Gail Godwin - Flora

Officially, my birthday wasn’t until late tomorrow. I had “finally decided to make my entrance” at six fifteen in the evening, according to Nonie. The time was recorded by her in blue ink in my baby book.

“Was she very tired when I finally came out?” I always wanted to know.

“You are always tired when you finish having a baby,” Nonie said, “but I would say she was more relieved than anything else.”

“Why?”

“She had been working hard to make you come out for eighteen hours. That’s a long time. But between her contractions she could be quite droll. ‘Honora, I’ve just had an awful thought,’ she said. ‘What if he decides he’d rather not come out?’ ‘Then,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to think of something really special to bribe him with.’ This made her laugh.”

“But where was my father?”

“He was waiting at a proper distance to be informed. I was the one who saw her through. Early on, the nurse came in and said, ‘Mrs. Anstruther, what, pray tell, are you doing in the bed with Mrs. Anstruther?’ ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ I said. ‘I am lying beside her, sharing her labor pains.’”

I liked this story except for one thing. “Why did she have to call me a he?”

“Oh, darling, that’s nothing. It’s just gender shorthand for babies who haven’t been born yet. It’s the same as when people refer to ‘the history of man,’ or ‘mankind.’ She knew you were you , all along.”

The fireworks had stopped. Had they run out or gone to get some more? I thought of Mrs. Jones waiting for the pretty fireworks Rosemary liked best and then saying “Stella Reeve, you are not forgotten,” even though people looked at her funny.

What if nobody came after me? Would I have to stay here until my father started searching tomorrow? And if nobody was going to come, what was the point in spending the night with my bottom getting damp from the ground and goose bumps on my arms and tree bark digging into my shoulders? Maybe I should drag myself back through the undergrowth and walk down Sunset Drive to the village. I would be just as hard to find if I spent the night in the church, which Father McFall was leaving open for people who wanted to thank God or be sorry about the bomb.

Something horrible with a huge wingspan passed directly over my head and I was back in the nightmare where Nonie flew through the air and shrieked before breaking apart at the bottom of the crater, one dismembered leg twisted sideways in its old-lady shoe. Only this time I was the one who shrieked. Why was life so treacherous and unfair? It was enough to make you want to stop being in it.

A circle of light jittered back and forth across the treetops. “Helen? Is that you?”

Don’t answer. Give the false-hearted more time to imagine the world without you in it.

Louder: “Helen!”

The tree frogs abruptly ceased their night chorus. The bouncing circles of light grew larger. “Are ye in there? I’m sure I heard you.”

Now my own mind was double-dealing me: Had I known all along he was going to come, like the soldier who finally wins the princess out of the coffin before she can destroy any more men? Or had he come too late for it to count?

The light played back and forth over the floor of the crater. “Will I find you down there?” he called. “Or are you wanting me to jump so you’ll have time to hide somewhere else?”

“I’m not hiding, stupid,” I said in my normal voice. “I hurt my leg climbing down.”

“Ah, the Sphinx speaks. Is it bad, the leg?”

“It’s stopped bleeding, but I’m resting it awhile.”

“Good idea. Where are you resting?”

“At that sassafras tree.”

The light skittered about until it found my face. “Ah.” The voice could not conceal its relief. “Will I come down?”

“Suit yourself.”

The light shut off. There were no footsteps, just the rustling dark, and then he swung down and was sitting beside me.

“How did you do that?” I said. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

“Didn’t I spend two years training to outsmart my enemy in the dark?”

“Am I your enemy now?”

“Let’s have a look at the injury.” He played the flashlight, which I recognized from our hardware drawer, on my legs. “Which one is it?”

“The one with the blood on it.” I stopped myself from adding “silly.”

“Hmm. Can you walk on it, or will I have to carry you home?” I caught something less than playful in his tone.

“It’s more of a cut than anything else. I’d prefer to walk.”

“Up you go, then. And no, you’re not my enemy, but just imagine yourself handcuffed to me as my prisoner of war till I get you home.”

He lugged me up the side of the crater and then towed me ungallantly along behind him. What a disaster this place was after dark. It was hardly possible to imagine my father and Willow Fanning running away at night, even though it hadn’t been such an obstacle course back then. How naïve of Flora to have thought we could “repair” such a jungle as a “surprise” for my father at the end of the summer.

“Do you have to go so fast?” I cried. “You’re hurting my wrist.”

“Sorry,” he said, stopping to let me catch my breath but not letting go of my wrist. “It’s only that I want to get you home. The poor girl is beside herself with worry. She takes it mortally seriously, you know, being left in charge of you, and now she’s terrified she’s let your father down. I had a feeling you might come here, but she thought you could have gone back to that place you walked to. That land on top of the hill that old Mr. Quarles wants to buy.”

“Why on earth would I want to go back there? The loggers have ruined it. That’s why he wants to buy it, he loves making a profit on other people’s losses.”

“Well, you weren’t there to tell us that, were you? She said you seemed to have enjoyed the walk, so we tried that first.”

“Enjoyed! How stupid can you get?”

“A pity, isn’t it, how stupid we all are.”

“I didn’t mean you. But Flora’s simpleminded, you must have realized that by now.”

“I must be simpleminded myself because no, I hadn’t. I think you are confusing simpleminded with simple-hearted.”

“I’m not sure I know what ‘simple-hearted’ means,” I said haughtily.

“When there’s no deceit or malice in your heart. Most of us have some; it protects us. People without it are rare. My friend Barney came close, but he’d built up a layer of sludge to protect his heart against his mother. That’s why Flora is so rare, it’s just her heart she offers, with none of the sludge to wade through.”

“You sound like you love her,” I remarked scornfully, but his answer, if he gave one, was drowned out by a shriek of braking tires, headlamps dancing crazily toward us, as though someone thought it might be fun to drive into the woods and run us down, then veering off wildly at the last minute to hit something else up ahead with a crack and crush of metal.

“God in Heaven,” said Finn, letting go of my hand.

“It’s because they shot out the streetlight again,” I said, feeling a surge of excitement accompanied by shameful relief. An accident would surely wipe my misconduct from Finn’s memory of this night. “Will we go and help out?” I was starting to talk like him.

“From the sound of things, we need to get an ambulance. You’re going to run up that hill as fast as you can and tell Flora to phone. She’s waiting at the house in case you come back. Tell them exactly where, on Sunset Drive.”

“But I want to help you.”

“Who’ll go and call for the ambulance, then? Who is being simpleminded now?”