A Place on Earth (Port William) (19 page)

He goes to the little toolshed under the oak tree, brings out a five-gallon bucket, which he upends against the face of the building, and sits
down. From there he can see perhaps half a mile of the little valley, from
the big woods in the slue hollows above the mouth of the creek to where
the creek bottom narrows at the upper end and turns out of sight. Up
the creek, among the trunks of leafless sycamores, he can see his and Ida's little girl Annie sitting midway of the swinging footbridge, wearing
a red coat. A brown and white feist named Speck is lying on the footplank beside her. She appears to be talking to it-playing something, he
supposes, but who can tell about a child? Since the rain quit shortly after
noon she has been outside with the dog, keeping to the good footing
along the road and the stepping-stones of the paths as Ida warned her to
do. Gideon has watched her, amused by her simple companionship with
the dog, pleased to see her out of the house after being so much shut in.
And for the last half hour he has watched the building up of a heavy
rainstorm over Port William and the upland to the north and west.

But for days now he has been used to rain, even used to the reflection
that he and the whole countryside are losing by it, and so the storm up
there does not break his peace. He is looking at the fields in the bottoms
in front of him. Empty of the last year's growth, awaiting the new season's crops, they seem to him to have the same serenity that he feels in
himself, the same poised free rest between one time and another. Above
the edge of the woods that cuts off his view downstream he can see
where the flood has broken over the creek banks, and the brown flat of
the backwater has begun to fan out a little over the bottom.

He takes off his boots and straightens his socks and pant legs and puts
the boots back on. And then he stands and, unbuttoning his work jacket
and loosening his pants, carefully straightens and tucks in the tail of his
shirt. He sits down again and makes and lights a cigarette. Behind him,
up on the hillside, his milk cows have started down through the thickets
toward the barn; he can hear the faint ringing of their bells. And from
half a dozen places comes the sound of water running through the rockchoked notches of the slopes.

And then he hears another sound, way off, like the hard whispering of
the approach of a strong wind. By the time he has thought what it is, he
can hear the bushes breaking under the weight and force of the water.
He is on his feet now, running along the slope in front of the house
toward the bridge. As he runs his mind knots in accusation against himself for not knowing sooner what he knows now.

`Annie! Come up here!"

He sees the girl look at him, turn and look back up the creek, and
with what seems to him a weighted slowness stand and take two steps toward the near end of the bridge. Strangely-he will think of this a
thousand times before he dies-she does not cry out. She just gets up
and starts toward him with the slowness of the sun moving.

The wall of water bursts into sight among the trees, the full sound of
it opening on Gideon like an unexpected explosion, though he knew it
was coming. And he stops running and stands still. As if in those few
running steps he left behind all that was comprehensible, Gideon stands
there useless, stripped of all but vision-the unbelievable taking place
before his eyes without bothering to become believable.

It hits the bridge. The cables and footboard tear loose at the near end,
flinging the girl and the dog up and outward and then down.

And now Gideon is standing at the edge of a turbulent swift river as
wide as the floor of the valley, the fields he was looking at a few seconds
ago no longer there. The muddy water sucking around his boots, he is
still looking up at the grove of trees, though he is already failing to know
exactly how the bridge looked.

He stands there another minute, the water drawing nearly to the tops
of his boots, hunting with his eyes over the wide surface of the water,
the miracle he is looking for instantly clear in his mind. That red coat
bright against the water. And then his mind bears up the remembrance
of the two of them as they were moments ago, absorbed in their pleasure, balanced in the path of doom, and still free of it. He should have
known.

Running again, he goes back up the slant of the ground toward the
toolshed. As he goes he notices that the shoreline now strikes almost
exactly midway of the length of the barn, the lower end of which has
been slapped clean off its foundation as if its timbers had been so many
straws. The water slides over his cropland, silent, muddy, a quarter of a
mile wide, keeping pace with him as he runs beside it; its flowing seems
already established, beyond thought of beginning or end. Even a serenity seems to be in it now, and to brood over the face of it.

At the toolshed he throws open the doors and goes in. Resting upside
down on a pair of carpenter's trestles in the center of the floor is a small
johnboat. He takes hold of the length of chain fastened to a ring on the
bow-end and drags the boat forward off the trestles and out the door.
Lifting the boat at the middle, his hands under the gunwale and then the bottom, he turns it over and over, rolling it down toward the edge of the
water. He works in great haste. He is not deterred by his instinctive
knowledge of the futility of what he is about to do. He works, maybe,
simply in obedience to a determination that he must not stay still-as if
to act now, even though it is too late, is the just consequence of his failure to act in time.

Leaving the boat balanced on the shoreline, he runs back to the shop
and brings a set of oars, shoving the boat out and leaping into it. As he
straightens up he sees Ida, bareheaded and bare-armed, running down
toward him from the house, calling out to him: "Gideon, where is she?
Where's Annie?" the weeping breaking suddenly up into the sound of
her voice; she knows as well as he does where Annie is. Looking at her,
moving away from her, he feels torn from her as he feels torn from
Annie. More than that, with all the force of self-hate, he feels ashamed
before her. He does not answer.

Before he can balance himself and turn and sit down and set the oars
into the locks, he is already a good way past the barn; the house and Ida
are out of sight. Thinking to combat somehow the power that has bereft
him, he sees now, he has only abandoned himself to it. There grows in
Gideon an awareness of the size of the thing that has taken him, the
hurtling muddy current, carrying the trash of slope and woods, riding
over his known place. He can smell it. He has failed again to consider
what he has known all his life. The hope or the sham of saving his child
is now replaced by the attempt to save himself.

The current is sweeping him rapidly down toward the woods. By the
time he has straightened the boat he has already covered half the distance, and is caught in a strong current at about the middle of the valley.
The boat is heavy and squarecut, dangerously clumsy in such water. Seeing that he cannot make shore this side of the woods, he turns the boat
around, so that he is facing the direction of the current, pushing the oars
rather than pulling. And now, working the boat as well as he can toward
the right-hand shore, he gives his main effort to guiding.

Holding the boat straight with the current, he plunges forward into
the woods, his speed appearing suddenly to quicken as the treetops
heighten and come over him. He crashes through the thicket growth at the margin and breaks in among the big trees, the current hurling and
sucking among the trunks. Problems, obstacles, dangers go out of sight
before he can move in answer to them. He notices only that he seems to
be carried ahead unobstructed for a remarkable length of time. And
then one of the forward corners of the boat strikes a tree. He sees it happening, braces himself, takes the jar, and more feels than sees the boat
hesitate, and turn, and continue turning as the current reclaims it and
carries it forward again. Now Gideon thinks only of getting the oars out
of the locks and into the bottom of the boat. Trunks and branches bear
down, turn, go by. And then a limb strikes him and sprawls him backwards. He lies perfectly still, his eyes open, the calves of his legs resting
across the seat. He does not move-because he cannot or because he
does not want to, he does not know which. He expects that at any second the boat will strike crossways of a tree and be broken or rolled
under. But he knows these things strangely now, without caring.

More quickly than he would have imagined, the sky clears of branches
and the forward motion of the boat seems to be subsiding. He feels building in him the unearned exhilaration of a man alive by luck, who has
gone by one of his deaths. Instantly he is on the seat and rowing again,
straining for the shore. Having failed in fighting for his life while it was in
danger, he will now fight for it when there is no need to. And suddenly
he seems to have reached some apex of absurdity. He sees all that has
happened to him stripped of reason or cause. He has been beaten by a
power larger than he can imagine, much less understand, and now he
comes out alive, not even by his own will, much less his own power. He
rows strongly across an eddy at the creek mouth, and drives the bow-end
of the boat onto the shore.

He steps out onto the mud and instinctively draws the chain out after
him and stoops to tie the boat to a tree. He built the boat himself, and his
pride clings to it. But this thought of his own doing immediately drives
into him the memory of Annie's two steps along the bridge; and in
repugnance and pain he flings the chain back into the boat, shoves it off
the shore with his foot, and leaves it for the current to take.

He has come undone. The reality of what has happened begins to
seem doubtful to him. He cannot be certain even of where he is in the joining of the two valleys, which are changed beyond recognition. He
turns and begins running heavily through the sodden mud of a cornfield, which dips out of sight under the water at his right hand.

It takes him a good hour and a half, in spite of his hurry, to get back, circling the in-reachings of the backwater.

Not long before dusk he steps around the upper corner of the barn,
past his cows waiting to be milked-seeing them, regretting his neglect
of them, forgetting them almost in the same thought-and stops below
the oak tree where he started. His own tracks there seem to him unbelievably fresh. He stands, looking down at them. The darkening water
flows high and quiet through the grove where the bridge used to swing.

He turns and starts up toward the toolshed. His direction and even his
hurry are the same as when he went up to get the oars. His sense of this
similarity is so powerful that for a moment he feels caught and confused,
as if the first time was a dream, or he is dreaming now. But this time he
turns toward the house. He goes through the gate and up the slope of
the yard and around to the back porch.

Hearing his footsteps on the porch, Ida comes out of the kitchen. She
has thrown around her shoulders an old jacket of his that she wears to
do her chores.

"She's dead, ain't she, Gideon? She's drowned."

Her voice breaks on the last words. But she remains dry-eyed and
erect, and continues to face him.

His own voice is even and steady, but he hears himself speak as
though he is another person standing a few feet away.

"Hush now, Ida. You go on back in the house now."

It is the gently commanding tone of a parent speaking to a child, and
to his surprise she minds him.

But when he has taken the lantern down and filled it at the coal-oil
barrel behind the smokehouse, Ida comes back out, not wearing the coat
this time, her bare arms folded against the chill.

"Gideon, don't you want to eat? I'll have supper ready before long."

Her voice seems to him now to have the stillness and solemnity of voices in the presence of death. He sees, through the door she has left
standing half open behind her, that the meal is on the stove, and he is
touched. But he cannot eat now. Again when he speaks he does not know
what his voice will sound like, and again, almost without any attempt on
his part to control it, it reveals no feeling except kindness.

"No, Ida. No, I don't want anything right now, sweet."

He runs down the slope of the yard, the lantern swinging and rattling
in his hand. He has not heard the kitchen door close. He believes that Ida
is still standing in the open door as he left her, unable for the moment to
turn and face the meal that nobody will eat. But he cannot go back. He
does not stop.

The rain has started again. He does not know when it began. The
water is beading on his hat brim. It is raining steadily on all the darkening countryside.

Before long it is dark. For a while there is a grey mirage of twilight,
which shifts and tilts over the surface of the water. And then that goes.
The surface of the water becomes soft, absorbent, drawing the darkness
into it, fusing with the air at some indeterminable distance from the
shore.

He does not light the lantern, unable to bear the confinement of his
vision. And he gives up the attempt to hurry. In daylight his compulsion
was to run, as though if Annie were still alive, she would most likely be
somewhere ahead of him. But in the dark his impulse is to go slowly and
quietly, listening, afraid now that she is alive within his hearing and that
he will go by without hearing her. He will save the lantern for when he
needs it.

Before he has walked an hour he is wet to the waist, his matches sodden and useless in his pocket. The lantern swings in his hand, lifeless.

The difficulty of the going is enormous, the ground sloping, slick,
and uneven. Feeling his way ahead, tensed against the darkness and his
failure by now to have any idea where he is, he falls repeatedly. A number
of times he slips down feet first into the water, clawing the mud with his
free hand, and then has to crawl up the slope on all fours and take off his
boots to pour the water out.