Before Familiar Woods Read online

  “Everything okay?” Ruth asked.

  “Everything’s fine.” Ruth’s mother continued forward a few feet, then stopped again and turned to her right and walked a couple of feet and sat down on a partial stone wall. She gripped her knees and struggled to catch her breath.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think this will have to do.” Ruth’s mother looked north toward the hill and the field of goldenrod—just dark stalks in the near dark. “I’ll have to look on from here.”

  Ruth sat beside her mother on a pocked stone that was cold and damp. “This is far enough. He can see you from here.” Ruth felt foolish as soon as the words left her mouth, but her mother didn’t seem to notice. She continued to stare at the field of goldenrod.

  “I know you miss Mathew,” Ruth’s mother said.

  Ruth was quiet. It was worse than that. She felt that her memories had turned to muscle and been stretched over her bones so that she couldn’t move without them. It had gotten so there was nothing in her future. Only a series of reactions born from her past.

  “We ought to get back inside where it’s warm,” Ruth said.

  The dogs returned from whatever they had been doing and stood wagging their tails and tilting their heads, confused by Ruth and her mother sitting still in the dark woods.

  “We can sit here another moment, though,” Ruth’s mother said.

  “Yes,” Ruth said. “We can sit here as long as you like.”

  MILK RAYMOND

  Jessica showed up at the blue duplex on Stub Hollow sometime in the early evening. Milk saw her pull in next to his truck in a gray Jeep Cherokee, and he knew it was her before she even got out of the Jeep and stopped in the drive to fix her hair and rub the bags out from under her eyes.

  She came up the concrete steps, and Milk opened the door enough to stick his head out. Her face was blistered and caked with foundation.

  “Don’t get mad,” she said. “I just got to talk to you.”

  Milk stood there staring at her and not saying anything. He heard Daniel shift in his chair at the kitchen table but didn’t turn around.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Marcy gave me your address. How is he?”

  “Like you care.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “Can I come in—please?”

  Milk shook his head. “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Please—Jesus, Milk. I just want to see him.” Jessica craned her neck around Milk. “Daniel,” she said. “Daniel, it’s Mommy.”

  Milk stepped outside and shut the door behind him. “You need to go,” he said. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

  “He’s my boy. I have every right to see him.”

  “That’s not the way I see it.”

  “I’m his mother.”

  Milk remembered how Jessica had told him she’d wanted a child since she was a little girl. How she used to cut out pictures of mothers and fathers and children from magazines and hang them on the walls around her room. She had names for all the men and all the children. But the mother never changed. The pretty blonde in the tennis outfit and the brunette in the black pantsuit with shoulder pads were all just incarnations of the woman she thought she would become.

  “I’m his mother,” Jessica said again.

  “A mother doesn’t leave her boy for some junkie.”

  Jessica fingered the cuff of her sleeve. “I made a mistake, Milk.”

  “You made a big mistake.”

  “You ain’t perfect yourself. You left him too.”

  Milk raised his finger and struggled to keep his voice level. “That was different. I left for us. We agreed to that.”

  “I already told you I made a mistake. What do you want me to say?”

  “I don’t want you to say nothing unless it’s that you’re leaving and you don’t plan on ever coming back.”

  “I’m not gonna say that.”

  “Well just say nothing then. I don’t care.”

  Jessica crossed her arms. Tears began to well up in her eyes. “You don’t need to forgive me. But that’s still my boy, and we gotta figure something out—for Daniel.”

  Milk motioned toward the Jeep. “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “That’s a fucking surprise, isn’t it?”

  “I told you it was a mistake.”

  Jessica wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “You can’t care for him. You don’t know nothing about raising a child.”

  “I know more than you.”

  “That ain’t true. You never knew what to do with him. You hardly knew him before you left.” Jessica shook her head. Her foot started tapping on the concrete. “You can’t have him.”

  “Go home,” Milk said. “Wherever that is.”

  “I’ll call the cops on you. I’ll call them on you for kidnapping.”

  “Call them. I already been talking to Social Services.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I told you. They been out here.”

  “You called them?”

  “I didn’t need to. You left our boy alone with a crazy woman. That’s the type of thing they take an interest in.”

  “What did you tell them? Did you lie to them?”

  “I didn’t tell them nothing but the truth.”

  Jessica lunged past Milk for the door handle, but Milk caught her around the waist and pulled her back. She swung at Milk and caught him across the chin, and he heard a dull pop. Milk wrapped his arms tighter around her waist and took her down the steps, and when they were standing in the gravel, he pushed her toward her car and she hit the ground. She stayed there a moment with the palms of her hands on the cold snow, and then she stood.

  “I’m calling the cops,” she said. “I’m telling them you assaulted me in front of my boy and that you’ve got him in an apartment against his will.”

  “Go on, then. See if they’ll listen to a druggie whore.”

  Jessica took a step forward. “Ask him. Ask Daniel what he wants. If he wants me to leave, then I’ll go. You let him decide.”

  “He’s already decided,” Milk said. “We both decided.”

  Jessica started to cry. She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat and stood there in the driveway watching Milk, and then she turned and headed to her car.

  “Don’t you tell him no lies about me. Don’t you go making up things.”

  “I don’t need to lie, Jessica. He was there—remember?”

  A truck drove by on the road with sandbags stacked in the bed. The man watched Milk from the driver’s side window. Milk watched the truck until it disappeared, and then he waited for the Jeep to back out of the drive and disappear down the road. When it was gone, he turned back to the duplex and the shriveled shrubs crowded in front of it.

  * * *

  MILK SAT ON the couch after dinner, not paying attention to the highlights of the baseball game that played on the television or his boy, who was sitting on the floor working his way through a book Milk didn’t recognize. He nursed a beer and thought about Jessica. He wondered what it meant that she was in town. Wondered where she was staying and whether her boyfriend would come looking for her. He wondered if she would return to the duplex or if she would try to see Daniel at school. It wasn’t what he needed—not with everything else going on.

  The familiar pain started behind his right eye. He had hoped the headaches would stop when he got back to the States, but if anything they had gotten worse.

  There was a small part of him that missed being in Iraq. Even the unexpected was expected in the sense that there was a protocol for handling surprises. You fought fire with fire. When all else went to shit, you doubled down. But in the States there was no such protocol. The surprises kept on coming and you just sort of took it.

  He finished his
beer and stood from the couch. In the kitchen he swallowed a tablet of Zoloft and pulled a fresh beer from the refrigerator.

  “Is she staying?”

  Milk looked toward the living room. “What?”

  “Is she staying here?”

  “Who?”

  “Mom.”

  “No.”

  “Where is she going to stay?”

  “I don’t know.” The pain on the right side of Milk’s head expanded. It felt like his head had been split open.

  “Where is she going to sleep?”

  “What?”

  “Mom. Where is she going to sleep?”

  “Daniel—Jesus. I don’t know.”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed and his lip quivered like he was going to cry, but he just turned back to his book.

  Milk swallowed another tab of Zoloft and twisted the cap from the beer. He leaned against the kitchen counter and watched the snow fall outside the window. He wondered if the heating company would keep the heat on in the winter even if he didn’t pay the bill. It used to be they would leave it on until the spring at least. But Milk didn’t know if that was how it still worked. He figured everyone was tightening their belts and he might just be shit out of luck come next month.

  He took another sip of his beer, watched the falling snow, and hoped the winter wouldn’t be too long. He looked back to his boy reading on the dirty carpet. Milk carried his beer into the living room and set it on the cardboard box and went to the door and put on his boots.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  The snow seemed like it was coming down even harder once he was outside. Earlier in the day he had heard the weatherman encouraging people to check their vents and stay off the roads on account of whiteout conditions. Milk opened the passenger door of the truck and grabbed the balsam fir branch he had spotted on his drive home from dropping his boy off at school and forgotten about until this moment.

  “What is it?” Daniel asked.

  “Go on and get my knife from the counter.”

  The boy got up from the floor and went to the table and grabbed the six-inch folding knife.

  Milk sat down on the couch. “This stick predicts the weather,” he said when Daniel got back.

  “The stick?”

  Milk nodded. “First you have to strip the bark. Then you hang it outside.” Milk took a sip of the warming beer and then opened the knife and began to shave the bark from the stick. The boy watched him quietly. “When the stick points toward the ground, that means the weather is bad. When it curls upward, that means good weather is on the way. I had one of these when I was your age, and it worked better than the weatherman.”

  Milk removed most of the bark and closed the knife and held it out to the boy. “Go on,” he said. “Finish it off.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Jesus, Daniel.”

  The boy looked down at his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Milk said. “I’m sorry. Why don’t you want to do it?”

  “I’ll cut myself.”

  “Is that it? Is that the only thing you’re worried about?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Okay, here. Can I show you something?”

  The boy hesitated and then nodded.

  “This part here is called the spine of the knife. Do you see that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You always want to hold the spine against your palm. That way the blade will open facing away from your skin. See, watch.” Milk opened the blade and then closed it. He held the knife out to the boy again. This time Daniel took it and held it so that the spine was pressed tight against his palm.

  “Good. Now take your right finger and thumb and put them on the sides of the blade here and slowly open it.”

  The boy did as he was told.

  “Set the stick down on your leg there and hold it behind the blade.”

  The boy set the stick on his leg and held it with his left hand.

  “Now push the blade edgewise along the stick—away from you, so that if it slips, it will slip away from you. It’ll come off easy.”

  The boy stripped off a line of bark and then another. His tongue hung out of his mouth.

  “That’s good,” Milk said. “You’re doing it right.”

  The boy worked the knife over the stick as slow as molasses moving over a splintered table, but eventually he removed all of the bark, and then he sat there holding the knife three feet from his chest and staring at Milk.

  “Good,” Milk said. “Now hold the knife the same way you opened it. Grab the spine with one hand. Make sure your fingers are clear of the blade and push the blade down.”

  A commercial for arthritis medication came on the television. A man in a blue flannel shirt walked along a weathered gray dock with a Boston terrier at his heel.

  The boy closed the knife.

  “Good,” Milk said. “Now let’s get her hung.”

  He went to the kitchen and opened the closet door and removed a hammer and a couple of nails. He put his boots back on, and his boy put on his own boots and tied them slowly and then put on his coat and carefully pulled the zipper all the way up to his chin.

  Outside the house, as he helped his boy hang the stick, Milk watched the snow piling on the drive and covering the tracks. He thought of Jessica, and then he thought of a girl he had known in high school. A good student who took her schoolwork seriously and was a member of the track team. She became addicted to pain pills and started driving two hours on the weekends in her parents’ minivan to strip at a dive in Palmsville. During her senior year she was shot to death while trying to rob a gas station with a carving knife.

  RUTH FENN

  The motion light snapped on and shone dimly through the bedroom window. Ruth pulled back the covers and stepped onto the cold floor and put on her slippers and sweater. She listened for her mother and then walked down the hall to the front of the house and opened the door and looked out at the well-lit snow. The cold tightened her skin. She pulled her arms across her chest and eyed the unmarked ground. The snow was coming down hard, but the motion sensor worked on heat, and it wouldn’t turn on because of falling snow or even wind if it wasn’t carrying with it something warm.

  A limb cracked deep in the woods. The wind rose up and bore down on the home, tightening the boards.

  Ruth closed the door and went to the kitchen and heated a glass of milk on the stovetop. The clock on the oven read one twenty. She poured the milk into a mug and took a small sip and closed her eyes. The wind whistled as it eddied around the home. The refrigerator hummed.

  The house had gotten so quiet after Mathew died. He’d never made much noise, but his death brought a quiet same as a snowstorm. Hushed and still and allowing for unfamiliar sounds a long ways off.

  With Elam gone it was even worse. Ruth was suddenly aware of her own sounds. The way her bones creaked when she moved, same as the trees when the sap froze. And the way she breathed hard through her nose even when she was standing still. She took another sip of milk. The motion light turned off. She fiddled with the towel that hung from the lip of the sink, straightening it out some, and then she finished her milk and set the mug in the sink and filled it with tap water and turned toward the bedroom.

  The motion light snapped on again.

  At the closet she put on her snow boots and coat. There were deer and other animals that came out at night, but she hadn’t seen any tracks. She buttoned her coat and turned up the collar and grabbed the flashlight from the drawer.

  The wind lifted the snow from the ground. The moon was full. Ruth buried her chin in her coat and listened to the sound of her footsteps and turned back every now and then to make sure she was only being followed by one set of tracks. When she reached the end of the motion light’s reach, she flipped on her flashlight and held it tightly beside her hip.

  The shed looked smaller covered in snow—like a rabbit den. Ruth went to the window and pressed her hands and forehea
d against the glass and felt the cold and damp. She could see the long table and the chairs and the wheel. She studied the inside of the shed and then went to the door and turned the knob. The door creaked open. The flashlight uncovered pieces of hardened clay and windblown pieces of paper. She stepped inside the shed and ran the light over the walls. She studied the books on the shelves and the statues and the framed photograph of Elam and the drawings with the names of her students written crookedly in the corners.

  The door slammed shut.

  Ruth spun and shined the light on the door. She held her breath and thought she heard something small scurry across the snow. She kept the light on the door a long while, long enough to notice the rust on the bottom hinge and the yellow paint on the doorknob, and then she turned back to the shed. She continued to run the light over the walls, and her heart nearly stopped when the light crossed the window and she saw her own reflection, as though someone were standing on the other side of the glass looking through it with a flashlight.

  She drew the light over the far wall and the double-basin sink where a ring-necked pheasant that Elam had shot and stuffed was fastened to the one of the edges. She let the light linger on the pheasant, and then she turned back to the door and hesitated before walking toward it and turning the knob.

  The trees cast thin shadows across the snow. Ruth raised the beam toward the woods, but it died before it reached the tree line. If there was something out there in the old growth, she wasn’t going to find it.

  Inside the house she locked the door and removed her boots and set them on the floor next to the wall. She thought she heard something and stopped and listened. The wind picked up and rattled the panes. She pulled off her coat and hung it on the nail and carried the flashlight to her bedroom, where she set it on the nightstand. She removed her socks and climbed under the covers, and after a long time listening to herself breathe, she fell asleep.

  She woke again sometime later. She lay quiet and waiting, and then she heard what must have awoken her. The sound of snow crunching underfoot. The other dogs must have still been asleep in the mudroom, but Woodstock had moved into her bedroom, and he stood on point in the middle of the room staring into the darkened hallway.