Invasive Species

No one breathes. We watch the dark woods, waiting for movement.

Eight pairs of binoculars, trained on one warbler. A collective sigh escapes us as it darts off the branch and dives. The first Eastern Wood Pewee spotted in the last five years reemerges moments later, sparking another silent gulp of excitement from our group.

He settles on the bare branch of a dying birch and trills out for a mate. Anecdotally, we know he’s one of the last of his kind. He sits a moment. I press my binoculars to my face tighter, watching as he tilts his head, blinking one wise beady eye in our direction before taking off into the brush.

We all stand there for a while, pointing our lenses at the still scramble of trees and bushes. After a while, my fellow birdwatchers begin to shuffle around and pack up. I lower my binoculars, rubbing the circles imprinted around my eyes, and slip my glasses back onto my face. I swallow hard and stretch my jaw, trying to shake the hot sensation spreading across my sinuses. I focus on fitting my binoculars back in my bag to hide the pathetic downturn of my mouth. A heavy hand falls on my shoulder.

“I’ve been at this for fifty years. I’ve seen too many species get wiped off this planet. We bear witness. That’s our sad fate, Annie.” His hand squeezes through my layers of early spring outerwear. I rub my face before turning to meet Arnold’s concerned gaze.

I’ve only spoken to him once. We exchanged hellos and destinations as I left the Sax-Zim Welcome Center yesterday afternoon. At this moment, however, he feels like an old friend. His expression is bright with emotion. Tucked in deeply underneath unkempt salt and pepper eyebrows, his icy blue eyes are framed by the wrinkles of someone who’s spent the last sixty years squinting into the tree line. With concern, I notice that he’s not wearing gloves. His hands are chapped and dry in the damp, cold air. I pat his swollen knuckles before finally slipping my binoculars into their case.

The birders around us are already dispersing, checking their cameras to see if they captured good photos of the soon-to-be-extinct species. A prize for the ages.

I sigh and swallow hard. He waits, thumbs hooked around the straps of his worn backpack, expectant. I fold up my chair and pack my bag as a comfortable silence settles between us in the foggy, morning air. Straightening up, I smile at Arnold and sigh again. “Would you like to get some pie? It’s on me”, I ask.

“Pie. Yes, that always seems to help.”

Walking back to the road, I notice my little red car is the only one left on the gravel shoulder.

“Can I give you a ride to town?” I ask.

A gentle look of relief passes over Arnold’s face, his square shoulders relax, “I’d appreciate it. It’s a long walk to Victory Cafe.”

“Well, Annie, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been alone. I like it that way. The forest and I take care of one another.” Arnold is matter-of-fact as he scrapes the bright red of the raspberry rhubarb filling off his plate, smacking his lips. I’m tempted to order him another piece; he looks like a man who wouldn’t say no. “But you haven’t. You’re new to the Lone Wanderer game.”

My eyes roll of their own accord. I sip my coffee, wondering how much to reveal to my new, old friend. Staring at his frayed cuffs and dirty nails, I decide on honesty.

“It’s that obvious? You can probably smell it on me.” I stare out the window, fiddling with the watch at my wrist, a watch newly inherited. ”Everyone can probably smell it on me. I’m brand new to most things. I’ve been taking care of my grandpa since high school. We were close; he raised me. I didn’t have much help after Grandpa’s stroke. I’ve been completely dedicated to him these last two decades, and now that he’s gone, I’m taking some time to see what there is to see.”

“And what there is to see is birds?” Arnold smiles as he says this, using his fingertip to trap crumbs on the plate and transport them to his whiskery mouth. He raises his coffee cup, making eye contact with the waitress across the room. Still hungry, I note.

“Well, I watched the same cardinals, goldfinches, and wrens land on our little birdfeeder for the last twenty years. Grandpa and I discussed them all at length until the very end. And sure, they’re beautiful birds, but I needed to see what else was out here.”

Arnold nods, settling into the booth with one hand holding up his windburned cheek and his right ankle resting on his left knee. He says nothing; his red-rimmed eyes hold mine, waiting for me to continue. My hands stray from my watch to my glass of water, gliding it along the wet outline of condensation on the table. His intense gaze makes me nervous. I’m not used to talking to anyone but Grandpa and his care team. Still, I force myself to keep talking, to open up, to make grandpa proud. Make new connections. 

“So far, I’ve been lucky. This is my first trip up here, and I’ve already seen a Short-Eared Owl and a Pine Grosbeak. They’re just gorgeous, by the way. I’d still love to see a yellow rail, they seem so gentle, and you know, we don’t know how much longer they’ll be around.”

“The red hue on Pine Grosbeaks is really something before the leaves come in. Now that your Gramps is gone, are you all on your own?”

“In all the ways that matter. My mom is kind of a loose cannon. We’re not very close. She refused to see Grandpa after he took to his bed. Five years of her raving about her fear of death and never lending a hand. Of course, her fear of death didn’t stop her from raiding the house for valuables before he was cold. She’s, well…”

“A bitch?” Arnold offers, his eyes clear of malintent.

I want to be offended, but something inside my chest loosens at the suggestion. Something between a laugh and a sob escapes my throat. I take a moment to clear the emotion out of my voice, rubbing my eyes with both hands. When I look up, a smile has taken over my face.

“Not a word I’ve ever called her, but, honestly, it does sum her up. She heard me talk about this birding trip at my grandpa’s wake, and she swore I’d be a dusty cat lady for the rest of my life.”

Arnold raises his eyebrows, his eyes flaring with a bright, angry light. His hands clench around the cloth napkin on the table, wringing it for all it’s worth. I swallow hard, watching them tighten around the soft, white fabric.

“Yeah, she didn’t know what she was saying.”

He shakes his head, pushing away his plate, which is now sparkling clean, “A cat lady,” he grumbles.

“We don’t talk much.” I motion to the waitress once more. “Can I get another piece?” No use in asking Arnold and risking his refusal. Who knows when he’ll eat next? Surely, whatever he eats, it’s going to be eaten cold, in the woods, and only as an afterthought.

Arnold smiles in thanks, relief crossing over his face, “Do you ever think about the invasive species we’ve brought to this land? All of them, eating up this world. Most of them benefit us or at least did benefit us at one point.”

“Cats,” I reply.

“Cats,” Arnold says. “Cats and hogs and worms, all feasting away at the natural world. Let’s not even talk about mankind. The second homes, the tiny houses, and the campers with their plastic waterproof gear leaching chemicals into the groundwater. All of them, with clear eyes and good intentions. They creep. They get closer and closer, trying to get a fresh bite. The circle tightens and our natural world shrinks.” Arnold’s eyes darken as he stares out the window at the busy highway in front of the restaurant. He finally releases the napkin. It drops like a murder victim, the twists in the linen still crumbled in the center. 

In silence, I sip my water as the waitress brings another plate of cherry pie. Arnold continues to stare out, rotating a wooden ring around his finger. It’s the only ornament he wears, and I wonder if he whittled it himself. It’s dark with age and etched in inky abstract symbols. After a minute, he breaks his spell. Knocking his knuckles against the table, he continues as if he never stopped talking,

“The fact is, we’re all part of the problem. Even us bird people with our khaki hats and bumper stickers. What the wild world needs is an invasive species. A species that’s ready to fight back, fend off the people, edge closer to civilization, and give the birds some god damned space.”

Looking down, he takes in the plate of cherry pie, seeping red onto the shining white plate in a pool of sticky sauce. His bushy eyebrows raise in surprise and delight, and he pulls it to himself, tucking in without a word.

“You talking bioweapons? You haven’t been sending off strange packages from that cabin of yours, have you? Working on any manifestos lately?”

Arnold doesn’t seem to hear. He eats the pie methodically. When he finishes, he looks up. His expression is grim. He pushes the plate to the side. The color has leached out of his cheeks. For a moment, I think he might be sick.

“Did you hear about the yellow rail nesting spot I found?”

When we meet the next morning, it’s still dark. The white gravel road under my feet gives off a pre-dawn luminescent glow, purple and bright in the deep blues of the dense swampland growth. Though my wool socks are pulled up high and my puffy is zipped to my chin, I can’t help but shiver in the icy spring air. Luckily, Arnold is right on time, strolling up the road only moments after I get out of the car. I don’t even have a chance to get a sip of hotel coffee from my thermos.

He passes me with a brisk, “Good morning,” before he heads out onto the trail. As he passes, I glimpse his eyes in the dusky light. They’re dark and drawn. The sweet, tangy smell of a cheap whisky hangover wafts from him as he passes me. He hobbles but quickly disappears into the darkness.

“Arnold! Hey, wait!” I shout. There’s no answer. I’m left on the road, scrambling to slip on my headlamp and stuff my thermos into my backpack before following the faint outline of Arnold down the narrow path, into the shadowy woods.

I struggle to catch up with him as the path narrows from a low-maintenance road to a rocky whisper of a trail. Downed logs and thorny bushes slow my cadence, but Arnold’s history with the place is evident in his confident stride on the twilit trail.

After an hour of bobbing ten feet behind him and struggling to gain an inch, his hunched frame disappears behind a bend, and my stomach turns. When I turn the bend and he’s not on the trail, I want to cry out for him, but a shout in this silent, untouched portion of woods could scare away the very birds I came here to see. I lower my head and focus on the trail, looking for the turn he must have taken.

Five long minutes go by, and I haven’t spotted Arnold since the bend in the trail. I’m paused, scanning the underbrush, wondering if I missed the place where Arnold turned when I hear a rustling from behind me. I turn, expecting to see Arnold, but all I see are tangled bare trees, cast in the gild of morning light.

I take my binoculars out of their case and remove the lens coverings without taking my eyes off the branches ahead of me. Something heavy is moving among a thick grove of birch. When I focus my binoculars on the grove, I follow the puzzle of branches until I find what I thought I saw.

A Boreal owl, its flat face focused in my direction. My heart skips. The wind blows the branches, but the owl’s head is still and stable, its eyes never leaving my gaze until a branch cracks in the trees behind me. In a silent burst of feathers and muscle, the owl takes off from the brittle branches of the tamarack tree, toward the sound. I follow its flight until it slips into the dense brush on the other side of the trail.

I lower my binoculars to the underbrush, seeking the owl’s next perch. Instead, between the thin branches of the boggy trees, I see a shadow, tall and slender. It slips through the forest in a lunging motion. As it enters a weak patch of morning sun, the shadow comes into focus rather than vanishing. Cold picks its way up my spine, freezing my belly in a tight grip. The shadow has copper-black skin, stiffly stretched over the creature’s bones that move underneath the surface as she passes through the trees.

The skin on her face is smooth yet finely wrinkled, like a scrap of paper, folded and crumpled in someone’s coat pocket until soft and malleable. Her leathery face is pulled tight around her skull. Her black hair hangs in clumps around her bony shoulders.

When she looks at me, her eyes are closed. Still, I can feel her see me. Her gaze is a cold, electric shot of judgment, a sizing up. It’s too much. I lose grip on my binoculars and stumble back into the branches of a tamarack tree. The branches slide around me in a sharp, snagging embrace. I wrench myself free, scrambling away over the path and into the woods on the other side.

Blood rushes in my ears. I’m deaf and blind, stumbling as if I’m in a nightmare that I’ve had a million times before. My legs are leaden and I want nothing more than to run, run, run. Instead, I crouch in a bush. The dim forest is a blur. The world is eerily silent. A scream pushes through my dry throat when I feel a heavy hand grip my shoulder. I swallow hard as I turn.

“Did you see her?” Arnold asks in a husky voice. I catch my breath and rub my face with my hands, trying to wipe the raw panic from my mind. It takes me a moment to register his question. I freeze, settling my glasses back on the bridge of my nose.

“She was real?” The rushing in my head hasn’t ebbed. I feel denial flowing in to protect my sanity even as Arnold nods. A warming morning light falls on the deep wrinkles around his eye. He furrows his brow. He seems decades older than he was when he cleaned his plate in the diner only a day ago.

I shake my head, no, but utter a shaky affirmative as I try to breathe. Then my brain clears for a moment. If what I saw was real, that thing is still out there, skulking through the woods. It could come back.

“We gotta get the hell out of here, Arnold.” I’m on my feet and ready to run before the sentence is out of my mouth. Arnold doesn’t make a move. He stands there, staring at me, no fear gracing his gaze, only a deep, unrelenting sadness.

“She’s there for a reason, Annie. We’re here for a reason. I brought her here decades ago after the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was declared extinct. My grandfather raised me, too, you see. He came to America as a baby and carried some of the magic of the old country. It’s not something they talk about, the power from the bogs. They’re digging the sacrifices up now; they have been since I was a boy. But they never seem to question why the bodies were put there, in those wild, man-forsaken places.”

“We’re here to see the Yellow Rail nest,” I whisper, but I know that’s not true. My vision clears, as does the pounding in my ears.  The silence in the forest has dispersed, and all around me the trees rustle and the birds call to one another. I take a deep breath and wonder absently, as if I’m spectating from a camera far above, why I’m not asking any questions.

“Come on.” Arnold’s tone isn’t demanding. It comes out in a tired sigh. But the sentence is an order, all the same. He turns into the forest. I stand on the worn gravel of the path, my legs sturdy and sure. A sober message scrolls through my mind: Now is your time. Turn back. Retreat to your car. Turn on a podcast. Forget this whole thing happened. Instead, I follow Arnold’s slow march into the undergrowth.

The clearing is bright with the weak yellow light of an April morning. I see the pit in the boggy soil immediately. It’s a deep, rich scar of black mud amid emerald mountains of moss. Tears roll down my cheeks, and I kneel in the thick flora of the forest floor.

Once again, Arnold’s hand squeezes my shoulder, “I’ve been trying to protect this land for over fifty years. Calling power from the bog. A life to protect all life. I’ve had to be careful, only culling a sacrifice when the last missing woman case has been forgotten. I hate that. It only works with women. Something about their maternal instinct, I guess. I tried a man once, but he didn’t even rise, much less exhibit any sense of protection.”

Arnold squats next to me, his backpack between his grass-stained knees. He slips long leather straps out of the bag. They’re etched with the same stick-like symbols on his ring. He wraps them around his forearm, looping around his hand and elbow, the tidy loops of a veteran camper. He stares at the pit as he continues.

“In all my years of sacrificing the unsuspecting, none of the risen have been powerful enough to fight the tightening circle of civilization. People blame the happenings on ordinary, worldly happenings. My life is almost through, and I cannot go without finishing what I started. You’re the last chance this plan has to work. You’ll be my volunteer.”

He pauses at his work. I can see him look at me from the corner of my eye, “If you go willingly, with intention, the sacrifice to the peat will work the way the gods intended it to work. Your spirit and body will harbor the spirit that my grandfather transported from the deep forests of the old country.”

I picture the woman in the woods, her naked body curled and dried, weaving its way through the forest. Her purpose was unmistakable the moment I saw her. She was there to remove anyone who ought not to be there. I stare at the hole in the ground, filling slowly with black water. I slide my fingers around the leather of my binocular straps, seeking reality.

As I kneel, I quiver with what I assume is fear. The creature’s strange face enters my mind, her closed eyes penetrating my gaze from across the crowded forest. And I realize that my body is filled to the brim with longing. A longing to meet with a fate deeper than the mundane life waiting for me back home. An unknown power lurks so close. I could have the power to change the unchangeable, to flip the tide.

My hands loosen their grip on the straps and fall to the ground. I let my fingers dig deeply into the thick moss. Arnold is still staring at me. He makes no move to come closer.

“You’ve come this far. You’re the one. You can be the miracle this ecosystem needs. People will call you a curse, but this will be the last place on earth they’ll want to drain for resorts, campgrounds, and cabins. You can loosen the circle. You just… You have to go willingly.”

The text scrolls in my mind again, weaker now, still urging me to turn, to run away from this feeble old man and report his crazy notions on the birding boards. I should call the police.

Instead, I get to my feet and step forward to the lip of the grave. I see my face, blackened by the murky water. Arnold’s face appears beside mine, a dark, indistinguishable shadow over my shoulder. I nod. A moment later, I feel Arnold slip a soft leather strap over my head and around my neck.

The water that enters my lungs is alive. My body struggles against the straps that hold me down, but my mind is already full of the forest. It fills, expanding like a breathing lung.

Tangled branches, the living moss, the creatures, teeming through the water, the mud, and the trees, they fold themselves into my mind as the last of my breath escapes in murky bubbles. I belong to them and they belong to me.