Joy Williams - State of Grace

“He loves me,” her mother said. “He wanted this. He comes to me every night. He won’t leave me alone.” Her hair was wet on her brow. Her mouth was wet.

THOUGH THOU BE SOUGHT FOR YET SHALT THOU NEVER BE FOUND AGAIN. Her father had taught her everything. Ezekiel that was. Words were more important than the things they represented. That was why using some of them was a sin. Kate’s throat was bitter. She swallowed.

“It has to be a boy,” her mother said. “A boy would kill him for what he is. He wanted me to be the one to tell you. As though it weren’t any of his doing.”

A drop of saliva dropped on Kate’s bare knee. The damning wish rose serenely and without hate. Without hate. I hope it rots and molds and dies inside her. And then maybe she will leave us be. They had to shoot the horse because he was sick. He didn’t know how to be a horse any more. Then they had to set him on fire. I just want her to leave us be . Dismally, she was sick. It was as though she had spoken aloud and the words had come into the clear air, darkening and putrefying everything. She vomited onto the sand.

Her mother did not move right away. Then she took a handkerchief out of her pocketbook and walked down to the water. Kate raised her head. The old man was still passing by. He seemed to have a grapefruit in his crotch. He had tiny dugs wreathed with long white hairs. And he was still passing by with a look of disgust and impatience.

And then Kate saw it. Propped between her and the place where her mother had been was a faint bundle, wrapped in a white blanket. It was bubbling, amorphous and horrendous, a clear liquid restrained by the blanket folds. When she touched it, her fingers fell through to the amnion slickness beyond. There it is and it’s never going to be any different. It’s never going to get beyond that. She might as well take it out of her stomach now and sell it to the traveling circus. Daddy and I will not discuss this, how it got inside her stomach, we will not mention this .

Her faith had taken on a terrible reality. Her faith had taken on the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Kate stood and tottered from the bench. The old man was passing by. And her mother came and reamed her mouth with the dainty cloth soaked in the cold sea water. She pushed back her braids and wiped them clean.

The child remembers … She tastes, she thinks, the fish that have swum in the water. She sees the form and future of the world in the shabby exotic skyline of the amusement park. Almost everything has already happened in her life. What can remain?

“I want to help you,” her mother said. “How can I turn my back on you?”

WHAT CAN SICKNESS NOT DO? Now the child is a woman. She is in the woods with her young man. The woods are far, far away from the place where she was born.

The land is owned by a paper company and can be bought for $150 an acre. They are not beautiful woods but they will do. They are still scarred from the logging operations of ten years ago. The loggers cleared and burned. Later, they planted seeds but the resulting growth is ramshackle, delicate. The larger animals never returned. The land is shocked, stilled. Everything is wet and tapping from a rainstorm in the night. In the leaves, fearful rustlings are heard, but only tiny finches emerge. The woods offer no enlightenment. They are a huge barred door before God.

The boy points to a square of soft earth. “A fox,” he says. He has slow pale eyes and thick hair, lying like a cap on his head. All the buttons are missing from his shirt and his thin hard chest is exposed. Above his navel, a blond furrow of hair begins. It is soft as seal would be, the girl thinks. She loves it. His jeans are faded. Around the pockets and the fly, the fabric is almost white.

The girl kneels beside him. She is tall and a little awkward. She has a wide sad mouth and two dark moles near her left eye which give her a convalescent look. To the boy, she seems different each day. It is nothing that he can explain. Her face seems to change. He is not yet used to her. It is as though her life has lacked the continuing experience that will make her what she will become.

She cannot make out the paw’s imprint. She searches for it on the damp ground, ashamed. She reaches for his hand and presses it to her cheek. At last she finds it — a very faint impression, more a memory than a mark. “In China,” she begins, “if you give a fox a home of his own, and incense and food, he’ll bring you luck.”

“Incense.” The boy smiles carefully. He has strong nice teeth, white as bone.

“Of course.” She nods. “In China, a family is very fortunate to be adopted by a supernatural fox.”

The boy rises. “Do you wish that you had been adopted?”

“Oh,” she says, stunned. “Of course.” This land depresses her. The red ground sucks at her feet and the pines are tall and empty of life.

“Perhaps we could go to China,” she says. “Or we could live in Mexico. Some country where there is a magic and mystery and luck.”

“All that’s right here.” He spreads his arms wide, taking in the trees, the swamp and distant bay and sky, the roll and ruin of the land.

She shakes her head.

“Why not Canada?” he says. “Why not Alaska?”

“No, it’s too cold.”

He tells her a joke about Eskimo children. The last line is don’t eat the yellow snow . She laughs. It is so innocent, so harmless. He touches her face with his.

The girl knows that they will never go anyplace. Before she met him he had a job. Earnest ambitions. He had a car and a few nice possessions. But now he has stopped working and sold everything except the car. He spends all his time with her. They live on his savings. He is self-made, clever, charming and shy. He owes nothing to anyone. But now he seems to owe a great price to her. They are students but seldom go to classes. Sometimes he does not touch her for days. It’s like a game. Being in love is not what he had expected it to be. She has taken away his energy and replaced it with premonition. He had imagined a different woman. Often he had imagined no woman at all for this was not necessary to him. He could make his way on nothing. Now he is involved with the nothingness within her.

The girl knows that other countries are not open to them.

The woods are sunny and then dark. The sky is full of square, swift clouds moving across the sun. Shadows flow down the trees like water and then evaporate. The boy walks several feet in front of the girl, leading them back home. Suddenly he stops and grasps her arm. He points to the left, to a hollow beneath a runty cypress.

There is a dog lying there, a big red hound. His big eyes gallop toward them, but he is scarcely breathing. He lies on his side. They can see the cracklings and mash of his dinner lying in the scummy pool around his head. He is torn open from his balls to a point a few inches before his front leg joints. The rent is straight and neat as any zipper opening and the guts hover still within the belly in bluish globes.

The hound’s eyes run toward them and the boy moves forward and crouches by the dog’s head, stroking it. The folds of flesh on the dog’s neck and shoulders are soft, crumpled like velvet. The hound doesn’t move. Two ants crawl across his nose.

“A boar must of got him,” the boy says. “He got caught up by a big mean boar.” The girl nods. She doesn’t know what to do. Her hands hang ponderously useless at her sides.

“Is he dying?” She can’t hear herself speak. The dog’s eyes are incredible.

The boy stands and walks away. He picks up a short thick branch, hefts it, pushing it against a tree to check its strength. The girl slowly opens her mouth. Deep in the limbs, the trees crack. The air shimmers in the morning heat. She doesn’t know this boy. They met stupidly, at a dull movie. He had been sitting in the aisle behind her and had bent over her shoulder, saying something, thinking she was someone else. It’s all a misunderstanding. A case of mistaken identity. He is going to brain the dog, dispatch him, club him expertly as he does the fish he catches.