Calvin Baker - Dominion

He entered and there was very little activity, as it was still the middle of the day and midweek at that. Soon the proprietress came out to oblige his needs, sending him into one of the rooms.

When he was done if he had to describe her he would have failed in all detail except her sex, which was female, and so all that mattered to his end of the trade.

As he rode home, he agreed with what Magnus had said, that taking one woman to forget another was indeed a peculiar sort of arithmetic. But, like some clever trick of calculus, it worked a shortcut to forgetting for him, and he was balanced enough so long as he was able to stay in the anonymous arms of the other woman. Seated on his horse, taking the trail back to Stonehouses, he felt a compounding of the shame that had seized him from the time he was there before and sensed how he was neglecting himself to behave in such a way. He knew nothing but the devil could work such low misery on a man.

“I must get this out of myself,” he said aloud, as he turned onto his father’s property. As he thought how he might be falling into Satan’s grasp, he resolved to himself never to go to that place in the woods again or do what he had done out there with anyone else.

When he came on his father’s land, he composed himself before riding to the house, but both his parents were still able to tell he was brought fairly far down by something. Sanne, not yet sensing its seriousness, did not try to comfort him. Merian, though, asked slyly whether he did not think it was time for him to begin thinking of taking a wife. “Of your own,” he added, as if in afterthought.

Purchase, when he heard this, looked severely at Magnus, thinking he had betrayed him.

“What puts that into your mind?” he asked Merian coolly.

“Only that it’s getting to be time. But you seem to have your own notions. What about you, Magnus?”

“What, sir?” Magnus replied.

“Have you given thought to a wife? Worse things can happen to a man at your age in life.”

“I’m still getting used to all that has changed in the last two years,” he said. “I don’t think a wife would help any but to confuse things.”

“Is there a drink to be had anywhere?” Purchase asked, when they had finished dinner.

Sanne, hearing this, grew worried. “There’s no need of drinking with every meal,” she said.

“No need for it, just asking,” Purchase said.

“Nay, have a drink,” Merian told him. “You too, Magnus. Let’s all sit down, since it is so rare we seem to be all together of late.”

Sanne went out into the kitchen, muttering that it was not temperate to drink in the middle of the week for no reason other than want of drink. “Salvation is in resisting urges, not giving in to whatever we want just for desire of it,” she said. Out in the kitchen she sent Adelia away and sat herself down at the low table, where she began praying for all of them in the house.

When she was younger all her prayers had seemed very abstract to her, and merely the habit of ritual and good behavior. As she prayed now, in the later part of her life, she was stricken with a great terror, and even the things she worried might happen in the afterlife seemed very real, nor did they seem far off. She prayed with an anxiety that she might pass at any moment and did not want any of her thoughts for her family to go unheard. She did not know what influence anyone on earth could have, either up there or in the other place, if people down there had sympathy for those still up here, but she knew that, without her, Merian would go to church very seldom, and Purchase and Magnus, whom she had taken in as an orphan even though he was well grown when he came into their lives, would not go at all unless it was for needs that had little to do with salvation. She did not think they were unscrupulous, any of them, simply that they did not pay enough heed to the care of their religion, in the same way some people would sit down to table without paying mind to the cleanliness of their hands.

In his own way, Merian was much concerned with the same thing, as he uncorked a cordial in the parlor and poured the spirits into glasses for each of them. “Temperance is the best way to go with this stuff,” he said, giving out the glasses. “But I tend to think that of most things.”

Magnus sipped at the spirits carefully, being still distrustful of their effect in any amount. Purchase, when he received his glass, emptied it in two great swallows and set it on the table beside himself without self-consciousness.

“Are you sure you haven’t had a drink already today?” Merian asked him. “That’s no way to act in your mother’s house.”

“I’m sorry,” Purchase said. “I forgot myself.”

“Well, why don’t you tell me what has been going on with you lately that has you forgetting yourself. How is your trade?”

“The same as always,” he answered laconically, without offering any elaboration.

“It is never the same. Magnus, why is Purchase acting so possessed?”

When Purchase heard that word it set off in him the worry that he actually was under an unnatural influence. He glowered at Magnus to see if he would betray him.

Magnus was not one to trust authority with any information they did not already have in their keep, but his concern for Purchase was strong enough that he thought about giving him away right then and there.

“I don’t know,” he answered at last, deciding that lying to Merian might give him more influence to help Purchase right his own course instead of the old man trying to fix it.

“Whatever it is, you had better get it under control,” Merian said, taking away the bottle. “Otherwise I fear you might lose your way. You always have been one to wander, but as you get older the danger from that is worse and worse,” he concluded. “You’ll tell me if you need help getting it back under control?” he asked, to let him know it was all right to do so. “The thing for both of you,” he went on, “is to start thinking of marrying someone to help hold you upright in all of this, because sometimes I fear it is too difficult for any one of us to do alone.”

Purchase and Magnus both nodded, and it pleased Merian a great deal that they listened to him so thoughtfully. As if to prove the effect of his advice, very soon after this speech in the parlor Magnus did become involved with a woman — even if it did not lead straightaway to respectable marriage. Purchase, though, he was bent on the dangerous course he had fallen onto and was soon lost to it entirely.

He slept very poorly that night, tossing under his blanket as he tried to put the woman out of his mind. He knew well that no welcome end would follow from his desires if he did not master them. In the middle of the night, still unable to sleep, he got up and went to the front porch for air. It was late October and already the frost came in at night, making everything before him sharp in the moonlight from the shards of crystal that clung to the grass and foliage. His own breath rose on the blue darkness in front of his face, and he placed his hand in front of it to feel the fleeting warmth, then rubbed both hands together. He was happy for this moment alone. He found, however, he could not concentrate on any one thought, but everything went scattering before his focus and examination until there was nothing but the diffuse desire for what he knew he should not want or, if wanting were no crime in itself, what he should not do.

He stayed sitting in a corner of the porch until he was everywhere numb from the air and his brain had stopped its overactivity. When he stood and went back to his bed, he lay down and found there was no thought of anything else except the woman. This time, though, when he tried to sleep the thought of her was warming to him and he drifted off with a mirthful smile on his face.