Sick, sick in the night, sick body, sick spirit, sick heart. I think sick thoughts; I sing my sick lament. Hot forehead, cold feet, marble feet, cold wet stink of the body corpse. Herb tea and the hair rising on my arms, dread as before lightning: something gonna get me. All this to repel a single invasion, to keep the strange cells from joining my body. Fear the flea on the hair of a mouse, bacteria on a fly’s foot, the sucking kiss of a deer tick, pestilence; fear the stranger in the body. Something foreign enters, undermines, and you shrivel like an apple on the stem, gnarls and canker, wormy at the heart. How does death get in, that invisible worm? Where did the fatal germ come from?
Fear the stranger. The man leaning against the screen, holding the door shut with his body, his lounging pose of ease, his sunburned face, his wine-blurred, self-loving smile. He crept up so quietly. How long had he been standing there when I looked up? And before? Walking around the shack, looking, touching. Wondering at first was there anyone here, peering in to find it was only one woman.
I put the lid on the pot, furtive, like a cat kicking dirt over the spot, never find me out. I would like to lie down in a long white tub with hot water up to the rim, lie back in it, let everything float, marry my fever to the hot water, and wash it out. The clean, bleachy smell of towels fluffed in a hot air dryer, spun around and around until all the fibers separate, so fat and soft. Bright bright overhead light, and that green or slate-blue motel room carpet. Read the paper all the way through, business pages and obituaries of strangers, yard sales on the north shore, zoning meetings in Milton. Read of far away lives, other people’s problems. See what they all died of, what they’re fighting about. Funny I think of a motel, not a house. Is my idea of home, then, a room at the Holiday Inn, buzzing fluorescent fixtures, dead bolt, sample bottles of shampoo, bad art on the walls?
Sleep won’t come; this night is endless. The peacefully snoring beast in the upper bunk lies eons away, no help to me, as far apart as one soul from another in Hades. Something bumps against the shack outside, some sniffing nocturnal animal, one of the track-makers I’ll never see. You might make anything out of these night sounds, but they are usually only mice. I get up, put on more hot water, lie down on the bed and wait for morning.
NINETEEN
Tempest
All day it was so hot the world burned. The water slid back and forth along shore, uncoiling like a muscle. Sand sizzled as the waves broke and drew back, dragging pebbles into the cool depths where they bounced and simmered in the froth.
Tern chicks crouch on hot sand under this breathless sun. They hide in jeep tracks or in footprints for shade, while their parents fly back and forth, making sharp cries and diving over the water. The birds’ voices are shrill, hysterical in the heat. Back and forth they fly, searching, crying, then they stop against the air, fold their wings and plunge straight down, twisting slightly with wings back and head tucked for a deadfall dive, shearing off just at the surface. They rise and dive again and again for the small fish, flying endlessly back and forth from their hot nests to the glaring surface of the water. They are so pure a white, so definite and sleek and gleaming a white and their cries are like the sound of wires dragged across metal, high and cutting, yet distant as a signal from space.
I stood chest-deep in the current, feeling the salt sting my insect-bitten skin. I squinted up at the sky where blue and silver lights bounced into my eyes. The sun had weight, leaning on my bare shoulders, leaving a hot scar on the flesh it pressed. The pigment in my cells rushed forward to darken, little dye pots breaking open and spilling to dim the gleam of pale skin. Drying myself, I brushed glowing crystals of quartz from my arms and legs, each grain separate and precise and final as my flesh is not: one atom of silicon nested between four atoms of oxygen in exquisite, repetitive symmetry. Time made these crystals: uncounted, undisturbed quantities of time, balancing molecule on molecule. Cell by cell, over millions of years, my body is preserved in stone: patterns of tissue and muscle fiber replaced as semiprecious stones, the spirit light of bone growing ever more stable. Agate, jasper, amethyst, lapis … a sea change, pearls that were my eyes, this corpse of light.
Back in the shack, a glass of water overturned on the floor spread out and evaporated before we could move to wipe the spot, leaving a dark stain on the boards. Not enough for a fly to drink.
The flies wanted something else: they hung in midair or dropped suddenly on to an arm or leg, insensible of danger, ignoring the hand raised against them. It’s our sticky selves they desire, taste of sweat and salt, the rich bitter blood. I slapped a fat one that grazed along my shoulder. He fell out of the air stupefied, half dead already, slowly turning wing over wing in hallucinatory mirage currents of heat. I wandered from bunk to window frame, lay down and stared up at the ceiling, scratched at a great bite on my thigh until it opened; a splash of alcohol there, and I winced and swore as it seethed through my cells. Time simply passed; the earth turned slowly, and we rode it around with the patience born of having no choice. You couldn’t call it waiting exactly—the way waiting points forward, directed outside the moment—rather we remained, hot, heavy, and yes, patient, riding inside time. Bert squatted on the porch in a slab of shadow, scratched a reed pen over worked and reworked lines of a drawing, connecting certain marks and pressing others back into oblivion. Crouched there on his haunches, he looked for all the world like some old savage, drawing the four directions with a stick in the dirt. I stared at my hands, turning them over and back, tracking alluvial cracks the sun made translucent, feeling the blood swell in my fingertips, stalled, lingering, before it was pushed back through the blue wrist vein. I stared at the white chips of my nails as if the faintest coolness was coming off their hard surfaces; I stared, allowing my eyes to rest on the nearest thing and slowly divine its contours. The thing might have been a tabletop or the view from a window, but because I was lying down it was not, it was only my hand against the red bedcover and I stared at it as if it were not mine, as if I could be far away or someone else and when that did not work I got up and drank a cup of cold, iron-flavored water and heard again the terns crying below on the beach, a sound which had continued to rise and fall even though for a while I had stopped hearing it.
Now toward evening a redwing shrills from the weathervane. A sparrow chirps busily in the tangled bay and poison ivy outside the window, rattling the branches to stir up a small breeze. Within the shadow of deep grass a toad pants. Light clouds pushed out of the east give the sky new depth, breaking up that unrelieved glare of midday, and the waves turn over with a gratified sigh. I go out on the deck and look out. Far out a boat horn speaks deeply; now grass moves, and unmoving branches, dead sticks with no green, darken slightly, pulling a new dampness from the air. They may not be quite dead; they may be wanting to put out leaves, or to hold on until the world moves again under them.
The horses come down the beach, mounted by unschooled riders, following single file behind the leader. From far off only their movement stands out, that up and down canter as they cross below, while the bumpy shape of a large boat offshore seems not to be moving at all until I turn back and the horizon is empty.
It is evening coming, and rain coming on. Behind these first puffy clouds a phalanx of low dark ones frowns on the horizon, gathering force, and the northeast breeze blown ahead of them feels wet and cool. This wind carries water and oxygen to quicken the world, freshening cells of leaf and hill. A breeze blows across the chipped waves. Each wave that breaks sprays particles of seawater up into the air; as the wind carries them inland we taste salt.
Blackbirds are massing on the next hill, making chittery, tossing flights, settling down and rising up again in annoyance. Down on the beach the gulls circle and float in broad ellipses. There is a general rising and falling: leaves flip on the branches, grasstops shake, and towels fly up on the line. My hair whips into my face; the wind pulls it straight back, then everything sags and settles.
The air smells of wind and pepper; the birds�
�� voices are shrill as they swoop back and forth, and light flutters on the grass, showing silver, then deep green. All along the foredune the grass is bent before the wind’s motion. The shack stands to take the measure and shape of the wind pushing at it. One has to give, and for now the wind divides. Sand dances in short leaps inches off the ground, each grain landing to dislodge the next, making dust clouds along the tops of the dunes. Skeins of sand whirl down the slope of the nearest big dune, twisting and twirling. The beach roses in front of the shack look surprised, their branches flailing the air, as the wind pushes the ground away beneath them, grain by grain, persuading the multitudes singly, a force no force can halt.
But now it seems to stop. Grass luffs in the dying breeze and a cool dampness settles over the valley. In the quiet a bobwhite repeats his urgent greeting, saying hopefully it is not too late.
I walk across the ridge and down into the valley by the pump. The sky turns light grey, seeming to absorb the cloud shapes that dashed across it, and the horizon darkens as wind flails the grass and disappears. I can’t tell if the wetness beading my arms is sweat or mist, if this air grows heavy with rain or fire.
The blackbirds have left the bayberry. Beside the pump the huge bush is dark and silent; no alarm sounds at my approach. For weeks they danced and called and flew in circles over our heads when we appeared at the top of the path. The male whistled and flew around us, while she fled to a nearby bush crying help. He fluttered, she moaned, all the while we pumped the buckets full and tugged them uphill, feeling guilty and harassed.
But yesterday all that was over. The pair flew past us unconcerned, as if nothing marked that spot, once so hotly defended.
Perhaps the nestlings have fledged and flown, but I suspect disaster: the marsh hawk. She has been around all week, raising panic in the valley every evening as she hunts along the ground and beats the grass for signs of life. I approach the bayberry cautiously, but nothing happens. I circle the bush, twelve feet across, looking for the well-hidden nest, but I see only tangles, thorns, and a deepening dark within. It is so quiet down here. Up above me, over the hill, the whole gang of blackbirds flies about full of weather news and excitement, swooping and calling back and forth.
The first drops make small depressions in the sand, and the sand begins to give up the heat borne down on it all day. A reversal is beginning: the earth’s warmth will go back up into the sky and the sky will let go cool drops into the sun-warmed earth. This afternoon animals hid in the shade; now they will come out. Rain cools the hissing fringes of the waves. Darkness begins to contract horizons; I stare hard at what is near, shifting into shadow: twigs and branches, the scuffed depressions in the sand where we have walked back and forth, a darkening stalk of high grass. Branches and leaves become one mass as the ground rises into them; backlighting gives shape to taller grasses, detail lost, the ground all one color. The rain still holds back, letting go in fat drops, a few here and there; you can walk between them.
As simply as that, the rain hitting my face, standing below the hill in the open, the change happened. I felt it like a gear slipping into place. A muscle relaxing across my shoulder, the board sliding into the notch, giving room to move without constraint. As the rain fell into the earth which pulls everything to itself, it seemed all space fell into order, pulling me with it. Clouds gathered weight and broke, falling into the earth, to lie upon the leaves and strike the bare hills, to break over our heads. And I stand here among birds and blowing grasses, adding my mass to that summoning, part of the storm falling towards me, falling as the earth falls, forward, circling back.
I stood there below the hill, feeling the beating of my chest against the air. Then I looked up and got my breath pulled out of my throat. A crowd of gulls was passing overhead, flying back into the dunes as they do every evening. White and dark, they take the wind under them, moaning as they leave the beach, flocking up to the slopes where they sit in disgruntled company on the sand, all facing one direction. Tonight though, with the light on their backs, against the darkening east, they seem strange, more than themselves.
Tonight they touch the outlines of the timeless. Black against a pale, curdling sky, they cross the sky in whirling spirals. In their passing are one thousand thousand summer evenings. They fly into the gathering storm, light glancing on their wings, the black, winged ones, shapes that cross the earth at night. Touched by those shadows I turn invisible. They have always been here and my life is so brief. I stand in the open and watch them come, flexed, wing against wing, above the wind-furrowed grass, as they fly back into the dunes, swirling down to disappear behind the hill where storm clouds are massing.
For an instant I seemed to remember something I’d been trying to say for a long time, something I knew, but did not fully understand until that moment—then that low, mumbling chorus overtook me. And then there was nothing left in me to think it. I was flown through, emptied and taken back. When I came back to myself I knew that I had been lifted, not in joy but in dread, and I knew that it did not matter. Raised up by the black wings or the white, you’re equally gone, emptied. And then there is no remembering and no question.
I’m left here. Shake it off and turn back. Climb the hill and look out over the horizon. Now the rain breaks in ribbons driven sideways into my face, and a storm wind keens across the emptied landscape. I turn toward the shack, walk a few steps, then begin to run.
An eerie darkness is gathering over Euphoria. Thunder rumbles across the waves and the sky turns weirdly stark and violent; the walls shake in sympathy. I close the door with difficulty, leaning on the wind to ease the wood over the swollen sill. The big board falls tight into its latch across the door frame. Then the room is small and filled with us.
Cold now in my summer dress, my skin wet, goosebumps rising along my arms, I go to stand next to Bert. He takes me under his arm, inside the thick shadow of his shoulder, his body’s heat. We watch together from our window as the combers fume and churn and plow up on shore.
We light the stove and set out lamps, confident in our small shelter, as the storm sweeps down on the land. Fill the lamps and check the water supply, eight buckets full, count our store of batteries for flashlight and radio, put out candles. Make everything tight and ready. We’ll keep an ear on the weather station just to be safe—though it’s not yet hurricane season. Hazel has left us a red flag to fly from the roof as a distress signal—but who would see it here? If a hurricane were forecast, we’d shutter the windows, unhook the propane tanks, and try to get out. Euphoria would likely stand as she has before, but the wind could shatter glass; a fuel tank toppled over could ignite.
Dark closes fast now, rain pelting the windows. For dinner we choose something from our store of cans and it is wonderful, miraculous that someone put this food into a can—beef stew, as it happens—that someone prepared it for us. Clear water in the pan, rice measured out; we’ll ladle the stew over it as night comes down and the tide leaps up the beach. Wind luffs the sides of the shack, bursts of rain, and then the warm stillness flowing back. Rice grains rattle in the tin; they scratch as I stir them into the water. Whoosh of the can opener biting into the lip, grinding metal teeth around the sealed diameter. We are rich and wise, in possession of metal tools, fire, shelter and light. Cooked food, and blankets folded across the beds. For thousands of years we have sought this shelter. In tents or houses, in walled fortresses or circles of wooden huts where the fire crouched, smoke seeping into the breath and bones of the people. For thousands of years we have spoken to each other in the hush of coming storms, passing pots back and forth, drawing near the fire. I slice crusty bread as Bert pours water into the basin; the lampglow shines in his eyes. Beyond his watching face, his spirit watches.
We wash the dishes by lamplight, using as little water as we can manage. I sweep the floor and tidy up in the first burst of energy in days, folding and stacking towels rescued from the line, clearing tables of books and papers. We lean together beside a lamp to take up the en
dless game of gin rummy, slap the cards down, add up the points in the summer’s tally. Wind tests the cracks, bursts of rain rocking us, and then stillness—it’s still coming.
The storm picks up again with a gash of light and a sickening thud as thunder hits the hill behind us. The shack shakes from roof to floorboards, down through the underpinnings, then rain gushes down with a sudden release and blows in sheets against the windows. It is a rolling, summer storm, a real Cape Cod tempest. The air crackles with static. Nothing comes through on the radio. Then a giant spark rips down the sky, white light slashes across the room followed by a violet strobe.
We stand stock-still in the middle of the room, pulled to our feet as lightning rips open a landscape rendered bright and flat as nightmare. A flash, a print on the retina, and in the swift dark the dying rumble of thunder subsiding, rolling over, like furniture dragged across a floor. The vision given by lightning is too quick; it reaches the brain just as darkness closes back in. We see a landscape of memory, lingering for moments on the back of the brain. The shack jerks and rocks as lightning shoots down; the world disappears and reappears, time seems to stop: the water is lit up bright and flat as an electric sheet and the dunes rise up in their Egyptian stillness.
We stand, surrounded by wind, inside the shack that trembles with its fury. The stovepipe beats back and forth, shaking down a black rain of fat sooty drops, and rain is driven down inexhaustibly, running over the sides of the shack. We hold on to one another, transfixed, as Euphoria sails into the storm.
The Salt House Page 11