by Sharon
In love himself, Alan was sensitive to it in others. He saw it in the face before him. The tall boy was hating this moment, hating her pain, hating his own. He made no attempt to speak.
"There's my answer. You've made yourself nothing to me. Less than nothing. Never speak to me again. Never come up to my house." Increasingly frantic, Anna turned to the young woman by the lantern. "Fanny, have you heard what they did?"
"I heard about it. Left some of their relatives in Susan's house, then come here trying to spread more dirt. Well, they can go off with their nasty talk about Susan. We don't listen to such here." They were firm words, bur Fanny's eyes were frightened, her voice shaking.
"You think I wanted to believe it?" Isaac walked closer, speaking to Anna. "Do you think I get joy from this? I've seen proof. I went with Seth to talk to .the guards at Greyling and they sold us a photograph for ten dollars. Susan in the arms of a man, an actor, and her dressed in some kind of fancy"—a slow twist of his hand revealed the revulsion his words couldn't articulate—"paint on her face, her hair uncovered and curled…" He grabbed a breath, spoke through it. "That's the way she keeps my brother's memory."
"And this is how you keep it." Still jittery, Daniel had brought himself under control. "Don't put John's name behind your tricks. He never did a thing in his life but to love and honor her."
Isaac ripped a folded paper from his pocket, opened it, and thrust it into the hand of the bearded man, Christ, who'd been restraining Daniel. The man tried to shove it away, but Isaac grabbed his hand a second time and slapped the paper into it. Unwillingly, unhappily, the bearded man's eyes were drawn to the paper. It was a photograph of Susan, a large glossy, soaking up lantern light like Turkish copper.
Christ pushed back the photograph as if he couldn't wait to get it out of his hands. "Take it and get off my farm. We don't want your proof. For Susan to do this, she must have had a reason. I know what Susan is."
"You know what Susan was." Seth's voice was muted behind his forearm, applying pressure to his bleeding nose. "You don't know what she is."
Rage gave a white-hot edge to Alan's thoughts and feelings of pain, but he denied himself the relief of expression. Protecting Susan mattered. That was all. Rarely in his life had he raised his voice. He did not do so now. "You want me, not Susan."
He could see they found his presence among them so alien and embarrassing that they scarcely could acknowledge it. Preoccupied with their own misery, it was almost beyond them to deal with his connection with Susan. It was .nothing they wanted to think about, or be conscious of.
"Don't blame her," Alan said. He caught Seth's gaze, held it without relenting. "She agreed to work for me without any real understanding of what I wanted her to do. Once she did understand, she held to her commitment because I wouldn't release her from it, and again, she didn't know how to make me."
They stared at him as though he were on the other side of a plate-glass window, as though they couldn't hear him or see him very well or didn't even care much about what he was saying.
"No. She wanted to do it. To give money to Rachel." Anna's wide-spaced, honest eyes focused on Seth, became rapt. "Susan didn't want Rachel to fail and have to come back to marry you. You violated Susan's house to get back at Rachel."
Naively she had chosen the weapon. In one stroke she had done the thing Daniel and Alan had been avoiding, each in his own way, by holding fiercely to the ragged edges of their self-control. Striking blindly, Anna had pushed Seth past the threshold.
"He violated your house. Your English friend." From the lantern came a gloaming shade of gold, marking highlights on Seth, glittering in his eyes. "Wilde used your sister for more than you know. He's had her for a whore."
Only Isaac had heard the accusation before. For the others, it was like being splattered with poison.
Anna stared at him. "You're a filthy, dirty liar, Seth Yoder," she shouted, "and you're going to hell for it. Just because he's her friend. Daniel—"
"Don't put out your hands to Daniel," Seth said tersely. "Your dear brother's laid his blessing on it. Ask him. Go on—ask him. No? Then you might ask Wilde..."
She swung back to Alan, trusting and fiery, confident of his denial, and he became blind to everything but her face. He heard Daniel's voice, low and neutral.
"There's nothing you can do, Mr. Wilde. Susan will be asked. She won't lie."
Seth's expression was savage. "Maybe he doesn't answer because we're not using his language. Ask him this way, Anna: 'Did you screw my sister?' Or try 'Did you fuck—'"
"Shut your filthy mouth in front of my wife," Christ yelled, then, "Wilde, no! No more here."
Magnified a thousand times, Alan reexperienced the emotion that had made him plant a fist in David Thorne's face. Christ's grip on Wilde's arms was anything but gentle.
"You're stupid, all of you," Seth said. "I know the English. Those are their words—in their books, every two minutes in their movies. That's how they think about women. That's the word you use, isn't it?"
Alan's answer was soft. "Never, never about Susan."
"You're no mystery to me, Wilde. I know how it is with men like you. You have woman after woman and despise us because we love God and choose one woman to care for until death, and raise how many children the Lord gives us,"
His body weighted with rage, Alan shrugged out of Christ's slack grip. "You don't have to lecture me on the way you care for women. Down the road there's a young widow, and tonight she walked into a house you made into a sewer. And that's all I want to know about the way you 'care' for women." Seth's hat was laying in the dust. Wilde swept it up and said, "Here." He shoved it hard against the younger man's chest. "You've done what you've set out to do. Go home."
The Amishman's hostile gaze remained steadily on his. "Time will have the last word," Seth said. "We'll see if she hurts longer from what I did to her… or from what you did to her." He stared at Alan another minute, then swung around, walked to his horse, and mounted.
Distantly, Alan was aware that Fanny's husband was ordering off the others.
Beside him Daniel was stroking his sister's hair. His other hand held and gently lifted her chin. "You should have done as I told you, Anna. I told you to stay with Susan, and you should have done that. I don't give orders often. When I do, you should listen. You didn't listen and you were hurt. Don't forget another time. Now I'm asking you to go on home." He placed his index finger over her mouth when she started to speak. "Listen now. When you get home, wake up Luke quietly and tell him. Then when Dad get up to milk, you and Luke meet him in the barn and say what happened here." Stilling a second protest, he said, "Listen. Tell him everything that happened tonight just as it happened. It would be bad if he found out you knew and kept it back. Tell him please not to come and see Susan. I'll bring her come morning. It's better he doesn't see her until he's had some time…" He laid his hands on her cheeks and kissed her brow. "Go on."
He withdrew his hands and they came away glistening with her tears. She left quickly. Isaac had lingered. Achingly, he tried to touch her back, a gesture of compassion, but she flinched from him, and he didn't try again.
Alan realized he had been staring abstractedly at Daniel's hands. He heard himself say, "You're bleeding." He put his hand on Daniel's arm. The fabric was spongy with fresh blood.
"Daniel, you said it was nothing," Fanny said sharply, bringing the lantern.
"It is nothing. I have to get back to Susan."
"I'll go to Susan. You—" She'd uncovered the wound, and sucked in her breath, appalled. "You get yourself to the doctor. This wants stitching." She looked up at Alan. "Would you take him? My son Jonas left the pitchfork out and Daniel fell on it while he was fighting with Seth."
Alan must have nodded. She looked away and moved to wrap the arm in a shawl.
"No." Daniel handed her his handkerchief. "Use this. You can go, Mr. Wilde. I have to get home. I'll go in later if it bothers me."
"So your uncle said, and lost h
is hand." Fanny was bent over Daniel's arm. "Christ, talk sense to him."
"Get yourself stitched." Christ held up the lantern, throwing light on the blood-saturated arm. "I'll milk for you. Fanny'll stand by Susan. We won't let anyone near her, don't worry."
Alan pulled open the passenger door of his car. When Fanny raised her face to him again, her eyes were so misted with unshed tears that she must have been hardly able to see him. Yet when she spoke, her gaze was direct and icy.
"You take him to the doctor and then home. And after that, don't come back. Ever."
She watched them leave, standing straight, but Alan saw her in the rearview mirror, a wisp of yellow in the oil light, going like a broken puppet into heir husband's arms.
Beside him, Daniel stirred, "Don't talk," Alan said. He still felt the stress in Anna's thin arms, saw Isaac's white, drawn mouth, the heartsick loyalty of Susan's friend Fanny, clasping her shawl with cold knuckles. And Susan's last smile when he'd left her… His worry for her was a barbarous emotion, tormenting him. He couldn't think. Susan, Susan…
He had to steady himself enough to drive; he shoved a tape in the cassette player. The car filled with Mozart. Miles passed. Daniel leaned forward, touching the speaker.
"That's very nice. Why do you like it?"
Alan stared at the twisting path created by the headlights. "It has purity, clarity, and order. And it's beautiful. I don't want to talk."
They passed slumbering farmyards, some lit by high yard lamps that hung like yellow stars above the drowsy buildings.
Daniel rested his head against the seat. "I'm bleeding all over your car."
"Very appropriate."
"Sorry. I thought it was a safe subject."
"Dear God. Safe." Then, "For a couple of pacifists, you two did a fair job on each other. Why are you trying to make me talk?"
"You don't seem to breathe otherwise."
The headlights picked out a sign bedded in crisp fern fronds. "Caution: Horse-Drawn Vehicles." Alan slowed the car. Under his palms, the wheel felt slippery, as if it were melting. He remembered a dream he used to have, that he was in a car speeding somewhere, with a feeling of urgency, and then the dream showed him the car from outside and it was empty. He spoke. "You said she'll be asked. By whom?"
"My father. The Bishop. Maybe some of the ministers."
"They'll ask if she's been my lover?"
"Yes. And she'll say she has."
"Why wouldn't it work if I went to them first and took responsibility? If they knew she was intimidated— why doesn't that make a difference?"
"You aren't responsible to the community for your behavior. We don't attempt to punish outsiders, or convert them. You aren't accountable to the community, but Susan is. Anyway, she'll contradict your story."
"What if I told them I want to marry her?"
Daniel let out his breath in a soft sound and looked out the opaque shield of the window. "Put it out of your head."
"Why?"
"If she goes to your bed, that's a sin. She can be reclaimed from that. If she marries you—"
"What?"
"She's damned."
It was a long time before Alan spoke again.
"What did Anna mean when she said Susan did it for Rachel?"
"Rachel was excommunicated from the church, charged with heresy. She lives in Chicago. She writes and studies."
His hands became tighter on the wheel. It was something, at least, to hold on to. Daniel added, "Susan saw the money as security for Rachel."
"When that's known, will it help Susan?"
"No," Daniel said, grim.
They crossed a bridge framed in metal scaffolds, the tires plucking musical vibrations from the steel, trickling with little shocks through Alan's rigidly clenched sinews.
"Last weekend when Susan came to you, it was after Rachel was to visit my parents." Daniel was lower in the seat, his eyes closed. "Rachel didn't stay long. But it was painful."
When Alan spoke, the motion of air in his throat was agonizing. "Susan's sister—"
"Susan's twin."
After a pause, Daniel sat up and looked at him, then said gently, "Wilde, pull over and rest. It's all right."
He didn't respond to the directive. He hardly heard it. "Rachel is Susan's twin?"
"Not identical. The other kind."
"They're different?"
"Yes. But not as different as they think they are."
Condensation on the fences reflected pewtery starlight, streaking the night in sorrow. Very quietly Alan asked, "What will they do to Susan?"
"They, they." Daniel's mouth quirked into a brief smile. "Susan told me you say that."
"Consistency is my only virtue. What will they do to her?"
"You shouldn't know. It would be better."
"I love her. Tell me."
"To be forgiven, she'll have to go on her knees before the church and confess her sin with you."
For what remained of the ride, Daniel watched him. But he did not try again to make him talk.
Chapter 20
A deep prairie sunrise spread over a field of hay. Before it, Susan's house looked small and rugged, every window open wide, sucking in the warming air. To one side, Susan's grandmother was hanging out wash as a barefoot child in a lilac dress handed her things. The sheets snapped and settled in the breeze, throwing off faint bleachy whiffs.
The car's wood paneling and leather upholstery were stained with Daniel's blood. Earlier, climbing out of the car in front of the small town hospital, they'd seen the mess for the first time. Punchy, distraught, they'd both laughed until they'd made themselves light-headed. Now, watching Daniel walk toward his grandmother, Alan tried to remember why it had been funny.
Daniel spent several minutes with her and returned. "Christ brought Grandma over. She's sent the others away. There's coffee and jelly bread inside. You should come in and have some."
Alan shook his head. "Where's Susan?"
"In the barn, up in the mow. She likes to go up there. Carolyn went to check on her a few minutes ago, and she had gone to sleep."
After a tense pause, Alan got out of the car and began to walk toward the barn. Behind him, Daniel said, "Be careful what you do. That was what people in the olden days used to call torture—pulling people in different directions."
She slept among the hillocks of hay fair skin and dark hair against a cardinal-red wool quilt.
For a long while he sat, gazing at her, breathing in the scent of her and the sweet-smelling hay. The experiences of the night had left no signs on her race. He had expected that she might look drawn, her cheeks silvered with dry tears. Instead her skin looked clean and soft. Her expression was intent, as though she had to concentrate to sleep. Nor did her soft breath fall into rhythmic patterns. The cadence of her respiration would break sometimes into sighs, quick catches, and moments came when she breathed so subtly that he could hardly detect that she did so at all. He did not touch her. Last night's anger died in him. Only one thing held any importance, whatever he could, whatever she wanted, he must give to her.
Life teemed around them. Shafts of light from known and unknown sources speared through the worn timbers of the barn walls, golden roads with depth and dimension paved with dancing motes of grain dust. Flittering barn swallows punctuated the murmur of pigeons nesting under the eaves. In the far corner, a mother cat tended her kittens.
Suddenly Susan awoke, not moving, blinking in the white sunlight until she saw him. And he found in her wide eyes the wounds missing from her sleeping face.
For a long time communication between them took place in silence.,
Then, remembering, she said, "Daniel—"
"He's fine. He's in the house."
She must have been relieved, yet her expression didn't alter.
He said, "Fanny told you about what happened on her farm?"
She nodded. After a pause she sighed, rolled on her back with her hands behind her head, and gazed upward at the far vault of
the ceiling. Her lips relaxed in a smile that was hardly a smile.
"You should see how it is in here come winter. Hay goes clear to the ceiling, and frost settles on it until you can see every piece of it. Frost makes on the cobwebs, too, and they hang down like sugar candy. We clean it all up in the spring with willow boughs; we have to put handkerchiefs over our noses." She sat up, looking around, seeming to see things invisible to him. "Summers we used to like to sleep up here, while rain pattered on the roof. If John was away at a cattle auction or somesuch, I'd have my sisters with me, Fanny sometimes, and we'd be talking until all hours. Dad used to fool with us, tossing rocks up on the roof, running by the windows with a sheet over his head, and we would: get so worked up, chasing around…" She walked to the open hay door, limned in colorless light, and beyond her was a field cut with the claw marks of a plow. "I came to watch our star last night and found it all covered with a cloud."
He went to her, standing close, resting his hands lightly on her shoulders, his thumbs penetrating beneath her collar to find the soft skin at the base of her neck. She shivered under his touch.
"I have to tell you good-bye," she said.
"No."
"I have to. My parents might come, or ministers from the church. If they find you here, it could be bad."
"I can't leave you."
"Please."
"I can't leave you, not to this."
"This, you say. But this is my home."
"Make a new home with me. You'll like California." His voice was low, close to her ear. "It's warm there all the time. Camelias bloom in January. I have a house on the beach, and at sunset the water turns colors you only see in dreams."
She was shaking her head already.
"Susan… You can do anything you want, be anything you want—"
She turned in his arms, her face tight against his chest, her hands holding him tight, and he was hurting so badly, every cell in his body alive and burning, he couldn't seem to think.
"I'm not separate like you." Her breath was quick and frightened, caressing his chest in a spot of sensuous warmth. "I'm one limb of another body. I've always known what my life would be." Not a hard life, but one that would be intimate and tender. She would know what her husband would be to her, who would cherish her children and teach them with a parent's care. She knew what work would fill her hours. Loving and familiar hands would care for her when she grew old, and comfort her final hours; and when she was gone, no stranger would touch her—no one but her family would make her ready for burial in reverence and love.