Gone to the Forest A Novel

12



The old man stays in a coma for the next three days. He does not stir. His breath is regular as a clock but a clock that is gradually slowing. They listen to his breath and now they are waiting for him to die in earnest. To go on and get it over with. His breath is slowing but too slowly for their taste.

They would like him to die. They cannot wait much longer—they do not believe it is physically possible. The strain is immense. They are not getting enough sleep. They are not remembering to eat. Celeste is cooking all day. Always there is a pot on the stove, she is cooking through their last remaining store of food. But they have lost their appetite.

They are the living and it is difficult for the living to contend with the dying. There is not enough space. The old man inflates and expands and he presses them against the walls of the house. They are having trouble breathing from this position. While the old man’s own breath swishes rhythmically in and out.

Flattened against the walls and ceiling they listen to the sound of his breathing. They wait for the walls to crack. For the house to collapse. It is obvious the structure cannot hold. There is not room for all of them and the dying and something will have to give. They hope it will be the house and not them. That it will not be their lungs that collapse first.

Tom alone sits by the old man’s bed and holds his vigil. He does not want the old man to lie unattended. He does not want him to die alone. Of course it is a possibility. He might get up to stretch his legs or use the toilet and whoosh in a flash he may go. It could end like this, it is a roll of the dice each time. But Tom needs to believe that there are still things he can do. At least inside this one room. That some things can still be maintained, even if too late.

Therefore Tom sits by the bed and the others, they sit pressed against the wall, they tumble out windows and crawl back in again. For three days Tom sits. He is persistent. He will not allow a single second of the dying to escape him. The others watch and to them it is like he is grasping the dying man to him, like he would devour the already stinking body if he could. He has the sense that he will dissolve when the old man dies, he can see the moment around the corner.

But even Tom’s persistence cracks in the face of this interminable dying. On the third day he leaves the bedroom and goes outside. He has had nothing but the smell of dying. The sweetness of which is now as strong as candy boiling. Lately he is having trouble breathing, he pinches his nose and holds his breath when he leans in to lift his father, to wipe him down and change the diaper.

The shit has the color and consistency of tar. A smear of tar on white muslin. Each time Tom examines the diaper like he is reading runes. Like there are signs written into the excrement.

Tom sits in the dark on the porch steps. He remembers putting the outdoor furniture into storage all those months ago. It goes without saying that it feels like a lifetime earlier. He looks down to the river, which is now running clear. Nine months—it has taken nine months but at last the river is clear. There have been no further signs of the rebellion in the valley. There has been nothing but the deafening silence of the old man’s death.

Later, Jose comes out and joins him. He leans against one of the pillars and lights a cigarette. Tom speaks without looking at him.

“Do you think they are coming?”

“I do not know.”

Tom nods. He continues to stare at the river. Which is not only clean but also flowing. In which there are fish, even if they are not huge in number and not yet breeding.

“I will give them everything. Our thousand acres. They can take the house—I have no need of it. I can live on an acre. I can live on less. Only—”

“Only you do not want to die.”

“No. I do not want to die.”

“I do not think they will come so far. There is nothing in it for them. They will return to the city and make their demands. Their leader will make a deal with the Government like before. They are not mindless and they are not without purpose.”

He is watching Tom as he says this. Tom shivers.

“I do not want to die.”

“Nor I.”

Jose turns and goes into the house. Tom stays on the porch. The air is clean and warm. It will be summer in no time. If the old man does not die by summer his body will rot in the heat and that will be that. It will end in this way. It is hard to believe the old man will die. It seems more likely that he will rot before their gathered eyes, it seems more likely he will stay with them forever, undead as he now is.

Tom stands up and goes inside the house. In the kitchen, Celeste has left a tray of cold food. Tom thinks he will take it to the girl, who is sitting with the old man. He takes the tray and goes into the bedroom. The old man’s body has not changed. It is still churning through the air like a wind machine. One of the lids has gone up. The white of the eye is visible and the pupil stares at nothing.

Tom puts the tray down. He lifts and then presses the lid down and sits down. The girl nods to him. They are neither enemies nor friends. It has gone beyond that kind of thing. They may as well be the last two people left in the world. Why did you lift his eye like that? Forget it, she shakes her head. She is tired, she sits by the old man’s feet. She presses her eyes with the heel of her hand.

She stands and leaves the room. Tom stares at the old man. In the last day there has been a change and he has been weighted to the bed. He can see the change clearly. Like there are a thousand stones resting on his body. The old man has been transformed by death’s alchemy: he had been weightless and brittle, now his body is heavy and dense like lead. Tom can no longer move him; his father can no longer be stirred.

He is also now a noise machine. His breath creaks in and out of his body. Like he has a bellows packed inside him. Like he is a giant bagpipe tucked into the bed. His body is very loud despite the stillness, it is making more noise than it made in all its life. Tom sits by the side of the bed and eventually falls asleep. He is dozing, he is slumbering, to the noise of his father dying.

HE WAKES TO a sudden and broad silence. In panic, he leans close to the bed. His breath—certainly his breath has slowed. Tom pitches his body to the bed and puts his ear against his father’s mouth. A long silence. So long that Tom’s heart rate rises in the quiet. It bangs against his chest. Then a sharp intake of breath that is dry—very dry, more like a mechanical click than a breath. Then another long silence.

A swell of nausea rises inside him. He leans closer to the old man. He listens to the silence. He counts it out—one, two, three—ten seconds, more like twelve. Fifteen. Can he be dead? Is this how it looks? He places his fingers on his neck and searches for a pulse. The vein is still and he presses harder and harder until he is almost throttling him with his hands. He feels nothing, no whisper of a pulse. And yet the old man does not look dead.

It has been thirty seconds—it has been longer, he has lost track. He freezes with his hands on the old man’s neck. His head is spinning. He tries to recover his count. He loosens his grip and drops his hands. He clenches them together in his lap. To keep himself from grabbing the old man’s neck again. Please. Do not go. Now he wishes he knew how to pray. A sound as loud as a shotgun bursts out of the old man’s throat and Tom sees his body finally let go.

Tom sits by the side of the bed. For a long time his mind is blank. He stares down at the corpse. He reaches for his arm and then stops. He does not move. The old man’s face grows rigid. It happens in a minute. One minute or maybe two. He is human and then he is no longer human, he is a thing with its mouth open like a maw. Its eyes staring in shock at the ceiling. Its eyes having opened at some point in its death.

It is not a face for the dying. It turns out the face of death is not a face for the dead. Sickened by what he sees, Tom tries to close the jaw. He presses and presses and the open maw does not yield until he uses the heel of his palm and the knuckles of his fist and then with a snap the mouth closes. He reaches forward and presses hard on the lids, until he feels the old man’s eyes sink beneath his fingers.

Tom drops his hands. He stands for a moment and then quickly leaves the room. He passes the kitchen, he can hear Celeste working at the stove. It is the middle of the night but she is banging pots and pans—she is unhappy with him and Jose, it is like when they were children. Now the old man is dead and who knows what will happen, what she will do with her dissatisfaction. Tom does not go into the kitchen. He goes to his room and gets into bed.

He does not actually sleep. He sits beneath the covers and stares into darkness. The old man’s death lying huddled in the corner of his brain. Whether it is dormant or expired he does not know. But it is quiet and the rest of his brain is like a desert or wasteland. It is like he has been emptied. He is not capable of stirring the death in his mind. He imagines that blankness is preferable.

Eventually, he exits the house and discovers it is dawn. Light appears on the horizon and he sees that the soil is green and the land stretches out in the direction of the sun. The land has been liberated. Its imprimatur is gone. Tom is in a daze. I will be in a daze for a long time, he thinks. That is the first thought that he has in relation to the old man’s death. A pop as he is set free. Then his mind is quiet again.

Past the gate he sees the girl, sitting underneath a tree. She is staring down the track. It is morning and getting warm. Tom thinks: she is going to run. She has done it before and there is nothing to stop her doing it again. He will tell her that the old man is dead and then there will be no reason for her to stay. They should both leave. There is no point in staying. But Tom does not think that he can leave, he does not think he is able.

He sits down next to her and she does not look up. They sit side by side. He sits and does not think he will ever be able to stand up again.

After a long silence, he speaks.

“Are you going to leave?”

She shakes her head.

“Are you thinking about it?”

She shakes her head again.

He nods and turns back to the road. He does not tell her the old man is dead. He tells himself that there is time for that later. He tells himself that there is time for many things, that one day he will love the memory as he never loved the man, one day he will be able to do this. But he does not see how such a thing will come to pass, the hope of ordinary things having grown impossible. Meanwhile, the death still prone inside him.

The girl came down to the road in order to escape the house. When she reached the gate and saw the dirt road—then she thought about going. She thought she should go now, while the road was open, while the country was quiet. There was nothing here worth waiting for. She did not believe in the farm’s safety. But then she had another instinct and changed her mind. Soon. But not yet. She sat down beneath the tree instead.

Now she looks at Tom. His heart quickens. He stares at the ground and says nothing. She reaches out and gently strokes his hair.

“I said to Jose that I would help tend the garden.”

He nods.

“We can grow things to eat. He said that he would show me.”

He does not move but waits. She strokes his hair again and then she tells him that she will stay. She tells him that she is not going to go. She knows that Tom will never leave the farm. The truth is that she does not mind lying. She drops her hand back down to her belly. She feels it hard beneath her fingers and then her mouth goes dry. When she speaks it is without meaning to.

“He is not going to come.”

Tom looks up.

“Who?”

She ignores him and presses harder on her belly. She tries to press her fingers in. Her body has changed. The baby made of lead has turned her torso into wood. She cannot break or crack it. She tries. She makes a fist and sinks her knuckles in but it does not give or even splinter. It is hard as the polished surface of a table and solid throughout.

She shakes her head and looks at Tom.

“It is made of wood. It has turned into wood.”

How can she make him understand? He does not know what to say, he does not even know what she means. He has no way of responding. She reaches out and takes his hand and lays it on her belly. She tries to show him what has happened.

“Do you see? It is made of wood. I am turning into wood.”

It is solid as rock. He starts to think he understands what she means. But then there is a stirring. A kick of alien life. The lead baby stirring. They look at each other.

“Do you see?”

She says it again. Her eyes are hard. She thinks to herself that it is hopeless. She will never be able to leave. She will be stuck dragging her wood belly back and forth across the length of the farm forever. It will kill her in the end. She asks him again. If he sees, if he can understand how it happened, how her belly turned to wood. He nods. He almost thinks he does see but of course does not.

They give up and stop talking. The girl sits and presses her hands into her wood belly. The wood begins to hum and vibrate. She turns pale. Tom does not feel the vibration. He is too busy staring down the road. He sees a cloud of dust. The sound of a motor in the distance. He sits up and peers across to the horizon.

With a roar an army truck catapults into view. The earth now trembling. The dust scattering in plumes behind the vehicle. A group of men hang out the side, holding machetes and AK-47s. The car careens across the road and the machetes swing. The girl lets out a strangled cry. Tom pulls her to her feet and together they crouch behind the tree.

The army truck continues to race forward. From the opposite direction, a horse and rider appear on the road, coming from the direction of the stables, heading toward the truck. It is Jose, who does not realize about the men. Who is about to make a terrible mistake. Tom almost cries out a warning but quickly the girl presses her hand against his mouth.

They watch as the horse moves down the road, the roaring vehicle and the galloping animal pulled together across the horizon. The truck now clearly in view. Tom waits for Jose to turn around, to veer and to run. He does not. He rides straight up to the truck and comes to a halt before the men. The horse snorting and rearing as the truck engine idles. Horrified, Tom waits for the gunshot.

There is no gunshot. Jose points in the direction of the house. He says something to the men. A second later he is continuing down the road. The men shout something and he raises his arm in reply, then disappears down the track. The men give another cry. They gun the motor and the truck leaps forward. In the direction of the house. In the direction of where they are sitting. The wheels spinning through the dirt.

Tom stares at the vehicle. The truck now lifting off the ground as it races toward them. The girl reaches for his hand and grips it. Tears streaming down her face. It is too late, Tom thinks. It is too late. His knuckles white and shaking. He watches the truck and braces himself for what is coming. They both do.

They sit by the tree and wait.