Joyce Oates - Sourland

“Open the glove compartment, Maddie. See what’s inside.”

Fumbling to remove from the glove compartment a quart bottle of amber liquid: whiskey. Mr. Carmichael instructed me to unscrew the top and take a drink and quickly I shook my head no, shyly I shook my head no, and Mr. Carmichael nudged me in the ribs with his elbow, winking: “Yes, you’d better, Maddie. Kills germs on contact and where we came from — ” Mr. Carmichael shuddered, as if suddenly cold.

It is death he is taking me from, I thought. I had never loved anyone so much.

With a gesture of impatience Mr. Carmichael took the bottle from me, and drank. Fascinated I watched, the greedy movements of his mouth, his throat. Mr. Carmichael handed the bottle back to me with another nudge in the ribs and so — must’ve been, I lifted the bottle to my mouth, and drank cautiously. Searing-hot liquid flooded my mouth, down my throat like flames. My eyes leaked tears as I tried not to succumb to a spasm of coughing.

Here is a secret Mr. Carmichael was never to know: I knew where he lived, on Old Mill Road beyond the Sparta city limits. I knew for, with the cunning of a twelve-year-old girl in love with her seventh-grade math teacher, I had looked up “Carmichael” — “Luther Carmichael” — in the Sparta telephone directory. More than once I had bicycled past Mr. Carmichael’s house, which was approximately four miles from my house, a considerable distance. But I had done this, in secret. And I’d forgotten more or less, until now. On a mailbox at the end of a long driveway was the name CARMICHAEL. And the name CARMICHAEL, in black letters shiny as tar, seemed to me astonishing. So suddenly, so openly — CARMICHAEL. It had seemed to me a very special name. In secret I’d written it out, how many times. And sometimes with only my finger, tracing the letters on a smooth desktop. On the Old Mill Road where Mr. Carmichael lived with his family — for it was known, Mr. Carmichael had a wife and young children — I dared to bicycle past the end of his driveway, and once dared to turn into the driveway, hurriedly turning back when it seemed to me that someone had appeared at the house.

In math class when Mr. Carmichael handed back our test papers marked in red ink, though Mr. Carmichael spoke my name in a friendly way and may even have smiled at me I did not smile in return, I kept my eyes lowered out of superstition and dread for the red number at the top of the paper was my fate for that day: my grade. You would not have guessed, surely Mr. Carmichael would not have guessed, which of the seventh-grade girls was most desperately in love with him.

So long ago! You have to smile, to think that people like us took ourselves, and one another, so seriously.

And so on Old Mill Road beyond the Sparta city limits it wasn’t surprising to me when Mr. Carmichael turned the station wagon onto the bumpy cinder drive leading back to his house. I knew, this was where we were headed. And there was the mailbox with CARMICHAEL in black letters on the sides, stuffed with newspapers — this wasn’t surprising to me. (So Mr. Carmichael hadn’t been bringing in his mail, reading the local paper. Which was why he hadn’t seen the front-page news of Harvey Fleet’s “savage” beating.) “Won’t stay long, Maddie,” Mr. Carmichael was saying, “ — unless we change our minds, and we do.” The sweet warm sensation of the whiskey in my throat had radiated downward like sunshine into my belly, into my bowels, and below between my legs and my response to this was breathy laughter. Out of excitement — or anxiety — I was asking Mr. Carmichael silly questions, for instance, did he own horses? — (no, he did not own horses) — did he know a Herkimer County judge who was a friend of my father’s, who lived on Old Mill Road? — (yes, Mr. Carmichael knew the man, but not well). Surprising to see how much shabbier — sadder — Mr. Carmichael’s house looked now than it had two years before, when I’d dared to bicycle partway up the driveway. The large front lawn had become a field of tall grasses and wildflowers and the cinder driveway was badly rutted. The house that looked ugly but dignified from the road looked, up close, only just ugly; a squat two-story block-shaped cobblestone with a steep-slanted slate roof, the kind of house (I bit my lower lip to stop from bursting into a fit of giggling at the thought) in which, in a fairy tale, a troll would live. “Glad to see you’re laughing, Maddie,” Mr. Carmichael said. “Damn lot better than crying.”

Mr. Carmichael parked the Dodge station wagon close beside the house. In the backyard was a children’s swing set among tall grasses. Cicadas were shrieking out of the trees. Close up the cobblestones were misshapen rocks that looked as if they’d been dredged up out of the earth with dirt still clinging to them. The back screen door was ajar as if someone in the house had rushed out without taking time to close it. One of the first-floor windows had been shoved open to the very top and a yellow-print muslin curtain had been sucked out by the wind, wanly fluttering now. The thought came to me He is living alone here. There is no wife now. With the cruelty of a fourteen-year-old female I felt a stab of satisfaction as if I’d known my math teacher’s wife, a youngish blond woman glimpsed by me only at a distance, years ago; a figure of idly jealous speculation on the part of certain of Mr. Carmichael’s girl students, in fact a total stranger to us. That Mr. Carmichael had young children was of absolutely no interest to us. “Won’t stay long,” Mr. Carmichael repeated, nudging me between the shoulder blades, urging me into the house, “but damn we are thirsty.”

It was true. I’d been drinking from the quart bottle out of the glove compartment and I was very thirsty now, my throat on fire.

All going to die. Why’s it matter exactly when.

This raw and unimpeachable logic emerges like granite outcroppings in a grassy field, at such moments. You will remember all your life.

“Welcome! ‘Ecce homo.’” Inside it looked as if a whirlwind had rushed through the downstairs rooms of Mr. Carmichael’s house. In the kitchen the linoleum stuck to my feet like flypaper. In grayish water in the sink stacks of dirty dishes were soaking. Every square inch of countertop was in use, even the top of the stove with filth-encrusted burners; in the hot stale air was a strong odor of something rancid. Flies buzzed and swooped. Mr. Carmichael seemed scarcely to notice, exuberantly opening the refrigerator door: “ Voilà ! cold beer! Not a moment to spare.” He grabbed a dark brown bottle, opened it, and drank thirstily and offered it to me but I could not force myself to take more than a cautious little sip. I hated the taste of beer, and the smell. I asked Mr. Carmichael if there was a Coke in the refrigerator and he said no, sorry, there was not: “Only just beer. Made from malted barley, hops — nutrients. Not chemical crap to corrode your pretty teen teeth.” I saw Mr. Carmichael’s eyes on me, his smile that looked just slightly asymmetrical as if one side of his mouth was higher than the other. Impossible to gauge if this smile was on your side or not on your side, I remembered from seventh grade: yet how badly you yearned for that smile. “C’mere. Something to show you” — lightly Mr. Carmichael slipped his arm around my shoulders and led me into a dining room with a high ceiling of elaborate moldings and a crystal chandelier of surprising delicacy and beauty, covered in cobwebs. This was the room with the opened window through which the yellow-print curtain had been sucked and here too flies buzzed and swooped. Around a large mahogany dining table were numerous chairs pulled up close as if no one sat here any longer, except at one end; the table was covered with books, magazines, old newspapers, stacks of what appeared to be financial records, bills, and receipts. On sheets of paper were geometrical figures, some of them conjoined with humanoid figures (both female and male, with peanut heads and exaggerated genitals), which I pretended not to see. Idly I opened a massive book — Asimov’s Chronology of the World . It came to me then: a memory of how Mr. Carmichael had puzzled our class one day “demonstrating infinity” on the blackboard. With surprising precision he’d drawn a circle, and halved it; this half circle, he’d halved; this quarter circle, he’d halved; this eighth of a circle, he’d halved; as he struck the blackboard with his stick of chalk, addressing us in a jocular voice, as if, though this was mathematics of a kind, it was also very funny, by quick degrees the figure on the blackboard became too small to be seen even by those of us seated in the first row of desks; yet Mr. Carmichael continued, in a flurry of staccato chalk strikes, until the chalk shattered in his fingers and fell to the floor where in a playful gesture he kicked it. No one laughed.