The Adventures of Flash Jackson Read online

  But he didn’t come closer. The cramp-induced trickle began towards the wee hours of the morning, as I crouched in paranoia under my now-cool rock face, wrapped in one of Chester Burgess’s blankets. I put in a tampon and thought about the moon, which was going to be full that night.

  I was far more aware of the moon now than I had ever been before. Even though Mother and I had bled in synchronized three-day blocks—mine heavy with assured fecundity, hers already beginning to dwindle as she approached the end of her childbearing years—I had never thought that the moon was in charge of such things. Every woman knows that some secret, mysterious rule regulates this kind of tandem effusion. Women who live together bleed together. I suppose there’s some kind of scientific explanation for it, but scientific explanations, with their ten-dollar words and their flashy-sounding Greek and Latin derivations, are of little use in real life, and they usually end up expressing the same thing anyway. I checked the moon every night like someone consulting a clock on the wall, and it was a source of satisfaction to me that I could tell from its expanding shape when the blood would come.

  Next morning, I trekked far away from my rock face to a spot I’d never been before and buried the evidence. I suppose it did no good that I was leaving a trail of blood scent behind me, for I knew Bear could follow it as easily as if I had been sounding a bicycle bell. I buried each tampon from that particular cycle in places far distant from one another, and when the flow was finished I went back to each place to check on them. And at each one, I found the same results: They were gone without a trace.

  Bear had my number, all right.

  Yet he never came after me. He haunted me, he trailed me, he sent me telepathic messages in Bear talk: I am here. But when the cycle was ended, he simply vanished.

  I began to think of him not as an enemy but as a protector. I fancied that he had a fondness for me, not for my taste but for my presence. Why else did he leave me unmolested? Perhaps he felt sorry for me, in some obscure, Bear-like way. Perhaps he liked having me around and wanted to make sure that nothing else got me, though in truth he was my only potential predator. I invented a new ritual: I prayed to Bear, that he be well, that he always have enough to eat. I drew a picture of him on the rock face with the burnt end of a stick, not to summon him but to acknowledge his existence. I understood that I was really nothing more than his guest, and I began to leave parts of the animals I killed as offerings to him, so that he might always protect me. I was his child. I was his girlfriend. I was his wife. I was also in his body.

  Next cycle, I vowed, I wouldn’t bother burying the tampons. I would leave them all in the same place, a feast of proto-placenta and corpuscles for him to savor like so many candies on a coffee table. Thus we would exist in harmony, for as long as the forest permitted us to live.

  Only problem was, when the next cycle was due, it didn’t come. I watched the night sky at first with calm expectation, then with anticipation, then with nervousness as the first and second nights passed. When the third night was over and the sun had risen, and still there was no blood, I knew what was going on.

  It was predictable, of course. I had been led to Adam as directly as though a string was attached to my belly, pulling me abdomen-first, like a fish hooked in the gut. Before I’d even finished calculating backwards, I realized I’d been ovulating during our encounter on the forest floor. I had been thinking with my eggs. If only someone had told me that eggs had a mind of their own, perhaps I could have outwitted them. You heard this about men, but never about women, this business of making decisions with the reproductive apparatus. I was learning the truth of it too late.

  Shit.

  I was pregnant.

  How was I supposed to have a baby in the woods, all by myself? I became, all at once, a panicked rabbit. What would happen when I was too big to move? How would I catch my food with no one to help me? It was impossible. I was fond of my image of myself as alone, independent, solitary. Yet I understood at that moment why women were doomed to be dependent on others, at least during childbirth, and that fiercely proud image came crashing down and burst into flames before my eyes. I watched it burn with loathing and fury. For a brief moment, and for the first time in my life, I wished I was a man.

  Part of me said: You can do it. You might die, and the baby might die, but you can try and do it. It’s your right.

  Another part said: You have every responsibility towards the baby and none towards yourself. You have to go home. There is no point in dying alone, not now.

  If there was one thing I hated, it was having decisions made for me. I would put it off a while longer, until the need for a choice became inescapable. Then I would decide what to do.

  Days passed. I pretended nothing had changed. I went on with my daily routine, conscious of having broken my promise to Bear. I had wanted to offer him the tampon treats he loved, so that our relationship might continue. As a poor substitute I nicked my arm with my scissors and let the blood drip onto a tattered and muddy piece of blanket. When this was good and soaked I left it in the offering place, but the next morning it was untouched. This was inconceivable: Had no one wanted it? Not even Fox, not even Raccoon? It was unbelievable. Yet there it sat, the evidence of my rejection. Tears stung my eyes. My blood was not good enough.

  He knows I’m going to be a mother, I thought. He can smell it. He can tell.

  Fine, I thought. When the baby is born, he can help me raise it. He can be his uncle. He’s not getting rid of me that easily.

  I went to sleep that night and dreamed of a meadow a half mile to the north, a good place to gather dandelions. I dreamed I walked along and talked to the flowers, and as I passed they bowed their yellow heads in greeting. This was how simple my mind had become: At night I dreamed that I was awake, and found it every bit as pleasant as the real thing.

  I awoke at sunrise the next morning filled with foreboding and fear, jerked out of sleep by some inner warning system, already alert and on guard for an attack. My first thought was that I had been discovered; somebody was watching me. That was what it felt like, at least. That, or something somewhere was happening again, this time much more serious than someone cutting down a tree. There was something strange afoot, something dangerous. Every nerve in my body knew it. Watkins? I thought. Watkins and his evil band of postgraduate elfkins! But I didn’t smell him, nor did I hear his clumsy feet kicking through the leaves and snapping branches that weren’t even in his way. Watkins knew nothing about silence. If ever he had to survive out here on his own, where camouflage skills determined longevity, he wouldn’t last a week.

  All right—so it wasn’t him. But it was definitely something. In a relatively short time, my instincts had been developed—I should say dusted off and tuned up—to the point where they bypassed my brain completely, and caused my body to act at once. I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. There was no need. When you live in the woods like I did, there is only one level of danger, only one degree of warning. I wrapped my twine belt around me, making sure the knife was secure, and headed for my oak grove as quickly as I could, stopping only to take a few mouthfuls of water at the stream.

  Ironically, it wasn’t animals I was afraid of, not really. It was the other bipeds of the world I feared, and not for any rational reason, either. I could outrun and outhide anybody. But humans are clever and devious—I offer myself as an example—and I knew that if enough of them made up their mind to find me one day, they would do it. You couldn’t beat the resourcefulness of my species.

  I had never bothered to consider whether Adam would tell anyone he’d seen me, but now this suddenly seemed like a horrible oversight. Of course he’ll tell, I thought now. Or at the very least he’s going to come back for more.

  But then I changed my mind. We’d had sex on the ground, in the woods, like a pair of animals. Would he mention that? Of course not. I knew Adam. He would be more embarrassed than proud, unlike some males. He would not brag—and you know why? Because eventually h
is mother would find out. Sex between animals was a daily part of life on the Shumacher farm, just like on all farms, but the family did possess a high degree of modesty about their personal lives that I had noticed more than once. And Adam wasn’t very good at lying, which meant if he announced he’d discovered me and someone asked him exactly how he had known it was me, he wouldn’t be able to keep from blushing and stammering and generally making an idiot of himself until the truth came out.

  All right. So whatever it was out there wasn’t Adam, or anything to do with him. That was a relief, at least. I had a soft spot in my heart for him, and I would have hated to have to kill him just to shut him up.

  But I would have.

  Maybe.

  The branches of the oaks were too far to reach from the ground, but I had figured out a way to climb one of them: Its knots and burls provided sufficient handholds to allow me to scale it like a monkey, and to pull myself up into the lower limbs. At this point I was already fifteen feet above the ground, far enough to hurt myself badly, perhaps even die, if I fell. This thought didn’t cheer me. For a wild forest woman, I spent remarkably little time in trees. I left that to those creatures who were better suited for climbing. Tree climbing had once been my trademark, it’s true, but that was before my fall through the barn roof; that experience had left me paranoid, and if I fell out here I would never be discovered. The animals would eat me first, poor helpless, shattered me. Even Bear, my old buddy, wouldn’t be able to resist the blood he loved so well if it was spilling out all over the ground. But an ancient, protective instinct had been awakened in me by whatever was out there, and I needed a safe place from which to view things until I had figured out what was going on. I was now the guardian of these woods. And the thing lurking in the forest this morning presented a greater danger than falling from a tree.

  An hour in the oaks, and nothing. No sounds, no untoward smells. But, even so, the other animals in the forest were strangely subdued. So it wasn’t just my imagination—they had noticed it too. The birds were still, and not even the squirrels had bothered to scold me for entering their leafy realm.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, I let myself out of the tree, hugging the bark close at the expense of my skin. When I landed softly on my feet I could feel where the oak had scraped me along my breasts and ribs. I would have to wash myself carefully, using the bark of the elder tree, which sudsed nicely if you beat it with rocks beforehand. It was easy to get an infection out here.

  But for now, I was on the hunt. I would not be able to rest until I had figured out what was up. No one was talking—the trees gave me no sign, and the animals seemed to prefer to forget whatever it was, as if it had scared them more than they were willing to admit. I crouched low and began to move, stepping carefully and deliberately but going as fast as I could. I started out moving in a broad circle, with the oaks as the center. This was the best way to commence a search.

  My first clue came in the form of a whiff of some kind of fuel. Just the tiniest bit, far off. Another tractor? Another logger? No, the trees would have told me of that immediately. And it wasn’t diesel fuel. Something else. Some kind of fuel I didn’t recognize.

  I set off in the direction of the odor. I moved warily now, like a warrior, as the Tree People had once moved through these same woods, fleeing the white pursuers who hunted them for bounty and sport. Whenever I found a spot hidden in deep shadow I entered it, waiting for as long as it took my heart to quiet and for any stray sounds to come to me. But there was nothing. I kept moving, always in the same direction. The smell of fuel became stronger, though it was still so faint that I never would have noticed it had my nose not become so keen and finely tuned in recent months. My muscles were taut and ready, like bowstrings. My breath came easily, and I knew I could keep up this pace for hours if I had to. I never felt so alive as I did in those days.

  Then I came across an object partly buried in the leaves. I almost didn’t see it, but its shape was out of place in the forest and my eye was drawn to it immediately. It was a small, oblong thing, the size of a man’s shirt pocket, made of plastic. I picked it up and turned it over, marveling at it as Prometheus must have exclaimed over fire. Yet I wasn’t pleased to see it, for it spelled trouble, and possibly an invasion.

  It was a cell phone.

  I stuck it in my belt and headed for cover immediately. Once safely hidden under a small pine, I took it out and opened it. A small screen greeted me, as blank as a fish’s eye, and rows of tiny buttons barely big enough to press with a finger. A small antenna in the back telescoped out, and I played with that for a while. I hit a button that said PWR and the phone emitted a startling beep. I hit another one that said PRG and pressed a number, and the phone beeped several more times, as if singing to itself. It was almost beautiful. I held it to my ear and heard the sound of a phone ringing on the other end.

  “You make it all right?” said a male voice in my ear.

  I snapped the phone shut in a hurry. Glory, that had scared me. A voice out of nowhere had just spoken in the forest, invading my quiet. It would take days for the sound to stop echoing in my head, just as I could still hear Adam’s Why are you going around like that? There was no way I was going to have this thing around. I had no idea how it had gotten there, but I knew it boded evil. I dug a hole in the loam and tossed the phone in. Then I covered it back up and rearranged the leaves on the surface so it didn’t look disturbed.

  A cell phone, out here in the middle of nowhere. Well, obviously, someone had dropped it. That much was clear. And that was even more disturbing than the phone itself. Who would bring a cell phone out in the woods? And under what circumstances would they lose it without noticing?

  Who was out there?

  There was still the smell of fuel to consider. It was strong and immediate, and I could tell now that whatever it was, it wasn’t simply exhaust but the fuel itself—that is, it hadn’t been burned but spilled. Something bad had happened in the forest once again. I was beginning to suspect that there had been an accident.

  I forgot about being careful now. I started jogging towards the smell, feeling my breasts jolt painfully—it wasn’t often that I flat-out ran anymore. Looking up, I could see that the trees had been parted here, like hair by a comb. The tops of them were shorn off in a line that descended gradually toward a point on the ground, as if someone had come along with a giant razor and lopped them off. I slowed to a walk, my heart pounding urgently, and stepped behind a large family of pines to stare at the spectacle that suddenly presented itself.

  There, in a tiny clearing that hadn’t existed a day earlier, was a small plane, or what was left of it. It had come in low and slow—obviously the pilot had been trying to land, even though he must have known it was hopeless with all the trees. I didn’t know anything about planes, but this one looked like it might hold two or three or four people. The wings had broken off and the front end was badly crumpled, and the whole thing looked like a dragonfly that had been tortured by small boys and left to die. The reek of fuel now was so strong to my animal nose that I knew my sense of smell would be ruined for weeks. I nearly fainted from it, but I forced myself to stay conscious.

  There was a stunned silence all around, as though none of the animals could believe this kind of catastrophe could occur here. So that was it. Word had spread, and forest creatures everywhere were still trying to cope with the immensity of it. That, and they had left the area as soon as they could. No one in their right mind would put up with that kind of odor.

  I crept closer. The only really recognizable part of the plane was the tail. The rest was badly damaged, smashed in like a soda can. The eerie silence hung over all.

  “Hello?” I called. My voice, rusty, sounded odd to my ears. I cleared my throat and stepped closer.

  “Hello?” I said again.

  Eventually I was going to have to look inside the cockpit, and though the fuel smell had blanketed everything there are some spoors that simply cannot be hidden, and the smell
of death is one of them. I already knew what I was going to find. No one had survived this crash. There were people inside—dead ones.

  Better get this over with, I thought.

  It’s funny how certain old habits will kick into gear, even in the mind of someone who considers herself more animal than human. I had been trained from early on, just as every other person is, that when one comes upon the scene of an accident one calls for help. People need you, and you cannot let them down. It’s more than a custom. It’s a very ancient, ingrained instinct. My two instincts were now at war with each other. One half of me was screaming Help them! and the other was instructing me to run far, far away.

  The helping instinct won out. I edged closer to the cockpit, unwilling to look but unable to bear the suspense. I simply had to see. I put one hand on the jagged metal hole where I guessed the door had been, stepped up on one of the splayed-out wheels, and looked.

  There were two of them, both men. The pilot, the one on the side farther from me, was sitting upright, in an attitude of rapt attention, as if he’d been receiving serious instructions in his last moments. In the brief second I allowed myself to look at his face I saw that one eye was bulging open, and his jaw had fallen so that his mouth gaped in surprise. I couldn’t see a specific injury, but there was a lot of blood. It had all dried.

  The one near me was leaning far forward, still supported by his seat belt but already in the process of sliding out of it, like the loose bag of bones and flesh that he was. He, too, was covered in blood, and one of his arms was at a funny angle, as if the impact had broken or dislocated it. I could not see his face. I didn’t want to. I looked for less than three seconds, long enough to determine that they were both dead. Then I stepped back.

  Jesus Hopalong Cassidy, I thought. Tell me this isn’t happening. Tell me I don’t have to deal with this.

  But of course it was, and I did.