Jean Hegland - Into the Forest

For Douglas Fisher
and Garth Leonard Fisher

and in memory of
Leonard Hegland

I NTO THE FOREST is a work of fiction. Sally Bells story is the only material quoted directly from another source (Sinkyone Notes by Gladys Nomland, University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology, Vol. 36 (2), 1935).

I would like to acknowledge the following sources for background information: The Way We Lived: California Indian Reminiscences, Stories, and Songs, edited by Malcolm Margolin (Berkeley: Heyday Books, 1981), in which I first discovered the Sally Bell material, and Original Accounts of the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, edited by Robert F. Heizer and Albert B. Elasser (Ramona, CA: Ballena Press, 1973).

I ts strange, writing these first words, like leaning down into the musty stillness of a well and seeing my face peer up from the waterso small and from such an unfamiliar angle Im startled to realize the reflection is my own. After all this time a pen feels stiff and awkward in my hand. And I have to admit that this notebook, with its wilderness of blank pages, seems almost more threat than giftfor what can I write here that it will not hurt to remember?

You could write about now, Eva said, about this time. This morning I was so certain I would use this notebook for studying that I had to work to keep from scoffing at her suggestion. But now I see she may be right. Every subject I think offrom economics to meteorology, from anatomy to geography to historyseems to circle around on itself, to lead me unavoidably back to now, to here, today.

Today is Christmas Day. I cant avoid that. Weve crossed the days off the calendar much too conscientiously to be wrong about the date, however much we might wish we were. Today is Christmas Day, and Christmas Day is one more day to live through, one more day to be endured so that someday soon this time will be behind us.

By next Christmas this will all be over, and my sister and I will have regained the lives we are meant to live. The electricity will be back, the phones will work. Planes will fly above our clearing once again. In town there will be food in the stores and gas at the service stations. Long before next Christmas we will have indulged in everything we now lack and cravesoap and shampoo, toilet paper and milk, fresh fruit and meat. My computer will be running, Evas CD player will be working. Well be listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, using the Internet. Banks and schools and libraries will have reopened, and Eva and I will have left this house where we now live like shipwrecked orphans. She will be dancing with the corps of the San Francisco Ballet, HI have finished my first semester at Harvard, and this wet, dark day the calendar has insisted we call Christmas will be long, long over.

Merry semi-pagan, slightly literary, and very commercial Christmas, our father would always announce on Christmas morning, when, long before the midwinter dawn, Eva and I would team up in the hall outside our parents bedroom. Jittery with excitement, we would plead with them to get up, to come downstairs, to hurry, while they yawned, insisted on donning bathrobes, on washing their faces and brushing their teeth, evenif our father was being particularly infuriatingon making coffee.

After the clutter and laughter of present-opening came the midday dinner we used to take for granted, phone calls from distant relatives, Handels Messiah issuing triumphantly from the CD player. At some point during the afternoon the four of us would take a walk down the dirt road that ends at our clearing. The brisk air and green forest would clear our senses and our palates, and by the time we reached the bridge and were ready to turn back, our father would have inevitably announced, This is the real Christmas present, by godpeace and quiet and clean air. No neighbors for four miles, and no town for thirty-two. Thank Buddha, Shiva, Jehovah, and the California Department of Forestry we live at the end of the road!

Later, after night had fallen and the house was dark except for the glow of bulbs on the Christmas tree, Mother would light the candles of the nativity carousel, and we would spend a quiet moment standing together before it, watching the shepherds, wise men, and angels circle around the little holy family.

Yep, our father would say, before we all wandered off to nibble at the turkey carcass and cut slivers off the cold plum pudding, thats the story. Could be better, could be worse. But at least theres a baby at the center of it.

This Christmas theres none of that.

There are no strings of lights, no Christmas cards. There are no piles of presents, no long-distance phone calls from great-aunts and second cousins, no Christmas carols. There is no turkey, no plum pudding, no stroll to the bridge with our parents, no Messiah. This year Christmas is nothing but another white square on a calendar that is almost out of dates, an extra cup of tea, a few moments of candlelight, and, for each of us, a single gift.

Why do we bother?

Three years agowhen I was fourteen and Eva fifteenI asked that same question one rainy night a week before Christmas. Father was grumbling over the number of cards he still had to write, and Mother was hidden in her workroom with her growling sewing machine, emerging periodically to take another batch of cookies from the oven and prod me into washing the mixing bowls.

Nell, I need those dishes done so I can start the pudding before I go to bed, she said as she closed the oven door on the final sheet of cookies.

Okay, I muttered, turning the next page of the book in which I was immersed.

Tonight, Nell, she said.

Why are we doing this? I demanded, looking up from my book in irritation.

Because theyre dirty, she answered, pausing to hand me a warm gingersnap before she swept back to the mysteries of her sewing.

Not the dishes, I grumbled.

Then what, Pumpkin? asked my father as he licked an envelope and emphatically crossed another name off his list.