A university dropout, M.R. thought. But of another era.
She saw in his eyes a glimmering light of recognition. But she had never seen the boy before in her life, she was certain.
“Yah howdy, ma’am . . .”
With an air of mildly distracted dignity M.R. tried to ignore the insolent greeting. She knew that it was a good idea not to lock eyes with the dirty-skinned boy as one is instructed not to lock eyes with threatening wild creatures.
“Excuse me, please.”
M.R. turned to walk back down the path to the picnic area. But the dirty-skinned boy didn’t step aside to let her pass.
“Ma’am? Din’t-ya hear me?”
Now it was difficult not to look at him. Though still, M.R. tried to keep her gaze from locking with his.
She was thinking: the young family was below, at a picnic table. She was not alone on this trail and not in any real danger.
“Ma’am, you got a car? Maybe can I ride with you?”
“I don’t think so. . . .”
“Where you headed so anxious-like, ma’am?”
His face was a young-old face. The skin appeared to be not dirty so much as discolored, stained. M.R. wondered if he was wearing—makeup? Or had lightly layered his face with mud, as his arms, with mud, to stave off insects? She felt dazed, disoriented. There was something very wrong here, she knew.
The boy’s smile was mock-respectful, sincere.
“I can drive, ma’am. You look like you’d benefit from some chauffeur-like. I can help, you’re driving some distance and alone and are gettin like anxious, being alone. And I work with cars, ma’am, I know engines. I know the fuckin’ insides of things.”
His smile deepened, with a terrible intimacy. His teeth were small, yellowish-gray, thin. And his eyes, so familiar. M.R. had been looking helplessly at him, just slightly up at him, not knowing what she did.
The dirty-skinned boy was taller than M.R. by several inches. His shoulders were broad like wings but his chest was sunken, his waist and hips narrow. You might have thought, glancing at him, that one of his legs was shorter or less developed than the other, though this didn’t seem to be the case. He appeared stunted in some mysterious way, not evident to the eye.
“Ma’am? Where’re you from?”
“I—I’m leaving now. Excuse me, please . . .”
“I’m from Massena. Know where Massena is?”
Yes, M.R. knew where Massena was.
“Fuckin’ shithole. You can’t appreciate till you been stuck there.”
M.R. was trying to determine: could she push past the boy, and risk being touched by him? Accosted by him?
Or should she back away, climb over the guardrail and try to get back to the picnic area below, by sliding down a steep pebbly hill? A sign warned DANGER DO NOT APPROACH EDGE OF CLIFF but she could avoid the sheer drop-off by cleaving to the narrow incline to her left, that descended to the parking lot about forty feet below.
It was not a good idea to be in this remote “scenic” place from which one might be pushed by a stranger, on a whim.
“You look like a nice kind generous lady, ma’am. Not like some selfish boowoisee would pass by a hitchhiker ’cause he’s a different ethnic-type from you.”
A hitchhiker! That was why she’d seen no second vehicle below.
“Here, too—‘scenic’ shithole. Fuck it matters if you’re starving. Can’t appreciate, ma’am, till you been stuck here like—a helluva long time.”
He coughed hoarsely, yet theatrically, as if to punctuate his extravagant words.
M.R. smiled guardedly. It was her nature to feel sympathy—not to ignore another’s request even when, as common sense might decree, she was in danger.
“Ma’am? You smiling at me? Ain’t laughing at me are you? That wouldn’t be kind.”
“I—I’m not laughing . . .”
“Maybe you got some change you could spare?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry you don’t have no change, or sorry you ain’t gonna give it to me? Ma’am?”
The thought came to M.R. But you can give him something! A few dollars.
But no. That would be a mistake. He will accept what you give him and take the rest by force.
Foolishly M.R. was smiling. Trying to determine if possibly the young family was still there after all, down the hill. If there was another vehicle below, in the cinder parking lot, she’d failed to notice. Or just M.R.’s own.
Badly now she wanted to call her father. She wanted to call Andre.
It was a mistake, to be so often alone. So much easier to be obliterated from the face of the earth, to be extinguished, if one is alone.
As if reading M.R.’s confused thoughts the boy said, with sudden vehemence:
“Ma’am! You are not in any fuckin’ danger! I will ride with you and be your friend. Looks like you’re all alone and got no husband, eh?—or he run off, or got old and died. Happens all-the-time, ma’am.” The dirty-skinned boy laughed as if he’d said something witty and risqué.
With an air of calm M.R. was considering the nearby guard railing which was about two feet high. If she could manage to climb over it, quickly, before the dirty-skinned boy grabbed her, she would risk the hill; not certain how steep the hill was but she would risk it; as a girl living with the Skedds she’d been led into such seemingly desperate adventures and had not been injured, at least not seriously. And if another vehicle had driven into the parking lot below, or the young family was still there, someone would hear her crying for help, the dirty-skinned boy wouldn’t dare follow her . . .
“You could give me a few dollars, ma’am. Ain’t like you’re going to miss a few dollars. In fact you could give me all the money you have and the keys to your car, ma’am. No matter it’s a piece-of-shit car—beggars can’t be choosers. You could give me, ma’am, or I could take.”
Though M.R. had been expecting the dirty-skinned boy to rush at her, she seemed to be taken wholly by surprise when he did. She screamed at him, fighting back, more furious than panicked; at the Skedds’ she’d learned to defend herself, however ineffectually, for you had to know—to give up is the error, you must never give up. She smelled the wild sick smell of her assailant, a rank animal smell, as he pummeled her, tried to wrestle her bag from her; of course, if all he wanted was her bag, she should surrender it to him, but she did not; she would not; she kicked at him blindly as he wrenched her off-balance, tugging at the shoulder strap of the bag. When she turned to run he grabbed at her—her clothing, her right arm. M.R. thought—Is it going to end here?—like this?
“Fuckin’ cunt! Goddam ugly fuckin’ cunt! Why the fuck d’you think you should be alive, fuckin’ bitch, when the rest of us ain’t?”
M.R. half-fell over the guardrail. On her knees but managed to right herself, then she was running down the hill, slip-sliding down the hill, nearly turning her ankle, if only she were wearing sturdier shoes! She’d scraped her knee, torn her clothing, but felt no pain yet, not even wet blood in a thin trickle down her leg.
The hill was near-vertical. Only a young heedless child could half-run half-fall down it without injury. M.R. clutched at shrubs and small trees to impede her fall as above her, leaning over the guardrail, the dirty-skinned boy jeered—“Ma’am! That’s real dangerous, ma’am! Gonna break your neck, ma’am! Crack your skull!”
A small avalanche of pebbles and dried mud accompanied M.R., sliding down the hill. The dirty-skinned boy was making his way along the path, which was winding, and not direct, for he didn’t dare follow her; she was aware that, for all his boastfulness, he was stiff-legged, and carried himself with his shoulders hunched. In a burst of strength M.R. ran limping to her car which she’d left unlocked—fortunately!—though Andre often scolded her for leaving it unlocked, carelessly—now, it was the proper thing to have done. M.R. threw her
self into the car—locked the doors—jammed her key into the ignition even as the dirty-skinned boy hobbled in her direction yelling and waving his arms. M.R. saw that the young family had departed leaving her alone and in desperation she pressed down hard on the gas pedal as the car leapt forward; the dirty-skinned boy continued to taunt her, cursing her standing spread-legged in the path of her car; he had time to get out of her way surely, but stood his ground, defiantly, refused to move as the left front fender struck him—not hard, but hard enough to knock him aside, as the car rushed past; his thin body was deflected and tossed aside as one might toss aside a rag doll and M.R. thought Have I killed him? What have I done?—but there was the dirty-skinned boy staggering to his feet trying to rush after M.R.’s car but lacking strength, his face uplifted, a mask of blood on his face where he must have struck the ground—his expression one of astonishment and fury and M.R. acted by instinct not hesitating but reversing her car, swiftly reversing and turning the car in a series of deftly executed if jerky maneuvers, turned the car around and swiftly exited the Lookout Point rest stop and within seconds she was on I-81 panting and half-sobbing yet exhilarated thinking No one will know. Not ever, no one.
By dusk, she’d arrived at the University.
About the Author
JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Novels by Joyce Carol Oates
With Shuddering Fall (1964)
A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967)
Expensive People (1968)
them (1969)
Wonderland (1971)
Do with Me What You Will (1973)
The Assassins (1975)
Childwold (1976)
Son of the Morning (1978)
Unholy Loves (1979)
Bellefleur (1980)
Angel of Light (1981)
A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982)
Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984)
Solstice (1985)
Marya: A Life (1986)
You Must Remember This (1987)
American Appetites (1989)
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990)
Black Water (1992)
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993)
What I Lived For (1994)
Zombie (1995)
We Were the Mulvaneys (1996)
Man Crazy (1997)
My Heart Laid Bare (1998)
Broke Heart Blues (1999)
Blonde (2000)
Middle Age: A Romance (2001)
I’ll Take You There (2002)
The Tattooed Girl (2003)
The Falls (2004)
Missing Mom (2005)
Black Girl / White Girl (2006)
The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007)
My Sister, My Love (2008)
Little Bird of Heaven (2009)
Credits
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover photograph by Martin Brandis/PlainPicture
Copyright
“Mudgirl in the Land of Moriah. April 1965” and “Mudgirl Saved by the King of the Crows. April 1965” were first published in Boulevard, 2010, 2011.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MUDWOMAN. Copyright © 2012 by The Ontario Review, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN: 978-0-06-209562-6
EPub Edition MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780062095640
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Joyce Carol Oates, Mudwoman
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