I don’t argue with him. I just get into my sleeping bag, in the tent I’m sharing with Eli, and I let the forest sing me to sleep.Chapter Thirty-FiveLeviEli slings his pack off of his back, positions himself in front of a pine tree, and rubs himself on it.
Caleb and I look up from the map we were studying and just watch him for a long moment, but he just keeps scratching. And scratching.
“You all right?” Caleb finally asks.
“My back itches,” Eli explains.
“A lot, apparently,” I say, and Eli just sighs.
“I’ve slept on the ground for two nights in a row and I have yet to complain about it,” he points out. “Let me scratch my back how I see fit.”
“Fair,” Caleb says, and I shrug.
We look back at the map. It’s the same edition as the one that June and I made from the logging records, the one that we consulted when we were figuring out where trees were likely to get murdered. Just looking at it, knowing that, makes me feel heavy, splintered.
I miss her more today than I did last night and last night more than I did yesterday. I miss hiking with her. I miss talking to her under the stars. I miss the excited look she got in her eye when she had an idea, the way she dove into a project she loved.
“It’s about half a mile,” I say, pointing at a dotted line on the map. “It’s just off the trail, no big deal.”
“Fine with me,” Caleb says. “Eli, you gonna live?”
“I’m doing spectacularly, thank you,” Eli says, still scratching his back. “Let’s go see if these trees are happy or not.”
“Thanks,” I say.
We’re checking on a stand of hemlock that had an infestation problem about a year ago that I treated. I need to see how they’re getting on, of course, but that’s not really the reason I’m dragging my brothers along to look at trees.
I’m making them ascertain the happiness of trees because I still haven’t decided.
Some people are heart people. They dive into whatever they’re doing. They fall hard, they fall fast, they’re never unsure because their hearts are true and pure, or something.
Eli, for example, is a heart person, as much as he’d probably deny it. I doubt he ever thought twice about being with Violet, no matter what.
Caleb? Head. Daniel? Head, though he’d deny it.
Seth is… if there’s something that falls harder and faster and deeper than heart, he’s that.
I’m a head person, unsurprisingly. I envy the heart. I envy knowing exactly what to do, having that internal tug that pulls you in the rightest, truest direction no matter what.
I wonder what it’s like, to simply know, to not weigh pros and cons, to simply do and not think.
We find the hemlocks. They’re happy and still pest-free. We head back to the main trail, then make our way back to the trailhead.
By the time we get to Caleb’s car and unload our packs and ourselves into it, I’m two-thirds sure.
By the time he drops Hedwig and me off at my house, I’m three-fourths sure.
I shower. I unpack. I brush Hedwig, get last specks of dirt and tree out of her fur. I make myself a simple dinner, and watch Netflix on my laptop while I eat it.
The show ends. I shut the computer, look around my house. I consider the fireplace, Jedediah the bear skin rug, the staircase, the drywall that Silas helped hang, the flooring that Caleb helped lay down. I think about everything that’s gone into my life here: my house, my job, my family, my wilderness.
I don’t know that I’m sure. I don’t know how people can ever be sure, how you can properly weigh two unlike things on a scale and figure out which one is better.
But I do, finally, understand that thinking has reached its limit. I understand that I could make lists of pros and cons forever and I wouldn’t get to the bottom of this, I’d only get more enmeshed in a web of my own making.
So I stop thinking, and I open the laptop again.
Thirty minutes later, I shut it, go upstairs, pack a few things.
Then I call Caleb and ask if he can dog sit for a few days.Chapter Thirty-SixJuneI stand outside the low-slung brick building at one end of Main Street and think: I should have listened to my mother.
Behind me, my ride drives away, and I adjust my briefcase over my shoulder, clutching it a little tighter to my thigh as though the leather’s going to give me much warmth. I pretty much only take the briefcase to job interviews — I got it from an aunt and uncle when I graduated college, and it’s way too nice to actually use.
Anyway, I wish I were wearing pantyhose. That’s a wish I don’t think I’ve ever had before — if anything, I’ve wished the opposite during fancy dress events and piano recitals where my mother insisted that I wear pantyhose — but it’s very windy and very cold and my coat isn’t helping my bare legs.