Terrence Holt - In the Valley of the Kings - Stories

Gasoline spilled from the neck of the tank. The trigger gave a dull clunk and went limp.

The door to the cashier’s office was locked. The knob rattled loudly in my hand, but the figure smiling by the open cash drawer did not move. I stooped to peer through the glass. He sat upright, his mouth and eyes wide open.

I took a winding route back home, through the empty streets. Not everyone is dead: as the sun set, windows lit in many houses. The people at the power station are still at their posts. I drove past every drugstore I could think of, and every one was empty, dark. On some of them, the doors stood open; others had their windows smashed. The street by a liquor store glittered and flashed. I drove home wondering, What are they waiting for?

I could not think of an answer.

At the sound of my key in the lock, Ell pulled open the door, rushed at me, and grabbed my shoulders. As I thought horribly of what could be wrong she was saying, — Where have you been? and, — I was sure, and, — Where were you?

I couldn’t speak. We did not fight. Normally, in such a case, we would, and eventually would have understood. I couldn’t. There was something on my tongue, even now I cannot say what, only that a fear of speaking welled up and stifled me. When she ran weeping from the room, guilt stabbed me, but I could not explain. I walked upstairs and closed the study door, sat here at my desk for a long time before turning on the lights.

THE MORNING IS bright. Outside the house the icicles are running, and water echoes loudly in the drains. Fresh air stirs the curtains, breathing in at the window opened for the first time in months. The January thaw has come, but a few days past the turning of the year, rushing as if to make the time. The air is piercing, fresh and sweet. It buoys me with an indiscriminate urge to do something — nothing I can name. It speaks tongueless, as varying and insistent as the water in the drains. The fresh air blows past my ears, whispering promises of spring.

When I came down from my study late last night, Ell was reading in her accustomed chair, her feet tucked underneath her legs against the cold. She looked up, angry and compact. I knew she would not speak — that it was up to me. But what was there to say? A minute passed, drawn out into a wire that tightened between us. I wanted to flinch — to run away. But where was there to run?

From where I stood in the doorway, her face seemed a shield held out against me. But in the curve of her lower lip, I saw a trace of motion, a sustained, suppressed tremor. It told me something of what she must have felt when I did not come home — and what she must be feeling now. I understood the offering of her face then, the cost it exacted as the minutes wore on and the muscles of her neck grew tired, quivering. I met her eyes, and the intensity of the look that met me seized me out of vagueness into something solid, here and real.

At that moment the lights flickered, and my heart leapt with an animal despair — dumb, and damned so. The lights went yellow, faded slowly to orange, red, and as the darkness closed in around us, I saw in her face — motionless still, and pale — the same mute despair, and then it was dark.

We found candles in the kitchen. By their light we made love upstairs, in a bed piled high with blankets. The clock beside us was stopped at a quarter to, and the candles held at bay the sky’s sick light. We were awkward; we were shy. I could not remember the last time we had broken the unspoken agreement that for months has kept us from each other.

A SILENCE THIS morning disturbed me as I stood, awash in the morning light, at the kitchen sink. Something was missing. I listened, until I realized that what I missed was the sound of birds at the feeders: the crack and scatter of the seeds, the whirr of wings — the ungainly thud of the jays. I wiped steam from the windows. Every feeder hung deserted, full of seed, shuddering gently in the wind. I watch, and no birds come. Hours have passed, and I have not seen or heard them yet.

Perhaps they know. Perhaps some message came to them. I hope so. I hope that, even now, someone in a southern kitchen is wondering at the chickadees, the juncos, the titmice, and the nuthatch, upside down, inspecting some unnaturally sweet and tender fruit.

THERE HAD BEEN another wreck. Both of us stayed seated long after the booming died away. The falls have frozen over at last; no sound rose to fill the silence. We sat throughout the afternoon, as the light faded and the sun went down for what must have been the last time — a dull, dim-red extinction. It disappeared and left behind a sky as blank as if the constellations had been destroyed. Perhaps they have. The moon rose soon after, waning, gibbous, sick in a sea of spoiled milk, and still we sat.

Ell rose, groaning a little with the effort it takes her now to stand. She shuffled out to the kitchen. I heard her fumbling in the drawer where the candles are, rattling hollow objects for a time that stretched out far too long. I couldn’t bear it. When she returned, her face alight, I stood abruptly, unable to look at her.

I think she knew, as I walked out the door, that I was not going to the gorge.

The streets lay deep in snow, and as I drove down the steep and winding road that ends in the bridge across the gorge, I lost control, fishtailed out onto the span sideways for the rail. Someone laughed as I spun, the railing moving wrongway by the windshield; then I was stopped, turned sideways in the middle of the bridge.

I got out of the car, stepping out onto the steel grid. Wind whistled up at me. I looked down through the deck; a dozen dark shapes lay at the ends of scars scraped in the show. I walked to the western rail and looked out over the valley where the gorge opens and falls finally into the lake. On the far hill shone a constellation of kerosene and candles, flickering dimly across the miles. Down in the town, a brighter glow grew into a blaze of buildings burning at the center. On the north wind came no sound, no smell of smoke, only the wind.

In the southwest, a dim glow, as the sunset faded into the ashen light of the sky. No evening star.

Then I was driving, fast again, swerving around curves I had never seen before, headlights doused. I remember nothing until three deer stood and faced me in the road.

Then there was light, shining in my eyes. They lifted me by the shoulders, headfirst through the window of my car although I clutched the wheel and cried. I saw a tire turning, spinning slowly in the air.

Then there was light again, and warmth, a chair, and hands rubbing mine and feeling up and down my arms and legs, voices asking, — Hurt? Talk? — a voice whispering, — Shock.

They put my fingers around a cup, where heat thawed feeling out of numb nothing. Something hot trickled down my throat.

And the first thing I saw was a tree, standing in the corner, shedding its needles on the floor. I thought: I missed Christmas, and: It was all a dream. The room solidified: a kitchen, plank floor, wood stove, iron washstand, water heater in the far corner. Warm light and the smell of kerosene. A man in coveralls, about my age, but the lines in his face had cut more deeply, the hand with which he slid the teacup back across the table was a farmer’s hand, old already. As I reached out to take the cup, he watched me critically.

— You’re not the first, he said.

I nodded, unable to explain.

He nodded back, indicating my hand. — You’re married.

I nodded again.

— Alive?

Again.

The man paused, looked away from me, and cleared his throat. — Do you want to go back?

I feel tears on my face. My voice makes no sound; the room seems to expand around me, leaving me in darkness. It is too late for words.