Roxanna Slade Part 4

For one long moment I was truly scared to speak. I didn't know Lark well enough to call him back from death. I was honestly simple enough then to think that, but also I was very near distraction. I'd barely known him well enough to use his first name, but it

beat in my mind like a terrified bird in a cold dark house--Lark, Lark, come home. I tried to keep still and think out the meaning of all that had happened since I left my parents' house this morning. I'm someway still convinced that acts have meanings.

Believing that is nearly the same as saying G.o.d goes insane off and on when you least expect. Otherwise what could I ever hope to do with the sight of this poor boy drowned forever at the simple end of a girl's birthday--a normal girl that he'd claimed to love? At the very least this had been the strangest day of my life and while I hadn't quite blamed myself for the tragic event, I couldn't help thinking for the first full time that, if Roxanna Dane hadn't fled her home for her twentieth birthday, one promising boy would still be alive and likely to last a good fifty more years.

Palmer finally spoke but in Lark's direction. "He's playing a trick--" His voice seemed to fail him.

It made me half think Palmer knew of a plot. This was all a long joke, this whole long day from the strange dog till now. Any instant Lark would s.h.i.+ft his legs to the floor and stand up to say some further thing about his feeling for me. Again as before at the edge of the river, I wanted to hear some version of Our lives are now twined in his voice only. I even spoke my feeling aloud straight at Palmer's eyes--"Looks like he'll talk to us, any minute maybe."

But Palmer had got his own voice by then. "Not a chance on Earth," he managed to say and broke up sobbing. Men were brave enough then to have real feelings on any subject and to own them in public.

By then my eyes had opened to the dark, and I could half see that except for Lark the room was otherwise empty of all but a wide old low piano and a broad array of still more Slade ancestors' faces hung on the walls. Just the sight of their long-gone stern-eyed glares in so much shadow braced me oddly. There are still people left. These few anyhow had made it through lives a lot harder than mine. To that point I was almost surely right. But of course I was scarcely more than a girl. So I took the first move to lead Palmer back to the remnants of his family still waiting with Ferny and Coy in the kitchen a million miles off.

They all looked toward me, but again it was Coy that said the first words. "You never get over this if you live till Judgment." When I nodded to her, she seemed to laugh behind her hand. n.o.body heard her but me very faintly. Three years later Coy went truly crazy, and they had to retire her to a house on the place and hand-feed her every last morsel she ate. Still that hard evening she was nothing but right.

Wild as it sounds I very much needed to laugh then myself. I'd come from a family that tended toward pleasure and happiness, that had good reasons from our past history to expect calm seas and welcoming harbors. But in one day the world had turned this strange in my hands. I stayed on the kitchen doorsill and choked the laugh down while I heard my inward mind tell me all I'd learned today. You find your path, and a person to walk withand, before you can so much as focus your eyes and take the first step, they fade right before you--dry empty air. Turned out I was right.

TWO.

I waited--we all did--through a year's mourning. And very little of that long year snagged deep enough in my mind to last. I've never been someone who thinks time itself has much real meaning. People I've met in gloomy elevators for three or four seconds have meant more to me and my good memories than some of the people I've lived with forever. From my long past what I've mainly dwelt on when I looked back for consolation are six or eight instants when I learned a thing I badly needed to know for survival or when I glimpsed a lone child or adult performing some act of open-hearted grace in no hope at all of the smallest reward.

I almost think the main part of my life has pa.s.sed in my mind, hid even from me, though I often overheard it or watched it move in flashes. For instance with all I've told so far, the clearest picture left from those days is altogether different. To this very moment I can call back every quick breath and the sights I saw in the moonlit dark when I woke far into the night of Lark's death.

Ferny and I had stayed over in the country to help the Slades out. It says a good deal about how crushed we were that neither of us thought to mention the worry we were causing our parents. By bedtime that night they were gone from our minds. I was sleeping on a cot at the foot of Miss Olivia's bed, and I woke up suddenly to hear her breathing far gone in deep rest. Behind her sighs though, regular as hammer blows, a voice in my mind said clearly three times "Palmer Slade needs you." It was not my voice, though it may have been a woman's. Yet strange as it was and shocking with its news, it struck me as somehow a happy arrival.

I rolled it over and over in my mind till I finally gave it my answer "All right." I wasn't all that clear about what I meant. What did I know about what a man needed--or a woman or a child? But my ignorance didn't scare me. With all the sadness of the past day and evening, I had still moved into some new calm that would last for years. I shut my eyes and slept hard till dawn. When Miss Olivia touched my shoulder and asked me to come down and help Coy with breakfast, I already knew this family was mine. Some way or other I'd yet be a Slade.

How could I think of parting completely from people I'd hurt as badly as them?

How or why that bond would lock itself into place didn't occupy my mind at first. Once breakfast was done on the morning after Lark's death, Ferny and I drove home in our dank clothes and got through the straits of explaining our absence to Muddie and Father with a lot less damage than I'd expected. The sad news of course helped cover our story. That and the fact of Ferny's grief. After the sudden closeness Larkin and I had felt, I was stunned, as I said. But it wasn't till we were back at home that Ferny broke down.

It was at our family's own supper table the same warm evening. Father had already volunteered that Muddie and Leela, Ferny and I should drive back out to the Slade place tomorrow for Larkin's funeral. As ever Leela was chattering on about what she'd need to wear for the trip--how bare her wardrobe was of mourning clothes, how she'd have to dye one of her hats black, which one did I recommend?

It irked me and when she kept picking at it, I finally said "You can wear your face, Sister. That'll cause general moaning." It was the worst thing I'd ever said to her, it was thoroughly untrue, and the memory still shames me.

Muddie and Father actually smiled (though Leela was his favorite). It was Fern though who brought up great booming laughter that threatened not to stop.

After ten seconds Muddie covered her ears. And Father said plainly "That's enough for now, Fern."

Fern quit in the midst of the deepest laugh. And while each one of us sat and watched, hot tears poured out of him too big to stop.

n.o.body said a word. We all understood in our own way that Fern was the finest of us all in his feelings, and I knew I needed to follow his lead and free up the strangling grip on my heart. But with Muddie and Leela there, I held on as I'd done and would still do all my life. I somehow generally manage to think One person here has got to stay upright, and I'm the one chosen. Chosen by whom I've never been sure.

Muddie said a strange thing that we all knew was wrong. "Ferny, Son, this won't happen but once."

Ferny managed to answer her just as strangely. He nodded his head with a scary fierce speed and he said "I'll see to that, yes ma'm."

Father was genuinely angry by then, a thing that happened less than once a year. He looked at Muddie with very near hate. It was shocking as thunder. "It'll happen every day for the rest of his life." He was pointing to Fern whose tears had not stopped. Then Father told him gently "You can go to your bed, Son. I'll speak to you later."

Fern looked to me.

I had literally nothing left to give him--and after that moment I never would, not anything that Fern could use--but I managed to nod and confirm Father's urging of rest.

So Fern got up and left. His room was the low dark room behind the kitchen.

Father didn't leave to speak to Fern though. He and we women ate our b.u.t.termilk pie in silence. Then Father got up, put on his coat and hat and walked out the front door. That was decades before white people started walking for their health --most sane people thought it would kill you, and I tend

to agree still--but Father had discovered exercise privately in his boyhood. Once I asked him why every so often he'd strike out and walk as much as four miles. He didn't crack a smile when he said "I walk just to keep from killing people," and I didn't ever mention it again. I did, though, reflect that with his full name--Simmons Augustus Dane--he sounded like a long-striding soul.

I don't know when Father got back that night once Ferny broke down but after clearing the supper table, I left my mother and sister in the kitchen and went in to Fern. I saw it was my turn to recompense him for his gift last night, my new pocketknife.

Fern was facedown on his narrow bed but was watching the single floor-length window. In the last red light, despite his strong body he looked as frail as he'd prove to be in the hard years to come.

I sat on the edge of the bed by his knees, and I rubbed at the small of his back, lean as iron.

He shut his eyes and gave a soft high hum through his nose. I'd forgotten how he'd do that as an infant if you rubbed a lucky spot on his skin. It had made me think he'd be a musician, but again I was wrong.

So I said "That knife you gave me--many thanks. More girls ought to have one."

Fern opened his eyes but still wouldn't face me. "You owe me at least a penny, girl."

I asked him why.

"Every boy knows that. If somebody gives you a knife or a blade of any sort, you have to buy it from them with a penny. Otherwise it'll cut your love in two."

I'd been to the post office late in the day, and I had some change tied up in my handkerchief. I undid it slowly, felt for a dime, kissed it to my lips, then laid it in his open left hand.

His fist closed on it and he nodded acceptance. A whole dime then was no small sum.

I said "I don't know much more than you, Fern. But my guess is both Muddie and Father were right just now. Life is apparently steady hard times, but Larkin Slade is the worst loss you'll take. Very likely the worst."

"You too," Fern said. Then he rolled to his

side and met me dead-on. "Lark had loved you for months since I showed him that picture."

I couldn't imagine what picture he meant. "The one I stole from you back before Christmas."

"The one of Leela and me in Raleigh at the fair last fall?"

Fern nodded. "I cut Leela out. It was just you standing there looking forlorn."

I had to laugh. "Oh Lord, I was. You didn't show that awful likeness to Lark?" I'd worn a washed-out cool cotton dress and an old straw boating hat with hard fake cherries, and my face looked as grim as I felt after following Leela for a whole fall day.

Fern said "You looked all right. Calm down. No, I gave it to Lark--he liked it so much."

Partly to keep Fern talking this calmly but mostly to feed my own aching mind, I said "Tell me everything Lark said about it."

Fern gave it some thought but finally shook his head. "Lark wouldn't want that. He swore me to secrecy."

So I sat there silent, my hand on my brother's back, thinking my thoughts. Full dark was nearly on us before I knew what to say. And what had come to me was as heavy as anything I'd ever felt, but I had to go on and let Fern have it, or I'd have broke too. "I plan to love Larkin Slade the rest of my life."

Ferny said "Me too."

I've always suspected Fern kept his half of that plan far better than I managed to. It was part of what killed him, so young and distressed. But that fall night with Lark's funeral facing us tomorrow noon, I felt I'd been mowed down way below my knees and could never think of rising.

In that same night not long before dawn, I woke in mine and Leela's room and had the first vision I ever experienced. It offered no angels or soft light and music, no sign of Christ or G.o.d or demons. And far from being a dream or a hope, it was clearer than scratching your eye on a thorn, though it brought no pain. It was broad warm day at the height of real summer, the sky was the main view, and I was walking entirely alone in a light pale dress toward the edge of a

deep wood--woods even deeper than those in my girlhood before every live tree was marked for cutting or poisoned by the air it tried to breathe.

I was feeling strong but with no big purpose in mind at the moment. Then as I got twenty yards from the thicket, a body stepped out and stood still before me--a young man naked as G.o.d ever made him. I've mentioned seeing my brothers naked all through my childhood--none of the Danes were especially modest; we didn't think we were that fine to see-- so what surprised me was not the bare skin but the suddenness with which Lark was there so near me, the look on his face and the feelings he caused in me at first sight.

I didn't realize right off that it truly was Larkin. I'd only seen flashes of his body in the minutes before he drowned. But to keep from concentrating in a way that would have seemed rude, I fixed on his eyes. They were not exactly Lark's eyes--not at first, not the ones I'd known. I've always a.s.sumed I was seeing Lark in what Saint Paul called our "spiritual body" raised from death and restored, and that sort of body is generally changed for the better in most ways. Or so people claim who've had more acquaintance with the risen than me. (i'm not making fun. I believe in resurrection.) But I held my ground and faced the dream-Lark pleasantly. After a good while he said "I died recalling your name. But remind me now." It seemed fair enough, with all he'd endured, that he'd lost my name.

I told him "Roxanna--you'd only just met me."

So he said "Roxanna, I'll thank you forever."

My eyes were filling with glad tears by then. But all I could think to ask was why people rose from death stark naked. Even I wasn't fool enough to say as much. Still I think Lark read my mind.

He said "This is how you'd have liked me most." I told him I hadn't got that far yet. "I'm still a maiden child." It was true but I laughed.

Lark laughed for a moment and then held a hand up to quiet us both. In his own fine voice, the one I'd known that single last day, he said "Palmer may well need you now." Before I could ask if his was the clear mysterious voice that woke me last

night saying very nearly the same few words, Lark turned slowly with both arms out as if to steady himself in a stream or to take flight now. He didn't swim or fly though, no more than if he'd been still alive. He stepped on forward into those thick woods and in ten seconds was gone for good. I never saw Larkin alive again, not even in dreams, though I long hoped for dreams with some glimpse of him and wouldn't refuse that chance tonight long decades later.

Again that same night after I'd slid on back to sleep with daylight just beginning to break, my body had a kind of vision of its own. No pictures or sounds and nothing I've ever known how to describe in words alone but since I'm aiming for the whole truth now (so far as I've encountered it), I can say it amounted to the fullest pleasure my skin and mind had ever felt till that moment. Since today in America anyhow most people seem to think that bodily gratifications are the finest available, I'll say that what I underwent was bodily, yes.

It started near the front of my mind just above my eyes in a spot the size of a silver quarter, and it poured slowly out from there down my length till it rested where my legs join together. Then it seeped on slowly away through my feet and I never woke. Every bit of it happened to my skin, understand. My mind was just the trigger. Not only did I sleep on through it, I didn't even make any sound you could hear. Leela would wake at the sound of a feather, but she slept soundly right on through my first taste of a grown woman's pleasure.

It left me, not only soothed in my sleep but utterly clear on one last point that proved important for the rest of my life--I was now a woman. I must live like one or like what people in general thought a woman was in those simpler days. Again I saw no pictures of anything, no human face or any other creature's, no memory of Larkin Slade's rangy body or endless eyes nor any other man's I'd seen.

Yet strange to say it didn't surprise me, didn't shock or shame me. And though it happened so long ago, I can bring the heart of it back even now, if I can get quiet enough in my mind and am well-intentioned toward myself. I've never doubted it amounted to the cause of what I

did next.

At Larkin's funeral on the 10th, a Sunday, I'd found myself concentrating on Palmer to steady my nerves if nothing else. Palmer seemed that strong in his own black suit that left him looking a whole head taller than his normal great height. And his eyes seemed set on some distant point, far past human vision, that he'd discovered in the wake of his brother's sacrifice. Without seeming worn or in any way tarnished, he aged some twenty years in a day. I think it was why I could never call him Palm again as his family did. It looked to me as if he'd earned his full name.

He got his old father and Miss Olivia through the burial with the quiet command of a battlefield veteran. The family graves were east of the house some hundred yards in the midst of a field of stripped cotton stalks. A black man I'd never seen before rolled Major down on a homemade kind of wheelbarrow cart. Miss Olivia of course walked swift and upright as any young captain on parade. The black man got Major upright as well but on two canes today and with eyes so baffled it might have been his own execution he stood there expecting. Clearly Major scarcely understood what was happening. But he kept his gaze on Palmer's face and wept throughout in absolute silence, letting his man all but bear his weight once the preacher's voice started.

Miss Olivia, who'd been as staunch as an oak beam suddenly broke into sc.r.a.ps at the grave. Her whole heart seemed to heave up in her throat. And when she'd moaned but couldn't shed tears, her legs slowly buckled till she sat on the ground before Palmer reached her.

Muddie touched my arm and said to go help her but I knew better. Miss Olivia had never found a trace of solace in me; she couldn't start now. I just faced the ground till Palmer reached her and sat her on the rock wall that guarded the graves till the preacher got his few lines recited and Palmer and two other black men could lower the coffin.

The black men waited with shovels beside the open hole till all my family had walked on ahead--Major Slade was waving for us to go first.

As I pa.s.sed through the gate, the major looked toward me with the blankest eyes. But he put out his right hand and snagged at my arm till I nodded and bowed. As his hand went down and I took the next step, Miss Olivia faced me and said clear as any diamond scratching through gla.s.s "You were here at the start of this, Anna. Weren't you? Say you were. Stay on please and help me."

She hadn't quite said I'd caused Larkin's death, but I heard her that way and so did my mother.

Muddie barely met my puzzled eyes before she smiled like a petted dog and told Miss Olivia "Gladly. She'll help as long as she's needed--won't you, Anna?"

Since my own mother took me apparently for an underaged child, what was I meant to say but Yes? I just managed to nod.

That wasn't sufficiently courteous for Muddie in these circ.u.mstances. Her eyes went hot as pokers. She met my eyes dead straight. "Thank Miss Olivia--deeply-- for the privilege."

I was twenty years and two days old. I could have been married at least four years and have had three children, more if I'd had a set of twins (twins ran in Muddie's family). And while I'd never been known for independence--Leela was our rebel--I returned Muddie's heat. For a dignified change I called her Mother. "Mother, Larkin's parents know my feelings far better than you."

Miss Olivia nodded and the major reached out for me again, but by then I'd stepped ahead and aimed toward the house.