Still, she thought, skating the tips of her fingers over this photograph as she had over the one of their wedding-dance, you must have known you'd have to go there at least once before I married you, like it or not. You had something to tell me, didn't you? The story that would back up your one non-negotiable condition. You must have been looking for the right spot for weeks. And when you saw that tree, that willow so drooped over with snow it made a grotto inside, you knew you'd found it and you couldn't put it off any longer. How nervous were you, I wonder? How afraid that I'd hear you out and then tell you I didn't want to marry you after all?
Lisey thought he'd been nervous, all right. She could remember his silence in the car. Hadn't she thought even then that something was on his mind? Yes, because Scott was usually so talkative.
"But you must have known me well enough by then . . ." she began, then trailed off. The nice thing about talking to yourself was that mostly you didn't have to finish what you were saying. By October of 1979 he must have known her well enough to believe she'd stick. Hell, when she didn't tell him to take a hike after he cut his hand to ribbons on a pane of Parks Greenhouse glass, he must have believed she was in for the long haul. But had he been nervous about exposing those old memories, touching those ancient live wires? She guessed about that he'd been more than nervous. She guessed about that he'd been scared to smucking death.
All the same he had taken her gloved hand in one of his, pointed, and said, "Let's eat there, Lisey--let's go under that
6
"Let's eat under that willow," he says, and Lisey is more than willing to fall in with this plan. For one thing, she's hugely hungry. For another, her legs--especially her calves--are aching from the unaccustomed exercise involved in using the snowshoes: lift, twist, and shake . . . lift, twist, and shake. Mostly, though, she wants a rest from looking at the ceaselessly falling snow. The walk has been every bit as gorgeous as the innkeeper promised, and the quiet is something she thinks she'll remember for the rest of her life, the only sounds the crunch of their snowshoes, the sound of their breathing, and the restless tackhammer of a far-off woodpecker. Yet the steady downpour (there is really no other word) of huge flakes has started to freak her out. It's coming so thick and fast that it's messed up her ability to focus, and that's making her feel disoriented and a little dizzy. The willow sits on the edge of a clearing, its still-green fronds weighted down with thick white frosting.
Do you call them fronds? Lisey wonders, and thinks she will ask Scott over lunch. Scott will know. She never asks. Other matters intervene.
Scott approaches the willow and Lisey follows, lifting her feet and twisting them to shake off the snowshoes, walking in her fiance's tracks. When he reaches the tree, Scott parts the snow-covered--fronds, branches, whatever they are--like a curtain, and peers inside. His bluejeaned butt is sticking out invitingly in her direction.
"Lisey!" he says. "This is pretty neat! Wait 'til you s--"
She raises Snowshoe A and applies it to BlueJeaned Butt B. Fiance C promptly disappears into Snow-Covered Willow D (with a surprised curse). It's amusing, quite amusing indeed, and Lisey begins to giggle as she stands in the pouring snow. She is coated with it; even her eyelashes are heavy.
"Lisey?" From inside the drooping white umbrella.
"Yes, Scott?"
"Can you see me?"
"Nope," she says.
"Come a little closer, then."
She does, stepping in his tracks, knowing what to expect, but when his arm shoots out through the snow-covered curtain and his hand seizes her wrist, it's still a surprise and she shrieks with laughter because she's a bit more than startled; she's actually a little frightened. He pulls her forward and cold whiteness dashes across her face, blinding her for a moment. The hood of her parka is back and snow slides down her neck, freezing on her warm skin. Her earmuffs are pulled askew. She hears a muffled flump as heavy clots of snow fall off the tree behind her.
"Scott!" she gasps. "Scott, you scared m--" But here she stops.
He's on his knees before her, the hood of his own parka pushed back to reveal a spill of dark hair that's almost as long as hers. He's wearing his earmuffs around his neck like headphones. The pack is beside him, leaning against the tree-trunk. He's looking at her, smiling, waiting for her to dig it. And Lisey does. She digs it bigtime. Anybody would, she thinks.
It's a little like being allowed in the clubhouse where her big sister Manda and her friends played at being girl pirates--
But no. It's better than that, because it doesn't smell of ancient wood and damp magazines and moldy old mouseshit. It's as if he's taken her into an entirely different world, pulled her into a secret circle, a white-roofed dome that belongs to nobody but them. It's about twenty feet across. In the center is the trunk of the willow. The grass growing out from it is still the perfect green of summer.
"Oh, Scott," she says, and no vapor comes out of her mouth. It's warm in here, she realizes. The snow caught on the drooping branches has insulated the space beneath. She unzips her jacket.
"Neat, isn't it? Now listen to the quiet."
He falls silent. So does she. At first she thinks there's no sound at all, but that's not quite right. There's one. She can hear a slow drum muffled in velvet. It's her heart. He reaches out, strips off her gloves, takes her hands. He kisses each palm, deep in the center of the cup. For a moment neither of them says anything. It's Lisey who breaks the silence; her stomach rumbles. Scott bursts into laughter, falling back against the trunk of the tree and pointing at her.
"Me too," he says. "I wanted to skin you out of those snowpants and screw in here, Lisey--it's warm enough--but after all that exercise, I'm too hungry."
"Maybe later," she says. Knowing that later she'll almost certainly be too full for screwing, but that's okay; if the snow keeps up, they'll almost certainly be spending another night here at The Antlers, and that's fine with her.
She opens the pack and lays out lunch. There are two thick chicken sandwiches (lots of mayo), salad, and two hefty slices of what proves to be raisin pie. "Yum," he says as she hands him one of the paper plates.
"Of course yum," she says. "We're under the yum-yum tree."
He laughs. "Under the yum-yum tree. I like it." Then his smile fades and he looks at her solemnly. "It's nice here, isn't it?"
"Yes, Scott. Very nice."
He leans over the food; she leans to meet him; they kiss above the salad. "I love you, little Lisey."
"I love you, too." And at that moment, hidden away from the world in this green and secret circle of silence, she has never loved him more. This is now.
7
Despite his profession of hunger, Scott eats only half his sandwich and a few bites of salad. The raisin pie he doesn't touch at all, but he drinks more than his share of the wine. Lisey eats with better appetite, but not quite as heartily as she thought she would. There's a worm of unease gnawing at her. Whatever has been on Scott's mind, the telling will be hard for him and maybe even harder for her. What makes her most uneasy is that she can't think what it might be. Some kind of trouble with the law back in the rural western Pennsylvania town where he grew up? Did he perhaps father a child? Was there maybe even some kind of teenage marriage, a quickie job that ended in a divorce or an annulment two months later? Is it Paul, the brother who died? Whatever it is, it's coming now. Sure as rain follows thunder, Good Ma would have said. He looks at his slice of pie, seems to think about taking a bite, then pulls out his cigarettes instead.
She remembers his saying Families suck and thinks, It's the bools. He brought me here to tell me about the bools. She isn't surprised to find the thought scares her badly.
"Lisey," he says. "There's something I have to explain. And if it changes your mind about marrying m--"
"Scott, I'm not sure I want to hear--"
His grin is both weary and frightened. "I bet you're not. And I know I don't want to tell. But it's like getting a shot at the doctor's office . . . no, worse, l
ike getting a cyst opened up or a carbuncle lanced. But some things just have to be done." His brilliant hazel eyes are fixed on hers. "Lisey, if we get married, we can't have kids. That's flat. I don't know how badly you want them right now, but you come from a big family and I guess it'd be natural for you to want to fill up a big house with a big family of your own someday. You need to know that if you're with me, that can't happen. And I don't want you to be facing me across a room somewhere five or ten years down the line and screaming 'You never told me this was part of the deal.'"
He draws on his cigarette and jets smoke from his nostrils. It rises in a blue-gray fume. He turns back to her. His face is very pale, his eyes enormous. Like jewels, she thinks, fascinated. For the first and only time she sees him not as handsome (which he is not, although in the right light he can be striking) but as beautiful, the way some women are beautiful. This fascinates her, and for some reason horrifies her.
"I love you too much to lie to you, Lisey. I love you with all that passes for my heart. I suspect that kind of all-out love becomes a burden to a woman in time, but it's the only kind I have to give. I think we're going to be quite a wealthy couple in terms of money, but I'll almost certainly be an emotional pauper all my life. I've got the money coming, but as for the rest I've got just enough for you, and I won't ever dirty it or dilute it with lies. Not with the words I say, not with the ones I hold back." He sighs--a long, shuddering sound--and places the heel of the hand holding the cigarette against the center of his brow, as if his head hurts. Then he takes it away and looks at her again. "No kids, Lisey. We can't. I can't."
"Scott, are you . . . did a doctor . . ."
He's shaking his head. "It's not physical. Listen, babyluv. It's here." He taps his forehead, between the eyes. "Lunacy and the Landons go together like peaches and cream, and I'm not talking about an Edgar Allan Poe story or any genteel Victorian we-keep-auntie-in-the-attic ladies' novel; I'm talking about the real-world dangerous kind that runs in the blood."
"Scott, you're not crazy--" But she's thinking about his walking out of the dark and holding the bleeding ruins of his hand out to her, his voice full of jubilation and relief. Crazy relief. She's remembering her own thought as she wrapped that ruin in her blouse: that he might be in love with her, but he was also half in love with death.
"I am," he says softly. "I am crazy. I have delusions and visions. I write them down, that's all. I write them down and people pay me to read them."
For a moment she's too stunned by this (or maybe it's the memory of his mangled hand, which she has deliberately put away from her, that has stunned her) to reply. He is speaking of his craft--that is always how he refers to it in his lectures, never as his art but as his craft--as delusion. And that is madness.
"Scott," she says at last, "writing's your job."
"You think you understand that," he says, "but you don't understand the gone part. I hope you stay lucky that way, little Lisey. And I'm not going to sit here under this tree and give you the history of the Landons, because I only know a little. I went back three generations, got scared of all the blood I was finding on the walls, and quit. I saw enough blood--some of it my own--when I was a kid. Took my Daddy's word for the rest. When I was a kid, Daddy said that the Landons--and the Landreaus before them--split into two types: gomers and bad-gunky. Bad-gunky was better, because you could let it out by cutting. You had to cut, if you didn't want to spend your life in the bughouse or the jail-house. He said it was the only way."
"Are you talking about self-mutilation, Scott?"
He shrugs, as if unsure. She is unsure, as well. She has seen him naked, after all. He has a few scars, but only a few.
"Blood-bools?" she asks.
This time he's more positive. "Blood-bools, yeah."
"That night when you stuck your hand through the greenhouse glass, were you letting out the bad-gunky?"
"I suppose. Sure. In a way." He stubs his cigarette in the grass. He takes a long time, and doesn't look at her while he does it. "It's complicated. You have to remember how terrible I felt that night, a lot of things had been piling up--"
"I should never have--"
"No," he says, "let me finish. I can only say this once."
She stills.
"I was drunk, I was feeling terrible, and I hadn't let it out--it--in a long time. I hadn't had to. Mostly because of you, Lisey."
Lisey has a sister who went through an alarming bout of self-mutilation in her early twenties. Amanda's past all that now--thank God--but she bears the scars, mostly high on her inner arms and thighs. "Scott, if you've been cutting yourself, shouldn't you have scars--"
It's as if he hasn't heard her. "Then last spring, long after I thought he'd shut up for good, I be good-goddam if he didn't start up talking to me again. 'It runs in you, Scoot,' I'd hear him say. 'It runs in your blood just like a sweetmother. Don't it?'"
"Who, Scott? Who started talking to you?" Knowing it's either Paul or his father, and probably not Paul.
"Daddy. He says, 'Scooter, if you want to be righteous, you better let that bad-gunky out. Get after it, now, don't smuckin wait.' So I did. Little . . . little . . ." He makes small cutting gestures--one on his cheek, one on his arm--to illustrate. "Then that night, when you were mad . . ." He shrugs. "I got after the rest. Over and done with. Over and out. And we 'us fine. We 'us fine. Tell you one thing, I'd bleed myself dry like a hog on a chain before I'd hurt you. Before I'd ever hurt you." His face draws down in an expression of contempt she has never seen before. "I ain't never yet been like him. My Daddy." And then, almost spitting it: "Fuckin Mister Sparky."
She doesn't speak. She doesn't dare. Isn't sure she could, anyway. For the first time in months she wonders how he could cut his hand so badly and have so little scarring. Surely it isn't possible. She thinks: His hand wasn't just cut; his hand was mangled.
Scott, meanwhile, has lit another Herbert Tareyton with hands that are shaking just the smallest bit. "I'll tell you a story," he says. "Just one story, and let it stand for all the stories of a certain man's childhood. Because stories are what I do." He looks at the rising cigarette smoke. "I net them from the pool. I've told you about the pool, right?"
"Yes, Scott. Where we all go down to drink."
"Yep. And cast our nets. Sometimes the really brave fisherfolk--the Austens, the Dostoevskys, the Faulkners--even launch boats and go out to where the big ones swim, but that pool is tricky. It's bigger than it looks, it's deeper than any man can tell, and it changes its aspect, especially after dark."
She says nothing to this. His hand slips around her neck. At some point it steals inside her unzipped parka to cup her breast. Not out of lust, she's quite sure; for comfort.
"All right," he says. "Story-time. Close your eyes, little Lisey."
She closes them. For a moment all is dark as well as silent under the yum-yum tree, but she isn't afraid; there's the smell of him and the bulk of him beside her; there's the feel of his hand, currently resting on the rod of her collarbone. He could choke her easily with that hand, but she doesn't need him to tell her he'd never hurt her, at least not physically; this is just a thing Lisey knows. He will cause her pain, yes, but mostly with his mouth. His everlasting mouth.
"All right," says the man she will marry in less than a month. "This story might have four parts. Part One is called 'Scooter on the Bench.'
"Once upon a time there was a boy, a skinny little frightened boy named Scott, only when his Daddy got in the bad-gunky and cutting himself wasn't enough to let it out, his Daddy called him Scooter. And one day--one bad, mad day--the little boy stood up on a high place, looking down at a polished wooden plain far below, and watching as his brother's blood
8
runs slowly along the crack between two boards.
--Jump, his father tells him. Not for the first time, either.--Jump, you little bastard, you sweetmother chickenkike, jump right now!
--Daddy, I'm afraid! It's too high!
--It's not a
nd I don't give a shit if you're afraid or not, you smucking jump or I'll make you sorry and your buddy sorrier, now paratroops over the side!
Daddy pauses a moment, looking around, eyeballs shifting the way they do when he gets in the bad-gunky, almost ticking from side to side, then he looks back at the three-year-old who stands trembling on the long bench in the front hall of the big old dilapidated farmhouse with its million puffing drafts. Stands there with his back pressed against the stenciled leaves on the pink wall of this farmhouse far out in the country where people mind their own business.
--You can say Geronimo if you want to, Scoot. They say sometimes that helps. If you scream it real loud when you jump out of the plane.
So Scott does, he will take any help he can get, he screams GEROMINO!--which isn't quite right and doesn't help anyway because he still can't jump off the bench to the polished wooden floor-plain so far below.
--Ahhhh, sweet-smockin chicken-kikin Christ.
Daddy yanks Paul forward. Paul is six now, six going on seven, he is tall and his hair is a darkish blond, long in front and on the sides, he needs a haircut, needs to go see Mr. Baumer at the barbershop in Martensburg, Mr. Baumer with the elk's head on his wall and the faded decal in his window that shows a Merican flag and says I SERVED, but it will be awhile before they go near Martensburg and Scott knows it. They don't go to town when Daddy is in the bad-gunky and Daddy won't even go to work for awhile because this is his vacation from U.S. Gyppum.
Paul has blue eyes and Scott loves him more than anyone, more than he loves himself. This morning Paul's arms are covered with blood, crisscrossed with cuts, and now Daddy goes to his pocketknife again, the hateful pocketknife that has drunk so much of their blood, and raises it up to catch the morning sun. Daddy came downstairs yelling for them, yelling--Bool! Bool! Get in here, you two! If the bool's on Paul he cuts Scott and if the bool's on Scott he cuts Paul. Even in the bad-gunky Daddy understands love.