Witches on the Road Tonight

  Every one of their nights together, Sonia has felt his need to get it all down. When she is moved, she doesn’t want to figure out what she feels or why she feels it. She wants only to capture the stark unadorned image of it and make love with a man about it. See the way that lamp flings shadows like heat? Make my body feel that way. See the way the mountain laurel flowers, see that dirty child washing in a splintered wooden basin? Put that inside me. I want to capture that instant, then I want you to feed it into me until in the explosion I can feel the big bang of it, everything in motion, traveling through us, taking flying bits of ourselves with it. This is why she needs a man around, not for himself, no, that self is always in the way. She needs him to stop her for a moment by fixing the beauty of the world inside her, even if it’s only a pin through the wing of a still quivering butterfly.

  Oh, Tucker, she thinks, why furiously strike out and rewrite? Why try to save the unsavable in frangible words, to keep a moment going by goading it to exhaustion? Only in the instant blink and the final thrust can we come close to fixing and placing the world’s beauty, everything else is imprecise and perpetual.

  The blood flows harder and she feels that old familiar cramping. She thinks of what had been growing inside her but is now lost, and she wishes so strongly that she could have it back, to go to him in his yellow light and say, Let’s try. Maybe I could be like other women, maybe you could be like other men. He sits at the table, his mind ranging, and she knows that for her to work and love she must move to capture. If only they might go on traveling together, but love is always ruined by settling down. Don’t men know if only they’d stay in motion, remain at war, she would trail after them with her lens and body forever trying to fix them in time and space, trying forever to fix herself?

  She steps out of the spring and stuffs her underwear with a handful of leaves to contain what is still to come. She pulls her clothes back on and Tucker’s jacket, where her hand finds the car keys he’s left in the pocket.

  What do women know of war? Tucker had flung at her the other day. You are never called upon to kill. Sonia slowly walks away from the small light of the kitchen, headed toward the car. No, we are never called upon, she thinks. We are merely conscripted at birth.

  The sun will be coming up in a few hours and the quality of the night has changed. The moon is setting, and everything on the mountain is in its deepest sleep. He is so tired, he’ll let Sonia drive so that he can doze beside her and pretend they’ll go on forever, that their trip has not come to an end. For a single, blinding instant moving inside her, Tucker had thought he understood the entire human, heavenly, molecular struggle for balance, and what it cost the world when a witch slipped in. But when he tried to write it down, his brain stuttered and the paths went dark.

  “You’re still awake.”

  He looks up at the sound of Cora’s voice.

  Her hair is loose and hanging to her waist, her green eyes swallowed by pupil in the low light. She wears the thin nightgown of his dreams and beneath it he sees the pink flesh of her breasts, the long lines of her thighs as if she were wearing nothing at all. Remembering her husband, he glances nervously over her shoulder. Sonia, too, will be returning from the spring. He is suddenly conscious of his own bare chest.

  “Eddie wasn’t ready to come home,” he says. “He’s sleeping under the stars tonight.”

  “I’m glad,” she says. “That you took care of him.”

  He wishes she would come inside the room. She stands, like the Unseen Guest hanging on her wall, watching him, expecting something.

  “You’ve been too kind to us,” he says. “It’ll be hard to leave tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be going tomorrow,” she says.

  “I’m sorry?” he asks.

  “Your wife. She’s left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She killed your baby and she took your car.”

  Tucker looks out the back door but it’s too dark to see the spring. He stares while he tries to make sense of what she’s said. He laughs a little, absurdly, to keep from screaming. Cora sees him hesitate.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Bud’s gone, too.”

  Tucker doesn’t answer but takes up the lamp and walks toward her. She steps aside and follows him down the breezeway to the parlor. Their pallet is still on the floor, the sheet tossed aside. That part of him that has been waiting for Sonia to leave him ever since he met her knows Cora is telling the truth. He looks around the room and sees his jacket with the car keys is missing.

  “Did they leave together?” Tucker demands.

  Cora shrugs. “Does it matter? She knew you wanted to stay.”

  Sonia knew Cora wanted to keep him here. She tried to tell him. This woman stole his dreams, burned his draft card. Why?

  “I’m ready to hide you,” she says. “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tucker denies. He is dressing swiftly to quell his rising panic, retrieving his T-shirt and socks and shoes from where Sonia so recently stripped them off. He slips his suspenders from his shoulders and pulls on his oxford shirt, tucking it into the waistband of his trousers as if he were leaving for work.

  “My old homeplace. It’s hidden so deep, you’d be safe there. I could visit you. Later, when things calm down, we could go away together.”

  He stops. Cora has stepped inside the room and stands close enough to touch. She is more lovely than he has ever seen her, radiant and fresh as if newborn. She is offering him the opportunity to stay, not to go among other men and kill or be killed. Cora searches his face in confusion. Isn’t this what he’s asked for? Hasn’t she heard him right?

  “Up here,” she says, “a kiss still means something. It’s like a promise.”

  What have I done to you? Tucker thinks. You are a poor, beaten mountain woman who invited me into your house and I have turned you into something infernal. He wants to kiss her one last time to remember what the tipping point tasted like, he wants to make love with her slowly and carefully. A kiss, for him, too, is still a promise. But he knows once he starts kissing a woman like Cora Alley, he might never stop. The problem is never the war, he wants to tell her, it’s how to live after the battle is over. It’s never the kiss, it’s how to live after the kiss.

  “I’m sorry, Cora—Mrs. Alley,” he says. “I think you’ve misunderstood. If I don’t show up, they’ll put me in jail.”

  “Where are you now?” she asks.

  His hands shake as he folds the sheet upon which they slept, touching the sticky red stain that has soaked through to the cushion. He turns it over when he replaces it on the old sofa so that it doesn’t show. He follows drops of blood on the chestnut planks to the door where there is the smear of a partial footprint. Walking to the kitchen, he folds the map he left on the table and shoves it into his pocket.

  “You’re going?” Cora asks.

  “Please tell Eddie I’m sorry I missed him,” he says, trying to find a self to sound like. “I’ll write to him.”

  Cora nods, dumbly, stepping back to let him pass. He is on the porch reaching for his father’s projector, which is the last thing remaining. He’ll be on foot until he catches up with Sonia and it is very heavy. He doesn’t even want it anymore and can’t remember why he’s lugged it around so long.

  “I’d like to leave this here with you. For Eddie.”

  Cora shakes her head. “No, it’s yours,” she says.

  “Keep it for me, Cora,” Tucker says. “I promise I’ll come back when my time is up and get it from you. I’ll even bring a camera, we’ll make movies of our own.”

  “Take it with you, please,” she says.

  “Consider it a loan,” he replies. “Just till I come back. Please, watch over it. For me.”

  He holds it out to her, needing her to believe he’ll do what he says so that he may believe it himself. This family will not become one more memory rattling around inside him. Cora’s hair co
vers her downcast face. He tries to meet her eyes to let her know he’s true. Slowly, she stretches out her hands to take the box from him, their fingertips brush so gently. Tucker feels the current race up his arms, through his body, into his groin and aching heart like lightning in a jar. Cora raises her head, shakes it with a sad smile. This, too, she knew he would do. His hands twitch to take it back, but it’s too late. She has him now and it is exactly as Eddie said. He has only himself to blame. In her face, he sees all he has given away to get away.

  The cold front has come in and fog rises on the path through the hollow. He is following the still warm tracks of Sonia headed to the car. She has not really left him, she is waiting, surely, down below, for his apology and the reassurance that he will return if she will wait. After all, it was she who said, After. After I get back. After you serve, and sometimes men must learn to wait, it’s a skill he’s never mastered but perhaps it’s time. He scrambles down the dry creek bed, skirting the ravine, and comes to the tobacco field he left only hours ago. In its center, Eddie lies sleeping on a clean white sheet.

  The moon is nearly gone and the clearing is dark, but even without seeing, he feels the absence of the car. Here is where he knew he would find her, curled up asleep on the front seat. He would open the door and whisper, Lift your head, and he would place her head in his lap and she would look up at him with those troubled silvery eyes, and he would stroke her back to sleep. But, of course, the thing that could not be, is. She has killed their child and gone ahead without him. Tucker lifts his head and shouts.

  “Sonia Blakeman, where are you? We have a future!”

  Their future echos off the rock face, tumbling down stone and moonlight, and this, he’ll think, is what calls the panther. She will find him, not by his scent of fear, but from the desire in his voice, calling another woman’s name. Tucker’s voice dies out and what comes back is an answering cry in the dark like a woman wailing in grief or childbirth, but it is clear to him this is no woman.

  Even before she told him of the lovers and the panther, Tucker knew he would have to face his Devil down. He feels the circling prowl, her sniffing him out. The fool in Cora’s story kept walking, telling himself it wasn’t real, but Tucker knows it’s real, what isn’t real is the belief you can outrun it. He is proud of his understanding then worries that pride will be his undoing.

  He waits. The woods wait. Early morning spiders are spinning their webs against dawn; in an hour, they will be weeping with dew. He had not thought beyond this moment. What if the panther doesn’t come? Tucker takes a step but still hears nothing. He tells himself he’s not disappointed, he is relieved to get away. No one wants the panther.

  He reaches the road that leads to the store, knowing this is the only way Sonia could have gone. He wonders briefly if she has overtaken Bud Alley who, too, must be somewhere on this road, ahead of him. Who else is walking in the night besides Tucker and his lover and his enemy and his panther? The fool in Cora’s story didn’t know what was coming, he was blessed that way. But Tucker knows. Goddamn it, Cora, he thinks, get it over with. He walks another half a mile or so, and still no trouble. The waiting is so much worse.

  And then, with no warning, it is on him. It must have been tracking along from limb to limb above his head and it drops down now upon his back, four great sets of claws hooking into his shoulders like an oversized parrot. Tucker feels the skin along his spine open up, but it is an almost delicious tear if only because at last the game is on, he doesn’t have to wonder anymore. Now he can set his plan in motion, the one he’d been formulating since he left her house and knew his fate was sealed. Tucker drops to one knee, shaking the creature off as he tugs at his shoe. He hurls the shoe as hard as he can, deep into the woods. The fool before sought to distract, but Tucker plans to lure. He races ahead, plunging back into the forest, his thoughts are swift and focused, a strong man’s thoughts. The panther is back at the shoe, licking and biting at the leather, tugging the laces with her wicked, sharp teeth, like a kitten. She can take her time, she knows she’ll catch up. Do not play with me, Tucker thinks, tossing the second shoe. Here, kitty, kitty. Here, kitty, kit. The cat gives up the first, though really she is not done with it, and lunges for the next. Yes, this is it, he thinks, draw it on, feed her any new distraction and she will follow where you lead.

  Through the chestnut graveyard he runs, leaping stumps as they did on their ginseng hunt. His belt comes off, a snake whizzing through the air. The panther leaps to catch it, she is having fun. They go this way nearly a mile as Tucker strips for her. Suspenders off and T-shirt off. Buttons flying as he loses his oxford shirt. He casts away his one, two socks, and then he has his goal in sight, the drop-off up ahead, the long dark fissure in the earth, a home for all the distractible demon panthers not looking where they’re going. Without a stumble, Tucker Hayes unbuttons his fly and springs from his trousers, running starkly naked, full on toward it. He feels the glorious cold night air between his legs and beneath his armpits and inside the crack of his ass. His child is gone, his woman gone, his mother and father gone. There is nothing left to lose. He feels the panther’s breath, hot against his ear. I have you now, Tucker thinks, the thrill of finally knowing gives him the extra push. He rushes top speed for the crack, they spring together, that man and beast, this is the end of love and fear, his wild chase through the woods. It’s yours, he shouts, Take it, and instead of claws, his own nails dig into the flesh above his heart, and he feels the tearing, like that of silk. Once the first rip is made, the rest follows the grain, and it’s not unpleasant, this feeling, it’s almost like standing under the cleansing spring, letting some solid part stream away in the shape of you. Tucker soars with blood on his hands, his own, no one else’s, and the question becomes not, What has she done to me, but, What have I done to myself, and it is the pain and relief of that final knowledge, that all of our deepest wounds are self-inflicted, that lets him rip through that last final membrane, and then Jesus Christ, yes, he is free. The panther leaps, Devil and flesh fall away together, down to darkness, with a howl of rage and shock. He is soaring and in some echoing corridor he hears his own gallop and is conscious of not needing a rider, not needing to ride, which is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all, to be perfectly and utterly on his own.

  He soars over the deep ravine in Panther Gap and comes down light on the other side, outside the lonely cottage where she grew up. She knew when she led him here that day of the hunt that this was where he longed to be. He couldn’t see it at the time, any more than he could see the ginseng growing beside him, but now he’s crossed the chasm and fear has cleared his eyes. All around the little shack, in the shade of the sole living chestnut tree, grow the waist-high golden leaves and ruby berries that mark the essence of man in the earth. He sets down in the clearing and by the first rays of the sun, he sees more treasure glowing on the ground, blue lapis and chips of amethyst, verdigris, and quartz. He walks to the timeless chestnut, where someone has carved a face and driven a nail; it is weeping sticky tears of sap. He touches his finger to it and picks up a stone and sets to work upon his pattern, creating something that will probably never be discovered or known by another living soul. But that’s okay. It is his. Inside the open door, he sees a table and a chair and a bed, everything he needs. He walks to the window and cups his hands around his mouth and blows. Am I dead? No, it’s there, the film on the glass. Beyond that reflected breath, the wars may rage and the bodies may rise in their pits and rains may wash the bones white and clean. There will always be men lining up to fight those wars. What he needs now he has, and the rest, he trusts, will come. He walks to the comfortless single bed and lays his head down and sleeps deeply for maybe the first time in his lifetime.

  Eddie found no more ginseng the morning after Tucker Hayes went away. The sun was rising when he got home, and his mother was sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch, finishing the brandy Tucker had left. She didn’t have to tell him they were gone. Her eyes were br
ight and glittering, excited and scared in a way he’d never seen them before. She said, Eddie, you will meet people who mean something and you know there is meaning but you don’t know yet whether they are your ruin or salvation and they go underground and live inside you until they reappear maybe years, maybe decades later, but by then you have grown so much of your own skin around them, layer upon layer, you don’t even recognize them anymore, and that’s how you become your own ruin or salvation, that’s the power of not knowing what’s growing inside you, what you’ve lost for so long. She told him this as she drained the jug and nodded some to herself, as if finishing up a second different conversation. Then she rose and announced she was going to bed. He watched her go and after she did he took her place in the rocking chair, trying out what it felt like to be an adult, and it felt to him very lonely and sad. He sat with his empty hands in his lap, watching the sun rise, until he heard some rustling around in her bedroom, and then he knew that she was planning to visit Tucker Hayes, and she’d keep going back, as she had done with the other men she’d kept in the woods when his daddy was away. Over and over, night after night, until she was worn out and Eddie was completely forgotten. He snuck quietly down the breezeway and put his eye to her keyhole and sure enough, there on the floor was her beautiful ivory flesh, and he knew then what he must do to make it all stop. He went to the kitchen and fetched the salt cellar and quietly he lifted her latch. Her skin was heavy as he spread it out like a quilt and lifted the salt above it, pouring a long, high stream. He rubbed it in good like he was curing meat or killing garden slugs, and it was sticky and odd to be back inside his mother’s body for the first time since he was an unborn. He tried to re-drape her skin, arranging the folds as she’d left them, so she wouldn’t know he’d touched it. Then he hid behind the bed and waited for her return. He may have dozed off, for time was moving in slow waves. She didn’t return until after dark the next night. Waking to footfalls on the wooden planks and the rattle of the latch, he saw that thing she was when she was away from him and he hated it. She put one foot into her casing and then the other and she tugged her skin over her shoulders, slipping her arms inside. But it didn’t feel right, he could tell, and she had to tug very hard and pull and almost tear, and then her face was back on and it didn’t look right anymore. It was pinched and tight and in that moment he was almost sad that he’d shrunk her, but she had driven Tucker away and if Eddie couldn’t have him, she wouldn’t either. Cora turned and looked around the room, searching out the thing that had done this to her, never suspecting it was he, though, really now, who else could it have been? After a while, she gave up, and sat hunched inside her skin, and maybe she knew then she’d never get it off again, or maybe she tried and failed many times later. That night, she crawled into bed and her shrunken skin pulled her tight into a fetal ball and all that excess salt seeped out in the form of tears. Hours and hours of them just rolling down her cheeks until the dawn. He felt kind of bad. But Cora Alley was a mother, after all. And it was about time she acted like one.