Gone to the Forest: A Novel (9 page)

I
N THE PAST
two weeks Tom’s fear
had grown as the valley recovered and the old man’s face grew quiet and watchful.
The ash was cleared from the pastures and shoveled from the roofs of the houses. The
natives hauled it away in wheelbarrows and made giant heaps on the edge of each village.
Then the sky was clear and only the ash heaps stood like obscure markers to the
storm.

But on the farm: a record of ongoing catastrophe. When the fish began to
float in the river, Tom saw the inverse to everything: the fishing, the food on the
table, the money. Everything that had drawn the girl to them in the first place. The
dreamlike arms and legs of the river farm, which sat useless in the water, corralling
fish that were going nowhere. As the bodies gathered they added pressure and weight
until the legs creaked and cracked and then broke.

As soon as the ash stopped the old man sent the
natives into the river to retrieve it. They listened to him give the order and stared
into the water. They didn’t move. They stared at the mass of rotting flesh and
turbid sludge. Then they looked at him as if to say: if that was what he ordered (it
was). If that was what he wished (it was). They stripped down to the waist and stood on
the banks of the river. They waited to see if he would change his mind. He didn’t
and they tied cloths around their faces and dropped into the water.

They began moving at once. Standing waist deep in the river, they used
their hands to push the bobbing fish away. They moved in the direction of the river farm
and then fanned out to circle the apparatus. Their faces impassive behind the cloths.
Slowly they surrounded the apparatus and then reached for the legs, which were slippery
with muck and rot. They turned to pull it toward land.

The apparatus did not move. The fish were too deep in the water. The men
were pushing their own legs through the layers of dead fish. They were squeezing through
the wall of bodies. Moving in its crevices. They pulled again. The apparatus remained
immobile. Their grip slipped on the legs and the machine sank down into the water.

They called to the men watching on the riverbank. They stripped down and
plunged into the water. They shouted for rope, which they tied around the legs of the
machine. They sent the lightest man to do it. He lay sprawled across the machine, moving
from leg to leg, tying knots around each joint. Then he gave a shout and dropped back
into the water.
He shouted again and they threw the lengths of rope
to the men still standing on land.

They pulled. Slowly the machine rose out of the water. With a grim
expression, the men in the river dunked down below the machine and hoisted it above the
river of fish. As they rose out of the water they were covered in grime to their faces.
Decaying plant and flesh draped from their neck and arms. They shimmied through the dead
fish, holding the apparatus above their heads, carrying and pulling it to shore. Then
they dropped the machine onto dry soil and stood, reeking of rot and panting from their
labor.

The river farm was in ruin. The men were too pleased with their labor to
notice at first. They laughed as they wiped the river gunk from their bodies. Chunks of
decomposing flesh. All the dying, all around them, became like comedy. They laughed and
laughed from relief. They were almost giddy, they were content, as the rot fell from
their bodies to the ground.

Into their laughter—his father’s cry, a terrible noise. He
stood, staring at the machine. Slowly, the men turned and looked. It lay in a heap,
groaning. Sputtering. Moaning in death throes. In actual terms the machine was silent
but there was sound in the sight of the machine, sprawled out on the ground, legs
collapsed, like a street thug had taken a club to each one of its joints.

Tom was also there. And he thought: it had been such a beautiful thing,
the first time they had taken it out. They had carried it to the river and set it
drifting. The legs had spread
into the water like a living thing and
it sat on the river aloft—the most astonishing thing they had ever seen. A miracle
of technology and time. A piece of the future that had been shipped to their remote
corner of the world. He had seen the farm’s beauty, even if he didn’t
understand its role in the farm’s future, even if he also feared and hated its
purpose.

Now the machine lay in ruin and it took the old man with it. They saw it
happening, it took place right in front of them. They saw but it was still hard to
believe. They looked at the machine. They looked at the man. They did not believe in his
going. The sound, the sound of a man going—it was everywhere around them. But his
face was stoic and his body straight. He looked stern and unforgiving yet. Then he
turned and walked back into the house, leaving the men and the machine behind him.

B
Y THE WAGON
, the old man puffs on the
cigarette. He watches Jose continue preparations. Tom feels a churn of rage inside. From
the outside, nothing is visible. But inside he is a jumble of half words and half deeds.
He thinks: I have been running the farm in all but name. Leave and nothing here will
change. You will see. The land will survive. Also the farm. The natives will stay here
with me. And I will be fine, yes, I will be fine. He does not believe the words, which
enter his head freighted in confusion.

The girl sits on the pillows and eats from the tin of lobster. Chunks of
shellfish between her thumb and forefinger. She
puts the tin down
and wipes her fingers on the blanket. There it is: a real piece of baggage. Living and
breathing as it is. Weighing the old man down as it is. Tom bristles just looking at
her. She sits among the boxes and the bags and for the first time—through the
cloud of rage and panic—Tom sees what his father is taking with him.

A multitude, an ocean of things. The girl is sitting on loot, on things
taken—she rides high on the surf of things taken. The loaded wagon material proof
of the old man’s departure. Tom cannot understand how it has come to this. Two
weeks and a lifetime has been undone. He watches his father. The old man circles the
wagon. He tests the ropes. The loading is almost done. He takes out his silver watch and
checks the dial.

The old man is the same by most known measures. Remote, imperious,
unknowable: the same as before. And yet the old man is entirely changed. Despite the
disorder in his head, Tom understands something new about his father: that he is a man
made visible by means of a backdrop. His father is a shape cut out against a landscape
he has personally dominated and formed.

The shape is still the same. It is the backdrop that has gone, and with it
everything that makes the man himself. Tom can hardly recognize his father. He cannot
see him in the same way, especially now, now that he is leaving, now that he is already
parted, has parted himself, from the land and property. It cannot only be Tom. Others
must see him differently. A man in bad fortune. His dreams for the future looking
foolish. A man without money, which is also ridiculous.

Tom does not know if his father is aware of how he
looks. He does not think he cares. His father has been preoccupied. He has stayed to his
study. Looking at papers, laying out maps, writing down figures. The old man making
midnight telephone calls, the conversations muffled by the house’s thick walls so
that Tom did not hear the matters being discussed. Although he eavesdropped carefully,
diligently.

There was more: the departure of the three men, the day the ash stopped
falling. Who left with promises of their return and the strong smell of brilliantine.
That afternoon the girl crawled out from her room. She did not look like herself. She
was pale and even thinner but the difference was in her eyes. Which had fallen back into
her head. She was watching things from a distance, measurably greater than before.

There were other differences. The girl now stayed close to the old man.
She was with him all the time. She sat inches away from him at dinner, fork clanging at
his plate, fingers reaching for his elbow. The girl standing between the father and the
son. Like she was
the physical
manifestation of the barrier Tom had often tried to deny, but that had always
existed between them. As if she were now the guardian of that distance. Tom saw her
sitting by the old man’s side. He saw her lift up her face to look at him.

They might have shared blood. The girl the old man’s daughter. The
girl the old man’s son, as he might have been, the girl the old man himself. They
would stay together. One and one being two. One and one and one on the other
hand—it did not add up. Tom did not fit in. In the house there
was sunlight and dust so thick it made patterns in the air. He passed the old
man’s study, he saw the girl and the old man sitting side by side. Neither looked
up.

Later, he came upon the girl alone. He stopped and she stopped, too. He
looked down at her hand, it was hard for him to look her in the face. She was still
wearing his mother’s engagement ring. He shook his head in confusion and looked
up. Now at her face, which had been wiped blank. She knitted her brow as she looked at
him.

“What has happened?”

He intended to sound firm. As if he had some purchase on the situation. He
was aware of how close she stood. The fetid smell of her hair.

She shook her head. She had never liked Tom. And they had wanted her to
marry him. They had believed this was the solution. Her eyes widened. Briefly. An
instant later they receded and she recovered her distance.

Her eyes were once again blank. Not that Tom knew or understood. No
details—the details sickened him. He knew that something had happened, that there
had been an incident. In this backdrop of new catastrophe. He saw how the girl was and
that was enough. He looked at her again.

“Please.”

She shook her head. She sighed: the sound like her lungs had broken.

“Do you know—”

She stopped. The girl meant nothing to him and even so. Tom swallowed and
waited for her to speak. Her face was
vague and she did not look at
him when she spoke, her eyes wandered and wandered instead.

“The Rheas. The birds are big. The size of humans. They live on
land. Too big to fly—”

She paused. Her brow crossed with confusion. She started again.

“A male Rhea has a dozen mates. He impregnates one bird and then
moves on to the next. But he risks his life in defense of all his offspring.”

She paused again. He had no idea what she was talking about. She shook her
head.

“No. I wanted to tell you something different. Something about the
Rheas.”

She stopped and seemed to think about it. She picked loose a dry piece of
skin from her lip.

“When the men fight to assert dominance it goes like
this—”

She cleared her throat and closed her eyes.

“When the male Rheas fight to assert dominance it goes like this.
They lock necks and spin around in circles. Because they are large birds—some as
heavy as one hundred pounds—they gather tremendous momentum. They spin around and
around and around. The one who gets dizzy first is the loser. They keep going until
there is a loser. They don’t stop until then.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at him. Her face was cunning again, it was
canny.

“Do you see?”

He did not see. He thought she might have lost her mind.

A
FTER SHE TOLD
the
story about the Rheas, Tom began to think his father might marry the girl after all. The
girl being the last remaining symbol of his power. The girl whom he would legitimate for
this reason. It would happen the way a bank transfer happened. In material terms the
ring would stay on her finger. Meanwhile the attachment it represented would transfer
from one man to the other. It would be personally humiliating but Tom was used to being
humiliated. He could have lived with it.

But this—he looks at the wagon. He watches his father check the
ropes one last time. This abandonment, by all of them—it is worse than the
nightmares that plague him at night. Jose leads three horses out from the stable. A pair
to pull the wagon and his father’s best horse. The old man mounts the expensive
animal, the horse likely worth more than the farm at this point. He circles the wagon
and goes to the girl, who has finished the tin of lobster. He takes the empty tin from
her and hands it to one of the servants.

They are going. It is happening! It cannot be stopped. Nothing Tom can do
will be enough to make the old man stay. Jose climbs aboard the wagon and whips the
horses to life. They strain and pull and the wagon creaks. They move an inch and then a
foot. The horses have never been made to carry such weight. Jose whips the pair again
and at last they bear the wagon away. His father rides alongside. He does not look at
his son as he goes.

Tom watches as the cart and horse move down the track.
Two days ago his father had said to him—two days, it has only been two days, since
his father announced that he was leaving. He had come to the shed, where Tom was
cleaning the tack. It was dark and there were soft drifts of ash still on the floor and
on the shelves.

“Thomas.”

He had stopped at the sound of the old man’s voice.

“We’re going.”

Carefully, he put down the bridle and harness.

“We—”

“Carine and I.”

He turned to face the old man in the darkness. Both of them black from
lack of light.

“Where?”

“To the city.”

“For how long?”

“I do not know.”

He nodded, his mouth was dry. He wondered why his father had chosen to
speak to him here—in the shed, the smell of leather and oil and horse shit. Of all
places.

“What will happen to the farm?”

“I leave that to you. It is yours, now.”

The words were meaningless. The ownership was meaningless, now. Tom turned
back to the bridle. He gripped the metal and leather straps. He picked up the rag,
rubbed the oil into the straps, he polished the metal and tried to think of a way to
speak.