Robert Tanenbaum - Absolute rage

Lucy and Dan had made their police statements, and Dan had been examined by paramedics, after which Lucy had volunteered to drive Dan back to his house. Lucy drove south on 130, Dan slumped in his seat, not speaking.

"What's wrong? Are you in pain?"

"No, I'm fine."

"I hate it when people say 'I'm fine' when they don't mean it, especially to people who are supposed to mean something to them. If you have cancer and the mailman asks how're you doing, then 'fine' is an appropriate answer, if false. But I really want to know."

"Well, what do you expect, cheerful? Happy? I just got the shit kicked out of me by a bunch of guys who probably killed my family. And they probably were going to do something really bad to you, and I didn't do shit."

"Yes, you did. You hit an armed man with a chair and while you were hurt, too. He might have shot Magog if you hadn't done it. I thought it was incredibly heroic."

Here he gave her a quick look to see if she was serious. He determined that she was, which was fine; but still the association of his sense of what he knew himself to be and the concept of heroism had a profoundly jarring effect on him, as if he had just been informed that he was adopted. He was not a hero; he was a shy bookworm; his father and brother were the heroes.

"The dog was the hero," he mumbled.

"Of course," said Lucy matter-of-factly. "That's what she's trained and bred to be. She'd give her life for me without a thought, assuming she thinks at all. There are people like that, too, I guess, people who just, like, jump into danger without thinking. Like a dog. You can call that heroic, and people do, but that's not really all that impressive, when you think about it. It's like being strong because you happen to be six-seven with a big frame. Well, yeah? It's really much more impressive when someone who's careful and thoughtful and imaginative does something courageous, because you know it was moral strength that got them over all their fears. Like my mother-she does brave things all the time, but you know it's really all in the nerves. She just acts without thinking. My dad's brave, too, but he suffers, before and after: 'What should I do, did I do the right thing?'"

"And which one are you like?"

"Both, I guess. I act without thinking a lot, but I still suffer." She laughed. "The worst of both worlds."

"You're just trying to make me feel better."

"True. Am I succeeding?"

"Mm. Try harder." This time they both laughed.

"But really," she said, "I meant it. If you hadn't behaved well, I would have told you that, too."

"Yeah, all the time I was thinking, take the girl, do whatever you want, just don't hit me again."

"No, you weren't."

"No, I wasn't thinking at all, except getting hold of a gun or weapon and killing all three of them."

"Yes, and if you'd done that, we wouldn't be sitting here."

"Oh, you don't approve of revenge?"

"It's not me that's in charge of approving or disapproving," said Lucy. "I'm obliged to love my enemies, being a Christian; you're not. But it would've changed you. You don't think it would've, and the movies and everything tell you it doesn't. The good guy kills the villain and hugs the girl, music up and fade to black. But that's not the way it is in real life, and believe me, I know. When you strike your enemy with a sword, the blade goes through your own body first. St. Augustine." She slowed the truck. "Is this the turnoff?"

"Yeah, but don't turn. Keep going on 130. I want to show you something."

"Ooh, yet another wonder of Robbens County! I have goose bumps already."

"Yet another," he agreed, and sat back in his seat. Somehow, the darkness that had lately borne him down was gone. He placed his left hand on her thigh below the hem of her shorts and felt a tide of gladness when she removed a hand from the wheel and placed it on top of his.

"Dan handwich," she said, "on thigh."

Dan had heard the phrase she made him happy many times, but until just then he had thought it to be a mere figure of speech or hyperbole. Before he could think about it or reduce it to the level of strategy, his usual way with girls, he heard his voice saying it: "You make me happy." And blushed.

She nodded. "Uh-huh. I know. You make me happy, too. You won't believe this, but I was actually thinking just that, and how funny that phrase is. I was also thinking, I don't know where we're going, but I hope it's hours and hours."

It was only twenty minutes, though, before he directed her to a left turnoff. The asphalt lasted only a hundred yards or so, as usual, and then they were on oiled dirt and gravel, rat-a-tat-tat, steeply back and forth up the mountainside. Then off that road up a rutted track to a clearing dotted with little twisted pines and gray boulders on a field of whispering, pink-tinged ocher grasses.

"This's Mount Knox, the highest point in the county," he said. "You can see almost the whole thing from here." Hand in hand they picked their way among the boulders, the dog casting before them, nose asniff.

He helped her clamber up a whaleback boulder resting against a much higher mass of naked rock. "You're looking north. You can make out the town there."

"Yes, the storied towers of McCullensburg, and their promises of romance and adventure. What's that smear?" She pointed to where a dirty tent of yellow-brown haze hung under the dome of the sky.

"That's the pit. Majestic Number Two, Hampden Mountain. That mountain used to be nearly as high as this one until they cut the top off it. What do you think?"

She looked at the splotched landscape, scarred by coal working and obscured by colored smokes. " Terribilita. "

"Come again?"

"It's what they said in the Italian Renaissance for the mighty works of men. Iron furnaces and foundries. Horrible, but also terrific, what puny man has accomplished and so on."

"Yeah, I've felt that. I didn't know there was a word for it, though."

"Oh, there's a word for everything, just about, in some language."

"And you know them all, huh?"

"Yes. Or will." She bent down, scooped up a stone, and flung it into the void.

They tossed stones for a while. Then he said, "Come on, I want to show you something else. This is the real reason I brought you up here. Hold on to my hand, it's tricky."

He led her down a narrow path around the base of the cap rock. The tops of forty-foot pines waved like meadow grasses far below. The path curved south, then climbed upward over a set of natural stairs. She saw that the southern rock face of the peak had fallen away, leaving a high, rectangular niche, open at the top and flanked by a pair of horizontal ledges.

"It's like a huge chair!" she exclaimed.

"Uh-huh, it's called Aaron's Throne. This last part is a little rough. Watch where I put my feet. And don't look down."

He clambered up the vertical base of the throne, and after a moment she followed him. It was not as hard as it looked. Dan helped her onto the seat of the throne, an area three yards square, covered (to her great surprise) by short, soft grass. Below, Magog complained about not being able to follow.

"This is incredible," she cried. "It's like fairyland."

"Yeah, now turn around."

She did and gasped. Green and purple-blue, the corrugated mountains stretched in waves to the limits of vision, their hollows boiling with white mist. In the middle distance a large bird cruised some invisible torrent of air. There was no sign of man's mighty works at all.

He came up behind her and clasped his hands around her waist. "This is what this country looked like before people got here. The Throne is set so you look over the south end of the county and into Virginia. That's Jefferson National Forest to your left. Pretty, huh?"

"It's gorgeous. Is that an eagle?"