T. Boyle - San Miguel

It was chilly, and the minute she stepped off the porch she wanted to go back for a wrap, but didn’t dare risk it. She was wearing the dress she’d put on that morning, though she’d been prepared to change into her nightdress if her stepfather had been up and about — he was in the habit of easing open her door to wish her a good night, especially if he saw the light on, and she wouldn’t want him to suspect there was anything out of the ordinary. A fog had set in, but it was thin and diaphanous, the three-quarters moon shining through it to light the way. Not that it would have mattered: she knew the yard as intimately as a convict knows his cell and could have found her way even in the pitch dark.

There were stirrings in the brush. The fog sifted down and it was as if the darkness itself had come to life, pulsing and fluctuating in a tincture of moonlight. Before she’d gone a hundred feet she was out of breath, and it wasn’t because she was weak or tired — it was nerves, that was all. She tried to keep her composure, telling herself to proceed with caution, to go slowly with him, to let him see and value her for what she was before she let him kiss her, touch her, but all night she’d felt herself racing as if he were pulling her to him on that thin hammered thread of wire. The W.C. was a black monolith, a shadow amongst shadows. The smell of it stabbed at her. She circled round back of it, thinking how clever he was — if anyone should see her, she had her excuse, just going to the privy, that was all. The call of nature. She smiled to herself.

But where was he? All she could make out were the dark hummocks of rock giving back a faint glow under the moonlight and the scraps of ragged vegetation bunched up round her like discarded clothing. Had he forgotten about her? Led her on? Played a joke on her? And if he had — and here she pictured him lying in the darkened bunkhouse with a smirk on his face — she’d spit on his eggs in the morning, slap him right there at the table in front of everyone, tell her stepfather he’d… but then one of the dark hummocks before her unfolded suddenly and there he was.

“Cariña,” he whispered, taking her by the hand and swinging round to lead her through the brush without so much as a kiss or caress, moving swiftly. His grip was tight, too tight, as if he was afraid she’d break away from him, but she didn’t hold back, didn’t protest, just followed him, stumbling, her breath coming quick and hard. They moved swiftly, no time for thought or hesitation, and when they came to the fence he stopped to shift his hands to her waist and lift her over into the dried-up field where the hay had long since been cut and the sheep let in to browse the stubble to bare dirt. And then, like Jimmie, he shrugged out of his jacket — or no, it wasn’t a jacket but a kind of blanket, what they called a serape — and spread it out on the ground.

She watched the shadow of him bend to the blanket and then he was pulling her down beside him, twisting her round so that her feet went out from under her and she came down hard and all she could think of was a lamb flipped over for shearing. Without a word he began to dig at her, at her skirts, her legs, his hands rooting there, and he pressed his face to hers, not for a kiss but to strain against her. His cheek was a wire brush. His hands were stone. She wanted him to stop, wanted to talk, wanted a promise, and now that it was too late she saw how naive she’d been to think he’d be satisfied with kisses and the kind of manipulation she’d practiced on Jimmie. He dug at her, tore her undergarments, and still he didn’t kiss her. His cheek chafed against hers, he rocked and tensed and shoved himself into her and now she was the one made of stone, and not just her hands but the whole of her, as if the weight of him had petrified her.

Afterward, when he was done and he pulled out of her and sat there in the dark whispering Cariña, cariña, she lay rigid watching the stars poke holes in the torn fabric of the night, and then he wanted her again and if he did what he liked what did it matter? When it was over, finally and absolutely, and she felt everything begin to dry and tighten and tug at her skin like so many tiny crepitating hooks, she pushed herself up. He was sitting there beside her, burning something — a cigarette, he was smoking a cigarette, the smoke harsh and stinging. She couldn’t see his eyes. She could barely make out his face, a dark oval hung there on a hook of nothing. “Rafael,” she said, and it was the first word she’d spoken since he’d pulled her down, “I want you to take me away.”

He said nothing.

“Please.” Her voice seemed foreign to her own ears, a thin tensile rope of sound drawn out of some deep place inside her. She thought she might begin to cry.

“Away to where?” he said finally.

“Anywhere. Just away.”

He was silent a long moment. He inhaled and the cigarette flared and still she couldn’t see his face.

“On the boat,” she said. “When you go tomorrow with the others.”

“Captain Waters,” he said, his voice low and disconnected, “he will oppose it.”

“He won’t know,” she said, and though she was made of stone and could barely work her muscles or lift her arm from her lap, she took hold of his hand in the dark and stroked it, her thumb moving against the callus of his palm, the gentlest friction, over and over. “Take me,” she said. “Just take me.”

* * *

By the time the first tremulous sliver of light appeared on the horizon she was already up and stirring about the kitchen. Her movements were slow and mechanical, her feet tracing the floorboards by rote as she bent to the stove, put on water for coffee, mixed the batter for flapjacks and set the pot of beans, eternal beans, on the stovetop. Everything was ordinary, everything in its place. If she paused a moment and held her breath she could hear the distant ratcheting of her stepfather’s snoring as if some metallic creature were patiently boring through the walls, but there was no other sound. She ground coffee beans and told herself she didn’t feel appreciably different, though she was truly a woman now — and here a voice in her head that might have been her mother’s took the thought a step further: a fallen woman, ruined, like the heroine of one of the Hardy novels her parents wouldn’t let her read. She didn’t care. She was numb to it. Something had happened and now it was over. She’d washed herself in the basin after she’d crept into the house at one in the morning and then sat in front of the mirror for the longest time, staring into her own eyes, and there was nothing different there, not a trace — she was Edith Waters, still and always, a very pretty girl, consummately pretty, who was going to go onstage and acknowledge the applause of hundreds and hundreds of elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen with a deep bow and a flush of modesty.

The water came to a boil. The first bird began to call. And then there was a thump at the back door, the dog nosing there to be let in and fed, and the day, which for all appearances was like any other day, started in. She didn’t so much as glance in Rafael’s direction at breakfast for fear of giving herself away — or of breaking down, or no, choking, actually choking over the emotion wadded in her throat that was so dense and heartbreaking she could barely swallow — and she took her own breakfast out in the kitchen to avoid his eyes, their eyes, the eyes of the men. He’d made her his solemn promise and the plan had been set in motion. She’d packed her suitcase and laid out her best clothes and gloves and hat. When the men were at work — only a half day today, clearing up the odds and ends, hauling the sacks of wool to the barn, packing up their shears and knives and bedrolls — she would conceal the suitcase in a clump of rocks just off the road that led to the harbor and then, after luncheon, instead of washing and stacking the dishes and scrubbing the counter and sweeping the floor, she would go upstairs and dress and then steal away to wait for Rafael.