With

by Donald Harington

  There under her oak tree, she will reflect that the nicest thing about an in-habit’s becoming visible, as Adam’s will spectacularly have done, is that one will be permitted to mind more readily by examining the lineaments and demeanor of the master. That is, one will be able to read and therefore to mind the visible face. You can’t very well mind something you can’t see.

  While she will be having these thoughts, she will suddenly sit up, and she will perk her ears, and will sniff the air, and will look all around her, but she will perceive nothing, except, eventually, a small, timid voice, which will say to her, Ma, things sure is a-changing hereabouts.

  Her memory will not be that good. It will be a voice she will not have heard for a number of years and it will be speaking in coarse, guttural accents. Because it will have no body nor scent attached to it, it will obviously be an in-habit, and she cannot mind it. Because it will have addressed her as “Ma,” she will only be able to assume that it is a relative of hers, and she will correct it: Son, we will be in the future tense hereabouts. You will not be able to say ‘is a-changing’. You’ll have to say ‘will be a-changing.’

  Thanks for the grammar lesson, Ma, but don’t ye know me? Or I reckon I should say ‘will ye not be a-knowing me?’

  She will be standing now, fully alert, and focusing all her senses on the source of the voice. In a voice as hesitant and awestruck as Robin will have first used to say to the rematerialized in-habit, “Adam?” Hreapha will say, Yipyip?

  Ma, I’m sure sorry I took off with them fellers, he will say. But I left my heart behind. I’ve actually been right here ever since but I just couldn’t bear to let ye know it. Now I want to come home.

  Then come home, boy, she will say. This here will be the future tense and you will be able to do anything you will like in it.

  She will gaze out across the meadow and will see him, in full trot. He will be an old dog, or at least a middle-aged dog, and he will have changed, but she will know him. It will be Yipyip, and very soon he will be surrounded not just by her but by his brother Hrolf and his sister Hroberta and all those of the menagerie who will have remembered him and all those who will never have met him but will be eager to sniff and ogle and listen to a wild dog of partial coyote parentage. He will be very hungry, but as soon as they will have fed him he will regale them all with stories of his many adventures in the pack of coyotes, who will have long since departed this countryside and roamed far away.

  He will attempt to explain that he will have come home not only because of his desire to encounter his in-habit and return to his boyhood haunt but because he will have missed his mother, and he will never want to leave her again.

  She will permit him to establish a loafing spot under her own private oak. She will attempt to bring him up to date on everything that will have happened around here, but he will hush her, saying, Ma, in-habits know all that stuff anyway.

  She will not even need to show him all the improvements that will have been made around here, the renovations of the house and barn and cooper’s shed and henhouse, as well as the construction of a garage and toolshed and greenhouse and something called a gazebo, because supposedly his in-habit will have already witnessed all of those.

  But there will be one building that will not have been renovated, which will have been left exactly as it was, and Hreapha will direct her son’s attention to it.

  The outhouse, with its door open wide, will yet be occupied by a skeleton, the remains of a man who Yipyip will never have known. The skeleton will be wearing a big grin, and it will occur to Hreapha that he must be finding this future tense very funny.

  Let me tell you all about him, she will begin to tell her son. Once upon a time, long ago, I decided to run away from him because

  Chapter forty-nine

  We will be charmed by darling Hreapha’s conversion of this recital into the future tense, which, whether or not it is perpetual and boundless, is best-suited for dénouement, a graphic French word derived from the untying of knots.

  The principal knot of this whole narrative will not of necessity have been our love story, but the more intricate knot of a girl’s passage into womanhood in a condition of isolation and seclusion from the mundane milieux of society. The untying of that knot, consequently, will be a matter of that woman’s decision either to remain in seclusion or to allow herself to accept and to receive certain satisfactions from the outside world. We will not wish to rush her into becoming sociable, because we ourselves will have led a rather private and circumscribed life, but at the same time we will feel obliged to steer her away from her determination to remain a hermit.

  “I’m scared,” she will confide to us one night in bed on the day that the finishing of the road has allowed us to park our SUV in the dooryard. “What’s to keep the whole world from driving up that road?”

  “For one thing, a big iron gate at the bottom of the trail,” we will assure her. “But I reckon nobody would have ary motive for coming up that road anyhow even if they could get in.”

  She will roll over into our arms. “Promise me you won’t let anybody find out about us.”

  That will be easy for us to promise. But that iron gate will have to open to let us out, and there will be any number of places we will want to go, things we will want to buy, things we will want to do, pleasures we will have earned the right to enjoy. The first trip back to Harrison, for example, which Hreapha will have already mentioned, having been allowed to ride along with us. Robin will point out to us the modest little house in which she had spent all her early years, and we will drive past the Woodland Heights Elementary School, which she will have attended but not finished, and the Harrison High School, where she will never have been able to go. (A topic we will already have discussed: she will have been too old to go back to high school but will she want perhaps to prepare for some sort of high school equivalency certificate so that she will be able to go to college, if she desires? “I don’t think so, but let me consider it,” she will say.) Robin will even show us the roller skating rink from which she was abducted, and we will get out of the SUV and examine the low little balcony from which Sog Alan had snatched her. We will watch her carefully, we will mind her in Hreapha’s sense, to see if any remnants of the trauma cling to her, but while she will obviously be lost in thought in the effort of remembering, she will not be disturbed. (Long, long ago we will have learned that one of the many things we love about her is her imperturbability in the face of hardship, shock, disappointment, and loss.)

  Among the several and sundry stores where we will stop to load the SUV with all the food and goods and needs that we can haul, is the discount supermarket where once her mother will have worked. Robin will want to buy a few things there, including, for sentimental reasons, a quart jar of pickled pigs’ feet, and she will call to our attention the fact that the manager of the store will still be the same Mr. Purvis who will have been her mother’s boss. We will already have reflected and observed, not simply here in Harrison, that the world does not really change very much in eleven years, that except for the coming and going of new fads and fashions and the latest developments in technology, the world of this future tense will not essentially differ greatly from that world of the past tense in which Robin’s story will have begun. Now she will tell us that she wants to speak to Mr. Purvis. She will not have spoken to anyone except us, our good friend George Dinsmore, and our excellent friend Latha Bourne Dill, and she will tell us that she will never have spoken to Mr. Purvis before. He will have seen her on several occasions at the ages of five, six, and seven, but he will not recognize her now, as she will have expected him not to do. The falls of her extraordinarily long hair (about which we’ll soon be making suggestions) are concealed inside her winter coat.

  “When did Karen Kerr quit?” she will ask him. She will have to repeat herself, because he will not immediately recognize the name.

  “Oh, my, I don’t believe she’s worked here for a number of years,” he will say.
“You know, she married that FBI guy and moved to Little Rock, I suppose it must’ve been at least six or seven years ago. Are you a relative or friend?”

  “Both,” Robin will say, and will take our arm and lead us out through the check-out.

  In time we will feel constrained to offer, “Robin, any time you feel like it, we’d be glad to take you to Little Rock to see your mother.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” she will want to know.

  “Well, I reckon it was just sort of an editorial ‘we,’ just meaning me myself.”

  “Let’s not talk like that, okay?” she will request.

  So we will—that is, I will—abandon the first person plural for the remainder of this untying of knots. But for a while there I will have liked to have thought, correctly I will hope, that I will have been including you in our story, as I will have been occasionally but consistently aware of you throughout. A good denouement will not merely untangle the knots of a story but will attempt to unscramble the reader’s feelings, or, to use the overworked analogy of narrative climaxes and sexual climaxes, a good denouement will leave you sighing in dreamy contentment, exhausted but satisfied.

  I will first, before taking her to see her mother, persuade her to go to Fayetteville, the Ozarks’ most civilized city, for a variety of purposes: to obtain the latest things in the way of a whole new wardrobe, to have an ophthalmologist examine her eyes and fit her for contact lenses as well as an assortment of eyeglasses, to visit a dentist for some evaluation, x-rays, and cleaning (the man, Dr. Michael E. Carter, will express amazement to learn that she hasn’t been to a dentist for a dozen years, and he will tell her that her teeth will be lovely once they are cleaned, and he will remark, “Looks like you haven’t been to a hairdresser in a dozen years either.”)

  Although she will be smiling with clean teeth at her new ability to see the world in sharp detail, it will have been a major problem to have persuaded her to allow her hair to be cut.

  “No,” she will have said, holding her long tresses in her two hands, “this is something I did. I haven’t done very much, but I grew this hair, and I plan to keep it.”

  “For how long?” I will have asked rhetorically and heuristically. “Until it reaches your ankles?”

  We will have had several lover’s quarrels centered around her locks, and I will have almost been swayed by her contention that the long hair will have been a symbol as well as a crest betokening her freedom, her originality, and her history. I will have admired her greatly on the one warm day that, totally nude like Lady Godiva, she rides Desire long enough for me to have photographed her long hair streaming down the mare’s flanks. But I will slowly and methodically have brought her around to the realization that her hair will have stood in the way of her introduction to (I will almost have said “return to”) civilization. And it will have been her desire to look her best when her mother will have first laid eyes on her that will, in the end, allow her to be taken to a Fayetteville establishment called Dimensions, where she will submit herself to the artistry of the town’s best hairdresser, Patti Stinnett, who will cut Robin’s impossibly long hair. The ends will be split, but Patti will know what to do, and the result will both startle and delight me. I will next want to stop at a good bookstore for a thesaurus, because I will have run out of fresh ways to tell Robin how beautiful she is. We (and I will be speaking only of she and I) will go to some fine restaurants and stay at the best hotel before heading down the Interstate toward Little Rock.

  When Robin Kerr will meet Karen Kerr Knight on the latter’s doorstep in the old Quapaw Quarter neighborhood of Little Rock, the former will be radiant in her beauty, neatness, stylishness and general marvelous attractiveness. The two women will only vaguely resemble each other, although I will suppose they might pass for sisters. I will note that Karen will seem to be several years younger than myself. She will of course not show any recognition at all of this old guy and this stunning blonde movie star standing on her porch.

  “Hello, Mommy,” Robin will say with a clean and lovely smile.

  Karen will need a very long moment, not to recognize her long-lost daughter, but to accept the reality and the loveliness of the apparition. She will not be able to say anything. She will burst into tears. Blinded by her tears, she will reach fumblingly to embrace Robin; her hands will find her at the same instant Robin’s find her mother, and I will admire the neighborhood while the two women have a long embrace.

  Then Karen will examine me critically. “Is this him?” she will ask. “Is this the man who kidnapped you?” I will be afraid for a moment that she will be about to strike me, and I will reflect, as I will have done more than once before, that the difference between Robin’s age and mine will be approximately the same as that between the kidnapped Robin and her abductor. “But you said he was dead,” the woman will answer her own question.

  “This is the man who kidnapped my heart,” Robin will say.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” the woman will say nervously to both of us. “Come inside. Have some refreshments. Meet my husband. Meet your brother.”

  It will be an early Saturday afternoon, and we will be there for the rest of the day. Karen will require a long time to get her hysteria under control. She will be totally beside herself as she will introduce us to her husband, Hal Knight, and to their son, a boy of five or six named Richard, or Dicky, who will at least five or six times ask Robin, “Are you really my sister?”

  Conversation in the beginning will be ridiculously trivial. Karen: “Where did you find that gorgeous dress?” Robin: “At Colony Shop in Fayetteville.” Hal, to me: “What do you do?” Adam: “I’m retired. I ran a cooperage in California.” Hal: “What’s that?” Adam: “They make wooden barrels for the wineries.”

  Then Karen will have a flood of more serious questions, punctuated by practical questions from her husband, the professional questioner.

  Karen: “Are you all right, honey? I mean, are you completely okay?” Without waiting for Robin’s answer, she will ask me, “Is she sound? Is she having any bad problems, here—” she will touch her head “—or here.” She will touch her heart. Flattered that my diagnosis will be sought, I will answer, “Your daughter is a survivor. She has endured indescribable adversity, but she has emerged from it with all her faculties intact, and a heart of platinum.”

  Karen and Hal will stare at me with thanks, and Karen will ask, “How did you two meet?”

  Robin will answer that one. “The house where I have been living all these years was his boyhood home, and one day—in fact, it was my last birthday—he just showed up.”

  Hal will ask: “Of course I’m very eager to know who took you to that house in the first place.”

  “His name was Sugrue Alan,” Robin will say.

  Hal will smite himself on the brow. “I knew it,” he will say. “He was my number one suspect, but because he was a police officer I couldn’t seem to persuade the others that we should go after him.”

  “Where is this house?” Karen will ask.

  Robin and I will have agreed, in advance of our coming here, that we will always respect our privacy by not divulging the whereabouts of our domicile to anyone who will not already have known it, namely George and Latha. We will also have agreed that we will never tell anyone who does not already know it, namely only Latha, not George, about in-habits.

  “It’s in the Ozarks,” Robin will say. “I’m sorry but I really can’t tell you where.”

  “You don’t want me to come and visit?” Karen will say. And before Robin can answer, Karen will have a barrage of additional, possibly related questions. “You’ve really drifted apart from me during all these years, haven’t you? Don’t you blame me for a lot of things about your childhood? Aren’t you holding a lot of stuff against me?”

  “No, Mommy,” Robin will say. “I have the most happy memories of living with you and I have missed you terribly. But as I tried to tell you in that note I sent, I want with all my heart to stay ther
e, so I can’t tell you where it is. Not that you’d try to prevent me from staying there, but just that you’d know how to find me.”

  Hal will say, “You know of course that I could probably find out very easily where you live. I could simply find the locations of any places where Madewells have lived and check them all out. So you might as well tell us.”

  I will respond to that. “Your investigation, Hal, is over, and your case is closed. The victim has been found, and the perpetrator is dead.”

  “How did he die?” Hal will ask.

  Karen will add, “You said in that note you’d tell us all about it. So tell us.”

  For the next hour or so, Robin will deliver a remarkably concise but comprehensive synopsis of her entire experience on Madewell Mountain, omitting, as we will have agreed, any mention of myself in the form of a twelve-year-old in-habit.

  At one point, little Dicky will wander out of the room, and his mother will take advantage of his absence to ask Robin, “The monster repeatedly raped you, didn’t he?”

  “Not even once,” Robin will say. “He was a sick man, physically as well as mentally, and fortunately for me he was impotent.”

  “Why didn’t you try to escape, after you’d shot him?” Hal will ask.

  “I was eight years old. I had tried to escape, but got lost. The trail that he had used to take me there was destroyed in a rainstorm. Winter was coming, and snow was on the ground.” Robin will sigh, and will take a deep breath. “But even if rescuers had shown up in a helicopter, I would not have wanted to leave. I had several pets. I still do. I love them. And I love the mountain. Adam never wanted to leave, but they made him do it. And now he has come back. And he and I will live there happily ever after forevermore.”