by Jeffrey Lent
“All he wants is to explain he was a boy. That he did not know what he was doing. That he was a stupid boy. And that he is sorry. So sorry. It’s all he wants, all he thinks he wants through those long years. Because he knows when she does come, which he no longer quite believes will happen, it will be enough. Because he thinks that would be what she is looking for. And more—he thinks it’s all he’s looking for. The chance to say how sorry he is. But what he does not know, what he cannot know until he looks up and there she is, is neither of them are the same people. She is not that young girl. As important, he is not that young boy. He would be if he could. He thinks he will be. But he is not. He is a man grown into himself.
“So then there is that afternoon. Weather aside, one like any other. Except he looks up and there she is. Standing down at the end of the walk. Looking at him up on the porch. Her face revealing in one look that everything he’d thought this would be will be something else. Because what he sees there is only just a little fear of him but the rest a mask of pure loathing, a disgust of him so true as if she sees down into that empty soul of his and knows it better than he even can. And he feels shabby, feels caught out, found out. And he sits thinking perhaps she will just look at him and walk on, that her purpose will be satisfied. But she pauses only long enough for him to hope she’ll go on and then comes up the walk. Lifting the front edge of her dress each time she steps up the bricks. It was all still tended then. Until she is at the bottom of the porch steps, in the shade of the house where she can look him right in the eye.
“She tells him she’d thought he was dead. Nothing in her voice to show she wished it was otherwise.
“He told her she’d tried but not hard enough.
“And she just stood looking up at him. As if measuring him. She already knew him. So it was something else she was studying and he looked away from her gaze, knowing it was pity of him she felt. And he was still looking away when she asked him what had become of her mother.
“And there you see. He had her then. All the pretense of those years fell away just like that. He was revealed to himself as purely and cleanly as a tooth. So when he looked back at her he smiled. And he raised up his hand, his one hand, and ran it over this scar right here upside his temple, still smiling at her. And she looked serious at that smile and watched him stroke himself like that and he saw her fall away just a little bit. Not too much. Just what he was hoping for.
“It was a moment of miracles. She there before him: no longer some remembered teenage girl so much older than him but a full-blown woman still young and lovely, arched upright down there before him. In her best clothes better than any he owned by appearance but still he could look at her and see she was a countrywoman, a country colored woman who’d done well for herself and had dressed as such to make her journey back. And he could sit there, feeling ruined and proud and stronger than he had in years, maybe all his life, and look down at her and know that the both of them, each helpless before it, were right back in that rain-pouring-down kitchen all those years before. And he did not know any reason not to trail her over with his eyes, sitting silent that long time with her quest still out unanswered in the air between them, but sweep her with his eyes and let her watch him doing that. Because that was what lay between them. Then, and before, and always. And each knew it.
“Now it seems to me that you have begun to learn about sorrow. And that’s good. Good for you. But what you still don’t understand is desire. As a poet, Foster Pelham, you have to understand desire. We have, I believe, covered a portion of it. When we talked about the nature of man, of evil. That was yesterday. Or was it the day before? It don’t matter. Because man is at least an octagon. And desire is the one point that will lead. Where you have no choice. So, the poet is after desire.”
(“No,” he said. “I’m not a poet.”)
“A truth-seeker. And you should not disclaim that. I don’t need long stories to explain desire. Desire is not what the preachers talk about. What they talk about is what they fear most simply in themselves: chasing after whatever they can get. That is not desire. That’s not passion. That’s simply old root-hog-or-die. It’s why I can’t abide religion. They will not get down in the dirt and talk about how things really are. The best they can do is prate about the little common things that afflict each and every one of us. But they shy from the big ones. Because the big ones are so vast, reaching out to all of life, that there is no way to make a neat parable of them. There is no simple right or wrong. Desire then, desire is when you are helpless. It’s not a lapse, you see. It’s the truth of yourself. It’s all you have. All you can ever hope for. Right here on the sweet old earth. It is everything. It is, when you have it, something you know the Lord would bow His head before. Because, if He knows nothing more, the Lord understands desire. And when you have that, when it owns you, directs you, you have no choice but to surrender to it.
“So that man up on the porch revealed to himself. It was very simple what he did. He held his smile while he told her: what she should do. Told her to go over to Fishtown, to Niggertown, and went on then, enjoying the loss of twenty-five years to describe to her where he was talking about. Because when she’d left Sweetboro there was of course no such place. So he journeyed back and laid out the geography to her. Told her to go over there and ask around. Because he knew she would find no answer there. Because he knew there was none to tell her. But wanted her to do that first, because he knew there was only him. Wanted her to know for her ownself he was the only one she could come to. Reminded her she was a fugitive woman. And then told her what it would cost her to learn what she wanted. He sat up straight in that rocker, leaving that goddamn cane flat on the porch floor and forced himself erect to look down at her. Still smiling at her. And told her what she would have to trade for what she wanted. And did not wait to watch her face but bent and scrabbled for his cane and stood sideways a moment on the porch, looking off away from her, letting her see that some part of him still worked exactly right.
“It did not matter what she told him then. He looked down at her face all blotched with anger, still so pretty and fine. Fine like an animal, the sort of creature a man would make if he could make anything he wanted, to his own specifications—wasn’t that after all what those old Greeks were up to with their nymphs and naiads, the woman as a creature of the world, out of stone, rock, wood or some such thing, some material that we strive to join with? Some other beyond just the simple frail humanity of a woman?
“So he waved her off, just waved a hand at her response. Told her again to go over to Niggertown and see for herself, then come back. Not sure she would go anywhere. Just wanting her to have to wait. And he turned then and went on in the house, shutting the door behind him, sliding home the bolt he almost never used. So she could hear him do that. He wanted her to hear the sound of the lock sliding home. Wanted her to know she’d have to come up on the porch when she returned and knock at that door. That he would not be out waiting on her. Wanted that locked door to make clear there was no negotiation.
“Because the thing about desire and regret, when you’ve harmed someone and then have years to shred it and play it over time and again—the thing is you fail to comprehend the origin of that initial episode. You attach layers of meaning to it and feel it was an aberration, some moment of yourself out of yourself. That is what regret does. It allows you to live with yourself. You know what they say—all men in prison are innocent? It’s not that they are and it’s not even that they truly believe they are; it’s that they grow to understand themselves in such a way as to see that moment, the trigger that set them off in the first place, that got them to where they are, they see that as something separate from themselves. They come to believe, to know, that ever again their choice would be a different one. Not only in the past but in the future. Because they cannot allow the truth.
“The truth, Foster Pelham, is very simple. The nature of man is divided. And because we cannot live in the light we refuse to see the dark
surrounding us. Until it owns us.
“So he sat up in that locked house the remainder of the afternoon. Because it was as if time had gone away. It was just hours of the day. Twenty-five years. More than that. He had no regret you see, no sorrow or remorse. All that was a confection he’d built around himself over the years. So he could live to that day. Because it was not love you see. What he thought it had been. There was terrible anger in it. Elemental is the word comes to mind. Possession is another one. To possess her in a way she would never be able to deny. That she could walk away from but would follow her, always. Yes, always.
“Now you can sit there looking at me like I’m some sort of monster. I don’t mind it one bit. You don’t know any better. But it is something that every man feels, at least once in his life. If he is lucky. That’s right. Lucky. That sort of passion. Beyond caring about anything. Any goddamn thing at all.
“So he did not move but sat in this chair right here. Waiting. For the first time in twenty-five years just waiting. Not thinking at all. Only a man, every bit and morsel of him. Roused, unstoppable. Needing nothing. Not food, not a drink of water, nothing at all. Not even that fucking cane. Which he laid up flat on the table and left there. So when late afternoon that knock at the door he knew was coming came he left that cane, and walked straight and steady and thoughtless as if he was fourteen years old again, down to the door. Where he could see her through the glass, her face turned down, her shoulder pressed close to the door. Waiting for him. He stopped some feet away. He knew she’d heard him coming but he did not care. He wanted to see her there. Waiting.
“When he opened the door she started to speak. But he reached out and laid his fingers flat over her mouth and held them there. Until she lifted her head to look at him. Her eyes wide and flat all at the same time upon him. And every bit of her piled up in those eyes. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. It did not matter that she flinched from him. He expected she would flinch more than once in the time ahead of them. In truth, he liked that, he wanted it. He wanted to hear her moan, not only with pleasure but agony. Because it was the only way she could apprehend him, could understand all of him. Which he knew she could do.
“When she was quiet, he took her by the hand and led her into the house. Down the hall and up the stairs. And got her all the way to the landing, at the door to his bedroom where she stopped him. She reached her free hand and took his shoulder, his short one, and turned him to face her. She stood like that a long moment. Looking at him. And he saw not just the rage and anger that he expected but also some fracture in her soul, some infirmity, an ancient chasm. And he wondered then if she might kill him, might finish the job she failed at so many years ago. Thinking that the same way she had returned him to his essential self, perhaps he’d done the same for her. This did not frighten him. It was excitement, was what it was.
“When she spoke he saw the hatred of him there in her eyes, as if her voice was something apart from her. And it was that hatred he wanted. He wanted to own it. Not tame or change or make it go away. But to own. He held his eyes on hers then and saw the shrink of retreat. Ferocious, he gazed upon her. For as long as it took for her to look away. Because there was no negotiation. Then, her head turned, toward the door she was already entering even though she had not yet moved; then, she told him she’d heard what happened to Peter. He was confused a moment. He had to think who Peter was. He had been sure no one would talk to her. Because they would not know her, and they would know him. But Peter did not matter to him, then or ever. What mattered was she was now moving ahead and he was following, toward the bed.”
Still raining, hard. The fire burned down, the room hot and close. The long windows steamed inside and oily from driven rain, the room at midmorning dark as dawn. Foster stiff, holding himself from motion, wet under his arms, his skin rippling in the moisture and heat with recoil. Looking down at the stained green blotter. He could not recall when he’d taken his eyes from the old man seated up close beside him. The smell in the room strong of the old body, astringent, sour, blooded, as if some must, some musk, came off the old man as he talked, rising up in pitch as he went on, the smell one of decay and excitement all at once. All Foster wanted was away. He dreaded the old man reaching out that one claw hand to touch him someway, to draw his attention, his eyes back to that bitter bright maniac old face. He did not move.
Quiet but for the lash and splatter of rain. Time to time the low fire settled and would pop, some small chuckle of fire. After a long silent while, Mebane rose up groaning from his chair, leaning on the cane. He hitched his way around the table to the grate, where he took up the poker and stirred the sifting coals. The movement a terrible labor. As if sitting so long had crippled him more. And Foster thought maybe this was the old man’s natural gait, that his liveliness, his seeming ability of the past days, had been an effort. Some illusion for Foster. Or even for both of them. To get through it. To get here.
Finally Foster spoke. “So what was it? What did you tell her?”
Mebane’s one hand was up on the slender dark wood mantelpiece over the fireplace. Slowly he turned and leaned forward, his body a crane up over the tripod of the cane and his two feet. He smiled at Foster.
“Why, boy, I had to give her something. Her coming that long way and all. I had to give her something for the effort. And she knew about that old nigger Peter, what happened to him. So it was an easy place to start. What I told Leah, what I told your grandmother, was that after those boys done that way with Peter her mama and I had a little talk. It was Helen anyway tended me with my bashed-in head and mashed ear. It was a bad time. Everything was gone to hell. She was too scared to run. She’d seen Peter after they were done with him. She was still a young woman, even to a boy like me. That high fine round ass. Oh my. It was a beautiful story. It had Leah stunned right back down sitting on the bed still just wrapped in a sheet. And me standing there with my trousers back up, still feeling her against me as I told her how I’d made her mother my woman for fifteen years. Told her my father, our father, was dead. So Helen was my woman then. My housekeeper yes but my woman as well. Whenever I wanted her, however way. It was some moment, I can tell you. Grace is what comes to mind. All of it, as I told her, I could see it. Some rarefied moment of the mind. It makes you wonder what makes truth, where truth begins or ends. Because what I was telling her became my memory as I told her and I stood with the words coming and saw it becoming her memory too. It was lovely. I could not stop.
“So I went on. I made a child come, a girl child but an idiot. An imbecile. Soft-brained. Her name was Nell. Now that was pure genius. Just like that, rolling off my tongue. Her own mother’s name turned around. I described how Helen tried to keep her hid, hid away from everybody as much she could but that little girl could not be stopped. And I suggested to Leah that her mother was not without complicity, to go from the father to the son like that, the blood all mixed around. As if it was the one thing she knew. As if she could not stop herself from being what she was. And watched your grandmother’s face then, knowing that what she’d just done with me was no different, that it fell the same way.
“But I did not stop there. It had to come all the way from the night she brained me and run off in the rain to that afternoon twenty-five years later when she hunched naked sweating in my bed. So what I told her I had done with her mother, and what her mother had done with me, was someway a version of what she and me had just done. Some better version. One in which both parties knew exactly what they were doing and why. Where there was no hazard like there had just been that one time I’d waited twenty-five years for but something else altogether. Where it was not love pictured but need. Dreadful terrible need that would not go away. Could not be slaked. For either one. Because it was what I wanted, you see. It was what I wanted it to have been with Leah.
“So the story goes on. There was that Nell. She made it come all the way around. An inspiration, she was. I made her an idiot but that could not stop her body. All sh
e was was body. I drew her tangled whole out of the air. What a daughter! Sister to your grandmother and cousin all at once. Who was fourteen years old when her throat was cut open in the middle of the night by someone unknown over in Niggertown where she’d been sneaking off for two-three years. Some jealous wife I suggested. Maybe even just some man sick of her. A simple creature-child who just wanted to lay back and splay her legs. The way any of us do. Leah fallen silent then, the sheet dropped off her shoulders. Flies landing on her and her not even aware. The smell of her still strong in the room. Her face like something broken by stone.
“Give me credit here—I made it short. Of course I was ready to wash myself. Get something to eat. It’s true, I wanted her gone. I had my reasons. But I did not torture her further. There was nothing left to tell anyway. It was just a detail to finish it off. How her mother then went out that night and walked the tracks to where the span is high over the river and dropped herself down into that water. That was all. I told her there was no grave. No marking. The niggers is afraid of suicides. But then, we all are, aren’t we? Then I left her. Alone in my room. So she could pull herself together and leave. I thought that was a nice touch, giving her that privacy. Even as I wanted her again and likely could have had her. But I was weary with it all. Some ways it had been so much for so long for so little. In the end, so little. Still, it was a good job. Wasn’t it?”