Meeks (15 page)

"They are all so beautiful,” he said quietly. He lifted the cylinder cookie gently. “Thank you.” He didn't know whether to eat or to breathe. His heart ached in her presence, or in the presence of the cookies. The rain picked up, gusting against the windows. Rainwater gushed from the gutters, overflowing them. Was there anything as thrilling as the motherly concern of intelligent women?

"It's like we're behind a waterfall,” he said, unable to stop smiling.

"It's quite a storm,” she said.

Ben could see the future: on the kitchen counter, we'll always keep some fresh fruit in a walnut bowl, fruit from our own trees—limes, apples, clementines. And if a tree stops bearing fruit and dies, I'll cut it up for firewood on the chopping block, deep in the yard. I'll haul the columns of wood onto the block, and I'll split them with all my strength, and then bury the blade of my ax in the chopping block so it can do no harm.

Ben sighed, contented in his thoughts. As long as the storm continued, the future stretched out before him. Yet, for her, he considered, this is perhaps merely the enactment of a good deed. He reminded himself: this was not an open-ended hour, one in which he could safely search forever for the word or words that would explain everything.

"Yes,” he said, “a rain like this may never stop."

"It can seem that way,” she agreed.

Ben scanned the room for conversation. He couldn't think of where to start. He thought: there should be children running in the yard, happily wild, while he chopped the wood; fearless, loud children who would call out to the neighbors (
Watch out! There's father! He's chopping!
). Or he might be the father of shy, sweet children who would fall silent when strangers walked into the yard, a boy and a girl who would cling to his legs and hide their faces. Ben sighed. I will lay my hands upon their soft heads, and I will smile neighborly at the peaceful stranger, and you will be beside me, and you will be the one with whom I share the observations.
The flowers are beautiful this spring
, I will probably say, or I will pull an apple from the apple tree thriving in our yard and halve the apple gently on the chopping block, while summer light seeps into our brains.

"May I have another cookie?"

"Of course,” she said and again held the tray for him.

Ben reconsidered the diversity of the cookies on the platter—more than one man could ever hope to eat alone. Am I one of many, and not just many, but very, very many? She had eaten none of the cookies herself. Ben took the silver tray and held it for her. “Cookie?” he asked.

"Oh, no, thank you,” she said. She leaned toward Ben, as if to tell him a secret.
Pop!
A pocket of sap burst in the log.
Pop

"So violent,” she said thoughtfully and leaned back.

"Yes, it's quite a downpour,” Ben said, holding the tray.

"Oh, I mean the fire."

"Hmm.” Ben paused, summoning nonchalance. “Do you have a special connection to a baker or something?"

"Hardly,” she said. “I'll tell you a secret: I hate cookies. And everything sweet."

Ben put down the tray and frowned at it. “I'm sorry."

"Please, don't be,” she said.

The grandfather clock behind her was ticking off thin, quick paces behind its blank face. Ben lifted the pale fabric of his pants away from his legs; his knees were uncomfortably hot. The rain was letting up, sunlight invading the gray comfort of the room. She reached for his cup and carried it to the sideboard. He watched her back as she poured the tea. A bowl of oranges was on the marble tabletop, a loose stack of fresh orange peels beside it; Ben imagined the smell of oranges on her fingertips as she poured tea into his cup. She spoke over her shoulder, as if they knew one another. “It's looking better outside,” she said brightly. Ben could hear the clink of the spoon as she dropped it on the marble tabletop.

In the late afternoon or early evening, around an outdoor table, you and I will bat away the sweet little bees with our hands, never slackening our conversation, and I will wear my light wool sweater when I rake the yard of autumn leaves. (She brought him his tea and sat down again across from him.) He and she would never become restless or uneasy—the crackling fireplace in wintertime would drain them of uncomfortable appetites and strengthen their aptitude for daily life, and the ice would tighten upon the eaves in their sleep, and they would wake to the sight of bright red berries, alive and capped in snow. The sky will be powder-white or powder-blue or charcoal-gray with rain, and we'll pull the static sweaters over the heads of healthy, happy children who smell of clean and ice-cold air.

Ben leaned toward her and whispered, “You don't like cookies, and I don't like to hunt."

"And here we are,” she said conspiratorially and winked.

"How have we ended up—"

"Ended up here together?” she offered.

"Yes,” said Ben, uncertainly. “Together."

"
Marooned together?
"

"Um. I don't know about—"

"
Marooned together, yet we need only to say something different, and to listen to one another.
It's from an old poem."

"Ancestors’ Poem?"

"No, no. Something I wrote a long time ago."

"Oh,” said Ben, taking note of his mild confusion, which he knew could be a sign of love. “I love poetry, which of course most bachelors don't. And, I mean, I paint, paint paintings."

"I
love
that,” she said. “What do you paint?"

"Still lifes. Mostly fruits."

"Huh."

"I also paint others things,” he added quickly, thinking of Finton's work. “A man on an island, surrounded only by horses. Marooned, in fact."

She smiled and said, “Exactly."

He reached for her hand across the shallow table between them. There was a loud rapping on the windowpane. Ben jumped; the young woman jumped. An old man in a sky-blue sweater tapped the glass with the barrel of a shotgun.

"Shit,” she said. “My father."

Ben leaned back, frowning.

"When you come back, find me,” she said.

"I will."

"I'll be walking in the orchard behind the house—come find me. We have a lot to talk about."

The father had disappeared from the window. Ben stood and took his hat from the hearth, where she had hung it carefully to dry upon a hot hook driven into the dark wood of the mantel. The silk lining had become quite hot. He pulled it ruthlessly down onto his head. It had tightened in the heat, and he could feel a headache forming over his eyes almost instantly. The silk band burned his forehead: an excellent simulation of a fever. It would have to do for now.

He turned again to face her, just as the father stormed into the room. “Young man!” he said.

The air was cool and thick with fog. “My hat's damp,” complained one of the bachelors, flicking the brim of his hat. “We've drifted far out to sea,” joked another, as he blew into the embers of a low campfire. The father had brought Ben out among the young men hunting and put a rifle in his hands. “Fucking fathers,” said one of the other men sympathetically, lifting his rifle to take aim at the father's back as he walked back toward the house. “That motherfucker brought me out here yesterday,” said the man as he brought his rifle back down, “when he caught me waving at her across the yard."

"She made me tea,” said Ben gleefully. “Then she gave me cookies."

The other bachelor leveled his rifle at Ben's head. “Keep talking!"

"Oh, shut up, you two, why don't you? Just enjoy a little sport in support of the real sport—a bit of shooting and then back up to the house."

The bachelor lowered his gun but continued to stare at Ben. “Where are you from?"

"From?” Ben asked innocently.

"You look familiar to me."

Ben shrugged, yanked his hat lower. He turned to study the fog. Occasionally it cleared, and he glimpsed acres of grayish-green fields splayed before them, the earth broken into rectangles by rock walls and rows of weeds. Everything else shorn. The fog rolled in again, hiding the countryside. The other men sat in a circle on the damp ground and played cards sullenly, their rifles across their laps. “Damn this fog,” said one of the men and pressed his hand over his eyes. “You all right there, buddy?"

"Of course I'm all right,” said the man and glared at him with cold eyes. “I'm just listening. Someone should tell a story."

"Do you know the story of Captain Meeks and the Corporal?” asked a slim bachelor, very young.

"We have heard it, but it feels good to remember,” said the bachelors in flat unison and fell quiet.

"This all happened a long time ago, when the Enemy was after the heart of the city. It's easy to forget that our beloved city park was once a battlefield and that the blood of our brothers was shed there. We should be grateful for their sacrifices."

"We are grateful for them."

"Captain Meeks was still a young soldier, stationed on the Near Ridge. He was fearless and full of love for the city, a love that was so strong, it sometimes forced him to sit suddenly upon a rock to rest his heart, even in the heat of battle. This is why we say a man may have ‘a Captain's Heart.'? Ben pulled his hat low over his face: the agony of the forced march.

"One day, the Corporal joined their unit, and it fell upon the Captain to protect and to care for him. The Corporal was not an ordinary man, and neither was the Captain, but we must never forget that they once walked on the earth no differently than you or I."

"We should strive to be better."

"The Corporal had arrived wrapped in his tight, pale sheet, his head exposed, his deep, dark eyes endlessly staring. The Captain was in awe of him. The Corporal
knew
everything, had
seen
everything, had
heard
everything, and he understood the Enemy better than the Enemy understood himself. The Corporal was famous even then for making his rounds, carried from camp to camp, and wherever he went, he inspired men, and the Great Fight was redoubled, and the Enemy fell back.

"The Captain watched over the Corporal as he lay on the ground, still as a corpse and quiet as a saint, and waited. The Corporal was listening to the Enemy's mind. When he felt the Enemy's thoughts turning toward the city, the Corporal let out a piercing cry from the heart of the camp: the birds would explode from the tops of the green trees, and the animals hunting each other innocently in the shadows would freeze, and the men would roll terrified from their rustasacks and stomp out the low fire and aim their rifles into the trees, and they knew the Enemy was almost upon them. They were listening. The Corporal was teaching them to listen and to understand.

"The men became so attuned to the Corporal that any sound—a sigh, a sudden breath—might cause them to panic, to roll from their rustasacks and to run screaming from an invisible terror, and Captain Meeks, eternally the master of his feelings, would tackle the men and hold them in the mud until they had become calm again.
Be quiet
, Captain Meeks would say, and they were quiet."

"Yes, be quiet,” Ben said under his breath.

The storyteller seemed to emerge from a trance. He surveyed his surroundings, and his eyes fell on Ben, and he said, “I'm sorry? You said something?” The other men turned to study Ben, and he saw the angry bachelor shift his rifle casually in Ben's direction.

"The Captain said it, and so it would be so, Brother,” Ben added quickly.

"Yes, it
was
so. While his men played cards, the Captain would sit in the dark with the Corporal and hand-feed him his own rations and sleep beside him in the dirt in order to keep the soldiers from pouring great quantities of black-market liquor down the Corporal's throat, as they sometimes did in an effort to get the Corporal to stop listening.

"One night, the Captain lay beside the Corporal and considered their camp—the gray stubs of felled trees, the pockmarked rocks, dinged by bored soldiers’ gunshots, charred logs, old food tins, ruined boots, and down in the harbor, burned-out ships drifting . . . disorder among men, disorder and fear of what might come. The Corporal was an old, old soldier, and that night, the Captain realized that the Corporal had mastered a new state, enviable and intermediate: he was both destroyed and whole.

"The Captain wanted to make this world a better place. He wanted to be unafraid, and to listen to what was hard to hear, and to look upon what was hard to see. He tugged at the pale sheet in which the Corporal was bundled, and the Corporal stared back at him with large, silent eyes and seemed to understand. The Captain lowered the sheet gently, inch by inch, until he could see the Corporal's naked body in the moonlight. It was marked with deep, dark scars, and the Captain reached down and touched a black hole of burned flesh in the Corporal's chest, and he was not afraid. Now he understood what the Corporal had endured, what he had lost. The Corporal suddenly lifted one of his bone-thin arms and hooked it around the Captain's neck. The Corporal was strong and his grip was merciless, and he pulled the Captain's face to his lips and said, ‘A man did this to me.’ The Captain listened. The Corporal said, ‘Shall I tell you a story? If I do, you and I can never part.'?

The men were silent. Ben's eyes filled with tears—he hated how the old tales moved him, in spite of his hatred of them. One of the bachelors jumped up and tackled Ben, pinning him to the ground and hissing into his ear, “Shall I tell you a story? If I do . . ."

"Show some respect!” said Ben and struggled to his feet and looked wildly at his jacket sleeves, now black with mud. “I'm covered in mud!"

"No harm meant, Brother."

"Selfridge!” said the angry bachelor. “Do you know Selfridge?"

"Selfridge?"

"Selfridge. That's how I recognize you. Selfridge told me all about you. See you got your suit."

Ben was trying to calculate what the angry man might know and what it would mean. “Yes,” said Ben, “finally got my suit from the tailor."

"Kind of a loose fit, isn't it?"

"Quiet, you two. Listen,” interrupted one of the others.

Ben held his rifle loosely in one hand and listened carefully. He heard the shouts of men somewhere in the fog. The bachelor beside him raised his gun and scanned the fog. “Don't shoot,” said Ben, “There are people there.” Ben strained to see into the thick, milky air; he could hear voices, people running; the bachelor fired.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
"Don't shoot!” Objects were falling out of the sky, fluttering to the ground. His first thought was,
books?
“Got it!” shouted the man at his side. Ben heard more shots, saw the bank of fog light up with bursts of orange light, and then he made out the shape of another bachelor: his pale suit ghostly in the thick fog, he was a floating head, floating hands. He was aiming his rifle at Ben.