by Michele L Tremblay
They often did this and they were here again: falling on to the remnants of some long-forgotten road that led into dark and dense woods. As always, they didn’t know how they got there and they weren’t sure how they would get back. She imagined how lush and alive it was during the summer but it was the end of fall and the trees were bare and the road seemed like a tunnel cutting through the woods, channeling them from their known world into one unknown.
The day had started out for them in sunshine and high spirits but now they were quiet, absorbed in their own thoughts. They continued to walk as the road dwindled to ghosts of tire ruts through the dense undergrowth. “Look,” she said, and pointed to the top of one of the two ridges that flanked the road, “A roof.”
The two-room house had a kitchen and another area that seemed to have been used for everything else. The house, which was in that rare, suspended state of decay—some place between what was once someone’s home and that being reclaimed by the woods. It would not be like that for much longer. The grey, afternoon light showed through the plank walls. There were vines and ferns pushing their way through the broken windowpane, twining around loose boards and rusted nails. Through the glass-less windows, the red, orange, and yellow of the autumn leaves seemed unusually bright and clear against the grey boards in the dull light. It would not be long before the house would be completely reclaimed by the woods and one day, no one would even know that it had been there. Like a skeleton, it still showed evidence of its existence with most of its flesh stripped away. The strewn possessions left behind were faded and shrunken. She looked around for a long time without saying a word but he knew what she was thinking.
“This is amazing,” she said under her breath and turned to him, “don’t you feel it? It’s as if something is in the air—” “Probably Hanta virus,” he interrupted absently, “don’t touch anything.” But she thought that he sensed it too, as he cautiously toed aside a rusted Chock Full ‘O’ Nuts coffee can and leaned over the sink to touch one finger to a calendar picturing a faded tractor.
The lives lived in that house were a mystery. The physical atmosphere was like a sentence started and abruptly stopped, never finishing and hanging in the air. All that once might have happened in those two, small rooms would likely remain a secret. All that was known now was the present—and the present was a small, still-full can of cinnamon, a ancient box of turnip seeds with a corner chewed off; its contents spilled, a small naked doll without a head, and, remarkably, shreds of curtains wafting in the breezy windows.
She thought that their own lives together were also a mystery but now their future was dark and uncertain. At first, they had been happy. They were compatible in what had once seemed like every way. It was different now but both of them pretended that it wasn’t. The truth was, they weren’t sure what had happened or when. There had been joyous weekends spent hiking and canoeing and traveling, and other, odder things like mining rocks and finding old, abandoned houses in the woods. Many times they had said how lucky there were to share an appreciation for these esoteric pursuits. Now they were torn apart, they had lost each other and what they had left was like the shreds of curtains hanging in the windows and the faint ruts in the nearly-obscured road behind them. They had been suspended for months, standing in this place that was between their once happy past and the uncertain future.
Did it start out the same for the people of this house? Was life once sunny and bright in their small home on the hill? What could make people suddenly leave their home in such haste that they left their dishes and books and even a tube of toothpaste by the sink? They both had seen many of these forgotten houses in the woods and had tried to imagine the reasons for such flights. It had been inconceivable that anyone could leave like that but lately it seemed clearer. It can become so complicated and so sad. Their lives had grown convoluted, hopelessly tangled like fishing line from a series of bad casts, so bad that she could no longer imagine untangling it. Maybe it would bebetter to just their losses, to leave everything behind and start over somewhere else. But when they left wordlessly, she secretly took the can of cinnamon with her and he pocketed the doll before they retraced their steps back along the overgrown road.