Carine McCandless - The Wild Truth - The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild

There is a long pause, and it remains unspoken, yet obvious, that Marian is not prone to welcome visitors. Eventually she looks back at my hopeful face and relents. “Well, you’re gonna have to give me a minute to let my dog out before he pees all over the house.” She smiles and hoots, “He’s an ole boy, that Charlie!”

As we walk around the backyard, the wiry chocolate Labrador keeps his head low while he examines me through the tops of his eyes. Harmless growls emerge from his graying muzzle like the rumblings of an old man disturbed from his routine. While urinating about the yard, Charlie ensures that either I am securely entangled in his extensive leash or he is standing between the house and me. Marian ignores the gaps in the dilapidated fence, apologizing as she liberates my legs again and again. “Charlie could just jump right over that.”

While I struggle to maintain my balance, I scan the areas where Chris and I would seek our refuge. No evidence remains of the massive vegetable garden we picked beans in every summer. Aster and chrysanthemum no longer grace the fallen leaves. The beautifully landscaped beds that Mom had so carefully lined with large stones now appear as mouths agape with crooked teeth, coughing up snarled knots of condemned shrubs and weeds. The railroad ties that had been systematically placed to create steps between the multilevel beds are barely defining the slope of the yard.

Free for the moment from Marian’s canine guardian, I make my way to the higher level of the backyard. In the left corner is a generous slope where Chris and I imagined ourselves as archaeologists and where he refined his considerable storytelling skills as an adolescent.

Our neighborhood was developed among a complex grouping of small hills and valleys where minor rivers had meandered centuries earlier to service tobacco plantations. The houses on our street were built along a strand of dehydrated streambeds. Looking down the back rows of neighbors’ chain-link fences, I can still trace the forgotten path of running waters. And those waters left behind a great deal of storytelling material.

I tell Marian how Chris and I would haul up our wagon full of plastic shovels and buckets—and the occasional soup spoon swiped from the silverware drawer—to dig section by section, getting filthy, eager to discover relics of the past. We didn’t come across anything that would be of significance to anyone else. But to Chris, everything we unearthed was legendary. Some of our greatest finds became our secret collection. Between the effortless detection of widespread oyster shells, we were thrilled whenever the excavation revealed ceramic shards of glazed white china. Arms raised in victory, we would run down to the spigot and wash off the mud and dirt until we could see a pattern we had come to recognize: depictions of oriental houses in soft blue-violet hues. Then we would sift through the shoe box in which we stashed our trove, looking to match the remnants together like puzzle pieces.

Our proudest days were those when our score completed an entire plate. Then we would sit and relish our accomplishment, gazing back up at the dig site while Chris weaved intricate stories about how the pieces had come to rest there. He told of ancient Chinese armies—the soldiers coming under surprise attack while enjoying meals in their dining tents—defenseless against superior forces while their dinner plates shattered and fell beside them, only to be discovered years later by the fantastic archaeological duo Sir Flash and his little sister, Princess Woo Bear.

Our dig site now lay covered with scattered piles of yard debris. The pleasant scent of late-season honeysuckle drifts over from the yard next door, and I recall hopping the fence like scavengers to suck the nectar from its delicate summer blooms.

On the days when our instincts led us to flee to greater distances, Chris would take me running down Braeburn Drive to Rutherford Park, where active streams could still be found. We ventured along the creek beds, soaking our sneakers with failed attempts to jump across the clear, cold rush at wider and wider points, skipping rocks, singing Beatles songs, and reenacting scenes from our favorite television shows. Chris was brilliant at creating diversions, and nature was always his first choice of backdrop. And even if the chosen scene from Star Trek, Buck Rogers, or Battlestar Galactica didn’t call for heroics, in my mind he was always my protector.

A lush blanket of English ivy covers most of the remainder of the yard’s top level. The plant’s deep green leaves were once contained behind yet another stone boundary, established and maintained as a neat and tidy latrine for our Shetland sheepdog, whom we loved to play with for hours on end. If Chris was captain of our adventures, Buck—or as he was officially registered by Mom on his AKC papers, Lord Buckley of Naripa III—was his first lieutenant. A little soldier with a big attitude, Buck regularly defeated our mother’s efforts to grow a thick lawn by tearing up tufts of grass while nipping at our heels, his herding instincts driving him to run circles around Chris and me.

Ready now to swap stories, Marian explains that she bought the house from my parents two decades ago, as a new beginning for herself and her young sons after their home had burned down. I was unaware that it had been that many years since my parents had sold it, and that the house had not changed owners since. Marian didn’t give many details about the boys’ father, but from what she did allow, about her long work hours and single income having made it difficult to keep up with the house, I gathered that going it alone was a tough but necessary decision she had accepted without hesitation. She speaks endearingly about her sons still coming by for visits, helping with things around the house when they can, and the future projects they have planned. Her face lights up when the subject turns to travel. She tells me of her solo trips aboard her Harley on any given day when nice weather coincides with a rare day off work. When I respond with my own history of solo hikes in the Shenandoah and my Kawasaki EX500, she is gracious enough to not knock me for having owned a crotch rocket.

With a nudge and a yelp, Charlie informs Marian that he is done, and I am surprised when she invites me to follow them inside.

AS I STEP INTO MARIAN’S KITCHEN, the odor of spent nicotine overwhelms me before the storm door closes. Fighting my allergy to the smoke and my urge to retreat, I fail to cough discreetly.

“Oh! My goodness! Do you need some water?” Marian kindly offers.

I glance at the eruption of glass and stoneware that flows from the kitchen sink onto the countertop, clean but chaotic. “No—no, thank you. I’m fine.” I suppose the conditions outside the house should have prepared me for what might lie within. Still, I am humbled that Marian has invited me into her home. Her smile is comfortable and enticing, and even Charlie yips and spins in his excitement to begin the tour.

“Excuse the mess,” she apologizes as she leans against the table. “I’ve just been so incredibly busy!” The excessive piles of paper and mail have been carefully organized, leading me to believe that she has a specific identity for each stack. Ashtrays occupy every horizontal surface. Almost everything around me, aside from the clutter, appears just as it did when I stood here as a child: the layout, the cabinets, the counters and backsplash, even the appliances are the same.

“I remember making drop cookies on this stove with my friend Denise,” I reminisce.

Marian seems pleased as I travel back in time. I recall a photo of Buck and me sprawled on this floor, fast asleep, taken on the first day we brought him home. Nestled in my yellow sweatshirt, he was just a puppy. I was in pigtails.