The Seasons Hereafter (39 page)

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked as if merely interested.

“No,” he said. “I'm going to kill the whoremaster who came in and busted up my home. It wasn't much of a home, but it was getting to be better. No, I ain't killing you. I figger you don't know right from wrong the way you should, never having a mother and all. But he's a Bennett! He's got no call to bust in and steal another man's woman.”

“He didn't lug me off and rape me.”

“It's the same thing. He come in and dazzled you. He's one of the big Bennetts. Big in every way, huh?” He leered. “Worth laying down for? Better than little old Barry? Well, we'll see who's better now.”

He went into the sitting room and she heard him lift the rifle down. “You've got no shells,” she called.

“Who said so?” He came out carrying it and laid it on the table between them. His face was now very red. “You don't know everything about me.” He started for the stairs, then came back and picked up the rifle, giving her a crafty smile. “I'd better take good care of my old friend here. You're likely to heave her overboard while my back's turned. Don't want me to shoot your fancy man, do ye?”

“He's not my fancy man,” she said wearily. “It's over. I only told you so you'd know they were people, not gods. The way you worship them turns my stomach.”

“Ayuh? Well, my stomach's turned now.”

“So much that you'd kill somebody and go to Thomaston for life?”

“It'll be easier than living in the same world with you and him, knowing he's touched you and you liked it. You're my wife! When you told me I had to marry you I was glad and proud. Even when I found out there wasn't any kid, I figgered, well, I had you, and never mind what the rest of 'em said. And sure, I know you didn't want me to touch you, plenty of times, but one thing I could always brag about when somebody give me a sad story about his wife getting it somewhere else—I was sure of you. You had class. Now it turns out you just couldn't find anybody you thought was good enough for you. Till you met up with the Bennetts.”

He ran up the stairs and she heard him slamming around in his room. Then there was quiet, and she heard the tiny clicking sounds that went with filling the clip, sliding it into the rifle, and jacking a shell into the chamber. All at once the whole business became real; it was entirely possible that he would do what he set out to do.

She slid out the back door just as he came down the stairs again, and dived like a seal through the alders. Where was Kathy all this time? If she saw Barry with the gun, looking as he did, she'd forget about Gina soon enough, and the whole thing would be out. She shut her eyes for a moment, until Barry shouted “Hey!” from somewhere behind her. Then she ran again, finding the track among the thin growth of spruces, remembering thankfully that Laurie and the schoolchildren were at Brigport.

Out in the field the path was a pale streak diagonally crossing toward the barn at Hillside. If Helen Campion should look out her pantry window now she'll have a shock, she thought. The rites of spring on Bennett's Island. Sacred fires last night and human sacrifice today. She kept running and Barry ran behind her, shouting. She didn't get any of the words as they came in fragments like showers of pebbles flung hard.

At the corner of the barn her aching lungs and burning throat stopped her. She waited for him there, leaning against the old shingles. The day was gray but over warm, and she wanted to lie down in the lush cool grass and never get up again.

“Trying to warn him, huh?” Barry said.

I don't want him, I told you. And neither of us is worth your going to prison for. Barry, I'm sorry,” she said tiredly. “I'm sorry for all the bad ways I've been to you. Let's go home.”

“You still don't get it, do ye?” he asked with patronizing patience. “He's touched you. He's had you. I'm going to kill him.”

“You're not a killer, Barry.”

“You don't know what I am,” he told her with that smile, and she was forced to agree. The only thing to do was to try to keep ahead of him; if Owen wasn't in the house, he'd be at the fishhouse, and if he was on his way around to the harbor in his boat Barry might work off his insanity before he could run Owen down. The thought that he might work it off on her was a refreshing one. She was so tired, she could ask for nothing better than oblivion, short and sweet, in the back of the head. To fall into the thick grass and stay.

She began to walk around the barn. They didn't have cows now, but chickens scattered away with her with an exasperated clucking. Two large cats watched, unstartled, from the open barn door. Against the woods a large vegetable garden had been started, and all along the back of the long white house there were early daffodils and tulips. The yard lay in silence except for the talk of the chickens as Barry, coming behind her, dispersed them again.

She had never been here. This was where he was father and husband, the stranger. She stood staring at the white clapboards, trying to think. She had not seen him face to face since the day at Ship Cove, and now her mouth dried not only with fear but with an anticipation that had nothing to do with Barry and the gun, or anything else that had happened this afternoon. Barry came up beside her and said breathily, “He can't lay you when he's dead.”

Without looking at him, still staring at the house, she said, “Barry, it was hardly anything. It would never happen again. It wasn't anything we'd want to keep going.” But she knew that the words were wrong, the “we” lacerated him deeply.

“Owen!” he bawled at the house. “Come out here!”

She wanted to cry, “No, stay in!” but she couldn't raise her voice. Could she turn to Barry now, cry, abase herself, hug his knees, beg him to drop the gun? Would the granting of this give him enough self-esteem to last his lifetime? There was no time to find out. Owen appeared at the screen door of the ell. He had a glass in his hand.

“Well, well,” he said, coming out. He squinted at Barry and the rifle. Then he swallowed something he had in his hand, drank from the glass and set it down on the doorstep, and came across the grass to them.

“I'm going to kill you, Cap'n Owen,” Barry said. He had begun to tremble as if with chills.

“What for?”

“You know. She told me.”

“That so?” He lifted an eyebrow toward Van. “Chatterbox, isn't she? Go home, Barry. You like it here, you make money. I'm not worth half a life in state prison, and neither is she. She'd still be out and you'd be in. So who wins?”

“But you wouldn't be walking this earth, you fornicating son of a bitch. I'd wake up laughing at that every day. Prison'd be worth it. And she could think how you looked lying dead, and how
she
really did it because she told me.” His laughter cracked. “And I wouldn't believe her at first! I kept begging, pleading with her to say she was lying. I never thought a Bennett would do anything like that, see?” He shifted the gun around, cradling it in his arm, and released the safety.

“You forget something, son,” said Owen. “I've not admitted anything yet. She could be lying in her teeth.”

Van could feel the waves of uncertainty that stopped Barry, and the passion of his longing to believe she had lied. She looked past the men, on by the syringa and lilacs past the corner of the house, down the road toward the schoolhouse. The yard was empty, and the flag hung limp from the pole under a heavy sky.

“They're coming back,” she lied. Both men looked quickly that way. She grabbed the rifle barrel and thrust it up. Barry resisted at once, and the gun fired, the shot going toward the roof of the house. A gull flapped away from the chimney with an offended squawk. As Van and Barry struggled with the rifle between them, their faces close together in a deadly intimacy, she thought how strange his looked, contorted into a sort of frozen leer. Neither spoke. He was stronger, and suddenly he wrenched the rifle away from her; but as he did so, Owen reached them and swept her away with one arm. He knocked Barry down, the rifle flew out of his hands, and he collapsed in the grass, over on his side and unconscious. Owen picked up the rifle, took out the clip, and put it in his pocket.

Vanessa walked away around the far corner of the house, facing the sea. She wished she could keep on going, out over the end of Windward Point, but instead she had to lean against the clapboards and concentrate on not vomiting. Owen came up behind her.

“Why did you tell him?” he asked very quietly.

“Why do you think? He worships you all, he goes on and on. And I— I can't get away!” She was going to blubber without shame, she thought. “I tried to get him to shoot
me
. He wouldn't. Nothing works.”

He took her by the shoulders and turned her to him, holding her off and looking into her face, not angrily but with a deep-seamed tiredness that she couldn't bear as well as she could have endured rage. “I don't want you to die,” he said. “You're young. No matter what you think, you've got a life.”

“I had a life for a few weeks. You were it. Oh, damn my nose.” He let go with one hand and pulled out a handkerchief. She grabbed it fiercely and mopped her eyes and blew her nose. “He's right. All he says about the Bennetts. . . . I mean about you. There couldn't be anyone else after you. I've had my life and it's over, it ends the way I got it, with nothing.” She sounded as tired as he looked, she couldn't have screamed or raged because there was nothing left to do with it. “I didn't tell him anything about us. The island up there, and about—” She had no words. “Oh, about anything
real
. I made him think it was just something cheap and fly-by-night. He was going on about how perfect you all were. I had to shut him up somehow. And now he thinks I'm a tramp, but I don't care.”

They both leaned wearily against the house. The eastern sea was a solid gray mass, but somewhere Jessup's Island floated in a globe of summertime; the birds would eat the field strawberries as they ripened. Suddenly a gasping cry was wrung from her. “I don't want you to die! I thought at first if I couldn't have you I didn't want her to have you either, but she can have you if you'll just stay alive. I can't stand to think of you dead.”

“Nor I you,” he said. “So don't do it.”

“I won't,” she promised. She put her hand on his face. “And you be careful. Don't go getting reckless and trying to speed things up.” He lowered his head quickly and made a muffled sound in his throat. She felt his mouth against her fingers and then, as if they had both heard the shuffling footsteps in the grass, they were standing apart when Barry came unsteadily around the corner. He looked at them from watery, bloodshot eyes, supporting himself with a hand against the wall.

“Are you ready to go home?” she asked him in a flat tone.

“
You
!—the both of ye—” He began to swear again, and Owen cut that off.

“Look,” he said. “Nobody but us three has to know what went on here this afternoon. Sure, it's hell, but it's not the first time it's happened to anybody and it's not the last, and folks manage to survive. You can go home, and tomorrow we'll act like it never happened. Ten years from now you'll be sure it never happened. You'll have a kid or two in the school and a big boat in the harbor, and today'll be a bad dream.”

“You mean if I crawl on my knees to you like that poor fool Willy and apologize for myself and my slut of a wife, I can stay?”

“Philip's the only one who can fire you.” She had never known him to be so quiet. She remembered that he had swallowed something as he came out to them, and she wondered if he were feeling those warning sensations in his chest and arm; if this afternoon killed him, her promise wouldn't be binding any more. She stood apart from the men and stared at that thick motionless sea. “Your wife's not a slut and don't ever call her that again where I can hear you. . . . You don't owe any apologies. It's the other way around.
I
apologize. That suit ye? Now, by God, the both of you put for home, and the next time I think I see a good thing, I'll make damn' sure she knows how to keep her mouth shut.”

“Ayuh, you didn't make much a fetch of it this time, Cap'n Owen. Didn't show much sense.” There was a tremor in his blurred voice; he was beginning to weaken, to be won again. She knew it with neither relief nor disgust, only exhaustion. In time he would forgive her; it would come all the more quickly because a Bennett was involved. “Well, I'll get my shooting iron and go home,” said Barry. “But by Jesus nobody'll knock it out of my hand the next time. I'll lay in the bushes and pick the pimp off when he goes by, whoever he is. You hear that, Annie?”

She didn't answer. “She's right, she ain't worth going to Thomaston for,” he said almost jauntily. “But I married her, and if I hadn't got kicked out of my own home for it, I'd never have ended up out here. And I figger on staying, even if I have to lock her in when I go to haul.”

Neither spoke. She thought, He thinks we're standing here humbly before him, ashamed and foolish. Well, I suppose it's owed him. She began to walk away, out around Barry and across the yard toward the barn. Under the low cloud ceiling there was a magnified beat of engines coming up Long Cove, and children's voices raised above them.

She knew without looking around that Barry was following her, and she wondered if Owen were standing by the house watching them go, or if he had already gone inside or down toward his workshop. The desire to look back almost overcame her, but she kept on around the barn and found the path across the field.

One thing she knew; she was more tired than she had ever been in her life, but in all this it had not once occurred to her that her mind might fly apart. I'll never go insane, she thought. Even if I wanted to, even if it was the only way out, it would never happen, and it was never about to happen. Whatever became of my mother doesn't touch me. She left me because she was scared or silly, maybe a mean little imbecile like Gina or a sweet and trusting one, and she was wiped out years ago like a kitten crossing a highway. A child who never lived to be as old as her daughter was now.