With

by Donald Harington

  He drove to the dying village of Parthenon, which still had a post office in a humble stone building, where he made inquiries. There were no Madewells still living in the area. Adam’s mother’s sister, Aunt Effie, had died. The man who had owned the Parthenon Stave & Heading Company was still alive and in his eighties, and Adam visited him and was taken to the site of what once had been a school, the Newton County Academy, where only one ruined building remained, the former gymnasium, a dilapidated old stone building being used for the storage of what was thought to be worthless oak staves. He and the man went inside, and Adam staggered at the sight of thousands upon thousands of oak staves, neatly stacked and turning gray as they aged. He lifted one at random, scratched it with his thumbnail, and inhaled an oaken fragrance that he had not smelled since the age of twelve and which he’d been searching for ever since.

  The man told him that most of the staves had been deposited there by Braxton or Gabriel Madewell, and since Adam was their heir, he was free to help himself. He gave the man the address of Madewell Cooperage in California and wrote him a check to cover the cost of hiring a convoy of trucks to deliver the staves.

  The business part of his trip, to all intents and purposes, was accomplished.

  Did he want to visit Stay More? It wasn’t a matter of did he but rather could he? He’d found that childhood sweetheart in San Francisco and knew her only in the Biblical sense.

  Could he drive his powerful SUV up Madewell Mountain? He could try, although he discovered he was sweating and nervous.

  His progress up the steep trail was halted when he encountered a pick-up truck mired squarely in the road. The owner of the truck, who said his name was Leo Spurlock, told him there was probably no way to get on to the top of the mountain, not even on foot.

  Adam had a bad leg. Worse, he had a great fear that if he succeeded in reaching the top of the mountain and finding the place where he’d willed a part of himself to stay forever, he would never want to leave again. He just couldn’t do it.

  So he returned to California. André Tchelistcheff was honored to be asked to serve as his best man at the elaborate wedding, held in the glowing, lovely vineyards of Linda’s family, a Madewell barrel serving as altar.

  Chapter forty-four

  She was a woman now. Latha had said so. She remembered how, long ago, the Woodland Heights Elementary had wanted her to skip a grade because she was so advanced over the others, and now she felt that she was not merely seventeen, she had grown entirely out of adolescence and if anybody asked her how old she was (if there was anybody anywhere to do such a thing—like Latha) she would have to say she was well along into her twenties. Maybe close to thirty. Yes, she was at least as old as her mother had been the last time she’d seen her. And much better than her mother in so many ways. Prettier. Smarter. Funnier. Shapelier. Friendlier. Sexier (God, yes). If only she had a man (not a boy but a man) to demonstrate it with. At her birthday party, when the dogs had presented her with the petrified but soon relaxed Armageddon, her armadillo, she had worn the dress Latha had given her, an old-fashioned country calico dress that Latha herself had worn in her twenties, and it made her look much older than seventeen, and she enjoyed being clothed for that one day, and finally understood for herself why human beings are the only creatures who wear clothes, not so much for bodily protection but rather because what is hidden is more tantalizing than what is revealed; that humankind, blessed with greater imagination than animalkind, needed to play a kind of constant hide-and-seek with the body itself, as all human creative work, which animals cannot do, is the expression of a hiding and a seeking and a finding, especially stories, and even music, yes, musical notes hide themselves and find themselves constantly (what else is melody?), as she demonstrated in her birthday descant. Then she said, “Adam, do you think I look more appealing in this dress than I do stark naked?”

  He was slow in answering, as usual. Sometimes she didn’t know whether his slowness was just a matter of being an ignorant twelve-year-old, or because the older she got the more reserved he was toward her, and now the five years that separated them was actually like ten or more. Finally, he said, rather wistfully, Tell ye the truth, hit don’t matter too awful much, one way or th’other, since I caint have ye, anyhow.

  “Have me?” she said. “Do you really want me?”

  Again he took a while pondering or formulating his answer. I’ve always wanted ye. But come to think on it, I reckon I’d want ye more in that ’ere dress than I’d want ye as you generally are, a-running around all over creation a-wearing nothing but a smile.

  “There!” she said. “That’s what I figured. Clothes can be naughtier than skin, if they stir up your thoughts.”

  My thoughts don’t need no stirring up.

  “You’re clothed, aren’t you?” she asked him. “What are you wearing?”

  Just my same old overalls.

  He pronounced it “overhauls.” She pretended to be staring down at him. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but you forgot to button your fly.”

  There was almost a visible stirring in the air; she could imagine him trying to button himself. Darn ye! he said. That weren’t funny.

  An idea occurred to her, but they were surrounded by all their friends, including the innocent new kitty, Latha, and the latest haunter, Armageddon, who hadn’t made up his mind (actually, as she’d soon learn, it was her mind) whether he (or she) liked birthday cake or not. “Adam,” she requested, “sometime before the day is over, as one more birthday present, even an immaterial one, let’s you and I get together for a private conversation. Would you do that for me?”

  He didn’t answer, and she wondered if her tone had once again been too supercilious for him. She finished her own piece of cake and offered seconds to all the guests, but only Ralgrub and Pogo wanted more. She thanked Hrolf for leading the expedition to procure Armageddon. Then she went into the storeroom and got a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels and opened it. She offered it around, but nobody wanted any. Paddington would have been glad to have some, but she hadn’t seen her bear for quite some time, and his absence was the only shortcoming in her birthday celebration. While she was relieved to be free from his constant devotion, she hoped that she hadn’t hurt his feelings by locking him out of the house. She was sorry that he had never acquired the ability of the other animals to understand her; he had never grasped what she had tried to tell him: that he was too rough, and sometimes his claws raked her. Probably, she had consoled herself, he had simply wandered off across the mountain in search of a female bear who could love him in a way she could not. But giving up this Paddington had been far more difficult for her than giving up the original stuffed Paddington that she had loved so much. Now she drank what would have been Paddington’s portion of the Jack Daniels, in his memory or honor or whatever.

  After a while she needed to pee and she stumbled out to the yard but instead of lifting her dress and squatting there she had an impulse to use the outhouse, which she hadn’t done for nine years. One of the two holes was still occupied by the skeleton, who was still holding his own bottle of Jack Daniels, and when she sat down over the other hole and began to tinkle, it was somehow more embarrassing, or more daring, to be doing it in the presence of Sugrue’s skeleton than it would have been to be doing it in the presence of all the live creatures who inhabited these premises. She knew she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been drinking so much. “Excuse me,” she said to him, rather tipsily, “but maybe I’m getting too old to squat in the yard. Tee hee.” Then she asked, “How’ve you been?” And she said, “Latha Bourne was asking me how’ve you been, and I had to tell her you were dead. She seemed to think that was good news. She’s doing just fine, herself, despite being past eighty. I had a real nice visit with her. She gave me some nice things to bring home with me. She gave me three books, or she let me pick them out, telling me just to take whichever three I wanted and she could have her grandson Vernon replace them if she still wanted copies, although I
left behind ten thousand dollars of your money. I picked Mythology by Edith Hamilton, which is very interesting and a lot of fun. Also I took a handbook on wildflowers, which has been very helpful in my study of my favorite subject. And finally just for fun I chose a book called Lightning Bug, which is a novel-book but has some interesting stuff on fireflies, and I’ve also started studying bugs a lot lately, even spiders, and you’d be surprised if you ever stopped to count the different kinds of bugs that are running and flying around all over this place. Latha also gave me a little bottle of cologne, because she doesn’t ever use it any more. It’s called “Tabu” and I’m wearing it right now. Can you smell it? Hey, it’s my birthday, did you know? I’m seventeen, ten years older than when you first took me. There’s not a single present left for me in all that stuff you left behind, except your whiskey, and I suppose there’s enough of that for me to have a birthday bottle from you for the rest of my life. I’m all finished peeing but I’ll just sit here a while with you, and bring you up to date.”

  She kept on talking to Sugrue’s skeleton for a very long time. She told him how much she had tried to live according to his precepts, such as everything in this life worth getting requires being stung a few times, and be careful what you wish for, and don’t ever sing before breakfast. When her mouth got dry, she borrowed the bottle he had in his bony fingers, and opened it and took a swig now and then. She actually got drunk, which she’d never done before and would never do again, because among other things she would have a hangover the next day that she never wanted to have again. She drunkenly told Sugrue that she wished he still had some flesh on his bones. She told him that if he did, she’d be glad to suck his dick, to get it stiff and hard so he could put it inside her. What she really wanted, more than anything, was a man. “If you had stayed alive,” she said to him, “and if only you’d been able to wait several years and give me a chance to grow up, you and I could have really fucked. Let me tell you how we would have done it…”

  She was busy describing a hot sex scene to the skeleton when a voice said, Scuse me for buttin in, but didn’t ye say you wanted to have a private conversation with me? She jumped, her butt actually rising above the outhouse hole, then she realized it wasn’t Sugrue speaking to her. The voice went on, Leastways I could answer ye, which this here skeleton caint do.

  “Hi, honey,” she said. She’d never called him that before. “Have a drink with me.” She held out the bottle to him, but of course he couldn’t take it. “Could you just pretend?” she asked. “Are you any good at play-like, Adam?”

  Iffen I wasn’t, I’d sure be up salt creek.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. So why don’t you play-like you’re having a big swallow of this fine whisky?”

  Okay. Glug glug glug. Umm, mighty fine hooch, ma’am.

  “Don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ Let’s get away from Sugrue. We don’t want him watching.”

  Watching what, ma’am? But his ghost can foller us wherever we go.

  “Really? Does he have a ghost? Have you seen it?”

  He’s all over the place. All the time. Like me, he never sleeps, ma’am.

  “Please don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It makes me feel old. If Sugrue’s ghost is everywhere, why haven’t I seen it?”

  I wish I could tell ye on account of he’s just shy, or just invisible like me. But that aint it. Y’see, us in-habits outrank ghosts, I mean we’re more powerful than them, so I’ve let that there ghost know that I don’t never want him to show his hide—or his spirit.

  “Do you mean there’s nowhere we could go that he couldn’t see us?”

  Out to the barn, maybe. He don’t never go near that barn, cause he’s afraid it’ll fall on him, but me and you know that ’ere barn’ll still be a-standing there when me and you both are ghosts.

  She’d been keeping Bess in the barn for some time now, and knew it was safe, but she didn’t like the idea of ever becoming a ghost. If she became a ghost, she’d really have to associate with Sugrue again. She wondered if ghosts could ever have sex. But she went out to the barn, and she assumed that Adam was somewhere behind or beside her. The kitten Latha tried to follow, but she shooed it away. Then in a dark corner of the barn, she said, “Now, Adam, if you’re so good at play-like, would you like to pretend you’re giving me my first kiss?” She held out her arms.

  Silence. Then his voice said, When you was still my age, I used to kiss ye all the time, specially when you was asleep. You may not know it, but you’ve been kissed many a time before.

  “Kiss me now. So I’ll know it.” She continued holding out her arms. She closed her eyes, to aid her own make-believe. And behold, verily it seemed that a pair of warm lips pressed against her own, for a long moment. She whispered, “Put your tongue in my mouth,” and she opened her mouth and her tongue seemed to feel a wet tongue sliding along it, all the way to the back, and then rolling around inside her mouth. Her knees buckled and her whole body trembled with desire. “Kiss my neck,” she requested, tilting her head. And behold those splendid lips of his kissed her in several places from her collarbone to her earlobe. “Oh, Adam,” she said. She unbuttoned her dress so that the top of it would fall below her breasts. “Kiss my breasts,” she asked. His kisses there turned her knees to jelly. Fortunately they were standing amidst the hay that she’d cut and stacked for Bess’ winter feed. She reflected that it was Adam who had taught her how to cut hay and how to stack the hay, and she wondered if he had even anticipated this use that they would put to the hay. She pulled him down with her into the soft hay. She asked, “Is your dick hard?” Silence. Had she said the wrong thing or in the wrong way? She waited, and then apologized, “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  I jist don’t much care to hear you call it that, on account of that’s what Sog called it.

  “What do you call it?”

  Actually, I don’t call it nothing. But if you’ve just got to mention it, I reckon you could call it my dood.

  She laughed. “Oh, goody! What if I called it your doody? Then it would rhyme with my poody, which it’s supposed to fit.”

  Call it whatever you care to.

  “But you do have a doody?”

  Sure as shootin.

  “And is your doody stiff right now?”

  Iffen you’re so good at make-believe, why don’t ye take aholt of it and see for yourself?

  She closed her eyes again and took a deep breath and reached down between them. It was her duty to feel his doody. And there it was! He must’ve already unbuttoned his fly. Good heavens, but it was big. Much bigger than that limp weenie that Sugrue had had. She wrapped her fingers around it and used her index finger to explore the smooth knob on the end of it. In the back of her mind she knew that she was just imagining all of this, that this was just play-like, and she knew also that she had had so much to drink that she could imagine she was flying away if she wanted to. But she did not want to fly away. She wanted to lie here in Adam’s arms and she wanted Adam to put that walloping doody inside of her. “Your turn to feel me,” she told him. And he did, timidly at first, lifting the hem of her calico dress. She was wearing the pair of silk panties Latha had given her, and she let Adam feel her through the silk for a while and then she took her hand off his doody so she could remove her panties. “Adam,” she requested, “why don’t you take off all your clothes?”

  I aint never done that in all the years I’ve been here.

  She sniffed. “It’s a wonder they don’t stink if they’ve never been washed.”

  Aint you a barrel of laughs, though? Okay, there, do I look any better now?

  Adam had just a little hair on his chest and around his doody. She was fascinated, as she was with jacks-in-the-pulpit, with the two large lumps clinging to the root of his doody, which her girlfriend Kelly had first taught her to call nuts, or balls. She cupped them in her hand; they were not hairy but downy. She wondered if he had a special name for those too, and she asked him, and he coughed and said them
was just his cods.

  She had an overpowering urge to creep down and take his doody into her mouth and see if it was more fun to do it because she wanted to do it and not because he, like Sugrue, had made her do it. So she did. Adam gasped and she could feel his fingers in the back of her hair. She understood that what she ought to do is not suck it as you would suck a thumb or a nipple but move it in and out of your mouth over and over. So she did. She took her mouth off long enough to ask him, “Do you like that?”

  He confessed, I used to allus imagine ye a-doing that whenever I…when I was…when I didn’t have nobody to…when I was trying to…

  He didn’t have a word for that, whatever it was that happened to boys when all of a sudden their doodies throbbed and spewed out a lot of fluid, the equivalent of what she had called reaching. So she used that word to supply the end of his sentence, “…when you were trying to make yourself reach?”

  Yep, if ye wanter call it that, and if you keep that up, I’m sure enough a-going to.

  Instead of understanding that he wanted her to stop or slow down, she speeded up and, recalling a scene from Lighting Bug that was so exciting she had memorized it, she was swallowing and unswallowing his doody as rapidly as she could bob her head and her head was bobbing so rapidly it shook her whole body, and he grabbed her hair and tried to pull her away but she hung on for dear life and buried her lips at the root of his doody and waited until the last spurtle had dribbled down her gullet. It was so real, the taste of him, all that warm liquid in her dry mouth, that she knew she could not possibly be just making-believe.

  He lay there panting and she waited a long time to see if he might reciprocate what she had done for him, but either because that would be beyond the thoughts of a twelve-year-old or because he didn’t even realize how good it would make her feel and that she could come too, he made no move to do it and she lacked the words to ask him. She said to herself, “For heaven’s sake, woman, you’re in charge of this whole thing for yourself, so do whatever you feel like doing.” But she could not will him to do that. By and by, they began to talk again, about nothing important, or about the barrel she was going to try to make in the shop, or about the saxifrage plant she’d found, which he called alumroot, with small but lovely white flowers and large glorious hairy leaves. He talked about the uses of alumroot, but then he said, It’s got hard again, if you got any more idees. And she certainly had one idee, which she’d intended all along: just to do it the way it is supposed to be done, with her legs spread and him above her. She cried out when the mighty dood pierced her poody. All he knew to do was to thrust, in the same way but faster and faster, which was fine but not the best, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and used her hands on his butt to show him the best.