I steer the truck down the narrow two-lane road that slices through Louisiana’s only national forest. A forest established in part by a schoolteacher named Caroline Dormon. We studied her in our Poison Wood history class. She was an advocate for Native American communities and led the effort to save the Kisatchie forest from the lumber companies. After many years, she succeeded. After living in it for four years, there’s a selfish part of me that wishes she hadn’t.
I drive deeper into the forest and finally pass through Piedmont, narrowly missing getting stuck behind a small-town Mardi Gras parade that includes everything from tractors to Santa and Mrs. Claus to Confederate flags.
The flags always give me pause. Prejudice, like grandma’s bone china, can be passed on to the next generation in the South. My only hope is that it is just as fragile and the next generation will break it.
As I creep through the thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone, I watch the camo-wearing men waiting to start their parade, studying me as if I’m an outsider. Thing is, even though I was born not far from here, I feellike an outsider. So much so, I press down on the gas pedal. The faster I get there, the faster I can leave.
When the electrical poles on either side of me disappear, I roll my neck. I’m close. My heart rate is steadily increasing. It’s been almost sixteen years since I’ve been in these woods.
A sign welcomes me to the Kisatchie National Forest, and a few miles past that, I slow down as I approach the driveway to the school. I turn the truck onto it and force myself to breathe.
The driveway is over a half a mile long. Deadfall and thickets spread out on both sides of it. Most of the trees except for the pines are bare, their trunks like tall skeletons. Several pines are missing their tops, as if a giant bent down and twisted them off. It must have taken one hell of a storm to do that. Makes me wonder what condition the school will be in. And it doesn’t take long for me to find out.
I stop the truck as the driveway spills out of the woods into a large open meadow, and I squeeze the steering wheel to control my shaking hands.
A monstrous U-shaped redbrick building covered in mold and dead ivy sits in the middle of the clearing. From the front it’s hard to tell it’s U-shaped, but I know it is. Two long two-story wings extend from each side toward the back, with a courtyard in the middle, the bottom floor classrooms, the top dorms for the wayward girls who once roamed the halls. The dark windows are either boarded up or shattered. The roof rotten and caving in.
My heart pounds so hard I believe it’s actually moving my shirt. My breath catches in my throat and not from the cold. It’s been a long time since I saw this school, set foot on its hallowed grounds. Haunted grounds, a voice in my head corrects.
I release a long, slow breath and ease the truck onto the circular drive. I put it in park and kill the engine. Then I climb out.
A fierce wind blows as the brick building looms over me. I reach back into the truck for my tote. Inside sits my red scarf. I wrap it around my neck, and the shock of red against the dull browns of theforest jolts me. It shoots a memory through my mind of another flash of red in these woods. One that chills me from the inside out. And my mind tiptoes back to a cold, dark night in November years ago when I watched a girl run off into those woods and never return.
I sling my tote over my shoulder, the other item inside it more important than a scarf. A police-grade Taser. I also pull my phone out and check the signal. One bar. Better than none.
I study the front door as I walk toward it. It’s completely boarded up. The front entrance looks like something you see at a Halloween haunted exhibit. Halloween. The memory that assaults me is so visceral I grab my stomach. Images of the graveyard, of the large oak limbs, of the spired iron fence.
I shove the memory away and head for the dirt path on the west side of the building.
The wing on this side is in as bad shape as the front. The windows on both floors are covered in plywood. The brick facade covered in graffiti. On the back side, I round the corner into the courtyard. The fountain in the middle is a crumbling shell of what I remember. Weeds have woven themselves over the stone path leading up to the main building. A patch of dirt on the left catches my eye. A dilapidated wooden picnic table sits there now, but years ago there was lush green grass with three bright beach towels on it. The cold breeze kicks up and brings with it the sounds of the past. Three girls, laughing as they tanned themselves under the scorching Louisiana sun. One girl, Heather, off by herself, watching us.
Katrina jumped up from her towel, holding her tiny string bikini top with one hand since she’d untied it in order to avoid tan lines. “Y’all, oh my God. Did I tell you about the St. Matthew’s boys?”
Summer and I looked up at her from our towels. It always seemed like we were looking up at her.
“No,” I said. “What about them?”
Katrina retied her top and held her long arms out wide and twirled in a circle. “I’m in love with all of them.” She stopped, her hair falling from its messy bun into her face. “And they are all in love with me.”
Summer said, “We’re not supposed to see the St. Matthew’s boys except at sanctioned school dances.”
“You are such a Goody Two-shoes, Summer,” Katrina said.
I laughed.
“No, I’m not,” Summer said. She stood and grabbed her towel and looked down at me. “I knew you liked her more than me.” Then she looked between us. “You two are always talking about me.”
“We’re not even talking about you now,” Katrina said with a laugh. “We’re talking about me.”
Summer stormed off. Katrina threw her head back and laughed. And I lay down on my towel and closed my eyes and wondered how the hell I was going to spend four years at a place full of girls.
But I had survived four years here, then escaped to Tulane. College saved me. It gave me a way to avoid the constant questions asked about Heather. A way to block it out and move on. News of Heather’s disappearance and the arrest of Johnny Adair was all anyone could talk about in this part of the state, but in New Orleans that story had competition. In my current career I know all too well another tragedy is always waiting to happen, waiting to upstage the latest one. Trauma doesn’t take a day off, and it always loves to outdo itself.
I creep up to the black maw that was once a locked back door. I swallow. This is a first. Of all the times I snuck out of this door, now I’m sneaking in.
I could turn around now and drive away from this rotten box of memories. But my father’s words the day I told him I’d landed my first job at a local Texas news station come back to me. “That’s great,” he said. “But did you come this far to only come this far? Remember you’re not done; you’re just getting started.”
I’m just getting started here too.
