He moved slow. An eternity before the knife was in his hand, the blade open. He pointed it at me.
Not me, I said. You.
A whole crowd of thoughts clamoring in his head, each one surfacing on his face, till one finally spoke loudest. He pressed the tip of the knife into the palm of his hand and blood welled up, I smelled it the moment before I seen it. My stomach growled and I had to stop myself from lunging across the cot, grabbing the knife, and making a real cut.
Instead, I took his hand. Think about home, I told him.
I only tasted. Just enough to be able to tell him about himself later.
To watch his father, my father, climb into the cab of some big machine and steer it toward an open field, his face already beaded with sweat from the morning’s work. To feel my mother’s fingers stroke my hair and hear her ask, How’s my girl? To step into the cool of the barn, the thick odor of cows and the stench of their shit, familiar and overwhelming. To sit in the shade, lost in a world different from my own, till I glance over the top of the book and find Tom Hatch studying me. To lay in bed and stare at a blank ceiling and wear my body like a stranger’s clothes.
After, I told his own life back to him.
When he didn’t say nothing, I told him how I’d finally recognized Kleinhaus’s story in the one he’d been telling. How his lies had convinced me he couldn’t be trusted. And that I come back from the woods because I needed to know if he was the kind of person my dad should let stay nearby, work our property. Come inside the house anytime he wanted. Become a part of the family.
He touched his mouth. The place where he’d bit his own lip still red and slightly swollen. Understanding in his eyes.
Sorry about that, I said.
What did you see then? he asked.
It’s not just seeing—
I get it, he said.
I could tell he didn’t, he probably thought it was just a sort of mind reading, but there wasn’t no way to make him really understand. I seen Tom Hatch, I said, and he was there in the room with us, a moment we shared now, our heart hammering and the weight of him.
So you saw— Jesse started, then stopped. You felt—
Not everything, I said. That’s not how it works. I get what I get in a taste. Just parts of the story. Whatever’s on a person’s mind, I reckon.
Jesse nodded. You reminded me of Tom.
When I socked you?
He touched his mouth, the place where he’d bled.
I really am sorry ’bout that.
Jesse got up, fed a log to the woodstove even though the fire was blazing. A tiny burst of joy, like bubbles fizzing round you when you jump into a lake, they pop against your skin. His joy. Delight at the crackling fire, at the stack of wood near the stove, the shed full of wood outside. Warmth all through the winter and never a worry that he wouldn’t be able to get warm when he was cold. All that sensation washed over me in less than a second, and I understood Jesse a little more than I had in the moment before. I leaned against the wall, lightheaded.
He sat back down next to me and I shook my head to clear it.
The two of you didn’t come to Alaska together, I said. Not after what happened. You come up, then—
He followed me.
He followed you, I echoed. Would he come looking for you again?
Jesse’s face clouded over. I don’t want to talk about him.
We can stop soon as you tell me if he might come back.
Jesse got up then, took two strides across the room and realized that was as far as he was going to get. Turned round. He run his hands through his hair, it had got shaggy over the last weeks, it stood up in little spikes. Why does it matter? he said.
It matters, I said, because I stabbed him. Could of killed him. I imagine that ain’t something a man just lets slide.
His face went pale. He stopped his pacing and his hands fell. I couldn’t take his eyes on me. I stood, put the knife back in my pocket. Opened the door and let winter into the shed. I was burning up. I wished he hadn’t stoked the fire.
He come up behind me when I was hunting, I said, frowning, remembering. We tussled a bit. I know I got out my knife. Then he struck me. I don’t recall stabbing him, but I must of. He sent me flying and I blacked out. I didn’t know what I done till he showed up the next day, bleeding all over the place.
I closed the door, and the room was instantly too hot.
How could I forget a thing like that? I asked. I dropped onto the cot again. Saying what I done didn’t lift the weight from me. I could claim I was only trying to defend myself, that it was Hatch who started our wrestling match when he put his hand on me. But the truth was like a seed I had swallowed, it had took root inside me. The moment Hatch touched me, I’d felt the smile on my own face. My body already acting on the realization it took my mind another handful of seconds to come to, that this stranger had just give me an excuse to let myself lose control. To do exactly what my mother had warned me against all my life.
I held my head in my hands, my face on fire.
The bed sagged a little when Jesse sat down next to me. He put his hand on my back. You didn’t mean to, he said.
But I did. And it don’t matter that I’m sorry now. When it happened, I knew what I wanted.
It spilled out of me then, the way Hatch had drug himself into our yard and how I seen the recognition in his eyes when I knelt next to him. Easy enough, with Jesse silent and the two of us so close, to tell him about the panic that sent me back into the woods, the fear that Dad would come home knowing what I’d worked hard to hide from him before I even knew it had to be hidden.
I wanted Hatch to die, I said. Just so I wouldn’t be in trouble.
It’s okay, he said.
I made a promise, I told him. Never to hurt a person. It ain’t okay.
He slid his arm round me. Yes, it is.
My ear against his chest. His heart beating, steady.
He won’t come back, Jesse said after a time.
I sat up. You certain about that?
He won’t come looking for you, he said. And I doubt he wants anything to do with me.
How come—
Can we just leave it at that?
His eyes on mine, plainly pleading. Behind them, a whole tangle of thought, the history of him. Plenty more there that I couldn’t see, layers of feelings and desires and fears and memories I hadn’t drunk in. I had learned, the few times I had tasted another person, how so many thoughts and memories could surface at once, one on top of another, one mind thinking and feeling a dozen things at the same time. Already I felt too far away from him, in a separate room, no windows, no doors. The way I always felt with other folks, always tapping on surfaces, putting my ear to a wall to hear the mumbling going on in the next room. Wishing I could make a door, find a way inside.
Jesse traced the cut he’d made on his own palm, the wound already bloodless and ready to scab over.
I should go, I said.
What about the pack?
I froze in the doorway. Sorry?
My book, he said. It was inside a backpack.
I felt my head shake slowly. No, I said and drew the word out. No, I didn’t find a pack. Just the book.
Oh, he said.
I had learned to be quiet so I could get close to the animals I hunted without startling them. Jesse had learned to be quiet for different reasons. We might of stayed where we was, staring at each other all night if he hadn’t spoke up finally.