Collected Stories of Reynolds Price

by Reynolds Price

  Turned out, none of us really knew if this was New Year’s Eve or not; we’d lost any count of actual time. But that didn’t hinder the bountiful goodness that flowed from then till late in the night. Neither Ruth nor Autry asked any more about why I was in their curious room; and I didn’t so much as glance at the fact of the beautiful child—her sudden mystery here among us, hid so close. It had come over me that they hadn’t found this place on the run—they’d been here all their lives at least, and the three of them someway constituted a merciful clan hid back up here to serve the world if more of the desperate world than me should ever need drastic help again.

  This child was the visible guarantee, not just that I’d live to finish my time but that life in the vicious world would eventually settle and tame. If not in my day surely in hers. For all we said about Margaret’s breathing presence though—a natural-acting child whose beauty was marked by silence—she might have been a soul from bliss that nobody saw but me, Trump Ferrell, saved from death by the strength pumped out of this room through Ruth and Autry’s hearts and skin, from Margaret’s soul and into me. For the present anyhow we stood together in the warming shed and acted as if we’d known each other most of our days and trusted our backs to each other’s mercy. Nothing more was said about New Year; but once the child and Ruth had hung big clumps of holly along the walls, I thought again of how I’d failed to bring in food for the past two days. I stood in place a last still instant tasting my luck, and then I said I’d better get going and hunt us a meal.

  Autry said they’d be much obliged.

  I spent the better part of the day back deep in the woods, calming my thoughts and studying various ways downhill. There was one real trail, nearly vertical and edged with boulders, and several rough scrambles through sharper flint and huge evergreens. I even showed myself to the sky at two or three points overlooking the valley, trying to see where troops were camped or the smoke of a skirmish. But what was there that one cold noon was nothing but a million trees (stripped for winter to their firm bones) and what must have been the stream I drank from the night I ran—not a human house or a creature in motion. Still every nerve in my new skin said Don’t go back there. Push on up; and when I looked behind me, the line of the ridge ran steep and naked, blue slate and granite on into the mist that shielded the sun. I’d climb farther on then when my time came, though I had to guess that meant a whole world empty of all but me and my dreams.

  The time wasn’t yet. I felt I had new debts to pay at the clearing to my benefactors, however they’d saved me. I didn’t want to see them too soon and be tempted to mention my aim to leave. So I found a bright cove beside three hemlocks and lay down there to rest awhile (by then my body was so hardened to cold, I could sleep on ice). I managed it easy and when I woke in the low slant light, I jumped up strong and went to my traps. They’d had good luck. I’d caught a fat rabbit and a covey of bobwhites tame as pups nested down beneath an old crate I’d baited with corn and propped on a twig.

  When Autry and I had cleaned the game, Ruth came outside and cooked it right on the coals we’d nurtured. I went on back to my place to wait; but when I looked out the window towards dusk, I saw that Margaret had come outdoors and stood by the fire, still not speaking but looking glad. Her skin in the late sun was whiter still; but it didn’t look sick, only fine-grained and sheltered. I’d pretty well answered the questions about her to my satisfaction—at the least she was near kin to Autry and Ruth. For their own reasons which may have been wise, they’d kept her hid; yet once I found her, they hadn’t blamed me but told me her name and borne our nearness a few calm minutes. Who was I with my blotched record to dig on deeper and meaner than that into whatever mysteries these three held among them here? They’d saved my skin and maybe my soul—if I had one, which remained to be seen.

  By then anyhow I’d searched my room for any small thing I’d left on the shelves and wanted to keep for my departure—the tailfeather fan of a grouse cock, the single picture I owned from my past life—a round tintype of my first daughter in her young mother’s arms. I pocketed a blood-red rock I’d found in the woods that might be a ruby; and I kept the Indian black axe-head I’d carried with me since I left home right through my battles (small but deadly, I’d yet to use it). My daughters’ picture I slid between the head of the bed and its side rails. I’d remember their faces long as I needed; and I’d thank them this far by leaving their likeness here on the spot where death and I struggled— or I and an angel or just a kind boy, desperate as I. It was after all where I learned I must free my kin for better lives without my greed to drain their strength and harrow their peace.

  Then a knock at my door, the first I’d heard (before now Autry and Ruth just walked in, sure I was ready for company). It scared me, knowing somebody stood there with a long-due bill for all my forfeits—a kinsman, my colonel, any one of the women I’d tried to use up. I couldn’t answer.

  Autry’s voice spoke through the wood, “Trump, I told you it’s New Year’s Eve. Eat beside us.”

  Skittish as my old loyalty was, I’d always liked big family feasts. So this new invitation from Autry ought to have shook my heart in its moorings—I owed him that much; they were still good to watch. But still I was balked.

  So he tried the door. It opened on me, upright square in the midst of the room. He studied my eyes in lantern shine. Then he said “She wants you to follow me.”

  I told him to thank Ruth and say I was tired.

  “It ain’t Ruth, Captain; it’s Margaret Jane.”

  No coffin hinge was ever colder than I that instant—the old world of people was swarming back: kin, friends, children, mates of my body, every one of them empty-handed and staring at me like the fountain of grace. But then my mind someway heard a sentence; a silent voice said Do this last thing. Well set you loose. I still couldn’t talk but I nodded to Autry.

  He led me onward.

  It was no big feast, but it filled our craws. We sat on the floor around the small table and just had the meat and a mush Ruth made from cornmeal and dried corn, the last they’d have till way into summer. I’d already forgot the things I saw in the corners that morning; and it came as a sweet surprise when Ruth and Margaret Jane slid back into darkness, laughing, and then returned with a jar of honey and the quart of figs. Each one of us ate with fingers scrubbed on a clean rag first—Ruth was clean as a bird. I’d eaten three figs and thought I was done when Margaret came forward to me with the honey. I thanked her and said I was way past full.

  But she said “No”—I heard it clearly—and a smile spread on her to pick any lock on Heaven’s gate.

  The smile was so welcome, I barely noticed she’d said the first word, not to mention it was No; and all I wanted was to keep her talking. It seemed like something fairly enormous depended on that—her life or mine, the real world’s future. I said “You’ll have to say my name.”

  She held her ground, stone-silent again, with the honey held out.

  Autry said “Captain, she’s deaf and dumb.”

  I knew for a fact I’d heard her No; so my hand went out in the air towards her, clenched like a claw that could tear her skin. I think I was trying to tear something off her, some throttling fist that choked her throat or a plugged obstruction in her mind. I thought if a strange man scared her some she might break free (I’d thought that way too many times and trapped too many kindly girls).

  It didn’t faze Margaret. Or she didn’t show it. Her right hand reached inside the jar, her white forefinger scooped down deep and brought up honey in neat cells of wax, then she brought it to me like gold I’d earned.

  I knelt to meet her hand straight on and ate the warm wild sweetness off her that smelled like summer before the war, red clover and big old drowsy bees.

  Next—swear to Christ—she said “Now rest.” I’d never heard a child say rest.

  I looked to Autry to see if he heard, but he’d moved away to the dark far corner. I could just make out that Ruth had already stre
tched out there on one of the pallets; it looked like Autry was ready to join her. And when I turned to Margaret again, she’d stepped back—still facing me—to her old quilt and was nesting there. I knew I hadn’t obeyed a child since that first dawn I saw real snow, but I felt like pleasing this girl now. I said to the room “Would anybody care if I rest awhile?”

  Nobody spoke, though the tin stove creaked on under our silence.

  So I laid myself back full on the ground—the packed cold floor—as near to the midst of the room as I could.

  Then we all rested, in proper places. Whoever Autry and Ruth might be to one another, they were fast asleep in a very few minutes with their work clothes on, ready to run or face daybreak. Margaret stayed busy a short while moving her hands in cold starlight to make horse heads on the wall beside her—mule heads, rabbits and almost surely a unicorn, though how she made it with just ten fingers I couldn’t see. It felt like I was wide awake; and likely I was more than blessed to be lying here in the core of something that, far as I knew, was entirely well-meant.

  I thought I might be able to whisper and someway coax the child to talk. Maybe she had fresh orders for me, some sure destination entrusted to her in her barred throat but meant for me who’d got words from her when no one had. I know I whispered my love her way and felt I meant it.

  But by the time those few words left me, her breath had slowed to a rate I heard as tranquil sleep, the daily trip of a simple human child into worlds beyond her power to change or fight.

  I tried to recall some fitting single verse from the past—a psalm of praise requesting strength—but my mind lay as blank as the snow I’d likely find when I left this warmth. And then I fell into my trance too. If any dream walked through those hours, it left no fear or further instructions; and if any sleeping heart ever longed to stay where it was and grow tap roots forever more, it was mine right then—that near the midst of one world that plainly worked for its creatures.

  Whatever woke me came as a word, but in my head, not the freezing room. I swam up knowing I’d heard a voice addressed to me and saying one word. Quick as it came it woke me fully, and I lay on long enough for the message. Nothing more sounded anywhere near me except the living trust and calm of the same three souls I’d lain down with, their healthy sighs on the ocean floor of brief blind safety. At last I told myself it was Now; the word that woke me had to be Now. I checked the window—no trace of light but the last of the moon that silvered my hands which I held up before me. Dim as it was I could see they were clean, not just of the honest dirt of hunting but all my past.

  Strike out of here now before they rise and hold or win you. I tried to think if I’d left anything in my old cabin. No, not a crumb. All I needed was on me—all and more. I put my silent hand down slowly into my pocket and found the rock that might be a ruby, that red anyhow and clear at the heart. My arm went out towards where it felt the force of Margaret’s perfect eyes and mind, and I set the redness down where she’d see it as first-day woke her.

  Then limber as any recent ghost, I stood to my feet. My shot leg tried to buckle once, but next it held and promised to bear me. I moved in uncanny quiet to the door, spread it open by quiet inches, slid my frame through and shut it behind me. Outside was barely colder than in, so my old summer coat would likely serve till sunup; I bound it round me and took a calm pause to listen again—nothing, just evergreens shifting in darkness, leading their ample harmless lives in one right place. Leftward the pitch of the sky burst open with white bomb light but still no sound.

  So I turned right and crossed the clearing. In one more minute my feet were muffled in thick pinestraw; my legs could feel I was bound uphill and inward on these unplumbed mountains, aimed away from home and help except what my two hands could give. Endless mountains, utter freedom, lasting peace—a healed strong man now, done with war.

  LONG NIGHT

  IN YOUR rented Fiat, the size of a roller skate, you can drive south from the heart of Jerusalem and be in Bethlehem in fifteen minutes. It also makes an attractive walk—two gentle hours, no real climbing and the compact town strung out on its ridge as your visible goal through the clear desert day. That winter month, a dry December, I drove south a dozen times alone. Because I’m a licensed architect who veered into writing years ago, I was there to plan a commissioned piece on the Church of the Nativity, the town’s great magnet. That big dim good-smelling warren of a place is the oldest continuously used church in Christendom and has a good deal to be said for it still as a showcase of Middle Eastern architecture from Constantine onward—a depressing good deal. The lines and pillars of the oldest church shame the Catholic and Greek Orthodox additions, a boatload of jimcrack pictures and lanterns—the eunuch Babe and his boneless Mother in cancer-causing pastel inks.

  The beating heart of all that weight is a limestone cave. You walk toward the altar, then start down one of a pair of steep stairs. Twelve feet later, you’re inside the cave. You look overhead, or steal a glance behind leather wall-hangings, to see the live stone. It’s very much there despite two millennia of chiseling pilgrims. And trustworthy records that date to less than a century after Jesus’ death say that here he was born, that simple a fact—a low space not as long as a schoolbus, which served as dry shelter for livestock and overflow guests from the nearby inn.

  There’s a silver star in a low corner niche that says “Here Jesus Christ was born of Virgin Mary.” It was stolen early in the nineteenth century and caused the whole Crimean War before its return. Five yards away down three more steps is a trunk-sized niche where the manger stood, the feeding trough that served as a cradle on the night in question. When the emperor Constantine’s mother came here in 339, she allegedly confiscated what was left and took it to Rome where it’s still on view in St. Mary Major just under the altar, a few warped boards in a busy crystal-and-gold container.

  Anyhow I was leaving for home the next day and had spent the morning in east Jerusalem, buying belated Christmas presents and a sidewalk lunch that either would or would not kill me. Then I napped for an hour on my narrow bed in the YMCA, an honorable hostel facing the famed King David Hotel with its high-rolling weird component of guests—American Jews and German civilians. I dreamed about a guided tour, where Jews walked Germans through Hebrew history, a long stage-pageant with actual blood. Though an Anglo-Saxon, since early boyhood in the 1930s I’ve dreamed I was Jewish and the prey of a hunting party of Germans who are blind but equipped with exquisite noses.

  By the time I got my eyes full-open, the afternoon was more than half gone; and the sky had thinned to the good light-blue of your favorite work-shirt, a billion years old. Most of the weary cells of my mind longed to fall back and sleep again. But a sensible lobe, the size of a nickel, said “Haul yourself down there one last time.”

  As I crested the rise to Manger Square, Kamil, the parking manager, hailed me; and I suddenly thought I knew why I’d come. Lying on the occupied West Bank, Bethlehem has dapper Arab police in dark blue and white, plus anxious young Israeli soldiers with Uzis primed. They sometimes deign to help with traffic in the packed town-center. But Kamil is strictly a free-will agent, a hometown boy who shepherds tourists to the scarce parking places with a hand ballet as good as any cop’s in rush-hour Rome. He assisted me three or four times before I understood his problem. The boy is dumb—mute, unable to speak. He’ll sound an occasional baritone note as he opens your door or shuts you in and waves you off with the small banknote you offer in thanks but not a word. Still his listening face is mostly as pleasant as his general mood, and he always sports a baseball cap in fire-truck red.

  He loped toward me now, beckoning wildly with a barn-wide grin as he caught my face. I quickly knew I’d give him all my leftover shekels and not bother splurging at the airport tomorrow on the useless gewgaws of duty-free shops. I had about fifty dollars left; and Kamil had been my favorite Arab of the several dozen on this first visit who’d shown me the hawkeyed boundless kindness of their faith and trib
e. And since he seemed to go home at dark, I’d give it to him now.

  As I braked to park, he was at my window with the eager smile of a child actor; but I took a moment to see who was near us. A bus was loading German nuns a few yards away, all stout and grim. Their hard eyes blocked my immediate plan but I hatched another. I got out, locked up and shook young Kamil’s eager hand. Then I risked a question, “Will you have coffee with me?”

  The smile disappeared; he was painfully baffled. Had I somehow offended or was he deaf too? A local waiter had said he was mute; I’d forgot to ask about his hearing.

  I pointed across the square to a restaurant, St. George’s (he of dragon fame, the other local-boy-made-good, after David and Jesus—a fair enough record for a town you could lose in a block of Manhattan).

  Kamil shook his head.

  “Coffee? Caffé?” In the air, I drank from a nonexistent cup.

  He finally got it. The smile beamed on and he took off his fingerless right-hand glove to shake my hand again, skin to skin.

  The air was still warm; the outdoor tables were all but empty. So we sat outside and faced each other like players in a game. Musa, the waiter who’d also befriended me, showed no surprise. He met us with benign self-possession and eyes that could drill through armor plate, and may get the chance, but showed no hint of disdain for Kamil. Yet a dumb and grubby unofficial parker must have stood ten rungs down on the ladder from a spotless waiter.

  And though I had a moment of panic—what would I say or do for these minutes?—once coffee came, the time went smoothly.

  Kamil pocketed his cap, hand-combed his tan hair; and when he’d had his first long sip, he lapsed at once into what seemed a trance of meditative calm. The harried cords and lines of worry melted inward. In under ten seconds, he showed for the first time his actual age, maybe thirty-five.