Robert Wilson - A Hidden Place

“Election?” The Wilcox woman seemed not to understand. “Election—no. It’s much more serious than that.” She adjusted her smudged bifocals. “Nancy’s gone. Did you know that?”

“Nancy? Gone where?”

“Where he is, I think. Where Travis is. You know, I pray they both get away safely. Truly, I pray for that. Is it un-Christian, Liza, that I should want them both to leave? But if they stay here they will be hurt. Worse.” She looked at Liza directly. “It’s tonight, you know.”

“I don’t understand… tonight? You mean the men who are meeting together?”

“Meeting together? Do you believe that’s what they’re doing? Is that why Creath is cleaning his rifle, Liza?” Faye Wilcox put her plump hands palms downward on the table. Her lips were pursed. “They are a posse. A mob.”

Vigilante, Liza thought. But— “You can’t know that.”

“How could I not? The rumor is all about town. But you don’t need a rumor to know.”

“But Travis? Surely Travis has left?”

“I believe he has not. Not while Nancy is here.”

Liza said nothing, only gripped the beveled edges of the kitchen counter. Faye stood up suddenly. “Your own sister’s child! How can you be so hard!”

Travis is lost, she thought dizzily. She had written him out of the book of her heart. But she thought of Creath with his rifle … of the other men with theirs. “Faye—”

“No,” Faye Wilcox said bleakly. “It was stupid to come here.” She went to the kitchen door and opened it. The hinges squealed; a breeze danced inside. There was the smell of woodsmoke. It was what Liza had always loved about autumn, that melancholy perfume on the air, the smell of winter stalking somewhere beyond the horizon. A dry leaf, wind-borne, swirled over the kitchen floor. “Pray for them,” Faye said. “Please do at least that much.”

Liza swallowed hard and nodded. Faye Wilcox closed the door behind her.

When the time came for Creath to leave the house, the fear Liza felt was for him as much as for Travis: it had lodged in her breast like a living thing. Outside, two big sedans pulled up and sounded their horns. Creath rose from his chair with glacial slowness and went to the door. His rifle was in his hand.

Liza took his arm. “Creath, don’t go.” He turned to stare at her and she fixed her eyes willfully on his red-checked shirt. His old hunting shirt. “It doesn’t matter what they want. Stay. Something bad might happen … I don’t want you to get hurt.”

But he pulled his arm free. The oily metallic smell of the gun was chokingly strong. Liza felt her eyes fill with tears.

“This is bought,” Creath said, and she knew at once that he did not mean the gun in his hand but the whole of it, the men waiting outside, the Baptist Women, the tent revival: all this skein of things and people into which she, Liza, had purposefully woven them; and she took a step backward, her breath catching in her throat. “Bought and paid for,” Creath said solemnly. “We can’t take it back now.”

No, Liza thought, it cannot be too late… she thought of Faye Wilcox standing like a funeral stone in the kitchen not an hour ago (a posse … a mob… pray for them) and felt fear close about her like a cloak. Creath had opened the door now, had turned his back; a cold gust of autumn air escorted him toward those two black cars idling in the shadows of the box elders,- and she thought he will die he won’t come back again-, she thought dear God, forgive me and held out her hand to him, stupidly, imploringly: “Creath—!”

But the cars were pulling away now, engines growling like animals against the night, and Liza faltered on the old boards of the veranda, alone, clutching her white knit sweater about her throat and thinking: He was right. This is bought. Bought and paid for.

Nancy brought the porcelain bowl to Anna’s lips. She drank a little, and the aura of blue fire—it was constant now—receded a little. “Travis is bringing Bone here?”

“Travis is attempting to.”

Nancy sat back, considering it. The sun was gone. On cloudless blue days like this, the darkness came down quickly. The sky beyond the open door of the switchman’s shack was giving up the last of its glow, and she used the time to light a candle. She was surprised to find that her hand was trembling.

She turned to Anna. How little there was left of her! She had faded almost to transparency, her humanity a frail vessel for this blue light that threatened to burst out of her … to disperse, Nancy supposed, like a puff of smoke; and she would be lost on the wind then, vanished. “Tell me what it’s like,” Nancy said impulsively.

Anna turned her head. “The Jeweled World?”

“Yes.”

“A place,” Anna said. “I’m sorry … I can’t describe it in terms you would understand.” “Not like this place,” Nancy said. “No.”

“And very beautiful?” “Often.”

“You dream of it?” “Yes.”

“I dream of it sometimes.” “I know,” Anna said, her voice far away. “You must be very powerful … to be able to come here.”

“Perhaps too powerful.”

She means Bone, Nancy thought. Bone might be dangerous. “Powerful enough to come here… powerful enough to go back.”

“I hope so.”

“Did you find what you wanted here?”

And Anna smiled faintly. “I don’t know. I think so, yes. A sojourn in the wilderness. You might ask yourself the same question.”

“Is that where I am? In the wilderness?” But it was a silly question. She gazed around herself. This shack, the prairie, the night…

“For a long time, I think,” Anna said.

We are all exiles. She said, “I envy you … I wish I had a place to go back to.”

“Here,” Anna said.

She held out her hand. Nancy looked dubiously at her.

“It’s all I have to give,” the alien woman said. “Not much. A little.” Nancy touched her.

She supposed, afterward, that what Anna had given her was a kind of memory, a glimpse into Anna’s own past: it was inexpressible, evanescent; all that lingered was the impression of a great light and warmth and vibrant color, as if, Nancy thought, she had penetrated into the heart of the sun. And the memory, inadequate as it was, contained a small heat of its own ;it warmed and reassured her.

I will keep this, she thought. I will carry this memory like a charm and only bring it out when I need it.

Anna gazed impassively at her.

“Your world,” Nancy said solemnly, “is very strange and beautiful.”

Anna smiled. “So is yours.”

“Is it?” Nancy looked up, surprised. The candle flickered. Outside this shack a sea of prairie grass bent and hissed in the wind. She said slowly, “It could be. I guess it could be.”

But then they heard the first of the gunshots… far away but clear and distinct, pinpricks of sound etched against the vastness of the night.

When they approached the railway trestle both drivers switched off their lights, and the black cars rolled like tumbrils off the main road and across the stub-bled meadow, wheels grinding, engines laboring. The railway trestle was black in the moonlight, stone and iron, and Creath fancied he could smell it, a stink of wood and grease and soot-blackened brick. It was hateful.

Bob Clawson sat with his belly up against the steering wheel, dressed, for maybe the first time in his life, in clothes that were less than immaculate: old pants, flannel shirt, threadbare jacket— and he’ll likely burn them in the morning, Creath thought. Clawson switched off the ignition and the ensuing silence was like a weight. Nobody spoke. There were six men in the car counting himself. Clawson was the leader. Nobody spoke, Creath observed, unless Clawson spoke first, as if they needed his approval. But Greg Morrow sat in the back seat with his daddy’s big shotgun on his lap and his eagerness was palpable, a presence in the car; Creath had been aware of it for the last quarter mile, when the only sounds had been the rumble of the engine and the hiss of his own strained breathing. “Everybody out,” Clawson said, and it was not much more than a whisper.