Authors: Jeffrey Lent
A Peculiar Grace (52 page)
Then driving in the jeep with the windows down they were mostly quiet, certainly comfortable. She had her shoes off and her feet up on the dash and one hand rested atop his on the steering wheel. What shyness there was rested in words and just then they didn’t need words.
At one point he said, “I guess we might need to think about getting a new car.”
“And give up your tractor?”
“Well, I’m sorta serious. I should go legit, I’m thinking. Seems about time.”
“Or bikes. We could get bikes. They’d work.”
“They don’t do so hot in winter. What about a truck? A small one. Not one of those tricked-up monsters. It’d come in handy now and then for my work.”
After a bit, as if she’d been testing it out in her mind before speaking she offered, “Maybe I could drive it if I went back to working for Roger.”
“A course you could.”
“I’d be one of the regular guys then.”
He glanced over and grinned and she grinned back.
A
FTER
N
ORTH
C
ONWAY
they were in the shadow of the mountains and the sun was losing on the far side and Jessica crawled into the backseat and spent a few minutes punching down a nest that she curled into and went to sleep. Leaving Hewitt with his thoughts, driving now with the headlights on, few other cars on the road. The windows still down for the bracing air although he turned the heater on so some warmth would find her. When she’d announced her intention to sleep he’d known he now had no choice but to attempt some reconciliation of the day against the weight of the summer passed as well as his adult life. It was inevitable and better now than later, was what he thought. But it didn’t happen. He came up out of Crawford Notch and the western sky was glowing green and the land was darkly green and he felt washed in some peculiar matchless grace, where for the first time in years, outside of the forge, likely since childhood, he was simply and exactly where he was, doing what he was doing. An ordinary pleasure. Perhaps. Driving home with a woman he loved sleeping behind him.
She was still asleep when he pulled into the farm in the dark. The kitchen light was on, left from this morning. Several lifetimes ago. He slid the driver seat forward and bent and lifted her and she
didn’t fully wake but wrapped her arms around his neck and he carried her easily up into the house, only a small strategic silent battle with the screen door. She was a wonder in his arms, neither light nor weight but a solid form he felt he could carry endlessly over the face of the earth.
She came awake when he snapped on the overhead light in his bedroom.
N
OW AND THEN
life cracks open like a giant stone to reveal the delicate wisps and webbings that patch together time, sweet fibrous tendrils of the heart’s songs and time itself bends and warps to become unrecognizable as even time but is rendered in snatches and fragments that aren’t to be resolved by clocks or wheels or phases of the moon. Where meadows meet hedgerows and meld into woods and the ancient earth is laughing and heaving in consort once again. This a door not out of the world but deep into it, where humanity and life itself gain or regain the unknowable spectrum within a newborn’s cry or a dying breath.
B
UT FIRST
.
T
HEY STRUCK A
wobbling cumbersome dance about the room kissing, hands run wild until she knelt and like a child with presents stripped the laces though the eyelets of his boots and then she was on the bed, on her back, her T-shirt gone, her hips up as she tried to push her jeans down and he gripped the bottom cuffs and shucked them off her legs and she lay all the way back and stretched her arms above her head—never seen, never naked before him dressed or undressed—her ribcage lifted and her breasts arching dark exploded nipples and the muscles of her arms and legs running quivering hard upon the bed and then he was naked and she reached for him as he tore the purple underwear from her and she gasped a wet round sound and then he was down above her as she lifted her knees to cradle him
and he pressed gently and paused as eyes both locked and held and agreed and then she was flooding him and he was all the way inside her, all of him within her as they rocked and she was kicking his butt and thighs with her heels as he wrapped his arms around her head and arched up, her hands wild across his back, her nails carving unknown glyphs, markings, brands, into him and then her legs fell out and she began to gasp something close to his name as her hands slid down and pulled him deeper into her, and he went heavily against her chest, forcing the air out of both of them as his hands slid down to the round spread of her, the taut heaving curves of her hips opening to the slick, the primordial swamp locked and held forever throughout all beginnings until this moment and then he felt her clench and his semen streaked out of him, and light spangled behind his eyes as he lifted his weight, her breath a breathless suck back into her, and then sinking again upon her.
R
OLLED OFF, SIDE
by side, adjoining legs twined, her face wet against his neck and cheek as she wept.
S
ITTING CROSS-LEGGED
face to face, touching, leaning mouths, minds soft and wondrous—stilled.
L
YING WITH HIS
head on her inner thigh, looking up at her face above looking down talking then words small forgotten of great consequence. Only needing to turn his head to run his tongue through the damp curls and then open her only reaching up to grasp her hands when she tried to move and this way slowly without wanting to end, the taste of no other woman, her breath gaining and then hitching as she locked her thighs.
D
OWNSTAIRS STILL DARK
he made an omelet and carried it back up with a fork and a bottle of Vouvray and one glass.
* * *
T
HEY SLEPT AND
loved again. A long bath and there was sunlight speckling the large tub never meant for two and they slept again. Flies in the warmth slow drowsy waking and lying under only a cooling breeze from the open window. Because she asked he pulled on jeans and walked out blinking into a day to the jeep. He brought her bags of clothes in and she pulled on a thin sleeveless top with narrow straps over her shoulders and new underwear and together they went down to forage the fridge and then Hewitt went back up while she put music on.
A
LONE IN THE
room, his room, their room, the sounds of “Whipping Post” a shock and then absolutely right and he stood waiting her, his pants off again when he saw the frame upright on the table and he took it and as easily as shelving a book tossed it out the window.
A
GAIN IN DARK
but with a candle brought up from below, sitting through a long steady shower, an old thin quilt around them sharing wine again, cheddar and a tin of smoked baby oysters and the rain stopped, and he wondered aloud if they were the only ones awake to hear the rain from start to end and she replied No there must’ve been other creatures in the woods and fields having a wet night, stroking him as she spoke and then again love.
T
HEY SAT IN
bed reading poems aloud. By daylight, by candlelight.
The Great Fires
was the only book in the room and the only one they wanted or needed. She wept when the dead wife was reincarnated as a dog and both man and dog recognized each other and the man knelt and told the dog stories of old friends.
T
HEY LAY IN
a cold morning fog under heavy covers and talked of strange dreams and the shortness of life and she put her hands around his neck and told him she could kill him and he told her he knew that.
H
E TOLD HER
of the two hitching posts and everything they meant to him, of everything they held silent forever within them. After a bit she asked if they should talk about birth control and he said he didn’t think so. She looked him in the eye, nodded and curled back into him.
H
E SLOWLY TICKLED
her awake once in daylight and they wrestled off the bed on to the floor and loved there. Moving across the floor until they were headfirst in the closet, her head knocking lightly against the plaster. She woke him in darkness with her mouth around him and when he woke again later he asked her if it had been a dream and she told him it better not have been. They sat in the kitchen naked and ate the last of the eggs and she looked thoughtful a long moment and he knew what she was thinking and so picked her up and carried her back upstairs. Not ready to stop this yet, thinking he would starve for love. A package of venison stew meat was thawing in the pantry.
T
HEY TOOK ANOTHER
long bath and went back to sleep. Hewitt thinking they were both catching up on all the sleep lost as well as everything else in life thus far. Later he slipped out of bed to the kitchen where he worked up the stew for a long simmer and baked drop biscuits, then carried up the basket of biscuits and butter and black currant preserve with a bottle of wine.
They were set for days.
H
E WAS DROWSING
in after-love stupor, hot with the afternoon when suddenly he sat up. She was standing by the bed in her underwear and the top with thin straps. She leaned to his raised head and kissed him, her breasts against his shoulder. Then she stepped back.
“What?” he asked.
“I think you better get up.”
He was wet with sleep-sweat and slowed. He pushed up and looked at her. All but her eyes were calm.
“What is it?” he asked, rolling to sit up, his feet on the floor as he reached for his crumpled jeans. When she didn’t respond he stood, hauling the jeans up. He ran a hand over his face. Her eyes direct and defiant, waiting.
“There’s a woman on the porch. I think you better go talk to her.”
She was precluding further discussion or information but he didn’t need either one. He walked over and kissed her.
“I’ll be right back,” he said and went just as he was down the stairs and through the house.
She wasn’t on the porch anymore but out in the sun, leaning against her car. He opened the screen door and went out, stopping on the top step. Emily saw him and raised a hand in small greeting.
A scattering of blown early leaves rattled across the porch behind him. He ran a hand through his hair, took a deep breath and let it out.
Then went down toward her.
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