A Hidden Place

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “Pardon me?”

  “Mother always called them mille-feuilles. Mary-Jane—that’s my sister—my, how she loved those pastries! She was always pestering Mother. ‘Make up your mill-fills, Mama, make up your mill-fills!’ She ate and ate and never got fat. Not like me …”

  “And how is your sister?” the Reverend asked, puzzled.

  “Dead,” Liza said. “Dead and, I presume, in hell.”

  Reverend Shaffer frowned. “The judgment’s not ours to make, Mrs. Burack.”

  “You didn’t know Mary-Jane, Reverend. Please—take a mille-feuille.”

  But the Reverend only gazed at her coolly and drifted away.

  How different it had been when she was a girl. In those days there had been virtue and vice, distilled and pure essences between which one might choose. Not this muddying, not this terrible confusion. Liza straightened her spine and gazed at the Wilcox woman—Nancy’s mother.

  “Love your butter tarts,” she said.

  Faye Wilcox looked at her as if from a great distance. “You haven’t even tried one, Liza dear.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. But they’re so beautiful. Just so perfect.”

  “Thank you,” Faye said.

  “Did you see my mille-feuilles?”

  “Lovely as always.”

  She is so hard, Liza thought sadly. Hard as granite. At one time, of course, they had been friends— allies, at least; wary, but with the same goals before them. In those days (it would have been three years ago: she remembered the annual picnic, “Summer 1929” printed on the invitation cards) Liza had been the leading light of the Baptist Women. It was Liza who had organized the letter campaign to the public school board concerning their thoughtless promotion of the Darwin Theory in the high-school textbooks; it was Liza who had chaired the Temperance Committee. Everyone agreed that without Liza Burack the Baptist Women would have been a vastly less effectual organization.

  But then things had begun to happen. Things over which she had no control. That Blaise girl had moved in. Creath began to act strangely. Mary-Jane had come down sick off in Oklahoma, and there was no way Liza could visit, not merely on account of the distance but because of the sort of woman Mary-Jane had allowed herself to become.

  The upshot of it all was: Liza faded. She had heard other people use that expression. Faded. It was an odd word. It made her think of flowers left too long in a vase. She thought with some astonishment: I have faded.

  And of course Faye Wilcox had stepped into the vacuum Liza had left; and now it was Faye who organized the letter campaigns, the library boycotts; now it was Faye everyone looked to for guidance.

  But Faye had her own Achilles’ heel, Liza thought, suppressing a certain vindictive pleasure. She had that daughter of hers, who was quite notorious. Faye herself complained sometimes, though she was shrewd enough to blame it on the schools….

  And now, Liza thought, Nancy Wilcox and Travis Fisher were going together.

  “I suppose,” Liza said, “you’ve heard about Nancy and my sister’s boy?”

  Faye adopted a stem equanimity. Her eyes were steely, buried in small effusions of flesh. “I know they’ve been seen together.”

  “My goodness, hasn’t Nancy talked it over with you?”

  “Nancy is not inclined to do that.”

  “Faye, that girl doesn’t appreciate what you do for her.”

  Faye relaxed a little. “Indeed she does not. I’m sometimes grateful Martin isn’t alive to hear the back talk she gives me. It would break his heart.”

  “You deserve better.”

  “It’s in the Lord’s hands,” Faye Wilcox said primly. “And Travis? Have you had any trouble—?”

  “Creath says he is unhappy at work. But no real trouble, no, thank God.”

  “The times …” Faye Wilcox said.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Of course, the boy’s mother …”

  “Tragic.” Liza added, “I mean, her death.”

  “One wonders if tendencies are inherited.”

  “He is a hard worker, in spite of what Creath says. He seems quite stable here. The influence of the home counts for so much, don’t you think?”

  Faye nodded grudgingly and brushed the air above her butter tarts. Flies buzzed.

  “Still, it could be worse,” Liza said. “The two of them.”

  Faye Wilcox gazed across the lawn, the baking asphalt street, her eyes unfocused.

  “It could be,” she admitted.

  There, Liza thought. It had been decided. In that strained admission, a truce. Nancy and Travis would be allowed to continue seeing each other.

  It was, for both Liza and Faye, the best of the meager alternatives. Faye had accepted it … grudgingly, no doubt, for it returned to Liza a measure of control.

  Now, Liza thought, now what does this mean? What does this portend for the future?

  “Those tarts just look so good,” Liza said.

  Faye held one out to her by the paper wrapper an offering. “Please.”

  “Thank you,” Liza said, biting deeply into the pastry.

  The ripe sweetness of it exploded in her mouth.

  Trav and Nancy made Friday night a regular thing. Twice, as the month crawled toward September, he met her on Saturday as well. When there was nothing at the Fox or the Rialto they walked up The Spur toward the railway depot or out to the wide, grassy fields where the Fresnel ran beyond the town. Nancy knew where the wild strawberry patches were, though the dry season had yielded very few berries. And, slowly, Travis had come to know Nancy.

  He liked her. He harbored an admiration for her frankness, her outrageous willingness to defy convention. She had quite consciously put herself in a position Travis had long occupied against his will: outsider, loner—“misfit” was the word she liked to use. And that fascinated him. But it disturbed him, too, the lightheartedness of it, as if she were playing a game with something really quite dangerous, something she did not altogether understand … compromising her femininity with this reckless curiosity. He liked her, but in a strange way he was also afraid of her.

  They had come to the strawberry fields again. The sun was going down now, the day’s heat beginning to abate, darkness rising from the eastern horizon beyond the ruin of a shack where, Nancy said, an eccentric railway switchman had once lived. The town was not far away—the train depot was hardly more than a quarter mile distant, obscured by a stand of trees—but their isolation seemed complete. They found a few berries and then Nancy put out a blanket over a bare patch of ground by the tumbledown hut, and they sat there watching the river run with their backs against the sun-warmed wood. A breeze had come up … the twilight breeze, Nancy called it.

  She held his hand, and her skin was warm and dry.

  She said after a time, “You like that place? The Burack place?”

  Travis shrugged. “It’s all right.”

  “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  “I don’t have much choice. It’s a place to live.”

  “You make money down at the plant?”

  “Some.”

  She smiled knowingly. “I bet that Creath Burack siphons off most of it for rent. Am I right?”

  “He takes a share. I save a little.” She was leading up to something, Travis thought.

  “How about that girl upstairs?”

  “Anna?” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t see much of her.”

  “She’s a big mystery, you know. Everybody talked about her for a while. Still do sometimes.”

  “Really? She’s so quiet—”

  “Travis, that’s a major crime in itself. But there’s more to it. There must be. Sure, she’s quiet. Nobody knows where she comes from or how she happened to end up in Haute Montagne. One day she was living at the Buracks’, that’s all anybody knows. But there are rumors. Man named Grant Bevis, used to live next door to your aunt and uncle, married man—he left town real quick not too long after Anna Blaise moved in. Anna takes in sewing but she
never shows her face in town. Answers the door sometimes … probably gets all her work that way: people take her sewing just so they can get a glance at her.” Nancy gazed up at a solitary cloud. “They say she’s beautiful.”

  “Haven’t you seen her?”

  “Maybe I have. Maybe I haven’t. Do you think she’s beautiful?”

  “Yes,” Travis said.

  “You talk to her much?”

  “She comes down to dinner. Creath does most of the talking.” He stretched out on the blanket. “I went up one time and offered to help her with the sewing. She said no, she was fine.”

  In fact he had stayed a little longer, trying to make small talk. Anna Blaise had sat on the bed, smiling encouragingly but answering in monosyllables. In a modest blouse and skirt she had looked more than attractive, she had been almost devastatingly beautiful, lithe and pale and still, like a piece of china statuary … and Travis had made himself leave the room because if he did not he would have been beside her on the bed, kissing her. He felt sure she would not have objected. He could have done anything he wanted. She did not, after all, object to Creath’s attentions.

  And he could not help thinking: why, why? How could she have compromised herself that way, and why did she seem in spite of it so pure?

  A mystery, Nancy had said. Yes.

  But he could tell her none of this.

  “You like her,” Nancy said.

  He pressed her hand. “I like you.”

  She said airily, “I don’t believe in monogamous love. Does that shock you, Travis? I believe it’s possible to love more than one person. Even sexually. I believe—”

  He touched her cheek and kissed her.

  She moved her body closer to his.

  They kissed until the sun was gone and the darkness had closed down around them- He was stroking her then, memorizing the feel of her body beneath the cotton dress, and it might have gone farther, might have reached a consummation Travis had only dared dream about … but she sat up suddenly, her wide eyes luminous in the last of the daylight, and said: “Travis! There’s somebody here!”

  “You want a ride, Nancy?”

  It was Greg Morrow. Nancy was able to make out his silhouette against the sky. He was big, his arms were prickled with black hairs, his angular face was a shadow. He hunched forward threateningly. And there was another shape looming behind him, one of Greg’s buddies, an illiterate millworker named Kluger.

  Next to her, Travis climbed very slowly to his feet. Nancy’s stomach was leaden with fear for him.

  Nevertheless she said, “No, thank you, Greg, I would not like a ride. You shouldn’t have followed me.”

  Greg came closer, his hips thrust forward, his hands loose at his sides.

  “Just curious,” he said. “Just wanted to know what Miss Too-Good-For-Me is up to. Miss Royal Twat.” He spat at Travis’s feet. “Rolling in the dirt with a shit-heel farmboy. Well, well.”

  She stood up. A moment ago, she thought dazedly, everything had been so nice…. “Go away, Greg.”

  “No,” he said. It was a hostile, insinuating whisper: “I want you to ride with me.”

  Travis started forward. But Greg was quick, Greg was terribly quick, and she saw his fist fly out like a piston and heard it connect with Travis’s face.

  Travis reeled back. She looked up at him and saw a ring of blood around his mouth. He was sagging against the timbers of the shack. His eyes were closed.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said.

  Greg laughed. “You dirty-mouthed cunt,” he said triumphantly. “Come on, cunt.” And his friend moved closer, too.

  Greg reached out for her. She drew back against the wall of the shack, next to Travis. Her heart was beating wildly, she could hardly see for the tears that had started in her eyes. But I will fight, she thought. He will not have me without a fight.

  Greg came forward again, his hand suddenly clenched on her wrist … and then, so quickly that she did not understand at first what had happened, Travis’s fist clubbed down on the side of Greg’s head, his foot came up between the legs of Greg’s greasy denims.

  It was clumsy, Nancy thought, but terribly effective. Greg stumbled back and then fell to the ground, clutching himself, shouting “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” —so loudly that Nancy thought the whole town might hear.

  Travis turned to face Kluger … but Kluger, his mouth an astonished 0, only stumbled back and pulled Greg to his feet.

  She looked at Travis and thought: How often has he had to do this!

  His eyes were dilated, vacant. He stared at Greg and Kluger. Greg, crimson-faced, drew himself up as if he might be willing to stay and fight it out; but Kluger whispered something in his ear and Greg nodded and backed off. It was over as quickly as that. Greg shouted once from the darkness, an insult or a threat—Nancy could not make out the words—and then there was the sound of Greg’s Model T ratcheting down a side road toward The Spur.

  “They’re gone,” she breathed.

  She felt Travis relax next to her.

  “You’re hurt,” she said. “Let me help. Travis?” She took his hand. “Please.”

  She led him across the dark field, down the shallow bank of the Fresnel to a quiet place she knew where pussy willows had grown up. The river had retreated in the dry season but she took his hand and guided him across a pair of broad, flat rocks until they stood surrounded by running water. “Kneel down,” she said.

  He went down on his haunches at the edge of the rock.

  She cupped fresh water from the Fresnel and washed his mouth with it. There seemed to be no loose teeth. That was good.

  His blood ran into her hand and she dried him with the hem of her skirt. She did what she could, then sat cross-legged on the rock with his head in her lap. He was breathing more easily now. The first stars were coming out.

  “This is what it means,” he said thickly.

  She looked at him, frowning. “Travis?”

  He said, “You let him screw you?”

  It was a vulgar question but she answered seriously. “No. He wanted to. I wouldn’t. That’s why he’s mad at me.”

  Travis nodded, seemed to mull over the information.

  “This is what it means,” he said finally. “Being a ‘misfit’.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “It’s not fun.”

  She said, “They’re gone now, Travis.”

  “Sometimes you win. Mostly they win. There’s more of them.”

  She rocked him. She put her hand on his forehead. “Dear God. This isn’t new to you, is it?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What were you?” She stroked his hair. “What could you possibly have done?”

  He said nothing.

  She said, “Was it something about your mother?”

  She thought at first he wouldn’t answer. But then, softly, he said, “Everyone knew.” He drew a breath. “I guess I was the last to know. Isn’t that strange? That I should be so close to her and not know—not even suspect!”

  He sat up and faced the darkness. She had to strain against the noise of the river to hear him.

  “We had no money. I knew that. We had loans out on the property Every year a little deeper in debt. I knew that, too. But the other thing. …” He took Nancy’s hand, and his grip was frighteningly tight. “I thought they were friends, her men friends she called them, and sure they stayed sometimes— stayed the night even—but I didn’t know—I was only a kid—I didn’t know they paid. …”

  And then she was holding him, because he could not contain his weeping, and a chill had crept up from the river.

  Chapter Four

  Travis thought often of Nancy Wilcox. But his thoughts returned almost as often to Anna Blaise, to what Nancy called “the mystery.”

  Creath let him borrow the Model A for an evening (after he’d promised to bring it back with the tank full—it was three-quarters empty when he’d climbed in) and he picked up Nancy at the Times Square. They drove far beyond
the town, driving for the sake of putting miles in back of them, Nancy watching with a kind of rapt eagerness as the road unfolded. “Like flying,” she said. “I wish we could just keep going forever.”

  September was already a week old. The wind that carried back her hair was cool and fragrant. When they were thirty or forty miles out of Haute Montagne, Travis pulled over and parked them under a stand of bur oaks. There was no other traffic on the road and the stars seemed immensely bright. They had escaped the aura of the town; it was easier to breathe here, Travis thought.

  “See much of Anna?” Nancy asked.

  He had expected the question. She had taken an interest almost as intense as Travis’s own. She’s one of us, Nancy had said the week before, whether she knows it or not. An outcast. It’s like the three of us are connected somehow.

  “The usual,” Travis said.

  She nodded. “I’d like to meet her sometime.”

  “I don’t know if I can arrange that.”

  “You don’t think she’d come? Or don’t you want to ask?”

  “I don’t think Creath would let her.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He hesitated. But then he thought: well, why not tell her? He had come to trust Nancy a damn sight more than he trusted Creath or his Aunt Liza. If he owed his loyalty to anyone, he thought, it was to her.

  “It’s Creath. He uses her. And I think he’s scared somebody might find out.”

  He explained about the late-night visits up the stairs.

  Nancy was wide-eyed, then thoughtful. She put her hands behind her head and gazed up at the canopy of oaks. “The princess in the tower,” she said faintly. “She’s a prisoner.”

  “She doesn’t give him any argument.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Maybe he’s blackmailing her. Maybe he threatens her.” She shook her head. “Jesus! I never did like the man. But this—!”

  “We still don’t know why she’s there. Where she came from.”

  “Find out,” Nancy said. Her features were suffused with new purpose. Her eyes seemed to shine in the dark. “She’s a prisoner. We know that much. And—you know what else, Travis? Maybe we can rescue her.”

  He came home late, parked the car carefully, went upstairs and fell at once into a dazed half-sleep. The footsteps brought him awake again.