My days were spent doing the things I needed to do to keep my life on its even keel. I would scratch at the dirt, planting my vegetables, hoeing the weeds from the rows, and hauling buckets of water from the stream to wet the buried roots of my intended harvest. If a rabbit nibbled at the emerging greens, I might stand and shoo it away carelessly, but I always planted plenty, and there was enough for all of us. I fashioned a yoke from leather straps and would use it to haul storm-downed trees from the near edge of the woods. I would drag them to the saw pit I had dug and would hack and saw, my winter’s pile growing nicely to sustain me in the long months ahead. And my company in all this? My faithful hound, always lying at my feet as I swung in my swing and played my guitar, or trotting at my side as I walked the dirt lane or standing guard at my flank as I struggled with the wood that would sustain us. From all of this, Bo’s company and my labors, I drew a calm. Life had been this way so long, it seemed to be life itself. I thought little of how it might otherwise be, contented with the routine of my rigors. Or so it seemed to me.
The day came when I was fastening a board gone loose on my coop, when just as I stood from a crouch I saw her. As silently as the deer, she had slipped from the edge of the woods, far from my cabin, and she bent occasionally and plucked from the ground a choice flower or sprig of green. I stood and watched her. She had to have known the cabin was there but she never looked my way nor offered a greeting from her distance. I went back to my labors, but stopped and watched occasionally as she moved along the edge of the broken fields, intent on her task. I stood to wash at the basin on my porch, dried my hands, and when I turned, she was still there. Not near, but closer than she had been before. I thought to speak to her and walked down the wooden steps to the ground. My foot had only hit the dirt when she stood abruptly, staring at me. I stopped and called out a halloo, raising my hand in a wave. She turned and like the deer, noiselessly but intent on her escape, was gone, among the shadows of the forest and away. I stared at the place she had last been, imagining that I detected some small movement, but my eyes deceived me. She was gone.
Many days passed and the sun disappeared behind the ridge a little earlier each day. My provisions were laid well, and I didn’t fear the advancing chill. I thought less of her with each day and finally not at all, and just when that day of no thought of her arrived, she returned. This time it wasn’t flowers that she plucked but the wild berries that had ripened in the glade beyond the brook. She had a broad blanket laid on the ground and a small bucket and as the bucket was filled, she would stoop at the blanket and add her prize to the growing mound. My mind was to leave her to her solitary task, but as I sat on my porch and watched her work in the distance, I decided of a sudden to inquire of her, my curiosity aroused. I rose and walked the path that circled my cabin, heading towards the ford where I customarily went to fill my buckets. At first she failed to see me, so intent was she on her juicy harvest, but as I approached she stood, stared to where her blanket lay and calculating my distance from her, knew that I would be upon her before she could gather her crop. And so she stood, mute and alert, dismayed and cautious. To respect her situation, I stopped a distance from her, close enough to speak, but far enough to grant her relief from my presence. I lifted my hand in a gesture of friendliness and spoke. “Hello”, I said, “I am Carl”.
She neither smiled nor frowned, only stared at the ground between us, and finally let her hand flutter vaguely in a distracted acknowledgment of my presence. I was between her and her tote blanket, her bucket was but half full. Yet she walked past me looking down, not speaking. She edged into the brambles to keep distance between us, gathered her blanket and was gone. I realized then that I had ruined her harvest, kept her from the bounty she had intended, and I regretted immediately that I had ventured towards her. But as I turned to retrace the steps to my cabin, I saw that she had stopped on her way to the woods. She was standing beyond a row gone wild, watching me. When our eyes met she paused, staring at me without rancor or fear. Then she turned and disappeared into the woods from which she had come. Bo moved as to follow her, but I called my friend back with just his name. The dog looked to me, then to the woods, unsure. We walked to the cabin.
Only one more time before winter did I see her. On this occasion she was not moving at all, only sitting with her knees drawn to her on a hummock near the forest, watching my cabin. This time I did not approach her at all.
During the cold months that saw my larder decline but hold, I twice saw her form in the leafless woods that surrounded my rustic home. The first time she was walking along the path that skirted my property, stopping occasionally to briefly inspect distractions on the ground or in the surrounding thickets. Her attention was unfocused, paying no particular heed to things distant or near, unhurried and casual. The second sighting was during the still-cold but lengthening days that foretold of the approaching spring. My woodpile was sufficient, but to vary my routine I sometimes sawed and split timber that had been felled by the occasionally violent winter storms. During one of those expeditions, as I penetrated the woods with saw in hand and ax over my shoulder and with Bo gliding near me, I again saw her walking. On this occasion, I observed her only little, her form hidden often by the trees and brambles that stood between us.
It was that day that I named the woman who visited me but declined to speak. The choice I made for her name was not deliberate or made with any particular thought. I simply began to think of her as Amy.
