Jewelweed

by David Rhodes

Apparently Blake had never installed a yard light. July never had one, either. He had always liked to see the night sky.

  Winnie walked over to the empty corncrib and stood in front of it. This was where July had died, caught in his tractor’s power takeoff while loading ear corn into a wagon. The experience of finding him had reoriented her life, forced her into deeper levels of engagement and higher planes of commitment. She took a deep breath and smelled the honeysuckle again. She remembered eating breakfast with July once. If she could relive that time now it would be different. She would treasure every morsel of biscuit, every movement of eye. She would prolong her departure, ask if there were any chores around the farm that she could help with, set aside her own agenda, and live completely in the moment.

  Winnie followed the dirt path to the house, climbed up the steps, and knocked on the front door. As she waited, she looked around. The porch and everything else seriously needed carpentry and paint. In fact, everything around looked rundown and shabby.

  After knocking again, she tried the door. It was unlocked.

  “Hello,” she called. “Blake?”

  Nothing.

  She opened the door. It was even darker inside.

  “Blake? Blake? It’s me, Winnie.”

  She found a light switch, turned it on, and stepped into the kitchen.

  The old-fashioned green linoleum was worn down in places to the black underlayment. The house smelled of mold, mildew, and dust from an earlier era. A good scrubbing was clearly needed here, but Winnie repressed her cleaning instincts and indulged a few moments longer in the complex set of smells, letting it open up memories. It had been almost fifteen years since July lived here. August hadn’t even been born. In fact, she and Jacob were not together yet then. Her long hair, when combed out, had fallen below her waist.

  “Blake?” she called again, feeling increasingly self-conscious about the naked sound of her voice in his home. The darkened doorway into the next room beckoned. She wondered what lay on the other side.

  She resisted the urge, turned out the light, and went back outside, closing the door behind her.

  The farmyard seemed unusually quiet and welcoming. She sat down on the top step, and once again her store of memories opened for business. She browsed its narrow aisles, letting old feelings wash over her.

  She felt at peace for the first time in many months, perhaps years, and while she dissolved pleasantly into this sensation she noticed a spot of light moving along the horizon. It advanced rapidly, flying low over the dark landscape. The single beam changed direction slightly, and then sped ahead again.

  When the light reached the drive, it turned in and rushed down the lane. Once in the farmyard, she could hear the engine and the tires on the gravel and dirt.

  The motorcycle moved across the grass and stopped at the foot of the steps. Blake climbed off.

  “Mrs. Helm,” he said, walking up to her. “Is something wrong?”

  She could smell his leather jacket and the fifty miles of night air clinging to him. His dark hair bristled like a weedy hillside in the skylight. The motorcycle’s engine sighed and snapped as it cooled.

  “I wanted to thank you in person,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “You know what. Don’t fool with me about something like this.”

  “Oh, Milton. August came into the shop today. He thanked me already.”

  “I know he did, but I wanted to thank you myself. Where have you been?”

  “Riding,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that,” said Winnie. “It’s breaking the terms of your release.”

  “I know, but sometimes the difference between doing something and not doing it is like the difference between living and not living. Let me take you for a ride.”

  “No,” she said. But even as she declined, she heard in her voice something different. “I’ve never been on one of those things,” she added. Then she thought for a moment and spoke again. “We couldn’t go very far.”

  “Done,” said Blake. He hopped off the steps and started the engine. “Climb on.”

  Winnie walked down and stood behind him. “Don’t look,” she said, hiking her skirt up enough to allow her to climb onto the seat behind him. She hooked the heels of her loafers behind the foot pegs.

  “Ready?” asked Blake, feeling her behind him, fitting around him.

  “You know, this seat isn’t very comfortable.”

  “Sorry,” said Blake. “Passenger seats are a bit of an afterthought on bikes like these.”

  They moved down the driveway, onto the road.

  “Why is there a hole in the back of your jacket?” she asked.

  “In memory of Spinoza, I poked a knife through it.”

  “But Spinoza was attacked by someone else.”

  “I know. But in my case I have no one else to blame for the time I spent in prison. It was a Blake-on-Blake crime. Is there anything else you want to say?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Because it’s time to go fast.”

  Blake turned the throttle and they shot ahead. Winnie’s hair blew away from her head, and she felt as if she were being pulled into a vacuum in the sky. What in the world was I thinking? she wondered, as the dark landscape peeled by. It was the most frightening thing she could ever remember experiencing. And yet on the very edge of her fear she began to detect a different version of herself. This new Winnie had no second thoughts about flying along winding roads at night with her hair in chaos, her skirt pulled up to her hips, and her red car coat flapping behind her like a libertarian flag. She laughed out loud at this realization.

  Five miles later, back in the farmyard, Winnie climbed off and straightened her clothes and hair. Blake shut off the engine, set the stand, and stepped away from the bike. “Come in,” he said. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”

  “I can’t drink coffee,” said Winnie. “My normal state is already too nervous.”

  “I’ve got tea,” he said.

  She followed him inside.

  “In case you’re wondering, Mrs. Helm, there were a lot of bats here when I moved in. It wasn’t very hard to catch one. No one will ever know the difference, of course. The esteemed officers of the law got their pound of flesh, and we got Milton.”

  He seated her at the kitchen table, went over to the refrigerator, and set a bowl of giant red grapes in front of her.

  Winnie chewed one and swallowed. “These are excellent,” she said.

  “I know it,” he said, putting on a pot of water. “My dad found them at a farmers’ market somewhere in Ohio. Take a bag home with you. I don’t really like grapes, but there’s no way to refuse my dad when it comes to food. I’m sorry it took me so long to decide on the right dye to disguise Milton. In the end I just used Kool-Aid. It will wear off in a couple weeks, but by then it shouldn’t matter. I also checked into licensing a wild bat, which isn’t very hard. Your veterinarian can help you.”

  “I’m leaving my church,” said Winnie, eating another grape.

  “No, you’re not,” said Blake.

  “I am. I can’t preach any longer.” She could still feel the imprint of the wind against her face, the tug at the roots of her hair.

  Blake took off his jacket, threw it over the back of a chair, and sat down across from her. “This is serious, Mrs. Helm. You’ll probably feel different tomorrow.”

  “I won’t. I know I won’t.”

  “You can’t leave the faith, Mrs. Helm.”

  “Call me Winnie.”

  “Okay, but Winnie can’t leave the faith, either.”

  “Yes I can.”

  “You can’t be saying this. Religion isn’t something you just walk away from. Where in the world would you go?”

  “Others live without it.”

  “That’s fine for them, but not for you. It’s part of who you are.”

  “I’m afraid that’s the point. As a preacher I’ve become someone I don’t particularly like.”
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br />   “What difference does that make? Of course you don’t like yourself. That’s the first definition of being religious.”

  “I think we’re talking about two different things.”

  “No we’re not, and I should know. I’ve taken every course on the subject of self-loathing.”

  Blake got up, poured them both a cup of tea, and set Winnie’s in front of her, along with a paper napkin and a spoon. A wind rattled the window in the door as he sat back down across from her. While they drank the steaming liquid, they looked at each other.

  “I need to leave the church,” said Winnie, breaking the silence.

  “Even Spinoza couldn’t give up religion,” said Blake. “He was excommunicated from his own Jewish community, cast out like a diseased dog. Then he was renounced by the official Christian church. But not even Spinoza could stop worrying about the maddening mystery of spirit and matter. He couldn’t stop trying to find a way to see the world as a good place, to find the sacred in the ordinary and live a decent life. The only way to really quit religion is never to have begun thinking about it. The only people who can walk away are those whose imaginations never embraced the idea that behind everything real is something more real, more alive, and more profoundly beautiful. Only people who never thought that way in the first place can be free from religion. People like you and me are doomed.”

  “I forgot how much I enjoyed talking to you,” said Winnie, smiling as she reached for another grape. “You’re right, of course. It isn’t possible for me to leave my faith, though I admit that when I first thought about leaving the church, it seemed like the same thing. You’re right. I just can’t preach any longer.”

  “Keep talking,” said Blake, drumming his fingers on the wooden tabletop.

  “I’m tired of constantly defending what religion and faith are supposed to be. The ministry forces you to do that. Your success depends on mounting a strong defense, and then what you end up defending are often institutional practices, hierarchical ways of thinking, ceremonies and rituals that you don’t even believe in yourself. I mean, maybe you believed in them at one time, but even after you grow out of them, you keep on defending them. Or at least it feels that way to me. The same institutions that first point us toward higher ground later prevent us from reaching it. Maybe other preachers don’t have the same problems, but I keep finding myself doing things that embarrass me whenever I think about them.”

  “Be specific.”

  “I want the people who pay my salary to approve of me. I’ll say things, do things, and even find myself thinking things that will please them. I also discover myself shading what I know to be true in order to conform to what they like to hear. It’s not really lying, but it’s not completely honest either. Isn’t that pathetic?”

  “No.”

  “And worst of all, I find myself all too often doing conniving things—arranging a committee meeting in a particular way, for instance, including details that present me in a favorable light, or pretending I’m better than I am—in order to increase my hold over my congregation. I act in ways intended primarily to make me more secure, to bring me more power.”

  “How much power can you possibly have in such a little church?” scoffed Blake.

  “Power is power.”

  “Do you still have your own private faith?”

  “Of course, and I’ve been telling myself that for years. I still have my own private faith, but how much does that matter when so little of my time is spent with it? I mean, the life I always wanted to live is escaping me. I want to live in a more authentic way, to believe in nothing yet have faith in everything.”

  “I see what you mean,” said Blake, standing and pacing back and forth between the refrigerator and table. “It’s like prison. Everything about it conditions you in exactly one way—to make you bitter, angry, and mean. It’s part of the design. The police who bring you in, the warden, the guards, even the other prisoners and people on the outside—everyone expects you to be bitter, angry, and mean. And if you relax for even a minute, that’s the shape you’ll take. If you don’t pay attention, don’t fight back, that’s exactly what will happen. The forces are constant, like gravity almost. The only way to be true to yourself in prison is to persist in remaining a decent and compassionate person. I failed many times, to be sure—but at least I was always aware of that.”

  “I don’t see how that’s at all the same,” said Winnie.

  “Well, it is,” said Blake, sitting down again and looking across at her with blazing eyes. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s the same.”

  “Too much of my life is spent fighting that particular fight,” said Winnie.

  “What else would you do?”

  “I don’t know. And my family does need the income.”

  “I’ll bet if you talk to Jacob about this, he’d tell you to quit. He’d want you to do whatever you think is right. He’d insist on it, actually. He loves you.”

  “I know.”

  “You could begin by living on grapes,” said Blake, opening the refrigerator and taking out a sack. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” said Winnie, standing up from the table.

  “I didn’t mean to suggest that you leave.”

  “I know, but I should be going.”

  “Wait,” said Blake, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  Blake grabbed his coat and waited for her by the door. Winnie had never taken off her coat, and she walked over toward him. They stood close together in the doorway. Their eyes found each other, and with an astonishment that didn’t really astonish her, Winnie noticed a monstrous surge of energy. An organic gate snapped open and a path of passion appeared, filled with slippery events that would not have been possible before. A swelling physical sensation threatened to crowd out all her past. She could feel her face flushing, her heart beating faster.

  Blake’s face flushed as well and he reached out with both hands. Winnie put her hands into his and Blake drew her toward him.

  “Mrs. Helm,” he said, “you’ve honored me with your visit. As long as I live, I’ll never forget it.”

  Then he walked her out to her car and Winnie drove back home. As she followed her headlights around darkened corners, she smiled upon recognizing that there clearly was a submerged part of her, beyond the control of her personality, that never slept. In fact, it was always planning new ways of engaging her. She drove faster, hoping to preserve the excitement aroused by the unexpected encounter in the doorway for later use with her husband.

  Jacob was waiting up for her, reading a magazine.

  “After Bible study, I went over to visit Blake,” she explained. “I wanted to thank him in person.”

  “I thought that’s probably where you were.”

  “He was out riding his motorcycle, breaking his curfew.”

  “I know. He’s going to get in trouble. What’s in the bag?”

  “Grapes.”

  Coming Alive

  After work, Blake rode to Red Plain and waited in the cement plant’s parking lot for Bee to come out. When she did, he asked if she had time to talk.

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  They walked several blocks and sat down on a bench along the sidewalk. Blake bought two cans of soda from a machine along the way, and they drank them overlooking the back of the feed mill and the front of a secondhand store. Light traffic moved slowly along Main Street, one block away. Occasionally a car or van would turn off and drive past them along the alleyway. Most of the drivers waved, and Bee waved back.

  “Let me say right out, I’m not comfortable talking about this,” said Blake. “I’m not. But I have to, and I didn’t know who else—”

  “It’s about time,” interrupted Bee, smiling uncomfortably and sipping from her can of cola. “How did it go?”

  “How did what go?”

  “You must have seen Danielle.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess. How did it go?”
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  “Not very well,” said Blake.

  “Maybe she just needs a little time to get used to the idea of seeing you again.”

  “It seemed a lot worse than that. She knocked my bike over and stomped on the tank. I pulled out the dents and polished them down, but one left a crease. You can still see it, even with new paint. It looks terrible. I’ll show you.”

  Blake ran back to his motorcycle, rode it over next to her, and parked it.

  “See?” he said, sitting back down on the bench.

  “Sorry, I don’t.”

  “It’s right there when the light’s right. It’s awful.”

  “Maybe you should have called before you went over.”

  “Then I wouldn’t have seen her at all.”

  “Did you meet Ivan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “Nice kid. He looks a lot like her.”

  “Who else does he look like?”

  Blake frowned and rubbed his hand through his hair.

  “Look,” he said. “I need to tell you something, but I don’t know how to say it. Prison does that to you. Those few good memories you carry in there, you think about them so much they become hard to talk about. They’re like private rituals. But this is important, probably the most important thing in my life.”

  “Okay,” said Bee, waiting.

  Blake turned and looked directly at her. “I love Danielle,” he said, as if he were confessing that he had tuberculosis.

  “I thought that might be true,” said Bee.

  “You couldn’t have,” he said. “I’ve never told anyone, not even her. I’ve never said those words out loud before, and I might never do it again. You couldn’t have known.”

  “I love your father,” said Bee. “So I’m at least a little familiar with the feeling.”

  Blake’s face went blank. What she just said had nothing whatsoever to do with what he was talking about. Absolutely nothing. The consuming passion he felt for Danielle could not possibly be associated with any love she might have for his father. The two were simply incompatible. The latter type of love was buoyant, friendly, cheerful, and familial; a comforting convenience, good for everyone involved. The former was a smoldering febrile disease, heavy, sorrowful, alienating, and cursed, the greatest suffering Blake could imagine. No one else had ever experienced it before, certainly not in the same way, and if they had they probably hadn’t survived very long. The word used to talk about the two feelings was the same, admittedly, but it referred to planets with completely different temperate zones.