The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  One of his favorite subjects in high school was American history, and he has visited almost all the historic sites and battlefields in New Jersey.

  In contemporary music he likes the folk singers but not rock. His taste for classical music, particularly Mozart and Beethoven, is the result of listening to WQXR for several years on a homemade fm set which he awkwardly but painstakingly constructed as part of the requirements for his merit badge in radio.

  All in all, he considers himself a reasonably average and normal young man. There are only two abnormalities he is aware of: one, of course, is this reincarnation business; the other is that, for as long as he can remember, he has had a feeling of being lonely, more so, he thought, than most average, normal people.

  Fifteen

  Diana Goes Shopping, Suffers Some Bad Moments, but Prevails

  Diana did not sleep well. Several times, waving on the outer strand of slumber, she came awake to wonder: what am I doing here? Each time, to go back under, she had to explain it patiently to herself, but with a different explanation every time. Never could she answer to her satisfaction who it was bothered her most, herself or him. Nor could she interpret the tatters of certain dreams that clung to her stubbornly when she surfaced from sleep, yet these seemed somehow more real than the reality of trying to sleep in a motel in Cornwall, Connecticut, in the same room with the reembodied remains of her grandfather. In time she could not distinguish: did she wake to sleep? or sleep to wake?

  Did she rise up when dawn came? Or was this just one more dream? It seemed she rose, and was sitting on the edge of her bed. It seemed some light seeped through their window, the aquamarine light of early dawn. The hills were too high to let the sun up yet. It seemed she sat awhile, and was looking at him. He slept deeply, it seemed, his mouth open, his upper lip swollen, his arms akimbo, one leg nearly off the bed, as he lay face down covered by a sheet only, only to his waist; sometime in the night he must have removed the tight raincoat of hers he was wearing. It seemed he seemed very young, a child, his sleeping face empty of any guilt or care or even experience. He seemed to have no soul, neither his own nor another’s.

  It seemed she sat a long time, absently looking at him and waiting, waiting not for him to wake but for herself to. Did she wake? He would not, for several hours yet; but did she? In this dream that seemed awake, or this wakefulness that seemed dreaming, she rose up and dressed, realizing she could sleep no more…nor stay awake longer. She would have to go out. It seemed she began hunting for something to write with, to leave him a message. Did she find a pencil or a ballpoint? No, it seemed she searched through her lipsticks. They were all too pale, but it seemed she found one which was a redder pink than the others. Would she write with it upon a piece of the motel’s stationery, or use the mirror in the bathroom? It seemed she chose the mirror, and it seemed she wrote: “Going out. Going shopping. Order breakfast. Back soon. Diana.”

  Then it seemed she was in her car and on the highway, and she decided, If this is a dream, I’ve never had one quite like it, before. She drove into Cornwall Bridge and stopped beside the same telephone booth whose yellow pages she had used to locate their inn the evening before. This time she looked under “Camping Equipment,” but the first entry there was a store in New Britain, which, she discovered after consulting her roadmap, was a long way off. The second and only other entry was for Llewellyn’s Sporting Goods of 521 Elm Street, Torrington. She located Torrington on the map. It wasn’t very near, either, but it was much closer than New Britain, and the day, of course, was young.

  When she reached Torrington, after a thirty-mile drive through nearly unpopulated countryside, she found that it was still much too early for the stores to open, but she located a Dunkin’ Donuts shop on South Main which had just opened for the day, and she had a breakfast of orange juice, French crullers and coffee. Then she had another cup of coffee, and smoked a cigarette. After the second cup of coffee, she became reasonably certain that she was not asleep and dreaming.

  “Getting an early start?” remarked the manager of the sporting goods store as he unlocked the door and let her in. Then he said, “what can we do for you?”

  “I need two of everything,” she said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Two shirts, two pairs of jeans, two belts….”

  She saw then that most of the stuff in the store was clothing. “I was interested in camping equipment,” she said.

  “That’s downstairs,” he said, and switched on a light and led her to the basement.

  It was fun. She picked out a pair of sleeping bags with bonded Dacron filling, a pair of air mattresses of tufted rubber, a pair of Coleman gas lanterns, a pair of battery lanterns, a pair of aluminum mess kits, and a pair of folding camp chairs. She selected a large umbrella tent, with aluminum poles and suspension, which had a floor space of twelve feet by twelve feet. “What else do I need?” she asked herself aloud.

  “A camp stove?” suggested the merchant, and she picked out a Bernzomatic propane stove with double burner.

  “An ice chest?” he said, and she chose a Cronstrom with a capacity of ninety pounds of ice.

  “How about a portable john?” he said, and showed her several models. She picked one that used chemicals.

  “You’ll want a good first aid kit,” he suggested, and she took one.

  “A hand pump for the air mattresses?” he said. “A rope hammock? Extra propane cartridges? Skewers for kebabs? Salt and pepper shakers? Spray insect repellent? Clothes hooks?”

  She added these items to her equipage, and said, “Well, I guess that does it.”

  “An inflatable boat?” suggested the merchant. “A folding picnic table? Charcoal brix? Paper plates? Snakebite kit?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I believe I’ve got enough.”

  “A fly swatter?” he said. “Binoculars? A telescope? A compass?”

  “I believe I’ve got all I can carry,” she said.

  “Carry?” he said. “That your car out there? You’ll never get all of this into it.”

  “Well…” she said.

  “What you need is a roof rack,” he said.

  “Where could I get one of those?” she asked.

  “Well, we have the small aluminum carrier, the deluxe two-tone luggage rack, and also the suction-cup bar carrier which you don’t want because the suction cups will leave rings on the finish.”

  She selected a carrier for her roof, and the manager offered to put it on for her and adjust it. While he was doing this, with some difficulty because of the slope of the Porsche’s roof, she realized she ought to pick out some clothes for Day. But she didn’t know his sizes. That could wait.

  She asked the merchant if he would accept traveler’s checks. He did, gladly. He helped her load all of the equipment into the back of the car and onto the roof rack. “Come again,” he said, and stood on the curb waving as she drove away.

  It was nine-thirty when she got back to the motel room, and she could hardly wait to see Day’s face when she showed him all this stuff. But Day, she discovered, was gone.

  A maid was cleaning their room. “Did you see my husband?” Diana asked her. The maid, after giving her a strange look, shook her head. Diana walked to the dining room of the inn, but he was not there. She wondered if he had seen the message she had left on the bathroom mirror. She returned to her room and looked at the mirror, but there was no message on it. “Did you erase my message?” she called to the maid, but there was no answer. She stepped out of the bathroom. “Did you—” But the maid was gone.

  Had Day ever been there? The bed was made, his clothes were gone, there was no trace of him behind. Had she dreamt that too?

  She got into her car again and drove down the highway, south down Route 7. Monday morning traffic had commenced; there were cars ahead and behind. She had not driven far when she spotted him, up ahead, standing beside the highway with his thumb in the air. But before she could reach him, a car ahead of her stopped for him, and he got in.
Whether he had seen her or not she could not tell. She followed. The car ahead accelerated, and she had to drive fast to keep up with it. She followed for more than a mile before coming to a straight stretch of road where she could swing out into the other lane and pull abreast of the other car. She rolled down the window on that side; the driver of the other car was a young man about Day’s own age; Day was sitting beside him. “Day!” she yelled, and both boys turned to look at her. She started to ask him if he wanted to go home, but a car coming from the other direction forced her to slam on the brakes and get back into the proper lane. The car in which Day was riding pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and stopped, and she stopped behind it. Day got out, but the car did not leave. He came toward her car. She got out and went to meet him. “Day,” she said. “Are you going home?”

  His eyes were still puffed from sleep; apparently he had not been awake very long. “I thought you had already left,” he said.

  “You didn’t see my message?” she said.

  “No.”

  “But my luggage is still in the room. Didn’t you notice?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t think I would go off without you, did you?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, I didn’t. I wouldn’t.”

  “I just saw the car gone, and you gone, and I thought—”

  “Well, I’m here.”

  Day turned and walked away. For a moment she thought he was going to get back into the other car, but he only stuck his head in the other car’s window and said, “Thanks a lot anyway. That’s who I was looking for. Thanks a lot. Sorry to bother you.” Then he waved at the driver and came back and got into Diana’s car.

  She made a U-turn and drove back toward the inn. Day asked, “Where did you go?”

  “Shopping,” she said, and pointed toward the roof of the car. Day said, “What’s all that stuff up there?”

  “Just wait’ll you see,” she said. “I’ve got everything.”

  She parked beside their motel room. She asked him if he had had breakfast yet. He said no. She suggested the inn’s dining room, but when he seemed hesitant, she said they could order something delivered to their room.

  Then she showed him her purchases. Of course she didn’t unfold the tent, but she lifted a corner so he could see the strong stitching and the mosquito netting and the sturdy aluminum poles. She opened the propane stove and removed the lid from the ice chest. She showed him everything.

  He did not say anything.

  “Well, what do you think?” she asked.

  Still he did not say anything. He seemed to be half-asleep. Perhaps he thought that he was dreaming. Or maybe he was disappointed because she had not asked for his advice in selecting the things. She wished she knew what was going through his mind.

  “Don’t you like it?” she asked.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Pretty good outfit. First class, in fact.” “Well—?” she said.

  He asked a shy question: “Is it for us?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Who’d you think?”

  “Let’s go, then,” he said. “Let’s get away from here. Breakfast can wait, can’t it?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ve already had mine, anyway.”

  “I’d rather have mine,” he said, “with wood smoke in it.”

  Sixteen

  A Pleasant Day Is Had in Dudleytown, and a Pleasant Evening

  Day had his breakfast with wood smoke in it. Eschewing her Bernzomatic propane double-burner camp stove, he constructed, with rocks and sticks and a small excavation of earth in the glade of the mountain laurel, an Official All-purpose Boy Scout Campfire, and proceeded to fry bacon and eggs, bake biscuits and make coffee. She watched him. It looked so good her appetite came again, and she had a second breakfast.

  They had stocked up on groceries at the general store in Cornwall Bridge, enough for several days at least, with Day doing the picking, so that even if he really did feel piqued because she had selected the equipment without his advice, this must have helped make up for it a little. On the first portage from the place where they had to leave the car, the same as the day before, to the site in the glade of mountain laurel, they had carried only the cooking and eating utensils and part of the groceries.

  After breakfast they began a series of portages to carry the rest of the gear from the car to the glade, a distance of perhaps a mile. They each together made two additional trips to the car and back before they were finished; so it was that their morning hike covered a total distance of about five miles. By noon Diana was fatigued, and, after a light lunch, she inflated one of the air mattresses and took a nap. While she napped, Day finished the setting up of their camp, and when she woke around three o’clock she found he had cleared a large area of brush, weeds and ferns and erected the tent with its awning on poles and a drainage trench dug around the perimeter on the uphill side; the camp chairs were unfolded and set up on either side of the fire, the utensils hung in a neat row on a rack of sticks. Everything, despite its newness, seemed to have been settled there for a long time. Diana laughed in surprise when she saw that Day had added a few “decorations”: apparently he had made one more trip to the car and brought back the stack of framed pictures which had been in her room at Sarah Lawrence, and these he had hung from tree branches on the perimeter of the camp: her reproductions of Kokoschka’s “Bride of the Wind” and of Giorgione’s “Tempest”; photographs of Martha Graham in Appalachian Spring and herself in Search for an Answer; and even the “Make-Love-Not-WAR” poster which had been Susan Trombley’s, not hers.

  “No place like home, huh?” Diana said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t like that tent,” Day said.

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It looks like it belongs in ‘Shady Acres Kozy Kampground’ inhabited by a fat butcher and his fat family on their first trip out of the city. I would rather make a lean-to out of sticks and brush.”

  “And let the mosquitoes bite us,” Diana said. “And let the rain trickle down our necks. No thanks.”

  “You might at least have got a green one. Or even a gray one. But a yellow one, for gosh sakes! The tourists will think we’re a concession booth and want to buy something. What can we sell them?”

  “Bouquets of mountain laurel,” Diana suggested. Then she said, “What tourists? I still haven’t seen anybody in these woods.”

  “Just you wait.”

  Diana rose up from her air mattress, and had a good stretch. The air mattress had been surprisingly comfortable, but it had left a few kinks which she had to stretch off. While she was stretching, she looked around her, unable to find something which she realized she needed at once.

  “Where did you put the john?” she asked him.

  “The what?”

  “The john. Our portable privy. The chemical comfort station.”

  “Oh, that.” He pointed. “It’s right over there.”

  “Where? I don’t see it.”

  “There.”

  She looked. She looked again. Then she realized why she had not seen it: it was nearly covered with a profusion of wildflowers that had been arranged into an artful bouquet springing out of its hole. “Lovely,” she said. “But I need to use your flower vase for something else.”

  “Use the woods,” he said. It was not a suggestion but a command, and in the same peremptory voice he added, “Lady, I can live with all this other superfluous junk of yours, but I refuse to desecrate God’s earth with an unnatural chemical contraption. Use the woods.”

  She used the woods. Or, rather, the bushes, threading her way through the dense mountain laurel shrubs until she was well out of sight. Then, when she was finished, she realized she had forgotten something. “Day!” she called out. “Did we get any tissue paper?”

  After a moment his voice came back to her. “Are you wrapping presents?”

  “Day?” she called. “Didn’t we bring any toilet paper?”

  She w
aited. His shout finally came: “I can’t find any.”

  “Any Kleenex?” she called.

  “No.”

  “Well,” she called out, “do you have two fives for a ten?”

  After his laughter, Day’s voice bellowed, “God didn’t make leaves just for photosynthesis!” His sibilant esses ricocheted through the woods and echoed back, like snakes rustling through dry leaves.

  When she returned to camp, Diana gave Day a little look, a moue, and said, “I wish you’d leave God out of this. I don’t need Him around as head counselor.”

  “All right,” he said. “I will be head counselor.”

  “Yes sir,” she said, and saluted, not with the three-finger Scout salute but with one finger, the middle one. “Sir, what shall we do this afternoon? Have you planned the afternoon’s activities, sir? Knot tying? Basket weaving? Calisthenics? Or a séance?”

  “Do you want to see if we can find Dark Entry Road?”

  They spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Dark Entry Road. It was not hard to find. She had torn off the little map from the back of the Cornwall Inn’s menu, and they used that as a guide. They followed the branch of Bonny Brook that ran below their mountain laurel glade, and it crossed under Dark Entry Road right alongside the cellar hole of what had been the Dudley house itself. The stream did not merely cross under the road any longer but through it, having long since washed away the small bridge; and it tumbled on down a narrow, winding cataract in its wild urge to meet and join the main course of Bonny Brook, which ran parallel to Dark Entry at this point. They followed Dark Entry, which was indeed dark, sheltered everywhere from the sun by a canopy of trees, down its length, past the foundation of the old mill, to the dam. The dam was an impressive work of dry masonry, its center section washed out by the brook but the two ends still standing in neat courses of huge slabs of stone: the most monumental structure remaining in Dudleytown.