Collected Stories Page 4

  But there’s a lot of duplicity in those Poroths-and I don’t mean just religious hypocrisy, either. Came out here after watching the news, and though I hate to accuse anyone of spying on me, there’s no doubt that Sarr or Deborah has been inside this room today. I began tonight’s entry with great irritation because I found my desk in disarray; this journal wasn’t even put back in the right drawer. I keep all my pens on one side, all my pencils on another, ink and erasers in the middle, etc., and when I sat down tonight I saw that everything was out of place. Thank God I haven’t included anything too personal in here… What I assume happened was that Deborah came in to wash the mildew off the walls-she’s mentioned doing so several times, and she knew I’d be in town part of the day-and got sidetracked into reading this, thinking it must be some kind of secret diary. (I’m sure she was disappointed to find that it’s merely a literary journal, with nothing about her in it.)

  What bugs me is the difficulty of broaching the subject. I can’t just walk in and charge Deborah with being a sneak-Sarr is moody enough as it is-and even if I hint at “someone messing up my desk,” they’ll know what I mean and perhaps get angry. Whenever possible I prefer to avoid unpleasantness. I guess the best thing to do is simply hide this book under my mattress from now on and say nothing. If it happens again, though, I’ll definitely move out of here.

  … I’ve been reading some Northanger Abbey. Really quite witty, as all her stuff is, but it’s obvious the mock-Gothic bit isn’t central to the story. I’d thought it was going to be a real parody… Love stories always tend to bore me, and normally I’d be asleep right now, but my damned nose is so clogged tonight that it’s hard to breathe when I lie back. Usually being out here clears it up. I’ve used this goddamned inhaler a dozen times in the past hour, but within a few minutes I sneeze and have to use it again. Wish Deborah’d gotten around to cleaning off the mildew instead of wasting her time looking in here for True Confessions and deep dark secrets…

  Think I hear something moving outside. Best to shut off my light.

  June 30

  Slept late. Read some Shirley Jackson stories over breakfast, but got so turned off at her view of humanity that I switched to old Aleister Crowley, who at least keeps a sunny disposition. For her, people in the country are callous and vicious, those in the city are callous and vicious, husbands are (of course) callous and vicious, and children are merely sadistic. The only ones with feelings are her put-upon middle-aged heroines, with whom she obviously identifies. I guess if she didn’t write so well the stories wouldn’t sting so.

  Inspired by Crowley, walked back to the pool in the woods. Had visions of climbing a tree, swinging on vines, anything to commemorate his exploits… Saw something dead floating in the center of the pool and ran back to the farm. Copperhead? Caterpillar? It had somehow opened up…

  Joined Sarr chopping stakes for tomatoes. Could hear his ax all over the farm. He told me Bwada hadn’t come home last night, and no sign of her this morning. Good riddance, as far as I’m concerned. Helped him chop some stakes while he was busy peeling off bark. That ax can get heavy fast! My arm hurt after three lousy stakes, and Sarr had already chopped fifteen or sixteen. Must start exercising. But I’ll wait till my arm’s less tired…

  July 2

  Unpleasant day. Two a.m. now and still can’t relax.

  Sarr woke me up this morning-stood at my window calling “Jeremy… Jeremy…” over and over very quietly. He had something in his hand which, through the screen, I first took for a farm implement; then I saw it was a rifle. He said he wanted me to help him. With what? I asked.

  “A burial.”

  Last night, after he and Deborah had gone to bed, they’d heard the kitchen door open and someone enter the house. They both assumed it was me, come to use the bathroom-but then they heard the cats screaming. Sarr ran down and switched on the light in time to see Bwada on top of Butch, claws in his side, fangs buried in his neck. From the way he described it, sounds almost sexual in reverse. Butch had stopped struggling, and Minnie, the orange kitten, was already dead. The door was partly open, and when Bwada saw Sarr, she ran out.

  Sarr and Deborah hadn’t followed her; they’d spent the night praying over the bodies of Minnie and Butch. I thought I’d heard their voices late last night, but that’s all I heard, probably because I’d been playing my radio. (Something I rarely do-you can’t hear noises from the woods with it on.)

  Poroths took deaths the way they’d take the death of a child. Regular little funeral service over by the unused pasture. (Hard to say if Sarr and Deborah were dressed in mourning, since that’s the way they always dress.) Must admit I didn’t feel particularly involved-my allergy’s never permitted me to take much interest in the cats, though I’m fond of Felix-but I tried to act concerned: when Sarr asked, appropriately, “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?” (Jeremiah VIII:22), I nodded gravely. Read passages out of Deborah’s Bible (Sarr seemed to know them all by heart), said amen when they did, knelt when they knelt, and tried to comfort Deborah when she cried. Asked her if cats could go to heaven, received a tearful “Of course.” But Sarr added that Bwada would burn in hell.

  What concerned me, apparently a lot more than it did either of them, was how the damned thing could get into the house. Sarr gave me this stupid, earnest answer: “She was always a smart cat.” Like an outlaw’s mother, still proud of her baby…

  Yet he and I looked all over the land for her so he could kill her. Barns, tool shed, old stables, garbage dump, etc. He called her and pleaded with her, swore to me she hadn’t always been like this.

  We could hardly check every tree on the farm-unfortunately-and the woods are a perfect hiding place, even for animals larger than a cat. So naturally we found no trace of her. We did try, though; we even walked up the road as far as the ruined homestead.

  But for all that, we could have stayed much closer to home.

  We returned for dinner, and I stopped at my room to change clothes. My door was open. Nothing inside was ruined, everything was in its place, everything as it should be-except the bed. The sheets were in tatters right down to the mattress, and the pillow had been ripped to shreds. Feathers were all over the floor. There were even claw marks on my blanket.

  At dinner the Poroths demanded they be allowed to pay for the damage-nonsense, I said, they have enough to worry about-and Sarr suggested I sleep downstairs in their living room. “No need for that,” I told him, “I’ve got lots more sheets.” But he said no, he didn’t mean that: he meant for my own protection. He believes the thing is particularly inimical, for some reason, toward me.

  It seemed so absurd at the time… I mean, nothing but a big fat gray cat. But now, sitting out here, a few feathers still scattered on the floor around my bed, I wish I were back inside the house. I did give in to Sarr when he insisted I take his ax with me… But what I’d rather have is simply a room without windows.

  I don’t think I want to go to sleep tonight, which is one reason I’m continuing to write this. Just sit up all night on my new bedsheets, my back against the Poroths’ pillow, leaning against the wall behind me, the ax beside me on the bed, this journal on my lap… The thing is, I’m rather tired out from all the walking I did today. Not used to that much exercise.

  I’m pathetically aware of every sound. At least once every five minutes some snapping of a branch or rustling of leaves makes me jump.

  “Thou art my hope in the day of evil.” At least that’s what the man said…

  July 3

  Woke up this morning with the journal and the ax cradled in my arms. What awakened me was the trouble I had breathing-nose all clogged, gasping for breath. Down the center of one of my screens, facing the woods, was a huge slash…

  July 15

  Pleasant day, St. Swithin’s Day-and yet, my birthday. Thirty years old, lordy lordy lordy. Today I am a man. First dull thoughts on waking: “Damnation. Thirty today.” But another voice inside me, smaller but more sens
ible, spat contemptuously at such an artificial way of charting time. “Ah, don’t give it another thought,” it said. “You’ve still got plenty of time to fool around.” Advice I took to heart.

  Weather today? Actually, somewhat nasty. And thus the weather for the next forty days, since “If rain on St. Swithin’s Day, forsooth, no summer drouthe,” or something like that. My birthday predicts the weather. It’s even mentioned in The Glass Harmonica.

  As one must, took a critical self-assessment. First area for improvement: flabby body. Second? Less bookish, perhaps? Nonsense-I’m satisfied with the progress I’ve made. “And seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not.” (Jeremiah XLV:5) So I simply did what I remembered from the RCAF exercise series and got good and winded. Flexed my stringy muscles in the shower, certain I’ll be a Human Dynamo by the end of the summer. Simply a matter of willpower.

  Was so ambitious I trimmed the ivy around my windows again. It’s begun to block the light, and someday I may not be able to get out the door.

  Read Ruthven Todd’s Lost Traveller. Merely the narrative of a dream turned to nightmare, and illogical as hell. Wish, too, that there’d been more than merely a few hints of sex. On the whole, rather unpleasant; that gruesome ending is so inevitable…

  Took me much of the afternoon. Then came upon an incredible essay by Lafcadio Hearn, something entitled “Gaki,” detailing the curious Japanese belief that insects are really demons or the ghosts of evil men. Uncomfortably convincing!

  Dinner late because Deborah, bless her, was baking me a cake. Had time to walk into town and phone parents. Happy birthday, happy birthday. Both voiced first worry-mustn’t I be getting bored out here? Assured them I still had plenty of books and did not grow tired of reading.

  “But it’s so… secluded out there,” Mom said. “Don’t you get lonely?”

  Ah, she hadn’t reckoned on the inner resources of a man of thirty. Was tempted to quote Walden-“Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?”-but refrained. How can I get lonely, I asked, when there’s still so much to read? Besides, there are the Poroths to talk to.

  Then the kicker: Dad wanted to know about the cat. Last time I’d spoken to them it had sounded like a very real danger. “Are you still sleeping inside the farmhouse, I hope?”

  No, I told him, really, I only had to do that for a few days, while it was prowling around at night. Yes, it had killed some chickens-a hen every night, in fact. But there were only four of them, and then it stopped. We haven’t had a sign of it in more than a week. (I didn’t tell him that it had left the hens uneaten, dead in the nest. No need to upset him further.)

  “But what it did to your sheets…” he went on. “If you’d been sleeping… Such savagery.”

  Yes, that was unfortunate, but there’s been no trouble since. Honest. It was only an animal, after all, just a housecat gone a little wild. It posed the same kind of threat as (I was going to say, logically, a wildcat; but for Mom said) a nasty little dog. Like Mrs. Miller’s bull terrier. Besides, it’s probably miles and miles away by now. Or dead.

  They offered to drive out with packages of food, magazines, a portable TV, but I made it clear I needed nothing. Getting too fat, actually.

  Still light when I got back. Deborah had finished the cake, Sarr brought up some wine from the cellar, and we had a nice little celebration. The two of them being over thirty, they were happy to welcome me to the fold.

  It’s nice out here. The wine has relaxed me and I keep yawning. It was good to talk to Mom and Dad again. Just as long as I don’t dream of The Lost Traveller, I’ll be content. And happier still if I don’t dream at all…

  July 30

  Well, Bwada is dead-this time for sure. We’ll bury her tomorrow. Deborah was hurt, just how badly I can’t say, but she managed to fight Bwada off. Tough woman, though she seems a little shaken. And with good reason.

  It happened this way: Sarr and I were in the tool shed after dinner, building more shelves for the upstairs study. Though the fireflies were out, there was still a little daylight left. Deborah had gone up to bed after doing the dishes; she’s been tired a lot lately, falls asleep early every night while watching TV with Sarr. He thinks it may be something in the well water.

  It had begun to get dark, but we were still working. Sarr dropped a box of nails, and while we were picking them up, he thought he heard a scream. Since I hadn’t heard anything, he shrugged and was about to start sawing again when-fortunately-he changed his mind and ran off to the house. I followed him as far as the porch, not sure whether to go upstairs, until I heard him pounding on their bedroom door and calling Deborah’s name. As I ran up the stairs I heard her say, “Wait a minute. Don’t come in. I’ll unlock the door… soon.” Her voice was extremely hoarse, practically a croaking. We heard her rummaging in the closet-finding her bathrobe, I suppose-and then she opened the door.

  She looked absolutely white. Her long hair was in tangles and her robe buttoned incorrectly. Around her neck she had wrapped a towel, but we could see patches of blood soaking through it. Sarr helped her over to the bed, shouting at me to bring up some bandages from the bathroom.

  When I returned Deborah was lying in bed, still pressing the towel to her throat. I asked Sarr what had happened; it almost looked as if the woman had tried suicide.

  He didn’t say anything, just pointed to the floor on the other side of the bed. I stepped around for a look. A crumpled gray shape was lying there, half covered by the bedclothes. It was Bwada, a wicked-looking wound in her side. On the floor next to her lay an umbrella-the thing that Deborah had used to kill her.

  She told us she’d been asleep when she felt something crawl heavily over her face. It had been like a bad dream. She’d tried to sit up, and suddenly Bwada was at her throat, digging in. Luckily she’d had the strength to tear the animal off and dash to the closet, where the first weapon at hand was the umbrella. Just as the cat sprang at her again, Deborah said, she’d raised the weapon and lunged. Amazing; how many women, I wonder, would have had such presence of mind? The rest sounds incredible to me, but it’s probably the sort of crazy thing that happens in moments like this: somehow the cat had impaled itself on the umbrella.

  Her voice, as she spoke, was barely more than a whisper. Sarr had to persuade her to remove the towel from her throat; she kept protesting that she wasn’t hurt that badly, that the towel had stopped the bleeding. Sure enough, when Sarr finally lifted the cloth from her neck, the wounds proved relatively small, the slash marks already clotting. Thank God that thing didn’t really get its teeth in…

  My guess-only a guess-is that it had been weakened from days of living in the woods. (It was obviously incapable of feeding itself adequately, as I think was proved by its failure to eat the hens it had killed.) While Sarr dressed Deborah’s wounds, I pulled back the bedclothes and took a closer look at the animal’s body. The fur was matted and patchy. Odd that an umbrella could make a puncture like that, ringed by flaps of skin, as if the flesh had been pushed outward. Deborah must have had extraordinary good luck to have jabbed the animal precisely in its old wound, which had reopened. Naturally I didn’t mention this to Sarr.

  He made dinner for us tonight-soup, actually, because he thought that was best for Deborah. Her voice sounded so bad he told her not to strain it any more by talking, at which she nodded and smiled. We both had to help her downstairs, as she was clearly weak from shock.

  In the morning Sarr will have the doctor out. He’ll have to examine the cat, too, to check for rabies, so we put the body in the freezer to preserve it as well as possible. Afterward we’ll bury it.

  Deborah seemed okay when I left. Sarr was reading through some medical books, and she was just lying on the living room couch gazing at her husband with a look of purest gratitude-not moving, not saying anything, not even blinking.

  I feel quite relieved. God knows how many nights I’ve lain here thinking every sound I heard was Bwada. I’ll feel more relieved, of course,
when that demon’s safely underground; but I think I can say, at the risk of being melodramatic, that the reign of terror is over.

  Hmm, I’m still a little hungry-used to more than soup for dinner. These daily push-ups burn up energy. I’ll probably dream of hamburgers and chocolate layer cakes.

  July 31

  … The doctor collected scrapings from Bwada’s teeth and scolded us for doing a poor job of preserving the body. Said storing it in the freezer was a sensible idea, but that we should have done so sooner, since it was already decomposing. The dampness, I imagine, must act fast on dead flesh.

  He pronounced Deborah in excellent condition-the marks on her throat are, remarkably, almost healed-but he said her reflexes were a little off. Sarr invited him to stay for the burial, but he declined-and quite emphatically, at that. He’s not a member of their order, doesn’t live in the area, and apparently doesn’t get along that well with the people of Gilead, most of whom mistrust modern science. (Not that the old geezer sounded very representative of modern science. When I asked him for some good exercises, he recommended “chopping wood and running down deer.”)

  Standing under the heavy clouds, Sarr looked like a revivalist minister. His sermon was from Jeremiah XXII:19-“He shall be buried with the burial of an ass.” The burial took place far from the graves of Bwada’s two victims, and closer to the woods. We sang one song, Deborah just mouthing the words (still mustn’t strain throat muscles). Sarr solemnly asked the Lord to look mercifully upon all His creatures, and I muttered an “amen.” Then we walked back to the house, Deborah leaning on Sarr’s arm; she’s still a little stiff.

  It was gray the rest of the day, and I sat in my room reading The King in Yellow-or rather, Chambers’ collection of the same name. One look at the real book, so Chambers would claim, and I might not live to see the morrow, at least through the eyes of a sane man. (That single gimmick-masterful, I admit-seems to be his sole inspiration.)