The Hermit's Story (11 page)

They climbed up on top of it. With his hands, Russell showed Sissy where to sit to stay out of the way of the handle, and by pulling as hard as he could, he was able to slowly make the first downward stroke on the mechanism, breaking it free of years of rust and sleep. The tracks were rusted, as were the steel wheels and axles of the little flatcar itself; but once he got that first downward stroke, the second stroke came easier. The flatcar seemed to lift slightly, and tighten and tense—as did Russell, on the third stroke, down, and the fourth, up.

The boxcar began to inch along, moving no faster than an old man walking crookedly. Slivers and flakes of orange rust, unseen by them, but scented, began to fall from the flatcar.

A slight breeze stirred her hair and cooled her sweat-damp skin. A lone spark tumbled from the front wheels. Sissy could feel the radiant heat from Russell's work—she sat on the other end of the flatcar across from him, so that it was as if she were on the bow of a ship—and slowly, the breeze increased. It swirled her hair in front of her face, and passed cool beneath her arms. She listened to the groaning resistance of the rusty tracks beneath them—a sound like a cat yowling—and wished that she could see him.

More sparks began to spill from the steel wheels, trickling but then pouring from the wheels, so that the lower half of the tunnel, as well as the lower half of each of their bodies, was periodically illuminated as if by orange firelight.

Their passage became easier, faster, and the shower of sparks increased proportionately, her hair swirling all around her and the rooster tail of sparks rising higher around them, revealing in flickering orange light the cave walls; up past their waists, and then past their chests, and then the orange pulses of spark-light rose higher still.

The spray of light rose above their shoulders and finally their faces, so that now all of them was illuminated, as if they had been painted or even created by that light, and by the thunderous noise. As the cave walls raced past, they caught occasional glimpses of old artifacts from the other world: busted out carbon lamps, and pickaxes leaning fifty years against the walls as if the miners had stepped away for only a moment.

They were traveling thirty, forty miles an hour. Sissy leaned forward, peered intently into the onrushing darkness, unable to see beyond the sparks. It was if they were surrounded by a cage of sparks, fire bouncing all around them and leaving glowing ingots in their wake.

Sissy looked back at him—in his feverish, nearly demonic pumping, he seemed to be orange-afire, and as he looked down at her watching him, she seemed calmly likewise—and now the flatcar, the mechanics of its gearings and the momentum of its mass, entered some kind of glide.

The tunnel reverberated and the mountain sang, glowing with traces and movements of life once more—such a roar that it was as if they were gnawing or carving or even blasting their way out of the mountain; and as they hurtled onward, fearless of unseen brick walls or plunge-caverns below, swept by reckless frenzy and daring, Sissy had the slightly troubling feeling (despite her grin, as she leaned out into that black wind) that she was leaving something behind.

Russell was finally beginning to tire. He was slowing down, pumping only three or four times a minute, letting the cart glide and then slowing it to a coast.

A button of light appeared before them. They were confused, not knowing whether the light was above them, or directly ahead of them, or even below: they could no longer be sure now, save for the faint tugging of gravity, which way was up and which down.

As Russell slowed the cart further, the fountain of sparks fell lower, the wall of light fading from their waists and their thighs, until finally the flatcar was drifting so slowly that only their feet were illuminated by occasional bouncing crumbs of orange light.

Russell's body was lathered with sweat; the cart coasted to a complete stop. His heart pounding as wildly as if he had a badger trapped in his chest, he lay down, trembly-legged, on top of Sissy, nestled in to the fit of her, laying his big head on her stomach, and rested. He was so hot that it seemed he might burn her.

They lay there for a long time. Sissy had the thought that he might harden in his cooled position as he slept, like something molten cast from a forge. She licked the dried salt from the hollow of his neck, then licked his chest, to awaken him, fearful that the button of light would disappear, and that they would not be able to find it again.

He sat up, stiff, and spit out a little blood, which he could taste but not see. He coughed again—splashed another spray of it across the walls, unseen—the silicosis, the lung-lattice of scars, clenching within him as his body realized where he was once again, as if in an allergic reaction.

They rested a while longer and then climbed down from the flatcar and began walking toward the light, once more holding hands. It was all she could do to keep from dropping his hand and racing toward that light.

The wind coming from behind them grew stronger closer to the cave's exit. Sissy leaned forward—the dull light bright enough now for them to see vaguely the pale dull outlines of each other's bodies—the ball of light was the size of a melon, and so close; again, she wanted to drop his hand and run—but Russell wanted to make love again, there at the edge of light, and so with a strange reluctance she let him pull her down to where he was sitting on the tracks, on the bed of ore. She was too sore to take him so he worked between her legs, and around the shape of her; as he kissed her, she could taste the blood, could scent the odor of it coming from his lungs, and when he had finished, his concluding tremors lured his lungs into another paroxysm of blood-spray, so that he was barely able to pull away in time, and heaved the mist of blood-spray across her back rather than into her mouth.

They lay in silence a short while—he apologized; she said nothing, only squeezed his hand.

They got up and walked on toward the light, the blood sticky across both of them. Sissy could taste the clean air. It seemed that a rain shower had passed during the time they had been beneath the mountain—there was that smell in the air, as well as the scent of flowers and wild strawberries—and the sunlight looked washed, scrubbed.

The opening was now its full size, its full self. The light was fully upon them. Sissy was afraid Russell would want to pull her down yet again, but instead he followed her out into the sunlight where the tracks ended. They turned around and looked up at the forested mountain above them, having no idea where they were. Sissy felt like weeping, so strange and beautiful was the sight of the real world.

They studied each other for the first time in the full light of late afternoon: blood and semen splattered, red grit and coal-dust caked, wild haired, but beautiful to each other.

They bathed by wading through the brush, which was still wet from the afternoon's shower. They scrubbed themselves with leafy green branches, then began walking carefully on bare feet through the woods, contouring around the mountain, hoping to somehow stumble across the piles of their clothes.

The sunlight seemed different—as if they had been gone for months, so that now they had emerged into a different season; or that perhaps they had been gone for centuries, even millennia, so that the tilt and angle of things was slightly different—the sunlight casting itself against the earth in some ancient or perhaps newer pattern.

They moved through the bronze light carefully, searching for where they had been. They could hear no roads below. They passed beneath sun-dappled canopy, through beams and columns of gold-green light where the sun poured down through sweetgum, beech, oak, and hickory. They could taste the green light on their bodies. It was a denser, more humid light—almost as if they were moving around underwater. Sissy saw that Russell was becoming aroused yet again—that he was like some kind of monster, in this regard—and she hurried into a trot, only half-playing, to stay ahead of him.

Later in the afternoon, they found a patch of wild strawberries and crawled through them on their hands and knees, sometimes plucking the tiny wild berries but other times bending down and grazing them straight from the plants.

They kept contouring around the mountain. They surprised a doe and fawn, who jumped up from their day bed and stood staring at them for the longest time before finally flagging their tails and cantering off into the woods.

***

The pieces of the puzzle began to come together slowly. They heard the faint sound of a road. They found a skein of rock, an outcropping, similar to one they had seen earlier in the day. They followed the strike of it a little farther up the mountain, believing themselves to be too low. The sound of the highway grew closer, disturbingly monotonous and familiar, yet they moved toward it, knowing their clothes to be somewhere in that vicinity, and when they finally found them, having come full circle around the little mountain, they sat down on a boulder in the last angle of light and stared for a while at their crumpled and folded clothes, not wanting to climb back into them, and they studied the cleft, the passage, beneath which so much had happened.

They marveled at the notion that if, or when, they walked away from it, the memory of it would be held bright and strong within them for a long time, but that after a longer time—after they were gone—the memory would begin to fade and lithify until it was all but forgotten, invisible: that even an afternoon such as that one could become dust.

They dressed only because they had to and walked slowly down toward the sound of the road. Soon they could catch the glimpses of cars, colored flecks of metal, racing past on the road below, caught in glimpses between the limbs and leaves of the trees. Their own car, with the green canoe atop, waiting as if resting, ready to rejoin the unaltered flow of things. Descending, again.

J
ERRY AND KAREN WERE
two weeks shy of their seventeenth wedding anniversary when an acquaintance of Jerry's, Jim, called to say that he had fallen down while splitting wood and detached a retina, losing sight in one eye. He had driven himself to the emergency clinic, where he had been referred to an eye specialist in Spokane, four hours away. Jim had been an officer in the navy but was retired now; he was forty-eight. He was old-school, unaccustomed to and uncomfortable asking for anyone else's help. On his drive to Spokane, the retina had occasionally shifted back into a rough approximation of its proper position and, for a few seconds, Jim would again be able to see out of that injured eye, a vague haze of gray-white light, before everything went black again.

In Spokane, the examining surgeon, a twenty-year navy man himself, Dr. Le Page, had canceled the ski trip he'd planned with his teenage son to perform the emergency reattachment surgery. Unable to find a nurse on such short notice—it was Presidents' Day—he'd had his son fill in, still attired in his bright skiwear, complete with bob-tasseled jester's hat.

That had been four days ago, and Jim was supposed to lie on his back several hours of each day, perfectly still, while the retina, that thin filter between the brain and the outside world, tried to reattach itself to the back of the eyeball. Because Dr. Le Page forbade Jim to drive, Jim was calling to see if Jerry might be able to run him back over to Spokane for his first checkup to see if the retina had fully attached. Dr. Le Page had told Jim that there was 895 percent chance that everything would be all right and they'd be able to turn around and head right back home.

Jerry was surprised, and slightly flattered, that Jim had asked him for help. He told Jim he'd check with Karen but, although he didn't tell Jim, he suspected Karen would fall out of her seat in her eagerness to get him out of the house.

If their story was not the most ancient in the world, it had to be running a close second: the end of love. The flat water where the shore is no longer visible, and where all wind leaves the sails, and the sun hangs overhead for days, without moving, in a bright burning haze, a searing ball of light, nothing more. A place where both will and navigation fail, as does the imagination, and where the two sailors, the two castaways, finally have no choice—none—but to turn upon each other: a place where each has finally become the other's prisoner.

One sailor—suppose he is a man much like Jerry—rides in the bow, and in the doldrums' heat feels as if he is burning at the stake. He turns in the seat of the little boat and tries to speak to the other sailor—she might be a woman much like Karen—but it is as if no sound comes from his mouth, or if it does; as if the words fall into some chasm before they ever reach her, across even that short distance.

Suppose that a hundred, or ten thousand lashes, however faint or light each one might be on its own, have mounted across the years: ten thousand little lashes or harshnesses or taking-for-granted ignorings, for every one small and dwindling kindness. Will you fold the newspaper more neatly when you're done with it, can't you do anything right? Why must you lift the lid of a pot on the stove to see what's cooking when it should be evident to anyone with any intelligence by the damned odor alone that I'm cooking rice, and that it's sitting there steaming, as it needs to do, and that now you've let all the steam out? And,
goddammit,
you bought the wrong kind of milk at the grocery store,
I told you to get the one percent with the blue label at the top, not the fucking one and a half percent with the red label! Don't you pay attention to anything, can't you observe what's in the refrigerator each day?

Panicked, the one sailor stares at his attacker, his critic.
We're stranded on open water,
he wants to whisper,
we've got to pull together
—but mid-sea, she can no longer hear or even see him, and instead stares right through and past him. The man—yes, certainly, it is Jerry, and perhaps he is not the only one—continues to feel that he is burning at the stake; he is filled with despair that she is wasting the moment, wasting the last moments.