Pricksongs & Descants

by Robert Coover

  ○ ○ ○

  Carl scrubbed his beard. It was pretty bristly, but that was because it was still new. He could imagine what his wife would say. He’d kid his face into a serious frown and tell her, hell, he was figuring on keeping the beard permanently now. Well, he wouldn’t, of course, he’d feel like an ass at the office with it on, he’d just say that to rile his wife a little. Though, damn it, he did enjoy the beard. He wished more guys where he worked wore beards. He liked to scratch the back of his hand and wrist with it.

  “You want this last beer, Swede?” he asked. He didn’t get an answer. Swede was awful quiet He was a quiet type of guy. Reticent, that’s how he is, thought Carl. “Maybe Quenby’s baked a pie,” he said, hoping he wasn’t being too obvious. Sure was taking one helluva long time.

  ○ ○? ○

  He lifts the hem of his tee shirt off his hairy belly, up his chest, but she can’t seem to wait for that—her thighs jerk up, her ankles lock behind his buttocks, and they crash to the bed, the old springs shrieking and thumping like a speeding subway, traffic at noon, arriving trains. His legs and buttocks, though pale and flabby, seem dark against the pure white spectacle of the starched sheets, the flushed glow of her full heaving body, there in the harsh blaze of the Goleman lantern. Strange, they should keep it burning. His short stiff beard scrubs the hollow of her throat, his broad hands knead her trembling flesh. She sighs, whimpers, pleads, as her body slaps rhythmically against his. “Yes!” she cries hoarsely.

  You turn silently from the window. At the house, when you arrive, you find Ola washing dishes.

  ○ ○? ○

  What did Quenby talk about? Her garden probably, pie baking, the neighbors. About the wind that had come up one night while he’d been gone, and how she’d had to move some of the boats around. His two-week beard: looked like a darned broom, she said. He’d have to sleep down with the dogs if he didn’t cut it off. Ola would giggle, imagining her daddy sleeping with the dogs. And, yes, Quenby would probably talk about Ola, about the things she’d done or said while he was away, what she was doing in sixth grade, about her pets and her friends and the ways she’d helped around the place.

  Quenby at the barbecue pit, her full backside to him, turning the steaks, sipping the. whiskey, talking about life on the island. Or maybe not talking at all. Just watching the steaks maybe. Ola inside setting the table Or swimming down by the docks. A good thing here. The sun now an orangish ball over behind die pines. Water lapping at the dock and the boats, curling up on the shore, some minutes after a boat passes distantly. The flames and the smoke. Down at the kennels, the dogs were maybe making a ruckus. Maybe Ola’s cat had wandered down there. The cat had a habit of teasing them outside their pen. The dogs had worked hard, they deserved a rest. Mentally, he gave the cat a boot in the ribs. He had already fed the dogs, but later he would take the steak bones down.

  ○ ○? ○

  Quenby’s thighs brush together when she walks. In denim, they whistle; bare, they whisper. Not so, Ola’s. Even with her knees together (they rarely are), there is space between her thighs. A pressure there, not of opening, but of awkwardness.

  Perhaps, too, island born, her walk is different. Her mother’s weight is settled solidly beneath her buttocks; she moves out from there, easily, calmly, weightlessly. Ola’s center is still between her narrow shoulders, somewhere in the midst of her fine new breasts, and her quick astonished stride is guided by the tips of her hipbones, her knees, her toes. Quenby’s thick black cushion is a rich locus of movement; her daughter still arches uneasily out and away from the strange outcropping of pale fur that peeks out now at the inner edges of the white shorts.

  It is difficult for a man to be alone on a green island.

  ○ ○? ○

  Carl wished he had a cigarette. He’d started out with cigarettes, but he’d got all excited once when he hooked a goddamn fish, and they had all spilled out on the wet bottom of the boat What was worse, the damn fish—a great northern, Swede had said—had broke his line and got away. My Jesus, the only strike he’d got all day, and he’d messed it up! Swede had caught two. Both bass. A poor day, all in all. Swede didn’t smoke.

  To tell the truth, even more than a cigarette, he wished he had a good stiff drink. A hot supper. A bed. Even that breezy empty lodge at Swede’s with its stale piney smell and cold damp sheets and peculiar noises filled him with a terrific longing. Not to mention home, real home, the TV, friends over for bridge or poker, his own electric blanket.

  “Sure is awful dark, ain’t it?” Carl said “ain’t” out of deference to Swede. Swede always said “ain’t” and Carl liked to talk that way when he was up here. He liked to drink beer and say “ain’t” and “he don’t” and stomp heavily around with big boots on. He even found himself saying “oh yah!” sometimes, just like Swede did. Up on the “oh,” down on the “yah.” Carl wondered how it would go over back at the office. They might even get to know him by it. When he was dead, they’d say: “Well, just like good old Carl used to say: oh yah!”

  ○ ○? ○

  In his mind, he watched the ducks fall. He drank the whiskey and watched the steaks and listened to Quenby and watched the ducks fall They didn’t just plummet, they fluttered and flopped. Sometimes they did seem to plummet, but in his mind he saw the ones that kept trying to fly, kept trying to understand what the hell was happening. It was the rough flutter sound and the soft loose splash of the fall that made him like to hunt ducks.

  ○ ○? ○

  Swede, Quenby, Ola, Carl... Having a drink after supper, in the livingroom around the fireplace, though there’s no fire in it. Ola’s not drinking, of course. She’s telling a story about her daddy and a cat It is easy to laugh. She’s a cute girl. Carl stretches. “Well, off to the sack, folks. Thanks for the terrific supper. See you in the morning, Swede.” Quenby: “Swede or I’ll bring you fresh towels, Carl. I forgot to put any this morning.”

  ○ ○? ○

  You know what’s going on out here, don’t you? You’re not that stupid. You know why the motor’s gone dead, way out here, miles from nowhere. You know the reason for the silence. For the wait Dragging it out Making you feel it After all, there was the missing underwear. Couldn’t find it in the morning sunlight either.

  But what could a man do? You remember the teasing buttocks as she dogpaddled away, the taste of her wet belly on the gunwales of the launch, the terrible splash when you fell. Awhile ago, you gave a tug on the stringer. You were hungry and you were half-tempted to paddle the boat to the nearest shore and cook up die two bass. The stringer felt oddly weighted. You had a sudden vision of a long cold body at the end of it, hooked through a cheek, eyes glazed over, childish limbs adrift What do you do with a vision like that? You forget it. You try to.

  ○ ○? ○

  They go in to supper. He mixes a couple more drinks on the way. The whiskey plup-plup-plups out of the bottle. Outside, the sun is setting. Ola’s cat rubs up against his leg. Probably contemplating the big feed when the ducks get cleaned. Brownnoser. He lifts one foot and scrubs the cat’s ears with the toe of his boot Deep-throated purr. He grins, carries the drinks in and sits down at the dining-room table..

  Quenby talks about town gossip, Ola talks about school and Scouts, and he talks about shooting ducks. A pretty happy situation. He eats with enthusiasm. He tells how he got the first bird, and Ola explains about the Golden Gate Bridge, cross-pollination, and Tom Sawyer, things she’s been reading in school.

  He deans his plate and piles on seconds and thirds of everything. Quenby smiles to see him eat She warns him to save room for the pie, and he replies that he could put away a herd of elephants and still have space for ten pies. Ola laughs gaily at that. She sure has a nice laugh. Ungainly as she is just now, she’s going to be a pretty girl, he decides. He drinks his whiskey off, announces he’ll bring in the pie and coffee.

  ○ ○? ○

  How good it had felt! In spite of the musty odors, the rawness of the stiff
sheets, the gaudy brilliance of the Coleman lantern, the anxious haste, the cool air teasing the hairs on your buttocks, the scamper of squirrels across the roof, the hurried by-passing of preliminaries (one astonishing kiss, then shirt and jacket and pants had dropped away in one nervous gesture, and down you’d gone, you in teeshirt and socks still): once it began, it was wonderful! Lunging recklessly into that steaming softness, your lonely hands hungering over her flesh, her heavy thighs kicking up and up, then slamming down behind your knees, hips rearing up off the sheets, her voice rasping: “Hurry!”—everything else forgotten, how good, how good! ‘

  And then she was gone. And you lay in your teeshirt and socks, staring half-dazed at the Coleman lantern, smoking a cigarette, thinking about tomorrow’s fishing trip, idly sponging away your groin’s dampness with your shorts. You stubbed out the cigarette, pulled on your khaki pants, scratchy on your bare and agitated skin, slipped out the door to urinate. The light leaking out your shuttered window caught your eye. You went to stand there, and through die broken shutter, you stared at the bed, the roughed-up sheets, watched yourself there. Well. Well. You pissed on the wall, staring up toward the main house, through the pines. Dimly, you could see Ola’s head in the kitchen window.

  You know. You know.

  ○ ○? ○

  “Listen, uh, Swede ...”

  “Yah?”

  “Oh, nothing. I mean, well, what I started to say was, maybe I better start putting my shoulder to, you know, one of the paddles or whatever the hell you call them. I, well, unless you’re sure you can get it—"

  “Oh yah. I’m sure.”

  “Well…”

  ○ ○ ○

  Swede, Carl, Ola, Quenby ... One or more may soon be dead. Swede or Carl, for example, in revenge or lust or self-defense. And if one or both of them do return to the island, what will they find there? Or perhaps Swede is long since dead, and Carl only imagines his presence. A man can imagine a lot of things, alone on a strange lake in a dark night.

  ○ ○ ○

  Carl, Quenby, Swede, Ola ... Drinks in the livingroom. An after-dinner sleepiness on all of them. Except Ola. Wonderful supper. Nothing like fresh lake bass. And Quenby’s lemon pie. “Did you ever hear about Daddy and the cat?” Ola asks. “No!” All smile. Ola perches forward on the hassock. “Well, Daddy had been away for two weeks ...”

  ○ ○ ○

  Listen: alone, far from your wife, nobody even to play poker with, a man does foolish things sometimes. You’re stretched out in your underwear on an uncomfortable bed in the-middle of the night; for example, awakened perhaps by the footfalls of deer outside the cabin, or the whistle of squirrels, the cry of loons, unable now to sleep. You step out, barefoot, to urinate by the front wall of the lodge. There seems to be someone swimming down in the bay, over near the docks, across from the point here. No lights up at the main house, just the single dull bulb glittering as usual out on the far end of the dock, casting no light. A bright moon.

  You pad quietly down toward the bay, away from the kennels, hoping the dogs don’t wake. She is swimming this way. She reaches the rocks near the point here, pulls herself up on them, then stands shivering, her slender back to you, gazing out on the way she’s come, out toward the boats and docks, heavy structures crouched in the moonglazed water. Pinpricks of bright moonlight sparkle on the crown of her head, her narrow shoulders and shoulderblades, the crest of her buttocks, her calves and heels.

  Hardly thinking, you slip off your underwear, glance once at the house, then creep out on the rock beside her. “How’s the water?” you whisper.

  She huddles over her breasts, a little surprised, but smiles up at you. “It’s better in than out,” she says, her teeth chattering a little with the chill.

  You stoop to conceal, in part, your burgeoning excitement, which you’d hoped against, and dip your fingers in the water. Is it cold? You hardly notice, for you are glancing back up now, past the hard cleft nub where fine droplets of water, catching the moonlight, bejewel the soft down, past the flat gleaming tummy and clutched elbows, at the young girl’s dark shivering lips. She, too, seems self-conscious, for like you, she squats now, presenting you only her bony knees and shoulders, trembling, and her smile. “It’s okay,” you say, “I have a daughter just your age.” Which is pretty stupid.

  ○ ○ ○

  They were drifting between two black islands. Carl squinted and concentrated, but he couldn’t see the shores, couldn’t guess how far away the islands were. Didn’t matter anyway. Nobody on them. “Hey, listen, Swede, you need a light? I think I still got some matches here if they’re not wet—”

  “No, sit down. Just be a moment...”

  Well, hell, stop and think, goddamn it, you can’t stick a lighted match around a gasoline motor. “Well, I just thought...” Carl wondered why Swede didn’t carry a flashlight My Jesus, a man live up here on a lake all these years and doesn’t know enough to take along a goddamn flashlight Maybe he wasn’t so bright, after all.

  He wondered if Swede’s wife wasn’t worrying about them by now. Well, she was probably used to it A nice woman, friendly, a good cook, probably pretty well built in her day, though not Carl’s type really. A little too slack in the britches. Skinny little daughter, looked more like Swede. Filling out, though. Probably be a cute girl in a couple years. Carl got the idea vaguely that Quenby, Swede’s wife, didn’t really like it up here. Too lonely or something. Couldn’t blame her.

  He knew it was a screwy notion, but he kept wishing there was a goddamn neon light or something around. He fumbled under the seat for the other beer.

  ○ ○ ○

  I asked Daddy why he shot my cat,” she said. She stood at the opposite end of the livingroom, facing them, in her orange shirt and bright white shorts, thin legs apart It was a sad question, but her lips were smiling, her small white teeth glittering gaily. She’d just imitated her daddy lobbing the cat up in the air and blowing its head off. u ‘Well, honey, I gave it a sporting chance,’ he said. ‘I threw it up in the air, and if it’d flown away, I wouldn’t have shot it!’” She joined in the general laughter, skipping awkwardly, girlishly, back to the group. It was a good story.

  ○ ○ ○

  She-slips into the water without a word, and dogpaddles away, her narrow bottom bobbing in and out of sight What the hell, the house is dark, the dogs silent: you drop into the water—wow! sudden breathtaking impact of the icy envelope! whoopee!—and follow her, a dark teasing shape rippling the moonlit surface.

  You expect her to bend her course in toward the shore, toward the house, and, feeling suddenly exposed and naked and foolish in the middle of the bright bay, in spite of your hunger to see her again, out of the water, you pause, prepare to return to the point. But, no, she is in by the boats, near the end of the docks, disappearing into the wrap of shadows. You sink out of sight, swim under water to the docks—a long stretch for a man your age—and find her there, holding onto the rope ladder of the launch her father uses for guiding large groups. The house is out of sight, caution out of mind.

  She pulls herself up the ladder and you follow close behind, her legs brushing your face and shoulders. At the gunwales, she emerges into full moonlight, and as she bends forward to crawl into the launch, drugged by the fantasy of the moment, you lean up to kiss her glistening buttocks. In your throbbing mind is the foolish idea that, if she protests, you will make some joke about your beard.

  ○ ○ ○

  He punched the can and die beer exploded out He ducked just in time, but got part of it in his ear. “Hey! Did I get you, Swede?” he laughed. Swede didn’t say anything. Hell, it was silly even to ask. The beer had shot off over his shoulder, past the bow, the opposite direction from Swede. He had asked only out of habit. Because he didn’t like the silence. He punched a second hole and put the can to his lips. All he got at first was foam. But by tipping the can almost straight up, he managed a couple swallows of beer. At first, he thought it tasted good, but a moment later,
the flat warm yeasty taste sliming his mouth, he wondered why the hell he had opened it up. He considered dumping the rest of it in the lake. But, damn it, Swede would hear him and wonder why he was doing it This time, though, he would remember and not throw the empty can away.

  ○ ○ ○

  Swede, Quenby, Carl, Ola ... The story and the laughter and off to bed. The girl has omitted one detail from her story. After her daddy’s shot, the cat had plummeted to the earth. But afterwards, there was a fluttering sound on the ground where it hit. Still, late at night, it caused her wonder. Branches scrape softly on the roof. Squirrels whistle and scamper. There is a rustling of beavers, foxes, skunks, and porcupines. A profound stillness, soon to be broken surely by rain. And, from far out on the lake, men in fishing boats, arguing, chattering, opening beercans. Telling stories.

  THE SENTIENT LENS

  Scene for “Winter”

  No sound, it gets going with utter silence, no sound except perhaps an inappreciable crackle now and then, not unlike static, but our ear readily compensates for it, hears not that sound but the absence of sound, stretches itself, reaches out past any staticky imperfections there might be and finds: only the silence. And that’s how it starts. Not even a wind. Merely the powderfine snow dropping silently, evenly, no more than infinitesimal flecks of light, settling idly on the quiet forest like frozen dust. The snow has folded itself into drifts, or perhaps the earth itself is ribbed beneath, cast into furrows by fallen trees and humps of dying leaves—we cannot know, we can be sure only of the surface we see now, a gently bending surface that warps and cracks the black shadows of the trees into a fretwork of complex patterns, complex yet tranquil, placed, reflective: the inter laced shadows and polygons of brightly daylit snow suggest the quavering stability of light, the imperceptible violence and motion of shadow. So close to the drifts are we that whole trees cannot be seen, only thick black trunks flecked with white and plunging branches weighted with snow, sweeping perilously near the white heaps of earth: we pass beneath them, sliding by the black trunks, over the virgin planes of groundsnow.