That look on her face, when she’d dropped the dollars in. She smelled him. That’s why he washed now. Every day. And a mother and father and two little kids walking past as far away as they could.
His clothes were still wet from washing them too, this second time. He’d hung them on branches to dry in the sun. He hoped she hadn’t seen them. Everybody has to get naked to get clean. Really clean. Really clean. But underpants hanging on a branch? He’d shitted himself once. Browned his underpants. That’s why.
Outside of Fallujah. They hadn’t even gone in yet. But he’d already killed the girl, ran his truck over her to avoid the sniper fire, and he was remembering. That was why. There were lots of things he couldn’t remember. Concussive brain damage, they said. Anger problems and loss of memory. From IEDs. But killing the girl he would always remember. She was tall and thin, like the one who’d just seen him naked, standing in a river, trying to clean himself. It was happening all over again.
Then he walked out of the river. Then he went to his lean-to. Its roof and sides and floor he’d made by weaving pine tree branches together. Then he went in. Then he unrolled his sleeping bag. Then he got into it. One thing at a time keeps you calm. He’d wait in the bag until his clothes were dry. But in the bag, he felt more naked than outside in the air. He wasn’t surprised. When you are brainfucked, the only thing that surprises is that you’re not. He crawled out of the bag and pulled the woven pine branches across the opening to shut himself in. He liked the piney smell of the lean-to; it made him think of the smell of balsam, which he liked even better. On Osgood Pond near Saranac. He would think about that. That’s what he would think about. He’d think about that to keep himself calm. He got into the sleeping bag again. Tomorrow, if the weather looked like it might last long enough for a sleeping bag to dry in the sun, he’d wash that too.
On Osgood Pond near Saranac. He said it aloud to hear the sound. Saranac. Saranac. It didn’t need notes to be a song. In the evening the wind always died and the lake would still, and the barn swallows would start to fly. Uncle Ray would say, Take the Adirondack guide boat, Chris. It glides, you can row it sitting forwards, it’s a canoe married to a dory.
But when he told the VA doc all the things that had happened in just one instant and the doc said, Yes, time slows down in combat, he’d jumped up from his chair. “How the fuck do you know? You never been there.” And he never went back.
Even though Uncle Ray would’ve liked the guide boat for himself. No, that’s all right, Chris. You take it tonight. I’ll fish at dawn. I love to watch the sun come up. He knew the girl who’d seen him naked wasn’t the one he’d run over. She was the one who’d bent down to move his hat. He wasn’t so crazy he didn’t know what was happening, why every girl who looked like she was about to be a woman was the girl he’d run over. But now it was only this one, tall, thin, like the one he’d killed. And why he’d been sure she and her friend had come back again to punish him, to make it happen all over again, again, when they probably just happened to be at the same place he was at the same time because they wanted ice cream so maybe he wouldn’t have hurt her to make her stay away—but not the other one, her big blonde friend, she hadn’t seen him naked, he wouldn’t need to hurt her, and he said aloud over and over the words: Uncle Ray would say. Uncle Ray would say. Because those words soothed him too—until he was sure his clothes were dry, or dry enough, and he wouldn’t be naked anymore, and he crawled out of his sleeping bag and left it unzipped for tonight and moved the woven pine branches aside from the opening and went out. And gathered up his clothes. And put them on. As fast as he could.
“You SURE?” ELIZABETH said.
“Yes, I’m sure. I’d recognize him anywhere,” Sylvia said.
“Yeah, but without any clothes on? That’s a shock. You could be associating. You know what I mean?”
“But I saw his face.”
“First?”
“Yes, first. I told you. And then he put his hands down there. Whaddaya mean, ‘associating’? Associating with what?”
“You know. We’ve been thinking about him, wondering where he lives. So you see some guy who’s maybe just taking a swim.”
“I keep telling you, I saw his face. How many people do you know who’d go swimming there? And without any clothes on? He was washing himself.”
“All right. If you’re convinced, so am I.”
“Why did it take you so long? You think I make stuff up?”
Elizabeth shrugged. “No, but people do imagine stuff. You think he lives there? In a cave or something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Well, I know how we can find out: put some food near where you saw him. If it’s gone when we come back, then we’ll know.”
Sylvia didn’t speak for a moment. She couldn’t come up with a better idea. The one thing they couldn’t do was just pretend she hadn’t seen him. “Canned food,” she said. “So animals can’t get it. And a can opener.”
“Right. And I think a grill to put over the fire so he can cook.”
“Yeah, definitely a grill and can opener,” Sylvia said. “Those are things he can keep.”
“After that, we’ll stop. Right?”
“Stop?”
“Bringing him food,” Elizabeth said. “Just one time and then we’ll stop. We don’t want to be all alone in the woods with him. We should drop the stuff and get out of there. But he probably doesn’t live there. The food will be still there when we sneak back. How many people do you know who live in the woods like a hermit?”
“Okay, we’ll drop the stuff and run. We can always give him money in Fieldington.”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Right into his hat. Just don’t tell your dad.”
CHRISTOPHER TRIPLETT, DURING one of his more stable mental states, thought that one of the weirdest things about his situation was how worried he was that the food he ate at McDonald’s would clog up his veins. And the other weird thing was that it didn’t do any good to know he was being weird. Instead of worrying about starving right now, he worried about having a heart attack twenty years hence all through the whole long walk from the ice cream shop in the middle of the village to the McDonald’s on the outskirts of town, where the money he’d begged for bought a Big Mac (for the protein) with tomato and lettuce (because vegetables were good for you) and a paper cup of milk (because milk was calming). Another thing about being brainfucked: he could actually see his veins, ruby-red pipes and yellow sludge. He could see the transparent plastic cups of yogurt topped with fruit they served in Starbucks too, and he didn’t stink because he’d taken a bath and washed his clothes, but the barista would know where he got the money. She would look at him across the counter while he handed it to her and he would see the girl through the windshield, just before he ran over her. The look on her face wouldn’t be her fear, not even her disappointment. It would be realization. I am about to die. And this is how.
Several days after the girl had seen him naked in the river, Christopher Triplett, early in the morning, the sun just risen, was taking a piss downhill, well away from his lean-to like any good camper, and remembering how he and his friends in seventh grade used to make their yellow initials in the snow where they hoped the girls would find them, when suddenly he caught a glimpse of two girls through a screen of bushes. He froze, wished he was through; and when he was, he crouched and slithered further away from them, uphill toward a big outcropping of granite to hide behind. Had word gone out that there was a guy hiding in the woods? Was this the girl who’d watched him taking a bath, bringing her friend in hopes of watching again?
He couldn’t see them anymore now, nor hear their movements, nor what they said—only the insistent clack of a woodpecker hammering in a tree above him, and the smell of dead leaves and wet earth he crouched in. His craziness hadn’t blossomed until he’d come home to the never-never land of post deployment when you didn’t have to be at the ready, on the lookout every minute. Now it was a strange relief to be in that hyper-alert state again, calmer than when he wasn’t. He waited a while, then he slithered on his stomach down the hill to get close enough to see them. Instead, he saw the sun glinting on something metal. He stood and approached whatever it was, wondering if the girls were watching and laughing at him, and found they had left something. A can opener. A lighter. A can of tomatoes. A can of beans. Of minestrone soup. Clam chowder in the red and white of Campbell’s, like in that famous picture.
They were mocking him!
He starts running up the trail to catch up with them, yelling, Stay away! Stay away or I’ll—They stop, turn around and laugh. He runs toward them, the axe that he’d built his lean-to with raised over his head in both hands, ready to chop down into the exact center of the top of the tall, thin one’s head, splitting it in two, like a log on a tree stump. Their laughter turns to astonishment. There is a sudden darkness, as if he’d closed his eyes. He stops running.
Then it was light again and the girls were gone.
His hands were empty. He was still standing by the food they’d left. His axe was sunk deep into a tree stump by the firepit, where it belonged. He didn’t have to turn around and see it there to know. Take comfort in that, he thought, comfort in that. And take comfort in what I take comfort in. He turned back and piled leaves over the food and the other things the girls had left for him. Then he walked the few yards to the edge of the river and watched it flow. After a while, he was sane again.