Joyce Oates - Sourland

“‘Infinity.’ Ex nihilo nihil fit. ”

It wasn’t clear what Mr. Carmichael wanted to show me. He’d wandered into the living room, sprawled heavily on a badly worn corduroy sofa, tapping at the cushion beside him in a gesture you might make to encourage a child to join you, or a dog. Tentatively I sat on the sofa, but not quite where Mr. Carmichael wanted me to sit.

This room was not nearly so cluttered as the other rooms. You could see that Mr. Carmichael often sprawled here at his end of the sofa, which had settled beneath his weight. Close by was a small TV with rabbit ears on a portable stand and beside it a hi-fi record player, with long-playing records in a horizontal file, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, a piano quintet by Mozart, a piano sonata by Schubert…. These were only names to me, we never heard classical music in our household; eagerly I asked Mr. Carmichael if he would play one of his records? — but Mr. Carmichael said, “Fuck ‘Mr. Carmichael.’ You’d like to, eh?” Seeing the shock and hurt in my face quickly Mr. Carmichael laughed, and in a tender voice said: “Anyway, call me ‘Luther.’ No ‘Mr. Carmichael’ here.”

Mr. Carmichael passed the icy-cold beer bottle to me, and I managed to swallow a mouthful without choking. Hesitantly I tried the name: “‘Luther.’” Biting my lower lip to keep from laughing, for wasn’t “Luther” a comic-strip name? — then I did begin to cough, and a trickle of beer ran down inside my left nostril that I wiped away on my hand, hoping Mr. Carmichael wouldn’t notice.

Another time I wanted to ask Mr. Carmichael who he’d been visiting at the hospital, and where his family was, but didn’t dare. Against a wall was an upright piano with stacks of books and sheet music on its top. I could image a girl of my age sitting there, dutifully playing her scales. The living room looked out upon the vast front yard now overgrown with tall grasses and yellow and white wildflowers. The walls were covered in faded once-elegant wallpaper and in this room too was sculpted molding in the ceiling. On the coffee table near the sofa were ashtrays heaped with butts and ashes. I resolved, if Mr. Carmichael lit another cigarette, I would ask if I could have a “drag” from it as girls were always doing with older boys they hoped to impress. Mr. Carmichael took back the beer bottle from me and drank again thirstily and asked me which year of high school I would be in, in the fall, and I told him that I was just starting high school: I would be in tenth grade. “That sounds young,” Mr. Carmichael said, frowning. “I thought you were older.”

To this I had no ready reply. I wondered if I should apologize.

“You were my student years ago, not recently. How’s it happen you’re just going into tenth grade?”

Our math teacher’s displeasure showed itself in a quick furrow of Mr. Carmichael’s forehead and a crinkling of his nose as if he were smelling something bad — and who was to blame? He asked if I had a boyfriend and when I said no, the bad-smell look deepened. Stammering, I said, “People say — I have an ‘old’ soul. Like maybe — I’ve lived many times before.”

This desperate nonsense came to me out of nowhere: it was something my grandmother had told me when I’d been a little girl, to make me feel important, I suppose, or to make herself feel important.

Still frowning, Mr. Carmichael said suddenly, “The Stoics had the right goddamn idea. If I was born a long time ago, that’s what I was — ‘Stoic.’ Y’know who the Stoics were? No? Philosophers who lived a long time ago. Marcus Aurelius — name ring a bell? ‘In all that you say or do recall that the power of exiting this life is yours at any time.’”

“You mean — kill yourself?” I laughed uncertainly. This didn’t sound so good.

Mr. Carmichael was in a brooding mood so I asked him if he thought there might be memory pools that collected in certain places like the hospital, the way puddles collect after rain; in places where people have had to wait, and have been worried, and frightened; if there were places where you left your trace, without knowing it. Mr. Carmichael seemed to consider this. At least, he did not snort in derision. He said, “‘Memory pools.’ Why not. Like ghosts. Everywhere, the air is charged with ghosts. Hospitals have got to be the worst, teeming with ghosts like germs. Can’t hardly draw a deep breath, you suck in a ghost.” Mr. Carmichael made a sneezing-comical noise that set us both laughing. “Could be, I am a ghost. You’re a sweet trusting girl, coming here with a ghost. Or maybe you’re a ghost yourself — joke’s on me. Some future time like the next century there’ll be explorers looking back to now, to 1959 — what’s called ‘lookback time’ — y’know what ‘lookback time’ is? No?” Mr. Carmichael’s teacherly manner emerged, though as he spoke he tapped my wrist with his forefinger. “‘Lookback time’ is what you’d call an astronomical figure of speech. It means, if you gaze up into the night sky — and you have the look of a girl eager to learn the constellations — what you see isn’t what is there. What you see is only just light — ‘starlight.’ The actual star has moved on, or is extinct. What you are looking into is ‘lookback time’ — the distant past. It’s only an ignorant — innocent — eye that thinks it is looking at an actual star. If our sun exploded, and disappeared, here on earth we wouldn’t know the grim news for eight minutes.” Now Mr. Carmichael was circling my wrist with his thumb and forefinger, gently tugging at me to come closer to him on the sofa. “Eight minutes is a hell of a long time, to not know that you are dead.”

I shuddered. Then I laughed, this was meant to be funny.

Somehow, we began arm wrestling. Before I knew it, with a gleeful chortle, Mr. Carmichael had kicked off his moccasins, worn without socks, slouched down on the sofa, and lifted me above him, to straddle his stomach. “Giddyup, li’l horsie! Giddyup.” My khaki shorts rode up my thighs, Mr. Carmichael’s belt buckle chafed my skin. Beneath the Rangers T-shirt he ran his hard quick hands, where my skin was clammy-damp; he took hold of my small, bare breasts, squeezing and kneading, running his thumbs across the nipples, and I slapped at him, shrieking in protest. Suddenly then Mr. Carmichael rolled me over onto the sofa, pinned me with his forearms, and gripped my thighs, between my legs he brought his hot, rock-hard face, his sucking mouth, against the damp crotch of my shorts and my panties inside my shorts, an act so astonishing to me, I could not believe that it was happening. Like a big dog Mr. Carmichael was growling, sucking, and nipping at me. “Lie still. Be still. You’ll like this. L’il bitch god damn .” Wildly I’d begun to laugh, I kicked frantically at him, scrambled out of his grasp on my hands and knees — on the floor now, on a carpet littered with pizza crusts, dumped ashtrays, and empty beer bottles. Cursing me now, Mr. Carmichael grabbed hold of my ankle and pinned me again, mashing his mouth against mine, his mouth and angry teeth tearing at my lips as if to pry them open. By this time I’d become panicked, terrified. No boy or man had ever kissed me like this, or touched me like this, so roughly — “Why’d you come here with me? What did you think this was — seventh grade? You’re a hell of a lot older than you let on. Hot li’l bitch.” With each syllable of hot l’il bitch Mr. Carmichael struck the back of my head against the carpet, his fingers closed around my throat. Fumbling, he tried to insert his knee between my thighs, he pressed the palm of his hand hard against my mouth to quiet me, I struggled, desperate to free myself like a fish impaled on a hook desperate to free itself at any cost, I would have torn open my flesh to be free of Mr. Carmichael’s weight on me. Now he lurched above me, grunted and fumbled, unzipped his trousers, I had a glimpse of his thick engorged penis being rammed against my thighs, another time Mr. Carmichael grunted, and shuddered, and fell heavily on me; for a long stunned moment we lay unmoving; then he allowed me to extricate myself from him, to crawl away whimpering.