A History of Wild Places(21)

That’s how it feels, looking upon the truck.

A felled tree is lying across the road, limbs shattered and broken apart, effectively blocking the path. The truck is parked askew, between an opening in the trees, as if the driver had tried to steer off the road then gotten stuck—in deep spring mud or even deeper winter snow.

I move closer, ignoring the fear clamping down inside my chest. I shouldn’t be here.

The windshield and hood are covered in golden leaves and rotting pine needles, a couple seasons’ worth. The truck hasn’t been here long. The two driver’s-side tires are sunk into the earth, buried. Stuck. I touch the door handle and a shiver of northern wind passes over my neck, a quick gust, and then it’s gone.

I pull open the door and take a step back, expecting something to lunge out at me, or to find a calcified body slumped against the floorboards—frozen or starved or rotted to death. But there’s no corpse. No scent of decaying flesh.

The truck looks generally undisturbed. A layer of dust covers the bench seat, the dashboard, the radio dials, the steering wheel. The kind of dry summer dust that seeps through cracks in windows and doors and floorboards.

There’s not much inside, no obvious clues about why the truck is here, and when I flip down the visor, several papers drift down around me: insurance card, three years expired; a coupon for a discount oil change at Freddy’s Oil & Lube in Seattle, also expired. I pick up a truck registration card and scan the details: The vehicle is registered to Travis Wren, a name that falls flat in my mind.

I reach across the bench seat to open the glove box. Inside, I find a wool cap with MERLE’S TREE FARM printed on the front, a few wadded dollar bills, a toothbrush, a pocket knife—the blade dull—a road map of the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, California), and a photograph.

A crease runs through the center of the photo, like it had been folded in half at one time, and most of the image has been obscured, damaged by water that must have leaked into the truck during wetter seasons, the colors of the photograph now puckered and warped.

I straighten, holding the picture toward the moonlight and running a thumb over the partial face I can still make out, staring up at the camera. The water has distorted all but the woman’s left eye, a cheek partly turned away—like she was uninterested in having her photo taken—and her cropped, sunflower-blond hair. I can’t tell much from the image, but there is a starkness to her, a seriousness you can only see in the lidded eye.

I run my thumb over her face, and a throbbing pulses above my left ear, an itch beneath the scalp. I flip the photograph over, where a name has been scrawled in hasty letters, as if written while the person was driving. Bumping over potholes, trying to keep from driving off the road.

The name is Maggie St. James.





CALLA


I’m standing in Bee’s bedroom doorway, the morning sun diluted through the curtains, watching her nostrils swell with each dreamy exhale. Her knees are drawn to her chest atop the threadbare quilt, like a pale-skinned nautilus shell. I have a memory of us when we were little, when we would sleep in the same bed, hands clasped, afraid of ghosts hiding in the closet, monsters beneath the bed frame, forest goblins at the window. But it’s a watercolor memory: nebulous, faded with age, hardly there at all.

Pink spots dot Bee’s cheeks in the sunlight, but she doesn’t wake, doesn’t feel my gaze on her. The rain has let up outside, and the air in her room feels stagnant, in need of an open window.

But I don’t step into the room, I stay like the ghosts we used to fear, pressed to the doorframe, while a sinking feeling finds weight inside my chest. There is an ocean that swells and heaves between my sister and me, a vast sea that neither one of us will cross. She prefers to remember the past, pick apart the moments from our childhood, while I keep it stuffed down where it won’t hurt me.

And when I look into my sister’s eyes, there is something there I don’t understand—the woman she’s become is a stranger to me.

Downstairs, the front door slams shut, the vibration rattling the walls of the house, followed by the sound of footsteps across the living room floor. Theo is home.

I close Bee’s bedroom door, letting her sleep, and descend the stairs.

Theo is standing at the sink in the kitchen, looking down at something in his hands, and he’s still wearing his boots—a trail of dirt across the hardwood floor. I stop short at the bottom step. His posture is strange, shoulders rounded forward, back rigid. And a spider-crawling-across-flesh sort of unease rises up into my chest.

“Theo?” I ask.

He turns quickly, nearly dropping the thing in his hand. But he doesn’t try to hide it from me—to tuck it away behind his back—instead he holds it between his fingers, and his face sags with an odd trace of confusion. Like he’s unsure what he’s holding.

“What is it?” I ask.

“A photograph.”

I cross into the kitchen and my eyes flick to his, suddenly unsure if I want to look—want to see what has caused this unnatural discomfort in his eyes. “Of what?”

“A woman.”

My gaze skims the photo, catching a glimpse of blond hair and a sharp blue eye peering up from drawn, hard features. The rest of the image is damaged, waterlogged. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Maggie St. James.” Theo stares at me like he’s looking for clues, like I might know who she is. “Have you heard of her?”