Authors: Joy Williams
I tell Grady this and slump down in the bed again, turning on my side. The sheet’s pulled back and I rest my cheek on mattress ticking. My mouth moves against a small cloth tag attached with a safety pin. Contents Unknown. Well.
At the window, tiny dots of light shine through the mess. A spider pushes a leaf out of its web. Grady’s told her that there’s something in a spider’s web that mends a cut. Something in the spinning juice. If I should smash one of my limbs through this window, there’d be nothing that wasn’t fine. Damage and repair would be simultaneous. The healing is working out there before any wound that needs it. This is the way it’s always been, I suppose, but never, before Grady, has it been true for me.
I move raptly on the bed. I am an impediment to our lives together. I want to tell him. The moments pass. None of them are correct. The baby goes about its mysterious business. It has formed eyebrows, a lung, certainly a sex. I want to tell him. I will say, “Perhaps the baby isn’t yours.” That is nothing. He suspects this, I know, and yet he has said nothing. My womb is a disease, a benign tumor. I despise my womanliness which carries its sickness about with it, inherent and innate, as though it were success. How can a man know such dyscrasia? I move back against the pillows. The light is so bad that it obscures my speech.
If I begin the story and do not finish it or if I begin it and do not tell it properly in the way it happened, in the time and
the place and the circumstance, in the correct sequence of results, will it not then persist like a drowned man, going on to haunt the sea?
I am trapped within this monstrous child. Each day I become precisely less what the unborn has become. If I tell Grady, will I release myself like a virus upon his loving world? The child is not Grady’s. That is nothing. That will cause no conclusion. He assumes responsibility after the movie house, not before. I know this. His pride lies in acceptance, renewal and life.
I am shivering for now I am fully awake and it is cold here. I reach down and turn the dial of our small electric heater. Its red grille and smell and clatter give the impression of warmth. I am only a nest and so cold. The child rocks in its sunlight, warm and breathing in its egg.
“I almost died the other day,” I say.
“That’s ridiculous,” Grady says.
“No, I had some bullets in my pocket and I forgot about them and I was baking chicken and the oven was very hot. I was working around the oven and the bullets were in my pocket.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he says, “they never would have gone off.”
I get out of bed and limp toward him on my aching foot. Grady does not sit in the chair at all. It is his jeans, his sweater scattered realistically in the chair. I pull on his jeans, retaining the nightgown over them, and limp into the kitchen, skirting the dog’s dish. I heat a pan of water, making some coffee with part of it and using the rest to soak my foot. The dog hasn’t been at the trailer for days. He sits a mile away, at the juncture of an overgrown logging rut and the blacktop that goes into town. He sits beneath an enormous tree. When we slow the car for him, he regards us pleasantly enough but he does not get into the car, nor does he look
after us as we drive away. The hound is waiting for his owner to come pick him up because he is a good redbone. And good redbones are trained to return to where they were released and to stay there forever.
I miss the dog. Only yesterday or so, I walked to the blacktop and brought him some food—fatty ribs and mash that we feed the ducks. He sits in the shade beneath the tree. In front of him is a deep ditch that catches and holds the afternoon rains. He had been very happy at seeing me and he’d eaten the food like a fellow of means and leisure and he had taken time out to watch me as I sat watching him. But he didn’t follow me home. And I know he never is about to. He has his own fidelities and they don’t include us.
I dry my foot, and go outside. Grady has built a fire in an old washtub and is sitting before it, throwing straw and dead branches on it from time to time. Beside him are four ducks, rearranging themselves continually on a patch of straw. They are dull barnyard ducks of unstable numbers for some wander off across the river and are eaten. At times, I collect their down which is bleakly sensual and useless in quantity. They set up a terrific racket as I approach and fly off into short trees.
It’s cold and the fire burns cleanly in the air, without smoke. Sometimes, sharks come up this river by mistake. I lumber toward Grady, awkward as a cub, bumping against him remotely, an unburnt branch on a cant from the fire, snagging my nightgown. Some things cannot be forgiven. Grady is not the one to forgive.
I crouch behind him and put my arms around his chest. Grady stirs the fire and the flames snapping in the weak sunshine are blond as his eyes. “How are you two this morning?” he asks.
“We’re fine,” I decide to say. “We’re coming along nicely.”
He shares a piece of bread with me. I take it and push it into the shape of a pony. Just as I crimp its mane, it trots away.
Don’t look, Father says.
I struggle for effect but my intention never lay in looking.
I say to the ducks, “Weather cold enough for you?” My life is prudent, recessive and dark. Every day is Christmas Eve. I talk to the animals but they do not talk to me.
“It’s going to warm up,” Grady replies instead “Move up twenty more degrees by noon.”
Noon. The threat of another pretty day with my Grady. He speaks with joy of little things. He tosses his head and laughs.
“Cold’s what makes the orange orange,” I say positively. I can learn anything.
Grady’s hands are warm from the fire. He turns. He unzips the jeans I am wearing and rubs his hands across my stomach. “Little fish,” he says.
I smile. For a moment there are just the two of us. For a moment, this is the way it is going to be. Daddy dies with our happiness. The baby dies. Poor baby. Rather he curls up like a flower, he goes back into his impossible night.
We are smiling. This was before the accident. Before he was corrupted and our life together lost. He did not want to
touch upon my past. He did not want to know if my favors had been freely given. He was not interested in the life I had before him. Instead, he tried to take me with him, through each day. He used time masterfully. It minded his whims. He spent it conscientiously, for both of us. We never returned to the movies after we met. I dislike movies, he told me that very night. Everything takes so long, he told me. He wasted nothing. Nothing was spent on him without ample reimbursement. I see him as a little boy watching fireworks. Oh, they are stunning, grand. He approves of each one. He gives all his blessing. He does not allow a single one to bloom and fire without his breath of praise. He never allows his attention to wander. He sees through to the finish. I see him as a little boy, very grave, tireless in his respect.
No, nothing escapes his notice and he studies, in great detail, everything but me. He is in love with me. I am beyond his code.
Look at the deer, he’d say. We would be soaring in the Jaguar under a cathedral of trees. It would be night. The lights would find everything, but not for me, never for me. Look, he’d say and slow, but they’d be gone. They love cigarettes, he’d say. They’re after the stubs that travelers throw out.
Look, he’d say. Look. He squeezes my shoulders. His tongue darts lightly down my neck. His eyes burned with happiness. He is proud of his wide smooth sex. It is fragrant with soap. He is assured of the sweetness of life. It sings to him.
Look, he’d turn my head gently. An old man drifts down the river in a white wooden boat. He wears a big flat straw hat and three sweaters, buttoned to different levels. He has a deep canvas bag for the fish hanging from his shoulder. He moves regally by. The line flicks lightly through the water flowers, into the deep pockets of the ancient river.
Everything is pleasing. There is a Ferrari. There is a mule.
There is a tiny Mennonite girl at a Whopper-Burger. She has been picking fruit. She wears a bonnet and a long brown dress and she smells of citrus. She eats her hamburger with a knife and fork. It takes forever. There is a woman wetting the stones that ring her flower garden. That is the most satisfactory chore, watering the stones. There is a drumfish, pounding on the water each night. We go out in the boat. The fish rises beside us. It sounds like a gigantic frog. He follows the boat, he nudges it. It is a magical fish, an enchanted fish that will grant your wish. Grady wishes for nothing. I always wish that he had taken me that night after the movie house and never looked for me again. We were silent. More so than I’d ever been with the strangers. I thought that I would never see him again. We drove, we drank, we stopped. We drove again. He lay me down gently in the darkness beneath some sweet smelling pines. His hands trembled. We drove by water, I could smell it. We heard the chuck-will’s-widow. We went back through the town. Tomorrow, he said. I was startled. Tomorrow, he said. Tomorrow, next week. But I was so weary, so lost. I did nothing to prevent him from saying … it’s true I wasn’t paying attention. My mind was going home with Daddy …
Just hours before, Daddy had boarded the train. Behind the coach he’d entered was a snow-white refrigerator car bearing orange juice for the rickety North. He was the only one departing. I was the only one left behind. Now, once this station had been one of the busiest in the state. There were huge crowds coming to see the circus. And an elephant was killed right here on these tracks though there is no plaque, for it was not Jumbo who was killed in Ontario but another elephant.
But there are no crowds at the station any more. It was early but the heat was rising. You could smell the fertilizer they’d packed around the sidewalk lily plantings. The town was dirty and had a milky cast. The street was trashy from the parade of
the day before and as we waited, Daddy and me, the work crews were making their way toward us slowly, cleaning up, the prisoners of the county in their gray trousers and shirts with the wide blue stripe down the side. Daddy was holding my hand in his. My hand was empty. Or rather, I was not holding his hand in mine. He brought it to his lips but did not kiss it. I could see our image in the locked windows of the station. I was in a position to notice this. Come with me, he’d said. There’s nothing here for you to leave behind, he’d said. Come with me while it’s still that way … the image of my hand moved back. The train wound through buildings and appeared abruptly and then wound through buildings and departed abruptly as well. The train didn’t even come to a full stop. Daddy glided on. The train sank dreamily away. The crews came sweeping and bagging up the street, nice boys, fresh faces, up for stealing copper wire or beating on their women’s fellows.
“Yo,” the captain said to me. He smacked his shotgun against his thigh. The boys phalanged by, leaving everything pretty behind them. I could hear birds beginning their day. The street lights went off simultaneously and the morning became a healthier color. Opposite me, the proprietor of a U-Rent-It-All put out his wares on the sidewalk. Mowers and beds and automatic nailers and hoists. And then he brought out an aluminum ladder that he would rent you too and he climped up on it and put a new combination of letters in place on his glass marquee, a new message on his fresh new day.
RENT YOUR CONVALESCENT NEEDS
. His little boy came out and voiced some easily accomplished desire in a piping screech and the man descended, folded up the ladder and leaned it against the storefront.
And the letters there you know, the portable letters there so ominous and … took me home again. Yes, I was home, waiting for Daddy. It would take him two days and three nights to return but I was there already. Years ago. I am a
darling toddler assisting him with the slate letters on the church bulletin board. I choose from a sturdy box that still smells faintly of apples. A remarkable box. It can make any word that anyone can think of. It is limited only by me. I slide the letters along the rusting runners, following Daddy’s directions. He is my only consideration. It is summer, it is spring. Daddy and I seduce the mornings. I weigh forty-one pounds. Fifty-seven. The earth shimmers with the yearnings of God. Daddy guides my hand.
I LAID ME DOWN AND SLEPT I AWAKED
. My thoughts were his thoughts. Psalms, I would say. Yes, darling. It is raining. It is a day of high cool sun fading my hair. Song of Solomons, I say, Genesis. Yes, sweet, he would say. Life’s simple as it seems for we love but once, darling. The rest is dissolution.
I walk across the street and into the rental place. Something clicks as I cross the threshold. Something’s counting me. The little boy sits on a rental hide-a-bed. What time is it? I ask. His mouth is full of jelly. Ten till, he says eventually. That’s wonderful, I exclaim. And what’s your name? Rutt, he says peacefully after a long pause. The proprietor emerges. Ambrose, he says, what does this lady want. The time, I intercede. He jerks his head in the direction of a big wall clock. Feast your eyes, he says. I go out onto the street again. I walk a little. I buy some coffee. For lunch I buy some wine. I know the time. I spent the day in darkness. And at the end of it, I met my Grady. But as I say, I wasn’t paying attention.
Look, he said to me then, I’d like for you to stay with me awhile. I have a place. He talks to me in darkness. My hips rub on grass. I have everything for you, he says, or I can get is tomorrow. Tomorrow. Next month.
Grady.
I did not demur. I entered his life. Coma calling. Now Grady sits on the riverbank. The fire sparkles. He gives my belly one more caress. It’s sculpted and heavy as a wooden pear.
“Come to school with me today and at noon we’ll go to the beach,” he says. “We’ll swim. We’ll buy some bread and cheese. We’ll swim and eat and sleep.”
“At noon.
Juste milieu
. When the sun is up.”
“And so am I,” he says.
The fire burns. So do all of God’s children.