Grimly aware of either outcome, she muttered, ‘Maybe then I’ll get some rest.’
There had at least been some luck in that the accident gave her access to Adam, but, perturbed already by one member of her household, he had little patience for her complaint. Yes, the hole in the dome was a serious matter, but if the invading ray illuminated a spot no larger than the span of one hand, and if the only household threatened were her own, then the problem would have to wait for the morrow. Patching any hole in the cover was a laborious affair requiring the coordinated efforts of several men already purposed for the day. Berenice would have argued more vociferously if not for the condition of her son. She was happy to let him suffer for a few minutes longer, but her responsibility to treat him with alacrity was unavoidable. Thus, distracted by Hosea’s predicament, she was handicapped arguing for her own safety. She was told to draw her shutters and that was the end of it as far as Adam was concerned.
‘And that damn Philip laughing the whole time like it was as funny as can be,’ she groused.
It didn’t take long to rummage through the box; Berenice had few keepsakes that were not woven or stitched cloth. In one corner, beneath an embroidered apron, was the cool, jagged clump. Every time she inspected it—rare as those times might have been—Berenice always found the crystal lighter than she remembered. She held it in front of her, fingers resting between triangular spikes of deep red.
‘It’s called cinnabar,’ the man had told her. She looked at her father and saw him smiling encouragingly, nodding. She extended both small hands and the man set the rock gently in the cup. She was afraid it would be sharp, and it was sharp, but not cutting sharp or hurting sharp, it was simply, wonderfully, naturally precise.
She turned the crystal over, switching hands from right to left. She still thought, as she had that day, that it looked like nothing so much as jellied candy that had stuck together and set. The man said it was something else, though. He leaned close and, with a wink, said quietly, ‘It’s the Red Devil’s heart.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s where it comes from. Do you believe me?’
She nodded as the man straightened and called back to her father, ‘The heart of the earth!’
She sometimes wondered if that man ever came back—or had he ever come to the village before? Did her father buy her the crystal, or was it offered freely—something not meant to be on the truck at all, or something the man might have picked up for one of his own children? She never had the chance to ask her father when the answer might have mattered. Would he even have remembered the singular kindness of a stranger one summer day? Did the man remember? She remembered, always remembered exactly, even if she didn’t think of it that often.
It was her only trifle and therefore her most prized possession. She took it into the kitchen and set it on a baking stone and smashed it with a hammer. Much of it remained intact. There were several splinters and rails of dust, and a few narrow shards and larger fragments. One of these was a shoot tapered neatly at the end and broken roughly at the base. This piece she tied up with a thin leather cord. She painted the cord with heated beeswax around the crystal and atop it, where a knot met the long loop, letting the leather cool between three subsequent applications.
She held the crystal in front of her and watched it spin. She ruminated, ‘If it’s good for killing, maybe it’s good for curing or keeping them away.’
Hosea sat crossways on his bed with his back leaning against the wall. His head slumped forward.
‘Boy, don’t you dare fall asleep!’
Hosea started and smacked his head against the wall. He rubbed it with his hand and remembered to smile at his mother. His puffy face glistened with honey.
‘God save us, you look like a bun cooling on the counter.’ She stuck her hand in front of him. ‘Take this and put it on.’
Hosea was genuinely surprised. He didn’t know what to make of the offering. He held the cord and held the crystal in front of his face, just as his mother had moments before.
‘It’s cinnabar. It’s a kind of crystal. It might protect you.’
Hosea looked quizzically at his mother. If he believed the lore, he might have understood right away, but he did neither. ‘Protect me from what?’
Berenice wanted to say, ‘From yourself,’ but instead instructed, ‘Put it on.’
Hosea was still confused, but above all else he wanted to avoid being contradictory, so he obliged. Despite himself, looking at the crystal dangling over his shirt, he couldn’t help but ask, ‘A necklace, Mama? Won’t people laugh?’
His mother again avoided her first instinct (‘They do already’), and told him, ‘Wear it beneath your shirt if you want. But wear it always. Can you promise me that?’
Hosea realised the pain from the stings was shepherding his body to rest, dulling his mind. He remembered at last the argument earlier about the shaft of light coming through the cover. Realising the point of the crystal was to protect him from a threat that he didn’t believe existed, Hosea’s suspicions fell away and he readily complied. ‘Of course, Mama. I promise.’
‘Good. Now get out of here. We need to keep you on your feet so you don’t fall asleep.’
‘What shall I do, Mama?’
Berenice sighed. Though it was embarrassing to have her unoccupied son wander around the town, there was no work he would be useful for that day. ‘It doesn’t matter. Go down to the river.’
‘What if I get tired?’ Hosea, despite his lack of faith, was at least uneasy—he could not dismiss the hobgoblins of his upbringing altogether, especially as he felt compromised by his injuries.
‘Stick your head in,’ his mother advised.
Hosea went to the river. He considered walking downstream, away from town, in the direction of the woods he and Hannah had braved the prior evening, but felt disinterested in the venture. With a desultory shrug he sat down on the bank. He couldn’t say why he felt low. He thought the weight of the charade might be dragging on him. He touched his lip gingerly and mused that it certainly was not without its sacrifices. He pulled the crystal out from under his shirt and studied it. The gift was truly unexpected, whatever the motivation. The stone was attractive; Hosea had never seen its like—red like the first blood from a shallow cut. How long had his mother kept it hidden away? It seemed like a thing not obtained for him, but rather something she had that she gave to him—why now? That it was a token of her concern, Hosea did not doubt. She was his mother and she meant to protect him.
He frowned. ‘Well, why shouldn’t she love me?’
Why did he feel guilty for what nature demanded? Hosea fidgeted and scratched at his collar and his back. Why did she have to oblige those instincts now when he was so close to leaving? Her sudden concern felt like restraint and Hosea resented it. He balked at the implication that complimentary devotion should be expected of him. He twisted his hands around his wrists as though rubbing skin that bondage made raw. The thin leather chord around his neck chafed like a noose. He took it off and laid it beside him in the grass. He leaned back on his elbows and felt an immense sense of relief. He relaxed his neck and squinted at the clear sky. The sun tingled on his honeyed skin.
He smiled. ‘Bun’s still baking.’
After a time he began to feel himself drifting towards sleep so he jumped up and clapped his hands together. He took off his boots and rolled the cuffs of his pants up to his knees. He chuckled and shrugged. ‘Well, Mama told me to.’ He walked into the river. He hooted appreciatively at the revitalising cold of the water. Cold was never bad for Hosea, it was merely something that had an acceptable limit which, when met, signalled the desirability of going inside and warming oneself. He had noted his limit grew each winter with his body.
The river flowed by the town down a series of short, broad steps; the shelves between each gentle tumbling angled down only slightly, and there were always flat stones for easy footing. This feature made it especially easy to see the contents washing lazily downstream in the clear water. T
he reasons for his forebears to settle in the valley were ever generously displayed. Here was the kinship they sought, nature’s matching truth revealing God’s will—were they not specs of gold themselves, good Christians, given over to God to take them through the wilderness and away to a place of pious seclusion? When they discovered they were haunted and beset upon by otherworldly beings it could only strengthen their conviction that this place was destined to be their home, never to be forsaken to their adversaries.
Hosea thought his allegiance to his birthright should tug at him more assiduously; that it didn’t indicated to Hosea his departure was inevitable. He knew that this was a special place—not just the cradle of his youth that would always be special to him, but a special place. Still it was not enough. In his heart, he was already outside, and this was his sovereign concern. Hosea felt no worry; the river showed nature’s matching truth for him: water clear as his intent, flowing forward in accord with its predetermined course.
He saw the glint of gold in the water and bent to investigate. He thought he had enough, but if there was a grain or flake he could offer to his mother that she, in turn, could contribute to the well-being of the town, then he felt he could repay the kindness she showed in giving him the crystal, as well as assuage any lingering sense of guilt on his part. Hosea easily retrieved a small pebble from the riverbed. He was gladdened to see three flecks of gold set in the rock. He thought it a perfect tribute to offer his mother. As he pocketed the pebble, he noticed another stone shimmering up through the water. It was darker than gold but elegantly attractive nonetheless. Hosea couldn’t make it out exactly. He widened his stance and plunged his arms to the bottom; his torso hovered parallel to the surface. He still couldn’t identify the source of the shimmer. He thought of his mother’s recommendation and smiled as he dunked his head into the water.
Hosea almost blew out his breath in surprise. The riverbed was not the rich earth, dull slate and pumiced stone he’d known his whole life. Instead he saw a treasure of glimmering gold nuggets and cinnabar shards sifting in alteration as the stones pushed up, out from the dirt, rinsed clean and glittering with effervescent lustre. The wealth on display was incalculable, but Hosea felt no call to seize the fortune—it was beautiful, that was enough; he could not take his eyes away. Soon the cold water stung his eyes and his lungs began to tighten. Then he noticed a shape at the border of his vision and cocked his head to look. Still underwater, he saw the figure of a man standing on the opposite shore. Details of the rippling image were hard to make out, but Hosea could tell the man was taller than any he’d ever before seen. The skin of his naked chest was deeper than bronze. He held a staff beside him tall as his shoulder. Hosea held straggling bubbles in his aching cheeks as best he could. His breath was gone and he was becoming increasingly dizzy, but he felt unaccountably certain that if he lifted his head from the water he’d never again see the man on the bank or the treasure below him. He heard the man calling to him in a high, muffled voice. With a voice like a woman’s, it was calling his name. His body shook.
Hannah kneeled next to him on the bank, shaking his shoulders and calling his name desperately. He looked at her. She seemed blurry. Hosea realised there were tears in his eyes. He propped himself on his elbows and Hannah hugged his neck.
‘It’s all right,’ he said with strained nonchalance, ‘I wasn’t asleep.’
‘You were!’ Hannah sniffed. ‘I was trying to get you to come back!’
‘I’m here!’ he said sharply. He was embarrassed at having been caught napping and annoyed at her terror.
It was a tone he’d never before used with her. She drew back and looked at his face. He forgot to smile. She saw something in him then, and though she didn’t know if it was a depth she did not expect or a flaw she hoped never to see, she knew something in that moment was scaring her and hurting her and filling her with intoxicating wonder. She kissed him. Part of his lip was still swollen, tough and rounded; though it no longer hurt, it stole half the feeling of the kiss from Hosea. He felt clumsy and deformed and he resented the stunt that left him that way. And he felt grateful to her, because she was perfect and she smelled of vanilla. She leaned her forehead against his and bashfully disengaged. She licked her lips to secure the taste before it faded. She looked in his eyes and love turned to alarm.
She drew back. ‘Your eyes!’
‘What? What’s the matter?’
‘They are . . . different!’
‘What do you mean?’
She didn’t want to say exactly what she saw. ‘They are . . . cloudy. Like . . . like milk.’
He sat up and turned away from her. ‘They have always looked that way. You know that. You act like this is the first time you’ve seen my eyes.’
‘Is it?’ she wondered. She’d never been so close to him—in every sense. Was she seeing his eyes with new eyes of her own?
Hosea thought her question somehow meant she doubted him, and became angry. He stood.
‘And do you think my head is in a fog, too? Is that it? I’ll tell you whose head is foggy—yours! You and everyone else in this town who thinks that to dream in the day is to invite destruction. It’s nonsense!’
‘Oh!’ Hannah was wounded by the unexpected attack and frightened by the blasphemy. She clasped her hands together over her quivering chin.
Hosea saw what he’d done and relented. He knelt beside her and cupped her small, folded hands in between his. She looked up at him, searching his eyes, beguiled by them.
‘Don’t you see?’ he breathed, ‘They’ve covered us, too. They’re smothering us. We’re bound by this town. We need to cut free. We need to get away!’
Tears rolled down Hannah’s cheeks. The suggestion had never occurred to her and to consider it now, even now when she wanted to cut her heart from her breast and give it to her lover, was impossible. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t recognise the boy in front of her. His face was marred by welts, his eyes bleary but intense, his smile was gone. She had come looking for him because her father had said he was unfit for her, that the incident with the bees was the last straw and that he could never allow his daughter to marry such a fool. Her heart did not break but strengthened instead, and she rebelled against her father for the first time. But now the boy she chose had changed in the space of a short nap on a sunny day. Her Hosea would never ask her to leave. She couldn’t help but wonder if she, too, was being led away—had her lover become an agent, albeit unwilling or unaware?
She took her hands from his. ‘I must go,’ she said.
Hosea was struck by how the simple, earnest phrase meant something so different to each of them. He could think of nothing to say as she got up and began to walk back towards town. He felt something on the ground beside him.
‘Wait!’ he called after Hannah.
She stopped, but did not turn. Her shoulders trembled. He hurried around in front of her. She kept her gaze lowered; Hosea thought she did not want him to see her red eyes. She kept her head lowered as he stretched the leather loop and dropped it on her neck.
‘I want you to have this,’ he said.
Hannah brought the crystal up to look at it. ‘What’s this for?’ she sniffled.
He didn’t know why he gave it to her. He felt he could not keep it. It was the one thing he had to offer her: a token of his esteem, something to remember him by.
‘For protection,’ he said.
Word had spread. When the men put up the cover that night, all eyes were watching—save one fair set, observed Hosea. Samson was there, done with the lamp lighting before Hosea could even volunteer. (Samson, doubtless apprised of the fiasco at the hives and wary of putting fire in the young man’s hands, told Hosea he needn’t worry about it, he enjoyed doing it, that Reuben only helped to keep busy.) All conversation was in hushed tones. The sounds of the work seemed particularly loud in the hush—the creak of the wooden spools, the creak of the ropes tightening, the creak of the hinges where the arcing ribs met the Town R
ing. The great canvas tarp ruffled deeply in rhythm like the slow beating of tremendous wings as it unfurled and stretched. The voices of the men were hard, their calls of ‘Hup!’ precise and strong. When he was young, Hosea used to want to rush and join the men on the take-up spool when the first rib crossed over centre, when their strength was needed most. He was surprised by the feeling welling up inside him again. He was shamed to think that if he did try to help the men on the spool, they would not welcome him—his presence would provoke only worry and his aid would be rebuked. He thought bitterly that their effort was meaningless, the accomplishment a sham, but he could not deny there remained the desire to count that honour and to have that camaraderie with his fellow men. There was a part of him that was still part of them, these people locked in tradition, united by belief. He wanted to yell, ‘Hup!’ and line up shoulder-to-shoulder with others like him and push the wheel around. Yet he had no feeling for these men particularly. He searched for his spot among the men and saw none; there was no man he wanted to stand beside. Hosea unfocused his eyes and the picture appeared more apt: the men were defined only by one purpose and coloured by the superlative qualities it implied, and so their identities were interchangeable. Hosea understood that his undefined self was drawn to that smear of simplicity, but he knew it would never be enough for his higher being. And so the allure of that calling became dim, just as the sunlight behind the cover of night.
By the time the first rib locked down into the town ring, genial conversation had resumed, peppered with twitters and giggles. The townspeople saw the hole and were relieved. Any hole was cause for concern, because it signalled the beginning of a tear, and a tear could widen at any time, especially if it lay close to a rib, but the hole they saw above them was mid-span and small, produced by fraying instead of tearing. So they laughed (slightly nervously) and disingenuously warned each other about the dire threat they faced that evening. Berenice was understandably indignant and set off in a huff, not bothering to acknowledge Adam’s reassurance that, now that its position was ascertained, the hole would be patched the next day as the cover was lowered.
The Hidden Back Room Page 18