“You’re not bothering me, June. You never have.”
“Please, I am fine,” she said, and before Sylvie could do anything else she ran off, sprinting behind the dormitory. Sylvie followed her but by the time she rounded the far end of the building the girl had disappeared. At the head of the path that led through the thick underbrush of the foothills Sylvie stopped to listen for movement. There were no sounds except for the threshing by the breeze of the tall, dry grasses and spiky weeds. And yet she suspected that June was still there, just as earlier, when she was with Min in the dormitory vestibule.
Back in the yard, the children and Hector were beginning to re-gather the leaves onto the tarps so they could be dragged to the compost pile near the gardens. Sylvie felt strong enough to help them, and once she began sweeping she was glad for the exertion and the closeness to the children. Her heart suddenly heaved with the realization of the time she had wasted: four days spent inside the cottage, and now there were only ten more before they would depart. Min worked near her, gathering errant leaves with a rustic hand broom made of bound twigs. He was obviously pleased to see that she was wearing his scarf but didn’t point it out or say anything. He was a mindful boy. His small stature was painfully obvious now that he stood among others his age, and when they momentarily crossed paths she couldn’t help but quickly press his oversized head to her coat. A broad smile lighted his face. Several girls then joined them and they worked together and soon the rest of them spanned the width of the makeshift field, everyone sweeping and raking in a single row, making one another brush faster, if mostly in the spirit of play.
Hector worked at the far end of the line, his back to her. If he had been in a good humor when they were all jumping in the pile he had all but shed it now. His wide shoulders pivoted powerfully as he raked, the reddish dust kicking up in low billows about him, the sound of his tines rasping loudly against the hard ground. His strong, steady rhythm was easily distinguishable from the rest. She could almost feel his scouring through her feet. He hadn’t spoken a word to her yet and although she was thankful he was keeping his distance she wondered if he could sense her attention. She was trying not to look at him but the sight of even his heavily clothed form after nearly a week of not seeing him kept drawing her eye. It was not so much a desire to be with him or to touch him that made her glance but her own wonder at how willfully she had forgotten his shape, which was so unlike Ames’s, and frankly her own, his body completely un-angular, blockish, as if he were made of sections of trunks cut from various-sized trees. Even his fingers about the rake handle had the property of a certain primary thickness, while all her life she felt herself as being composed of only the thinnest reaching branches, third- and fourth-order limbs.
She knew with Hector her feelings were base and wrong and in every way contemptible, but there was the truth that she desired his form, the magnificence of which he was completely unaware. She hadn’t ceased to feel its density, the uniform heft of his flesh when she drew him into her and she rowed them, he the heaviest oar. She had always tried to make herself invulnerable to beauty, her parents acclaiming only the sublimity of deeds, of selfless effort. The beautiful work. The last person who had so arrested her breath was Benjamin Li, whose outward beauty had been completely unlike Hector’s but had infiltrated her all the same, this beauty that was disrupted beneath the surface, veiling some errancy or even wreckage.
The leaf pile had again grown mountainous and Hector told a few older boys to grab hold of a corner of the tarp, while he took another. They pulled together but their corner didn’t budge and the boys lost their footing and fell down. The children cackled wildly. When they were ready again Hector counted to three and they pulled in unison; the pile began to move, Hector gripping the forward corner of the tarp, and when it looked as though the boys would falter, some of the others, including Sylvie, took hold of the lead sides. Several children stood between her and Hector. He glanced at her bloodlessly but her gaze didn’t waver and he had to look away. She could not give in to him now, let him keep shunning her, for these few days Ames was gone would be the last chance they might freely speak. She had not lied to Ames about wanting him to stay or about how much the children at the newer orphanages would benefit from his visiting, but it wouldn’t be untruthful at all to say that she had hoped for this chance.
Hector counted again and all together they dragged the pile about fifty meters, to the spot near the garden where they collected the compost. Once there, Hector went around to the other side of the pile and then waded through it while pulling the tarp in his hands, crouching and using his weight for leverage to flip the huge load over onto itself; for an instant it completely covered him before he stepped out, his hair and clothes tagged with pine needles and leaves as though he were a wild creature of the woods. The children brushed him off and after a moment’s hesitation he stretched out his arms and even bent down so they could reach his head, letting them pick him clean.
Since the field was cleared, and with no other work for the day, the older children organized their usual afternoon soccer match, the younger ones playing jacks with stones or running about in games of tag. Reverend Kim had not yet come out from the dining hall and would probably remain there until supper, after which he would drive back to Seoul. Hector was now gathering the various brooms and rakes, and when he knelt for a hand broom, the high raft of the tools he was balancing on his shoulder nearly toppled and Sylvie stepped forth quickly and picked it up. She neither moved nor handed it over and without speaking he walked to the garden shed where he kept the tools. He came out and went right past her and she watched him transfer a load of firewood to a wheelbarrow and push it to the main dormitory building; he was replenishing the fuel for the woodstoves in the dorm rooms and the chapel. She waited until he was inside and then made her way over. He was coming back out for more when he saw that she had an armful for him. He took it and went inside the vestibule.
“You’re not going to talk to me anymore?” she said. He didn’t answer and she followed him into the chapel, where he deposited the wood next to the stove in the far corner. He was responsible for preparing the stove in the chapel for services, though now because of the cold weather he was lighting and extinguishing it nightly as well. The chapel was aglow with light from the small window he’d put in the roof, the gray-painted pews, the gray-painted walls, the plain wooden cross suspended by wires attached to the backs of its arms. “Is that it, then, Hector? Is that all?”
He said to her: “You’re leaving the day after Thanksgiving.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you ought to go the day before.”
“Why do you say that?”
“This way we’ll all know the blessing we’re missing when we’re giving thanks.”
“Please don’t be cruel.”
“I’m not being cruel. I’m just saying it like it is.”
“You know I don’t want to leave.”
“I don’t know that,” he said, his voice rising. “How would I know that?”
“You do,” she told him.
“Then you can stay.”
“I want to, yes. But if I did, what would happen? Do you think anything good would come of it? Do you think we could work together like simple colleagues?”
“You mean like you are with your husband?”
“Please don’t be like that. Don’t act like a boy.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Please stop.”
“Isn’t that why we were together? Because you wanted someone you didn’t have to be righteous and responsible with, and who gave you a good screw besides?”
“Fuck you.”
She turned to leave but he caught her by the wrist and pulled her in and tried to kiss her and she turned away, covering her face. He persisted and she slapped him. But he held on to her anyway, not even flinching when she raised her hand again. She tried to wrench away, but his grip on her was fierce, unbreakable, as though she were manacled to a rock wall.