by John Dalmas
All through her description, Mary's whisper had tightened, tightened, her body writhing now, twisting with inner agony. "Then cry!" Macurdy ordered sharply. "Cry! Let it out!", and she began to keen, dismally.
Seconds later he heard feet hammering down the stairs inside. A wild-eyed Fritzi stepped onto the porch in his nightshirt. "What in hell?!" he said, staring.
"She told me about her mother dying."
Fritzi gawped, bug-eyed. Mary's keening had turned to blubbering; it seemed to Macurdy she didn't even know her father was there. When she'd calmed a bit, he spoke once more. "Tell me again, from the beginning. See if there's something you missed before."
Basically she repeated, this time in the past tense but added something now. "And while she was spanking me, mama yelled, 'You terrible terrible child! I wish I'd never had you! How could you cause me such pain?!' Then she threw me on the bed and fell on the floor."
Mary's tears still flowed, but the terrible grief was gone. Both Macurdy and Fritzi stared. Klara too was peering out the door now, alarmed and bewildered. "And that's it," Mary said, then hiccuped, which made her giggle. Even Macurdy gawped at that. He'd seen Arbel's patients respond in more or less the same way, but he'd never caused such an effect himself.
"Sorry," she said. "Yes, Curtis, I'll go to a movie with you. What night?"
"I better find out for sure what night I can have off. I'll let you know."
She stared unseeingly past him toward the lilac bushes at the corner of the porch. "You know what? When they picked mamma off the floor and laid her on the bed, I told myself I would never ever have a child who would do such wicked things and make me die. Because I knew she was going to die. I knew it before any of the grownups. And I thought it was my fault. I was too little to understand that she'd already had the cancer, probably for months, and no one knew it; a kind the person is dying from before they show any symptoms. I remember Pappa telling Uncle Wiiri that."
Fritzi stared, shaken. "I remember. The doctor told me, and I told Wiiri. He called it glioblastoma something. I remember that. It is what killed my Aina."
Klara spoke sharply to Fritzi in German, and he gave her a brief summary. The old woman grumbled something more, then left, presumably returning to bed. Fritzi spoke gruffly to Mary: "Better you come in and go to bed. Rest. The whole neighborhood must be awake now."
"In a minute, Pappa. First I have to thank Curtis. Privately."
Fritzi backed through the door, no doubt to wait listening in the hallway. Macurdy wondered if Mary was going to kiss him. Instead she talked.
"You're a strange man, Curtis Macurdy, but a very nice one. How did you know what to do? To ask those questions? I feel like a new person, I can hardly believe how new."
"I had a friend once who did things like that," he answered. "I'll tell you about him sometime; I'll tell you a lot of things you should know about me. But not tonight. Your dad's right. Wash your face and go to bed. Sleep on it. I'll see you tomorrow, and see how you feel."
She peered at him for a moment, seeing he didn't know what. Then, standing on tiptoes and holding his face in her hands, she did kiss him, gently. He left in a daze.
* * *
Back in his rented room, Macurdy again gave shamanic attention to his damaged face, then went to bed, where he reviewed the evening in his mind. He knew he'd ask Mary to marry him, probably soon, and he knew she'd say yes. It seemed strange but inevitable.
* * *
Mary lay looking at a shaft of moonlight through her window. If her mother hadn't had that cancer in her brain, she told herself, she wouldn't have gotten so mad about the dish. Wouldn't have hit her so hard and said those terrible things. Poor äiti! It must have been an awful death.
And if it hadn't been for Curtis and his questions, she'd never have remembered, never have known what festered in the back of her mind, hidden by her sense of childish guilt.
What kind of man was Curtis Macurdy? She'd find out, she told herself. Because she knew he'd ask her to marry him. And she would. She would. Perhaps he'd ask her after the movie. Perhaps in a week or a month. She would not, she resolved, disappoint him, with her answer or her love.
7
Disclosures. Proposal. Advices.
By Monday morning, Macurdy's efforts with shamanism, massage, and hot washcloths had reduced the discoloration to a faint greenish yellow, a remarkable accomplishment. He arrived at the courthouse a few minutes before eight. Fritzi was already there, as usual, and Macurdy peered into his office.
"Excuse me, sheriff," he said, "can I talk with you a minute?"
"Go ahead."
"I wonder if I could have a day shift today."
"That's what I planned for you. This morning you go to the courthouse and read some court proceedings. I have written a list.
"You were along when Earl arrested Arne Peterson, and he showed you how to do the paperwork. The trial is this afternoon, and Earl will be there as arresting officer. I want you there too. You got to have experience with these things."
He paused, eyeing Macurdy. "Now. Why did you want the day shift today?"
"I want the evening off, to take Mary to the movie. There's things I need to tell her about me, the sooner the better."
Fritzi nodded worriedly. "Macurdy," he said, "I like what I know about you, but I don't know very much. I don't know what happened last night, only that it seemed to end all right. But I love my daughter more than my life. Don't hurt her."
Instead of answering, Macurdy reached across the desk and shook the sheriff's left hand. "Now," he said, "I'm ready for that list."
* * *
The movie was a western, The Last Roundup, starring Randolph Scott. They ate popcorn, and when the popcorn was gone, they held hands.
Afterward they strolled Nehtaka's tree-lined residential streets. In jackets; September had brought offshore breezes, and the evening was cool and humid. For the first fifteen minutes they hardly spoke at all, but Macurdy's mood was pregnant with things needing to be said. He'd lost totally the confidence he'd felt Saturday night.
Finally he broke the silence. "How old do you think I am?"
"I don't know. Twenty-five?"
"Twenty-eight."
"That's not old."
"Old enough to have been married. Twice."
There was a long moment's silence before Mary responded: "Tell me about it."
"My first wife's name was Varia. She'd always seemed kind of strange, but we were in love. We were married about six weeks when her family sent people to kidnap her, and I followed them. Out of the country. By the time I found her, she was married to someone else."
"But—that was bigamy! Couldn't you get her back?"
"Not under their laws. And her new husband was an important man. Later I married a girl there named—it translates to Melody—and I got a farm. But a few months later she drowned."
Her hand on his arm, Mary stopped him, looking earnestly into his eyes. "Those things were no fault of yours. Were they?"
"Not so far as I know. But that's just part of what I've got to tell. The easy part. I'm afraid you'll think I'm crazy when I tell you the rest of it, but it wouldn't be honest if I didn't."
When he said nothing more, she turned, and they began walking slowly again, still holding hands. "I have a secret, too," she said. "Not like the one I told you on Saturday, that I'd hidden from myself all those years. It's one that goes on every day of my life, and I've only ever told one person."
He didn't ask, but let her continue in her own time. "You've seen pictures of Jesus and Mary, with haloes around their heads."
"Yeah."
"I see haloes. Everyone has one, and not just around their heads. They're brightest there, but when I take the trouble to, I can see them around their whole body." She peered at him earnestly. "Does that sound crazy?"
This time it was Curtis who stopped. "You see them? I do too! Varia called them auras." He paused, his features vague in the darkness, but to Mary's eyes his aura
had expanded: pastels of red, gold, violet—a kind of personal aurora. "That makes it easier for me," he said. "Easier to tell you what I need to."
They walked again, one street after another, Macurdy talking at length. He told her more about Varia, who'd married his Uncle Will when Curtis was four years old. Varia had seemed about twenty. Twenty years later, when Will was killed felling timber, she still looked twenty. Then she'd married Curtis.
The story grew stranger, Macurdy's voice becoming monotone as he told it, as if he'd lost hope again that Mary could possibly believe. Varia had come from another world, he said, then repeated it—another world, named Yuulith, with gates that from time to time opened into this one. In Yuulith she'd belonged to a Sisterhood that was like a tribe. Its women used magic—nothing all that amazing, but useful—and stayed physically young for nearly a century, then rapidly grew old, and died in just a few years. They had men in the tribe for breeding and soldiering, but the head Sister was the boss, like a queen. What she said was law.
A month later, when the sate had opened again, he'd gone to find Varia, and on the other side been made a slave by a tribe there, then a shaman's apprentice, then a soldier. Had been in a war, and found Varia, only to discover she'd remarried. Then he'd married and lost Melody, and returned home again. They'd stopped on a low bluff overlooking the sparsely lit town, the Pacific stretching in the distance to a horizon seen only by inference, where the stars ended, the blackness becoming sea instead of sky. "And now," he finished, "you probably think I'm either crazy or the world's biggest liar."
She took both his hands. "Curtis," she said quietly, "I'm not even going to think about it. I'm glad you told me, but the smartest thing for me to do is just be me and let you be you, and see how things develop.
"I see haloes, or auras, and most people, if I told them, would think I was crazy or lying. Of course, another world, with gates to this one, sounds quite a lot stranger than that, and I might never quite believe in it. But I'll get used to the idea, and that's more important.
"I can generally tell when people are lying, by their haloes, and you're not. And you don't have bad intentions, either; I can tell that too.
"As for magical powers—what you did last night was magical enough for me, and that happened! It was real!"
She moved closer to him. "I want you to take me home now. But first I want you to kiss me, because I'm in love with you." The kiss was soft and lingering, then they turned back down the hill, saying almost nothing at all until they reached her block, when Macurdy could delay no longer. There's something I didn't tell you. Something more important."
"Yes?"
"Varia said I won't get old either, till I'm maybe ninety. And that's kind of how it seems. If she was right, then in fifty years I'll still look about twenty-five."
It was Mary's turn to introvert now. After a long moment she responded: "And I'll look about sixty-eight."
They walked on till they reached her front steps, then stopped. "I have a lot to sleep on tonight," she said. "Perhaps even more than on Saturday. Kiss me again, Curtis. It will help."
Again they kissed, a kiss cool but slow. "Thank you," she said. "Stop at Sweiger's tomorrow when I'm at work, and we'll make another date." They stood a couple of feet apart, holding hands between them. "And before you go to sleep tonight," she added, "remind yourself that I love you."
* * *
He did. He also told himself that each woman he'd loved had been very special—better, it seemed to him just then, than he deserved.
* * *
The next day dawned drizzly. He arrived at Sweiger's just before 2 pm, and walked Mary home, both of them wearing raincoats. This time when they reached her porch, she didn't offer to kiss him. Instead she looked him in the eye and said, "Curtis, will you marry me?"
He stared. "Do you mean it?"
"Dammit, if I didn't, would I ask? Let's try it again. Will you marry me?"
It took him a moment to answer. "Yes, Mary, I'll marry you. I just—it's hard to believe this is happening. I'll be very happy to marry you, and I'll be a good husband." As I was to Varia and Melody. Oh God, let this one last. Let it go on a long time.
"When?" she asked. "When will you marry me?" Now she didn't seem like a determined young woman at all. She stood like a young girl, straight-backed, brave, hopeful, vulnerable.
"Soon," he said. "We need to get the license, the blood tests, a preacher... You need to decide whether you want a lot of people there, a big party—keeping the expense in mind. It could be in a week, I'd think, or maybe a month."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I'll meet you after I get off tomorrow. If you can get off, too."
Then, though it was daylight, she kissed him before turning and going inside.
* * *
Curtis went back to the courthouse and told Fritzi he thought he was coming down with something and wanted to go home to bed. He lied about feeling sick, but he did go straight home to bed, and slept for ten hours without waking.
* * *
He went to Doc Wesley for his blood test. They were already acquainted; Wesley had examined him before Macurdy had been signed on as a deputy. The doctor drew the necessary blood, then said, "You laid with a woman recently?"
"Not for quite a while."
"How long?"
Macurdy looked back to that night when Omara had come to his room at the palace in Teklapori. "Most of a year." Not really so long, he realized, but a world away.
"A prostitute?"
"Nothing like that. A good friend. A nurse."
The doctor grunted skeptically. "Drop your pants. You were a logger till recently, and even you might not know what you did in Tacoma or Portland or Medford, some Saturday when you'd been drinking."
Macurdy dropped them. The examination took only a minute. "Well, that looks all right," the doctor said. "Look. I won't beat around the bush. I suspect your blood tests will be clean, too. But this whole community knows Mary Preuss. And we like her. A lot. We want her to be happy. What do you know about ladies? Beyond your mother and sisters? I'm talking about ladies now. This girl is no floozie that hangs around drinking in blind pigs, waiting to be picked up. Odds are a thousand to one she's a virgin. She's hardly out of school! Does a roughneck like you know how to treat a girl like that?"
Macurdy bristled a bit. "I think so," he said.
"Well let me tell you some things, because I don't think you do. Your intentions may be good, but I don't trust your knowledge, and the instructions are free."
Then he gave the would-be bridegroom a lecture, with diagrams, on how to deflower a virgin gently. Macurdy left embarrassed and grateful.
* * *
Under "Announcements," the Nehtaka Weekly Sentinel reported that on October 5, 1933, a marriage license had been granted to "Miss Mary Preuss and Mr. Curtis Macurdy, both of Nehtaka. Miss Preuss is the daughter of Sheriff Fritzi Preuss. Mr. Macurdy is a deputy in the sheriff's department." Word had gotten around quickly, even among those who didn't read the announcements section, and since Macurdy was a local hero, the general response was more enthusiastic than Doc Wesley's had been.
Two days later, Macurdy went into Sweiger's Cafe for a late supper, his duties having precluded taking it at the boarding house. There was only a handful of customers drinking coffee and eating. Hansi Sweiger waited on him, and when he brought his food, sat down to visit.
The first thing he did was to thank Macurdy for saving his life that early August day in Severtson's messhall. He had no doubt at all that Hannigan was about to shoot him.
Now he was in town for the winter. After the fire, Lars Severtson had promoted him to choker setter. It paid better than whistle punk, but setting chokers on a burn was the dirtiest job in the world. Usually he had to lie down in the ashes and dirt, to poke the cable knob under the logs, while to hook them up, he often had to he on their charred bark.
So finally he'd quit—his father hadn't been happy about that—and come home to help out in his family's r
estaurant. He doubted he'd log again. With so much burned timber to salvage, it'd either be more of the same, or he'd have to go somewhere else.
"In fact," he said, "I'm thinking about going back to the old country. Things were really bad there for a while—a lot worse than here—but they've gotten a lot better recently. My cousin Karl's been writing me about it; a guy named Hitler got elected chancellor, and he's putting everyone to work. He's better than Roosevelt any day." Hansi paused. "Roosevelt's a Jew, you know. His real name is Rosenfeld.
"My old man really blew up when I told him what I might do. He says Hitler will ruin Germany—that he'll start another war. Geez! Hitler's not crazy; he doesn't want a war! I tried to reason with dad, but it's like arguing with a brick wall. He got wounded four different times in the last war, you know." Hansi's expression turned thoughtful. "I never thought I'd want to go back, but now—maybe I'll give it a try. I can do it. I put more than enough money away working for the Severtsons."