The New Wild (14 page)

In 1943,
the U.S. Government launched a nuclear production complex in eastern
Washington, where three rivers—the Columbia, the Yakima, and the
Snake—wind through the grasslands and tumble into one. They created
enough plutonium for more than 60,000 nuclear weapons in the country’s arsenal,
not to mention the bomb that all but obliterated Nagasaki, Japan. But by the
late eighties, the site was entirely decommissioned, leaving millions of
gallons of radioactive waste in its wake. This would be all well and good if it
were on another planet, hidden behind lock and key. But there are three cities
there, and before the Burning, there were almost five hundred thousand people,
breathing and drinking and living along the riverbanks.

I know the place the minute we get
to it because, as an environmental lawyer, my Mom was always working on cases
related to it. There’s the crooked arm of the river, the sky-high blackened
smokestack, the hulking barbed-wire fences now crawling with brambles. In every
other place I’ve come across, Mother Earth only burnt up the buildings, things
we built. Here, the ground is charred, too, endless meadows of soot black.
Maybe it was too ruined to fix.

In this place, the jee-bows stand
over twenty feet tall, their stems glowing from within. When we pass, they turn
fuchsia pink, then red. Xander reaches over and decapitates one with the axe.
Black steam rises out of the cut stem and evaporates.

I won’t let us drink the water
around us, which despite Mother Nature’s fresh start, is topped in shimmery
green slime. At least the Columbia will take us all the way to Portland from
here.

I can smell it in the air, what
Xander smelled
—
home. But I’m getting a shiver up my back that tells me to
be careful. Something’s going to go wrong, really wrong, in the next few days.
I can feel it. And I can’t stand it.

Gingerly, with one foot in front
of the other, we cross over the melted-down remains of the steel bridge that
leads from the Tri-Cities to Oregon,
my
Oregon. It’s still frigid
outside—not Montana cold, but Oregon cold. The dampness in the air will
chill you to the bone. Water gushes though the fractured beams of the first of
the Columbia River’s eleven dams we come across. I guess that would explain why
the river, which had gotten pretty narrow by the time I left for Camp Astor, is
now nearly as wide as the Mississippi. When I left Oregon, trash swirled on the
surface. Now, it flows clear as crystal. The rainbow salmon that were on the
brink of extinction are back and leaping out of the water, wriggling their way
upstream to spawn. Some elder members of a Native American tribe have set up
lodges along the water and are smoking the fish over roaring fires. It’s great
to interact with other human beings, to laugh again. They offer some smoked
salmon to us—enough to feed us for three or four days. I can feel my body
growing stronger with each bite.

We walk as fast as we can along
cliffs of the Columbia River Gorge. My head hurts, my palms are sweaty. I keep
thinking I’ll return to find my mom and Bernard turned to ashes. I guess I’ll
know soon enough.

We inch
across the rolling fields alongside a cliff, high above the Columbia River. All
of the sudden, Droops starts freaking out, barking and whining and jumping in
circles. The sky above us, which had been a brilliant blue in line with the
sapphire of the river, turns deeper shades of pink. My heart pounds, and my
hands curl all by themselves into tiny, tight fists. Xander’s pretending
nothing is wrong, which is a very bad sign. The ground starts to quake and
shake. I grab onto Xander tightly, but it isn’t long before I realize that,
just as before, this is no earthquake.

Xander holds on to me super tight.
He has tears in his eyes. I glance over my shoulder and freeze. Far in the
distance, I see a string of lights moving rapidly along the horizon line. A
gang of horned, bloodthirsty unicorns is stampeding our way.

The sky is now beet-red, swirling
with smoke. The thundering sound gets louder and louder. Xander clutches Droops
closer to his chest and points south, where an endless line of flaming red
lights—their horns—are burning across the horizon line, headed
toward us. I can’t die today of all days, a violent and bloody death, a couple
days from home. Neither of us can talk. For a few seconds, we stand there,
watching the line of red lights race closer, too scared to move. They’re
definitely after one thing, and one thing only
—
blood.

There’s nothing around us. No
place to hide. We’re surrounded by empty fields on the edge of a great cliff,
hundreds of feet above a jagged rock bed that’s edging the river. Still, we
run.

The closer they get, the more I
think I’m going to pass out. My chest is thudding so loud I can almost hear it
above the pounding of their hooves. Almost.

They’re close enough now that when
I look back I can see their eyes glowing under the lights of their horns,
hundreds of red dots coming toward us. I can feel waves of heat rolling over my
body, and the nearer they get, the warmer it is. Damn. We have to do something.
I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen if we don’t. But what
can
we do? We have one lousy axe to defend ourselves with. That’s not gonna do
jack.

Mid-run, I clumsily trip on a tiny
rock. I go flying, feet in the air. When I hit the ground, all the air’s
knocked out of my lungs. Xander pulls me up, and we start to run again, but
it’s no use. They’re quicker than lightning, and we’re just people. No fangs,
no breath of fire, no real running ability. All we have is our heads.

I see bubbles floating all around
us. If we poke them, maybe the trees inside will provide some cover from the
killer unicorns.

“Pop the bubbles!” I scream, as
they’re getting so close to us my flesh is starting to sweat from the heat. I
start popping, and Xander follows suit until there’s a ring of tightly planted
redwoods, yellow cedar, and lodgepole pine trees locked into the earth around
us, encircling us, protecting us. The circle is maybe eight feet wide, and the
trees are planted so close together the branches above are blocking most of the
sky. It’s dark, except for the tiny slats of red light glowing between the
trunks.

We huddle together, shuddering as
the earth continues to vibrate beneath us and the unicorns encroach. About one
hundred yards away, they start to slow until they reach our little copse. My
breath is shallow. We try not to make a sound as they sniff all around us,
poking their muzzles between the branches and scratching at the tree trunks. So
much adrenaline is pumping through my veins that I think I’d have the energy to
run fifty miles without a break. But I can’t do anything with it. I have to sit
here as silently as possible and wait for them to break through, wait for their
hundreds of spinning, saw-like horns to bust through this wall of trees and cut
us all to bits, leaving our flesh to smolder in the sun. I’m crying so hard I
can’t see and holding onto Xander with every last ounce of energy, even though
I know there’s nothing he can do. It feels good to touch him.

A horn bursts through one of the
trunks, penetrating our little circle. I scream. We scurry away from its
gleaming tip, stumbling into another compromised trunk. I can feel the drilling
and the heat radiating from the horn at my back. We are totally screwed, both
of us. We don’t have much time. I turn to Xander and hug him as tight as I can,
sobbing. I want to tell him I love him, tell him it was all worth it to be with
him. I look into his eyes, and they’re quaking with fear. Both of us are
covered in the surreal red glow of the unicorn horns.

And then I see her. In the
distance, through a tiny crack between trees, Kitten is standing, the white
diamond of hair on her chest clear as day. She’s pawing at the ground and looks
pissed as hell. She’s facing the cliff.

I aim my eyes through a tiny slat
in the wood and look over toward where she’s staring. I spot a tiny, round beam
of light shining toward her, right on the edge of the precipice. Whatever it is,
it’s flickering in the one ray of sunlight that’s bursting through the clouds.
The beam of light it’s creating keeps waving from side to side, as if on the
wind. As if to tease her.

The unicorns stop sawing at the
trees to turn toward it. “Oh my God,” Xander whispers, pointing at it. “What is
that light?”

The glimmering light is
distracting the unicorns. They’re all squealing. Out of nowhere, Kitten races
toward the light, like she’s going to kill it. The same way she charged the
buffalos and the grizzly. They all follow suit, charging straight for it. They
are determined to kill that twinkling thing before they kill us, and run after
it the way a cat chases a fly.
At least it will buy us some time.

The unicorns are running so fast
they look like a blur. They race straight for the source of that flashing
light, straight for that cliff, and all we can see from our cell of trees is a
wall of them moving rapidly in that direction. And then, we don’t. They’re so focused
in their pursuit, they run right off the cliff. We hear them hit the jagged
riverbed in a faint succession of thuds.

I collapse into Xander’s arms.
“Did that really happen?” I ask him. “Are they really that dumb?”

“I think the real question is, are
we really that lucky? There’s only one way to find out,” he says, his jaw
clattering. Sweat pours off him in buckets.

Xander takes the axe and hacks
through the trees so we can crawl out. Our knees are like jelly as we stagger
toward the cliff. Xander tries to hold me upright as I sob in his arms.

When we get close to the beam of
light, I see it’s just Bernard’s compass caught on a rock above the ground,
reflecting the tiny ray of sunlight bursting through the clouds.

“My God,” I say. “It must have
slipped off me when I fell!”

“Amazing,” Xander says. “That
thing saved our lives.”

Gingerly, we approach the cliff’s
edge.

“I can’t look,” I admit.

“Me either,” he says softly.
“Let’s do it together.”

Slowly, we inch up to the ledge
and peer over. Thousands of feet below us, the unicorns are smashed in a huge
pile, un-moving. Some seem stuck in the boulders along the river, their bodies
splayed out and twitching. But they all look dead, every one of them—even
Kitten, which puts a small lump in my throat. And from the looks of it, their
horns have completely disintegrated. They’re gone. I fall back into Xander’s
chest. It’s hard seeing Kitten dead—she helped us on this journey as much
as her fellow unicorns terrified us. But if that shining necklace hadn’t caught
their eyes, we would be torn to pieces right now. Part of me wonders if she led
them off the edge on purpose, to save us.

He looks over at me, smiling. “Are
you going to say it or should I?”

“What?” I say, exhausted and
relieved.

“
Phew,” he exclaims.

I erupt into a fit of nervous
laughter. “Phew,” I say back, then kiss him until my lips hurt. We’re
alive—and I’m almost home.

Not that
long ago, I was the type of person that spent many hours a day “hooked up” to
computers and television with music pumping into my ears. So many moments of my
life were consumed by things, by the constant beat of the modern world. I could
tell you the random town some celebrity was born in, and how to upload your own
HD videos to the web, but I couldn’t begin to describe how to boil water
adequately, on a stove or otherwise. I didn’t know how.

Today the only beat I hear is the
thudding of my own heart, a tiny chamber of muscle whose sole purpose in life
is to keep me alive. I know which berries to eat and which will make me gag. I
can kill, pluck, and cook a bird with my bare hands—no blade required. I
can tell you which way is west by looking at the sky. If it’s clear enough, I
can even tell you what time it is. It sounds gross, but I know when Aunt Flo is
coming each month solely by looking at the moon. I know now that all you need
in life—all you really need—is your next breath.

We’re still walking along the
Columbia, but we’ve passed through all the rolling fields of Eastern Oregon and
into the thick evergreen woods that line the river close to Portland. The
moment we enter the forest, I know we’re nearly there. The air, dense with fog,
also carries a smell of pine and sap so permeating it has the sweet perfume of
Christmas. There’s so much moisture in the atmosphere that our clothes are damp
to the touch. Woodland creatures skitter around us as they rush over the mossy
rocks and ferns—chipmunks, flying squirrels, brown pocket gophers. We
reach an overlook where we can see Mt. Hood, with its snow-capped peak,
standing regally to our left. When we get to Multnomah Falls, now coursing
wider then I’ve ever seen it, my heart is so filled with worry it feels like it
might break in two. Xander holds my hand as we walk, and his giant paw feels
like an embrace.

But when we’re within a few hours
of home, I settle into a strange calm. Right now, at least I have hope. At
least I can still pretend they’re fine.

Part of me thought Portland would
be untouched, the same as it was when I left it. In my head, I tried picturing
it burnt up like every other town I’ve seen, but I couldn’t do it. I thought
maybe, just maybe, it would have survived her wrath. The city had been pretty
green, after all.

But the closer we get to
Stumptown, the more I know that’s not the case. Lots of houses on either side
of the Columbia are charred and covered in foliage. Cars on I-84 are stalled
permanently in their melted states. There aren’t that many people around, but
every time we meet someone, it’s like running into an old friend, even though
we’ve never met. We talk about what we miss—foods and stores we loved, and
the people we’re looking for.

In the city, all the trees that
used to grow here unnaturally—the Redbuds and the Soapberries—have
been replaced by the indigenous evergreens. Enormous Pacific Silver Firs and
Coastal Redwoods are everywhere, shooting so high into the sky, they almost
block out the daylight. They’re growing out of the streets, out of the houses,
even out of the former cars. The air smells fresh, like rainwater and pine
needles, and the earth is thick and brown and covered in moss and lichen. There
are a few people scattered about, doing whatever it is they need to survive.
One is tending a vegetable garden, a couple are fanning what may be the biggest
bonfire ever made. A herd of elk graze over the spot where the freeway used to
zip south, California-bound.

Everything we pass in Portland
seems to bring back a memory I can’t shake. The streets remain, and though
they’re now overgrown with brambles and crowded by thick, needle-dripping
trees, I can remember the good and bad times I had on each one. Skinning my
knee here, kissing a sweet boy there. I can picture Bernard and me on almost
every corner, whooping it up. I’m so scared I’ll lose him today that I can
hardly breathe.

By the time we get to my old
neighborhood, I think my heart might go ahead and stop, terrified of what it
will find. I’m running now, Xander trailing behind me, swaddling the puppy.

The first thing I see is the
house. The whole place is torched. The roof is crawling with thick grass, and a
blue heron is standing on the porch. I thought those birds were good luck
signs, but from the looks of it, I have no more luck left. I poke my head in
all the windows, and the interiors are all soot black and crumbling. There’s no
floor. Huge plants have sprouted between the mossy walls.

“Hello? Mom?” I call, my voice
cracking. There’s no answer but a shift in the wind. The hope I had, that tiny
flame inside me that said they were alive and it was all going to be okay,
dwindles. And if Mom is dead, surely Bernard is dead.

 All is lost, all is gone. I
hit the ground and sob. I sob for Mom, for Bernard, for all the things I’d
never get to do with them. Xander looks at me with pity in his eyes. I can’t
take it. I get up and start to run. I have to feel something besides this, even
if it’s my own body aching.

“Jackie! Where are you going?” he
shouts after me.

I don’t reply. I can’t. All I can
do is run.

Almost all the houses are burnt up
like mine. As I run, the trees morph into a blur and for a minute, look like
they’re all one mass, all one garbled chain- link fence of pine. Now that the
pavement is gone, the earth feels soft under my feet. Soft and uneven, covered
in mossy topsoil.

I have never felt this much pain.
I want to run so hard I can’t feel anything anymore. And I’m running so fast,
so determinedly, that I almost don’t see him.

He is sitting under the pear tree
we used to climb when we were kids. His dirty-blond hair is brown from soot,
he’s skinny as a rail, and his skin is so tan he could be a different person.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I’m
almost scared of him. I’m worried he’s some post-Apocalyptic psycho who’ll eat
me as soon as he catches me. But then I look into his kind, knowing eyes, and I
know—this is my friend. He stands up and lets out a whooping cry the
minute he sees me.

“Jackie!” he hollers as I’m
rounding the bend.

I stop dead in my tracks and look
into his eyes for the person I used to know.

“Jackie, it’s
me
.”

He smiles so wide his teeth could
fall out of his mouth.

Tears pool in my eyes. “Bernard!
Oh my God,
Bernard!
” I cry, racing toward him. “I thought you must be dead!”
Our bodies fly together in an embrace.

“No, not the last time I checked,”
he says, putting his hand up to his neck to take his pulse. I snatch his hand
away from his neck and wrap it around me.

We hug harder and fiercer than
I’ve ever hugged anyone. Xander must have heard me shrieking from up the
street, because he ambles up behind us. But I’m so happy to see Bernard that we
stand there like we’re the only people in the world, squeezed together as
Xander shifts uncomfortably. We’re both sobbing, huge, happy tears rolling down
our cheeks. We only break apart when Xander talks.

“So, this is the best friend I
guess, huh?” he asks, his voice full and low.

“Xander,” I say, tears in my eyes.
“This is Bernard, one of the greatest people you will ever meet,” I shout,
grabbing him and shaking his shoulders with glee. “Bernard, meet one of the
other greatest people you will ever meet,
Xander
,” I say, giving
Bernard a wink so he knows there’s something between us.

“God, it’s so nice to meet you,”
Bernard says. “I can’t believe you’re here. I kinda gave up a few months ago.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, I mean,
come on
,
Jackie. Your mom’s the only thing that kept me alive. She has this old book on
living off the land. Without that thing, we both would have starved to death
and
we
weren’t fighting our way west. Your mom wouldn’t give up, though.
She knew you would come.”

“SHE’S ALIVE?” I shriek. “Where is
she?”

Bernard smiles and takes my hand.
He leads us down to the Willamette River, where the sunset has turned the water
a dusty pink hue. A series of tents sit under the rain-blocking branches of redwood
trees. There’s a fire puffing smoke from the ground. We can see the back of a scrawny
figure sitting cross-legged by the blaze, hunched over, poking the fire with a
stick she holds in her right hand. The other is held back in a sling. From
behind, she looks frail—this new world has not been kind to her. But
she’s alive. My heart feels like its going to stop, it’s beating so hard.

Bernard and Xander stay back to
give me space. I walk closer to the figure quietly, as if on tiptoe.

“Mom?” I say, my voice cracking.

The second she hears my voice she
sits up straight, her back stiff as a board. I notice her hair is all silver-gray
now, held in a long braid that runs down her spine. She drops the stick and
whirls around. When she looks into my face, her jaw drops. She bounds up on her
feet and over to me.

“Baby? Is that my BABY?” she
wails, her eyes wet with tears.

“I’m home, Mom,” I say, stepping
into the shelter of her embrace. She is rail-thin, but she smells the same as
she always did. Sweet. Like Mom.

“Oh, I can’t believe you’re
finally here! I knew you would make it, Jackie. I knew you would.”

We hug each other tight for what
feels like an hour—so tight I can barely breathe, but I don’t mind. When
we break apart, Xander and Bernard are double-teaming the cinders to make a
roaring bonfire, throwing sparks into the night.

“Do you want to introduce me to
your friend?” Mom says, reaching down to pet Droops and tilting her head toward
Xander.

He comes over, smiling.

“Mom, this is my, uh, boyfriend,”
I say, sheepishly.

She lets out a big belly laugh.

Xander looks nervous when I drop
the B-word. He extends his hand. “So nice to meet you. I’ve been hearing about
you for months.”

“Oh, give me a hug, Xander,” Mom
says, pulling him in. Under her frail arms, he looks even bigger than normal,
but childlike at the same time. He collapses into her. I think he needed to
feel a mother’s comforting touch. I’ve never been happier than I am in this
moment, and I’ve never felt so lucky.

We all gather around the fire and watch the moon rise to
cast its surreal white glow over our camp. I look up at it, and I swear I can
see a smile in its face. Tears course down my cheeks. I grab my mother’s hand,
nearly crushing her slender fingers. I look into her eyes and she smiles wide.

I’m home. We may not have a house, but we’re home. Together,
we’ll figure out how to live in this new wild.