Flies were settling on the dogs.
“Taught you a thing or two, huh?” he said, backing away.
HE DROVE THE mile and a half back into the village and parked in the shade of the old carriage house and entered his house by the back door, noisy as always to let his mother know he was home. “Jesus God, Mamma,” he called out; “you got some lemonade or something fixed?—my mouth tastes like a buzzard’s crotch.”
He let fall the bloodstained paper bag onto the table and laughed to think how the old woman would peer into it and scream, but when Mrs. Vickery came into the kitchen she frightened him by the look she gave him and said: “What’s that on your forehead? What you been up to?”
“What’s what?” Ashton said.
“Paint? Blood? Did something fly into you, did you scrape yourself going through the brush?”
FROM UNCLE EWELL he collected only thirty-five dollars, the most the old man would hand over. (He claimed the pack was much larger than Ashton said it was, at least fifteen dogs, maybe twenty; Ashton must have let most of them escape.) Ashton’s photograph was indeed published in the Yewville Journal, in a prominent position on the third page of the Saturday edition; posed with the dogs’ ears arranged before him on the ground, Ashton Vickery squinted at the camera and managed a somewhat strained smile (for cameras made him nervous: he hated to just stay still and have someone do something to him). Ashton and his mother bought a dozen copies of the paper to hand out to all the relatives who might have missed it, and a few friends and neighbors, and in general everyone was well pleased. Dr. Vickery said very little; he spent a while examining the ears, the ragged blood-stiffened ears, but he said very little.
“The old man’s jealous ’cause I got in the paper and he didn’t,” Ashton laughed, slapping at his thighs.
His mother told him to hush, not to make Dr. Vickery flare up; but probably it was true.
BUT PROBABLY IT wasn’t: Thaddeus Vickery was never a mean-spirited man.
II
You are from above and I from beneath; I am of this world and sunk deeply into it: You are not of this world.
Bereft of You for the past three years, I am in dread of dying in my sins . . . I am in dread of the draining-away of my spirit. Once after You swooped upon me so suddenly, like a great hawk, and I only a child at the time, I arose baffled and stunned, and it seemed to me that the soul was a kind of thread: how easily it might be snapped if it were Your will, and thereby loosed from the body!—from the surrounding world!
Now I languish in exile and my spirit is turgid and brackish as swamp water, ebbing daily, draining away. There is an odor of rot and of stagnation: of despair.
Why seek the living God among the dead refuse of the past?
The ditch heaped with bodies, the iridescent winking of the flies, the sky raising itself as the sun burned through the morning haze. Higher and higher the perfection of the sky. Flat, it would seem to me now; flat as wallpaper.
Distance is an illusion of the optical nerve.
The past is an illusion of the human brain.
There were moon-bright nights he slept through with that abandon I described. A certain pale, trembling intensity to his sleep: his breath occasionally rattling, his fair face contorted, his eyeballs rolling in his head. He is not dead at this moment—Ashton Vickery, I mean—but the young man he was is dead; someone is dead. It has been promised there shall be time no longer. And so the past is an illusion, a cheat. And yet it cannot be reclaimed.
I am thy salvation . . .
Of Nathanael it was said by Christ that he should see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. Of the child Nathanael it was said that God had claimed him from birth and filled him at certain moments with His power. In his grandmother’s strong arms he slept: Sweet mouse, sweet little mouse, dear one, dear baby, sleep. His mother’s knees weakened when she carried him and her breath grew rapid and shallow and she cried aloud that he should be taken from her and clasped safely in another’s arms, for there was grave danger she would hurt him—she would drop him on the floor, or bring him too near the stove; she would squeeze him so hard in her embrace that his life would be smothered.
She was evil, some said. The evil that befell her contaminated her.
You know, however, that this was false, and those who said it spoke falsely, in ignorance and in malice.
You have seen deeply into her heart—You know that no evil resides there.
Do You dwell with her even now?—or have You abandoned her also?
It is said that the poor in spirit are blessed, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and they that mourn are blessed, for they shall be comforted; it is said that the meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth. The mighty that are exalted unto heaven shall be brought down to hell . . . But it is also said that to him who has shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him who has little shall be taken away even that which he has.
ONE DARKLY BRIGHT October evening Elsa Vickery was crossing a field on her way home from a Wednesday-night service at the Emmanuel Baptist Church of Marsena when a man, a man she had never seen before in her life, stepped onto the path before her.
She halfway smiled, she was that simple; that friendly.
“Hello?” she said. “What do you—?”
She had never seen him before in her life, or anyone who resembled him. He wore a neck-scarf, he was about the size of her brother Ashton, maybe twenty-eight or thirty years old, he had tight curly hair that might have been black, his forehead was strong and bold, his eyes were dark, shadowy, humorless; though he was grinning at her from the start.
“Who are you?” Elsa asked, her voice rising in amazement. “Do I know you? What—”
He approached her, grinning. His lips were stretched flat across his teeth. He spoke in a harsh melodic voice and she realized he was from the mountains, he was a stranger, he was no one she knew. But what was he saying? She strained to make sense of it. The words were low and caressing, cajoling. Almost inaudible. In the moonlight she could see him plainly: the hair retreating on the temples, the strong bony forehead, the long aquiline nose, the teasing grin. “Where are you going?” he murmured, “Where are you going in such a hurry, huh?—slow down. No hurry. Lots of time. No hurry.” He reached out to touch her and she shrank away, but she was not yet frightened: nothing like this had ever happened to her. The voice was murmuring and caressing and cruel. “Where are you going so fast? Nowhere.”
She turned and ran a few steps and there appeared on the path before her another man, somewhat younger. He stepped out from the brush and blocked her way, holding his arms wide as if for an embrace.
“Who are you?” Elsa cried. “Who do you want—”
The moon exposed them: they were like figures in a photograph, starkly black and very pale, unnaturally pale. Their hair and the recesses of their eyes and their wide-stretched mouths were deeply shadowed—their faces and hands appeared to be white, a queer glowering bloodless white, like bone.
The young man skipped toward her, boyish, his arms extended.
Elsa half-turned, and saw the man with the scarf close behind her, and ran from the path, stumbling, plunging through the underbrush in the direction of the river. Something was startled up, something flittered noiselessly into the air—bats?—could they be bats? The high grass caught at her legs, tiny thorns tore at her flesh, she heard the man laughing behind her, and it crossed her mind that this might be a game—must be a game. Perhaps she did know them? They did know her? It must be a game. One of them clapped his hands as if driving her before him as if she were a cow or a hog, as if he knew her and she him, as if it was a game. But she ran, she ran. It did not matter that the bats fluttered and dipped on all sides, that the underbrush scratched at her legs and hands and even at her face. Were these men brothers or cousins of boys she knew, were the boys hiding somewhere also, could it maybe be the Ackerson brothers, or Ralph Prestone who had been teasing he
r earlier this evening, could it maybe have something to do with Sarah Grace and Gina—? Not long ago Duane Ackerson had frightened her at school, saying there was a tear in the back of her dress, and Elsa had screamed a little, though she had half-known he was teasing and she shouldn’t be so breathless and fluttery and silly—who are you imitating now, her mother would say—and tonight after church services Duane had been glancing her way from time to time though she had ignored him—Or was it her brother Ashton—some friends of his she hadn’t seen before—Once he had put a dead mouse in her coat pocket and howled with laughter at her shock, and—
“What’s the hurry, hey girl? Where’re you going in such a hurry?”
Someone caught her by the upper arm. His fingers squeezed her soft flesh so, she cried out in alarm. It was happening too fast. She could not comprehend the game. She was panting, her hair had fallen into her eyes, her mouth stretched into a kind of smile. “Leave me alone,” she said. But was that Elsa Vickery’s voice? It came out so broken and feeble, she could barely hear it herself.
Another of them ran up. He made a low throaty chuckling noise.
“Who’s this? Who’s this?”
“We found us a little surprise.”
“Is she one of—” and here Elsa couldn’t make out the word, the name: it might have been Wayne or Wade or Ray or something like a jocular snarl, distorted by the long twangy nasal accent. “—one of Wayne’s girls come looking for him? Hunting him up? Can’t get enough of him, eh, and has to come hunting him up?”
Three or four of them surrounded her now. And still another came running with long strides up from the river, where there was a small campfire. Elsa smelled gutted fish, burned flesh, tobacco, beer, whiskey.
“You ain’t told us your name, girl,” the man with the scarf knotted about his neck said, scolding. He closed his fist in her hair and gave her a little shake, as one might shake a dog. “Ain’t you going to be friendly? Ain’t you going to give us a little smile, even?”
Elsa looked from one to the other to the other, still trying to smile, trembling, speechless. Her mouth was so dry, how could she speak? Her tongue had gone numb and cold. Were they men she knew or who knew her, were they friends of Ashton’s, were they teasing not-meaning-to-hurt, were they acting up because they were drunk and couldn’t judge how frightened she was . . . ? She tried to speak but could not; her throat just closed up tight. Her front teeth hurt where the night air touched them.
In the stark moonlight the men resembled one another except for age. And weight. The one with the scarf knotted about his neck appeared to be the oldest—or was he maybe just the pushiest, the most domineering? They were brothers, she saw that. Or cousins. All had tight curly hair, broad faces, loutish grins. Lopsided grins. They had been drinking, that was it: fooling around: not knowing when their play began to hurt. Fishing on the riverbank and drinking and now teasing poor Elsa, who knew she should laugh and push at them and show them she wasn’t afraid, and—Her head was jerked back.
“Why’re you so unfriendly? Why’re you so standoffish? Hey, girl, how come you’re trying so hard to get away?”
Even now she thought she should smile; must smile. For if it was a game, a joke, if they told about it afterward, why, she would be laughed at—everyone in Marsena would laugh at her. Silly Elsa Vickery! Isn’t she silly, getting so worked up over a joke! It hadn’t been so very many years ago she and Gina Talbot were chased home from school by the big boys afternoon following afternoon, and it had been only play, the boys hooting after them and tossing horse chestnuts and snowballs and overripe pears in season, and hadn’t the other girls been rather jealous because it was obvious the boys liked them—which was what the schoolteacher tried to explain to Dr. Vickery, who didn’t understand and who was angry, having seen his daughter running shrieking down the middle of the Marsena Road in full view of anyone who happened to look out—
One of the men held her by the hair, and another squeezed her arm again where it already hurt, and still another, a boy, bent forward to touch her breast—how could he dare do such a thing, in front of everyone! She tried to throw herself backward. She tried to break free. Dear God, she cried in silence, dear God please don’t let, dear God please—She stumbled against someone’s legs and nearly fell. But they wouldn’t let her fall. Beery whiskeyish breaths were hot against her face. Why were they laughing? Why did they want to hurt her? She couldn’t believe it was happening and her mind stood off a little from it, astonished, feeling nothing. But then she came back to herself and nothing had changed. The boy had pushed against her, speaking in a light sly taunting teasing drunken voice, saying words she had never heard before but understood, somehow, understood at once: she stared at him in amazement and saw he was hardly more than her own age, and there was a smudge—or was it a birthmark—three or four marks on his cheek—and then her knees buckled.
Dear God—
Oh please—
An arm jammed itself beneath her chin, hard. Pressed itself against her throat, hard. She choked and gagged and tried to scream. There was a taste of grit, salt—one of them put his hand over her mouth.
At last behind that hand, she began to scream.
THAT AFTERNOON IT had been warm enough for Elsa and Sarah Grace Renfrew to sit on the side veranda of the Vickery house, in the sun, making crepe-paper flowers—mainly daffodils and jonquils and daisies—the water lilies were tricky, and the roses demanded a certain precision Elsa didn’t seem to have: so she thought it wisest to make only the simplest flowers, since she was wasting paper and her wilted, mashed attempts were disappointing and made her feel irritable and perhaps a little resentful of her friend Sarah Grace. So the girls worked for several hours, sitting at a small oakwood table Dr. Vickery had brought out for them. They carefully fluted the edges of petals, they carefully arranged tiny stamens inside calyxes, and with their very fingertips labored to make the tips of the stamens look real or close to real. The petals and the interior organs were secured by twists of wire, thread-thin, then covered with dark green crepe paper, and the flower itself was then secured to a stem of covered wire, very malleable but not very real-looking. However, it worked—it held the flower up, and kept the leaves in place, and looked fairly nice. She kept glancing at the six or eight daffodils she had already made, rather pleased with them, though the first two were bruised and perhaps the petals were overstretched in places and showed finger smudges—but then, so did Sarah Grace’s: they were no better, really. Elsa thought the flowers looked nice. They were for the church bazaar a week from Saturday and she hoped everyone would like them and that they would be bought, not left behind; but probably someone would buy them—one of her aunts or even her mother—just to make her feel good. She hoped that wouldn’t happen, it would be so awkward. Everyone would know. Sarah Grace’s flowers would probably be sold and what if hers, Elsa Vickery’s, were not—everyone would know and pity her—
“Look what you’re doing,” Sarah Grace said sharply.
“What—?”
She had almost knocked the saucer of glue off the table with her elbow.
“I saw it,” Elsa said, her face going hot.
“You didn’t either see it. You were going to—”
“You needn’t be so smart,” Elsa muttered.
“How am I smart? Just for saying that?” Sarah Grace whined. But she kept working at the jonquil she was making, her fingers quick and skillful. She was Elsa’s age exactly, almost to the day—fifteen years old last May—but taller and thinner and more quick-minded and with a tendency (so everyone said, especially Sarah Grace’s mother) to get ahead of herself. “Did you want me to sit here and say nothing while the saucer is skidding off the table—?”
“All right,” Elsa said.
Sarah Grace’s fingers were so slender, so swift; they looked as it they knew ahead of time what they should do—how was it possible? Elsa had to think carefully about each step. First you did one thing and then the next and then the next, and th
en you fitted the sections together, one step, then another and another, and when she was doing the first she couldn’t possibly think of the next, let alone the next, while Sarah Grace showed her how you could skip one of the steps by twisting some wire around the stem to begin with and then fitting the petals in and—but it was too complicated, Elsa’s head swam, she had to shut her eyes and tell Sarah Grace to please stop: she intended to follow the instructions in the book Mrs. Sisley gave them, and that was that. “There’s only one way of doing things, Reverend Sisley says—the right way,” she told Sarah Grace, who only shrugged her skinny shoulders. So she labored and bit at her lip and sighed with befuddlement and exasperation—if a flower was so difficult to make in nature, if God had such trouble with it, why there wouldn’t be many flowers at all—or there would be just the very simplest ones—and sometimes she threw her work down with a small cry of impatience and hurt and began over again, all over again. It seemed to Elsa that her hands were heavy birds, ungainly and sullen, not at ease on the table-top amid the crepe paper and wire and flour-and-water paste.
Sarah Grace was singing under her breath, and Elsa began to sing under hers. She sometimes wondered—did Sarah Grace do such things deliberately to annoy, or was it just her nature? It often happened that the girls got on each other’s nerves, though Elsa knew it was rarely her fault. She was easygoing, softhearted, too softhearted. Where Sarah Grace was all wristbones and elbows and long skinny legs, Elsa was prematurely adult with flesh and a certain overwarm embarrassment. It might be said that Elsa Vickery was the prettier of the two—though Elsa would have protested shrilly and gone bright red, her eyes fairly watering with dismay; but neither girl was nearly so attractive as Gina Talbot, whom they both admired and detested. Sarah Grace was tall and pale and freckled and her two front teeth were unfortunately prominent. Elsa was rather short, with a large spreading frame like her mother’s, and her mother’s soft, fine, beautiful skin—high-colored for the most part, especially when she was excited or self-conscious, and unfortunately so delicate, so lovely, that the smallest bump or pimple or rash or insect bite could disfigure it: so that she spent long miserable minutes staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, wondering if life was worth it, if she could manage to endure, if she could just live through the drawn-out space of time it took one of her skin eruptions to flare up, come to a dull, sullen, white-tipped maturity, and then subside and gradually fade . . . Sarah Grace’s skin was blemished, but with her freckles who could tell? It wasn’t fair. Elsa eyed her enviously and thought it wasn’t fair. At the same time she knew it was wrong, it was sinful, to think such thoughts about her best friend—or about anyone; she knew that very well. Hadn’t Jesus made it quite clear . . . Not once but several times Jesus had been very outspoken on the subject of envy and jealousy and spite and coveting and lusting after in one’s heart . . . and Reverend Sisley had preached near the end of summer about the seven abominations—was it from the Book of Psalms or Proverbs—all about discord and mischief, the sowing of evil, the danger of pride, lying tongues, the heart that devises wicked imaginings . . . feet swift in running to mischief, or was it to being a false witness . . . She had listened closely, rather fearfully (for it sometimes seemed that Reverend Sisley was preaching to her—that he knew very well how sinful she was, how she forgot about Jesus for long periods of time during the day, how she was mean and spiteful and silly and petty and jealous and clumsy as a calf, and her skin was always—always—broken out in some prominent heartbreaking place), and while she could not always follow Reverend Sisley’s or the Bible’s argument word for word, she nevertheless knew very well in her heart what was being said. Certain phrases escaped her altogether, certain warnings were baffling and alarming, but she felt vaguely that she understood: she sensed the awful, inevitable truth: it had in some way to do with her, even when she was most confused. (For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread, Reverend Sisley had read in his high, rapid, breathless voice, glancing up and out at the congregation over his glasses, and blinking as if he’d just run before them with terrifying news, news for them out of all the world’s inhabitants; and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life . . . !)
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