That stagy exchange down at dinner, though. The fish, the urine, the Alma bring me my milk. It was pathetic, shouldn’t have laughed. Sometimes it is better to be seen as half off. Sometimes better to be seen as all the way off, right off the edge. Which tribe is it in the Andes, the oldest amongst them generally allowed to act the craziest, carry on with their polygamy, skip the chores, and the same true of course of the females, the maids who don’t marry, sleep around a little, and far outlive their married sisters and friends.
Could ask Jonathan, he’d know. The response time of youthful cortical tissue, one of the wonders of the world. Could have Alma ask Jonathan.
But he had been in here, and of course he would have known. Anyone would have known. Owen made no effort to conceal the materials which anyone who gained entrance into the room might seek—it was as if (he knew this to be true) he would welcome an end to the process. The process which, in and of itself, sought to deny ends. He himself could not stop it, although in a way he knew, just like the house, his heart was no longer sufficiently in it to push the blood, so to speak, to the ends of its body’s thought anymore. Houses tire, and men and women tire, too. There was the primary struggle. They’re both pulled down and down because the gravities caused by all the spinning and whirling made it so. Intervention would have to come from without. He was far beyond the threshold of responsibility. How grateful he felt toward Alma, though this too he could never show, for her having sent for her brother. The little histrionics worked—he was here, wasn’t he? And Jonathan, after all, must have been the bridge by which Corless came into their lives in the first place. How else? No other way. So, as far as that goes, Jonathan was culpable.
The worst part was that he hadn’t been feeling in the clear, excruciating heart of how it could function, that obsessive drive to his work anymore. Not for years. The obsession had dried up, was parched, the will had fallen. There was only the presence of inertia left to carry him forward—inertia as much as anything brought along by business, money, the transaction, the supple joy of the letter-writing and the other arrangements, getting the guest rooms ready, washing the linen, pressing the extra pairs of pajamas. It was all actually happening to him. He turned around and sat against the sill, arms folded. That was part of it, wasn’t it? the merest great-good sense of mixing it up with the world, engaging.
What would he do once he had taken possession of this extraordinary property, who even now was probably preparing to come? Laser technologies and the promise of genetic-recombining surgery, who knew?—perhaps even at the prenatal stage, perhaps even in preconceptual matter, the very tissue of the egg under the sharp thread of light in this post-Lord era, worrying the double helix, searing it in an atomic furnace and redelivering it back through the eye of the needle into a strange new world, but girded, strengthened against itself as well as everything else, protected from its own tendencies to break down, crumble from the inside as Sophie had, perish like Will, into the unimaginable void—the one he himself faced soon enough.
He could not follow that particular road. Pioneerism was over, in a certain sense, in a pure sense. This was all musty science fiction, was it not? It felt like that, as Alma’s laugh rose up the hill to the house. He stood away from the familiar window, his favorite, the one he’d passed so many years behind, looking down.
Alma down there hugging her man. No more children for this house. No more name, no more house.
And so let it come forward. Perhaps we shall become fast friends, I and It. No, absolutely, we will be friends. It will be good.
We can teach It to speak, as if a mouse. It will be the mouse-king; that is what he shall be. Owen drew the windows closed and rested his forehead against the cool glass.
The texture, the slow wave of skin that fell away from where his head lay on the damp pillow, until it reached a delicate, soft point, a place rather, where he could see his own hand cupped into the waist, and beyond, where her hip rose and the frame of flesh, a pear, curved down, buttocks, the straight dark indentation, her feet, the puckered soles of them, side by side, innocent and intent. Alma’s head lay in the concave dish of his belly and for her it was like being carried away from all of them, her brother, the question of her father, even away from Dill himself although of course he was right here beside her on the bed. She could hear his breathing, and her head rose and fell with the pulse of blood that occupied his arteries, heart, veins. He tasted of nothing in her mouth, but she was familiar with him, with his projection, his scent, the blue threads heavy and thin that traced this arcing flesh. Sometimes her eyes were open, sometimes half closed, sometimes shut so that what image formed itself, willed itself into being and motion, was seen on the insides of her eyelids. Her eyes now were open. The engagement ring on her own finger caught a fragment of the light cast from the bathroom as ring and finger it banded rhythmically moved toward and away from her face. She moaned, in response to Dill’s moan, which she could hear behind her. His hand she could feel on her waist; its fingers were splayed, then drew together. Slowly they projected, like the ribs of a fan whose paper had worn away, and moved from her waist over her hip. Gently, she was plied open by this palm, these fingers; Dill shifted his torso so that he could reach her from behind between her thighs. In his memory he was able to conjure with great precision what she looked like between her legs. It was a flower, crushed to fusiform, a carnation whose system of petals was reduced, fashioned of meat, or jelly, of flesh. Her breast hung heavily to the sheet and he knew that while he had touched other breasts, studied them, kissed them, this was the one his own child would someday feed at. His hand moved to it, cradled it, weighed it, found its nipple that projected like a brown pebble: this he pressed lightly between his fingers. He closed his eyes, concentrated on the sounds and what he touched. He opened them and looked up.
The paint on the ceiling was chipped in great triangular pieces. The house was coming down a fragment at a time, Dill thought. It didn’t seem likely that either Alma or her brother, or their father, could stop the process of decay even if any of them knew where to begin, which—so out of touch was one from the others—none clearly did. He closed his eyes again, and breathed the house into himself. There was the slightest scent of her perfume from the night before.
Her hair lay over her shoulder and across his chest. He brushed it away from her face and smoothed it out over his own flesh. With the tips of his fingers (which began to quiver, as she moved her tongue, fluttered, hummed, around the head and stroked him with her hand along the saliva-wet shaft) he tucked her hair in behind her ear. She pushed her mouth and lips forward deeper into his lap, warmly took him in. She could feel him pulling her head back away from his lap. Her mouth gave him up and she allowed herself to be drawn back and as she did she could feel her feet go numb with heat.
She was in the bathroom, running water in the bathtub. Dill was still lying on the bed in the dim light that came through from the bath, his face moist and flushed. He was trying more carefully to study the cracks and peeling paint on the ceiling. He imagined an upstairs sink, above, overflowing, rust water from the old well of this house, leaking through poorly spackled tiles or chinks in the linoleum, soaking through the planks beneath, through crevices and bad joinings, dripping down the interstices between floors to pool above where it spread to form in the ceiling, once so nicely plastered and painted eggshell white, a stain the shape of a blossom first, and began to rot away. He even imagined, but just for an instant, that Owen might have made himself a peephole up there so that he could watch their mating procedures. Just a simple idea. His eyes traveled over the surface. No. His mind’d wandered. Who would blame the old duffer even if he had?
The water in the bathroom was shut off. Alma was toweling dry. In the shower she had been humming to herself. Christmas carols. O come all ye faithful. God rest ye merry, gentlemen. Now she was quiet.
Dill sat up in the bed. She came into the room. The towel was wrapped about her and she stood just inside the room for
half a minute, saying nothing. He finally asked, “Why don’t we go out and get ourselves a Christmas tree this morning?”
“It’d be dead by the time Christmas comes.”
“We’ll get another one.”
“Don’t be dumb.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Dill frowned, but she could not see his frown in the light. Once he understood this the frown dropped away to be replaced by a sigh; still no response, repeated, “Nothing.”
“You know, Jonathan doesn’t have the faintest idea how much I loved her—envied her. I mean to me she was the end-all, the object of something like total admiration. Graceful, beautiful, thin, smart, there wasn’t a guy in school who paid attention to me I don’t think for any other reason than finally to get a chance to meet Maddie.”
“That I doubt.”
“It’s true, though, and I even understood maybe even sometimes I counted my blessings she was my sister, or else nobody’d have paid any attention to me at all.”
“Alma.”
“But it’s true, I mean it. I went into her room once, everybody in the house was asleep, she had a cat named Willie Winkie, Willie was the only one who saw me, he was lying curled up next to her and I looked at her for the longest time and realized she was the most beautiful girl on the earth and it’d be best if I learned to live with that because that was the way it always would be. She was pa’s favorite”—finding her bathrobe, and the damp towel was tossed on the end of the bed where Dill distractedly drew it up and began to wipe himself—“I think that’s why he was so hurt when she ran away, they all were. And Maddie had no concept or else she didn’t care. But I stared and stared at her that night. She was old enough she must’ve been involved with him, with Henry by then. But she was such perfection.”
“Just like you.”
“There was no way for me to measure up, doesn’t make me very proud of myself but I must have been partly happy when she did it. Not that he transferred any of his affection for her to me after she left, god forbid. Just withdrew. I guess even that felt better than having to stand there and watch all his … adoration’s the only word for what he felt.”
“I think you’re being very hard on yourself.”
“He’s all that’s left of the family now, all that’s left for me, and I wanted this to go, I had some ideas about his coming up that I guess weren’t right. Maybe it would be the best thing if he did find Maddie, maybe he’s right, what do I know?”
“Hey.”
“What.”
“Come over here.”
“No.”
Another pair of eyes studied another ceiling in wonderment though they had seen so many things of wonder before. The eyes ran with tears at the spectacle. They had seen only moments before the night where stars twinkled not just in the heavens but on the earth, too. He giggled, Who would ever believe the stars could shine in the earth, too? But they were there to see. He was witness, and Sardavaal’s emissary, who stood with his arm around his shoulder, was witness, also. Some of the earth-stars were in colors, but most were white and flickered like the heaven-stars. Then they left the flat plateau of roof and went down a stairway carved at the most perfect angles the old Indian had ever seen, turned through a doorway, and came into a great, beautiful land that wasn’t like home but reminded him of home, all green and with the animal noises. The big difference was that down here it was day. He stared at this bright and blue sky. Sardavaal, he thought, is bringing me to a miracle.
VI
Tercer Mundo
1.
HENRY LIQUEFIED THE stuff, heating it in the bowl of a tablespoon whose handle flared as he passed it over the flame of the lighter which illuminated a number, neatly painted in white, centered on its crenellated edge. The critters gathered behind him, where he hunkered a little and suffered the rush because of the candy that seemed to have gone straight to his heart. They peered in a bunch over his right shoulder, giving off the same blue as a jay tail and Henry knew at once what it meant, this blue, even though they hadn’t come around visiting for a while—meant they were about to take their leave of him again. That was quick, but it didn’t make him unhappy. His face settled into repose, tiny teeth withholding his tongue, moist and heavy in the slack mouth. His eyes strayed inward; no more blue. All across the pate of his wide head fine gray coiled hairs encroached the glistening black. At the temples he’d gone white as an apple core, the hair frizzled out before two pronounced cauliflower ears. Maddie, it’s because they’re here again, you don’t know them, but they’re here and … he apologized, deep down inside where it was dimmer than even the Saturday night around him. Maddie answered, it seemed, that it wasn’t to forgive, that she was there with him, although he knew she really wasn’t. He was humming to himself a tune which freely drifted from one song to another and the words to two melodies, favorites of his father George Washington, came to his lips in a deep tenor.
“Rock of Ages down in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten,
Cleft for me, cleft for me
Let me hide myself in thee …”
which seemed to work pretty well all gummed up and, having opened his eyes into the most brilliant, burning blue, he kept pushing,
“Let the water and the blood
From Thy wounded side which flowed
Look away,
look away,
Look away.
Dixieland.”
The plastic syringe he had already removed from its acetate wrapping and a fresh-boiled needle had been attached to it. No, the critters didn’t like even the crinkle of the acetate. They knew it as well as he did. Neither we, troth to tell, likes the crinkle. Not air enough, even out under the moon like this, for all of them. And the critters say, Don’t sing no more baby Henry, and he remembered about their not enjoying that, so he took up another verse.
“O, I wish I was in Dixie
Hooray, hooray
Cause I’d hide myself way down in thee
And I’d live and die in Dixsee …”
but Henry, man-Henry not baby Henry, preoccupied with drawing off the liquid into the barrel of the syringe—it had been some years since he had done this—faltered on the melodies, and the songs trailed away.
So having aspirated the goods of the bag into the plastic cylinder, he set down the spoon, whose heat he could not feel through the heavy calluses on his fingers. He rolled back the left sleeve of his shirt and, syringe tucked like a carpenter’s pencil behind one ear, commenced slapping the muscular, rubbery skin at the juncture between forearm and biceps.
“Come on,” looking for the vein to rise.
After tightening the elastic tourniquet just above the elbow, he clasped the angle of his arm and screwed his clenched hand on the flesh. He looked to the surface for results. Nothing. He wagged a finger, scolding, scissored the skin between this thumb and first finger, kneaded, all concentration, regard fixed over the voice which was already beginning to leave him although it was his own, “Come on … you bad girl not come on up.”
Presently, the vein began to articulate. It rose, pulsating, like a reluctant worm sheltered beneath the skin. He slapped it several times back and forth with the back of his fingers and the fronts, as if he were dusting the skin. The vein responded, the worm grew excited. Henry daubed it gently with tissue soaked in rubbing alcohol.
“Come on sweet, that’s it you got it,” he said, remembering the years when he did this to assuage the pain, recalling also how the pitter-patter of talking made it all so much easier.
After he finished, critter-blue spluttered over his shoulder and at least some of the contingent slipped and fell into the ceiling of the silo, complaining, then splashed, sloshing upside down out between the columns, sloshing into the heavens. He hid away the punch, the elastic tape, the spoon in a small niche behind a loose brick. Some great breaths, and the cold, for it was chilly, radiated into his chest. He knew he’d be miss
ed, knew that Maddie, Hannah, Hammond, possibly even the stranger Lupi would by now be searching for him. Soon enough they would find him. He looked out from the silo to the north. There the Citibank building glowed, a stout amber chisel prepared to chip the sky, the hue of a sun-bleached and time-weathered shack. The three tiers of lights on the Empire State were ash-white, shining up at the great syringe where they used to park airships. In a week, now that Christmas neared, they would change the lights to green and red. He shook his head, chin to shoulder, and beamed at the thought of the windows at the department store, the dancing ladies in their frilly gowns twirling on the arms of their tuxedoed beaux, the wooden elves hammering together toys, children gathered by a hearth and beside it a tree covered in ornaments, ringed with tinsel, popcorn and cranberry strings.
It had been an unusual afternoon for Henry. Payday. But a day, too, in which he had located a door behind which were stairs that led him down, flight after flight in darkness illuminated only intermittently by the wan red of bare light bulbs enclosed in metal cages that put him in mind of catcher’s masks. He had come into a lobby. The metal door had sprung shut behind him. He tried it, but it was locked. He slapped his trouser pocket for his keys. They bulged there. He had no idea whether or not any of them would let him back into the secret stairwell; he would find out later. First, he had to get out, get away from them all, not for long, but just an hour. Not to think necessarily—what was there to think about? The critters had clued him in. Maddie, they said, had matters to settle, and they couldn’t protect her from matters no more. She didn’t need their help, he answered. But they’d already rolled off to mulch themselves from green to blue in the electric hay. So, he had to get out. It was hardly his choice.
Come Sunday Page 36