A History of Wild Places(46)

Yet, they never made it out of the woods.

Their bodies were found, spotted from the edge of the border, down a low gully near the creek. It was discussed for many days if we should venture past the boundary to retrieve their bodies so they could be properly buried in the community cemetery. But it was decided the risk couldn’t be taken.

It was only a couple days more when their bodies were no longer visible from the perimeter. They had been dragged away, deeper into the trees by some wild animal. Some said it was a mercy, that we didn’t have to watch their corpses slowly rot over the next few seasons.

We held a ceremony the following afternoon, placing stones in the graveyard without bodies to bury. “We should not speak their names after this day,” Levi said. “They risked all of our safety by trying to leave. They deserted us. And so we will desert their memory.”

And now they are the nameless. Those who chose the unknown over the community that sheltered and protected them. It hurts to speak their names aloud now, the silent grief, a wound left untended.

“They lost their lives going past the boundary,” I say, my voice wavering. “They knew the risks, but they did it anyway.” I want him to see, to understand: Death is all that waits for him out there. Even if he thinks he’s immune, we can’t be sure. It’s possible he’s just been lucky, evaded getting sick each time, until the next time when he returns with rot inside his lungs and eyes and fingernails. “I know what you’re thinking,” I say, pressing my teeth together at the back. “You want to go down the road anyway, even though Levi told you not to, you want to find a way to help Colette’s baby.”

His temples contract. “You don’t?”

“I don’t want to lose anyone else.” I feel the hot prick of tears behind my eyes. “I won’t lose you.” I’ll do whatever it takes to keep him here with me, on this side of darkness.

My husband’s shoulders draw back, and he breathes in the thick, gray air.

“Please,” I beg. “Forget about the road, the truck. Promise me you won’t leave. There’s nothing out there.”

He nods like he understands, but his eyes stare into the trees, over our border, and for a moment his expression is stark and pale in the moonlight, inhuman almost. A man with too many things secreted away inside him, things he won’t let me see. And for the first time, I think perhaps I don’t know him at all: this man I married, who lies beside me each night smelling of the forest, our breathing taking on the same sleepy rhythm, who sometimes looks at me as if he doesn’t know me either. As if I’m a moving puppet with disjointed arms and legs, words muttered from my wooden mouth.

A puppet wife.

His eyes lift, watery and bloodshot from the smoke, and he says, “I can’t.”





THEO


The white farmhouse with its mockingbird-gray shutters and tall, crumbling chimney, looks like a ghost ship set adrift among a sea of shadowed summer grass. A place where people wait out bad storms, protected from an illness they don’t quite understand.

We are those people.

But Calla doesn’t feel the gut-ache inside her like I do. The need that’s been etching ravines through my flesh. If I made it past the boundary once, and survived, could I do it again? Could I make it on my own?

The screen door creaks then thumps shut behind me, and I hear my wife upstairs, walking across our bedroom floor, from the doorway to the closet, bare feet, shedding her clothes and letting them fall to the floor. I stop at the bottom of the stairs, holding tightly to the wood railing. If I go to her now, if I whisper into her ear that I’m sorry: I’m sorry, little rabbit—a nickname I gave her shortly after we were married because she reminds me of a rabbit always in the garden, pulling up herbs and fresh carrots from the soil. Maybe if I climb the stairs and find her in our room, she will incline her head, enough space for me to kiss the soft, pale skin behind her ear. She will let my hands rove up her back, her spine, into her long dark hair, beginning to turn auburn from the summer sun. I will promise her anything, everything, just to hear her say that she forgives me.

I will prove to her that I will never leave.

And if I’m lucky, she’ll believe me this time.

But even as this thought skips across my mind, my legs carry me away from the stairs, past the kitchen, and down the far back hallway to where it ends. I stand facing the closed door on the left—the room that was a sunroom once, and then a guestroom for outsiders. But it has sat unused for years, for as long as I can remember.

I turn the knob and step inside.

A metal bed sits against one wall, coated in dust. The floor bends away from my feet as I cross the room, grass poking up between the boards, cobwebs spanning much of the ceiling, a vine from a half-dead wisteria growing through the broken window, inching its way up the wall—dried purple flowers scattered beneath it from the last time it bloomed and shed its petals onto the floor.

One of the heavy curtains has been drawn back from a window, revealing a slant of moonlight. Perhaps it was Bee, the last time she was in here, her small footsteps visible in the layer of dust along the floorboards.

Years ago, when Cooper was still alive and outsiders arrived from time to time—appearing from the distant curve in the road—this room housed exhausted travelers. They slept here for weeks or months until it was decided if they could remain in Pastoral. And then they were given a job; a place to stay within the community. This was the halfway house. An in-between.