Wilderness (26 page)

She felt Glenn nod. “I know that too.”

She wet her lips. “But?”

“But what?”

“You tell me. You say it.”

He let go her hand and cradled his head with laced fingers, still staring upward through the dark. “You’re right, we can’t turn him out. Not with winter coming.”

Ellen sighed. “Do you really think he’d stay? That he’d even want to? To settle for that little room?”

“Do you think he can do much more?” asked Glenn. And then, softly, “No. No, I don’t. But what can we do? … What I’ll do,” he said, thinking aloud. “What I’ll do is tell him I need help clearing the upper field. Which I do. He could drive the wagon back and forth, if nothing else.”

“He won’t,” said Ellen. “Granted, I don’t know him well, nor do I really want to, but a man like that driving for you? He couldn’t conceive of it, I’m sure.” She sighed. “When he wakes,” she said with a certain, heavy resignation, “I’ll offer him the room for the winter. That’s all we can do and that’s what we
have
to do. We’ll offer the room, and he can decide on his own.”

“You don’t think we should force him? For his own good?”

“I don’t, and we couldn’t,” she said. “There’s his good and the world’s and then there’s ours. Our good, Glenn. It might not be Christian, but I don’t care. If it comes to it, ours has got to win out over his, over the world’s. After everything we’ve …” Ellen took a fast, hot breath and Glenn took up her hand and pressed his lips to each of her knuckles in its turn. She watched his shadow in the dark beside her—how he moved, the soft rustling of fabric as he shed his union suit. The sudden warmth of him pressed flush against her. His fingers at her knees, bunching the nightdress around her hips, and the cool kiss of wintery air upon her flesh.

And she was conscious of her own breath and his, suddenly synchronous. Their frantic pulses of blood beating in time as their tired, hurt hearts thrashed against each other with only thin walls of flesh and bone to keep them separate. She opened her eyes, trembling in the soft, cool dark, and saw his sad, lonely face hovering close. His eyes closed and his face held as though he’d weep. She said his name and he told her he loved her. “Can you see me?” she whispered against his ear. “Can you feel my skin?” He told her yes and yes and their hands fisted together atop the sheets as though struggling quietly, desperately. But before it was beautifully finished things went all wrong within her as they often did and she cried out, pushed him back. Away. Kicking the sheets from her legs and her legs pale and thin in the dark where they were tucked under her. She clawed at the wall beside the bed and scuttled into the corner, covering her face and trying to will away their smell, the old, cold feel of the gun barrel going into her.

Glenn covered his eyes with his forearm and breathed deeply until his heart had slowed. He knew better than to talk or try and touch her, so lay instead damning them for what they’d done and damning himself because he’d not been there to stop them doing it. Ellen wept. She told him she was sorry, and after a time he sat up
and held out his hand and after a time she took it and without another word they lay back down together.

She lay, telling him how she loved him, and he answered. Their hearts slowed, the sweat and tears evaporated from their flesh into the dark cold—rising through the shadows and through the roof and on into the clouds where they would, days hence, fall again as rain upon the town below and the townsfolk would look up from their lives, suddenly melancholy and for what reason they would never know. And finally, in the cold, moonshot dark, Glenn and Ellen fell asleep and dreamed dreams quiet and weary and sad.

Down the hall, Abel woke in the dark. He could hear their urgent, soft, grief-struck lovemaking and could hear them when they fell apart. At the change of his breath, the dog rose and licked the side of his face. Abel grinned and swore softly and when he finally did fall back to sleep it was with his good arm outflung over the dog, fingers curling into the soft fur behind its ear.

The next morning, Glenn rose early. The rain had ceased and the sky was gray, charged with a high wind that you sensed more than felt. He hiked to the upper field to judge the work that needed doing, calculating two men’s labor against the scant days remaining before the first snowfall. Ellen stayed behind to warm water on the stove for bathing. It was cool and she spent some little time coaxing flames from the ash-hidden coals. By the time the fire was crackling the water was warm, and she cupped her pale hands into the pot to raise the awkward bowl of her palms to her face. Running wet fingers through her brown hair until her face and neck and scalp were damp, she was lost for the briefest of moments in the pleasant steam, the water’s soft warmth. When next she looked up, Abel stood with his dog just without the room in the dark of the hall, looking studiously at the floor with his old boots in his hands.

When he sensed her eyes on him, the old soldier looked up and grinned lopsidedly. Wincing a little, he ran a hand over his shorn head. “I’ll be damned if every time I wake up anymore someone hasn’t barbered me,” he said softly.

Ellen smiled and Abel nodded and ducked his head and pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek. The deeply callused soles of his bare feet rasped on the swept floorboards like shy whispers. After a few silent moments, they both raised their voices to speak, then both fell quiet again. Abel raised a palm. “You go on,” he said.

Ellen nodded. “I was just going to ask how you were feeling. You’ve had us worried.”

“Yes ma’am, I reckon I was pretty worn out. Still a mite woozy, but I do feel one whole lot better’n I did.” Sniffing, he looked at her. “Must’ve been you who doctored me?”

Ellen nodded, plucking up a towel and pressing her damp hair into it. “I didn’t do all that much, really. Just cleaned you up a bit and gave you a little trim.” She patted her forehead with the towel and dried her cheeks, then raised her chin. “That cut on your face looks like it’s healing pretty well. Whoever stitched it did a good job.”

Abel touched the long cut that ran the length of his face. “That was old Charley Poole and his kin,” he said, nodding. “Like Glenn, they come crost me when I was in a bad way.”

Ellen set the towel aside and looked at the old man. “Glenn said he found you in the woods north of town.”

“That could be,” said Abel. “And I’m obliged to both of you.” He looked down at the dog where it sat next to him, leaning against his leg and dampening a spot on his trousers with its wet panting. “And for takin’ in this fool, too.”

Ellen shook her head. “It’s nothing,” she said. “But it looks to me like someone beat you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Abel, looking away. “I reckon it would. I reckon they have been.”

Ellen sighed heavily and crossed her arms. “Abel Truman,” she said. “What happened to you?”

The old man stared off into the corner of the room. He whistled flatly through his teeth. After a moment, he reached down and scratched behind the dog’s ears, then looked back up at Ellen. “Ah,” he said. “That’d be a long tale.”

She pursed her lips and stared at him until he shuffled his feet and shrugged. “We run afoul of brigands,” he finally said, nodding to include the dog.

She looked from the old man’s face to the dog’s and back again. “Brigands?” she asked, raising her fingers to her lips to cover the smile forming there.

“Well,” said Abel, shrugging again. “They was bad men, sure enough.”

Ellen’s smile faded and she nodded. “There are a few of those about,” she said.

Abel squinted at her and raised his chin. “I reckon I’ll step outside, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Pull on my boots and take the air.”

Ellen nodded again. “I tucked some socks down into them for you,” she told him. “You’d better go on and put those on too.”

Abel blinked rapidly with surprise, then felt inside the boots and smiled. As he went to the door, Ellen stepped aside, and as he passed her, she caught again the faint, metallic whiff of something gone or going wrong within him and for just a moment she was unbearably sad. Taking a quick, deep breath through her mouth to master herself, she squared her shoulders, and as Abel opened the door the ferrous odor disappeared with the cool air that rushed in.

The old man turned in the open door and looked back at the dog where it still sat in the hall with its mouth open, looking at Ellen. “What’re you grinnin’ at, dumbass?” he asked it. “This nice lady don’t want you. Now you come on here now.” Abel slapped his thigh
twice and the dog stretched its front legs out, raising its hindquarters and squinting with a pleasurable stretch. “Look at you,” said Abel with mock disgust, shaking his head as the dog trotted leisurely out the door. “You are pitiful, is what you are.”

Before following, Abel turned to Ellen and raised his hand as though to tug down on the brim of his hat, but he was bareheaded so only frowned briefly, then nodded to her and closed the door.

Abel Truman stepped across the Makers’ porch and sat upon the top step. The day was overcast but not too cold, and Abel reckoned that on clear days the Makerses had a view that stretched over the trees and gentle foothills to the distant ocean. Trees rose through the fog like strange steeples, their trunks looming as though some great, quiet city existed there in the fog without motion or sound. Abel closed his eyes while the dog scampered off, and when he opened them again, Ellen was crouched beside him on the step with her wet hair pushed back behind her ears so it hung in dark ringlets below the sharp hinges of her jaw. She smelled of soap, and Abel blinked rapidly.

“Are you all right?” she asked, settling a hand upon his shoulder.

Abel cleared his throat loudly. It became a harsh, hot cough that doubled him over and chased tears into his eyes. He wheezed, though he tried hard not to, and when it was done with him he spat to the side and apologized. Ellen shook her head and handed him his old slouch hat. “You left that in … in your room,” she told him.

“Goddamn,” murmured Abel, taking the hat from her. Grinning his pleasure, he blocked out the crown with his fist and turned it about by the brim, marveling. “Well, I just knew I’d lost it somewheres,” he said, snugging it down on his head, settling and situating it slightly front and back to account for his haircut.

Ellen set a mug of coffee on the step beside him along with a little wooden box painted with Chinese dragons in red and gold. “I
thought it might have been awhile since you had a decent cup of coffee,” she said, then nodded to the box. “Let alone tobacco.”

Abel looked at the coffee. He smelled it on the damp air and wiped his eyes, for a fierce heat suddenly troubled them. As Ellen turned to go back inside, Abel shifted on the step and found his voice. “But I couldn’t take none of Glenn’s ’bacca, could I?”

She paused at the door and looked back at the old man. Very small and worn he perched, half in tears over the prospect of coffee and tobacco. “Glenn doesn’t use it much,” she told him, waving her palm. “You go on, help yourself.” She nodded and winked. “Glenn’ll be down from the field in a little while and we’ll all have some breakfast then and talk things over a little. Is that all right with you?”

Abel ducked his head and nodded. Ellen returned the nod with one of her own and went back into the cabin.

Left alone again, Abel took a deep breath and drug his palm down his face. He scowled to remember his beard was gone, then picked up the little box of makings and stared off into the forest. Distantly, he heard the dog barking and Glenn calling to it. Abel smiled and set the box to the side. He lifted the coffee and held the mug by its base in his damaged hand, cupped it with his good one and put his face over the white china rim, closing his eyes to the rich scent and letting it conjure what memories it would. All those unbidden recollections suddenly fine and easy and bright there in the cool morning air. He sipped the coffee and, for the first time in a long while, enjoyed his thoughts. And after a while, Glenn came along the uphill trail beyond the tool shed.

Abel watched him cross the yard and bid him good morning when he drew near. Glenn nodded in return and settled down on the step beside him, setting the veiny slabs of his forearms on the peaks of his knees and clasping his work-raw hands together in the air before him. They sat together silently and Abel sipped the coffee. In the cabin
behind, they could hear Ellen moving about, and presently there came the sound and smells of breakfast cooking—the clatter of crockery upon the wooden table, a sizzling in the pan, and the soft, unbearably clean, fine scent of broken eggs. After a while longer Abel said, “She seems well.”

Glenn nodded, pursed his lips, then nodded again. “She does,” he said.

“They ever catch ’em?”

Glenn filled his cheeks and blew. “No,” he said. “But I don’t figure they’re still around. If they were, even old Jensen would’ve found ’em by now.” He unlaced his fingers then laced them again, trying by small movements not to think of any of it, though, in truth, there was seldom a moment that he wasn’t turning it all over again in his mind. As though it was the punishment for his tardiness that day, it came constantly back, kinking and tangling in his mind like fencing wire that’s slipped the post.

He recalled paying cash for the down payment on the land and how carefully he folded the paper receipt into his breast pocket. He remembered making a proud show of it in Wheelock afterward so everyone could see he’d finished a legal transaction and by God this land was his now, and he remembered felling trees for three months straight. And then came a warm spring, a hot summer. Nights spent in a mud-spattered canvas tent beside the river at the edge of town as they resupplied. They could hear at night the soft crashing of the ocean beyond the forest and knew its constant presence by the rise and fall of the river in its bank. And Glenn remembered that last week in August when he spent the night alone on the property, hurrying the cabin along, getting it ready to receive them while Ellen waited for him in the tent beside the river swollen by the tide.

They came in the night while he was away, their boot prints crazing the mud along the riverbank and not a man in Wheelock willing to follow them the next morning save Jensen, who knew
little in the way of tracking. Glenn remembered how he’d found her on the floor of the tent, her thighs smeared with blood, her eyes wide without sleep or thought. She didn’t speak for six days after, and on the seventh she wept. Some nights, Glenn’s dreaming mind still recalled the blood on the tent wall where they’d written the word “mudshark” and how he’d naively turned to Jensen, who said past his stained mustache, “What some fools call a white woman who lays with a black man.” And then the rage; the great, hot, red, dirty rage that unmanned him until they’d struck him a blow on the temple and he fell into the dark.