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SHE

In Vida’s dreams, the forest goes on forever. If in reality it has limits, it is nonetheless so vast that a full and happy life can be lived within its columned chambers and in the open meadows that it encircles. Among the inhabitants of the forest are mountain lions and bears, which are to be feared, although they are less dangerous than some human beings. As for wolves, she fears them not at all.

Her five-room home is of native stone and timbers, with a slate roof. It was built seventy years earlier under the supervision of her uncle Ogden. The house stands in the foothills and backs up to the woods. The front porch faces a meadow fifty yards in diameter. Great mountains loom on three sides; on the fourth, the descending phalanxes of trees are little thinned by the valley where, at the moment, a still mist lies like a frozen river.

Throughout the residence, the floors are red-brown waxed concrete. Walls paneled in golden pine have been shellacked to a soft gloss. Although the bedroom is small, it is large enough. The eat-in kitchen is a generous space, likewise the bathroom and the library with its hundreds of books. Her workshop, where she cuts gemstones en cabochon and polishes them to perfection, is slightly larger than the room in which she sleeps.

The property lies remote, beyond the service of all public utilities. Propane provides gas for cooking and fuels a generator. A deep well issues a sparkling flow as pure as the headwaters of Eden.

Uncle Ogden didn’t want a phone. After he died at the age of eighty-five, ten years ago, Vida installed a satellite dish on the roof and, through it, obtained cell service. She hasn’t made more than ten calls a year since then, mostly to arrange appointments with a doctor and dentist in the nearest town, which is more than nineteen miles away.

Although homeschooled, she’s never used a computer other than the one in her phone. What she knows of social media appalls her. She has no need to stream anything. A turntable linked to quality speakers summons music from her uncle’s collection of vinyl records. Otherwise, her entertainment needs are provided by books and nature.

Should she wish to assess the current condition of the world beyond these woods, she has a radio. She rarely turns it on. Because she has lived her life in pleasant seclusion, she has never been subjected to the tide of misinformation and fearmongering that seems to be the news as the authorities shape it; therefore, she recognizes agitprop for what it is.

This Monday morning in May, as she prepares breakfast, she listens to Arthur Rubinstein’s recording, with the Guarneri Quartet, of the Brahms Quintet for Piano and Strings in F Minor, opus 34. As always, this music moves her, though not to tears as it did in her youth. She is now twenty-eight.

Somehow, the music evokes from the humble kitchen a grand sense of place. The morning light shimmering in polished pine cabinetry; the black-and-white two-inch ceramic tiles that checkerboard the countertops; the O’Keefe and Merritt six-burner three-oven stove from 1949; the Philco refrigerator of similar vintage: Everything speaks of dependability, of an age when proud manufacturers could not have conceived of a policy of planned obsolescence, when often the consumer was knowledgeable enough to repair most appliances. The kitchen is a timeless space in a world where time erodes all else.

Having learned much from her uncle, Vida has, since his death, replaced the compressor, condenser fan, and evaporator fan in the refrigerator, and has maintained all the systems on the property.

After eating breakfast and washing the dishes, she threads a supple leather holster onto her belt and inserts a can of bear spray in it. She has firearms but never carries them on her placer-mining expeditions.

Burdened with only a cooler that contains flexible cold packs and two bottles of water and a protein bar, she leaves by the front door and engages both deadbolts. The back door is likewise secured.

The metal casement windows feature pairs of twelve-inch panes with a sturdy center post. Even if the glass is broken out, neither pane is wide enough to admit anyone above the age of five.

There is a basement where she stores canned goods and freeze-dried food in vacuum drums. The lower realm has no window or exterior door; the only entrance is from inside the residence.

Behind and to the north of the house stands a smaller building of stone. It contains a backhoe, a riding lawn mower, a workbench, an extensive collection of tools, the generator, and racks of spare propane tanks.

Included is a stall for her midnight-blue 1950 Ford F-1 pickup. Thirty-two years ago, her uncle added rack-and-pinion steering and replaced the engine. The vehicle is a workhorse and a beauty.

The placer mine lies two miles from here, but no road leads to it. She walks there and back two or three times a month.

This is the first time she has left the house since the man in the forest has put her under surveillance. Whatever his intentions, he is unlikely to follow her, for to do so would be taking a greater risk of being exposed.

She enters the forest by a deer trail at the west end of the meadow and turns to look past the house, across the field to the forest in the east. The sun is behind him, so his binoculars don’t reveal his position, but she can almost feel him out there, perhaps much as an exorcist might feel the presence of a demon hiding bone-deep in the body of the possessed.

This is largely an evergreen wilderness, pines and firs, but it includes communities of deciduous trees that have begun to leaf out with the coming of spring. The undergrowth is mostly western sword ferns, snowy wood rush, maidenhair spleenwort, and ribbon grass.

A maze of deer trails winds through the rising foothills and ravines, offering novice hikers a false sense of direction while providing myriad paths to nowhere and a variety of deaths. Of the few nature lovers who venture into this primeval vastness, fewer still are unwise enough to do so without preparation and provisions.

Vida knows the terrain as well as she knows the rooms of her house. The beaten paths lie in sun-dappled shadow, but unique rock formations and a tree disfigured by a lightning strike, as well as other landmarks, allow her to proceed almost at a run, too fast for the unknown man to follow her even if he is of a mind to do so.