In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [103]
I hate my weakening legs, my slow finger against the trigger. I hate the doe, who believed us trees solidly planted in the bank, and I hate that I made of her some symbol of resistance. I think I might hate the man in front of me, my father, who carries his burden so easily, as if it were nothing, the rifle slung over his shoulder. I wonder what he is thinking, and as has always been the case between my father and me, I think he can discern the reason for my every action. He wanted me to shoot the deer, and because he wanted me to, I wouldn’t. But it was you who started it—I want to say—you’re the one who insisted I take the shot It wasn’t a gift, it was a test, a trial.
By the time we crest the ridge, I’m somewhere between tears and fury, both unacceptable shows of emotion. I swear silently that I’ll never subject myself to this again. My father slows, then stops. He pulls a cigarette from his pocket with two fingers, lights it, scans the ridge. I long for a cigarette of my own, but I cannot imagine smoking in front of my father. I kick mud from my boots, glad for the moment’s rest, already planning a hot bath when I get back to my apartment, where I can be free of my father’s reckoning.
He turns his gaze on me. “Now,” he says, “you lead.”
For a moment I feel between us the steel-blue shock of recognition: he is the father, I, the daughter. His job is to teach, mine to be taught. No matter how many years pass, no matter what conciliatory gestures I make, nothing will change. I look to my brother, who shakes his head and looks away.
I hate this, this lesson.
It was I who had thought to save him, to rescue him from his television and easy chair, to remind him of the life he had left behind. I wanted him to remember what his life was like before his all-night runs hauling wood chips from one mill to another; before his stride of open country turned to the cramped steps of a man shuffling from bed to table, from the door of his house to the door of his truck, between the close boundaries of manicured hedges, back and forth, cutting the same swath so it might be watered and grow to be cut again.
But now it is I who must walk for hours toward what I think might be our beginning. The men follow me, my father half-smiling, my brother wary and observant, knowing that he might be called upon to take my place. If there are deer, I do not see them. The air darkens. How long will he let this go on? “Learning the hard way,” he’d say, “makes them remember.”
What I learn is this: I am lost, and he will not lead me out.
We could walk for miles, spend the night shivering in our clothes beside a fire of pine branches, more smoke than warmth. He’d let us, I think, just to prove …
I want to spit my anger at him. I want to cry and sink to the ground. I want him to gather me up in the circle of his arms and carry me to a place of comfort, as he did when I was a child. I stop, close my eyes, take a deep breath: “I don’t know where we are,” I say.
He settles onto a log and unwraps a chocolate bar, breaks it into thirds. I crouch on my heels, unwilling to give in to exhaustion, to let him see me beaten. Greg walks a little ways off to pee, an excuse, I think, to give us all the room he can. My own bladder is full, but I can’t bear the thought of fighting my way off the trail and into the brush to gain the privacy I would need to squat.
“You haven’t been watching,” my father says. “The treadmarks on the road run a certain way. Notice that.”
I nod, tired beyond remembering. I let the chocolate melt on my tongue. He crosses his legs and points, his cigarette deep in the V between two fingers.
“See the ridge? That tallest snag? Tamarack. Been there long as I can remember.” The dusky horizon seems a solid wash of trees, none distinguishable from the other.
“You look down too much. You’ve got to see it all, forward, backward, sides. You get lost in here, it’ll be a long time before someone finds you.”
You could, I think, but I keep my eyes on the blank sky and say nothing.