethoscope around his neck and his arms folded, a pathetic figure when compared to the greatest healer this part of the world had ever known, and even more so because he seemed to take himself so seriously.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Crap in a bucket?”

He frowned. “You can leave it in the toilet,” he said. “I'll take care of it.”

“I don't have to go,” I said.

“I can give you something for that.”

“What? Rhubarb?”

He was amused, I think. I was offended. That was the remedy Grandma would have used, after all.

“No,” he said. “An enema.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I don't need your medicine. Just leave me alone for a while. Something will happen.”

I went into the bathroom, ignoring Mother in the hall except to mutter, “A little privacy, please.” I can do pretty much anything when I put my mind to it, and when I had produced what I figured was a satisfactory amount I stuck my hand out the door and the good doctor handed me a plastic container. I filled it and handed it back—my offering to modern medical science.

“That will be all,” I said. “Right, Doctor? You're leaving now.”

I closed the door again and waited for him to be gone. I could hear him talking in low tones with Mother. Then he left. Mother knocked.

“No,” I said.

“No what?”

“Just…no.”

“Haley?”

What
, I thought.

“If it means anything to you, I was glad you were out there so long…for your own sake, not mine.”

I didn't say anything.

“I knew you were learning important things,” she said. “I knew you were going through something you had to go through. I missed you, but I respected it.”

I opened the door.

“If you really want to know,” she said, smiling weakly, “I was kind of jealous. I never would have had the courage to stay out there by myself. That was part of why I left to be with your father. It was scary out there.”

“I know,” I said. “It was.”

Mother had taken the news of Grandma's disappearance with a great deal more stoicism than I'd expected. I understood why; Grandma wasn't really her mother, any more than she was really my grandmother. She was whoever she was, and now that she was gone things
would certainly be different. I hadn't bothered to explain to her about the death of Bear because she wouldn't have understood.

“Would you like some soup?” she asked.

Soup. Cooked on a stove, made from things I hadn't eaten in a long time. With salt. And pepper. And a piece of bread and a soda, maybe, to go with it.

“That sounds good,” I said.

“You come on downstairs,” she said. “I'll fix you up something nice to eat.”

 

The big news, which had been splashed all over the front page of the Mannville
Megaphone
and the television news programs since my return, was not that a naked forest woman had been discovered living nearby in a feral state but that a small plane had gone down that was engaged in something illicit. The two men I'd found in the cockpit were not family men. They were not going to be mourned by anyone. They were drug smugglers, on their way to Canada. The entire tail section of the plane had been full of cocaine—for a couple of hours, I'd had access to five million dollars' worth of drugs, and I hadn't even known it. The authorities had known these guys would come through this way, flying low to avoid radar, which turned out to be their last mistake—they were carrying too much weight, and they had lost control over the treetops and crashed. That was why the rescue helicopter had arrived so fast, and why it had been carrying DEA agents instead of rescue personnel. They'd been waiting for the plane to appear. Now, after months of work on their part, and one lucky break, a notorious drug connection had been extinguished. Everyone in the government was happy.

This was why no one had said anything to the press about having found me. They wanted to protect me, they said, from whoever those guys were working for, because they—some mysterious Colombian drug lords or something—were the vengeful type, and if they thought I'd had something to do with their supply lines being cut they would
do me in. Perhaps it wasn't very likely, but there was no reason to take chances. Of course, I think it was also that the government wanted to take the credit for having found the plane themselves. How would it look to the public if legions of men with millions of dollars' worth of equipment were outdone by a naked girl with only a knife?

“Imagine,” said Mother, as I ate my soup. “You read about those kinds of people, but you never think you're going to see them. Drug people, I mean.”

“If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have come home,” I said, in a way that was loaded with double meaning. I had been found out because I was acting out of compassion, but it had all been wasted on those two. I should have let them rot out there. Then Bear would still be alive, and I would still be in my own little paradise. Learning. Talking to the Tree People.

Still, I had to admit, it wasn't bad being home again. I had forgotten how comfortable simple things were, such as the easy chair in the living room that had once been a favorite of my father's. Or the sheer pleasure of letting hot water cascade over my body in limitless amounts, soaping myself over and over again, feeling it tingle on my bare scalp. I had been so dirty I'd forgotten what it was like to be clean. During my first shower, the water had run brown for twenty minutes. I was now scrubbed so pink and shiny that I practically squeaked when I walked.

“So,” said Mother, watching me eat my soup—chicken noodle from a can, loaded with preservatives but not tasting too bad, all things considered. “What now?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I kind of need some time to think.”

We hadn't talked like this in years.

“You take all the time you need,” said Mother. “Things like this take a while to settle. Homecomings. I'm just glad you're safe and sound.”

“I might go visit Miz Powell, for starters,” I said.

“Oh, dear,” said Mother. “Oh, you don't know, do you?”

I froze with alarm. “Don't tell me,” I said.

“No, Miz Powell is fine,” said Mother. “It's her friend, Letty. Letty Horgan.”

“What about her?”

“She passed away in her sleep, a few weeks back. Peacefully. They said she had a stroke and never woke up.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was too bad about Letty, but it would have been too much for me to have lost Miz Powell before I'd had the chance to talk everything over with her. I wasn't done with her yet. There were lots of things I needed her opinion on. Such as: How was I going to fit into the world now? She was the only person who really seemed to understand me. Even Grandma ran only a close second—Miz Powell and I were birds of a feather, and suddenly, with the news of Letty's passing, I was seized with a strong desire to see her right away. Immediately. Now.

“Were there many people at the funeral?” I asked.

“Only a handful,” Mother said. “You get to be that age, you don't have many people left. She's buried up in Springville, if you want to know.”

So another piece of the circle had been broken.

“Thanks for lunch, Mom,” I said. “I better go.”

I cleaned the dishes at the sink. Then I changed out of my bathrobe into a pair of loose jeans, and a shirt that billowed around me like a sail. By my own and Mother's calculations, I had lost nearly fifty pounds in the last year. Nothing I owned would ever fit me again. I was going to have to go shopping. Even the maternity clothes I'd be wearing soon would be smaller than what I used to wear. With my head shaved and my cheekbones visible, I looked like a concentration-camp prisoner. Yet I could see my own face in the mirror for a change, unhidden by layers of fat, and I recognized myself as though I'd spotted an old friend passing by a store window.
There you are
, I thought.
I was wondering what happened to you.

After much debate I struggled into a pair of sandals, because it wouldn't do to show up at Miz Powell's place barefoot. Barefoot and
pregnant! That would be a laugh. The only part of me that
had
grown were my feet; all that time going around without shoes had caused them to spread. I was going to get some fierce blisters today.

I paused on my way out the door.

“You want to go shopping later, maybe?” I suggested to Mother. “When I get back? I need some new duds.”

Mother had retired to the easy chair, where I knew she'd been spending the better part of her days. Maybe she'd already resigned herself to spending the rest of her life there. I hadn't told her yet about the baby, because I hadn't decided if I was keeping it. For a moment I thought maybe I should tell her, just to give her something to look forward to. But at the mention of shopping she brightened. For now, shopping would have to be enough.

“I'd love to,” she said. “We can go to Kaufmann's, if you want.”

“Kaufmann's it is,” I said. “See you in a few hours.”

 

Miz Powell still had the same ramrod back and steely eyes that softened when she wanted them to, and I could tell that this was still a woman who would never be trifled with, even on her deathbed. Her hair was still perfect, her makeup applied lightly but with purpose. She smiled and ushered me into the dark gloom of her house, still as neat as a hospital operating room and smelling of mint and licorice. That, at least, was reassuring. Nothing here had changed. Embracing her was like clutching a bag of twigs to my chest. I released her gently and we sat down. A fresh pot of tea was already steaming on the coffee table.