Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

“The last of the pagans,” she said. She shook her head, though she didn’t smile her fast, flickering smile, and I knew for certain that the invitation had been a great deal more serious than I’d guessed. “I am trusting you to not bring up the age thing, all right?”

There was nothing else to do, so I stepped up and put my hands on her shoulders and I leaned in and kissed her. It was a long kiss, and at the end she gently bit my lip.

“Pack your things,” she said.

“They’re in my pockets. There isn’t much to pack.”

“No,” she said. “Charcoal, pencils, brushes, paint, your sketch-books — you know. You can even bring Miss Patootie’s etching.”

It seemed to me that we were both too embarrassed to understand what we were doing. When you get to that point, I knew then and know better now, you will take steps or draw conclusions you end up regretting. I could offer my four and a half years of college and much of my life with my parents as examples. We stood at the wheelbarrow filled with stones, and then Rebecca turned, the way you do when you’re dancing, and she went back toward the house. Then she stopped herself and slowly walked back.

“Look,” she said, and her face was full of sorrow for me, “nobody’s forcing you to live inside that terrible trailer. Or my apartment. Or anyplace else.” Her voice was thick with feeling. “It’s pretty much you, David. Whatever place you’re inside of, you’re the one who turned the lock.”

She looked at me very directly, and she nodded her head. She wanted me to know how certain she was of what she had said, and I nodded back with respect. She walked toward the house again, and this time she kept going, waving goodbye over her shoulder. The movement of her fingers reminded me of Artie Arthur’s wave. When Rebecca was out of sight, I looked at Artie’s cabin: still no car. When, I wondered, would someone come and rescue us?

I finished several yards of wall, and it was a shape now. There were chickadees buzzing back and forth, and there were a few more cars. Surprisingly light traffic, Artie. The sun had a little weight. And to all of it I could now add the stone wall along the edge of Mrs. Peete and Rebecca’s property. I had made something pretty true, I thought, looking at the brilliant flecks of mica, the voluptuous whiteness of limestone veins, the hundred shadows and hollows, the sense of bulk and permanence, the undeniable function it served of tying down their land and holding it in place.

Julia would not have hung around even if she knew I was going to build this wall so well. I knew that. And she had seen me at work before. I trusted that she remembered I could build with stone or stud up a house or put up wallboard so well you’d not find the seams. I knew that, and I knew that a sudden reminder would not sweep her back to me. Still, I did wish I could show her what I’d made. I thought of tracking her down by telephone by using a fudged pidgin Spanish, calling with the announcement that I had built another good wall. I thought of hearing, from behind her, around her, the wails of wounded children she was tending as the sniper fire sang off packed earthen streets outside the clinic. I propped the wheelbarrow, standing it on the nose of its wooden frame, against the wall. I collected the discarded stones in a mound. I had been preparing to do it, though I hadn’t suspected I was. I know it now. I had awakened with a sense of purpose and, though working on the wall had satisfied much of it, the need to cross the road remained strong.

So I went — across the road, and across the dead lawn, across the pebble walk, directly to Artie Arthur’s cabin. I knocked, too driven to be frightened, though I had no idea what to say or do when someone opened the door. But no one did. And the key, its oval tag hanging down from it, was in the lock. So I knew I could turn the knob and go inside, and I did.

I smelled something that reminded me of the milky, pyramidal bottle that Frank the barber would tip over my head when I was a kid. It helped keep my hair in place for a while, though, soon enough, it sprang back up. I realized that I was running my fingers through my hair. I sometimes did that when I was upset. I did it for all three months that Julia and I were together. “It’s like you’re petting an animal,” she had said, “except the animal is you.”

There weren’t any towels in the bathroom and there weren’t sheets on the large bed. Nor was there a television set, a radio, or a clock. The rug was covered with dried mud. An open bureau drawer was stuffed with plastic and cellophane and cardboard wrappers of snack food. Someone had eaten most of two pizzas and a little bit of Chinese food. The wrappers and the top of the bureau were sprinkled with mouse turds. Near the small window, on an oval table, I found burnt matches, perhaps from lighting the lantern by which he had done his homework. The matches were in a neat grouping in a stained, slimy-looking soapdish. The one piece of paper on the table, from a two-ring looseleaf notebook, had numbers written in an adult hand. Someone had added the same set of figures about a dozen times. They always started out with 39,000 of something and then concluded with a meticulous minus sign, and a final 1,100. On the other side of the page was handwriting practice, or practice in remembering a name: ARTIE ARTHUR ARTIE ARTHUR ARTIE ARTHUR ARTIE ARTHUR. The big characters filled up the page. He was there, but noplace else. Although there was one more place to look.

When I went outside, I walked around to the back of the cabin and saw the tracks of the long, charred car pressed into the wet soil. I was pleased to learn that the vehicle in Artie Arthur’s life was actual, and that I had truly seen it. But I was not pleased with where I had to look. I crossed the road and went back to their garage, walking along the side of the stone colonial house, and I fetched the long-handled rake, which I carried on my shoulder like a man a long time ago off to rake hay. It was damper and cooler in the field I cut through, and it was outright cold at the swamp. Little sun seemed to get through to warm the water, and it radiated cold like a freezer left open. I squatted at the edge, listening to ducks squabble, and then I straightened and walked to the water, took a breath, and went in up to my knees. The deep chill went up my legs and through my chest, and my head suddenly ached as if I’d eaten ice cream too quickly.

I cried out and the ducks, several dozen yards away, took off, making their wheezy noises. I waded further in, balancing myself with the rake, and then I began to look for the horrible news behind Artie Arthur’s story. I let the rake, which I held at the end on its haft, flop down, and then I pulled it back to me as if it were a rope, and most of the time something came with it: bath towels, horribly smeared, and then a big green towel such as you’d use at the beach, I thought, and then a shower curtain with figures of seagulls on it. I let the cloth eddy about me where I stood, and I went back with the rake to free whatever was trapped beneath the remaining clothes. The reds and oranges of T-shirts and underwear came up, and then fancy-looking pajamas that perhaps a small woman had worn. Up, too, came bubbles of gas, the broccoli smell of trapped vegetation, and the cheap white dress shirt of a man with unusually long arms.

I was prepared, or I thought I was, for little Artie, blue and open-eyed, to come rocking up. And I suspected that his mother or aunt might be down there with him. It would be a sudden surfacing, I thought, and then the vandalized body would arrive to float before me, and I would have to figure a way of getting it on shore. But no one came up from exile back to the world. I was surrounded by cheap clothing and filthy towels. I heard his wings before I saw him as the heron clumsily angled for the top of the tree across the swamp. He saw or heard me, then, and he curved off and out of sight. Wading in further, so that the water was above my waist, balancing myself with the rake, I tried once more, but I drew up only weeds and a bit of rotted tree that caught between the tines of the rake.