Читать книгу Rock Island Line - David Rhodes - Страница 10

FOUR

“OK, bring it along, but hurry up,” said John through the screen door. Then he returned to walking impatiently up and down in the yard. This grass needs to be cut again, he thought. I’ve never seen such a summer, an inch a day. An inch a day! A person ought to be able to watch it move.

“Should we bring some paper for starting a fire?” sang out Sarah from inside.

“No . . . yes . . . I don’t care. Hurry up.”

“Don’t shout,” said Sarah, bumping the door open with the picnic basket. “Oh, I forgot the blanket.”

“We don’t need a blanket.”

“Yes we do. Here, hold this.” She hung the basket on his arm and ran back inside. He began pacing again. Sarah returned with a heavy wool blanket, dropped it on the ground and went back for the small canister of cream. John began counting to himself, but at twenty-seven a dragonfly settled on the rim of the basket. It was solid blue, nearly iridescent, and its double wings were tinted the same color, like thinly colored glass, with lines of silver and sun dust. John stood very still. He’d seen many dragonflies, especially when he was little, fishing with his father, stacked up two and three at a time on the end of his pole, but never, so far as he could remember, one this color. It seemed so beautiful to him that even while looking at it he couldn’t believe it. When it flew away he felt as if he just had to have another look at it, dropped the basket and carefully pursued it, bringing the glasses up to his eyes whenever he had a chance to look at it sitting still.

Sarah came out with the cream, saw the abandoned basket of food, a cat within three feet of it, and her husband walking quickly down the road, crossing over a fence, off into a field, looking every once in a while into space with his binoculars. “Get out of here,” she yelled, rescuing the basket and sending the cat off down below the fence. Sarah secretly didn’t like cats and felt they were much too sneaky, and where some people thought they were independent and cunning, she thought they were stupid, vile, insensitive and cowardly. She threw a stick at it and it went across the road; then she looked around quickly for fear Mrs. Miller might have seen her. Satisfied, she went over to John’s Ford, put the basket and blanket in the rumble seat and got into the passenger’s side, easing herself down onto the soft leather. Wearing blue jeans was fun. She tied her scarf more tightly under her chin and just sat. No thoughts came to her, or pictures. She could see her husband coming back down the road, feel the warm sun, smell fall, hear noises and find small prism colors in the windshield; but vacantly, taking a mild pleasure in through all her senses, passively enjoying being alive—taking a vacation from motivation, interest and control.

John got in and started the motor. “What’s up, fat-face?” he asked, easing out of the driveway, smiling inwardly at the sound of his mellow-toned muffler.

“Just sitting,” said Sarah, putting her feet up on the glove compartment and accepting her whole self back. They almost never rode in the old Ford and when they did it was a pleasant novelty. It was a convertible with running boards, mechanical brakes and red paint. It made her feel important to ride in it, and waving at people from it was especially nice.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to wave at Ronny McClean, who stood in the ditch in front of his parents’ house at the edge of Sharon. John would. She looked into her faded denim knees and put her feet down.

“I wonder what it’s like to be like that,” asked John.

“Don’t talk about it. I’ll get upset.”

“One day he rode his bicycle over to Frytown and they finally found him in Lloyd Brenneman’s fruit cellar, eating a little banquet he had spread out on the floor. That’s the farthest he’s been from home in forty years. That was . . . let’s see . . . thirty or thirty-two years ago.”

“Don’t talk about it, John. It’s awful.”

“No it isn’t. At least, if you grew up with him. He’s never been any different.”

“That makes it worse.”

“It doesn’t. I kind of like him. He’s all right.”

“ You don’t like him. You just say that because you think that’d be good to feel that way—I’m sure you have a secret ambition to be a saint.”

“Sarah, that’s unfair. I only—”

“I know,” she said, and moved over closer to him. “It’s just, you know, how you are. Being bad isn’t so serious.”

“Yes it is.”

“You worry too much.”

“Besides, I do like him.”

“Why can’t you just accept that a madman gives you the creeps? You never learned to accept things and forget them.”

John’s voice rose to nearly an argumentative level. “It’d make more sense for you to learn to accept that there’re people like Ronny, and accept that it’s not so bad if there are. It’s possible to like someone for—”

“John, let’s don’t talk about it.”

“Not talking about it doesn’t solve anything.”

“There isn’t anything to be solved.” Both sat in a gloomy silence. John felt the beginning of what could materialize into a roaring headache. The air seemed too wet, too hot, and his most cherished car seemed made of wood and corrugated fasteners. He drove faster. They turned off the blacktop onto gravel, and the dust flew.

Two hundred feet in the air a large bird looked down on them. At that height the wind covered all the noise from the ground, and he could not hear the muffler or the popping of the gravel against the tires. Only the motion, and the dust stretching out behind the red car like so many giant balloons. He was too high to be hunting, cruising in long circles. He veered slightly to intersect with a lesser angel, the sensation passing through him in all its colors, and quite out of his own control he let out a joyful krreeeee. Below, the car slowed down and stopped, the dust catching up with it and blowing on ahead. Lights flashing: two tiny glass reflections. He swung off toward the west, the hayfields and long-grass pasture.

“It’s a broad-wing! I’m sure of it. Look at him—just look at him! Oh man, can you imagine him up there, the wind and—There he goes. Just look at him.”

Sarah was turned, unhurriedly going through the basket, looking for her own pair of field glasses, wondering if she hadn’t forgotten them.

“Here, take these, quick, look at him!”

Sarah adjusted the left eyepiece one half a digit to the plus side.

“Hurry up!”

She put them to her eyes, couldn’t find the bird, took them down, relocated it and brought the glasses back up.

“That’s nice,” she said.

“He’s too far gone now,” said John.

“I saw him,” she complained.

John put the car in gear and they were off again. Sarah waved at the Brogans sitting in their yard on steel-rung chairs. It seemed the motor was running smoother and he drove more slowly; soon he didn’t think about the rattles, and by the time they arrived at McDuffs pasture both of them were enjoying themselves immensely. They left the convertible in the road and crossed the woven-wire fence at the place it was nailed to a maple tree which not only supported the old wire but had engulfed it and held it toward its center with a hand’s breadth of wood. They walked back into the timber.

“Look,” said John. “There’s a kinglet. Look.”

“Don’t stop walking,” said Sarah.

“No, wait. Look. Right over there.”

Sarah stopped, and was immediately bitten by a vicious mosquito.

“Over there,” said John. Then, “This place is full of mosquitoes!”

“I told you.”

They continued on to the picnic table Marion McDuff’s father had built. The pasture had been his wife’s joy, and as a symbol of devotion he had built a table and a fireplace recessed against a sharply inclined bluff, in a partial opening of elms (the cursed tree), her name written in the fireplace cement. John and Sarah loved the little wild park. They fought off the bugs by cupping their hands and swinging them by the sides of their heads, and built a fire with the paper Sarah had brought. The gnats tenaciously hung on through the smoke, but retreated with the rising heat.

Then they sat on the picnic table and drank iced tea with lemon and honey. Out of the basket they took the warm turtle meat and ate it with salt, brown bread and butter. They talked about what animals it would be preferable to be, if you had to be born one.

“I wouldn’t want to be domestic,” said Sarah. “I’d rather be wild.”

“It’d be nice not to have to be afraid of people, though.”

“Domestic animals are afraid of people too.”

“I’d like to be a dog,” said John, “if I could be one of my father’s.”

“I wouldn’t. I’d be a wild horse—a mustang!”

“Anything wild has to spend all its time scrounging for food, or being afraid of bears.”

“Bears wouldn’t bother a mustang,” said Sarah.

“Of course they would. A horse wouldn’t have a chance against a bear.”

“It’d trample it to death with its sharp hooves. Jab! Jab!” Sarah made pummeling gestures, her fists representing hooves.

“That wouldn’t be much of a threat. Bears have claws, you know, and have enough strength in their arms to whing a horse, especially a mustang—a very small horse—several feet in the air.”

“Bears aren’t that strong. Nothing’s that strong. A fierce fighting mustang stallion could smash the biggest bear in the face.” And her fist came down on the table.

“Many times bullets don’t even penetrate a bear’s head. It’d just pounce on a horse’s back and it’d be all over.”

“A mustang stallion,” said Sarah, “would grab him off and fling him up into the air.” And with her clenched teeth she imitated the action.

“I’d rather be a fish,” said John. “A mud cat.”

“And get caught on a hook,” said Sarah, pouring out only one third a glass more of the iced tea, so that there would be two glasses left for later.

“Not just an ordinary fish. A smart one.”

“I see what you mean, I think,” said Sarah. That would be nice, she thought, lying in the deep holes during the day, sleeping on the bottom and watching the watery things . . . in a kind of liquid dream, the sunlight shimmering on the rocks, greenish yellow, all sounds soft and low—cows in the distance. Then going out at night into the shallows, hunting for smaller fish like a cunning, silent submarine, feeling the faster water carry you downstream, in among the roots of the shore . . . seeing the moon from underneath and hearing the oars of the Dark Lords in their long black boats, their footsteps on the bank, their fires winking across the tops of the ripples, deer drinking. Woodchucks eating green shoots. Leaves and water insects on the surface.

Their clothing inundated with smoke, an insect deterrent, they set off in search of birds, taking with them both binoculars, the thermos and the wildlife book. Sarah carried the blanket around her shoulders. She frequently let her thoughts be carried away by merely walking, or by the embroidery of the grasses. They waded in the stream, and she found smooth stones with color veins and put them in her pocket as remembrances. John saw a bobolink. They tried to catch crayfish until he became obsessed with finding an owl’s nest, and they tramped over what seemed to her several miles. But the reward so outweighted the walk she could hardly contain herself and broke into laughter when she raised the glasses and saw as though directly above her two huge, round, dusty white horned owls frowning at her. “Who,” she said. “Who. Who.” That made her laugh more. John was so excited he could do nothing but talk about how owls’ eyes were made and how, per square inch of flying surface, they were lighter than all other birds, their feathers softer, and how they had asymmetrical, adjustable ears nearly as long as their whole head. He read out loud from their book every scrap of information about them, and remarked that because there were two, it was a good year for owls and was an indication that the land would support them even through the winter. They seemed so comical because of their size, helplessness, dumb interest and aloofness—their unshakable faith in their own invulnerability at that height. They were also going to sleep.

Reading and thinking about owls made John want to find a place they could sit until it was dark in hope of seeing the parents hunting, gliding over with wild, burning eyes. They drank the last of the iced tea. They found a tall hayfield and lay down in it so that they would be invisible except from directly overhead. But despite the spectacle of the cloud formations, as subtle as frozen breath, with the darkening air came the bugs, and they were forced to give up the vigil and return to the fireplace. Several broken logs placed on top of the coals soon revived John’s defeated spirit and they sat against the nearest elm and watched the flames. Darkness descended around them with the cooler air. Sarah went over to the fire and put on more wood and let the warmth saturate her clothing until just that point where it was too hot, and moved back, turned and began on the front side.

John looked at her silhouetted against the leaping colors, then at the colors themselves, and began to daydream. The daydream tapered back to the fire and he found himself looking at Sarah again. He went back to daydreaming but returned again to the seat of the denim pants; and when she gave a little jump back from the heat, her face glowing red, the air full of her smell, he felt his desire rise. Unsuspecting, she came back to the tree, stretched and sat down. He put his arm around her, and she moved closer, still unknowing. He sat with his desire for a few minutes to see if it would stand the test of time, then unbuttoned her pants. “Oh, John!” she said. “Not here.”

“Why not?”

Sarah’s senses (already inflamed by fear and embarrassment) nearly exploded, like a barrel of fish dumped into a river, when she felt her pants being drawn off and her bare skin exposed to the open air. She began to loosen John’s buckle and pull his shirt down his arms. In his search for something to put under her buttocks, to protect her from the hard ground and to get her a little way up in the air, he found the blanket. “Oh, John,” she cried. “Love me. Love me,” closed her eyes on tentacled Hercules, and let her passion carry her to the other side of the doors of death, primeval darkness, and back again. Afterward, sweat rolling from where their bodies had touched, they dressed and made coffee, boiling water in a tin pail. They sweetened it and poured in cream from the little canister. Contented, and at the table, they sipped it.

I knew we’d want the cream, thought Sarah.

In 1941 there was a war. John was troubled, though he did not talk about it. The next year, in February, he told Sarah that he was going to enlist. It was supposed that he wouldn’t be accepted because of his age; but he was gone within weeks. He was a faithful letter writer, though the neighbors were disappointed because the letters contained no war news. That year he came home for Christmas and stayed twenty days, then was home again a year later for a shorter visit.

The idea of Sarah Montgomery being alone was at first thought to be an imminent danger. It was even suggested to Della that she should insist her daughter-in-law move in with her and Wilson in the country. Della was excited at the idea, and asked her right away. Sarah declined, and would accept no sympathy, denying as she did that there was even the slightest gloom in her life, and maintaining that she was perfectly safe—or as perfectly safe as anyone else. Remington Hodge’s father said: “I used to think at night sometimes, walking out to the barn maybe, or listening to the radio—of the image of that woman alone in her own house, sitting and reading, sewing, cooking for herself. I’d think about that and wonder, picturing myself there, see, standing knocking at the door, her opening it and . . . then I would force my thoughts away from it.” On September 18, 1943, Sarah gave birth to a boy, July Montgomery.

The adult congregation of the Sharon Center Baptist Church was spread out on the front lawn and steps. Wilson stood with some men on the landing before the opened door and their voices rang with short, tenorous bursts of laughter. They were dressed in suits and sports jackets, white shirts and ties, and their manner of talking seemed to be influenced gently by wearing them, as though they were children in front of a great dollhouse, pretending to be grownup. Many of their faces were nut brown from working exposed to the summer sun. Sarah was virtually surrounded by the other women on the grass, protecting her, it appeared, from the unwanted looks of the men. They talked about gardens. The lawn sloped away from them toward a pair of soft maples and an overhead wind rattled and turned the silver underside of their leaves so that the foliage of the two shimmered in the late morning light. Their trunks, despite great breadth, looked as though they had at one time partially melted and the flat pieces of bark undulated over them in waves. Underneath these giants, in the cool shade, sat the children on thick little wooden chairs, the seats of which were no more than a foot off the ground and on the backs were decals of red bears, giraffes and smiling rabbits. They all sat in a cluster facing a slightly larger but by no means full-size chair, on which Della Montgomery perched like a gold-finch with a Bible opened in her lap. Their eyes were glued to her as though she and not what she was teaching them was a marvel of unexpected creation, and perhaps in their inchoate minds they half suspected that in an exuberant expression she would fly away in a flash of color, huge blue-and-white wings sprout from her polka-dotted dress and disappear behind a cloud.

July Montgomery sat in the very front, wearing his new pair of cowboy boots and a shirt with snaps instead of buttons. He was three and his dark eyes burned in intense concentration, growing slowly into a frown of bitter hatred, his small hands knotted together in fists. Della, interrupting her story, asked a question:

“And do you know what happened then?”

July answered as though there were no one else there, only he and his grandmother, as though the question were only for him. “They hung a sign up,” he said darkly.

“And what did it say?”

“It said, ‘Here’s the king of Jews.’ ”

“Then what happened?”

“He died—because no water and they pushed a spear in Him.” July could hardly talk now, and began to stutter when he tried to go on.

Della continued. “That’s right, the soldiers killed Jesus with a spear and they took Him down from the cross and put Him in a tomb like a cave, and in front of the cave they rolled a great big rock that took all the soldiers to push, and they left Jesus there. Then three days passed.”

Tears were forming in July’s eyes, but his frown had eased. His fists uncurled. She continued:

“Three days passed while His friends felt so sad that He was gone, but Jesus had made them a promise. Do you remember the promise?”

“Yes!” shouted July, jumping from his chair. “He rolled the rock away!”

The eyes of the adults turned toward him from the church.

“No, July, that wasn’t the promise. What was the promise?” she asked gently.

“He rolled the rock away!” hollered July again, his face now filled with uncontainable joy and good feeling. Della tried once more to settle him down and get him to remember the promise, but the image was so rooted in his mind that he was unable to let go of it and once more shouted that the stone had been rolled away, the angels of the Lord had pushed it aside and Jesus wasn’t dead after all. The fact that He had promised anything didn’t interest July, and he was so emotionally wrought up that he wouldn’t stay in his chair and went running around pushing the other children and generally starting a fracas. Sarah came over and admonished him, but because it was so near time for Sunday School to be over, Della dismissed them and they exploded in all directions. The circle of women fanned out to keep them in view.

December 1946

Wilson’s only dog, Cindy, was as broken and old as himself. They walked outside together in carefully measured steps, never going much farther than the barn and outer sheds, leaving paths in the snow. Wilson would think to himself, I can remember when she was young. She could run like the wind. What a dog she was! There’re no dogs any more like she was. He thought of her as an old warrior who had fought many of his battles for him. It was Della’s secret, terrible wish, hidden by seven seals of silence, that Cindy would not pass from the living world until after her husband had quit it. She did not want to watch that kind of pain kill him. She didn’t want to see his worn-out heart hurt him again.

One day Wilson began to notice that he was feeling stronger. His arthritis began to slip away. He felt good enough to do some snow-clearing from the steps and sidewalk. He got the shovel and went outside. Della came out immediately and took it away from him and locked it up in the kitchen closet, despite his protests. OK, he thought after lunch, I will go for a walk this afternoon. He dressed warmly and walked farther than the sheds, out among the trees, close down to the bottom of the hill. Cindy, he noticed, seemed to be getting younger. She was running in the snow. I could walk on further, he thought. But I’ll go back, because Della would worry.

He went back and said nothing. That night he had to tell Cindy several times to stop chewing up the furniture, but quietly so his wife wouldn’t find out and blow up. Later Della took the flashlight away from him just as he was about to go out and hunt coon in the valley.

The next day he had the same walk. Cindy was running like a two-year-old and barking. He felt as if he could run himself. There was no pain in his chest. He felt strong. The crisp air was invigorating. Then Cindy let out a growl and the hairs covering her nervous spine stood on end. Wilson looked out into the timber and saw a wolf coming toward them. Cindy stepped forward to attack, but the wolf stopped running and began wagging its tail. No, thought Wilson. “Josh? Is that you, Josh?” The tail went furiously, whining and barking, but he stayed back. “Cindy,” Wilson said, putting his hand on the old dog’s back, “take it easy. It’s Josh. It’s only Josh. Come on, Josh.” The wolfish dog came and Cindy smelled him and was soon friendly. He jumped up on Wilson, then ran off with Cindy, both playing like puppies. Wilson was so happy he could hardly contain himself, but, not wanting Della to worry, he went back up the hill.

Between the barn and the house he began to think: Now there’s going to be a problem with Della. She won’t easily accept another dog after I promised no more than one. But she humors me. Always has. I can remember when I brought home those mules. Boy, was that something! Two black mules with . . . His mind wandered, and he forgot about Josh, and went inside with both of them, kicked his boots off on the porch and let them into the house. They ran into the living room, growling and snapping at each other, knocking into furniture. Oh no, he thought, I should’ve left him outside. But it was too late and he waited in the kitchen for Della to begin yelling. After he had listened what seemed to him a long time to the ruckus and the curtains being pulled down from the windows, Della came out. “Take off those wet pants,” she said, and went upstairs. He crossed the kitchen and looked into the living room, expecting it to look as if a drunken army had spent the night. But it was all right. Quickly he got hold of Josh and took him out onto the back porch. He could hear the sewing machine running upstairs. She must be getting very slow, he thought. He had everything under control before she came down.

“I thought I told you to get out of those pants,” she said. “Put on your coveralls.”

That evening Wilson listened to a talk show on the radio and ground coffee. He managed to smuggle Josh into the basement where it was warmer and set water and food down for him. Just before going to bed he let Cindy down for company. Sleep came quickly and he yielded up to it.

In the middle of the night, Wilson heard them both barking and howling and carrying on to no end. The ticking clock said it was 2:30. Della remained asleep next to the window. He got out of bed and went downstairs. Burglars, he thought. There must be burglars. He took the flashlight from off the top of the refrigerator and let both dogs upstairs. Immediately they squared off against the back door. Wilson went over and listened. “Keep quiet,” he said to Cindy and Josh. “I can’t hear anything with you carrying on so.” They were quiet and he could hear scraping noises against the wood. Very strange, he thought, and opened the door. On the porch was a large yellow-and-black dog. “Hey, you,” he said, “you get away from here now, you—” Then he saw the torn ear and scarred left side. The dog was lying down, trying to crawl into the warmth of the kitchen. “Duke,” he said. “Duke! My God, get in here, you look like you’ve been buried in a snow-bank. Get back there, Cindy, Josh; let Duke get in here.” Josh was jumping on him and knocked him back against the table. Upstairs he heard Della’s relentless footsteps coming down the hallway, heading for the stairs. “Quick now,” he whispered. “All of you in the basement. Get going now. Get! There’s food and water down there. Get.”

He had them down and the door shut in time. The upstairs door opened and Della came into the kitchen. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I thought I heard something. I got up to check.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No,” he said. “No, just the usual.”

“Well, come back to bed. Your feet will freeze.”

They went up together.

In the morning Wilson could remember hardly anything about the day before. Something unusual . . . yes, something unusual. Now, what was it? Halfway through his poached egg he remembered it and could hardly wait until Della took the car into town to pick up Sarah and go to the grocery store.

Then he let them up and took them out to run rabbits. They went off into the trees and down the hill. Wilson followed them. When he came up he had Jumbo with him too, running and jumping in the prime of her age. What fine dogs, he thought, looking at them. What fine dogs. Look at Cindy run! He felt very strong and even ran several steps uphill.

Two nights later, lying awake in his bed, watching the stars out the window, he had all of his fourteen dogs safely locked in the basement. New-fallen snow covered everything. He felt too good, he decided, to go right off to sleep, so he just lay and watched the stars, saying little prayers for the well-being of his wife, his children, some neighbors, and daydreaming.

“Wilson.”

It’s my imagination, he thought. Everyone knows I’m asleep now. Then he heard it again, more clearly.

I should know that voice, he thought, got up, put on his pants and shoes and went downstairs. In the kitchen it was deathly silent, only the faraway tick of the clock above. He went over to the cellar door and opened it. More silence welled up and around him—but no sounds of any kind from below. He went back to the table and sat down, then got up and recrossed to the door. “Hey,” he said softly. “You all still down there?”

Nothing. He had a feeling that strange things were astir.

“Cindy, Spark, Jumbo, hey,” he began a little louder, though hardly above a whisper. “Get up here, you dogs.” Without his hearing a sound, as though they had materialized out of the darkness, all at once they were at the foot of the steps, ascending and clamoring. “Good,” he whispered, “but don’t be so noisy.” The kitchen filled with them. They’re being pretty quiet, he thought, considering how they could be. He let them outside.

If there’s something out there, some burglars, he thought, they’ll wish they weren’t. At the kitchen door he watched them leave the porch and hit the snow without a sound and flash off into the dark of the barn and yard trees, as quickly and quietly as a cloud’s shadow. No barking. Strange, thought Wilson, but then no one ever knows exactly why dogs do anything. Then he heard his name again: “Wilson.”

“Who said that?” he said and switched on the outside light, holding the door ajar. He saw his dogs running silently at the edge of the light, moving slowly toward him, running in a large circle, dipping to and fro out of the darkness. Then two gray figures stepped into the light. Both of them wore hats and their faces were dark and without definition. They carried what looked like long, thin reeds bending at the tops, with winking spots of silver. They came up to the door and stopped. There was no light in the house. “Wilson,” one said.

“Step up closer,” he answered. “I can’t see you clearly. I know that voice. Step closer, I can’t see you.” He went through the door onto the porch. They came up the steps and just inside.

“Step closer,” said Wilson. “There, now I can see you. Dave . . . Sam . . . What are you doing here?”

“We thought you might want to go fishing,” said Sam.

“We came to see,” said Dave.

“The river’s frozen over,” said Wilson.

“We’ve got a hole chopped in the ice. Sam made it, clear down to the water.”

“Why are you whispering?” said Wilson. “It’s too cold out there.”

“It’s not so cold,” said Sam.

“ You’re right, it’s not too cold,” said Wilson almost to himself, looking down at his pajama tops and bare ankles, not feeling the slightest discomfort.

“They’ll be biting tonight,” said Sam. “The big ones.” The dogs were sitting silently outside. Frequently one would jump up and dance around in anticipation of going for a walk, but noiseless in the snow.

“I can’t go, really,” said Wilson. “I don’t have my poles any more. Della locked them up.”

“We brought one for you,” said Dave, and held it out to him, the light from outside glistening off the silver eyes.

He looked at it. “It’s sure a nice one,” he said. “Feels like you could really bring them in with this one . . . I don’t know, though. I better not. Della would worry.”

“No she won’t,” said Sam. “She’ll be asleep.”

“No . . . I better tell her. I’ll be right back.”

“No, Wilson. Come on, let’s go. She’d never let you.” They stepped off the porch.

“Wait,” said Wilson.

“No, come on,” said Dave, his voice almost inaudible.

“OK, I’m coming,” called Wilson, and followed them outside. The three walked down below the barn into the trees, Wilson’s dogs running around them. “You know, I think you’re right, Sam,” he said, shaking his rod and looking at it. “I think they’ll be biting—I’ve just got that feeling.”

Della woke up at three and saw the empty bed. She threw on her bathrobe, stuffed her tiny feet into slippers and went down the hall, downstairs and into the kitchen. A blast of cold air met her. Holding her robe closely about her neck, she went to the door and closed it. She stood there looking out into the lit barnyard, shadows roundly filling the two tracks out into the darkness of the barn. The awful snow, thought Della, and the words came running back again and again like shaking someone falling between consciousness and unconsciousness, calling his name over and over—the awful snow, the awful snow—until she regained herself.

She went to the closet where Wilson’s winter coat still hung, and put on her own. Then the fur-lined boots and scarf. She took down Wilson’s coat and hurried to the door—then stopped again, looking outside. Dropping the coat, she ran into the dining room, and with a key from behind the teacups she opened their utility closet. From a little case between Wilson’s tackle boxes she took the pistol and put it in her pocket. She took up the coat again on her way out, and the flashlight for the porch. She called his name and followed the tracks, noticing how closely Cindy had kept to Wilson, never wandering as much as several feet away. Though she did not think it now, she did later. Those tracks . . . they were much like soldiers’.

She followed them below the barn, halfway down the hill toward the river, to a place where there were rocks jutting up from the snow, crowned with ice. Her flashlight caught Cindy’s green eyes. She went over. Leaning against the rock was Wilson, his eyes nearly closed. She took her hand out of her mitten and touched his face. It was cold and hard.

Della dropped the mitten. She stood back and closed her eyes, opened them wide, lifted her head up above the white, howling wilderness, watched the stars of Orion reel over her, his belt like a dagger in her heart. Then she felt the gentle pressure, Wilson’s gentle pressure—his comforting net settle over her soul and bring it back around her.

“Come on,” said Della to Cindy. “There’s nothing here.” The old dog whined and lay down at Wilson’s feet, watching for his eyes to open, for him to get up and go back to the warmth of the house. Della took out the pistol and shot her, then went back home, the sharp, tearing, inhuman blast running a needle through her sorrow, bleeding into the insatiable pores of her body.

John was out of the Army in 1947.

From the dawning of his conscious thought July had been told that Daddy was coming home, though he had no idea of who this was or what he would be like. He did know that this Daddy, however, was likely to be an object of his mother’s attentions, which all his life had belonged almost entirely to himself, and which he felt were vital to his very existence. She told him he would have to try hard not to be jealous, because Daddy loved him too, and Daddy’s attentions were going to be just as good as, or better than, her own. And not knowing anything else, July could do nothing but wait and see. Then later she came to talk about the exact date he would be coming, and every day after that she exclaimed how, praise be to God, it was one day less. The closer it got, the more she neglected July and abandoned herself to her own expectations, filling him with dread.

John rode on a bus jammed with servicemen from New York City to Toledo. Many got off along the way, and there was a layover of six hours. On the bus to Chicago there were only eight men in uniform besides himself, trained from their duties to live with boredom and motion. Another layover in Chicago, a dinner of fried chicken and coleslaw in a diner on the Loop, and he was the only GI on the bus for Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, a seven or eight-hour ride.

He tried to sleep and couldn’t. For the rest of his life he would remember this ride. Outside the tinted windows everything smelled of the disgust and nightmare of war. January thaw, he thought. My father’s dead, he remembered again. My mother: they might not have wanted to tell me about my mother. He resolved then, passing over the Mississippi and into Iowa, that if he could salvage his broken and splintered religion, if he could become a part, in a small way—any way—of those things he had so many nights feared were never true, if he could lie against Sarah’s body and be only a little happy—he would never breathe a word of the last five years. He would deny them. The bus went on farther into his state and he began seeing familiar landmarks, familiar towns. His sleeplessness since getting into the States had honed his nerves to an edge, and by the time they pulled into Iowa City, fear was soaking him in cold sweat. Beyond the window Sarah stood against the brick wall. Tears wanted to be let out of his eyes. Men were staring at her. Her face looked anxious. His desire to touch her frightened him. Maybe, he thought, she won’t want to. Maybe she’ll say when we get home, “John, I’ve got to tell you something, while you’ve been gone away—” God help me, please help me, I am a wreck of a man.

It was in this condition July would have first seen his father, had John come out of the bus at that time. But a large woman getting baggage from the overhead rack forced him back into his seat. Angry and frantic, he looked out the window again. This time he saw his son standing behind her against the wall, and it was as though he had not known before and had just been told: Did you know, you have a boy, old enough to talk and understand, with a complete personality of his own. Here he is. He’s yours.

He’s a pretty good-looking boy, he thought, staring out of the besmudged window. He stands well, making no trouble . . . no idea what a man would think in a bunker—what he would do to save his own miserable life, the extent to which he would go . . . The woman with her bags bumped on down the aisle, and John slid out of his seat. At the door he stopped and gathered as well as he could all the loose ends and stepped down, reminding himself over and over: Be careful. Nothing can be taken for granted. Make no assumptions.

July felt his mother’s hand tighten and tremble as the uniformed man stepped down from the huge metal bus onto the ground. “John,” she called, and he came slowly over, carrying a cloth bag, holding his hat in his hand. Dark moons like blue wounds under his eyes, ugly hairs on his face, smelling clothes. The man held out his hand and at first July was afraid to touch it, even though pressed to by his mother. The knuckles and joints and veins were so awful. July touched it and wanted to cry: it was so hard. Then the hand squeezed and he felt the power, the child-crushing strength that lay dormant like a crouching panther, controlled only by the sallow face’s intention. Red lines in his eyes.

They went over to the car, and his mother wanted “Daddy” to drive. No, he said, he didn’t want to. He sat next to July’s window, July next to his mother behind the wheel. They left the station and headed home. The stranger looked suspiciously at the telephone poles and houses, at the dashboard and at July’s mother’s feet. His smell overpowered July’s mother’s. He spoke once on the ride home, asking about Grandma, only he called her Mom. The rest of the time he was silent.

Once home, he remained standing in the driveway, looking suspiciously at everything outside as though it might grow wings and flap away into outer space. The bird feeder (which his mother had carefully filled before they drove to the bus station) seemed to hold him mesmerized. His mother waited silently for him inside the opened door to the house. Finally, he came toward them with his cloth bag. July rushed to the door, slammed it and locked him outside so that he could never come in. He looked back to his mother, whose face was a betrayal of her erupting emotions: fear, hatred, sorrow and despair. She sank to the sofa.

The doorbell rang. “Go away,” July shouted.

“Please,” came from outside, and the word cut through the door and into July’s throat. There was sadness and loneliness unimaginable in an older person. “Please,” he repeated, and July opened the door. “Thanks, July,” he said and put out his hand again. July took it and squeezed as hard as he was able.

“Ouch,” said John.

Tears ran down Sarah’s cheeks as she tried to stand up from the sofa. “Go outside and play now,” she said.

July left, glad to be out of the oddly electric house. He knew “Daddy” had been joking, but still felt as though he could smash rocks with his fists. He closed the door and stood outside it.

“Would it be all right ...” John was saying inside.

“I hope you’re never satisfied,” said his mother.

July left to play in the empty garage across the street.