With

by Donald Harington

  Further up the steep trail, which is in such terrible condition it gives his mighty SUV the workout of its life, Adam encounters a bobcat, who scampers off into the woods. Before Adam reaches the gulley where he’d had to turn back before, where that fellow named Leo Spurlock had mired his pick-up, he encounters, or catches glimpses of, several other animals: a mongrel dog, a possum, three raccoons, and that thirteen-point buck that George had mentioned, a magnificent animal. Adam knows that this isn’t typical of the animal population of these environs; he’d never in his boyhood seen such a diversity of animals together in one spot. As he is rounding a hairpin curve on the trail he glances into the rear view mirror and it appears that all those animals are following him! He stops, and waits, to see if they catch up with him, but the animals stop too, and keep their distance until he drives on.

  Maybe it is the present tense, after all, which is making him feel funny. He is having distinct premonitions of disorder even before he reaches the spot where, he discovers unhappily, the trail comes to a complete end, far short of its original destination. He must stop and exit the vehicle, taking his rifle with him. He examines the terrain, trying to spot anything familiar, but apparently time and thunderstorms have transformed everything. The original course of the trail, over which his grandfather and father had driven so many mule-team loads of barrels and staves, has been totally obliterated. Not a trace remains of the ledges his grandfather had hacked into the bluffs. Now in every direction there are only deep gullies and ravines. In one of the ravines appears to be the remains of a burnt pick-up which had crashed, maybe years before.

  Adam makes slow progress on foot. His bad leg hampers his descent into the ravines and his climbing out of them. Looking behind him, he catches an occasional glimpse of one or more of those animals who have been following him, even that big buck.

  Finally he comes upon a very strange thing: in a clearing above one of the ravines, in a patch of grass, is standing a bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label whiskey! He opens it, sniffs it, and determines that it is a fresh bottle, untouched, undiluted, unpolluted, perhaps recently left behind by some hunter. But the hunting season, as George has reminded him, hasn’t yet begun. His hiking has left Adam thirsty, so he takes a generous swig of the stuff, and it tastes just fine. He lights himself a cigarette. He carries the bottle with him as he continues his hike. But then he comes to another bottle, identical to the first. He does not open the second bottle but continues onward with the first, until he comes to the third, at which point he is distinctly beginning to feel funny, and needs more than a swig from the bottle to settle his nerves. From the lay of the land he has a distinct feeling that he is nearing his destination, and this drives him onward. By the time he arrives at the tenth bottle, he is stumbling not because of his bad leg but because he has consumed nearly a third of the one bottle he carries.

  And then he hears the sound. At first he thinks it is just the wind in the trees, but as he listens, limping onward toward the source of the sound, he realizes that what he is hearing is too liquid to be the wind—it is an angel singing, or, no, not singing but vocalizing in wordless tones that rise and hide themselves and then reappear. He stops and listens, entranced. He is reminded of the soprano solo in Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 3, the Pastoral, the soft off-stage cantilena, incredibly beautiful and incredibly haunting. Yes, that is the word: haunting. When he reaches the eleventh bottle he converts that adjective into a noun: haunt, and he looks down at the earth beside the eleventh bottle, seeing there an imaginary boundary line, and knows that something truly fantastic is happening to me.

  This is not merely present tense, it is present tense first person singular, and I having reached my haunt have come at long last into full possession of myself.

  But perhaps not completely full, just yet. Because as I reach the twelfth and last bottle, which stands at the very edge of my meadow, and I happily behold in the distance that my beloved house and its outbuildings are all still standing, I descry the source of that lovely singing. In the yard of my house stands a tall woman, nude, her blonde hair cascading to her knees but not concealing her nakedness. There is a serpent entwined around her neck and upper torso. My whisky-fuddled head is a vortex of thoughts; I am thrilled beyond measure to be home at last but I am uncertain if I am actually alive or just dreaming of some Eve in Paradise. I am Adam. And then practical reality takes hold of me, and I realize that probably my homestead has been expropriated by some hippies, and she is just some free-spirited flower child left over or lost from a previous time, as the Ozarkers themselves were left-over and lost from the mainstream. This thought fills me with chagrin.

  And then she spots me. She seems to be having trouble focusing her eyes on me, but she has seen me. Although I have an impulse to turn and flee, I am visited by the last and most powerful of this day’s haunting oddities; she may or may not be Eve, but I am certainly Adam, and I have not ever left this place, my haunt, nor shall I ever leave it again.

  Chapter forty-seven

  It was the most challenging and wracking thing she’d ever had to do, and the doing of it had practically ruined this special day of days. She cared so much for his feelings and did not want to hurt him in any way. She really was deeply in love with him, but she had to make him understand that she simply could not face a future in which he not only remained ethereal and invisible but also remained twelve years old forever. What would it be like when she was thirty or forty or fifty years old, and he was still only twelve? She had hoped that his wisdom and mother wit, greater than she herself had possessed at twelve, would permit him to accept and even welcome the presence of the newest addition to the circus, but she could hear her own voice quavering when she said to him, “I think I’d better ask you how you’d feel if my eighteenth birthday present from the others was a man, I mean a real live one, I mean one who could truly lift things and eat what I cooked for him and even be able to go to sleep at night…”

  In yore bed. His voice was matter-of-fact, and he added, Tell ye the honest truth, I druther see a man a-sleeping there than a bar, but you’uns would just have to be able to sleep with me a-watching over you’uns.

  “And you’d be watching everything else we did, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “Would you be terribly jealous of him? Would you hate me for it?”

  As was so often the case that it didn’t even bother her, he did not answer. She waited, as usual, giving him plenty of time to come up with the courtesy of a reply, and, as usual, he did not. She had much to do today, to get ready, and as she put the layer cake into the oven, she went on talking. “Don’t you see? That’s one of the main things I want him for, that he’ll answer me when I say something to him, which you won’t do.” But he still did not speak. “Or at least, if he won’t answer, at least I can see his face and tell what he’s thinking or feeling. Don’t you understand how frustrating it is for me that I can’t even see your face?”

  There was not any response to that question, either. She poured hot water into the tin tub and got a fresh bar of her special lavender-scented beeswax lye soap. She climbed into the tub and said, “Would you like to get in here with me? I’ll scrub your back and behind your ears and under your cods.” But he did not make his presence known or felt. She decided, for the first time, for this special occasion, to shave her legs, which were just too downy and even hairy in places, and she used Sugrue’s razor to scrape it all off, although she nicked the skin in a couple of places. “There,” she said when she was finished. “See how smooth they are. Put your hand on them and feel them.” But he did not.

  She trimmed her fingernails and her toenails and cleaned under them. She washed her hair and was tempted to cut it, and she asked Adam if he’d mind if she cut her hair, but he wouldn’t answer. She decided not to cut it; she started braiding it but then determined it would look better if she just let it hang loose to her knees. She studied herself in the mirror, and carefully brushed some pokeberry juice onto her lips to empurple them. She da
bbed a generous amount of Tabu around her chin, her neck and the top of her full breasts. “Before I get dressed,” she said to Adam, “could you see your way to making love once again?” Surprise: he didn’t answer. “Oh, Adam,” she sighed. “Don’t you understand? When the man is here, I’ll still always love you and I’ll still make love to you whenever you want to. Whenever you get hard, all you’ll have to do is let me know. We’ll have to keep it a secret from him, but that shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?”

  She put on Latha’s old-timey dress, which had already gone through several washings since Robin had acquired it, and was beginning to look faded and frayed. She studied herself in the mirror again with the dress on and was skeptical. She wondered, for the first time, how particular the man might be. Would he think she looked cheap? She had no idea what sort of man she’d be getting for her birthday. All she knew about him was that he’d have two arms, two legs, a head, and a dood…no, that would have to remain Adam’s private word. And it was to be hoped that the man would be able to speak English. She believed without any doubt that Hreapha and the others would be presenting her with a man for her birthday. If she had asked them for an elephant, they would have got one for her. Or at least a horse, and now with her misgivings she began to wish that she’d asked for a horse instead.

  She was starting to feel uneasy about the arrival of the gift, and she went into the storeroom to get a bottle of Jack Daniels. An entire case was empty, and she wondered if she had been consuming more of the stuff than she had realized. She opened a bottle, and drank straight from it, which she didn’t usually like to do. “Care for a swig, honey?” she asked, but Adam was still sulking and silent and maybe even absent. Maybe he had gone out to the cooper’s shed to escape from her entirely, and possibly he was curled up inside her barrel. He had told her that he was so proud of the barrel that she’d made with his advice and instructions that it had become his favorite place, not to sleep, since he never slept, but just to curl up and hide from the world. “Why would you want to hide from the world?” she had asked him. “Especially since you’re invisible anyhow?” And for once he had tried to answer her.

  Sometimes it’s just too much with me, he’d said, and she had thought about that for a long time.

  The man coming was of the world, and she feared that he might be too much with her. She didn’t care if he was young or old, so long as he was older than Adam and ideally younger than Sugrue. She hoped he would be good-looking, and perhaps tall, and she hoped he would be intelligent enough to carry on a decent conversation with, and she certainly hoped, above all else, that he would be marvelous at sex. But what if he was too much with her? What if he couldn’t accept her as she was? And love, or learn to love, her as she was?

  And what am I? she asks herself. Do I know? The question haunts her almost as much as she is troubled by the sudden realization that her entire past, her whole story of eleven long years endured in this lonely aerie, is all now past, behind her, and she is living in and for the present, the very real but still fantastic present.

  She removes the dress. She thinks aloud, “If he will have me, he will have me as I truly am, unadorned.”

  She takes another lusty swallow from her bottle, and steps outside the door. Many of her family are there, those who have not gone off on the quest for a man—Hreapha, Ged, Latha, Bess, Hroberta, Sigh and Sue, and Sheba, resting atop Sparkle—Robin lifts Sheba, gives her a kiss, and wraps her around her neck. Robin breaks spontaneously into song, or rather an inspired vocalization of abstract sounds born deep inside her lungs and transformed through all her vocal chords and tongue and the chamber of her mouth and even her nose. Such music delights most of her family, except Adam, who has complained that her melodious chants are jist a lot of hootin and a-hollerin. Another reason she wants a man, and with any luck a man who appreciates her singing.

  She dances out to the cooper’s shed and peers into her barrel. She is prouder of that barrel than anything else she’s ever done. It is tight and solid and although she has not yet attempted to fill it, it will probably hold any liquid without leaking. Is Adam in there right now? She takes Sheba temporarily off her neck and puts her down. Then she whispers into the barrel, “Adam, dear sweet wonderful Adam, could you at least kiss me for one last time before he gets here?”

  She begins to fear that Adam is permanently silent, perhaps even permanently gone. Maybe he has left his haunt and established another haunt somewhere else. But how could he do that? The afternoon is getting on, and perhaps those members of the family who have gone to find a man have not had any luck. She has not even tried to imagine how they might possibly have obtained a man. She has not wanted to risk trying to imagine. And possibly her birthday wish is not going to come true, after all. She decides to go inside and light the cake’s eighteen candles that she has made out of beeswax.

  Then she hears, far off, the faint sound of the motor of a vehicle laboring uphill. It is a sound she has not heard since Sugrue’s truck made its final trip with her in it. She suspects that it is the man, coming up the mountain, and when she sings again, she truly sings with passion and joy. But the trills and tremolos in her soprano voice are not controlled and deliberate; they reflect her increasing anxiety. What if the man is simply not nice? What if he isn’t interested in making love but only in raping her? What if he’s cruel?

  During her long wait, she practices her taekwondo. She discovers that she can sing and kick and chop at the same time. An hour passes, and her legs and arms grow tired. She has to save some of her energy for the actual employment of the taekwondo, if need be. As one more precaution, priding herself on the resourcefulness of the idea, she loads both barrels of the shotgun and all six chambers of Sugrue’s service revolver.

  She sets the weapons down on the porch, and resumes her singing, a distinct tone of elation now in her music, because she is ready. Ready for anything. Ready for the man, the world, for life. If the melody of her music consists of a hiding and a finding, then it is now mostly discovery, and the thrill therein.

  Now she sees him, across the meadow. Her eyesight being so poor, she can only discern his fuzzy silhouette. Behind him stands the majestic silhouette of Dewey, his branchy antlers a calligraphy on the sky. She continues singing, interrupted only by her beloved dog, who says “Hreapha,” that is, Happy Best of All Possible Birthdays.

  Then Hreapha’s son comes bounding across the meadow, barking HROLF! HROLF! HROLF! at the top of his voice. He arrives quickly and seems to be trying to tell his mother something. Behind him come Ralgrub and her thieving sons, Rebbor, Tidnab, and Feiht. And then Pogo and Robert, the latter running as if he’s being pursued. But the man is not pursuing him. The man is walking slowly across the meadow. In fact he is limping, and for a brief terrible moment Robin thinks that this is Sugrue’s ghost, because the limp resembles that of Sugrue’s final affliction, and even the man himself, what little she can see of him, seems to have Sugrue’s shape. And worst of all, there is smoke rising from him, smoke coming out of his mouth, smoke from a cigarette in his fingers. And in his other hand he holds a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels! Yes, it could be Sugrue, but her credulity, which can accept and even love an immaterial in-habit, cannot accept the idea of a daytime ghost.

  Robin stops singing. As if to continue her music, Sigh and Sue on a nearby limb are cooing, or at least Sigh is, since Sue doesn’t sing; and Bess is mooing, and Robert is wooing, and the dogs are barking, and there is even Ged on percussion, grunting.

  She has not even given any thought to what she will say. Maybe the man, who has now almost reached her, will speak the first words, and all she’ll have to do is think of something clever to say in response. Maybe he’s just some guy who has lost his way and will ask her for directions…as if she’d know.

  Will they do something as piddling as shake hands? Or will they rush into each other’s arms? Or will they just keep their distance and make idle chitchat?

  Suddenly her nakedness bothers he
r, and she wishes she had not chosen it. Her nervous hands try to arrange her long hair so that it covers her breasts and her poody. Then she can only stand and stare as he nears her.

  He is only a few feet away when he stops. She can see him fairly well now. He is tall and extremely good-looking, but he is not young. He is perhaps as old as Sugrue was. She is relieved that he certainly is not Sugrue, nor his ghost. And he has thrown away his cigarette.

  Finally it is he who speaks first. “Howdy,” he says with a big smile.

  “Howdy yourself,” she says. She even imitates his accent, which is like Sugrue’s, like Latha’s, like Grandpa’s. She realizes she hasn’t thought of Grandpa Spurlock in a very long time, and she surprises herself that she is standing here wondering what Grandpa Spurlock would think if he could see her like this.

  The man has an enormous smile on his face, as if she has said something funny. Or maybe he is just loopy from drinking. “You sure sing pretty,” he says. “I’m sorry I interrupted ye.”

  Well, at least he doesn’t share Adam’s low opinion of her singing. “Thank you,” she says. “I’m very glad you like it.”

  At her feet, her dog is asking, “Hreapha?” that is, Well, do you like him?

  And she can only say, “Thank you, Hreapha. I guess he’ll do.” She won’t tell Hreapha that the man is not exactly her ideal, and he certainly isn’t perfect: in addition to his limp, he has an index finger missing from his right hand. Missing finger? She is beginning to have an uneasy thought. The thought is superceded or supplemented—she isn’t sure which—by something she remembers Latha had said. Although she doesn’t have any lemonade to offer the man, she can repeat Latha’s words, “But here I’m being chatty and rude and haven’t even told you my name. I’m Robin Kerr.”

  “Yes,” he says, and holds out that missing-finger hand for a shake, and she takes it and accepts his handshake.