Maynard’s House

by Herman Raucher

  Again she allowed him to hold her hand. And again his blood responded by rushing to an immediate boil. He hoped that she was unaware of the effect she was having on him, but her sidelong glances told him that she knew. He wondered if he was affecting her similarly. If he was, he was courting big trouble, for she was far too young. It would be far more moral of him to throw her back, like the trout, and not mount her.

  They came to the Devil’s Dancing Rock. “You know what that is, don’t you?” he asked.

  “A-yuh.”

  “Devil’s Dancing Rock.”

  “A-yuh.”

  “You danced on it.”

  “Who says?”

  “You danced on it. You and Froom. I saw your prints in the snow.”

  “Who says?”

  “And you left your names.”

  “Just to tell ya we were hereabouts.”

  “You didn’t dance on that rock?”

  “Bad luck to.”

  “Even for a Minnawickie?”

  “Anyone dancin’ on it’s supposed to be in league with the Devil.”

  “Who says?”

  “People. Folks.”

  “Then why’d you dance on it?”

  She smiled. “’Cause I felt like it.”

  “Feel like doin’ it again?”

  She thought for a moment, looking first at the rock, and then at the sky, and then at Austin. “A-yuh.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Ya not to laugh.”

  “I won’t laugh. I’ll accompany you by whistling. What kind of music do you need?”

  “None. Music’s inside.”

  She stepped up onto the rock and danced. At first it looked to be the kind of dancing any kid might do. The frug, or the monkey—he couldn’t be sure, because he wasn’t up on that kind of thing. But whatever it was it soon slipped into something else, something distinctly serpentine and latently sexual, her arms curling about in the air, her fingers, even in their mittens, dancing singly and in sequence like miniature synchronized divers, beckoning to him no matter which way the rest of her turned. And all the while her eyes looked elsewhere, as if he weren’t there at all.

  She pulled off her hat and tossed it aside, and her black hair blew free, trailing her face like a comet’s tail. And when she turned her head, quickly, in an opposite direction, her hair whipped on, veiling her features just below her eyes, making her appear as someone Eastern, foreign and headily forbidden.

  Her hips and thighs, swathed in ski pants as they were, knew no bounds. Even her feet in those clumsy boots took to the slick rock as if belonging to a mountain goat. Every part of her moved independently and on its own, yet the sum total of her was of a choreography that would have goggled Terpsichore. She was seductive and endearing, swept up in a music that only she could hear—and Austin went all dismantled because little girls didn’t dance that way.

  Then, turning to him for the first time in her dance, her gray eyes filled his and he was pinned like a butterfly in a display case. Her hands, stretched toward him, were there for the taking, all ten fingers making come-hither bumps in the mittens. He filled his hands with hers and she drew him up onto the rock beside her.

  “There’ll be the Devil to pay,” she said, not waiting for his response, leading him about on the rock instead, dancing him to a music he only faintly began to hear—church bells and strings, too distant to comprehend.

  He held her hands and she spun him as in a child’s game. Faster and faster the music folded about him, until he was as wrapped up in it as a papoose—until he was no longer moving of his own volition but of hers, his feet no longer feeling the rock beneath them, his eyes no longer seeing anything but her eyes, everything beyond being unfocused and ill-defined.

  She laughed and he did likewise. She changed direction and he changed with her, the pair of them seeming to turn on the same axis, blown by the same breeze, provoked into the same laughter on the same musical scale, hers an octave higher, his a heartbeat faster. And cell for cell, blood for blood, he felt himself going into her, swallowed up by her.

  A salvo of snowballs ended the devil-dancing. It came in silently, looping at them from over a hill—the infamous Froom unleashing another of his perfidious attacks.

  Still laughing and still holding his hand, Ara led him out of range and on again toward the house, stopping only to rescue her hat, which hung playfully on a bush. Single file through the trench they ran, Froom racing alongside them but through the higher snow, which slowed him perceptibly. When last seen he was up to his knees in it, throwing snowballs and cursing rancorously, falling on his face in it while lobbing his last snow grenade, which fell pitifully short.

  Breathless from running and laughing, Ara and Austin swept into the house and bolted the door. They laughed for minutes, holding on to each other, her hair forest sweet and soft on his cheek. She was remarkable, so much the changeling that it would not have surprised him if she sprouted wings and took to the beams.

  He cupped his hand to her chin, raising the dear face to his, sighting it for a kiss. But the eyes looking up at him were so filled with cold and withering hate that the kiss never came to pass.

  It lasted for but a moment, that look, but all the same it struck with the thin rage of a stiletto, inflicting no wound yet inferring a bloodless and incredulous death. He stepped back from her, three steps, before sagging into a chair, his breath coming hard, as if someone else were breathing for him and none too well.

  She looked at him, as pretty again as she had been prior to demolishing him with her eyes. “What’s the matter, Austin?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Run too much for ya?”

  “No.”

  “Ya got heart trouble or somethin’?”

  “No.”

  “Want me to make ya some stupid cocoa?”

  “No.”

  “Well, ya don’t look too good.”

  “Why’d you look at me that way?”

  “What way?”

  “Come on, Ara.”

  “I didn’t look at ya any way.”

  “I was going to kiss you.”

  “Ya were?”

  “And you knew it.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “And you looked at me like you wished I was dead.”

  “Didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t.”

  “Who are you?”

  She turned petulant and put on her hat, pulling it hard down over her ears as if preparing to go out into a blizzard. “Never goin’ to dance with ya again if that’s the way ya goin’ to behave.”

  “Ara—”

  “And who said ya could kiss me?”

  “Ara—”

  “Good thing ya didn’t. I’d of bit ya nose off.” She was leaving, had the door open and was halfway out when she turned to look at him, no humor in her voice. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are.”

  “If I want to be kissed, I’ll let ya know.”

  “Okay.”

  “And ya don’t go doin’ anything on ya own, if ya value ya nose.” It was a smile that she tossed at him, fickle and Giaconda-like, but it was a smile. She was still funnin’ him and he was still set off balance by it. And when she had gone, and was on the sled with her brother, coasting down a hill and laughing out of sight, he was still sitting there, in abject disarray, knowing that something was very wrong, but not knowing what.

  He didn’t like it. He was not in charge. Something else was gradually asserting itself, coming on the scene to call the tune and pull the strings. Something calculating and chilling, and he wanted to go home. And that was what the trouble was—he had no home other than the one he was in.

  16

  The night passed, Austin becoming accustomed to the amorphous haunts that populated it. His house, for some time, had been schizoid. By day it was as bright and inviting as a house could be—a Christmas card, a Robert Frost poem. But by night it was Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel H
awthorne, a foreboding thing of shapeless terrors and casual shadows, a cold place where no lantern lasted the night and no fire emanated any warmth. And none of the predatory beasts he knew to be outside came close to matching the fear he had of the apparitions he knew to be inside his house and his mind.

  But it was morning, and after firing up his stove and drawing up some water for coffee, he glanced through his window and saw her, not ten yards from the porch, feeding his private deer. And the animal was eating right from her hand. Austin was amazed at how it allowed her to pat its muzzle and stroke its thin flanks. And when she no longer had food for it, the deer still would not leave, staying close by her side, as if on a short leash. She could have climbed up on it and it would not have objected. She could have ridden it to Londontown and back, whipping it all the way, and it would have been grateful.

  Austin opened his door, silently, he thought, but the deer bolted and ran off in terror, leaving Ara facing the house, hands on hips in a gesture of no small disapproval.

  “Scared him off, ya did.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “He don’t know that.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get him to eat out of your hand.”

  “It’s a power I have.”

  “You have a power?”

  “A-yuh.”

  “What kind of power?”

  “Raisin power.”

  “Raisin power.”

  “A-yuh. He likes raisins. That’s what I fed him. Always keep a pocketful, just in case.”

  “Do all deer like raisins?”

  “He does.”

  “Then you’ve fed him before.”

  “A-yuh.”

  “Here?”

  “Everywhere?”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “That was Brownie.”

  “Who?”

  “Everybody feeds Brownie. He wanders all over, and everybody feeds him. He’ll eat right out of ya hand if ya don’t let on ya nervous. ’Course, if ya not pure of soul, he’ll have nothin’ to do with ya. And, judgin’ from the way he run off, I’d say ya soul was in trouble.”

  “Come on in.”

  “No kissin’.”

  “No kissin’, I promise.”

  She breezed past him, entering the house and going directly to the stove where the coffee simmered, and she poured herself a mug.

  “I thought Minnawickies preferred tea,” he said, baiting her playfully.

  “They do.”

  “That’s coffee.”

  “A-yuh.”

  “It’s not tea.”

  “I can tell,” she said, sipping it.

  “Then how come you’re drinkin’ it?”

  “I ain’t drinkin’ it.” And she put it aside. “It’s as bad as your cocoa.”

  “How come you always knock things?”

  “Things that deserve knockin’ get knocked.” She took her jacket off and laid it aside.

  “You’re always knocking things.”

  “When it’s called for.”

  “Anything else in here you care to knock?”

  “Probably.”

  “Look around. Help yourself.”

  Austin sat down and watched as she moved through his house like an appraiser. She touched things, moved furniture, straightened one of his bearskin rugs. When she got to the trapdoor she studied it a shade too long before nudging the iron ring with her boot.

  “Root cellar?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Right in the middle of ya floor.”

  “Square in the middle.” It seemed to him to not deserve all that attention. What could be down there that was so important? “Care to see it?”

  “Seen it.”

  “You have?”

  “A-yuh. Seen one, seen ’em all.” She moved on, checking the guns, the implements, the firewood—she didn’t walk three steps without stopping to examine something. The utensils, the pump, the stove, the dry sink.

  “Hey, I’m not plannin’ on sellin’ the place.”

  “Good,” she said, looking at herself disinterestedly in the mirror. “No one’ll buy it.”

  “Maynard bought it.”

  “A-yuh. He bought it.”

  Her comment required no comment from him. Maynard had indeed bought it. He bought it in Maine—and he bought it in Nam. Still, she was so certain of the ground she was on, so cocksure of all that she said, that he wanted very much to take her down a peg. “What you just said—it was in very bad taste.”

  “Truth often is.” She was looking up the chimney flue, checking his windows, studying his shirts, boots, towels, snow-shoes.

  And he suddenly didn’t like her. She was changing again, shucking identities—little girl sliding into bitchy broad. And she could do it just like that, without missing a beat. “Why don’t you sit down and relax? You’re making me nervous.” There was an edge to his voice that surprised even himself.

  And she sat down, contrarily, crosslegged in a corner, her usual Indian fashion, her hands in her hair again, straightening, fussing, an edge to her voice, too. “Found somethin’ else to knock.”

  “Yeah, I figured you would.”

  “Care to hear?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “I care to hear.”

  “Ya firewood.”

  “What about it?”

  “Some is good. Some ain’t. Some so full of dirt—it’s why ya fire keeps goin’ out.”

  “Who told you my fire keeps goin’ out?”

  “Nobody had to. More dirt in ya stove than ashes.”

  “I didn’t see you look in my stove.”

  “Don’t mean I didn’t. Also, ya should mix ya wood. Not always use the same kind. Makes a better fire.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “I got a poem on wood. Care to hear?”

  “A poem? On wood?”

  “A-yuh. Care to hear?”

  “Yes. I’d like very much to hear a poem on wood.” He was being sarcastic.

  And so was she. “Whatever turns ya on.” She stood, walked to the center of the room, faced him, curtsied, and delivered her poem with all the innocence of a girl in grade school.

  “Beech wood fires are bright and clear

  If the logs are kept a year.

  Chestnut’s only good, they say,

  If for long it’s laid away.

  Birch and fir logs burn too fast,

  Blaze up bright and do not last.

  It is by the Irish said

  Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.

  Elm wood burns like a churchyard mold;

  E’en the very flames are cold.

  Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

  Fills your eyes and makes you choke.

  Apple wood will scent your room

  With an incense like perfume.

  Oaken logs, if dry and old,

  Keep away the winter cold.

  But ash wood wet and ash wood dry,

  A king shall warm his slippers by.”

  She curtsied and returned to her corner, where she sat again, crosslegged, reinserting her fingers into her hair, twirling a lock thoughtlessly, all as if she’d never gotten up in the first place.

  Austin didn’t quite know what to say. “That was very nice. Very educational.”

  “I know others, but I’m not goin’ to recite ’em for ya.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t like each other anymore.”

  “I still like you.”

  “Ya don’t, but it’s all the same to me. I got better things to do than waste my poems.” She stood up, slipped into her jacket and prepared to go.

  He was at the door, blocking her way. “You’re always leaving.”

  “Person can’t leave more’n she arrives. Ain’t mathematical.”

  “I’d like you to stay.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.”

 
She was squarely in front of him, her face not a foot away, her eyes softer than he had ever seen them. He had never been a ladies’ man, not in the sense that he’d logged all that much experience with them. But he knew when a girl wanted to be kissed. And so he kissed her and she bit his nose.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Told ya I would.” And she was gone. Out the door and into the lightly freckled snow, never looking back, going twenty or so haughty yards down the length of one of his trenches before climbing out to where Froom was waiting, though Austin couldn’t see him.

  His nose didn’t hurt, not nearly as much as his ego, the bite she’d inflicted on it being the kind an affectionate puppy in a rowdy moment might bestow upon someone it liked. If she had really wanted to hurt him, she most certainly could have. It was a love bite, Austin reasoned. As such, unless he was completely out of his mind, it carried with it a definite invitation to try again.

  He felt idiotic and enlightened and destroyed—and he loved it. His equilibrium was upset, his sanity threatened, his wagon fixed—and he loved it. He was holed up in the frozen silence of dead-center Maine, scared to shivering every night, his house filled with witches and goblins, his head filled with far worse than that—and he loved it. Funny what a bite on the nose by a pretty girl could do.

  Later, having completed his morning chores, which included knocking the dirt from his firewood and sweeping a ton of it out the door, he headed out to his postbox to see what goodies, if any, Jack Meeker might have left there at some time during the last few days. Though Ara had shaken him with her flat pronouncement of the big man’s death, he didn’t really believe her because, by her own admission, Minnawickies were known to lie. And, if it turned out that Jack had left some foodstuffs in the postbox, meat in particular, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get there ahead of Brer Bear or Brer Wolf or Brer Benson, because that man, if still alive, could very easily shoot the postbox full of holes, killing the salami within and selling its pelt to some firewater-soaked Comanches.