Gene Wolfe - The Best of Gene Wolfe

I said, “I understand.”

“He’d been on the football team and the softball team and run track and all that, and mostly it was those boys he’d talk about, but one time it was the shop teacher. I never even took shop.”

I nodded again, I think.

“But never Larry, so Larry got to be special to me. Most of those boys, well, maybe they looked, but I never looked at them. But I’d really dated Larry, and he’d had his arms around me and even kissed me a couple times, and I danced with him. I could remember the cologne he used to wear, and that checkered wool blazer he had. After graduation most of the boys from our school got jobs with the coal company or in the tractor plant, but Larry won a scholarship to some big school, and after that I never saw him. It was like he’d gone there and died.”

“It’s better now,” I said, and I took her hand, just as she had taken mine going upstairs.

She misunderstood, which may have been fortunate. “It is. It really is. Having you here like this makes it better.” She used my name, but I am determined not to reveal it.

“Then after we’d been married about four years, I went in the drugstore, and Larry was there waiting for a prescription for his mother. We said hi, and shook hands, and talked about old times and how it was with us, and I got the stuff I’d come for and started to leave. When I got to the door, I thought Larry wouldn’t be looking anymore, so I stopped and looked at him.

“He was still looking at me.” She gulped. “You’re smart. I bet you guessed, didn’t you?”

“I would have been,” I said. I doubt that she heard me.

“I’ll never, ever, forget that look. He wanted me so bad, just so bad it was tearing him up. My husband starved a dog to death once. His name was Ranger, and he was a bluetick hound. They said he was a good coon dog, and I guess he was. My husband had helped this man with some work, so he gave him Ranger. But my husband used to pull on Ranger’s ears till he’d yelp, and finally Ranger bit his hand. He just locked Ranger up after that and wouldn’t feed him anymore. He’d go out in the yard and Ranger’d be in that cage hoping for him to feed him and knowing he wouldn’t, and that was the way Larry looked at me in the drugstore. It brought it all back, about the dog two years before, and Larry, and lots of other things. But the thing was . . . thing was—”

I stroked her hand.

“He looked at me like that, and I saw it, and when I did I knew I was looking at him that very same way. That was when I decided, except that I thought I’d save up money, and write to Larry when I had enough, and see if he’d help me. Are you all right now?”

“No,” I said, because at that moment I could have cut my own throat or thrown myself through the window.

“He never answered my letters, though. I talked to his mother, and he’s married with two children. I like you better anyway.”

Her fingers had resumed explorations. I said, “Now, if you’re ready.”

And we did. I felt heavy and clumsy, and it was over far too quickly, yet if I were given what no man actually is, the opportunity to experience a bit of his life a second time, I think I might well choose those moments.

“Did you like that?”

“Yes, very much indeed. Thank you.”

“You’re pretty old for another one, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. Wait a few minutes and we’ll see.”

“We could try some other way. I like you better than Larry. Have I said that?”

I said she had not, and that she had made me wonderfully happy by saying it.

“He’s married, but I never wrote him. I won’t lie to you much more.”

“In that case, may I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Or two? Perhaps three?”

“Go ahead.”

“You indicated that you had gone to a school, a boarding school apparently, where you were treated badly. Was it near here?”

“I don’t remember about that—I don’t think I said it.”

“We were talking about the inscription Dante reported. I believe it ended: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate! ‘Leave all hope, you that enter!’ ”

“I said I wouldn’t lie. It’s not very far, but I can’t give you the name of a town you’d know, or anything like that.”

“My second—”

“Don’t ask anything else about the school. I won’t tell you.”

“All right, I won’t. Someone gave your husband a hunting dog. Did your husband hunt deer? Or quail, perhaps?”

“Sometimes. I think you’re right. He’d rather have had a bird dog, but the man he helped didn’t raise them.”

I kissed her. “You’re in danger, and I think that you must know how much. I’ll help you all I can. I realize how very trite this will sound, but I would give my life to save you from going back to that school, if need be.”

“Kiss me again.” There was a new note in her voice, I thought, and it seemed to me that it was hope.

When we parted, she asked, “Are you going to drive me to St. Louis in the morning?”

“I’d gladly take you farther. To New York or Boston or even to San Francisco. It means ‘Saint Francis,’ you know.”

“You think you could again?”

At her touch, I knew the answer was yes; so did she.

Afterward she asked, “What was your last question?” and I told her I had no last question.

“You said one question; then it was two, then three. So what was the last one?”

“You needn’t answer.”

“All right, I won’t. What was it?”

“I was going to ask you in what year you and your husband graduated from high school.”

“You don’t mind?”

I sighed. “A hundred wise men have said in various ways that love transcends the power of death, and millions of fools have supposed that they meant nothing by it. At this late hour in my life I have learned what they meant. They meant that love transcends death. They are correct.”

“Did you think that salesman was really a cop? I think you did. I did too, almost.”

“No or yes, depending upon what you mean by cop . But we’ve already talked too much about these things.”

“Would you rather I’d do this?”

“Yes,” I said, and meant it with every fiber of my being. “I would a thousand times rather have you do that.”

After some gentle teasing about my age and inadequacies (the sort of thing that women always do, in my experience, as anticipatory vengeance for the contempt with which they expect to be treated when the sexual act is complete), we slept. In the morning, Eira wore her wedding band to breakfast, where I introduced her to the old woman as my wife, to the old man’s obvious relief. The demon sat opposite me at the table, wolfing down scrambled eggs, biscuits, and homemade sausage he did not require, and from time to time winking at me in an offensive manner that I did my best to tolerate.

Outside I spoke to him in private while Eira was upstairs searching our room for the hairbrush that I had been careful to leave behind.

“If you are here to reclaim her,” I told him, “I am your debtor. Thank you for waiting until morning.”

He grinned like the trap he was. “Have a nice night?”

“Very.”

“Swell. You folks think we don’t want you to have any fun. That’s not the way it is at all.” He strove to stifle his native malignancy as he said this, with the result that it showed so clearly I found it difficult not to cringe. “I do you a favor, maybe you’ll do me one sometime. Right?”

“Perhaps,” I hedged.

He laughed. I have heard many actors try to reproduce the hollowness and cruelty of that laugh, but not one has come close. “Isn’t that what keeps you coming back here? Wanting favors? You know we don’t give anything away.”