“I think the best kind is lemon poppy seed,” says Kit. He holds out a root beer to show the teen behind the cash register, pays, and we walk out the door together. A ride home is assumed. At least he’s changed my focus somewhat, and I’ve stopped dwelling on Krahe’s lawn cutting. I’ve always been a little curious about Kit’s passion to be an Indian. It seems a lonely obsession—I never see him with other Indians or would-be Natives. And as the point is to have a tribe and belong to a specific people, I wonder what he gets out of his fantasy. But of course, he explains on the way home, his search is about making some connection. Only connect, he says, absurdly, and adds, Maybe E. M. Forster was an Iroquois at heart. Once he knows for certain where to connect, maybe everything about him will fall into place. Then again, maybe Kit Tatro irritates me because at some level I understand his longing and confusion all too well. I let him out at the turnoff to his house, and keep the windows wide open the rest of the way.
When I walk into the house, I see immediately that Elsie is serving Krahe a cup of hot chocolate. He’s gotten a chill—cutting the grass! It upsets me to see that she’s poured the chocolate into one of her favorite cups—exquisitely etched and hand-painted, one of an incomplete set she bought before an estate sale. She’s put the cup under hot water to warm first, then dried it, her little trick, to prevent a skin forming on the milk. She has given up her disapprobation, or her fear of my being used, and she has decided to encourage him, I fear. A low sensation of hurt boils up in me, its source mysterious. Why, now, has she decided to stop looking the other way? Because she can’t. I see now that the grass cutting is Kurt’s way of bringing our relationship into the open. He’s doffed his jacket. They are talking in normal, convivial tones about the town road agent and how he has suggested inserting speed bumps on the straight, paved section of Revival Road.
“He says he’s clocked some going seventy.” They both nod, together, almost in unison. Then a stiff break, a beat of silence as both remember Davan’s run and wish to veer away from unsteady ground. I have timed my entrance perfectly. With relief, both realize that I am standing in the kitchen entrance.
“Would you care for some hot chocolate?” says Elsie, getting up to fetch another of her special cups from the high shelf of the cupboard.
“Sit down!” Krahe rises to give me his chair, a gesture of old-fashioned courtesy that might touch me, as he is not at all chivalrous, except that I feel so awkward and suspicious.
“Thanks for cutting the grass.” I roughly pull a different chair out and plop down. I find myself glaring at the cup in his hand. “It’s very thoughtful of you. And very unlike you,” I add once Elsie’s back is turned. “You’ve got more important things to concern yourself with. I’ve got someone else to cut the grass, anyway.”
Not true, but I’m determined to quash Krahe’s possible repetition of this favor, no matter what motivated it.
“Who?” says Elsie, overhearing me.
I turn, widen my eyes, and blink meaningfully at her, but she is bending to place the chocolate before me. I am stung by this fake demure look of hers—the downcast eyelashes hide righteous glee and it seems to me, suddenly, they are a they, in cahoots. Elsie has decided something. She’s ahead of me. I am bewildered. And I’m also caught in my grass-cutting lie, because they know everyone I know, and I wouldn’t ask a stranger, and they’ll expect whomever I mention to come and cut the grass. I open my mouth not knowing what I’ll blurt and out comes the name Kit Tatro. It makes sense, as I’ve just dropped him off, that his name should still be on my tongue. Now I’ll have to rush back and persuade him to cut our lawn before either mother or Krahe find and question him.
“Oh, Squaw Man,” says Krahe, dismissive. “He doesn’t even cut his own lawn.”
“He needs the money.” True enough. I gulp down the chocolate too fast, scald my throat, and rise with a rude abruptness.
“And for your information, squaw means vagina, or rather, cunt. It is an insult.”
“Oh,” says Krahe. His eyes flicker as he scrambles for a light tone. “Knowing Tatro, he’d probably find that a compliment.”
“An insult to us,” I say, indicating Elsie, who turns away to show she’ll have no part of this. I am the one embarrassing her. It is then that I am positive she is rejecting me, pushing me out the door toward Krahe. Perhaps she is tired of the secrecy, or the discretion, really, but wasn’t it for her benefit? Perhaps she wants to set me free, thereby invalidating all we have carefully constructed, cheapening all that I’ve given up in order to stay with her. I don’t want to be free in that way. Krahe pretends not to notice that I am standing now, breathing hard, upset, ready to escort him out. He continues the thread of a conversation that he and Elsie had seemingly left unfinished.
“Just let me know,” he says, “about those trees. I’ll be glad to bring my chain saw over and—”
“What trees?” I break in.
“The apple trees,” says Elsie, “the orchard. Krahe thinks that with a bit of judicious pruning—”
“A great deal of severe pruning!” Krahe says with an infuriating laugh.
“—we could bring back the orchard!”
“Now while it’s still cold, before the buds form. They could even bloom this spring.”
“The orchard is gone.” My heart flares with anger and I want to reach over and shake her, but I keep my voice even. “You know I like it ruined.”
“It could be beautiful again, alive,” she says. And just like that I know she has abandoned me. Leaning on the table, I knock over my cup of chocolate and must grab dish towels off the counter to mop with. Krahe actually tries to help me and suddenly, over the spilled chocolate and in the smell of dusty grass clippings, I detect the shadow of a masculine expectation. It advances across the floor like a gloaming, to where I’m mopping up the syrupy spill on hands and knees, a dusk of longing that I would have loved to enter the day before but which panics me now. I rinse a towel out beneath the faucet, wringing it too hard, glancing out the window at the rows of beautifully gnarled trees.
The kitchen feels too small, even the house too enclosed. Elsie’s sudden betrayal has pierced me. I feel childishly vulnerable. I hang the towel up and smooth my hair back into its clip. “I’m going out,” I say before either Elsie or the too attentive Krahe can form the next sentence. And I do go out. I’ve still got the car keys in my pocket. I climb swiftly into the Subaru and drive to Kit Tatro’s. Though I could easily have walked there, Krahe might have taken his leave of Elsie and followed, cut me off, found me out.
I pull into Tatro’s littered yard and park next to piled bones and the tatters of a painted tipi. I’ve seen it often, hiking by, and now I notice up close that the symbols painted on the sides with worn acrylics are finely done, very detailed. A black bear, side view, is caught in midstride. There is a white line leading from its mouth into the bear’s stomach, ending in a sharp spear point. I suppose this has something to do with hunting magic, and indeed, Kit Tatro can use some. I happen to know, because he sometimes asks permission to hunt on our land, that he takes advantage of the doe season open only to those who shoot with muzzle loaders. I’ve lost track of his comings and goings. Sometimes he gets his doe, other years he complains of wet gunpowder or the excitement of a mis-fire. He’s never talked of going after bear.
I get out and walk past the rusted Studebaker that I imagine Tatro has had towed here intending to restore, past a stack of mink or chicken crates, an unraveling yellow roll of crime scene tape perhaps bought at a garage sale, a little tan junked computer, a bowl of teeth, open cold frames jammed with milk cartons full of dirt out of which frail tomato seedlings urge themselves to light, hardening off. There is no sign of Kit and he doesn’t answer my knock. But the solid door behind his screen door is open. The doorknob to the screen door is a screwed-on wooden spool, the old kind before thread came wound on plastic. I touch the knob. Somehow it charms me, that little thoughtfulness of saving and using the old spool. Maybe one of Kit’s wives saved the spool—he’s had a succession of pale and stoop-shouldered girlfriends, unhealthy-looking women all alike, sad and rickety-boned. Not one of them can I put a name to, and not one of them has stayed with him.