by Sharon
And she saw suddenly the thing she had not noticed before in the strong, wind-burned face. Kindness.
Alan greeted with resignation and courtesy the intelligence that Joan had become infatuated with an Amish boy who had invited her to meet him in the morning at an auction on a local farm. He had politely rejected her surprisingly intense request for his company. More surprisingly, especially for Joan, she wasn't accepting his firm "no."
"Alan, think it over a little. We'll just go for a short time and check it out. Who knows? Apparently they're selling off a lot of antiques, so we might find something great for a prop. It'd be good for us to see something besides the inside of a rented room and a closed set. I'd like you to meet Daniel. I mean, you should see this man. He's just so… You can imagine him in a suit of armor, know what I mean? And he has eyes…"
When the rest of the sentence disappeared into a rapturous pause he murmured agreeably, "Glad to hear it."
"… Eyes like Jesus. They nave these beautiful crow's-feet at the corners like Dash has, the kind you get from being out of doors most of the time. I really don't know why you're smiling like that. I thought you, of all people, would understand."
The smile perished. Rather gently he said, "Oh, I understand very well. And it's not an experience I'd wish on a dog."
"Alan, I'm not talking about falling in love. Merely a little civilized lust."
He slapped the stack of papers he held onto the crowded desk. Paper clips ricocheted off the wall. "Take it from a beleaguered initiate. There's no such thing as civilized lust. It reduces an ordinary mortal to the approximate social level of an amoeba. If you want to retain any feeling whatsoever of yourself as a humane individual, don't develop intricate fantasies about boys or girls with eyes like Jesus. And I'd like to know what makes you think I'm in love."
A self-mocking flex in the long stretch of his mouth and the soft, ironic voice robbed each word of its importance. He didn't want to show it—he didn't want to show anything—but Joan had the eerie sense of having stumbled into the unquiet privacy of his extraordinary, tangled soul. It was a little too much like putting your foot through a da Vinci.
She touched his sleeve. "Are you?"
There was a moment of puzzled silence that felt terribly long to her. Then the austerity of his expression softened, and he gave her a smile of breathtaking sweetness.
"I don't know." Again a silence. "I don't know." His return to the paper work on the desk was automatic, self-protective. She thought about the golden eagles, who never seem to be at peace unless they are drifting, suspended on a stream of air. After a moment he spoke absently. "Have fun, then. You won't have any trouble finding someone else to go along with you. I'm not the logical choice."
She couldn't wait half an hour and try him again. By then he'd be deep into work intoxification. He went on line like a megacomputer.
"Still, I think you ought to be there."
"Thank you, but no."
Alan's final "no." Everyone who had worked long with him knew it; anyone who didn't learn to recognize it quickly had a brief tenure in his world. So, having almost failed, she'd come with a brickbat.
"Alan, I think the boy I met last night is Susan's brother."
He stopped, a page half-turned in his hand. "Why?"
"He has the same coloring. And the same… well, the same eyes. And he made a point of finding out that I was with the movie company before he approached me."
"You're hesitating. Is there one more 'and'?"
"And, in the most respectful way possible, he spent the better part of an hour grilling me about you."
"So." The page drifted from his fingers as they went lax.
"So?"
"So…"
He stood. "I'll get my car keys."
Chapter 13
In a yard of pebbles and trampled weeds, with a trim white farmhouse and dark red barn and outbuildings in the background, a large and intriguingly varied crowd had gathered. Parking on the stubble of a cornfield, Alan had the first taste of it—a Porsche with Illinois plates beside an Amish buggy beside a rusty Chevy. It was easy to spot the antique dealers from the cities, the families from the small towns—and the Amish, exotic in their plainness.
It was the kind of crowd scene Alan usually avoided. He'd always been a celebrity whose life was of interest to strangers. In spite of that, he was uncomfortable under public scrutiny. The balance of the world shifted at such times, and the people who stared and asked for autographs and were in turn worshiping or critical of his films seemed real, and he was an exhibit, a preconceived fragment in someone else's real life. Dash had another explanation for it. He had no memory of it himself, but Dash said that Alan's parents had been terrified he might be kidnapped and had overdone the lessons of caution.
Strangely, he felt relaxed here. Sunlight fell heavily on his shoulders, warming his hair. This sun meant business. Here was the willful fertility that could pull the thick weight of a corn stalk from the earth in a single summer, and he could feel its ability to grow and nourish. It was the same force he could feel flowing from Susan.
"Good Christians, the Amish. I can't complain about them myself." Under the faded peppermint-striped awning of a 4-H concession trailer, Alan had struck up a conversation with a man the size of Eddie Arcaro who was up to his elbows in a vat spinning clouds of pink cotton candy. "You never saw anything like how they stick together. Run their own schools, care for their own old folks, help out the widows—they take care of their own. If one family has a barn fire, the whole community'll get together and have a new barn raised before the ashes cool. And I'll tell you what else—they can work. You got work for hire, take on an Amish kid if his parents'll let you. You'll get your money's worth. Most people today"—the woeful shake of the head included the better part of the modern generation— "they're waiting to win it in a lottery, know what I mean? Say, you want to know about the Amish, you ought to talk to Ben Hosely over here. He's got a farm up by Hostetlers and he's real tight with them—goes to their weddings and everything, and that's unusual. They don't mix much, you see. Hey, Ben!"
A little banty rooster of a man in a new-from-the-package white undershirt, heavy denim trousers, and work boots turned and identified with clear pleasure the man who'd called him.
"Charley! How you been?"
"Pretty fair. How come we haven't seen you in a while?"
"Plantin' corn. Didn't you run into Mary last week down to the drugstore?"
"Yep." In a spirit of innuendo, he added, "Asked after you and she told us what we need to know."
Ben grinned. "And then some, I'll bet."
"You bet. Ben, here's someone interested in the Amish. I'd like you to meet—"
"Alan Wilde!" The farmer extended a sun-infused hand that closed around Alan's like a clamp. "Ain't that something! We've never missed a one of your pictures. My kids must have gone to see Star Wars four times. That was some movie!"
Alan felt a spark of real amusement. "It was. But I'm afraid I had nothing to do with it. You may be thinking of George Lucas."
"I may," Ben conceded, perplexed. "Then how about that picture about the archaeologist who tries to get the ark away from those Nazis? That's the one you directed, wasn't it?"
"Sorry. Spielberg."
A little crestfallen, Ben took the disappointment in stride. "How about that? I could have sworn…" He took off his cap, smoothed back his hair. "So you're interested in the Amish? The things I know about them, I could make a movie. I wouldn't, though. They wouldn't care for it. I think the world of those people." He set the cap placed on the counter, beside Ben's crossed forearms. "We live neighbors to an Amish family—thirteen kids he's raising on that little place. Those kids are something else. You never saw anything like the way they bring up kids. A honey, each one of 'em. Last week I was up there after I got this new hat from AM PI, and the kids came over to fool with me and rassle, and one of 'em got the hat off my head. So I said, 'Say what? I'd like you to keep it.' But d
o you think he would? No chance. He draws himself up so straight and proud and puts the hat right back in my hand and says to me, 'I don't want it. I want to look Amish.' Think of that. Just ten years old and dedicated heart and soul to his people."
That was altogether too sanguine for Wilde. "It can't be that surprising. He's never been exposed to anything else."
Charley straightened up from handing a puff of spun candy to a child in pigtails. "True enough. They don't mix. And there's some wouldn't care to mix with 'em, either."
Ben nodded. "Pacifists, the Amish. They won't take up arms against their fellow man. You study their history, you see how way back when they had to flee from one country in Europe to the next. They were tortured, jailed, killed, but it's against the way they believe, to fight back. And don't think for a minute that those little Amish kids don't know that part of their history. They learn it from the cradle. Well, how do you think it went down around here during the Vietnam War when the Amish boys wouldn't take up arms for their country?"
Wilde could imagine it: an isolated rural community, burning under the tension of the draft and a divided national conscience, "There must have been some resentment."
"Plenty. Young fellow from here in town died during the Tet. Fine boy, Doc Mason's son. Group of his friends egged a couple of Amish houses and set fire to a shed. And later, after they got themselves good and drunk, they caught one of the little Amish girls bringing cows in from the pasture and attacked her. Spit on her, pushed her to the ground, I don't know what all they done. Don't know if she ever quite got over it. Of course, not one of them boys was punished for it, because the Amish don't believe in taking an oath in court and her parents wouldn't have her testify against them."
It had happened a long time ago, and in a community this size, the odds were against it having been Susan. But he still felt a fierce tightening in his chest. What year was Tet anyway? 'Sixty-eight? Yet the farmer told the story with a sense of immediacy. The past was that real to these people. Time and events wouldn't pass into the shadows, and they would remember him and his presence here today. That was the year that movie fellow came to the county. Met him at the Hosely auction. Fellow name of—Mary, what was his name? Because of that, he disciplined the impulse to make sure that the little girl wasn't one who had grown up to become his—God knew what—his obsession.
So instead of asking the question that would link Susan's name in county history with that of a Hollywood movie director, he returned a remark that was quietly sympathetic, carefully appropriate. A mask.
And the conversation became lighter, touching on the diversity of people passing by. Alan listened like an outsider, encouraging Ben and Charley to talk about their families, the crops, the weather, the history of the region, all the time noting gestures, body language, dialect, with the artist's acute, alienating need for observation that he could rarely turn off.
Suddenly Charley's gaze took note of a distant figure and froze on him.
"Well, I'll be… Ain't that Amos Yoder? I didn't know he came among 'em."
"Not often." Ben was staring too. He shook his head solemnly. "See there, Mr. Wilde? There walks a man without a friend in this world. Been cast out like dirty water."
It was easy to spot him. Gaunt, bespectacled, his face underlined with the red bramble of a full beard, he was dressed Amish. He had just made a purchase, a leather harness, weighty and awkward to carry, and he stood like a sentinel, gazing across the yard to the folding table where he would have to go to pay for the item. It was an open face, as undefended as Susan's was, and the fear there and in the posture of his body was nakedly, .helplessly legible. Then he put his head down, his eyes fixed on the ocher dirt in front of his feet, and began the long march through the Amish throng.
In a yard of smiled greetings and chatter, not one of the men, women, or children he passed either spoke to him, looked at his face, or acknowledged his existence. Yet they knew he was there. They were aware.
"What did he do?"
"Heretic. Went to a meeting with some traveling evangelist and got slain in the spirit, so he claims. Since then, he come back preaching like the Charismatics, going against the sayings of their church, and when he wouldn't give it up, the Amish community put him out. Shunned him. Not even his kin will speak to him. Has to take meals in the basement of his own home, and his wife told him she can't have relations with him. It's a hard lot Amos has took."
Wilde saw it. The steady, lonely figure with the loose harness slapping his, knees, walking through rejection— the skirt yanked swiftly back, the averted gaze, the turned shoulder. Silent, effective, shaming. Complete.
"The man's lucky the auctioneer ain't Amish." Charley leaned over the counter. "Plain folk won't do business with him. Let me tell you, they take their beliefs serious."
Wilde watched the painful journey until the purchase was made and the shunned man vanished behind the barn in the direction of the parking field. "Yes," he said without warmth. "Righteous, aren't they?"
Joan came soon after, across a trampled lawn strewn with metal tables sparkling with depression glass, old kitchenware, and a typhoon of knickknacks. She paused to flirt with Ben and Charley and two others who happened to be nearby and tucked her arm in Alan's to stroll away with him, leaving behind her a miniature dominion of awed admirers.
"So many men," Alan murmured cheerfully, "so little time."
"Just fine-tuning the wiles." She gave him a glance that said Harlow, "Sorry I took so long. I became engrossed in an ice-cream mold, then a ceramic frog on a mushroom. I hope you didn't need rescuing."
"Don't fret. I know how to extricate myself if I have to."
"You modern, independent males. Seen your Amish yet?"
"No. Seen yours?"
"Not so much as a suspender. Shall we sally forth to peer under bonnets and black felt hats with our pulses doing the funky chicken?"
"Impossible." He felt the pressure of a ridiculous smile. "My heart only plays classical—presto, prestissimo, allegro, scherzo…"
And the auctioneer bellowed away like a flugelhorn trolling pig Latin. Broad and sweating under a Panama hat, with a wicker fan and shirt buttons that barely met in the middle, he was more African Queen than Little House on the Prairie. His assistant Oliver—as in "Okay, Oliver, what've we got now?"—was skinny and beaked in a shiny black suit, his springy hair standing up to show through sweat and sunlight. His falsetto phrases ricocheted off the end of the auctioneer's chant like exclamation marks.
"Pair o' matching whale-oil lamps, matching lamps, guaranteed sandwich glass, heart and thumbprint pattern, pewter collars, pewter burners, pewter pewter, twin oil spouts in each, two rare and terrific antique lamps today." The auctioneer stopped, wiped his brow, and fanned himself.
Oliver hoisted the lamps. "Mighty fine lamps!"
"There you heard it! Who'll take these beauties home today? Who'll give me one-fifty? One hundred fifty dolla, who'll gimme, who'll gimme…"
Joan squeezed Alan's arm. "Alan, there he is."
He followed the direction of her gaze, upward to the high open windows of the barn, where young men, mostly Amish, leaned out, watching the crowd below. One man was separating himself from the others. At a wide double doorway fringed with hay, he leaned over the sharp drop and grabbed a rope suspended from an old hayfork track just beneath the gabled roof. Clenching the rope in sturdy fists, he jumped into space and let himself down rapidly, hand over hand, his heels releasing a golden spill of glittering straw.
John's cheeks picked up color. "Me Jane," she murmured.
"If I were you, I wouldn't count on it," said Alan, admiring the young man's fluid descent. An experienced stunt man couldn't have made it look easier. Fifteen feet from the ground, the strong young hands discarded the rope, and he landed gracefully on his feet in the packed dust. With no hesitation, his attention centered on Wilde, and for the first time Alan could see his eyes. They were Susan's.
It was one thing for Alan to know she was pa
rt of this harsh, sequestered world, another to step through the looking glass into the sanctum. Her life, like a fragile cloth, would be a visible thing laid before him, and no longer just the bare threads spun in his imagination.
He was accustomed to good-looking people. He found most human beings attractive in one way or another; his aesthetic sense was more elastic than convention or fashion. He liked the human body, the inner brightness of the eye, the soft texture of skin, the underpattern of bone, the striking individuality of external structure. Years in front of the camera and behind it had long since shorn beauty of any mystique; it became less enveloping with the realization that it was a combination of sculpture, confidence, and care. He looked for other things in faces, intangible things, the qualities he needed to complete himself. He saw them in Susan. Now he saw them in Daniel.
The steady brown gaze altered, holding Joan with its warmth.
Joan had simple and devastating methods of flirtation. When the young man stopped in front of them, she looked at him cheerfully and said, "When you smile like that, I want to kiss your teeth."
The poise never faltered. The smile grew. After a glance at Alan, Daniel leaned forward to say something for Joan's ear alone, something effective, judging by her reaction. Her eyes gathered light like new pennies. Alan watched their glances mesh, the exchange eloquent, laced either with elemental, intuitive understanding or a misunderstanding of cosmic proportions. Alan couldn't decide which. It was a little like having his face rammed in a mirror. These two were simply having fun; there was none of the darkness and sunlight that passed between him and Susan. Even on their level, however, the basic insanity of the mixed relationship was too apparent.
Daniel's brown eyes remained eloquent as they returned to Alan, but the humor was starkly absent. It was impossible to assess how much the Amishman knew or had guessed at, but pretense was unpalatable. Alan said, "Are you a Peachey?"
The young man didn't pretend either. "I'm a Hostetler. Peachey is her married name. I'm glad you could come."