by Ward Just
Thomas collected his things and left the parking lot in the direction of the path over the rocks to his house. The night was very dark but he had made this passage many times before and knew it from the contours of the rocks and the bluff beyond. The path wound through sea grass and bramble thickets, spiny fingers that tore at his sweater. His house, somewhere ahead, not far, was dark. He had expected to be home well before nightfall. He had certainly not expected Bernhard and Antoine, though the Bernhard he saw was not the Bernhard he knew. Thomas thought he saw the roof's silhouette on the near horizon and stopped to take stock. He was winded, the way up was very difficult, the path slippery, the light a memory. The beach bag was heavy in his hand. It seemed to him that the fog was lifting but he could not be sure. His face was damp with it. Then he heard the engine of a boat close in to shore where the rocks were, evidence that the fog was dispersing; but it was also true that Maine skippers could navigate with their eyes closed, a useful skill at end of day. Thomas listened for the owl but the owl was silent. The boat's engine receded. He wondered if there were sea gods as well as mountain gods and if the sea gods were similarly capricious, spiteful, and cunning. Sure they were. Why wouldn't they be? He thought that tonight was a good night for a fire. Autumn was in the air.
He began to hum, then parlando one of Holiday's standards. When he hesitated, smiling at the droll notion of Billie Holiday's getting some fun out of life, it was as if the world had fallen silent, everything forgotten. It was with that thought that he struggled up the path and mounted the steps to his house, dropped the beach bag and the camp stool on the porch, and stepped inside into the familiar smell of oil paint, turpentine, and weathered wood. The chill was inside, too. He made out the silhouette of the easel and his work in progress, he and Florette seated at their table in old Bardèche's café, Florette's face turned toward the light. The day was fine. They were in shirtsleeves. She was laughing at something he had said. Thomas had proposed an alternate destiny for the boyfriend who wanted to become a gangster: instead, he had gone into politics and was now minister of the interior. Thomas had been working on the portrait for a month and would continue to work until he had what he wanted. When he knew precisely what that was, the portrait would be finished. He shivered in the chill. The single light came from the radio dial, the evening news reporting casualties from Iraq. He listened to the details, unchanging from one evening to the next, a monotonous weather report from a region where the temperature was constant. The dead were never named because their families had not been notified; and each evening he imagined the knock on the door that would precede such notification. And how many families refused to come to the door when an army major was on the other side of it, a briefcase under his arm, his face grave, the worst possible news brought to you by a stranger. Go away, this is the wrong house. No one is at home here. In that way the distant became intimate and the chaotic quite routine. Meanwhile, you waited for the stranger's knock on the door. Thomas switched off the radio, the room in sudden darkness, its silence unsettling. Then he heard the creak of the rafters and, far away, the splash of waves. He set a match to the kindling in the fireplace and watched as the wood caught, smoldering at first, then a flame, low but steady.
Thomas stepped to the window and stood there listening, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the night. He thought that might take some time, the island was dark by nature, the green of the firs, the deep blue of the sea, the autumn days short and getting shorter. In any case there was more in front of him than he could possibly discern or even imagine. Outside, the fog was lifting, assuming fantastic shapes, swirling, aimless, unstable, suggestive. Far off he heard the bleat of the ferry's horn. It was the last boat, and a calm night for a sail. He touched the windowpane, thinking—Wasn't it something, that child riding out of the fog on her white horse, reining up, and vanishing as quickly as she had come, a moment that approached the miraculous, a moment worth remembering. They were always unexpected.
Patience, he thought. Wait it out. Wait for the light that arrives ages later, light even from a dead star. Thomas looked back at the silhouette of the canvas on the easel, then resumed his watch of the night.