“No,” she said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.” She hurried out of the bus before he could say anything that would change her mind. Willie Rosen, the driver, smiled at her, too, as she passed him. He always looked so intently at her when she stepped on the bus in the morning; and twice, when she was the only one left on the run, because the Cooper kids who lived two houses down were sick or playing hooky, she felt uneasy being alone with him. He talked to her and smiled at her and moved his body in suggestive ways. She was going to tell Mary about him, but she was afraid that somehow she would find fault with her for it.
“A man wouldn’t get interested in a woman, unless a woman gave him some reason to,” she said. “Of course, that doesn’t excuse the man, but it doesn’t excuse the woman, either.” Faith understood that this logic made it easier for Mary to go on.
“Want me to wait for you, Faith?” Willie asked and laughed. She didn’t turn back. After the bus pulled away, she started slowly behind it.
She walked slowly with her head down. She was long legged and Mary made her wear those ankle-length dresses to school. The material rustled with each step, an almost indistinguishable whisper of cotton that made for a continuous and monotonous sound track. She held her books against her stomach and looked up only occasionally. Sometimes, she even closed her eyes.
Wildwood Drive was a little more than two miles from Centerville, a hamlet in the Town of Fallsburg, in Sullivan County, New York. The area, which had once catered mainly to city tourists, had lost most of its bungalow colonies and small hotels to changing times. Economically depressed and forlorn, some of the buildings actually sagged and leaned. Empty storefronts reflected half-empty streets with little traffic in the winter, spring, and fall. There was still some activity in the summer, but it was nothing like it used to be.
Overgrown fields swallowed up the small bungalow units and the grounds of the little hotels. It was as though the earth was reclaiming what had been taken. Cracked and broken swimming pools, tennis courts, handball courts, and the like were literally being bulldozed out of existence by weeds and vigorous wild vegetation.
For Faith the walk back to Wildwood was very solitary. Few houses had been built where bungalows and tourist houses once stood. The unmanaged land came back, the forest creeping toward the road, the bushes joining in a chain that threatened to reach across the very macadam. Once in the spring, and once or twice in the summer, the town sent a tractor and a mower down the road to cut back the overgrowth, but, for now, that had yet to be done.
As she drew closer to Frank’s Auto Dump and the car, the images and the memories became more vivid. Today she remembered him at a time when she was a very little girl. She recalled him coming home from work and sweeping her up into his arms, pressing her tightly to his body. She would inhale all the scents, the manly odors of sweat and cigarettes, and often the strong scent of whiskey or beer.
He held her close to him even when Mary greeted him with anger and criticism. She would bury her face in his shirt and try not to hear the shouting. Sometimes he put her right down; sometimes he squeezed her tighter. Once he squeezed her so hard, she cried out in pain and fear. Mary made a big thing of that.
Whenever she tried to remember his face now, she would draw up different images. That was Mary’s doing; she wanted her to see the Devil whenever she thought of him: eyes on fire, smile sardonic, his lips curling “even when he looks at you!” Mary never failed to use him as a lesson. “He surrendered to lust; he took it into his veins and it killed him as it will all bad people. ‘Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.’”
But Faith couldn’t help but recall the visual details. She had gotten to know them too well, to know every crease and wrinkle, to know every little blemish, every hair. How many times had she run her forefinger over that small scar on his chin and pressed her fingertips in between his lips. She remembered the way his eyebrows thickened as they reached the bridge of his nose, the way his cheekbones pressed upward, cutting his face with stonelike sharpness.
She didn’t want to think of him as evil, but how could she deny it? Look at what he had done; look at the sins he had committed. Mary wasn’t wrong about that. And the evil that was in him could have been passed on to her. Mary was right. Mary had power. Sometimes she believed Mary did get special help from God and that Mary was one of God’s agents on earth. She had been selected, just as she claimed. There were things she knew; things she could do that others didn’t know and couldn’t do. It had to mean something.
She looked up. She was at Frank’s Auto Dump, a large field beside Frank Stratton’s house. The wrecked cars and trucks were kept for parts. A good part of the field was overgrown here, too, but here it was appreciated, because it hid the offensive-looking vehicles from the public. There wasn’t any logic to how the wrecks were piled and stored, but Frank knew where to look for models and parts. She knew where to go in the field, because she had gone there so many times before. Of course, Mary didn’t know she did. It would be terrible if she found out.
She turned into the dump and walked past the pile of trucks, the battered small autos, the rows of parts and tires and oil drums. As usual, there was no one around, and even if there were, no one would bother her. Frank knew what she came to see and he told anyone else who worked there.
In a moment it was there before her, the wheels stripped off, the axles up on cement blocks, the rear door on this side gone, the windshield smashed in, and the roof battered down so far, it hung in jagged creases within the automobile. Interestingly enough, the dashboard was still in good shape, except where the radio had been ripped out. The seats were torn and rotted in places, but she liked getting into the car, sitting behind the steering wheel, and thinking.
In this car, one summer night, her father and a woman he had been seeing missed a turn on Olympic Hill, a steep hill just outside of Centerville. They went over the edge and bounced a half mile down before resting on the bottom. Their bodies were broken and bleeding, yet they were found on top of one another, clinging to one another in a last, desperate gasp of love and protection. At least, that was the way she liked to think of it. Mary said they were married by the Devil, so they could spend their honeymoon in Hell.
Mary refused to make a funeral. She removed everything that she could that was associated with him, burned some of it, and gave some of it to charities, hoping that nothing was contaminated, for to Mary, evil was a disease—something that could be spread and caught like a cold, something that had to be cured with faith. She wouldn’t tolerate his picture or his jewelry, nothing that in any way reminded them of his existence in their house. That was why Faith came to this car so often, for it had been his car, and it was a tangible reminder of what he was and who he had been.
She had good memories of riding in this car. She could remember when they had first gotten it, how proud he was of it, polishing and cleaning it so much. She remembered how much it angered him that Mary wouldn’t go for rides unless they had a destination. “Rides for the sake of riding is wasteful and anything that is wasteful, is sinful,” she said.
When she sat in this car, she could sense his presence and remember him even more vividly. She could almost hear his laugh, his singing, his soft voice, even his shouting. She could almost smell him again, although she had to admit to herself that was a little too farfetched. It was sinful to do this, she knew; but there was some mystical pleasure for her when she sat in this car, the place where he had been when he was last alive. She could touch things he last touched. Through this car, she could reach him. In it she held her own, private séance.
Was it the Devil who drew her here, who tempted her to remember her father? The possibility was so vivid to her that she often looked about, half expecting the fallen angel, Mary had drawn so clearly for her, to be standing next to one of the wrecks watching her and smiling. Once, she thought she did see him and her
heart skipped a beat. She broke out into a terribly cold sweat and for a few moments she could hardly move. Trembling, she got out of the car as quickly as she could and ran off. It took weeks before she was able to come back again, and when she did, she was even more cautious, more tentative.
It was like the beginning when she first decided to do it. Nothing she had done until then had been as terrifying for her. All the while, she could hear Mary’s chastising voice and see her angry face. It haunted her so intensely that night, that twice she got up from her bed to go to Mary’s room and confess. If it were the Devil who brought her there, Mary could save her, she thought.
But she was too frightened to tell her, and she didn’t want to end it. Maybe it was wicked; maybe it wasn’t. Whatever the case, she couldn’t resist, and, anyway, she told herself, she was there remembering only the good things about him. She didn’t think of him as drunk and lustful; she didn’t recall the violence and the hate. She thought about the earlier days, when he looked young and healthy and there was always a great deal of laughter for them. Surely, this couldn’t be sinful, and she had her wits about her enough to resist any suggestions the Devil might make.
Then there were the times when she came here simply because she felt terribly alone and had no one to talk to. Sitting there behind the steering wheel, she could talk to her father and imagine his responses. Sometimes she simply cried. Sometimes she sat and felt nothing but disappointment. Those were the saddest of times and the most frightening; for despite what Mary had taught her and made her believe, she thought, if she lost her father completely, she would have only Mary and what Mary and she had done. That was too much to face alone, no matter what Mary said about her voices and her visions.
And deep down inside, she had the nagging feeling that it was all terrible, even if God wanted it. The feeling was growing stronger and stronger, growing as he grew in the basement and clawed away at the ceiling. The same kind of clawing was taking place within her. It was as though they were prisoners of the same madness, hungering for the same kind of freedom.
This thought frightened her, because it made her think that Mary might be right when she said, “Beware of him. He can infect you, even easier than he would infect others if he were free; for you share the same blood.”
Hearing Mary’s words in her mind made her shudder. When she lifted her hands from the steering wheel, she saw that the palms were damp and red. She had been holding on so tightly the whole time she sat there. She wiped them on her skirt and got out, looking back only once before leaving the dump. Now the car looked small and insignificant, even a bit comical, with its twisted metal and shattered windows. She questioned why she should feel any mystery about it, but she also knew that the feelings that brought her here would return and she would sit inside it again.
The sound of Bobby O’Neil’s pickup truck pulling up behind her filled Faith with a combination of fear and excitement. Her heart began to pound; her face flushed. She walked on, pretending not to notice his slowing the vehicle to a crawl to follow along with her. Finally, she turned and he smiled out at her. He looked older and more mature sitting behind the steering wheel in the dark blue truck cab. For a moment she thought of her father again, his shoulders pulled back wide and high, his smile framed in the windshield.
Bobby drove the truck beside her, leaned over to open the passenger door, and looked out at her. The sunlight was just behind him now, and the glare made her squint.
“I was looking for you,” he said. “Where were you? I gave up and started back.”
“I told you not to.”
“Yeah, well I did. Come on, get in.”
“I wanna walk.”
“Walk? Why?”
“I just like to, that’s all,” she said and started away. He watched her walk before him and studied the long lines of her body, the way her hair lay softly on her shoulders, and the almost imperceptible movement of her hips within the loose, long skirt. Instead of giving up, he left the truck in low gear and crawled along behind her, the passenger door still opened. When she stopped, he stopped.
“What are you doing?”
“Just waiting for you to change your mind.”
“I didn’t tell you to come get me.”
“Yeah, but I already did, so we can’t let it go to waste.”
She turned away again and walked on. He drove the truck forward, just as slowly and just as far. A car going in the opposite direction slowed down when it came to them and the driver studied the scene, a wry smile on his face. Faith imagined he saw it as some kind of lovers’ quarrel and thought that she had jumped out of the truck.
“Damn it, Bobby O’Neil,” she said, spinning around. He brought the truck to a stop again. He was still smiling widely, his eyes bright with mischief. She had to smile, too, but she looked away to do so. Then she thought, what difference would it make if I rode with him? Mary wasn’t home yet; she wouldn’t know. She ran to the truck impulsively and stepped in. “You’re embarrassing me,” she said. “That’s why I’m giving in.”
“Close the door. I don’t wantcha to fall out now that I gotcha.”
There was something very attractive about his smile, she thought, and it wasn’t only his straight, white teeth. It was in his eyes, in the laughter, and sexual excitement that lay just behind them. It was that little expression of knowledge, that challenging enticement that she had seen in her erotic dreams. For her there was a danger here, and that danger quickened her heartbeat and sent a tingling up the inside of her thighs. She tugged her skirt tightly around herself after she closed the truck door. He didn’t start off immediately; he simply sat there smiling like someone realizing an accomplishment or a prize.
“Well?”
“Why are you so nasty?”
“I’m not nasty.”
“You’re not the friendliest person I’ve ever met.”
“I don’t like being tricked,” she said, but her voice already indicated some retreat. She didn’t like being thought of as unfriendly and nasty, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be nasty to him anyway.
“It’s not really a trick. It’s just my way of trying to get to know you,” he said, making it sound like a sincerely simple explanation. She turned and stared at him for a moment, her eyes small and suspicious. His smile began to melt.
“Why?”
“Because … because we’re neighbors for so long and we’ve never really been friends.”
“Why did you decide to become friends now?”
“Boy, you’re tough.”
“Why?” she insisted. His smile returned.
“Because I think you’re pretty,” he offered. The honesty of the statement threw her into a blush and left her momentarily speechless. All at once she had the urge to open the door and jump out so she could run away; and yet, at the same time, she felt like smiling, like moving closer to him, like getting to know him. He sensed her indecision and spoke quickly.
“It wasn’t easy for me to tell you that so fast, but you wouldn’t give me the chance to lay any groundwork. I’m not a fast-talker, believe me. When you act like this, I don’t know what else to do but speak the truth. I’m not giving you a line,” he added.
“I’ll bet,” she said, but she believed him. She turned away to hide her pleasure.
“You’d lose,” he said and started up the road, almost as slowly as before. It was obvious that he wanted to prolong the ride.
“How come you keep to yourself so much?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I never see you at any of the parties.”
“So? Those parties are stupid. There aren’t too many people around here I care to know anyway,” she added defensively. She didn’t want to tell him her mother forbade her to go to school parties.
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but still …”
“Besides, I’m serious about my life. I want to do something with it.”
“Really?” he asked, as though he had never met anyone
serious before. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe … maybe be a doctor.”
“Wow. I’m not even sure I’m going to college. My father thinks I should stay and work with him. He says I’ll learn more and make more faster.”
“He’s wrong,” she said. Her definite tone of voice annoyed him, but he didn’t show it.
“Well, he doesn’t do too badly. If he wanted to work more, he’d make a lot more.”
“That’s just it—he’s lazy. Like most people around here.”
“Why are you so down on the people around here? Your father was from here, wasn’t he?” This time he couldn’t hide his unhappiness. She didn’t reply. “My father says your father was a good worker.”
“I don’t like talking about him,” she said. He looked at her. There was a heavy silence between them for a few moments.
“Getting nice now, isn’t it?” he asked, hoping the conversational change would bring back whatever it was he first felt when he saw her walking along the roadway. “Took my little brother fishing on Brown’s Pond last weekend. We put a rowboat on it, you know.”
“Why do you call it a pond? It’s a mile-long lake, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. My father always called it a pond. I guess to him it’s too small to be a lake. Does your mother call it a lake?” he asked timidly. He didn’t like bringing up her mother; he had heard too many stories about her. His mother thought Mary Oaks was “wacko.” If she knew he was interested in Faith Oaks, she’d bawl him out for it. “The less we have to do with those neighbors, the better,” she always said.
“She calls it a … a pond, too,” Faith confessed. “But I call it a lake.”
“All right,” he said, nodding and tapping the steering wheel as though he had come to a major decision. “From now on, I’m going to call it a lake, too.”
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