I fell many times. The last time, I peered up through creepers and nettles and saw that the malevolence had gone; the god had departed; human light was darting into the vegetation, the light which represents our conquering of unreason, and I brought my body complaining up into a squatting position to see from where the light was coming. I could feel Alison’s letter in my pocket. My personality began to reassemble. Artificial light is a poem to reasonableness, the lightbulb casts out demons, it speaks in rhymed couplets, and my body began to shake with relief, as if I had stumbled into the formal gardens of Versailles.
Even my normal cast of mind returned to me, and I regretted my momentary betrayal of belief. It was betrayal of Alison and betrayal of spirit. I had been spooked, and spooked by literature at that.
As this specific Teagardenish guilt whispered through me, I finally saw where I was and knew the house from which light fell. Yet my body still trembled with relief when I made it stand and walk through the domesticated oaks.
She appeared on the porch. The sleeves of a man’s tweed jacket hung below the tips of her fingers. She was still wearing the high rubber boots. “Who is that out there? Miles? Is that you?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “I got lost.”
“Are you alone?”
“You’re always asking me that.”
“But I heard two of you.”
I just stared at her.
“Come on in, Miles, and I’ll pour you some coffee.”
When I came up on the porch she scrutinized me with her good eye. “Why, Miles, you’re in a terrible condition! You’re all over dirt. And you’ve torn your clothes.” She looked down “And you’ll have to take off those boots before you can come; into my kitchen.”
Gently I removed the mud-laden boots. I was aware of numerous small aches and sores on my face and hands, and I had somewhere banged my leg in the same place I had when I had accompanied the chair down the stairs of the root cellar.
“Why, you’re limping, Miles! What were you doing out there at night?”
I lowered myself into a chair and she placed a cup before me. “Auntie Rinn, are you sure you heard someone else in the woods? Someone besides me?”
“It was probably one of the chickens. They do get out and make an awful ruckus.” She was sitting poised on a chair across the old wooden table from me, her long white hair falling to the shoulders of the gray tweed jacket. Steam from the cups rose wispily between us. “Let me take care of your face.”
“Please don’t bother,” I said, but she had already bounced up and was at the sink, dampening a cloth. Then she took a covered pot from a shelf and returned. The cloth was cool and soothing against my cheekbones.
“I don’t like saying this to you, Miles, but I think you should leave the valley. You were troubled when you first came here, and you are more troubled now. If you will insist on staying, I want you to leave Jessie’s house and come to stay here.”
“I can’t.”
She dipped her fingers in the pot and dabbed a thick green mixture on my cuts. It made my entire face throb. A woodsy fragrance snagged in my nostrils. “This is just an herbal mixture for your cuts, Miles. What were you doing out there?”
“Looking for someone.”
“Looking for something in the woods at night?”
“Ah, yes, someone broke most of the glass on my car and I thought I saw them running up this way.”
“Why were you trembling?”
“I’m not used to running.” Her fingers were still rubbing the green mixture into my face.
“I can protect you, Miles.”
“I don’t need protection.”
“Then why were you so frightened?”
“It was just the woods. The darkness.”
“Sometimes it is right to fear the dark.” She looked at me fiercely. “But it is never right to lie to me, Miles. You were not looking for a vandal. Were you?”
I was conscious of the trees bending over the house, of the darkness outside her circle of light.
She said, “You must pack your things and leave. Come here or go back to New York. Go to your father in Florida.”
“I can’t.” That thick smell hung over my face.
“You will be destroyed. You must at least come here to stay with me.”
“Auntie Rinn,” I said. My entire body had begun to shake again. “Some people think I have been killing those girls — that was the reason they attacked my car. What could you do against them?”
“They will never come here. They will never come up my path.” I remembered how she had terrified me when I was a child, with that look on her face, sentences like that in her mouth. “They are only town people. They have nothing to do with the valley.”
The little kitchen seemed intolerably hot, and I saw that the woodstove was burning, alive like a fireplace with snapping flames.
I said, “I want to tell you the truth. I felt something monstrous out there. Something purely hostile, and that’s why I was frightened. I guess; it was evil I felt. But it all came out of books. Some toughs chased me through Arden, and then Polar Bears shook me up, as he would say. I know the literature about all this. I know all about Puritans in the wilderness, and it caught up with me. I’ve been repressed and I’m not myself.”
“What are you waiting for, Miles?” she asked, and I knew that I could prevaricate no longer.
“I’m waiting for Alison,” I said. “Alison Greening. I thought it was her I saw from the road, and I ran up into the woods to find her. I’ve seen her three times.”
“Miles—” she began, her face wild and angry.
“I’m not working on my dissertation any more, I don’t care about that, I’ve been feeling more and more that all of that is death to the spirit, and I’ve been getting signs that Alison will come soon.”
“Miles—”
“Here’s one of them,” I said and took the crumpled envelope out of my pocket. “Hovre thinks I sent it to myself, but she sent it, didn’t she? That’s why the writing is like mine.”
She was going to speak again, and I held up my hand. “You see, you never liked her, nobody ever liked her, but we were always alike. We were almost the same person. I’ve never loved any other woman.”
“She was your snare. She was a trap waiting for you to enter it.”
“Then she still is, but I don’t believe it.”
“Miles—”
“Auntie Finn, in 1955 we made a vow that we would meet here in the valley, and we set a date. It’s in only a few weeks from now. She is going to come, and I am going to meet her.”
“Miles,” she said, “your cousin is dead. She died twenty years ago, and you killed her.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said.
I LIGHT OUT FOR THE TERRITORIES
__________
Six
__________
“Miles,” she said, “your cousin died in 1955 while the two of you were swimming in the old Pohlson quarry. She was drowned.”
“No. She drowned,” I said. “Active verb. I didn’t kill her. I couldn’t have killed her. She meant more to me than my own life. I would rather have died myself. It was the end of my life anyhow.”
“You may have killed her by accident — you may not have known what you were doing. I am only an old farm woman, but I know you. I love you. You have always been troubled. Your cousin was also a troubled person, but her troubles were not innocent, as yours were. She chose the rocky path, she desired confusion and evil, and you never committed that sin.”