In another place I lived for some months, in the South, near to former, thriving plantations on which cotton was picked by enslaved Africans, there was a florid-faced man who'd been a farmer, and in his late sixties, after retirement, decided to learn massage therapy, so he went to school and once a week offered his novice services free to everyone in the small town. I offered myself regularly to him. His farmer's hands were rough and big as hams, he read the Bible daily, he moved fastidiously, he kept the room very warm, and every time he worked on me, also very slowly, I melted into the professional table he brought with him, and under his rough-skinned, gentle hands and fresh sheets smelling of wildflowers his wife laundered, I let my mind wander as far as it could, since I mean always to untether it from its ordinary course, but habits were established early, in the neural routes of the brain, about which I had no choice. The apprentice masseur spent hours on me practicing his trade, and his efforts tired me, but also I had hardly a care in the world by the time he finished, and the big, tender man was also exhausted, when darkness had fallen in the place where wildflowers sprouted, bloomed in abundance, and the air smelled sweeter than the freshly laundered sheets, and no more was expected of either of us. I could return to my home, careful to avoid a man who, because I refused his seduction, would later take revenge, though I didn't know that then, when my fate was, in some way, enjoined to his unfulfilled, temporary desire. I remember the masseur's hulk, his benign face and large frame, I can assemble the sweet infinitude of those long nights in that overheated room where he practiced on me, where his tender concern and his religious convictions showed themselves, by acknowledging, in long, stroking motions and studious pummeling, his belief that the body was holy.
Today I'm determined to walk briskly and avoid the main house and to keep to the road. I wonder if facing the traffic, when it rounds the bend, or having my back to it, is safer, as I also watch for deer, birds, squirrels, and wild turkeys. If it is 3 p.m., the yellow schoolbus will wind around the road and drop off children, big and little, in a familiar scene that verges on a gluttonous, almost pornographic sentimentalism, so I hope to make my way to town before its nostalgic appearance. It is probably 2:00, not even, and there is hardly a car that passes and only a few trucks, and by the side of the road beer cans and used condoms are strewn, but not too many, and sometimes from the thick forest a hidden animal moans or a bird sings or screeches, or the trees and branches, some bare, shake from a sudden breeze, but it is mostly remarkably quiet. I can hear my heart beat and my second heart contract, and also hear my breathing, which I adjust to my steps, in, step; out, step; in, step; out, step, and while I try not to worry, only to breathe in and out, to think, what a day, since it is a beautiful day, but I do worry, also about how well I'm breathing. I keep up a pace but am passed by two women jogging who wave exuberantly; by the tall balding man running even faster, with his mouth hanging open, so he looks vulnerable and stupid, when he is neither; then the kitchen helper, who whizzes by on his bicycle, hits the brakes, turns to look at me, gets off, and stops to talk. Now I remember that I appear to be something.