Gone to the Forest: A Novel (13 page)

“I understood,” she said. “You were—you are, my fiancé.”

He blinked.

“You have certain rights.”

She was watching him carefully. He told himself not to listen to her. He reminded himself that she was full of deceit. But the idea—no, not an idea but a collection of urges and images, of the girl, and the farm, of a version of life—had been seeded inside him once more. There could be other children, for example. He reminded himself that he had never touched her, though not for lack of want. His mouth was dry like she had stuffed it with cotton.

“I have rights—”

She nodded. He did. Though she was not going to open herself up for him, this shop being closed for business,
however temporarily. His rights being granted too late. But there was no reason for her to tell him this. After all, it was self-evident. He stared at her and wet his lips. A crease of confusion appeared across his forehead.

“What is it you want?”

S
HE LOOKED AWAY
and after a second shook her head. She did not know what she wanted. The measure of what she wanted had been taken away. The tape having been stolen. It had been no easy thing—keeping the pieces from floating away. It had taken everything she had. If she’d had an endless amount of string she would have tied them together and then been whole again but as it was sometimes the splitting came back to her in a flash.

She looked around the kitchen. And now the growing inside her. Which she had avoided all these years by cunning and tact but was now a definite reality. Her body grew heavier each day like the baby was made of lead. The chain tightening. Her world also shrinking. Just like it did for the old man. In this they were also the same. Their bodies revolted in unison and the world around them—

She stood up and went to the stove and turned the gas back on under the kettle. She waited for the water to boil while Tom stood beside her. She was not imagining a life with this man: that was not the way she thought about it. She only needed him to do what he was meant to do, do as the old man said he would. He had made her a promise. He had not
spoken the words, it was in no way binding, but it was the best that she had.

She stared down at the flame. The sickness had clenched her head and stomach. The first wave came just days after they reached the city. She felt her insides shift but thought that was to be expected. Given what had taken place. Given what had been inserted and then torn out. Then she was late and she still didn’t think. She was trying to recover all the pieces of her body. It never occurred to her that something could grow in such a desert.

It was not a good time for such a thing. She was in no condition for growth. While her head was still retrenching and her body. There had been lasting damage. She half expected the baby to fall out of her but it did not. She half expected the baby to curdle inside her but it did not. She tried to help it. Twice she tried, but it insisted on living, on thriving inside her. She therefore needed protection. The old man had stood by her thus far. Now she was pregnant and she had to guess if he would continue to stand by her.

Even if the child was not his. Which she believed it was not. She spent a long time going over the math and the thing was never entirely certain—scribble on paper and count your fingers, give or take a day, it was hard to know. The father remained faceless and nameless like the group of men that night. The father was a many-headed monster and that was the truth. As for what was growing inside her—there weren’t prayers sturdy enough for that.

She went to the old man and told him what was currently
transpiring inside her guts. She waited for him to ask if he was the father and to tell him yes, to assure him of course yes, obviously yes, who else? But the question never came. He asked her why she did not get rid of it and she told him that she had tried. She had tried, she had tried to get rid of the damn thing but she had failed and now she was stuck. It was tied around her neck like a weight.

Then there was rage in his face. This man, who could bear her rape but not the evidence of it. Who could not live with the evidence growing up in front of him. She half thought he might tell her to leave. But he did not. Because he was sick, they soon realized that he was sick and would need to journey back to the farm. Things had not gone according to plan. They had run out of money and the old man had discovered that no bank would extend him credit. They had already sold the horses and jewels.

He said there was nowhere else for him to go. He could not stay in the city. She said to him the country did not feel safe. She said she did not believe in the peace. There had been rumors that the violence was spreading across the country again. That the natives had not been appeased. The Government had not done enough. She asked if there was not another way, another option. He stared at her and then told her not to believe in idle gossip.

He would have left her if he could. His old use for her being gone. But he could not travel alone. She therefore tried to make herself useful. Driven as she was by need. She made preparations for their departure. In haste they purchased a car—she
handed Jose a wad of bills and two hours later he returned with a Buick built like a hearse and some rusted canisters of gas. A joke contraption that would break as the wheels turned. It was not worth discussing. They packed their bags into the car and left in the morning.

Jose drove them through the traffic in the city. As soon as they reached the autoroute he gunned the motor and they shot down the empty road. However, it was full of potholes and invisible ditches. They punctured two tires and the motor repeatedly stalled. They were constantly stopping and coaxing—coaxing and beating, they alternated between the two—the hearse into movement again.

By that time the girl had grown desperate to reach the farm and the enclosure of land. She was nervous and the open road terrified her. Meanwhile, the old man was so sick they could not get south fast enough and she saw that they were returning to the farm for him to die. He lay in the backseat and expired by the mile. He was green and blue and sweating from the journey. The girl was no great shakes either. Nausea meant she spent half the trip with her head out the window as they drove, hurling her guts out or trying to.

Halfway to the valley she made Jose stop the car and she vomited onto the side of the empty road, so much she thought she must have heaved the baby out. As she stumbled back to the car she turned to see if there was a fetus dropped in with the half-digested protein and starch. Once inside the car, she shouted at Jose to go. They screeched away down the road and she would have told Jose go faster if she’d
glimpsed a little fist, a little foot, waving out of the puddle of mush.

They were a hundred miles from the farm when the old man rose up from the backseat. Like a vampire—he rose up from the sleep of his coffin, having been supine the whole of the journey, and said to the girl, “You will tell Thomas about the child.” She turned to look at him. She would tell him what? That he was going to have a brother?

She said this hopefully. She reminded herself that she was as strong as the old man. That under different circumstances she could have owned and run her own farm. That she was more like the old man than either cared to admit. He shook his head. “A son. You will tell him that he is going to be a father.” Then he lay back down.

The father’s shame transferred to the son. These being men made up of appearances. Now she stood in the kitchen and waited for the kettle to boil. Tom stood by the table and watched. He had spent a lifetime under the weight of the old man. His endurance was considerable. He was like one of those hardy plants that grew low and close to the ground. You didn’t notice them but they outlived the taller and more verdant ones. Yes, probably he would be here when she was all but been and gone. She watched him shift and scrabble his eyes across the floor.

She told him to sit down. She no longer felt afraid. She believed that he would fall in line. In the same way she had. She would have her security. It was the old man. He overcame them both but it was more than that. The truth was that there
was too much else. The country was in turmoil. And there was besides: sickness and growing and dying. How could they do anything but give in, to what was obvious, rather than what was good? In the face of that accumulation.

Yes. Even she. She looked at Tom. She felt a stir of sympathy despite herself. The gap between them lessening by a sliver. She wanted to tell him that there were some things they held in common. She wanted to say they were not entirely different. This was against her better judgment. The thin edge of the wedge.

T
om and the girl sit in the kitchen. Tom leans forward. If the old man dies that will be one thing, he tells her. But what if he recovers and lives? His father looks out the window and does not seem to see the change in the land. He talks to Tom about what they will do next year. He tells him about the improvements that must be made. They will open the fish farm once the water runs clear, they will add another pool, they will open up new trails, maybe a second lodge.

Tom does not think the old man sees the change in the country or the change in his own body. Tom does not try to convince him otherwise. He does the opposite. It is like playing a game of charades. He tells and he does not tell, he does not see why he should do either. The image of the father is gone, but Tom is still afraid of him. Afraid for him. That part of the relationship remaining intact. Tom drinks his tea and asks the girl how much the old man knows, how much he remembers.

She shrugs. He knows plenty, she tells him. He knows more than you know, more than you and me put together. He tells
her this cannot be the case. He asks if she has been listening to what he has been saying.

She shakes her head. You have known him forever. How can you know him so little? He is lying in the bed but there is nothing weak about him. He is lying in the bed and he is going but until he is gone the old man is still there. Do you understand?

He understands. He looks at the girl. He becomes more attached to her by the day. Also to the child growing in her belly. Toward whom he feels proprietary. His idea of what life will look like after the old man’s death being tied up in the woman, also in the child that is not his own. She heaves her belly around the house and now she stops to catch her breath, she holds her belly in her hands like she is worried it will fall to the ground. Her skin is growing dull and her hair dry. She looks as if the child inside her is draining her of life, the growing child and the dying man.

Tom asks if she is getting enough to eat. If she is getting enough rest. He tells her she should try not to worry too much. She tells him that she is fine. Everything is fine. Thank you for asking. She knows that he is doing his best. His best is not good enough but she sees that it is something. They are beginning to grow tired. They are starting to be ground down by the old man’s dying.

Both slept poorly the night before. The old man could not stop coughing and called to them continuously—for water, for light, for a goddamned cigar. The girl brought him one and then he ignored both her and the cigar. He is beyond cigars.
They know this. She knew this when she brought it to him and still she brought it to him. She allowed herself this. She thinks it must be hard for Tom, Tom who would not have brought the cigar and will therefore never be free.

She thinks: Tom does not know how to love the old man so he loves the land instead. She had seen this from the start. His emotion toward the old man unresolved. His feeling long misdirected. Even now, he would like to stay on the farm. In this house, in this room, at this table if possible. He clings to the land and the farm and really he is holding on to his father. Whom he hates and loves in equal measure. A wave of pity and she reminds herself that the problems of the farm have long been in place. Some of them too long to solve or change.

The girl leans forward.

“How much money is there?”

He looks up.

“Money?”

“Yes. Money. How much money is left?”

He shakes his head and looks blank. His expression is stupid, stupid without thought or pretense. Which cannot be right. The old man said there was more to Tom than met the eye. He said that Tom could be canny, on occasion. Good with money. Good with numbers. He had left the farm—not in good hands but in hands that would do. That was all he said. But the girl listened.

The girl listened and that is why she knows that Tom knows more than he is letting on. She believes this because she needs to. The old man will die. And then what will become of them?
She has staked a great deal on Tom’s good hands. On the protection of the land, however reduced it may be. She sits with her knees apart to accommodate her belly, she sits back into her chair. She clears her throat to show she means business and takes a good long look at him.

“The money.”

Tom appears startled by the sharpness in her voice.

“There is not much.”

“How much?”

“Very little.”

“What has happened to it?”

He shrugs.

“There was not that much to begin with. There was not money. There was land.”

“How much land remains?”

“There are still some pastures.”

The old man is wrong. His son is an idiot. He stares at her and does not know what he is saying. She leans forward.

“Tell me what is left.”

“They took almost everything.”

“Tell me what is left.”

“Enough for a small farm. That is what we are. A small farm.”

She can see that it pains him to say this. He is not without vanity. He is not a man without want. But that want is small and it is compromised, it has undergone a lifetime of atrophy. She sees that she will need to do the wanting for both of them. She leans back and looks at him. She wills her voice steady.

“But there is still land.”

“Yes.”

“And in what condition, since the eruption and the ash?”

He does not reply. He blinks and then wets his mouth.