He did so, and got to the other side.
For almost an hour, Royce walked in the direction of the reservoir. He had gone there years ago with his mother — more than once, actually — but his sense of direction was bad, so it was difficult to say what kept him on course. Walking along in his chinos, with a tie-dye shirt he had picked out himself and a top hat, he might have fooled anyone whizzing by in a car who didn’t notice the expression on his face, because this part of Vermont was still full of hippies. Where the hill dipped, instinct carried him once more down the road, where it forked to the right, and once on it, he was headed directly toward his destination. His mother and father had often walked with him there on summer nights, up until the time he began to scream because he wanted to go in the water. Though he had no memory of it, his screaming when he was two years old had brought his mother to tears, daily. She had taken tranquilizers and considered institutionalizing him. His father stopped coming, because his mother would no longer speak to him. Sometimes, for as much as a week, he and his mother would stay inside the house. In the house, she could run away from him and lock herself behind a door. Some things he did were only the things any baby would do, yet she reacted strongly to them. When he reached for her glasses, she stopped wearing them and functioned in a fog. When he was old enough to pull out her shoelaces, she did not replace them. She had a lock on one small closet that contained clothes she would wear when she took him into Boston to see doctors. Except for those clothes, she would often stay, all day, in her nightgown. Even after his teeth came through, she rubbed his gums with whiskey, hoping he might fall asleep earlier. She would smash delicate things that fascinated him before he had a chance. They drank from paper cups and ate more food than was reasonable with their fingers.
He took off one shoe and sock and left them by a tree, because the little piggy that cried “Wee-wee-wee” all the way home was also telling him it wanted to walk barefoot on the grass. When he took off the shoe, he made a mental note of where to find it again. He had left it at tree number fifty. There were exactly four thousand four hundred and ninety-six trees on this road to the reservoir.
Pale white clouds began to turn luminous, becoming the same yellowish color — something like burnt yellow — as the water in town, where the water was shallow as it fanned out to go over the waterfall. The clouds were quickly overlapping. It was as if blotting paper was soaking up all color. From second to second, more brightness faded as a stronger wind blew up. This was the sort of wind that preceded an alien landing. It could be used to advantage, Royce also knew, by criminals, who would step through broken store windows and steal whatever was to be had. In the distance, he heard sirens.
By now, he could see cars parked off the side of the road and, in the distance, the big green hill that led to the water. He looked down and saw that he had cut his toe. He crossed his arms across his chest and marched bravely on. He only stopped when he felt the wind start to lift his hat. He pulled it lower on his forehead, then ran his fingers along his temples to feel the fringe of mashed-down hair.
Several sirens were wailing at the same time. He looked over his shoulder. Two men were hurrying toward their truck: no fire in the distance, no car through which a toppled tree had crashed. He looked at the front of his shirt and thought that the mottled orange and yellow looked like fire. That made him feel powerful again, and he pulled his foot out of his other sneaker and kicked it high, like a football. It landed in the grass partway up the hill. By now the clouds were dark gray against a pale gray sky, and blowing so they twisted one in front of the other. He was a little out of breath from trying to breathe in such wind. He had to duck his head to breathe easily. When he got to his shoe, he sat down for a minute, enjoying the way the raindrops fell, flicking themselves over his body. He touched his hand to the top of his hat. The rain made the same sound falling on his hat that it did when it fell on the roof. He looked at the trees fringing the flat land on which bright green grass grew, now made dusty green by blowing dirt and a lack of light. The grass was newly mowed; something in the air made him sneeze. He sneezed several times in succession, blessing himself after each explosion, yelling God’s name louder each time. His feet were cold, and he thought about going back for the abandoned shoe, but the wind was blowing across the water in the reservoir so enticingly that he was transfixed. It reminded him of what it looked like when his mother peeled Saran Wrap back from a tray of chocolate-frosted brownies.
When the next gust of wind blew the top hat from his head and sent it skipping down the darkening grass, he followed behind, hobbling a bit because of his cut toe. He put his hands over his ears. The sound the wind made, rushing through the trees — a sound like paper being crumpled — muted. The sirens’ wail continued. What do fish hear? he thought.
A couple ran past, a sweater or jacket that was too small held over their heads as they laughed, running from the picnic area. They were the last people to see Royce, and later the girl said she believed that she had seen his hat blow in the water, though she had no reason to concentrate on that or anything else in her desperate rush toward shelter.
Maybe the fish said glug-glug. Maybe they talked the way fish did in fairy tales, and said something like: Come into the kingdom of the deep. Or maybe the hat itself started to talk, and that was what made Royce edge into the water, looking back as if taunting someone behind him as he advanced.
The reservoir was posted: no swimming, no boating, no water sports of any kind. No no no no no. Just a beautiful body of water that could magnetize people. Picnic tables to eat at while they enjoyed the view. Little paths that worked their way into the woods like shallow veins running down an arm. A place where lovers could stroll.
The hat was found floating, like a hat in one of the comics Royce loved so much. The shoes were found first, then the hat.
8
All her life Mrs. Brikel had been struck by the way people and things turned up when they were most needed and least expected. Today, just when she was feeling discouraged because her cold had lingered so long, a flower arrangement had been delivered from the local florist — a thank-you from a professor whose paper she had typed the night before on a moment’s notice, staying up until midnight so he could present it today at a conference in Chicago. There were daisies, roses, and three iris in the flower arrangement — a lovely sight to see in midwinter.
Since the publication of Pia Brunetti’s book almost a year before, Mrs. Brikel’s typing services had been much in demand. The acknowledgment in Pia’s book thanked Mrs. Brikel for her dedication and support: when Pia was unable to type for so long after her mastectomy, the entire task of typing the manuscript had fallen to Mrs. Brikel. But who would have done otherwise? It was not as though Pia had not paid her. As well as being an occasion for kindness, it had allowed her to develop her typing skills. She now had a word processor and more work than she had ever imagined. Suddenly she was doing very nicely in terms of income. The previous summer she had planted annuals instead of perennials. The house, if not exactly toasty warm, was quite comfortable since insulation had been blown into the attic and aluminum siding had been installed. If Royce were still alive, it would be much too hot for him in the house. He had sat around in his shirt-sleeves even in winter because he was never cold. The house would seem like a sauna bath to Royce.