“It’s a recumbent bike.” Slowly, he spun the pedals, looking thoughtful. “Although I’ve realized lately that you wouldn’t want it. I originally thought—with your hip and everything—it would be easier on you than a regular bike. That you might enjoy it.” He stole a glance at me. “But, you know, I think…well, I think I probably should’ve know you wouldn’t want to use anything different from what everyone else uses.”
I was still confounded. “You made this for me?”
“Yeah. But it’s all right. It doesn’t have to be for you. Somebody else will take it. I guess I just—” He laughed to himself. “I’m not sure what I was thinking, really.”
I looked from him to the thing.
Penance, I thought.
“Martin,” I said then, looking at him and, for the first time in all the years I’d known him, truly seeing him, this man with his quiet intelligence and unwavering compassion, his strident and almost foolish faith in human goodness. “I’m so sorry.”
“What do you have to be sorry about?”
“I don’t know. All of it. You’re never anything but kind, and we all—”
“Oh,” he interrupted, “nonsense. Now.” He took his hand off the machine. “What do you need me to do?”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak.
“Well,” I said when I’d gathered myself, “if you could call Herman—you know, the store’s owner—and maybe find somebody else who can watch the place—”
“Done. I have cousins. That’s what they’re for. Next?”
“And…and tell Herman I’ll pay him back.”
“Pay him back?”
“Yeah.”
He seemed to consider this, but put his questions aside. “Okay. Anything else?”
I closed my eyes. “Nothing. That’s all.”
“Listen,” he said. “Go ahead. Go.” There was an effort in his voice, as if he were forcing himself to say the words. “This place will still be here when you get back.”
“I don’t think I’m coming back.”
“I see.” He looked down at the streaks of black on the floor, then back up. “Well, if that’s how it’s meant to be, then that’s how it’s meant to be.”
We walked back down the stairs together, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, I found myself facing someone and not knowing what to say.
“Goodbye, then,” he told me, reaching out to shake my hand, pressing mine in both of his. “You—you take care out there. And you know, the minute you need—”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
We held each other’s gaze, our hands clasped.
“Go on, then,” he said, his voice strained.
I went, not turning around, realizing that if I looked back at him, I would never go.
Outside, I noticed that one of the store’s windows was open, yawning darkly like a toothless mouth. For a moment, I looked at it, feeling the cool air on my skin. Then I strode out of the parking lot and up the hill, leaving the car behind. In the shade that lined the sides of the road, I walked toward the sun, shielding my eyes. A pickup swept by me, its driver raising a hand in greeting. I turned my head, pretending I hadn’t seen.
Fifteen minutes later, I turned onto the dirt path that led to the prison camp, not caring about the mud that soaked my shoes. I stood there at the entrance, gazing into the forest, taking from it the last peace it would ever give me, picturing the grasses and streams that would come with the summer, slowly covering the ruins as if to shield them, to keep them hidden from those who would seek to map them, to find meaning in what they once were. The fire hadn’t touched this place. The only thing that could undo it, it seemed, was time, the time that would either continue to pull it open to the view of others like a wound or, someday, let it close and disappear and be forgotten.
By the time I returned to the parking lot, the sun was beginning to descend. A bird sang somewhere in the woods, and for the first time in months, I saw a column of smoke rising from the campground. I drove away, slowing only when I passed St. Eleanor Regina, the chapel named after a dead queen whose heart had been removed and buried miles away from her body. I knew how she felt, I thought, picturing the silent woman stretched out, her hands folded over the void in her chest, her eyes closed. I knew how she felt.
* * *
—
In town, I was careful, as I always was. I stopped at all the red lights, accelerated slowly on green, kept an eye out for pedestrians. Passing the two strip malls and the Joyride bar—its parking lot so full that two cars were waiting for spaces, their headlights glowing—I got onto the interstate.
At Harrisburg, I merged onto another highway, taking it north, past Hershey. The medical center where I had been treated after the accident was visible from the road, and as I watched, a helicopter landed on the flat roof of one of the buildings, illuminated by floodlights. Moments later, it was gone, hidden by the trees on the side of the road.
Keeping my eyes fixed ahead, I passed it and left it behind.
The truth about the accident, of course, was that it hadn’t been an accident; furthermore, as far as I knew, I hadn’t been hurt at all in the wreck. I was the only one who knew that, and I had never told anyone, even though it would have been easy enough for someone to figure out. I had always expected to be asked about it, but I never was. Everyone was too frightened, I guessed; there was probably plenty that was frightening about me in those early days, bolted and sewn back together and drugged the way that I was. Even so, I always wondered why it was that everyone seemed happy to take the story I told them at face value, and that no one—not a single person—ever asked how it was possible that someone who had been sitting in the passenger’s seat of a car had wound up with so very many injuries on her left side.
Memory is a funny thing. People, as I learned from the handful of psychology books I later found at the library, can be tortured and not remember, kidnapped and not remember, attacked on the street and not remember. Some do remember, but only peripheral things, like the shirt they were wearing or the face on the billboard across the street, the song that was playing on the radio, the color of the sky, the stains on the walls, the sound of some other terrible thing that was happening to someone else nearby. I remembered everything about that afternoon, though, maybe because it wasn’t really such a surprise.
It was a Monday in March. Amos had been laid off a few days earlier after spending the long, cheerless winter working on a building site in Carlisle. Ever since the garage incident, I’d been locked in the house, unable to open the windows or doors. That day, however, he had decided to take me with him while he went fishing up at Possum Lake, on North Mountain, across the valley from the park where I would later work.
I would never know why he brought me along; it was a drizzly day, and maybe he thought he would be lonely, out at the end of the long wooden pier. I sat next to him on a plastic lawn chair, shivering. He had stopped bringing food to the house, eating on his way to and from work instead, with the result that he was increasingly puffy while I was becoming slighter with each passing week. I was determined to leave again, stowing my few possessions away in a corner of the attic, waiting for another chance, a better one, telling myself I would get it right this time, I would run to a place where he’d never find me. I knew it was little more than a fantasy, but I fought hard to hang onto it, clinging to it on bad days, struggling to remember it on what seemed to be good days, willing myself not to let go, not to forget.
I wasn’t as brave as my grandmother had been; or rather, if I was, it was in a different way. When he did the things he did, I didn’t shout or fight back, and after the day when I had fled so uselessly to the priest, I didn’t run. Instead, the war I fought was based on a single tactic: patience. I waited. I waited for him to make a mistake.
For a long time, I was hopeful, but I discovered that hope is hard to maintain when you’re hungry. Hunger trumps everything; there are no other thoughts, no other real desires or fears. Incr
easingly, I spent my days wandering around the house in the quiet, searching for something that would keep me from thinking about food, wishing for the radios Amos had taken away, wondering if I would actually go crazy from the silence. Often, I simply slept, since sleep was a place where I couldn’t feel the clamoring emptiness in my gut. But all the time, I was waiting. Ready.
That day, on the edge of the dock, with no one else around to see us, I stood up tentatively to stretch, then sat back down when Amos yanked on my arm. He was tense; I could see that. He kept recasting his line for no reason, his face an almost eerie blank as he stared out at the gray water.
It was the loss of his job, I thought. It would pass.
For a while, I, too, stared out at the water. The pier stretched out behind us, so long that it felt as if we were on an island by ourselves. Amos clapped a hand to his neck, swatting a mosquito, then was still again. There was no wind, and the long grasses and cattails seemed to stand sentry, guarding the hostile and impenetrable marshes.
I dozed off for a time, perhaps a few minutes, perhaps an hour. When I woke, everything around me was unchanged except the sky, which had cleared slightly. Somehow, that quality of light, dusky and variable even in the middle of the day, made me feel more than ever as if we were alone in the world, trapped under a glass dome.
Finally, Amos’s pole jerked down, bobbing and dancing in his hands. With a noise of satisfaction, he pushed his chair back and turned the reel with his large, rough fingers. The line, weighted with the struggling fish, cut a path through the water. I watched it creep toward us until he leaned back and pulled the fish out of the lake, bringing it swinging into the air.
It was a rainbow trout, long and silverish, with a red streak on its side. Outraged, it bent its body convulsively at the end of the line, the dim light catching on its sides. It was young, but large enough to be worth keeping.
Amos was pleased.
“Hand me the knife,” he said.
Rousing myself, I stood, holding onto the back of the lawn chair for a moment to steady myself. The green duffel bag with his fishing gear was behind us, and I loosened the ties that held it closed. Reaching into it, I felt my way past the tackle boxes and ponchos and coils of line. My fingers found the solid, heavy pocketknife at the bottom, and I grasped it, looking up.
The fish hung in the air, its tail still twitching, its soft, greenish belly glinting in the light. Its eyes were wide and shocked, its jaws stretched open. The tip of the hook pointed toward the sky, sharp and silver.
I turned my head, and the pier stretched out before me, almost surreally long, like a mirage. At the other end of it, the truck was parked at the edge of the lot, near the sand. As I looked at it, I imagined that I saw it slide backward, down the sloping asphalt. Straightening, I blinked hard at it, and the image dissipated. The truck wasn’t moving.
But, I thought with a sudden jolt of adrenaline, it could.
I bent down over the duffel bag again and dropped the knife in, shoving it deep into the bottom.
“It’s not here,” I said.
Amos looked over his shoulder. “What?”
“The knife. It’s not here.”
He scowled. The fish twitched and gasped noiselessly. “What are you talking about? Where else would it be?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe in the truck.” Retying the bag with trembling fingers, I summoned the courage to add, “I think I saw it on the dash.”
“Then why didn’t you say something? What’s wrong with you?”
I looked out over the lake and didn’t answer. It took all of my self-possession not to move, not to give myself away. I was sure he would see it, the fact that I was steeling myself, my heart racing. But he didn’t.
“Go get it,” he said disgustedly, and I closed my eyes, preparing the words that came next.
I turned to face him and waited.
“Go on!” he barked. “What’s the holdup?”
“It’s locked,” I said, fighting to keep my tone indifferent, my voice steady. “I need the keys.”
“What do you mean, it’s locked?”
“It’s locked. I locked it. I’m sorry.”
He gave me a look of disbelief and contempt. “Up here? What are you, crazy?”
I bowed my head. He couldn’t see my face, couldn’t hear the pounding in my veins as it reached a crescendo, its sound filling my ears.
Reaching into his pocket, he handed me the keys. Then he turned back to the fish, sitting down and bending over, working the hook out of its mouth.
The keys shone in my palm. For the briefest of moments, I stared at the back of his head, hesitating, just like the thirteen deer I would one day count in the darkness, frozen by their fear just as they should have fled.
Then I saw it: his neck tensed, and he lifted his head. Realizing what he had done.
I ran.
My feet pounded on the boards of the pier, each step ringing through the air like a shot, one two one two one two. I heard a crash behind me as he leaped up, stumbling over his chair and shouting as it fell into the water. I was running forward, faster than I ever thought possible, my weak legs spurred on by sheer willpower, complete and utter fright. The lakes and trees around me blurred, a smear of gray and brown, unreal. All I could see were the boards in front of me, the reeds at the shoreline, the truck. Behind me, I heard Amos’s strides slamming against the wood. I could picture his arm outstretched, grasping for me as he yelled. The shoreline approached, bobbing up and down in time with my panicked steps, and I flew, soaring off the end of the pier, landing in the sand, screaming, reaching out for the truck, my body lunging forward, my entire being stretching toward the door handle, my mind a white-hot blank, everything in me concentrated on the key, the key, the key.
My fingertips found the handle. I could see the ignition through the window.
I pulled, and the door opened. Gasping, I threw myself into the seat, holding the key to the ignition, hands shaking violently.
I dropped it.
Amos grabbed me and lifted me bodily, throwing me so hard I landed ten feet away, in the gravel, sending up a shower of dirt.
In a bound, he was at my side, standing over me. I panted, looking up at him, raising a hand to shield myself.
“You think you’re so smart?” he shouted.
It was one of the last things I would ever hear him say.
Pulling his leg back, he kicked me sharply, driving the steel toe of his boot into me as I curled on my side. Then he did it again, and again. I sank my fingers into the gravel, trying to crawl away, but he simply followed me, his boot thudding into my flesh. Insanely, I was still reaching for the truck, trying to slide toward it, but that ended soon enough. I didn’t feel the bones break, didn’t feel my ribs fracture or my hip give way. What I felt was the points of the gravel pressing into my cheek as I lay with my arm resting limply, uselessly, in front of me. I thought I would never move again.
Our ordinary monsters. What are we supposed to see when we look at them, their monstrosity or their ordinariness?
He didn’t kick me in the head, which was lucky; otherwise, I probably would have needed new eyes, a new face. When he was finished, he bent down and grabbed me under my arms, dragging me to the truck, not seeming to notice the twin ruts my heels left in the gravel. He fastened the seatbelt around me, which would seem odd in hindsight; maybe, at first, he intended to take me to the hospital, as he had done after the garage episode. I could only imagine, later, what kind of story he might have come up with this time in order to explain what had happened, but as it turned out, he managed to tell a tale that was completely convincing without even saying a word.
I must have been making some kind of noise, moaning maybe, but he sat down in the driver’s seat and shut the door without looking over. The engine started, and he drove us out of the parking lot, pulling onto the curving road.
After a few minutes of calm, he began to gather speed, taking the turns hard, whipping us first
right, then left. At first, I thought we might be rushing to the doctor, but as the tires began to skid with each curve, spraying gravel over the edges of the steep drops that lined the road, I realized that that wasn’t it.
I said his name, and he glanced at me.
“There’s blood on your mouth,” he said. “You’re drooling on yourself. Wipe it off.”
Slowly, I did as I was told, lifting my hand to my face and then sliding it along the inside of the door, grasping the armrest, slumping forward in the seat, breathing through my mouth. He kept his eyes fixed on the road, his jaw set. The needle on the speedometer edged upward; the rocks and trees flew by. He wasn’t blinking, and, looking at him through the strange film that was clouding my vision, I suddenly knew what was coming. He said nothing, just stared through the windshield, a harshly determined look coming into his eyes, bouncing in his seat whenever we hit something in the road. I didn’t say anything, either, because I didn’t know the words; because it hurt to breathe; because if I couldn’t escape, I was content to die. Then, as the car went faster and faster and the engine screamed louder and louder, I thought I might say something, take the risk, even if he would be angry, even if he would strike me, and had just turned toward him when he spun the wheel and, with a flick of the wrist, steered us straight into a telephone pole at the edge of some stranger’s yard.
There was a burst of dust, a sound so loud I thought a grenade had been dropped in my lap. Then it was over.
He hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt, even though he’d put mine on. He went over the steering wheel, into the glass.
And that was that.
Later, I would hate him for having done it, for having done all of it on purpose, but by then it was too late. Whatever words I had for him were just empty sounds. What can you say to a dead man, especially one who’s already been buried by the time you can sit up, by the time you can once again say your own name?
I went to the chapel once, the one in the hospital, while I was still in the wheelchair. It was nearly Easter. Most of the stitches were out by then, although the bones would take much longer to heal. It was a Protestant service, and the minister was giving a sermon on Matthew, the part that describes the Last Supper. “And Jesus said,” he intoned, like someone who was trying to make himself sound important, “‘This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” I began to titter, then laughed so loudly they had to wheel me out of the place. The pouring out of blood, as I could have told him, had nothing at all to do with forgiveness. Blood was blood, and suffering was suffering. It didn’t redeem anyone. It couldn’t. The world went on exactly as it had before, regardless of whose blood had been poured out for what reason. Jesus, I thought, had known what was in store for him and had only been trying to give it a meaning, to make it something other than the useless and routine act of cruelty it was.
Ways to Hide in Winter Page 25