The Followed Man

by Thomas Williams

  "Let's go to my room and see what happens, anyway," she said.

  Her room was across the unfinished hallway, the bed high and white, brass columns and flutings like pipe organs at head and foot. There was the going to the bathroom, he using hers, she finding another somewhere in the old house. The strangeness and familiarity of preparation, the acknowledgment of function, the overcoming desire. She came back still dressed and sat on the high bed, her feet not touching the hardwood floor that was cool to his bare feet. He helped her off with her clothes, and put the suddenly tiny, unsubstantial beige dress over the back of a ladder-back chair, then the silky rope of pantyhose. For a moment they examined each other in the lamplight. She was usual, beautiful to his lust, strange in coloration. Her nipples were not pink, but a light tan, her olive skin not of the blank clarity of youth, but their naked bodies were of a kind, each almost unnaturally preserved and firm. This seemed a bond between them, even at this anticipa­tory moment, and they both said so. He picked her up, weighing her, and put her down easily on the bed.

  "You're examining me," she said. He nodded and looked close­ly at her, following his hands with his eyes. Her hand on his erec­tion was like needles. He almost laughed, it was so uncomplicated. Her hollows and creases, the night-black neatness of her small tri­angle there. He took a long pleasure in knowing her body—lips, textures, planes, articulations, tastes—until she insisted that he enter her.

  They awoke off and on in the night, neither used to the other. Sometime before dawn they lay awake, her head in the hollow of his arm, her hand gently and idly playing with him.

  "You do love women, don't you,' she said.

  "Yes, I think so," he said.

  "Oh, you do. Most men don't. I don't resent you sticking your prick in me. I mean I don't resent it even afterwards, when we get through."

  "I feel grateful you let me," he said.

  "You don't think the little bitch needs a big prick in her?"

  "You're pretty bitter."

  "You should have known my husband, not to mention the other emotional cripples that came after."

  "Why did you finally get divorced?"

  "I don't think I want to talk about it. Maybe sometime, if you ever want to come back."

  "I'll come back. We're neighbors."

  She gave a twisting yawn and stretch, took him briefly in her mouth and then kissed his belly. "God, I hope so. I'm so full, I'm just sloshing with your gism. See, I'm crazy and truthful at the same time, and I never wait for anything, so I scare people half to death. Aren't you scared of me? Don't say anything. Sooner or lat­er you'll think I'm a crazy neurotic grubby-colored bitch who's too ambivalent about sex, life or anything else. I know."

  She did have a talent, whether self-destructive or self-protec­tive, for modulating tenderness, or for suddenly changing its en­vironment. He held her, and she pleased him beyond the thoughts she kept pushing at him. But don't ignore the thoughts, he told himself, sad that they couldn't have the same thoughts.

  When he entered her again she was like silk.

  They got up at dawn and made breakfast, talking about her stu­dio and her work. She had been an art major at Smith, but not in ceramics; should she use fiberglass or foam insulation on the barn ceiling? She liked to work hard, that was one thing she could do. She could turn out the finished commercial stuff in bulk, then fool with experiments, glazes and designs. Their talk was businesslike, and he didn't know if she really wanted it that way or not. Should he, when the time came, say so long, see you, and leave? When the time came, shortly after they heard Coleman groaning awake up­stairs, he put his hands underneath her bathrobe on her buttocks and pulled her against him. "Will you come back?" she asked. "When?"

  "Tonight, if you want," he said.

  "You don't want to, do you? That's too soon—isn't it?"

  "No."

  "Yes. You want to do your solitary thing up there on the moun­tain. Listen. You know you've never said my name to me and I've never said yours to you? That's right."

  "If I come tonight will you be here?"

  "I'll be here and in heat, but don't come tonight. I don't want you to come tonight. I really mean it!" Her strange eyes were a lit­tle mad. He kissed her on the lips and left.

  He drove his pleasing truck up the mountain, alone, feeling beautifully light, empty of all the fluids and pressures she had re­lieved him of, and guilty that it had been so natural to take her, the strange woman not his wife. With the guilt, the unreasonable and unlegal guilt, he wondered if she had used some sort of con­traceptive. Maybe the pill—he didn't know and hadn't thought to mention the subject. The subject was connection and responsi­bility, and the ghost was a small, demeaning fear.

  17.

  By the middle of July the mosquitoes were rare, the blackflies had lost their aggressiveness, and only now and then a deerfly, slow and easy to kill against his head when it landed, came to irri­tate him at his work.

  The old farmhouse, sheds and barn were gone, the cellar hole and barn foundations now set like prehistoric stones in smooth new grass that waved at their bases in the wind. Four new poles took the power line down the hill to the valley and his cabin site. Marple & Son had set forms and poured his footings, all plumb­ing and waterproofing were done, and with his new farm tractor, called a Kubota, Luke had pushed back the soil so that the cabin, as it grew, would sit more pleasingly upon the land, its back to the north and the heavy spruce. The mountain rose to the west, seem­ing one long slope until, in certain kinds of weather, mist defined the many ridges and depressions that cut between the valley and the bald granite peak.

  His tent was now set up near the cabin. Under electric light in the evenings he drew his plans, changed them, improving the not yet existent spaces of his cabin, trying to feel those spaces through the two-dimensional of paper, pencil and rule. It was something he had been good at in his life—to see shapes where blankness or bland solidity hid them, or in the dark to find a wall, drawer or doorway.

  Or the parts of women. He had seen Louise Sturgis several times, until a week ago when she had discovered, or treated it as a discovery, that he had arranged somehow to see her exactly twice a week. He didn't think it was that precise, and hadn't thought it deliberate on his part, but she accused him of using her, as she said men had always used her, to relieve an urge that was to them as self-centered as evacuation. He didn't think that was true, ei­ther, and he didn't think she thought it true. He wanted to be fond of her; she said that she loved him and then, perhaps with the cold insight of the mad, wounded his ability to love her. They could never think in harmony; her surprises were always jarring. He thought it her fear of trusting him. Last week, before ordering him to put on his clothes and go, she had been near orgasm, he easing her and in his mind a smooth clarity in which she was per­fect; he loved her joy and the nearly painful little pullings and cracklings of nerves he felt in her, in her nearness to release. Then she went limp, dead still, and then cried long sobs mixed with hiccups. "Why are you crying?" he asked. "You prick, you're trying to make me love you, aren't you?" she said. "So get the hell out of here! Now! Go!"

  And so he left, but not until he was certain that she meant it and it wasn't just a test. But he left with a phrase in his head, which he said aloud out by his truck. "That is a crazy lady, Luke Carr. Watch out, old buddy." The phrases were sane, true, and sad. Gone was some transcendent mood or other, something high and pure that now seemed ridiculous. So she had gone to California, Coleman told him, for a couple of weeks at least, to visit an old girlfriend.

  He mixed his mortar in a small, rented electric cement mixer, sifted his sand, added the gray, floury cement, then some mason­ry cement and then the precise amount of water so that the muck would be plastic enough to hold on the vertical. His trowel became a skillful extension of his hand, and little by little the interior wall grew, a very few square feet of facing each day. He spent much of the time staring at and into stones, turning them over and over in his h
ands, heavy stones, some of them, that weighed nearly a hun­dred pounds. His arms and shoulders grew bulky and taut, and hard muscles appeared in his abdomen, symmetrical rises and depressions he hadn't seen since his school athletic days. His gloves kept wearing out at the fingertips, then his skin, so that heat and rough textures were painful. But the wall grew toward the floor level, where it would be visible in his living spaces.

  He picked up his mail whenever he found that he needed mate­rials and had to drive to the lumberyard or to Follansbees' in Leah. There had been no new letter from the Avenger. Martin Troup wanted him to come to New York at Gentleman's expense and talk about the article on death and building, or at least call and talk about it, and why in hell didn't he have a telephone?

  Jake was gone for three days, then came back limping badly, a tooth broken, a bare abrasion on his head and a round lump on his ribs, the size of an orange, Luke first thought a herniated intestine. Jake had come slowly up to him where he was sifting sand into his wheelbarrow, Jake's tail down and curled under his belly, standing awkwardly, hangdog and as if ashamed. Luke soon found the bruises and then read in Jake's eyes that he should help him, that it was up to him to do something. Jake yelped in pain as he lifted him up into the cab of the truck. He took him to a veteri­nary hospital in Leah, where the vet diagnosed the lump as a bad bruise full of fluid that would be reabsorbed. It wasn't a dog fight, the vet said, because there were no canine tooth punctures or cuts. Either the dog had been hit and his stretched skin run over by a car, or someone had beaten him with something like a baseball bat.

  The vet at first thought Luke must be Lester Wilson, from the tag on Jake's collar. He was a young man just recently come to the area. "Heartworm is here now," he said. "Has he been tested for it? A few years ago they never saw a case up here, but it's coming north." So Luke had the vet take some of Jake's blood and test him for heartworm, and when the test was negative bought seven dollars worth of preventive pills. Jake weighed thirty-five pounds, so he'd have to take half a pill each day with his food. "It's really serious here now," the vet said. "We've had four dogs with it this summer. Two died. After they get it the heart's so full of worms if you kill the worms too quickly you kill the dog." The disease, he said, was transmitted by mosquitoes.

  Luke looked at Jake who, though sick with his aches and bruises, trembled with well-mannered nervousness about being at the veterinary hospital among too many distant yips, mews, growls and strong odors. His coat had turned waxy, and stank about twice as strongly of dog as it did on the mountain. Jake be­longed to Lester Wilson; it said so right on his collar. Was it Lester Wilson who had beaten him up? No way of knowing. And now Luke would be giving him medication along with the food he probably shouldn't be giving him, so he would have to confront Lester Wilson again, one way or another.

  He paid the vet's secretary and went back to the mountain, Jake a little sedative-logy and content to curl up on the seat. Whatever choices had been given to Jake in his dog's world had evidently been made. Unfortunately Luke hadn't been given much of a choice. He'd never thought of having a dog now. They'd had a springer for seven years as the kids grew up, a dull good dog who was killed by a car. He didn't want a dog. With this thought came guilt because he really had enjoyed having Jake around with his ears and nose, his specialized and undemanding intelligence.

  So he put the question off and went back to work. Let Lester Wilson come up here and complain. Of course, maybe Lester had already come up and collared Jake; maybe that accounted for the three-day disappearance. Maybe Lester had taken him back to that rickety shed next to his trailer and beaten him with a baseball bat. For how long? How many blows?

  In this life one could rarely be sure of things like that. Maybe Jake had been bothering a bitch in heat, and the owner had run him off with a baseball bat, or he had been partly run over; a bea­gle could practically turn around inside his own skin, and a car tire could have pinched out that orange-sized lump, the bumper, muffler, tie rod or rear-end housing having shaved and battered his head.

  Jake lay in the grass nearby, still too sick to go off on his rounds, moving a little as the sun's turning rearranged his shade. Luke built his wall. The valley whispered in a light wind and the brook spoke and hissed faintly from down across the field by the eastern hill. In the dry, even warmth of the July day it seemed the most peaceful, meaningful and benevolent place in the world. Luke found a stone that was a near perfect cornerstone, a gift. It was gray, like frozen flannel, with opaque white felspar squares set in it. It seemed to weigh little in his hands, though it weighed nearly thirty pounds. His arms were a smooth reddish brown flecked with dried splashes of gray mortar. Holding the stone easily in one hand he made a soft bed of mortar for it, knew just the pebble that would tilt it correctly, set it into its place and placed mortar around it. Each stone was important not just for itself but for the as yet unfound stones it would support. He had to think ahead and upward, into nothing but the clear vertical spaces he would slowly build through.

  At five-thirty in the afternoon, more tired than he'd thought, he dropped a stone on his foot, the pain so sudden and commanding he could not move for a while. His whole left leg was so weak he had to stand and let the pain pass at its own speed—a feeling so momentous it was like a close call with death. He was tired, just physically tired, but he'd built a section three by four by two, a cu­bic rectangle of sturdy (when it took its first set), respectable ada­mantine bloody wall. His foot was not broken, or even badly bruised. He was so familiar with his using body now he knew that kind of thing at once. Tomorrow he would hardly notice the resi­dual soreness.

  He took a towel and soap and crossed the brushy pasture to the brook pool. He'd cut down alders and pincherries so the after­noon sun could come into the pool and its banks, making the rushing water and the boulders a warm golden room in the green, columned hall of leaves the brook followed. Taking off his boots, socks and dungarees seemed, out of doors, in this active and sigh­ing place, like sexual preparation. His feet, on the unstable organ­ic earth—lichens, hemlock needles, roots, parts of insects left in molt, the paths of salamanders, white mushrooms being eaten by orange, shell-less snails—were a tender part of all the miniature violence and life they touched. Tender in feeling yet strong from labor, his newly tightened body gave him a small narcissistic thrill that eased him into the cold water. He arched his chest against the thudding pushes of the water beneath the chute and felt the openness of his skin to this astounding new element, his anus licked by cold fingers at his ribs and scrotum. He grew a numbed, looping, partial erection. Long ago he and Helen had made love just here in the buffeting water, one warm summer night. Maybe it had been here, underwater, that Johnny had been conceived; he'd always swum like a fish.

  A motion at the bank—animal. It was Jake, who, having had to follow, gingerly looked for a place to be. He settled down in a mossy depression between roots, curled and tried to lick himself, but gave it up as too painful. After a few tentative moves, he found a way to prop his head on a root, his large eyes on Luke.

  At first even Jake didn't hear, over the rushing of the water, the approach of someone else. Luke was soaping himself and his eyes were closed. He heard Jake's hoarse, short bark of warning, bent down to rinse the soap from his face and came up to see, fuzzily, a woman he didn't recognize immediately because he didn't expect to see her here. His first reaction to her being a woman was to wade toward the stone where his towel was. He wiped his face just as she spoke, and knew who she was.

  "I've seen you naked before, Luke Carr, so you don't have to put on your sarong!" It was Jane Jones, in white tennis costume, her tanned skin dark as an underexposure against the white of her tennis dress and shoes. She took a long-legged step and a jump to a nearer boulder and sat on it with one knee up. "Go on with your bath," she said. "I'll wait."

  He had been startled, and being startled was not, here and now, exactly pleasant; there was a trail of disappearing fear. Jake made some other th
reatening sounds and subsided to watch Jane care­fully. Luke said hello cheerfully enough, he thought, then went under to rinse himself and wash away the bitter memory of fear, thinking as he pushed through the cold water that Jane Jones was about the last person he had expected to see, and what did she want with him?

  He surfaced and stood waist deep, wondering if it was modesty or some other sort of fear to have the water cover him, though she could see through the refracting water and did look there, with an amused look. He resented this somewhat, and said, "Come on in. The water's fine."

  Involuntarily she glanced at Jake, as if he were a third party to this immodest proposal, and then she saw that she had lost the advantage, and frowned, again involuntarily, just long enough to realize that she had given herself away. So she had missed that part of a second in which she might have maintained her cool. Luke climbed out, wrapped the towel around his waist and invited her to his camp. Jake followed them slowly across the field and waited patiently, standing while Luke made drinks, entering the painful process of lying down only when Luke sat down.

  Jane explained that she had been in a doubles tournament in North Conway, that she and her partner had lost, and she had de­cided to stop by on her way home. The directions Luke had sent to Ham were bare but adequate, and so she had found him skin­ny-dipping in the brook. She had the TR-7, which didn't have much clearance, so she'd left it out at the main road and walked in, following the electric wire.

  "You're beginning to look like one of those weight lifters," she said. "A stunning body you've got, Luke Carr."

  "Yours is pretty stunning, too, Jane."

  "I know. I don't look a day over twenty-nine."