“You’re trembling,” Day told her. “I’ll make a little fire, and we’ll rest.”
She laughed. “With what? What will you make a fire with?”
“Do you have a match?” he asked.
From the pocket of her jeans she drew out a limp book of matches, showed him how wet they were, laughed, and threw them away.
He picked them up and gave them back to her. “Don’t litter,” he said. Then he fished in his own pocket and brought out a jackknife. It was a regulation Boy Scout pocketknife, even with the official crest on it. “I always carry this,” he said.
“I suppose it has a built-in Ronson lighter,” she said.
“Wait here a minute,” he said, and left her beside the cellar hole while he plunged off into the woods.
He was gone more than a minute, closer to ten minutes. When he came back out of the woods, he was holding something in each hand: in one hand what appeared to be some sticks, in the other hand a small mass of some fluff y-looking stuff and a rock.
“You’re just going to rub a couple of sticks together, I suppose, and presto!” she said doubtfully. “Where did you find dry sticks?”
“They’re not dry,” he said. He squatted beside a large flat rock and began whittling the pieces of wood into a pile on the rock. “I found them on a burnt white pine,” he explained. “It’s got so much pitch it’ll ignite in a downpour.”
“Ignite with what?” she asked.
“Just you watch,” he said. After making a small pile of the slivers of pine, he dumped the pile onto the small mass of fluff he had found. It seemed to be thoroughly dry.
“Where did you find anything so dry?” she asked.
“In a hollow log,” he said, and added, “of course”—somewhat smugly, she thought.
He placed the rock (“flint, of course,” he explained) besides the little pile of fluff and began striking it with glancing blows from the back of his pocketknife. Then he quickly knelt and began puffing at the pile. Soon she saw a tiny wisp of smoke curl upward from it, and, as he continued blowing, the shavings of pine suddenly ignited with a billow of thick black smoke. “Now,” he said, getting up, “anything you put on that will burn, wet or not.” He picked up several twigs and sticks from the ground and piled them on.
Within a few minutes, he had a crackling blaze going, and while she stood drying herself beside it he roamed the woods for more fuel.
After he returned, with an armload of sticks, she told him, “You are a perfect genius.”
He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout sign and said, “My good deed for today.” He put more wood on the fire, then rolled a small boulder close to the fire and patted it with his hand, saying, “Have a seat.” She sat on the boulder, and felt the heat already drying the denim on her legs and knees. “Comfy, now?” he asked. She nodded vigorously and smiled. “Welcome to Dudleytown!” he said.
She laughed. “Where is it?” she asked.
He swept his arms in a wide arc. “All around, I guess.”
“But how do you know this is the right place?” she asked. “Unless…does this seem at all familiar to you?”
“Very vaguely,” he said. “Not the sight of it, but just the…the spirit of the place.”
“Do you like it?” she wondered.
“It’s not bad,” he said. He squatted close to the fire and raised his arms, pinching the sides of his shirt to tug it away from his skin. Soon it was no longer stuck to him. “It’s very peaceful up here,” he remarked. Then he asked, “Do you hear anything?”
She listened keenly, a bit alarmed at his question, but heard nothing, except the dripping of drops from trees, and a distant bird call. “No. Why?” she asked. “What do you hear?”
“I…it just sounded like…” he said, and seeing her tensed expression, “it’s nothing. Do you know Beethoven’s Sixth? The Pastoral? The part toward the end, after the storm, when the storm has passed…?”
“Yes?”
“It just sounds like that,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She stood up. She raised both arms above her head. She lifted high one leg. He stared. Slowly she wound into a grapevine, then, bent, broke at the waist, double, hearing the oboe form a rainbow, then, to the rustic yodeling of the clarinets and horns, she began to move, spinning, drifting, caracoling around the old cellar hole and around the fire. He could light fires in rain. What could she do but dance? Her one talent, in exchange for his: that is what you can do, see what I can do. She interpreted the post-tempest allegretto of the Pastoral: she wove a country jig and hornpipe of well-being: Hirtengesang, Frohe and dankbare Gefule nach dem Sturm. A saltatory shepherdess.
He watched, entranced, but then he rose and slapped her, smartly, his palm clapping the side of her neck.
Abruptly she ceased her dance.
He showed her his palm, the tiny smear of her blood around the crushed wings. “You had a mosquito,” he said.
She rubbed the spot it had bit. The magic of the moment was shot, her dance squashed like a bug. She smacked him on his ear, then showed him her hand, saying, “So did you,” but the bug she killed on him, at least, had not yet gorged itself; she’d killed it clean. Did Beethoven’s shepherds, gladsome and thankful after the storm, swat mosquitoes while they sang?
They laughed and walked on, a ways, waving their arms around their heads to keep the bugs away. The rain began again, to snuff their fire.
“You dance good,” he said, off hand, ungrammatical.
“You make fires good,” she returned.
They found a byroad, dropping off to their left and disappearing into the woods. They thought, mistakenly, that this was Dark Entry, and turned into it. It went down to a small swampy brook, one of the many narrow forks of Bonny Brook, its indigo water sloughing through bracken and wild blue iris. They stepped over it, the road ascended and they followed it up the hill to its end, in a glade.
Diana gasped. All around, all over this glade on the hillside, sprawling in rise after rise, were thousands of snowy white blossoms, large multi-floreted clumps stretching up from their dark green shrubs and raising their cups to the raindrops. Inhaling, Diana caught a smother of the sweet fragrance that pervaded the air. Exhaling, she sang a small “Oh!” in enchanted awe. She had never seen so many blossoms in one place, so white, so teeming, so sweet. She plunged among them, crying, “Look, look, oh look!”
“Mountain laurel,” said Day matter-of-factly, and then, as if to belittle their magic, “state flower of Connecticut. Pennsylvania too.”
“But so many of them…” she said. “Everywhere. All over. Didn’t anybody plant them, once?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “They grow wild.”
Diana swung around, a pirouette through the mountain laurel shrubs. “Wouldn’t this be a great place for a house?” she said. This rise of ground was open, a glade free of tall trees; uphill the forest of hemlocks became dark and deep again, but here, if the sun were shining, they would be in the light, and the dazzling white blossoms would be in the light too.
“Maybe there was a house,” Day said. “The road came here.” He began looking around for a cellar hole. She joined him, and they tramped back and forth all over the glade, but found no remains of any dwelling.
They wandered farther and farther away from the glade of the mountain laurel. Diana realized they had been strolling through the woods for some time, keeping to no road or trail or path, for there was none. She was surprised at how easy it was to drift at random through the woods, without obstacle or impediment—no briars or thorns to snatch at them, no quicksand to step into, not even very many fallen trees to climb under or over. But then she wondered why they were doing this, and asked him, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” he replied with a shrug. “Where are we going?”
“We could get lost, this way,” she said.
“I’ve never been lost,” he said.
“Is that you speaking?” she asked. “Or grandpa?”
“Just me,” he said.
What they needed to find, she decided, was a cemetery, the Dudleytown cemetery, wherever it was, and what she needed to find was a headstone or two engraved montross, his parents or relatives. But a cemetery out in the middle of a dark and haunted forest would have unsettled her, would, in fact, have terrified her. She didn’t need a cemetery.
Nor did she need the next thing they found: a trail. A clearly marked trail winding around through the woods with the trees on either side of it blazed with small painted white triangles.
“Aha,” said Day.
“Aha what?” she said. “What is this?”
“This,” he said, pointing at one of the painted white triangles on a tree, “is the blaze mark of the Appalachian Trail.”
“Oh, drat!” she said. The Appalachian Trail! The main thoroughfare for hikers, all the way from Maine to Georgia, running right through the middle of their Dudleytown! She looked both ways up and down the trail, expecting to see a safari of back-packing Alpine-clad hikers come trudging cheerily along.
“Well, let’s follow it a little way,” Day suggested. “Probably it rejoins one of the Dudleytown roads.”
The Appalachian Trail does rejoin the Dark Entry Road at one point, but not in the direction they turned. Thus they walked on up the trail for a considerable distance without finding a road, while in the upper atmosphere high above their heads new winds blew new combinations of air and cloud into a mass that was statically charged. They did not see the first flash of lightning, beyond the hilltop, but they heard the distant rumble of thunder.
“Uh-oh!” Day said. “Now we’re in for it.” He began to trot.
“Wait for me!” she cried, trying to keep up with him.
The trail began to descend, and Diana hoped that by some wondrous luck it might suddenly come out onto the Dudleytown Road right beside the safety of her car. She did not know that they were running in the opposite direction.
The woods were for an instant illuminated by a nearer flash of lightning, and the following report of thunder sounded like cannon fire.
“Well, there’s an old saying,” panted Day over his shoulder at her, trying to sound flippant, “‘If you heard the thunder, the lightning did not strike you. If you saw the lightning it missed you. If it did strike you, you would not have known it.’”
“You cheer me up enormously,” she said.
As the trail mounted the crest of a small knoll, Day suddenly stopped and pointed. “Look!” he said.
A huge boulder, large as a grounded yacht, seemed to be perched upon a group of smaller boulders at one end of the knoll. Dark crevices showed on its underside: a tiny cave, a shelter. Day took her arm and ran toward it.
The niche, the snug den, was just large enough for the two of them to sit side by side, half-reclining. Diana did not feel completely secure, thinking of the tremendous weight of the boulder balanced overhead.
Day read her thoughts. “It would take more than lightning to crack this rock,” he said and gave it an appreciative rap with his knuckles.
They were, then, safe. Except for having to swat at mosquitoes now and then, they were cozy. Evening was coming on, and Diana did not want to stay there after dark. But it was a nice temporary refuge from the storm.
Cloudburst, thunderclap, downpour, were so noisy as to make conversation difficult, had they not been placed, by the confines of the den, so close beside one another, mouth to ear. They talked.
Diana conjectured that such a large boulder, rare for the area, must have been there a long time. She knew little about geology, but as she told Day, she knew the boulder must have fallen off a bluff, yet there were no bluffs in sight. The point was, she said, that the boulder must have been there when Daniel Lyam Montross was young, and, if so, he would probably recognize it as a landmark.
She asked his permission to find out. A formality.
He readily consented, but reminded her that with his eyes closed he could not see the boulder, and asked her to open his eyes. It could be done, easily, he said. He told her of a time he had watched Mr. Sedgely open a girl’s eyes so she could see an eighteenth-century chamberpot he had found and correctly identify it for what it was. A test.
“Well then,” Diana said. “Go to sleep, Day.”
He did, and she moved him back to the fifteenth year of her grandfather, and told him he was in Dudleytown, Connecticut, reclining beneath an enormous boulder in the woods. Then she told him to open his eyes and see the boulder above him.
Eleven
Under a Rock in the Rain, an Exchange Is Had with Young “Daniel”
Do you know where you are?
———Sure. Looks to be ole Landlocked Whale.
Is that what you call it?
What I call it. Some jist call it The Rock.
How far is your house from here?
As near as no matter.
How near is that?
Two whoops ’n a holler.
You’re looking at me. Can you see me?
Naw, I’m blind a one eye, ’n caint see out th’other.
Really?
’Course I can see you, nimsky! Who are ye, anyhow?
You don’t know me?
You aint Violate, less ye blanched yer hair.
Violate? Violate what?
T’aint what but who.
Violate who, then?
Violate Parmenter.
Is that a name?
Naw, it’s a gull! Hoo.
Who is she?
Eph Parmenter’s gull. Who are you?
I’m just…a friend.
Friend a whose?
Yours.
Do say? Are you a Thornback?
No. Who are they?
T’aint they but them. It’s a what.
What’s a thornback?
Maiden gull. Aint you past marrying age?
Well…maybe by your standards I am.
What in tunkit are ye doing here in the belly of the Landlocked Whale?
Waiting for the rain to stop. And I’m lost.
Lost from where?
Dudleytown.
Huh? It’s not but right down the hill, yender. How’d ye get lost?
I just…went the wrong way…in the woods. Do ye want I should show ye the way?
Please, thank you.
Soon’s the rain quits. Which house ye going to? Well…I guess the Montross house.
Huh? That’s my house. What’re ye going there fer?
I…I’d just like to meet your father.
Why? Are ye some kin a his?
Yes…distantly…on my mother’s side.
My father’s dead. Didn’t ye know that?
No. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to hear that. When did he die?
Few months back. Fell in one a the charcoal pits. ’Least that’s what people think. I shouldn’t wonder but what he uz pushed.
Who do you think pushed him?
Ferrenzo Allyn, that skunk.
Why would he have pushed him?
Pure spite. Dad bested him, once.
Do you just live with your mother, then?
Yep. Just me and her.
No brothers or sisters?
They’ve all flew the roost.
Where’d they go?
Ohio. Illinois. Nick’s all the way out to Montana, last we heerd a him.
Why did you stay here?
Huh? Somebody’s got to look after Ma, don’t they?
Is she not well?
Not so’s she can manage on her own. She has spells frequent. Able to set up ’n eat a few porridges, though. Say, you wouldn’t be looking fer a place, would ye?
A place?
A position. Hire on fer your keep. Only wondered, happen but what ye was, Ma’d be glad to take ye in, and…I could go off some’ers and look fer me a good job a work. But naw, I cal’late you’re too pindling fer chopping wood and such, aint ye?
Do you want to leave home?
Who wouldn’t, on half a chance? Du
dleytown’s all pegged out, dead to your navel. Weren’t fer Ma ’n Violate, I’d a been back a beyond long since.
Is Violate your girlfriend?
Some has been known to say so.
Do you plan to marry her when you grow up?
Grow up? Dear me suz! Aint I growed enough yet fer ye? Naw, prolly Eph Parmenter won’t ’low it. ’Sides, Renz Allyn’s done staked her out.
The same one who pushed your father…?
Yep, ’n Satan git’im.
Is he bigger than you?
Naw, but a good sight older.
The rain is slacking. Could we go now?
Yep, let’s hyper out! Come on, it’s not far, ’n Maw’d be proud to meet ye if you’re some kin a Dad’s. Jist a piece down the path, yender….
———
What’s the matter?
That tree. Don’t reckerlect it being there. And somebody’s been pushing stuns off Jenner’s stun wall. He won’t like that.
———
Now what’s wrong?
Right peculiar. I could swear this here’s our gate, but look at all the weeds! I just mowed the durn thing last week.
———
Great keezer’s ghost! Would ye take a gander at that! If I aint slipped a cog, the mountain laurel bushes has eaten up our house, be jiggers!
Are you sure that’s where your house is?
Sure? Why, sure as God made little green apples! Them laurel bushes has swallered up the house! And where’s Ma? Ma!
All right, Daniel, close your eyes. You are coming back, you are moving on back to the present, and on the count of three you will be back in the present time. One…two…
Twelve
An Awkward Situation Is Encountered, Also a Disappointing Revelation
“I thought we were under a big rock,” Day said. “How did we get back here?”
“You led me back here,” she said. “Or he did. He claims this is where his house was.”
It was strange, more than strange, Diana thought, that he had led her back to the same glade of mountain laurel where previously she had exclaimed, Wouldn’t this be a great place for a house? Could it be that in his subconscious (or even his conscious, if he were only feigning his trances) he knew that she liked it and would consider it an ideal site for a house? The skeptic in Diana was stirred. A beautiful and seemingly authentic conversation she had had with “Daniel,” but she could not quite dismiss the possibility that it was only the product of Day’s imaginative mind.
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1 Page 30