The Blood Oranges (24 page)

“Listen, Meredith,” I said, passing her, deciding suddenly
that fury might be a symptom of true grief after all, “whatever wakes up has to go back to sleep. Think about it, Meredith. OK?”

My fully rounded words, my wrinkled forehead, my athletic size, the faint smell of lemon juice on my sun-tanned skin and the hazy smell of white wine on my breath—none of it meant anything to Meredith, of course, who walked deliberately within striking distance of my seductive speech and refused to answer. I saw the fresh tears, the angry eyes, even the pale strawberry-like impression of the vaccination on one bare upper arm, and I was as close as I would ever come to feeling what Meredith must have been feeling at the loss of her dog. But it was hopeless, and I could only shrug and lean down, removing heavy hands from tight hip pockets, and seize the abandoned shovel and prepare to dig.

“Take your time, boy,” Hugh called gruffly. “Make it deep.”

With the first full thrust of the rusted shovel into the coarse sand, I both destroyed the original dark drifting mood of our death party and restored it. On the one hand I was breaking ground, making irreparable crunching sounds with the shovel, merely digging a hole in the wet substance of a narrow strip of gray beach. And yet on the other hand the grave was opening. Yes, I thought, poor Hugh’s funeral fantasy had given way suddenly to one large half-naked man working slowly and steadily on an empty beach. Grief had given way to industry. And yet my thoughtful exertion pointed toward the moment when the pitted cross would stand in place and the contemplation of mystery (if that’s what Hugh thought it was) could be resumed.

My physical labor, my concentration, my upper body beginning to shine mildly with sweat, the unmistakable flashing movements of my golden spectacles and large and low-slung belt buckle of dull pewter, the serenity of my dripping face, and the deepening trench, the flowering grave— all this was exactly what Hugh wanted in spite of himself, I knew, and so I prolonged the brutal practicalities and continued to dig, to shave the walls of my wet pit in the sand. I recalled Hugh’s tactless confession of a few hours before (“She asked me if you and Fiona had to come along, boy. I said you did.”) and realized that if Meredith had had her way, had in fact been able to disrupt the firm community of our two families, there would have been only Catherine to dig the grave or to share that task with her mournful and disabled husband. But better me, I thought, better old Cyril with his good wind, two good hands, steady arms, brown and hair-tinged abdomen hard as a board. Yes, this work was to my liking, I told myself, and noted that both Hugh and Fiona were staring out over my bent or rising figure as if they could see some distant apparition of the black dog yelping and floundering on the horizon. Alone as I was for once, alone with my cream-colored calfskin field boots sopping up water and my tight denims gritty and streaked with sand, still I could not help but admire Hugh’s fierce expression and Fiona’s refusal to hold Hugh’s hand or touch her hip to his.

“Done,” I called, and tossed out the shovel and climbed from the grave in one slow unobtrusive motion appropriate to the man who had dug to the center of Hugh’s fantasy and laid bare the wet and sandy pit of death. Slowly I brushed at the wet sand on my denims, took a fresh breath
and surveyed the deep empty trench and the remarkably high pile of inert yet trickling sand. Deeper than necessary, higher than necessary, stark. Already my chest and arms were drying and I did not regret the magnitude of those expressive scars on the beach.

“Look,” I heard myself saying then, “a visitor …”

“But, baby,” Fiona whispered, “he’s got a dog!”

I nodded, though Fiona had already turned to stare again toward the dark trees and tall approaching man and leaping dog, as had Hugh, whose fist was clenched, and Catherine who had climbed to her feet and was holding close her small and obviously frightened girls.

“He’s a shepherd,” I murmured. “And he may not be quite right in the head. You can tell by that odd angular gait of his.”

“We’ve got to get rid of him, boy. Send him off.”

“When he sees the coffin, he’ll want to help us mourn.”

“Oh, baby, how awful.”

“Be friendly, Fiona. That’s all we can do.”

“But that damn dog, boy. It’s just like ours.”

“Yes,” I said, “too bad for Meredith.”

“Tell him the party is private, baby. Please.”

“Can’t offend him, Fiona. Bad luck.”

He raised one long black-sleeved bony arm in innocent greeting. Carelessly he swung a long white slender crook in time to his steady but unrhythmical gait. He was fast approaching, and all the incongruous details were clear enough—the shapeless and once formal black coat and trousers, the absence of shirt or socks or shoes, the short black hair suggesting the artless conscientious work of the village barber, the stately and yet ungainly size, the slender
crook. Yes, I told myself, hearing his sharp whistle and noting that the whistle had no effect on the fat and mangy black dog bearing down on us, in every way our approaching stranger exemplified the typical shepherd who was bound to keep an illiterate family in the village and yet spend his days and nights roaming from thorny field to secret watering spot with his nomadic sheep.

“Hugh, baby,” Fiona whispered then, apparently forgetting Catherine, Meredith, me, the funeral itself, “he looks like you.”

But before I could comment on this latest of Fiona’s aesthetic judgments, suddenly the appealing and yet repellent figure of the shepherd was standing a shadow’s length from the casket and frowning and crossing himself, while now his dog lay groveling and whimpering in the sand at Meredith’s feet.

“It’s a different dog, Meredith,” I said. “He’s a lot younger than yours. Besides, he’s got that white star on his chest. Listen, if you pat his head a few times he’ll leave you alone.”

“Never mind, baby, it’s all right. We’ll pat him together.”

With obvious disregard for everyone but Meredith, quickly Fiona stepped to the child’s side, knelt down, put a thin strong arm around her waist and firmly began to stroke the head of the dog. It was a small but totally absorbing example of Fiona’s swift feminine purpose, another one of Fiona’s golden pebbles dropped into her bottomless well of rose water. We heard that sound, we saw her move, we watched.

“Look at the way your shepherd is staring at Fiona, boy. I don’t like it.”

Had the circumstances been other than what they were, had there been no children, no coffin, no open grave on the beach, and had we four met the tall intruder while swimming or among the pines in some dense secluded grove where we might have sat with our spread white cloth and Fiona’s array of wicker baskets, then surely Fiona would have been her usual self and would have touched the man’s arm, paired him up with Hugh, would have softened to his fixed smile, his indifference to loneliness, his broad and crooked shoulders. But not now. She had made her decision. She was concentrating on Meredith and the shepherd’s dog. And did he know all this? Had he understood this much of my kneeling wife in that single frank sweep of his dark unfocused eyes? Had he caught the pretentious tone of Hugh’s remark and decided to heed that hostile sound? Was he more concerned with our funeral than with Fiona?

Slowly he stepped forward and offered his bony right hand first to Hugh and then to me, and in the grip of those cold and calloused fingers even Hugh must have begun to comprehend what our unwanted intruder meant to say: that he had slept in dark caves, that he had buried countless dead ewes, that he also knew what it was like to bury children, that only men could work together in the service of death, that death was for men, that now his only interest was in the one-armed man and bare-chested man and the coffin. The rest of it (our wives, our children) meant nothing to him. Only death mattered. He had joined us only because of the coffin.

“Meredith,” Hugh was saying then, abruptly, gruffly, “the shepherd is going to help Cyril and me. You better watch.”

Together Hugh and I lifted the coffin, moved in unison through the crab grass, and approached the wet hole where the mute and barefooted figure already stood waiting, shovel in hand. The flatness of the sea before us reflected the gloom and silence of the wall of trees at our backs. The hole, soon to be filled, was ringed, I saw, with the deep fresh impressions of the shepherd’s feet. No birdcall, no tolling bell. Only the sound of Hugh’s breath and the rising of the salty breeze and across the open grave the white face of the shepherd.

“You better gather around,” Hugh said. “All of you.”

“Meredith, baby. This is the way it is in real life. Don’t be sad.”

“Ready, boy?”

“Ready.”

At either end of the grave we knelt and took hold of the silver grips and swung the coffin over the open grave. Together we eased the small black heavy coffin down until it rested finally in the sea-smelling dark water that lay in the bottom of the hole. I was sure that behind us Fiona was restraining Meredith. And was Fiona thinking what I was thinking? Was she too recalling the old half-drowned animal in my wet arms? No, I thought, Fiona did not share my interest in coherence and full circles. For better or worse, Fiona lived free of the shades of memory.

But it was not at all a question of restraining Meredith. She was not struggling to plunge toward the grave, as I had expected, but instead was kneeling with her hands clasped
gently and her thin white face raised happily toward the black-and-white figure of the shepherd who was now filling the grave. Sitting back on her heels, Meredith appeared to be quite unconscious of Fiona’s long fingers stroking her hair or of the dog’s head resting in her lap. Only the shepherd mattered for Meredith, and despite his concentration and violent labor, the tall man was obviously aware of the admiring child.

“I’m afraid of him,” Catherine whispered.

“No need to be,” I murmured, and brushed the sand from the hair on my chest, felt little Dolores encircling my tight and heavy thigh with a stealthy arm.

Bare foot raised to the edge of the black and pitted blade, coat open, chest and belly now and again exposed in both a poverty and pride of nakedness, broad and crooked shoulders twisting suddenly to the thrust of the long arm and invulnerable bare foot—all this was observed in silence as slowly the pile of sand went down and the shadows lengthened and the light of the afternoon grew still more pale. In this physical act of covering up forever what he assumed to be the small body of an infant dressed for death, the shepherd was providing Meredith with a performance which I, had it been me, would surely not have attempted. But even now I suspected that Meredith, so seldom treated to anything she herself desired, had probably forgotten the reason we were waiting at the edge of this grave. And yet if Meredith was having a little excitement, I thought, what did it matter if momentarily she had forgotten her old dog? After all, I thought, the afternoon really belonged to Hugh.

“Oh, baby, a flute …”

From a pocket in his open coat the shepherd had produced a short wooden pipe on which he now played his reedy tune for Meredith. The light faded, the rising wind blew through the open coat, his unfocused eyes were fixed on Meredith, the bony fingers rose and fell on the holes of the crude pipe. Had he known all along that he would stand here playing his shepherd’s pipe? Was this why he had joined us and taken up the shovel? Only to pipe his endless frail tune into the approaching night? At least Meredith would never forget those sounds, I told myself. Nor, for that matter, would Hugh.

He was still playing when I retrieved the shovel, still playing when once again we straggled back into the wall of trees. And still playing when from the darkness ahead, where Hugh and Fiona were quite invisible, I heard against the wind and that faint piping the clear tones of Fiona’s voice.

“He was attractive, baby. But not as attractive as you.”

I
T IS ANOTHER ONE OF OUR MURMUROUS NONSEQUENTIAL
midafternoons in Illyria. Together we lounge around the small white female donkey which only this morning Hugh discovered stock-still in the lemon grove. Hugh holds the donkey’s rope. Catherine ties back her hair, Fiona smiles, all four of us have taken turns at the makeshift shower.

“Listen,” Hugh says, “we can either pack the baskets on the donkey and walk. Or Cyril can carry the baskets and
Fiona can ride the donkey. What do you say, boy, shall Fiona ride?”

“Sure,” I say, admiring the little trim white body and pearl-colored hoofs, “let Fiona ride.”

“Help me up, baby. OK?”

We face each other, we kiss, we look into each other’s eyes. I put my heavy hands on Fiona’s waist and lift and seat Fiona sidesaddle (though there is no saddle) on the donkey’s rump. I step away, Hugh gives the end of the rope to Fiona and puts his quick hand against the small of her back.

“I’ll hold her on, boy. Don’t worry.”

Fiona waves. Off they go at a fast walk through the lemon trees which soon give way to orange trees white with blossoms.

“Wait,” Catherine whispers, “they’ll see.”

“Can’t wait,” I say, and pull her into another full-length embrace, mouth to mouth with Catherine’s hands in my hair and my own two weathered hands pressing the warm flesh beneath the blouse and beneath the wide waistband of Catherine’s skirt. We hold each other, we erupt into a few choppy kisses, again we hold each other—Catherine and I who are too heavy to ride on donkeys, too large in each other’s arms to move.

And yet I lift my head, Catherine lifts her head, for a moment we see that all this while Fiona has been riding back and forth between the trees, Fiona with her bare legs thrust out for balance and steadied at the same time by her smiling Hugh. They wave, the air is sweet, the small white distant donkey carries its laughing and weightless burden through the orange trees.

“Baby,” Fiona calls, “we can do whatever we want to do. We really can.”

Remember?

O
R IN THE SEA AND SWIMMING, ALL FOUR OF US SIDE
 
BY
 side in an undulating line of naked bathers peaceful, untiring, synchronized, stroking our slow way out from the pebbly shore behind us and forward toward the little island rising ahead. And today Hugh is as naked as the rest of us. Today he lies in the low waves beside Fiona and his body rolls, his tufts and patches of black hair shine in the foam, his thin legs are cutting imaginary paper, his stump is pink, his good arm is doing double duty.