In June the hills were full green, the Dogwoods and Redbuds
having turned long before. He arrived at the property in the morning after
driving overnight from what used to be their place. The sky gray and low with
clouds, rain coming unevenly, and then stopping. He carried his things in,
dropped them in the front room, a hastily gathered assortment; trash bags
filled with clothes, shoes, a pot for cooking, a pillow, bed sheets. When he
stepped outside to smoke, the clouds were separating and
sunlight was catching in the wet grass and leaves, sparkling. He believed what
his mother had said, that when you were here, you were truly alone. Not a
neighbor for miles, maybe. The turnoff at 112 was twenty minutes away by
vehicle.
At Cassville he’d stopped and bought food and water from B & P. The well on the property wasn’t for drinking. It wasn’t poison but was tainted with sulfur. He washed in it, but wouldn’t put it to his lips for the stench. He left the canned food in brown paper grocery bags next to the door and would pull from them when he was hungry.
The forest was not long off from reclaiming the whole place.
The grass in the yard had gone wild and was to his waist. At the edges, young
White Oaks had encroached into the clearing; they’d come on like weeds but if
not cut would grow a hundred feet into the sky.
For days, he was not productive. He slept and ate and smoked
and wandered down the gravel road he’d driven in on and looked long down it,
waiting for someone, but for who he wasn’t sure. There would be no one on that
road except by accident; a person lost.
On the fourth day he woke at noon. A dream was still in his
head, remaining like the scent of something gone. He remembered some of it,
some faces, words, and for a few moments he sat behind the wheel of the truck
and contemplated going somewhere just to be with people. He wanted to hear
another voice. But then the urgency passed and he went inside and opened a can
of tamales and ate them, sitting on the front steps.
After that, he busied himself. For lack of tools, he pulled
out the tall grass until his hands were sliced and bleeding. He kicked over the
young trees, snapping them off a foot above the ground and piling them near the
road. He reinstated the boundaries of the property, pushing back against the
encircling foliage.
At the one-week mark, he drove into Cassville and bought an
axe, a hammer, a machete, and other tools. He picked up food at the B & P. The teenage girl at the
register smiled at him and later, before he fell asleep, he thought of her and
wished she was with him.
With the axe, he was able to clear the yard. Mornings were
hot but tolerable. In the afternoons he collapsed on the floor of the trailer and
slept for hours. In the evening, when the sun dropped to a point just above the
treetops and the shadows stretched long, he would go back outside and work a
few hours more. Or he would walk into the forest with the machete and thrash a
desultory trail through the growth.
He was out amongst the trees, in the fading light, when he
first heard his name called. The voice came from the direction of the property
and he ran back along the newly formed path, gripping the machete feverishly at
his side. He paused at the edge of the forest and surveyed the yard, looking
for the source. There was no one to be seen in the clearing. He was slow to
approach the trailer. The door was closed, as he’d left it. He shouted out, but
there was no response. Upon entering, he found it empty.
On an afternoon in the first days of July he walked into the
forest looking for a place he remembered from his childhood. It was a place
he’d gone to with his mother and younger brother. There was a high wall of
rock, an outcropping brindled with moss, and at the bottom, thorny bushes with
dark fruit. He remembered his mother calling them black hats. He walked an established path used by whitetails and feral
hogs; followed it up the western face of a ridge, the trail weaving through the
trees like a sloppily stitched thread.
At the top, he found the black hats at a spot discordant
with his memory. The bushes grew in a row, a peculiar uniformity. There, the
earth was flat; a plateau of young trees had risen up from thick undergrowth.
He picked the berries and tasted one and spit it out. The strongly bitter juice
streaked his chin with a line like fresh ink.
Four strides to the south he discovered a remnant of stones
that had once formed the foundation for a small shack. Only the rectangle of
stacked flat-rock was left. The roots of trees had turned up the foundation
from beneath and close observation was required to see the layout of the
stones. He circled the area, scanning the ground for artifacts. In the dirt he
saw a sliver of something emerald, and upon kicking it with the toe of his
boot, found the visible portion to be much smaller than the portion submerged
beneath soil. He knelt and scraped at the surrounding ground with his
fingernails until the form of the thing was evident. It was a medicine bottle, made
from opaque blown-glass. The lid was sealed with rust like barnacles upon a
ship’s hull. There was some liquid still in it. He turned it over in his hand,
brushing clumped dirt away from the bottom.
From somewhere down in the forested ravine that separated
the plateau from the property came the sound of a newborn’s wail. He stood
swiftly and peered through the trees in the direction of the cry and there saw
an upright figure step across an expanse between two trees. It was a woman, her
hair long and black. Startled, the bottle he held slipped from his hand. He
looked to where it landed, and when he raised his eyes again to the place the woman
had been, she was gone.
He crouched low balancing with one hand on the cornerstone
of the foundation. The sounds of the forest settled on him. Birds above. A
slight rustling of branch and leaf. The inhale and exhale of his breathing the
loudest of all. He was still for a long time. There was no movement down on the
hillside, and when he was sure that there had been no woman, he went to where
he’d thought he’d seen her and examined the ground and it looked undisturbed.
One hour on the trail and he was back at his property. He
drove the truck out to 112 and took it to Cassville. The summer evening light
was dimming. The antique medicine bottle was beside him on the bench seat. In
the parking lot of the B & P he
slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans and went inside. He had ten
minutes; the door said closing time was nine. He walked an aisle and pretended
to consider the products, reaching out and touching bottles and cans. At the
front, a woman worked the register. He’d not seen her before. The young girl he’d
come to see wasn’t on duty. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the medicine
bottle and left the store without buying anything. The next time, he’d show her
what he’d found beyond the property.
* * * * *
To learn more about the Zone of Alienation, read the original Wikipedia article HERE.
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