He felt pressure on his arm again. He didn’t resist it. He heard through his weeping and his pain, "Come with me, please. I’ll make you some tea. You’ll feel better in no time."
He found himself walking with the thin man, found himself only half listening—weary, pain-ridden—to the man’s ramblings.
He looked back after a minute. He saw that the woman and her crowd of listeners were far, far behind, that the green mouth of the forest was gone, that the horizon was in a gray/blue turmoil, as if it were a whirlpool that was trying hard to get started.
~ * ~
Christian Grieg, driving on Route 96, ten miles west of Syracuse, remembered a line from a movie he’d seen several years earlier; the line was, "I am standing here beside myself." As he remembered the line, he smiled. He was no longer beside himself, was he? He was whole again. It had been a long battle, but he was whole again and he could, at last, deal with the things that the other side of him had done.
Deal with them.
Cope.
Live with
.
He sighed.
Admonishing the other—hidden—side of himself for the things it had done was useless. Such acts could not be admonished—there was too much passion and too much finality in them. It was like shouting at a thunderstorm to be a little quieter.
But some of the things he had done had been what
this
side of him had done. And he had enjoyed them. Quite a lot, in fact. There was no getting around that bare, distasteful fact. He had enjoyed them. He had enjoyed that vulnerability, that pain, that fear. It had made him feel strong and important.
He jammed a fist hard into his crotch. He doubled over. The Buick swerved to the right, onto the wide shoulder. He swerved left, still doubled over, then looked up, eyes watering with pain. A small car was coming at him. He swerved right, got the Buick going straight, focused on the awful pain between his legs, relished it. "Asshole!" he screamed at himself. "Jerk! Asshole!" Then he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped the car.
When the pain was gone, he opened the glove compartment and took out a map of the area around Oneida Lake. He knew that David had a cottage there, on the lake’s south side, on the Sylvan Beach Road, but he couldn’t remember exactly where. It had been five years since he’d been to the cottage, after all.
He located Sylvan Beach on the map, put the map back in the glove compartment, and pulled onto the road again. He guessed that he’d be there within the hour.
Because where else would David go but to his cottage?
He had privacy there.
Memories.
Time.
I
t is ten years later, and Maude, who is living with her husband, Peter, in the house that once belonged to Anne Case, says to her husband, "I saw something in the upstairs hallway today." Her voice is trembling a little. She’s clearly frightened by the memory of what she saw.
Peter gives her a quizzical, amused look. He doesn’t want her to see that he’s amused. She amuses him quite a lot with her "sensitivities" but when he has shown her that he finds her amusing, he’s paid for it with many cold nights and cold glances. "Which upstairs hallway, Maude? We’ve got a couple of them. This is a barn we’re living in, remember."
She purses her lips. She doesn’t like the house referred to as a barn. She likes the house a lot. It was, in fact, only after her weeks of insistence and pleading that they decided to buy it. It had remained empty for ten years, since Anne’s death, but a caretaker had seen to its upkeep, so it was move-in-able.
She says now, "It’s not a barn, Peter. Please don’t call it that."
He shrugs. "Sorry."
"The second floor hallway," she says. "I saw what I saw in the second floor hallway."
"Go on."
"To be truthful, I’m not sure I really saw anything."
"You’re only saying that because you think it’s what I think."
"I
know
what you think, Peter. Don’t deceive yourself into believing that I alter my thought patterns simply to please you. I’m saying that it’s possible I . . . scared myself into thinking I saw something upstairs. In fact, it’s likely. In my
memory
, I see something there. In that hallway. But how reliable is that?"
"And what are you saying you saw, Maude? A ghost?"
She sighs. "I don’t know. Something. It had a big . . . head. A very big head." She smiles self-consciously.
"Like E.T., you mean?"
She thinks a moment. "Maybe. Something like that. Not so pleasing as E.T., I think—"
"E.T. was hardly
pleasing
, Maude."
"I thought he was. I thought he was cute."
"Uh-huh. Well,
you
probably would have. You were probably a pretty perverse little girl."
She sighs again, in annoyance. He says, "I’m sorry," and she continues, "A big head, and large eyes. Very large eyes. I think you could use the word ‘bulbous’ to describe his eyes."
"It was a man, then?" He stifles a smile.
She nods. "Yes. Someone . . . stocky. Mannish."
"With a very big head and bulbous eyes? Sounds charming, Maude."
"He was crying," she says.
~ * ~
"You used the phrase ‘the earth’," the man with the unruly light brown hair told David as they walked together. "Do you mean by that ‘the ground’? I don’t believe you do, and that’s why I ask. I’ve encountered the word before, in writings, and I’ve decided that it has meaning. And I must know how you came to be here, too, and where it is that you will go when you’re no longer here. I’ve seen others like you. Others without faces. I’ve spoken with them, but they haven’t told me a thing, so . . . "
"Please don’t talk," David said.
"Of course," said the man. "I understand that. People are always telling me that: ‘Please keep quiet,’ or ‘Please don’t talk,’ but what can I do? I think that I’ve been talking forever." He paused only a moment. "
Forever
, did you hear that? I’ll tell you something; it happens all the time. I use a word like that, and I don’t know what in the heck it means, but I’ll use it like that, like
forever
—"
David decided to let the man ramble. Clearly, there was no way of stopping him, and just as clearly it gave the man pleasure to talk.
Ahead, halfway to the turbulent blue horizon, the particular geometry of a city was visible.
~ * ~
Christian Grieg turned his five-year-old Buick
LeSabre
onto a one-lane dirt road which, the man at the gas station had told him, would take him to Sylvan Beach Road; it skirted the south side of the lake. But it was a small lake, Christian reminded himself, and if he had to search its entire south shore until he came upon David’s cottage, it would take him no more than an hour. That was no big thing.
David was his friend.
He and David had shared much, and would, doubtless, share much more.
He wanted to talk to David. He wanted to find out what David knew. He wanted to find out what David was doing and why he was doing it. He wanted to find out who David had talked to, what he had been told, and what he intended to do with what he had been told. He wanted to find out if it had any bearing on him—Christian—and, if it did, he wanted to find out how serious this whole matter really was. And, if it was serious . . .
He braked hard as a small white dog crossed in front of the car.
The dog scurried off and was gone, hidden by the high grasses to the side of the road.
Christian pushed the accelerator.
He did not want to run over a dog.
He braked again. The big car came to a bouncing stop.
He pushed his door open, got out, stood quietly on the dirt road. The afternoon was warm, pleasant. There was a little breeze and he liked it. It tickled him.
He called, "Here, doggie." But there was no response from within the tall grasses.
He walked off the road and into the grasses, calling to the dog as he moved, "Here, doggie, doggie, doggie; here, doggie
doggie
!"
He did not want to run over a dog today.
He found himself well off the road, found that the ground he was walking on was soft, a swamp. He did not want to walk in a swamp today. He turned and started back to the car.
Had he left it running? he wondered. If he had, perhaps it had been stolen. He peered over the tops of the weeds. He couldn’t see the car. Damn. If it had been stolen, he would have to walk.
"Here doggie, doggie," he called. But he no longer hoped to find the dog. He knew better. The dog was, without a doubt, afraid of him. That’s why it had run off. It didn’t want to be run over any more than he wanted to run it over. The dog was looking out for itself, as did all natural things.
He found himself back at the road. The car was still there. It was running. No one had stolen it. Perhaps he had been overreacting to think that someone
would
steal it. The road was all but deserted, after all. Still, there were evil people everywhere.
He
knew that.
He went to the car and got in. He had left the driver’s door open. He closed it, turned the ignition. The engine shut down.
He smiled. Well, wasn’t that stupid! He had wanted to turn the car on, thinking it was off, but he had known—somewhere deep in his brain—that it was on, though he didn’t know it consciously, so he had turned the ignition off. He’d done the same thing with light switches in lighted rooms—flicked them off thinking he had to turn them on when the light was on already.
He started the car again.
Someone was honking a horn behind him.
He turned his head, stared through the back window.
A middle-aged woman with round dark eyes and a crown of black hair was honking furiously at him to get moving on the one-lane road. He was blocking her way.
He didn’t want to block anyone’s way today. Nor did he want to be honked at. It was a puzzle. The two needs fought each other. To which one should he respond? he wondered.
He thought about it for a minute, while the woman in the car behind continued honking.
At last, he pushed his door open slowly, got out of the car, stared at the woman behind the wheel of the car in back of him.
She continued honking her horn. He thought he heard her curse.
He didn’t want to be cursed at today, the day of his self-realization, the day he was no longer standing beside himself, the day of his naturalness.
He didn’t want to be honked at, either.
He strode very quickly to the car, leaned over and looked at the middle-aged woman. The driver’s window was open. He concentrated on the middle-aged woman. He didn’t much like her eyes. They were shallow and meddlesome, even in anger. The inside of her car smelled of perfume, too. It was an unpleasant perfume. Lilac. It mixed with her nervous sweat and made the inside of the car smell like a place that was unsanitary.
He had written about such women as this, he remembered.
She said, "You’re blocking my way. Could you
please
move." Her voice was sharp, hard to listen to. It was the voice of an unattractive bird—a crow, a starling. It was controlled and raucous at the same time.