A Circle in the Woods Read online

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  A CIRCLE IN THE WOODS

  Copyright Winston Emerson, 2012

  All rights reserved.

  Book photo: Copyright Justin Comley, 2012

  A Circle in the Woods

  a novel

  by

  Winston Emerson

  Part One

  out of the woods

  There is a creek at once lost and undiscovered and it trickles calm through the Kentucky woods as it has for thousands of years, before men waded across its fords and before it carved its way deep into the knobs of what is now called Peeke Hollow.

  At a particular point along its course a deep pool collects under two jagged walls of limestone. They rise high and inward on their sides like effigies of a rapport beyond reckoning. High on the rims of the crags loose rocks crawl and rattle year by year to the ledge like quarters in a carnival game and the white ash and river birch and sycamore lean far over the brim, limbs reaching skyward, with roots like fingers curled over the ledge.

  It is a shadowy brook, spectral. It contains the material of the world and whether it ferments wonder or cataclysm all things seem possible.

  The air is cool and damp. The leaves on the forest floor twitch atop nests of insects like maggots in a dressed wound. Fishing spiders skitter along the water surface. Schools of minnow gather in the deep end of the pool. Crawdads dart backwards upon the downy silt like bastard deformities of an unsympathetic evolution, derailments from some final result in the offing.

  It is a quiet place where things are born, where things live and die, where things are buried, and here is Phil Stapleton. He sits elbows to knees on a limestone outcropping, chair-shaped, as though the world lends him its form. He studies the perfect symmetry of the ginseng hidden among the sting weed. He doesn't speak. He doesn't move. In his right hand he holds a knife.

  If there are places yet to befall the machines of man's vision for the world, this is one. The only perversion of the natural order is a length of rope dangling high up on the ledge. The rope, which he himself put there, and him.

  At his feet something shorn smooth and white by the current protrudes from the mud. He stamps it down and the object disappears under the suction of his boot. He sits bowed forward with his arms crossed under his stomach and the knife blade touching his ribs. The water surface casts a vaporous reflection of the achromatic limestone and the high hills above.

  Here within this hoary doubling he notices the movement of some tiny red blur. Then the sound of loose pebbles trickling through leaves, twigs breaking, a small and hitching gasp.

  ****

  He rose and sheathed his knife and scanned the hillside. The red color appeared and disappeared through dense shrubbery. He squinted. A child.

  He walked upstream to where the limestone gave way to a small rivulet, to the right of which rose a thickly rooted hillside. He climbed the hill using bare roots as handles and footings and slanted right until he was walking the rim where deer had tramped a path.

  He grubbed through deadfalls of cedar and tore into a thicket of blackberry vines which gave way to a stubborn copse of young sassafras. Finally he reached a clearing where the ground ran near vertical.

  The girl was on her hands and knees trying to clamber upward. She climbed hysterically and without gain, as though some force were sucking her down. When she saw him she sat down and began to cry.

  She wore oversized red gym shorts and a baggy t-shirt. The rubber bottoms of her sneakers flapped open like mouths. Stick-tights matted her hair and made her shirt cling to itself in strange ways.

  She looked up at him and sniffled and stretched out her right leg and pulled up her shorts to expose on the thigh a deep and crusted gash. Turkey mites dotted her legs like flakes of black pepper and they crawled along her neck and arms and grouped in thick clusters around her ankles. All over her were scratches from thorn bushes and red streaks where she had dug into the itch from sting weed. There were a number of dog ticks in the crease where her stringy black hair parted.

  He took up her little forearm and pressed his thumb into the skin and removed it and watched the white fade.

  How long have you been out here.

  Words whispered from deep in the pipes of her throat as if she were calling from far away.

  All night, he said.

  Longer, she said.

  How did you get here.

  Doggy. Ran away.

  How old are you.

  Five.

  What's your name.

  Brittany Duncan.

  I'm Phil.

  Was it you.

  Was what me.

  I dunno.

  You're going be okay, he said. We just need to get you out of this heat.

  I'm hungry, the girl said.

  Can you walk.

  She tried to stand but staggered and dropped. She began to cry again, faint and drippy breaths plaited evenly with the sound of the watercourse below.

  I'm going to pick you up now. Put your arms around my neck.

  Her skin was hot and dry and her arms and legs wobbled but she did not shake, as if the panic had drained from her.

  Come along with me, he said.

  He scooped her up and held her with one arm while he used the other to steady himself or grab onto small trees.

  What a strange sentiment to carry something living out of the woods.

  The hill crested and the ground grew shallow. He adjusted his hold on the girl and they traveled for a while in silence.

  Do you like horses.

  Yes.

  I have a horse that I call Weasel.

  What kinda horse.

  An Appaloosa mare. Do you know a lot about horses.

  Uh-huh.

  How many do you have.

  Three palominos and a pony.

  What kind of pony.

  Shetland.

  You're smart to be so young.

  I go to kittergarden soon.

  Kindergarten.

  Kindergarten.

  Yes.

  Okay.

  Her clutch loosened around his neck and she began to emit strange clicking noises from her throat as if she were close to vomiting. Before long a thick hot bile collected on his shoulder and trickled down the back of his shirt. He repositioned her so that her cheek rested on his clean shoulder and he patted her back and kept walking. She grew limp. She began to mutter.

  Close to the edge of the woods bordering the Stapleton farm the ground flattened, bedded with layer upon layer of pine needles. Sunlight slanted soft through the evergreens and the breeze glided gently around the tall bare trunks of the pines. Here Brittany regained consciousness or gathered the wherewithal to speak and she spoke of women and young girls screaming in the moon's alabaster glow.

  Coyotes, Phil said.

  No it was girls.

  Perhaps it was a dream.

  Nuh uh.

  Would you like to hear what I dreamed last night.

  Okay.

  I dreamed I was hovering above the world at a great height. Where the air is cold and thin and the wind is fierce. But it was as though I were made of nothing, for the cold caused me no discomfort and the wind was no opponent. I drifted weightless in the night. From the stratosphere, civilization resembled tiny clusters of fire scattered among the hills and the trees. I heard something. A whimper. Then more of the same. The sounds collected, generating a soft rumble that the wind swept up and devoured. I could see you all down there in the dark half of the world, alone with your dreams, crying in your sleep. The dream then distorted its proportions, for when I reached out to the earth with a gesture of comfort and compassion, my hand was gargantuan. It splintered trees and it smeared mountains into gravel. It ripped gaping fissures in the land.

  ****

  A litter of kittens had recently emerged from the barn, all bloated with worms, the hair around their eyes crusted and caked together. They played in short bursts, then retreated to the barn or the crawlspace under the porch. The horse Weasel grazed along the fence line, eating half-rotten red delicious apples scattered about the fence line bordering the orchard. Two registered Holsteins trailed the horse like an armament, as if cattle in some long ago had assented to equestrian servitude.

  Brittany pointed out the horse and said its name and inquired about the cats' names.

  They don't have names, Phil said.

  Can I name one.

  He set her in the shade of the back porch awning where peppers hung drying on strings and flypaper dangled like the poisonous tongues of grotesque amphibians in the attic. Poison oak crept up one of the support beams and crawled along the roof and pieces of vine drooped like snakes from the gutters where red wasps buzzed and landed and raised their wings angrily, as though goaded by their own existence.

  The porch was cluttered with firewood, kindling, an old kerosene heater blistered with the nests of mud daubers, unglazed and cracked ceramic whiskey jugs, likewise flower pots bearing the dead stems of flora unnamable, and in one corner an old oak wine barrel held wood-handled rakes and shovels and scythes and axes and post hole diggers.

  He gave her one of the kittens to play with and left her there to retrieve the things he needed from inside. When he returned she was sitting legs crossed on the warped and molded wooden planks, cradling the
kitten. He sorted his things on the table and stood her and brushed chipped bark and dirt from her bottom and put her in the chair. She pointed at the kitten as it scampered off but she said nothing.

  He handed her a glass of water and a Benadryl capsule.

  It'll help with the itching.

  While she finished the water he opened a package of chocolate chip cookies and set them within her reach. She ate timidly.

  He removed her shoes and socks and flung them out into the yard, to the dismay of the kittens. Then he poured warm bleach water from a gallon jug into a bucket, soaked a wash cloth, and began to scrub away the turkey mites on each ankle, then the legs, then the arms.

  Stand up.

  Brittany jumped out of the chair. He removed her clothes, inspected her torso and carefully pulled deer ticks from her back and sides and picked dog ticks from the part in her hair and from the hairline on the back of her neck. She was crying again.

  I'm not going to hurt you, he said. Then he wrapped her in a towel and carried her into the house, leaving her on the couch while he drew a bath.

  Can you wash yourself.

  Uh huh.

  Come along then.

  He led her to the bathroom and closed the door and went to the kitchen. He opened the Philco refrigerator and the dual-hinge door slipped off and crashed to the linoleum. He laughed and heaved it to a standing position and fitted it back into its hinges and then opened the door more carefully.

  He sliced ham and made two sandwiches, set out a pitcher of lemonade and a bag of potato chips. Then he went to his bedroom and picked the smallest of his t-shirts from the closet and sat at the kitchen table waiting for the gurgle of the drain pipes.

  The girl was hesitant to come out of the bathroom. She inquired about the loud crash, as though she'd met often with violence. He explained the poor design of the refrigerator. He gave her the t-shirt to wear and put her on the couch with her sandwich and chips and lemonade and she thanked him with a sincerity unusual to him. He knelt and inspected the gash on her thigh. Then he brought his food from the kitchen and sat next to the girl and ate. Several times he sensed her looking at him. He ate his sandwich.

  That cut needs to be cleaned better, he said when she finished eating.

  Is it gonna hurt.

  It won't take long. He picked her up and set her on the counter next to the sink. Put your leg up here, he said and ran water from the faucet over the wound. Her legs were pockmarked with tiny red welts.

  Mommy uses peroxide.

  That's good stuff for scrapes, he told her. This is a gash.

  Is a gash bad.

  If it's too big, but this one isn't that big.

  Am I gonna have stitches.

  It's too late for stitches now. You have to get them within eight hours.

  Am I gonna die.

  He smiled. All we need to do is get you back to your mom.

  I know my phone number, she said.

  Do you know what road you live on.

  One-sixty-two Spencer School Road, she recited slowly.

  You traveled a long way to get to where I found you.

  Really.

  Yes.

  Are you gonna call my mommy.

  Well I would, he said, picking her up and setting her on her feet, but I don't have a phone. So we'll just take a trip to your house. How's that.

  Okay.

  He dressed the wound with gauze and surgical tape from a first-aid kit he kept under the bathroom sink.

  Tell your mom, he said, to watch for swelling, redness, and heat. Those things could mean it’s getting infected. He repeated the instructions and asked her to recite them until she remembered.

  He let her bring the kitten into the house while he scrubbed turkey mites off his own ankles and took a bath. He dressed and put on his boots and grabbed the key to his black 52 Desoto Fire Dome and when he returned to the living room he found her sleeping on the floor with an arm around the kitten which also slept.

  She was still asleep when he pulled up to the trailer, a flat-roof hulk of aluminum sank into the weeds like alien ship wreckage, shaded by the twisted and jointed limbs of a massive hackberry tree. There were no cars in the driveway. Behind the house sat a dusty half-acre lot fenced in by a single strand of barbwire. Behind the fence stood three palomino horses and a small Shetland pony all underfed and picking at tufts of yellow grass.

  Phil left the girl in the seat and went and knocked on the door several times. A golden retriever came around from the back and leapt up on the rickety wooden steps wagging its tail and panting.

  Made it home did you.

  The dog yelped and Phil recoiled and warned the mangy thing back.

  When no one answered the door he drove into Hodgenville and carried the girl still sleeping into the sheriff's station, a squat brick building shaded in hickory trees behind the town square, and asked to speak with a deputy. The clerk asked him to take a seat. She spoke briefly on the telephone.

  How old is she.

  Five I think.

  She looked at him. You think.

  This ain't my kid, he said. That's why I'm here.

  Oh my, the woman said. She stood and picked up the phone again and two deputy sheriffs came quickly from an open office door.

  He began to explain the day's events and was ushered into an office.

  I'm sorry for the excitement, I'm sure you understand, one deputy said. I'm Larry Thomas. This is Jackson Wilder.

  Phil Stapleton.

  Thomas nodded. Phil sat with the girl still sleeping in his lap. He watched the officers' eyes shift from him to her and back.

  You found this girl, Thomas said.

  Yes sir back at Peeke holler.

  We've got Doc Higgins on the way but you say she's all right you think.

  There's a cut on her leg here. She was eat up pretty bad by turkey mites but I think she's okay. I fed her and gave her a bath. Don't have a phone or I woulda called the hospital myself.

  Good thing you found her else she might've died out there.

  Yes sir lucky too. On a windy day I'd a never heard her.

  You say she was out there all night.

  Accordin to her longer than that. Could have been a few days.

  Thomas looked at Wilder, then back at Phil. Jack you might ought to fetch Lydia to come watch the girl till Doc gets here.

  Wilder left the room.

  What a blessing, Thomas said. I'm sure her momma will thank you. Lord you kin imagine what the poor woman is thinkin what with the goings on lately.

  Today the news is good, Phil said.

  Yes sir, yes it is, said Thomas.

  On the way out of town Phil stopped and bought a stick of jerky from the gas station and then drove out to Spencer School Road and pulled into the child's driveway and broke the jerky in half and used one half to lure the golden retriever into the backseat of the car. When he let it out at his house it immediately sensed the kittens in his back yard and went berserk chasing after them. He followed it to the yard and left it to play while he scoured the barn for a collar and leash and then he captured the dog with the other half of the jerky. He led it yapping and brushing against him and grappling with the leash through the open expanse of pine and deeper into the woods where the foliage was crowding and the gradient vexing. Here the dog acquiesced like all exhausted creatures and Phil taunted it for it's brainless resignation and then escorted it in silence to the head of the cliff where he had found the girl. He tied the leash to a dogwood and gathered up the rope from the rock face. With the noose cinched snug around the dog's neck he unhooked the collar letting it dangle on the leash from the gnarled branch and took out his knife and hooked his arm under the dog's front legs and scooped it up to his chest and eviscerated it spilling blood and entrails onto the loose rock and he heaved it spewing blood and wailing like a thing snared in the depths of hell over the precipice.

  When the rope pulled taut he walked the trace and lowered himself down the hill and sat the rock chair formation and washed his dressing knife clean in the russet creek water. The surface shimmered dull and grey with the broken reflection of the limestone wall and a glint of yellow-gold danced among the ripples. Below the surface a crawdad spooked from the disruption in the current fled backwards across the fine silt floor of the pool and as though its actions were at the helm of some higher arthropod it slipped blind but nimble into the dark hollow eye socket of a human skull.