Wonderland

by Joyce Carol Oates

  His body was tired from the heavy farmwork. Yet he was pleased with it—the persistent, inhuman work. He was not the same boy he had been a few months before. He had become transformed entirely. When he went to bed not long after dark he fell asleep at once, exhausted, urgent, his body tightened until the moment at which he actually slept and was lost to himself. And so, he thought, the rest of his life would pass. Sleep, waking, work; sleep, waking, work. Jesse sleeping. Jesse waking. Jesse at work, hard at work. He would not have to think about his life because it would pass like this, one day after another, carrying him forward. When he walked he could feel the muscles hardening in his legs and thighs; it excited him to think of the inhuman growth of the muscles in him, the strange, neutral strengthening of his body, which would push him forward into his own future.

  The soft, sucking noises of the earth—what did they have to tell him except that he could walk quietly through the mud, in his boots, and be free of it and of anything that tried to hold him down?

  One Sunday in early April he went with the dog along the bank of the creek—the “crick”—that ran about a mile behind his grandfather’s house. The underbrush was thick on the banks and he had to force his way through. Birds flew up about him, as if to startle him. Partridges, pheasants, trying to terrify him with the noise of their flight. Across the creek he saw some boys, five or six boys. Were they his own age? He could not see how old they were. He hid, not wanting them to see him. They were hunting, probably for rabbits. Jesse hid and watched them. The day was filmy and glaring; he had to shade his eyes in order to see them. It crossed his mind that they might fire idly into the bushes and hit him.… Their voices came, indistinct and light as girls’ voices, across the distance. He wondered what they were talking about. Two dogs ran along with them. Jesse had to comfort Duke, who had begun to whimper. “Quiet. It’s all right. Nobody is going to hurt you,” Jesse murmured. He watched as the boys climbed the long high hill of the creek bank and he could almost feel the strain of their climb, the tug of their leg muscles. They were about to disappear. Jesse had an impulse to call out to them—But he said nothing. Displeased with himself, he grinned angrily, mockingly, and stood with the heels of his boots firmly in the sucking mud. He did not move.

  When the boys were out of sight he hacked his way to the creek bank. Slid down a few yards of earth, sliding in the mud, almost falling. His arm shot out mechanically to steady himself and the pain in his back began. God damn it. He shaded his eyes to look across the creek, but the boys were gone. Now, standing alone on the bank, he began to realize that this place was familiar. His grandfather had evidently built a dam across the creek at this point, to force water back into a stream for his cows. Yes, he remembered that old dam. It was nearly gone now, only a few of the heaviest rocks remained in place. Water splashed across them, thick with mud, propelling debris, and in between the rocks water rushed freely and smoothly.… Jesse fingered his shoulder. The wound pounded strangely. What was this place, why was it so familiar to him? He stood on the bank and wondered if he could walk across on what remained of the old dam. The water was quite shallow. He stepped onto the first rock, which was larger than a man’s head. It was shaky. He put his foot on the next rock but it was precarious, it would probably turn if he shifted his weight onto it. He paused. Duke had splashed after him. He shaded his eyes and looked up the creek again—he knew that this was a familiar place but he could not remember why. Was someone watching him?

  Then he remembered: Six or seven years ago his father had gathered a group of motorcyclists out here, men from Yewville and Lock-port and Ontario, and they had raced across the creek and up the bank and a mile out to the road and back again, around a big, crazy looping circle.… Jesse and some other boys had watched them. A few women had watched them. It had been a hot sunny day in midsummer and the men had been drinking beer, and at some point there had been a fist-fight: Jesse’s father bellowing at someone, the sudden exchange of blows, Jesse’s father lifting his knee into the pit of another man’s stomach, cries of alarm and rage, some of the women screaming. It was all mixed up in Jesse’s head with the roar of the motorcycles and the speed of their racing. Flattened grass, grass torn out by wheels, caught up in spokes and torn out like hair from a head—Yes, they had raced here. Down that long creek bank, into the creek and up the other side, and back around again, turning sharply, back into the creek and up the hill, some of the motorcycles falling sideways, the men leaping clear, the laughter, the swearing.… Jesse’s father had gone home with a tooth missing. Blood all over his shirt front. Grinning at Jesse’s mother and her angry surprise. What, what did you do to yourself! He had shown her the empty socket, as if proud of it. Jesse had stared into his father’s mouth, feeling his warm breath, the scent of blood, the warm dark damp scent of blood.

  The sun seemed to break above him and to be reflected suddenly in the churning water. Fragments of light darting like bugs, like fragments of thought he could not bring together. He stood paralyzed. He could not move. Around him the water surged, high because it was April, with the light inside it. He felt that he would become lost in the light, in the broken water. What if he could not make his way home again? Where was his home? He might slip and fall, the wound might open again and bleed, pouring out of him the way this water poured downstream. He tightened his fingers on his shoulder. There it was, the pounding of his blood, that thrilling beat that pronounced his name for him, the triumph of his blood, changing inside him, making him silent and separate and safe from himself as his grandfather’s horses. He wondered if the wound was clean. There might be germs.

  Living begins when crying leaves off.

  The day multiplied around him. The water seemed to thicken as it rushed around his feet. It sparkled, caught fire, shaping and breaking and shaping itself again, like darting insects or stars or thoughts not quite thought. He would spend the rest of his life like this, in the country, safe in the country, where the water and the light and the expanse of empty land could hide him.…

  That evening, after supper, he said to his grandfather, “Can I look at those things in the barn? My parents’ things?”

  The kerosene lamp threw up long faint shadows across the old man’s face. He was impassive, as if he had heard nothing.

  “Please,” Jesse said, raising his voice. “Can I look at them?”

  His grandfather looked away. “You better leave all that alone.”

  “Please—”

  “Why do you want to mess around?”

  “I just want to look.”

  “That won’t do you any good.”

  The old man pushed his chair away from the table and stood. Jesse stiffened. He could hear his grandfather’s disturbed, raspy breathing, and he knew that he had made a mistake. But he did not care. He said recklessly, “Grandpa, please, it won’t hurt anybody.…”

  “No.”

  “I only want to look. I know I can’t use the radio or anything. I know that. I only want to look.”

  “I said no.”

  “Why not?”

  His grandfather’s hairless, stern face was eager now, eager to say no. No. And Jesse, standing to face him, was eager to oppose him. “I only want to look in there. Why is it locked?”

  “Because I want it locked.”

  “But why?”

  “That junk is no good to nobody, it’s staying where it is. It’s piled up neat out there and it can rot, just junk, nobody would buy it, the barn is locked and it’s staying locked.”

  “My bed is in there. I could use my bed,” Jesse said.

  “You have a bed.”

  “I want my own bed.”

  “The barn is staying locked.” Jesse could feel a swaying motion between them, a movement of the air. He and the old man were staring at each other. Jesse felt how immune he was, at this moment, as if he were still on that rock in the creek, buoyed up by the energy of the water. And his grandfather, with that coarse, flushed face, the mean little eyes, was as immune as Je
sse himself; stern and aged and nullified, he faced Jesse across the kitchen table.

  “You’re like her,” the old man said suddenly, sneering.

  “Like who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Like her, just like her! You don’t let trouble alone, you hunt it out! All right, go after it, marry it, lay down with it, but when you get up again all filthy don’t come to me—you get what you deserve. Don’t come to me for help, any of you!”

  Something flew up inside Jesse, a sensation of terror. It was almost giddy, it was like the fragmented sparkling water with the darkness beneath it, inside it. He stared at his grandfather’s angry working jaws. He could not believe that his grandfather had said those words—so many months of silence, a dry, holy silence, and now those ugly words. He thought: Don’t say anything more! Not one word more!

  “The two of you are alike, you and her,” his grandfather said. “You ask for trouble. You want it. I told the doctor and the others, I told them I was an old man and sick to death of all this, that family, all my family—why don’t they let me alone? People should let one another alone! But I drove to Yewville and there you were, in bed, and your father was dead by then, and you were in the hospital and they said you would be alone, so I gave in and said all right. All right. I would take you back with me. All right. But I’m an old man,” he said hotly, “and I’m tired, I want to come to the end of things, I don’t want starting all over again with a kid and a goddamn noisy nervous dog and trouble—I knew what he was, your father, the first time I saw him. I knew. And that day he came out here and tore up the land and I called the police on him, I knew what he was, everybody knew—”

  “Don’t—” Jesse said.

  He put out his hand as if to caution his grandfather—how could he be saying these things, how could he be putting them into words at all? For months there had been a silence in which certain events still existed, stark and invisible, and now that silence had been dirtied by words, by an old man’s whining voice.

  “Fifty years I worked this place, you know that? You know what fifty years is? No. You don’t. You don’t know.”

  “I only want to see those things. They’re mine,” Jesse said.

  “Yours! What’s yours! You don’t own anything on this earth, not a thing! Yours! I should sell that junk to the junkman! Should ask him for five dollars and he could haul it all away!” the old man said angrily. “What do you think that hospital cost? Who do you think has to pay for it—all that blood and medicine and the doctor and the bed? Huh? Do you think the hospital is free? Your goddamn bastard of a father lived for two days, did you know that?—two days with part of his head blown off because the stupid goddamn bastard couldn’t aim right when it was between his own eyes he needed to shoot—he lived and sucked up blood and money, and who do you think has to pay for that? Bastard—bloodsucker—cost me money while he was dying—and the funerals—the goddamn son of a bitch, that undertaker—”

  He screwed up his face and spat. He spat onto the floor but some of the spittle clung to his chin. Jesse stood with his hand outstretched toward his grandfather.

  How could such words be said out loud?

  Jesse ran to the back room, to his bed.

  He lay awake most of the night. He could not believe what he had heard. It was not that his grandfather had said anything wrong, but that he had said anything at all. It couldn’t have happened. They had had a partnership of silence; Jesse had thought he understood that silence, but his grandfather had violated it … and he had spat onto the floor of his own kitchen, his eyes narrowed with hatred.… Branches rubbed against the roof and the side of the house, as if signaling Jesse. The windows were very dark. Black. It was all an inhuman place outside, no words, no betrayal. No words. He watched the windows turn slowly from black to gray, a fuzzy bright gray, and his head ached with the certainty of the morning and his return to himself, to Jesse, the inescapable beat of his heart: Jesse, Jesse, here is Jesse, this is Jesse. That heartbeat got him out of bed, it was so strong, so demanding. He could not lie in that bed any longer. He was finished with it.

  He walked for several miles before he caught a ride with a farmer. It was a Monday morning and there wasn’t much traffic. The farmer drove a rickety old car and hadn’t much to say to Jesse, didn’t recognize him, didn’t ask him any questions. He let him off on the highway. Jesse began to walk toward Yewville, between empty fields. A man driving a truck piled high with fresh new lumber picked him up. “Where you headed, kid? Yewville?” Jesse said yes. He wondered if this man recognized him. But no, probably not, he chattered about the long drive and about a boxing match he had seen in Buffalo. “Do you like boxing?” he asked Jesse. Jesse seemed to think for a moment, then said no. The driver glanced at him, peeved.

  He stopped at a bar near Yewville, one Jesse remembered his father going to, and Jesse walked the rest of the way. The air was very damp. He walked along the edge of the road quickly, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. This close to home, he did not want anyone to recognize him. He walked fast, faster. As he neared his old home he felt strangely lightheaded, as he had felt as a child on important days—his birthday or Christmas—when the day loomed up gigantic and unpredictable, an uncharted day that might be too much for him to live through. His skin felt bright. He found himself smiling brightly.

  There it was: the gas station, the small house, the junkyard. There. But something new was out front, a FOR SALE sign, black letters on a yellow background. FOR SALE. Why did the sign look old? It was dented and chipped and weatherworn. There were small pits in it, as if kids had thrown stones at it or shot it with BB guns. Jesse’s face was numb, but inside his face, where the nerves and blood vessels worked like tiny electric wires, everything was subtle and alive.

  What would happen? He was coming home. At any minute Duke might come running down the drive to him, barking. He might see a movement at the door of the house—his mother waiting for him, wondering why he was home from school so early. I just walked out. I wanted to come home. He thought of the Christmas assembly and of how he had hidden in the lavatory, afraid to go home, where he was needed. He could have changed everything if he had gone home.… He touched the realtor’s sign, running his fingers along its edges. He had never heard of Martin Realtors before. What business did they have selling this house?… He walked up the drive, which was in bad shape from the long winter, its gravel sparse and eroded. Mostly mud. He seemed to be floating to the door. It was splashed with mud from the dog’s paws. Jesse tried the handle. Locked. He looked around to see if anyone was watching. The back of his head tingled. But he was alone, the highway was empty, everything was still except the birds. A flock of crows. Calling at him, taunting him from the Brennans’ side of the fence. His heart pounded slowly, stubbornly, I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Jesse Harte is here, a survivor.

  A lone car passed out on the road, not slowing.

  Miles away, his grandfather would be alone—maybe glancing up at the sky, a habit the old man had, just as his father had had the habit of glancing at his watch. Checking the weather. The time of day. He would do the farm chores and he would think, now and then, of Jesse. He would keep on living—an old man, sour and tired, a failure, but living—and Jesse would keep on living, the two of them now separate, in separate dimensions. The old man had been his grandfather for a while. A partner for a while. They had worked together, lived in the same house together, they had shared months of silence together … and then it had all ended, his grandfather had broken the silence, had spat. It was ended. Jesse felt his eyes well with bitterness at the thought of that old man’s betrayal. He had loved his grandfather and his grandfather had betrayed him.

  He smashed the door window. He reached inside and unlocked the door, cutting himself on a piece of glass. He wiped the blood absent-mindedly on his jacket and went inside.

  Unheated. The kitchen was nearly empty—only the old stove and the icebox
remaining, very dirty. He looked from corner to corner. Was this the right house? So empty, so cold.… His heart slowed as if coming to rest. Yes, this was the right place. It was restful here. He was stepping into his true home, out of the strife of crows and the moist, sinking sound of the earth.

  Walking through the rooms. Floating. The living room—the empty, stained walls—the floor with its worn-out carpet—the cardboard boxes in a corner, the puffs of dust, the window shades yanked halfway down. For a moment the roof of his mouth ached. In the back room one of the windows had been boarded up. Boards nailed in place. Jesse recognized this room. Who had nailed those boards up? His grandfather? The police?

  There was a box, an old crate, in the corner. Jesse went to sit on it.

  On the wall before him were patches of sunlight that flickered and faded and grew bright again. He could see out into the other room and there the sunlight looked stronger. A movement of cloud: patterns of shadow upon darker shadow. The wallpaper was ragged. Yet there was something compelling about it. Ripped, smeared. A certain design. His heart announced to the place, I’m here, here I am.… Jesse narrowed his eyes to hear more closely the sounds of his family—his brother, his sisters, his parents—and he felt them watching him from the doorway, wondering at his being so alone, sitting on this crate. He would be teased for walking out of school so early. I wanted to come home. I just walked out. He remained sitting, his nerves tightened, his face brightened as if with fever. He would not go back to school. He would not go back to his grandfather’s farm. That was over. He would not go back to the hospital because he was well. He was healed. A face seemed to be shaping itself out of the torn wallpaper, nicks and scratches and a deep tear that was like a mouth, a gouge of a mouth, his father’s mouth, his father’s staring face.…