Маргарет Миллар - The Cannibal Heart

At the end of one of the planks a black furry spider was spinning his web, oblivious to the wind, crossing and recrossing the silken strands with his humped legs. His old web was nearby, spangled with the remains of flies. She stopped to touch the spider. It curled up into a ball from fright. She drew her hand away and walked on.

On the other side of the barranca she saw Jessie and Mr. Roma coming along the path. She knew what they were looking for even before she heard Jessie calling, “James, here James, come on home!” Stepping out of sight for a moment behind a tree, she made a futile attempt to straighten her hair and to brush from her skirt the leaves and twigs that clung to it like guilt.

“James, here James!”

“He isn’t here,” Mrs. Wakefield said.

“We’ve been looking for him everywhere. He might be lost, so we’re leaving a trail of corn.” Jessie’s hands, and the pockets of her blue jeans were filled with kernels of corn, and Mr. Roma was carrying a paper bag.

Mr. Roma was faintly apologetic. “He likes corn, and we thought, just in case...”

“That’s a very good idea,” Mrs. Wakefield said brightly to Jessie. “You mustn’t forget to leave a trail through the barranca.”

“I won’t.”

“Can you do it all by yourself while I talk to Mr. Roma for a minute?”

“I’m not a baby!”

“I’ll wait for you here then.”

“All right.”

With the corn dribbling out of her hand Jessie slid down the side of the barranca.

“He may be hiding,” Mr. Roma said. “Like Billy.”

“Like Billy, yes.”

“James doesn’t like the wind, he gets frightened.”

“He won’t be frightened this time.”

“He always is. Always when there is a wind or before a storm...”

“Not anymore.” She reached out and touched the sleeve of his plaid shirt. “Mr. Roma, listen to me. I couldn’t tell you in front of the child, but James is all right. He’s perfectly safe.”

“You know where he is?”

“Yes. Yes, and he’s all right. He’s better off this way, really much better off.”

Mr. Roma bent his head. He saw the golden trail of corn winding in and out of the trees, and he heard Jessie still calling the gander, “James, James.”

“What have you done?” he said heavily.

“He was so old and helpless and half-blind — I put him out of his misery.”

“No, no, he was not helpless. He was not in misery.”

“It was only a matter of time anyway. I found him wandering here in the woods, lost.”

“He never went into the woods.” Mr. Roma pressed his palms together, and she thought suddenly how grotesque his hands were, with the brown leathery skin covering the tops like half-gloves, and the undersides as pink as Jessie’s cheeks. “Never further than the garage, Mrs. Wakefield. I only came out here to please the little one. I knew James never went into the woods.”

“He did. Why do you keep arguing like this? Don’t you believe me?”

He stood in silence with his head bowed. Beads of sweat glittered on his forehead and along his temples like tears.

“Getting emotional over a gander,” she said bitterly. “Have you nothing better to cry about? We should have fattened him up years ago and put him in a roasting pan. Don’t you see that?” He didn’t answer; his mouth moved, but formed no words that could be spoken. “Carl, listen. I cried today, too. Do you want to hear about it? It doesn’t matter now who knows.”

He seemed not to have heard. “Helpless and in misery, no, he was not. One eye, one eye was all he had, but it was all he needed.” He raised his head and looked at her, and she saw in his eyes no tears, only a dry terrible grief that seemed to be not for the gander but for her.

“Don’t look like that. What have I done?”

“Like Billy,” he said.

“What?”

“Out of his misery.”

“You keep talking about Billy. I don’t...”

“The little fellow trusted you. And you... you...” He couldn’t go on. He moved his head back and forth in helpless anger.

“I see now what’s in your mind. You think I deliberately left Billy alone on deck, that I was deliberately negligent.”

“You... never left him alone before.”

“I’ve told you how it happened. He was thirsty. I went to get him a glass of water. When I left him he was playing with one of those leather-covered dolls, flinging it up in the air and trying to catch it. They found the doll afterwards, floating around in the water. They actually fished it out and gave it to me. Thoughtful, wasn’t it? I was very polite. I said, thank you, thank you, good people. When it was dark I threw it overboard again. I’m the victim, don’t you see? I’m the one who’s suffered, not Billy, not a useless old gander...”

She turned her gaze toward the sea. Through an open space between trees she could see, dimly, part of the island, a little barren mountain rising out of the sea, where no one lived but a flock of sheep starving in the drought, and the black vicious ravens grown fat on sheep’s entrails.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everywhere I went people stared and whispered, and then turned away breaking into self-conscious chatter. They never looked at me as if I were a person. To them I was the mother of that half-wit, the woman with the queer little boy. I was ashamed, yes, I admit it. Who wouldn’t have been ashamed? Then when I came back here I met Mark and he looked at me as if I was a woman, a real woman. And I felt like one, too, for the first time in years. I’ve been cheated. Perhaps it’s made a monster of me, I don’t know. I feel that from now on I’m entitled to anything I can lay my hands on.”

“My Luisa has been cheated, too — to be born half-mulatto, half-Mexican — but if she talked like you I would be worried. I would wonder about her — her mind.”

“Don’t worry about my mind. It’s very clear. I’m not muddled anymore at all.”

“What will you do? He — I’m sure he will not leave his family. He belongs to them.”

“Only half,” she said, softly. “He’ll never really belong to them. And Jessie — Jessie is all mine.”

“It is bad to talk like that.”

“You must try to understand me, Mr. Roma. After all, we’ve known each other a long time, and you’ve always admired me, haven’t you? You’ve always said I was a fine woman. Those were your very words.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have a pleasant goodbye, then?”

“Yes, Mrs. Wakefield.”

They shook hands, but at her touch he seemed suddenly to grow smaller, like the spider that had curled up into a ball from fright.

At the bend in the path he began to run. She watched him through the trees, controlling an impulse to follow him and try further to explain herself, starting right at the beginning: I was born on a farm in Nebraska. It was a scraggly little farm. I hated it. I was always terribly ambitious. I wanted to make something of myself...

Like that, very simple and logical. But Mr. Roma had run away from her, like John, and like Mark. There was no one left to explain things to, only the deaf trees and the blithe lizards, the selfish chattering birds and the rocks worn smooth by the storms of other years.

She wheeled suddenly and called out, “Jessie? Where are you, Jessie?”

“Here.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Right here.” The top of Jessie’s head, and then the rest of her, appeared at the edge of the barranca. There were leaves caught in her yellow hair, and little spikes of twitch grass had pricked the front of her jersey.

“There you are,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “There you are, of course. Let me brush you off, darling.”

“You sound funny. Like my mother after she cries. Shivery, kind of.”