Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  In the afternoon, she walked back down Poyntz and along the road toward the bridge. She had made plans. If Henry was not there, she would slip back into the school and sleep by one of the stoves. But Uncle Henry was there, blue in the dusk, waiting for her, holding the horse’s lead.

  And that night, as he led the horse and the cart toward the barn, he grabbed her wrist, and pulled her with him. Inside the barn, he held her to him and blurted out a kind of a sob. He rested his shaggy, smelly head on her shoulder and neck, and his cheeks were damp and he pressed her to him.

  He did love her after all. Dorothy went weak from gratitude. She hugged him back, and his huge, rough hands pushed her even closer to him. The whole length of his body was against her, and he kissed her cheek. Was he saying he was sorry? He must be. Dorothy kissed him back. She meant to kiss him on the cheek, but he turned his head and their mouths met. That startled Dorothy and she jumped back. He worked her shoulder, and his smile crumpled and went grim. He turned away, and Dorothy wondered again if she had done wrong.

  The next day, the ride was joyful. Uncle Henry sang old campfire songs. Dorothy had never seen him like that. She giggled and he turned his eyes toward her and they had a sparkle she had never seen before. It suddenly occurred to her that Uncle Henry had once been young. He would have been a young, broad-shouldered man with sparkling eyes. And bad teeth.

  So when did it begin? Every evening in the barn, or sometimes in the woods, when it was dark, he would pull the wagon to a stop and hidden under lap robes, he would tickle her. Dorothy was getting bored with being prodded and tickled. Henry kept looking back and forth up the road as if it were something naughty, something bad. She pitied him. Poor Henry, old Henry, she thought, and she hugged him. Was that bad? He was just hugging her, and he loved her, so was it bad?

  His hands were blunt and large and rough. They kept rubbing her shoulders. When did they begin to rub her legs?

  She remembered him cupping both her tiny breasts in his hands. “Pretty little things,” he had said, forlornly. Even then, Dorothy was not sure that it was bad. He looked into her eyes. His eyes were blue and large, cold and soft at the same time, and his cheeks were always bright red on deep brown and covered with tiny purple veins all over the surface. He looked lost.

  “Do you like it when I touch you there?” he asked.

  She didn’t like it, not really at all. It was private and it wasn’t nice, but he was Henry and he loved her.

  “You’re so kind, Dorothy. You’re so good to old Henry.”

  One evening in the barn, his trousers came down, and she saw his thing, and she knew then that this was bad.

  “No, honey, no, Dorothy, don’t look away, don’t look away from old Henry. Here, look, I put it away, see?”

  The only thing that Dorothy had thought was good about her life was bad. All her life was bad; it was something to do with her. She must be bad, if this was what happened. The thought of her badness made her go still. It must have made him go still too.

  He didn’t do it right away. He tried to hold off. But it was too much for him, alone with the flat wilderness, his drying fields, and Em. Finally he did it, quickly, in the barn, while Em sat with her books. The thought of her own badness made Dorothy go small and still. Dorothy looked at the straw and the wooden beams and knew that everything would change. When he was done, he was scared. He pulled up his trousers and began to weep. “Oh God, oh salvation. There’s no praying that can heal this.”

  She knew it was truly terrible then. Dorothy watched, as if pork were frying. He did not look at her. He will hate me now, she knew. She was ready. It was all she deserved. There was more blood. More bad blood. She was so full of that bad blood, it just oozed out of her.

  “You better get into the house,” he murmured, looking away from her.

  That night at dinner there was a terrible silence. Even Em could sense it. She was full of rage. It was Aunty Em’s turn to cook and she banged down the plates and the coffeepot. She had boiled up some jerky and some dried corn and that was all they had to eat. Dorothy thought she must have seen them, that she must know. The silence was terrible, but Em did not notice anything unusual. For Em, the silence was always there, and always terrible. Em was oblivious to her own rage, but Dorothy ate in suspense. Later, Dorothy went out into the darkness and threw up, quietly so Em couldn’t hear. There is no pit, Dorothy thought, no hole in the ground deep enough and black enough to cover me. There was a hook on which they hung the bodies of the hogs. It went right up through their guts. Dorothy thought of putting the hook through herself.

  Once again, Henry did not come for her after school. Dorothy had known that he would not. He’ll be scared, she thought, beginning to feel contempt for him. He’ll keep well away. He might be so scared, he won’t do it again. Either way, she knew she could no longer count on Henry for anything. He might send her away. He might want to keep her near and do it again. He might ignore her and pretend that nothing had happened. There was nothing good that either one of them could do. She hitched a ride home with Max Jewell. He had grown up nice and polite and was very interested in Dorothy. He asked her all sorts of questions about Manhattan and tried to catch her eye. Dorothy saw Uncle Henry in him and answered coldly, yes or no.

  It took a week. Uncle Henry let other people take her back home for a whole week. Neither one of them said anything to Aunty Em. Max had found repeated excuses to come out to town, in order to give her a lift back. That in itself was ominous. It might be good to discourage Max.

  Finally Uncle Henry showed up, waiting at the bridge. Max was there too. Max called hello to Henry, somewhat unwillingly, and his quick crumpled smile in Dorothy’s direction was one of apology. Max assumed quite rightly that she might not want to ride with some smelly old man.

  Dorothy felt herself go into abeyance. She watched herself. What, she wondered, am I going to do? She saw herself climb down from Max’s wagon.

  “Thank you, Max,” she murmured. It sounded like a farewell.

  She got into the wagon. Henry waved Max away. Henry pulled hard on the reins to keep the wagon still. Henry waited until Max was out of sight, disappearing over the top of Prospect.

  “We don’t share no blood,” Henry said solemnly. “We’re not blood kin.”

  That meant nothing to Dorothy. Did he mean that he had no bad blood? Did he mean that only she did? She waited, as an animal waits when it’s cornered by a predator.

  “I’m just older than you, that’s all.” He tried to smile, but there was a shaking in him. “You aren’t going to do nothing, are you, Dorothy? You aren’t going to go away, are you? ’Cause old Henry, he needs you. You are the light of his life. You are the only beautiful thing. And a man needs that, Dorothy.”

  He paused and looked at the wall of trees, full of spring buds, climbing the side of the hill. The buds gathered together on the trees looked from a distance like a slightly purple mist. “We’ll have to be careful of her. We’ll just have to watch our step. In summer, the corn will be as high as you like.”

  He means we’ll do it in the corn, thought Dorothy. He’ll wait for me here, and we’ll go into the corn. He wants to go on doing it.

  “She can’t live forever.”

  He wants Aunty Em to die.

  Then he gave her a ride home, a chaste distance from her. It was already late, so they walked into the house, Dorothy first, Henry a few minutes later. Chores, he told Dorothy. Got a few things to do. You just go right on in. He was lying.

  The next day, they went into the barn. “I got to do it,” said Henry, grinning. “I just can’t keep away. You are a wicked, wicked little thing.” He smiled and rubbed his nose against her, and she went still and cold and quiet as ice.

  “You like that, you like that, don’t you?” he said, and it made no difference that she didn’t answer.

 
It went on and one and Henry got rougher and rougher with his raw hands. Yes, I’m bad, thought Dorothy. I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m bad. She could feel herself twist inside. She hated Henry’s smell, she hated his body, she hated the barn. And she wanted Aunty Em to see them.

  She wanted Aunty Em to see them, so bad she could taste it. Her so God-fearing, her so church-loving, to walk in and see her husband pig-backing a kid, pig-backing me, doing what you should be doing Em, you old dried piece of beef jerky. You should see this. I can just hear you yelping.

  So she pulled up Henry’s shirt, and she pushed his trousers down, so that there would be no mistaking. No one hugs a child with their milk-white bottom bare in early spring unless they’re doing that.

  And one day, muddy, bleak, not so cold, his trousers were down around his knees, and he kept pulling them up, chuckling, “Don’t do that, honey,” and Aunty Em yelled out, real close to the barn.

  “Henry, where are you?”

  Henry gasped and ducked away, scuttled around behind the bales of hay. Dorothy stayed where she was. Her dress fell back down by itself, but she would not have pulled it down. Her flannels were still down around her thighs. She leaned against the post and waited.

  Aunty Em came in, carrying a pan. Mocking her, Dorothy made a coy little-girl motion with her hips and head. Little old me do anything wrong?

  “You seen your uncle?” Em asked.

  “Sure, he’s just around there,” said Dorothy and pointed.

  Em looked between Dorothy and the hay. “What you doing there?” said Em to Henry. “Why didn’t you answer?”

  Henry stood up. Down on his knees, he had managed to hoist and fasten his trousers. “Thought I saw a rat,” said Henry, looking straight at Dorothy. Dorothy’s eyes went wide. Did I do something wrong, Uncle?

  “Well, get up off of the floor and tell me when we can get into Manhattan. I can’t use this pan. It’s finally gone through.”

  “Friday. We’ll go Friday.”

  “High time too. Dorothy, if you’re through in here, come in and sweep up.”

  “She’ll be ‘long momently, Em,” said Uncle Henry. “She’s doing some chores in here for me.”

  “All right, but send her along.” Aunty Em left, sensing something too big to even acknowledge. She left scowling.

  Pause. Dorothy looked at Henry, with that cold curiosity.

  He took two steps toward her and whupped her right across the mouth and onto the floor. Dorothy tasted blood, in triumph. Yup, yup, that was right. That was what it was. Now she could hate him.

  “What the hell are you trying to do?” he said, whispering, shaking in fear. “You want her to know or something?”

  “Did I do something wrong, Uncle Henry?” she asked in a little-girl voice. “She asked where you were and I told her.”

  “You just keep quiet. You just keep quiet about everything. Oh Jesus!” He hid his face.

  “What am I going to tell her about my mouth?” she said. Dorothy puffed out her lips as she spoke to make it sound as though she were hurt worse than she was, all swollen.

  “Tell her you fell. You’re pretty good at making up stories.”

  “Like you are, Uncle,” said Dorothy very quietly.

  She was silent and smiling, and she knew that the smile said: Why should I lie for you? Give me a reason. Then she spoke.

  “You gonna bring me back something nice from Manhattan?” she said.

  Uncle Henry looked scared again. He leaned over and helped her up. He started to brush her dress. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Dorothy smiled sweetly at him, so that he couldn’t see all her teeth were red.

  “Dorothy, I’m sorry I hit you, but you almost got us . . .” He could not imagine what would have happened. “Honey, we got to keep quiet about this. We got to keep as still as mice. It’s like it’s our own little world. It can’t touch the other world at all.”

  “Okay, Uncle Henry.”

  He looked at her with love and great misgiving. His eyes were saying: What have I got myself into?

  “I better go in,” said Dorothy.

  I got them dancing, thought Dorothy. I got Aunty Em with a pin through her, squirming like a butterfly, and she don’t even know it. And Uncle Henry, he’s just got to be so careful. All I got to do is make sure nobody knows, and I can just keep pushing pins.

  She stopped at the barn door and turned. “Tell Aunty Em that I need some new boots,” she said.

  I’m bad, she thought, rejoicing. I’m wicked, I’m evil. I’m the Devil’s own.

  “You can get them for me, when you go to Manhattan,” she said, and went into the house. She burned the pork, deliberately, burned it black, and she was smiling all the time.

  The next day or the day after that, in Manhattan, at school, a pretty little girl fell in the schoolyard and started to cry.

  Aw, thought Dorothy. You poor little thing you. Is that all you got to cry about? Is that the only reason you have to cry?

  Dorothy grinned and pretended to help the little girl up. She was so little and so thin and Dorothy was so big. She could feel her size.

  “Does it hurt?” she cooed, and sliced the edge of her nails down the girl’s wrist. The little girl looked up in bewildered horror.

  “Hurt?” asked Dorothy, and wrenched the flesh of the wrist in two directions at once, wrung it like a cloth.

  The little girl wailed.

  “Shut up,” whispered Dorothy, and punched her as hard as she could in the stomach. The little girl doubled up and went quiet.

  Dorothy looked at the pretty white dress and had an inspiration. “You got any money? Give me some money. I’ll stop if you give me some money.”

  The little girl wept in silence.

  Dorothy put her nails against her cheek. “You better give me some,” she warned her, and chuckled suddenly. “It’s going to be real bad if you don’t.”

  The feeble little girl reached for a pretty little purse kept inside her glove. Dorothy took it from her. “Tell your mother you dropped it,” she said. “And you better not snitch, or I’ll follow you home and whup you so bad you can’t walk.”

  The other kids said that Dorothy Gael was farm dirt. They said she was poor and had fleas. They said she smelled, which she did, and they refused to sit next to her in class. I can shut you all up, Dorothy realized. There’s nothing I won’t do to shut you all up.

  She was swollen with discovery. She hung up her coat and scarf right next to the other kids’.

  “Ew!” they cried with gestures of disgust.

  She very quietly grabbed one of them by the throat. She had chosen a boy, one of the bigger ones. She throttled him. She cut off his supply of air, and then relinquished just enough to hear him gasp.

  “You want to fight?” she whispered. She shoved him away from her, into the wall. She turned and spat on his coat. “You ought to be more careful with your clothes, Sam,” she told him. She looked around at the others. “Any of you little chickens tells, I’ll come for you.”

  Dorothy turned away with complete confidence. If anything happened to her slimy old coat, she wouldn’t mind. She wouldn’t mind, and she’d beat them all hollow on the way home.

  Dorothy walked down between the rows of desks, feeling like a queen. And there was Larry Johnson, pug-faced Larry who always made the jokes. Well, well, well. His desktop was lifted open. She slammed it down as hard as she could on his fingers.

  No matter how tough he was, he had to yelp. “Ow!” Everyone turned. They saw Larry Johnson, sitting, looking up at Dorothy Gael, who loomed over him. They saw Larry Johnson having to fight to stop the tears, and he was big, in the eighth grade. A ripple of fear passed through them, as if across the surface of a pond. The people from the cloakroom came in, whispering. D
orothy Gael sat down and raked them all with her eyes. There’s going to be some changes hereabouts, her eyes told them.

  There was another poor, fat, ugly girl. She had a smile like a rat’s. The other little girl saw her chance. She saw how it was done. Curiously enough, her name was Em too, just like Dorothy’s aunt. When the teacher, Mr. Clark, came in she raised her hand and asked, “Sir, can I move my desk next to Dorothy’s?”

  A sigh came from the class, a sigh of loathing. The two misbegotten were teaming up together. It was an alliance against them all, and they knew it. The teacher considered. Dorothy was dangerously isolated, he thought. He wanted Em to stay in the front of the class where he could keep an eye on her, but anyone being friendly to Dorothy Gael was a change for the better.

  So this second Emma moved, cradling up her textbooks and slate. “All these slimy little Two-shoes,” she whispered to Dorothy.

  “Yea,” said Dorothy, with authority.

  So it went, into summer. The corn came through. Couple of times a week, Dorothy and Henry in the shed. Sometimes he would drive the cart into the woods on Prospect. Dorothy would lie under the trees and remember the days when she went to Sunflower School. School had only been a half-mile walk across the fields then. As she walked, the birds, the red-winged blackbirds, would leap up into the air ahead of her, and the Jewells’ cat Rusty Hinge would slink out from the corn and mew and come up to have his head scratched. In summer, the corn would move its leaves, and quail would run across the path. Sometimes the pinch bugs bit, but you soon got over that.

  The children each planted a tree around the schoolhouse and that tree was named after them. It was as if a piece of each child had been left behind to grow.

  Dorothy would lie down on the ground with Uncle Henry covering her, and she would look past his face. The trees would lean over as if in sympathy, and Dorothy would let her spirit fly up to them, to hide amid their leaves, to reside in them. She would make herself part of them. She felt herself bend and sigh with them; she felt buds and soft green leaves at the tips of her extremities. She was out of reach of Uncle Henry then. He could not touch her then. She was a tree. There were trees called Dorothy all over the hillsides.