Where the ground was soft it sucked at her feet. She watched them: muddy shoes, mud-scuffed legs, one foot came out and then the other, like the feet on a wooden doll. Karen began to experience a strange sensation then—that of being eased suddenly away from herself and able to watch from a distance her slow progress. A frail girl with blond hair blown ragged by the wind, and a blank, exhausted face, pale blue eyes that probably reflected madness. The day before she would have observed such a creature with pity, and now she was this creature—irreparably, completely; she could not go back. She clasped her hands before her and murmured, “Forgive me. Forgive me,” to the dead wood and the birds and the remembered image of her father’s face.
A memory of her late childhood came to her. It had been four or five years ago, an April like this though warmer and softer. The road to the country school had glistened with mud and water and the sky had been swollen with clouds. Fear came with the memory: fear of the school, of the children. Since she was the youngest child, Karen had no one to walk with; her brothers and sisters no longer went to this school. So she hurried along the edge of the road and pressed her school books against her chest and dared herself to cry. When tears threatened, she pinched her arm viciously. “Baby! Baby!” she whispered, the way her older sisters whispered to her when she cried. About her fields lifted away from the clay road, already plowed, and the earth looked dark and fertile in the early light. The sky was richly shaped, with great masses of cloud that looked boiled, so heavy were they with rain. Karen hurried.
The schoolhouse was in a muddy yard between two fields. It was a one-room building with a churchlike entryway, on one side of which coal for the stove was kept. A crumbling concrete walk led to the door. Karen walked up the walk. The school seemed unfamiliar without the other children running about and shouting before it.
Before entering the school Karen looked back to the road: no one was in sight. She hurried inside. The air of the school was chill and stale, and there was dust in the air—the schoolteacher had come early to sweep and light the stove, for he had been hired to do this work as well as teach. The man stood at the front of the room by the window and looked at her in surprise. Karen went to her desk and sat down. The teacher was a young man, but he did not act young, really: Karen thought of him as she thought of her father, a person beyond youth who had never had youth and had never desired it. He had a dark, thin, nervous face, glasses that made his eyes small, and teeth with slight cracks between them, as if they, too, were too small. Karen did not look at him, but put her lunch inside her desk and folded her arms on top of her books and stared at the blackboard at the front of the room. With the knowledge that she was safe her heart began to slow. She ran her eyes along the top of the blackboard, following the smartly gleaming placards of letters, A B C D, and on to the corner where the tarnished, spearlike top of the flag leaned, covered with dust. Above the letters were portraits of famous men, presidents, who stared down at the children past streaked glass and always looked burdened by the heavy imitation-gold frames that contained them. One of the portraits, that of George Washington, had fluffy white clouds circling the man, as if he were peering down at them from heaven. The boys had said that he had been tarred and feathered and that was why he looked like that, but Karen preferred to think it was indeed heaven from which he looked.
The teacher walked slowly down the aisle on the other side of the room. She heard him clear his throat. “It looks like a storm today,” he said. When Karen did not reply, he cleared his throat again and straightened out some books on one of the wall shelves. Karen sat with her knees up against the cold bottom of her desk. “Karen,” the teacher said. She jerked as though he had touched her. “Why did you come so early?” He had moved behind her now, back by the old black stove. She heard him open the smoked door of the stove and prod around with the poker. “Is there some trouble I ought to be told about?”
“No,” said Karen, but so faintly she had to repeat herself. “No.” She remembered she had not taken off her coat, and got up to do so. The teacher, warming himself by the stove, watched her. His eyes were grave and colorless behind his glasses.
When the others began coming in Karen was looking through the book for her first lesson—an old arithmetic book of her brother’s. All the answers were written in and other things as well—names and drawings. In uncertain inked letters on the first page was: JUDD HERZ GRADE 7. IF BY CHANCE THIS BOOK SHOULD ROAM BOX ITS EARS AND SEND IT HOME. Karen had written her own name above Judd’s, also in ink. For some reason she felt pleased to see their names together—the “Herz” together—though Judd himself, one of the older boys, paid little attention to her.
Karen looked around to see the other children coming in. The smaller children were helped with their clothing by older brothers and sisters, who squatted to pull off boots with looks of hatred. Dirty mittens, tied together by long lengths of yarn, were pulled through sleeves and looped over hangers. At the last minute the older boys stomped in, important in their hunting boots and overalls. Their hands were big and moving, constantly moving. Karen looked around to her book, holding it tightly, and waited for school to begin.
The teacher self-consciously rang his hand bell and ignored the snickers of the big boys. When he went to the entryway (known to everyone as the “antry”) to ring the bell again, the boy who sat behind Karen leaned forward and closed his fist in her hair. “You, there, Karen Herz!” he tittered. “Hey hey!” Karen tried not to cry out and waited for him to release her.
The first graders were taught first. They read aloud, first in a group (there were five of them), then singly. When the teacher’s back was turned the boy behind Karen—he was a Revere, perhaps four years older than she and still in her grade—leaned to her and whispered, “You there, Karen. Karen Herz. Ain’t you got pretty color hair now?” He poked at her shoulder. The other boys giggled. Karen tried to sit forward, staring down at the smudged pages of the book. Nothing happened for a while, then a piece of paper, folded in two, was tossed over her shoulder. Without thinking, she opened it. It was an obscene drawing with the label KAREN attached to part of it. The boys behind her giggled as Karen crumpled it up and brushed it off onto the floor. The Revere boy stooped and picked it up to save for later. “Hey, hey!” he murmured. After a while, when she did not respond, she felt their attention shift elsewhere.
Outside, one noon not long before, they had pulled Karen into a game the other boys were playing, running back and forth and around. It was “pom-pom-pull-away” and tags for “it” were allowed to be blows. Karen had tried to break away, and as she ran, the Revere boy had grabbed her by the collar and nearly ripped her dress off, yanking her violently around. She fell to the ground and cut her knee and the boys had run, laughing, around the schoolhouse. When the schoolteacher came out, hurrying clumsily, Karen had been sitting on the frozen ground and crying. The other girls inched away; they did not know her well, or like her; they shared their families’ envy of the Herz clan.
Since then, at recess and at noon, she remained in her seat, reading a book. She would be conscious of the shuffling about her, children running down the aisles, footsteps slamming hollowly out in the entry. At noon that day, after she had finished her lunch, she sat with her head down on her hands, her cheek against the carved desk top; she pretended to sleep. The teacher moved about occasionally, crossing and uncrossing his legs. His desk was at the front of the room, by the first side window, in front of the old faded flag. He spent recesses and noon hour reading and coming out onto the concrete walk when summoned—he was the sole, if inadequate, protection for the younger children. Though he rarely spoke to the children, he now said to Karen: “Are you sure there isn’t something I ought to be told about? Something you’re afraid of?”
Karen looked up, blinking as if she had really been asleep, though she knew the teacher hadn’t been fooled. “I guess not,” she said. She shook her head slowly and thoughtfully. The teacher stared at her and pushed his glasses up furthe
r on his nose. “Why don’t you go outside and play?” he said.
Karen shook her head again. “I don’t know,” she said.
After school she waited, putting her books into a pile on top of the desk and putting them back inside, back and forth, until the other children were gone. Then she stood and picked them up—she carried the same books, all she owned, back and forth to school every day. As she put on her coat the teacher approached her. His hands were stuffed awkwardly in the pockets of his corduroy jacket. “Karen,” he said, “I think you and I should have a little talk. I think—” Karen went slowly to the entry and the teacher followed alongside her. Out in the entry they stopped. It was a narrow corridor with a coal bin to the left, quite dark. The boards of the bin were scarred with initials and drawings and words. “I think I know what you’re afraid of,” he said confidentially. Karen saw the Revere boy’s name carved in the wood, clumsily and deeply, the dirty wood splintering outward around it. “The boys here, the big boys,” he said. “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You’re afraid of them.” Karen shook her head vaguely. She opened the door to the outside and looked out. The yard and the road were already empty.
“If that’s the case I could do something about it,” he said. “I could talk to their fathers. I would be glad to—It isn’t because they don’t like you,” he said oddly. Karen glanced at him in surprise. “It’s all right,” she said. The teacher went on, “If I thought they were molesting you. . . . You might tell your father about it too.”
“No,” said Karen.
“Why not?”
“It’s nasty,” she said. She spoke so faintly he had to ask her to repeat it. “It’s nasty,” she said, “it isn’t nice, it—They’re nasty.”
She stopped. “Nasty?” said the teacher. “How? How do they bother you?”
“I don’t know.”
“They make you afraid of them, don’t they?”
Karen shook her head slowly.
“No? You’re not afraid? Why do you stay inside, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He tried to laugh a little. “You certainly are afraid,” he said. “You’re very afraid. What do they do to you?”
“I’m not afraid,” Karen said.
“No?”
“I don’t like him to touch me though.”
“Him? Who’s that, Revere?” he said. “The Revere boy?”
“Yes,” said Karen. “But I’m not afraid of him. I just don’t like him. I don’t like him to touch me.”
“Does he—where does he—What does he do to you?”
When Karen said nothing he went on, “It’s a shame to have a boy that age still in school—he’s so much older than you, and—Boys that age are—are getting to be—” His voice suddenly turned peculiar, a little hurried and guilty, slurred, so that Karen knew he was not looking at her but that his eyes were lowered. “He’s so much bigger than you, he’s—What does he do to you?”
Karen was leaning out of the doorway and looking down the road. She could see no one there. When she started to step down the teacher stopped her; he took hold of her arm. “Wait,” he said. “Why don’t you answer? Why are you like this? I only want to talk to you. Please don’t be—don’t be ashamed. I was watching you today. I felt sorry for you. I felt sorry for you.”
“I have to go home,” Karen said. She looked up at him. Surprisingly, his eyes behind the thick glasses were not like her father’s or an older person’s at all—they belonged to a boy. She stared at him as if seeing him for the first time.
“Won’t you listen?” he said. “I only want to help you. I don’t like to see you so afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Karen.
He still held her arm. “Tell me—what does he do?” he said, nearly in a whisper. There was something urgent about his voice that shocked Karen. “Don’t be ashamed to tell me. Don’t be ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed,” Karen said. “I’m not afraid either.” Her shock and discomfort were turning now to anger, though she could not have said why. She frowned out at the road.
“Tell me what he does,” the teacher said.
“He does this!” said Karen impatiently. She pulled the skirt of her dress up and stared at the teacher’s alarmed look. “I’m not ashamed of anything,” she said, letting the skirt fall back. She thought, looking calmly at him, that she ought to say something more, but she could think of nothing—she felt only a sharp sensation of joy, of obstinate joy, in response to the alarm and shame she saw in his eyes. It was almost as if she had struck him: he stepped back, releasing her, his eyes at last rising to her face. “Now you leave me alone,” Karen said. “You leave me alone too.” In spite of her anger she knew that somehow she had done right, and that the teacher, shaken and ashamed, recognized it. Even in the face of the knowledge that she would be completely alone at the school after this, she could not help but feel a sense of bitter joy. “You leave me alone too!” she had cried, running out onto the walk.
Something moving drew her back to the present—to the woods: she thought she had seen something. She stood before a small gully, looking across to a pasture. Shapes defined themselves to her eye but she did not really see them; she waited only for movement. The gully was crusted with remnants of snow and rocks and looked as if it would be difficult to cross. She could not remember if she had played here as a child; probably she had not come so far from home. Some distance away there was a small grouping of buildings she thought she recognized.
After a while she began to descend the gully, steadying herself with her hands. Her mind went blank beneath a pushing, blood-pounding ache, and she lost her sense of time. She could not have said how long it was since she had left her home, and the fact of leaving—the pain of her father, the automobile accident before that—seemed unreal. Rocks gave way and she lost her footing. Her hands were scratched, one fingernail was torn back to show raw, pink, bleeding flesh that looked surprised at being uncovered. When she reached the top of the other side her head was pounding. She looked over to the buildings, which were in shadow: the sun was behind them. She stared at them, resting, and at the sun that must have fallen suddenly through the sky. Time had proceeded with gaps she did not try to understand.
As she crossed the field she heard something she had not noticed before: the beginning of the wind. It murmured sadly through the grass, a low, dwindling sound that never quite died. Birds back in the woods called out warnings to one another, as if they had just seen something that frightened them. As Karen approached the first of the old buildings—abandoned buildings of her father’s—she saw, without any surprise, Shar appear around the corner. He seemed to be waiting for her. She did not hurry. She looked at him, neither with relief nor with concern, and from time to time her eyes slipped out of control and stared at the sky or the field or the barn again and Shar’s figure before it.
She could already hear his voice. What was he saying? His words made no sense. Then she saw his expression suddenly leap to her, close, in focus, savagely clear. His words came like scraps of paper or leaves raised and slammed past by the wind. “Goddam it but I told you! I told you! I told you!” He ran to her. “I seen you all this time!” She thought he was about to take hold of her but he only went on, white-faced, trembling with anger: “Now you come all this way! For what? For what? Now what?” His face was still streaked with blood: Karen saw that. His hand was dirty, smeared, and he rubbed it restlessly against his thigh, his fingers outstretched as if in exquisite pain. He turned suddenly to look around. Something moved down on the road. He pulled Karen back behind the barn. She could still see, though, the wagon down there: a horse-drawn wagon, a small wagon with a man holding the slackened reins and turning on the seat to look at two persons behind him—two children, Karen saw, whose voices she could hear across the distance. She thought she knew who they were, neighbors of theirs. The voices of the children were thin and snatched and one of the children, a little girl, leaned ove
r the side of the wagon with her hand outstretched to the moving ground. . . .
“All right,” Shar said. They were standing before the entrance to the barn in what had once been worn, used ground; it was now crusted with grass. “Now you get what you wanted. Come here.” His last words startled her. She looked up and then thought to cross the little space to him; this was what he meant. Shar’s expression changed from its look of taunting hardness to one of slow, cold disgust, almost incredulous disgust, as if he could not quite believe what he saw. “My God,” he said, staring, “how can you—” Then he quit. Overtaken by something else, he came to her, touched her shoulders, took hold of her. His touch seemed to awaken her: she felt the reality of the moment, the strength of the strange man who held her. She turned aside and put her hands to her face, shielding it, and looked back to the field and the empty road as if to frame their look.
When Shar opened the door of the barn and forced her inside, things ran away in the corners, fleeing the light. “Son of a bitchen rats!” Shar said in a vigorous, straining voice.
7
The store was in an old, barnlike building oddly close to the road, with an old-fashioned porch that ran its length and was cluttered at one end with discarded barrels and cartons. Inside, the air was cold and stale. Shar walked idly up to the front window once again, buttoning his shirt. His eyes were sore from the few hours’ sleep he had had and he was trying to get rid of the taste in his mouth by smoking. At the window he rubbed the steamy dirt and looked out to the road; it was still empty. In the early morning cold the gingerbread posts of the porch were coated with a thin film of frost. Across the road a plowed field sloped up and ended in a chill white haze.
The owner of the store, a man Shar had thought at first to be old but now thought to be middle-aged, stood behind the counter, as if he were waiting to sell something to Shar. He watched Shar pace back and forth. He had spent the night sleeping out in this part of the store, in a roll of blankets on the floor, and these he had now piled on top of the counter. One looked like a horse blanket—it was olive-colored, filthy, and had buckles on it. Shar looked at the buckles with distaste. The man pulled his shoulders up with an effort and began to speak. “He’ll be along any minute. Any minute now, don’t you worry. I’m glad to do it. I don’t owe Herz anything.” When Shar did not answer, the man went on, peering up importantly at Shar, “It don’t look so bad now you washed the blood off. Your face, I mean. Nobody could hardly tell there was anything wrong.”