The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  “Hattie Rose Pearl,” I say, “you leave me be.” She is too old to be my girl, past eleven at least. But she’s a pretty one, I have to say.

  “Oh, Danny,” she says, and rumples my hair some more, then she sits beside me at my desk and puts one arm around me. “I want to share your desk,” she says. Nobody shares my desk; all the other desks are shared, two and two; not mine. I’ve never had a deskmate.

  “You’re Zadock’s girl,” I remind her.

  “No more, I’m not,” she says. The others are still tittering. “Miss Fife won’t let you share my desk,” I say.

  “She will if I ask her pretty-like.”

  Close as she is, her girl-scent is a new thing to me, and rife, and sweet, even her hair, like mowings.

  Girl. Why’s a girl? Her arm around me tightens, hugs.

  My face is hot as time, my tongue frozen.

  When the others keep tittering, she says, “Scat!” to them and hugs me even tighter as if to protect. “Danny’s my boy. Have off!” They leave us. The schoolhouse is empty but for us. It’s even harder to be alone with her. I fidget.

  “Put your arm around me,” she says, “and I’ll be your girl.”

  “I have to go and do my chores.”

  “Not yet you don’t.”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  Outside in the schoolyard the others are still waiting, even Zadock, whose girl she is, who makes a lip. He’s big enough to eat me up. He doesn’t join the others, who join hands and ring round us, singing

  Danny, manny, little squirrel

  Got himself a pretty girl

  Hattie’s Danny’s rose and pearl

  Dance her, Danny, with a whirl.

  I do not dance her but run. One thing at least, I’m the fastest runner in the school. I outrun them all. Except her. She hangs on my heels, until all the others have dropped back. I’m nearly home. Still I run, until I’ve reached the marsh path to my yard. Here I stop for breath, and here she catches up with me and, panting, asks, “Don’t you like me?”

  I, panting, accuse her, “You are only trying to make Zadock jealous.”

  “No,” she says. “I truly want to be your girl.”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why me?”

  “Because you don’t have one.”

  “Then Zadock won’t have one.”

  “Yes he will. He’s after Felicia.”

  “I don’t know as what I need a girl.”

  “If I’m your girl, I can snitch you some candy from Papa’s store.”

  Now this sounds to be the square thing. A toothy lure. But what’s my end of the deal? What does having a girl require? Why’s a girl? I’ve never had one. I’m only nine.

  My breath is back, I’m not panting but just unsteady: “Well, if you want to.”

  My chores can wait. We walk together to her father’s store. She asks me what’s my favorite? Jujubes, I tell her. She has me wait outside while she goes in. She returns, later, empty-handed. I am disappointed. We walk on back toward my house. But where the road goes into the woods, she draws me into the woods, behind a screen of cedars. She lifts the hem of her dress high, I see the length of her pantaletted legs. From beneath her dress she takes out a whole paper bag of jujubes. We laugh and share them, one by one.

  She walks me on home. Our swinging arms brush, our hands touch, then hold. Shivers shive me. The holding of hands’s a thing of wonder. Trees hold hands. I’ve never, except in play. A hand’s a nice thing. Animals don’t have them. All the pads of her palm cup and suck the pads of mine. A hand is for holding.

  I have a girl.

  6

  Then there were certain matters which she did not record in her diary.

  Diana slept well every night. With the exception of a few occasions, early on, when she was not accustomed to the normal woods noises of the night and had awakened in fear at the strange sounds (once, investigating with the flashlight, she discovered it was merely a raccoon trying to break into their food chest), she generally slept better than she ever had. The combination of the fresh and fragrant night air, the comfort of the air mattress and sleeping bag, in short, the sheer relaxation of the whole situation, made her nights deeply restful.

  But Day, on the other hand, was a fitful sleeper, every night flouncing around on his air mattress, groaning in his sleep and occasionally even grinding his teeth. She supposed it was because he was “possessed.” Once, after a particularly rough night, when he appeared haggard and sleepless at breakfast, she asked him about it. He told her that he had just been through “a double-feature nightmare.” She asked him if the dream involved Daniel Lyam Montross. No, Day said, it had nothing to do with him. Well, she had asked, who was in it, then? His mother? His father? Anybody he recognized? “Just you,” he said.

  For all her intelligence, Diana was embarrassingly slow in coming to grasp or guess the possible source of Day’s affliction.

  One night, after she had easily dropped off to sleep, she came awake again—or rather her eyes snapped open, not to any sound or audible disturbance—she wondered later what in fact had actually wakened her—her own dream? or a telepathic summons or something?—her eyes came open and saw, in the dim light that a crescent moon cast through one of the mesh windows of the tent, Day lying face down upon his bag and mattress, seeming to embrace them, his pajamas removed, his pelvis writhing. He made no sound but he was violent. She nearly spoke, but didn’t. Finally he stopped, sighed, then seemed to go to sleep. She was not even certain that he had been awake. The next day, while he was away fishing, out of curiosity she investigated his sleeping bag, and found starched places on it.

  It was the evening of that day that he had held her hand. It had been spontaneous, apparently; they were sitting with their chairs side by side before the campfire, in the early dark, some time after she had been listening to Daniel telling of his first “girl,” Hattie Rose Pearl. Day’s arm and Diana’s arm were close, on the arms of their chairs, and their hands suddenly touched then clasped; she wasn’t certain which of them had instigated it; perhaps it was simultaneous; she had been thinking about it.

  They merely sat for a long while, in silence, holding hands. Several times she came extremely close to blurting out, “Day, would you like to make love?” She even considered being more matter-of-fact or even blunt about it, and saying, “You can screw me if you want to.” But she just couldn’t. And even if she could, could he?

  She tried to rationalize her way into it by thinking, It’s bound to happen sooner or later. But was it?

  We aren’t here on a date, she reminded herself. We are explorers, not lovers. And besides, after all, he was three years younger, more like a kid brother.

  And then of course the biggest hitch of all: he could be her grandfather. That would be incest, wouldn’t it?

  But these were all excuses, she realized. Then what was her real reason?

  If he asked me, I would. Or if he even made the first move. There. That was it. There was only one man she had been to bed with, and she had practically asked him; that is, she had pursued him, played upon his vanity as teacher and writer, made herself available, schemed and plotted, and then, when it finally happened, she didn’t think it was particularly enjoyable. At least not very satisfying. Not the kind of thing the books made it out to be. She was nagged by the suspicion that it would have been better if she had not been aggressive, if she had waited and let the man court her.

  Would Day ever ask her? Or make the right move? She hoped, when they held hands, that it would lead to something. But it didn’t. Later, when they were getting into their sleeping bags, she nearly forgot her resolve again and decided to go ahead and make the first move, to get into his bag with him. But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

  Now here comes the one incident she would never, could never, record in her diary: the next day, in the afternoon, once when he went off to “use the woods,” she impishly and stealthily followed him, to spy on him. Out of simpl
e curiosity? Or out of some unformulated suspicion? He sometimes seemed to take an inordinately long time when he went to use the woods. At a distance she hid behind the mountain laurel and spied. She almost gave herself away stifling a giggle at the sight of him peeing. He spouted a thick stream; that must be the beer he had for lunch. She thought she was going to choke trying to swallow her giggle when he was finished and was shaking it. Then he began doing something that made her cover her eyes with both hands. But then she had to peek through her fingers. She could not help herself. She had to watch. Once she had tried to imagine how boys did it, but couldn’t quite. So this was it: the fist, the fist as surrogate.

  Now this is what she would never be able to put into her diary: this is the strange thing: for a while, watching him through the fingers of her hands that covered her face, she was partly fascinated but mostly just embarrassed and ashamed of herself for watching. But then suddenly she realized that she was becoming very much aroused. She was breathing very hard. I’m no voyeur, damn it! she tried to tell herself, trying to fight it. But there it was: this passion coming on her in sight of his passion.

  “Save that for me!” she almost called out, but didn’t. If he saw her he would die. If he saw her she would die. Sharply she inhaled and the waistband of her jeans slackened; she thrust her hand down inside, and did what he was doing, not his way but hers. If he sees me I will die.

  His eyes were closed; was he thinking of her? She closed her eyes and thought of him. But then she had to open her eyes and look at him again.

  This would have been pretty, if she could have brought herself to record this in her diary: “We had simultaneous orgasms.”

  Then she ran away, and kept running. She felt terrible. She had never had any problems before, but this…. When she was twelve she read in a book that everybody does it, so it never bothered her. But this…. She was both ashamed to face Day again and angry with him. Damn him, why did he waste it on himself? Why couldn’t he get up his nerve and ask her? Maybe he didn’t even like her. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to her. Now she felt rejected, as well as ashamed, and she kept running.

  She ran all the way to her car. Possibly, when she started the motor and backed out into the road, she fully intended to get out for good and keep going, and certainly the way she scraped hell out of the car’s underside driving over the rough road would have indicated this haste and determination, but after she was out of Dudleytown and on the highway she had cooled down a bit and realized that she only wanted to restock their supplies. The food was nearly gone, they had had the last of the beer with lunch, the ice had long since melted.

  But still, when she returned to Dudleytown again, she couldn’t face Day. All by herself she portaged all of the new groceries from the car to camp, without trying to find him and ask him to help. She even lugged two fifty-pound blocks of ice, one by one, the long distance into camp. She worked up a good sweat doing it, and took a long bath in the pool at the falls. This time the icy waters didn’t bother her in the slightest.

  When she finally saw Day again, at suppertime, she couldn’t look at him. She busied herself with preparing supper and didn’t look at him. They ate supper without looking at each other.

  Finally he asked, “Is something wrong?”

  She looked up and looked into his eyes for the first time, but then looked away again.

  He kept looking at her, and she thought she might have detected in his eyes some glint of…of something. It couldn’t be possible that he had known she was watching him.

  She couldn’t look at him. And she didn’t want his eyes on her. “Go to sleep, Day,” she said.

  7

  Violate’s her name. Without disregard. Is what her people called her. Prettier, in sound, than Violet. No transgression nor harm meant in it. We’re some kin, her ma a cousin of my ma, and I’ve known her since I was old enough to know. But it is late in my eleventh year now before I come to know her well.

  The older boys tattle about her. This summer they have let me into their club. It’s called “The Oatsowers,” they haven’t told me why. They will. I had to do some things to be let in. Then with pokeberry ink they dyed my perkin reddish purple and it still hasn’t come off and I wonder when it will. Then I was told I would have to collect a lock of hair from Hattie Rose Pearl, and I did, but they told me that wasn’t the hair that was meant, and told me what was meant, and Zadock who’s in the club too told me he would kill me if I did, and I didn’t know what to do. But I wanted to be let in the club, so once I asked her if she had hair there, and she said not much but some, and I asked could I have a lock and she slapped me, but later she said she’d misunderstood me and thought I’d asked to have a look instead of a lock and she’d been thinking about it and decided I could have a look and a lock both if I’d do the same for her, but I didn’t want to because I was dyed with the pokeberry ink.

  What would she think? But I wanted in the club. So I did. And I got a snip of a curl of a lock of her hair there, but when she saw mine covered with the reddish purple pokeberry ink she shrieked and ran, and isn’t my girl any longer, and then when I took the snip to the club I got in a fight with Zadock and he nearly killed me but I got in a few mean licks on him too and he decided to let me live. Then the last thing I had to do was drop my trousers and stand and keep the stand hard without touching it for one half of an hour while Seth timed it on his pocketwatch.

  Now I am in the club. The club is for secrets and mysteries, and for finding out things. For watching bulls and stallions do it, and even roosters. For showing off and measuring. Renz has the longest, twice at least the size of mine. But I’m bigger than Reuben and Seth, and twice at least the size of Jonathan, though I’m the youngest.

  We have to tattle on our girls. Since Hattie Rose Pearl is Zadock’s girl again he has to tattle on her, but we don’t believe him, the things he’s claimed to’ve done with her. She told me once she knows that babies come through the navel. Since I have no girl now I have to tattle on my sisters. I have seen Charity embrace a tree.

  It is Renz who tattles on Violate. He brags they were but seven the first time he drove his perkin through her vale. The others have large eyes and open mouths when they listen to him tell this, and they believe him. At seven, he says. And then at eight, several times. At nine, often. All these were dry. The first wet funicle was at ten, and, he says, it gave him a turn, struck him all of a heap, he thought he’d bursted a vein or thew.

  What is this wet? Dearly I would I knew. Once I thought it was only tinkle, and some others did too, Reuben’s brag is of a peefunicle with his girl. But we are wrong.

  Wetness is each and every. The maple tapped in March seeps its sap. The pine oozes resin. The earth itself pours out its water through its springs. The spider spews a sticky strand. Grab a grasshopper and he’ll burb a bubble of tobacco juice. The dew at night is the weeping of the stars. My eyes weep. My nose runs. My sisters have their monthly courses. Cows milk. Snow melts. The fish milts, or roes, in spawning. All is burble and surge, and spurtle and spume, and steep and jet, and dissolving and flowing.

  My witnesses are a pair of pools, and heavy, I fathom that. Round reservoirs. Wetness in my witness. But how draught them off? I’ll ask at the club.

  My chance comes. “Renz,” I say, “what is it that makes the wet? I mean, when you’re he-ing and she-ing, like you told, how come it comes out? Do you have to grunt and bear down or what?”

  Renz twinkles at the eye. He pops my shoulder and says, “Why, aint you ever drew water up a pump? Same principle. Just work the pump handle up and down. Like so.” He makes a grab, as if at a pump handle, and raises it and lowers it.

  As soon as I’m alone, I try it. It’s awkward, pumping the handle of yourself, you have to turn your hand around or else your elbow’s in the way. I pump and wait, anxioused up, wondering what it will be like when the wet comes. But nothing comes. I pump a bit harder. It’s stiff and hard to bend down; on the downstroke it pains me some. But I keep on.
For nigh on to an hour before I quit.

  At the next meeting of the club, I say, “Renz, you tole one. It don’t work. You were just pulling one over me.”

  He laughs, and says, “Why, did you try it on yourself?”

  “I did,” I say, “and not a thing come of it.”

  Some of the others are laughing too, and this makes me think that Renz is making a fool of me.

  “Don’t you know,” says Renz, “that a pump won’t draw before it’s been primed? You aint been primed yet.”

  “How do you get primed?” I ask.

  “That’s what a girl’s for,” he says.

  This is how I come to get in over my head with Violate.

  I think they’ve put her up to it. But I can’t be all too sure. How did she know I was in the corn? I am in the corn, high of midsummer, just lying on my back and watching the clouds break up into white wisps on the blue. But lately pretty nearly everything I see makes me think of he-ing and she-ing, and the way pieces of corners of clouds break and tear away is like the wet in my witnesses wanting to pull loose and get out. And above my head the corn has tasseled, and I am tasseled, and the tassels spill their pollen on the waiting silky silks. I stroke a silk and it reminds me of the lock from Hattie Rose Pearl.

  The corn is high and I am deep into it; I don’t know how she finds me, even if she was looking for me. It might be an accident. “Oh, hello, Danny!” she says, nearly tripping over me. “Dear me suz, what are you doing here?”

  “It’s Pa’s cornpatch,” I say. “Can’t I set in it if I’ve a mind to? What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I’m just gadding about,” she says. “Such a fine afternoon,” she says. Then she kneels and says, “I’ll just set with you, I will.”

  She does. I don’t gainsay her. She’s my cousin, and she’s two, maybe three, years older. But she’s a girl.