The Probable Future

They went on until they came to the place where people said Rebecca Sparrow had first appeared. She had walked out of the woods one evening as though she were walking out of a dream that had ended, there beyond the flat rocks called the Table and Chairs. Brock Stewart used to come here with Elinor in the weeks after Saul’s death, just to sit here, nothing more, although time after time he’d thought of kissing her. But he’d put the thought away, he was married, happily, really; it was just that this was something more. This was everything he felt inside.

Argus had followed along at a slow pace. Now, the wolfhound stretched out to watch as Dr. Stewart hacked away at vines in a spot that Elinor had deemed sunny enough. After expending all that energy, the doctor took a break, taking a seat on one of the Chairs, but the granite was cold, and brought little comfort, and Elinor was toting away the vines herself. After he caught his breath, Brock began to dig in the clearing with an old wooden-handled shovel they’d brought along. There were cinnamon ferns growing wild, and yellow iris that had escaped from Colonial gardens, jumping fences, growing underneath hedges. There was jack-in-the-pulpit, and dozens more swamp cabbages, which gave off a sulfury scent if brushed up against. It seemed unearthly quiet here in the woods, but for anyone who listened carefully, there was actually endless sound. The hum of the mayflies and the mosquitoes, the drone of the bees as they visited the wild dogwood, which had come into full bloom, the chattering of catbirds, the song of the warbler, the trill of the sparrows, who had lit on every branch.

When the doctor had dug a deep enough hole, Elinor removed the burlap from the rosebush; she folded the rough fabric and tossed it into the wheelbarrow. As she worked, she was careful not to look too closely at the little plant, lest she frighten it into invisibility. It was a foolish folk tale, surely, but perhaps not completely without merit. Things withered, after all; they fell away. But some things went on even when no one was looking; unseen, unknown, they grew.

“Do we mark the path with stones so we can find it again?” Brock Stewart said as he turned the wheelbarrow around.

“We can never find it again.” Elinor had come to stand beside him. She hooked her arm through his, and rested her hand on the wheelbarrow. “That’s why we brought it here.”

The way back was tough going, through the underbrush, past the swamp cabbage. Before long the doctor was confused. Perhaps they should have marked the path. “Damn,” Brock Stewart said, for every dogwood tree looked like every other and every stand of yellow iris appeared to be no different from the next.

The doctor was sweating, he was tired from working so hard, and there were blisters on his hands. Look upward, he had told his son, David, when David was a boy, so very long ago. When you’re lost, remember: the sun always sets in the west and you’re sure to find your way. Now, the doctor wasn’t even able to see the sun through the tangle of trees.

“I’m not sure where we are,” he admitted.

“That’s good.” Elinor was so close it was possible to feel her warmth, her certainty, her breath. “If we can’t find it, no one else will. That’s what we want, Brock.”

They might have stood there together forever, lost in the woods, in the dark, on that ridge where Rebecca Sparrow first appeared so many years ago, from the north, people said, although no one was sure, but luckily the dog knew the way home. They had to trust Argus and walk blindly on; it had grown foggy and there was a pale, light rain that made for mist. It was the last of the season’s daffodil rain, the sort that falls for no reason, when the lawns and the hedges are already green enough, but the sky just can’t stop from falling down.

At the edge of a clearing the doctor stopped and picked a bunch of yellow iris. His fingers turned green with their sap and his senses grew dizzy with their redolent, golden scent. He could walk here endlessly, never growing tired, never feeling thirst. What initially drew him to anatomy he felt once again on this leafy path: the sheer abundance of life, the heat of it, the connection of things, the mat of roots under the soil, so like blood and bones, the wild potato vines like arteries, the honeybees’ hive, so like a heart. If he could take one thing with him to eternity, it would be the way he felt right now. Their feet were wet and the going was difficult. It was ridiculous for people their age to be wandering around in this manner, and still the doctor didn’t wish it to end. Elinor was feverish, he saw that clearly; a flu, perhaps, easily caught in her weakened condition. He saw clearly, too, they would indeed never come this way again.

Walk slower, he whispered, because by now the iris he held in his hand lit their way, globes of light in the dark. I don’t want you to go.