Lost (36 page)

Two other women lifted their heads and joined in the chorus, the music romping along toward a final crescendo. But the song didn't end with a flourish as Leona expected. Grudge's wife sat down, and one by one the players stopped until only the piano strummed away and Funny Grandma was playing a kind of daft solo, bits of a sonata, then raking the keys in a long, tinkling run. Vee stood up from the bench and faced the small audience. “'Scuse us, everybody,” she said, “while my mama shows off.” The musicians looked at each other and laughed.

In the attic, Leona stayed with the children until they were sound asleep; then, bending over Mamie, she pulled the covers up around her, whispered good night, and kissed her warm cheek. Then she drew away. The music still rippled from the living room, and, beneath it, the slow churn of voices. In the dark kitchen, she slipped into the coat Hardesty held for her. “My purse,” she said.

“You don't need it,” he said, “and nobody'll bother it. Why give them something else to talk about?”

She smiled and glanced toward the light in the doorway. “I should at least say something to Vee.”

“She'll know,” he said, and after a moment Leona nodded and went out ahead of him. A mist was falling as they went through the gate. The night sky was mottled with wispy clouds, and ahead of them the barn and outbuildings stood black against the sleight-of-hand moonlight. They turned, following the path around the fence. Music leaked from the side of the house like an impudent melody sprung to life in a packed-away music box. In the rays of window light, the threads of falling mist satinized the ensemble inside. Leona glimpsed their shapes arranged around the country band, saw the high-spired neck of the bass fiddle, and immediately felt younger—as if she had slipped backward through time.

The path meandered at the edge of an orchard, then joined the lane marked off by taller trees. Icy twigs snapped underfoot. The air tasted as clean as rain, a fresh and tinny fragrance. They reached the high mound in the road and she saw Hardesty's ice-shrouded cabin in a grove of trees below.

Again the soft whisking noise of the knife being sharpened subsided in the toolshed. Twice earlier that night, Sherman had thought he heard stray footsteps, not the sounds of the men outside by their trucks but footsteps walking in the snow, and each time he had gone to the window to look and listen.

Now he heard the same noise, like steps, and held the knife still. Quiet as a shadow, he rose to the small, flyspecked window and gazed toward the pickup trucks and a horse-drawn wagon tethered to the fence. But no one was there. In the high-gabled farmhouse, shafts of light poured from the downstairs windows. Dim music swam to him through the night. When the clouds parted, an enormous moon loomed over the black chimneys, exposing a jagged half of his boy's face. It was like granite, lips drawn almost white with purpose. His stark blue eyes moved so quickly they seemed to twitch in him. Unable to do anything but wait, Sherman stepped out of the moonlight. With his bandaged hand, he stroked the Chinaman's broad forehead. “They're here,” he said. “I know they are.” The Chinaman began to whine softly but Sherman scolded him. “Don't do that,” he whispered. “It won't be much longer.” He spit on the stone, and in the toolshed, out by the barn, the soft abrasive grating resumed, the steel knife blade winking blue and silver in the dark.

When they reached his cabin and went in, she was still full of her remembered self, still full of a delighted irrational excitement. It was intoxicating—like stepping to the edge of a very high diving board, apprehensive and exhilarated. Through the small-paned window she saw the way they had come, the snowy hills and the long night laid out before them, and then she looked around the room itself, this cabin in the woods with the firelight brandishing softly around her while their voices, his and hers, drifted back and forth.

“So this is where you live?” she said; her eyes, a little embarrassed now, restless, searched the rustic walls, the spaces set apart by furniture and screens. The main room was very much like him—ordered and confident, arranged for work. Next to the stone fireplace, a large window overlooked a ravine and there he had a worktable.

He was watching her. She looked at the clutter of his work—he was in the midst of carving several ducks from wood. She lifted an elaborate mallard, fully painted in shades of green and gold and red. “You're very good at this, aren't you?”

“I just do it for my own fun,” he said. “Winter's a slow time around here.”

Unable to concentrate, her eyes came to rest on the patch of black hair in the collar of his shirt. If she could open that shirt and put her hand there, touch him there and feel … and press her head to him … then he would cover her like the night. “You know,” she said, “don't you, I really shouldn't have come here.” She glanced at him. “I should go back. I didn't tell them where I was going. Why don't you come back with me?”

“Why don't you stay?” he said. “Linger a while.” It sounded so unlikely, so odd and quaint, like a voice from a more chivalrous age.

“What did you say?” The light from the fireplace quivered like wingbeats across her pale face. She gathered herself to go, but suddenly turned back, awkward for a moment in his arms, leaning into him while he sought and found her mouth. With a little trembling spasm, her lips parted. She wanted the kiss to last a long time. Without any trace of clumsiness, his hands touched her hair and lifted it tenderly from her face, touched the delicate curve of her cheek, her throat. Through her drowning senses, she said, “You look so pleased with yourself. You've been expecting this.”

“You knew what was happening,” he said. He straightened up and looked at her. “You can't get away with this, you know.”

She was trapped in that disarming gaze. It was only then that she let herself admit that she loved him. The idea asserted itself and she accepted it. Until then, she hadn't. She would miss his little actions and expressions, his laugh, his voice that touched her so, his clarity. The moments loomed between them, charged with everything that would remain unsaid. She knew it had already been decided; she had the sensation of rushing toward an unavoidable fate. Searchingly, she touched his face. All the feelings she'd kept in silence these days gave way to the folds of peace that surrounded them. She remembered thinking, If I'm really going to do this, I'll do it to last me the rest of my life. She kissed him again and trembled, anticipating what would happen now, what had to happen, what she would do. He began to loosen her clothes. “No,” she murmured, “not like this,” and let out a convulsive breath. “I'll do it.”

Nothing else was said. She turned from him blindly, and moved down the hall to the room where he slept. Still feeling where his fingers had touched her through her clothes, she lifted the glass chimney from the lamp and lit it with a match from the holder. The flame nibbled blue on the wick. He had not yet come into the room, but she could sense him in the doorway, watching her, silent. Her body rocked forward a little on the throb of her heartbeat; she began to undo her clothes. Look at me, he had said that first morning when she opened her eyes. Look at me, she thought. With a twinge of self-consciousness, she undressed, then watched him enter the room and undo his trousers. She turned from him to pull the covers back on the bed, her breasts yielding to his hands. Her pulse deepened and flashed.

She trembled as she turned back to him, letting her arms close around him and lifting herself up to his mouth. And the rhythm that had lain dormant in her for so long was alive in her lips. “I've wanted you,” she said, and she was still trembling when he lifted her and laid her back on the bed.

Suddenly, passionately, without any thought or even the will to think, she gave herself to him. It hurt a little at first and she thought she was tearing inside like new leaves, but he was bending over her, between her legs. “Mark,” she murmured. “Mark …”

Then they were apart and his dark eyes, full of admiration, devoured her. She moaned watching him and drew his head down to her, to feel him there again. “Don't stop,” she murmured, “don't stop,” still smoldering inside.

He touched her lips to silence her. “The night's still ahead of us,” he said.

She looked at him, and smiled. “Do you suppose they'll know what we've done?”

He looked amused. “You worry too much.”

“No,” she said, “it's not that. It's just … this night will have to last me a very long time.”

“Nothing lasts as long as we want it to,” he said.

“Maybe it will for me. I want to be everything with you.” She could see the kindling in his eyes; he was about to speak again. “Please,” she said, suffused with tenderness. “Don't talk … don't talk.”

Her lips roamed his body, never stopping; his long muscles shivered under the slow brush of her mouth. She lavished herself with him, nuzzled and caressed him with her flesh, touching him everywhere, her breasts trailing over him, feeling his chest with them, his mouth, his eyes. She kissed the soft plush skin of his belly. As if from far away, she heard him groan. “Ah,” she laughed and, rising on her arms, leaned over to kiss him fully. “Let me look at you,” he said. She sat astride him, bedazzled. His hands covered and caressed her nipples, sending liquid contractions all through her. She wanted to let her flesh absorb his in an act like fire. She thought his eyes had narrowed. “What is it?” she murmured. “Tell me.”

“Leona …” His voice throbbed inside her. She closed her eyes. “I swear to God, Leona. You take my breath away.” They were like words from another time, cloaked in his man's voice.

Folding to him and arching back just a little, she received him in a gentle smothered meeting, and her body began to move in a rhythm of its own, to and fro, as fluent and unrestrained as light switching through prisms. She abandoned herself to her own pleasure. The lamplight shattered to filaments; she could hardly see the shadowed blur of his face. All her movements began to gain speed; an indescribable, sweet pressure ripened inside her. “Mark. Touch me.” And when she couldn't contain it any longer, she threw herself upright on him, arched and tensed, her thighs shuddering with exertion, and a scream rose deep in her throat. “My God! … God! … God!” Her hair hung in her face. Strumming inside, she toppled to him. Rapture flooded through her—wave upon wave, as if a long sweet ribbon were being drawn from her.

18

On the edge of sleep, Funny Grandma heard Vivian out by the gate saying goodbye to their company. “Now, don't stay away so long next time,” she called to them.

“Goodbye, Vee. Thanks for everything.”

Her old fingers pecked the nightstand and closed on her eyeglasses. Funny Grandma set the springlike wires over her ears. Now she could see. Leaning to her window, she peered through the long depression of tree shadows and fence, woodpiles and sheds. Headlight beams flashed across her face, dazzled her glasses, and made her squint. “They're out there waitin',” she muttered, her mouth working on the words. “Just waitin'. If you listen, you'll hear 'em.”

“Good night,” Vivian called. “Don't forget, now. Come see us. Goodbye. Bye.” Doors slammed, metal doors out in the night; motors started up. The gate closed. Vivian's footsteps crossed to the porch, the screen door clapped.

Funny Grandma nestled her head in the crook of her arm to watch the night. Moments later, she was talking though there was no one there to hear her. “Vivy,” she was saying, “why won't ye listen to me? I am an old, old woman, not very long for this world. I have seed many things and did many things I shouldn't, but Vivy, if I never knowed anything else, if I never draw another breath, I will prove to ye once and for all what ye won't hear of. That no account, lowlife trash ye feed on the porch is stealin' us blind.” Her head curled and rolled to the pillow, her eyelids sagged shut, her breathing grew deeper and slower. “I don't know why yer daddy puts up with it. Why don't he just drive 'em off?” She dreamed she could see them crouched behind bushes, eyes flashing in the moonlight.

Vivian was coming in to say good night. “Mama, shame on you. You've still got your clothes on.”

Funny Grandma rose toward the face whose features were like her own but younger for all eternity. “Vivy, ye have to listen to me. Will ye listen?” And it began again. “They's out there stealin' our corn we slaved for.”

“I know, Mama,” Vee said. “I know. But it's all right.… I know. Let's see if we can't put this nightgown on.”

Through the walls of the toolshed came the sound of a truck motor, and the growl went on building in the Chinaman. “That's the last one,” Sherman told him and held the black mouth tighter. Thin razors of light flickered through gaps in the crude plank wall, expanded and rotated in the air above his head. In the barnyard, the truck turned; the Chinaman's growl deepened.

The last of the pickups rumbled past the shed. Minutes passed. The Chinaman struggled to get up, but Sherman held him, speaking directly into his ear. “Now, be still,” he whispered. “Lay still. I mean it.” Out on the main road, the noise of the truck engine gradually sank to a distant buzz. Then silence.

Sherman pulled the loose galoshes from his shoes. Tapping the pill bottle to his mouth, he gulped three of the pills, then stared at the bottle while he capped it. These new pills ain't as good as the others, he thought. Not near as good. He unfastened the toolshed door, patted his leg, and the Chinaman followed him out. Under the dim full moon, the mist stung his face like needles. When he walked across the untrodden snow, it cracked under his feet, and the noise made him even more jittery than he had been.

Only that snowman in the yard told him children were here, that they were really here.

At the woodpile, he studied the quiet house. He scanned the shadowed porch where the others had come out, saying goodbye; then he looked back to the side of the house where the tall windows flickered with stovelight. Keeping the Chinaman close, he followed the path around the picket fence until he could look directly through the four windows and into the dim interior.