When we got to Hilda and Steven’s house, Roger turned to me, his mouth hesitating at a word. He started to reach out to touch my shoulder but put his hand on the edge of the passenger seat and said, It’s … um, I really think it’s all going to work out just fine.
Steven was on the porch, drinking from a silver can. As I came up the stairs, he stood, opened the front door, and shouted inside—
Hilda!
I stood still on the porch stairs. Nothing for a moment. Then footsteps coming from somewhere in the house.
Go on inside for a minute, Steven said to me. Hilda and I just have to talk for a minute, then we’d like to speak to you before bed. There’s cold drinks in the kitchen.
I drank lukewarm water from the kitchen faucet, then went to the room where the parrot lived. It was hunched on one side of the cage, its feathers flared the same way hair rises from a cold body. I sat in the armchair beside the cage and looked out the window for a while, looked at all the plants in the dark.
The kingdom of God is within you—the parrot said. The kingdom of God is within you. Within you. Within you. Fuck you. Fuck you. The kingdom of God.
A little laughter came from across the room.
What’d you do to piss him off like that, huh? Jack asked. I could see a smile of white teeth faintly through the unlit room.
Fuck you, the bird said. Fuck you. Fuck you. The kingdom of God. The kingdom of God.
Jack kept laughing, stood and came over to the cage, opened it and took the parrot out, put it on his shoulder and stared down at me. Just as he began to say something, the front door opened and Steven shouted in—
Jack, go back to bed. How many times do I have to—
You forgot to feed Little Chuck, so I was just feeding him. Dad, he’s hungry—
Steven stomped down the hall toward us, grabbed the parrot from Jack’s shoulder and threw it back into the cage. The parrot flapped around the cage saying, Fine, how are you? Fine, how are you?
If you are not asleep in five minutes, Steven said, you are in huge trouble.
Jack retreated, no longer laughing, disappeared down a hall, and slammed a door.
Hilda and I would like to talk to you on the porch for a minute. Steven threw a handful of birdseed into the cage.
From the porch I watched moths hover around a tall lamp across the street. Others flew helplessly against the screens that kept Steven and Hilda and me away from them.
When we said you could stay with us as long as you needed, we really did mean that and we still mean it, Steven began. Hilda nodded.
We do.
And we’re still not sure about how to include you in the festival. Do you remember us telling you about it?
I nodded, but I was still thinking about Nelson’s dream, and wondering why it was that anyone believed the human body needed to be any particular way, or what was so important about a human body. Was it possible for a human’s mind and history and memory and ideas to live inside the body of a horse, and if it was, did that make that being a human or a horse? What difference did it make, one life or another?
Well, Steven and I consulted quite a few people about whether or not we should have you attend … or even participate in the festival. You know—it’s really something we do only for ourselves, and we’re concerned it wouldn’t make sense or would even be … well—
It’s just that we introduce the festival to children over the course of a few years, Steven said, we ease them into it.
Yes, Hilda said faintly, almost to herself. And we’re just not sure what could happen if you … well, if you don’t get eased into it.
I believe it will make sense once you’re there, Steven said, or at least once it’s all over. It hasn’t really been decided how much we need to explain beforehand. It may sound … well … it may sound stranger than it actually is.
It’s really very normal, Hilda said. And useful.
Yes.
But that’s not until Saturday and there is, like we said, no need to worry about it right now.
We just wanted to prepare you, Steven said.
Tomorrow there’s going to be a reception at Kitty and Butch’s house—you know, Nelson’s family—it’s during the school day, so the kids won’t be there, but many people are very much looking forward to meeting you …
Yes. Our community is very eager to find every possible way we can to help you move forward in your life, whether that means you’ll be integrated here or whether there might be some other place that might be more appropriate and comfortable for you.
And we’re just going to have a little reception, some of us from the church, to discuss our ideas, Hilda said. Really, the whole thing will be so casual, it’s not really a big deal at all. We just thought it was the right thing to do, get everyone on the same page, put our heads together, that sort of thing.
And we do remember how we promised you could stay with us as long as you need, and of course we are serious about that promise, however, it’s possible you might not need to stay with us anymore, and should that be the case, we will wish you well, wherever you go.
Yes …Yes. Hilda nodded in a tiny, silent agreement with Steven.
And if you do move on to live elsewhere, we want you to understand it’s not because we don’t want you to live here. It would simply be a matter of what is best for you. What is decided to be best for you.
Hilda was looking at the floor with a strange trouble on her face.
Well, Steven said. Time for everyone to get some rest.
We all went inside, and as I reached the top of the attic stairs, I heard Steven begin to speak so I turned to him. We just wish you would say something, that’s all. We really do wish that. We really do.
I heard the door lock low behind me.
THURSDAY
I WAS SITTING by the little round window watching the tree branches when I heard the attic door unlock and footsteps on the stairs. Hilda appeared, eased into the room.
Now, I’m not sure that, uh—well … there’s this neighbor of ours who has been asking to see you ever since Sunday and I just thought you might have had enough visiting with people, so I told him I just didn’t think there was time but … well, he just insists. Normally I would put my foot down, but Mr. Kercher is a very quiet man and he usually doesn’t take to insisting on anything. His daughter married the Hindmans’ boy, so he retired here—can’t remember where from—and he’s a real nice neighbor—set up this nature trail over there in the woods last year and he wants to take you on a walk through it? You don’t have to go, but if you’d like, he’s here and we don’t have to be anywhere until after lunch.
Mr. Kercher stood on the front porch holding his hat.
The morning is cool, he said. Unusually cool, but not for long. Therefore, I will go for a walk in the little woods we have here. Would you join me?
I nodded and followed him away from the house, down the sidewalk, toward a shadowy cluster of pines at the end of the block. We were silent as we went. Several times I thought Mr. Kercher was about to say something, but he gave up before a word came.
The pines were narrow and sparse. A path had been patted down between them. Every few paces, there was a stone on which someone had painted little white arrows to guide the way.
Hello, Mr. Kercher said, stooping to pet a pile of green moss. He looked at the moss the way I’d seen people look at children or babies sleeping in strollers, soft bodies someone larger had to protect. Goodbye, he said just as quietly and seriously as before. He stood again and we kept walking.
Where I am from, we have many woods, many hikers. Here, not so many—people go to church instead. So we must let the forest know we appreciate it.
We kept walking, slowly, each step soft. A few feet off the path a dark bird was bathing in a puddle. She turned her beak toward Mr. Kercher as we passed, chirped, then flew deeper into the woods. We climbed a slight hill, and when we reached the top, the light shifted, made the world more stark and clear. There was a
log on its side and Mr. Kercher sat, so I sat next to him and we listened to a creek below us, listened to the water pass over the stones and the stones be washed with water. A wind came and went.
In our silence I felt as if something had been given back to me that I’d lost a long time ago. Mr. Kercher did not look at me and I did not look at him. There was no need.
I feel … confused all the time, Mr. Kercher said eventually. My daughter, Ava, says it is because I am getting old. I know I am getting old. It may be the only natural form of justice. Maybe. But I do not think my confusion has to do with aging.
I moved here because I love my daughter and she is all I have left. She got married. They have three children. He is—his whole family is from here. It seems his family, the Hindmans, has some special … distinction in the town. They are—they have been kind to me, but I do not understand this reverence. I fear it is only because they are wealthy. I’ve seen people line up to talk to one of them, and there are special tables at restaurants, lots of invitations to things. The Hindmans are on all these boards, these groups of people who make decisions about other people. Perhaps there is something I do not know about them, but I have been here for many years and … well … I don’t want to speak ill of them. The Hindmans have been perfectly nice to me. Or at least they have not been rude. And Ava chose to join this family, to become a Hindman, so I must respect her choice. Everyone has their own life, their own decisions, and anyway, so much is outside our control—the circumstances of our deaths and births, that is, and the various circumstances that pass between those times—
As I listened to Mr. Kercher, I was visited by a memory or the memory of an old dream—of an autumn afternoon when I was sitting on a bench in a town square somewhere. One of the storefronts nearby had several white gowns in the window, sequined and lacy and draped on headless mannequins, and the square was quiet, no sounds but a far-off church bell or a clock chime, until a young woman ran out of that store, the door bursting open and several other women pursuing her. The young woman was wearing a loose pale blue slip and screaming and weeping—I hate this, I won’t, I won’t—and the other women in their woolen dresses and thick stockings and sweaters buttoned high tried to crowd around her. You’ll catch a cold, one of them said, come back inside. The young woman, barefoot, tried to escape the hands of the women but she could not. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a person, she said, the very worst thing! But the women around her said, Nonsense and Calm yourself and Dear, my dear, please come back inside now, please come back inside. And eventually she did, still weeping, retreat into the store.
I thought of telling Mr. Kercher this story but I didn’t know if I had seen or imagined or dreamed it. No, there was no use in saying it. I set that image back down in me.
I wouldn’t have come to this place if my daughter hadn’t been here, Mr. Kercher said, but I’ve found a way to make a life here that is acceptable. These woods are here. There is a lake a short drive away, also. I go there. Much of the day, I am reading books.
Mr. Kercher began to cry without making a sound, but after a moment he seemed to fold up this cry and put it away like a handkerchief. He smiled with soft confusion at the ground.
For many years I have tried, but it is difficult for me to make peace with her joining the Hindmans’ church—though of course she would. She married him. But she was never religious before. In school she studied philosophy and came home for the holidays each year just—bursting. She wanted to talk about everything, reason through everything. She would have me read all the books she had in this class or that one. She shared all her papers. She was always carving away at this thing that belonged to her—her way of thinking, her beliefs … Ava.
Then—I don’t know exactly when … maybe it wasn’t until she’d been at this church here for some time or perhaps it happened sooner and I didn’t realize—the Ava who wanted to know everything was gone. She stopped reading like she had. We didn’t speak about it, and I didn’t want to challenge her new life. She’d chosen this young man, moved here for him, joined this church, began having the children, doing all the work at home to take care of them … Of course I respect that. She was our only child, so it was somewhat natural for her to want to have many children of her own—perhaps to correct the mistakes she saw her parents making, the solitude of her childhood. And perhaps, I’ve thought, this is a way for her to be with her mother again, to become a mother in order to remember her mother …
One of her daughters looks so much like my late wife that it’s … startling. I know my granddaughters are all their own people, of course—people don’t repeat—but it’s natural to go looking for the dead in new faces. But what about when you lose someone who is still alive? When you lose track of the person you know within a person they’ve become—what kind of grief is that?
I shook my head. Mr. Kercher shook his, too.
It has only been recently that I started to ask Ava about the questions she used to debate so tirelessly with me, and we hardly ever agreed about everything—in fact it seems we never completely agreed about anything. She was the one who claimed atheism, which led me to put forth the idea, perhaps, that some mysteries in nature made me wonder if there was some sort of … larger consciousness … something beyond human consciousness … well, she would become so impassioned in rebutting this idea. Reason, reason, reason, she’d say. She had no patience, she said, for the waffling agnostics or those blindly seduced by deism. Her words! I won’t repeat them to her now …
Recently she said to me—she said—God spoke to me, and now I don’t question it. That put an end to our discussion … she put an end to it. She didn’t want to be questioned. When someone says they heard something you did not hear, and they know you did not hear it, then you cannot tell them they did not hear what they believe they heard. They have heard their desire to hear something, and desire always speaks the loudest. It is the loudest and most confounding emotion—wanting.
Mr. Kercher’s voice disappeared into the pines, the creek, the soil and stones. His hands were palm up on each knee and his face tilted up. His mouth hung slack awhile, then shut.
It’s always seemed to me—and as I get older, I feel this even more intensely—that kindness to other people comes with its own reward. It can be immediately felt. And the only thing I can see that a belief in divinity makes possible in this world is a right toward cruelty—the belief in an afterlife being the real life … not here. People need a sense of righteousness to take things from others … to carry out violence. Divinity gives them that. It creates the reins for cruelty …
Mr. Kercher stood up then and looked around him, as if he’d just remembered where he was. All his crying was gone then. I’m so sorry to take up all this time. He smiled and looked around as if suddenly lost. I don’t usually say so much. He put his hands in his pockets and removed them. There’s really so little to say.
HILDA WAS ON THE PORCH when Mr. Kercher and I approached. The air was already heavy. Somewhere in the neighborhood, a lawn mower purred.
I wish there was something else I could do, he said. I wish there was anything I could do to help. He shook his head a little, but I wasn’t sure why.
Did you have a nice little walk? Hilda asked.
She squinted across the street, waved her whole arm at Mr. Kercher, who was looking back toward us.
Thank you, Mr. Kercher! she shouted. Have a good day now, you hear?
Yes. And you.
Will I see you at Butch and Kitty’s later on?
Mr. Kercher stood still a moment, looked to his feet. I don’t believe so.
All right, well, you have a good day now. Hilda’s voice was loud and firm, a stone.
Yes.
IN THE DAYLIGHT that large house looked even larger, like a courthouse. Several cars and trucks were parked on both sides of the street. We walked beside the house, passed through a side gate, down a stone-paved path, past one of those trees that tried to grasp the sky, past flowers gasping
in the heat.
Hilda knocked on a glass door and Kitty came to let us in. Inside, the house was thick with voices and noise. Kitty spoke to Hilda awhile, then turned to me—
Now I wish Nelson could be here to keep you company but he’s in school and I couldn’t get him out of school without upsetting the other kids—you know, we try not to favor him over the others or give him anything different or special. We try to treat them all equal.
I was given a glass of ice tea and a little chair in the corner of the kitchen. Several women were moving things in and out of ovens, arranging things on wide platters, slicing things with knives. The one that had spoken to me last time was there, too, her white apron stiff and clean, and her dark hair still pulled back tight, as if nothing at all had happened or changed since I’d last seen her. She fled the kitchen through swinging doors and I heard a wave of voices come toward us from the next room.
Why does this feel so much like a funeral? I heard one of the women ask another.
I know what you mean. People are in that mood. I guess it’s just … well, people do sort of get like that right before the festival, don’t they?
Jimmie Lee’s car got broken into last night and someone stole the Karlton children’s bikes right out of their garage this week, a woman said as she layered ham on a platter.
Is that so? Hilda asked.
Four whole bicycles. I keep forgetting the festival’s Saturday, the woman said, speaking as if to that platter of meat.
Across the kitchen a child in a clean pink dress and white bow was busying herself in a toy kitchen—moving things into and out of the little oven, arranging plastic foods on plastic platters. A small television in the other corner spoke muffled words to the room.
Sometimes, Kitty said, loudly enough to address the entire room, I feel like—if I just keep that television on all day, then nothing bad can happen, you know what I mean? Like a watched pot, like that kind of thing. Then other times it’s almost the other way around—like I know something is going to go wrong eventually and I don’t want to be the last to know.
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