by King, Sadie
Said with mock solemnity: “I do.”
He then turned his head to the left, to an imaginary justice of the peace standing directly in front of the happy couple.
“May I now kiss the bride?”
Turning his face back to Zora, he puckered his lips for a sensual conjugal kiss. All he got was a hard unmarried shove. At least she was smiling when she pushed him.
Zora thought it best to change the subject. The m-word would have to wait. One thing at a time, one question at a time. Starting with the question she had asked him that he still hadn’t answered.
“Did you ever find that path you were looking for?”
“I did. Took me a while”—no shit Rocinante—“but I found it. Want to go see what’s at the end of it?”
Zora answered by scampering at a brisk pace back whence the two of them had come, back in the direction of her berserk flight through the scrub. Victor ran ahead of her to show her the way. She had donned her bright orange hunting vest again—unless they ran into some drunken idiot hunting an oversized cock of the rock in the middle of Texas, 3000 miles from the orange-plumed bird’s native range, the vest should make her safe.
As they rounded the western side of the hill, the rock broke into a stubble of small cliffs, and everywhere was scattered a rabble of boulders. She understood why Victor had not wanted to bring her along earlier—wandering around rudderless in that stuff was foolhardy bordering on suicidal. Victor might have known how to play the scalawag, a part he played all too well, but he could also play the gentleman. More times than she could count, he helped her up and over a parade of rocks and crags, catching her when she tripped up on the sawtooth terrain.
Ascending the rocky scree, they came around to the north side of the hill. Zora was struck speechless. Below the concavity at the crown of the hill—from where she stood, Zora realized the top of the hill was not flat, but formed the margin of a small basin of rock—the hill on its northern face opened up into another larger bowl, another round rock-rimmed basin, about 100 feet lower. The configuration of the two basins of rock reminded her of a geological version of the Fontaines de la Concorde in Paris.
And not only because of their terraced pattern. The two basins were connected by a cataract, the most beautiful Zora had ever seen. The waterfall poured down from the upper bowl into a cerulean pool that filled the lower bowl. What was something like this doing in the hills of Texas? It was more like a dream of nature conjured from the pages of Mandeville.
They sat to rest on a rock near the edge of the pool. Zora finally found speech.
“It’s magnificent Victor. I see why this place was sacred to the Comanche. It’s a vision of heaven, it really is.”
“Up top is the most sacred spot. We’re not going up there—too difficult a climb. There’s a spring up there that flows from deep in the karst. The Comanche used to call it Piki-ra-hihkiapi-paa-pahiti-ka. The place where shadow waters are born. The water from the spring actually looks black because it’s so pure, coming up from the darkness of the earth.”
All Zora could muster was a murmur. She was stupefied by the spirituality and splendor of the place. That time of day, she noticed, the waters of the lower bowl were buried in shadows too, sunk from the sun in the lee of the hill.
“Let’s catch our breath here, eat lunch. Then I’ll take you around the pool and answer your question.”
After their lunch—food so bland had never tasted better—they ringed their way around the eastern edge of the pool, wending toward the waterfall. Because of the asymmetry in the rockiness of the two sides, the western edge was not passable. Two-thirds of the way to the falling shadow waters, Victor stopped and set down his bow. He took off his vest and set it on top of his gear. On cue, Zora set down the cooler.
“In the mood for skinny dipping?”
She didn’t nod but smiled. Victor began to undress, and she followed suit. She was eager for dessert. She hoped Victor had an entire tasting menu in store. Creme brulee followed by white-truffle custard. Ambrosia. Chocolate drizzled in a sherry reduction. Sweetness mixed with sin.
Their clothes on the rocks—no Damiana on the rocks, alas—they inserted their bodies into the dark waters of the pool. The chill pricked Zora’s skin at first but then the coolness broadened to a sumptuous warmth. For a while they frolicked and embraced, splashing apart and coming together. Partaking of the darkness of the water, the depth of its sacredness.
Were they being sacrilegious, mocking with the playfulness of their bodies an entire cosmology of ancient beliefs? No. Only those who are ignorant of the depths of the spirit can see in the joys of the body anything profane, anything evil. The spirit needs the body; love needs passion. There is no paradox in the pleasures of the spirit that spring from the pleasures of the body.
Victor knew the deepest secret of that fountain of stone. He swam with Zora to the melodious foam of the falls. The spindrift of the wispy sheet of water fell onto their bodies. He reached through the veil of water as one might reach through the veil between heaven and earth. And then, pivoting his body, he disappeared behind the veil.
In an instant he had crossed through the falls, passed into a rocky womb of shadows that the falling water had eroded over millennia. From behind the veil, having to cry to be heard over the volume of the spray, he told Zora to follow and she did.
The recess behind the falls was wide enough to allow three people to lie down side by side, but no more. And the tallest part of the cavity, nearest the falls, was only about five feet from top to bottom, so standing erect was out of the question.
This was not the most comfortable place to make love, but it was the most perfect. Everything was dripping and dark. The antithesis of the sterility of heavenly light. They were in a womb, waiting to be born into a new experience of each other, a new set of sensations. Born from a world of stone into a world of water.
For a while they caressed in the shadows, slipping back and forth on the smooth rock floor of the recess. Once or twice their legs slipped all the way through the watery veil of the falls. But they were not ready yet to be re-born into the world. They pulled themselves back through the shimmering water, a hymen of the earth, a hymn of the earth, always in a state of flux, never broken, never unbroken.
Even in nature’s womb, on the unborn side of a hymen of water, love needs comfort. Stone no matter how smooth is less inviting to the body than the hardest bed. The ability of passion to overpower pain has a limit.
Their solution was as perfect as the place that Victor had chosen for them to make love: the falling lotus position. They faced each other, sitting. Each lover’s legs extended out beyond the body of the other lover. A variation on the lotus position, the folded-leg pose of meditation. Their lovemaking would be tantric, their bodies and minds falling meditatively into one another.
Victor sat with his legs perfectly straight, spread a few feet apart. Zora sat on the cusp of his waist, guiding his penis inside her as she sat, and locked her legs around the back of his body. She leaned back and grasped his ankles for balance. Their hips began to move in smooth methodical waves, like slow ripples of water on a placid pool. Her womb of flesh was sacred to him, her fertility, the bounty of her body, the object of his devotion in the womb of stone in which they sat.
They were enacting a ritual that the earth itself had carved out of stone. Crossing the veil that divides body and spirit, flesh and air, light and darkness.
It was a spiritual experience to be sure, but it was also an intensely bodily one. The sensations that the falling lotus gave Zora crested inside of her. Thanks to their seated position, the sharp upward angle of Victor’s penis drove it repeatedly into her G-spot. The sounds of the splashing water near their bodies mingled with their own rising and falling sounds of togetherness. Victor’s moans were a mixture of pleasure and pain, for Zora had dug her nails deep into the skin of his ankles, and flexed her fingers inward, into muscle, with a rhythmic ebb and flow.
Overwhelming the p
ain, Victor’s pleasure fed off of her pleasure, drew sustenance from her whimpers and cries. The passageway to her womb enwrapped and enraptured his penis in the shadows of her body. If they could have, they would have flowed together like currents of the same stream for as long as the waters nearby sat in repose—but Zora’s body satisfied Victor long before that. He released himself into her, seed out of stone, flesh that had been stone turning back into flesh once again. He pulled out of her, and they lay there huddled in the darkness, the two of them dripping, radiating warmth to each other through skin, regaining their breath and their consciousness.
Until Zora said, “Let’s go for another swim.”
They swam in that sacred pool until their bodies seemed to become one with the water. Their skin was no longer a barrier. They would have been content to slip under the surface and stay there, breathless, re-born.
But the radio crackled to life, bringing them back to life. It was Vane. Zora cursed him and the sound of his voice. The voice of the snake in paradise. The voice of Hades in the sweetest glade of Elysium.
Victor hurriedly swam to the rock-ringed shore, dried his hands on his shirt, picked up the radio.
“Yes, brother, we’re here. What’s going on?”
“We got that buck. He’s in the bag. We gutted him and we’re hauling him out of the Hollow.”
“Great! Same one you were chasing, the 6-by-5?”
“Yeah, same one. Spread on him has to be at least two feet.”
“Now you’re just making me jealous. Damn you. That’s bigger than the one I shot last year over by Double-T Arch.”
Double-T Arch was about 4 miles from Victor and Zora, roughly north-by-northwest of them. It was a natural stone bridge with a sixty foot span. Like the spring of shadows above the waterfall, it had an old Comanche name. Tomo-taupe. Lips of the sky. The arch and the rim of rock underneath it formed the eroded contour of a gaping mouth. The settlers had learned the name from the natives, but hadn’t bothered to preserve it in its entirety. Tomo-taupe had become Double-T Arch.
“You better believe he’s bigger. What did you expect, taking her with you?”
Jerk. Too bad Jack didn’t accidentally shoot you in the ass. If it were me, I would have done it intentionally.
“Day’s not over yet. Who shot the buck, you or Jack?”
Victor’s last shot at pride for the day. The last realistic possibility for him not to be grievously out-hunted by his younger brother. Alas.
“I shot him, right through the heart. Perfect shot. Jack was nowhere around. We split up. I finally got the buck at the very bottom of the Hollow. Jack’s just helping me drag him out.”
“We’ll start heading back then. Better get home and start the butchering. Maybe I’ll shoot an 8-by-8 on the way out.”
It was customary for the entire group of hunters to divvy up the spoils of their kills. With one exception: the trophy rack belonged by sacred right to the vanquisher.
“Right, maybe you’ll shoot an elephant and a tiger too. Get fucking real. Just hurry back to the trucks so we can get out of here.”
Zora was glad that conversation was over. All the macho talk, the talk of shooting and gutting and killing, made her heart sick. She knew that men would brag of killing a deer just as they would brag of fucking a woman. And even worse, she had to listen to Vane, spreading his virulence into her ears like poison through the air.
“You heard the man Zora, we’re heading back to the trucks. Let’s get dressed. I’ll help you out of the water. These rocks are pretty slick.”
Back in their clothes, the fabric wetted by their bodies, they shivered and shook their limbs to get limber and warm. They needn’t have worried: the afternoon sun dried them out, heated their blood, even in the shadows of the hidden pool.
Once dressed and warmed, Victor stood at the very edge of the pool. He motioned to Zora to come. The film of water was a mirror of polished metal.
“You know something, I still haven’t answered your question. Look into the water. You will see your answer there.”
As Zora peered into the liquid mirror, Victor took from a pocket of his vest a folded-up photograph. It was a picture of a father and a son. The boy appeared to be about 9 or 10, and the man to be in his mid-20’s. The father stood behind the boy, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy knelt beside a small buck he had just killed.
Victor unfolded the image and held it up against the water, angled it so that Zora could clearly see its reflection in the pool.
“Oh my God. It’s you and Jack. He’s your son, isn’t he?”
The father in the picture was clearly Victor, a somewhat younger-looking version of the Lothario of Law. He’d carried his youthfulness into his late 30’s pretty damn well. Must have been all that Pilates. The boy was Jack Carson.
“Yes, Jack is my son. Sheila’s his mother. My ex-wife. You might have heard about that.”
Zora merely nodded. She knew the scuttlebutt about the divorce but thought better of delving into that open secret, that open wound. Victor was already soured enough on the institution of marriage as it was. He needed hints of future success—success with her—not reminders of a past failure with someone else. Even though he had a long history what that someone else.
“Sheila and I had him when we were still in school. Westlake High in Austin. I got her pregnant during our first date. If you want to call the bathroom of a diner in Austin a date. I was very sexually active in those days—”
What the fuck are you now, a prude?
“—and looking back I’m not proud of that. But I’ll never call Jack a mistake. It was tough raising him through college and law school. Sheila did most of the work.”
“He took her name instead of yours, didn’t he?”
There was clearly something Oedipal going on between Jack and Victor. For a young man to legally change his name like that, abandon his patronym, he must have had layer upon layer of resentment for his father. And conversely, layer upon layer of love for his mother.
“Yes—he changed it after Sheila and I separated. That was a while ago. Even though he’s a grown man, he blames me for a whole list of things. Up to and including the divorce. He loves his mother dearly. But I think he respects me deeply. Look at him—a hunter, going to be a lawyer soon. He hates to admit it, but he’s turning out exactly like his dad.”
Zora had turned from one reflection of father and son to another, from one more liquid to one more solid, from water to paper. She and Victor stood there at water’s edge, looking at the photograph. Zora knew firsthand the power of Victor’s charisma, and she wasn’t entirely surprised that Victor’s personality had wheedled its way into his son. Had cast an inevitable light over Jack’s life—or was it a shadow?
“This was his very first hunting trip. We had just moved back to Texas, after I graduated from Yale. Sheila didn’t want him to go that day, too young she said, but hey this is Texas. You can hunt in diapers if you want. So I took him, and he killed a nice little 3-by-3. All on his own. Vane took the picture. He flew out here from law school, from Northwestern, for the trip. So you see, Jack is a good son, and Vane is a good brother.”
“Good for him.”
She meant it earnestly for Jack, and sarcastically for Vane. She didn’t give a shit what Vane did. But to her own surprise, Zora was actually glad that Jack had killed that deer. A rite of passage for a boy. A rite of togetherness for a father and a son. Sealed in sacrificial blood.
But she still didn’t have a fucking clue what all those numbers meant.
And she didn’t terribly mind that Victor had answered her question— Who do you love most in the world?—in the way that he had. It showed a manliness deeper than the machismo of hunting: the love of a father for a son.
If anything, the revelation of that answer, of that paternal bond, made Zora love Victor more. Not less. Now if he had answered Vane, he loved Vane more than he loved her, she would have gotten upset. Very upset. She could understand the love of
one brother for another, a timeless love, a mythic love. But Vane? Come on now. Love for that unbelievable prick, that undeniable sociopath?
They put the lake, if such a small body of water could be called a lake, behind them. On the trek back to the truck, they saw not a single solitary deer. They had not seen a deer the whole day. But they saw, and heard from time to time in the glory of song, a whole aviary’s worth of birds—a Cooper’s hawk, a dark-eyed junco, a blue jay, a meadowlark, a rock wren, several ravens, a golden-fronted woodpecker, and a mourning dove. Among others. They even saw a pyrrhuloxia, a male, with its brilliant fiery breast, a bird which Victor had never seen in that patch of woods before.
They arrived back at the vehicles. Jack and Vane had already loaded the buck, dressed and tagged, into the bed of the pick-up. They were sitting in the cab, waiting to show off their kill, listening to a Country Classics CD. At that particular moment, the Man in Black was up. Seeing the stragglers finally return, they hopped out.
The buck lay in the back, grotesquely sprawled out, at the center of several large smears of blood—crumpled and battered like a marionette with the strings cut, fallen from a higher place. A place of life and movement and the dance of limbs.
Zora briefly glanced at the dead majestic thing. She turned her head away as fast as she could. In equal measure, blood and violent death revolted her, and here were both on full display. Victor looked at the corpse of the deer lovingly, enviously, as Salieri must have listened to the symphonies of Mozart.
“I have to admit brother, that is a beautiful animal. You really outdid me this time.”
“Of course I did. You know all the big deer are down near the Hollow. Doesn’t hurt that I’m a better shot than you either.”
Jack couldn’t take any credit for the kill, but he could at least editorialize. Rhapsodize. Partake in the gloating.
“Right through the spine. Perfect shot. Best I’ve ever seen.”
“Pure luck is more like it. Here’s an idea—next time we hunt the Hollow, and you head up to that rocky wasteland.”