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Ea“ I ”it“s: I :Wmfi ’ v: i’rwsfii’; 9“: 8 4'»: ”’1',“ )r 4 ~ 1 ‘I w‘ r;‘ u'vic :10}: 1mm ‘r‘ij‘fl " :"f" {If "1 ~ . fii‘: : ”‘T ddhfi‘ '1“ '~" " " ' We" .. ‘33}, m W. 4&5}; hr. , r7231 , This is to certify that the thesis entitled ON BREAD AND FICTION: THREE SHORT STORIES BY GWENDOLYN ASHB'AUGH presented by GWENDOLYN ANN ASHBAUGH has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for ENGLISH (M.A.V) M°A' degree in Major professor Date W 5r: /?93 0-7639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution IV1£31_] RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to LJBRAfiJES remove this checkout from .‘Ilicyl-IL. your record. FINES will be charged if book is returned after the date stamped below. _ T OK BREAD AID FICTION: runs: SHOE! STORIES By Ovundolyn Alhbunjh A.!EESIS Subdttcd to Michigan State university in 9.33131 fulfillnnnt a! the requitcncho for the doggoo of MISTER OP A318 Dcpaxtnnnt of English 1983 was!!! by mun mm 1983 11 ' “ ‘1" ’A 0 ©1985 GWENDOLYN ANN ASHBAUGH All Rights Reserved 1’03 SHEILA mans mun U BREAD AID 1161'!“ ED, :02 $30!! 80m minus TABLE 0? ms 1v Pm 1 P13. 23 Page 58 ABSTRACT on BREAD AID ncnm : mm SHOE! STORIES 3! Gwendolyn Ashbsngh Inns short storiss, on BREAD AND Hula, 33D, FOR 8301!, ad SCAN! WINS, on inclndsd. Tho first is s nstntiction shout tho touching of crontivo writing; tho socond is s fictional can study involving s thornpist and s son-yon: old girl; and tho third is s story about s dialysis pstisnt ad his sistsr. a BREAD AND norm: iuy first gran-er and composition books (those shiny crackling tones that sonehow’never looked fro-.tbe outside as though they contained any beauty, pity, or sex on the inside) always pro-deed that fiction, like setter, could be broken down into its essential ingredients. Thus if one could isolate character, point of view, plot, setting, the-e, tone, synbol, diction (and I was always careful to check the footnotes for special high altitude directions), one could blend, fold. and finally create fiction. I an.reninded of a tire at recess in the ninth grade when a girlfriend of nine, an early Ate-1st, confessed that as a child she had never known how'bread was node, and.believed for years that each crunb in the loaf was stuck to each of the other crunbs by laborers in a bread factory. "With tweeserst" I asked her. "Hell, yes!" she said. "How else could they do it?" I felt sorry for her, knowing that while her delusion persisted, she nnst hare been continually awed by the negnificence and intricacy of bread. She must haye wondered why they didn't display loaves of bread in the nuseuns next to the Faberge eggs. She oust have been horrified when she found out that bread was nothing sore than a.nase of bloated fungi. "were you.horrified?" I asked her. "You're kidding!" She recoiled in horror. "Is yeast really a fungus? A fungus? Really? Yuck!" To earn her any further disappointment, I told her that I wasn't I 2 sure. ItoldherthatIhadreadsonewherethatyeaetwasatypeof fungus, but that I had probably got the idea out of a pulp magazine and that nest of what one reads, no setter where, is bound to be at least fifty percent piffle. I hope she was conferred. I, however, we not coaforted. Even now, almost twenty yem .1 after our conversation in the playground, I wonder. Is bread anything like fictian Is fiction anything like bread? The word "fiction" cones from the Latin m a "shaping or J co‘nterfeiting, " and one of the so-called else-eta of such counter- feiting is character. (I cn't help but think of George Washington's pictureonthedollarbill,and1auconvincedthatevsnifthe dollar bill is real, George Washington—his wig and that cherry tree—is a comterfeit .) But before one can blend and fold character into a fiction, one met first ask the question: what is character? are instinct of the aspiring scholar who is confronted with the necessity of having to answer such a question is to delve back through history, back through literature, in order to cone up with the quintessential, paradignatic, prototypical character. And so, being a lazy scholar, and not wanting to have to go so far back that even the years themselves diminish instead of add up, I decided to begin with God, who presunably is eternal. John says, Inthebeginningwas theWord, andtheWord was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were nude through him; and without hit: was not anything node that hath been made (John 1:1-3) . It seems to us that John's thesis, or ntithesis, is as good a place as my to begin a discussion of character since, according to 3 John, character ad the Word are one and the seas thing. Further-ore, John's statement has survived the test of ties. All the greatest characters, real or counterfeit, are sade of words, ad without words it is conceivable that neither God nor George Washington could have withstood the oral distortions that occur, even in word genes, when a whispered secret is passed around the toes. .1‘1' God, then, is the quintessential character as far as the ale-ants of fiction are concerned. God is the only character I can think of who . __ can wriggle free (except, else, for his afortunate personal pronoa) J of the other elemental trappings that grace fiction. Does God have a setting? Is he not i-Ine frou point of view? Is there a plot to which he is subject? Does he require style, tone, diction, or synbol? Is he not the "on" in oaynoron'! Yes, I think he is. The Great Presence in the Void, or, according to the delusional system of my friend, God is the first Cris-b to which all the others are stuck. 'rhe problen for the yomg writer who wishes to play God, to create a character, is that stripped of setting, point of view, plot, etc., a character is worse than naked—he is nothing. (It is odd, in light of this fact, that so may elenents of fiction have been superiaoeed on God by ea. We build houses for hin, we eat the body ad drink the blood of his son, we tell stories about his—the Bible, for example—we say that he is merciful- or vengeful, is symbolized by the cross, the fish, the fire or flood—thus "fools rush in where agels fear to tread.") What, then, is the recipe for character? Let's begin with a vague presence (a women, so as to break God's tiresons monopoly). Who is she? 4 Someone raises her had. "Oh, I know! She's five foot eleven with blonde hair—long blonds hair—and blue eyes . Her name is Margaret. She's a model!" Instatly, the imagination snaps shut like a compact, leaving a little cloud of pink powder. "0.K.," I say, groping for the nearest blunt instrument, "and I suppose she's in love with a tall dark-haired ea, about six foot two with gray eyes ad asclee that ripple like swan water ader the grea alligator appliqued on his tennis shirt?" mother had waves frantically in the air. "a: yes! Let's call hia Steve! he's a race car driver! ‘A doctor! A detective—no, a lawyer!" My stolach heavee. "All right." I take up the chalk. "He'll call hin Stepha." I write their naes in my uost florid script on the blackbocd. "Herguet ad Stephen." Already, I know that I would never entrust the mags-at of the firmsnent to a blonde, nor would I ever allow a billboard clothes horse to grass' in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I sigh. I dismiss the class. Q: Tuesday, I notice that the janitor has not erased the asses of surprotagonists. I reachupwithmynakadhadtoswipethaaway, but scathing intervenes. It is the voice of God, "SHE IS SAM!" (we've all heard God's booning voice) ad I see Mephistopheles turn on his cloven hooves, his codpiece pointed straight at Faust. "You've got the wrong Margaret, God," I whimper. "Besides, these two deserve to die." I wipe out Stephen. Then, suddenly, I see Stephen on the bottom of a lake, floating, stomach down, under the cloth top of a blue convertible. His left an, sticking out from the driver's side, makes the ghastly gesture of a turn. acreage carpidlesby, kissesthearmupaddownits asclad length, wage for a amat before the rear view mirror, ad is onu- . Good Heavens! I think. Here is plot! Setting! Even perhaps (the If orage carp) syaol! - I turn to face hrgaret's naa. "Hell?” I say (knowing that whatever she says might just be the start of a point of view). "Hell? I Did you know this guy Stepha or not?” Iha I see a yoag women adrift in a battered old fishing boat. Adrift, almost crossed out by oars in their oarlocks thet'intsrsect just below her chin. She does have blonde hair, beautiful ad thick ad long, but frommyvatage, all I cases is theeid-section of the frissy' braid; the rest is hidden ader her half-buttoned denim jacket. Shedoesnotspeek,butsheisthinking,ad1cahearher. Sheis thinking about sleep ad ager. About how Stepha loved to stretch out his anger, to dry it so taut it could sing. He loved the soad of it, she thinks, like cloth ripping between her legs; the pressure of it, like knuckles inthe smell ofhisbeck, forcinghimout of abar into the street. He loved the sharp whack of his tennis racket against the ball, the and of her father at midnight, pounding on the anvil. Stephen drove to attenuate his agar, his fingers gracing the guns of the plastic steering wheel, twirling the red radio dial like a little sword in a sexy, love-singing liquor. He accelerated until he could feel the car cutting smooth along the dotted line of highway around the lake. cutting smooth, like a maniac stripping out his victim's 6 heart. The faster he went, the more relaxed ad methodical he became until after a while, he knew everything. He understood. Sowhenthebrakes closedontheair, ad thebluespreadof color onthehoodseemedtofusemomatarilywiththesky, healmostmistook the horror of the cold sinking and the slow light-quenching for a kind of sleep. "Well?" But she sits there crossed out by the oars, thinking thoughts that eva I ca't hear. "Hell?" She lifts her eyes. her eyes are blue. "Well," she says, "if I could have sent as kiss through the windshield, through the mottled leaf-camouflage that scaned his lips from the trees, lips half-mouthing the steely highway outsic of heart- break ad first love. the kiss unlike all my other kisses that broke, always on the glass in front of him ad drooled their insect juices into the wiper blades." "he was your brother?" "Yes." She bends down into the boat ad picks up a rusty ca, crushedinon itself ad coveredwithdriedmoss. "fee, hewasmy brother. Hrs. Peaeley saw him. She clans the place on South Shore Road, with the colonial mailbox that matches the colonial birdhouse that matches her colonial house ad boathouse. She told the Lake Patrol that all she out was a flash of blue go sailing off her launch- ing dock so fast it skipped a few times a the water before it sak. "They dredged for two days . Mrs . Peasley called the Iron Works to come out ad put up a wrought iron gate with an automatic opener and eight ornamental flour a. 1:... She told the reporters she knew the victim's father. She had ordered her wedding bad re-sieed by Dad 7 afewst-srsback,adshesaidshewassorryhshadsuchaspesd demaforason. Shesaidshehopedthsgatewouldbsefuture deterrent. Thegate, shesaid, remindedherof her girlhoodin Iouisiaa. She hadbea Gotta Queen. In the news, they reprinted thsazaaerofCo-ercegeologicalsurveymap. (heoftheartists drewStephen'scaraitsomshalfleaguedounwherethsfootof Paintbrushbbatainwouldbsifthereweren'teleke. Theyfigured thscarwassunkbetweatwograiteshelvee,leswardofwherelir. Graberdisappearedinhisiceboattwyeersbsfore." Idraacircleerounduergaret'snameandthechalksatdgsthat had once baa Stepha's. In the corner, perhaps near Hrs. Peaslsy's leaching dock (the circle reminded me of the shore's perimeter), I wrote "Save," so the jaitor wouldn't erase the board overnight. I closed the windows; I locked the door. I went hoa. The next day, I apologised to the yoag writers esseablsd in my class. "Stephen," I said, "is dead. I'm sorry. The jaitor last have erased him by mistake." At the time, I didn't feel the least coa- punction about my lie because, like Peter, I was doomed to repeat it. We spat the first part of the morning talking about faulty pronoun references (I thought of God, the Great Antecedent) and then I continued my lecture on the Elements of Fiction. "Yesterday" I said, "we proposed two characters: Margaret, a attractive blonds; ad Stephen, s hadeome well-ascled brunette. I wrote their names here, but afortunately, as I have already said, one of them was erased last night by the jaitor. Of course I wrote them only as an illustration, ad when I ask you to write your own stories, you may choose ay names you like for your protagonists." "I think I'll resurrect old Stepha," someone said. "He was such a for." "Do so, by all means. But reader that E. M. Forster says that charactersareoftwosorts, roindandflat. Theroadoneecanturn ad roll, I suppose; the flat ones ca't. The round ones have facets, likeagem;theflatoneserelikepenniesplacadontherailroed r tracks. (:herscters may also be dynamic or static. The former change; the latter don't. But as when you stad on the bridge looking down at the river adhavethesensation that itisthebridge, adnotthe L river, that moves, such dynamism or stasis is dependent on your point of view. "As for point of view, there are two basic types: first person "I" ad third peuon "he" or "she." Regarding the first person type, a narratoraytelleitherhis ownstory orthatofaomaoneelse; the "I" may be a main character or a observer. Regarding the second type, the story writta in the third person, the narrator may be oaiscient (again, I thought of God) or limited; he may also be opinionated or objective." "But what about plot ad setting?" someone said. "Aren't they elements of fiction?" "Yes. Plot is simply what happens. Setting is where it happens. Of course, there are other elements in fiction. There is diction, which has to do with the words you choose to write your story; there is style, which has to do with the manner in which the words are combined; ad there are other fictional devices, such as symbol, allusion, metaphor, stc.-—but these are the condiments of fiction. The theme dressings . " 9 "But how does one actually go about writing a story?" (who that cheeky little voice belonged to, I don't know. She piped up from the back.) "Well," I said, "all you have to do is to think of a few characters, a plot, a setting, ad a point of view. Then, simly stick them together ad there you are! , Simlel" "Ch," she squeeked. That night, I tried not to think of Margaret. I even hoped half- heartedlythatwhoeveritwasintheclasswouldgoaheadadresurrect Stepha, turn him into a advertising copy writer or a slick surgeon about to have a affair. I slept badly. Maybe it was too Inch coffee, or that potted meat sadwich. I remembered how 141:. 8188130 (Philosophy ad religion) had been eying Miss Beck (mic) in the faculty lounge. when he got up before sixth period, he held his scriptures ad grade- bookdowninfront ofhimasthoughheweretryingto coverupla erection. Speaking of affairs. In the middle of the night, I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed, sweating profusely ad gasping for breath. It could have been a bad dream, but the minute I sat up, the blurred images turned benip, scattered. like children after the bell. In the diaess of my 11m. Botticelli night light (a pink shell that I always keep plugged into the wall outlet), I an the clock. It was 3:00 a.m. Margaret walked into the room, smoothed the end of the bed, and sat down. "Never mind," she said. "We all have bad dream. It will pass. Somtinns even I still have then, after all these years." She smiled at me. This time she had her hair braided in two braids, like an India. They came down nearly to her waist. She started to fold her legs in 10 under her, ad I noticed that she was wearing codiat boots. "Margaret! Don't you dare put those filthy boots on ey great aunt's afghal" "Sorry," she said. She smiled sheepishly, ad I watched the shadows scatter ad that pool again in the hollows of her cheeks. She had aged. "Hell," I apologised, "on second naught, go ahead. I suppose the afgha's due for aother cleaing ayway." "Gee," she said, "thaks." She brought her feet back up, shield- ing then fro- the afghan with the tattered hell of her bathrohe. "I guesstheydolookfrigbtful. But it'ssuchaordealtohavetolace ad unlace them." "Never mind," I said. "I'm glad you're here. I think I met have eaten some bad potted meat." "Harm milk with pepper. That's what I usually do. Father thought up the pepper part of it. It dich't matter if I had strep throat, menstrual creeps—em blood poisoning from a bad cut. He'd always boil up a pot." "Doesn't boiled milk make you constipated?" "Idm'tknow. Doeait? Ifitdoes,thenthatexplaineit. I was always constipated when I was sick. In the moming, after one of his nursing efforts, I'd find the pa in the sink, ringed with dried whitescum. IguessIthoughtitwsslookingat tbepathatmademe constipated." "Well," I said, "I da't usually have bad dreams. In fact I really dm't know what I was dreaming. These days, I really sleep pretty somdly . " ll "he too. I didn't need to though." She smiled again. "Isn't it aaai'ng that people dream at all? Dreams disprove everything. hey are so disjunctive, so evanescat, like dark shapes moving just under water." "Iknow. wheanokeupjustnowtheydartedawaylikeascheol of brightly colored fish. It's easing." "For years later, I couldn't sleep at night." Her smile faded. her eyes were black daubs of shadow. "The air would catch, sputter, likel’ather'soldlvenrude. Inmydrea-Iwnuldwadeinaynidlt- g I: dreasouttotherottedpilingswheretheboatwas tethered. Iwould drag melf shivering into the boat and kneel before the agine, grown baldadoracularfromascore oflakssu-sers. I'dwindthe cord, pull the choke, and pm my ears to the rusted metal gills. All night I would strain to underatad it, yaking the cord until my arm pained, hoping it would speak, surge to life. I finally dreamed my first dre- word that way. First the agine said, 'giver—giver-turg-giver- turg-turg-giver. ' Then, I thought it said, 'turg-shiver-turg-shiver- gate-shiver-gate.' I knew it was a word, if I could make it out, Stepha's lat word coming from the agine. I woke up with the word on my lips, as though something fathom down in my being had given up its dead." ‘ I smiled at Margaret's imitation of the engine. "Did you find the word?" "No. I da't know what the dream meas." "I'll find out for you. I'll try to find it for you tomorrow." I pulled the covers up around me. "What in the world are you doing here, ayway, in your nightgown ad combat boots?" 12 "I don't know. I Just got back from Paintbrush mountain. I was up Jigger's Gulch, at the Silver Lake nine." "The old ghost mine?" "Yeah, beautiful night. I sort of wish I'd worn a parka, though. I got pretty cold sitting on that old ore car. The moon was pouring through the rotted lathe in Buttercup Murphy's old foyer. You know, it asthavebea greattobe awhere duringtheSilverhoom. Itried to imagine Buttercup's house the way it was—it looks like a spider web now in the moonlight. I tried to picture her all got up in her bustles ad stays, with her snakeskin gloves they still have at the mean. I tried to imagine her receiving gentlemen, pulling the velvet curtains tight in the draing room. I could almost see her drawers pinned to_ a clothesline out back, wafting to ad fro in the night breese'." "What were you doing there in the middle of the night? Are you still cold? Here." I pushed the quilt down to her. "No. I'm fine now, thaks." "Did you used to go there a lot when you were little?" "Tea. All the time." "All alone?" "No, with—" "With Stepha?" I interrupted her. I was afraid to hear her say his name. "Yes, in fact—" Margaret suddenly got a look on her face that I could only describe as pure terror. She fell silent, then her face relaxed. "Where's your father? Is be home?" "(11, no. Haven't you heard?" The look returned. "Actually, I've 13 got to go. I really met. I ca't be seen roaing around in my bath- robe ad I've got a good two hour walk before daylight." She got up. "Wait, Margaret. Well, at least take a coat with you. There are platy in the hall closet. All had-me-downs. Take one, please." But she was gone, ad I dith't think it would do any good to chase after her. _ That moaing, I wat straight to the school library ad looked for mrgaret's word in the big Webster's. I looked up "give" ad "tur" ad "shiver" ad "ter." Then I fond it: tergiversate: l. to turn one's back on; to become a renegade, a apostate. 2. to use subterfuge, evasion. tergiversation: l. desertion of a cause, party, faith. I didn't think it was a word that Margaret would ever use. 0: Stepha, for that matter. I shut the dictionary ad traced the ripples althe marbled surface of its cover. I was afraid. "Don't be." "Don't be what?" I looked up, ad there she was, her long blonds hair pulled over to one side. She looked fresh, stading there before me in the library. Almost like a schoolgirl. Yeager. I Opened up the dictiaary ad pointed to the word. She leaned over the big book, ad her hair dusted the finger tabs. "Tergiversation," she said softly. Then she let out a low tomboyish whistle. "Tergiversation. That's it. Father's old Evenrnde. Stephen's last words coming from the engine. Tergiversation." She pronounced the word like a litay. "rergiversation. Tergiversation." "Tergiversation." We said the word almost at the same time, ad it made a sort of chugging sound. Her face looked small ad sad. 14 "Did he ever?" I asked, "I mean, did they ever find him?" "No." The flourescat lights in the library sort of fizzled in her eyes. "But Father ad I fished for him too. Father couldn't rest until he'd done his om dredging with his high-powered magnet ad his five hundred feet of heavy duty fishing line. We putted out there on the third day. I packed a thermos of coffee ad so- Fig Newtons, ad for warmth, under his tattered windbreaker, I made Father wear Stephen's orage lottery jacket. It took us a good hour to get there with only five horse power, past the docks like wooda tongues waiting for absolution, pine trees leaing alone or stading in clusters. We fished all morning. Mrs. Feasley came out once onto her launching dock with breakfast leavings for her swas ad scrutinised us a long while, holding her bad bill-like above her eyes. I watched the light grow on Paintbrush Maintain, clotting the fall lines ad spreading a bruise of shadow. (nee, Father thought he spotted a flash of blue from Stepha's lottery car, but it was only a oil rainbow from the Evenrude. By noon, we'd caught a perfectly good philip's head screw driver, sou cans, a trout hook, a rusty sailboat cleat, ad a bottlecap, gooey with moss." She paused, ad tha she looked straight into as eyes. Almost acasingly, she said, "Tergiversation." Mr. Higgins nudged me. "Say, didn't you hear the hell? You English people are all alike, lost in your dictionaries." His voice was too cheerful. His face was red. I knew he had bea screwing Miss Beck. When I turned back to Margaret, she was gone. I spied a pair of blends braids and followed them down the hell, but then I remembered that her hair had all been pulled over to one side, like the spout on a watering ca. In my classroom, I noticed that her nae was still there, next to the smear that was Stephen's, saved by my little circle. I looked for her face among those seated before me. She wasn't in the room. mly her name. "I ca't think of a plot," someone said. "ad I ca't think of a setting," someone else said. "I've got a plot ad a setting," said aother, "but I ca't think of a point of view." "I did resurrect old Steve, but he's a nerd, a spoiled little prig. I'm going to have him shot." "I've got a Margaret, but I don't think she's a road character." "Does she have big tits?" "lot too big. Nice aes actually. She's a model." "Thashe's round. Makeherfallinlovewithastudwho'sgot a big diction." I sighed. The chairs screeched ad scraped. The class can to order. "We have bea discussing fiction, ad by now you all know the elemts of which it is coarised. What you write now is up to you. You have the power to create ad destroy—ad defile (I scowled at the wiseecre). Iwill collect your finishedworkneatweek, butaowwe Inst move a to Chapter Eight. The Essay, page 226." The morning finally droned to a close. We slogged our way through various rhetorical modes. I argued, I persuaded, I described. Inwardly, I was full of dread. I kept hearing Margaret's word, tergiversation, over ad over again. The word rolled ad ebbed, surged ad throbbed. I heard it in solo, in counterpoint, in fugue, 16 in chorus. It alast drowned my lecture, then it hung likes heavy magnet in my heart, a sucking regation. Finally, the bell. A death knell. I dismissed the class. I heard the slap of books, huma voices, titters, ad whispers. A cough. I smelled wool. A torso brushed by covered with bright orage bade ad some sloga I couldn't make out. They wat out through the door, which gurgled like a syphon. .4 Then I was alone. Margaret walked in. She was all dressed up like a covergirl. Ber eyes were shaded green ad the pupils shin-ered red in their centers like pimientos in a martini. her lips were painted. Her hair was blowing. She sat down in the third desk on thewindow side, ad she turned her head profile, lifting her face as though expecting; a caress. She froae'. that way. She didn't move, except her hair. I heard her voice speaking from somewhere within me. "There isuo cure for thewayI feel," she said, "not evenmilk ad pepper. No pilgrimage, nothing will help. Not even if I find the woman I am looking for now." "What women! What about Stephen?" "G: the fourth day, we opened cards ad piled them on the stump by the avil. I pitched out the roses that had nodded off on their stems and sat a thak you note to Father's gem dealer. Mrs. Ready brought a casserole ad a loaf of fresh baked bread, but I've never liked chicken, ad the skin floating in juice under a confetti of chopped aion made me think of Stepha's goosepimpled corpse under a sprinkling of tom paper on Silver Lake." "They never found .him? I know, but maybe someday—eomday." "It's terrible not to really know death, not to see it, never to 17 say goodbye. I took Mrs. Ready's bread into the kitchen ad put it on the butcher block. It looked odd, like a casket, like something one could mourn. I ra out of the house, back to the boat. I took every- thing out of it, the screw driver, the sail cleat, the tin cas—all the detritus we had dredged up out of the lake. I took it up Jigger Gulch, up to the silver mine, ad I squashed it all under a rock, in a .4 field of yarrow. Then, I started piling stones, one a top of the other, until I'd made a cairn. I picked lupinxand marsh flower ad colt-bins. I picked paintbrush, St. Johnswort, ad fireweed. I turned that cairn into a flower cake. I practically cleared the field ofyarrow. Then,whenIhaddae, Ididn'tknowwhettodo. Isat downathatrusted-outorecaradwept. Andswore. Isworeatthe Stats lottery, because if Stephen had never won, he would never have got that blue car. I swore at Father, because if Father had never told Stephen what he told him, then Stephen would never have got in that blue car ad woad his agar so tight around the lake that it snapped. Snapped, like silver into the lost war of a centrifuge." "But what did your father tell him?" "He told him that our mother waa't his mother. It was Stepha's birthday. Stepha was eighteen, so Father just haded him the adoption papers. He tried to explain everythhg, but Stephen just read them, ad then he took them out, shredded them, ad threw them off the pilings into Silver Lake. Then he went aroad the house, got into his blue car, slamed the door—" "Did you law?" "Yes. I aooped through Father's files. I have always known." "And so you fell in love with him." 18 "Yes." "ad never told him." "No." "ad now?" "Now? Thereisawomasoawhere. Sheismymother. Shsadopted Stepha ad tha she gave birth to me. She loved Father, but he sat r her away. She didn't take us with her." Margaret's hair was blowing. I went to the board. I erased "Save." I erased the circle around her name. I erased Stepha again, ad tha I turned around. the are, her legs, ad part of her chin were gone. Still, her hair was blowing. I erased the "garet" in her name. Her face was gone. mly her hair, blowing. ally 'm," the bitter root. I erased it, but still, I heard her voice. "fiihalcsmedownoffthemoatain, Iwas famished. Thehousewas dark except for the back porchlight. I walked through the shop. Thick dust of diamond, carnelia, ad malachite. Father wasn't home. I went into the kitchen ad there was Mrs. Ready's loaf of bread on the butcher block. I ate it." "bid now?" "It's romantic, I know, but sometimes I still go up there to the mine to keen. Every tire I go, I put another stone on the mend, aother crumb of earth. I know they are tailings. The silver is all mined out, bent into rings for weddings of dust. Father finally married Mrs. Ready after she had been sufficiently widowed. I suppose they are still happy. I don't know. I moved away. I teach school now, ad model sometimes for extra money." "You have beautiful long blade hair," I say, as I lock the 19 windows ad close the door. "But I wonder about your calm. Does it really help to make a pile of stones, to add to it every year with aother lichen-covered tailing? I get the feeling you think you can put him back together that way, atom by atom." "God knows," she said. "God knows it doesn't really help. But after all, it is a kind of comion, isn't it?" "God knows," I said. But my mind was on other things. I had no body to mourn. I was no tergiversator. I had no birthday mounds to tend to in a ghost town. "You may think so," she said, ad her voice was fading, "but it depends." "Depends on what?" "It depads on your point of view." "Oh," I squeeked, rendering my lecture. her voice was fading. I got a clea eraser ad erased the sadge the jaitor had left on the board. I wondered what would be left of her after next week, when I would read other stories that had started with her name, her long blonde hair, her love for a tall dark ascular man. John says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. " Did it? Perhaps it did. Perhaps I would find her again on the waxed back of a magaai'ne, leaing seductively against a blue convertible, her hair blowing, her foot grasi'ng some caption about style ad the luxury of speed. 'Tiargaret?" She didn't answer. No matter. After all, she was only a character, a counterfeit. Comprised. of stones, little elements of fiction. Besides, there was still The Essay to think of. Chapter Eight. Afterwards, perhaps, I would go looking for her. She could be 20 stuck together somehow. "Margaret?" Then I heard her word, tergiversation, echoing down the eaty hells, coming in with a puff of wind through the metal doors as I exited into the parking lot. I heard it again as I started the agine, thenagain, asIdroveofftowardsmyhome. Iwonderedif Margaret would ever find that apostate, her mother, who had adopted Stepha ad given birth to her. Could such a woma have loved them equally? She had turned her back on them. Could she have loved the- at all? I heard her word, tergiversation, ad I ra a stop light. Did she think I was that woma, her ather? "Margaret?" Still no aswsr. "MW?" Did she think I created her? I had other concerns now. The Essay, for instace. I had earlier posed the question, "Is bread aything like fiction? Is fiction aything like bread?" I thought of Mrs. Beady's loaf of bread, ad remembered that Margaret had eata it, eata it because it was something one could mourn. I ea a flash of red, a stop sign, the bright orange caters of Margaret's eyes. I tried to compose her figure in my mind, but I could only think of dis- jointed figures of speech, her hair pulled over to one side like the spout on a watering ca, the dark shape of her dream moving under water. I called her name once more, but heard only her word, tergiversation. The Essay. I would compose the essay instead. I would say that fiction was not like bread. Fiction was composed of elements: plot, 21 setting, character, point of view. Theme, diction, style, symbol. I would point to the chapter headings in the book, cite inportat scholars- "TBRGIVSEATOR!" It was God—God's booming voice. I burned rubber into w driveway ad cut the agins. I threw my briefcase onto the lam ad made a mad scraale for the house. (It's silly, I know, tothinkthatonecaraforcoverfromcod.) "Margaret? Please, Margaret, aswer me. I promise-J I fie-bled to lock the door behind me. ThaIsawtheaddycleatmarksonthecarpet. "thrgsret?" Ibsntdo‘atotouchthem. Theyweredry. Ifollowedthemonmy hadsandkneesup tomybedroomadback, butInever fomdher. That night, I tried to sleep in spite of caterwauling thunder ad the send of rain slapping the windows. At 3:00 a.m., I found myself sitting bolt upright in bed ad remembered that I had left all my papersonthelan. stdedoutinmynightdress tothemsilboxad found my sodden briefcase afloat in the flower bad. My composition book was waterlogged. I tried to flip through to Chapter Bight, but thepagescamsout inmyhads. Idroppedthemintothegntterad they were carried away by the run-off down the street. I couldn't think of Margaret but I thought of the orage carp, kissing Stephen's an up ad down its ascled length. I thought that one may pile stone upon stone, glue crab to crumb day after day in the dimly lit aisles of the bread factory, but that it was grief after all; some vague yeaaing turned image, some yeasty hunger, that grew into the fiction by which one lived. 22 God didn't say aything, but I knew. I was saved. RED, FOR SHOE Coloredois thenaeI giveherhere, partlytodisguiseherreal identity ad partly to allow myself to bask in the amatary indulgace of a archaic ad gradiose wish. Every doctor beginning with Aesclepius has padered to the fatasy that he ca raise the dead, ad I ano exception. mewould thinkthatbeing awoma, Iwouldbeless likely to fall prey to this particular hubris of my profession, since we won own most of the biological equipment of creation-whether we use it or not. Nevertheless, in giving in to the little thrill of renaing, Icanothelpbutsufferatvingeofpreverbalaweordread, what harry Stack Sulliva calls a "uncanny election." There is so ash bloodadglory inanaa, evaafalse'ae, that I canotbringmyself to call her Mary, or I, or Miss Q, or "my little obsessive coaulsive" --as Anna Freud might do. Instead, I invoke the epic iaerative. Call her Colorado. After all, it is geography that binds us finally, ad we were both children who sunered in a moraine on the western slope of the Rockies. Call her Colorado—or, all right, Red for short. Picture freckles, friasy. hair, ad grape green eyes. Seven years old, about as tall as amailboxwith the flagup, admadlyin lovewithawooden horse. Red was the first child of my homecoming—not to the western slope, since one~ca never return to the 111st of childhood, but to the Queen City on the eastern side. I had been back in the house a 23 26 month since I had ousted the last taats, thrown the last of their detritus (a old tire, some spoiled towels) into the trash. For weeks I had saded ad drilled to make the downstairs into a office, bolting the game shelves to their lead sinkers, installing the doll house with its rubber family ad furniture. My old life had haunted me since the move back into the upstairs, as though the dust particles of nary, settled into the vats seven su-ers before, had whooshed out again the minute I lit the furnace for winter. Really, I marveled at the old house, its ability to keep all suspaded, countless tenats, lovers, neighbors; all the asings ad mappings since 1887. how, ad after all ‘my labors of twelve years before, the house looked a stately old Victoria, well kept, in a girdle of wrought iron, on a shaded semi- residatial street. - In the bay window area, I set a table with my favorite smorgas- board for the psyche, the Board of Objects Ca. invated by Dr. Richard Gardner. m it, I loaded fistfuls of checker-sired aimals, people, trucks, shapes, ad trinkets; beside it, I placed a bright cloisonne box full of my gradmother's old lacquered poker chips. I put the overflow from the board into a child-sired huabacked trunk labeled PRIZES, in my finest poster lettering, tha stuffed it full of slinkeys, space man, ballerinas, jungle fauna, gumballs, popguns, ad wriggling lizards. I placed two muslin-covered wingback chairs by the fireplace, as well as a odd-sired assortment of children's chairs, baa Bear, Poppa Bear, Baby Bears—even one for that little interloper Goldilocks. Behind the television, installed in the closet wall, I rigged all of my audio ad video equipment, hiding the ugly wiring ad making easy viewing for family observers. 25 m the eve of Fed's arrival, after I had swept up the last dust from my renovations, I collapsed in the Poppa Bear's chair with a glass of Jack Daiels ad surveyed my little workshop. Through the sliding doors was the room that had once bea my bedroom. Metamorphosed into a rolltop deskwas thebrassbedwhereIhad oncedreamed incipherthe lost chronicles of my own childhood. Silverware drawers that had once hidden my socks ad underclothing were now filled with the office supplies ad letterhead of my profession—was it a historical para- phraxis, I wondered, from slip to Freudia slip? The corner cupboard south of q fraud diploma was crowded with books whose titles seemed to twinkle ad titter behind their leaded glass at the irony of it all, like observero barely visible in the light behind a one-way mirror. That the room had passed through these larval stages--from formal diningroom to bedroom to office—was a source of inspiration to me, ad I toasted the house, "May we continue to econ-odete such evolution of the heart's desire, from south, to genitals, to love's knowing coaromise." Outside the aow was falling, wrapping the house tight as the gifts I used to rip out of their white butcher paper on Christmas. I dosed, perhaps, before mounting the stairs to bed. That morning, it was had who broke the ground, ducking under my first hadshake with her mother, cutting the curled wisps of cold that trailed into the waiting room after her, ad in fact I had to coax her had out of her red coat pocket while she cocked her akles ad teetered defiatly on the rims of her galoshes. (be little parable from a early interview sticks in my mind. Apparently had had so tormented her mother with questions about her appointment-would I look down her throat? shine lights in her eyes? 26 would I want to watch her play?-that her mother, in desperation, had parrotted the diagnosis given her (awisely, I think) by Red's previous therapist . Several days later in my office, having never once looked at me, unless perhaps, like Perseus, she studied my reflection in the shiny convexity of her patent leather shoes, we had the following erchage : R: T: B: You still don't know who I am but before you find out I'll tell you. I'm a borderline. A borderline! Good heavens! Who told you that? Mother. But the shrink told her. What shrink? Did you go to a shrink? Yes. He said he was my big playmate. Be made me play games, but I'm very big for my age. I grswtwoareinches sincehemovedeway. Well, do you think I'm going to try to shrink you? (There was a long silence. After all, had had practically never sea me, except smeared on the surface of her shoes.) You ca't shrink me, because I'm not me. I'm Abeneeser. A liner. (This was the first I had heard of Abaeeser. Later, after much thought, I chose the pseudonym for its wheesy, old-timer cadence, like a men with a nose full of gold dust.) So you're Abeneeser? And here, all this time, when I thought I'd been talking to Bad, I was actually talking to Abeneeser? Well well, ca you tell me about yourself, Abeneeser? (No response. Only the red hair parted down the middle, like a book opened and abadoned face down on a table. I tried a different tack.) Well then, what about this business of your being a borderline? A borderline is someone who has four corners. Someone who is not aywhere because they are four places at once. Who told you that? I found out for myself. We went once to the mum-r, 27 borderline ad I put one foot in Arisaa, one foot in, uh, um, Utah, my right had in New Mexico, ad my left had in Colorado. (From her strained gestures, it was clear that Red did not know left from right .) T: (h, I get it. You visited the Four Corners Monument , where the boundaries of four states meet in one spot. But tell me, how did you become the borderline? R: By putting my hads ad feet. I am the line. But the shrink tried to aka me go home. he didn't like me being all different states at once. T: Well, that's just about the best definition of a borderline I've ever heard. As far as I'm concerned, you ca be the borderline as lag as you want, ad I'm never going to try tomekeyougohomeorchooseonlyonestate until you—ad Abeneeser—are good ad ready. That day, out of the chest marked PRIZES, Red took a wriggling rubber catipede. Wha I asked her why she had chosen it, she told a she was planing to take it to the Four Comers, so it could becoae a borderline too, ad be in a hundred states at once. Red Pike, borderline. Borderline of what? Diagnosticiana are endlessly trying to repair the broka faceline that rages along the vest continuum from sick 'to well. For the sae, a decorative lattice or slatted wood; for the neurotic, woven or twisted metal; for the very sick, a single wire—electrified. But invariably a specimen of live- stock, here or there, is bound to get out. Nevertheless, I must cacede that Red exhibited may of the symptoms of the so-called borderline. met striking were the following: 1. Chronic, intense axiety, with occasional paic states. Red alternated between fratic, severely agitated body movements ad a almost catatonic, paralysed inability. In the former anxiety state, Red whinnied a 28 unintelligible stream of speech; ad in the latter state she said nothing, only stared out of a face that was both stiff ad apressionless, a face that seemed almost hardaed into rigor mortis. 2. Pear of disintegration, of becoming aother person or object (her horse) , ad fear of being anihilated by separation from others. 3. Excessive magical thinking, with loss of contact with reality so that Red often believed that her thoughts-may, her death wishes for her mother or father—had actually come true. 4. Various rituals , somatic concerns , obsessions, ad phobias which served her fatasiad reality ad bespoke a natural self-absorption. Red Pike, a borderline. I smiled again at the picture of her straddling four states at ace, ad I sighed thinking that, structurally, the mind is no are coalicated tha a three-tiered pastry caddy on a lasy susa, ad that the psychologists who saala its wicked sugars are no more objective tha the sweet tooth who astches a long john from the middle shelf instead of a napoleon from the first shelf, or a apfal strudel from the third. The psychologist-equivalent of the guy who selects a long john would be, in my opinion, Wilhelm Reich—assuming, of course, that the cream filling inside were shot full of precious orgona ad that the confection had not been identified previously as a UFO. Of course, the faciar of the napoleon would be Adler, with his will to power. The apfal strudel would go to Jung, whose psychology, comprised of layer upon layer of flaky paste trio-ed into a square, would reveal here or there a culinary oddity, say, a raisin, of quaint background or gender, wall-wrapped ad with a look of puckered, pre- historic holiness—but with a core of apfal after all. The game of matching pastries with psychologists is fatuous but 29 fa. When I think of Carl Rogers, for aaale, I think of apple pie, which is positively valued accept in combination with motherhood. As for lak, with apologies for the fact that it's hardly gourmet, I think of the fortae cookie. he cannot help but re-esperiace the birth trauma when cracking through to as of those portentous ad divalent messages? Portae cookies are schisophraogaic. I never open nine. But where, as might ask while nosing among the confections, is Freud? Perhaps he is the cart itself. Perhaps his topography, ad the three—tiered trinity of id, ago, ad superago, are the creaking gyre on which all the other sweets of psychic wisdom are displayed. Red's mother, Mrs. Pike, was the aly child of a upper-middle class family. Her father died the year of her birth, ad her athsr died when she was in her teas. lot surprisingly, Hrs. Pike had all the earmarks of a extremely phobic individual. Concealed in her iaoeing ad athletic figure was a laely little girl who, from earliest childhood, had lived in fear that her nether would die. Every arguant with her mother carried its dread portat; every slight indisposition or temporary disappearace bodsd a threat that her mother's heart, weakened since birth by rheumatic fever, would run done: or spring a fatal leak. Even though Hrs. Pike had been raised by her wealthy gradfather to expect a life at the side of a successful, upper class businessma, Hrs. Pike's fears made her drea of a man who would never leave her, a prop-dike the as which held up the photograph of her dead father a her bedroom bureau—that could forever support the image of a love she had never received from her bereft mother. 8o wha she met her husbad, a reckless ad indigent romatic bri-ing with easy grace ad power, reader, she married him. I learned from my aecad interview with Red's mother that Mr. Pike ad three of his four siblings were alcoholic. Rad's father, in fact, was the aly child inhis familywhohsd found, by genuine cleveasss ad chase, a way to escape the ghosts of his parents. He brought his wealthy ad beautiful bride back to the poor min street of his home town, into his deceased parents' clapboard house, ad he busied himelf with good works. He raised fade for the blind; he joined this board; he was elected to that co-ittee. But some deep-seated pride or fear smeared him from his wife's childhood world. When Mrs. Pike had tickets for the synphay, he got the tractor stuck in the cotton-nod grove ad refused to go; when she proposed bridge, or a theater outing, he somehow wand up having to repair a leak or build a fountain for the courthouse lawn. Like the child of unsuspected royalty whose curse is baished by a kiss, 141:. Pike was awakaed ad rescued by his marriage. With his wife's money, his natural kindness found a outlet. And so he became a forger of public spirit ad achieved middle age without ever having to stop believing in magic. From his workshop issued all sorts of whimsi- cal sculptures, wood carvings, weldings, ad staework. He invented birds, dragas, engines, ad whirligigs. To Red—st least until he "died"-ha was a god. Every wish can true. "A draga, please, Daddy?"-by sundown it was haging over her bed expelling hot blue flames from a kerosene-soaked wick. "A baaa split, Daddy, please?"-off they went right before dinner in the truck to get one. 31 Borderline? Why? Born of these two, with no sober extended family to sway the balacs, Red was like as stading waist high in a riptide. To please her mother, she must fuse with her; to please her father, she met be the sorcarar's apprentice, the tinker's belle. Now the horse. By the age of seven, Red had chaged schools thrice. The second school was me. Pike's choics,'s private girls' school bursting with future owners of fur coats ad ski resort condo- niniuma. There, the playground games consisted of mock coming out parties ad aka believe dressage. Her father mist have heard about how the girls linked their uniform belts together, put the buckles in their mouths, ad rode tadam, horse before rider, over the seats of swing sets ad across the cavaletti of white lines painted for hop scotch ad four square a the pavement. no carved the horse from pine. finale, nose, haw; forlock, cheek, throat. as fashiaed ears of leather. Mae of horsehair, brooutick body, flaired nostril dug out with a .1. He gougsd the eyes, chisseled the velvet lips. Rosehad, chinstrap, browbad. Ba split the leather reins ad braided them. He welded a aaffla bit. Red named him Graymellory, ad took him—only once-to school. To his second consultation with me, Mr. Pike brought a scrapbook full of photographs of his sculpture ad puctical jokery. I recog- nized, from his sheepish grin ad his embarrassed gestures, that he was trying to win me over, to prssat himself as s an whose humor ad child-like vision of the world were sufficiat to baish ay real troubles Red might be experiencing. "Do you sell them?" I asked him. ‘ "No, they're just for fun." (he of the photos was of a beautiful hand-carved stick horse. 32 "Graymallory?" I asked him. ”Red's horse?" "Ies. I carved it for her. I made the bridle, too, ad welded the bit myself. The mane is made from clippings off the tail of her mother's hater." "It's a beautiful horse. But da't you think Red is a little too old to be riding a stick horse?" "Hell, I never thought of it. I don't think so. She did take it to school once, but when I asked her what her girlfriends thought of it, she went into one of her marble moods." "Marble—the stone? Is that what you call them?" "Pink marble, really. I carve in pink marble. Here, I'll show you." t watched, tka, while no. Pike turned the pages of the photo album. sts stirredbyhispowerfularmsad forearms, hishadsso big they made the oversisad album look like a volume from Collin's Miniature Library. Be fumbled through the pictures until he came to a statue of a woman, but I feigned lack of interest. "Hr. Pike, we were speaking of Red's vacat, stay expressions, what you call her 'pink marble' moods. Do you think Red might have been embarrassed by the horse? After all, not may children have such a unusual toy, ad perhaps Red was made to feel excluded by her girlfriads' envy of it." Mr. Pike was silent, but in his eyes I sat a sadness, as though the spirit of love in which he had carved Graymllory had run away with him, waspart ofadrssminwhichnedwashis jockey ad Graymallory the talisma of his on abstinence ad fairy tale ascendance. He took the book from me and closed it, bowing his head in a gesture of shy gallantry. "No good at school, maybe," he said, "but she hardly parts 33 with the thing at home. Not even wild horses could keep her away from Graysellory at home. I wouldn't be surprised to see her dappled ad sprouting a mas as of these days." "How lag has it baa since Bed became so unusually attached to the horse?" I asked. "an, I don't know. Her mother knowa. It's her mother worries about it. Maybe a year or so." "Do you ride, Hr. Pike?" "Heavens, no! Not that I mind my wife's hunting friends—I just prefer is what they stay on their horses!" I laughed. "I suppose that's what you think of head shrinkars too --as lag as they keep their voodoo to thauelves?" "de's just high spirited, ad maybe a little barnsour. She was too web for the shrink we first took her to. I ca't recall his name just now, but the name sounds like that sggplat dish they serve at Dmitri's Cafe. muse Cake, I call it." ”You msa moussaka?" "Something like that. It's the Blue Plate Special at Dmitri's, but I stick to the liver ad aions." "where did Rad learn the name 'Ahsnesser?"' "Abebeaser's our name for evaryae who dosa't have a name. The egg men is Abaeaser; the postman is Abaeaser; the psrsa who spills something, loses something, breaks something—they're all named Abaeaser. Abaeaser is the family scapegoat." "Did you know that Red sometimes believes that she is Abaeaser? But in Red's mind, Abaeaser is a miner." "A miner? Well, Abaeaser was also a baby mule dead last sumr. 3‘ miles, you know, I've always told Red, are a miner's best friend. The mere rejected it. We used a nose twitch ad hoppled her legs to keep her still so the mule could nurse, but she broke loose as morning ad kicked the little thing in the stomach. We had to put it down." "Did Bed see it happen?" "Bed dichi't see it happen, but Bed liked to go down to the stall nights ad hold the for-Ila bottle. She had tatrues when we'd try to pry her loose. Maybe there's something in it." "that something?" "Hell, seems to me that's your job." Watching Bed a video, I was ofta hypnotised by the rhythmic distortias, frayed or particulate, that flickered over her torso like sheet lightning. I would hear my on voice or Red's briefly probing some dark horisa, sometimes making a jagged belt for solid groad; I would watch her face warp or decoaose, almost fearing that it was through the effort of my [on concatration, reliving our hour in the evening after the morning sessia, that her image kept its precarious integrity. It isn't easy to write a case history. Most of them read like auto repair manuals: "The patient had a bent chassis and a cracked block. Be coalainsd that his gears were stripped, even though at as time he had boasted a four-speed maual transmission with automatic overdrive." Is that really so different from the stuff one reads in psychology journals? (he colleague of mind cemented a the similarity between case histories ad the mystery stories of Sir Arthur Cona Doyle, but in 35 this cass-Ths Borderline of the Basksrvilles?-thsre was no script for a Sherlock. I am no wily sleuth, ad there was no premeditated evil to unmask. Those evenings I felt more like Penelope, unraveling the threads of a tapestry woven that morning in my office, sorting through the colors, wrapping the skeins tight again, readying the shuttle for our next session. I thought I'd never get ahead, never finish waiting, never see the pattern emerge. I Wha Red arrived for her twaty-fifth sessia, she wat straight to work a the blak piece of drafting paper I had brought in ad clipped to a easel in the playroom. Seemingly unaware of my presence, she busied herself for five minutes or so. Then she backed away, two green crayas in her mouth ad a fist full of colored ass stuck in her pocket. Sheputherfreehadoutinfi'ont ofher, inthegestureof the artist trying to judge proportia, thud: up, eyes squinted, head cocked to as side. "I guess it's finished," she said. "So you made a picture? Would you like to tell me about it?" I helped her tear it from its binding. Ilsiditoutaatable for thetwoofustoses. Itwasofa little girl with a triagulsr skirt ad red hair, stading in a corral surrounded by three concentric snake faces. The pasture outside the corral was colored green. The inner aake face was red, the outer ass blue. In the upper left was a reclining stick figure, colored black. Beside it was a saw horse. "Is that you in the corral?" "up." "And is that your stick horse?" "Yep . Graymallory . " 36 "But why are you inside all those faces?" "To keep me from getting out." "had who is the black person?" "A man." "What is he doing there?" "He's dead." "Well, how did be die?" "He fell asleep." "Bow ca someone die from falling asleep?" "Graymallory stepped a him." "Can you tell me the story of how it happened?" "Well, Grsymallory ad I were safe inside ad tha this ma came slag. Be fed Graymallory bad water ad he gave me a rotta carrot. But while we were eating, pretending to eat, he turned aroad ad Graymallory juupsd out ad stepped a him. Tha Grsymallory ad me climbed up into the sky a the white notes." "The white notes?" "Yes. The piao notes that go up to the sky. c, D, B, P, G, A, B, c." Bed sag a ascending octave. "The white notes are safer." "But you didn't draw that part. You drew yourself still stuck in the corral." "It's not a corral. It's a merry-go-round. Besides, I drew the story before it happen ." "I see. But tell me about this black ma. Is he a older men, or a younger ma?" "An older ma." "Like your father?" 37 "No, not my father. My father is a white ma. My father is a good kind ma. This ma is black. A bad man, who feeds bad water to horses." "What kind of bad water?" "Bad, bad water. He tried to poisa Graymallory, but Graymellory stepped a him because I couldn't touch him." "Do you touch your father?" "He's not my father. My father's a white man!" Bed flew into a rage. She ripped the picture off the desk ad tore the black ma out of it. Then she crusplsd him ad stooped a him with her patat leather shoes, the whole time shrieking, "He's a bad black water ma, a bad, bad ma, I hate hate hate him?" She draped the Board of (bjects Gain off the table ad sat down, holding her knees ad rocking amidst the spilled aimals ad toys. I got down a the floor, ad as calmly ad distinctly as I could, I told her that I thought the black ma in her picture was the bad part of her father, the bad part she was agry with, ad that no father was all good, all white, ad that no little girl could always be enacted to love her father all the time without ever being agry‘. I suggested that she had put Graymallory inside the snake face with her because Grsymallory was the good part of her father, the father who would protect ad love ad care for her, ad I told her that her picture represented a wish that Graymallory , the good father, could kill the black ma, the had father. "Graymallory will never let you ride him, " she said. "That might be so," I said, "but maybe if we ca figure out why you are agry with your father, you won't have bad black men in your 38 pictures aynore who try to feed you a rotten carrot." Red retrieved the crumpled picture ad spread it out flat. I helped her patch the black nan back on with sons tape, ad I told her that I would like to have the picture free her as a gift. She nodded. I asked her about the snake faces. "they're to keep as fro: getting out ad being Abeneeser." "who are you wha you're Abaeaser?" "I'na oldniner, andI liwebynyself in seine." "Do you think the snake faces could be like your mother, who protects you ad keeps you safe?" Bed nodded. "But aother sometime goes away. We had a little horse ace who got out of the corral ad got his foot caught in the hay wire." "Does your aother go any?" "tea, ad when she does I'n always Abaeaser." "Is Abeneeser a girl miner or a boy miner?" "A boy miner." Red stopped rocking. I gave her so. kleenex ad she blur her nose. "Do you have children?" she asked. "No," I answered. I'm not aarried, ad I have no children." "Do you have parents?" "Of course. Everybody must have parents. I have parents, but my father is dead now." "Will he cone back to life?" "No. He is dead. Dead people ca never, ever come back to life, but they stay alive inside you because you rem» then as they were when they were alive." "Can I take a prize?" 39 "Yes," I said. "The hour is almost up, ad you have been a very brave girl today." I opened the trunk, ad Red spat several minutes ru-aging through the toys before she chose a wooden necklace, painted blue. "Will you wear it home?" I asked. "No! Miners don't wear necklaces. This necklace is for Gray-al- lory, to make him look pretty and to scare sway monsters." "Is it a face? It looks like the face you drain your picture, the face that surrounds ad protects you like your mother." "No! It's a necklace. I will give it to you instead. You wear it." "Do you think that if you give me the necklace, it will keep me from going away? I'm not going to leave you, Red. I will be here tomorrow wha you come, ad I don't need a magic necklace to help me be here tenorrow. You have already giva as your picture, which pleases me very ach. I'he necklace is for you." "Hsybe I will give it to my mother as a pretty surprise." Red's father case to pick her up. I helped her on with her boots ad watched as down the porch stairs she clung to her father's coat, walking as one atraced or asleep. Inside the playroom was her after- image, deja vu, perhaps, of my own childhood fears ad rages, or perhaps some memory of the house itself, one of its ghosts i-olated in the fire of Red's hair as she never descaded, aly stepped out in her galoshes onto stairs that rose to meet her. What's in a child's mind? What, if anything, could Red have heard of our conversation? It was impossible to know whether or not my 40 interpretation of her picture had made ease to her. Wha she thought of white or black, for instace, did she think of cowboy hate on television westerns? Did she think of brides ad witches? Vanilla ad licorice? Eva after years of training, I could never adopt the imagery inspired by my teachers, real or vicarious, who spoke of the mind as, say, (the behaviorists) a counter in cauliflower drag or as, say, (the Jungias) a madalla-shaped ciphon full of everything imaginable so that no atter how one flushed it, some erotic artifact (from deepest Africa, or the tomb of some Peloponnesisn king) was likely to come bobbing back up. No, wha I pictured the mind, I saw a trail cairn, high above timberline. There it was, a pile of inscrutable stones, a mound made by accretion, each stone part of a coaosite idatity, otherness made self; each stone marking . way hoa. I like to think that after the next Ragnarok the ragpickers who sort through the arcaa of our shattered history will come upon these names: Adler, which msaa "eagle"; Jung, which means "yang"; ad Freud, which msas "joy." Tha, if these twilight archaeologists mis- takenly presume that the nanss were affixed not by parents but by posterity, they will at least be correct in their assignment of allegoric significace. Red's picture had set me wondering. I decided to request that her parents coma for a further consultation. I asked Mr. ad ms. Pike if they would mind being taped during the session. They consented, ad what follows is a transcription of our conversation. '1': Mr. Pike, do you drink? (The two of them looked at each other in surprise.) Mr. P: Mr. P: Mr. P: 61 No. I don't drink. I used to drink a bit, in the early days of our marriage, but it was so upsetting to everybody That's not quite true. You drak heavily in the early days of our marriage, so such that I almost left you. (She turned to me.) I threatened to leave him. I did leave him, in fact, for a time during the pregnacy. I went to visit relatives. I told him that I would rather live alone as a single mother tha with a drunk. (Mrs. P looked down, ad her eyes darted from object to object around the room, as though she expected something to pop out fron behind the doll house or from underachair.) WhaI caebackhejoined AOAOO You see, I was drunk the day Red was born. Iwaedrunk, sodrunk, infect, thathas afraid to pick her up ad hold her. So I promised myself that I wouldn't drink ay- more. Iwasafraideoulddropmytiny daughter. Doyoudrinknow? I askbecausenedhas apressed considerable fear of being alone with you. Did you ever drink wha Hrs. Pike was away? Come to think of it, I have noticed that Red seems to be afraid of you. She wouldn't let you come tuck her into bed last night. She never kisses you good- night aymore. Did you drink wha I was away those four weekends last su-sr? You've bea drinking again. I know it. Well, I guess I did do a little experi- menting with some wine 1 last su-sr. (He turned to me.) You see, I hadn't had a drink for almost seven years, ad I thought I'd just try ad see if I could drink a little, socially, the way I used to. I guess I was afraid to drink with Red's mother, since she gets so hopped up about it, so I did In emerimating wha she was way. (Mr. Pike hit his lower lip. He had the look of a child caught with a opa book of matches. Mrs. Pike's face was gray with terror ad rage.) Mr. P: 1': Mrs. P: T: Hr. P: T: 62 Hr. Pike, I hope you understad that no one ‘is grilling you with these questions in order to eek a confession out of you. Alcoholism is a disease, ad it is not unusual for the reformed alcoholic to have a relapse. I ask because Red, in her previous sessions with me, has given me reason to believe that you might have bea drak in her presace while Hrs. Pike was away. Have either of you ever explained what alcohol is, ad what alcohol does to a person who drinks it? There's never boa ay reason to explain alcohol or its effects to her. I waa't drunk. All I've bea doing is aperimating with a little wine. Have you gone back to A.A.? Indehingobackwhalledwasborn. I think it helped. (To Mr. Pike) have you attaded a meeting reeatly? Recatly? No, I don't see ay reason for going. I'm through with my little experi- ments. I've learned that I'm not the kind of guy who ca drink, eva socially. I recon-ad, nevertheless, that you return to Alcoholics Anonymous. I also suggest that you attempt to explain your drinking to Red. She does not understad why your behavior chaged when she was alone with you those weekads. Instead, she has devised a elaborate fatasy explaation in which you are both the horse, which you carved for her ad which she loves ad ca depend on, ad alsoamawho isdead orasleep, whobribes her with poison. You must rember that all children believe in a kind of magical causality. If you were drunk in Red's presace, it is probable that she felt she was responsible, that her own thoughts ad wishes made you drunk, or even killed you. (By this tine, Mrs. Pike's anger ad fear had found an outlet in tears. I offered her a kleaex.) I do not blame you for drinking, nor do I think that your drinking is the sole cause of Red's troubles, but I recounad that you look upa your drinking as a problem which you canot be expected to control without 43 the support ad assistance you will get from a group such as A.A.. It is impor- tat that you learn to overcome your daial, to speak about it without shame. Children will take the most extreme measures in order to love ad understand their parate. Sometime, they eva go so far as to reinvat them. Mr. P: (He spoke almost inaudibly.) I guess, in one ease, I did drop her after all. When the session aded, I watched as, grudgingly, Hrs. Pike allowed her husbad to help her on with her coat. I was once again struck by his arms ad forearms, the shy determination with which he buttoned his wife's anger up against the cold. He held the door patiatly, waiting until she had assembled her features into a righteous pout, ad wha he exited after her he winked at me, as though to include no in some conspiracy of their future reconciliation. I smiled back ad later, from the window, I did see her take his had. Whether from some uncanny countertransference or from some dis- torted empathy, the cold terror of Red's weekads alone with her father comes clear to me, ad the vision is like a thing from the depths of the sea, wrapping around my feet ad spewing its black ink into all time ad memory. I see her perched on the kitcha ladder, tightaing the caps on the liquor bottles so the seals will match up, stealthily marking the level of the liquid with a black craya. I see all the evil tools, the silver shot measure on a stem that turns into a spoon, the ice bucket with its lid that slides opa ad closed like the door of a bak vault or the rock in front of a robber's cache; two bottles, full of a liquid the color of cats' eyes, a squinting tawny color that smells metallic ad raw, a little like soap; aother bottle full of a blood-tainted water behind a label frothing with grapes ad M goat-footed men. Late afternoon, the ladder put away, Red lingers in the hall astride Gray-allay, waiting, knowing he will come, because she has long ago learned the exigencies of thirst. Finally, his footsteps, ad then the sound of the sliding glass door on its aluminum track. Red doesn't flinch, she doesn't eva grip the imaginary flake with her knees . Instead she feels like the hunter who has outsmarted a prey too beautiful to kill. She hears the clicking of cupboards, ad tha of a glass; she hears the trickle of liquid, ad feels the black dilation of Graymsllory's nostrils, his leather ears laid back, his mouth champing a bit that he ca never swallow. Tha footsteps again, the glass door on its aluminum track, ad wha she is sure he is gone, Red tiptoes back to the broom closet for the kitchen ladder. Up its rickety steps, she finds the disturbed seal, the bloated griuce of goat-footed men aong the grapes, the black crayon mark high above the blood liquid, ad under her she feels a powerful beast rear- ing on its beaches, pawing the air, lashing out at the qty space where once her allegiace to him had bea. I knew it would take time, that there would be an afternoon wha she would see him slip a smll bottle surreptitiously into his sock and disappear down to the barn. I knew there would no doubt be aother afternoon wha he would park the truck to get cigarettes ad she would have to wait an hour for him to return, his kiss sweet ad innocat ad reeking of juniper. What I hoped was that somehow I could help her realise that she was not the scapegoat, that she didn't have to turn herself into a wheesing miner to escape his intoxicated satimatality, nights wha he would beg her to sit on his knee, force her to listen to him dredge through the tailings for the fools' gold of his own 45 narcissism. I knew it would also take time--time far beyond her sessions with me, before Red could understand the symbiosis that bound her to her mother-we mother who, in order to gain imity from her own phobias, engaged Red in a sort of dangerous game of peek-asboo. Sometimes Hts. Pike was warm.and nurturing; sometimes she was like the mere who refused Abeneeser. craymsllory was more than a symbol of her father's love ad steadfastnees. More rippled down the powerful croup ad gaskin of the horse than the transposed muscles of her father's arms. For Bad, Graymsllory was a trasitionsl object, a object which she created to fill the expanding and contracting gap between her mother ad herself. Graymsllory's gait always matched her own; fringed with hair from her mother's hater, the horse carried her over the dry or flooded fields of her dissolution to a place like the warm.hay smelling barn where her mother went to curry and feed and blanket, where the packed earth was spread with a soft bedding of straw. What I hoped for was that Red, through the trasferace, could establish ego boundaries strong enough~to withstand the symbiotic demads placed upon her by her mther. “ha the soft bedding of straw became a place of terror where hooves lashed out at her in sleep and the sheets that hoppled her unlocked a nightmare of violence, I wanted her to hear a new voice—not the toothless whinnying screen of a newborn-but my voice, wrapped around the voices of her parents, bushing her cries, staunching her fear, taming the darkness, rocking her to sleep. I was pleased when finally, after our 100th session, Red was able to leave Greymallory at home alone and return, after an absence of 46 almost nine months, to the third grade. I had arraged with her teacher for her to be excused from class to call her mother as often as she wished, ad I asked Hrs. Pike to stay by the phone in order to reassure her that, yes, Grayssllory was grating contatedly on the carpet in her bedroom, ad that, yes, she would bring him some oats, a lug of sugar. That autua, Red ads steady progress. In spite of her sulks and rages, she bega to achieve a certain amount of differentiation between herself ad objects. Slowly, the other childra at school became aimated; she did not cry wha, after crumpling a piece of construction paper ad throwing it in the trash, or after breaking a toy, she would suddenly believe that she was a ardent, had destroyed something with a soul, a beating heart. are conversation that seemed to have a catalytic effect on our future sessions occurred wha we were playing the Board of $1 ects Game, at her lend session. Red chose a blue cat's-eye marble, ad told the following story: Pad: This marble is Hr. than who lives in the sky. the night he was rolling around in the sky wha suddenly he got turned inside out ad landed in our back yard. He made a big hole. I woke up ad rode Graymsllory out into the back yard to see what happaed. There was a big hole in the yard ad it was bubbling inside, making a whish sound like the washing machine wha it's full of soap.‘ I looked up ad there was no moon, not eva part of him was up there, all of Mr. Moon was in the hole. I got scared, because Graymsllory wated to ride around him, so we rode around him, trotting (Red bounced the marble up ad down around the checker board). We kept riding ad riding, ad then suddenly we got stuck ad this metal thing can out ad grabbed Graymsllory ad he became a merry-go-round like the horses that go around ad round at the ferris wheel, ad he kept going round ad round until he was catering and running ad 47 I couldn't hold him ad I fell off ad he got swallowed into the hole and-(Red threw the marble across the room ad began kicking her feet and stamping. Then she got up, gallopad over to the marble, snatched it up ad brought it back to the table) . And tha I went into the house ad grabbed sugar cubes ad took them out and dropped them into the hole ad m. then exploded ad one piece wat way up into the sky ad lots of things came out, ad I got all wet ad things kept falling on me, ..- pennies ad toys, and then everything laded on the gromd, ad I wat to look for Graymsllory, ad I found him, but all of his legs were gone, except one. The ad. Does Greynsllory have legs? I thought Grsymsllory was a stick horse. Graymsllory has legs, but you ca't see all of them. Here is one (she waved her foot at me) and here is one (she waved her other foot at me) but the other two are visible. . You aa invisible. But who is missing the legs—you or Grayssllory? GraymslloryuI msa ms. Graymellory has legs, but they are invisible ad Mr. then ate them. The ad. Can I have a prize? Yes. You get a prise (I handed her two laquered chips). Now it's my turn to tell a story about Mr. moon. (I understood Red's story to have meaing for her on may levels. First of all, I suspected that her recent experiaces in public school had set her wondering again about the differaces between the sexes, ad I thought her story expressed considerable confusion of gader. I wondered whether the moon might symbolize a kind of vagina dentata, whether perhaps the fact that Red had lost Graymallory's leg into the well of the moon might represent her own concern with having no pais, as well as a fear that perhaps her mother, the exploding moon, had deprived her of it. Secondly, I suspected that her story expressed a more archaic fear, a fear that she would be annihi- lated or agulfed by her mother. Thirdly, I suspected that the death of Abaeaser the mule Red: 48 was confused in Red's mind with her under- stading of the evats that had occurred on those weekads when she was alone with her father. The two deaths were no doubt amalgamated-the "death" of her father, in his intoxicated stupors, ad the death of the baby mule. If Red felt that she was responsible for her father's behavior, that her oedipal feelings ad her fear of seduc- tion by him had somehow kicked him.down, than her old miner persona provided refuge. ,Her father would not seduce a boy; a boy cannot have babies ad thus canot nnrder them. For Bad, birth was synonymous with violent death. I did not know whether Red knew that mules ca never have offspring, since they are hybrid, gaetic dead ends; but I suspected that she did know, and I guessed that she had aligned herself with Abaeaser, the baby mule, out of a desire to be absolved of the crimes of gader. It was with this understading of her story that I tald we) mce upon a time there was a beautiful moon. But this moonwasnot aboymoon. Mymoon was called Hrs. Moon, ad she looked like this (I took a piece of paper ad drew a crescat shape on it with a crayon). Have you sea nrs. won wha she looks like this? Yes. But then she goes away. No, she dosa't go away. It's just that the light doesn't shine on her so you ca't see her. Anyway, Hrs. Moon was a lady moon, so she didn't have a penis. She was a girl moon like you ad your mother ad me. But she fell in love one day with a comet who did have a pais ad they got married-(I drew a picture of Mr. Comet ad Mrs. Moon in church). Tha one day, they decided to make baby moons, so Mr. Moon put his penis into her and filled her full of moon mix ad she grew ad grow until she was very pregnat (I drew a full moon with a big smile). Tha one night, she gave birth to a beautiful baby moon. She rolled it over and around to see it if was a girl moon or a boy moon, ad sure enough, it was a girl moon. There was no pais. What happaed to it? Did she eat it? She ate it! Tha she ate the baby moon! 49 No, she did not eat the baby man's penis. Little baby girl moons never have paises. They are born without them. No, she did not eat the baby girl moon. She was proud to have giva birth to a baby girl moa, just like you. Graynllory ad I have a pais. My father made it from a broom. Does Abaeaser have a pais? Yes. Abaeaser has a pais but he keeps it hidden. He keeps it down in his mine with all of his gold aney. If people find out about all of his money they will come do‘m ad kill him. Will they kick him to death, like the mother horse did to her baby ale? No! They will never find him. He lives in a secret mine with his gold. Is that the ad? The ad of Abaeaser or the ad of the story? The ad of the story. (Red became agitated ad anxious. She bega kicking her legs against the chair.) No. That's just the beginning of the story. You see, Hrs. Moon was not like the mother mare. She loved her little girl moon very mob, ad Hr. Comet loved his little girl moa too. Mrs. won would never kick her little girl moon, ad the little girl won would never kick Mr. Comet, eva though she was agry sometimes when he drank liquor ad fell asleep. Is that the ad? No. That's just the beginning. You see, tha the baby moon grew up ad she fell in love with a comet who had a pais. She wated to have lots of baby moons to love ad take care of, so they made lots of little moons together in the same way until there was a whole galaxy. The end. Now I get a prize (1 took two chips). 50 Red: Well, I am going to grow up to be a comet. I am going to grow lots of paises instead of little moons. Tha Daddy will wakeup adhewillneverdrinkliquor again. '1': Don't you wat to grow up to make baby acne? Red: No! I wat to live by myself ad have lots of money. I wat to make baby horses! For the next five sessions, had was agrossed in a study of how babies were made. Over ad over again, I explained all the procedures. I showed her pictures, we ads drawings, told stories—finally she l seemd satisfied with her lot as a little girl ad reassured that if she — wersto growup admakebabias, shewouldnotmrdertha. Sheava asked her father to carve her a new horse with a real pais, so that she could get married ad make horse-babies. Around that time, she also insisted that I draw pictures of the moon. She was fascinated by the fact that wha the moon was in its crescat phase, the part that was not showing was really still there. I hung Christmas ornaments from threads from the chandeliers, made a pretad sun out of a flashlight, ad with the blinds drawn, we depicted all the chaging phases of the mom. For her birthday, Hrs. Pike took her to the plasterium, ad thereafter, Red was determined to become a astronaut . She learned the castellations by heart, maorised the- gases on Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, the distace in light years to Betelgeuse ad Arcturus. Gray- mllory made friads with Pegasus ad grew his own wings. To her third grade Show ad Tell, Red took a mobile of the solar system, carved ad welded by her father. Her classmates were achated by her speech, ad for the first time, Red was proud of her father's sorcery, proud to be the daughter of a magicia. She was welcomed by 51 her peers at public school, augmated by her father's artifice. On that day, I think, an old wound was healed. The derisive aeere of the girls from the private school—"Red has to have a real horse to ride. She's too good to put a belt in her mouth. Look at her stupid child's stickhorse."-—stopped echoing in her memory. The merry-go- road whirling in her due: that eat her flying to pieces that day on the playground, the ridicule that created a constellation of shame, setting her farther apart than a star on the longest leg of a spiral galaxy—that merry-go-romd stopped. Red simply stepped off, onto solid ground. *' That Christmas we were to adore our first major separation. I had grown very attached to led, ad I Inst cafess that I was facing a countartrasferace of extreme proportions. I tried my best to reassure Red of the fact that my absace was only teaorary, that like the moon wha it is dark, I would not disappear, I was still there, ad would be there wha she returned in Jauary. 1 was pleased by the fact that Red did not regress. She seemed to take it all in stride. .We made a Advent calendar together, ad Red insisted that the child in the mager behind the last paper window was herself, ad that I was the virgin, bading over her. I didn't interfere with her fatasy, although I heard the twin snakes of Aesclepius hissing hubris, felt the shadow of the caduceus pass menacingly over my head. The week before Christmas, I had a most curious anniversary dream. My own father had died on that day several years before, but in my dream, my father was metamorphosed into Mr. Pike. I recognized the hads, the almost erotic reticace of his gait. I imagined his work- shop, sparks dacing on the avil, the whirring carnival of saws ad 52 grinders. Hy father/Mr. Pike had coins back to life. He said he knew there wasn't room for him in the house, but that he didn't mind sleep- ing out under the stars by the raspberry patch, didn't mind the white swirling snow. He asked if I would join him some night under the spot where the windmill was, where one of his perpetual motion machines was—the one that only worked for three days. He built me a while for the soul, carved a boat for me with welded metal wings that flew me to the moon. To thak him, I one to him one night in a cloak covered with flakes of sugar—but he was gas. I kneeled down in the agel- shaped depression his body had made in the snow, ad a huge black stallion came up behind me. I felt the grass-sweet, hot breath of a animal, his nose softer tha the shaved hard of a putting green. His male on my neck, nibbling the dust on my collar. The hot breath on my neck. any own orgasm woke me up ad I sat up in bed, shuddering with desire, quaking with sweat ad sex-soaked fear. I had other similar dreams in the week before Christmas. I recog- nixed in them my own identification with Red—a long forgotten oedipal passion that had been awakened by our sessions. I was horrified by the fusion of my father with Mr. Pike, but my conscious disapproval second only to heighten the erotic content of‘my successive dreams. Those nights before Christmas, I dreamed of shameless encounters with Sate Claus on the hearthrug. I would waka in what seemed like a tagle of white fur ad red flanel, amidst a roomful of naked toys. Maybe Red wasn't ay different from the rest of us. Maybe she got scared ad the scare stuck. Maybe having a wizard for a father, a father of unexpected sorcery, who stayed up nights like Saint Nicholas 53 glueing horse hair into Craymallory's mane, whittling each side of the horse to look out of a pupil shaped like a keyhole, maybe that scared her (I even dreamed once that I peeked surreptitiously into the nostril of Graymallory's nose, saw two hooved and shrouded beasts locked in love). God knows a man like Santa Claus is terror enough on Christmas Eve, after a dry run at the dry goods store with a dummy in a white beard, or after firewater and food offerings and an empty sock hung on the hearth. But imagine a madman on the roof in.June or February, some deerbdriving maniac with some scheme he wants to perpetrate in your living room.1n the middle of the night. It's terrifyflng. Christmas is a primal scene. In his essay on Christmas, Ernest Jones doesn't men- tion the origin of the sock tradition. Why the sock? me sock can only net one foot. What about the other foot? ‘Was it cut off? Did it walk away? Even worse, for the lot of woma, if the mysterious pneumatics of Christmas are meant to mimic sea: in the middle of the night, the liq: sock becomes agorged, swelling with a veritable cornucopia of delights, but the instant she empties it in the morning, it stays flaccid again for a.whole year, packed into the closet with the Christmas balls and the colored lights! My father was long dead, but those nights I relived all the greed ad eroticism of Christmas. My father was dead, but time doesn't stad still for the dead. Maybe for the living, for the eternity of a kiss, for those moments of being, those epiphaies, those shocked instata of recognition when one finally rips the wish out of its wrapping of fear-maybe then it does. In the case of the Christmas sock, a woman is justified in praying for time to stad still. Por- tunately, love's poets have not had to gather love's flowers off the 54 century plant. Only I, who never had legs with feet the right size for the glass slippers proffered me, only I, nosing with my blunted shears among the blossoms of other children's dreams; only I had such prayers. In a curious fashion, my prayers were answered. Time did stand still. I had been looking forward to a Christmas alone in the house, a time when I could putter and reflect, invite a few friends for mulled wine and eggnog. Instead, after Red's departure, the house was overrun with voices from the past. When I wasn't dreaming of embarras- sing encounters with Red's father, I was fantasising about my own mother-—or Red's mother, since the two became increasingly confused in my imagination. Eva my cat, a stray tom I befriaded ad castrated and named.Winnicat-after the psychologist who first conceived the notion of the transitional object-even he was no comfort. I would sit with him on my lap, sipping the rum ad eggnog I had intaded for my guests, and I would suddenly be seized with a kind of abreaction. In one such seizure, Graymsllory had become a cannibal horse. My father and I had tried to twitch and hopple him, but he jerked loose. I went down to the barn and saw the halter broken and swinging free on its rope. We searched all day, and that night I asked my mother if she would come down with me and scare him up with her low eerie horse whistle. She followed me out. I was wearing black patent leather shoes with no socks; a‘welded iron owl in the crabapple tree was pitted with shadows by the porchlight. Something was different about the north yard. The moon had bled into it, and just past the mailbox was the pit, deep and translucent. It was a pit of light, but it looked like the moon when it appears as a hole in the sky rather than as a 55 body, and a spiraling ring of steam rose from it. I tucked my night- gown up into my underwear ad dove down into the moonlight. My mother followed. we went through swirls of white warmuwater, down to where the cone narrowed to the sire of a horse's torso. The water felt cooler on w akles. I became apprehasive, heard the soad of fitting. I signalled my mother back up and told her that I was sure Craymallory was down there, but that if we entered the narrower chamber of water it would erupt. I took a lump of sugar, to show‘her, and pitched it in. I grabbed my mother's had ad we ra from the pit, from the hissing, until we were safe and could see. The moon erupted, too slow phosphor- escat spurts that diffused into the dark sky. We waited, nightgowns stuck to our skin, watching the sky turn the white of milk, or the white of eyes. Spume kept coming out of the lawn, out of the rail of foaming grass. It threw bones up all over the yard. It coughed up a caduceus with live snakes, some sleigh bells, a pair of ragged ballet slippers. volumes of Freud and Anna Proud, Bettelheim, Ekatein, and Klein.arced down on their white trajectories, and bounced weightlessly at our feet. It was as though all history had been thrown up onto our lawn. Everywhere were beautiful coiled artifacts. Down by the pump- house I found the photograph of my mother's deceased father'amidst a heap of my old clothes-two dresses, one for me and one for my mother, both exactly alike. Meanwhile, the sky had slowly emptied itself of things and my mother had gone in. The night was slowly absorbing the white milky wetness and the stars were coming back, sucking the phosphorescence into themselves. I wandered over the grounds, still looking for the cannibal horse, hoping he had not swallowed my mother or ascended 56 somehow into the sky. Then suddenly I saw it again, the moon, up there, just come out from a cloud. Everything that had darkaed was suddenly laved again in moonlight. All the quaint bones ad objects scattered on the lawn jumped into relief, irridescat, Daliesque, all the whimsical sputm of the moon. But the canibal, I knew, had escaped. Graymallory was a clever devil. I did try to analyse. my hallucinations; I did have amats of lucidity. m the day before Christmas Eve, I managed to aswer some correspadence ad tad to some bills, ad as I sat in the office that had ace bea my bedroom, I was able to keep a tauous hold on reality, although I had to remind myself that w letterhead-not my underwear- waspiledinthedrawer, andthatthegreetingcardsstrewnathe blotter were not the patchwork swatches in my old quilt. That day the snow fell steadily, ad wha I settled into the Poppa Bear's chair with Winnicat purring contatedly on my lap, I tried to rationalize the snowasakindof dreascresn, imaginingthathas caught inaeof Levin's oral triads, eating, being eata, ad sleeping against the breast of Christmas. Instead of wine, I mulled over the events that had made me choose my career. How could as ever follow the dictum of Socrates, "Know thyself," wha the self was no more tha the scattered motes of a prism, patches of light ad color that as culled ad sorted--or tried to—until they assumed a shape. As a child I wated to be a orphan. I would lie under the clouds, as varied in their forms ad meaings as the blotches on Rorschach cards, ad I would simply wader who I was, 57 how I got there, who my parats could be. ("Oh, but Red," I remember telling her, "there are no wild horses. Only feral horses—horses descended, horses with parats, with mothers ad fathers. And there are no wild Abaeasers either.") This, perhaps, is my mother, I would think, ad I would draw a circle of blue light around her to keep her in. And this man, inside this grea corral, is my father--but he would always get out. On Christmas Eve, I felt dared ad a little lonely. I fastaed a string of lights around the window, ad I lit a fire in the hearth. Downstairs, in darkness, was the toylad where Red and I had set the plaats right in their orbits. I hope she dreamed, now, of sugar plums ad listasd without fear for the clatter of hooves a the roof. Below the playroom, under the house, were the boxes I had saved to opa for the holiday. Nothing new, only the treasured mementos of my own childhood, stashed away until I had the distance ad the wisdom to opa them again, to see them in the healing grace of nostalgia ad forgiveness. In one of them, I hoped, was a wooden stickhorse, ears of leather, mas of horsehair. Broomstick body, flaired nostril dug out with a awl. A horse carved from pins. Murals, nose, haw; forelock, cheek, throat. I would look for it last, in a long narrow box. I would open it last, waiting, as Red waited, to opa the last window on the paper Advent calendar, knowing that when I did open it, I would feel again the little thrill of raaming, ad would call the little child ewaddled in the straw by my own name. SCANT macs "Herrick? Why do you always paint desolate farmhouses?" He looked at her, startled. "Remember that old Victoria clapboard, with the outhouse in the foreground?" ' "Which one?" ”The farmhouse with the light on in the kitcha window. There was a road, a teetering one-holsr with a slat roof?" ”at, that as. There wasn't a road. What do you msa, 'Why did I paint it?‘ I painted it, that's why. Why do miners pick the coal aot out of their noses? I don't know." "What about the other as, the still life with the rusty old Colema lamp ad the pa ad the pickers?" "What about it?" "I like it. I like to pretad that the Colaa from the still life is in your other painted house. It's what's lighting the kitcha window. Sou old duffsr's probably inside, eating beas ad picking his nose." "Yep. Beas keep him coupay. (he tin' adhs ca spad all night chasing after the barking rats with his pickers." "Barking rate?" "You know—farts! " "0h, Herrick! Why did you paint it?" "Jesus, Morga, don't you know how to let a guy alone?" "0.1L, O.K., sorry. Can I drive when we get to Buerfao County?" 58 59 "No." "You ought to let me drive the jeep once. Can we pull over and put down the top? It won't rain till later." "No." Marga unlaced her sadals ad tucked her feet up next to the glove box so her toes curled around the hand grip on the front of the dash. She tried to think of it as another toy journey, no different from.the little toy journeys they had made with matchbox cars in the dirt at the Estate. Beyond the dash, the mountains were no different from the little windrowe-in the roadside at the Hain House, made by dragging out the tire ruts in summer for their little toy towns. Even then Herrick had driven a.jeep, and Morgan knew that if he still loved her, it was because she didn't nag him.about the future, accepting his eccatricities with curious childlike resignation. As a child, she had pressed flowers. She took them.from.the fields in the spring and flattened them in the big books in the library at the Main House. She had ruined the dictionary with pink stains of saxifrage, blue smear of lupin, yellow smudge of marshflower. She pressed them in order to name them and in order to keep from losing them. It was in the sane spirit, grown up, that she wanted to know Herrick just the way he was, to keep him.alweys as in a kind of spring- time, never'mind the colors bleeding a little into the blurred script of memory. Herrick.was different because he had been adopted. He didn't collect living things. He painted in oils and rarely opened a big book unless it had pictures. "Hey, Mbrgan, reach back there in the back seat. See the brown pack? unzip the left side and grab that little bottle of pills." 60 Morgan felt the little triangle of sun slide down the red cotton of her shirt onto the bare patch of skin above her baggy jeans. "Ca't reach it. Gotta unfasten this dam seatbelt." Morgan came back up, popped the clasp and disappeared again into the well behind the driver's seat. She fumbled for something too heavy for pills until she worked the zipper ad found herself staring deed into the barrel of a hadgun. "Jesus Christ, Herrick," she popped back up, "is it loaded?" "You mat always assume, Marga, that every gun you see is loaded, cocked, and about to go off." "Is this?" "The bullet's not in the chamber. You unzipped the wrong compart- ment. Get the pills." "What kind of gun is it?" "A Walther semi-automatic pistol." "Jesus Christ, scare the hell out of ms." Marga found the pills and ripped the pack back up, being careful to point the gun so that if it went off it would blow through the floor of the jeep. (In her way up, she noticed aother gun, a holstered revolver it looked like, stashed between the driver's seat ad the drive shaft. It was pointed straight at the engine. She didn't ask. Herrick lit a cigarette. "Whatever possessed you to wear that old ratty red shirt? Looks like the top to a pair of thermal under- wear." His speech was gurgly and rocky from trying to work up enough saliva to swallow the pills. "It is." "Well?" He swallowed. "Well, I like it. I figure if you're going to sweet, you may as 61 well sweet in something that seeks it up. I think it was Dad's old shirt." "I wouldn't take you to a dog fight in it." Marga grinned. "what does one wear to a dog fight? Saddle ‘ shoes? Yes? Ind maybe one of those felt circle skirts with pink poodles glued on?" "Even pink poodles would look better tha that dismal rag." Herrick jausd the gear shift into third ad cornered around a pothole. "Daaed highway. We haven't got the chace of a pin on a cribbage board. Road's ripped up worse tha your goddamn shirt." The sun was beginning to bake through the cavas jeep top. Morgan craed forward to get a glimse of it, plumb over their heads. Dead noon. They were just atsring Huerfano County, ad there was a hot dry wind blowing down off the foot hills. She watched a orphan tud’lswesd a little huerfao, blow up ad stick against a snowfacs, keeping its doily-like shadow exactly under it. She wondered if it was a blessing to have no roots, to wander, dried ad hunched into a ball over the southern plains of Colorado. She wondered if Herrick ever wondered about his real parats. The mountains were beautiful today, deep blue ad wrinkled like the loose skin on the flanks of beached and petrified buffalo. lbrga found her India, a mountain silhouette like a chief lying prone in all the glorious costtanes of death, headress feathers- really fall lines—smoothed and faned down towards the four corners of the earth, round-teed moccasins frmd against the blue. "They look pretty nice, don't you think, Herrick?" She pointed. "Yep." 'Turple-lbuntain-Maj estic . " 62 "Yep." Marga thought of the long ride from Denver to Trinidad, ad of all the nanes of poverty ad hardship: Ludlow, seas of s miners' strike ad massacre; Halsabsrg, Agilar, Las Aniline—ell mining towns, hope black as the coal under them. She saw the clipped barred asses, a cluster here or there of heat-drugged cows: white Charolais, brown Hereford, Black ages. They passed a deserted wheatfield, each stalk of wheat blowing subtle as a candle-flea breathed by winds of speech ever the fauly dinner table. "The wheat, you know, it's beautiful." "Yep." "Like the wheat in your painting. what's the secret to painting wheat?" "It doesn't blow in one direction, so you ca't paint it leaing in as direction. See out there? See the eddies ad spirals?" Horga looked past Herrick to the east, ad looking taught her what it meat to speak of a "prairie sea" stretching to the horizon, leagues ad leagues of wheat, striations of green, grey, ad yellow, blending all the swells ad hollows in a gentle movement that suggested water instead of lad. Herrick doashifted; the jeep lurchsd ad swerved. "has, this highway's got nore holes tha a whore. lbrga, get as aother cigarette. There's a new pack in the glove compartnsnt." lbrga watched him unwrap his cigarettes. He always bought the- inahardpack, adhekspt thehardpackinaleathercasewitha facy lighter, this one a solid silver, turquoise-studded one. He threw the cellophas out the window ad it hissed ad slapped the cavas before it was gone. Then he put the pack neatly into the old 63 leather pouch, dropped his cigarette into the flae shielded by his cupped had, ad drove the jeep with his forearm until he got a good dra. "Hhere'd you get that lighter?" "Oh, a guy down in Baton was stuck off the highway last winter ad I winched him out. Afterwards, he asked me how he could repay me, ad we were sitting there smoking, ad I noticed his lighter ad I said, 'Hell, if you wat to repay me, you ca just give me that lighter you got.‘ And he just looked up, blinked a couple of times, ad hadsd it over. "Sounds like you didn't give him mob of a choice." "No, I didn't. It's a dam fine lighter. I wated it the minute I saw it." "Do you still treasure that watch of Great-Gradfather McLeod?" The clouds reminded her of it, dark filigreed swirls rising over the Sagre de Gristos, inking a old initial across the sun. "Yep. I have the watch ad the stad. I told Mon she had to give it to me after that time in the moatains. You remaber, the time I took Mark ad Ia up Devil's Gulch ad we stayed at The Estate." "Tell me again. I forgot." Hut Marga hadn't forgotten. There were soon things that she never forgot. Once, at breakfast, he looked up from his newspaper, scrutinized her up ad down and said, "You know, you'd make a great widow." Another time, he told her how he would die an old ma all decked out in his Easter best on a big four-poster mahogay bed. "I'll just sign a few papers, make some choice parting remarks, ad blow my brains out." He had it all planed. "Well? Please tell me." 6‘ "Hell, ms ad Mark ad Ia-s-god what a couple of idiots. Old Ia, if you stuck a ice crea cone up his see he could tell you what flavor-" "Herrick!" "Sorry. Anyway, the three of us came up in the jeep ad tamed out in the old Haid's Cabin. The two of them got waxed ad while they were thigh slapping ad chewing the fat ad hayingtthe‘lights off Prospect Maintain, I auck out ad headed the long way around to the Main House. There was nothing special about the night, no eerie music, no full moon, no stratus-shrinking screams—just a typical star-studded night in the moatains. I felt like skulking around, so I wat down past the wood house ad the barn ad skirted all the cabins from the pasture side. I wound up climbing up the rocks where we had the sack swing—remember that rock hollow you made us dig out ad fill with water so you could have a spa for your dolls? Hell, I almost stepped in the dean thing, Jesse-o. But I got to the Main House ad auddaly got this queer feeling like I had to go in. A sort of magnetic attrac- tion. "Wasn't it all locked up for the winter?" "Yep. Hon locked it up the week before, but I had the keys." "Gee, scare the hell out of me." "Well, I wasn't scared. I figured whoever was in there would be wishing he'd worn brown underwear because I had my .44 Hagnum revolver pistol with the silacer screwed on the and ad I figured, 'click'-I could drop him like yellow out of a fried egg--'click'-—that's all the noise it makes." "Hurrr, Herrick, I hate all your dam gas." 65 "Well, somehow I knew I wasn't going to find ay weirdo. I had this feeling-I'd had it for a long time-that I was going to meet the old ma hiuelf. Great-grandfather Theopholis." "A ghost?" "Ho. Him. Thsopholis." "But he's dead." "Well, he wasn't that night." Marga scowlsd at him. "Aren't silencers illegal?" "I”... "Isn't it illegal to have guns in the car?" "Yep." "Thsopholis? Herrick, you couldn't have sea Theopholis. Mom's gradfathsr? Our great-gradfather? Jesus, Herrick, you never eva met him. He was dead before we were born." "Yep. But ever since I was a small boy, I've had the feeling that he was waiting for me, watching me. After a while, I learned to sense his presence. When Mam locked the house up that super, I could feel his presace really strong. It was the last sumer. Mom sold it that winter. Didn't you ever feel it?" "Well, not really. I found a dime once in the road, 1909, ad I guess I thought maybe it could have been his dime, maybe he dropped it or something, getting into his old Lincoln Touring Car." "Well, I had been noticing strange things. I remember putting his picture in the bottom drawer of the old roll top in the living room, ad then finding it, for no reason, laid on the keys of the player piao, under the dust cover. I just happaed to lift the lid." "But Herrick, anybody could have moved it. Maybe Mom, who knows?" 66 "No. I'm sure she didn't do it." "What else happened?" "Remember those goats we had that summer? Remember the one who hanged himself by his halter rope?" "Yeah, so what?" "Well, it was about that time that I noticed I was sick." The first raindrops, like cracked eggs, blatted on the dust-caked wandshield. Herrick switched on the wipers and they made two brown crescent-shaped smears that completely obstructed their view of the road. "Grab my army cateen out of the back seat." Herrick downshifted and stuck his head out of the side window to steer. "You shouldn't have switched them on so soon. What if it doesn't really rain?" Herrick took the canteen, pulled himself up by the roll bar and drenched the front window outside on the driver's side. "What about my side? I still have to squint through the dead bugs ad the and." "Here." He passed her the canteen. "But don't use it all. We might need it." "Why would we need it?" "Just don't use it all." Morgan drenched her side, sawed a quarter of it, and took a swig. "Want some?" "No." The thunderhead came out of nowhere . Marga loved the Colorado weather. The sky could be blue ad sunny, ad then all of a sudden a 67 big rolling tumblewesd of a cloud would somersault in off the moatains and dmp its cantata on the prairie. "Gee, it's really going to come down!" They drove in silence, ad Marga atched the rest of the ad above the eyebrow-shaped swath of the wipers slowly dribble into the blades. The sudden darkness made her were of the cosy gadgetry on the dash ad the smell of leather which she always associated with her brother. Leather ad flanel ad daim—thst was Herrick. He down- shifted again, ad lsaed forward to see better through the blur. "Did you ever find Theopholis?" "I'll tell you later. Shut up, I can't see through this toad- stragler aymore. Worse tha a cow pissing on a salt lick." "What?" "I said, it's coming out of the clouds like shit through a goose." "Herrick, for god's sake." Marga ripped the rest of her window shut ad brought her knees up to her cheat on the seat. The rain wat auddaly into hail, little pearl-shaped beads wrapped in the nacrs of the storm, bouncing like dropped D-H's on the pavement. The mountains turned pointillist, ad the stea started rising off the plains. "I think--" "What?" "It's like so. old grandmother dropped a box of moth balls down the attic stairs." She was proud of her simile. "What?" "Never mind." The din on the roof was too loud for further conversation, ad it crescendoed until Morga thought the bail would rip through the caves top ad stone them to death. Morgan remembered how she used to shake 68 the ripe crabappls tree in the driveway and stand all hunched over under it until they stopped falling. She relaxed her shoulders; the noise had stopped except for the squeaking sound the wipers made as the windows dried, and the sound like gravel-really hailstones-apelting harder into the fenders as Herrick downshifted back.into high gear and lit another cigarette. They drove out of the hail, through hissing puddles that looked the same as heat mirage on the pavement. It was like dying. The sky relaxed like the bellows of a sick, wheesing lung. Her father had died like that, and afterwards the house was full of silace ad the smell of fresh rain. "Do you realise, Morgan, that in that tiny pack back there, I have enough supplies to keep alive for s.wesk.in.the‘wilderness-exespt water? But I always carry water. Water enough for a few days." "Really? Gee." Morgan didn't want to ssk‘himLhow he could possibly last a week in the wilderness now, now that he'd need at least one good kidney, besides insulin, if he was going to survive a.week. She remembered how he'd always had little duffle bags ad army packs, always packed and ready to go. Hsr'mother told her one time how she had taunted.Herrick about his things. "Well, if you're all packed for a survival outing," she had said, "why not just go? Clear out the old cobwebs in your braint It would be good for you." But Herrick never did go. He just stayed ready, ad his favorite pasttims was to unpack ad tha pack again, rearranging something, or adding perhaps a Swiss Army Knife ad some asks bite atidots. He loved little boxes and tins ad gadgets, since in his past life or in his genes, he said, he was cut out to be a Army General. Herrick kept saccharin tablets in a brass hollowed-out bullet that fastaed to a chain to his belt loop, 69 ad he kept cady in the jeep tool box in case of insulin shock. Thirst had been the first herald of his diabetes. Herrick was sixteen then, running up from the welding shop by the barn to drink out of the sprinkler. Morga wondered what he must have thought as the thirst grew on him, the new aquachable thirst, ad she pictured him walking into the concatric slapping spray from the sprinkler, ja-ing it with his foot, drinking long ad greedily from the clea arc of water, looking up axiously as though to try to size up his thirst against the heat of a cloudlsss Denver stunner day. He always wore cowboy boots, even in July, ad Marga pictured him walking out of the hissing rage of water, letting the drops pepper the back of his leather vest without quickening his pace. Horga unzipped the jeep window ad dagled her bare foot out of it. The sun was glittering on the washed graite in the pavement. She sneezed. "Bless you." Both of them watched the rainbow bloom ad fade over Fisher's Peak. Herrick took the long way through town, over the brick-paved streets, past Victoria masions built by coal barons ad railroad royalty. Trinidad was set betwea Fisher's Peak ad Simon's Heat, the latter sporting a neon "Trinidad" sign, the former so symstrically leveled that it was a peak in name only. By the time they turned up Colorado Avenue, the sky had almost completely cleared. Herrick back- fired the jeep by switching the ignition offend-en, a loud flatulent pop. The balls on Dell Block chimed out "Nearer My God to Thee" as Herrick skidded into the driveway of his house ad jerked to a stop. Herrick never thought of his jeep as a mere meas of conveyance. To 7O him it was a.highly refined instrument of percussion, a feat of mechanical artistry, and he reveled in the purring, popping, skidding, knocking, chugging symphony of jeep. Morgan always delighted in her rides with him.bscause he was a safe but aggressive driver. Once, to avoid an accident, he deliberately hopped a median, crossed three lanes of on-comdng traffic, and stopped neatly on the opposite shoulder of the highway. "Close as a shaved baby's ass." Then he ‘waitsd for all lanes to clear, hopped back over the median, and headed down the read without saying another word about it. He was, to use one of her mother's Vassar expressions, "Completely unflappabls." Herrick's house was an old nineteenth-century Victorian, half- painted a rich.Prench blue with oxéblood gingerbread and slate gray trim around the windows. Morgan packed her sandals under her chin on top of her sewing and nightgown and.walked the railroad ties that lined the access to the front porch. "Ouch, dammit!" Morgan hopped about on one foot, spilling her things onto the lawn. "Coal tar creosote. Jesse-o, Horgan, you're supposed to go up to the house like a white man, not a coal train. What do you think the sidewalk's for?" Mbrgan tried to rub the tar off on the needles under the spruce tree. "It'll come off with gasoline. There's some in the shop behind the saw. I'm going to pick up the UhHs ." Herrick made a quick tour of the house, unlocking all the doors. He emerged on the south side, climbed in the jeep, popped the clutch, and squealed rubber out of the driveway. Mbrgan watched him until he 71 turned off Colorado Avenue, and then she gathered up her stray under- wear and embroidery threads and hopped on one foot into the shop. This was it. This is what happened to people. They got sick; they moved; things changed. Herrick used to have a wife; he didn't anymore. His wife used to be thin; now she was probably still fat. They were both collectors, but his wife must have decided one day to keep her possessions right on her where Herrick couldn't mortgage them: she ate and ate. Then one day she left. She had to. She had to run away from her appetite ad from Herrick. Eva back then, Herrick was a dead man. He was impotent. He had to run his blood through a sieve every couple of days. She took the cats with her. Morgan found the kerosine behind the table saw. She found an old T-shirt on the fly wheel and used it to rub the liquid into her arch. Little by little, all the cross-hatched lines in her feet re-emerged, till the arch and callouses were shiny white. She kept rubbing anyway, watching her fingers travel over the ball of her foot, letting her gaze fall out of focus and gather her into the blue of Herrick's tidy works room, into the dance of tiny particles in the sunlight. She shook the shirt and sent them.flying. This was it. At the Estate, one time, she had actually seen where a pack.rat lived. Her father had hoisted her high up above his shoulders so she could see into a hole in the lath under the floorboards of the Main House. Inside was the most elaborate assortment of goodies: lint, nutshells, pinecone cores, a rubber soldier, a pencil, a firecracker, a playing card, a marble, bobbie pins. The rat wasn't home at the time, so Morgan unsnapped her favorite pink barette off her braid and put it on what she thought might be the rat's front porch as a surprise. 72 When her father let her down, though, she regretted her impulsive magnanimity. That night, she put her ear to the linoleum in the kitchen over his neat to see if she could hear if he was glad. Pros then on, she always thought of Herrick in terms of that rat. She thought of his locked treasure room by the foyer, full of guns, brass candlesticks, egg coddlers, cloissone boxes Theopholis got in China—almost all of it besides the guns was loot from the Estate. Morgan thought how if people from another century were to open Herrick's treasure room, they would know—Just like they knew when they-opened the Egyptian tonbs—that everything inside the room had special significance. Well, maybe they wouldn't know. After all, they could have just placed Tut in there with so. decorative salvage, but they probably didn't. Same with Herrick. Everything he owned meant sons- thing to bill, and it was hard to covet anything he had, since his attachment to his possessims far exceeded any interest an outsider could muster. Every once in a while, he could be persuaded to sell something, but only for roughly three times its worth. This was it. Today theyxwere going to load as such of Herrick's workroon as they could into the U-Haul . Herrick agreed—although Morgan was dubious—to transfer into the Denver dialysis ward, and Morgan had promised to help him store his tools at her mother's. She heard the jeep pull in, popping like the fourth of July. Herrick trudged through the house. "I'm in here." He came in through the kitchen ad paused in the doorway. "You look like forty miles of bad road—what's got you?" "I don't know. I'm as ." 73 "Why should you be sad? I'm the one that's dying." "Well, I'm still sad." "Hell, cheer up. We've got to diamtle this shop by sundown. Get off your duff and help as load this stuff into the boxes in the hall closet. I'll give the orders. You do the work." Herrick grinned. They spent the whole afternoon in the workroon. Herrick, exhausted I: free the drive down, sat in an overstuffed chair, snaking and instruct- . ing )brgan as to how to pack his tools. Bones of hardware, porcelain plumbing fixtures—even the antique marble sink lbrgan had given his as a wedding present that he had never installed. Every possible sise 3' socket wrench, ’. full wall of p13“: holes, each with 1:. special contents. Herrick was neticulous. Morgan had to pack, seal, and label everything. "You sure you want to take all this stuff back to Denver? You sure you're not going to change your aind?" "Yep." Hut Horganknewhewouldchangehismind, andhewouldkeep chang- ing 1: until one day, in. “or hat-:I-h-m.§od.;. a tree mam Ip entrmking bin and she would be turned into the sparrow Isis, dipping ' and singing in circles around his. The last thing lbrgan could squeese. into the U-Haul was a treadle whatsth Herrick had pilfered fron the Estate after their mother had sold it. It looked like a spinning wheel, but the pedal turned a stone about two inches thick and three feet in diameter . Morgan heaved it into the U-Haul and locked the door for the night. In the kitchen, Morgan found Herrick heating soup and a casserole their nother had fined for then to take with them. Morgan looked at 74 bin, whittled down to nothing by his illness. "You never told no what happened." "what?" "At the Estate." "What, when?" "After you went in with your loaded gun to the Main House." "an, well, I just had a little chat with Theopholis. That's all." "What do you mean, 'a chat?' What happened?" "Well, Iwas inthe living roe-by theround table. I don't know what itwas that drewmetothetable. Iguessthefactthatlknewhe had presided there, that was where he sat ad looked each of the members of his fanily in the eye. I guess I figured I'd find bin there." "It was the biggest table I've ever seen. Do you renenber how we used to slide the salt across it?" "rep. So I started to walk around the table. I stopped once to light a candle on the sideboard, ad than I just‘walked ad walked. I not have circled that table twenty tines." "Well?" Herrick heaved a big spoonful of casserole onto Horga's plate ad slid it down the counter to her. "Well, he finally just walked in." "hon where?" "Pron the master bedroon." What did he do? Did he say anything?" "Well, at first he sea-ed kind of distracted, like he was looking for something. He patted all the pockets of his trousers ad vest, ad then he looked at me and started to walk towards ne." "Jesus, Herrick, weren't you scared?" 75 "Yep. But tha he stopped. We just stared at each other, he looking at me ad me looking at him." "Did he say anything?" "Not exactly, but somehow, I knew what he was saying." "Well?" "Well, I knew he was looking for his watch, ad I knew that the reason he was looking for it was because he wated to give it to me. Tha, without really saying it, he told me that he had bought the watch in Salt Lake, from a little watch aker named Weybrecht." "Weybrecht! Jesus, Herrick, isn't that the name of your real parents? Remember that time you told me you sneaked into Mom's files?" "Yep." "What did you say?" "I thaked him for giving me the watch. I told him that: the watch was safe in Mom's jewelry box ad that I would get it from her ad keep it forever. I told him that I was grateful for the sign from my real parents, since I knew I would be sick soaday, ad would need to have a reserve." "A reserve?" "Someday, I told him, I would sad it back to them as a sign." "But how could you? You could never find them." "I have ways." Morgan gulped the last of he: casserole ad wat to the stove to serve herself more. "A reserve?" "Jesse-o, Morgan, you ate that like there was a bad of armed Mexicas on the veranda." "A sign? A sign of what?" 76 Herrick wouldn't aswer. Talking to Herrick was like going on a tiad ride. Wha the ride was up, that was it. Herrick unscrewed the bullet and tapped soss saccharin into a cup of instat tea. To save the bother of getting a spoon, he opaed his Swiss Army Knife, stirred, wiped the blade on his flanel shirt, ad Wind it in his pocket. "I'll do the dishes." Marga collected the plates ad put them into the sink, ad Herrick wat in to watch the news on the TV. Wha she finished, she took coffee to the table ad listaed to the affled sounds of the news, watching the tired light fade a the oak tabletop . Like all the other rooms in his house, Herrick's kitcha was pervaded with a air of stark readiness. a old butcher block dominated the cater of the floor, ad a atique stove that Herrick had reaickeled warned the house in winter. Herrick had restored the walls with new wainscoting ad his wife had papered above the wainscot ad decorated the windows with ruffled yellow chinta. As in may other houses of the era, Herrick's kitcha had more doors tha ay other room in the house. The dining roan, study, bathroom, workroom, ad back porch all radiated from the kitcha like streets from a glorietta. From the back door, left opa since early afternoon, the smell of grass ad day lilies blew in ad circled the vacat chairs. "Well," said Herrick, "my lust for life seem to be on the was." She heard cae creek on the wicker settee and tha she heard him punch off the TV. "I feel like I got chewed twice, digested twice, ad shit out of a Charolaia. I'm going to bed, but you can stay up ad howl if you like. Your bed's in the first guest room. It's still not wired. 77 I think it has sheets, unless they were here." Herrick walked pain- fully through the kitchen to get his cigarettes, ad tha she heard him fumbling with the PM in the foyer a the treasure room door. "What are you doing?" "mug nyself." "What for?" "I always do." He pulled the string, locked the door, ad as he ascaded the staircase, each step a effort, lbrga could hear him screwing his silacer into the .M magnum revolver for the night. "Goodnight," she called, ad then she called out the faily cautionary adage, "Watch out for the wheelbarrow." "You too. Geothlight." Horga made as last swathe with the sponge ad tha switched off the kitchen lights. In the study she propped so. pillows a the couch ad pulled the ad table up close. She ra her fingers across the titles of Herrick's art books, finally stopping at a collection of the paintings of Andrew Wyeth. She pulled it down ad turned to her favorite painting, "Groad Hog Day 1957." Of all the paintings in the book, it was the most evocative of Herrick. It was a painting of a corner of a kitcha, and out of the atin sash window there were two logs, one bitten by are strokes ad one sawed. Inside on a bare table was a plate, a coffee cup, a saucer, ad a knife. They were white. The table looked as though it had baa set for sunlight itself. A long even shadow slashed the wood ad the wallpaper. The picture looked the perfect formula for peace, for the solitude that foreshadows 16’ personal revelation. Painted white as prayer, the wood work, the cup, 78 ad the empty plate bespoke a hunger so old the smell of food ad drink had gone from it. There was no smell in the picture. No smell of coffee, of warmed linoleum, of dam cuttingboard. It reminded Horga of'Herrick's supplies in the jeep—enough to keep alive in the wilder- - ness for a week. Suddenly Morgan felt fdrlorn ad afraid. She closed the big book ad pulled the light strings ad crossed the floorboards to secure the lock ad retrieve her paniard free the darkness of the stairwell. She took the stairs two at a tie: to the guest room. She tried the wall switch but no light came ad tha she remembered about the wiring ad toad the cadle ad the matches on the nightstad, little paper fingers dipped in sulphur, ad she struck one ad the light blooad a the ceil- ing ad on Herrick's wife's sock-monkey doll still propped on the pillow. The light flickered on Morga's nakedness ad on the pool of clothes at her akles. ad tha steadied wha she was safe in her flannel nightgoa, the colored embroidery threads strea over the quilt ad the monkey hugged close. She threaded the needle with sea grea ad the light settled shyly around her wooda hoop ad she bega stitching a eye where only blak muslin had bea before. Slowly, over the blind membrae, she built a iris, pouring her wakefulness into it stitch after stitch. Then she threaded her needle with black for the pupils and heard Herrick coughing in his bedroom ad wondered how the gun was painted. She found gold for the arched brows ad heard his affled footsteps ad the sound of retching ad meaing ad the toilet flushing from the bathroom. Tha red thread ad silace, ad Morga patiatly stitched a smile into the muslin, thinking how she would thread the cadle wick next ad sew light into the face until the wick 79 was gone. Tha she would gather up the melted was while it was still warm, molding it to her own face, giving away the last of her features while the light sputtered ad died. Little crewsl-work flowers ad a valentine a the cheek, ad she plaited the long blonds yarn of her hair while the Sata Fe Train howled through the town northbound to Davsr. Hy 40:00 a.m. she was wearing the cal of the dream, ad light as a sparrow she stepped off the dirt road that led to the thin House of her mother's gradfather's Estate. She walked through the yarrow ad wet sags past the old pump to the hitching post, recognising it as the same post she had tried to tightrope as a little girl. She turned ad faced the old barn, locked ad string-latched, a suffusia of bluish-gray light on the shingles, grea shadow smeared on the hinges ad crowded into the slits in the double doors. It was the old barn. There was no astaking it, for it was here that her mother—or at least the dissebodied presence of her mother-head, "I'm not sure, thinking back, that it was my axiety, not having enough for your brother Herrick to eat, that kept a from the world." Ibrga was fumbling through the keys, the paper labels having gotta all tagled up with the metal. She stopped, for without eva going into the barn she had the presentimnt that the hay shutes had baa blocked, ad that there was no unplugging than, no sliding do“! them as they had done when they were childra. Of course she wasn't sure what had blocked then, perhaps lint that the mice had brought in, odd castaway objects mingled with dirt ad hay, the hand-ee-downs of the pack‘yrats. Nevertheless, she was certain that it was at that moment, for the first time, that she was rude aware of the enormous difficulties her mother ast have faced in order that her older brother 80 might have enough to eat. She turned toahsr mother—or the presence of her mother-and expressed her amazement and concern. "Tea," continued her mother, "if it were not for the tremendous respasibility of having to feed Herrick, I am sure none of this would have happened." ‘ "But, aother, it was thirst." Standing thus by the barn, Hbrgan.suddenly had the transcendent sensation of being the bluish-gray light, tingling.in.ths sage, wind- ing through the stalls where the ghosts of horses stqsd, flicking away flies, waiting,‘which is what horses do more than anything, for the dank grain, the salty halters. For it was with the fluidity of light that in her mind ehe went up the road to the Main.House, slid through the shutters into the living roomlwhere the furniture had been piled ad coversd'with old sheets. And it was with the softness of light that her fingers graced the keys of the player piano, the G where the ivory had chipped, soaking the dust up fromxher fingers into the meta that was herself, for she was a mere shaft, dusty with memories when the sun fell.on her fro-isomewhere, a.black funnel indistinct from ordinary darkness when it did not. Of course, this statemat of her mother's was quite a surprise. That so much could be reduced in.her mother's mind to the difficulty of feeding Herrick, well, it was a bewildering thesis, and Morgan could not but think it another glaring example of her mother's feeble powers of analysis to attribute.to the appetite of her adopted~older brother the collapse of an estate within.her own soul, and of course all the other things-closed shutters, shrouded furniture, stalls emptied of horses—that were attadat on the collapse. But tha, she reasoned, 81 her mother ofta said things that were so preposterous that they couldn't be salvaged by reason or feeling: statements that bloomed unexpectedly, like Pireweed. There she was, picking through the keys, turning over the faded labels, "Haid's Cabin," "Goal House," "Harn"--Ah! the barn, but it was the old skeleton key, and she wated the padlock key. Wha she found it, snag the keys that had lost their labels, ad sprag the lock, she became excited ad afraid, for the years that had separated the opa- ing of the barn door seemed more ominous to her tha had the distacs, wha she was a child tightrope walker, betwea the hitching post ad the ground. The door opaed with a sharp cry, ad three aths tualed into flight, ad she atersd. Wha her eyes had adjusted to the darkness ad her nose to the salt-leather ad aim-unis smells, she was relieved to find everything as it had bsa, the buckets haging from their hooks, the pack saddles wrapped in gunny sacks, the bailing wire wedded up under the grain bins. For a instat she thought the horses might be out to pasture, or that she might turn again ad see her brother raning don the road, his legs churning like beater-blades; that they might have planed a ride to Captain's Rock of Gem Lake. She gave the low horse whistle her mother had taught her. The sound startled her. The three notes of the whistle made her mistrust the fact that she was alone, ad bowing, as she did, that in all dreams there are unsea listaers; ad trespassing, as she was, with stola keys, she felt more urgently the need to sweep the corners for their eyes ad signal threads. She mounted the stairs gingerly, ad the gooseflesh was all 82 over her, ad she thought of her mother's gradfather's hired had, who slept in the garage ad pushed the pedal of the whetstone all .day like a spinner, sharpaing the axes and shovels. She gained the top of the stairs ad threw opa the hay window. She knew she had come for some treasure, something to keep, to rsmesbsr; a syaol, perhaps, of Herrick's thirst. The gray light flooded the loft. There was nothing blocking the hay shutes—she had grown up, could not slide down then, that was all. She ru-aged through the harness, found a broka singletree, a old horse collar turned porce- lain with dust. Where had they put it? She foad it behind a aormous heap of rusted box springs in the corner. It was a old harp with a woea's head carved on the front. The gold leaf was cracked, milky with dust, ad the spiders, as though to repair it, had spun their traps in the strings. The face was stony, slightly med, a innocent turned wood for gazing at the forbidden. Marga dragged the old harp out of the tagle of springs, old bailing wire of the hired ma's bed. Stirring a cloud of groggy moths, she lugged it to the opa hay window, fastaed it with harness reins, ad lowered it down. The moths followed, like agels at a resurrection. Tagled with the threads on the had were harlequin patches of red, yellow, blue ad grea from the stained glass in the south window. Horga thrust her wrists into them ad they were hot. She found the monkey by her pillow and used its red sock-toe mouth to soak up her sobs. fragments of her dream, red, yellow, blue ad grea, winked at her through the semi-darkness of her tears. The monkey smelled of time, like the quilts at the Main House when they were first taken from the 83 closets in early summer. Maybe the monkey smell had fomented the dream imagery of grief ad loss. lbrga knew that dreams are never generous, that darkness was what Herrick strained his blood against. The quilts were hot; she threw them off and made for the bathroom. She knew Herrick.was up since there was an empty insulin bottle on the vanity, so she downed.her face quickly in the sink and put on her same old dirty jeans and red shirt. She couldn't find her shoes, so she went downstairs barefoot. Herrick.was coming in through the front door. "Where have you been?" "Where have I baa? I I've baa up fer hours. I roused myself at sero dark-thirty, wat to Shop-go for my morning cake doughnut, took a drive around the courthouse and went to the parts store when it opened for an air filter for the jeep. When did you get off the rack?" "Just now. I had a bad dream." "Well, did you snap your underwear?" "Snap my underwear? Jesus, Herrick, what's that supposed to mean?" "Well, in my opinion, a ma can always tell what kind of day he's going to hare by how‘hard he snaps his underwear elastic in the morning. A.real healthy vigorous snap on both sides so it stings will guaratee him a good day; a feeble weak snap on one side ad the whole dam day will be adiocrs." "If I tried to snap my underwear, it would either disintegrate or fall down. But you.must have snapped the hell out of your underwear. What's the plan?" Mbrgan wandered into the kitchen. "I thought we'd go to Eaton." "katon? What for?" "0h, there's a little atiqus store I'd like to check into." "What about packing?" "Forget packing." "Forget pecking? Hut Herrick, don't you wat to move that stuff up to Davsr? Don't youwat to goup adlivewithhomsomedsy so you da't have to drive 100 miles to Pueblo to get dialysed?" "lope. I don't." "Jesus, Herrick, what are we going to do today, apack?" "No. We ca take all that workroom stuff up to store in the carriage house behind Dad's old shop. I've already unpacked what I'll really need to tinker around here new ad tha." "But what about Hem? How's she going to feel about you living down here with nobody to look after you?" "I've got all the neighbors. You've met Margaret, lives across the street with her Scottie dog?" "The old lady with the Wedgewood collectia? Herrick, she's older tha Prospect Maintain. How's she going to keep the walk shovelsd, feed the fire, or jump start your jeep for the drive to Pueblo in the winter? She has trouble putting in her false teeth, never mind storm windows." "I'm not helpless, you know. It's stunner. By Christine I'll have the house sold. Besides, I don't think I could stad living with Mom ad her constat ragging. Storm windows, ha! Mom wouldn't buy me any last winter; I practically fross my ca." "Well, Herrick, she supports you coaletely as it is. She's got rocks but she's no Stonehags. She's no Easter Islad." 85 "Well, she may not be Easter Islad, but she sure has the money to go flying down there to look around." "Well, why shouldn't she travel? It's her money, not ours." "It just makes me so damn mad." Herrick kicked the footstool, stomped over to the stove, and slammed the copper teakettls so hard on the burner that it sang‘without being hot. "All I have to do is think about it ad my blood boils hotter tha a popcorn fart." Inorgan remembered waiting;in.the car’in.ths freesing snow by the Passage: Pick-up at the Daver Airport. It was always a thrill to see her mother's tall aristocratic figure, a healthy tan showing above her tweed cost. an the way home, her mother told her all ibout the statues at Easter Island, and the best thing about them.to Morgan was the fact that they faced inland—not out to sea. No man is an islad, she thought, but if he tries to be one anyway, he better build his gods so they face they enemy. "Hut Herrick—" "Oh, for crying in a bucket, Morgan, leave me alone." ‘Herrick reached for the bottles on the kitchen table. "What are these pills?" "Well, the white ones make me pee, the tan ones make as shit, and the yellow ones are to keep my heart from stopping. They bind the potassium." Morgan watched Herrick limp over to the sink and swig the water for his pills straight from.the faucet. "Do your legs hurt?" "an, a little. By the time I get off the machine, my body is so creamed it's practically fossilized. Sometimes my hads crap up too, 86 Jesse-o, like those dinosaurs in the mean of Natural History." Herrick made his fingers into a shape like a small garden rake. "Holy Konument, it hurts. The machine drains all the sodium out of the aecle tissue. Afterwards, you feel like a sucked scorpion." Morgan was still thinking about the tall elegiac statues of Hester Island, carved of volcaic tufa, each leveling its monolithic scrutiny on the windswept grasslands. m the backs of those that had fella face down towards the inlad there was not a trace or wrinkle of lost dignity. They had eialy trasferrsd their gates esrthwards. Looking at Herrick, she realized that it was not always the see that swells ad diminishes the shoreline. Herrick was tethered to a tide all his own. His Heaters came three times a week now, the tides pulled out of his body as though through the eyes of some strange pillered being. Dialysis really wee a kind of redeation, ad Herrick was born to be redeemed, first by her parats, tha by insulin, ad now by the machine. “organ knew that her mother would be disayed by Herrick's capricious chage of plane, but that finally she would be unable to stop Herrick from doing whatever he wated. Her mother had always baa wealthy, ad had always nurtured in her childra that peculiar depadency for which wealth was the only cure. In her, there was a fragile balance betwea an essatial generosity and an inbred inability to abandon that generosity to the gratitude of her childra. What seemed to be a lack of trust on her mother's part was really just a fear of loneliness, the loneliness of corner cupboards full of expaeive china ad monogramd silver, the loneliness she out have felt as an only child hunting Indian Paintbrush at the Estate, dream- 87 ing, perhaps, of the romantic playmate she would finally marry. Perhaps it was in the first shadow of disillusionment with that elated loneliness ad romance that her mother had decided to adopt Herrick. She had no doubt assumed that he would feel as she did, that when he grew up he would take things like brass cadle snuffers ad egg coddlsrs for grated; that he wouldn't pack ad unpack for a iaading journeys, or have on had aough guns ad supplies to fight a small foreign war. Horga knew that her mother would keep on paying for Herrick, always accompaying her checks with the gentle criticism J and suggestions that boiled his blood to a steam toxic aough to warrant dialysis in its own right. Morga poured herself some coffee ad traipsed around the house looking for her shoes . She found them in the shop, parked neatly beside the boxes Herrick had removed from the U-Haul. "that are we going to do about the rated truck?" "on, I'll take this lead up to Daver to store in Mom's carriage house ad explain my change of plans." "I suppose this meas you will stay in Pueblo's dialysis ward?" Morga trailed her shoes into the kitcha by their strings ad plopped them down by the kitchen table. "Yep." "Do you think they might have ay doll shoes at the atique store?" "Stella's got everything. I'm sure she'll have shoes. Is that what that bag of cotton in the back of the jeep is for?" "I'm making another doll. So far, all I've bot is the head ad body. I've got tubes for the legs but they're not stuffed yet. I'll 88 show you." lbrgen took the stairs to the bedroom and swept the doll parts off the quilt into her panniard. "What should I call her when she's finished?" She brought in a torso and head, its embroidered face frosen in a cheerful smile. "Jesse-o, I don't know.” "Just making her hair the other day took two skeins of yellow yarn. But her eyes are green, the color of lichen." ”Heme her Lichen, then." ”Lichen? But that's a mold that grows on the rocks. Her eyes are the color of verdigris, you know, brass rust.” "Hams her Verdigris, then." "verdigris? I never thought of naming her Verdigris. Do you think it's a name that*will scare children?" "th would it?" "0.x. Her nas's Verdigrie. Let's go." ‘Horgan grabbed her doll legs to stuff during the drive to laton. She laced her sandals and scrounged for the scissors and thread in the bottom of her panniard. Outside the sun cast a.chalky light on the spruce tree. Hbrgan remembered to avoid stepping on the railroad ties, which‘were sticky as birdlime with hot tar. In the glove box of the jeep she found a pair of expensive army sunglasses that Herrick reserved for guests and wha she put them on the lawn ad house leaped away from her, tinged with olive. Herrick.waited, listening to the staccato idle of the jeep before be burned rubber out of the drive. He made a U-Turn around the median and as he headed down the hill‘Horgan caught a last glimpse of the house, framed by the canvas, the UhHaul propped on its 89 hitch in the drive ad the spruce turned . verdigris through her glasses ad the scratched plastic of the window; verdigris, the grea mold of nostalgia on treasured metals. At the corner of Colorado ad Co-srcial Street the house slid out of view and they headed down 1-25, the old Sate P's Trail, towards Papa Uooton's Toll Road, already bloodied with the red dirt of Beta Pass. "Hhat are we going to get at the atique store?" "0h, some things . " What?" "I don't know, but I do know that whatever it is, it's there and I'll get it." "I had a dream last night." "Of what?" "0f the barn, ad the Main House at the Estate.” "What happaed?" "Oh, I found a harp. It was the spring because the yarrow was out." "A harp? What deep psychological significace could you possibly ascribe to a damned harp. Did it have tits or something?" "Tits?" They laughed. "Well, almost, but that's your dream. Ho, it was Dad's harp, the one in the poem by Edna St. Vincat uillay. He used to recite it to us. He recited it to me the night he died, in that dying voice he had that sounded like he was under water. You remember. There eat my mother With the harp against her shoulder Looking ninetea 90 And not a day older, A.smile about her lips And a light about her head And her hands in the harp strings Proeen dead. You do remember it, don't you? The harp had a woman's head, and the mother's little boy was starving, and they burned the chair, and she wove clothes for a king's son for him all night Christmas Eve?" "Yep. I remember." "I've always wondered why he liked it. I asked himLoncs, and he said it was because of the rhythms, as though a shutter were loose, flapping m the wind. He recited 'The Listener" too, ad 'The l’orty Singing Seama' by Alfred Hayes, but he ran out of wind when he got to 'Casey at the net' ad he fell asleep." "Weird." Herrick struck the flint of his silver lighter and brought the flame to his mouth. Clouds of smoke billowed into the ‘windshield fromhhis cigarette. A sign said, "Welcome to the Land of Inmate" From.ths top of the pass, Haton looked.no more than a cross- hatched reddish grid in the valley. Haw fibrico'wes enchanting, wales of mesquite and.pinon; forest-green florettss in.a reddishsbrown tapestry. but when they turned down lower, the whole vista was spoiled by the gigantic letters on the hillside west of town. "Why do they label the town like that? Are they trying to make it look like a tombstone?" "Ho. It's just the only thing the goddamn thricas know how to spell: the name of their.hometown. At night it's a lighthouse for truckers." Herrick pulled into Stella's, cut the ignition, and waited for the 91 last sputtering peroration of jeep before he grabbed his cigarettes ad swung hinelf out. They tickled through the glass door, rigged with chadelier pris- knotted on lace. "Hello? Stella?" "on, Herrick, it's you." The voice came from behind a atique tailor's du-y that was decked out for a wedding ad covered with harness. ”Stella, I came for that ivory-hadled pistol. I brought my little sister Horga.” Stella stuck her head out ad nodded. Pbr'ga nodded too. People always stared at her a little lager wha Herrick introduced her as his little sister. She was almost a foot taller. She walked cautiously around a table piled with blue china to see what Stella was doing. "Doyouthinkyoumighthave'aydoll shoes?" Stella was sorting a hos of large metal records from a salsic box. She indicated a chest of drawers with her chin. "Doll stuff is in there. A rich Tera rI-aged through it yesterday, but I don't think she got the shoes." lbrga wat to the chest ad lost herself sifting through the ' little ironed piles of lace collars, monogramed hakeys ad christaing hate. Crocheted atimecesears pressed fleet as Colt-bins, old rolls of hand-made lace; she even found a small disembodied arm with a pop-bead socket. In the third druer was the perfect shoe, a ballerina's slip- per, but there was only one. She took it to her paniard ad tried it a the foot of her doll. The stuffing bulged prettily. She would change the doll's na- to Le Caise. (he shoe was enough. She found dddd Herrick at the register, squinting into his tiny pistol ad spinning 92 the chamber like a kaleidoscope. "How areyou going to pay for it?" "on, I have ways." "Hhat's it for?" "I've always wated it." "Is it real ivory? How ca you tell?" "The grain. Besides, I knowwhen it was made." Stella pushed her way through the dutch door to the coater. "Did you bring the watch? Let's see." Herrick unhooked the gold clasp on his vest ad pulled out their great-gradfather's watch. The elaborate incised initials seemed to bite into the light. Stella looked dean her nose through has half glasses, ad her pines-nee chain glittered ad swayed over the register. "It's a fair trade, certainly." She looked up. "Wat a receipt?" "No. But lbrga found a shoe. How much?" "Never mind the shoe. It's a the house." "Gee, thanks." They walked back into the sunlight. The door made a little shattering sound ad clicked shut . Herrick stabbed the key into the ignition and pumped viciously. Morgan heard the ruthless firing-squad sound; a soul rising up in the agine. "what's the matter?" "Give me a break, Horga." lbrga reached for the solace of the doll's leg in her paniard. She fingered the red stitching a the tiny leather sole ad watched the sunlight travel across the facets of the rhinestone akle button. 93 when the jeep hit the dirt road she looked inquiringly at Herrick but his face was set. "I've got to shoot off some steam." "Where?" "one of Daddy Uoota'e little gullies. The old Toll Road." "Herrick, you didn't have to trade the watch." "Goddeahsr. DoyouthinkIcaliveathemeaslytwobite she sends trickling down here when the mod strikes her?" "You mea be? Did you have to get that ivory pistol?" "You think I would have traded that watch for the hell of it? I've bea planing this for a long time. Herrick McLeod might be contat to let his life tick quietly away hooked to a goddaa fob in a blood shop, but not James Indrew Heybrecht. Heybrecht's got plas for that little pistol." Herrick jammed the gear shift into second; the red duet bloomed aromd them. "Shit." Herrick veered off the dirt road ad yaked the keys out of the ipitia. "Tou ever shot off a Thomson sub-machine gm?" The red duet clotted ad sak. "Jesus, Herrick." Herrick heaved a violin case out from-_ader-.the seat, ad ale-ed the jeep door so hard behind him that Marga winced, forgetting it was w w' canvas. Without looking back, he trudged painfully out of sight into the grea of pinon ad sage. The door yawned on its hinges. Morgan felt dumb and small. How could she have thought that me shoe was aough? It waa't. She sat waiting for the deafaing explo- 94 sions, wishing that Herrick would come back so that they could go to Stella's ad comb the chest for the other shoe. How could as shoe be aough? Herrick had parked the jeep crooked ad it irked her to see the door haging open like the tongue of a suppliat. It upset her ease of synetry. Stella hath't even told them for sure that there wasn't aother shoe. Tha the sounds came, yesterday's first raindrops on the windshield, the faint stutter of bullets filtered through the silacer. In the afternoae at the Estate, she ad Herrick would cuddle together on the wicker porch swing like fattaed emperors, sharing grapes from lunch, watching the jagged lightaing rip through the curtains of rain like pinking shears, radomly sacrificing here or there one of a repeating pattern of pines. They coated the seconds before the thunder, trying to read the sky as though it were the score of some terrible meic. At night, the coyotes would circle her bedroom keaing orisa. It was the sound that made her vulnerable, the plangat wailing breaking on the old quilts ad soaking her fear. In the morning, the orpha bleating of the goat would blad with a trace odor of ceahor ad she would wake to the staccato peeling of flattaed bells, a etteen door ’ slat-ing somewhere in the Main House. Horga could not move. This was it. Her fear had curled aromd her ad turned gelatinous. Her forehead had stuck to her knees with sweat; her arms had fused with her shinsp ad her feet, stuck up on the dash, had become a amalgam of bone ad the metal of the had grip. She stared into the red of her shirt as into the walls of a woa, ad her blinking became systolic, a spasmodic fluttering of wings still wet 95 in a chrysalis. She listaed to.the bullets, trying to aka out their rhythm, sometimes a little scattering of sirteath notes, sometimes a eva slapping. She wated to run into the fire like a child into a tuning Jul-props: the for the money Two for the nurse Three for the lady With the alligator purse the for the money Two for the show Three to get ready Ind four to... ' Nothing. She pulled her forehead off her knees like an old bend-aid. After a silence of sage, Herrick lined towards her. He threw the briefcase onto the hood of the jeep" ad the sound echoed through the metal like a recess bell. He took the gun apart ad methodically put the pencil pieces inside. "Click," "Click," ad tha he heaved it towards the backseat ad followed'it in a themomsntum. Herrickhad always knownhowtomakenoises inhis throat likeajeep, adlbrga wondered ifhemade the-now, the jeep turning gracefullyas though guided by giat fingers down the red road to the highway. At the top of the pass, Herrick pulled over and stopped. "Ton drive. I have a goddaaed headache." He logged hiaelf toward her, forcing her out the caves and around to his side. Horga sewed the road shut behind her. Past Herrick's profile, defeated by pain ad exhaustion, the mesquite was faded green calico, a fabric turned inside out ad blurred by the heat. She wated him home before the rain, home, helping him down out of the jeep, home, over the tar-baked pilings, up the wooda stairs with their half-disintegrated carpet. 96 "Let me take off your shoes." Herrick was flopped over on the bed, all’the stuffing slapped flat in him or sunk to his feet. when she pulled the lanes, they popped opaliketheseams ofdriedpode, swollawithedema. "that time is your dialysis tomorrow?" "Noon. Pueblo." "Do they know you're coming?" "Tee. I called." "Pills?" "Hops." "I'llweksyouatdinner." Ibrgaturnedagainat thedoor. ”Do you think you'll ever be Herrick again, or just James Andrew Heybrecht from now on?" "Leave me alas, Horga, I'm beat." lbrgawat doastairsanddialedthephaeinthesunroom. "Stella?" "Ho, Stella's gas for the day." «an» "lbssage?" 'Io thanks. Later." She foundsomemset inthefreeseradsetitoutonthecutting- board to thaw, and then she headed out the back door up Siapson's Heat. Itwaeasteep clia. Theskywasblackbut therewouldbenohealing rain, ad she wated to put the town below her while Herrick slept, watch the clouds brood ad scatter before the dusk. . The rock itself was a old India ambush, carved up with hearts and initials, ad Simpson was laid out beside it under a concrete slab 97 with a bronze. marker. )brga sat on him. Scattered in the valley below her were the baled houses of Trinidad. )br'ga wondered that it was a town at all. The rains were scat rations, boarded by the yucca for their pink blossoms in spring. She could see the church, the museum, the court- house, ad a sprinkling of colored roofs. the day a great tague of water would come again, swaaing the town, carving new msees, lapping up the foothills ad sloshing against the Sagre de Cristos. Then he would say, "The days of biscuits ad hard tack are over," ad they would laugh, the house bobbing ad creaking ad the light bulb swing- ing in circles from its cord over the kitcha table. And tha they would hold up glasses full of yellowwine to toast their opulace, armed ad alive, with aough supplies to last out the flood. Hut mtil tha, Herrick's secret pile of sweepings would lie iglored under the threadbare carpet of the town. She would have to keep searching for the parts to him, holding out new ad tha a bottlecap of rubber soldier. Until then, there was her mother to think of, ad getting the watch from Stella's. Tomorrow, his wrist threaded in the red strings of the dialysis machine, he would dry out again like the prairie after a afternoon rain, ad wha he swore from the crane, she would lay his legs out and press them against the sheets, pressing his blood back in because she knew that for now he would keep better that way and because that was the nature of redemption.