The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  Then we took a saltine apiece, which represented grain and earth elements; after chewing it slowly, we tossed down another shot of Southern Comfort.

  We repeated this procedure. The quart bottle of Southern Comfort was now half empty. I had the uneasy feeling that at other times, in different places, this ritual had been meaningful. But tonight, in Stark’s Bog, its significance was escaping me.

  We sat with closed eyes, meditating on our upcoming union. Then we tossed off another glass of Southern Comfort saying, ‘Kulakundalini.’

  We drank jelly glasses of water. Hawk handed me a cardamon. We studied the coarse outer husk. Then we broke through the husk to the grain and contemplated the two symmetrical halves, joined to form a whole. We chewed them slowly.

  Removing my rose negligee, I crawled over to the sleeping bag and arranged myself, while Hawk adjusted the bug lamp so that its rays fell upon my body, which was now bare except for the ritual neck scarf.

  Hawk sat down next to me, the bell in his ear lobe jingling. He gazed upon my body with admiration and was supposed to be seeing in it the mystery of creation, the bejeweled vault of all riches, the begetter of the cosmos. It was this megalomaniacal attitude that Hawk had to achieve in order to distinguish our upcoming coition from ordinary vulgar human intercourse. The burden of the evening was riding on him. It was a lot to ask of him, to see all those superlatives in my somewhat flabby flesh, which was etched with silver stretch marks from Wendy’s birth. I could see in his hairy face the strain of this leap of the imagination. He’d invested his all in the outcome of the next hour. What if we failed to attain whatever it was we were supposed to attain? If we did attain it, would we know that we had? I clutched the sleeping bag spasmodically, and my breathing became jerky from the mounting tension. A casual roll in the hay with a war hero was all I’d had in mind all those weeks ago. How had I been foolish enough to get involved in transcendence?

  I tried to calm myself and think only about the energizing union of polar opposites, the harnessing of the blind life force, as represented by me, to material creation, as represented by Hawk. I breathed deeply, following the 7:1:7 plan.

  Hawk placed his hand over his heart and muttered, ‘I am Shiva. I am She.’ He knelt over me and gingerly placed his index and middle fingers over my heart, on the top of my head, on my eyelids, on the center of my forehead. He mumbled words I couldn’t make out as he progressed to my throat, my ear lobes, my breasts and upper arms, my navel, thighs, knees, feet. And finally my yoni, as he chose to refer to my cunt.

  Then he removed Ira’s robe. His erection pointed to the heavens like a Gothic spire. He lay down on my right and waited for his breathing to switch. Mine had already switched.

  We assumed the tangled ritual position by my raising my legs and his moving his upper body away from me and inserting his right leg between my legs. The result of these contortions was that his lingam, which was the Maithuna term for cock, entered me slightly. We both trembled violently as it did so, and my yoni contracted with excitement. We gritted our teeth and forced our hips not to move reflexively.

  Initial impulses successfully overcome, we began the wait. We were to lie joined like this for thirty-two minutes, meditating upon the ineffable bliss of divine union, and visualizing the currents flowing across our bridge of flesh, at the end of which time something profound, unlike any previous experience, would occur. Samarasa. Nirvana. Transcendence of time and death. Participation in infinity and eternity. God knows what.

  I lay still and pondered cosmic currents in the relaxed detached fashion Hawk had recommended. This was not difficult because I was very drunk from the Southern Comfort. Hawk’s assignment, however, was more difficult. It was his show, and if be allowed himself to ejaculate, our act would become commonplace fucking. Perish the thought. His lingam was alternately wilting and then swelling like a tampon in a toilet bowl.

  I opened one glazed eye and glanced at him. Beads of sweat were popping out on his forehead. He was red-faced from trying to swallow his tongue in order to forestall orgasm. My heart went out to him, but I didn’t know how to help, other than to lie very still. I stroked his damp forehead soothingly. His grimacing face began to go slack, and he started the 7:1:7 breathing. I withdrew my hand and closed my eyes and floated on a seductive sea of Southern Comfort, visualizing the languid healing heat of a southern summer. I descended into a deep drunken sleep.

  I awoke to sounds of sobbing. Squinting through a throbbing headache, I glanced around. Far more than thirty-two minutes had passed, I was sure. The purple glow from the mosquito lamp bathed the immediate scene — me, Hawk asleep beside me, wrapped in my legs, the littered board table. We were covered with dead mosquitoes. Then I noticed that Hawk’s and my joined genitals were bathed in a white light as well. I followed the beam to its source, a flashlight. The holder of the flashlight was also the source of the wracking sobs that mixed with the pulsing croaks of frogs in the Pots o’ Gold valley.

  I strained my eyes through the dark. It was Ira.

  “Back from your meeting so soon, dear?’ I gasped.

  He sobbed in reply. I gingerly removed Hawk’s wilted lingam from my yoni and sat up and grabbed my rose negligee, which I had worn on Ira’s and my wedding night. I was covered with goose bumps. The night air had turned chilly.

  ‘It’s not what you think, Ira,’ I told him, wincing as he turned the flashlight beam on my face.

  ‘What is it then?’ he rasped.

  ‘We weren’t having sex,’ I explained reasonably.

  Ira kicked over the board table, and the china platter smashed on a brick. ‘Jesum Crow, Ginny! I’ve been standing right here looking at you!’

  ‘Yes, I know it looks like sex, Ira. But it wasn’t. You’ll just have to believe me,’ I pleaded.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘I will not believe you, Ginny! You and your hippy friends — you think you can rip off us honest hardworking sincere suckers! You’ve been using me, Ginny! No wonder you won’t fulfill your wifely obligations. I bet this has been going on the whole time we’ve been married. How could I be so thick as not to have seen it? You live off me — your straight idiot of a husband — and you carry on the way you always have with your weird friends!’

  ‘That’s not true, Ira! I’ve never been unfaithful to you. And I’m not being now. This man and I, we were — uh — trying to transcend the bondage of our flesh.’

  ‘Oh sure! Call it anything you want, Ginny, but I’ve had enough! Do you understand? You’ve done nothing but hurt me and make fun of me from the first day we met. I want you to leave now. And take your freaky friend with you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now. This minute. Go to your friends at their commune. Go sleep with this hairy creep in the woods like the animals that you both are. Go anywhere. I don’t care anymore. Just get out of my life!’ He began sobbing again.

  Hawk yawned and sat up and glanced around, blinking vacantly with his bell jingling. Gradually his memory started functioning. As it did, his face clouded over with anguish.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ he wailed. ‘I fell asleep! Jesus, I blew it! A whole year and I fucked up! Oh God!’ He looked around wildly, saw me, and moaned, ‘Ginny, we blew it! We fell asleep! Oh God!’

  I nodded toward Ira. Hawk realized that we weren’t alone, and looked up at Ira, who stood shaking with sobs. ‘Ira, this is Hawk. Hawk, my husband, Ira.’

  Ira snarled. Hawk gazed up at him uncomprehendingly. Finally he jumped up and extended his hand, his southern manners rising to the occasion. Ira drew back his fist and slugged him in the face, knocking him down.

  ‘Now get out of my yard, both of you.’

  ‘What about Wendy? Children need their mothers, Ira.’

  ‘No child needs a slut for a mother.’

  Hawk and I skulked into the house, followed by Ira. As we entered the kitchen, Hawk, dressed in Ira’s robe, his eye swelling shut, said sensibly, ‘Now look, Ira…’

  ‘Get dressed and get out of here,
’ Ira said calmly, taking a .22 down from the wall.

  I dressed in a pantsuit and stuffed a few toilet articles in my pocketbook. I couldn’t believe I was being kicked out, couldn’t believe how few rights I had that would allow me to stay. After all, it was Ira’s ancestral home, his town, his relatives, his furniture…his daughter? I had been merely a temporary fixture. Since I had failed to meet specifications, I was being disposed of. Until now, I had been swamped with remorse over hurting Ira, however unintentionally. But now I began getting angry. He felt I had used him. How about all the meals I’d cooked, the mountains of shirts I’d laundered and ironed just so, the bizarre sexual perversions I’d had to endure? Did they count for nothing?

  I tiptoed into Wendy’s room. She lay sleeping, all damp and flushed, her tiny hands folded into fists, breathing heavily. She was his, like everything else in sight. But unlike everything else, she was also mine. I would get her back. I leaned down and kissed her cheek. She sighed in her sleep and turned over.

  At the door, Ira was clearing his throat, his gun resting on his hip. As we walked down the hall, he said plaintively, “Everyone in town always told me not to get mixed up with the Soybean People. I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I could change you into a decent God-fearing woman.’

  ‘Well, I guess everyone in town was right, and you were wrong, huh?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Don’t take it so hard, Ira. A snake will always be a snake, even if you put a chain around its neck and try to make it walk upright.’

  It was past midnight. Hawk and I had slept for over four hours during the Maithuna. As Ira stood in the doorway with his rifle on his hip, we trudged away from the huge stone fortress and down the dirt road toward the Canadian border. We slept that night in a field. Hawk didn’t speak. His face was a mask of mute suffering.

  The next morning when I woke up I found Hawk lying staring at the sunny summer sky, his hands folded under his head.

  ‘Well! Where to now, Hawk?’

  He didn’t reply, didn’t even appear to have heard me. I ran my hand in front of his eyes. He didn’t blink. Slowly, he turned his head and stared at me without recognition. Unnerved, I repeated, ‘Where shall we go? The world is ours!’

  He stared at me without answering. Then he resumed staring at the sky.

  ‘Hawk?’ I asked anxiously. No glimmer of a response.

  ‘Hawk!’ He remained motionless, expressionless.

  I tugged insistently at the ring in his ear lobe, like a farmer grabbing a recalcitrant bull by the ring in its nose. ‘Look, Hawk, it’s not the end of the world. Really it isn’t. We’re all trained now. We can try the Maithuna again on the fifth day after my next period. It’s no big deal. We just have to switch from Southern Comfort to wine.’

  He continued staring at the sky.

  ‘Hawk, I mean, really. This is ridiculous, sulking like this.’

  He said nothing, stared fixedly at the blue summer sky. I grabbed his arm in the vicinity of his mandala tattoo and shook it fiercely; it was like shaking a corpse.

  I lay back down and stared at the sky with him. I enumerated the possibilities for me and my zombie. We could return to Ira’s. I could turn Hawk over to the FBI, and plead temporary insanity and beg Ira to take me back. I could take Hawk and hike over the hill to our left and join Mona’s and Atheliah’s commune. I could leave Hawk here, lying in this field, and fend for myself, returning to Hullsport or something. I could take Hawk back to Montreal, braving the border guards, maybe locate some of his friends, live with him if he wanted, or strike out on my own.

  I rolled up the sleeping bag and attached it to the pack frame. Then I shook Hawk and pointed to the pack. Obediently, he allowed me to hoist it onto his back. Then I took his hand and led him like a pack horse. We climbed a hill and walked along a ridge until Mona’s and Atheliah’s rambling house was directly below us. Then we tacked down the hillside through the woods toward it. I felt as though I was perhaps finally coming home, after a long and painful exile among strangers.

  When we reached the house, it was empty, deserted. The front door had popped open and swayed in the breeze. We walked inside. Most of the debris had been shoveled off the living room floor. The caravan had moved on. Panic gripped me. I had been counting on them for advice, or at least for moral support

  I searched through all the rooms, but could find no trace of continuing human habitation. I stuffed a few discarded T-shirts in the pack and removed it from Hawk’s shoulders and led him to the couch and sat him down. He stared intently at his dirty fingernails. Then I sat down, too, and stared at Hawk. He had been such a dictator while he was training me, had known exactly what to do when. Where had that personality vanished to now when we really needed it?

  ‘Now what, maharishi?’

  He continued studying his fingernails as though he hadn’t heard.

  I walked into the kitchen. There were some large jars of brown rice and soybeans, dried fruits and nuts, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds. Moths swooped around in them like flying reptiles. I took two handfuls of dried fruit and gave one to Hawk. We sat and munched gravely on the leathery apricots and pears.

  Were FBI agents really lurking around waiting to descend on Hawk? If so, would Ira be likely to hear about it and draw the appropriate conclusions? This farm would be the first place he’d send them, in a seizure of National Guardly wrath. I was aiding and abetting a fugitive. I was in this up to my ears. What was I to do?

  I studied Hawk. In his fringed leather jacket and bib overalls and beard and tangled hair, he looked like the quintessence of army deserterhood. I got some scissors out of a kitchen drawer. Then I sheared Hawk like a sheep, cutting his beard down to stubble and hacking away at his hair. He didn’t appear to notice. Then I got the razor I used on my legs out of my pocketbook. Lathering him up, I shaved him. I removed the silver ring and jingle bell from his ear lobe. Then I helped him, unprotesting, out of his leather jacket and overalls. The pinstriped pants to an extra suit I had brought were cuffed and fashionably loose. They fit him well and looked like men’s slacks. The jacket, however, was ridiculously tight, and the sleeves came halfway up his forearms. I let him wear his work shirt instead and sandals. Even so, he looked remarkably clean-cut and fresh and innocent without his mangy beard. I was startled to see his chin after all these weeks. No wonder he had hidden it. It was weak and receding.

  I plopped down on the sofa. Clearing my throat, I said, ‘Do you think we should go to Montreal, Hawk?’

  He didn’t look up from his fingernails.

  ‘How difficult will it be for you to get past the border guards?’

  Sighing, I pulled him up from the couch. I loaded the pack on his uncomplaining back, and we struck off northward through the woods. When we hit the road to the border crossing, we hitched a ride with some young kids in a Volkswagen bus. The border guards were so busy searching for drugs that they didn’t pay any attention to us middle-aged straights. I had remembered by then that Hawk had landed immigrant status anyway. He was already on Canadian soil and so was home free.

  In Montreal I decided we might as well live it up for a night on Ira’s credit cards while we (read: I) decided on our next move. We swept into the Bonaventure Hotel. A Chinese coolie relieved Hawk of his pack and led us down endless interconnected carpeted corridors to a vast chamber, outfitted with fold upon fold of thick drapery and two king-sized beds. The windows across one wall looked down many stories to a scenic parking lot

  Hawk sat in one upholstered armchair, and I sat in the other. ‘Look, Hawk, I think you’re overreacting. Yes, we blew it. We drank too much Southern Comfort and passed out. But so what? We can restage it using grape juice or Seven-Up or something. That can’t be what’s really bothering you. What’s wrong?’ In fact, I was awash with guilt. Perhaps my rotten attitude toward the Maithuna, regarding it largely as an opportunity to get laid, had played a major role in wrecking it.

  For the first time all day, Hawk res
ponded. He looked up out of bloodshot blue eyes and croaked, ‘Entropy.’

  ‘Entropy?’

  He rubbed his clean-shaven face furiously with both hands, like Samson discovering his shorn head. ‘They’ve finally got me,’ he whispered.

  ‘Who has?’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he asked with an incredulous smile. ‘They’re going to suck all the heat from my body before I have a chance to get out of it. I’ll be trapped in it and will die.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘I have to get south,’ he muttered.

  ‘You can’t go south. You’ll be thrown in prison.’

  ‘I am in prison,’ he croaked.

  ‘Hawk, I’ve really had enough of this nonsense,’ I snapped, like a spinster schoolteacher. ‘Now, you just pull yourself together.’

  He glared at me sullenly. ‘If you weren’t already dead, you’d feel it, too. Entropy — sucking all the warmth from your body.’ He started shivering spasmodically, and his teeth chattered.

  ‘It’s actually very comfortable in here,’ I notified him. ‘Seventy-four degrees. Fingertip control in every room.’

  His shuddering increased, and he wrapped his arms around himself.

  I studied him hopelessly. I figured that if I continued to treat him normally, didn’t go along with his game, maybe he’d snap out of it as abruptly as he’d snapped into it.

  ‘Come on,’ I barked like an army sergeant. ‘We’re going out for dinner. Please try to behave.’

  I turned in at a trendy-looking spot on a quiet side street, dragging Hawk behind me. Smart couples were sitting at tables under an outside awning. A large neon sign of an American Gothic-type farmer read ‘Old MacDonald’s.’

  Inside, the bar was a feed trough with a cover. The bar stools were old tractor seats mounted so as to swivel on milk cans. On the wall behind the bar were pictures of stylized domestic animals, silos and tractors, made by gluing exotic beer labels into patterns. The chrome shot spouts on all the lined-up liquor bottles were in the shape of cows’ udders.