by Rocky Wood
“Don didn’t ask me to go riding until Thanksgiving. It snowed--just a powdering, like confectioner’s sugar, and Cass laid out a tremendous spread, all of it with a sour face, like something in her stomach was bad and hurting her. She sometimes mumbled to herself in the kitchen when she must have thought she was alone, strange little half-prayers that made me uneasy. It was as if God walked with her, like He walked with Esau. Except that Cass’s God wasn’t Esau’s. Sometimes she made faces. I don’t think she had any idea she was doing it. As if there were ropes and pulleys inside her head, and her God was yanking on them every now and again, just to remind her. I tried to ignore it. It was her affair. That’s the way people are in New England--or maybe everywhere.
“When he asked me to go out riding in the snow I said I was too tired. He said: That’s not it, you know that’s not it. With no school how’d you get so tired? I said: My mind is tired, Don. My father died, don’t you remember? He said: If you brood over it, it will just hurt the longer. I’ll take you into Gates and buy you a sundae at Roth’s. I said: I’d rather not, Don, thanks. I’m full anyway. He said: Please? And I said all right, almost as if I were doing it to be polite, but I wasn’t, I wanted it to be just politeness because my father was dead and I hadn’t even cried the last time I saw him alive, but it wasn’t that way. I wanted to go. I wanted him to love me because I already loved him.
“So we went riding that first time, and I can remember looking back just as we left the dooryard and seeing Cass looking out of the kitchen window at us. And the ropes and pulleys were making her muscles work with the faces she didn’t know she was making and I almost screamed because she looked like a gargoyle.
“There was a lot of snow that early winter. I was out of school almost as much as I was in it. The sky was the color of lead and the smell of salt was always in the air, and the gulls would come right up to your feet for a scrap of bread or a piece of suet. Peter van Nook got his library card and asked me what he should get first. I recommended The Count of Monte Cristo. That same day I caught Alvah and Karen Genack in the shed. She screamed at me and tried to claw my face. I had to slap her. She slapped me back and ran out. She left her bloomers on the floor. Alvah stood there with his…his penis still in…a state of excitement. He grinned and said: She wanted too much anyway. He took a step toward me and I said: Kindly tuck yourself in, Alvah. And he looked down at himself and then looked at me and then took another step. I shut him in the woodshed and locked the door. He started pounding on it. He pounded and cursed and kicked, and I went on with my third grade geography lesson. My heart was going like a crazy clock. Fifteen minutes or so later I saw him tramping down over the hill, plowing through snow up to his knees. He must have let himself out through the shed window. He came back the next day looking embarrassed and mumbled a little apology at the floor. I accepted it. Karen Genack never came back.
“When the snow was hard enough on the roads, Don took me out in the sleigh, both of us all wrapped up in robes, and when it got near Christmas he put bells on the horse, which was named Jason, and it was so gay! It was all very gay and sweet, like a fine wine that makes your mind warm.
“On Christmas eve, when we were coming home from town, he kissed me for the first time--he was very proper, you see. Very sweet and proper. It was snowing and almost dark and everything was white and gray and violet. His nose was cold on my cheek but his lips were very warm. He said: I’m afraid I love you, Edie. I said: Afraid? He laughed and said: No. No, not afraid. I said: I love you. Kiss me again. So he did and Jason found his way home by himself.
“When the traveling was passable, I went home for a week. It was the longest week of my life. Mother cried on the last day, but she didn’t ask me to stay home. She wanted to, but she was very strong. When I got back, Don asked me to marry him. I said yes, and he almost squeezed the life out of me. We were in the entry and my bags were on the floor and we kissed each other until I saw stars. I said: Have you told your mother and father yet? He said: Not yet. Stay in the parlor this evening. We have to talk.
“So we talked in the parlor after Mr. and Mrs. Knowles had gone up to bed. I was knitting a sweater and he sat beside me on the divan in front of the fire. The wind groaned outside around the eaves while we talked. Or rather, while Don talked.
“He said: My father will be a happy man because of this, Edie. He’s made that clear. He thinks you’re a fine woman. But mother is apt to take on. You know her--or at least, you’ve seen her. She’s strange. She wasn’t, not always. Or not nearly so bad--I can’t remember her when there wasn’t at least a touch of the oddness. But it’s gotten worse, especially in the last two or three years. My father blinds himself to it. He does not like to see what he can’t cope with, and I am not sure I can blame him. Once a friend of his mentioned some kind of shaking disease and I asked him: Do you mean epilepsy? He said: Yes, that’s it. Epilepsy. Father wanted her to go see a doctor in Mechanic Falls. She screamed at him. She actually screamed at him. That was three years after Julia was born. Father hasn’t said anything since.
“He said: She may have it--epilepsy, I mean. But there’s more, I think. Something in her mind itself, or her spirit. Have you sensed it? I said: Yes.
“He said: I want us to go away, Edie. Not like thieves in the night, no. That wouldn’t be good or right. We’ll tell them both, be married, and let the pieces fall. But after that I want to go far away.
“I said: Where? He said: Mr. Calligan at the bank recommends a town called Harding. He has a brother who works in a new bank there. Mr. Calligan says the town has a future. And Mr. Calligan will recommend me to his brother--I’m sure of it.
“I asked: Where is Harding? He told me, and I said: Why, that’s halfway across the country (but the prospect rather thrilled me, and I imagine he could see that). He said: I told you I wanted to get away from here. How does it sound to you? I said: I love you. It’s all right with me.
“After that we necked. It was very delicious, very satisfying. I felt him against me--hard--and it was the most amazing thing I had even felt in my life. It made me laugh and that made him laugh. He said: I’m going to bed now. While I can still go alone. I asked him when we were going to tell them and he asked me what I thought about the following night. I said that sounded fine. Then he kissed me on the base of the neck and said: Good night, Edie. I love you.
“I don’t know how long it was before she came in. I sat on the divan in front of the fire, curled up like a pussycat. I felt like a pussycat, all warmness and content. There was the warmth and the love of a very definite singing in my brain. I think I dozed. Anyway, the next thing I knew, she was sitting across from me in Mr. Knowles’ wing chair, with the last of the fire playing across her face in orange lights and shadows. Her face was working, bunching, twisting. She scared me and I jumped and that made her smile, just a little twitch of the lips. She was holding a book on her knees. At first I thought it was her Bible, but it wasn’t. It was green. A bilious green. It reminded me of a copy of Hardy’s Tess of D’Urbervilles I had once. Your mind associates things: Whenever I see a book that color I think of Cass, sitting across from me and making her poor unconscious faces.
“She said: He was touching you.
“I couldn’t say anything. I was literally tongue-tied.
“She said: He was touching your breasts. I saw. It’s coming out in him. Unto the third and fourth generations. I do not blame you. I blame myself. I blame him.
“I was sleepy and confused and it was such a turnabout from the happiness. I said the first thing that came on my tongue, and of course that was: We’re going to be married.
“She didn’t say anything. For a moment she just sat there with her face twisting and mugging at me (she didn’t know--I’m almost sure she didn’t know), and then she started to laugh. It was a dry, tittering sound, like leaves in autumn at the fall of night. She looked like a gargoyle. She said: You daren’t.
“I said: What are you talking about?
“She said: It would be monstrous. Your children would be monstrous. Unto the third and fourth generations.
“I said: I’m sorry, Mrs. Knowles.
“She began to scratch her arms. Her arms were brown and tough-looking, like the branches on old trees, and she made great white marks on them that turned red. Her face worked. A log in the fireplace popped and sparks went up the chimney. I said: Do you feel all right, Mrs. Knowles?
“She said: He is a bastard.
“I said: Bast--
“She said: He was gotten in me by a railroad conductor on the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad. He was a harsh man, a big man, and we did it while my husband was working for our daily bread. We did it for the carnal pleasure of the thing. He bit me. I asked him to bite me. John and I hadn’t been married two years. I took his thing in my mouth, and he put his filth in my mouth. Filth, filth. It was monstrous and filthy and I wallowed in it. He would come in with his tie pulled down and his vest open and I would reach for his fly. And he got my son Donald in me. Donald is monstrous. He is the devil’s bastard.
“I stared at her. If I could have made a noise, I think it would have been somewhere between a laugh and a howl.
“She said: I have repented my sin. I have scourged myself. I have begun my atonement. Do you understand? Do you understand? Unto the third and fourth generations. I will not allow you and Donald to spawn the devil. Do you understand?
“I said: I’m going to bed. I stood up and she must have thought I was going to hit her because she shrank back in the chair. And I felt sorry for her. I never doubted that what she said had happened those years ago was true. She was literally eaten up with guilt. I felt sorry for her; she looked so little and demented. I thought she was harmless. That was where I made my mistake, John. Oh, how I wish I could go back and redo it, change it. She was like a cornered ferret, and ferrets bite, don’t they, when their backs are against the wall?
“I got to the door and she whispered: Unto the third and fourth generations. I never looked back at her.
“The next afternoon I asked Don to take me out riding. We went into town and got hot fudge sundaes, and I told him the whole story. He took it very well. I can remember that he repeated the word over two or three times, tasting it, rolling it in his mouth: Bastard. Bastard. Then he asked: Did she say what his name was? I said: No. He took my hand and held it between his. He said: Does it feel any different? I said: Not a bit. He said: I love you.
“On the way back we talked about his father--his foster-father, Cass’s husband. Don said: I don’t think she could ever actually tell him. It’s been hidden too long. I don’t think she could even bring herself to tell me. I said: I hope you are right.
“He was. After supper that night Don stood up and announced that he had asked me to marry him and that the lady had said yes. Julia clapped her hands and said: Yayyyyy! She ran around the table and kissed me. For a moment John just looked at us, and then he dropped his napkin into his plate, smiled, and said: I could not be more pleased.
“Cass made an odd hissing noise. Her face had gone dead white. It began to twist. She knocked over her water glass getting up, seemed on the verge of saying something, and then ran out of the room. Julia had pressed herself against me. Outside it had begun to snow again.
“John said: You mustn’t mind. You know how she has been, Don.
“Don nodded and his father said: Now perhaps you had better tell me your plans and how I can help.
“I said: Except for my father, you’re the finest man I’ve ever known, Mr. Knowles.
“He got out his pipe and said: Then perhaps you ought to marry me.
“Then we all laughed, and things were a little easier. When Don told him that we planned to move here, he nodded and said that would probably be best. He said: I suppose this does not sound just right, but I think perhaps it will do your mother some good, Donald.
“Don said: I think that might be. We both looked at him, but his face was as unreadable as the back of a playing card. I still wonder how much he did know about Cass. Perhaps she talked in her sleep.
“I went to bed early. I was walking in a rose mist. April seemed an eternity away. I didn’t even like to think what Cass would be like to live with for the next four months. As it turned out, I didn’t have to live with her that long. Nowhere near.
“The next two weeks were heaven. I bought things. Two dresses, a set of dishes. I bought a nightie. A silk one. I felt very sinful, buying a silk nightie. I felt downright Babylonian. John went around smiling. He tried to make Cass smile too, but Cass didn’t want to smile. She was beyond smiling. She cooked and she fetched the wood when Don wasn’t there to do it (I offered; she only glared at me), and she read the Bible. For a while she went on reading it at the table, but John must have told her to stop. The last night she did it she read from one of the Books of Moses, something about wholesome and kingdoms of wholesome and fire and judgments.
“On the last day of January, Don came back from Brunswick with an engagement ring. It was very small--you could have put it in your eye and it wouldn’t have hurt your eyesight any--but it was beautiful. Beautiful. I wept and he kissed me, and we lay down on the divan in the living room. He touched me all over and I touched him. I wanted to. He could have had me, right then. But he did not want it just then. He said: In the spring. In the spring. And we will have the windows open and we will be able to smell the earth starting to make.
“He got up and said: Good night, Edie. I love you. He was wearing his brown banker’s suit, and how he bulged! I said: I love you too, Don. Goodnight. He said: Will you remember to take the milk out of the ice-box before you go up? I said: Yes, dear. Goodnight.
“Those were the last words he ever said to me. I loved him more than the world. He was mine and I was his and it seemed like it was us together that made the whole universe. And the last words he ever said to me were: Will you remember to take the milk out of the ice-box before you go up? How can there be a God? How can there, unless He’s on an eternal LSD trip?”
John Edgars shifted his legs in the darkness. A fresh cigarette glowed. “Maybe He’s just a lousy playwright. How’s that for pseudo-philosophy?”
She put her hands on his. They were cold and he held them tightly, enfolding them.
“When I came home from school the next day I was really euphoric. Peter van Nook had gotten into a fight with one of his classmates, a boy named Arthur Hapgood who had been calling him a bookworm pansy. Peter thrashed him and made him take it back. Arthur finally did, after Peter almost broke his arm. Then he let Arthur go and said: I learned that hold out of a book, you stupid bastard. And Arthur said: Show me. Peter said: I’ll bring the book tomorrow. And they went away with their arms around each other’s shoulders. There was that, and there was Don. Don would be home when I got there--for the whole blessed and wonderful week.
“The sky was overcast, but we were having a thaw and the snow was melting. The roads were slushy but clear. All the icicles on the house were dripping, and the smell of the sea was as sharp as a slap. I took off my boots in the entry and came into the living room. I could smell apple pies. They smelled cinnamony and fresh. They smelled lovely.
“And right then, feeling as wonderful as I did, I decided to make friends with Cass. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in my mind that I could do it. I could have done anything. That’s how I felt.
“I pushed through the door into the kitchen--”
She was taken with a fit of shuddering and tried to draw her hands away from him. He held them and pulled her against him. He wrapped an arm around her and she pressed against his shirt, smelling the warm smell of him.
“I saw him right away. His head was in the wood box and at first I thought he had been sick. Then I saw the blood. There was blood underneath him and blood on the walls. I could smell it underneath the smell of the pies. A sharp smell, like heated metal. It smelled like a hog had been slaughtered.
“I screamed. I ran to him and tried to turn him
over. I couldn’t. He was too heavy. He was all…loose. God knows how many times she had hit him with that hatchet. I got blood all over the front of my dress. It was warm and gooey, like fudge-sauce. I rocked back on my heels and looked at the ceiling. I thought I was going to faint.
“That was when I heard her. I looked around and she was crouched in the corner between the stove and the wall. She was rocking back and forth and keening. There was blood on her ankles. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t even know I was there. She was just rocking back and forth and clutching her apron. There was something in her apron. The hatchet was between her feet. I took two steps toward her, and I saw what was in her apron.
“She looked at me and I began wailing. I couldn’t move. All I could do was stand there and wail, smelling the pies as they started to burn and hearing the icicles drip.
“She held it out to me. She said: Unto the third and fourth generations. Then I ran out. I ran straight down to the docks. It must have been a mile. I fell in the slush and screamed going down and getting up. I screamed all the time I ran. People came out and looked at me. I could smell the salt and the water but there was still the smell of apple pies. I found John and then I fainted.”