Between Here and the Yellow Sea

by Nic Pizzolatto

  Then she pointed to the Great Square of Pegasus and to its northeast, an elongated patch of fuzzy light that was the Andromeda Galaxy.

  “How do you know all this?”

  “A teacher. She watched the stars, and knew about them. A lot of stars we see are dead. Their light’s out. It just takes thousands of years to reach us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She explained animatedly, using her hands to describe distance, and he realized this was the closest he’d seen to emotion in her. A loon cried out on the pond, and she stopped.

  “Certain ghosts live at the bottom of the water,” she confided. “They speak through loons. Cry through loons.”

  He pondered this scrap of character, rolling over in his mind his total knowledge of her, that she knew things about stars and believed in ghosts. He began assuring himself that she was intelligent, possessing a type of cautious imagination, that her lost eyes were romantic.

  He spent the night in the woods, in a soft, shallow culvert between oak roots. Alone, he was compelled to picture her body in a nightshirt. When he finally closed his eyes, he tried to imagine seeing light that no longer existed.

  Tin-colored clouds huddled over the castle and four men hammering out gutters refused to work for fear of lightning. The greenhouses stood on seven-foot foundations of river stone that supported four feet of wall and six of roof. Above the walls, empty frames awaited glass skin. Volta sat on a bucket, mixing mortar and whistling, while Thomas worked on the roof.

  In mid-afternoon a woman called up to him. Below, Carmen Rogers shielded her eyes and tilted her head skyward. “Hello,” she said. Yards behind her, Kenneth and Elizabeth McRyder stood together. They both waved.

  Thomas slid down the ladder and waved back. Volta busied himself.

  Carmen had brushed her cheeks with rouge. Her eyelashes were thickened black, a sheath of scarlet silk draping her thin frame. Strands of apricot hair hung errant around her face, and near her temple a black headband held a sharp black feather that trembled in the breeze.

  She twisted her foot, looked back over her shoulder, tall, but under his six feet. “I’m sorry about my humor last week. I should have explained.”

  He didn’t know why she was talking to him. “You don’t need to.”

  “That’s generous.”

  “I just work here, put glass in.”

  “They told me you work with glass.”

  He faced the greenhouses. “Anybody could do this.”

  When he turned back, she was staring patiently, as if he hadn’t finished. “I make glass, though. I know how. And stain it. I made two church windows back home. That’s what I wanted to do here.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “Linn Creek,” he pointed northwest. “Thirty miles yonder.”

  “Yonder,” she smiled. “I’m completely taken with the idiom here.”

  He just stared, confused. On a pine to her left, a woodpecker hopped and struck, precisely, as if its work were necessary and delicate. Her perfume wafted over him, strong and floral.

  “You’d like to make windows here?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I once saw an entire building with broken windows, and they pushed the glass into piles. It looked like diamonds.”

  “Oh.”

  She stepped close to him behind a cloudy expression. The woodpecker flew away. “You know about the war?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “If you lived in Europe you—every man your age I mean, is dead. Or worse.” Her cheeks quivered, but then she laughed unreasonably, faced upward. “Right. My—I’m sorry, please—how stupid. I walk over here and start telling about the dead people I know.” She laughed again. Behind her, Kenneth said something to his wife.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. He gave her his chamois and she wiped her eyes. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me now. You seemed polite, the one day, and I wanted to apologize, but, look.”

  She walked away, rejoining her aunt and uncle. Elizabeth took Carmen’s hand and shouldered her head while they walked. They left him baffled and uncomfortable.

  “Ey,” Volta set down his trowel. “What was that then?”

  “I don’t know.” He started back up the ladder. “I guess she’s sad.”

  OCTOBER. AGAIN THE DRY, VACANT LIGHT OF OCTOBER.

  Astra invited him to dinner one Friday. Her father was hunting all weekend, and she would cook for them. Thomas walked there with the two stained-glass pieces he’d carried from home.

  The cabin was small, oak logs weathered and ill-fitted on a dusty yard over which several rattler and adder skins hung from a low pine branch. She was waiting outside for him. The snake skins were translucent, pallid sun through them the color of butterscotch.

  A window in the cabin was broken. “I can fix that,” he said.

  Her eyes stayed on his shoes. “My father didn’t go hunting. We can’t have dinner.” She wore the only dress he’d ever seen her in, old blue flannel.

  “So? Let me meet him.” He held out the stained glass. “I brought you these.”

  She looked briefly at his art. “Thank you. No, you should go.”

  It was like some regression had occurred and he knew her no better than the first day he saw her, and he panicked. “I want to meet your father.”

  She took the pictures and paused, remained still a moment, then opened the door and motioned for him to follow.

  Inside, there were only two rooms in the house, stale and smoke-filled. Her father sat against a wall, next to an iron stove. Smoke leaked out its fractured chimney in dark threads that wove around his head. He had Astra’s long hair, wore a heavy khaki shirt and was much larger than Thomas. This, he realized, was the big Indian he’d seen playing cards in the bunkhouse.

  Astra said, “This is Thomas. He works at the castle.”

  “The castle,” the man huffed, then leaned forward and squinted at Thomas. His voice creaked, “What do you want? I don’t owe you anything.” He lifted a tall clay pitcher and drank.

  “I’m a friend of Astra’s.”

  The man reached into a stove pot and pulled out something he began to eat. He chewed and watched Thomas suspiciously, as if trying to decide in what manner the young man had offended him. “You have money?”

  “What?”

  “Get out,” he said.

  Astra stepped away from them.

  “Sir?”

  The man nodded up, eyes glinting in the flat brick of his face. “If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to stand up and kill you. I will break your neck.”

  Thomas turned to Astra.

  “Don’t look at her,” the Indian lurched. “Get out!” His shout made them flinch.

  Astra opened the door, calm, without complaint. She seemed to be a speck on the horizon.

  The door closed before he could say anything. On his way back to camp he picked up a heavy branch and kept stopping to hit trees with it until it broke.

  Because it was Friday, men arrived at the bunkhouse dragging burlap sacks containing mason jars of grain alcohol. Peach or cherry, twenty cents. Volta bought three and gave one to Thomas. He asked Volta about the big Indian who played cards with the workers.

  Volta shrugged. “Lives aroun here. Awful card player.”

  “He’s a son of a bitch.”

  Volta grinned and belched. “Who isn’t?” He began strumming an old guitar, singing something about a farm, a horse, a woman.

  Eventually Volta’s second jar rolled off his gut and banged empty on the floor. Little by little men retired and bearlike snoring rose in chorus. Lights extinguished. Thomas had to keep one foot on the ground to prevent a tumbling sensation.

  Saturday they worked till noon. A red-shouldered hawk made a nest atop a basket-oak, high above a cluster of bluish morning glories and pink ironweed. He watched the raptor circle and bob over crumbling treetops that trimmed the skyline.

  Volta complained. “M’no good t’day. S’not
right, that shite.”

  Late morning, Kenneth McRyder approached the greenhouses. In gray trousers and suspenders with a crisp white shirt, he lightly dragged a walking stick of dark wood. Volta greeted him. McRyder nodded and moved past him, looked up to Thomas.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “Coming along nicely.”

  “Thank you.”

  “May I talk to you? Koenig, right?”

  “Yessir. Thomas.”

  “Will you walk with me?”

  Volta sat back down and watched them leave.

  Kenneth was thirty-five, trim. His mustache gleamed and his trousers sported razor creases as they walked along a dirt path bordering the castle, staying close to the trees. Thomas watched Kenneth’s fingers pick at the grain of the walking stick. Now and then he pinched the tips of his mustache.

  “You’ve built church windows before?”

  “Yes. Just two. In Linn Creek. I can do anything with glass.”

  “We’re thinking about installing a stained window on the eastern wall, where the tall clear one is now.” He pointed his stick toward the castle and they stopped walking. “I was only sixteen when my father started building this.” Men and simple machines moved around the castle at insect scale. “They spent an entire year harvesting materials before construction even started. Did you know that?”

  “My father was one of the first people to work on it back then.”

  Kenneth struck his stick. “Wonderful! Where is he now?”

  “Ten years ago. He was a stonemason. A wall collapsed.”

  After a respectful silence, he asked, “Where did he come from?”

  “Canada. He settled in Linn Creek when the work stopped.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “Yes.”

  Kenneth said proudly, as if it were his doing, “Then this castle is why you’re American.”

  “I guess.”

  Kenneth dusted his shoe and perhaps pondered whether he found Thomas’s directness charming or arrogant. “Would you like to work with glass here? Would you like to make a stained-glass window?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “What would you need?”

  “A furnace. I’d make all the glass here. Like everything else in the castle. Just tell me what you want.”

  “What if I told you to make whatever you wanted? What if you could design the picture?” He parted his hands like a conjurer, and two gold rings shined on his fingers.

  The proposition needed some qualifier to make it realistic. As if sensing this, Kenneth added, “You know our niece, Carmen?”

  “I’ve met her.” Thomas couldn’t understand why, in this situation, Kenneth was the one who appeared uncomfortable.

  “A lot of people in St. Louis are uppity about money. I’d like to think the McRyders are not. My father began his career driving a cart for a grocer, and we’ve never looked down on the status of others.”

  “All right.”

  “I just want you to know that. My money came from my father, but then I say I don’t know how to make church windows.”

  “All right.”

  “I’m not explaining this right.” Kenneth leaned against an elm whose shadows sprinkled the two. Birds twittered invisibly. “Carmen’s from England. I’m sure you knew that. She’s been through a great deal. It wasn’t so long ago, you know, they were in the war. So were we, but not like England. And there was the influenza.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m saying that I would like you to be nice to her. My wife and I care about Carmen’s happiness.” He put his hands up as if pushing a wall. “I’m not talking about anything improper. Carmen has a life to return to, eventually, but, we feel, there is a sadness she must be eased out of.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I only want you to be affable toward her. We’ll start your project, you’ll be around the castle, making glass, and we’ll come around from time to time. When we do, just talk to her. Visit. Chat. That’s all.”

  Thomas watched parched leaves disperse across the path.

  Kenneth’s voice became final. “It would be a great favor to our family.”

  “I just don’t—why me? I don’t see why you’d want it to be me.”

  Kenneth looked up the rise at the castle. Cedars around it shook against a welter of blue-gold sky. He turned back to Thomas, with a face as though he were viewing some pure tragedy, like a burnt infant. “I believe you remind her of someone.”

  He only saw Astra days later, as she had not worked earlier in the week or played checkers before dinner. He worried vaguely for her, but he now had new concerns occupying him. He’d drawn plans for a furnace and studio—that was fun—but now came the difficulty of actually designing the window.

  She stood outside the bunkhouse in a rose-colored dress and moccasins, a small red bundle dangling from her hand. “I brought you some food. Since we couldn’t have dinner.” Then, incredibly, she grinned.

  “Let me get a blanket.”

  Astra walked quickly. With light steps she led him toward tall rocks riddled with lesions of shale. She kept smiling until he knew her mood as false, too insistent. “Hurry,” she sang. Her voice sounded unnatural, like raindrops in the desert.

  Without thunder or lightning, a warm drizzle began to fall. Combed ferns drooped and slapped at rocks with the wind’s jostling and she laughed, a low sound. Fat drops pounded down as they ran, Astra moving quick, nimble. Her wet dress clung to her as she darted between moonshadows and lightning flashes.

  At a wall of granite, glassy feldspar twinkled, pink as polished flesh, and she led him into a cave. The constricted dress took the color of her skin.

  He used dried branches and moss to make a fire inside the cave. She unwrapped bread and jam while he laid the blanket by the fire. The wild caves secreted their own fluid and the weeping stone was slick as oiled glass and firelight leapt on the damp walls, snapping. A great horned owl landed in the cave, giant wings flustered, rain at its back. Astra’s skin gleamed saffron in the light.

  She stood and the dress stuck high up on her legs. He felt blood pounding the rims of his ears.

  Her fingers touched his elbow, the bend in his arm.

  She moved in determined ways, giving him no time. Then luxurious frenzy, where certain fantasies materialized, becoming real, alarming flesh in his hands. Her hair fell around their faces. She had wiped her lips with jam.

  Fire hissed to shriveling embers. From the cave’s entrance the owl watched them and lightning flashed behind the great bird.

  *

  He chose a space for his studio. An area north of the castle, about four hundred square feet on level ground, sectioned off under an awning with spaces for an oven, benches, a mixing and grinding station, and the furnace.

  Six men were to build the furnace for him. They hauled cinder blocks and firebrick and arranged them with grim faces while he studied his own diagrams. A man named Jack Alden moved slow and carried light loads. Bearded, a pink scar ran across his forehead, and he watched Thomas with narrow eyes.

  Every time he saw Jack watching, Thomas looked down at his plans.

  This time he said, “Make sure the eighteen-inch go just above the base.”

  Alden dropped a firebrick on the ground. “No, sir. No thank you. I don’t know that I feel like taking orders from a child anymore today.” The other five stopped what they were doing.

  “Just do your job,” Thomas said.

  Alden smiled, motioned with his hand as if dropping a dish rag.

  Thomas took two steps back. “You’ll take orders because it’s all you can do.”

  Alden began closing the distance between them, and Thomas backed up, almost into Abberline’s horse.

  Abberline drew the animal around and looked at the two while his roan pawed the ground with a hoof. “How’s it coming?”

  “This one,” he pointed to Alden, voice unsteady. “He’s trouble. I don’t want him h
ere.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Enough.” The horse pranced in a small circle and Abberline’s pistol flashed in the sun as he turned. “Come with me.”

  Alden didn’t shift. He watched Thomas.

  “If you value employment,” said Abberline, “you come now with me. I will not ask again.”

  Alden moved, eyeing Thomas until Abberline directed him to walk in front the horse. Abberline tipped his cap. “We’ll get someone out to replace him.”

  “Thank you.”

  The others stood watching. Thomas put down his plans and lifted two firebricks, moving to stack them. Eventually, haughtily, the men followed.

  Kenneth arrived at the studio site before noon, with his wife and Carmen.

  Thomas nodded. “Hello,” and, remembering, “Miss Rogers.”

  Kenneth said, “I wondered if you’d like to have lunch with us today?”

  He’d hoped to see Astra at lunch. “All right. Thank you.” They all walked away as clanging from the east announced the noon meal.

  Inside the castle, a dining room contained several oak tables with strips of white linen draped across them. Two Negroes served stewed rabbit in a thick gravy with baked trout, garlic potatoes, and bread. He sat next to Carmen, who grinned demurely and kept her hands in her lap. He saw her stare from the corner of his eye, in the reflection on his silverware.

  During the meal, Kenneth spoke. “Have you settled on a design yet?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got some ideas.” Nothing he sketched seemed worthy of the opportunity, and this was starting to worry him. He sensed the colors he wanted, but was missing his key element: theme and subject. The precise picture eluded him. A temptation to simply create a mosaic of abstract shapes was instantly dismissed. Using this kind of patronage to make an unremarkable composition would be worse than not doing anything, and he believed the opportunity required a subject of power and grace. He felt he had two points of leverage in his search. First, he trusted the processes of his art, that in the moment of creation the method itself would produce an essential discovery. Second, most important, he tried to use his eyes: use them like nets to snare the world, though his interest was in landscape, not human forms. He believed the subject of his window, the universe, resided only in the hills, trees, and water around him, the natural world.