by Jim Grimsley
“Is that Nate?” Dad’s voice echoes behind, but diminished. In the yard, where October is draining the leaves from green to brown, Nathan sidles along the hedge, out of sight of the windows.
Roy appears suddenly near the barn. He carries a pail in each hand. His flannel shirt is buttoned to the neck, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He marches from the barn door to the chicken house, boots crunching the gravel. Nathan’s heart beats fast at the sight. But Roy retreats into the murk of the chicken house without a word. Stung, Nathan hurries to the pond.
In the afternoon he tries to sleep for a while, making a bed of the blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders. He has not thought far ahead. He stretches out on the blanket and uses his schoolbooks for a pillow. Lying in such a way that he can still survey the pond, he has only to lift his head. He closes his eyes. Sounds follow, and he jerks his eyes open and scans his part of the world. One after another sounds intrude: a broken branch as if a foot were stepping on it, the similarity of something to a cough, the shrill cry of a bird, or the wail of distant wildcat. His eyes come open for each sound no matter how tired or near sleep he is. He scans the edge of the pond for his father. He cannot feel safe.
Twilight finds him curled against a tree, hoping he will not get redbugs this late in the year. He has begun, dully, to consider how he will pass the night.
Night descends like a sharpened blade. Leaving the graves for the first time since afternoon, Nathan waits near the cluster of farm buildings. Early autumn brings a chill to the evening, and Nathan’s thin shirt retains sparse heat. But the sensation of cold reaches him as if from far away. The facts of dusk surround him. Lights burn in the kitchens of his house and of Roy’s. Roy’s father ambles idly in the driveway, under western ranges of rose-stained clouds. Roy’s mother hovers in the square of light over the kitchen sink, dismantling the remains of the family supper. The rolls of fat over her elbows shiver back and forth.
Later, Roy lopes out of the house and drives away in the truck. A baseball cap obscures his face.
Mom appears on Nathan’s porch, wringing her hands anxiously in a dishtowel. She scans the distant fields. She is afraid to call for Nathan, because of Dad. But Nathan’s supper is cooling minute by minute, and soon she opens the screen door and leans out. The plaintive sound flies across the farm. Nathan relents.
When he enters the kitchen, she moves without speaking to serve him food. Even the backs of her hands seem pale and drawn. She is cautious to meet his eye. Dad reads the Bible in the living room. His rhythmic mumbling cannot be mistaken. Now and then the sound stops, the page turns. Once, while Nathan eats, Dad steps into the doorway. The tug of his watching pulls fiercely, and Nathan shivers. Mother stands between the two, uncertain.
“Nathan is home,” Dad says. “I’m glad.” Then he returns to the living room with his back bowed. His mumbling ecstasy resumes. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
Nathan eats, hardly tasting. Mother turns her back.
After supper, Nathan steps onto the porch, studying the darkness that has settled over the world. The wind sharpens. Cold stars wheel in the sky. Nathan advances to the screen door, tests the air. The cold change of wind soaks him. He had thought about sleeping outside, but the chill of the wind decides the issue for him. He will face the house for the night.
In the kitchen he finds a ball of twine in his mother’s drawer of odds and ends. Climbing softly upstairs, he takes a deep breath, bouncing the twine in his hand.
He ties one cord across the doorway, using the hinge and a low nail in the wall. He ties another cord from the bedpost to the same nail. About the height of a man’s mid-calf. It is as if he has already prepared the plan. But even with the tripcord set, he will not dare the bed, which has been a trap in the past. He makes himself a pallet in the darkest corner of the room and sleeps there.
He adjusts to the hardness of the floor beneath the quilt. The odd perspective of the room requires study. The floor under the bed needs sweeping. Cobwebs under his desk catch light. He fluffs his pillow, closes his eyes.
It is difficult to keep his eyes closed. Like in the graveyard that afternoon, every sound jerks him awake again. Every creaking of the house is a footstep, every murmur of wood a voice. But he hardly slept the night before, and soon the need for rest overtakes him, even on the hard floor, even keeping watch.
At first, deep sleep. Then a new sense, a presence. At first the presence seems dreamy, unreal, and then there is a change. The surface of the dream becomes the room in which he sleeps. Nathan needs to take a deep breath but there is a weight on his chest. A sound, a door that creaks when it opens. He wakens to a crash as Dad, at some wee hour of morning, falls face forward into the room, feet bundled in twine. Dad cries in fear and rage. The sudden image reverberates, the shadow of the father falling, the loud slamming of his body onto floorboards, followed by harsh groans of surprise and pain. The image replays again and again as Nathan flees through the door, slipping down the stairs and nearly slamming into the white-gowned figure of Mother, emerging from her bedroom.
She asks something, but Nathan hurls himself through the house without answering. Did he touch you? He bursts through the screen door into the wet grass. Burning stars herald the stranger part of morning. He runs along the hedge in the shadow. He sees the light in his own bedroom window. By the time the images clarify in his mind, he has passed the barn and runs, out of sight of both houses, toward the lake and the familiar path to the cemetery.
He finds his blanket and sits against the trunk of the water oak. He is shivering, his teeth chattering, he cannot get warm. He huddles with the quilt drawn up to his nose and his knees tucked under his chin, in the shadow of the tree with the view of the whole pond. For a while he thinks his father is searching for him but Nathan, patient, remains perfectly motionless. He can see the stars over the trees and notes the changes as the hours pass. Soon, whatever search was undertaken is abandoned. Nathan is alone, waiting.
At dawn he rouses with no awareness of having rested. Light rainbows along the horizon. Along the shore of the pond, heavy feet are walking. Distant, Dad clears his throat. The sound strikes Nathan with a cold hand. He remains motionless, partially sheltered by a tombstone. Feet are treading on dry leaves, in tangled grass. Across the pond Dad’s dark figure flows along the water, walking with a bewildered slope to his shoulders.
For safety there is the whole width of the pond and the fact of black water. Dad’s search already falters. He steps along the lake shore brushing aside low-hanging branches. Nathan flattens on the ground. Dad steps forward and stops. He studies the forest. He heads back to the house but stops again, straightens, as if he has taken a breath of youth. It’s almost as if he knows where Nathan hides, as if by scent or sixth sense he can feel his son’s presence across the water. For Nathan, the fear becomes vivid. But the cemetery neither beckons nor sways him. He stands like an intruder, the lowering shadows of branches across his face, his arms. His stance weakens, his back bends, he returns to the house. Where he will, no doubt, drink a little, then dress for church.
Chapter Eight
Nathan steps into the kitchen and closes the door.
The fact that the curtains have been drawn carefully across the windows changes the room. Something about the light reminds him of water, pools of water. There is even the sound of water, the faucet dripping, added to the almost inaudible murmuring of the television in the nearby room. But the house radiates a peace only possible when it is empty. This is Sunday morning, and Dad and Mom have gone to take their places on pews at the Piney Grove Baptist Church, Dad to nod, entranced, while Mr. John Roberts speaks the gospel.
Since he is alone, he dares to go to the room he usually avoids. In the living room the curtains have also been drawn, not quite closed all the way, and gashes of sunlight fall through, slan
ting across the couch, across the coffee table and the open family Bible. Dad has left the television to play for the empty room, volume low, pale images flickering.
In the bedroom that opens onto the kitchen, his parents’ bed is neatly made. The remnants of perfume and aftershave mingle and drift. Mom has let open her round box of talcum powder on the dresser, and a brooch lies near it, reflecting a moment of light. The room comprises its shadows, surfaces, scents; nothing here can be touched. They have slept on the bed but all evidence has been concealed between the neatly squared chenille spread, the high fluffed pillows. He pictures them lying side by side on their backs, eyes closed, hands folded across their chests.
His own room lies exactly as he left it, pallet scattered in the corner. Mom has not even folded the blankets. Nathan finds extra socks and takes his coat. He steals—now he thinks of it as stealing—another quilt.
In the kitchen again, in the moment before leaving, he waits. The silence and stillness fill him with fore-boding. For a moment, a thought of the future intrudes, a moment of how long can I hide? But he locks the door behind him and, hiding the key once again beneath the flowerpot, he escapes into the autumn morning.
A warm wind is rising from the south. Nathan should be in church, between the shadows of Father and Mother, beneath the massed clouds of Preacher Roberts’s voice, in the presence of God. He finds that he misses the event. But he feels no need of a change in hiding place. Even for a second day, the cemetery seems safe enough. He remains among the dead Kennicutts and their married relations, sheltered from October wind by quilts and tombstones.
From there he can hear the cars return after church, can hear his mother calling his name, exactly twice, when Sunday dinner is ready. Discreet, as if Nathan has stepped into the yard to play.
Time slows to a crawl. He has finished all his assigned homework and finds himself idly reading ahead in the history text, penetrating the chapters on the Hittite, Babylonian, and Assyrian Empires. The history takes on the quality of fable or fairy tale, read outside time, among graves. The sun slowly arcs overhead.
Once during the afternoon Roy appears along the shore of the pond. His quiet ambling could hardly be called unusual, but something in his walk, in the carriage of his shoulders, broadcasts disquiet. He stops near the small dam on the opposite shore and seems to be watching the vicinity of the graveyard. Nathan, for his part, hides from Roy same as from Mom, same as from Dad. But when Roy’s mother’s voice summons him back to home, the sadness that descends on Nathan is all the more complete.
Lengthening shadows indicate it is the time of Sunday when Dad naps, a time that can be dangerous, when you can think you are safe, but are not. He is willing to forego the nap, if he is restless. He might be anywhere out there, searching, hidden in the woods on the other side of the pond. Dad might see any movement. Nathan holds so still every joint is stiff. As before, every sound becomes suspicious. The wild, tangled calls of birds rise in eerie echoes high in the tree tops from the deep forest that surrounds the farm. Nathan takes the blankets and books and searches out a more secluded place, behind a tree and a large stone grave marker, tilted at a wild angle but broad enough to hide him. He risks the movement even if Dad should be watching, his fear is suddenly so great. In the new hiding place, he is completely concealed.
But better concealment has its own price, that he himself can see nothing except banks of willows and slices of pond. He sits in silence, listening. Every possible footfall resounds. He is relieved when the sun sinks below the treetops, he is grateful for the cloak of shadow that descends over the graves. He can be less wary in the dark. He stretches, throws off the quilts.
With dusk he returns to the houses. The kitchens are lit and interiors shine. He slips through shadows, passing the ghostly windows of the parked school bus. He crosses the empty farmyard and slides through the gap in the hedge, into the yard where his mother can see him coming.
She steps to the screen door. Nathan stops at the bottom of the steps.
“I was worried sick.” They stand there. They sense each other. A cough echoes from inside the house. “Do you want something to eat?”
Nathan studies her shoes. Tattered boat shoes, grayed with mud and detergent.
“He’s watching the television,” she says.
Inside the kitchen, Nathan sits with his back to the door. The smell and curl of cigarette smoke locate Dad where Mom has promised. No liquor tonight. He is apt not to drink on Sunday night if he is going to church. The absence changes the smell. Nathan breathes and listens.
Mom serves his supper silently. Dishes whisper onto the table. Silverware glides across plates, meat and vegetables appear. She could be serving spies. Dad, for his part, seems locked in an agreement not to hear. His coughs are regular, dry, almost weak. Nathan eats his supper, sitting like quarry in the kitchen, and Mom watches, mild-eyed and numb.
He eats, hands back the plate and stands.
“You can’t go back outside.”
Nathan runs water over his hands, dries them on a towel.
“It’s going to be cold out there tonight.”
He steps to the door. From the smoky horizon comes Dad’s voice, “Who is that you’re talking to?”
She freezes, also like the hunted. The recliner creaks when Dad rises, and the springs make a gasping sound when he stands. Nathan slips into darkness as the first of Dad’s lumbering footsteps resounds.
By the time he reaches the shadows of Roy’s side of the hedge, he can hear Dad’s weight across the drying grass and fallen leaves. Acorns crack. Dad searches the yard abruptly, coughing his discomfort, never daring to call Nathan by name. The brute search halts as suddenly as it began. The screen door slams and Dad retreats.
Shivering. The night air has a biting edge. Nathan creeps further, to the border of the woods, not quite daring the graves as his shelter for the night. He retrieves his quilts but returns to the edge of the forest behind the houses, hiding himself in the underbrush. The houses remain clearly visible. The lights blaze from every window, Roy’s included; only Nathan’s own bedroom window is dark. He wraps himself in the quilts, as if in a cocoon.
The least sound rouses him to awareness; he is in a state between drowsing and wakefulness. He hears his parents drive to Sunday night service at church. Roy’s parents do the same, and Roy is probably with them. The houses are dark, except for a dim blue bulb burning in Roy’s kitchen, tracing the shoulder of the refrigerator in the frame of the window.
He is tempted to go inside, to sleep on a bed tonight, to take the chance. But he remembers the voice in the hallway, the crash of his father tripping across the twine trap and falling to the floor. He wraps the quilts tighter.
Both families return. Roy’s church service ends the sooner, no surprise. Nathan’s parents return late, when the waxing moon has risen. The house lights flicker on, ripple through rooms. They are flush from Christ’s victory, they will read the Bible and pray in the living room. Mom will find no reason to change the routine tonight.
The night is cold again, and even two quilts are not enough to cut the wind. He takes shelter near a tree but it is as if the wind pours around it to soak him. He endures as long as he can. Later, maybe after midnight, when all the windows have gone dark in both houses, he sneaks into the school bus and curls up on a seat near the back. For a while the cold and the smell of the seat keep him awake. The mundane interior takes on its own mystery in the half-light of the yard. But he has the quilts, at least, and some warmth accumulates beneath them. He sleeps for stretches, awaking and changing position, never quite comfortable, never quite warm. He dreams tangles of images from the last few days, boys diving through the air, a hand sliding along a wall, a voice in the hallway, a tangle of blankets in the corner of the bedroom. Then he wakens to the stillness and silence of the school bus.
Near dawn he sits and stretches, following his longest sleep of the night. The hard seat has given him a stiff neck and sore shoulder. He peers out the
windows warily.
Light blazes across the yard, from the kitchens of each of the houses. The igniting of the lights must have wakened him. Mom stirs in the kitchen. She will be waiting for Nathan there, and Dad will still be sleeping.
So Nathan, rising and stretching, careful to remove the quilts from the bus, slips quietly across the yard and into his house again.
Mom allows him inside, looking once, deeply, into his eyes. She moves with the usual silence of morning, added to the other layers of her withdrawal. She is a blankness to her son. She has hardly slept herself. She is thawing orange juice into a plastic pitcher. He passes across her field of vision and creeps up the stairs.
His bedroom already seems a vacant, airy place. He chooses clean clothes. Washing his face at the sink, brushing his teeth, he feels a moment of normalcy. One more morning finds him getting ready for school. Except that his awareness is heightened. Dressing quickly, he listens for familiar footsteps on the stairs. He finds himself holding his breath, he hardly makes a sound.
So when he hears the customary sound of the bus motor warming in the yard, he welcomes the promise of escape.
He descends carefully, listening. Dad’s snores wash the house in waves. Mom offers food and Nathan accepts a greasy slice of cheese toast on a folded paper towel. He carries this and his books into the yard, hearing, as a last low undertone, Mom’s whispered good-bye. Nathan crosses the yard and climbs into the school bus, and Roy, gripping the steering wheel, sitting with a slouch, closes the doors.
Nathan hesitates, uncertain whether to claim his usual seat or whether to seek some refuge further back; finally Roy says, “Sit down,” and Nathan sits. This action seals them even closer in spite of their inability to make the slightest sound. They listen. The bus hides them.