It’s been close to three months, and yet it seems like only yesterday that my father showed up in the Hundred Acre Wood. I never thought about going back to the woods together. I mean, during the tougher days at school I’d think of going back myself—running away is the term for it, I know now— and although I might not have known what to call it, that’s exactly what it felt like: running away from everything in the civilized world that’s oh-so-unbearably emotional.
I sneak a glance at my father, at the dead-ringer profile that looks like mine, and marvel how I used to worry that I was all Mama, in the ways that do and don’t count. We couldn’t be more different, it seems, and yet I belong to him. All those years in the woods and I belonged to him, too.
My stomach slips sideways like skeeters across the creek, and it’s more than the truth coming out. The woods may as well be Mars now, despite my longing for them. I’m afraid to see what it used to be like— the way we used to live, what we’d accepted and settled for—from this civilized perspective. Just thinking of the cat-pee coat causes my ears to burn.
Mama blows meth clouds at Nessa and me, laughin’ so hard, she pees her pants. I scoop up my sister and tote her outside, proppin’ her on a log by the campfire, the flames jump- started with a few handfuls of kindlin’.
Ness keeps almost fallin’ over, catchin’ herself with a jerk. It’s two in the mornin’, after all. I’m flat-out annoyed, cold and tired myself. Only, annoyed at Mama. Never at Nessa.
I rest my face against the window glass, cool and smooth, and watch the signs go by, the trees growing thicker, the road older, other cars fewer. I think of that night, the one haunting me every day since, no matter how hard I’ve tried to exterminate the memory. When we left the woods, that night came with us as sure as our breath, our shadows, our eyelashes.
Nessa?”
“Okay,” she says with a long sigh. “I’m comin’.”
I’ve spent the last half hour buildin’ up the fire, not just to keep us
warm, but to cook over. My mind is elsewhere, itchin’ to get back to the violin. Mama’s been gone for five weeks; I started markin’ the days with notches carved into the dyin’ walnut tree at the edge of the clearin’.
“What we havin’ for dinner?”
“Food,” I tell her. The point isn’t lost on my smarty-pants sister. Jenessa wrinkles her nose, her eyes accusin’. “Beans again? Ain’t there
other things in those cans?”
“You ate rabbit for breakfast and the last can of ravioli for lunch. If
we don’t eat the beans, there’ll be nothin’ left but beans, and then you’ll
be eatin’ ’em three times a day.”
Ness huffs and puffs her way over to the two-by-four swing. It took
scalin’ a hickory like a flyin’ squirrel and loopin’ and tyin’ thick rope
around the crotch of the fattest branches to make it work . . . to give her
a piece of childhood.
Ness had watched the pro cess from the leafmeal below, her eyes
shinin’. By the time I was through, I had her believin’ Saint Joseph had
left the rope and plank in the forest just for her.
Little kids need to somethin’ to believe in. For them, it’s as important
as breathin’. And when Mama never fit the bill, Saint Joseph made a
right good substitute.
“Here.” I hand her a bowl with water and give her the rag from the
table. “Clean your hands and wipe your face.”
“Why do I have to? No one sees.”
“I see. Just because we live in the Hundred Acre Wood don’t mean
we have to live like savages.”
“Rowr!” Jenessa growls.
I watch her wipe herself down, face, neck, and hands, while I clear
the foldin’ table for dinner. I pile up my poetry books, our schoolbooks,
and her Pooh books into a jagged tower; a tower I carry into the
camper and spill onto the flimsy table that folds out from the wall, all
the size of a doll’s ironin’ board, as Mama said. I yell to Ness through
the open door.
“Get those other two rags and fold them on the table. You know how
to set the table. You’re no baby, right?”
I scold her gently. She’s just turned five, after all. But that’s no excuse
to be useless.
Back at the fire, I load up our bowls with baked beans, the kind
floatin’ in a sweet brown sugar sauce. Into Ness’s bowl, I ladle the three
chubby squares of pork fat I find in the mixture.
I know Jenessa’s too skinny. We’re both too skinny, and although our
mama is also skinny, and perhaps it’s partly genetic, I know it has to do
with our nutrition; with the careful rationin’ of canned goods and the slim
pickin’s of bird, rabbit, and squirrel I’m lucky to shoot. I constantly salivate over the thought of wild turkey, but trackin’ those noisy birds leads
me too far from the camper and Nessa.
We sit at the table and eat quietly. The truth is, we’re both ravenous,
no matter the complainin’ we do or what food we’re sick of. We’re luckier than some, Mama says. I reckon she’s right. We have a bed, roof,
clothes, food. I reckon we’re crazy luck. It’s hard to imagine not havin’
the essentials.
Finishin’ quickly, I pick up my violin, gettin’ bean sauce on the neck,
but that won’t hurt it none. I play in spurts, the notes clunky, determined to git it right.
Crack!
There’s a feelin’ that comes before danger falls. You can see it in the
eyes of the deer or pheasant moments before the shot. Synapses firin’ the
instincts on, I reckon. Knowin’ your life is about to snuff out, moments
before the inevitable bang. I don’t even remember settin’ my violin and
bow on the empty chair next to me.
Jenessa jumps up and freezes, her eyes widenin’ until the whites show,
her forgotten spoon drippin’ beans onto the front of her patched pink
dress. I place my index finger to my lips. Immediately, two fat tears pop
from her eyes. We both watch the urine run down her legs, fillin’ her
sneaks and coatin’ the leaves. We don’t have time to hide before he stumbles into the clearin’, his heavy boots makin’ suckin’ sounds as he tramps
through the mud to our table.
I wrinkle my nose. From a few feet away, I can smell the moonshine,
and lookin’ into his eyes, bloodshot and unfocused, I feel goose bumps
colonize up and down my arms.
“Where’s Joelle?”
The tears flow fast and furious down Ness’s face. I watch her spoon
in free fall, bouncin’ against the leaves.
“She went into town for supplies,” I stammer at his feet, my stomach
gathered up in one huge cramp.
“Don’t you look away, girl. Only liars look away!”
I look into his eyes, and it’s all I can do to hold his gaze. “Do you know our mama, sir?”
I’m buyin’ time, time to think of somethin’. I’m in charge. My steady
voice fools even myself. My mind whirs a mile a minute.
“I’m Carey. This is my sister, Jenessa.”
“Pretty little things, aren’t ya?”
My heart drops when he laughs, a soulless sound if ever there was one,
capped off by a cobwebbed meth cough, a sound we know all too well.
Jenessa leans over and empties her stomach on the ground. In four lightnin’ steps, he covers the leafmeal between us, his hand
dartin’ out to wrap around my throat.
“You don’t know what you’re doin’,” I say. “You’re makin’ a big
mistake.”
“I asked you, where’s your mama, girl? She owes me money and I’m
not leavin’ without it.”
My fingers encircle his fingers, desperate to loosen the hold, my flesh
burnin’, his grip a vise. I cry out in pain.
“Mama should be back any minute, sir. If you want to wait, you can
have some food and—”
“Where does she keep the money?”
I listen to my voice, small and placatin’, like I’m talkin’ to someone
rational. Tears flow down my cheeks, but he don’t let go.
“I . . . I—we don’t have no money, sir. But if you wait for Mama—” “When’s the last time she’s been here? And don’t lie to me, bitch.” “Five weeks ago.”
I tell him the truth. Maybe he’ll let me go and go lookin’ somewhere
else. But he leans in, breathin’ on me, and my one mistake is turnin’ my
head to escape his breath.
“You look at me, girl, when I’m talkin’ to ya!”
My head jerks to the right under the crack of his hand, and white
stars dance in the air. Beyond, there’s a lake of blackness. I fight it with
all my bein’.
In the Hundred Acre Wood, I could always see them comin’ before
they appeared. Nessa, a pink peekaboo through breathless greenery.
Mama, a lemon yellow zing of insulted bushes and low-hangin’ branches
whippin’ across her store-bought ski jacket.
Between the white stars, the lemon yellow flashes, but it don’t zing. It
sneaks off in the direction it came, at a quick but silent clip. “Mama!”
But the scream lodges itself deep in my throat like a rabbit’s knucklebone.
With one sweepin’ gesture, our dinner flies to the forest floor, and he
uses his free hand to rip off my jeans and undergarments. He hauls me
by my ponytail backward onto the table, the metal edge digging into my
calf. As the white stars fade, I see him fumblin’ with his zipper. He forces
my legs apart, his breath quickenin’, his weight crushin’. I feel white lightnin’ rip through my stomach.
That’s the last thing I remember before goin’ dark.
It’s Jenessa’s screams that rouse me. The leaves are a sea, rockin’ me.
I grab hold of a low-hangin’ branch and scramble to my feet. He has Nessa on the table O She’s naked from the waist down, her
dress pushed up to her chin.
In the dyin’ firelight, he don’t see me crawl to the camper. I should’ve
had it on me all along. An ember pops in the background. Two or three
ticks on a watch pass, if that, and that fast, I know what I have to do. I pull my shotgun from its pegs and inch back down the camper’s
rickety wooden steps, my mind animal keen.
He struggles with Nessa, his hand clamped over her mouth, swearin’
at the thing hangin’ limply between his legs like a tree limb struck by
lightnin’.
I give him no warnin’, my finger cocked and the trigger pulled by a
hatred floodin’ me bigger than the creek swollen with ten spring rains. I aim for the heart.
At the last minute, he turns toward me, and I blow a hole through
his upper arm. The slug passes clear through his hide, thunkin’ into the
hickory behind him.
“Stay down, Nessa!”
“You fuckin’ bitch!”
He shoves Jenessa away and she crashes to the ground. I hear my
voice, clear and true, betrayin’ nothin’ of my intentions. But boy, do I have
me some intentions.
“Go in the camper, Jenessa, and lock the door behind you. Don’t you
dare come out until I come get you myself, you hear?”
She’s a frozen heap on the ground, but I know she can hear me. I
have no choice but to yell at her.
“GO! Get your skinny ass in that camper NOW!”
In that moment, it’s like I’ve prodded her with a white-hot poker.
She scrambles to her feet, wailin’, but she don’t make a sound. I stand in
front of them, half-naked, but I don’t feel shame. I’m a mountain lion
landin’ on the back of a whitetail buck. I’m the rapids rippin’ the river to
shreds, pretty to watch but able to kill.
I see it in his eyes, fightin’ to sober up quick: He thinks I’m crazy. He
must have me confused with Mama. I’ve never been like Mama. Once I hear the lock click, I turn to him.
“I’m comin’ back for your sister, bitch. For both of you. And I’ll keep
comin’ back, if you catch my drift.”
He don’t think I’ll do it. My mouth slips into a crocodile smile. His
stench lingers on my skin as his stickiness runs down my legs. I cock my
shotgun. He runs.
He’s off tramplin’ bushes, getting’ thwacked in the face by lowhangin’ branches. He cuts a careless, sloppy trail. It’s perfect for trackin’
an animal.
I only have time to shove my feet into sneakers and grab the flashlight from a crate under the table before settin’ off after him, trackin’ him deeper and deeper into our Hundred Acre Wood. Soon, a heaven of stars map his trail. I see the violin constellation, the one I don’t know by its real name. More than once, its brightest star has been my point of
navigation, leadin’ me back to the camper if I’ve wandered too far. The man is mak’ decent time, if all be told, only he don’t know he’s
travelin’ father into Obed. I follow stealthily, thankin’ Saint Joseph for
all those years of practice huntin’ our own food. I’m a sure shot, exercisin’ a precision that comes from those things we do over and over again,
day in, day out.
When I get close enough, I hear Mama’s voice in my head, her
words slurred but true.
“We get what we deserve, Carey. Sometimes we’re the getters, and
sometimes we’re the givers.”
I palm the flashlight, glad to have it. By the light of the moon, I see
him bent over at the waist, palms on his thighs, breathin’ hard. When I
snap a twig, he ups and dominates the clearin’, swackin’ and stabbin’ the
night with a broken branch while turnin’ in circles.
Lookin’ for me. He’s naked from the waist up. He’s tied his sweatstained T-shirt tight around his upper arm, I reckon to stop the bleedin’. When I’m close enough to smell him, I shoot straight toward his form,
aimin’ at heart height. His mouth forms a scream that never comes. He
collapses to the ground.
I circle him, careful not to get too close. I sweep the flashlight over his
chest, his face. I see no signs of breathin’. I feel nothin’—no triumph, no
remorse. B’ness. Although my body shakes against my wishes, and I let
it. He’ll make a bear or a pack of coyotes a right fine meal. On my wrist, I’m wearin’ Mama’s watch, like I always do, the one
she taught me time on. The one I’d used to teach Jenessa. Checkin’ it, I
see it’s taken more than forty-five minutes to get back to the camper, and
it’s a lucky thing. No one wants a corpse rottin’ close to their camper.
He’s too heavy to drag or carry, and diggin’ graves is an act of respect. The river sees everythin’ and is cold to the marrow, but I peel off my
T-shirt and wade in up to my chin, the moonlight blue on my bare skin.
I hold the shotgun over my head; I can’t get myself to put it down. The
river cools off the swollen parts, baptizin’ me back into skin and bone
and savin’ me into a new Carey, a Carey who, to night, let go of childish
things.
I shake so hard, my teeth clatter against each other. I’m standin’ nekkid in the winter water, and I can’t do it for long. I command myself to
put the jeans back on, crumpled atop the wanwood leafmeal. I only have
two pair, and I need ’em both at night.
My gait is thick and wobbly, my girl parts split like a wild turkey’s
wishbone. I reckon Mama would say I’m a woman now. I lean over
into a bush and retch and retch. I pull a clean T-shirt off the line and
fumble with the arm holes.
Afterward, I pretend I’m fingerin’ Dvorak’s Romance for Violin,
usin’ the music to steady my breath. When that don’t work, I repeat the
lines in my head, from beginnin’ to end and back again, only this time, I
insert my own name.