These Silent Woods: A Novel(29)

More noise, then. A ways off, still, but loud. Rustling and thrashing. Scotland. I hand the bow to Finch, lean down slowly and grab the .243. I press my pointer finger to my lips and signal to Finch to keep quiet. It’s thick on the far end of the valley, and though we can’t see what’s coming, we can see the tall tops of the alder and dogwood shifting, their silhouettes bending and shaking. I could fire into the air, which would send a message.

But then a voice, singing. Not Scotland’s. No— It dawns on me: he would never be so loud.

Coming closer and closer and suddenly, she’s there. Emerges from the thicket. A young woman. A girl. Hard to say, exactly—not sure I’m a good judge of age and I guess maybe she’s somewhere in between. Thin and pretty and wearing a large blue backpack. Tripod tucked beneath her right arm. Big, fancy camera slung from her neck. The wind picks up and the girl’s hair blows across her face. Long and red and lustrous as it catches the sun. She comes closer, still singing, but then she stops, leans over, takes off the backpack. Slides it off her shoulders and rifles around in there and then sets it up against the base of a maple.

She is too close. Much too close. A hundred yards away, maybe less.

I press my hand against Finch’s chest to hold her still, and I feel her heart thumping against my palm. I glance at her face. Not afraid. No, enthralled. Rapturous. For a minute the girl just stands there: listening, looking. Waiting. My mind starts bounding ahead because Finch and me, we cannot be seen. Cannot.

The girl sets up the tripod, presses its legs into the ground. She screws in the camera, spinning it round but looking up and around as she does. Next, she leans down, peers through the viewfinder. Pans left, right, snapping photographs. How long is she there, adjusting the lens, looking, taking everything in? Seems like hours, Finch and me frozen there in the tree, hearts racing. The girl stands up from behind the camera, looks in our direction, raises her hand to her brow. She tilts her head.

Dear God—is she looking at us?





FOURTEEN




At last she turns and packs up her gear. Straps the tripod to her backpack, slides the camera over her neck, and heads off west of us, crossing onto national forest land, disappearing into the pines.

I drop my hand from Finch’s chest. Right away, a loud and unnatural sound starts thundering through my head: like standing right next to a train but worse.

“Coop, you all right?”

I grab Finch’s hand and hold it. Throat tight, no words, just noise and the sun that is starting to sink, so unbearably bright and everything—trees, cliff, cattails—spinning and blurred.

“Did she see us? Cooper, are you okay?”

I shake my head, hold up one finger. I realize I better get out of that tree, so I turn and start climbing down, quick.

Breathe.

At last my feet touch the ground, and I let the rest of myself drop. Finch is there, too, must’ve scrambled down right after me.

“Cooper, it’s happening.” Finch leans down, her face close to mine. “Can you hear me? Your face is white and you’re sweating.” She looks around, fishes out a canteen. She twists the cap off and holds it to my lips, but I can’t drink.

Fear, pungent and metallic in my mouth, sour and burning. My heart is roaring now, pumping so hard my chest feels like it’s in a vise. Everything is hot hot hot; everything is too close. Tree, sky, air, all of it pressing down. I stand and tear off my jacket and stumble, foot catching on a root and then I’m facedown, on the ground, the grass in my teeth, and I’m shaking and so afraid.



* * *



“Panic attack,” Dr. Shingler said, years ago, when I sat at one of my appointments at the VA hospital and told her how sometimes an overwhelming sense of fear would take hold of me, make the world spin hot and vicious, like some kind of brush fire licked by wind and bursting into something bigger. I resented that term, “panic attack,” because it sounded like a name some hoity-toity person in a white jacket had made up. But the truth is, it did ring true. It felt like I was under attack, like the world was caving in on me, like I was trapped. Plus, if there is one thing I have learned in this life of mine, it’s that the mind is the cruelest of all weapons. Battles, skirmishes, they did their mean work and then they were over, but the wounds on the mind remained: scabs, welts, pockmarks. They never really went away. They could come back, strike again.

“You witnessed a lot of trauma over there,” Dr. Shingler told me. “You lost friends. You experienced terrible things. At the time, you probably didn’t have the opportunity to process all of that. You had to survive.”

I hadn’t even told her about the worst of it: the thing I did that sealed the deal for my ugly heart and guaranteed me a spot in the hottest corner of hell. The thing that would swim back to me in the darkest of dreams. The thing I never told a single soul about. Not Jake, not Cindy, no one.

“You’ve got to ride them out,” Dr. Shingler said. “They feel terrifying, but you need to tell yourself that there’s nothing physically threatening. By that I mean that you’re not in cardiac arrest or anything, though it may feel that way. Has it happened at work?”

“Once.” I’d gone to the bathroom and locked the door until it passed and then told my supervisor that I must’ve eaten something bad for lunch.

“Well, if it happens again, try to keep working, if you can.” She took off her glasses. “I’ll teach you a breathing exercise. It might help.”