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The Midday Stroke of the Bell
An American Fairy Tale
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By W.P. Grundy
Copyright 2011 W.P. Grundy
Published by Two Coyote Press at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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CONTENTS
Allegory of Origin
THEY walked together for many days and many nights. Margaret held the boy by the hand as the dew hung in spidery motes above them. Jacob and the others hollowed a channel through the pinewood thick.
As they climbed upward their only compass was the sun until the canopy covered them over entire. Their path turned and twisted and they could find in neither time nor space one dimension to fix the other. The sole measure of themselves became the movement of their bodies in mutual relation.
‘Papa.’ The boy spoke in a whisper. ‘Papa.’
Their bodies lunged and ached. As they uttered into the foreign space their words attached to the wild accents of the wood and the human voice was shrunk to the human body. The second party came behind at a distance plagued dry like muleteers as they led the animals through a country no such creatures had figured to see. The rolling forms lurched in protest against the thistle.
The boy whispered a second time.
Jacob pulled him close and set his hand upon the boy’s head. ‘What is it?’
‘Where are we, Papa?’
‘Just keep on now.’
On the fourth day they picked up the track of a river where they stopped to wash and drink. Their clothes were bistered and worn and the dirt starched the threads so that they scratched against the boy’s skin.
‘How do we know, Papa?’
‘Know what?’
‘When we get there.’
‘We’ll just know is all.’
Margaret pulled back the boy’s sleeves and washed the small arms in the water. The Doctor came across to look. She ran her hand through the boy’s hair.
‘How?’
Jacob pointed upward along the stream as he spoke to The Colonel and The Professor. ‘Yonder to the head.’
The vault of the trees was thin above the bending artery. The sun broke through upon the water threading the trifling swells in beads of white and silver. The brook purled and murmured in natural tones.
‘Where do you make us for then, Jacob?’
Jacob smiled. ‘Your guess.’
‘Or when.’ The Professor rubbed at his forehead.
Binden spat at his boots and wiped the wet from his lips. ‘When what?’
‘In time, I mean.’
Jacob shrugged as he pulled a stick from the brush and cleaned it against his leg. He was thick and strong. The breadth of his chest and shoulders pronounced his vitality. ‘So long as there’s a sun above us.’
Binden eyed the falling redness through the branches. ‘Two hours—no more.’
‘We’ll reach the treeline soon enough. We’ll follow the river. Camp beside it.’
Margaret and the boy fell back with the others as The Professor continued beside Jacob at the front. The sun dwindled above the twining shoots and the sparkling beads that laced the stream became dull and infrequent until the moon crested and the light turned to shrouded silver. They came to a place where a scheme of riverstones had been assembled by some ancient human hand into a circular hollow. They stopped. As the sun dropped the boy foraged scraps of wood from the brush and they made a fire from it. They slept.
In the morning they set out again along the trail of the river. The Professor dropped back to the second party to show them the way as the train of wasted bodies climbed to where the river opened into a wide and running meadow.
When Jacob saw the meadow he stopped. ‘Home.’ He pulled the boy against his leg.
‘How do you know, Papa?’
‘I know.’
_____
Some years later Margaret lay on the bed. The sheets were purple with blood. The Doctor held the new life in her arms as Margaret gripped Jacob tight. She pressed his hand as if to seize through his flesh an anterior passage before being claimed by a thing altogether unknown and unyielding.
Margaret’s voice trembled as she spoke. ‘It’s not his doing, Jacob. Promise me—’
Through the merciless night Jacob sat with her in the house beside the farm. Before the morning Margaret lay dead. They buried her in the earth that edged upon the river. Jacob named the new child Benjamin.
Part One
So they went both of them together.
Woman Virtue
THE first was the Woman Virtue. The stones shined with all the mineral colors of the deeper earth as Eva fixed them in place and the suggestion of a face part woman and part divine grew up beneath her.
She knelt at the center of the square. The square had been quarried of the same stock and like the stones Eva cupped in her palm they showed the venations of the ridge beneath the falls where the men had cut them. With the tip of her brush she marked the features of the lone figure into the receiving slabs and the paint whirled like discs of color captured from the curl of the boiling sea.
Eva’s yellow hair was chignoned at the back of her neck and her pants and shirt were thin and white. She wore no shoes. As she skirted atop the stone the movements she made had the look of a slow and weightless and solemn dance. She leaned her head upon her shoulder to measure out the figure with her eye. At last she touched the sable tip to the slim silhouette. The white of the stone yielded to the grey and blue and black of the oils until the figure of the Woman Virtue brimmed with life and made the only form upon the empty superfice. It was as if the Woman Virtue had been birthed from the very interiors of the hermetic stone or in the manner of a man who steps from the black chambers of the forest until his form changes to a thing particular.
With her brush she made the shadowed lines of the drifting gown and the arms that were bare and long. The robe was belted at the waist with yellow cordage that hung at the figure’s side and fell in twinned lengths to the curve of her knee. The Woman Virtue held a sword in her hand and as Eva fixed the colored stones into the painted shadow of the metal blade it became like a silvery flame rising up from the ground. She painted golden bands and tassels upon the shoulders and when at last she affixed the shavings of amber they shimmered like the epaulettes of the righteous. The hair of the Woman Virtue rippled the color of the orange and honeyed dawn. When the face was at last revealed her lips were scarlet and full and the long line of her nose made her beautiful.
Eva laid down the brush as she tilted her head sidelong upon her shoulder. She heard the sound of someone behind her in the square and then he was above her and she looked up but she did not know him. The Reverend stopped and looked down to where she knelt. He paused to contemplate the Woman Virtue. There was something passing in his eyes and he made a remark to himself and then he continued on in the same direction.
There was a slow dawning in Eva’s eyes. ‘Mr Binden? Mr Binden, is that you?’
The Reverend moved on without turning back.
Eva looked down again at the unfinished image and heard only the vanishing clap of The Reverend’s shoes upon the stone. She turned the small pieces in her hand as she restored her attention to the figure.
The Reverend
THE Reverend was dressed in a white suit. He was thin in the face and his jowls and neck were scarred by botryoidal pocks as if he had been victim to some vengeful visitation. Scratching at the skin with rough and jagged nails he flattened the oily hair upon his head.
Samel followed several steps behind. He was round and short with a porcine face. His head was bald but for the persevering strands that sprouted from the top and curled neckward. Laboring to keep pace Samel wiped the beads from his skin and brow with a yellow handkerchief. When they came to the bench he held the cloth to his face and sat.
Deeds was walking at the far end of the square in purposeful strides. He wore denim trousers layered in crusted dirt. Red suspenders clung fast to his broad chest and his thick arms filled the sleeves of a white thermal shirt. His great hands were scarred and raw.
‘Jacob Deeds! May I have a moment of your time, Mr Deeds?’
Deeds studied the two men from a distance. The brilliance of his fearsome blue eyes gave him the appearance of a man much younger than his years. He moved toward them. ‘Is that you, Mr Binden? Have you come back to us—and after so long?’
‘Reverend, Mr Deeds. Reverend only.’
Deeds took a pair of lenses from his breast pocket. ‘Reverend?’
The Reverend spoke hurriedly. ‘My business is most urgent.’
As Deeds held the lenses to his eyes the skin above his nose wrinkled. He made a gesture toward The Reverend’s collar. ‘I see, yes. It is a miracle, isn’t it?—one man leaves and two return in his place. A priest no less—’
The Reverend waved off the remark with his hand. ‘I’m no father, Mr Deeds.’ He gave a curious laugh.
Deeds made a smile of indulgence. ‘And to whom do you minister exactly, Mr Binden?’
‘To whom, yes.’ The Reverend surveyed the square with his eyes. As he looked back to where Eva knelt he adjusted the band beneath his collar. ‘My companion and I have most recently ministered to a small congregation on the far side of the mountain—myself and Mr Samel there.’
‘Mr Samel?’
Samel cleared his throat on the bench as the beads continued to drop from his forehead.
The Reverend parted his lips to reveal a gapped and carietic grin. Deeds narrowed his eyes as The Reverend gestured over his shoulder to where Samel sat. ‘I confess Mr Samel is a rather particular sort.’
‘Is that so?’ Deeds looked down at his watch. He angled himself around The Reverend but he glimpsed only the bottoms of Samel’s podgy legs. After some moments he restored his attention to The Reverend. ‘I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a bad time, Mr Binden. Kenton—’
‘Your son, yes. I remember. How excellent! I don’t have any children myself, of course.’
‘I really must—’ Deeds began to walk slowly away but The Reverend followed closely beside him.
The Reverend continued. ‘You see, Mr Deeds, Mr Samel and I have been on a remarkable journey through the mountains.’
‘Well, we did not know what became of you, Mr Binden, it’s true.’ Deeds glanced a second time at his watch. ‘You say your business is—?’
‘Most urgent, yes.’ The Reverend paused. ‘But I must not detain you. Perhaps I can walk with you some of the way?’
‘Yes, alright, Mr Binden. Some of the way, alright then.’ Deeds looked doubtfully at The Reverend. ‘You see, it’s the Black Bear—let’s hurry now.’
The Reverend followed. He spoke as if to himself. ‘A remarkable journey, yes. More spiritual than physical even.’
Deeds moved off in the direction of the passage with The Reverend at his elbow and Samel several steps behind. He glanced at Samel and smiled. ‘It must be said we’re not accustomed to such things up here.’
‘To visitors, yes.’
‘No, to urgency. Time demands rather different things on the mountain.’
The Reverend gave a nod of his chin. ‘And yet a man is the same no matter his location, Mr Deeds. That is one thing I have learned. One cannot escape the condition of one’s soul through a geographical evasion.’
‘A geographical evasion.’ Deeds smiled. ‘No, perhaps not.’ He turned back and gave a look of concession over his eyeglasses as he ran a finger along the brim of his straw hat. ‘I’m curious, Reverend. Why have you come back here? You left us rather suddenly. We thought for good. But here you are—not that we regret your presence.’ Deeds studied the weathered face of The Reverend. ‘Have you grown tired of the wandering life?’
‘I have made a kind of circle, you are right, Mr Deeds. One might say that is the very opposite of progress.’
‘But you could have come back to us at any time.’
‘There was never a question of retreat, Mr Deeds. If a man turns back at every obstacle—well, he soon finds himself nowhere. Neither in the place where he was going, nor in the place where he began.’ The Reverend made a pedantic gesture with his hand. ‘For he would have acquired in the meantime the knowledge of his own failure. No, to come back one must go ever forward, strange as that may sound.’ He restored himself. ‘In any case not all of our tasks are chosen.’
‘Task?’
The Reverend turned on him. ‘You do believe in the concept of a higher purpose, Mr Deeds?’
‘I know the concept well.’
‘But you doubt.’
‘That a higher purpose might guide our actions? On the contrary.’ They were silent for some moments as they walked. They passed the place where The Shopkeeper had his store. When Deeds glimpsed him in the window he doffed his hat before turning onto the path that led away from the square and toward the river.
They came to a small orchard of fruit trees where Deeds seized an apple from its shoot. The branch pitched downward and recoiled in a pendular snap as he bit into its sour flesh. ‘Soon it will be winter, Reverend. The snows will come.’
‘Yes.’
‘If you don’t go you’ll have to stay here with us. Is that what you want?’
The Reverend gave a mischievous smile as he nodded.
Deeds continued. ‘There won’t be any getting out. Not until the spring.’ They walked through the space of the orchard as Samel lingered behind them. ‘This matter of urgency—’
The Reverend stopped at the edge of the fruit trees. Seizing Deeds by the arm his expression changed to something earnest. ‘You condescend to me, Mr Deeds.’
‘You shouldn’t think so.’
‘You make a mistake to dismiss me.’ Samel eyed Deeds intently from behind.
Deeds gripped the apple in his palm and held it straight. As he considered the interrupted form he told The Reverend that all manners of belief were admitted but that he could not abide those who mystified the things of the earth. The image of God is the image of creation. To make of man an animal in His image is to make of man an animal who makes. But the Christian man makes himself a shadow that lives in peonage to its duplication. In the doubling of himself the Christian man is lost rather than saved. Deeds took a last bite of the apple and tossed away the core so that its seeds broke upon the ground.
‘You’re not the man to hear my story.’
Deed grinned. ‘I can’t say until you tell it.’
They arrived to the clearing where the river first became visible. The Reverend pointed his finger over Deeds’ shoulder toward the place where the lake showed black and silver above the face of the escarpment. The Reverend was silent for several moments. ‘I’ve come back to build a church, Mr Deeds.’
‘A church?’
‘There. I will build my church there.’ From where the two men stood it was as if the mountain had been despoiled of her peak. The green pines formed a great colonnade around the glittering gem of the lake.
Deeds turned to look where The Reverend pointed. Every day he saw it but still he looked carefully at what was intended. He turned his eyes back upon The Reverend. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mr Binden.’
The Reverend’s tone grew more severe. ‘As I presume that you own neither the forest nor the things within it, Mr Deeds, I have not come back to seek your permission, but rather your friendship. If that will not be possible—‘
At The Reverend’s words Deeds produced a look of astonishment.
The Reverend continued. ‘I am talking about the cause of personal and collective redemption, Mr Deeds.’
Deeds fixed sternly now on The Reverend’s eyes. ‘Redemption is not only for the Christian man, Mr Binden.’
‘Yes, well.’ The Reverend looked at him strangely.
Deeds smiled uneasily. ‘We are merely people who believe in ordinary virtue. You do remember, Reverend? Why we came here? Your plan is mistaken.’
The Reverend looked back in the direction of Samel. His eyes brightened as if a thing with many pieces had been seen at last under the aspect of its completion. Setting his hand on Deeds’ arm he spoke quickly. ‘Yes, I believe I understand it now, Deeds!’ The Reverend paused and gave a devious grin. ‘I understand now what has brought me back to you—’ Behind them Samel made a grunting sound and wiped the cloth against his face. ‘You’ve been lost.’
Deeds raised his hand in impatience. ‘We are certainly not lost, Reverend.’ He looked upon The Reverend as if considering the man anew. ‘I must tell you that I don’t think you’ll find what you’re seeking. There are no extraordinary beings here. We do not mystify our experience.’ He paused and looked to where Samel was standing. ‘We’re a certain kind of people, Reverend. We have no theology. We strive only to be good—there is salvation even in being good.’
The Reverend held his hands upward. ‘The community of God will be found where it is lost.’
Something altered in Deeds’ eyes. He removed his hat and nodded toward The Reverend. ‘We’ll continue this another time, Reverend. Time is short.’ Deeds restored the hat to his head as he cast a long glance in the direction of Samel. After considering the two men a final time he advanced toward the river where a bridge crossed to the far meadow.
The Reverend walked back to where Samel waited at the edge of the orchard. Without speaking the men exchanged glances. They doubled back in the direction of the town.
The Woodcutter
THE path pitched sharply and the parched mud that ran down the center was the color of brown clay. Deeds removed the straw hat from his head and arranged the thin strands of his hair. He wiped the wetness from his forehead. The trees began to tunnel until the branches closed him over and the sun broke irregular patches of yellow light through the thatch like common signs of grace. The descent bottomed into a dirt bridge where milkweed stalks overran the edges and obscured the fingering creek that circulated beneath. Down by the reeds the edges of the track were sogged in pools of mired water. On the other side of the crossing the path steepened again into a long and twisting climb.
As he went an eddying breeze spun a low mist of pollen white through the reeds. Plumes of sedge tufted over the guttering lanes. A young boy came running down the slope. His feet were bare and his hair blackened by wet. The boy slowed to a walk as he neared the older man and flashed a pitted grin.
‘Hello, Mr Deeds.’
‘How is it then, Andrew?’
‘How is it, Mr Deeds?’
‘The river.’
‘Yessir. The river.’ The boy shook the drops from his head.
‘Cold for swimming?’
‘Yessir.’ The boy rubbed a palm against his ear.
‘I’m looking for Kenton, Andrew. Have you seen him?’
The boy made a thumbing gesture over his shoulder as he nodded.
‘He’s with The Woodcutter, is he?’
Without answering the boy broke into a run with his heels kicking small vapors of dust into the air.
‘Alright, go on then.’ Deeds called after him. ‘Be careful now.’
The boy climbed the far stretch. ‘Yessir.’
A narrow passage opened ahead. Deeds quickened his steps. A threshold of heavy sun issued from the open sky like a peroration and blinded him to the drifting grass. At the near corner of the pasture Deeds saw the figure of The Woodcutter hunched beside a sawhorse. The Woodcutter gave a passing look as he gripped a cherrywood length against the support and halved it with the ax. A pile of planks gathered up around him as he positioned another length of pinkly tissued wood. The deerflies made buzzing orbits around his head.
Deeds continued toward The Woodcutter’s boxed cabin and stood before the porch. The structure was made of roughly cut logs and the outer walls were daubed with a paste of mud and straw. The roof fell long above the porch on columns that rose from the ground like fixed and perdurable trunks speculating the duration of the forest. The soffits were broad and flat and retained the pinkish gilt of The Woodcutter’s planks. There were small windows cut beside the door. Deeds lingered in the doorway as he circled his eyes a final time around the sweeping field.
The interior of the cabin was a mess of hewn planks and hammers and tools for cutting. There was a long rifle propped against the table that occupied the central space. A small door opened to a second room. Deeds sat on one of the sectioned trunks that served for chairs and prodded his hat across the surface of the table as he waited.
After some moments he heard the creak of an axle upon the stones outside the cabin. Rising to the door he saw the hoaried form of The Woodcutter hunched onward between the poles of the cart like a man conveying the litter of some great personage. The cart heaved with wooden lengths and as it bucked the boards fell in a trail behind him.
Lowering the poles The Woodcutter rubbed his thick forearm to his face and walked toward Deeds. Deeds looked beyond him to the heap of wood and then outward through the pasture.
The Woodcutter wiped his hands on the cloth that was nailed into the wood beside the window. He filled a glass from the pitcher beside the washbasin and emptied the contents into his mouth.
‘What brings you then, Jacob?’
Deeds recovered the hat from the table and set it on his head. He stood in the doorway pausing over the sight of the woodcart. ‘Looking for my boy is all.’
‘You well know you won’t find Benjamin here.’
‘Not Benjamin, no.’
‘If it’s Kenton you want—’
‘That’s right.’
‘—I believe he’s headed up the passage.’
‘Toward the farm?’
‘Aye.’ The Woodcutter paused. ‘Caught the trail of the Black Bear, he did.’ The Woodcutter gestured beyond Deeds toward the rear of the pasture. From the doorway Deeds glimpsed the form of the pen against the bordering trees. The Woodcutter disappeared into the second room without taking his leave. As Deeds stepped onto the porch The Woodcutter called out. ‘You just continue up yonder passage. You’ll see your boy plain enough.’
As Deeds left the cabin he picked up an errant plank and tossed it at the heap that rose above the frame of the cart. The path sank again into a dense thicket where the air was wet and cool. Deeds came to a second structure. The house had two levels and stood on a wide pasture. A long path of dark pebbles curved toward a porch between wending beds of purple flowers. A second footway veered to a large garden where a man and woman tilled. A group of children ran among the beds. Deeds waved to the children as he glanced off toward the meridian of trees that strung involute and blackish green beneath the sky.
The road dipped and curved along the inconstant veil and the sun stroked him with the lightsome pulse of an empyreal clock. After a time the gallery broke and the claycrusted path opened again. Appearing above the slope of the farm Deeds glimpsed Kenton crouched at the treeline.
The Black Bear
WHAT boundaries the farm had it overflowed so that what was wild and what had been brought to cultivation made a single pasture. On the higher land beside the river where the wood was thin there drifted a versicolor pattern of brown and green and yellow fallows. To the east the river made a serpentine edge where the animals lingered and drank. To the west the understone of the mountain came exposed in a soaring escarpment and formed an enclosure that seemed a contemplation of the land itself. To the south the earth sloped down in declivity toward a loose patchwork of dirt roads and forest. To the north the lake pooled and the water emptied in a surging cascade over the ridge and the volleying water broke upon the boulders below to form the head of the river.
Beneath the escarpment the paths and houses radiated outward from a great stone square laid from the red crag of the mountain. From above it was the only vacancy to be seen against the spilling trees. In the sun the rooftops formed a template of brightly colored clay. The bushy crowns of the trees swelled between the houses so that it seemed as if the earth would germinate again upon what humankind had brought there.
On the side of the river opposite the farm and the houses the land became a meadow of minor thickets and groves and what remained was grown over with tall yellow grasses. Beyond the meadow the forest was vast and thick.
Kenton spied his father approaching across the purlieu of wild grass and scrub. He held a finger to his lips as Deeds came up beside him.
Deeds looked down across the planes and angles of the town. ‘Who would expect such a thing?’
Kenton looked up from his position. He whispered. ‘What are you talking about, father?’
‘Binden.’
‘Mr Binden?’
‘There’s another man with him now.’ Deeds laughed. ‘Where that strange fellow has come from—anyway he’s had a revelation.’
‘Mr Binden has returned?’ Kenton eyed his father. Again he whispered. ‘But it’s a joke, father. A revelation? Here?’
‘I think he’s gone mad—he’s told me the most extraordinary story.’ Deeds tapped a finger against his head.
Kenton pulled an instrument from the case at his feet as Deeds told him about the church that The Reverend purposed to build. In the strangeness of its form the instrument looked like a sextant of some terrene application. He positioned the pellucid eye toward the trees as Deeds watched him in silence. After some moments Kenton restored the instrument.
‘The bear?’
Kenton pointed across the river toward the thick of the forest. ‘He’s in there, Papa. I know it.’
Deeds reached into the case to take up the instrument himself. ‘A theodolite, yes—how wonderful!’ He held it against his eye in the direction of the horizon and considered the vast sweep of the opposing meadow. ‘Cultivatus—there’s a word for you, Kenton. From the chaos we breed an order.’
The mountain hawks circled above the trees and slashed the frictionless air in a ceramic gyre. Their motion was endless. ‘Perpetual in their stillness.’ Deeds was quoting. He waved away the remark with his hand and rested the instrument against his hip. He said that the mind is forged in its confrontation with the land. Whatever the benefits that have accrued to man during the time of his stewardship are owed to his contest with the limits that the earth ordains.
Kenton made a gesture with his hand. ‘There—in the treeline.’
They descended the small declivity of the glade to the place where the farm became strips of varying tillage and soil. As they moved in the direction of the bridge Deeds continued to talk. He said that a man cannot be at home in a place until he has made terms with the land itself. He must come to know the ground and the things upon it. He must discover the form of its vitality. ‘So too does the earth console us, Kenton. So too does it make us human.’
The earth grew red as the stripling trees became sparse. They came to a minor clutch of chicks that turned and harrowed the ground with spicate claws. Deeds grabbed one of the pullets at the legs to show its articulation. As he held it aloft with its head pointed downward the bird gave a saccadic sputter and swung itself to stillness like an enacted death.
In the field beside the river they observed the cows that herded and drank in a mindless presence. Deeds remarked on the principles of rotation and about the chickens and the pigs and how all creatures live under the form of an essential symbiosis. In the near distance they could see the outlines of a caprine procession moving liturgical along the shelf of the glade from which they had come.
From a distance Kenton watched the motion of the trees in the wind. They crossed the bridge and moved in silence along the descending treeline and Deeds began again to speak. ‘The energy of nature passes through many different forms, Kenton. Through ourselves—back again to the earth. We are only one more stage in the transformation of energy—from the sun and through the grass and into the animals and into us. We must not think we can conquer nature.’
Kenton breathed heavily inward and looked at his father. Again he held his finger to his lips. They circled in the direction of the lower wood.
_____
After a time of fruitless searching Deeds turned back alone to the solitary farmhouse that sat in the shadow of the great escarpment. As he recrossed the bridge he turned a final time to glimpse Kenton’s familiar form as it mingled with the curtain of the forest and vanished. Deeds spoke quietly to himself about the boldness of youth and about wisdom.
The space of the farmhouse was barren but for the plain furniture and the shelves that sank beneath the stacks. Deeds sat at a wooden desk carved from the pinewood of the forest abutting. Holding his glasses between his fingers he pulled a map from the drawer and began to measure out allotments and gulleys with a piece of string. He continued to speak aloud to himself. ‘All principles follow from the first principle, which is the rotation of the animals. To understand the first principle rightly is to understand the essential nature of space and time. It is to be husband not only of the elements, but of the dimensions. To surmount the spitefulness of time itself—that is the sign of the virtuous man.’
Deeds became lost in the words as he heard them spoken. He looked out the window. At that hour the trees slashed scythings of grisaille shade across the sunbaked pasture.
After a time he was startled by the familiar sound of the axle creak. The wheels fell heavier upon the ground than their usual pattern. When he stood and moved to the doorway Deeds saw Kenton dragging the cart away down the passage. On the bed of the cart lay the great figure of the Black Bear anchored to the slattings by sisal cords. It heaved a magnificent breath.
The Prince
THERE was a look in Benjamin’s eyes like disquiet. He ran a finger in listless rings around the mouth of a bottle as he held a cigarette low in his lips. The room was small and the furniture was wooden and bare. The windows were stippled in patches of soot so that the light that shone westward over the forest became perverse and dissipate and it left the room slight.
‘Anger is the poison of the soul, Bennie.’
‘I’m not angry.’
Affen made a captious smile. ‘Everyone is angry—about something.’
‘Grace will hear.’
Affen leapt onto an empty chair and made a bow to Benjamin. ‘Majesty I should say—for grace thou wilt have none.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I say you’re a prince among men, Benjamin.’
‘Stop playing around.’
‘A man among princes.’
Outside the pinewood flitches that clapboarded the house were worn and hanging. The blue paint had been applied in coarse strokes so that it flecked and chipped and its color had become sodden and foul. The naked timbers that supported the beams at the corners were cracked and the eaves were fossetted by mites and by rain and sagged with the leaves. There were bottles on the table and on the counters and the sills and when the wind encroached upon the arachnid fissures that made sport of the glass their brown necks brattled against each other and fell from their places and broke. The clothes on the floor were strewn in cespitose drifts tattered and crumpled. When Benjamin turned his cigarette the ash smoldered and fell into one of the piles. He twisted the tip of his shoe into the heap.
Affen shrugged his shoulders indifferently. ‘Someone like me, I’ll never be in your position.’ He enumerated the curse upon his fingertips. ‘No, I am born to a mother who has abandoned her children, Bennie. A sister ashamed of her own flesh. But you—’
‘We’re no different. My mother—’
Affen observed him.
Benjamin continued. ‘What’s my position, then?’
Affen climbed down from the chair. ‘A position is its use.’
‘So what use am I?’
Affen walked in languid steps to the window. He pulled back the curtain and looked down over the square. ‘Your ingratitude saddens me, Benjamin.’
‘My ingratitude?’
‘Here you are with every advantage—but you pity yourself like a sick and dying animal. Pitiful pity.’
‘Pity myself—?’
‘Squandering what’s been given to you.’
Benjamin fell silent on the couch.
Affen corrected himself. ‘No, you think more highly of yourself than that, Bennie. You can’t hide it—you’re the coin in the mudpit, aren’t you?’ Affen cast his eyes airily about the room as he made an ethereal gesture with his hand. ‘I tell you, your position is the form of possibility itself—a point of action from which many things can flow. And yet here you are, paralyzed by ingratitude.’ He gave a theatrical turn. ‘Look at what you’ve done, Benjamin! You’ve turned your own strength into weakness. Disgusting spectacle.’
‘I’ve heard enough, Affen.’
‘Enough?’ Affen made a menacing approach and leaned down so that his face met Benjamin where he sat. ‘I’m just a vassal in this world, Bennie—born to weaker stock. Just look at my father—The Colonel has gone mad, as everyone can see.’ He laughed. ‘One day I too—’
Benjamin sneered. ‘One day?’
‘Ah, but you see, I’ve made a pact, Benjamin.’
‘With the devil, I know.’
‘This is no time for the devil. The state of the soul is no toy for triflers. No, I’ve made my pact with the animals. With the ground and the trees. With the river.’
‘You’re mad.’
Affen wheeled. ‘I’m not the favored one, Benjamin.’ He gave a rude thrust of his hips and shot a contemptuous grin at Benjamin. ‘Would Kenton—?’ He puffed the words like smoke. ‘No, I think not.’
Benjamin recoiled.
Affen returned to the window and looked out. At that hour the square was a place of slow and solitary peregrination. A woman walked below. On the eastern edge The Shopkeeper stood before his store and raised his head to watch her. He touched his finger to his hat. Affen tapped the seconds of her transit upon the sill until she turned along a far passage and out of view. He murmured the words to himself. ‘Kenton and the Black Bear.’
Affen continued with his eyes upon The Shopkeeper. The Shopkeeper had grown old. His breath jumped within him as he moved.
Affen looked again at Benjamin. ‘You think I don’t respect you, Bennie. That I think you’re not like your brother?’
‘Enough about Kenton!’
‘But I do respect you.’ Affen stepped toward Benjamin’s sullen figure with a new vitality. He knelt down and seized Benjamin at the shoulders. ‘And I will prove it to you—there’s something we must do together, Benjamin. To establish our respect for each other. It’s true—I’ve been too quick to see blame in others. But have I set an example myself? No, I can’t say I have. I’ve been unfair to you, Bennie. What do you think?’
‘What do I think about what?’
‘What do you think of an adventure?’
‘What adventure?’
‘We’ll make a pact—‘
‘I thought you already made a pact.’
‘Together, you and I. And through this pact I’ll show you that you’re capable of much more than you suspect. To the devil with your brother! I’ll show you a truth about yourself from which you’ll never again retreat.’
‘Let go of me, Affen! I have nothing to prove.’ Benjamin shook off Affen’s hands and stood up from the couch.
Affen made a gesture of offense. ‘But I’m not asking you to prove anything, Benjamin.’ He spoke grandly as he paced about the room. ‘What I propose is an interrogation of the self—of myself and of yourself.’
As Affen leapt upon the open chair Grace stumbled forth from the adjoining room. Her hair was knotted and wild and her movements were slatternly. She wore yellow underwear and her breasts were bare. As she shook her hip the yellow cloth rose and fell upon her skin and Affen licked at his lips. She opened the lid of the icebox. ‘You boys are making an awful noise.’
Benjamin waved her away. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘Is that how you treat a woman, Bennie?’ She made a false voice. ‘What would your father say?’ She slammed the lid shut and exposed her grey and crooked teeth in a coquettish grin. When she saw where Affen looked she smiled lewdly. ‘And what’s on your mind, Affen Pratt?’
Affen made a bow. ‘Just looking is all, m’lady.’
‘You like what you see?’ She twisted her body in a barefaced curtsy. Affen’s eyes lingered.
Grace studied them and frowned. ‘What kind of trouble is he talking you into, Bennie?’