by Brian Hodge
“Handy’s was closed.”
Page by slow page, she perused the dictionary, referring frequently to a look-up list from The Winter’s Tale. Every so often, she would whisper a pronunciation to herself.
An hour became another hour, midnight approached. He dozed, only to wake and find her still studying.
“You really need your sleep,” he said at last. But it was nearly one before she turned off her light.
He lay awake, waiting.
When there came a light tapping on the front door, he almost jumped out of his skin.
She’d done it.
He said nothing, only sat up in the madly creaking bed, put his feet on the floor and went shuffling into the kitchen. He even went so far as to get himself a glass of water, on the off chance that Loi might be vaguely aware of his movements.
Ellen appeared at the kitchen window. “I’m scared, Brian.” Her whisper was little more than breath itself.
He pulled on a pair of jeans over the shorts, and threw a T-shirt across his shoulders. Then he slipped into his ancient sneakers. He went to the door, opened it a crack, hesitated. The hinges seemed to creak even more loudly than the bed. Well, no matter, he had to risk it.
They walked toward the woods. “We can go along that path by the kill,” she said. “We’ll be at his house in a few minutes.”
“I know.”
“Did you tell Loi?”
He didn’t answer, and she didn’t repeat the question. As they passed the ruins of his old house, he began to feel the cold. He put on the T-shirt.
Ellen’s arm moved around his waist. “I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m scared all the time.”
“We’ll get one of your bugs. Then science will react.”
They were well beyond the ruins of Kelly Farm now. Here the woods were deeper, darker. The breeze sighed in the trees.
“You know, Brian, even being out here with you, I’m still real afraid. Are you as scared as I am?”
“For a couple of minutes I was totally helpless, moving toward the judge’s house against my will. You’re damn right I’m scared.”
“I keep remembering the way they smelled.” She shuddered.
“You have a sensitive nose.”
“They stink like sweaty old men.”
They began to hear Coxon Kill up ahead.
“This is where I got away from them—by diving into the water right there!” She pointed, then glanced back the way they had come. “I hadn’t realized your place was so close to mine.”
“Our old roads wind around a lot. The whole area’s deceptive that way.”
At that moment there appeared a glimmer among the trees.
A shock like a slap went through him when he realized that it was a long stream of light, like a glowing snake. It shimmered and undulated among the trees, the tip of it gliding about, seeking. Ellen’s hand gripped his arm. “They’re here.”
She opened her purse, pulled out a Ball jar.
He was watching the thing, deeply fascinated. Was he actually seeing something from another reality, another world? “It’s as cohesive as a single creature.”
“We’ve got to go closer. You’ll see it’s actually a swarm.”
She fumbled the jar open. They stepped forward. They were hand in hand, like two children.
The moment they moved, the swarm shot at them like a bolt of lightning. It stopped short fifty feet away. Brian could hear the sigh of many wings. It seemed to strain toward him. “I think it has a limit to its range.”
“Yeah.”
“Give me the jar.”
She put it in his hand. He heard her sob.
“Stay back, Ellen.”
“Hell no.”
Together, they moved into the pale light of the swarm.
Without warning he was covered with them. He screamed like a shot deer, grabbed at the legs scrabbling against his face—felt himself pulled hard from behind.
He fell back against her. There was a tinkle of glass. The jar had broken against the ground. “Run.” Her voice was choked.
In moments they were in one of Brian’s orchards. The trailer was visible in the distance, a black shadow. The swarm had extended itself again, and was now a hundred feet beyond where it had originally stopped. It was also a good deal thinner, like a long, glowing cable.
She was sobbing openly now, her shoulders shaking, her hands tearing her hair. “We’re OK,” he said, “we’re OK.”
She clutched him.
The glowing cable was undulating, and getting shorter and thicker. “Look at it, Ellen. It’s pulling itself back.”
He held her to him, comforting her.
Another voice spoke: “Brian?” Loi came out of the shadows, moving softly and carefully—but fast. She was very fast.
“Loi!” He pushed Ellen away. His heart started thundering.
Ellen said the worst possible thing. “I’m sorry, Loi!” She could not have appeared more guilty.
“Brian, please come with me now.”
“He was helping me in an investigation,” Ellen said.
“Ah. You are exploring sex?”
“I—he—Loi, there’s something you should know.”
“I guess so.”
“It’s not what it seems. He’s helping me investigate the judge.”
Loi looked toward the forest. “The judge is in the woods, then?”
Brian went to her. “Loi, it’s not what it seems.”
“Don’t you dare tell me what it is or isn’t. You think I’m stupid?”
“There really is an investigation—”
“And as for you, Miss Fancy Reporter, you get off my land right now. And stay away from my husband, or I’m gonna come after you the way we do at home!” Her voice crackled with authority. This was a very new side of his wife.
Ellen gasped, stepped back. Brian was so shocked he couldn’t make a sound. Loi’s tone had sliced through the air. She’d meant those words, they were no idle threat.
It felt to Brian as if the whole world was falling in on him. He loved this woman with all his heart and soul. “You mustn’t think—”
“Come, husband. We go.” With that she turned and began moving back toward the house. She walked fast, slipping through the night with the grace of a trained infiltrator. “Come,” she called.
He hurried after her.
Chapter 6
1
For Loi the awful details of her discovery were the hardest part to bear. Brian’s hurrying along home with her like some silly geisha; the way Miss Maas had nervously drummed her fingers along her jaw—these were the things that cut through the lies that they spoke.
A part of her sought blame and wanted to apologize. Another part wanted to do something to him with a knife. She had been a worthy wife, and wasn’t she carrying his son?
She had seen all—and not two hours ago he had been making love with her. Was he never tired, never satisfied? Why were men slaves to their sticks?
She took him back to their trailer in silence, listening hardly at all to his protests. “Loi, I did not—” “Loi, it wasn’t what—” At home a man discovered like this would not have further humiliated himself with such babble.
At home, indeed. What was she thinking? She was without a home. This trailer, this man and her big belly—these were her home. Without the man she might fall back into destitution. She would fall back. She knew well what awaited a little boy in the back streets of Bangkok. Was it also the same in the slums of New York?
The thought tightened her throat, made her stomp with rage as they passed through the brushy field that had once been Mary Kelly’s vegetable garden. Her own far better garden was nearby, sited farther down the slope for correct drainage.
When they got back to the trailer, he spoke again: “Loi, please, I beg you, listen to me.”
“Why you put me in a trailer? Why not rebuild the house, you’ve got the money, you old skinflint.”
“I—Mary—”
She put her hands to her ears, she didn’t want to hear that name, not now. “All of these women,” she shouted. He grabbed at her but she pushed him away, turned from him. She did not even want to look upon the face of Dr. Brian Kelly.
“Loi, please. I can’t bear this.”
She went to bed. When he heard the springs creak, he came into the room, but she delivered a look that drove him out.
Let him go. Let all the white-eyes go. They were no better than the devils who had made her a soldier at the age of eight. The devils would never have put a pureblood child in those tunnels. Only a nigger girl, the child of a round-eyed colonialist whore and a dirty American, an ugly little embarrassment.
Loi lay imagining that she was a statue, as still and cool as the Emperor of Jade Buddha in his shady pagoda.
Within her she felt Brian Ky Kelly begin to move. She smelled the aroma of the cigarette Brian was smoking in the living room, and her soul reached into her womb and twined tendrils of it about her baby, imagining that the sweet threads of family still bound them all together.
She didn’t want this new weight in her heart. But she was a proud and good woman; she did not deserve to be treated in this disrespectful and humiliating manner.
Her anger was so great that she couldn’t sleep; she got up and went to the front door. Maybe the quiet of the night would calm her spirit.
“Loi?”
She thought she wouldn’t answer him now. She stepped onto the tiny porch, surveyed the still, silent yard. The driveway was a pale shadow, beyond it the dark bulk of the barn. If she walked to the far end of the trailer, she would be able to see the ruins of Kelly Farm, where he had left his past life… his real life.
She was only his whore, not his wife.
The driveway was lit briefly by a lightning bug. It was a lovely, large one, like the ones that floated through the jungle at home.
She went along the path that surrounded the trailer, stopping when she could see the remains of the farmhouse. There were lightning bugs gleaming among the ruins, lending them a ghostly significance, as if spirits of the dead still lingered there. She went closer. One of the bugs came up and hovered before her. It acted as if it wanted to land on her belly. Idly, she slapped it away. The thing was big and fast, and it buzzed angrily and came straight back, bouncing against her stomach as if it wanted to burrow its way inside. Again, she brushed it away.
In each beat of her heart she felt her love for Brian. She wanted to turn it off, but she could not.
She looked back at the trailer. If he was really suffering as much as he pretended, then there was still hope. He would have to apologize, of course. He would have to do many things.
Two of the lightning bugs were hovering around her belly. They landed, she brushed them off.
Maybe he’d been seduced. That woman certainly had the capacity to do it. The need, too. She was alone in a small town. The only available men were either too young, too old, too mean or too drunk.
Annoyed, she pulled another of the pesky bugs off her stomach. It buzzed angrily, and two more came racing toward her. Then she noticed that a great swarm of them was coming up the field behind the ruins of the farmhouse, pouring out of the woods like a river of moonlight.
For a moment she watched this phenomenon. Its beauty distressed her, though, because she could not enjoy it, not through her new sorrow.
Five or six of the bugs began pummeling against her stomach like moths crazed by a light bulb. Waving them away, she began to think that it wasn’t so pleasant to be outside now.
More angry at him than ever, she returned to the trailer.
From the dark of the living room, she heard a sound like a dove sighing.
Behind her lightning bugs began hitting the screen door. They were peculiar and unpleasant, not a kind she’d seen before. She shut the wooden inner door to make sure they wouldn’t get through.
“What was that?” he called from the dark.
“Nothing.” She went into the bedroom and lay down. Her body sank into the mattress.
Maybe she had wronged Brian, somehow hurt him. Perhaps the slap—had that driven him away from her? But no, he’d never even mentioned it.
The truth was that men were weak, feckless creatures, led by the stick, as the old grandmothers used to say at home.
Brian belonged to her, and she would not let his stick lead him away.
She was so much smaller than the American woman, so much darker. That was her real trouble. Ellen was as pale as a lotus flower, as tall as a goddess. Her eyes were beautifully round. Despite all her white blood, Loi’s were more slanted than her own mother’s. Slanted eyes were such a misfortune.
The dove sound came again, and this time she sat right up in the bed because she could hear that it was definitely coming from Brian. Was that the sound of his weeping?
She rose, went softly into the living room. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at her, his eyes hollow, his face gleaming with sweat. His reply was mumbled.
“Brian, I can’t hear you.”
When his words came again, they were like the rumbling memory of a storm, slurred echoes of speech. “I’m sorry. I was terribly insensitive.”
She bent to him, took his face in her hands.
“Godawful things are happening,” he said. “Godawful!”
“I know,” she said.
“No, Loi, you don’t know. You don’t know anything!”
“I know all.”
He pushed against her chest, so that she had to rise to her feet, step away from him. “What do you know?”
“Her beauty is very great.”
He closed his eyes, a look of pain.
“Are you going to go with her?”
He came up from the chair. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me!” His bulky body pressed against hers and he held her, trembling like a guilty boy.
He looked down at those rich, dark eyes, and was shaken, amazed by how much he loved her.
Somewhat roughly, she broke away.
“You have a right to your anger. But I still want to ask you to understand.”
She looked down at the floor. He reached for her hand, but she drew away.
“I lose my face. All face.” Her voice shuddered with emotion. For her, there could be no catastrophe worse than loss of face in her marriage. “I saw you embracing her. It hurt me so much!”
“Oh, my poor baby! I beg you, forgive me, somehow find it in your heart.”
“Brian, I am wishing to but I don’t think it’s gonna be!”
He no longer had the option of telling her about the insects. How could he ask her to believe such a crazy story—it would sound like an absurdly clumsy attempt to conceal an affair. “Loi, this is a horrible misunderstanding.”
“Nothing is misunderstood.”
“No. She isn’t my lover.”
“What is she then, a concubine?”
He didn’t answer. There was no way to answer.
She did not want to fight with him. This would accomplish nothing. If he still loved her, she would find out soon enough— but only if she was careful. She gave him a smile. “It’s a hot night, Brian. You’re sweaty. If you’d like some lemonade, it’s still in the fridge.”
They went into the predawn kitchen together and she gave him a glass of the lemonade, watched him drink. “I am a good woman for you. Better than her!”
He could see what had enabled this woman to drag herself up from the bottom. Sometimes great human beings are born into very small lives. In the scheme of things, Loi’s escape from her past was a small thing. But it had required the same kind of human greatness that enables big people to change history. He raised his glass to her. “Thank you, Loi.” “My lemonade is good, isn’t it?”
2
She watched him drink, his eyes pleading. For forgiveness? For rescue? What terrible thing troubled him, so big it was even more important than his infidelity? Better always to speak of big things in the
morning when the blood was strong. “You’re exhausted,” she said.
“I can’t possibly sleep.”
He needed help, she could not deny that… nor that she had the desire to give it to him. Even so, she drew him to the couch, got him to lie with his head in her lap. “Ellen Maas does not even know you. She couldn’t help you now.”
He closed his eyes, let the whirl of explanations fall silent. He dared not ask her if this small intimacy meant that he was being forgiven. Somehow he had to prove to her that he wasn’t being unfaithful with Ellen. Maybe Ellen herself could do it. Together, the two of them could explain all that had happened. It would seem more plausible then. Yes, that was what had to be done.
In the meantime, it was so good here, with his cheek pressed against her stomach, his son communicating faint movements from inside. He closed his eyes. “Loi,” he whispered, “I love you.”
She did not reply.
He had not been asleep two minutes before he became troubled by a nightmare of a tall, black insect standing before him in the darkness, cloaked like a monk. There was a loud cawing noise, the sound of an enraged crow.
Her cool voice awakened him from the dream, then her soft caressing hands lulled him. “Nobody could do this for me, my love, nobody but you.”
He sank away into deeper sleep.
When he woke up she was in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
He sat up from the couch, saw her standing at the sink, sunlight pouring over her from the window.
He’d had more bad dreams, of being trapped down in his old facility, of seeing the charge in the waveguide rising and rising, going beyond redline, of the blue pipe shuddering and smoking and glowing orange, turning into a glowing swarm and rising into the control room—
But nothing like that had ever happened. It was just a nightmare. It symbolized his life going out of control, his brain humming on overdrive, everything flying apart.
Regret cut his heart. Between the two of them everything had changed. Her posture—shoulders stiff, head down—told him that the incident had penetrated the depths of their relationship.
He got up and went into the bathroom. He shaved, mechanically preparing for the day. Her peculiar and delightful Vietnamese singing did not fill the house on this morning.
