Noy Holland - What begins with bird

A few of her things are still here — figurines of horses, a family of porcelain dolls.

Down the hall a short stretch is their bedroom his and Sarah’s, his and Helen’s. Walter tries to remember what it felt like to him to be lonely before Helen, when he was alone.

He has drawers full of places to go. Rivers to fish, famous creeks.

Old age would come upon him in his hip boots.

He pulls the door shut.

The hospitals, the phone calls from distant precincts, all of it, mucking around with lowlifes — it is already back in his hands. She will steal from them. She will drive their cars into lamp posts. She will break her neck at the square dance, lift her skirts for the guards at the gate — for the men you have to check in with before you are allowed to go home.

I was to marry him. I had no doubt of it. But I saw easily that it mattered to him that I take no notice of his plan.

It was not like him, it was strange of him — to have brought us at all to the island. He had secured a room in the island hotel, a clean place of thickest coquina, the tide gnawing at its heels.

The room, the entire island, even the sea seemed to quiet. He had consulted the gods, I decided. And this unnerved him, it surprised him, I saw, how the moment embarked upon in such quiet came to swagger before us and leer.

We saw no automobiles. We saw none but the crudest wobbling ways for the few mewling carts to run on. No bridge stretched over the inlet; the natives bullied their way by foot as they must, to market, to the city from which we had travelled and to which, bound anew by a mulish faith, we would return to make our home. They went weakly, carting their old in the ebb tide over the oyster beds.

The trip was pleasing, the passage by ferry from the mainland we made over the open sea. The night was soft and damply mooned. He suggested that, once we had settled, we walk; we would take in the night’s salt breeze.

I agreed, happily. I meant no trouble to him.

As we walked, I saw he allowed the box to drop to his feet in the sand. I saw the broad spotted face of a pony as we walked — there were bands of feral ponies — peering out from the bearded trees. The sand was fine and polished. I swung my foot, as we went, through the ruffle of foam — that we might know where we had lingered, that we might, in turning, easily sec where perhaps the box had been.

I confess this much surprised me, it worried me, that he had tossed the box onto the sand. I said nothing; I had decided. He had considered the hazard himself, understand. He is careful, it is his habit; he is thorough, such a man. He would make no failing gesture.

And yet I worried. I thought how easily the box might coast out. They would find it among the oysters beds, some child at her game, some luckie.

It was nothing. The loss of the ring would be nothing. It was his disappointment I dreaded, supposing the plan went askew.

We walked on. I understood I was meant to discover the ring when we had turned to return to our quarters. I saw my surprise, my elation; I imagined, as a kind of practice, that my voice might thicken with joy.

I understood, I believe, the custom well enough — my part in it, and his. I recognized the artifacts, the necessary gestures. He would fall to one knee, as is the custom.

I understood that the box would be velvet, it is velvet, I need not explain. The lid is jointed that I might, as I wish, snap it shut, that he might stand it open.

I saw him kneeling, a plain man, decent, mine, the small box sprung in his hand.

He spun round; he lurched past me, I was walking some distance behind him, poor man. He sank to both knees pitifully and begin to claw at the sand.

The ring was plain, it is plain, this is his habit.

And yet to see it surprised me. I found myself giddy, I was gladdened — to snug it over my knuckle. The long ardor, the looseness of girlhood at an end.

We kissed lightly; we brushed the sand from our knees. The light of our room fell toward us as we went, happily, in our languor; it swam to us from the shadows swung out of the bearded trees.

I meant no trouble to him.

I mean no trouble now.

That we were greeted at the door — this is the custom, is it not? And it is, is it not, the custom to boast, to say, Look , was it not, what has happened?

Besides, I found I wished to hear it — how lovely, such a ring, how lucky for me. I felt luckier still to hear it.

The night was strange to me, it was pleasing, the sea, the sweet wide faces of the ponies as we went, showing themselves in the trees. I was dizzy with it, I was foolish, I suppose, I who so terribly seldom felt — undone — even then, so very timid I was, I was — watchful of him, let me say it — you! Say, Watchful, kind. She was careful , say. She bore him three seemly girls .

The clerk said, “Isn’t that perfectly lovely.”

And I felt it, it had a way in me — the stone in my throat, the habit of love.

He was in a fury when we reached the room.

The clerk would come to us in the night, he was convinced, with a potion, a bludgeon — what would prevent her? — a blade. She would plunge an ax into his skull.

Could I not see how easily?

How stupid I had been to boast?

No ferry at such an hour, a fog sweeping in.

What hours, what years he had labored and saved — to have it come to this.

“To this!”—he was trembling, and shook me.

She would set him adrift in the sea.

Impossible — that I might calm him. He could see no means of escape. Was he to tie his trousers around my neck, cart me over the oyster beds, reckon a course by the stars?

I saw myself slung across a pony, drenched, my dark hair drifting prettily and fouling in the weeds.

She was a clerk, understand, paid to greet us, paid to sort out keys. She was nothing to me, a service to me, I had scarcely seen her.

But he had seen her. He spoke of patches of yellow where her scalp showed through — she had cut her hair like a boy’s. The skin had split on her knuckles and bled. And she had bitten herself — bitten herself! — and what in God’s name would I say to that, how did I mean to explain away that — the deep print he had seen in her arm?

I saw her clearly then. She would swim him beyond the breakwater away from the windward shore. I saw his arms swinging gently from their sockets, the mound of his back above the sea. The surfers would arrive by morning — careless, brown-limbed boys mounted on their boards. They would not see him. They would lay him cleanly open with their fins.

It was only the ring she would covet at first. But give her time, give her leisure. Who would there be to stop her, with him bobbing in the sea?

She would make me her pet, her kin, quick to shame, obedient, her creature, the bones parting in my knees.

He drew the knot of rope from his satchel and, with this, lashed the door to the bed to the stop to the sink and back to the massive bureau. He lashed the window shut. He fashioned a rattle of the shells we had found to hang from the door should she shake it.

I did not think that she would shake it.

A night clerk, a girl.

I slept. The air, the sea, I had no trouble sleeping.

In sleep I built him a crown of nails. The nails were mildewed. We could push them home with our hands.

Such a man as he.

I waked to find him. He sat in the chair in his shabby briefs and picked at his cheek, at his knees. He crossed his legs at the knees and the ankles… twice.

And this surprised me.

Old captain, mine, old suffering school.

In such a way the night passed, in such a way the years.