Cicada (12 page)

“What’s that?”

“The ocean…the beach…wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Oh,” and then after a pause, “I reckon.”

“Best part of the ocean is the smell. I love that smell. The salt and freshness. The air seems as open as the sea itself, you know? Kind of pours right through you.” She closed her eyes and drew in a great breath.

“Sounds nice,” he said.

With her eyes still held tight, “Yeah.”

“Never been.”

“Never been?” she confirmed in disbelief.

“Never had no cause.”

“Oh no, no, no.” She sat up now, gathering the sheet up around her hips while exposing her breasts. John turned his attention to her nakedness with a sly, boyish grin. If she noticed, she paid no mind. “The beach isn’t something you ‘need cause’ for…it’s one of those joys…what makes life worth living. A day at the beach. No…better…a
night
on the beach. Full moon, waves beating, soft cool sand….” She lay back then, closing her eyes once more to be swept away, off to her imagined tropic.

John settled back into Cicada, one leg over hers and one hand gently cupping her slim nape as he joined her in their escape.

…

Two hours later he’d found his way back home. John could smell Cicada’s perfume lingering on him and was as sure that he smelt the musty air of their commingling about him as well. A few lights were on in the house; the hour wasn’t as late as others had been recently. Impulsively he decided to drive around to the barn and break a sweat heaving bales of hay whether they needed moving or not. He couldn’t face Frances just now and he thought the strenuous work would wash away the damning scent of his transgressions. He slammed the door hard as he got out of the truck to be sure his wife knew of his return.

“One less thing to argue ‘bout,” he half muttered.

Buckshot and Casey locked eyes with one another. From where they sat on the other side of the barn they’d heard the truck arrive, heard its door slam and then the double barn doors screeched angrily as they were swung wide.

“That your daddy?” Casey speculated dumbly.

“Yeah, reckon so.”

“Why’s he comin’ home so late?”

Buckshot stared into the fire. “I dunno. My mama thinks he might be Klan.”

“Klan!”

“Yeah. Keep your voice down, ya idjut. She’s makin’ him sleep on the couch.”

“Sorry. Well…” Casey spoke slowly as though he were puzzling through some long division that eluded him. “Then he might be with them what hung that man ya found, huh?”

Buckshot had many times considered the same thing but cast his friend an angry look all the same.

“Shut up, Casey. You don’t know nothin’.”

They were interrupted then as John began hurling bales of hay against the inside wall of the barn. The boys couldn’t know, but it was a mound that had already been neatly stacked by Ben earlier that day and therefore didn’t need John’s attention. As the thuds of his unnecessary labor intensified, several mice scattered from the barn where they resided not aware of the little owl that waited for them in the wood beyond.

Frances would be damned if she was going to darn her husband’s worn socks. She even went so far as to say so.

“I’ll be damned,” she mumbled to no one there.

She would, however. Darn them, that is. That was the way of things. Not just in the Sayre household or throughout the community of Melby, or even the state or country, but it was the way wherever two people coupled; it was the way of the world. An hour later she’d picked up her husband’s balled, dirty socks from the hallway where she’d abandoned them and taken them downstairs to wash. As Frances cracked the perpetually red flesh of her hands against the washboard, she considered buying a better brand of thread.

Another few hours later, after that load of laundry had dried in the blistering afternoon sun, Frances was doing just what she’d earlier sworn she would not. While working the needle, the image of John’s yellowed toenails cutting through the cotton sock repeated with almost every stitch. She considered leaving off the chore at least twice more, but before she could rally her resolve she was finished. After all, what else was there for her to do, Frances thought.

The porch creaked to the rhythm of her gentle rocking, and the tabby cat, Rusty, sprawled a few feet away, tongue panting as though it were a dog. There was no way for her to know, but the animal was ill from eating cicadas, a lesson it seemed the poor feline was never destined to learn.

Out in the fields, from behind the house, she could just make out the steady thrum of the tractor. The sound seemed in concert with the undulating waves of heat that distorted the horizon. She had no way of knowing whether it was her husband, John, or the field hand, Ben, who was at work there. She hoped it was John. Otherwise, he might be pulling up in his truck at any moment and that was an encounter she preferred to face later. She was too exhausted to continue her argument with him just yet. Cutting the thread with her teeth when she finished the knot of the last stitch, and tossing the sock into the basket at her feet, she paused to notice the seam made from the mend looked like a little smile.

“Yeah, right,” she huffed and kicked the basket aside.

Rusty thwacked his tail about to let her know she was irritating him.

“You and me both,” she told the old cat.

Back upstairs, where the swelter collected mercilessly, the open windows could hardly be of any help. The heavy air seemed too tired to move. Frances repeatedly blew the hair from her eyes and wiped her glistening brow with the back of her forearm as she balanced the laundry basket on her hip while putting her husband’s things away.

She was still wrestling with her anger with John when her hand discovered something unexpected as she pushed clean and newly mended socks into his bottom dresser drawer. Three sheets of folded paper brushed against her hand. She crinkled her nose in wonderment and set the laundry basket to the floor. Something deep inside told her that this was trouble; perhaps more than she was ready to undertake.
Leave it be,
that little voice said. She would not.

Taking the pages out but not unfolding them, she could tell that it was a handwritten letter. In a flash of thought that she covered more quickly than could have been recounted, she went from considering it was a letter
from
a lover to the idea that it might be a letter
to
a lover. Before any of those notions could have come to fruition, however, she banished them.

“He’s never had eyes for other women, you silly goose,” Frances quietly chastised herself.

Still, she couldn’t bring herself to read it. She stood there in the heat unable to come to a conclusion. She finally moved to put it back, but then caught herself knowing that such would only be a postponement of the inevitable. Running her finger through the bangs of her hair that were intent on teasing her eyes, she stepped back to the bed and sat, placing the pages in her lap to regard them as if they were the urn of some loved one’s ashes.

“Why do men think they can hide things in their sock drawers?” she asked herself aloud. She had to chuckle at the absurdity. “Stupid.”

Then, like a soldier grimly rising from the trench, she snatched the letter open and faced her fear head-on.

My Darling,

It began, drawing a lump to her throat.

When I went out this morning it seemed no different than any other. Dog panting as he trotted beside me in the half-light getting a head start on the day’s heat. Over to the east the sky all a hazy shade lighter than elsewheres. Earth spongy with dew. My shoulders hard with ache. And I don’t know why but I stopped when I reached the barn and just stood. No reason. Just stopped and stared out into the remains of the heavens. A few flecks of glitter here and there. Dog took to his haunches and stared at me in turn. I think I said something to him, but I ain’t sure on that and don’t know what if I did.

And I was pretty sure I was about to be getting on, but just about that time the morning star caught my eye. Venus, just up there, hanging like it were as near a light hardly down the road a piece on some long, dark highway. Last gas for seventy miles or some such. So I stayed there with it taking it in like I’d never done before. Beautiful. Best of God’s ornaments, I suppose. Anyways, while I stood there letting the daylight come on me like I’d nothing better to do, something kind of profound came over me.

With the sky changing from gray to blue, in slow little increments that one can’t measure but still perceive all the same, that morning star started to die. Bit by bit, the day crept up to swallow it. It was just there, a pin prick of light against the haze. The other lights were all gone and what’d made the morning star special seemed lost. But I guess it was special still since I knew what it had been. Even more so since where all the others were spent it stayed on refusing to be snuffed out.

Near the end, half the sky was full of the day that any moment would be bursting over the ghostly trees at the far end of the fields. Venus was so far gone that I knew if I was to look away for even a breath I’d never find her again. So I hung on until finally she just wasn’t there anymore. I put myself to stare on where she had been…where I knew in all truth that she still was. Gone from me, but still just as wonderful right on. And somewhere about that time it hit me. That light hadn’t gone away. I had. It was still there, always would be. Departed only by perception. My perception. Where I’d been pondering how incredible it was something so wonderful and magnificent could simply vanish, it really was something so small and inconsequential—me—that had disappeared. Forever lacking the faculties to keep the most beautiful thing in my eye.

Your loving, John

Frances read the last line over three more times and then carried the letter to the drawer where she’d found it. She pushed the socks back over it. As she closed the drawer she couldn’t help but notice that the mended sock was turned upside down now into a frown. It made her think the universe—the very one her starry-eyed husband had been waxing romantic over—was also speaking to her.

She did her best to forget the letter over the course of the afternoon. She failed. It was as relentless as a toothache and refused to be ignored. It thudded against her thoughts until in her distraction she’d cut her hands twice peeling potatoes. Frustrated and frayed, she’d wept softy then and swore to push it all from her mind only to stumble on the back steps as she went to gather in the last of the day’s wash. Forgetting all else she finally gave in and railed against the wooden planks on the porch, bloodying her knuckles as well, imagining she was punishing her husband and not herself. When her anger seemed spent she curled up there as though she were Rusty, the family cat. She held her eyes tight and in that self-imposed darkness Frances swallowed down the thick scent of her own sweat and blood mingled in the salt of tears.

The sad truth was, however, that for all Frances Sayre’s torment, she failed to see things for what they truly were. For the past few weeks she’d been worried that John had taken up with the Klan—that her husband was some cruel bigot—and now that concern had been trumped by the discovery that her husband was in love with another woman. He was, but that was not what the letter she found had meant. It was a love letter of sorts. And it was a love letter like she’d never known to have come from John, but that was because it was much more. It was also a suicide note; one of many that John had secretly penned over the years in his maudlin, self-pitying moments. The letter was in fact for Frances, or so John had imagined when he’d put pen to paper. Like so many such parting gestures, however, it was more for John’s benefit; one last deep indulgence into his guilt and self-loathing.

Near the end, the only thing Frances really got right was that she didn’t really know the man she’d known for so many years at all.

…

At the window nearest to Deputy Tippen’s desk, Dennis Hart sat as the officer had directed him, patiently awaiting his return. A desperate housefly pitched itself against the pane near Dennis’s shoulder in its reckless dance to reach the sunlight beyond. Dennis’s eyes stayed with it as he reconsidered the purpose of having come there himself. Several minutes became a dozen and he was just on the verge of leaving, deciding that obviously the deputy had little interest in whatever some lowly cemetery groundskeeper had to report, when the sound of a toilet flushing was made even louder as the bathroom door on the far side of the office swung open wide.

Tippen stepped out still buckling his trousers and hefting his fly. He paused a moment to nod at Dennis with an air of annoyance when their eyes finally met as though he’d forgotten the man was there. Tippen fanned his backside and adjusted his side arm before finally crossing the room with what the Sheriff often called his ridiculous saunter.

“All right, Mr. Groundskeeper, what’s the emergency?” he asked, plopping down behind a cluttered desk.

Dennis had never had a problem being called a groundskeeper, until now.

“No ‘mergency, deputy. Actually, will the Sheriff be in soon? Maybe I should—”

“Sheriff is out. Like I told ya when you come in. Now, either you got business or you don’t. And if ya don’t, well then ya need to amble back out to your worm farm and let me get back to real work. I got plenty to keep me busy, ya understand?”

“I just thought…” Dennis began, only to reconsider leaving once more.
No
, he settled his mind,
he’d come this far
. “You see, thing is, I’ve been gettin’ some strange visitors out to the cemetery.”

“Yeah? Whatdaya sayin’, like ghost?”

Dennis squirmed in his seat. The deputy sounded serious and was now suddenly treating him as such. Dennis shook his head. “First it was John Sayre. Then it was that odd fella Wes Crocker. You know ‘im…big guy.”