by Gina nahai
The boy kept looking at her. He was barefoot and shirtless, dirty from field work, clearly malnourished.
“You’re that woman,” he said after a moment.
She nodded.
He looked briefly at the car, then down at his hands.
“He’s not from around here,” he muttered, referring to Adam.
Blue turned to Adam and smiled.
“He used to be,” she said indulgently. “He still may be.”
A moment later the boy pointed to the east and told Blue to look for a barn with no roof and a sign that read prepare to
MEET THE LORD.
It was four-thirty in the afternoon when they drove up to the barn, and a group of believers had already congregated in the clearing outside the makeshift church. The men had brought their guitars and tambourines and were already playing music and singing “In Heaven We’ll Never Grow Old.” The women had brought food and were laying it out on tables erected in the back of the barn. The very sight of them, the realization that he was back after almost two decades, close again to people he had sworn he would never see—the very sight of those women made his stomach turn.
John Dewey was there with his wife, who had been mute and found speech through Little Sam’s healing, and Liston Cunningham, whose young daughter had died drinking lye in church. There was John Sherman, who had raised two people from the dead with his own faith, and Bob Reynolds who must be in his eighties, Adam calculated, and who had just married the fourteen-year-old granddaughter of a childhood friend. Bob had taken the girl to a McDonald’s in Pineville on their first and only date. She had married him because he was kind, and because he had bought her two milkshakes the night of their date.
The girl was the first to notice Blue’s car and point it out to the others. Suddenly heads began to turn, conversations came to a halt. Less than two months after Jenkins’ death, having signed a pledge to the DA and the sheriff that she would never handle again, Blue was back. And she had brought an outsider—a man—with her.
She sat behind the wheel with the engine running and looked at the believers staring at her.
“I won’t go in there with you,” Adam told her.
She turned to him then, as if to understand. He saw her teeth dig into her lower lip, saw her hands tremble ever so slightly. For a moment he let go of his anger and let the hardness out of his eyes. Then he realized what was about to happen and pulled back: she had brought him here to make him understand, brought him into her world so he could see it from within—so he would lose perspective, objectivity, the willingness, ultimately, to decipher right and wrong.
“I won’t do it,” he said again.
I left this church eighteen years ago and swore never to set foot in it again and I won’t do it now, he wanted to say—not for you and not for Little Sam’s legacy and not even for the sake of a story.
The words, unspoken, fell like leaves into the silence.
She went alone.
She DIDN’T LOOK like the others, he thought, didn’t talk or move or act as if she belonged with them. He saw her walk across the green field toward the church, and he thought that this was a creature who was used to being different. She knew she did not belong, he thought, knew that she never would belong.
She was like the fairy-tale wings on a small child who dreams of flying away—startling, exquisite, out of place no matter where she went.
She approached the crowd without a pause in her step, without showing the slightest sign of fear or adopting the defensive posture of one who expects to be attacked. Adam knew she was afraid. He had sensed it before she left the car, seen it in her hands as she had grabbed the handle to open the door. Yet, watching her, he thought she looked aloof and strong and willing to face any challenge thrown at her.
He slipped into the driver’s seat and told himself he should drive away, leave her there with her snakes and her believer friends and all the lies and illusions they lived and died by. He thought of her moving inside the barn, enduring the hostile and judging glares of other believers, sitting in the women’s section and feeling their suspicion burn holes into the back of her neck. He imagined her standing up at the right time during the service, singing in the right tune. She would not look away from those who despised her, he knew, would not bend under pressure from those who wanted her to vanish.
He watched the sun set over the fields, watched the darkness seep into the car. With the window down he could hear the sound of music and words, the talking in tongues and the screams and hollers of men and women in the throes of ecstasy. Sometime after that, he saw shadows—some still singing, others quiet and spent from the emotions they had experienced during the service—begin to drift out of the church. These were the hardest times, he thought—when he watched groups of people who belonged together, who felt a bond of family or friendship or common beliefs, and whose very existence reminded Adam of how disconnected he was and would always be.
His eyes searched for Blue.
She walked out alone—a bright white flame in the night— and stopped only to hug Anne Pelton and say a word. She did not look toward the car, did not search for Adam through the windshield, but he could tell that she was conscious of him, that she had been thinking of him all the time she had been in church, inviting him to stay, to wait for her, to see her again before he left. Something about her was both worlds removed and impossibly close—a longing, once urgent, that has turned into memory and seeped under the skin.
She came up to the car and slid into the passenger seat. Adam felt his heart race at her proximity and held his breath to contain his relief. Her skin glowed in the dark and her hands looked small and cold on her dress. He felt like holding them, so he looked away.
She watched him for a moment.
“Thank you,” she said.
She knew why he had waited for her—understood that he had wanted to stand by her, stand with her in the face of the doubt and the blame she would receive.
Without looking at her he turned the car on and put it into gear. She put her hand on his arm, waited until he had found the courage to turn to her.
Then she put her lips against his cheek, touched the edge of his mouth with her tongue, and kissed him.
MAKING LOVE TO HER, he thought, was like driving blind across narrow mountain passes—the road hanging halfway between ecstasy and annihilation, traversed by faith more than reason, by madness more than faith. Adam had traveled that way a few times before. It was how outlaws and gun traffickers smuggled people and goods into and out of countries at war with one another in the Middle East, how convicted criminals and political prisoners escaped the borders of their native countries: a moonless night, a car with the headlights turned off, a passenger hiding in the back while the man behind the wheel floored the gas pedal and prayed to stay one step ahead of his pursuers. They stayed quiet—passenger and driver both, strangers bound together by the threat of detection, the certainty of death if captured. They braced the road and prayed it would not give out from under them, moved by instinct, by memory, rather than by sight. Minutes stretched to unimaginable lengths, and the passengers could hear each other’s heartbeat. Every time the car turned a corner there would be silence, then a gasp, then—as they realized they were still alive—joy beyond what they had known possible.
They were in the cave directly across from the church, in the underground chambers that led to the Lost Sea. He had driven here after the service, taken Blue into the cave and made love to her standing up, his hands grasping her as she leaned against the cold stone wall, tearing off her dress and holding on to her as if he would never let go, as if she had been his from the start and he had come to claim her at last.
One wrong turn and he would be lost in the curves of this woman’s body, buried in the folds of her hair. He would be
blinded by the hands that had touched his face as if to preserve the memory of his skin, by the way she gave in to him, bore her face into the crook his neck, and whispered his na
me.
“Adam.”
Like a wish that won’t come true if spoken out loud, the name hung between them, opening a floodgate of questions he did not know to answer. He pulled away from her, looked at her white frame against the black stone wall.
A woman, naked as hope, exposed and unprotected and strangely, strangely unafraid.
They drove home in silence—their eyes cast on the road that took them across the open fields surrounding the city and into the labyrinth of narrow alleys and dead-end streets of Fort Sanders. Nineteenth Street was empty. Clinch Avenue lay under the spell of an evil witch and a thousand years of silence. In Blue’s house a single yellow light burned behind the lace curtains of the living room which overlooked the street.
It was the Professor, Adam thought, waiting for his wife.
The BOARDINGHOUSE owner was sitting on the balcony of Adam’s room, sipping brandy and smoking a cigar. He had left the door open a crack to warn of his presence, and he displayed the same ironic smile and feigned indifference with which he always greeted Adam.
“What is it?” Adam asked in the doorway.
The owner raised an eyebrow and acted surprised.
“Brandy!” he said, and took a sip of his drink.
He wore a white linen shirt and khaki pants, soft leather shoes, a musky cologne. He was acting friendly without daring to admit it, trying to engage Adam without having to ask for attention.
“Would you like some?” he asked, still with sarcasm in his voice.
Adam was exhausted and confused and feeling overwhelmed by his encounter with Blue. Part of him longed for a quiet place in which to reflect. Part of him, too, was glad for a diversion that might save him from his own thoughts.
He moved inside the room and sat on the bed.
“What can I do for you?” he asked with a sigh.
The owner smiled mischievously.
“Hmm,” he mused. “We could start by making love.”
Adam leaned against the headboard and crossed his legs.
“What else?” he asked without looking at the man. He had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the nightstand. He lit a cigarette and looked on the table for a glass.
The man from Michigan was looking at him quietly.
“I liked you the first day you came in,” he said when Adam met his eyes. Quickly he caught the softness in his voice and switched to a more sarcastic tone. “That’s until you spoke, of course.”
Adam had come into the boardinghouse with his backpack and his three-day stubble, looking exhausted and smelling of airports and cigarette smoke. He had asked for a room without looking at the owner, paid for a week without counting his change. He was a gorgeous specimen, the owner had thought as he showed Adam up to the room—a fairy-tale prince arriving in a land of poisoned apples and insomnia. It wasn’t until later, when he started asking questions about Blue, that the owner had begun to distrust the man.
There were no glasses in the room. Adam took a swig from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and left the top open.
“Isiah Frank,” the owner introduced himself. “I thought you might be curious.”
Adam nodded once, did not bother to say a word, took another sip from the bottle.
The owner was disdainful.
“At least no one can accuse her of softening your edges,” he sighed.
He saw the tension, like lightning, strike through Adam’s eyes. Frightened, he recrossed his legs and looked down at the burning tip of his cigar. He had gotten too close, he realized, touched a vein that might erupt any moment and drown him in blood.
“I’ve known her for years,” he said, extending an olive branch.
He couldn’t resist poking further.
“Known her husband, too.”
Adam was fixing the man with his gaze—aggressive and hostile and unrelenting. Suddenly Isiah Frank did not know why he was here, what he had hoped to get from this man who clearly did not return his interest.
It’s a dark and humid night, and I’m far from being loved and all I want is to fall asleep in this world of glass animals and cursed princes—fall asleep alone and know that when I die, I will be missed.
Painfully, he forced his eyes to meet Adam’s.
“She’s a splendid creature,” he said, his voice suddenly devoid of irony.
“If you break her, she’ll cut you to the bone.”
ADAM STAYED UP all night in his room, drinking Jack Daniel’s and making a mental map of the story he had come back to write. He had not called the paper since speaking to the night editor from Frankfurt. The newspaper staff had no way of getting hold of him, no way of knowing where he was or if they would hear from him again. He should have been worried about his job, but he wasn’t.
He would write the story about Little Sam and the thousands of men and women who had followed his faith when he was alive and who would continue to do so after his death. He would speak of the snakes that did not kill, the oil that was used to anoint, the hands that healed the believers. But he would not make a single mention of Blue, he knew, or of the manner of Sam’s death.
She would be there, of course, reflected in every line, laced into every word, conspicuous by her absence. She would be there, and yet, Adam knew he could not mention her.
He wanted to protect her, he realized. This, more than anything, scared him.
He told himself he should leave—tomorrow, when his eyes had cleared and he could muster the will to drive away and find an airport and go anywhere at all. He thought he should walk away while he still could, while he still wanted to.
Yet something about the city, about the mountains surrounding it and the life that brewed within it was fine and hypnotic and seductive in a way he had not been prepared for—a way he had not experienced in his childhood—and so he stayed, day after day with Blue’s image everywhere he looked, and it was all he could do to stop himself from going to see her.
She had turned to him that night, in the moment before she stepped out of the car and vanished into the house she shared with her husband—turned to him and looked at his hands as if to wonder if they would save her.
He stayed away for three days. Then he went to see her.
He stood outside Mrs. Roscoe’s house at night, tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans as if to hide his need, stared up at the walls with the cracked and faded blue paint, the moth-eaten lace moldings, the overgrown front yard. He imagined Blue moving quietly through that house, eating dinner with her husband in a dining room full of starched linen and old china. He saw her as she waited for the Professor to finish reading his books, as she sat in bed and watched him put his clothes away. They lay next to each other with their eyes open and talked in slow whispers about things no one else must know.
He sat in his car smoking cigarettes and watching the house. He felt haunted, charmed, connected to Blue as much by his anger as by her will, unable for once to walk away, unwilling to leave.
Did he see in her his own destiny, only reversed?
He saw her loneliness, her desire. He saw the reflection of the road in her eyes. It was the same road he had traveled to save himself from his past, the same one he had traversed again to come back. He saw her body reaching for the one path that led away, that cut through the land and led to the open seas of imagination. He wanted, to stay.
In the first-floor window, a light went off the moment Adam appeared. A shadow—the Professor’s—moved behind the curtains and closed the blinds, walked around the house and made sure the doors were locked, that the windows were shut and the phone was off the hook, and that they were safe—the Professor and his wife and everything Adam might intrude upon.
Mrs. Roscoe across the street came out of her house and frowned when she saw Adam.
“Better go away now,” she warned. “The Devil’s in that house and he might get into you if you don’t watch.”
He drove home through the empty city with the broken streetlights. He did not look behind him, did not stop, but
all the while he could feel Blue moving toward him in the dark.
Isiah Frank let her in with a smile.
“You are more beautiful in love,” he told Blue, then stepped away and watched her go to Adam.
BEFORE MY DAUGHTER DIED I USED TO WONDER WHAT I would tell her when she was old enough to ask where I came from, or why it is I cannot go back there or even point to the place on a map.
Blue was standing by the French doors that separated Adam’s room from the balcony overlooking the courtyard, facing Adam without looking him directly in the eyes. He lay in bed with his back against the headboard, the dress he had peeled off her still next to him. He studied the way the curls in her golden-red hair fell against her white skin, the lines of her body as if drawn with a sure hand on paper—lean, spare, certain. Across from the window a wall mirror with a black wood frame reflected her image.
You did not know this—that I had a child and that she died. The newspapers have written much about my snake handling, but they never mentioned my daughter or her passing. It doesn ’t make good copy: a little girl catching fire in the middle of the afternoon, running across the yard without a sound or a whimper as the flames rise around her body and over her face and head, running toward her mother with her arms open as if to embrace her, and me standing there, too stunned to utter a sound or make a move.
Would she have been saved if I had acted a moment sooner?
The newspapers didn’t write about this, and the townspeople hardly seemed to notice at all. They have always thought of me as an outsider—because I came from abroad, and later, because of the church and its practices. They looked at me and talked about me, but they never saw me as anything but an oddity and so it was easy for them to ignore both my daughter’s birth and later, her passing.
She fell to the ground half afoot away from me, flames ris-ing from the tips of her tiny white fingers, and by the time I threw myself on her to choke the fire, I knew I had lost her.
So the townspeople do not mention my daughter, and the church members, who know what happened, rarely spoke of her afterward: they could not explain it, you see—how such a thing could happen to a five-year-old. They could not explain it and could not accord it any greater importance than all the sorrow and misfortune that has tainted their own lives, and so they responded the only way they knew how: accepted it as the will of God and moved on.