A Peculiar Grace (2 page)

Hewitt said, “Jessica, are you hungry?”

She turned then and looked at him without releasing her grip on herself. “I’m just fine,” she said.

“Well,” he said. “I’m not. I want some breakfast. What I was thinking was why don’t we tow your car down to the house so you don’t have to worry about it and we can fill it up with gas so you’re all set to go and then maybe you could sit down with me and eat some eggs and toast. How’s that sound?”

For a moment she looked like any other girl and was maybe a bit more than pretty and then the shade passed over her face again and she said, “That’s kind of you. But I think I truly need to get traveling on. I think I got all turned around. But you should be careful what you eat. They put whatever they want in just about anything.”

Hewitt was fascinated. “The eggs come from an old fart of a neighbor who most likely would agree with you. And the bread’s baked fresh every day in the village by a couple women I’ve known all my life. The loaf in the breadbox may be a little stale but it’d make good toast. Jessica? I went through an awful hard terrible time in my life some years back and much of it’s still with me but every now and then you have to trust somebody. Trust me if you want or not. But
I’d hate to see you drive off hungry. The truth is I’d be happy to have some company for breakfast. Let’s get your car off this mountain and figure it out from there.”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“I’m sorry I don’t. But there’s a rotary phone at the house. You’re welcome to use it, you don’t run up a bill the length of my arm.”

“Don’t you be getting a cell phone. I’m serious as death, you hear me?”

“I never gave a thought to one. Anyways, what I hear is they don’t work around here.”

“Is that right?”

He shrugged. “What I hear.” Hewitt was a little stunned with all this. He’d come up expecting a quick rescue and being sworn to silence by the children of someone he most likely knew. And her nipples were clear and dark through the thin shirt even as the morning was warming through the trees.

She said, “Can I ask two questions?”

“Only two?” He grinned.

She did not smile back. Just waited.

“All right. Shoot.”

She said, “I got rid of that gun a long time ago.”

He digested this and then said, “I meant go on and ask your questions.”

“What happened to you?”

Well fuckhead he’d opened that door. “It’s a bit of a long tale.”

She nodded as if this was enough. She said, “Why on earth do you try to hurt iron? Does that stop you from hurting something else?”

He wanted to ask if that was one question or two but simply said, “I’m a blacksmith. I think I told you I pound iron. After it’s heated the iron reacts in surprising ways. When it’s right, beauty comes from it.” And thought Shut up now.

She said, “But we all have iron inside us.”

“Yes,” he said. “We are stardust.” Thinking if she doesn’t want breakfast that’s probably a good thing.

She said, “Hewitt? Tell me again I can trust you.”

“You can trust me.”

She turned again and resumed her pacing between car and now dead fire and he stood waiting wanting to speak but with no idea what to say. She was so intent it seemed she was reading the ground. Messages for her to decipher. Or perhaps easily read. He could not say but knew both possibilities were congruent with this wild wild life. He’d done the same. More times than he could count. He’d stood in a snowstorm with bitter wind out of the northwest and screamed a name into the night. Or on his knees forehead striking the ground over and over wanting to push his head down into the very earth. Both small events of an endless mosaic that was not so much behind him as one he now rode as a silent steady river he’d bled into and merged with.

There came now the image of a jam jar dropped to explode on the bare plank pantry floor. So he did what he could. He fired up the tractor and backed it around, then got down on his knees to wrap the chain around the rear axle and snug it tight. She stopped pacing and was watching. He went the closest he’d been to her and said, “Because we’re going downhill you’ve got to keep the tension. Just keep pumping the brake and make sure you watch only out the back. It’s better to have the chain get tight and jerk you than have the car run into the back of the tractor. Do you understand?”

“I’m lost,” she said. “Not stupid.”

“Well, sit over breakfast with me and maybe we can figure out where you got turned around.”

Her mouth tightened, lips pressed. As if trying to learn if she was being led or not. Then she said, “I’ll watch you eat. But Hewitt …”

“What is it?”

“Stop staring at my boobs. Okay?”

“Why don’t you get in your car?” he said.

* * *

W
HATEVER SHE WAS
or whatever she lacked she knew how to handle her car being towed through the woods backward and downhill. Hewitt appreciated this but the slow trip down gave him time to ponder this peculiar woman and he’d determined to give her the gas and send her on her way. He had too much to cope with as it was, although he refused to attempt numeration. He was not the man to take on someone else’s problems. Not beyond a fifteen-minute solution anyway and that only applied if the problem was practical, tactile, something he could lay hands on and repair. So they came to a slow moderate halt in the farmyard, with a nice slack in the chain.

What he’d failed to consider was a change in her. She was out of the car down on her knees working the chain free before he even had the tractor shut down and so he removed the clevis and pin from the drawbar as she raised up and they walked toward each other looping up the heavy chain. She said, “I was raised with better manners than I’ve shown and I’ve been living off Coca-Cola and candy bars since I don’t know when. I surely could eat a plate of eggs and toast.” Then as if his hesitancy had transmitted itself she backpedaled and said, “Although I wouldn’t put you out. You’ve been so kind and I bet you’ve got better things to do than put up with me so I’d be just tickled with the gas and go.”

W
ITH THE EXCEPTION
of a few conveniences added, the house was essentially unchanged from when his father returned in 1951 with his new wife. Beth was born a year later and Hewitt six years after her. The house was late Victorian with the large rooms, tall windows and rich woodwork and detailed trim of the time. Hewitt had only vague memories of his grandmother Pearce. He never had known his grandfather, any more than his father had known that man—a secret of history, an intrigue deepened by the fact that his great-grandparents, who’d built the house and prospered with a bobbin shop factory as well as the sheds and sawmills for the raw timber and ownership
in the railroad spur line, were Pearces as well. Thomas Pearce then, a man seemingly shorn of paternity. Confounding the mystery, grandmother Lydia Pearce had died not at home but in Holland, in Amsterdam, a city where after she’d raised her son Thomas and seen him off to the Pratt Institute to study art, she’d spent months at a time annually until her death. She was buried up the road in the Pearce Cemetery where also rested an assortment of Snows, Duttons and Peeks.

The kitchen held a giant wood-burning range in soft charcoal black rimmed with heavy chrome aprons and trim and had double ovens and two cooktops, one meant for kerosene but now connected to a propane tank outside. Cabinets formed a dividing wall to the dining room—built not against but within the walls, two sets with glass fronts for fancy display. The kitchen table was drop-leaf bird’s-eye maple that almost certainly had made the trip by oxcart north toward the end of the eighteenth century, the construction pegged and dovetailed, free of nails altogether and without a wobble. The dining room table could seat twelve and had not been used in years.

Jessica wandered the room while he worked at the range after putting new grounds and running fresh water into the coffeemaker. He’d done this without asking, her confession of her diet enough to tell him she would need coffee. The eggs were big with blood spots in the yolks, the gas turned low to cook them soft and slow.

They sat across from each other and ate. There was thick toast and tall glasses of orange juice. He broke a piece of toast into quarters and used them to mop the yolk and bits of white and cleaned his plate. Eating but watching her across from him. And doing his best to smile with his eyes. She was only halfway done eating, using her fork to cut small pieces of the whites of the eggs and dip them into the carefully broken but intact liquid yolks and bring them to her mouth. Not nibbling but savoring, making it last. Christ—Coke and candy bars. He stood and took his plate to the sink and poured two mugs of black coffee. He didn’t need or want more coffee. But it was a prop and life
wants props. He blew the surface for the updraft scroll of steam and pretended to take a small sip. He was in deep debate he’d already lost.

He said, “Jessica? Do you have clean clothes in your car?”

Her face tightened as he knew it would. “Why?”

He sighed, a sound he meant her to hear. “Because I think you don’t. When’s the last time you had a bath or shower?”

“I don’t believe I care for the way this is going.”

He sighed again. Then shook his head, nothing more than that. “What I was thinking. Is that you could do some laundry here. Maybe even wash yourself up. Because you need it. I can tell you that from over here. Again, and you listen to me—I’ve been closer to where you are then you can imagine.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she interrupted.

“I know that. Except both you and your clothes are wicked dirty. You wanted, you could take a couple hours and leave here good to go for quite a while.” He paused and then said, “The way things are right now all that needs to happen is for some cop to pull you over and you’d have an awful tough time talking your way clear. You understand that?”

She was silent.

He did not wait but stood and said, “Come on. I’ll get you a laundry basket and show you the machines and the big bathroom. I was you I’d take a bath. Soak it out of you. But you can shower if you want. I won’t bother you. I’ve got work to do.”

She did not move but looked close upon him. That shadow was back on her face but underneath he now saw something else. Then she stood and said, “Those were good eggs. I thank you.” He was afraid he’d lost her. Then she went on. “If you’re serious I could use to do some laundry. And a bath would be sweet.”

“All right. Let me show you where the basket is.”

“Wait,” she said. “Let me show you something first.” And very fast dipped a hand into her shirt and came out with a straight razor on a shoelace. As the razor came free of her shirt she snapped the blade
open and it was the brightest thing in the room except her eyes. “You see this?”

He nodded. “I’ve seen them before. Come on, I’ve got work to do.”

A
FTER HELPING CARRY
the reeking mounds of clothing to the house and showing her everything he could possibly think of he left her alone. He had no energy for the forge. So he took the wheelbarrow and a fork and rake and went into the flower beds and cleaned out what he should’ve a month ago. Everything was sprouting so most of the work was done on hands and knees and slow going. Which fit his mood. Restless, mildly rankled. And then found himself whistling as he pulled dead Siberian iris stems free from the slender bright new shoots pointed as if determined to learn the sky. After this he just worked. He cleared all the beds and wheeled loads of composted ancient manure from the barn pit to spread on the beds and then walked down past the forge to the small spring seep and stepping carefully used his pocketknife to cut the first dozen stalks of asparagus.

And stood holding the tender green spears in one hand and the clasp knife in the other and abruptly turned and ran to the house. In the kitchen he paused to compose himself. Laid the asparagus on the sink and listened to the house. The washer had stopped and there was no sound.

He went up the stairs to the big bathroom. He tapped lightly on the door but it was silent within. He could picture the water flooded and diluted rose. Or perhaps not so diluted. How much blood would a body offer against a few gallons of water? He took a breath and opened the door.

The tub was empty but for a gray grimed ring three quarters up. With a foamy residue of bubbles. There hadn’t been bubble bath in the house for years and he knew it for a fact because when Amber Potwin left she’d cleaned the bathroom of all trace of her. But on the floor leaning against a clawfoot was the bottle of dishsoap from the kitchen drainboard. He almost smiled.

He went out past his own open bedroom door and to the next room down, the door there open as well. She was sprawled under a sheet with her hands beneath the pillow, elbows extended flat, one knee drawn up so the rise of her hip rounded up the sheet. Her hair was flying off her head in wet spikes from the toweling. Her mouth was open and she was breathing deeply. The cracked yellowed shade was pulled down on the bedside window but for the last couple of inches—fresh air. He looked but the wet balled towel was all there was on the floor. She was clearly naked under the sheet. Gently he pulled up the white cotton spread, thin and ancient even when he was a child, covering her only to her hips. Then he took the balled towel and went downstairs.

There was a load of wet washed clothes sitting in the washer. And a heap of stinking dirty clothes before it. The dryer was empty. He thought about it all for a minute and went back upstairs to his own room and dug free the pair of sweatpants shrunk too small for him. And an old soft T-shirt. He carried them down the hall and left them folded on the bedside table. He stood beside the bed and watched her sleep. Finally he leaned and kissed the crown of her head and left the room.

He didn’t have any idea how to spend the day.

T
HAT SUMMER OF
the Bicentennial.

The granddaughter of immigrant Danes, Emily Soren with snapping blue eyes that at times seemed green and oatstraw hair in a braid near to her waist or pulled back peasant-style under a kerchief, whose first words to Hewitt Pearce were “I know who you are” and last ones a year and a half later were “Keep the tears for yourself, Hewitt, I don’t want them anymore” was by any reckoning from the moment she uttered those first five words or even the moments before as she approached him that early summer day carrying to his car the tray with his cheeseburger and strawberry milkshake just in the way she walked toward him seeing something he’d never seen before or the nearinvisible
hairs along her forearms that struck and entered him with a force both stunning and long-expected like brushing against an electric fence jolts, the one person on earth he was born to meet although it would be years of pondering that would allow him to see the multiple strands that led up to that time for both of them and those same long years pondering the events and likewise strands that led to her final statement. At first he couldn’t, absolutely in his deepest core could not accept the idea that his wild-hearted passion of impossible range would not in the end slice through and be recognized for the inevitability that it was; that the sheer velocity of this passion had initially set their mutual course like twin blazing comets across the eons of the universe; and then later could not believe she had seen this, reciprocated, and then ultimately denied it. How could he not hold that as the simple most basic touchstone of his life? How could she flee?