With (54 page)

Surprisingly Linda didn’t ask to go with him. He was prepared to talk her out of it if she did, as he had talked Frances out of France or talked Roseleen out of Stay More. He knew he couldn’t use “business” as an excuse because Linda herself was just as fascinated with oakwood as he was. But he didn’t need any excuses.
Have fun
, was all she said. He said, “I reckon I’d like to take just one good look around the Ozarks before I settle down forever in California.”

“I don’t suppose you’re planning to search for some childhood sweetheart you don’t want me to know about,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe that’s it. Only she never wore a dress nor had long hair nor even a cute little nose like you’ve got. She was just a
place,
for heaven’s sake.”

He let her have the fancy German sedan and he took the sports-utility vehicle, as they were just becoming known in those days. In fact, his was a top-of-the-line English model with powerful four-wheel drive, which he assumed he’d need if he ever decided to climb Madewell Mountain. He drove up into the Rockies and across the plains, taking his time and studying a few stands of oak en route, spending a couple of nights on the road before finally reaching the place he’d spend the third night, Harrison, Arkansas. Although it was one of the principal trading centers of the Ozarks, he’d only been there once before in his life, when his father had put them into the back of a rickety truck headed for California. He spent the night at the Holiday Inn and had a decent supper and breakfast at their restaurant, where someone had left the
Harrison Daily Times
at his table, which he read while eating. Crossing the state line into Arkansas had thrilled him, entering Harrison had been a triumph, picking up this newspaper and seeing the names of his people (even if he saw no familiar names) gave him a sense of controlling his destiny.

The main local news concerned the continued search for an abducted girl, only seven, last seen in a roller skating rink, and the subject of a massive search by the state and local police as well as the
FBI
. The girl’s mother, Karen Kerr, had agreed to the organization of a national support group named after her daughter for parents of missing children. Adam wondered how he would feel if his daughter were kidnapped. He wondered how he would feel if he had a daughter. Linda had not yet broached the subject of whether they’d have children.

He drove to the dying village of Parthenon, which still had a post office in a humble stone building, where he made inquiries. There were no Madewells still living in the area. Adam’s mother’s sister, Aunt Effie, had died. The man who had owned the Parthenon Stave
&
Heading Company was still alive and in his eighties, and Adam visited him and was taken to the site of what once had been a school, the Newton County Academy, where only one ruined building remained, the former gymnasium, a dilapidated old stone building being used for the storage of what was thought to be worthless oak staves. He and the man went inside, and Adam staggered at the sight of thousands upon thousands of oak staves, neatly stacked and turning gray as they aged. He lifted one at random, scratched it with his thumbnail, and inhaled an oaken fragrance that he had not smelled since the age of twelve and which he’d been searching for ever since.

The man told him that most of the staves had been deposited there by Braxton or Gabriel Madewell, and since Adam was their heir, he was free to help himself. He gave the man the address of Madewell Cooperage in California and wrote him a check to cover the cost of hiring a convoy of trucks to deliver the staves.

The business part of his trip, to all intents and purposes, was accomplished.

Did he want to visit Stay More? It wasn’t a matter of
did he
but rather
could he?
He’d found that childhood sweetheart in San Francisco and knew her only in the Biblical sense.

Could he drive his powerful
SUV
up Madewell Mountain? He could try, although he discovered he was sweating and nervous.

His progress up the steep trail was halted when he encountered a pick-up truck mired squarely in the road. The owner of the truck, who said his name was Leo Spurlock, told him there was probably no way to get on to the top of the mountain, not even on foot.

Adam had a bad leg. Worse, he had a great fear that if he succeeded in reaching the top of the mountain and finding the place where he’d willed a part of himself to stay forever, he would never want to leave again. He just couldn’t do it.

So he returned to California. André Tchelistcheff was honored to be asked to serve as his best man at the elaborate wedding, held in the glowing, lovely vineyards of Linda’s family, a Madewell barrel serving as altar.

Chapter forty-four

S
he was a woman now. Latha had said so. She remembered how, long ago, the Woodland Heights Elementary had wanted her to skip a grade because she was so advanced over the others, and now she felt that she was not merely seventeen, she had grown entirely out of adolescence and if anybody asked her how old she was (if there was anybody anywhere to do such a thing—like Latha) she would have to say she was well along into her twenties. Maybe close to thirty. Yes, she was at least as old as her mother had been the last time she’d seen her. And much better than her mother in so many ways. Prettier. Smarter. Funnier. Shapelier. Friendlier. Sexier (God,
yes
). If only she had a man (not a boy but a man) to demonstrate it with. At her birthday party, when the dogs had presented her with the petrified but soon relaxed Armageddon, her armadillo, she had worn the dress Latha had given her, an old-fashioned country calico dress that Latha herself had worn in her twenties, and it made her look much older than seventeen, and she enjoyed being clothed for that one day, and finally understood for herself why human beings are the only creatures who wear clothes, not so much for bodily protection but rather because what is hidden is more tantalizing than what is revealed; that humankind, blessed with greater imagination than animalkind, needed to play a kind of constant hide-and-seek with the body itself, as all human creative work, which animals cannot do, is the expression of a hiding and a seeking and a finding, especially stories, and even music, yes, musical notes hide themselves and find themselves constantly (what else is melody?), as she demonstrated in her birthday descant. Then she said, “Adam, do you think I look more appealing in this dress than I do stark naked?”

He was slow in answering, as usual. Sometimes she didn’t know whether his slowness was just a matter of being an ignorant twelve-year-old, or because the older she got the more reserved he was toward her, and now the five years that separated them was actually like ten or more. Finally, he said, rather wistfully,
Tell ye the truth, hit don’t matter too awful much, one way or th’other, since I caint have ye, anyhow.

“Have me?” she said. “Do you really
want
me?”

Again he took a while pondering or formulating his answer.
I’ve always wanted ye. But come to think on it, I reckon I’d want ye more in that ’ere dress than I’d want ye as you generally are, a-running around all over creation a-wearing nothing but a smile.

“There!” she said. “That’s what I figured. Clothes can be naughtier than skin, if they stir up your thoughts.”

My thoughts don’t need no stirring up.

“You’re clothed, aren’t you?” she asked him. “What are you wearing?”

Just my same old overalls.

He pronounced it “overhauls.” She pretended to be staring down at him. “Don’t look now,” she said, “but you forgot to button your fly.”

There was almost a visible stirring in the air; she could imagine him trying to button himself.
Darn ye!
he said.
That weren’t funny.

An idea occurred to her, but they were surrounded by all their friends, including the innocent new kitty, Latha, and the latest haunter, Armageddon, who hadn’t made up his mind (actually, as she’d soon learn, it was
her
mind) whether he (or she) liked birthday cake or not. “Adam,” she requested, “sometime before the day is over, as one more birthday present, even an immaterial one, let’s you and I get together for a private conversation. Would you do that for me?”

He didn’t answer, and she wondered if her tone had once again been too supercilious for him. She finished her own piece of cake and offered seconds to all the guests, but only Ralgrub and Pogo wanted more. She thanked Hrolf for leading the expedition to procure Armageddon. Then she went into the storeroom and got a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels and opened it. She offered it around, but nobody wanted any. Paddington would have been glad to have some, but she hadn’t seen her bear for quite some time, and his absence was the only shortcoming in her birthday celebration. While she was relieved to be free from his constant devotion, she hoped that she hadn’t hurt his feelings by locking him out of the house. She was sorry that he had never acquired the ability of the other animals to understand her; he had never grasped what she had tried to tell him: that he was too rough, and sometimes his claws raked her. Probably, she had consoled herself, he had simply wandered off across the mountain in search of a female bear who could love him in a way she could not. But giving up
this
Paddington had been far more difficult for her than giving up the original stuffed Paddington that she had loved so much. Now she drank what would have been Paddington’s portion of the Jack Daniels, in his memory or honor or whatever.

After a while she needed to pee and she stumbled out to the yard but instead of lifting her dress and squatting there she had an impulse to use the outhouse, which she hadn’t done for nine years. One of the two holes was still occupied by the skeleton, who was still holding his own bottle of Jack Daniels, and when she sat down over the other hole and began to tinkle, it was somehow more embarrassing, or more daring, to be doing it in the presence of Sugrue’s skeleton than it would have been to be doing it in the presence of all the live creatures who inhabited these premises. She knew she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been drinking so much. “Excuse me,” she said to him, rather tipsily, “but maybe I’m getting too old to squat in the yard. Tee hee.” Then she asked, “How’ve you been?” And she said, “Latha Bourne was asking me how’ve you been, and I had to tell her you were dead. She seemed to think that was good news. She’s doing just fine, herself, despite being past eighty. I had a real nice visit with her. She gave me some nice things to bring home with me. She gave me three books, or she let me pick them out, telling me just to take whichever three I wanted and she could have her grandson Vernon replace them if she still wanted copies, although I left behind ten thousand dollars of your money. I picked
Mythology
by Edith Hamilton, which is very interesting and a lot of fun. Also I took a handbook on wildflowers, which has been very helpful in my study of my favorite subject. And finally just for fun I chose a book called
Lightning Bug,
which is a novel-book but has some interesting stuff on fireflies, and I’ve also started studying bugs a lot lately, even spiders, and you’d be surprised if you ever stopped to count the different kinds of bugs that are running and flying around all over this place. Latha also gave me a little bottle of cologne, because she doesn’t ever use it any more. It’s called “Tabu” and I’m wearing it right now. Can you smell it? Hey, it’s my birthday, did you know? I’m seventeen, ten years older than when you first took me. There’s not a single present left for me in all that stuff you left behind, except your whiskey, and I suppose there’s enough of that for me to have a birthday bottle from you for the rest of my life. I’m all finished peeing but I’ll just sit here a while with you, and bring you up to date.”

She kept on talking to Sugrue’s skeleton for a very long time. She told him how much she had tried to live according to his precepts, such as everything in this life worth getting requires being stung a few times, and be careful what you wish for, and don’t ever sing before breakfast. When her mouth got dry, she borrowed the bottle he had in his bony fingers, and opened it and took a swig now and then. She actually got drunk, which she’d never done before and would never do again, because among other things she would have a hangover the next day that she never wanted to have again. She drunkenly told Sugrue that she wished he still had some flesh on his bones. She told him that if he did, she’d be glad to suck his dick, to get it stiff and hard so he could put it inside her. What she really wanted, more than anything, was a man. “If you had stayed alive,” she said to him, “and if only you’d been able to wait several years and give me a chance to grow up, you and I could have really fucked. Let me tell you how we would have done it…”

She was busy describing a hot sex scene to the skeleton when a voice said,
Scuse me for buttin in, but didn’t ye say you wanted to have a private conversation with me?
She jumped, her butt actually rising above the outhouse hole, then she realized it wasn’t Sugrue speaking to her. The voice went on,
Leastways I could answer ye, which this here skeleton caint do.

“Hi, honey,” she said. She’d never called him that before. “Have a drink with me.” She held out the bottle to him, but of course he couldn’t take it. “Could you just pretend?” she asked. “Are you any good at play-like, Adam?”

Iffen I wasn’t, I’d sure be up salt creek.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. So why don’t you play-like you’re having a big swallow of this fine whisky?”

Okay. Glug glug glug. Umm, mighty fine hooch, ma’am.

“Don’t call me ‘ma’am.’ Let’s get away from Sugrue. We don’t want him watching.”

Watching what, ma’am? But his ghost can foller us wherever we go.

“Really? Does he have a ghost? Have you seen it?”

He’s all over the place. All the time. Like me, he never sleeps, ma’am.