Robert Stone - Children of Light

“What about your kids?” Walker said.

Lu Anne was looking up at the rain. She bit her lip and rubbed her eyes.

“Goddamn you, Gordon! What about your kids?”

“I asked you first,” Walker said. “And I told you about mine.”

“Mine, they’ve never seen me crazy. They never would. They’d remember me as something very ornate and mysterious. They’d always love me. I’d be fallen in love, the way we nearly were just now.”

Walker yawned. “Asleep in the deep.”

He arranged his windbreaker and his duck trousers to cover them as thoroughly as possible.

“Yeah,” Lu Anne said, and sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”

They settled back against the mud and straw.

“Things are crawling on us,” Walker said sleepily.

“Coke bugs,” Lu Anne told him.

For some time they slept, stirring by turns, talking in their dreams. When Walker awakened, he was covered in sweat and bone weary. He kicked the false door aside. The sky was clear. He sat up and saw the yellow grass and the wildflowers of the hilltop glistening with lacy coronets of moisture. On his knees, he crept past Lu Anne and went outside. The chubasco had passed over them. The wall of low gray-black clouds was withdrawing over the valley to the east, shadowing its broad fields. An adjoining hill stood half in the light and half in the storm’s gloom. Its rocky peak was arched with a bright rainbow.

Walker examined his nakedness. His arms, torso and legs were streaked with Lu Anne’s blood; his shorts dyed roseate with it.

“Sweet Christ,” he said. There was no water anywhere.

When he heard her whimper he went inside and helped her stand. She was half covered with bloody rags and her hair matted with blood, but her stigmatic wounds were superficial for all their oozing forth. She had been making her hands bleed as much as possible, the way a child might.

She came outside, shielding her eyes with her forearm.

“How’s your Spanish?” Walker asked her.

“I can’t speak Spanish. I thought you could. Anyway, what’s it matter?”

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to explain ourselves and it’s going to be really difficult.”

“Difficult in any language,” Lu Anne said. “Almost impossible.”

“How do you think I’d make out thumbing?”

“Well,” she said, “you don’t seem to be injured, but you’re covered with blood. Only people with a lot of tolerance for conflict would pick you up. Of course, I’d pick you up.”

“We’d better have a drink,” Walker said.

“Oh my land,” Lu Anne said when Walker had given her some whiskey, “look at the rainbow!”

“Why did you have to throw my cocaine away,” Walker demanded. “Now I can’t function.”

“It’s right back there somewhere,” she said, indicating the brush around the stone house. “You can probably find it.”

“It’s water-soluble,” Walker told her. “Christ.”

“I have never been at such close quarters with a rainbow,” Lu Anne said. “What a marvel!”

“You know what I bet?” Walker said. “I bet it’s a sign from God.” He went to the shelter where they had lain and sorted through their clothes. There was not a garment unsoiled with Lu Anne’s blood. “God’s telling us we’re really fucked up.”

Lu Anne watched the rainbow fade and wept.

“What now?” Walker demanded. “More signs and wonders?” He held up his bloody trousers for examination. “I might as well put them on,” he said. “They must be better than nothing.”

“Gordon,” Lu Anne said.

Walker paused in the act of putting on his trousers and straightened up. “Yes, my love?”

She came over and put her arms around him and leaned her face against his shoulder.

“I know it must all mean something, Gordon, because it hurts so much.”

Walker smoothed her matted hair.

“That’s not true,” he told her. “It’s illogical.”

“Gordon, I think there’s a mercy. I think there must be.”

“Well,” Walker said, “maybe you’re right.” He let her go and began pulling on his trousers. “Who knows?”

“Don’t humor me,” Lu Anne insisted. “Do you believe or not?”

“I suppose if you don’t like my answer I’ll get hit with a rock.”

She balanced on tiptoe, jigging impatiently. “Please say, Gordon.”

Walker buckled his belt.

“Mercy? In a pig’s asshole.”

“Oh dear,” Lu Anne said. She walked away from him toward a rock against which he had left the whiskey and helped herself to a drink. When she had finished drinking, she froze with the bottle upraised, staring into the distance.

“Did you mention a pig’s asshole?” she asked him. “Because I think I see one at this very moment. In fact, I see several.”

Walker went and stood beside her. On a lower slope, great evil-tusked half-wild pigs were clustered under a live oak, rooting for oak balls. A barrel-size hog looked up at them briefly, then returned to its foraging.

“Isn’t that strange, Gordon? I mean, you had just mentioned a pig’s asshole and at that very moment I happened to look in that direction and there were all those old razorbacks. Isn’t that remarkable?”

Walker had been following her with her faded bloodstained army shirt. “It’s a miracle,” he said. He hung the shirt around her shoulders and took hold of one of her arms. “The Gadarene Swine.”

Dull-eyed, she began walking down the hill. Walker started after her. She tripped and got to her feet again. He followed faster, waving the shirt.

“Lu Anne,” he shouted, “those animals are dangerous.”

She stopped and let him come abreast of her. When he moved to cover her with her shirt, she turned on him, fists clenched.

“Who do you think it was,” she screamed, “that breathed in the graveyard? Who was bound in the tomb?”

Walker stayed where he was, watching her, ready to jump.

“You don’t think that filthy tomb person with the shit for eyes, you don’t think he saw who I was? Answer me,” she screamed. “Answer me! Answer me, Walker, goddamn it!”

Walker only stared at her.

She threw her head back and howled, waving her fists in the air.

“For God’s sake, Lu Anne.”

“Talk to me about Gadarene Swine? Who do you think it was, bound in fetters and chains? Where do you think I came by these?” She pointed around her, at things invisible to him. “Don’t you torment me! Torment me not, Walker!”

“C’mon,” he said. “I was joking.”

Her lip rolled back in a snarl. He looked away. She turned her back on him and went to a place beside the house where the mud was deep and there was a pile of seed husks, head high.

“Jesus,” she cried, “Son of the Most High God. I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.”

“Amen,” Walker said.

She clasped her hands and looked at the last wisps of rainbow. “I adjure thee, Son of the Most High God. I adjure thee. Torment me not.” She buried her face and hands in the pile of chaff. After a moment, she got up and went up to Walker. She seemed restored in some measure and he was not afraid of her.

“You’re a child of God, Walker,” she said. “Same as me.”

“Of course,” Walker said.

“That’s right,” Lu Anne said. “Isn’t it right?”

“Yes,” Walker said. “Right.”

“But you can’t take the unclean spirit out of a woman, can you, brother?”

She touched his lips with her fingertips, then brought her hand down, put it on his shoulder and looked at the sky. “Ah, Christ,” she said, “it’s dreadful. It’s dreadful we have spirits and can’t keep them clean.”

“Well,” Walker said. “You’re right there.”

“No one can take it out. Man, I have watched and I have prayed. And I’ve had help, Walker.”