The boy said, “Wow.”
“Unfortunately,” Miss Maple continued, getting to her feet, “it escaped me. You don’t happen to see it, do you, William?”
William said no, and she pretended to hobble back to the field.
At 4:19, after grading three groups of tests, Miss Lydia Maple put on her gray cotton coat and flat black hat and started for home. She was not exactly thinking about the incident in the forest, but Owen Tracy had to speak twice. He had been waiting.
“Miss Maple. Over here!”
She stopped, turned, and approached the blue car. The principal of Overton High was smiling: he was too handsome for his job, too tall and too young, and Miss Maple resented his eyes. They traveled. “Yes, Mr. Tracy?”
“Thought maybe you’d like a lift home.”
“That is very nice of you,” she said, “but I enjoy walking. It isn’t far.”
“Well, then, how about my walking along with you?”
Miss Maple flushed. “I—”
“Like to talk with you, off the record.” The tall man got out of his car, locked it.
“Not, I hope, about the same subject.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. I have nothing further to add.”
Owen Tracy fell into step. His face was still pleasant, and it was obvious that he intended to retain his good humor, his charm. “I suppose you read Ben Sugrue’s piece in the Sun-Mirror yesterday?”
Miss Maple said, “No,” perfunctorily. Sugrue was a monster, a libertine: it was he who had started the campaign, whose gross libidinous whispers had first swept the town.
“It refers to Overton High as a medieval fortress.”
“Indeed? Well,” Miss Maple said, “perhaps that’s so.” She smiled, delicately. “It was, I believe, a medieval fortress that saved the lives of four hundred people during the time of the Black Plague.”
Tracy stopped a moment to light a cigarette. “Very good,” he conceded. “You’re an intelligent person, Lydia. Intelligent and sharp.”
“Thank you.”
“And that’s what puzzles me. This mess over the sex-education program isn’t intelligent and it isn’t sharp. It’s foolish. As a biology teacher you ought to know that.”
Miss Maple was silent.
“If we were an elementary school,” Tracy said, “well, maybe your idea would make sense. I personally don’t think so, but at least you’d have a case. In a high school, though, it’s silly; and it’s making a laughingstock out of us. If I know Sugrue, he’ll keep hammering until one of the national magazines picks it up. And that will be bad.”
Miss Maple did not change her expression. “My stand,” she said, “ought to be perfectly clear by now, Mr. Tracy. In the event it isn’t, let me tell you again. There will be no sex-education program at Overton so long as I am in charge of the biology department. I consider the suggestion vile and unspeakable—and quite impractical—and am not to be persuaded otherwise: neither by yourself, nor by that journalist, nor by the combined efforts of the faculty. Because, Mr. Tracy, I feel a responsibility toward my students. Not only to fill their minds with biological data, but to protect them, also.” Her voice was even. “If you wish to take action, of course, you are at liberty to do so—”
“I wouldn’t want to do that,” Owen Tracy said. He seemed to be struggling with his calm.
“I think that’s wise,” Miss Maple said. She paused and stared at the principal.
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Simply that any measures to interrupt or impede my work, or force changes upon the present curriculum, will prove embarrassing, Mr. Tracy, both to yourself and to Overton.” She noticed his fingers and how they were curling.
“Go on.”
“I hardly think that’s necessary.”
“I do. Go on, please.”
“I may be . . . old-fashioned,” she said, “but I am not stupid. Nor am I unobservant. I happen to have learned some of the facts concerning yourself and Miss Bond . . .”
Owen Tracy’s calm fled like a released animal. Anger began to twitch along his temples. “I see.”
They looked at one another for a while; then the principal turned and started back in the opposite direction. The fire had gone out of his eyes. After a few steps, he turned again and said, “It may interest you to know that Miss Bond and I are going to be married at the end of the term.”
“I wonder why,” Miss Maple said, and left the tall man standing in the bloody twilight.
She felt a surge of exultation as she went up the stairs of her apartment. Of course she’d known nothing about them, only guessed: but when you think the worst of people, you’re seldom disappointed. It had been true, after all. And now her position was absolutely unassailable.
She opened cans and bottles and packages and prepared her usual supper. Then, when the dishes were done, she read Richards’ Practical Criticism until nine o’clock. At nine-thirty she tested the doors to see that they were securely locked, drew the curtains, fastened the windows and removed her clothes, hanging them carefully in the one small closet.
The gown she chose was white cotton, chin-high and ankle-low, faintly figured with tiny fleur-de-lis. For a brief moment her naked body was exposed; then, at once, covered up again, wrapped, encased, sealed.
Miss Maple lay in the bed, her mind untroubled.
But sleep would not come.
She got up after a while and warmed some milk; still she could not sleep. Unidentifiable thoughts came, disturbing her. Unnormal sensations. A feeling that was not proper. . . .
Then she heard the music.
The pipes: the high-pitched, dancing pipes of the afternoon, so distant now that she felt perhaps she was imagining them, so real she knew that couldn’t be true. They were real.
She became frightened, when the music did not stop, and reached for the telephone. But what person would she call? And what would she say?
Miss Maple decided to ignore the sounds, and the hot strange feeling that was creeping upon her alone in her bed.
She pressed the pillow tight against her ears, and held it there, and almost screamed when she saw that her legs were moving apart slowly, beyond her will.
The heat in her body grew. It was a flame, the heat of high fevers, moist and interior: not a warmth.
And it would not abate.
She threw the covers off and began to pace the room, hands clenched. The music came through the locked windows.
Miss Maple!
She remembered things, without remembering them.
She fought another minute, very hard; then surrendered. Without knowing why, she ran to the closet and removed her gray coat and put it on over the nightgown; then she opened a bureau drawer and pocketed a ring of keys, ran out the front door, down the hall, her naked feet silent upon the thick-piled carpet, and into the garage where it was dark. The music played fast, her heart beat fast, and she moaned softly when the seldom-used automobile sat cold and unresponding to her touch.
At last it came to life, when she thought she must go out of her mind; and Miss Maple shuddered at the dry coughs and violent starts and black explosions.
In moments she was out of town, driving faster than she had ever driven, pointed toward the wine-dark waters of the gulf. The highway turned beneath her in a blur and sometimes, on the curves, she heard the shocked and painful cry of the tires, and felt the car slide; but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except the music.
Though her eyes were blind, she found the turn-off, and soon she was hurtling across the white path of shells, so fast that there was a wake behind her; then, scant yards from the restless stream, she brought her foot down hard upon the brake pedal, and the car danced to a stop.
Miss Maple rushed out because now the piping was inside her, and ran across the path into the field and across the field into the trees and through the trees, stumbling and falling and getting up again, not feeling the cold sharp fingers of brush tearing at her
and the high wet grass soaking her and the thousand stones daggering her flesh, feeling only the pumping of her heart and the music, calling and calling.
There! The brook was cold, but she was across it, and past the wall of foliage. And there! The grove, moon-silvered and waiting.
Miss Maple tried to pause and rest; but the music would not let her do this. Heat enveloped her: she removed the coat; ate her: she tore the tiny pearl buttons of her gown and pulled the gown over her head and threw it to the ground.
It did no good. Proper Miss Lydia Maple stood there, while the wind lifted her hair and sent it billowing like shreds of amber silk, and felt the burning and listened to the pipes.
Dance! they told her. Dance tonight, Miss Maple: now. It’s easy. You remember. Dance!
She began to sway then, and her legs moved, and soon she was leaping over the tall grass, whirling and pirouetting.
Like this?
Like that, Miss Maple. Yes, like that!
She danced until she could dance no more, then she stopped by the first tree by the end of the grove, and waited for the music to stop as she knew it would.
The forest became silent.
Miss Maple smelled the goaty animal smell and felt it coming closer; she lay against the tree and squinted her eyes, but there was nothing to see, only shadows.
She waited.
There was a laugh, a wild shriek of amusement; bull-like and heavily masculine it was, but wild as no man’s laugh ever could be. And then the sweaty fur odor was upon her, and she experienced a strength about her, and there was breath against her face, hot as steam.
“Yes,” she said, and hands touched her, hurting with fierce pain.
“Yes!” and she felt glistening muscles beneath her fingers, and a weight upon her, a shaggy, tawny weight that was neither ghost nor human nor animal, but with much heat; hot as the fires that blazed inside her.
“Yes,” said Miss Maple, parting her lips. “Yes! Yes!”
The change in Lydia Maple thenceforth was noticed by some but not marked, for she hid it well. Owen Tracy would stare at her sometimes, and sometimes the other teachers would wonder to themselves why she should be looking so tired so much of the time; but since she did not say or do anything specifically different, it was left a small mystery.
When some of the older boys said that they had seen Miss Maple driving like a bat out of hell down the gulf highway at two in the morning, they were quickly silenced: for such a thing was, on the face of it, too absurd for consideration.
The girls of her classes were of the opinion that Miss Maple looked happier than she had ever been, but this was attributed to her victory over the press and the principal’s wishes on the matter of sex-education.
To Mr. Owen Tracy, it seemed to be a distasteful subject for conversation all the way around. He was in full agreement with the members of the school board that progress at Overton would begin only when Miss Maple was removed: but in order to remove her, one would have to have grounds. Sufficient grounds, at that, for there was the business of himself and Lorraine Bond. . . .
As for Miss Maple, she developed the facility of detachment to a fine degree. A week went by and she answered the call of the pipes without fail—though going about it in a more orderly manner—and still, wondering vaguely about the spattered mud on her legs, about the grass stains and bits of leaves and fresh twigs, she did not actually believe that any of it was happening. It was fantastic, and fantasy had no place in Miss Maple’s life.
She would awaken each morning satisfied that she had had another unusual dream; then she would forget it, and go about her business.
It was on a Monday—the night of the day that she had assembled positive proof that Willie Hammacher and Rosalia Forbes were cutting classes together and stealing away to Dauphin Park; and submitted this proof; and had Willie and Rosalia threatened with expulsion from school—that Miss Maple scented her body with perfumes, lay down and waited, again, for the music.
She waited, tremulous as usual, aching beneath the temporary sheets; but the air was still.
He’s late, she thought, and tried to sleep. Often she would sit up, though, certain that she had heard it, and once she got halfway across the room toward the closet; and sleep was impossible.
She stared at the ceiling until three a.m., listening.
Then she rose and dressed and got into her car.
She went to the grove.
She stood under the crescent moon, under the bruised sky.
And heard the wind; her heart; owls high in the trees; the shifting currents of the stream; the stony rustle of the brook; and heard the forest quiet.
Tentatively, she took off her clothes, and stacked them in a neat pile.
She raised her arms from her sides and tried a few steps. They were awkward. She stopped, embarrassed.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
Silence.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
Then, she heard the chuckling: it was cruel and hearty, but not mirthless.
Over here, Miss Maple.
She smiled and ran to the middle of the grove. Here?
No, Miss Maple: over here! You’re looking beautiful tonight. And hungry. Why don’t you dance?
The laughter came from the trees, to the right. She ran to it. It disappeared. It appeared again, from the trees to the left.
What can you be after, madame? It’s hardly proper, you know. Miss Maple, where are your clothes?
She covered her breasts with her hands, and knew fear. “Don’t,” she said. “Please, don’t.” The aching and the awful heat were in her. “Come out! I want—”
“You want—?”
Miss Maple went from tree to tree, blindly. She ran until pain clutched at her legs, and, by the shadowed dell, she sank exhausted.
There was one more sound. A laugh. It faded.
And everything became suddenly very still and quiet.
Miss Maple looked down and saw that she was naked. It shocked her. It shocked her, also, to become aware that she was Lydia Maple, thirty-seven, teacher of biology at Overton.
“Where are you?” she cried.
The wind felt cold upon her body. Her feet were cold among the grasses. She knew a hunger and a longing that were unbearable.
“Come to me,” she said, but her voice was soft and hopeless.
She was alone in the wood now.
And this was the way it had been meant.
She put her face against the rough bark of the tree and wept for the first time in her life. Because she knew that there was no more music for her, there would never be any music for her again.
Miss Maple went to the grove a few more times, late at night, desperately hoping it was not true. But her blood thought for her: What it was, or who it was, that played the pipes so sweetly in the wooded place would play no more; of that she was sure. She did not know why. And it gave her much pain for many hours, and sleep was difficult, but there was nothing to be done.
Her body considered seeking out someone in the town, and rejected the notion. For what good was a man when one had been loved by a god?
In time she forgot everything, because she had to forget.
The music, the dancing, the fire, the feel of strong arms about her: everything.
And she might have gone on living quietly, applauding purity, battling the impure, and holding the Beast of Worldliness outside the gates of Sand Hill forever—if a strange thing had not happened.
It happened in a small way.
During dinner one evening Miss Maple found herself craving things. It had been a good day, she had found proof that the rumors about Mr. Etlin, the English I teacher, were true—he did indeed subscribe to that dreadful magazine; and Owen Tracy was thinking of transferring to another school; yet, as she sat there in her apartment, alone, content, she was hungry for things.
First it was ice cream. Big plates of strawberry ice cream topped with marshmallow sauce.
Then it was
wine.
And then Miss Maple began to crave grass—
Nobody ever did find out why she moved away from Sand Hill in such a hurry, or where she went, or what happened to her.
But then, nobody cared.
The Customers
The room was quiet and the old woman sat in the room looking out the window, out into the steel-gray afternoon. At the cheddar-sharp little fingers of wind playing with icy bits of weeds and leaves; at the sickly rays of sunlight tumbling to the ashen earth; at the soft clean fragrance of moist grass and moldering pine needles; the gray wind, the gray sunlight.
She fretted the neck of the brown tomcat asleep in her lap, and watched. Then she leaned forward, squinted and rubbed away some window-frost with her hand.
“Henry,” the old woman said.
The old man’s hand fell from the arm of his chair. He made a small noise.
“Henry.”
His head bobbled. His lips moved.
“Wake up.”
The old man’s eyes opened. “All right,” he said. “Just give me a second.”
“Second nothing. Wake up now.”
“Well, what is it? What is it?”
The old woman’s voice sounded filled with fear. “It’s Him,” she said. “He’s coming.”
The old man sat up and yawned and wiped the sleep from his face. He smiled. “Didn’t I tell you to quit staring out that blamed window? Didn’t I say that you’d go imagining things?”
“Henry Ludlow, nobody’s imagining nothing. Get up from there and come look.”
Mr. Ludlow braced his fingers on the chair. He walked to the window, patted his wife upon her wrists and parted the curtains. He squinted.
“Hmm!” Mr. Ludlow said.
“Mr. Know-it-all. You see or don’t you see?”
“I see,” the old man said, dropping the curtains again. “But we can’t be sure, Myrtle. Not actually.”
Mrs. Ludlow turned her head. “Just look at him,” she said. “You ever see such an elegant person around these parts? Black suit, briefcase, even a little bitty old mustache. Now who in thunder else could it be?”
Mr. Ludlow laid a finger alongside his nose and shook his head. “I ain’t saying it don’t look like Him.”
The Hunger and Other Stories Page 11
