The pile of seasoning lumber smelled of sunshine and brittle beetle wings. I had to unstack several pieces before I found the plank of yellow locust I’d split out when I’d first arrived. I hefted it onto my shoulder, careful of its rough edges, then realized I should have worn gloves. Both hands were a mess of splinter scars, new, healing, and half faded. I should have been wearing gloves for months.
The sawhorse stood in the sun. There was still no breeze, and cutting can be heavy work, so I picked it up with my left hand and carried it and the plank into the shade. There was no pain now in the injured arm and shoulder, not even a twinge.
I marked the plank at inch intervals with a blue pencil, picked up the saw, and braced the plank on the horse with my left knee. Yellow locust is dense and hard, but the bright steel teeth ripped through the plank in three easy pushes, and a finger of wood, an inch square and five inches long, dropped onto the grass. I shifted the plank an inch, set the saw, pushed forward and down, and ripped off another, then another, until it was a mindless, mechanical rhythm, and after a while there was nothing left of the plank but a nine-inch board I could use for something else, and dozens of wooden bars in a pile. When I scooped them onto a square of canvas, they sounded like a disordered xylophone. I sat on the turf and poured them through my hands and listened, imagining a mobile strung with different woods that made soft, wooden sounds in the breeze among the trees.
After a while I simply sat. Sometime later, I realized I hadn’t eaten.
The hogpen smelled of wood, and dirt on cool stone. The sealed painter’s bucket sat on the right-hand shelf. I swang it down, opened it, and took out the airtight tub of rice salad. I carried it to the log by the cold fire pit, and ate mechanically with my fingers. The woods were still quiet. The tomatoes seemed unnaturally red, the olives too pungent.
Somewhere in Atlanta Dornan would be sorting through piles of precious keepsakes, wondering whether to trust me with embarrassing love notes or the fact that he had kept phone messages from Tammy from the last eighteen months. In the end, he would; he wanted her back. To want someone back and know it might be possible…
A familiar shuddering started deep deep down in a place I couldn’t even name. “No,” I said aloud to any bears who might be listening. “Not now. I have things to do.”
Then do them. Concentrate on the details and everything will be all right.
No birds nested in the engine block, no rat snakes curled around the battery. It took a moment to loosen the dipstick, but when it came free it glistened with clear, pungent oil. I wiped it on the cloth, redipped it, and pulled it out again. The smell was stronger now, thick and sullen and artificial, and, as though some spell had been broken, a cool breeze set the foliage whispering. The oil looked fine.
The cab was hot—I’d kept the windows closed to prevent spiders and squirrels from nesting in the upholstery during the summer—but the fuel gauge looked healthy. When I turned the key the truck started with a deep, authoritative rumble. It was strange to feel artificial fabric on my bare legs and the vibration of manufactured power under my feet. The Chevy was a big truck, an extended bed rear-drive V10, fitted with a second gas tank and compression brakes. The dashboard was a complicated affair, with extra displays to support the cooling system, the trailer’s lights, the brake controller, and all the other extras a driver needs to haul thirteen thousand pounds up a steep incline and control it on the way back down. The side and rearview mirrors were big, and minutely adjustable. I looked in the rearview. An oil smudge split my forehead between my brows, like war paint. It should have made me look fierce, but it didn’t. I hadn’t realized how much my hair had grown, how startling my eyes were against a tan, but the real difference was my expression: the shock of seeing myself had been written across it clearly, just as now it registered intent interest. I had forgotten how to wear a mask.
I turned the engine off and climbed back down to the turf, checked the tires on the dual back wheels, and the muffler and lights. The gas can, jack, tools, fire extinguisher, jump cables, and flashlight were in the trunk; the spare tire felt firm. No mask. How odd. Under its protective tarp in the truck bed, the fifth-wheel coupling looked fine.
When I couldn’t think of anything else to check, I went into the trailer, to the sink in the tiny bathroom. I turned on the tap and let the water run over my hand, endlessly. My hand got cold. I stared at it, then turned the water off. I’d been waiting for it to run hot. It wouldn’t; the point heater was set on OFF to conserve the battery. I stood gazing at the wet sink for five minutes before I lifted my head.
My face lay on the glass like a picture of someone else. I turned this way and that. No, more like a picture of a rock after some vandal has ripped off its decades-old layer of moss and soil, and the bare stone is revealed. I touched my reflected eyes. Wolf eyes, Julia had said, not long after we met, so pale and hungry. For a moment I saw her behind me, leaning in the doorway, arms folded, smiling at my reflection but serious as she said, “More like a blasted heath, now, Aud,” and she was so clear, the words so exactly what she might have said, that I almost turned around.
Run, I thought, run and run and run, and when Dornan comes back, don’t be here. Hide.
Sunshine warmed the middle of the clearing. I stripped, knelt, hands palm up on my naked thighs, and began the measured breathing of zazen. At first I was aware of the dry grass poking at my shins and instep, the ruffle of breeze stirring the tiny hairs in the small of my back, the scent of my body, and I still wanted to run, but as I breathed steadily, in and out, and in and out, everything faded but the rhythm of air. My eyelids half closed. My heart beat steadily, relentlessly, like a machine. “You are not a machine.” Julia’s voice in my head. I smiled. A tear ran down my cheek. I didn’t move to brush it away. Not a machine, then. A living, breathing being. Alive. Julia was dead, but I was alive. Skinless, and half mutated, but alive. In and out. Stay alive, Aud. Promise me. Had she known how hard it would be?
In and out. In and out. Nothing else.
A bluejay shrieked. I blinked. The sun was well past its meridian. Midafternoon. The need to run was buried, for a while. I stood, stretched, walked naked to the hogpen, and pulled the tarp off the generator.
The Onan Microlite 4000 is essentially a lawn mower motor that drives a tiny electrical generating plant to produce 115 volts. Like a lawn mower, it can be cranky. I changed the oil, put in new spark plugs, and topped up the fuel reservoir from the red plastic can, then pressed the starter button. The clearing filled with its shattering roar and a plume of blue hydrocarbon smoke. I watched it for a few minutes until it burned clean, then climbed up into the trailer to take a look at the converter and smart charger. The flickering LEDs all said what I wanted to see: the deep-cycle marine battery was charging swiftly. I tested the electrical appliances one by one, turning them on and then off in careful sequence. Everything seemed to work.
I hadn’t run any of the propane kitchen appliances for a long time so I checked and rechecked the fridge and stove and air conditioner to make sure the gas lines were closed and the pilot lights off before I went back outside and detached the regulator. The two tanks on the tongue of the trailer were more than half empty. I hefted them into the truck bed.
Still naked, I walked into the trailer, turned the water heater on, found my cell phone and started it charging, then took paper and pen to the captain’s table and wrote a list. The pen felt strange in my hand. When the list was done, I found my wallet and put it on the bed. Next to it went clean clothes, suitable for going into Asheville. Then I dug out a towel and fresh soap, and had a shower.