In the Wilderness (29 page)

I knelt and gathered the dirt in my hands. It sifted through my fingers like powder. The land had been scavenged, scraped, then burned to sterile ash. I knew nothing could ever grow there—not in my lifetime, not until the wind and rain
had covered the scar with sediment deep enough to nurture the seeds that might fall from the few remaining pines.

I left the creek, following the dirt road back to pavement. I would not go to the hollow that day; I could not bear what I might see. Instead, I drove the road slowly back toward Pierce, past the bunk buildings of the Clearwater Timber Protection Association, past the wide curve in the creek where I had been baptized. Then Cardiff, where the parsonage with its creosote-stained siding squatted silent and cold, even though the sun shone brilliantly off its tin roof.

This time I stopped. I rolled down my window and studied the parsonage and the church. How small they seemed: the plain building, now looking dispatched, settled into disrepair, seemed an unlikely place to have ever contained the warmth I remembered, the loud singing and boisterous praise, the preachers twirling like dervishes down the aisles. I knew that inside the doors of the church was a wall of obsidian, built by one of the elders as a gift to the congregation. Many times I had studied its makeup. The black shards reflected my face in broken whorls, and when I reached to touch the fractured image I felt the cutting edge of glass.

The double-seated outhouse still stood tilted between the house and church. Did the rope swing still hang from the cottonwood limb above the creek, the one only the boys were allowed to sail from? Beyond the creek lay the railroad and the trails of coyote and bobcat.

Where were those skulls now, perfectly matched, incisors gleaming? Did the Langs carry them in their gypsy caravan, stashed with the hymnals, cushioned by tea towels and aprons? They would be picking cherries somewhere in Oregon, camped in a canvas-walled tent, singing their songs of faith.

I let myself miss the Langs as I had known them then, and
felt with a nauseating intensity the shame and betrayal they had left me with. Times before, on a day such as this, the sun greening the leaves, warming the stone flies to hatch and swarm the creeks, Luke and I might have found ourselves alone in the church. In another place, another time, it might have been called first love. Whatever it was I felt then was lost to me now.

I thought of the life we had all lived there for those few years. So little of it seemed real, so little of it made sense outside the world we had created for ourselves. I pulled onto the road and drove the miles back to Pierce, its windows and sidewalks still faceless, then on to Lewiston, to my apartment empty of anything that felt like family.

Sitting on the kitchen counter that night, smoking, flicking ash into the sink, I let the cool air from the open window draw the cloud of my breath away. Outside, the locust trees hung heavy with their sweet blossoms, drawing the bees in clusters that wove and bobbed through the branches like dark drowsy spirits. I had nothing to attach the trees’ fragrance to, no memory I might later recall and feel the rhythms of life continue.

That night was one of many I would spend alone, balanced at the window, smoking and looking into the night for some sense of what my life might be made of. For the next fifteen years, there would be no place I could find that gave me comfort, no place I believed I might be sheltered from the world—no sanctuary, not in the arms of a lover or the house of a friend, not even in my own bed, there least of all, for it was there that the fear set in and the dreams found me, and always I was running, trying to hide, trying to find the place of safety I had left, the way back a dim and impossible memory.

My father’s arms encircle me as he snugs the rifle into my shoulder, pressing me against his legs. He steadies my left elbow, extended and trembling with the barrel’s weight. I lay my cheek on the cool wood, breathing in the camphor of gun oil
.

“Steady,” my father says. “Don’t hold your breath. Aim like you’re pointing your finger.”

The target—a red circle crayoned on butcher paper and tacked to a stump—seems more distant with one eye closed. I know in a moment my arms will collapse, that the rifle will fall from my hands. Imagining the lovely brown stock caked with mud makes me shudder. I focus on the wavering bead and touch the trigger. The still afternoon explodes into pain, sharp and burning, spreading from my shoulder to the tingling tips of my fingers. My ears ring as the shock reverberates across the meadow
.

He moves from behind me, loosens my hands, cradles the rifle against his chest. He pulls a Camel from his pocket and smiles, a full, eye-wrinkling grin, holding the cigarette between his teeth. He is proud of me
.

He nods toward the target. “Let’s go see,” he says, and I move after him, my shoulder numbing, still feeling at my back the cool air of his absence. It is 1964. I am six
.

I am twenty, my father’s age when I was born. He, my brother and I sit in the pickup, parked somewhere in the Clearwater National Forest, drinking sweet tea from a thermos, waiting for dawn. Nearly a decade after moving to Lewiston, we have come back to hunt my fathers country.

It has been two years since I left home on graduation night, and we have barely spoken since. Two years on my own have given me the courage to believe that I’m independent enough to forge a new relationship with my father based on love and respect rather than on authority and obedience. I want to be welcomed into his home again. I want him to stay in the room when I enter to visit my mother. I want him to stop getting up from the table when I sit down. More than anything, I want a family that will not shun me.

I know that our truce will not come via apology—we both hold firm to the decision we made that day—and so I’ve found another alliance: I’ve asked him to hunt with me, to show me the land he knows. He logged it, punching through skidroads now grown over with chokecherry and alder. The thicketed draws, the stands of cedar, the meadows lush with tall grass and lupine are landmarks he lived by, familiar beyond simple memory. He has moved through this landscape, taken it inside of him, worked in the bone-deep cold of its winters, hauled from its heart millions of board feet. He has found the
water sprung from rock and filled his hands with it, so cold it seemed molten.

I crave his intimate knowledge of the woods and want to show him what I have learned. I’ll point out the deep-cut track of a running deer (
twin divots at the back—it’s a buck, then)
, name for him the birds that cross the sky (
flicker, evening grosbeak, pine siskin, and that one you call “camp robber”—it’s really only a gray jay)
. Given the chance, I’ll prove my marksmanship, but not with the rifle I’ve carried for the last year. I’ve given the Winchester 30.06 back to him, cleaned, oiled and polished—a token of peace. Maybe here, I think, in the woods, we can come to some understanding of the ways we share.

Sitting next to him in the pickup’s cab, I feel light-headed and girlish, once again a visitor in my father’s territory, beset by the need to act properly, to show myself worthy of his command. I try to keep my arms and legs close, conscious of every brush of cloth between us. I try not to breathe too fast and give away my nervousness. Greg sits on my right, six-foot-three and solid, touched by the light coloring of our Grandfather Barnes—dark blond hair that will prove itself red as he matures, his beard and mustache the color of fox. Between the two men I feel both protected and diminished, the daughter, the sister, always in need of safeguarding. When the silhouettes of trees notch the horizon, we pull on our hats, savoring the last of the heater’s warmth before stepping out into the frosted morning air. My father checks for matches, drops a few shells into his shirt pocket. He turns a slow half-circle, squints at where the sun colors the clouds, smiles at us and heads for the cover of timber.

For a time, we keep to an old dirt road, then turn onto a game trail that leads us along the flank of a high ridge. My breath wisps out and evaporates, and I keep my eyes on the
path, intent on keeping up. Already, my shoulder is numb with the weight of the Marlin—a lever-action 30.30, heavy and homely compared with my father’s Winchester. I swing it around, cradle it in the crook of my left arm.

My father is a tall man, long-legged and lean, unhurried and efficient in his movements. He keeps our pace steady, as though he has no intent of simply hunting but will lead us directly to where the deer stand exposed, stunned by our arrival into stillness. We should slow down, I think, listen. There might be bucks stripping alder only a few feet away. The farther we get from the rig, the farther we have to carry what we kill. The thought of half a carcass on my shoulders makes me groan. The muscles in my thighs ache with the climb. Sweat wicks into my long johns, and I am thankful for the overcast sky, gray and cool as gun metal.

I’ve been told my father can outwalk any man, can walk for days without tiring. Beneath a towering larch, he stops just long enough to strike a match. Golden needles drop around him, catching in his hair. His hands seem sometimes possessed of their own grace, like the wings of a raptor, finely boned and beautiful. He is strong, his chest and arms surprisingly large, so that when he rolls up his sleeves I find myself staring, seeing the muscle there tense and release, and I feel all that he has held back and is capable of.

No matter how carefully I step over twigs and loose rock, my presence is betrayed by the thud of my boots, the crack of dry limbs echoing through the quiet. A raven flies before us, calling its disgruntled warning. I watch its blackness against the sky and see the head pivot to follow our movement. He knows something we don’t, I think. I think that ravens are our attendants through the forest—dusky harbingers, impartial jurors, marking our progress, patient as fate.

I see my father’s back, the straight shoulders, the way he
moves: in the swing of his legs the hint of a swagger. I sense the rhythm of his stride and begin to hear its song, its smooth cadence. I bring the rifle around to rest behind my neck and drape my arms across its barrel and stock, like a woman carrying water.

Only a few miles into our hike and already I want to stop for a drink of tea. I want to rest. I try to discern the hour by the muted light of clouds. I hum out ragged bits of old songs—“Going to the Chapel of Love” and “I’ll Fly Away” and something by Bobby Goldsboro.

My father’s sudden stop startles me. I nearly run, thinking we’ve surprised a cougar or bear. He points to me, freezes me in my tracks, motions me to his side. My eyes follow his to a dense jumble of slash and tall brush.

Even with his direction, at first I cannot see the light-dappled back of a deer, motionless in the frosted undergrowth. My father’s hand is a brushstroke through air as he silently traces the hidden head and legs. I nod, finally able to see the doe where she stands fluid as mercury.

I step back to give him room, but he shakes his head. He has given me the shot. I should be grateful, but instead I feel patronized, instantly aware of his expectation, his judgment of my every motion. This will be his test of me, his way of making me prove up. The action, which normally comes easy—
snug the butt of the rifle tight against your shoulder, elbow up and out
—seems awkward as I lay my cheek to the stock. The deer raises its head and I think she has sensed us, but she dips again, browsing in fern and the shriveled leaves of mullen.

I aim for the killing spot, just behind the shoulder, a point at which I know the bullet might puncture the lungs or pierce the heart, but now I’m not sure I want to kill the doe. We’re not here for meat; we’re here because a daughter and her father can speak to each other only in a code made up of
action and reaction. The forest, the trail, the deer are backdrop and props for the little war we wage, and if only a few hours ago I believed our outing an innocuous attempt at reconciliation, I feel our roles settling upon us: the powerful father, the willful daughter, each intent on gaining some edge over the other, even here, in the wilderness, in this ritual of blood.

The shot echoes across the ridge. I lever in another cartridge and aim again, waiting for leaves to move, for shadows to separate. What I see is the deer’s white flag of a tail disappear into the thick undergrowth. I turn to my father pulling smoke deep into his lungs. He looks at me above the still-lit match and raises one eyebrow. I glance at my brother, who is studying his boots.

Before I can protest, my father turns and moves away. Greg shrugs his shoulders and follows him. I want to tell them I meant to miss, or that anyone can miss a shot. I think, Quit walking, listen, but the distance between us lengthens until I fall far behind.

I hate my weakening legs, my slow finger against the trigger. I hate the doe, who believed us trees solidly planted in the bank, and I hate that I made of her some symbol of resistance. I think I might hate the man in front of me, my father, who carries his burden so easily, as if it were nothing, the rifle slung over his shoulder. I wonder what he is thinking, and as has always been the case between my father and me, I think he can discern the reason for my every action. He wanted me to shoot the deer, and because he wanted me to, I wouldn’t.
But it was you who started it
—I want to say—
you’re the one who insisted I take the shot It wasn’t a gift, it was a test, a trial.

By the time we crest the ridge, I’m somewhere between tears and fury, both unacceptable shows of emotion. I swear
silently that I’ll never subject myself to this again. My father slows, then stops. He pulls a cigarette from his pocket with two fingers, lights it, scans the ridge. I long for a cigarette of my own, but I cannot imagine smoking in front of my father. I kick mud from my boots, glad for the moment’s rest, already planning a hot bath when I get back to my apartment, where I can be free of my father’s reckoning.

He turns his gaze on me. “Now,” he says, “you lead.”