The Promise of Rest

by Reynolds Price

  But at that moment young Raven ran off toward the single-strand barbed wire fence that lay between here, the woods and the creek in its steep valley. The fence was thirty yards off in full sun; and when the boy reached the ugly strand of wire, he looked back toward the solemn adults and burst out in a low hilarious unbroken laugh.

  It felt to Hutch like the first authentic joy the human race had earned.

  Raven spun in place a few quick times, then stopped with arms out to calm his dizzy head. Finally he looked back and called out plainly. “Mother, I’m gone from here.” Then he bent to pass through the wire to the strip of field that lay between him and the trees.

  Ivory kept smiling but she said “You hold on right where you are, Mr. Smarty.” She looked to Hutchins and, though her face was empty of anything like a threat or plea, she said “You think you could stand for him to walk down with you?”

  Hutch thought With—what are you telling me? But in the presence of Ivory’s commandingly peaceful eyes, he knew She wants the child to go; so he said at last “I’d be more than pleased.”

  She said “Then I’ll wait back in the house.” Her eyes had always seemed past weeping; they were still in her mind’s full control, but what showed through them was a sorrow beyond what Hutch could have guessed.

  Straw, in a sudden pool of green light, was his best old self—more vulnerable than any young runner at the end of his sprint, far more likely to last. He said to Hutch “You’re really sure?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of me not walking down with you this time.”

  Hutch accepted that. “You’ll be here the rest of your life though, right?”

  Straw said “To the best of my knowledge, yes—it’s my intention.”

  By then Ivory had walked halfway toward Raven. When he’d slowly obeyed her beckoning hand and stood before her, she told him to help Mr. Mayfield politely, not to act silly and to show his respect for Wade and Wyatt.

  Straw followed closely and gave his own warning. “Don’t fall in a hole—there’s an old well back there that eats careless boys.”

  Ivory looked concerned.

  Straw shook his head and grinned.

  Raven said nothing but ducked his chin. He’d been to funerals with his old grandmother, but this was the first time he’d known the dead man. He’d do what he could, as events unrolled.

  By then Hutch had joined them, still waiting for fate to choose his companions.

  Ivory turned and faced him a moment. The loss in her eyes was glaring and endless. She said “I’d go if I thought I could, but Raven will help you.” Then though her composure had held, she passed Hutch and headed back toward the house. After a few steps, she looked round and said “Don’t forget young Raven’s a city boy; he wouldn’t know a snake from a rolled-up sock.”

  Hutch silently mouthed two words—He’s safe—and waved as if they were leaving for good.

  But Straw told her “Put your mind at ease. No bad snakes around here.” It was not strictly true—the odd copperhead turned up every few weeks.

  Ivory took it though and went her way.

  When she’d gone past earshot, Raven whispered “I’m hoping to see me a cobra.”

  Straw said “You’re on the wrong continent, Son.”

  Hutch smiled. “That’s a fact, more ways than one.”

  If anyone heard him, no one gave a sign.

  Then the two men and the eager boy were silent for a moment, their eyes on the ground.

  Straw stood long enough to reach out and touch the urn once more. Half facing Hutch, he said “So long”; then he touched his friend’s shoulder and followed Ivory.

  * * *

  WHEN a safe distance had grown between them, Raven called to their backs—a notch louder than a whisper—“I’m big enough to take care of me and this man.”

  No one heard him but Hutch. He touched Raven’s forehead and said “I hope you are.”

  But Raven tore off eight or ten giant steps toward the trees.

  And Hutch saw that Maud, Straw’s old black retriever—broad backed as a pony—had come up beside him and was fixed on Raven, running beyond her. She’d never harmed a live thing in her life, nearly thirteen years; and in her youth, Wade had been her favorite from humankind, an instinctive bonding that had pleased them both through hundreds of walks and hours on the porch. Hutch suspected she’d come to follow him down through shade to the creek, and he knew a single word would stop her. The day was hot for her age and her thick coat; Hutch also didn’t trust his strength to be with her. So he scratched the loosening skin of her muzzle and said “Old lady, you guard the others.”

  Maud didn’t look up—she was still calculating the distance before her, down through the woods. But finally she took Hutch’s order and turned. No look, no trick, just a slow stiff-hipped surrender and exit.

  Raven had stopped at the line of trees and was looking toward Hutch.

  So Hutch went on.

  13

  HUTCH set the urn down and crouched to thread himself through the rusty barbed wire.

  Before he could stand upright again. Raven ran back to watch his progress; and as Hutch reclaimed the urn, the boy said “Who burned up the man?”

  “Call him Wade. His name was Wade Mayfield. You remember Wade, your uncle’s friend.”

  Raven’s eyes were blank; he was making no commitment. In fact he hadn’t seen Wade since Christmas, seven months ago.

  Hutch reached his right hand out to Raven.

  The boy looked it over, then surrendered his own. It was deeply lined already, a shrunk man’s hand but fully fleshed.

  When they were nearly into the pines, Hutch asked again “You remember my Wade?”

  The boy watched the ground, unlike any ground he’d crossed till today. “Nobody told me he was yours.”

  “Well, you’re right he wasn’t, not mine to keep. But I was his father.”

  “When he was a child?”

  Hutch said “That’s pretty much how it was, yes—when Wade was a child very much like you.” And for the first time, Hutch wondered if Ivory or Wade or Wyatt—or old Mrs. Bondurant on northshore Long Island—had given the boy any clue about Wade. No way to ask, not for years anyhow. Possible questions ran through Hutch’s mind, but all seemed mildly obscene or cruel.

  Then Raven forestalled him. “My mother and father have got a divorce.”

  “I heard that, yes. Do you see your father?”

  “Too much. I hate him. One weekend a month way off in New Jersey. I hate that place.”

  Hutch said “Hate’s probably not a good idea.”

  Raven looked up till he’d drawn Hutch’s eyes to meet him. “You must not know my father then.”

  Hutch noted the courtliness with which the boy called his parents mother and father when the rest of America had accepted mom and dad from TV, but he dodged the boy’s question. “I just meant hate hurts the person that hates more than anybody else.”

  Raven said “Man, you’re wrong again.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Meanness is getting to be the big style. You never been to New York City, have you?”

  Hutch laughed. “Not lately. I hear it’s bad.”

  “Bad! They’ll shoot you in kindergarten; don’t wait till you’re grown.”

  “But you’re being extra careful, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t stop bullets if that’s what you mean.” Raven held up both palms as if to show holes.

  Till here it hadn’t really struck Hutch that, if Wade was truly this boy’s father, then his and Ann’s one grandchild and their only heir was living up north in even more danger than he’d meet down here in the worst imaginable hands—the all but vanished white-trash Klansman or defeated punk. The apparently endless slaughter of innocence underway in American cities, a mindless raking down of bystanders, had overtaken hatred in its tracks and bludgeoned its way on at unchecked speeds. Anything I can do about that? Not short of moving him down here with Ivory, no;
and that can’t happen—can’t or won’t. Hutch said “You wish you lived somewhere else?”

  “Not down here anyway if that’s what you mean.”

  Hutch said “What’s the problem with where we are?”

  “Hot, red hot.” The boy fanned his face.

  “It’s hot up north.”

  Raven said “Sometimes. But we got the ocean. Remember I live in Sea Cliff, New York.”

  Hutch laughed. “I’ll do my best to remember.” Yet even alone now he felt the need to cover his tracks. “I wasn’t exactly inviting you down here. I just thought you said you liked all the trees.”

  They were well into the serious woods, the soft floor deep in dry leaves and pinestraw, the gradual downgrade toward the valley. In ten more yards the shade was dense as dusk.

  Raven pressed Hutch’s hand. “I didn’t say that to hurt your feelings.”

  Hutch said “I understand—you’re a city boy. You think you could come down and visit sometime though? We could go to the beach or the mountains maybe.”

  “Just you and me?”

  “Ivory could come if she wanted to.”

  Raven’s head all but agreed to the plan. “She does like it better than me down here.” He went on thinking the option through. “Would that lady back at the house be with us?”

  “Wade’s mother? Ann?”

  Raven signed a strong Yes again. “The dead man’s mother—”

  “Wade’s mother—she might be; yes, she might. Her plans are still vague. But that wouldn’t affect you.”

  “I like her.” Then the boy looked around in half-comic carefulness and whispered “She gave me a five-dollar bill.” He patted his hip pocket where a small wallet guarded the crisp new bill, plus the five and two ones he’d brought from New York (his grandmother gave him money to phone her in case he got lost).

  Hutch said “Good. She’s smart and well paid.”

  Raven seemed to consider that matter closed. He struck off on his own. “My mother is scared of airplanes, but I’m old enough to fly by myself. Children fly everywhere, tickets tied round their neck to show who they are.”

  “They do,” Hutch said. “You name the day.”

  “You’d need to make those arrangements with my family.” The boy’s high-spoken gravity amused even him; when he’d heard his sentence, he beamed up at Hutch.

  “I’ll remember that, when the time comes, surely.”

  They’d gone a good way downhill before Raven said “When will that be?”

  “Sir?”

  “You said ‘When the time comes.’ What time is that—when you ask my mother?”

  Hutch said “It could start anywhere from the minute we’re back in Strawson’s house till sunup tomorrow.”

  “And last for how long? How long would you need me?”

  “Oh till you’re a grown man and I’m out of sight.”

  Raven consulted himself in silence. “I don’t think that’s going to work, Mr. Mayfield. I’m missing day camp just walking with you in all this heat.” He elaborately dried his neck with a hand, then fanned himself again.

  “Call me Hutch, please sir—I heard about your camp. Sure, you need to finish that.”

  “And high school and college and the rest of my grandmother’s life, I guess.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She’d die without me.”

  Hutch thought That’s very likely the truth. “That doesn’t leave us much hope then, do you think?”

  Raven said “I wouldn’t go far as that.” His voice was plainly an echo of his elders but likewise in earnest.

  “You got some spare time, somewhere in your life?”

  “I’ll see can I manage to work – you – in.” Again the boy smiled his enormous delight at Hutch.

  It found its mark. Hutch felt the slow rise in his chest and throat of that strange elation he’d felt in the early hours of rescuing Wade and bringing him home. When he could speak, he said “You phone me collect when you know.”

  “No way, Hutch,” the boy said. “I’ll pay for the call.” He held up his pale small hand to offer a genuine high five, nobody’s beggar.

  As well as Hutch could, with the cradled ashes, he met the hand and confirmed the greeting.

  By now they were near enough to the creek to hear its slender late-summer flow and the heartened birdcalls that signaled a cooler air and light than any available elsewhere for miles. Hutch recognized each sound as it came—the furious challenging cluck of a squirrel, a far-off dove in its lunar moan, the piercing scree of a red-tailed hawk nearby overhead. It all drew him down more surely toward his goal.

  Raven had never been this near a wilderness, but the deepening peace above the strange sounds and the separate odors of natural water and ripened leaves were welcome findings.

  Hutch said “This place where you and I are going was Wade’s favorite place when he was your age. He used to come up here every summer and stay with the Stuarts and old Mr. Walters, and this was the place he made his own.”

  “For what?” Raven said.

  “Oh being alone, thinking his own thoughts with nobody leaning or holding him back.”

  Raven said “I spend most of my time alone, when I’m home from school. My grandmother works till time to cook supper; then she watches TV past my bedtime.”

  “You mind that at all?”

  “Shoot, no, I love it. I’m good company, Hutch.”

  “I’m beginning to notice. You’ll almost certainly like Wade’s creek then. With a little luck on the food and weather, a smart sane man could live a whole life here and never need more.”

  “How about a young boy? Could he make out?”

  Hutch said “Maybe if he was, say, thirteen.”

  “That’s five years from now.”

  Hutch said “You could probably manage it, with occasional visits from Strawson or me.”

  Raven let go of Hutch’s hand and stepped ahead faster, but he still asked clearly “Why did Wade leave then?”

  “Wait please,” Hutch said. “Don’t get there before me.” He wanted to see the boy’s eyes take in the heart of the place—first sight, first pleasure.

  So Raven halted in his tracks, with his back turned, and waited till Hutch was precisely beside him. He asked again “Why you think Wade left?”

  Hutch said “He had his grown life to find.” For a moment he wanted to sit down here, beg the boy to sit and try not to leave. Crazier still. Lead him on; do your job. He said to Raven “You walk in my tracks,” not explaining that his tracks would be safer on the slope, when they reached the downgrade.

  So the boy looked to Hutch’s feet and fell in behind him, stride for wide stride, till they came to the crest of the valley and stopped.

  Full as the summer growth still was, this deep into shade, the stretch of creek that Grainger had channeled was plain below them. Its edges were softened by moss and vines since Hutch’s visit in early spring, and summer rains had gnawed at the banks, but the big smooth boulders still broke the flow into tamer strands of water that now looked clear but dark brown like strong cold tea.

  Raven’s face was calm but his eyes had widened; and he said “Man, this is a Tarzan movie.”

  “Exactly. Hear him swinging our way—him and his monkeys?”

  Raven gave Hutch the benefit of the doubt; he actually listened, then shook his head Yes and pulled ahead on Hutch’s wrist. “Come on, man.” The boy ran three steps down the steep embankment, then tumbled over, rolled a fast two yards, stopped himself and sprang to his feet.

  Hutch had thought God, don’t let him be hurt with me. We’ve only started and moved to help him.

  But by then the boy was brushing leaves off his suit, picking at a narrow scratch in his right palm, then laughing to Hutch and giving a formal bow from the waist. “Son of Tarzan, at your service, sir.”

  Hutch said “Well, greetings” and returned the bow. For that long instant he felt all but fully rewarded for the spring and summer’s pain. />
  Raven said “For a white dude, you doing all right.”

  “Thank you, friend—I try. I try when I can.”

  Raven was already thinking ahead. “Can I see the dead man now?”

  Hutch was holding the urn in both arms, against his chest. “These are ashes, Son. They’re all that’s left of Wade Mayfield’s body. Wade was my only son. You said you remembered Wade.”

  “A little bit. I think we had a picnic.”

  Hutch could see he was hedging. “When was that?”

  “When I was a child, way back when.” Raven’s eyes were still fixed on the urn.

  Hutch said “Let’s do our duty then” and took the first careful step down the steep slope.

  Reminded again of their serious errand, Raven came on several yards behind Hutch in long slow strides.

  AT the edge of the creek, Hutch waited till the boy had caught up beside him. Then he crouched to the ground and again peeled the tape from the lid of the urn. He paused a moment to brace himself for what he might feel at this last sight. Then he looked to Raven who was in reach behind him, waiting too with eyes on the lid. So what Hutch felt was, again, the oldest feeling of his life—the literal medium in which he was born and had swum ever since: a bitter mix of pleasure and grief, thanks and irrecoverable loss. He took off the lid; the ashes were just as Grainger had left them. The gold ring barely showed, still pressed in the center. Hutch tilted the urn so Raven could see.

  The boy crouched too and took a long look. Without facing Hutch he said “Is this all you got?”

  “All of what?”

  “The dead man—your Mr. Wade.”

  Hutch said “Not all, no.”

  “Who’s got the rest?”

  Hutch said “All of us, deep down in our minds. You’ll know more about Wade once you get grown.”

  Raven said “I see him right this minute.” When he looked across to Hutch, it was clear that the boy meant he was watching memories, however unsure and far in his past. Then his head bent closer to the urn. “Are they safe?”