The Backwoods Read Online Free PDF Page B

torturing myself, she thought.
    Hours later familiar road signs began to pop up, signals that she wasn′t so much driving away from her exhausting lifestyle in Washington, but instead driving to something much more stressful. The far less traveled Route 10 seemed to throw the signs in her face as she raced past, towns with names like Benn’s Church, Rescue, and Chuckatuck. More and more of her frame of mind began to melt. Then a sign flashed by:
    DISMAL SWAMP—10 MILES.
    And more signs, with stranger names:
    LUNTVILLE—6 MILES.
    CRICK CITY—11 MILES.
    MOYOCK—30 MILES.
    Oh, God, Patricia thought.
    She was beginning to feel sick, and with the sickness came a resurfacing. She hadn’t thought of the psychologist in a long time, a keen, incisive bald man named Dr. Sallee. And she’d seen him only once, just after her return from her last trip to Agan’s Point five years ago, when her despair seemed insurmountable.
    “We bury traumas,” he’d told her. “In a variety of different ways, but the effect remains the same. Some people deal with their traumas by confronting them immediately, and then forgetting about them, while others deal best by forgetting about them first and then never confronting them because there’s no apparent need. That’s what you’re doing, Patricia, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no apparent need because you relocated yourself from the premises of the trauma.”
    The premises of the trauma. She thought over the odd choice of words. But he’d been right. I moved away as fast as I could. . . .
    “What happened to you will always be there,” he continued, fingering a paperweight shaped like a blue pill that read STELAZINE. “I’m a behavioralist psychologist; I’m not so liberal in my manner of interpreting human psychology. Other professionals would tell you that it’s unhealthy to leave your traumas because they remain in your psyche whether you know it or not. That’s not true with regard to how we must function in our lives, in our society, and in the world. If not living in Agan’s Point restores you to that kind of functionality, then you’ve done the right thing. Your trauma becomes neutered, ineffectual—it becomes a thing that can’t affect you anymore. It no longer has any bearing on your life, and never will . . . unless you let it. You don’t need a regimen of antidepressant drugs and costly psychotherapy to deal with your trauma; all you need is to be away from the area of the occurrence. Your life right now is validation. You’re a fabulously successful attorney enjoying a fulfilling career and a wonderful marriage. Am I right?”
    Patricia splayed her hands on the couch. “Yes.”
    “You aren’t traumatized by what happened to you when you were sixteen, are you? You aren’t a psychological basket case ; this event in your past hasn’t ruined you. You can’t tell me that this twenty-five-year-old tragedy still rears its head and exerts a negative force in your existence, can you? Can you tell me that?”
    Patricia almost laughed. What he was forcing her to admit to herself was now replacing a creeping despair with a frivolous joy. “No, Doctor, I can’t tell you that at all.”
    He looked at her with a blank expression. “So your problem is . . . ?”
    She conceded to him. “You’re right. I don’t have a problem anymore.”
    He raised a finger. “Proximity to the scene of the trauma is your only problem. Whenever you return to Agan’s Point, your despair recommences. When you’re away from Agan’s Point, your mind functions as though the trauma never occurred. We know I’m correct about this because every aspect of your life verifies it. Let me put it in the most sophisticated, clinical terminology I can, Patricia. Fuck Agan’s Point. Shit on Agan’s Point. To hell with Agan’s Point. How’s that?”
    Now Patricia was laughing outright.
    And he finished, “Your despair is activated only when you return to Agan’s Point, so my