Joyce Oates - Sourland

He’d made up his mind to marry Sophie, he told her afterward, at their first meeting. Sophie had asked was this love at first sight and Matt said Something better, and more durable.

In Madison, Sophie had heard tales from Matt and his friends of their wilderness adventures, their camping trips to northern Wisconsin and on Drummond Island and in the Canadian wilds south of Elliot Lake, Ontario. Matt had belonged to the university sailing club, that sailed on Lake Mendota in the most turbulent winds. But these outdoor activities had begun to lose their appeal to Matt, at about the time Sophie entered his life.

She’d been twenty-two. Matt had been nearly thirty. In all ways he’d been older than Sophie: intellectually, politically, sexually.

Matt’s friends were older, as well — Ph.D. candidates in such fields as history, politics, Russian studies. Most of them were political activists engaged in protesting the Vietnam War. For this was the late 1960s when the war had finally spread its poison everywhere. To be young was to be aroused, outraged. The university at Madison, Wisconsin, was a center of socialist dissent and political activism; there were highly vocal chapters here of SDS, Weathermen, and other left-wing organizations agitating for the overthrow of the hopelessly corrupt U.S. government. Matt had close friends in these organizations but whether he himself belonged, Sophie wasn’t certain.

Not that Matt had secrets from her, exactly. But he was taciturn, reserved. To question him too directly was to risk offending him as Sophie had instinctively known, upon meeting him.

She had not been very political. Of course she’d protested the Vietnam War in large campus marches with hundreds — thousands? — of others. She’d been disgusted by the official American politics of the time, like everyone else she knew. But the radical-left counterculture — was alien to her, temperamentally. She’d come to Madison to study nineteenth-century American literature, from Wells College in upstate New York; her father was a public school administrator, and her background was Protestant/secular. She’d been intimidated by other, older students in the graduate school as she’d been intimidated by the sprawling size and tempo of the university itself.

Just once, Matt had taken her along on a march to the state capitol building in downtown Madison, a risky venture since the leaders of the march had no permit and the National Guard shootings at Kent State had occurred the previous week. In the wake of young protestors’ deaths in Ohio emblazoned in headlines across the country and in that single, iconic photograph they’d marched — two or three hundred protestors of varying ages — as uniformed Madison police officers and Wisconsin National Guard soldiers lined State Street brandishing billy clubs and Mace, their faces obscured by tinted visors. Matt had instructed Sophie that if the police charged, to try to get behind him; if they began shooting, to get beneath him. He would shield her, he said. He’d spoken earnestly, sincerely. He’d been excited and frightened and exhilarated. Sophie had no doubt that they were in imminent danger, and that Matt would protect her from all harm. A strange reckless elation flooded her veins, a conviction of immortality she would never again feel in her life.

It happened that the protestors were greeted with sympathy by a sizable number of Wisconsin legislators — the demonstrators were made to feel placated and respected and the dangerous situation was defused. They didn’t die! They didn’t even get struck by billy clubs, their heads and faces bloodied. This was the first time — as it would be the last time — that Sophie would find herself in such a situation, in a crowded, public place without any knowledge of what might happen to her within the next half-hour.

Sophie checked the envelope from K.a second time — a folded sheet of yellow lined paper slipped out.

Sophie — Come see me here. We need to meet.Now you are prepared.KOLK

Next thing Sophie knew, she was lying on the floor.

It had seemed that the floor — hardwood, and very hard — swung up to strike her, on the side of the head. Like a billy club the floor struck her, with vehemence, malice. She’d had no time to put out her hand, to mitigate the force of the blow. How many minutes she lay there, part-conscious, she had no idea. Perhaps no time had passed. Perhaps a very long time had passed. By the time her strength returned, she’d forgotten where she was. She could not have said what day this was. Or where Matt was, that he hadn’t heard her fall, and call out for him.

Hairs on the back of her neck stirred in fear. Something seemed to be crawling over her skin. Feathery-light these tiny things were, and very quick. She brushed at them, blindly. Her skin was clammy-cold, covered in sweat that had partly dried. And so some time must have passed, the panic-sweat had partly dried. No! no! — she brushed at the crawling things. She was on her elbows now, lifting her head. Her dazed eyes saw that the hand-printed letter signed KOLKhad fallen to the floor beside her.

Matt? Where are you…

Waking in the dark, frightened and disoriented.

How many times, like one afflicted with a fairy-tale curse. Waking in the dark — calling for her husband — the absent husband — the no longer existing husband.

Sophie would confide in no one.

Nor would Sophie confide in anyone how on that November day when Matt had been hospitalized he’d wakened early to prepare IRS forms to send to their accountant in Hackensack.

He’d known that he was ill, and would need to be hospitalized. He had not known when he’d be back home, to complete the forms.

Sophie had wakened at their usual time — 7 A.M. — and still dark — knowing that something was wrong. His side of the bed was empty. Carefully the bedclothes had been turned back, Matt had slipped away without her knowledge.

He had not confided in her. Of course Matt would say, in his maddening way of brushing aside her concern, her anxiety — Look. I didn’t want to upset you.

And so barefoot and curious but not yet alarmed Sophie sought out her husband downstairs — she guessed he’d be in his study, working at his desk — as she approached the room on the first floor of the darkened house there was Matt just emerging in T-shirt and shorts which was his nighttime attire — his expression was strangely intense, a small fixed smile, a smile of a kind Sophie had not seen before — in his hands that were trembling — Sophie saw this, took note of this, with a part of her brain that had become immediately alert, aroused, yet inarticulate — was a large FedEx envelope. (So Sophie told herself This is all it is! Something for the IRS. )

Thinking how like her husband to be so zealous, to behave so responsibly. Determined to send their joint financial papers off well before the deadline to their accountant in Hackensack who would include them with other documents and send everything on to the U.S. Treasury. Sophie I will protect you! I promise. It was an ordinary morning Sophie wished to think and yet with that preternaturally alert and aroused part of her brain she saw unmistakably that her husband was looking exhausted, his face was ashen, his lips so pale as to appear blue and his movements tentative like those of a man uncertain whether he can trust the floor beneath his feet. And that strange rasping sound — a sound Sophie would long recall, as the surviving spouse — of his labored breathing.

Yet calmly he spoke her name: “Sophie.”

And calmly he told her, in Matt’s way of giving precise instructions that Sophie must not misunderstand or misconstrue, no matter how emotional she was to become: “Call FedEx to have a driver pick this up. I’m sorry, I need you to drive me to the hospital.”