Дэймон Найт: Orbit 11

It rained almost every day in April. Toward the end of the month on a day when the sun finally came out I kneeled on the big red chair with my chin on the back, not thinking, not really looking out even. And suddenly I was crying, and I hated the day for being sunny and the air for being warm, and Rob for having a band practice and Eleanor for having a part-time job.

“Elizabeth, honey.” She put her arm around my shoulders and I hated her because she wasn’t crying.

I pulled away, but I couldn’t stop crying. That night I woke up and went to the kitchen for a drink. As I went by the living room, I saw her, in the same chair, the same position, and beyond her the moon was lighting up the back yard. I kept thinking of that afternoon and night on our way to Salyerville. I hadn’t gone to her because I had known she’d pull away from me just exactly the same way I had pulled from her. We had both cried in his chair, hopelessly, unable to stop or be consoled. And now we were going to do something about it. I didn’t know what. But I felt certain we were on our way to do something about it.

I wouldn’t go to church or Sunday school after he died. The minister came out to talk to us all, and he kept saying things like God’s ways are mysterious, and death is but a transition from this life to a better one, and Jesus would save us all from damnation, if we would admit him to our hearts and not be bitter over God’s will being done on Earth. Rob kept saying “Yeah,” and “I guess so,” to his questions. Eleanor treated him like special company. “Wouldn’t you like more coffee, or another piece of cake?” Mother didn’t say much. She was knitting Eleanor a vest, and she watched her needles and the yarn, although her hands could do it alone. I glanced at her once or twice, then away again, afraid she’d see me looking. I was embarrassed for her.

“Elizabeth, won’t you come back to us Sunday? Let us help you in this difficult time. Let God help you.”

I stared at the cake I was holding.

“Elizabeth!” Eleanor’s voice, the voice she used if I tagged along when she didn’t want me. The voice she used when I mimicked one of her boyfriends.

I shook my head.

“Elizabeth, God will help you.”

I looked at the minister then. He was sincere, his eyes were bulging a little and his cheeks were very pink and moist. I shook my head again. He reached out for me and I drew back. I didn’t want him to hold my hand while he prayed God to comfort me. Eleanor had held still for it, I wouldn’t. I drew back and stood up, holding the dessert plate very carefully. “Daddy didn’t believe in God. I don’t either. And if I did, I’d hate Him!”

Rob wanted to belt me. Another hour, he must have been thinking. Later, his glance threatened. I’ll fix you later. Eleanor was humiliated and ashamed of me. She’d want to fix me later too. Mother put the vest on the table and stood up. “Excuse us, will you please. Come along, Elizabeth.” And she took me out, down the hall to my door, and gave me enough of a nudge to get me started inside. I was still carrying the cake, but now I was shaking. She reached out and took the dish and put it down on my dresser. No one ever mentioned the incident to me again. The minister didn’t come back.

After the interstate highway the state road we took was like something you might see a stagecoach on at any time. Originally built too narrow, it was trimmed even more by eroding shoulders. We were in hills that became steeper as we drove. The road twisted and turned to conform to the valleys as much as possible and although it was September each valley was a heat trap, holding moist heavy air.

I glanced at Mother from time to time. She was wearing a little white head scarf to keep her hair from blowing, but strands of hair had pulled loose and they were curling about her face. I thought what a pretty profile she had. I had always simply accepted her prettiness without thinking about it, this appreciation of her profile and the curling bits of hair below her ear and against her cheek wasn’t like that. I studied her face, examined it closely for flaws and good points, the same way I’d do a new girl at school, or one of Eleanor’s new boyfriends. My mother was very pretty.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“Is it always this hot?”

“Of course not. Feels like a storm might come up.”

The sky was deep blue, cloudless. I stared at the road. She was humming, very low, probably didn’t even know she was doing it. I got out the road map and began adding up the miles from the highway to Salyersville. We were only doing about forty. One hundred ten miles, about.

“I don’t think it’s very accurate,” she said. “See how far it is to Honeyville, will you?”

“This road?”

She swerved around a pothole and for the next few minutes was too preoccupied to answer. Our speed dropped to thirty.

“I guess no one goes there from the north anymore,” she said finally, when we made a sharp curve and came out on a straight road that was relatively smooth.

We had been on the road for two hours, it was almost five. There was a break in the hills westward, and through the gap I saw the sky. It was grey on black, and moving. Mother looked at the sky and braked hard; for what seemed like a long time we watched the roiling clouds through the opening in the hills, like looking at a fight through a keyhole. There was a tension in Mother that hadn’t been there before, not even when a passing truck swung in ahead of us and nearly forced us off the road early in the day. She stared at the clouds, then turned to look at the road we’d come over, and then squinted at the long valley before us. It was a narrow valley, the road went over a couple of bridges, then seemed to end at the base of a steep rocky hill. I knew that was just another of the sharp turns, that after it the road might continue at the base of the hills that had become mountains, or we might start climbing yet another chilling mountain road, potholed, with no guardrails. I didn’t want to be on a road like that when the storm broke. There was no sound in the valley, and with the thought I knew I was wrong. Water. A stream off to the right, hidden by bushes and low trees, but now I could hear it faintly. The clouds had completely filled the gap. It was like watching the creation of a new mountain range, the upward thrust of darkness. The air was as hot and heavy as ever, more so since we weren’t making our own breeze, but suddenly I shivered.

Mother lighted a cigarette, and that added to my fear; she smoked very seldom. Being afraid when you don’t know why is the worst kind of fear, I thought, and tried to find a reason.

“Well, we can’t go back. Can’t turn around here, and I don’t have nerve enough to back up over that last stretch. And we can’t stay here. So, onward. Right?”

“Why can’t we just wait for it to storm and be done with it?”

She started the car and accelerated to sixty, then had to brake hard for the first of the bridges. “Look at it, honey. If there’s a downpour, that little stream will almost fill this valley.” The bridge was like many others we had crossed, posted Narrow Bridge. 10 M.P.H. Rickety, ancient, its sides close enough to brush us, four, five, six times the width of the tiny stream it crossed. I glanced toward the west and now it looked as if a grey-black mountain range had grown up to the sky and was advancing eastward.

“That was pretty dumb of them,” I muttered, looking at the crumbling road ahead, obviously much flooded in the past. “Why’d they make the road so low? Why didn’t they raise it or something?”

She concentrated on driving and I watched the road and bridges also. It wasn’t that the bridges were so ancient, I decided. It was their design; they had been built for a different kind of traffic, not wide swift automobiles. We got out of the valley only minutes before the storm broke and we stopped on the road that began to climb into the mountains again. I twisted to watch the streams turn into torrents; the water swirled and boiled over the road in several places. It became very hot in the car quickly, and it seemed that the rain was from all directions at once. There was no window that we could open without having rain blow in, and in spurts it came down so hard that it was like being parked under a waterfall, and only the pounding roar of water could be heard. Then a lightning streak would illuminate everything, the hills, the blowing trees, the rocks that appeared turned to glass under the sheen of water, all would flash into sight with painful intensity followed by the equally painful blast of thunder.