Strange Seed (20 page)

The crowds.
 
They had been, she reflected, one of the reasons she hadn’t given Paul a harder time when he’d announced his plans to move to the house.
 
She could have flatly refused; it might have worked, though it would have done irreparable damage to their new marriage.
 
But the crowds.
 
What was it about the great masses of New Yorkers that unsettled her more than other crowds did?
 
Their aloofness?
 
That was part of it.
 
And their very numbers.
 
Or, on second thought, perhaps not.
 
Perhaps it was more their aloofness than their numbers.
 
It was an aloofness that was as if, as New Yorkers—outside their apartment and homes—in the midst of, a part of, or, more correctly, pieces of that creature called New York City, their existence was designed to sustain it, to nourish it.
 
Individuals did not exist in any crowd, but, in New York the crowd
was
the individual.

And what of the crowds here at the house?
 
Around it.

She remembered a Sunday early in spring that she and Paul had left New York and had driven several hundred miles to a little park near Albany.
 
They had supposed that because it was a cool day, and overcast, the park would be theirs alone, until they saw the cars, and the couples moving slowly over the park lawns, in and out of the woods, some with newly procured walking sticks in hand.
 
Still, they thought, there was enough of the park that they’d be able to find a place somewhere that the people, and the sounds of the people, would be behind them.

They walked, avoiding the paths, carefully through thickets, up and down small wooded hills, until they found themselves at a shallow odorless swamp.
 
They paused there.
 
Listened.
 
Nothing.
 
It was a good spot.
 
Who, after all, would avoid the paths, as they had done?
 
It was a perfect spot, free, even, of the occasional beer can or cigarette butt common to the most secluded areas of all parks.

And then they heard the shouting of some anxious mother whose child had apparently wandered beyond her control.
 
They looked.
 
The woman was at the top of a high ridge behind them.
 
“Have you seen,” the woman called, and went on to describe her son.

There had been a lesson in that, Rachel thought.
 
Something trite about the encroachment of civilization—that no matter how unspoiled, how wild a place might be, it was wild and unspoiled only because man decreed that it should be that way.
 
If he should decree otherwise…

And what of the crowds here at the house?
 
Crowds?
 
The children?
 
Lumas (who, though dead, still occupied the land)?
 
The children did not constitute a crowd.
 
That was silly
 
They were…a part of this place, a part of this creature, just as New Yorkers were a part of the creature called New York.
 
In New York, she was a trespasser.
 
And here, too.
 
But there was a difference.
 
Numbers didn’t matter.
 
Numbers only…

Paul had stopped working.

She sat bolt upright in the chair, listened.
 
She heard, for the first time, the breeze moving over the house, but not that hideous scraping noise of the shovel.

And, she knew, she hadn’t heard it for some time.

She stood, ran to the bedroom window, pushed the curtain aside, looked out.
 
She had been sure that was where he’d been-beyond this window, close to the house.
 
The scrape of a shovel, like the noise of a rake on hard earth, is a very directional thing.

She listened again.
 
Maybe Paul had merely decided on some other spot, further away from the house.
 
Maybe he knew that the noise his awful work produced was putting her on edge…

She listened hard.
 
Heard only the breeze buffeting the house, the cat tearing about in the upstairs hallway.

And then a sharp, metallic, whumping sound—the car’s hood being slammed shut.
 
As if in anger.

She hesitated: perhaps the sound had not been that at all, perhaps it been something else.
 
But she could think of nothing else that would approximate it.

Before she reached the front porch she knew what Paul would tell her.
 
And how she would react.
 
How she
had
—as her role, or because there was always a question, a doubt, a chance—to react.

He was coming down the lawn from the car when he saw her appear on the front steps.

“Bad news,” he said, an embarrassed grin on his face.

Rachel saw that he was holding something in his hand.
 
He held it up.
 
“It’s part of the fuel line,” he said.
 
He was within a couple yards of her.

She looked incredulously at the thick, short, black rubber hose.
 
He bent it to expose a slit running at right angles to the length of the hose.
 
“It’s worn all to hell,” he said.

“Can you fix it, Paul?”

He studied the hose a moment, shrugged, said, “I don’t know.
 
Maybe.
 
If I can find some plastic tape, it might work till we get to town.
 
And it might not.
 
I don’t know.”
 
He shoved the hose into the right pocket of his denim jacket.

“Can we…walk, Paul?”

“Into town?
 
Why should we?
 
I’ll get the damned thing fixed tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Early.
 
Weather permitting.”
 
A pause.
 
“You might as well get a fire started in there.
 
It’s getting cold.”
 
He nodded at the house.

“So we’re going to stay.”
 
It was more a statement than a question.

“Only long enough to get the car fixed, I promise, Rachel.
 
No longer than that.”
 
A pause.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
These things happen, I guess.”

She sighed.
 
“Yes, I guess they do.”

He looked questioningly at her a second, then started around the side of the house.
 
“I’ll be finished in an hour or so,” he called over his shoulder.

Mundane things—pots, pans, silverware.
 
Cream-colored plates with simple blue borders.
 
Living things—things to live with, to store away in cupboards, to display, if they were attractive enough, if there was a place to display them.
 
And, if so, they brightened a place up, if the place needed it, and if the colors were right.

“I don’t know—it might be a few days, Rachel.
 
There’s some bad weather coming and I’d hate to try that damned road…”

A mundane thing—bad weather.
 
And cozying up inside an old house to be away from it.

“Why don’t you…” she began, but did not continue.
 
Ferreting out a lie.
 
A mundane thing.
 
Simple ability.

Living was a mundane thing.

“That box in the car; I’ll bring it in.
 
We’re going to have to eat, you know.”

Cream-colored plates on end, all in a line.
 
It made a house a home.
 
And pots and pans, ugly as they were, hung again from ugly nails, so nicely utilitarian.

“We’ll be calling this place home a little while longer, I’m afraid, Rachel.
 
Not too long, I promise.”
 

Promises.

“Might as well bring the blankets in, too, I guess.”

And the pillows.

“And the pillows.”

Warm beds and a warm fire and cream-colored plates all in a line.

“I hate it, Rachel.
 
Keeping you here like this.
 
I really do.
 
But it can’t be helped, can it?”

“If you say so, Paul.”

“Well, yes”—big apologetic smile—“I do.
 
I’m sorry.”

Ferreting out a lie.
 
It was easy enough.
 
Easier than building one.
 
That was the balance of a lie.

“How’s this, Paul?”
 
Point smilingly at the cream-colored plates all in a line.
 
Help him build the lie.

“Looks nice.
 
You should have done that before.
 
It brightens the place up.”

Love was a mundane thing.
 
So was trust.
 
Trust was very much like the cream-colored plates.
 
Trust was simple and beautiful and…

“Lock up, Rachel.
  
I’ll probably be gone till after dark.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out there.”
 
A nod to indicate the forest.

“Why, Paul?”

“Why?
 
Well, you know why, now don’t you?
 
I

mean—“

“Do what you think you have to do, Paul.”

“Yes, I intend to.”

Sweep the cream-colored plates to the floor.
 
They spend a long time breaking.
 
Whole minutes.
 
Long, noisy, satisfying minutes.

*****

He’d prefer New York now to this.
 
He hadn’t thought he would—ever.
 
Long ago, he’d reflected that the winter might strand them at the house for days, weeks, but it would be preferable to an ugly New York City winter.

He’d forgotten the rifle.
 
To hell with it.
 
What would he do with it, anyway?
 
And he hadn’t actually forgotten it, only thought, at that moment, that he might need it, that he should have brought it along.
 
But to hell with it.

Rachel
knew.
 
Well, she thought she knew, she
said
she knew.
 
He should have pressed her on it.
 
But to what purpose?
 
Let her know.
 
It probably comforted her to think she saw through him.

What drives you?
 
Had he whispered the words?
 
Impossible.
 
He would have heard—

This is torture for her.
 
That was another voice; the voice of conscience.
 
Let it speak.
 
This will destroy her, destroy her for you, destroy your marriage.
 
Let the voice play itself out.

It was played out.

“Goddamn!”
 
He’d said that, he realized.
 
It was okay.
 
Curses were okay.
 
(Had it been one of his uncles, a relative, anyway, who, after a stroke, could utter only curses?
 
That was interesting.
 
There was some primal truth in that.
 
As pathetic and as laughable as it was.
 
All primal truths were like that.
 
Maybe all truths, by their nature as truths, were primal.
 
He loved Rachel, for instance.
 
But to the point of altruism?
 
That much?
 
Did anyone love anyone that much?
 
He would willingly sacrifice his life for her.
 
Because, it was obvious, there were some things more important to him than his life.
 
But he would also sacrifice both their lives if something moved him strongly enough.

What was he thinking?
 
What did all that
mean
?
 

He cursed again, deep in his throat.
 
“Shit!”
 
The word carried out to several seconds, a curse on his thoughts, something to make them vapid.

The gun—he should have brought the goddamned gun.

*****

Maybe that poor dead girl, Rachel thought, had been the last of them, the last of the line, the last of…the family.
 
She grinned, despite herself.
 
The “family”—a family of children.
 
It was less than ludicrous.

The last of them, anyway.
 
She’d been the fourth.
 
Four.
 
A good round number.
 
Easily managed and easily imagined.
 
She imagined four bright lights on the black backdrop of her consciousness.
 
Easy enough.
 
Five?
 
A little harder.
 
And six—two groupings of three, easier than five.
 
Seven.
 
Eight.
 
Nine.
 
Ten.
 
It broke down at eleven, burred, required too much shifting, too much uncertainty.
 
Ten was her limit.
 
It was a good game.