In the Valley of the Kings: Stories

by Terrence Holt

  I rise from the bed, the cold floor at my feet telling me again I am awake, the world is real. Through a silence fragile as old age I inspect each room, and everything is as we left it. But in each room, the objects I find—the chair with the book face-down upon its arm, my binoculars on the windowsill—seem to be holding a pose, waiting for my back to turn. Only the kitchen clock confesses, filling the room with the catch and release of its cogs. In a distant, unconscious way I hear the sound of water flowing in the gorge, whispering dimly. The falls are almost frozen over.

  I wring back the curtains, snap up the shades, flush the rooms with light and nothing moves. In the kitchen I heat the kettle to a scream, bang pots, and overcook the oats. Upstairs, Ell is moving slowly; she showers, the pipes shudder and groan, the wind picks up outside. In the feeders, finches hiss and flutter, fighting for a perch. A dog lopes hip-deep through the yard, barking bright blue clouds of breath at the treetops, where four crows cling to the waving limbs. They flap and caw, caw a senseless monody. Over all of us, gray clouds pour ceaselessly into the east.

  The wind has blown for days. I wonder how much longer it can blow before the country west of us lies in a vacuum, and dogs and crows, finches and clouds freeze solid, and the trees’ metallic branches thrill faintly against the stars. I have dreamed this. I have been dreaming of the stars as they once were, as I will never see them again, unless there is after all another life after this one, in a cold and airless west.

  I woke again this morning among the booming echoes. Through the window I saw the morning star, failing, dim in the sick gleam that made my hand a skeleton on the curtain. Between my ribs my heart was thunderous in its hollow, ticking off the seconds of the dawn.

  A RESTLESSNESS TOOK me out of the house today, on a final, senseless errand. I took the car downtown to fill its tank, though I have nowhere left to go, no errands left unrun.

  As I coasted down the long hill into town, I noticed that the odometer was less than ten miles from turning over. This fact—this string of nines rolling up under the quivering needle—loomed before me much larger than I wanted it to. The windshield hazed, and the large, familiar hands that held the wheel seemed not my own. They are older than I noticed them last—the skin is drier, nicked with scars I don’t remember, and a gold band glints at one finger.

  As I came down the block I saw a banner over the pumps.

  FREE GAS

  it read, in hand-drawn black. The sign sighed and billowed in the breeze, but nothing else moved: the pumps were deserted, the street beyond stretching silent and empty down to the frozen lake.

  By the time I stopped the car, I was almost laughing, glad to have my mood broken by this sorry joke. I have given over too often to self-pity: it is only a car. Through the glass, still decked with offers of anti-freeze, I saw the owner dimly, seated at his desk, and thought I saw him smiling.

  Gasoline spilled from the neck of the tank. The trigger gave a dull clunk and went limp.

  The door to the cashier’s office was locked. The knob rattled loudly in my hand, but the figure smiling by the open cash drawer did not move. I stooped to peer through the glass. He sat upright, his mouth and eyes wide open.

  I took a winding route back home, through the empty streets. Not everyone is dead: as the sun set, windows lit in many houses. The people at the power station are still at their posts. I drove past every drugstore I could think of, and every one was empty, dark. On some of them, the doors stood open; others had their windows smashed. The street by a liquor store glittered and flashed. I drove home wondering, What are they waiting for?

  I could not think of an answer.

  At the sound of my key in the lock, Ell pulled open the door, rushed at me, and grabbed my shoulders. As I thought horribly of what could be wrong she was saying,—Where have you been? and,—I was sure, and,—Where were you?

  I couldn’t speak. We did not fight. Normally, in such a case, we would, and eventually would have understood. I couldn’t. There was something on my tongue, even now I cannot say what, only that a fear of speaking welled up and stifled me. When she ran weeping from the room, guilt stabbed me, but I could not explain. I walked upstairs and closed the study door, sat here at my desk for a long time before turning on the lights.

  THE MORNING IS bright. Outside the house the icicles are running, and water echoes loudly in the drains. Fresh air stirs the curtains, breathing in at the window opened for the first time in months. The January thaw has come, but a few days past the turning of the year, rushing as if to make the time. The air is piercing, fresh and sweet. It buoys me with an indiscriminate urge to do something—nothing I can name. It speaks tongueless, as varying and insistent as the water in the drains. The fresh air blows past my ears, whispering promises of spring.

  When I came down from my study late last night, Ell was reading in her accustomed chair, her feet tucked underneath her legs against the cold. She looked up, angry and compact. I knew she would not speak—that it was up to me. But what was there to say? A minute passed, drawn out into a wire that tightened between us. I wanted to flinch—to run away. But where was there to run?

  From where I stood in the doorway, her face seemed a shield held out against me. But in the curve of her lower lip, I saw a trace of motion, a sustained, suppressed tremor. It told me something of what she must have felt when I did not come home—and what she must be feeling now. I understood the offering of her face then, the cost it exacted as the minutes wore on and the muscles of her neck grew tired, quivering. I met her eyes, and the intensity of the look that met me seized me out of vagueness into something solid, here and real.

  At that moment the lights flickered, and my heart leapt with an animal despair—dumb, and damned so. The lights went yellow, faded slowly to orange, red, and as the darkness closed in around us, I saw in her face—motionless still, and pale—the same mute despair, and then it was dark.

  We found candles in the kitchen. By their light we made love upstairs, in a bed piled high with blankets. The clock beside us was stopped at a quarter to, and the candles held at bay the sky’s sick light. We were awkward; we were shy. I could not remember the last time we had broken the unspoken agreement that for months has kept us from each other.

  A SILENCE THIS morning disturbed me as I stood, awash in the morning light, at the kitchen sink. Something was missing. I listened, until I realized that what I missed was the sound of birds at the feeders: the crack and scatter of the seeds, the whirr of wings—the ungainly thud of the jays. I wiped steam from the windows. Every feeder hung deserted, full of seed, shuddering gently in the wind. I watch, and no birds come. Hours have passed, and I have not seen or heard them yet.

  Perhaps they know. Perhaps some message came to them. I hope so. I hope that, even now, someone in a southern kitchen is wondering at the chickadees, the juncos, the titmice, and the nuthatch, upside down, inspecting some unnaturally sweet and tender fruit.

  THERE HAD BEEN another wreck. Both of us stayed seated long after the booming died away. The falls have frozen over at last; no sound rose to fill the silence. We sat throughout the afternoon, as the light faded and the sun went down for what must have been the last time—a dull, dim-red extinction. It disappeared and left behind a sky as blank as if the constellations had been destroyed. Perhaps they have. The moon rose soon after, waning, gibbous, sick in a sea of spoiled milk, and still we sat.

  Ell rose, groaning a little with the effort it takes her now to stand. She shuffled out to the kitchen. I heard her fumbling in the drawer where the candles are, rattling hollow objects for a time that stretched out far too long. I couldn’t bear it. When she returned, her face alight, I stood abruptly, unable to look at her.

  I think she knew, as I walked out the door, that I was not going to the gorge.

  The streets lay deep in snow, and as I drove down the steep and winding road that ends in the bridge across the gorge, I lost control, fishtailed out onto the span sideways for the rail. Someone laughed as I
spun, the railing moving wrongway by the windshield; then I was stopped, turned sideways in the middle of the bridge.

  I got out of the car, stepping out onto the steel grid. Wind whistled up at me. I looked down through the deck; a dozen dark shapes lay at the ends of scars scraped in the show. I walked to the western rail and looked out over the valley where the gorge opens and falls finally into the lake. On the far hill shone a constellation of kerosene and candles, flickering dimly across the miles. Down in the town, a brighter glow grew into a blaze of buildings burning at the center. On the north wind came no sound, no smell of smoke, only the wind.

  In the southwest, a dim glow, as the sunset faded into the ashen light of the sky. No evening star.

  Then I was driving, fast again, swerving around curves I had never seen before, headlights doused. I remember nothing until three deer stood and faced me in the road.

  Then there was light, shining in my eyes. They lifted me by the shoulders, headfirst through the window of my car although I clutched the wheel and cried. I saw a tire turning, spinning slowly in the air.

  Then there was light again, and warmth, a chair, and hands rubbing mine and feeling up and down my arms and legs, voices asking,—Hurt? Talk?—a voice whispering,—Shock.

  They put my fingers around a cup, where heat thawed feeling out of numb nothing. Something hot trickled down my throat.

  And the first thing I saw was a tree, standing in the corner, shedding its needles on the floor. I thought: I missed Christmas, and: It was all a dream. The room solidified: a kitchen, plank floor, wood stove, iron washstand, water heater in the far corner. Warm light and the smell of kerosene. A man in coveralls, about my age, but the lines in his face had cut more deeply, the hand with which he slid the teacup back across the table was a farmer’s hand, old already. As I reached out to take the cup, he watched me critically.

  —You’re not the first, he said.

  I nodded, unable to explain.

  He nodded back, indicating my hand.—You’re married.

  I nodded again.

  —Alive?

  Again.

  The man paused, looked away from me, and cleared his throat.—Do you want to go back?

  I feel tears on my face. My voice makes no sound; the room seems to expand around me, leaving me in darkness. It is too late for words.

  I heard a chair move, and felt a hand on my shoulder.—I’ll go warm up the truck.

  The man did not return. I heard an engine catch, roar, and settle into a rapid idle. A woman, in a faded print, and herself worn thin enough to show the pulse at her temple, a tremor in her jaw, each bone and tendon of her hand, sat around the corner of the table. She reached out to touch the tabletop before me, paused.

  —Your wife alone? Her voice was hoarse.

  I wondered what she might mean, and looked around the room. Through an open door I saw three children all alike in dingy pastel pajamas, staring back at me.

  —We let them stay up late tonight, she apologized.—When we talk about it, they don’t understand. But they like to stay up. We wanted to do something for them. She looked at them, and whispered,—Do you know what I mean?

  I stood abruptly, caught myself with a hand on her shoulder and staggered into her lap. Embarrassed, she gave me her thin arm, and, biting her lower lip, led me to the truck. There she whispered to her husband, and, with a shy glance at me, kissed him long and urgently. Then we were gone.

  The road was drifted deep where snow had blown across the fields. The clouds had broken before the rising wind. The moon burned bright at our backs, the only thing in the ghostly sky. It shone unnaturally bright. I felt it pushing, as it brightened by the minute, behind us.

  The man drove fast, his need for haste twice mine. Deer were everywhere. They stood in silent groups of twos and threes beside the road. Smaller shapes, writhing in the headlights, fled before us. Overhead, darkness dotted the sky, flitting from horizon to horizon as if the graves gave up their dead. The face of the man beside me was taut in the dim green light of the speedometer. He swerved to miss something that froze before us—a skunk—and silently drove on.

  He turned on the radio, tuned from static to a voice beseeching to the sound of running water, then fire, then large masses breaking, waves upon a shore, marching feet, applause, a voice explaining, violins, a chorus shouting, a man singing

  Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen

  Durch des Himmels prächt’gen Plan.

  He switched it off.—Last night there was hymns, down from Canada. You could tell it was hymns, even in French.

  One road to the city was blocked by fire: black against the flames, men and women were dancing, singing, in tuxedos and gowns, diamonds flaming like stars.

  The bridge from the north was destroyed.

  The way from the south was blocked by a creature I cannot describe.

  The door was unlocked. It opened into the dark hall, and I stepped in. I stood in the doorway, seeing no reason to shut the door behind me. The house was as cold as a crypt, and—I knew without having to ask—as empty. I wondered where she would be when the time caught her. I hoped the time would find her ready. I would never be, and saw no reason to wait, not any longer.

  I went to the kitchen and pulled the stool up to the sink, and fumbling open the casing of the clock I found the vial I had hidden the night we fought. Not all of the drugstores had been closed that evening. I am more coward than I seem. I stood on the stool, the vial warming in my palm, and tried to remember something I had forgotten. The silence in the room was complete.

  The clock at my ear was silent.

  She reached up and took the vial away.—I poured it out. It’s just food coloring now.

  How foolish I was to think anything would remain hidden! She helped me from the stool, stopping me as I started to fall. Her hair was cold, smelling of the outdoors. For a long time we were silent. For the space of half an hour, nothing mattered.

  Then she moved, reached up a hand to touch my face. The light of the moon had brightened abruptly, as if a window shade had snapped up. As the light and silence grew, I felt the spell that has kept me speechless breaking. But when I bent to her ear and started to whisper, she placed her hand gently over my mouth and held it. I understood: there is nothing to say.

  We stood together in the growing light, the thunder rumbling in the distance, drawing nearer, and I shrugged away impulses that no longer had meaning—to speech, to fear, to sorrow. I felt laughter growing inside me. Certainly she was laughing. At the window, moonlight poured in.

  Ellen spoke.—Is there anything you want?

  —Yes. The words came easily.—I want to finish something.

  And at the door of this room, she left me.—I’ll call if I need you.

  LITTLE REMAINS. She is calling. The moon burns still brighter with each passing second, leaves my hand too slow to record, to report. I must end now.

  But before the end we will speak once more, of everything that matters: of the brightness of the moon; of the birds still flying dark against the sky; of the man who brought me here; of the hours that she waited; of what we would name the child; of the grace of everything that dies; of the love that moves the sun and other stars.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Terrence Holt began writing the stories in this collection while he was earning MFA and PhD degrees in English from Cornell University. His first published story, “Charybdis,” appeared originally in the Kenyon Review and was included in the O. Henry Prize Stories 1980. After a decade teaching English literature and creative writing, Holt enrolled in night school premedical courses at the University of Pennsylvania and went on to earn his MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he now holds academic and clinical appointments in the Department of Social Medicine and the Division of Geriatric Medicine. “I went into medicine for reasons having nothing to do with writing,” he says. “It was only after I’d been at it for several years that I realized I’d found another way of doing th
e same thing.”

  “In both,” Holt explains, “I’m intimately involved with the limits of human existence—of life, of compassion, of our capacity to understand ourselves in our world. For me, these stories are more than anything else about where stories come from, and where they take us. They’re about the moment-by-moment process by which our brains convince us that the world exists, and the gaps in that process as well. Those flaws in the illusion are what I want to capture. They’re the chinks in the structure where mystery gets in and haunts our lives—and through which one day we slip into eternity.”

  In addition to his writing and the practice of medicine, Holt is an avid amateur astronomer and has written a handbook for amateurs, The Universe Next Door. He lives in Chapel Hill with his wife and two sons, with whom he haunts the flea markets and bass ponds of the Piedmont, respectively. He also plays the Highland bagpipes—very badly, he says, but very, very loudly.