In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [100]
The double-seated outhouse still stood tilted between the house and church. Did the rope swing still hang from the cottonwood limb above the creek, the one only the boys were allowed to sail from? Beyond the creek lay the railroad and the trails of coyote and bobcat.
Where were those skulls now, perfectly matched, incisors gleaming? Did the Langs carry them in their gypsy caravan, stashed with the hymnals, cushioned by tea towels and aprons? They would be picking cherries somewhere in Oregon, camped in a canvas-walled tent, singing their songs of faith.
I let myself miss the Langs as I had known them then, and felt with a nauseating intensity the shame and betrayal they had left me with. Times before, on a day such as this, the sun greening the leaves, warming the stone flies to hatch and swarm the creeks, Luke and I might have found ourselves alone in the church. In another place, another time, it might have been called first love. Whatever it was I felt then was lost to me now.
I thought of the life we had all lived there for those few years. So little of it seemed real, so little of it made sense outside the world we had created for ourselves. I pulled onto the road and drove the miles back to Pierce, its windows and sidewalks still faceless, then on to Lewiston, to my apartment empty of anything that felt like family.
Sitting on the kitchen counter that night, smoking, flicking ash into the sink, I let the cool air from the open window draw the cloud of my breath away. Outside, the locust trees hung heavy with their sweet blossoms, drawing the bees in clusters that wove and bobbed through the branches like dark drowsy spirits. I had nothing to attach the trees’ fragrance to, no memory I might later recall and feel the rhythms of life continue.
That night was one of many I would spend alone, balanced at the window, smoking and looking into the night for some sense of what my life might be made of. For the next fifteen years, there would be no place I could find that gave me comfort, no place I believed I might be sheltered from the world—no sanctuary, not in the arms of a lover or the house of a friend, not even in my own bed, there least of all, for it was there that the fear set in and the dreams found me, and always I was running, trying to hide, trying to find the place of safety I had left, the way back a dim and impossible memory.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My father’s arms encircle me as he snugs the rifle into my shoulder, pressing me against his legs. He steadies my left elbow, extended and trembling with the barrel’s weight. I lay my cheek on the cool wood, breathing in the camphor of gun oil.
“Steady,” my father says. “Don’t hold your breath. Aim like you’re pointing your finger.”
The target—a red circle crayoned on butcher paper and tacked to a stump—seems more distant with one eye closed. I know in a moment my arms will collapse, that the rifle will fall from my hands. Imagining the lovely brown stock caked with mud makes me shudder. I focus on the wavering bead and touch the trigger. The still afternoon explodes into pain, sharp and burning, spreading from my shoulder to the tingling tips of my fingers. My ears ring as the shock reverberates across the meadow.
He moves from behind me, loosens my hands, cradles the rifle against his chest. He pulls a Camel from his pocket and smiles, a full, eye-wrinkling grin, holding the cigarette between his teeth. He is proud of me.
He nods toward the target.