The Solitudes

  —Come, boy, come.

  Tears were gathering in his father’s voice. Will reluctantly went to him; Hunt was nodding solemnly, as though yes, this were the next thing to be done. His father took him in his arms, patting his shoulder.

  —I will tell you what. I have decided—Master Hunt and I have decided, with God’s help—that you should go away with him tomorrow. Beyond the sea. Listen to me, listen.

  For Will had begun to draw away. His father would not release him. A horror was growing in his heart: they meant to deliver him to Hunt, an endless schooling, Hunt’s voice and touch always. No.

  —Oh, son, oh, son. You have a good wit, a good wit, a better wit than I. Think of it, think. There is learning there, holy learning you cannot have here, listen, Will, that is a treasure to search world’s ends for. Listen. You are a good boy, a good boy.

  Closed in his father’s arms, Will had grown weirdly calm; a cunning almost seeming not to belong to him, a whisper in his ear, made him still; and when his father felt it he released him. And held him then before him by the shoulders, smiling at Will with his mouth while his wet eyes searched his face.

  —Good lad. Brave lad. Will you not speak?

  —I will do as you like. Father.

  The tears welled in his father’s eyes. Will counseled himself: say yes, yes, only yes. His mother drew up her apron over her face.

  —There was secrecy required, Hunt said. It had to be so. We could not tell you till the last. For fear of the powers of this world.

  —Yes.

  He knelt by Will and looked into his face.

  —An adventure, boy. Going secret by dawn’s light. I will be knight, and you my page, and we will fight every devil the world shows us. For the world is full of them now.

  —Yes.

  His smile was somehow worse than his solemn face. Will’s face smiled into it.

  —Oh, there will be singing there. There will be singing there as you have never heard, and plays, and churches full of splendors made for God’s sake. As wonderful as in any book. Not like this darkened land where they hate beauty and figured song. And truth, Will. Truth to learn.

  Will took a step back from him.

  —At dawn? he said.

  —Yes, said Hunt. I go now to make all ready. Bring little, now. Everything will be provided.

  He rose, anxious and intent again, his common face, and sat at the table, where Will now saw there was money being counted out and a leather pouch. Hunt and his father put their heads together.

  —There will be lodging in London, Hunt said. My careful friend there. He is apprised of this. But the wherry thence to Greenwich must be hired. …

  They turned again as one to watch him when Will stepped farther away.

  —I’ll go prepare, he said.

  —Do, said Hunt, with a wink. I’ll return about the middle of night. You won’t sleep?

  —No.

  —See to him, see to him, John Shakespeare said to his wife. See to him.

  But he was gone up the stairs to his garret room, and had latched the door before his mother could reach it.

  A fissure had opened in the world, huge, and he had found himself all in a moment on its edge. On the opposite side were his father, and Hunt, asking him to leap in; and his mother, asking him to come to her. But he could not. He could feel nothing but his sudden danger, he could only think fast and calmly how he could abandon them and save himself; and his mind whirred like the gears of a clock about to strike.

  —Will? his mother said softly; Will didn’t answer. From a secret niche in the wall he drew out paper, he had a fondness for paper and saved clean scraps of it when he found them; and a little horn of ink. His hands shook steadily with the beat of his heart, and only by an act of will he steadied them. He propped the paper on the sill of the tiny window, and by its light he began to write; he spoiled one sheet, and began another, more calmly, the words flying to his mind’s tongue as though his father really were speaking them: or if not his own father, then some father; a believable father, a father whose voice he could hear.

  Just after dark, he took the bundle of shirts and hose his mother had made up, and the little purse of coin his father gave him, and the new kid gloves he had made himself, all up to his room: to think and pray there, he said, and wait for Master Hunt. And when he thought his brother and sister were well asleep, and his father below at his wine, he went out the window and down the side of the house by a means he had long perfected for getting out on just such a summer night as this one was.

  Master James Burbage was in a great hurry to get out of town. A member of his company had got into a brawl with a local boy over some wench or some piece of money, and the swain had got the worst of it and might die. Burbage, furious with his man, had however no intention of waiting to see local justice done, and himself fined or worse, and at ten o’clock was seeing to the strapping-down of the last of his stage properties on the wagon, to leave by moonlight, when the boy startled him into crying out by sidling up and tugging at his sleeve.

  Did he believe the note the boy gave him? Signed, and attested by a Master Simon Hunt. Trusting he will treat with my son the said William in good faith and honestly and train him up in the trade, business and arts of player in my lord of Leicester’s company. My beloved son whose person and fortune I entrust to the said Master Burbage and the said. There was no mention of any fees; Burbage had never and would never meet this man John Shakespeare; in the dark, the redhead’s face was a mask, a mask saying I have done what was asked of me and here I am ready. No, Master Burbage did not believe it, not for a moment, any more than he believed the boy’s face. But he thought a magistrate would, if it came to that; or would anyway forgive Burbage for having believed it; and he was in a very great hurry; and the imp had an angel’s voice.

  —Get up then! he said, giving Will a boost that was nothing to the flight he gave to the boy’s full heart. Get up on the seat. No—not on the seat, then—get down in there. Well down. Good. Now, young Master Shakespeare, gone for a player, you will keep to that place until we are past Clopton Bridge, and farther on than that too. No g’yup! G’yup!

  And the little wagon train, with Master Burbage riding post and the rest perched about the wagons or riding two to a horse or walking behind trading songs and speeches (and a leathern bottle too) went out of Stratford over Clopton Bridge and south on the road to London; and Will down in the wagon turned a property crown in his hands and listened, his ears seeming to grow huge as bells, to the talk outside and the night, his heart unwilling to cease beating hard and loud.

  The note he had left for his father to find said that he had gone for a sailor to Bristol, there to take ship for the New World and make his fortune on the sea, or die in the attempt.

  “Telephone,” said Mrs. Pisky, putting her head out the veranda window. “Telephone for you.”

  Rosie closed the book, her finger at her place. Trying for a certain calm deliberateness she got off the chaise. “Okay,” she said; she sighed, what a bother, but really it was to breathe out the sudden darkness that swarmed in her—and just then over the lawn and the veranda too, what was it, oh: the heavy clouds that had brooded so long in the next county had come at last overhead. A wind was rising too. Rosie followed Mrs. Pisky through the fast-darkening house to the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Rosie.”

  “Hi, Mike.”

  A lengthy pause, and Rosie knew that from now on, not forever maybe but for as long as made no difference, all their conversations would begin with one.

  “First of all,” Mike said. “First of all you’ve left Sam’s nighttime diapers here. Three boxes of them.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want to come get them?”

  “I think I’ve still got a couple around. In the travel bag.”

  Another silence. The “first of all” had staked a claim that Rosie was satisfied to let him prosecute. If he had a list, she would respond to each item
as it came up.

  “I’ve also found,” he said, patient archæologist working the midden she had left, “what looks like the rear-view mirror of the wagon.”

  “Oh. Yes. I was going to epoxy it on, but I couldn’t find any epoxy.”

  “Epoxy?”

  “That’s what Gene did, only maybe he didn’t use enough. I thought we had some in the toolbox, but we don’t.”

  He laughed. “Well, it’s not doing you much good here.”

  She refused to answer that. It wasn’t part of the list. She waited for more. She heard him sigh, in a prefatory, brass-tacks sort of way. “Do you want to tell me,” he said, “what your plans are, if any?”

  “Well,” she said. She glanced up; Mrs. Pisky was busy, or not busy, with something in the butler’s pantry off the dining room. Rosie could see her large pendulous ear.

  “Do you want to try to tell me …”

  “Well there’s nothing just right now to say, Mike,” she said softly. “I mean not just right now this afternoon.” There was a sort of huff, which maybe stood for head patiently shaken, or even patience tried. “I mean …” You were warned and none of this is any kind of goddamn surprise: that’s what she meant. Mike’s capacity always to begin the old conversations, the old negotiations, afresh from square one was inexhaustible, probably it came from having to do it in therapy. He seemed to thrive on it, as Rosie withered, became tangled and speechless, unable to finish sentences.

  “You mean?” He waited. She seemed to see him shift the phone to his other ear, settle down. She knew this so well, Mike growing quiet and large and patient, waiting, exuding what Rosie called the Cloud of Power. And as she saw it it dissipated, she knew herself to be outside and beyond it, that being outside and beyond it was her reason for being here in Arcady now and not in Stonykill.

  “I mean I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  She realized her middle finger had gone numb inside the book she had been gripping tightly. She released it. There was a long soft roll of thunder like a groan of relief. She put the book down, it fluttered closed, she put her hand on it just as the title page was falling.

  “Well, so what are you up to?” he said. Start fresh, new tack.

  “Reading.”

  “What.”

  “A book.”

  Beneath the title was the quotation from which the title was taken: These are the youths that thunder at a playhouse, and fight for bitten apples. From Henry VIII.

  “Rosie, I think I really deserve just a little bit of openness. I think you don’t feel I can imagine what you’re feeling, but …”

  “Oh, Michael, don’t, just talk normal, please.” During his silence at that she made a decision. “I just don’t have anything to say now for a while. I don’t have anything to say that I can say. I mean it. If you really have to talk all about it right now then well you can call Allan Butterman.”

  “Who?”

  “Allan Butterman. He’s a lawyer.” The house had grown dark as night. There was a more authoritative roll of thunder; in the pantry Mrs. Pisky clucked and turned on the light. “His number’s in the phone book, I suppose.” Great volumes of warm wet air were blundering through the rooms; Mrs. Pisky bustled quickly around the dining room, closing the windows whose light summer drapes were tossing like startled hands. “Listen, Mike, it’s starting to rain, I have to go find Sam. Goodbye.”

  She hung up.

  She glanced at her watch. The lawyer’s office would be closed, she’d call first thing in the morning before Mike did. If he did.

  It’s all right, it’s all right, she counseled herself, feeling calm except for the dreadful lump in her throat. It’s all right; because only the I-feel-you-think stuff, the big gasbag words, could pass between them now any longer without hurting; every common word carried too much terrible weight to be spoken, diaper, wagon, house, toolbox. Sam. We.

  So he could talk to Allan Butterman, who wouldn’t mind.

  She went out to the veranda. Furry gray clouds moved fast over the valley; the trees were pulled at and lost leaves as though it were autumn. Across the lawn Sam hurried, her hair windblown over her stricken face, and Boney shuffling behind her pulling her wagon. Dry insect-riddled leaves rose in a whirlwind around them.

  Blow it all away, Rosie prayed; blow away summer, bring the hard clear weather. She had had enough summer. She wanted a fire, she wanted to sleep under blankets, she wanted to walk in sweaters under leafless trees, clear and cold inside and out.

  EIGHT

  The storm did not come then; neither did it pass. After the darkening wind and a few inconclusive drops it seemed to pause, leaving the evening sky clear; it lay still visible on the horizon, though, muttering lowly from time to time, probably raining (those at Spofford’s party said to one another) on someone else’s party, somewhere else. The dense hot air was charged with its nearness, and when the moon arose, to toasts and laughter, immense and as amber as whiskey, her light gilded the scalloped hem of its clouds.

  Pierce and Spofford drove down to the party from the cabin in Spofford’s aged truck. Pierce’s feet were amid the toolboxes and oily rags, and Spofford drove with one arm across the steering wheel, the other propped on the window sill, holding on the roof. Gravel roads, the old truck’s smell, night air on his face, had Pierce thinking of Kentucky, of long-ago summer Saturday nights, out sparkin’, of freedom and expectation: as though this road were an extension of one he had once been on, one that he had left years ago and had suddenly rejoined at this juncture, who would have thought it led here, who would have thought.

  They turned onto an unkempt paved road, jouncing mightily, and in not too long a time drew up at a shuttered roadside stand. By the headlights Pierce saw that it sold, or had once sold, a long list of summer foods. They parked there amid other vehicles, old trucks like Spofford’s and newer ones and ones fitted out to special uses, and a bright little red convertible and a vast station wagon. Spofford pulled off the brown Indian-patterned blanket that covered the truck’s seat, rolled it and put it under his arm; he hooked with his forefinger from the back a huge jug of red wine, slung it over his shoulder, and led Pierce to a path that ran behind the roadside stand and descended through a pine woods toward a triangle of gold and black water. There were others on the path, darkish shapes or moonstruck and white, carrying hampers, shepherding children.

  “Is that Spofford?” said a big woman in a tentlike dress, cigarette between her lips.

  “Hello, Val.”

  “Good night for it,” Val said.

  “The best.”

  “Moon’s in Scorpio,” Val said.

  “Is that so.”

  “Just be careful,” Val chuckled, and they debouched into a peopled clearing, firelight, greeting voices and dogs barking.

  It was Spofford’s party only in that the stretch of waterside where it went on was his, a little pleasure-ground his parents had used to operate in the summer, the stand, a few picnic tables and a scattering of stone fireplaces like a druid ring, a brief wooden pier and a pair of outhouses, Jacks and Jills. Spofford brought the jug of wine, but did no hosting, was only a little seigneurial as he and Pierce strolled down amid the people, saying hi and passing remarks. The tables were piled with meats and fruits, bottles and cheeses and bowls of this and that, enough for multitudes it seemed, each of them there his own host to all. Fires had been lit in some of the dolmens, and woodsmoke mingled with the night air; a thin piping could be heard, curling through the pines’ hushing.

  Hands in his pockets, nodding to left and right as Spofford did, Pierce walked with Spofford down to the water’s edge. The moon above the massy trees on the far shore seemed to be a hole cut out of a jet sky to let the light of a far cool heaven through. Out on the water as they stood there, one, two, three figures broke the surface suddenly, as though they had been sleeping on the river’s bottom and had just awakened; laughing and naked, they climbed the ladder onto the pier and stood in the
moonlight drying themselves: three women, a dark, a light, a rosé; three graces.

  “Well, she’s here,” Spofford said quietly, turning away.

  “Oh?” said Pierce, not turning away. The dark one twined her thick hair in her hands to squeeze the water out; the blond steadied herself with a hand on the dark one’s shoulder, drying her feet. The third pointed to Pierce, and they all three looked up, and seemed to laugh; their voices carried to him over the water, but not their words. Pierce, hands still in his pockets, smiled and stood. Just then there was a heavy padding behind him, and a naked man ran past him and flung himself into the water, praying hands outstretched and long hair flying, as though drowning himself in tribute: it was he they had laughed at.

  He was followed by a blond child, rushing in to his knees with a shriek and then stopping in surprise; then an older child who raced on past him and went under. A large woman, their mother it might be, drawing off her smock, her great breasts rolling with her stride, followed them in, churning the gold-barred water into silver foam.

  Pierce turned away, a fullness in his breast and the grin still on his face. Adamites. How had they escaped the curse?

  “You couldn’t buy this, in the city,” he said to Spofford, who poured red wine for him black in the moonlight. “Couldn’t buy it. This amenity.”

  “Yeah, well,” Spofford said. “It’s not for sale.” He handed Pierce a thick crackling joint from which ropy smoke arose. “You want something to eat?”

  Roasted corn and tomatoes sweet as berries, the harvest was coming in; crumbling bread from someone’s oven, blackened weenies, nine kinds of slaw and salad, his paper plate sogged and bent beneath it. “What do you suppose this is?” he asked a woman filling her plate next to him, prodding a cake-like thing. “I dunno,” she said. “Beige food.”

  He carried his plate to a suitable rock for sitting, in view of all; on the rock next to him sat the piper, his thin uncertain music coming from a set of bound reed pipes, and himself looking Pan-like in a mild-mannered way, bow mouth pursed to blow and a boyish beard. A sleepy child sat with his head in the piper’s lap.