Northern Lights (38 page)

When he got home, Grace was waiting alone in the kitchen.

“Addie called,” she said quietly. She’d been crying. She smiled anyway. “She says she has a headache.”

“What about my lovely brother?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You were supposed to bring him.”

Perry gave her a kiss, the card, the candy. “I waited for him … No matter. Happy birthday.”

Grace smiled weakly. The table was set for four people. A big birthday cake stood as a centerpiece.

“Here, take it easy. Harvey’ll be along. Maybe they’ll both come. Or we’ll just celebrate together. How would you like that?”

“Addie won’t. She says she has a headache. I get aches, too.”

“Don’t worry about her. You know how she can be if she wants.”

“Well … She’s my friend,” she whispered. “I guess she’s my best friend and now she can’t come because she gets a headache.”

“Maybe they’ll come later on.” Perry kissed her and went into the bedroom and pulled out the sweater he’d hidden under the bed. It was still in its J. C. Penney sack. He looked at it and realized how utterly unimaginative and fitting it was. He wrapped
it up in Christmas paper and glued on a bow and brought it out to her.

She seemed happy. She kissed him and she was smiling. They had their supper, then Perry carried the cake into the living room, where he built a fire and cut the cake and served her while singing “Happy Birthday.” And she seemed happy. She opened up the gift, showing great surprise, and she immediately tried on the sweater. “I love it, I love it.” she said, pulling it over her shoulders and breasts, “I do love it.” She made the J. C. Penney sweater look much better. “I love it,” she cooed, turning for him before the fire, and he knew she would soon be bringing it into the store to exchange for something not quite so tight, and he knew she would not mention it and he knew he would never notice. “It’s marvelous, it is, it is,” she whispered.

Later he had a warm shower. He found Grace in bed, wrapped in her flannel nightgown. The lights were out.

“Feel good?” she said. She warmed against him.

“Pretty good. Those glasses gave me a headache this afternoon.”

“Better now?”

“Headache’s gone.”

“Maybe Addie caught your headache.”

“Maybe so. I’m sorry it was such a rotten birthday.”

“Oh, no. It was beautiful. It was better just to be alone. Wasn’t it? Don’t you think so? I was … I was disappointed at first but now I’m glad they didn’t come. We never get to be alone and I thought it was beautiful just to have you and me and nobody else mucking it up.”

The rain had stopped. Water still dripped from the eaves.

“You warm enough?” she whispered.

“Fine.”

“Really,” she sighed. “Really, I’m happy that they didn’t
come. Maybe I’m too shy. I don’t know. I just can’t keep up with all their teasing and games and everything. But … I’ll be glad when Harvey gets a job and goes to work somewhere. He’s talking about it again, you know. He hasn’t said anything but I’m sure, I’m sure from the way he talks about a job, that he’s thinking about asking Addie to get married again. He’s acting the same way. You think so? Anyway, I’ll be glad when he gets a job and goes off to work. Or when we do, whichever it is. At first … at first I was feeling bad because you lost your job. Not bad, really. I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, it wasn’t as if you were fired or anything, was it? But I felt kind of down in the dumps. I didn’t try to show it, I just kind of felt that way because I knew you were feeling down, too. But now I don’t. Now I don’t feel that way. I wouldn’t mind moving to another place, would you? Really. Would you?”

“I suppose not. There isn’t much else to do.”

“Oh, it’ll be better maybe. In the long run. I can find a teaching job anywhere we go, so you don’t have to worry about it, about finding a job right away. I know you’re a little worried, even if you don’t talk about it. I …”

“I’m not worried,” he said.

“All right. If you say so, then you’re not worried.”

“I’m not. I just want to take my time and find something decent. I was thinking for a while about maybe going back to school.”

She sat up. “Really? Oh! I think that would be wonderful. I do. I love the idea. Really?”

“Maybe. It’s an idea.”

“We could go down to Iowa,” she said.

“That’s part of it.”

“Oh. Oh, I like that idea.”

“We’ll see what happens.”

He heard her turning and thinking. He wished he hadn’t mentioned it. Water was still running off the roof and dripping from the eaves. The bed was very warm. After a time, she curled close to him. “Hmmmm,” she sighed. “Are you warm enough? I’m happy. This is a beautiful birthday. Everything’s getting better, isn’t it? I knew everything would get better.” She was touching him. “Do you want me to rub you?”

“No, not tonight.”

He held her and listened to water drip from the roof. When she was asleep, he turned to his stomach and faced the wall.

He awoke once, feeling restless. He was hungry. He was always getting hungry now, ever since getting out of the woods. He tried to sleep but the hunger kept growing, and at last he got up and went to the kitchen. He ate birthday cake and drank milk. Then he went up the stairs to look in on Harvey. The bed was empty and the window was open and a puddle of water had formed on the floor. He wiped it up with a sheet and went back to bed. Grace was mumbling from her dreams and he listened. She never said much. He curled around her and slept late into Saturday. It was peaceful. The house was quiet and there was spring sun. He slept through the weekend, and on Monday, hopelessly sluggish, he drove into town to continue changing his life.

Harvey had disappeared. He tried calling Addie’s boarding house, but there was no answer. Grace was sure they’d got married.

The spring sun continued into the second week of June. The fat was coming back and he had no power to defend himself, and his waist and hips quivered with the old gelatinous slime. He was either hungry or sleepy, and there was no other sensation.
He began going again to Pliney’s Pond, sitting on the rocks and staring with sleepy eyes into the thick water, never going in, now and then dipping into the pond and letting the green water trickle through his fingers. The water was always warm.

Once he shed his clothes: a bright Thursday morning.

He stood naked over the pond, put his foot in, let it sink into the mud.

But he stopped.

He dressed quickly and hurried back to the house to get ready for work.

That afternoon Bishop Markham stopped in to say old Jud Harmor was dead.

“Cancer,” Bishop said, sitting on the edge of Perry’s desk.

“Lord.”

“Old Jud.”

“Well,” said Bishop, “it has to happen. You’re right, he was awful old. It was all over him, I’m told. Started in his throat, and I’ll bet that will teach him to smoke. Well. I just wanted to fill you in. I got things to do. With Jud gone, I guess I’m temporary mayor. Seeing as how … town council and so on. It’s no fun getting it this way, I’ll tell you. You want anything done, let me know.”

“Right, Bishop.”

“Okay. Have a good day now.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Bishop grinned.

“You’re a hell of a man, Bishop.”

It was the way he’d felt when … a lot of times. He sat at his desk. He realized he was grinning and tried to stop. He finally got up and locked the office and went to have his tooth repaired. Hal Bennett leaned over him, working like a garage mechanic. Poor old Jud, Perry was thinking, but not in words, gripping the chair. Bennett drilled the cavity and smeared the hole with medication
and thumped a filling home. Poor old Jud, Perry was thinking. His mouth was braced in a grin. The light was brilliant overhead, the silver instruments gleamed in Bennett’s hand. “Jud’s dead,” said the dentist as he hit the filling. “Just like—that,” and he hammered Perry’s tooth. “Brush your gums,” he said. “You got to take better care of them teeth, you’re gonna lose them otherwise.” He handed Perry a new toothbrush. Outside, Perry threw the brush away in disgust. Poor old Jud, he was thinking, but not in words.

His mouth hurt all night. He woke up with a savage headache. It started in his jaw and rolled in tremors along his skull. In the morning he had orange juice and aspirin, looked at the sun, then returned to bed.

Grace finally shook him. “Jud Harmor’s dead,” she said.

“I know it.”

“You ought to get up.”

“All right. I’m hungry.”

“Well, you should be, you should be. Sleeping Beauty. Go get a shower. And you should have told me about poor Jud.”

“I forgot. I’m sorry. What time is it?”

“Supper time, that’s what. Go get a hot shower. Sleeping Beauty in person.”

Perry sat on the rocks at Pliney’s Pond. Thick steam rose from the waters. Bacterial wastes, decaying plant life, dead and living animals. Microorganisms that flourished and multiplied. Floating algae, tiny capsules of cellulose, lower-level plant life, ripe and rich and hot. Frogs and newts and creatures with beady eyes dangling from optic nerves. Continuity. Spores in the air. Chemical life, chemical transformations, growth and decay. Bacteria feeding, insects feeding, frogs feeding. The processes of protoplasm.
Respiration, oxygenation, reproduction, metabolism, conversion and reconversion, excretion and growth and decay. Such a fountain, he thought. And poor old Jud. And poor old Harvey and poor old Addie, and poor old Grace. And: “Poooooor me,” he sighed. Simple multiplication and division, asexual continuity, spores in the air, dispassionate life: “Poor me.”

He drove into town. He stopped first at the office. Working steadily until noon, he finished cleaning out the files. He took two maps from the wall and rolled them up and stuffed them into a box for shipment. Then he emptied out his drawers, saving some personal papers and a box of staples. The rest he threw away, one by one turning the drawers upside down over the waste basket.

When the noon whistle blew, he walked to the church. The bells were chiming. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gone inside. The pulpit was in the familiar place. The apse was high cold stone. He walked up the center aisle and looked down on old Jud. Behind him, the custodian was sweeping. Jud looked all right.

Perry stood awhile then went out into the sun.

He had lunch in the drugstore, then went back to finish his work. Billowing from nowhere, dust filled the air in the old office and he began sweeping the place down, taking great care to sweep in the corners and under the desk.

Then he took out the razor blade.

It was cool and slim.

He went to the window. Outside, the streets were dizzy white. To his left he could see as far as the railroad tracks. To his right, the drugstore and a corner of the bank.

He held up the blade and began scratching his name from the glass. It took him most of the afternoon: first erasing his name, then the title, then everything.

He swept the paint chips out into the street. He washed the glass clean and pulled the blinds.

He was sleeping when Harvey came in. His feet had fallen from the desk.

He heard the door open, and the light fanned through his dream, and he heard the boots, the rush of hot air.

“Addie’s gone,” Harvey whispered. “She’s flown off.”

“Sit down.”

“Addie’s gone.”

Harvey sat in a hard-backed chair. His bad eye was red. The blinds were drawn and the office was dark. It still smelled of dust. Harvey sat still a long while. Then he put his elbows on his knees, leaned forward, cupped his face in his hands. Outside a tractor went by.

“Addie’s gone.”

“We were worried about you, Harv.”

“She’s flown off. She’s gone to Minneapolis. I asked her to get married again and then she went to Minneapolis. She’s just gone.”

“It’s a bad show.”

“She was making the plans for two weeks. I found out she got bus tickets two whole weeks ago. She didn’t say anything to anybody.”

“Where were you?”

“So I found out. So I got on the next bus and went down to find her … makes me sick.”

“You look rough, Harv. How about us going home now?”

“I tell you it makes me
sick
! She’s got this apartment down there. The city, I can’t believe it. I had to sleep on the floor. Can you believe that? Makes me sick.”

“Let’s go home.”

“Let’s get a drink someplace.”

“You want to?”

“Sure.”

“I swear to God, it all makes me sick. Almost killed me. You couldn’t believe it. How nice she was. Lets me stay there and listens and smiles and says I can come and visit whenever I want, and says no, she can’t marry me, and I say why the hell not, and she just smiles and says no, and it goes on and on I don’t know how long, forever I guess. The goddamn city. It’s not even the city. A goddamn suburb. Can you believe that? Richfield, a goddamn suburb. That’s where Addie’s living if you can believe that. Took me a whole day to find her. Scalped. I feel rotten, Paul. You ever feel this rotten?”

“I guess not.”

“I feel rotten.”

“You look it. You need sleep and supper.”

“Goddamn city. Goddamn bus. So I knock on her door, and she comes to the door and, you can’t believe it, she knows it’s me, I don’t know how, and she’s smiling in that same bloody way, and she’s even got a
roommate
. It’s all been planned for … And I was talking about Nassau and Italy, and she’s cheering me on, and all the while … I feel rotten.”