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  In Wilderness is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Diane Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BANTAM BOOKS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Counterpoint Press for permission to reprint a poem from Axe Handles: Poems by Gary Snyder, copyright © 2005 by Gary Snyder. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Thomas, Diane C. (Diane Coulter)

  In wilderness: a novel / Diane Thomas.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-8041-7695-8

  eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-7696-5

  1. Terminally ill—Fiction. 2. Solitude—Fiction. 3. Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Veterans—Fiction. 4. Squatters—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3620.H627I5 2015 813’.6—dc23 2014025351

  www.bantamdell.com

  Jacket design: David G. Stevenson

  Jacket photographs: © Tomasz Pietryszek/

  Getty Images (mountains), © Robert Jones/

  Arcangel Images (woman)

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  February 1962 Prologue

  Early Winter, 1966 1: The Woman

  2: The Watcher

  3: Gatsby’s House

  4: The Cabin

  5: Danny’s Refrain

  Spring 6: Seeds

  7: A Journey

  8: Need

  9: Lonely. Home.

  10: Danny’s Errand

  11: The Cart

  12: Gun Love

  13: On Foot

  14: In the Snow

  15: Danny’s Long Dream

  16: The Ones Who Went West

  17: Awakening

  18: The Why of It

  Summer 19: “Please, Won’t Somebody …”

  20: Sin-Cleansed

  21: The Gift

  22: “It’s. All. Right.”

  23: “Unbraid Your Hair”

  24: Storm

  25: “Take Me In”

  26: In This Quiet, Familiar Place

  27: Morning

  28: Endlessly Rocking

  29: Quilts

  30: All of It Burns Him, Even Air

  31: The Way It Is and Will Be

  Fall 32: With People

  33: Running Away

  34: The Deer

  Winter 35: Three Presents

  36: Memaw’s Nightgown

  37: Lullaby

  Spring 38: Green Growing Things

  39: A Reversal

  40: In Too Deep

  41: Snake Hole

  42: Memaw’s Tea

  43: The Healing Cup

  44: A Good Woman’s Love

  45: Katherine’s Bargain

  46: The Gook

  Summer 47: His Baby, Too

  48: A Good Day, All of It, Clear Through

  49: The Heart of the Forest

  Epilogue A Brief History of Bartram’s: Mountains, from an Interview: on a Late Summer Afternoon

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  In the midst of life’s journey

  I found myself in a dark wood,

  for the right path was lost.

  —DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno

  As the crickets’ soft autumn hum

  is to us

  so are we to the trees

  as are they

  to the rocks and the hills

  —GARY SNYDER

  February 1962

  Prologue

  SHE WILL REMEMBER THIS MOMENT ALL HER LIFE, SHE IS SURE OF IT.

  She will remember the seven men seated with her around the oval table in the agency conference room, even the four clients, whom she does not know. Will remember how the men sit in an assortment of relaxed postures, each with his paper cup of coffee in its blue plastic holder within easy reach and a wadded or refolded paper napkin and a color-matched paper plate nearby with crumbs or some larger portion of a Danish in it, and how most of the small glass ashtrays scattered on the table now contain at least one cigarette butt; will remember how the room still holds the scents of the coffee and the pastries in its smoky haze.

  She will remember, too, the exact way her husband, Tim, stands at the far end of the room beside three easels, each of which displays a logo designed for the company the clients represent; will remember how Tim holds the pointer loosely in his right hand, angles it toward the farthest of the drawings, and she knows that he is proud of all of them—because each one is good, because he can see in the clients’ faces that they know this, and because all three of the designs are hers. She will remember noting that this pride, and the necessity of hiding it before the clients, makes him nervous, which he shows in ways that only she can recognize: how he slides the toe of his brown loafer rhythmically back and forth on the plush beige carpet, sniffs at intervals.

  “Any one of these will afford an exceedingly effective visual anchor to a powerful corporate campaign for 1963.…” His words, directed to the clients, soothe her and wash over her.

  She will remember that this is the first day she has worn her glen plaid suit, an extravagance she felt guilty for when she bought it on sale in the fall, and that she likes the suit even more than she imagined liking it, feels pretty in it and regrets somewhat that soon she’ll have to give up wearing it for several months, despite the reason. She will remember, too, how she notices for the first time that the room’s familiar floral drapes are slightly worn and thinks perhaps she should say something to Tim about this; after all, this is his advertising agency, and as his wife it might be her responsibility to do so.

  She notes all these details unconsciously, recalls them solely because they form a frame around this moment, a kind of shrine for this occurrence that has just become the intense focus of all her attention: For the first time, she has felt the baby move.

  In this instant, her pregnancy has transformed itself from something she accepted from her gynecologist on faith to something real. The evidence is there: the smallest flutter in her belly. Like one strong beat from a single pair of tiny wings. Or the littlest tropical fish whipping around to swim back to the other side of its aquarium. A movement that might easily have gone unnoticed, except that it so definitely was not a thing that came from her.

  Please, baby, please, please do it more. Strong little butterfly, dear little fish. She folds her hands across her belly just below the table, her belly that at four months hardly protrudes at all, belly that lets her wear her glen plaid meeting suit. Oh, please do it again.

  She leans back, smiles a quiet half smile that might be interpreted as rapt attention to the meeting going on around her but is not that at all. Yes, oh, yes, it’s moved again, as if the tiny fetus has become so intimate with her it can discern her thoughts. The room around her—all she noticed of it, even the men’s voices—has receded now. She and this small being are together all alone in a vast, empty space. It’s what she wants, for all of it to go away except her and the little swimming fish inside her. So she can cry from happiness.

  But it’s too late. Already, tears well in her eyes; she can feel the first one trembling on her lower lashes. She turns her head away from the men seated at the table, rises. “Gentlemen, excuse me for a moment.
” Walks quickly from the conference room, the office, past the bank of elevators. To the ladies’ room, empty as usual. There she sits inside one of the stalls and lets the tears run down her face to slide over her widening smile.

  By the time she returns to the conference room, the meeting has ended and Tim has left for an off-site presentation across town. She stays to put away the papers, scraps of drawing board, bottles of colored inks strewn about her modest office. Back home, she hardly has time to take off her jacket, pour two glasses of Chablis, before he bursts through the door, his face pale with worry.

  “Kate, are you all right? You missed the last part of the meeting.”

  She nods, still smiling; she has smiled all the remainder of the day. “The baby moved. This little flutter. I cried and had to leave the room.”

  “Oh, Kate, my wonderful Kate.”

  He crosses their still-unfurnished living room, wraps his arms awkwardly around her, stands there holding her. It is, she thinks, like Russian nesting dolls, the whole thing. The air and sky enfold the earth, the countryside, that itself enfolds this city she has lived in all her life, which in turn embraces their neighborhood of spreading oaks and budding daffodils; the neighborhood, its trees and flowers, holds their home—old, rambling, bought just last year because it seemed designed and built to furnish echoes for the sounds of children—and this home holds her and Tim, here in this room with all its narrow strips of wooden lath exposed for plasterers who come next week; inside this room Tim folds her in his arms, her a warm and living bunting for their baby, the tiny, determined entity that is the solid center all the dolls enclose, the heart of everything.

  The baby flutters once again and she takes Tim’s broad hand, places it against her belly, looks into his face that’s nothing but a blur through her fierce, joyous tears. And her whole body trembles from the sum of it, that sum’s enormity: That she should be here. In this universe. With everything.

  And, yes, she will remember every piece of this. Forever.

  Early Winter, 1966

  1

  The Woman

  IN ADVERTISING, SHE HAS LEARNED, YOU LIVE AND DIE BY THE RULE of Three: “Less tar, less nicotine, same great taste.”

  It’s the same in life: “Third time’s the charm.” The gray-haired gastroenterologist seated across from her behind his cluttered mahogany desk is Dr. Third Opinion, her last hope, who was supposed to sally forth and save the day.

  But Dr. Third Opinion has not sallied forth, has chosen instead to betray her, to align himself with doctors one and two in his assessment that her pain and suffering come from her body’s failure to assimilate her food. Not to put too fine a point on it, she’s starving; soon her organs will start shutting down; she’s got at most six months.

  And there you have it: “Three strikes, you’re out.”

  Assimilate. Good word, that. Significantly more abstract and intellectual than digest, which might far too easily lead to overcontemplation of actual physical functions. She nods to indicate she knows the word’s import, knows the import of all his words. Which she does, her mind’s eye picturing each in a contrasting typeface—Garamond, Bodoni Bold, Helvetica—as if they are a dummy print ad sent her for critiquing. Dying. D. Y. I. N. G. She can get no closer to the thing than metaphor: exiting early from an unproductive meeting in some new office high-rise, into an empty hallway with harsh lighting, where she will wait alone for an elevator that never comes. This is not particularly satisfactory.

  “What’s its name, this thing that’s killing me?”

  Names matter. For a while they were her specialty, extracting from thin air the perfect single-word descriptor for a suburban subdivision, line of carpeting, or processed sandwich spread. Before names she specialized in graphic design—logos, illustrations—and married her boss. After names she got promoted to creative director. This doctor, like the other two, tells her he does not know the name of what is killing her. Among all the colleagues, laboratories, scientists, and sorcerers her physicians have consulted, not one has come up with an answer. She is dying of a lack of information.

  If she opens her mouth to scream now, she will never stop.

  By her count she’ll make it through Christmas into 1967. Maybe see the trees leaf out, but that’s less certain. Thirty-eight seems young to die. But maybe if you’re ninety-six so does ninety-seven. She has disciplined herself these past four years to give no outward sign. Of anything. Except she can’t quiet her trembling hands.

  “I see.” She doesn’t, it’s just what one says. Or maybe not; she’s got no idea what one says, she’s never died before.

  The doctor frowns, delicately clears his throat. “If you’ll forgive me, there’s one question I try to ask all my patients. For my own edification, really, so if you’d rather not …”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine.”

  Truly, it is. He looks so earnest, the doctor. He seems a kindly man, in his white coat; she hopes his gray hair is premature and that he can look forward to a long career.

  “Can you recall for me the last day that you felt completely well?” The doctor pauses. “There’s no hurry. Take all the time you need.”

  All the time she needs would be six decades, although right now she’d be quite satisfied with five. Or four. Yet answering his question needs no time at all. The last day she felt completely well was May 24, 1962, a day she still remembers for an incident of such transcendent beauty she mistook it for a foretaste of all her life to come.

  With her belly gloriously swollen, she was seated on a red stepstool in the baby’s room, or what would be the baby’s room in two more months, drawing pictures on its robin’s-egg-blue walls. A kite, eyes closed in rapture, rode the blowing wind; a rabbit in a frock coat and monocle had just popped out of his rabbit hole; a library table frowned beneath its load of books. Alice in Wonderland, Tom Sawyer, Little Women, she was lettering their titles when there came a loud commotion from the peaceful residential street—brakes grinding, men shouting, and a strange hissing sound. She flung her brush onto the canvas drop cloth, can still see it there in a faint spatter of black paint, and ran down the hall into their bedroom, hers and Tim’s, to see what was the matter.

  Outside the open window, a city truck was spraying the runtiest of the ginkgoes in the grassy strip beyond the sidewalk, the tree with all its fan-shaped leaves eaten to filigree. The window framed a tracery of leaves and branches in a pearly mist shot through with rainbows. She remembers thinking she did not deserve to come upon such beauty, that she already had her child inside her, which was far and away beauty enough. Nonetheless, she stayed there, nose pressed against the rigid metal screen, for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, filled with too much gratitude to move. Stayed until the spraying was completed and the truck lumbered off down the street. A small collection of leftover rainbows lingered as drops of consolation on the screen—along with an oily film inside the draperies that, Tim said the next morning, stank like a cheap Florida motel and gave him tropical dreams.

  When she is finished speaking, the doctor gazes past her with so great a sadness she experiences a moment of confusion, unsure if she has also told him how, only a day or so later, the headaches started and her energetic child quit moving. She never spoke of it, but even that unyielding denial did not save him. Tim couldn’t face it, made believe it never happened, left her to grieve alone. Became first a shadow and then slipped away, under the door or something. Left her controlling interest in the agency, an unwanted guilt offering, began another someplace far away—Milwaukee? Minneapolis?—she never can recall exactly where. Sometime in there her illness got its start and grew without her knowing, like gossip you don’t hear until too late.

  Dr. Third Opinion sighs. He leans back in his creaky chair, stares past her into some middle distance to her left. “A hundred, hundred-twenty years ago, we used to tell patients like you, patients we had no hope of curing, to go west, move to the country, take the Grand Tour of Europe. Anything. A change of scene. After all th
is time, we can’t do any better.”

  “Were they healed? The ones who went away?” Hates her voice’s horrid, hopeful whine.

  He shrugs. “Who knows? I doubt most of their physicians ever heard from them again.”

  He writes in his prescription pad, tears out the page. “This is for Valium. Refillable as long as you need it.”

  She squints at it, can’t read his writing, bets it cuts off in six months.

  “And don’t hesitate to call me if you need to.”

  “Thank you, Doctor, that’s most kind.” What good would calling do?

  After he leaves, she checks her reflection in the mirror by the door. Dull dark hair, hollow eyes, drawn mouth; the glen plaid suit hangs so loose on her now. She regrets not keeping her religion after high school. As things stand, she’s got no idea of what’s wanted, no chips to bargain with, nothing to trade. If she believes in anything, she believes in Sartre: Death is nothingness, silence under a bleak sky.

  Absence of pain, one hopes. Not much help otherwise.

  She touches the pearl earrings she put on earlier that morning, her gold watch. She wants to cry and doesn’t dare, for the same reason that she didn’t scream. The sure knowledge she will die descends upon her then, not unlike that earlier mist, and cloaks her in its shimmering protection. From that moment, she becomes a different person, never certain anymore what she will do.

  WHAT SHE DOES FIRST is unremarkable. Drives straight home, gathers all the Valium bottles from her medicine cabinet and dumps their contents out onto her bedside table. She’s not sure why, except they’re pretty there against the dark, polished wood. She pushes them around with an index finger, the five-milligram yellow tablets toward the center, the two-milligram whites into radiating petal-lines around them, the ten-milligram blues stretched out to make a single leaf and stem. Doctors always prescribe Valium for you when they don’t know what else to do. She always dutifully filled her prescriptions, as if each new bottle might include some fresh, heretofore undiscovered healing charm. The pills always only made her feel peculiar, so she never took more than one or two from any of the bottles. Her finished flower is quite large.