She was planning her supper like any other housewife.
6
But he was gone. The potting room was empty. Leaning over, she felt for him in all parts of the sleeping bag as if he might have shrunk. Her stomach hurt where the rail of the bunk hit her. When she straightened up, she felt dizzy and nauseated. How could his not being there make her sick?
Yet even as she searched, uncovering pots, looking behind creeper, she could feel her eyes narrow, her lips begin to curl as her searching self turned round and went down into her Sirius self until she stood now, arms folded, in the corner next to the stove from where she could see all of the potting room and through the door into the greenhouse. She eyed the vent in the eave where the cave air entered and blew across the room and through the space above the partition. Not much warm air came down. The room was cold.
The room had the look of his not coming back.
She shrugged. Very well, then. She drummed her fingers on her thigh. Why did the room suddenly feel cold? The warm air blowing in from the cave needed to come down. There must have been a system of ducts here earlier, probably of wood which had rotted. It would be possible to make new ducts out of — there were piles of cardboard boxes behind the A & P, many of the same size perhaps for standard-size cans like Campbell’s soup. One could cut out the ends and connect them. The only expense would be paper tape and wire to suspend them from the ceiling. It would be an interesting problem to make branches in the duct system, cut boxes at the proper angle to deflect air to the proper places. How to transport the boxes? Flatten them out, load them on the creeper, and drag them from town?
She was nodding and chewing her lip when she caught sight of the steaks on the stove, still wrapped in white butcher paper. Wet pink spots stained the paper. What to do with them? All at once her mouth spurted with juices. Eat them. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate red meat.
Feeling sick about him is all right, but not all night.
After starting a fire of fat pine in the Grand Crown, she went with her Clorox bottle to the waterfall, drumming her fingers to the running chords of the Trout. It was almost dark—
— and there he was in the path as if he had just fallen down and was trying to get up, hand propped under him in the very act of pushing himself up, but he didn’t. He couldn’t get up. When she knelt beside him (her stomach was hurting again), his one-eyed profile gazed not at her but at the wet cold earth inches away. The eye bulged in the terrific concentration of pushing the earth away. He didn’t move. The eye didn’t blink. Was he dead? Not knowing that she did so, she both lay on him and pulled him up, hands locked around his waist, then stopped still to see if he lived, because he was so cold, lying on him long enough to feel the onset of the rigor, which started like an earthquake tremor then shook him till his teeth rattled.
Then what will love be in the future, she wondered, lying on him cheek pressed against his, a dancing with him in the Carolina moonlight with the old world and time before you, or a cleaving to him at the world’s end, and which is better?
“Don’t worry. I’ll get you back.”
Straddling him and trying his pelvis for heft, she looked around, gauging trees and limbs for hoist points. But he could move, enough so that by rolling him and getting herself almost under him with his arm around her neck, he could help her push them up and, leaning heavily on her, walk. Staggering though she was, her eye for angles was good enough to bend at the right moment and lever him onto the bunk without hurting him. He shook like a leaf. There was nothing for her to do now but, spent, gasping, trembling, use her last strength and climb over him, cover them with the sleeping bag and hold him until she got stronger and he stopped shivering. Somehow she, they, got them undressed, his wet clothes her dry clothes off, her warm body curled around his lard-cold muscle straps and bones, spoon-nesting him, her knees coming up behind him until he was shivering less and, signaling a turn, he nested her, encircled her as if he were her cold dead planet and she his sun’s warmth.
It was dark. There was no firelight from the stove. Flexed and enfolded she lay still, waiting for him to get warm, blinking in the dark but not thinking. Her arm went to sleep. She began to worry, about the doctor, that he might not come or that he might and find them so and that the stove fire of fat pine might go out.
Presently he stopped shivering and went slack around her. “Ah,” he said quite himself. “You undressed me again.”
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m getting up to fix the fire. The doctor is coming.”
“He came.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. He said my leg wasn’t bad, didn’t need a cast. He smelled me, looked in my eye, shook his head, and told me to come in tomorrow for a checkup.”
“Is there something wrong with you?”
“No.”
“Then what were you doing out there on the ground?”
“I went out to get some water and fell down.”
“Why didn’t you get up?”
He was silent.
“I mean either I am not understanding something or something is not understandable.”
“I blacked out.”
“Is there something serious wrong with you?”
“No. Except I tend to fall down.”
“I am a good hoister.”
“I know.”
“When you fall down, I’ll pick you up.”
“I know.”
“I have to fix the fire.”
She got up naked but not shivering. The pine had gone out, but it was so fat, a new fire could be started with a match. Atop the blazing kindling she laid two short green maple logs and a heavy hunk of chestnut to press them down. She left the door to the firebox open. When she started to climb over him, she discovered that he had moved to make room. As she turned to nest again, he held her shoulder and she came down facing him. But he was bent a little away from her. She bent too. They seemed to be looking at each other through their eyebrows. The wind picked up and pressed against the greenhouse. The metal frame creaked. There was a fine sifting against the glass. At first she thought it was blown pine needles. The sound grew heavier. It was sleet.
Winter had come.
His hand was in the hollow of her back, pressing her against him. She came against him, willingly. It was a marvel to her this yielding and flowing against him, amazing that I was made so and is this it then (whatever it is) and what will happen to myself (do I altogether like the yielding despite myself and the smiling at it like smiling when your knee jerks when Dr. Duk hits it with his rubber hammer) and will I for the first time in my life get away from my everlasting self sick of itself to be with another self and is that what it is and if not then what? He kissed her on the lips. Ah then it is that too after all, the dancing adream in the Carolina moonlight except that it was sleeting and it was firelight not moonlight on the glass.
“Oh my,” she said. “Imagine.”
“Imagine what?”
“Imagine having you around at four o’clock in the afternoon.”
He laughed. “What’s wrong with night? What’s wrong with now?”
“Nothing. But—”