Daniel feels like a servant in front ofwhom the lord and lady ofthe house think nothing ofundressing.Clutching Richmond’s handkerchief, he backs out ofthe kitchen, but before he is out, the door swings open and the two men who delivered theTibetan flags and fireworks come in.
“Everything’s put away,”says the older ofthe two.He uses his beret to dry his forehead.
“Before the snow gets worse,”says the younger.“I never seen anything like this.”
“Thank you, Ramon,”Susan says pleasantly.“You’re an angel.”
“I’m working on it,”Ramon says, smiling.“May I ask you?Who is the young man with the crow on his shoulder?”
“He’s our friend from Slovenia,”says Ferguson.“He lives inAlbany.
He came down fromTroy in July to work on the roofofthe piggery, and for some reason he hasn’t left yet.He found that crow near the river and he’s made something ofa pet ofit.”
“I’m going to see to this,”Daniel says, backing out ofthe kitchen.He is seized by anxiety, thinking that ifhe doesn’t leave in the next minute, then he could be facing impassable roads and a long entrapment in Eight Chimneys.As he makes his way down the hall, he notices a door to the outside is open.It is not the door he came in through, but finding this way out is irresistible to him, and rather than deliver Ferguson’s hand-kerchiefto Marie, he stuffs it in his pocket and heads out ofthe house.
He finds himself on a semicircular stone porch, a repository for busted-up furniture.He can’t tell what direction he’s facing;the world is chaos.He looks up at the sky, at the deluge ofsnow floating down.He opens his arms wide.He wants to shout out her name.Her name is her body, her scent, the shadow she casts upon the world.The violence and unexpectedness ofthis weather leads him not to the actual beliefthat the world is in a state ofemergency and that everything now is suddenly per-mitted, but to something close to it, something that suggests what that would feel like.He walks carefully down the stairs, snow seeping through his shoes.Then he walks around the house until he finds his car, which in the halfhour he has been here has accumulated a five-inch coat-ing ofwet, heavy snow.
He must dig around in his trunk to find the scraper and brush to clear his windshield, and once that is done he has no idea where the road is.
He looks for the tracks left by the men who delivered the flags and rock-ets, but the tracks have already been filled.He drives the mile and a half slowly, slipping in the wet snow, having no idea ifhe is driving on pave-ment or grass.
He calls his office from the car.The answering machine comes on, but with a new outgoing message left by SheilaAlvarez.“This is the of-fice ofDaniel Emerson.We have closed early because ofthe snow.And Mr.Emerson, Kate called to say that the day care center has closed and Ruby went home with Iris Davenport, and ifyou can make it over there would you please pick her up.Everyone else, leave a message after the beep.”
[5]
An immense oak tree lay on the ground a few feet from where they stood.Hamp-ton rested his foot on it and then shouted Marie’s name as loudly as he could.The veins on his neck swelled;Daniel had a sense of what it would be like to deal with Hampton’s temper, about which he had heard a great deal from Iris.Like many men with clear goals, Hampton was impatient, quick to anger.Hampton shouted again.If Marie were nearby she might have cowered from the furious sound of his call.Daniel sighed, folded his arms over his chest.
t was snowing and it was snowing and it was going to snow some more.
IA truck bearing the signwide loadand carrying behind it a tanand-brown modular home that was being delivered to a hillside already filled with similar ready-made houses lost traction on the main road about a quarter mile south ofLeyden, jackknifing into the northbound lane and colliding with an oncoming U-Haul truck, which was being driven up from the city by a young couple who had just bought a little weekend house and were bringing up their sofa, chairs, tables, lamps, bed, pots, pans, silverware, mystery novels, cross-country skis, aquar-ium, and paintings.Firemen, police, and paramedics struggled to the scene—many had difficulty driving there—and once the wreckage was cleared away and the victims transported—the truck driver to Leyden Hospital, the couple from the city to the morgue at the south end ofthe county—they were called to another highway disaster, and then another.
Six miles north, on the same road, a trucker on his way down from theAdirondacks, carrying twelve tons offreshly harvested hemlock, slammed on his brakes to avoid a collision with a Chevrolet driven by an old man who was moving no more than ten miles per hour.The trucker avoided rear-ending the old man, but the suddenness ofthe stop created a lurching backward and then forward motion in the logs, and, though they had been secured by braids ofheavy chains, two ofthe smaller trees broke entirely loose and shot out over the back ofthe truck as ifout of a catapult.One ofthem flew over the roofoftheToyota behind the truck, hit the pavement, and bounced offthe road, entering the woods end over end.The other log, however, went straight through theToyota’s windshield, like a giant leg stomping through a thin sheet ofice, crush-ing the driver and sending the car killingly out ofcontrol, directly into anotherToyota, a blue one, in the northbound lane.
An old silver van, with a high rounded roofand oddly diminutive tires, flipped over on a sharp, slushy curve on Frankenberg Road.The van was carrying two chestnut-and-white racehorses down from Canada to a horse farm in Leyden.The horses, a gelding and a mare, were both in can-vas harnesses, which were strapped to the sides ofthe van to keep the horses in place during their three-hundred-mile journey.When the van overturned, the canvas did not tear and both horses dangled upside down, whinnying in terror, their pink, powerful tongues wagging back and forth, their chin whiskers soaked in thick white foam.The woman who owned the horses and the man who was their trainer staggered around on the side ofthe road, banged and bleeding, feeling lucky to be alive.But then, as the van began to smoke, and then to burn, they realized that the miracle oftheir survival would be forever compromised by hav-ing to spend the rest oftheir lives remembering the crescendo ofcries and then the even more terrible silence as their horses were immolated.
At the Bridgeview Convalescent Home the loss ofelectricity would have normally switched on the auxiliary generator, but last winter’s power failures had used up all ofthe generator’s fuel and no one had thought to gas it up—winter was still a couple ofmonths away.The lights went dull, then dark, like dying eyes.Clocks stopped.Those nurses who were generally irritable became more irritable.Those patients who were generally confused became more confused.The bedridden propped themselves up on bony elbows and looked around for some explanation.
The patients who were chronically complaining shook their fists, spit on the floor, told the staffoff.The fearful became terrified—the booming death ofall those trees, theTVs with their gray blank screens standing in their corners like uncarved gravestones.
In aVictorian house out on Ploughman’s Lane was a facility for teenage boys who had tangled with the law and been ordered there by juvenile courts ranging from the Bronx to Buffalo.It was now called Star ofBeth-lehem and it was run by Catholic Charities.In deference to the people of Leyden, there were never fewer than four guards on duty, hulking, quiet men who patrolled the halls and the grounds in lace-up paratrooper boots and black turtleneck shirts, carrying black rubber batons.The doors were always locked and the windows were locked, too;the fence that sur-rounded its ten rolling acres was electrified.Shortly after the power failed, the staffherded the boys into their rooms.The staffat Star ofBethlehem were, for the most part, men who themselves had had tough dealings with the law in their youth, who seemed to operate under the principle that if they could put their lives on track, then these boys could learn to live right, too.They were usually rough, and with the power out they pushed and prodded the boys into their rooms, as ifsome gross breach ofdisci-pline had already been committed.It was a total lockdown.
The boys went docilely, confused by the gathering darkness, the moaning winds, and the distant sounds ofcrack
ing trees.Once they were in their rooms, they watched through barred windows as the snow brought down one tree after another.Star ofBethlehem’s auxiliary power supply was already in operation:the Honda generator was pump-ing out enough power to light the lights and keep the boiler running.But it was unlikely that the generator was sending power out to the electric fence hundreds offeet away.A couple ofthe boys picked up a bed and smashed the metal frame through the windowpane—the electric alarms were silent, dead, useless.Then six ofthe eight boys in the room pulled mattresses offtheir beds, and wrapping their arms around them, holding them fast, as ifthey were warm, soft sleds, they dove out ofthe second-story windows and out into the pearl-white snow.The mattresses landed with thuds ten feet below and the boys left them behind as they scram-bled up and slid down the hill, toward the powerless fence and the icy woods beyond.
[6]
Discouraged, exhausted, Hampton sat on the fallen tree—and immediately sprang up again.He had sat upon the Roman candle in his back pocket and it had split in two.He quickly pulled it out, with frantic gestures, as if it might explode, and tossed the top half of the candy-striped cardboard tubing as far from him as he could.“Oh no,”he said.
Now his back pocket was filled with the Roman candle’s black powder, a mix-
ture of saltpeter, sulfur, arsenic, and strontium.If I kick him in the ass, he might explode, thought Daniel.He had a comic vision of Hampton blasting off, sailing high above the tree line, stars, pound signs, and exclamation points streaming out behind him.
It takes Daniel nearly halfan hour to drive the five miles between Eight Chimneys and Iris’s house on Juniper Street.Some roads are already closed, and on others the traffic barely crawls.He is listening to a mix tape he made—Don Covay, Marvin Gaye, Ray Charles, IrmaThomas.He curses the storm, the roads, the other drivers, and imagines himself making love to Iris.He thinks about her voice, the slightly spoiled, slightly shy, and always shifting quality ofit.He is envious ofnot only Hampton but her fellow students, the library staff, the7-Eleven clerks, the shopkeepers up and down Leyden’s miniature Broadway, a man named Timmy Krauss, who mows her lawn, the tellers at Leyden Savings Bank, even Nelson.
He pulls into the driveway behind Iris’s car.A branch from one ofthe four maples on her front lawn, as long and thick as a stallion’s hindquar-ters, has snapped offfrom the weight ofthe snow and it sticks like a spear into the ground.Daniel looks up.The downward rush ofthe snowflakes, unusually large, looks like the blur ofthe stars when a space-ship accelerates into warp speed.He hears the creaking wooden sound ofa window opening.
“Let yourselfin, okay?”It’s Iris from the second story.She has stuck her head out the window and her short black hair whitens instantly.“I’m up here with the kids.”Her voice rings out in the silent world.
He steps into her entrance hall and peels offhis gloves, feels the melting snow trickling down his back.There are raucous screams ofcrazy ex-citement coming from Ruby, who is beside herselfwith joy to be in Nelson’s house.He hears Iris moderating.
Because the pickups and deliveries ofRuby generally fall to Daniel, he has been to this house ten or fifteen times, but each time Iris has Ruby dressed and ready to go upon his arrival.Nevertheless, in those moments ofpolite exchange, he has breathed in the smells ofher domesticity—the aromas ofwhatever meal was being prepared, the smell ofa newly painted room, ofeucalyptus stalks stuck into a beaded glass vase that stood upon an end table in the living room, just visible from where he usually stood.He has taken in everything there was to see in the foyer it-self:the blue-and-silver-striped wallpaper, the illustrative hooked rug (streetlamp, horse and buggy),the tiger maple table near the door, with its resident wicker basket filled with junk mail, the occasional stray mit-ten, and the curling cash register tape from the supermarket.From this he learned that her purchases included such items as Playtex tampons, and Dry Idea deodorant, Marcal bathroom tissues, Sominex sleeping pills, Tom’s Natur-Mint mouthwash, Revlon emery boards, Tylenol PM.
Outside:the crack offalling trees.For a moment it seems the electric power will go out here, too.
Iris comes downstairs, beckons him in.She has taken offher shoes;
her socks are bright electric blue.She wears a loose-fitting yellow sweater, jeans.She is a woman at home, she has put the world behind her.
“Are the kids okay?”Daniel asks.
”Ruby’s amazing.She’s got such compassion and wisdom in her eyes.
I love looking at her.”
Daniel feels unaccountably moved by this.It seems somehow more tender and appreciative than anything Kate has ever said.Kate loves Ruby, ofcourse she does, but she has no patience for motherhood.Its unending quality confounds and irritates her.Kate longs for privacy, for uninterrupted mornings, for what she calls her DreamTime.
“Have you ever been to Ruby Falls?”Iris asks.
”No, where is it?”
“InTennessee, outside Chattanooga.It’s an underground waterfall, the biggest in the world, and it’s red.Well, they might just shine red lights on it to make it look that way.I was ten years old when my family went there.I mostly remember how hot it was outside and how cool it was in that cave, and that everyone on the tour was white, but they were super nice to us.”
“How wonderfully civil ofthem,”Daniel says.
”I wasn’t really used to seeing white folks, not then.I was so nervous.”She sighs, closing the subject.Then:“I’m going to have some tea.
Do you want some?”
He remembers the appearance oftea on one ofher IGA receipts:Celestial SeasoningsAlmond Sunset and Celestial Seasonings Emperor’s Choice.
“Sure.”He is still in the foyer, stomping loose the snow that was jammed into the waffle sole ofhis shoes.“Tea would be great.Do you have like an almond tea or something?”
“As a matter offact, I do,”says Iris.
The dog comes in.Daniel crouches down to let Scarecrow sniffhis hand.She has no tail but moves her rump back and forth to signal her ac-ceptance ofhim.He strokes her lightly on the top ofher head and she makes a low groan ofpleasure.
“This dog is Jesus,”he says, glancing up at Iris.He turns back toward Scarecrow.“Are you Jesus?”
“Don’t answer that, Scarecrow,”Iris says.
It strikes him with the force ofrevelation that this is the most fun he has ever had, ever, in all his life, this is the pinnacle, the greatest happi-ness he has ever known, right there, asking the dog ifshe is Jesus, and Iris telling the dog not to answer.
They walk across the living room, with its bay windows, dark mahogany molding, a white marble mantel over the fireplace.On the north side ofthe room, French doors lead to the dining room;on the south, a newly hung door leads to the kitchen.Daniel stops at the rack ofcom-pact discs to see what music she listens to and feels a rush ofconfusion, disappointment as he reads:Fleetwood Mac, Tony Bennett, Boyz2Men, Aaron Copland.
“I can’t believe you like almond-flavored tea,”she says to Daniel as they enter her kitchen.“To me, it tastes like arsenic or something.What is it, a guy thing? It’s the only tea my husband will drink.”
Iris cannot bear chaos.Beyond the rituals and reassurances ofdaily life lies danger.Go offthe road—danger.Swim in the dark—tragedy.Those people in London all huddled in the subway stop while the bombs dropped? She would never have been able to do it.She’d hang herself first.Life without its presumption ofreasonable safety—intolerable.
She is aware ofa slow, engulfing terror growing within her.She has been holding her panic in check for a couple ofhours now, telling her-selfthat the storm and all those exploding trees are part ofNature, and she is fully capable oftaking it in stride.But she cannot take it in stride, she cannot evenstride,she feels trapped, waiting for something terrible to happen.And knowing that it’s all in her head doesn’t make it better; in fact, it makes matters worse—how do you hide from your own mind?
Night has come.It seems to be snowing harder now than it was an hour ago.The daytime sky was just runn
ing out ofsnow when the night sky rolled into place with a fresh supply.There is no fear that is not worse in the darkness.
Daniel.It astonishes her how closely he listens to her, how he leans toward her when she speaks and nods his head, yes, like the ladies in her grandmother’s church, theAmen choir, in front ofwhom you could sing, or cry, and never feel the slightest shame.He seems to remember every-thing she has ever said to him, starting with their first hello.Like most married people, she is used to being heard only by half, and has even got-ten used to being ignored.Daniel not only listens, he seems to possess, to embrace the things she says to him.Six months ago, she said she had de-cided her thesis dissertation would be on some aspect ofParchman Farm, and today, sitting in her kitchen, with the candles in their holders and a box ofOhio blue tips at the ready, she learns that Daniel has readWorse Than Slavery,one ofthe best books about Parchman.It initially gives her a guilty, embarrassed feeling because she’s moved on from Parchman, it just didn’t feel right—she might, in fact, have abandoned it later the same day she’d mentioned it to Daniel.She has been having a difficult time set-tling on a thesis;jumping from one possible topic to the next has been the source ofno small number ofnasty remarks from Hampton, who wants her to get her Ph.D.and move back to the city.But Daniel doesn’t mind when she softly confesses that she has left Parchman behind.
“I switched to the music,”she says.“I couldn’t read about all the beatings, it was ruining my life.”
“The music?”Daniel says excitedly.
”People survived, they made songs, it’s very rich material.”
He gets up from his seat at her kitchen table, suddenly full ofanimation.“I’ve got just the thing for you! Do you have a tape player in here?”
She points to a boom box on the kitchen counter.
”I’ll be right back,”he says.He goes out to the car to retrieve a tape from the glove compartment.He is unjacketed;wet clumps ofsnow slither down his back as he paws through lumpy old maps and a dozen cassette boxes, most ofthem empty, until he finds what he is after, one oftheAlan Lomax Southern Journey compilations.It’s not the one he was hoping to find—he wanted the field recordings ofprison songs—but this one will have to do.“Sheep, Sheep, Don’tcha Know the Road.”
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