Town Burning (22 page)

John put his hand on her arm. “Yes, I know,” he said, “but he’s a man who had to admit it. Can you
see
all those dead men? I can.”

They came out from under the black branches of the elms as if from a tunnel. The moon was about to come up, and a red glow like a false sunrise shone above the Vermont hills. A tall pasture-pine with craggy branches like arms stood in a field, and as they rode along, it passed from the red glow back into darkness. She could smell fire in the night air, and as the black crown of a hill passed, the great red moon sailed out and followed them along.

“Haven’t you ever done something mean?” he asked.

“Yes. I was mean to Junior when he brought the Riders to see me. I made him feel as bad as I could. I gave him an awfully hard time.”

“Junior,” he said.

“And once…maybe I shouldn’t tell you this. It happened a long time ago, when we were pretty young. You were a freshman in high school.”

“When we were kids. What difference does it make now?”

“These things aren’t very funny to the kids,” she said. “I sicked Junior on you once. Deliberately.”

“He didn’t have to be sicked,” he said, a certain amount of bitterness in his voice.

“You see? It still isn’t very funny, is it?”

“The funny thing is, I remember,” he said, and now she heard a new emotion: he was ashamed of himself. “One of my many little shamefulnesses. I was thinking about it a while ago. I remember things very well—especially the things I don’t want to remember.”

“No, wait. This is
my
shameful piece,” she said.

“Do you remember that time at the scrape? Sure you do. Whatever happened afterward I deserved it. You told me you loved me and I hurt you. Just kid stuff? Bob fell when the rope broke, and we ducked you—my idea entirely—and then I took my towel and snapped you raw and you went home bawling. Kid stuff? And Junior and Keith Joubert caught me that night at the Community House.”

“I sicked him on you, but I never told him why.”

“I knew you didn’t. You don’t know how much I admired you and how much worse I felt because you didn’t tell him what I’d done.”

“God! How mad I was!” she said, but then reconsidered: No, not angry. And it was very easy to remember. First his hands touching her, even though he grabbed her to duck her—the joy of that contact. And how it turned slowly, as the minutes went by, into desperation; into a real fear of drowning. The acid bite of water in her nose—she could feel that again—but most important was the terrible shame, the shame of her protruding buttocks, the shame of her breasts and the poor worn bathing suit that could not conceal them (but had, a short season before. It was as if her growth itself were a kind of shameful disease). Shame as when all the girls in school were afraid on their periods that their dresses would be spotted when the bell rang and they had to stand up; had to stand up and couldn’t look.

“I know you didn’t like getting ducked, Janie,” he said in a soft, nervous voice. “It was childish and cruel of me. But when I snapped you with the towel, that was sadistic. It was a dirty thing to do.”

“Maybe you were getting back at Junior.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. I just couldn’t take it when you said you loved me. I remember thinking what a tremendous responsibility it meant for me, and I got scared. I felt the same about you, you know, only I’d never dare say anything or do anything about it.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said, and began to laugh without quite knowing why.

“I’d like to think it was funny,” he said, “but it wasn’t really too long ago, Leah time.”

“Yes. You can take one year and change it around with another and never know the difference. I know that.”

“The rest of the country isn’t like that, I’ll tell you. You come back after a while and it’s all changed. People have been walking all over it and building horrible things everywhere. Let me tell you. I always think of Leah as a center—no, a starting place, a calm starting place. Maybe it’s more like the center of a whirlpool, where it’s relatively quiet. But I never forget that the hole’s right underneath. For me it would be safer out on the edge of it. I don’t like Leah. I feel wounded here. I feel like a mental basket case. But everything means more here. Little things I’d forget, ignore, just laugh at; here in Leah they paralyze me. For some reason everything’s
real
here.”

“Weren’t things real in Paris?”

“No, nothing’s real in Paris. Nothing matters there. There are some things I can’t imagine doing in Paris. I can’t imagine doing
anything
worth while or serious in Paris.”

“But you could in Leah?” she asked. He turned onto the bridge that led back across the river to Northlee. In the pale fluorescent light on the modern bridge his face was greenish and unhealthy looking. She was glad he didn’t turn and look at her at that moment, and as she realized this she became terribly impatient with his self-consciousness.

“Yes, I’m afraid I could in Leah,” he said.

“You’re afraid,” she said.

He turned toward her, and smiled. “I’m afraid of you, Janie. Always have been. Afraid of Junior, too. God knows why. If I met him anywhere else we’d get along. If I met you anywhere else I’d…” He stopped, then began to hum to himself.

“You’d what?”

“Well, you see, I didn’t meet you anywhere else, or I’d tell you straight out.”

She made an impatient noise.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said. “Look! It’s stupid. You’re more real to me.
Too
real to me.”

Too real
for
you, she thought, and suddenly the picture of an old-fashioned can-opener came into her mind. John Cotter needed to be let out. At least she would then find if anything were inside. She kept silent as they went through Northlee and the campus, remembering a poem she’d written, or started to write, when she was a high-school senior and wanted to go to college:

Across the college campus
In the gloom of winter night,
A thousand men are sitting
In their rooms of yellow light.

Now that was a wonderful combination of yearnings: romance and higher education!

“Why didn’t you go to Northlee?” she asked.

“Because I didn’t want to commute. Things were crowded after the war. Number two: too close to Leah. But look, Janie, I don’t want to go on with this business. I’m going to shut up about it for good and all. God knows what I’ll talk about. No, let’s see. I used to think what I’d do….” He turned sharply onto a dirt road that led to Slocum Pond, Scrotum Pond to the students; a parking place.

“Oh I” he said. “Do you mind if we park by the pond?”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m not scared of you,” she said, and was immediately sorry. “What was it you used to think you’d do, Johnny?”

“Well, it was another dream—daydream. You and I were caught in a place where there was a huge forest fire. We knew we were going to be burned up. No chance of getting out. So what to do? Believe me it was worth it.” He laughed and was embarrassed again.

“It’s not too different now,” she said. The air was heavy with the smell of fire. He parked beside the little pond beneath a tall pine whose broad branches made whisking noises in the wind. Summer session at the college was over, and they had the pond to themselves.

“You always seemed more
valuable
to me than Mike,” he said hesitantly. “I don’t know.”

“Valuable?”

“Mike was just…”

“Mike just didn’t care about school. He wasn’t stupid. He just never
lit
anywhere.” She was afraid that she sounded angry, and didn’t want to give that impression.

“I used to envy him in high school,” John said. “He was so damned free and easy. He was witty, in a kind of goosing way. How could he smile so damned easily?”

“And you were the strong, silent type,” she said.

“The weak, silent type, you mean.”

“Do you believe that, Johnny?”

“No, of course not. I’m not silent and I’m not weak. That’s enough of that. Do you want a beer?”

“No, I don’t think so, Johnny.”

He picked up the carton of beer, opened the car door, ran down to the edge of the pond and threw it into the water. “There,” he said as he came back, “what do you think of that? Wasn’t that a non-John Cotter gesture?”

“It was,” she said wonderingly.

“Some day I’ll probably be diving for it. It’ll keep cool, anyway. Why the hell do you always make me talk about myself? I don’t like to talk about myself, Janie. I really don’t. What have you been doing for the last ten years? Read any good books?”

I have, she thought, been the regular bed partner of an erratic but faithful husband. I read
Time
and
Life
and
Harper’s
and
Atlantic;
I put my name on the waiting list at the library for the best-sellers; I have done exactly nothing for ten years. I read the Leah
Free
Press
to keep up with what is going on in the world and in Cascom and Cascom Corners.

“I’ve done nothing,” she said.

He was silent for a long time, then he put his arm around her shoulders and gently pulled her toward him. She was grateful that he didn’t ask her if it was all right. His face was dry, like fine sandpaper against hers. She felt her lips become soft. Their teeth touched with a hard little click. Her nipples turned hard; the straps of her bra tightened over her shoulders. As she turned in his arms there was a moment of clear, rather cold wonder—she could never remember such immediate symptoms with Mike. He had not changed her body so much or so quickly. Never. She shut her eyes, and the hot wind ruffled over them, coming into the car with a push that seemed deliberate. She found herself thinking, If it were only real, if I could only know that he is going to stay this time. There was a tremor in his leg, and his toe tapped against the floor of the car.

“See that?” he said. “Hear that? I’m nervous as hell, for some reason. You’d think we hadn’t known each other all our lives, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s because we have,” she said. “You’ve never kissed me before. Now let me say something. I’ve been wondering what that kiss would be like for a long time.”

“How is it?”

“Like I thought it would be.”

“I only know how it is for me,” he said, and tried to stop his leg from trembling. “I feel like a gawky virgin. It’s like going back to the scrape.”

She put her hands under his shirt, against his skin.

“Yes, you did that and nearly killed me on the spot. Yes,” he whispered, his lips against her ear.

“All of a sudden I want to know if you are going away,” she said.

“You feel that way?” he asked eagerly. “Do you, Janie?”

“Yes. I feel like a lawyer, or a miser. Right now I do. I want to know what’s going to happen.”

He moved his hands up her arms to her shoulders and neck, but kept them chastely away from her breasts. “I don’t know what to do. It’s the truth. I’ve never felt this way before. I mean it. It’s brand new. I mean new for real, not for daydreams.”

She had learned that reality had many definitions; that ten years, at least, could be unreal as a dream. To her, reality was progression, not stasis. She was quite sure it must include something she vaguely defined as “improvement.”

John watched her, held her out at arms’ length and watched her without moving. The red moonlight left black hollows beneath his eyebrows, and she could sense the eyes moving in the dark, and only the eyes. She wanted to move toward him, but would wait until he pulled her. Honest? she asked herself. Perhaps it meant too much to be honest; it was too late to be honest; perhaps honesty was not wanted. And yet John Cotter was honest. She could think of no one more honest.

Now his arms were steady; his foot had stopped tapping. The short spasm of his hard muscles had ended completely, and he was again the immobile, watching animal.

“I love you. I only say what I know. You’re not just my girl; you’re the archtype, the essence, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. That’s the truth. Every girl I’ve ever had was you incomplete in some way. I don’t like to get out on limbs, but I don’t care what you think about me now. It’s the first thing I’ve been able to say I
know
for an awfully long time.”

“How do you know what I’m like?” she asked.

“I will know what you’re like,” he said, and pulled her toward him. As they kissed he began, with expert fingers, to undo her clothes. His hands moved surely and busily about her straps and plackets, doing what she wanted him to do—not tearing, not impatient, opening her skin to the hard touch of his hands, which moved down over her back and spine. Suddenly she shivered and there was a great, convulsive blunting of the mind—but then she began to plan again, asking herself how cold she might make herself become. She wanted his hands to press into her flesh itself, to bury themselves in her flesh, and yet she used all her strength to stop him. He knew when to recognize the strength she used against him, and when to really stop.

“I still love you,” he said. “I am committed.”

“I’m sorry. I almost…”

“Yes. Almost,” he said.

“John, I was the first to declare myself, remember? At the scrape.”

“Then what are you sorry about? I don’t lie. No, I don’t mean that. You’re sorry for no reason. You think I’m in pain, or something. That’s a myth, Janie. This isn’t pain.” He put his hand on the bulge in his pants. “If you love me it isn’t pain. Pain is suffering. How can I suffer? For the first time in my life I know what I want, so I can wait. I felt you move toward me.”

“Yes, I did,” she said quickly, then put her mouth to his ear, wanting to be secret, as if to whisper in his ear kept the secret even from him. “I love you. It was the same for me. I didn’t—maybe no one grows up just because glands start and all that. I grew up with you as the man I could receive when I changed and got big enough. I can feel your hand on my back as if I were burned there.”

“Now we won’t do anything,” he said, “and I’ll take you home, temporarily. Here, I’ll help you fix all these things.” He fastened up her dress.

The moon had climbed out of redness; the wind was still hot but did not push. An elation, a clearing of the eyes, a feeling of confidence and carelessness came over her and was strange. “Johnny, I’m so goddam happy,” she said. And then she seemed to hear herself asking,
Yes, but for how long this time?