The Wilderness
Alexander B. Hogan
My grandmother rescued me one night from the wilderness behind my father’s house. I don’t remember how I got out from under his grip, but I remember the tightness in my chest. The tripping over branches and fallen limbs. The feeling of leaves and twigs scratching my face as I made my hard landing. I remember the distance of stars as I lay whispering my pleas into the darkness and the calm that followed when I’d given up hope and my consciousness began to merge with the whistling of the wind through leaves on the higher branches.
I remember the sudden appearance of the amorphous shape of my breath floating across the beam of her flashlight and then back into darkness. The tension in her voice as she balanced a whisper and a yell with my name. I remember her swollen ankles. Our feet as we ran through the long, wet grass between the tree line and the road. I can still feel the warm desperation of her big hands pressing my face against her body as we crossed in front of his windows. And me, clutching the belt of the coat of a woman I’d seen only twice before.
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