by Devon, Gary;
From time to time as she bathed, she caught glimpses of herself in the long mirror, and finally she stepped to the glass, loosened the gown on her waist, and let it slide down her legs in a soft bunch. The scratches and bruises on her abdomen and thighs were receding in yellow and gray smudges. It was not often that she looked at herself completely naked, never before in a room so unfamiliar. Outlined against the cozy backdrop, she appraised herself and decided she was still fairly willowy and well-shaped. You look naughty, she thought, and you’re enjoying it. At least, she hadn’t completely wasted away. She heard them laughing outside again.
Leaning over the basin, she wet her hair with handfuls of water and washed it with the shampoo; then, stooping over the bucket, she lifted the dipper and rinsed the suds from her hair. A trickle of soap burned her eyes. Dripping water, she reached for the towel and heard the children coming in with Hardesty. She grabbed the towel and wiped her eyes, then dried her body and wrapped her hair in the towel. Sunlight transformed the window shades into rich, bronze panels. Opening the suitcase on the floor, she took clothes from it and quickly dressed. When she stood up straight, all at once she felt clean and attractive and new.
She wanted to see Hardesty up close, yet wanted her curiosity to go unnoticed. With her hair still wrapped in the towel, she went to the door, opened it quietly, and paused there, looking for an excuse to enter the kitchen. She glanced at him surreptitiously, but he was turned from her, talking with the children, and she saw only his shoulder and the back of his head, his dark wavy hair—darker than hers—just touching the edge of his collar.
Walter looked toward her, and she gestured for him to come. “Your shoe’s untied,” she said to him. “Let me help you.” And she stooped and drew the lace tight. Lapping the ends, she lifted her head to look at Hardesty. He turned, and their eyes met and disengaged like dragonflies darting across water. His eyes were even darker in clear daylight. Near her ear, Walter said, “You’ve tied it enough,” and moved his foot, and she hid her smile, seeing the clumsy knot she’d made in his shoelace. She stood and withdrew from the doorway, feeling real excitement, and her first resistance to it. This can’t be, she thought.
Morning and evening, he came to the Turner farmhouse. Often from her window she saw him cross under the spindly walnut trees beyond the fenced yard and heard him enter through the kitchen door, a room away. When she missed seeing him pass, she heard the children welcoming him and his gruff, cheerful salutations. Time after time, he wore the same slouch hat of an indeterminate brown felt, a khaki-colored mackinaw, and green rubber mudboots that came nearly to his knees. His shirts were always clean and pressed, his hair neatly combed, and every morning he was freshly shaven, carrying a hint of some lime tonic. Invariably he looked comfortable and very much at ease. After she was moving around the house more routinely, she glimpsed him seated at the old kitchen table, stirring his coffee and teasing the children with another elaborate story, watched him one afternoon trying to show the three of them how to shoot marbles across the white tablecloth.
Once, some years ago, she had nearly been married—nearly, she had thought, to the point of buying a wedding dress and talking to a minister. It was long after the time she had loved Alfred; she had been with the Merchassens five years when she met him, and in many respects she had truly entered her womanhood with him—at least, she thought of it in those terms. His name was Jack Wilkinson and he had come to the doctor’s office selling pharmaceuticals. He usually arrived in the evening, and she began to go out with him to the picture show or to dinner. He had money to spend and, as he said, time on his hands.
From the beginning, she thought he was married—so much so that one night she had gone through his wallet while he slept, looking for some telltale scrap of evidence, but found nothing. He had never really acted married, was never in a hurry to leave, never had to be somewhere at a particular time. After the movie, they would drive to another town, where he invariably wanted to stop for a drink, and what she had admired about him most was that he would listen to anyone. Drunks who could hardly stay on their stools found a listener in him. When she asked him why he did it, he said, “They all have their stories. I always learn something.” But it was more than that; he liked those down-and-out people, cared about them in some unspoken way. She wondered sometimes if perhaps he had come from people like them and it was his way of touching home base. She never knew.
But she had loved him for that; now, from this time and distance, she thought perhaps she loved him for that only. And then they would find a room, or if he already had one, go to it. She must have known that he was lying and yet she couldn’t deny herself to him. And, of course, it ended as she thought it might. He stopped coming around. He disappeared. And she waited a long time with the need to confront him, knowing quite well that if he should reappear, she might not be able to, might once again ride with him through the night in his open car to look for a room. But she never had the chance to find out.
Nothing had prepared her for the subtle effect Mark Hardesty began to have on her; so thoroughly had she, years ago, renounced her dreams of finding happiness with a man that his charm and attention caught her completely by surprise. To her, his presence was like a warm and flickering fire in the midst of a very long, very dark night. Every glance, every word, every half-hidden smile resounded with layers of importance, as if the moments themselves contained the sparks of something larger. And yet as inviting as it all was, she was afraid of rushing toward it.
All day she waited for evening to come when she would see him again. He always spoke to her then, asking how she was, telling her about the quirks in the weather, usually with the children clustered about, Vivian coming in red-cheeked from the cold and Funny Grandma babbling some nonsense. But it wasn’t what he said or the pleasing sound of his voice that she dwelled on most. He was watching her. Even when they were in different rooms, Leona knew he was as aware of her as she was of him. And the way he looked at her with that slight tilt of his head and the dark softening in his eyes was like enchantment. At night, after he was gone and the children had been put to bed, while Vee pottered about, adding wood to the stove, preparing for the winter night, Leona blew out the bedside lamp and felt the night shrink around her, more eager than ever for morning. Wishing my life away, she thought, and smiled ruefully at the truth of the old cliché.
One evening, as he was preparing to leave, she went to the living room to get his coat, lifting it from the back of a chair. Slowly she looked back toward the kitchen where he was and heard him talking with Vee. On impulse, she drew the coat—full of the smell of him—up around her shoulders. She was consumed by it. The scent of leather and tobacco and that hint of lime tonic flooded her senses. She imagined him touching her, and a hot, wicked sensation ran through her. Then, in the other room, he laughed. She thought she’d been seen, glanced behind her. The doorway stood empty.
When he wasn’t there, she plotted to put him out of her thoughts. But if there was still light outside, she would see the distant column of smoke from his chimney and imagine him there, tending to his stock, chopping wood.
Though it was still a few days away, Vee began telling the children what they’d be having for Thanksgiving dinner; some of the neighbors would be coming, she said, and they’d bring other good things to eat. At first, Leona felt like an outsider who would be intruding on a neighborly event, but since she lacked the means or a graceful way to excuse herself and the children, she volunteered to help in the preparations. Happy to be useful, she tied up her hair in a scarf and, with mops and rags and buckets of soapy water, she joined Vee in the housecleaning. Repeatedly while she cleaned or served the children their lunch or helped Vee wash the dishes, her gaze would stray to the windows and out across the fence and through those spindly black trees, following the path he had taken earlier to the lane that dropped from sight. There the chimney smoke would seem closer—like a presence emerging from nothing.
The feelings between t
hem accumulated like the slow inevitable gathering of snow on the ground. From Vee she learned only a few things about him. He had grown up here, gone to school here, and enlisted in the Army at seventeen. He had lived overseas for some time and had returned a few years ago, to farm. Vee didn’t know why. Leona guessed him to be older than she was, maybe close to forty. She waited for a chance to talk to him while the children were occupied elsewhere, but when it came, the things she wanted to know seemed too personal, so she asked him instead if he could drive her to the nearest town when the roads became passable.
He grinned. “Where is it you want to go?”
“I’m afraid we won’t be going anywhere unless I get a car. I’m still not quite sure where we are … exactly. But I can arrange to buy a car, if you could take us just that far.”
He nodded. Again, like two dragonflies, that swift telltale glance passed between them, as brief as a spark. Then he squinted through the window at the morning sky. “We’ll see how it goes. When the roads are bad, I leave my old Willys out in Vee’s barn. It wouldn’t start the last time I tried it.” He chuckled. “I’m thinking about walking over to Mose Yerby’s place later on. He’s got an old two-way radio he keeps in his tack room. If you want me to, I could let somebody know that you’re all right.”
She thought at once of asking him to find out about Emma, but the likelihood of his getting information without causing new risks was remote.
“No,” she said. “There’s no one.”
Vivian set the hoop on the post to close the fence gate and saw Hardesty coming toward her through the dusk. “Let me give you a hand with that,” he said.
“I’ll get it,” she told him. “You can carry my light.” She handed him the lantern, then stooped and lifted her bucket of milk. They started toward the house.
“The big storm’s about over,” he said. “It’s getting warmer.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll be glad when spring comes. Where’ve you been—cuttin’ across my pasture from that direction?”
“Over to see Mose. Did you hear that somebody’s breaking into places all over Guthrie? Broke into that drugstore, the one you always go to. Damn near demolished it, Mose said. People wake up and find their clothes gone, iceboxes ransacked. The town’s in an uproar, to hear him tell it.”
Vivian squinted at him and shifted the milk pail to her other hand. She shook her head. “Well, weather like we had some people just go a little berserk sometimes. But what goes on in Guthrie ain’t no business of mine.”
“You never know,” Hardesty said, and nudged her. “Good-looking woman like you. Might be one of your old boyfriends looking for you.” Then the playfulness left his face. “We don’t need to tell her about this. With those kids she’s got enough to think about.”
Vivian regarded him carefully. What he said had very little to do with what he wanted to know. “She’s gonna be all right,” Vivian told him. “She’s gone through something. I don’t know what. Maybe a man.” Setting her milk bucket down, she hugged herself, staring at the lighted windows of the house. “We might not never know. I won’t ask her. I’d rather just leave well enough alone.” She glanced at him and he was looking at his rubber boots, listening. “She sure is involved with them kids. Her face just lights up. I like her for that especially.”
He smiled at her and the humor returned to his eyes. “Vee,” he said, “anybody that nice-lookin’ can’t be good all the time.”
“You better just mind your manners,” she said, and mocked him with a smile like his own as they parted.
“I’m going out and see if my car’ll start,” Hardesty called back.
That evening as he headed home, Hardesty paused at the edge of the fence to watch the living-room windows, searching for Leona in the place where she had lain unconscious those first few days. In the beginning, he had thought: She’s like those cats that live under Vee’s house, skittish and flighty and afraid of her own shadow. But every day—it was like setting a pan of milk among the stones—he had gone out of his way to make some pleasant remark or to talk to her in some small way, because he knew that as surely as a cat would eventually poke its nose toward the milk, so would Leona find her way out of her fears.
Suddenly, through the window, he saw the children racing about and she was among them, laughing, playing some game. She seemed, at that moment, to speak to him in ways neither of them would ever express. She was what a home would be like. She looked happy and full of life as she hugged the children and mussed their hair. Briefly she turned to the window, exhilarated, as if to beckon him in. But he knew she couldn’t see him; it was fully dark now. All at once, she hid her eyes with her hands and began to count, her lips moving, shaping the numbers, allowing herself to be like them: innocent, daring, vital. He wanted her then with that part of himself he had hidden away and sworn never to open again.
On the day before Thanksgiving, in the morning, he said, “It’s time we took those stitches out.” She had forced herself to ignore them for so long she had nearly forgotten them.
He went out of the room and came back, carrying a clean cloth, a bottle of alcohol, and small scissors.
“Should I be sitting up or lying down?”
A smile played over his lips. “You can stay where you are. It won’t take long.” She settled back in the rocking chair and he leaned over her, drawing her hair gently away from the wound.
It was as close as they had ever been. She could feel his warmth, breathe that scent of lime. “Is this going to hurt?” she asked. “I’ve never had stitches before.”
“That’s not my plan,” he said. His voice strummed at the deepest recesses of her tension. “Hold still.”
She saw his curving eyelash very close, felt his breath blow softly across her face, and an almost irrepressible urge came over her to raise her lips to him. She felt his fingers and the cold tips of the scissors nibbling at the tender crusty skin of the cut. “This will sting,” he said. He dampened a corner of the cloth with alcohol and held it pressed against his handiwork. Then, putting the cloth aside, he said, “Let’s have a look at you.” Very solemn, she thought. His hard hands touched the sides of her face with such delicacy it sent a thrill flying through her. “You’re going to have a scar,” he said quietly, almost apologetically, “but the way you fix your hair”—she was looking at him, and for a moment he seemed to lose track of his thoughts—“nobody’ll ever notice. It could have been a lot worse.”
Leona said, “If that’s the worst that happens—” But she stopped herself and smiled. “Really, I don’t mind,” she told him. “I’m just glad to be here.” She touched the thin, feverish ridge of the wound. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank your Maker.” He gathered his materials and started to go.
“Stay here for a little while,” she said, “and keep me company.”
He smiled as he turned. “I’ll put this up.” When he came back, he brought two cups of coffee and handed one to her. It was like a warm glow in her hands.
“What do you do when you’re not here?” she asked him.
He pulled a rocker toward her and sat down. “I farm.”
“Yes,” she said, sipping the coffee, watching him over the cup rim. “And you have some fish?”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “That’s true.”
She started to laugh. “Tell me about these fish. You know how children get things mixed up.”
“Sure,” he said, enjoying her response. “What would you like to know? They’ve been blind since the time of the red man. I don’t know how they ended up here. They look a lot like a salmon. I’ll show you sometime.”
“When?” Leona felt happy, radiant. This was what she wanted for now, easy talk, a careless laugh. She liked having him here; she felt safe with him in the house. The resistance she’d felt in the beginning was gone. She had almost forgotten what it was like—to flirt with a man, to enjoy this slow movement toward some degree of intimacy. “Vivian
said you live alone.”
“Yes,” he said, “it was my granddad’s place before he died. I used to come here when I was a kid. I remember Vee when she was about thirty. A true hellcat.”
“I don’t believe it.” With her next question, Leona felt her throat constrict a little. “You’re not married, then?”
He looked at her, then lowered his eyes. “No,” he said. “Not any more. I was, once.”
She waited for him to go on, but he sat across from her staring at the fire in the grate. She didn’t want to pry and yet suddenly she wanted to know everything about him. Very slowly, she tilted her head toward him. “Tell me what happened.”
Before the sound of her voice had ended, he answered her automatically. “She died.” Then he looked at her and she could see the pain edging into his eyes. It looked wrong in his rugged, clean-cut face. Inadvertently she had led him into painful territory. “Look,” he said, “I don’t like to talk about it much. It’s not very interesting.”
“But it still hurts you,” she said softly. “Doesn’t it?”
The muscles in his face had hardened; he looked almost angry. “She seemed so scared in the end. That’s what I regret.… Frightened and alone and I couldn’t help her, couldn’t do anything to ease her way.” His speech was halting now. “I felt completely helpless, outside of everything. One day something happens you never dreamed possible. It’s as if your life crosses some invisible line and then for a long time afterward you can’t believe it. But it happened. And it lasts a long, long time.” He raised his head. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’ve never tried to put it into words before. I can’t expect you to understand.”
“But I do,” she said. “I do know, exactly. You loved her.” She wanted to touch him.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, I certainly did that.” He cleared his throat. As he stood, he reached for her coffee cup and she also stood, across from him. When his fingers came forward to take the saucer, they both nearly let go of it at once. The cup clattered on its dish as if the closeness of their emotions had set off a physical reaction. Then she released the cup and in silence they looked at each other. Never had his eyes been so dark, so tender, and the moment left Leona so profoundly exposed that she had to sit down to keep from falling.