Кристина Клайн - A Piece of the World

“Do you have one for me?” I ask.

“Of course.” He stops and takes out another, unwraps it, and puts it on my tongue. He rubs my arms. “Autumn in the air already,” he muses. “Are you cold? Do you need my jacket?”

“I’m perfect,” I say a little stiffly.

“I know you’re perfect. I was asking if you’re chilly.” He smiles, and I can tell he’s trying to lighten my mood.

I suck on the candy for a moment. “You’re leaving.”

“Not for a few days.”

“Soon.”

“Too soon,” he concedes, lacing his fingers through mine.

For a few minutes we walk along in silence. Then I venture, “Teachers are needed all over. Even in Maine.”

He squeezes my hand gently but says nothing. Above our heads a riot of birdsong erupts, piercing the quiet. We both look up. The dense tree cover, leaf lush, gives nothing away. Then, suddenly swooping across the road, a dark flurry.

“I’ve never seen so many crows,” he remarks.

“Actually, they’re blackbirds.”

“Ah. What would I do without you to correct me?” He pulls on my hand playfully, and then, realizing he’s yanking me off balance, tucks his arm around my waist. “Such a clever girl,” he murmurs in my ear. Then he slows and stops in the road.

I’m not sure what he’s doing. “What is it?”

He puts a finger to his lips and tugs me gently down the embankment into a copse of blue-black spruce. In the shadows he cups my warm face in his cool hands. “You are truly something, Christina.”

I look into his pale eyes, trying to decipher what he’s saying. He gazes back implacably. “I can’t tell if you’re sad to be leaving,” I say, a petulant tone creeping into my voice.

“Of course I am. But admit it—you’ll be a bit relieved. ‘Finally summer’s over, I have my life back.’”

I shake my head.

He shakes his head, mimicking me. “No?”

“No. I—”

He kisses me on the mouth, gathers me closer, kisses my bony shoulder, the hollow of my neck. He runs his hand down my bodice, hesitates for a moment, then continues all the way to the folds of my skirt. I am dizzy with surprise. He pushes me back against the bark of a tree. I feel its knots pressing into my back as he leans into me, running a hand down my side, another under my blouse, up the slight curve of my breast. His mouth on mine jams my head awkwardly against the trunk, an uncomfortable and yet not altogether unpleasant experience.

The butterscotch clicks in my mouth. “I’d better spit this out, or I might choke,” I say.

He laughs. “Me too.”

I don’t care that it’s unladylike; I spit it on the grass.

Now his hand is between my legs, lost in the fabric. I feel him cup me there in a proprietary way, and I push my hips toward him, feeling his hardness between us. My skin is alive, every nerve ending pulsing. His breathing ragged, insistent. This is what I want. This passion. This certainty. This clear sign of his desire. Right now I would do anything, anything he asks.

And then—a sound on the road. Walton jerks his head up, alert as a bird dog. “What is that?” he breathes.

I cock my head. Feel a low rumbling in my soles. “An automobile, I think.”

The sky is dark now. I can barely see his face.

He pulls back, then sways into me, clutching my shoulders. “Oh, Christina,” he murmurs. “You make me want you.”

The darkness emboldens me. “I’m yours.”

Still holding my shoulders, he rests his head on my breastbone like a nudging sheep. When he sighs, I feel his warm breath on my chest. “I know.” Then he looks up into my eyes with a startling intensity. “We must be together. Beyond”—he waves an arm, indicating the trees, the road, the sky—“all this.”

My heart leaps. “Oh, Walton. Do you mean it?”

“I do. I promise.”

Though everything in my nature fights against it, I’m determined to find out what he means. Swallowing hard, I ask, “What do you promise?”

“That we will be together. There are things I need to—resolve. You must come to Boston, and meet my parents. But I promise you, Christina, yes.”

Blue-black spruce shushing overhead, gravelly dirt under my thin-soled shoes, the smell of pine, a Necco wafer of moon in the sky. Some sense memories fade as soon as they’re past. Others are etched in your mind for the rest of your life. This, I already know, is one of those.

When we get to the Grange Hall, Ramona and Eloise are chatting and dancing with whatever stray boys they can round up, gaily pulling them out of chairs. The makeshift band, fiddle and piano and standing bass, is composed of some of the boys I grew up with, Billy Grover and Michael Verzaleno and Walter Brown. They play raucous, sloppy versions of “The Maple Leaf Rag” and “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” Walton croons in my ear: “Leave the Strand and Piccadilly, or you’ll be to blame, for love has fairly drove me silly—hoping you’re the same!”

When they start to play “Danny Boy,” I listen to the words as if I’ve never heard them before, as if they were written just for me.

The summer’s gone, and all the roses dying,

It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide . . .

It’s I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow—

Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so

We dance nose to nose, Walton’s hand low on my waist, a tacit reminder of our moment in the woods. “I’ll miss this,” he says. “I’ll miss you.”

My voice chokes in my throat. I don’t trust myself to speak.

After the last song, we make our way home on the dark road with the others. My legs are tired, but melancholy makes me even slower, like a dog on a leash being pulled where it doesn’t want to go. Walton puts his arm around me and we fall back, away from the others. At the turnoff for the Carles’ we linger by the gate. I lean my head on his shoulder.

“I wish I could reach up and grab a faraway star and put it on your finger,” Walton says. Running a finger over my lips, he bends down to kiss me. I feel in his kiss the weight of his promise.

TEN DAYS LATER I receive a letter postmarked Massachusetts. “Remember a week ago tonight? I shall remember it until I see you again,” he writes. “What promises I make, I keep.”

DECEMBER IS AS gray as my mood. I haven’t received a letter from Walton since September.

Though it’s cold, there’s little snow. A cat has been hiding under the house, a butterscotch tiger-striped Maine coon with enormous ginger eyes. I tempt it out with a bowl of milk. Shivering, it laps the milk hungrily, and when the bowl is empty, I lift it onto my lap. A female. Her skin is loose around her bones; it’s like cradling a bag of hollow pipes. She licks my chin with a sea-urchin tongue and settles on my lap with a purr. I name her Lolly. She’s the only bright spot of my entire month.

For Christmas I give my brothers plaid shirts I’ve sewn out of flannel while they were working outside. Mother knits socks and hats. Papa makes no pretense of giving presents; he says the roof over our heads is present enough. Sam gives me a baking tray, Fred puts a ribbon on a new straw broom, Al carves a set of wooden spoons. Walton sends a thick cream-colored card foil-stamped with a green wreath and a red bow, addressed to The Olson Family. “Sending you warm wishes in this cold season. Happy Christmas and God Bless!” He signs it “Walton Hall.”

Instead of displaying his card, as I’ve done in past years, I take it upstairs to my room. I take the stack of his letters from the shelf where I keep them, untie the pale pink ribbon, and sit on my bed, opening the letters and reading each one. All roads lead back to Cushing for me. What promises I make, I keep. With love. I hold the Christmas card between my hands so tightly that it rips a little. Slowly, I tear it down the middle, then rip the pieces again and again until they’re as small as butterscotch candies, as two-cent stamps, as faraway stars in the sky.