When he stopped the second night it was in Huguenot country, and he decided to try an inn he had not seen on his earlier trip. He tied the horse up and knocked at the door, then went inside, where he was greeted by two small round people — one a man, the other a woman. Whether they were husband and wife or brother and sister he could not say, but that they were related was unarguably clear, as both had the same set to their face and a general shared air about them. When he tried to order pork they responded to him in a language he thought might be Frankish but could not understand. They brought him out what he had asked for without further complaint, though, and he was satisfied until the little one, the woman, spoke to him sharply and pointed at a picture of the Accepted Son of God that had been pinned to the wall. He nodded his head at it, turned back to his plate, and began eating. At that point the larger one of the two came and took the spoon from his hand.
“As I haven’t paid, I guess it is your spoon. So you are lucky today,” Merian said, standing and towering over the man. The hotelier then pointed at the picture drawing and folded his hands together with bowed head. Merian understood that they expected him to pray before he had his meal, or else they thought he was not Christian and were trying to convert him. It was not his understanding, though, of how such things were done. He took his coat and continued out the door.
Outside he sat his horse again and pulled a piece of hardtack from the saddlebag, which he ate, half wishing he had not left in such haste. He appreciated, however, that he would now get home that much sooner, so long as the gelding’s legs should hold.
He rode half possessed into the evening, when the sun became a thin yellow line at the horizon, silhouetting the heavy tarnished-gray sky that descended from the heavens as a breeze from the east began to tremble and scatter the clouds. When he finally stopped that night it was to sleep under the stars, as he had not done since he was still a young man. Half his natural life, he thought, bending slowly to avoid aggravating an ache in his knees, was passed now and over. He lay down on his pallet and tried then, as he watched the night, to draw out all the lines that had led to him, and all that led away — parsing events and faces, trying to remember the different iterations of his character and seeming fate. One had gone to Ruth and Ware, and another to Sanne and Purchase. One to Virginia and Sorel’s Hundred, another to Stonehouses, or else one led to Virginia and then away, breaking again across the schism of that place into two. Only one line, though, continuing through each station, both itself and its own tangent, bending before the objects in its path and reuniting on the other side of them to continue its passing march. And one of those boys to grow up fathered and the other abandoned; one left with a knowable inheritance; the other a patrimony of questions. There is no sense to be made of it all but a pretend one, he told himself, pulling his saddle blanket up under his chin and staring up mutely before falling asleep, as he used to in times past, under the blanketing stars, the cold and naked canopy, systemic and random, of heaven.
When he finally reached Stonehouses first frost had already set in, and the crystalline glow from the fields danced in the red sunrise as he approached, making the whole place look as if it were on fire. Around the lake district all was quiet, and he reached the house without disturbance or indication that anything was the matter on his farm.
He stabled the horse at a small outbuilding he had put up, which served as a barn, then walked the worn path to his door. Inside nothing stirred when he entered, and he touched the oven to see how long it might have been since Sanne went out. It was stone cold, and a fine dust covered its surface, but he cast about briefly for her anyway, before admitting she was nowhere on the place. He did not know what he would do about it, but knew whatever it was would have to wait until later in the day. He fired the stove then and made himself some porridge and a handful of okra, as he was used to from his days alone there.
He had never considered his and Sanne’s rows a thing to be worried about, but as an elemental part of the working conflict of creation. He was concerned, though, as he went out to the barn and fed the wan-looking animals, that he might have disturbed the very base of relations between the two of them. He returned and finished boiling water for a wash, savoring the hot cloth across his dirty, tired face, then bedded down for a spell — collapsing from the demands of the journey just passed. He had returned a full day quicker than it took him to go there, but when he added the time he was away, almost two weeks, he realized he had been far and gone indeed.
* * *
When he woke from his rest, he checked on the horse and decided to let the creature continue sleeping as he went on his errands. “You’re no Potter,” he said, slapping the gelding’s shank. “Potter would’ve — well, never mind what Potter would have done.”
He gave the beasts new hay, bundled himself in warm clothing, and set out on foot for the town center. When he reached Content’s place, exhausted from the trek, he hollered around back before going inside, where he found his friend at the bar.
“Sanne here?”
“Mad at you a bit.”
“But here?”
“Since three days. Scary out there by herself.”
Content did not say anything else to accuse him, and Merian did not feel the need to explain himself. All the same, he told his friend, “I came from somewhere too, Content. Just like you and Dorthea and Sanne and that little boy. I came from somewhere that didn’t just dry up and disappear when I left.”
“Still, scary out there at night by herself,” Content said, pulling a pint and placing it before Merian.
“I appreciate your looking after them.”
“Nothing of it.”
“Will she see me?”
“We can try and find out.”
Content went out back and upstairs to the main living quarters, returning after fifteen minutes and nodding to Merian from the doorway. Merian rose and removed his hat, going the way his friend had just come from, as Content went back to the bar.
When he entered the room Dorthea said hello cordially before withdrawing to help Content in the tavern.
“I had business to attend,” he said preemptively. “I had put it off already, and put it off, but it was getting older and older until it couldn’t wait anymore.”
“Did you bring her back with you?” Sanne asked, staring directly at him. “Is she out there at my home right now?”
“No, Sanne,” he answered her. “There is no one else there, nor will there ever be.”
Still, she would not return with him that evening, and it took almost a week of negotiations before she would go back to Stonehouses at all. When she finally did, she reminded him at every opportunity what it was like to sit waiting for him those first two days after he disappeared, after she had put two and one together to figure what he had done.
He bore the recrimination silently, knowing it would eventually die down and be replaced by some other passion. In due course this proved correct, when she turned her attention back to Purchase, gathering him up in her arms. “Why, I bet he hardly recognizes you anymore,” she said, without looking at her husband.
Merian’s face deflated, and she witnessed then the same look she had noticed when he was courting her, and wondered again whether he was not a man cursed with sadness. But Merian simply began playing with Purchase, speaking to him softly, until they were all at ease. His only remark to Sanne then was to ask whether the boy had grown in the brief time he was away. “Didn’t anybody comment on his size when you were staying in the town?” he asked.