“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She was, I don’t know, more complicated than I was, but that was part of her beauty. For me, anyhow. No one else understood her. And I did not kill her, accidentally or any other way.”
“Only you two were there.”
“That’s not certain.”
“Did you see anyone else that night?”
“I don’t know. I might have. I thought I did, several times. I got knocked out in the water.”
“By Alison’s struggles. She nearly took you with her.”
“I wish she had. I haven’t had a life since.”
“Not a whole life. Not a satisfied life. Because of her.”
“Stop it,” I shouted. The heat of the kitchen was building up around me, seeming to increase with every word. The stuff on my face was beginning to burn. My shout had frightened her; she seemed paler and smaller, inside all those wrinkles and the man’s baggy jacket. She slowly sipped at her coffee, and I felt a great sad inevitable remorse. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I shouted. If you love me it must be the way you’d love some wounded bird. I’m in a terrible state, Auntie Rinn.”
“I know,” she said calmly. “That’s why I have to protect you. That’s why you have to leave the valley. It’s too late now for anything else.”
“Because Alison is coming back, you mean. Because she is.”
“If she is, then there is nothing to do. It is too late for anything. She has hooks in you too deep for me to remove them.”
“Thank God for that. She means freedom to me. She means life.”
“No. She means death. She means what you felt out there tonight.”
“That was nerves.”
“That was Alison. She wants to claim you.”
“She claimed me years ago.”
“Miles, you are submitting to forces you don’t understand. I don’t understand them either, but I respect them. And I fear them. Have you thought about what happens after she returns?”
“What happens doesn’t matter. She will be in this world again. She knows I didn’t kill her.”
“Perhaps that doesn’t matter. Or perhaps it matters less than you think it does. Tell me about that night, Miles.”
I let my head drop forward, so that my chin nearly touched my chest. “What good would that do?”
“Then I will tell you. This is what Arden people remember about you, Miles. They remember that you were suspected of murder. You already had a bad reputation — you were known as a thief, a disturbed, disordered boy with no control over his feelings. Your cousin was — I don’t know what the word is. A sexual tease. She was corrupt. She shocked the valley people. She was calculating and she had power — I recognized when she was only a child that she was a destructive person. She hated life. She hated everything but herself.”
“Never,” I said.
“And the two of you went to the quarry to swim, no doubt after Alison had deceived your mothers. She was ensnaring you even more deeply. Miles, there can exist between two people a kind of deep connection, a kind of voice between them, a calling, and if the dominant person is corrupted, the connection Is unhealthy and corrupt.”
“Skip the rigamarole,” I said. “Get on with what you want to say.” I wanted to leave her overheated kitchen; I wanted to immure myself in the old Updahl farmhouse.
“I will.” Her face was hard as winter. “Someone driving past on the Arden road heard screams coming from the quarry and called the police. When old Walter Hovre got there he found you unconscious on the rock ledge. Your face was bleeding. Alison was dead. He could just see her body, caught on a rock projection down in the water. Both of you were naked. She had been… she had been abused.” Her complexion began to redden. “The inference was there to be made. It was obvious.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think she seduced you and died accidentally. That she died by your hand, but that it was not murder.” Now her blushing was pronounced: it was a ghastly effect, as if she had rubbed rouge into her cheeks. “I have never known physical love, Miles, but I imagine that it is a turbulent business.” She raised her chin and looked straight at me. “That is what everybody thought. You were not to be charged — in fact, many women in Arden thought that your cousin had gotten just what she deserved. The coroner, who was Walter Hovre in those days, said that it was accidental death. He was a kindly man, and he’d had his troubles with his own son. He did not want to ruin your life. It helped that you were an Updahl. People hereabouts have always looked up to your family.”
“Just tell me this,” I said. “When everybody was silently condemning me while hypocritically setting me free, didn’t anyone wonder who had made that phone call?”
“The man didn’t give his name. He said he was frightened.”
“Do you really think screams from the quarry can be heard on the road?”
“Evidently they can. And in these times, Miles, people remember your old story.”
“Goddam it,” I said. “Don’t you think I know that? Even Duane’s daughter has begun to hear rumors about it. Her crazy boyfriend, too. But I’m bound by my past. That’s the reason I’m here. I’m innocent of the other thing. My innocence is bound to come out.”
“I hope with all my heart that it does,” she said. I could hear the wind rattling the branches and leaves outside, and I felt like a character from another century — a character from a fairy tale, hiding in a gingerbread house. “But that is not enough to save you now.”
“I know what my salvation is.”
“Salvation is work.”
“That’s a good Norwegian theory.”
“Well, work, then. Write! Help in the fields!”
I smiled at the thought of Duane and myself mowing hay side by side. “I thought you were advising me to leave the state. Actually Polar Bears won’t let me leave. And I wouldn’t, anyhow.”
She looked at me with what I recognized as despair. I said, “I won’t let go of the past. You don’t understand, Auntie Rinn.” At the end of this sentence, I shocked myself by yawning.
“Poor tired boy.”
“I am tired,” I admitted.
“Sleep here tonight, Miles. I’ll pray for you.”
“No,” I said automatically, “no thanks,” and then thought of the long walk back to the car. By now the batteries had probably run down, and I would have to walk all the way back to the farmhouse.
“You can leave as early as you like. You won’t bother a dried up old thing like me.”
“Maybe for a couple of hours,” I said, and yawned again. This time I managed to get my hand to my mouth at least halfway through the spasm. “You’re far too good to me.”
I watched her bustle into the next room; in a moment she returned with an armful of sheets and the fluffy bundle of a homemade quilt. “Come on, youngster,” she ordered, and I followed her into the parlor.
Together we put the sheets on the low narrow seat of her couch. The parlor was only marginally cooler than the kitchen, but I helped her smooth the quilt over the top sheet. “I’d say, you take the bed, Miles, but no man has ever slept in my bed, and it’s too late to change my habits now. But I hope you won’t think I’m inhospitable.”
“Not inhospitable,” I said. “Just pig-headed.”
“I wasn’t fooling about praying. Did you say you’ve seen her?”
“Three times. I’m sure I did. She’s going to come back, Auntie Rinn.”
“I’ll tell you one thing certain. I’ll never live to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because she won’t let me.”
For a solitary old woman close to ninety, Rinn was an expert in the last word. She turned away from me, switched off the lights in the kitchen, and closed the door to her bedroom after her. I could hear fabrics rustling as she undressed. The immaculate tiny parlor seemed full of the smell of woodsmoke, but it must have come from the ancient stove in the kitchen. Rinn began to mumble to herself.