Joyce Oates: Sourland

Kolk said, with forced exuberance: “Soph-ie! How d’you feel?”

“I–I — I feel — wonderful.”

Was this so? Light-headed with hunger Sophie leaned against the table smiling. Wonderful! Wonderful. Wonderful.

Her joints still ached, she felt as if she’d been hiking for hours in her sleep. But she would betray no weakness to the man. Glancing about for something useful to do, some task to which she might be put — setting the table. And there were stubby candles she located on a shelf, to set on the table and light with trembling fingers.

How romantic, candlelight! Sophie was thinking how, at home, a thousand miles away, she and Matt had eaten their evening meals by candlelight.

Maybe at this very moment — was this possible? — the Quinns were sitting down to dinner, in that house in Summit, New Jersey. There was Sophie, and there was her husband Matthew Quinn. Could this be?

“What happened to your face?”

Kolk was staring at Sophie. He’d removed his dark glasses.

“A spider bit me — I think.”

“A spider? Where?”

Where do you think? Where have I been?

“While I was sleeping, I think.”

Kolk came closer, peering at Sophie’s face. He was embarrassed, chagrined. His eyes were dark, puckered at the corners, deep-set and bruised-looking. It was something of a shock to Sophie, to see Kolk’s eyes, without his glasses. The man’s eyes fixed on her face. “Christ! I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, no — it’s nothing. Really it’s nothing.”

Sophie laughed, certainly it was nothing. She touched her lip that had swollen to twice its size. Beneath her clothes other bites itched violently, she dared not scratch for fear Kolk would be embarrassed further.

Muttering to himself Kolk stomped into the other room, Sophie saw him on hands and knees peering beneath the bed, cursing and grunting. With a rolled-up newspaper he swatted at something beneath the bed.

When he returned Kolk was flush-faced, frowning. He said that Sophie could sleep in his bed that night — he would sleep in the “guest room.”

Now it was supper! A romantic supper by firelight.

Kolk brought the stew-pan to the table. Self-consciously he ladled the rich dark liquid into bowls. There was also multigrain bread, he’d baked the previous day. And dark red wine, Kolk served in jam-glasses. Sophie thought I won’t drink, that would be dangerous.

The stew contained chunks of fibrous root vegetables, onions and pieces of a chewy meat, a dank-flavored meat Sophie couldn’t identify. Hesitantly she asked Kolk if it was — venison? — and Kolk said no, it was not venison; she asked if it was — rabbit? — and Kolk said no, it was not rabbit.

Other possibilities Sophie could think of — raccoon? — groundhog? — she did not want to ask about.

Still, she was hungry. Her hand trembled, holding a spoon — Kolk reached out to steady it.

Kolk said they could go hiking in the morning. Or snowshoeing, if the snow didn’t melt.

“Snowshoeing! In April.”

“This is northern Minnesota. We’re in the mountains.”

Sophie laughed a little too loudly. Sophie saw that her jam-glass was in her hand, she’d been drinking after all. Thinking of her husband in his grave, reduced to ashes. She had done that — she’d signed the document, for the cremation. And yet, she’d gone unpunished. No one seemed to realize.

On the drive from the airport Sophie had asked Kolk about his life since Madison, since he’d dropped out of school, and Kolk had answered in monosyllables, briefly. Discreetly she’d made no reference to the alleged bomb accident. She’d made no reference to Kolk’s anti-war activism, that had frequently crossed the line into civil disobedience. Now, Kolk began to speak. He told her about his father — who’d “disowned” him. He told her about his older brother — who’d been shot to pieces in Vietnam. He told her how he’d incurred the wrath of Sourland residents when he’d volunteered to speak at local high schools, explaining the “imperialist designs” fueling the Gulf War. He’d been arrested, “roughed up” by Grand Rapids cops, for picketing the army enlistment office there.

“And then —?”

“‘And then — ’ what?”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing happened then. As much as I’d expected.”

Sophie had finished the wine in her glass. Sophie felt her swollen lip throb with heat. Inside her clothes, the spider’s-bite rash pulsed and flamed.

He will touch me now. Now, it will happen.

Beneath the table the fat panting dog, that had been clambering about their feet through the meal, gave a sigh like a grunt and fell asleep.

Kolk poured the remainder of the wine into their glasses. He’d eaten twice as much as Sophie had eaten, and drunk even more. His skin exuded a ruddy heat, like the heat of Sophie’s swollen lip. She found that she’d been looking at the disfigured flesh of his jaw, the exposed teeth, without feeling repelled. Suddenly she wanted very badly to touch Kolk’s jaw — the soft melted-away scar tissue.

Kolk stiffened as if sensing Sophie’s thoughts.

The yearning between them. Like molten wax, dripping and shapeless.

Gently Sophie said, “Your — injury. It was an accident —?”

Kolk shrugged. Kolk’s face was flushed still, stiff.

Sophie said, uncertainly: “We’d heard about it — an accident. An explosion. We’d heard that you had been — killed.”

Kolk laughed. Possibly, Sophie had taken him by surprise.

“It was good, ‘believed dead.’ Nobody follows you there.”

Kolk lurched from the table to fetch a bottle of whiskey — Canadian Club. Without asking Sophie if she wanted any he poured the amber liquid into their emptied wineglasses. Not what Sophie’s fastidious husband would have done, this was an act of barbarism. Sophie laughed, and tasted the liquid. So strong! Sophie was not a drinker of whiskey, Scotch or gin; she was not a drinker at all; a single, small glass of wine was her limit.

In the shifting firelight Kolk’s ravaged face looked like the face of a devil reflecting flames. Sophie thought This is what the surviving spouse deserves. A demon missing half his face.

She wondered what it would be like to be kissed by a demon missing half his face. The teeth! — if only the teeth would not touch her.

Kolk drank, and Sophie drank. Kolk began to speak in a confiding manner. Sophie was curious, and moved. Sophie was eager to hear of Kolk’s life, that had been hidden from her. With an air of aggrieved irony Kolk spoke of the “accident” — the “explosion” — except there are “no accidents” in the universe. He spoke of the “logic” of history. Or was it the “illogic” of history — what has happened once, cannot happen again in quite that way. Yet, it cannot happen again in any way that is very different. Kolk spoke of the “great vision” of the 1960s and of the “betrayal of the vision” — the “revolution” — by its most fervent believers. He spoke of having sacrificed a “personal life” for — what? — so many years after the wreckage, it wasn’t clear what.

Sophie said, “But I had a personal life. And that, too, is gone.”

Kolk was leaning on his elbows, on the table. His forearms were dense with muscle, covered in wiry black hairs like an animal’s pelt. Yet his beard was a bristly steel-color, and the short tough quills on his scalp had no color at all. The young Jeremiah was trapped inside the older man, only his eyes were untouched, baffled and wary.

Kolk was confiding in Sophie, he’d never been arrested. He’d left the state of Wisconsin within hours of the explosion and he’d never returned. He’d broken off contact with his friends — not “friends” but “comrades” — yet not “comrades” either — really. For years he’d moved about the country working with his hands. Learning skills with his hands: carpentry, plastering, roofing. He drove trucks, he learned to operate bulldozers. He used chain saws. He’d lived in Alaska, and in Alberta; he’d worked in New Orleans, and Galveston; he’d never returned to his family’s farm but he’d returned to the Midwest, to northern Minnesota, which was very like his home, yet isolated. And no one knew where he was. Only Sophie knew where he was, and who he was. In the Sourland Preserve he helped maintain the trails, kept roads open in winter. He was a forest ranger on the lookout for fires, in times of drought. He helped search for lost hikers. He brought back the injured, he knew CPR. He could go days — weeks — at a stretch in this place of utter solitude without encountering anyone or speaking with anyone. More than once he’d found bodies on the trails, in high ground where hikers weren’t likely to go in the winter. After the start of the spring thaw, he found them. Men — all had been young men, in their twenties or thirties — who’d gone out deliberately into the wilderness, into the snow, to lose themselves, to lie down and sleep in the numbing cold. He’d found them, lying motionless on the ground, so utterly still, peaceful as statuary, their faces strangely beautiful — for no decomposition had yet set in.