As a family, they’d gone into town nearly every Saturday, all four of them piled into an old ’56 Ford. It was a battered car, the color of dishwater, with only three hubcaps, the radio antenna broken off. His father had called it the “Old gray mare,” and sometimes kicked gently at its threadbare tires with a comical affection.
Jasper Graves had been a tall, lanky man, and each time Graves remembered his father, it was first as a long, lean shadow moving fluidly across newly seeded fields. He’d worn overalls and a weathered hat that his sweat had soaked through so many times the felt had finally taken on a look of perpetual dampness. He’d been oddly shy around strangers, but quick and lively when at home, forever making jokes and acting boyish. He could imitate animals, particularly the old brown dog that had suddenly appeared in the yard one day and never left. He’d named her Ruby for some reason that had never been explained, and Graves could recall sitting on the front steps, watching his father lope languidly past, his eyes taking on the same laziness as Ruby’s, moving at the same slow pace across the yard, his hands cupped over his ears, until he stopped, stared about, the right hand jerking up suddenly, just like Ruby’s did when she suddenly heard something unfamiliar, the screech of a crow or the distant rumble of an approaching car. Then he’d grin or give a wink and continue on toward the barn or the chicken coop, his shadow following behind like a ragged cape.
But it was his mother Graves most often recalled when he suddenly found himself reminded of his boyhood. His father had been a gentle, kindly man, and there’d been something docile and accepting about him, something that never looked for anything beyond the nearby fields. His mother, on the other hand, had had a curious drive, a keen sense that beyond her world there was another one she yearned to see. On summer evenings, when her chores were done, she would sometimes sit on the porch, thumbing through magazines, gazing at photographs of faraway places. She knew that the great cities were out of the question, that there would never be either the time or the money to visit such extravagant sites. And so she thought of Florida, instead, and on those few occasions when the truly far-fetched took hold of her imagination, she even contemplated the prospect of a trip to California. Once, she’d actually gone so far as to mention the possibility to her husband. Graves remembered how his father had not so much as glanced up from the local paper before making his reply, “Lord, Mary, you know the old gray mare couldn’t ever make a trip like that.”
But it had been the old gray mare that had taken them away on that last day. “We’ll be back by supper time,” his mother had said as he and Gwen stood in the yard that summer morning. She had knelt and run her fingers through his hair. “You be good now, Paul.” His father had laughed at that. “He’s practically grown-up, Mary,” he’d gently scolded his wife as he bent and grasped his son’s small, round shoulders. “You be the man around here until we get back,” he’d said with a smile. Then he offered his familiar wink and uttered a line that haunted Graves still, particularly on summer nights, when the darkness seemed arrayed against him, something watching him sleeplessly from its black depths, Don’t let nothing happen to your sister.
They were the words Graves most often heard when he thought of his father. They’d been said softly, trustingly, but Graves had long ago stopped hearing them in that tone. Instead, they returned to him accusingly. And always tied to other words, said with a grunt, in a hard, mocking voice, You didn’t know what you was, did you, boy?
He knew precisely what he’d been. A boy. Just a boy. Twelve years old. You thought you was a man, the voice repeated through the years, Now what you think you are?
“Nothing,” he whispered, then glanced about to see if anyone had heard him. No one had. The people of the village moved through their afternoon obliviously.
Watching them, Graves fought to keep his attention focused on where he was, Britanny Falls, the present. But slowly, like someone drawn into deeper and more dangerous waters, he found his mind returning to the day he’d been left in charge of things, in charge of Gwen, of making sure that nothing happened to her, despite the fact that his sister was four years his senior, along with being far closer to adulthood in other ways time couldn’t measure.
In a sense Gwen had always seemed like a woman, he thought now. Strong. Knowing. With a dignity his father lacked, and a central quietness unknown to his mother. It was Gwen who’d first read to him, taking him with her to a place beside the river where she liked to sit in the shade and watch the green water drift past. She’d begun with short stories from a collection she’d been given by her high school English teacher. It was called Stories for Girls, but Graves had felt that they were for boys too. He had said just that to Gwen on the day she’d read the last of them, and he could stall remember how she’d smiled at him, as if she’d accomplished some goal she’d had in mind when she’d first begun to read.
Only a week later, Graves had begun a story of his own. He’d called it “A Story For A Boy,” and had scribbled its first paragraphs in one of his school notebooks. He’d planned to give it to Gwen on her upcoming birthday, and had nearly finished it by the time his father and mother left for Ellentown that day, his father reminding him that he was “the man of the family” and that he should not let “nothing happen” to his sister.
He could remember that day with extraordinary clarity, how he and Gwen had stood in the yard and watched the old car back out onto the dusty road, then head east, noisily, a slow trail of dust following behind it like a yellow tail. They’d gone about their separate chores after that, Graves feeding the chickens and pigs, Gwen dusting the furniture and sweeping off the porch.
By noon, the summer sun had begun to bake the house and fields. They’d sat down beneath the shade of the thick oak that rose in the front yard, and eaten their lunch together. Gwen had made a fresh pitcher of lemonade, and there were times when Graves could still taste it.
It was the smell of chocolate that returned Graves to that particular day, June 14, 1962, since Gwen had made a chocolate cake for their dessert that evening. They’d taken it outside to escape the heat, sat down on the steps of the front porch, and watched the scores of lightning bugs drift over the yard as night began to settle over them.
They’d expected their parents to return by nightfall, but by nine o’clock, the old gray mare had not yet brought them home. They’d played checkers, then a game of cards, and finally gone out to the road, first to linger beside it, then to wander down it, in the direction toward which their parents had gone that same morning. It was something animals would do, Graves later thought. He and Gwen were like two bear cubs that had waited all day at the mouth of the burrow, then timidly headed down the unfamiliar hillside, silently, hesitantly, sniffing the dying trail of the parents who had abandoned them.
Even now, over thirty years later, sitting on a chipped wooden bench in a town far north of that dusty country road, Graves could easily remember the feel of that evening walk, the ominousness that had gathered around them, the moist touch of Gwen’s hand as she’d taken his, the increasing pressure with which she’d grasped his fingers as their walk lengthened and the darkness and their bewilderment deepened, and still the old gray mare did not come rumbling up the road.
It was a far different car that finally pulled into their driveway. It was nearly midnight by then, but he and Gwen were still awake when Sheriff Sloane brought his car to a halt, got out, and walked toward where they sat together on the front steps.
“Evening, Gwen,” Sloane said when he reached than.
“Evening, Sheriff,” Gwen answered quietly, her voice already fixed in a tone of dark expectation.
“You have any relatives in the area?” Sheriff Sloane asked.
“No, sir.”
“None at all?”
Gwen shook her head.
Sheriff Sloane drew in a loud, weary breath. “Well, why don’t you and your little brother come home with me, then.”
Gwen did not move. “Where’s Daddy and Mama?”
Sloane’s features appeared even darker than the darkness that surrounded him. “Come along, now. You and your brother can stay with me and my wife tonight.
On the way to his house, Sheriff Sloane answered Gwen’s questions one by one, so that by the time they reached it, everything had been revealed. Their parents were dead, killed in a fiery collision with a jackknifed truck. The truck had been hauling wood for the paper mill in Harrisburg, Sheriff Sloane said, and when it overturned, it sent a waterfall of logs tumbling over the embankment. In all of this, he offered only one consoling fact. “It was instant,” he said. “I don’t think your parents suffered.”
They’d stayed the next few days with Sheriff Sloane, then returned to the farmhouse. There seemed no other place to go. Neighbors dropped by, bringing food and hand-me-down clothes, but otherwise the two of them had gone on alone, doing the chores as they always had, then sitting on the steps together, just as they had the night Sheriff Sloane had finally pulled into the dusty driveway, told them of their parents’ deaths. Autumn brought its usual rains, winter its sparse snow. Through it all they remained together, living in the family home, walking to school each day, returning to the house at night, equally determined to continue on their own. After a while, no one pressed them to do otherwise.
When spring came, they leased the fields to other farmers, keeping only a small parcel for themselves, one at the far end of the field, nearly a mile from their farmhouse, but an area of rich, moist earth that was perfect for a large garden.
Graves worked that garden all the next summer, planting, hoeing, weeding, working in the hot sun with the same sort of persistence he’d observed in his father. At noon, he would drop the hoe in the grass beside him, sit under the shade of an old elm, naked to the waist, and wait for Gwen to bring his lunch. It was at those times, sitting alone, waiting, that his mother and father most often returned to him. He saw his father’s face boiling in the flames, his mother’s hair a mane of fire. They melted like candles thrown into a furnace, their features blending into one charred mass. The pain that accompanied these imaginings was the deepest he had ever known. He could not imagine a deeper one, nor that anything in life might ever hurt him more. And yet, for all that, one thought sustained him. That he still had Gwen. That he was charged to love and protect her. And that he always would.
“Are you Paul Graves?”
Graves abruptly returned to Britanny Falls, glancing to the left, where a tall, gray-haired man stood, peering down at him.
“I’m Frank Saunders,” the man said. “I’ve come to take you to Riverwood. The car’s just over here.”
The past still surrounded Graves like humid summer air. He realized he did not know exactly how long he’d been waiting on the bench. Rising, he glanced at his watch. He was relieved to discover that it had been only a few minutes.
“Riverwood isn’t far,” Saunders told him. “Just a short ride. The car’s over here. You don’t have any bags?”
Graves patted the small traveling case that hung from his arm. “Just this one.”
“This way, then,” Saunders said. They walked half a block to a dark blue Volvo station wagon.
“Riverwood’s a nice place, Mr. Graves,” Saunders said as he casually guided the car through the short main street of Britanny Falls. “With a big lake for swimming and rowing. All the summer guests have their own cottages, you know. So you’ll have a lot of privacy.”
“I’m just here for the weekend,” Graves told him. “I haven’t been invited for the summer.”
“So that accounts for the lack of luggage,” Saunders said as if it were a small question that had been gnawing at him. “Well, however long you stay, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself. Everybody does.”
The car continued down the road, the woods thickening, a dense undergrowth spreading across its shaded ground. From time to time Graves spotted hikers as they made their way along a narrow trail. Each time, he turned away and focused his attention on the road ahead, not wanting to conjure up the things such people sometimes came upon in their lonely forest rambles.
“Did they send you any information about Riverwood?” Saunders asked.
“Yes.”
“So you know its history? I don’t need to go into that?”
“No, you don’t,” Graves told him, instantly recalling the major points, how the Colony had been founded in the early 1960s, cottages added to the manor house and vast grounds of an estate that had once been the summer home of Warren Davies, but now accommodated the various artists, writers, and thinkers to whom his daughter, Allison, the current owner, saw fit to extend her hospitality.
“All kinds of people come to Riverwood for the summer,” Saunders said. “Writers. Poets. Playwrights.”
Graves could not imagine himself among such people, chatting confidently, easily holding forth while others listened attentively to whatever he might say. He thought of his apartment, its modest furnishings, spare as a monk’s cell, the only voice his own, a whispering in his mind.
They arrived at a broad green pond, then circled it, moving past a line of small wooden cottages, all of them empty, deserted, with nothing but the neatly tended lawns to give the impression they’d ever been occupied at all.
About halfway around the pond, Graves saw the main house rise in the distance. It rested on a gentle incline that swept up from the water.
“That’s where Miss Davies lives,” Saunders told him.
The big house had wide steps and high white columns, and from the booklet he’d received about Riverwood, Graves recognized it as the architectural centerpiece of the estate. The mansion had been built in the years just preceding the Depression, and in every way it seemed to suggest its own invulnerability to such cyclical catastrophes. A spacious side porch looked down over the front lawn. A stream ran from the pond to a boathouse that was joined to the main house by a long covered shed.
“Mr. Davies had the channel dug just before the war,” Saunders explained. “It connects the pond to the boathouse, then goes all the way to the Hudson. You can’t see the river from here, but it’s only a couple hundred yards from the back of the house.” He smiled. “Nice idea, don’t you think?”
Graves nodded but said nothing as the Volvo continued on along the edge of the pond until it reached yet another wooden cottage, one that was slightly larger than the others, and somewhat set apart, though a second, more or less identical cottage was situated only a hundred yards or so away.
“This is your place,” Saunders said cheerfully. “Not exactly a five-star hotel, but nice enough. Come on in, I’ll show you around.”
The cottage was indeed very nice, rustic in a carefully manicured sort of way, with oak furniture that had been regularly oiled, checkered curtains, a scattering of furniture that included a small sofa, a few chairs, and a rolltop desk in the far corner, its top thrown open to reveal a complex of tiny drawers and slots.
“There’s a kitchen, but you won’t need it,” Saunders told him. “There’s a tray of cold cuts in the refrigerator. Tomorrow morning, someone will bring your breakfast.” He smiled. “Room service, you might call it.” He glanced at the small travel bag into which Graves had hastily packed his clothes and toiletries. “Is there anything else you need?”
“No, nothing,” Graves replied.
Saunders nodded. “Well, have a good evening, Mr. Graves,” he said crisply, then turned and walked back to the Volvo.
Left to himself, Graves walked through the cottage. In the adjoining bedroom he found a bureau with four drawers and a narrow closet. There was a gooseneck lamp on the right side of the bed, and a little table with a pen and writing pad on the left. Everything appeared well made, but decidedly plain and functional, as if purposely selected to provide ample accommodation without creating a distraction.
The kitchen had the usual appliances, and when he opened the refrigerator, Graves found a large silver tray spread with an array of meats, pickles, olives, all tightly sealed beneath pl
astic wrap. Several plastic food containers held potato salad and coleslaw; others, mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise. Breads—white, whole wheat, even pumpernickel—had been placed in a rectangular container on the shelf below. A bottle of white wine stood upright in the refrigerator door, surrounded by an assortment of beer, soda, mineral water. On the table, a bottle of red wine rested in a wicker basket.
It was a generous spread, but Graves wasn’t hungry and he never drank. And so he returned to the porch and sat down in one of the wooden rocking chairs he found there and vaguely wondered why he’d been invited to Riverwood in the first place. Certainly he was not the type of literary writer Saunders had mentioned as the estate’s usual guest. His books were void of any symbolic complexity. There was nothing in them academics would be likely to discuss. And as for being an intellectual, Graves had long ago realized that he did not think so much as brood.
But if Graves could not fathom why Allison Davies had invited him to Riverwood, neither could he clearly understand why he’d agreed to accept her invitation. He did not like to leave New York and very rarely did so. The countryside held more dread than charm. Meeting other writers meant nothing to him. Even his earlier yearning to be with other people had long ago withered. He no longer felt the aching loneliness that had sometimes plagued him in his youth. He was accustomed to living thinly, without connections, the sort of life that was, in Slovak’s phrase, “mere breath.” Because of all that, Graves suspected that the real reason he’d come to Riverwood was his need to think things through a final time, decide once and for all if it was time to stop it altogether, shut down the little engine that dreamed nothing but dark tales. He had never doubted that one day he would kill himself. He’d hung a metal bar across the narrow corridor that led from his bedroom, and bought the rope that now lay coiled in the top drawer of his dresser. He knew the chair he’d stand upon. And the name he’d utter with his final exhalation: Gwen.