Joyce Oates - Sourland

And then, she saw a man approaching her. He was walking with a curious limp. Sophie stared, and began to feel faint.

This man was middle-aged, bulky-bodied. For one who limped with a shuffling-sliding motion of his left foot he moved quite readily. He would have been a tall man of over six feet but his back appeared to be bent like a coat hanger wantonly twisted. His face glared like something hard-polished with a rag. His head looked as if it had been shaved with an ax blade. There were the schoolboy wire-rimmed glasses but the lenses were dark-tinted, hiding the eyes. From the lower part of his face metallic-gray whiskers sprang bristling yet as he drew closer Sophie could see that the left side of his face was badly scarred, disfigured — a part of the lower jaw was missing, a double row of teeth exposed as in a ghastly fixed smile. The right side of his face was relatively untouched, unlined. As he made his shuffling-sliding way forward people glanced at him — turned to stare after him — but he ignored them. Perhaps in fact he didn’t see them. Having sighted Sophie standing very still staring at him as he approached he smiled exposing stubby teeth that glistened, of the color of old piano keys.

“Sophie. You came.”

It was a blunt statement of triumph, elation. It was a statement of masculine appropriation.

Sophie stammered hello. There was a deafening roar in her ears. She thought — they were in a public place, he could not harm her if she ran away. If she ran into the women’s room, and did not reappear. He would have to let her go.

Seeing the look in Sophie’s face, Kolk smiled harder. “Am I the person you expected to see, Sophie? No? Or maybe — yes? If you are ‘Sophie.’”

Sophie had no idea what this meant. She was staring at Kolk’s eyes — the dark-tinted lenses of his glasses, that hid his eyes — to avoid looking at his mutilated jaw. Weakly she said:

“Are you — ‘Jeremiah’? Is that what people call you — ‘Jeremiah’?”

“No. ‘Kolk.’”

It was a blunt ugly name. It had not seemed to suit Jeremiah Kolk as a young man in Madison, Wisconsin, but it had come to suit him now in this middle-aged ravaged state.

As Sophie hesitated, not knowing what to say, Kolk took her hand in greeting, squeezed her fingers hard as if claiming her. Now, could she run away? Could she hide from him? She was smiling confusedly, trying not to wince in pain. Though his spine seemed to be twisted, yet Kolk was taller than Sophie by several inches and loomed over her. He wore fingerless gloves, his exposed fingers were nicked with small cuts, scars and burns, Sophie was remembering how years ago she’d dared to touch Kolk’s arm and he’d thrown off her hand. Rudely he’d turned from her as if her touch had repelled him but now Sophie wondered if this strange awkward disfigured man expected her to embrace him in the way of people greeting one another in airports — to throw her arms around him, and brush her lips against the side of his face.

But which side of Kolk’s face — the shiny-scarred melted-away side, or the more normal side — would Sophie kiss? She guessed that Kolk would be keenly aware of such a choice.

Kolk asked if Sophie had anything more than the single suitcase at which she was clutching and Sophie said no she had not. Kolk frowned.

“Let’s go, then. It’s good to get back before dark.”

Something had disappointed him. The single suitcase, maybe.

This lightweight suitcase, Kolk insisted on taking from Sophie. It was on rollers, but Kolk carried it.

The roaring in Sophie’s ears had only slightly abated. Was she going with this man, then? This disfigured man? At a first glance you might imagine that he was wearing animal hides. And on his feet, hobnailed boots. Before Sophie could pull away Kolk took her arm, and linked her arm through his. He said nothing as they walked through the terminal together. Sophie had no choice but to accompany him. She dared not pull away from him, such a gesture would offend him terribly.

How likely it seemed to her, the disfigured must be vainer than the rest of us.

Awkward to walk with Kolk who limped so markedly. And how self-conscious Sophie was made to feel, walking with a man at whom people — wide-eyed children, rude adults — stared openly.

“S’reebi! Quiet. Sit. ”

In the rear of Kolk’s vehicle was a lunging barking dog — a bulldog mix — with splotched steel-colored fur, a milky right eye, quivering jowls and small flattened torn ears. Sophie felt her blood freeze, she feared and disliked such dogs.

Kolk struck the lunging dog on its skull, so sharply you could hear the impact.

“I said sit. ”

Sophie said, “He’s — handsome.” With forced warmth Sophie addressed the frantic barking dog, that was throwing itself against the back of the seat. His slobber shook in frothy droplets from his mouth — surreptitiously she wiped it from her face with a tissue.

Kolk laughed. It wasn’t clear why Kolk laughed.

Kolk said not to worry, S’reebi would not dare attack her.

In swirling snow the drive from Grand Rapids north and west into the foothills of the Sourland Mountains took longer than Kolk had anticipated. Though it was early April yet the air was blustery and wintry, and tasted of metal. During the more than three-hour drive Kolk said little as if he were chagrined or resentful or possibly he’d forgotten his guest in the passenger’s seat beside him. Sophie could have wept. How miserable she was shivering in her attractive and inappropriate clothing — cream-colored cashmere coat, light woolen slacks, leather shoe-boots that came only to her ankles. It was clear that Kolk was accustomed to being alone in the jeep — driving long distances with a sort of stoic fortitude — punching in radio stations that came to life, prevailed for a while then faded into static — in the interstices of which Sophie chattered nervously, to fill the silence. The female instinct: to fill up silence. The (female) fear of (masculine) silence. Sophie heard her anxious voice like the palpitations of a butterfly’s wings, throwing itself against a screen.

Kolk said: “You don’t need to talk.”

In profile, seen from the right, Kolk did not appear obviously disfigured. His face was strong-boned, his skin ruddy, weathered. The untrimmed whiskers looked charged with static electricity like those of a mad sea captain in a nineteenth-century engraving. His eyebrows, in profile, stood straight out, gunmetal-gray. His shaved head was stubbled with steel-colored quills. The scalp was discolored, blemished and bumpy as a lunar terrain. In the fingerless gloves his hands were twice the size of Sophie’s, the hands of a manual laborer, or a strangler. The shortcut nails were edged with the kind of grime that could never be removed.

There was little of the young Jeremiah Kolk remaining. This was a fact, Sophie had to concede. Yet the old intimacy between them persisted, unmistakably. Though we are changed we are not different people. He knows this!

Sophie saw that in the rear of the jeep there were miscellaneous articles of clothing — a lightweight jacket, a mangled-looking sweater, a single hiking boot, dirt-stiffened gray wool socks. There were advertising flyers, newspapers that had never been unfurled, unopened envelopes as if Kolk had grabbed his mail out of his P.O. and dumped it into the jeep without taking time to sort it. The frothy-mouthed bulldog lay atop the jacket panting as if he’d been running and had just collapsed in a partial doze. Sensing Sophie looking at him he began to pant more loudly and his pink-rimmed eyes opened wider, glistening.

No! — no! Sophie looked quickly away before the dog began barking.

They’d made their way through the despoiled suburban landscape outside Grand Rapids — minimalls and shopping centers, motels, gas stations, fast-food restaurants, discount outlets. Beyond were desolate winter fields not yet stirred into life. Still the snow continued in lightly swirling white flakes like mica-chips, much of it melting on the pavement.