WILD PLACES by Teresa Burns Gunther
Toni squinted against the sun glaring off the car’s yellow hood. Hot and sweaty, her legs stuck to the plastic seat cover. The air conditioner broke and the baseball drone on the radio made her queasy. Every summer her father took three weeks off his milk route and piled her family in the station wagon for their annual camping trip. That summer of 1971 they headed to the Rockies. Her two brothers stretched out in back with the gear while her sisters, the oldest, hogged the windows. Toni, the youngest, got the hump.
They’d just left Jackpot, Nevada and crossed into Idaho when Dad turned down the game and said, “Listen up.” He caught Toni’s eye in the rearview mirror. “We have an announcement.” He rested his arm along the top of the seat and squeezed Mother’s shoulder. “We have another angel arriving in six months.”
“Better be a boy,” Jimmy grumbled. Joey agreed. Understanding, Toni clapped, delighted to relinquish the unlucky position of baby and odd man out. Sheila and Jean, identical twins, exchanged identical ugly faces. Mother didn’t say a word, just sat behind her dark glasses and stared at the road ahead through the wild, desolate landscape. That summer there were no license plate games, no rounds of Row, Row, Row Your Boat.
On the second night in Yellowstone, Toni scrubbed out chili bowls, stuck with KP for cussing; bad language was reserved for her father’s exclusive use. Bug bites itched under her sunburn after a day of aggravation on the river when her bathing suit ripped up the side. She’d tried to hold it together with safety pins but it eventually split to pieces. If her mother hadn’t stayed behind in camp she might have fixed it.
Dad stoked the campfire, peering past its flames to the dark where Mom was resting in the car. Sheila and Jean argued over Crazy Eights at the wooden picnic table. Jean howled when Sheila pinched her arm and called her a cheater. Jimmy poked a flaming marshmallow at Joey who swatted it, sending the burning stickiness – smack – into Dad’s cheek. He swiped it off with the back of his hand.
“Knock it off,” he yelled. “Boys, get firewood. Toni, see if Mom wants a s’more.” Sheila and Jean just had to shut up. Dad settled into his chair and opened his first Oly with a fizzy gasp.
Toni followed the whisper of music and the red glow of her mother’s cigarette to the yellow wagon where she sat, head back on the seat, staring at nothing. Her cheekbones jutted. She’d been a sad blur at the edge of vacation. Toni tapped on the window, open a few inches, releasing Sinatra’s moony song in her smoke.
“Mom?”
Dad said it was the baby, but she’d been so sorrowful and strange Toni worried it was something worse. She tapped again but her mother didn’t move.
“Mom!” Toni knocked.
Her mother jumped and her empty eyes slowly found Toni.
“Oh!” Toni said, legs weak with relief. The window cranked down to its stuck place, letting out the stale plastic smell of the car. “Wanna s’more?” Toni asked, working her face into a sweet invitation.
Her mother looked past her and Toni followed her gaze to the twins arguing over cards, the dust cloud Jimmy and Joey made, and the sparks from the fire where Dad tossed another log. Her bandana slid back off her head but she made no move to fix it.
“You eat one for me,” she said and patted Toni’s cheek. Her hand smelled of Jergens and menthol cigarettes.
“Come sit by the fire,” Toni urged. “It’s real nice.”
“I’m fine here, honey.”
“I could sit with you?” Toni said, but got only a small smile of dismissal as her mother cranked the window closed.
At the fire, Toni climbed into her father’s lap. He grunted, shifted her to his knee.
“You’re double digits now, kiddo. Gettin’ too big for my lap.”
“Why won’t she come out?” Toni asked.
Dad stared into the fire. “She’s resting.”
“But she hates that car.”
He snorted. “I guess it improves with togetherness.” He handed her a s’more. The grahams were stale but sweet with gooey chocolate and marshmallow.
“Mm . . . s’good,” Toni said, mouth full. The boys debated player names for their imaginary baseball team as they unrolled sleeping bags on the dusty pads beside her parents’ tent. The “girls’ tent” had fallen apart the summer before so they had two yellow tube tents; Sheila and Jean shared one, Toni slept alone in the other. She blocked the ends to keep out spiders and bears but by morning it was just a girl burrito, raining sweat. “Where’s Sheila and Jean?”
“Bathroom.”
Toni hated public bathrooms, especially campground toilets at night, and her sisters knew it. They liked to ditch her and a few times they’d scared her when she went alone. She hurried through the dark campground to catch up but saw them walking back, their hair wrapped in towels. She ducked behind a tree.
“Thanks a lot, assfaces,” she hissed.
The bathroom door opened with a terrible screech and the tang of damp metal, ammonia and pee. No light. Something moaned. She aimed her flashlight inside fearing sharp claws would rip it away but saw a tall girl at the sink, her hair in a fancy braid. Toni had seen her at the river with her own folding chair, sunglasses, and a fluffy new Beach Boys towel. She wore hoop earrings and a white bikini that showed she had boobs. The twins had whispered about the girl and glared, but boys ogled like she was cherry pie a la mode.
Toni hurried into a stall, praying no spiders were under the seat. She always felt something sinister watching over the top or ready to grab her leg from under the next stall. Her mother said she peed like a horse and should try to tinkle, but she’d waited too long and wanted to finish before that girl left. When Toni came out she was shining her flashlight in the sink.
“Don’t use it,” the girl said.
“Says who?”
“My ring fell down the drain. It’s a gift from my father. He’s just going to die.” Toni pictured a tall man, blond like the girl, clutching his chest and keeling over.
“What kind of ring?” The only ring Toni knew was the kind a man gave a wife. She’d never heard of fathers giving daughtersjewelry.
“Opal,” she said. “I’m a Scorpio.” The flashlight made feathers of her lashes.
“Oh? I’m a Catholic.”
“Hmm.” She slumped back against the bathroom stall.
“Will you get in trouble?” Toni asked, wondering how she was punished.
“What?” The girl screwed up her face like Sheila did when she said Toni was being a retard.
“Never mind.”
The girl put her head in her hands. “What am I going to do?”
No one ever asked Toni’s advice.
“Don’t worry,” she said, pointing at the girl. She had someone who could fix anything. “I’ll be right back.”
Toni flew out the door colliding with a mom clutching toothbrushes and kids in PJs.
“This bathroom,” Toni said, arms flung wide to block the door, “is out of order.” The woman had that fed up to here look Toni’s mother often wore, but she sighed and pulled her kids down the path to the next bathroom, giving up so easily.
Toni’s mother still sat in the car; her dad still poked the fire. She collapsed against his chair, the one only he could sit in.
“Slow down,” he said. “You’re kicking up dust.”
She squeezed the stitch in her side and said, “My friend dropped her sacred ring down the drain.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, his whiskered face creased.
“We need help. It’s an emergency!” He made noises but was easy to persuade after he’d had one of his Olys. “Bring your tools!”
“What’s going on?” Sheila asked. In the kerosene lantern her face was green. She was curling Jean’s long hair around empty orange juice cans. And they called Toni stupid.
“Everyone stay put,” Dad ordered, but in his at‑ease voice so Jimmy and Joey followed, jumping, swatting at tree limbs like a campground parade. Toni had to run to keep up.
“Go on.” Dad jerked his head at the bathroom door. “Check the coast is clear.” He drained his beer and chucked it at the garbage can. It kissed the rim and rolled onto the paper trash with a sigh. Jimmy was only eleven months older than Joey, but much bigger; he hoisted Joey up to peek in the windows ’til Dad said they’d better get back to camp or he’d knock them into the middle of next week. They went.
The girl was gone. Toni shined her light under the stalls, daring monsters to come out. This time she had her dad.
“All clear!”
A note in the sink read: LOST RING. Please return to Janine, Campsite #39. Her confidence was stunning.
Dad flicked the switch up, down, and frowned. He looked weird in the Ladies, so big and manly. He shined Toni’s flashlight down the drain, slapped it – his fix-it shortcut – but it didn’t get brighter. He pulled a wrench from his tool belt and slid under the sink. She shivered, thinking of spiders, proud of his bravery.
“Hand me that,” he said, pointing with the flashlight to a metal pail forgotten in the corner. He stuck the pail under the sink and gave Toni the light. His lips pursed as he tugged on the wrench. “Shine it on the pipe,” he snapped, then pulled hard with a grunt. Something squeaked; water trickled into the metal bucket, then ping! “This what you’re looking for?” Even in the flashlight’s feeble beam it glittered, a tiny heaven of blue and green stars.
“Yeah! It’s a . . . opal?” She slipped it on her finger. “So we don’t lose it,” she explained when he raised his eyebrows. She’d never seen such a fancy thing up close. “C’mon!”
She grabbed her father’s thick-fingered hand and pulled him outside, onto the cloverleaf road, searching with her flashlight for the small posts that bore each campsite’s number. Peering in at families they passed she saw dark figures that moved in nighttime rituals among the trees. In some, faces floated white above campfires and in others people were just shadows thrown on tent walls.
Toni heard their conversation and laughter before she got there. In campsite #39, light from smokeless lanterns and a roaring fire danced on the trees and shone off the sides of a silver Airstream trailer she imagined was one hundred feet long. A gingham cloth covered the table. Clothes hung short to long on a taut clothesline.
“Well, go on,” he said.
“Come with me.” She tugged his hand and pulled him into the light of the campfire ringed by folding chairs; it looked like they had company and were playing charades. She loved charades but it always devolved to a riot of shouts, even punches, so Dad had issued a kill order until further notice.
The people looked like movie stars pretending to rough it in clothes pressed and clean. The mother wore pearl earrings in their shiny campsite with newfangled gear. Even their ice chests were neatly labeled – Pop and Beer. It was like a Holiday Inn of the forest. Toni had never stayed in a motel but her Aunt Joanie sent postcards from her fancy Hawaiian vacations that her mom read, regarding Toni and her sibs as if they were too many unpaired socks.
“Can we help you?” Janine’s dad’s voice was deep. A Sears catalog man, tan, in a blue polo shirt, his blond hair combed smooth with a part. He didn’t stand, just studied them like he didn’t know whether to get his camera or his gun.
“Is Janine here?” Toni asked.
“She’s inside,” the mother said. Her eyes surveyed Toni’s feet, black with dirt, and her rumpled top stained with hot chocolate and mustard. Dad scratched his whiskers. The firelight made his flattop glisten and the scar on his cheek stand out. He wore checked shorts and black socks with brown sandals, a look her mom had quit fighting. The mother raised her eyebrows at the other woman, her hair a perfect blonde flip, and called into the trailer for Janine. Toni was glad her mom wasn’t there, her eyes lifted like she was dreaming Calgon take me away or thinking about the old boyfriend she talked about sometimes.
Janine leaned out of the trailer. “What?”
“Ta da!” Toni rushed to meet her, ring held high. “We found it; my dad got it out.”
Janine shrieked and hugged Toni, whispering, “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. I’m Toni,” she whispered back, then snuck a quick peek inside the trailer with sofas, a tiny kitchen, bedrooms; Janine said it even had a closet bathroom.
“Then why go to the public one?”
“It’s just for emergencies,” Janine explained.
“OK, then,” Dad said and turned to go but Janine ran and wrapped herself around his arm.
“Thank you very much, sir,” Janine said, looking up at him with her perfect face.
Sir? “All right, that’s enough,” Toni said, freeing her dad from the girl’s grip.
“What’s this about?” asked Janine’s father who stood and set a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” Janine said, sounding like she might cry. “You told me to leave it at home but I love it so much, because it’s from you.” She hugged his slim waist and grinned at Toni. Daddy lifted her hand; the ring caught the firelight. The mother explained to the other couple that the ring was Janine’s thirteenth birthday present.
“It fell down the bathroom sink,” Janine said. “This little girl’s father saved it.”
Little girl? Toni started to say it was all her idea but Janine’s father pulled out his wallet. Toni’s dad looked confused, then his jaw tightened and Toni figured this guy was a boss jerk who didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.
“Just being neighborly,” Dad said, unsmiling. He shifted his tool belt on his shoulder and nodded to Janine’s mother and friends. “You folks have a good night.” He strode off through the trees. Janine’s father shrugged. Toni could hear their laughter and voices buzzing as she hurried to catch up; she wished that man had offered her the dough. Her dad was quiet on the walk back; he didn’t take her hand. Toni chewed her thumbnail, worried he was mad.
Their campsite was dark and cluttered with bikes, fishing poles, jumbled cardboard boxes, and sagging tents. The only light came from the kerosene lantern buzzing with insects. The fire smoked without flames until her father threw on logs and it flared back to life. Toni sat on a stump and pretended to read her Nancy Drew, stealing looks at her father in his chair.
“Janine’s not really my friend,” she said. He just whittled a stick, working his jaw back and forth. Her mother stayed in the car. Toni didn’t understand why he couldn’t make her get out. Or why she wouldn’t just put on lipstick and sit with him by the fire and make tomorrow’s plan.
Toni kept an eye on her father, whittling over the fire, staring into it like he’d lost something in the flames. When it was down to coals, he climbed in the driver’s seat of the car. Toni tried to listen but all she could hear was the trees creaking in the wind. After a while her father got out, passed by without seeing her, without telling her to go to bed, and crawled into his tent alone.
She sat by the coals worrying, wondering what she could do to make her mom be herself again. Happy, like when they were home alone and Toni sat beneath the board where she ironed and they listened to stories on tape or Toni read to her.
When the car rumbled to a start Toni craned her neck to see her mom backing out, the taillights quickly lost in the trees. She’d slipped off once before, earlier in the trip, but not at night, not in the dark. Toni hated not knowing where she was going or why. Her sisters’ voices drew Toni into their tube.
“Mom’s gone,” Toni said, crouched on all fours. They didn’t respond. “Where’d she go?”
“How should we know?” Sheila finally said.
“Why would she just leave?” Toni asked, her voice shrill.
“Duh!” Jean said. “She doesn’t want a baby. She’s too old; probably sick of kids.”
“That’s stupid,” Toni said, punching her fist into the plastic wall. “And a lie.” A noise at her back startled her. She spun around peering into the dark woods, certain something was watching. She shivered. “Hey,” she said. “Can I sleep with you guys?”
No answer, just twin sounds of phony sleep.
“I know you’re awake.”
She waited.
When they didn’t answer she backed out of their stuffy tent onto the needled ground; the air was cool and sweet with evergreens. She crouched by the fire; a few coals still glowed in the circle of stones where she fed in pine needles that turned red, orange, white, then shriveled away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Joey asked. He nudged Jimmy. They sat up in their sleeping bags, two buzzed heads white in the moonlight.
“You’re gonna get it,” Jimmy said.
She ignored him. She’d learned that zipped lips were safer than sass or a stuck-out tongue, knowledge that would serve her in life.
Joey, always full of big ideas, said, “Let’s get this thing cookin’,” and directed the gathering of needles. “Okay,” he hissed, when satisfied with the pile’s size. “On three.” One – he mouthed, finger raised, two, then, three! They rushed in and dumped armloads of needles on the coals. Toni feared they’d snuffed it out until a wisp of smoke snaked up from the pile. It trembled like they’d trapped a little critter. Then, whoosh! A towering flame shot skyward. She gasped and fell on her butt as the flames licked the overhanging pines. Dad flew out of his tent in his skivvies, eyes wild.
“Jesus Christ!” Dad hopped into shoes and dumped a thermos of Kool-Aid on the flames. Grape steam dirtied the air while he swung at the boys, yelling you oughta know better. Someone snickered. The flames had shot so loud and bright Toni wondered if it drew the attention of dark shapes in other campsites. “What the hell were you doing?” Dad shouted, but his sharp-eyed look shut them up. He told them to put the fire out but good. They filled cups at the spigot and poured them on the fire ring until it became a small pond.
“Dammit,” Dad yelled. “That’s enough.”
“Jeez. Morons,” Sheila said, wrestling her orange juice cans through the tube opening beside Jean’s matching metal head. “You almost burned down the forest.”
Jimmy and Joey got in a fight over whose fault it was, earning them each a whack upside the head, which somehow made everyone easier and ready for bed. But Toni stayed by the fire. She couldn’t sleep. Her bites itched. And the parking place was empty.
The boys whispered in their sleeping bags and pointed out stars. Toni crept over and squatted at Joey’s side and told them about the hoity-toity people.
“The guy tried to pay Dad,” Toni said.
“What’s wrong with that?” Joey asked.
“He’s a boss jerk,” she said. “He made Dad mad.”
Her brothers thought this over.
“We should get ’em,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah,” Joey whispered.
“We could slash their tires,” Jimmy said, grabbing his Boy Scout knife he kept at the ready. “Injun style.”
“Yeah . . . by the light of the moon,” Joey whispered. “But Dad . . .”
“Yeah,” Jimmy said and burrowed into his bag.
“Well, I’m gonna do something,” Toni said.
“Nah, you’re too chicken,” Joey said and rolled over.
She pulled on her sweatshirt, grabbed her flashlight, snagged her father’s knife from his chair, stuck it in her pocket and marched out of camp, checking over her shoulder, but they didn’t follow. She went quick along the road, the night darker without her dad. But when she found the massive silver trailer the camp was bright with moonlight, everything clean, like they’d swept the forest floor. She crouched low and kept to the shadows. The ice-chest squeaked when it opened. She dropped to her knees, held her breath, checked the windows, but nothing moved.
She grabbed a cold pop and ran into a ring of trees at the edge of the campsite where no one could see her. She squatted, her back pressed into the trunk of a Ponderosa pine, and opened the bottle with the knife. It hissed and bubbles foamed over the top. She put her mouth over it, disappointed by the yeasty bitterness of beer. Still, she drank it, her booty, in small, rapid sips so cold she began to shiver. She pulled her hood closed, the sweatshirt down over her bent knees to her toes. She grinned, feeling brave, imagining her brothers’ awe when she told them. She turned her cheek to the Ponderosa’s rough bark and sniffed its sweet vanilla. Her loud burp surprised her. She covered her mouth to stifle her laugh.
She pictured Janine wearing baby-doll pajamas, cozy in her own trailer bedroom, her parents safe in the next room. It made her throat tight. She fingered her dad’s knife thinking about the way they’d upset him and about Jimmy’s idea for vengeance. She opened the sharp blade and crept from her hiding place.
But standing beside the tire, she feared the loud sound – bang – like when their tire popped crossing into Wyoming and her mother had cursed a startling, ugly word. Toni’s eye fell on the clothes dancing on the line in the wind. She climbed an old stump and sawed at the cord until – snap! – it broke free and the long line of towels, tops and bathing suits snaked on the wind, whipped at the trees, then shuddered to the ground.
She stuck the bottle in her pocket – proof – and walked back on a tilted road, the world dizzy. A loud rustling in the trees startled her and she remembered with a shudder how the ranger had come through the day before to warn her dad about a mama bear with cubs.
She ran.
At the campsite she found Jimmy and Joey huddled on a log beside the parking space. She showed them the bottle. Her brothers shared a look then Joey shook his head.
“Nah,” Joey said. “You got it from the trash.”
“Nuh-uh! Go see what I did,” Toni said. When they didn’t move she asked, “Where’s Mom?”
“She’ll be back,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah,” Joey said, but he looked like he might cry.
Toni lay on top of her sleeping bag, woozy. The wind gusted harder, making the outside loud with strange noises that whispered something was coming while the picture part of her mind drew things the sounds might be. She wondered if a mother could really not want kids. Was there something about her – the last baby – that had hardened her mother’s heart against children? Had she been that one last straw? She slid down inside her bag, the bottom gritty with camp dirt, and felt herself a pile of separate parts in need of retooling.
If she were an only child her parents would be sleeping next door in their Airstream bedroom. She thought about Janine, safe inside and so beloved Daddy gave her a ring. She took a mean pleasure imagining the family horrified to find their clothes in the dirt. She thought of the closet bathroom and squeezed her eyes shut, willed herself to forget about it and fall asleep. No way was she going to the dark toilets alone.
The sound of the car made her gasp with relief. She hurried out to meet it. Lights flashed through the trees, coming closer. Toni stretched on tiptoe to see.
But it was the ranger in his truck, his bright light bouncing through the forest, searching for something wild, maybe dangerous, on the loose.
Teresa Burns Gunther’s stories have appeared in Zyzzyva, Northwind Magazine, 2014: A Year in Stories, Pure Slush Books: Bar Stories, and Best New Writing 2012.