A Peculiar Grace Read online

  He didn’t say anything but smoked and passed it back to her and they went along like that until he reached up to the rearview mirror and pulled down the alligator clip and smoked right down to the nub, until the last hard toke sucked fire into his mouth and he choked and coughed and then he said, “Hey Emily?”

  She twisted sideways in the seat to look at him. The evening sun in full accordance with her luminescence. She said, “You all right?”

  “I caught a buzz.”

  “Good,” she said. “Me too.”

  “Only thing. Is I don’t have any idea where I am.”

  She was fiddling with the buttons on the radio, then gave that up for the dial. She said, “You lost, Hewitt?”

  “I guess you could say that.”

  She waited and then said, “Me too. But keep driving and we’ll always find our way back home.”

  “You think?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Now he waited. Then said, “I believe so. I do believe so.”

  She pushed her sneakers off and slid way down in the seat and propped her bare feet up out the window and said, “That’s good. Why don’t you just drive a while.”

  They sat high on the end of the bluff that broke the northern half of the lake into two branches and gave the village its name and watched the sunset and drank a four-pack of St. Pauli Girl and then at dusk retreated halfway back the length of the bluff past vineyards and wood-lots and scrub pastures before dropping down a side road to the east lake shore and then almost immediately up again, this time a narrow gravel rutted track that passed through two stone entrance columns heavy with moss and tangled poison ivy and up some more, then opening before a long three-story Italianate house with peeling white paint and some obvious dark places where windows had been either boarded over or covered inside with cardboard. At least a dozen cars were parked there as well as an old school bus painted blue and off to one side on what had once been lawn was the incandescent large cone of a teepee. Hewitt’s first thought was I’m home and he would remember this a year and a half later after he’d grown to know some of the people he met that night and the house itself well, far too well. But at the moment it was as if Emily were leading him toward what he’d somehow expected, as if she were part of all of it. Several people clumped on the long porch fronting the house and from within a wave of bass and drums and guitar far too dense and loud to come from any stereo system and he paused, rocking back on his heels, still barefoot and she paused with him, cupped her hand inside his elbow and leaned her upper body against his side. He gestured toward the teepee and she tilted her face up and spoke in his ear, “That’s Max’s. He’s full-blood Iroquois—a Seneca. Very heavy vibe but a sweetheart, claims to be a direct descendant of Cornplanter. You can’t miss him, bald as an old man. I think he shaves his head. And check it out.”

  “What?”

  “He’s the drummer, flat-out rock and roll. Come on, let’s go in.”

  Emily knew everyone which didn’t surprise Hewitt and at least half of them seemed to know who he was—guys running long eyes over him and some of the women as well but the air was thick with weed and the band was cranking and for a time he stood watching and listening as Emily made slow rounds, Hewitt thinking Well she brought me here she’s not going to abandon me and then something else clicked in and he thought She’s showing me off, and immediately pulled back, not willing to make such assumption. Even if he knew he was the exotic stranger he also knew that wouldn’t last and then someone handed him a paper cup half filled with cranberry juice and told him Down the rabbit hole and he stood holding the cup until Emily glanced at him and he raised the cup and tipped his head in question and she nodded yes and he drank it down.

  Sometime later Emily was back, glowing iridescence herself and they went outside and sat in his old Volvo while he quickly twisted up some hash joints and while she held the pipe for herself and Hewitt as he worked, both open naked souls looking upon each other and laughing, laughing and as they got out of the car to return inside he bent quickly to kiss her and she not only kissed him back soft and sweet as a peach but moaned as he pulled his lips away—Hewitt all liquid neon sparking and feeling those ten thousand trailing enraptured threads between them, and then inside again where they made their way to the front of the living room where the band was set up and people were dancing and the music was hot and clean and punchy with dirty drawdowns spiraling with singing lead guitar bringing it back up—Stones and Feat and Dead and Clapton and just about anything else he could hope for and the night opened like a pod splitting as he and Emily began to dance.

  Hewitt liked to dance, liked the music filling his body and carrying it in such a way that he was a part of the music as the music was of him—but dancing with Emily was a revelation. They began slow as those around them, thumping and pumping legs and elbows and torsos and shaking heads with the beat and rumble, arms shimmying and fingers trailing with the vocals and lead lines and then although he could never recall how it changed the space around them opened up and they were flying within each other, passing and touching, hands meeting and sliding as they passed and turned and worked lowdown toward each other before one or the other would flare out spiraling away and they were off again, sometimes working backward without once looking and coming butt to butt with hair flying as heads bent low and once Hewitt heard her growl as they did this and the band seemed to have hit its own head as there were no more breaks between songs but long slippery sequences that would suddenly bounce home into what Hewitt already had heard coming and it seemed Emily did too as she was right there with him on every turn and now both of them with soaked hair and shirts and on they went going down the road and Hewitt had one inspired moment of clarity when he realized that they were making love for the first time and they were not fading away, not at all or ever because love for real won’t fade away and then back outside in the cool night leaning against each other and silent, down off the porch on the ruined lawn by a copse of twisted cedars, Emily plucking out the front of her Danskin and blowing down toward her breasts and then looking at Hewitt, that face he felt he already knew sober and somber and laughing all at once and said, “Can you dance like that when you’re not tripping?”

  He reached a finger and slid it through the cooling sheen of sweat on her nose and said, “Can you?”

  She smiled and said, “How about some peace and quiet?”

  Two hours later they were seated back to back on the cottage dock watching the day peel back the night. They’d come through the village where Hewitt counted three dogs and a parked sheriff’s cruiser and stopped at the all-night gas station where they bought eggs and bread and orange juice and drove around the eastern side of the lake to her family’s cottage where she stretched up tiptoe to take a key down from the hook hidden by the upper door jamb and sat in the chill dormant house with the low background scent of mothballs while she fried eggs and made toast as they listened to crinkly crackly big band swing on the AM radio and then went out to the dock.

  Hewitt was thinking he should be feeling ground down but he wasn’t—all he wanted was to sit there holding her hand and feeling the length of his back against hers when she said, “You still have one of those mighty joints?” Wearing not only the flannel shirt she’d brought with her but an old Hot Tuna sweatshirt he’d had in the trunk of the car. Hewitt still in his cutoffs and denim shirt and watching the gooseflesh on his legs but not at all cold. He said, “I’ve got the makings.”

  “Look out at the water.”

  He did. The sun was striking down against the far shore.

  “What do you see?”

  “The sun coming up.”

  She said, “I really do believe if you reach down in the front pocket of your shirt you’ll find a joint waiting.”

  He did and there was and they scooted around to face each other as they smoked and she ran her hands over his now cold thighs and pulled off his sweatshirt and placed it over him and tugged tight her flannel shirt and whe
n the joint was done she said, “Look back at the water now.”

  “Do you want to swim?”

  “Hewitt.”

  He studied the lake and then said, “The surface isn’t flat anymore. It’s broken up.”

  She nodded. “There’s a chop.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Feel the air, turn your head or wet a finger and feel the air.”

  After a moment he said, “There’s wind. Not much but there’s air moving. Is that it?”

  “I think,” she said, “we should go sailing. Do you sail, Hewitt?”

  “I’m sailing right now. But if you’re talking about boats—”

  She was up on her feet. “You wait right here.”

  A few minutes later the boathouse door next to the dock cranked slowly up and from the invisible depths she used a single paddle to bring out a small sailboat, an exquisite wooden craft he would learn was a catboat with not only a mainsail but a small flying jib and brought it alongside the dock and he climbed carefully down in. Emily paddled out and then was up all darting motion as she dropped the centerboard and raised the mainsail and hauled in the sheets and settled back beside him as the wind took the sail and away they went. She didn’t ask him to do a thing and he knew enough to sit still and be happy watching her. She fled back and forth over the boat as they got on into the full morning breeze, adjusting ropes and slipping knots and for one beautiful moment stretched up on tiptoe facing into the wind, one hand raised to steady herself against the mast, her body as alive and separate from him as it could ever be and yet she was there showing him this of her. Then she came back and settled into the cockpit, one hand on the tiller and the other holding the sheet as air and water and girl all ran together and she looked at him and grinned and called out, “So, Hewitt Pearce. What are we doing? You and me?”

  “Flying. We’re flying, Emily.”

  She grinned and called back, “You betchum, bub.”

  When they finally quit the morning was well along and other boats were out, sailboats and speedboats with big rooster-tail wakes trailing water-skiers. As they drifted toward the boathouse with the sail flopping and Emily paddling, pushing a straight course, Hewitt jumped out as he saw the bottom coming up beneath the water and guided the boat into its berth. He waited while Emily stowed everything and furled the sail and wrapped it all up and last thing cranked down the boathouse door. Then she said, “I think it’s time to go to bed for a while.”

  He only nodded which was a good thing because although she stripped down to her underwear and made no objection as he shucked off all his clothes once he slid in beside her she kissed him once, then kissed his forehead and said, “Good morning, Hewitt. I’ll see you in a bit,” and turned away from him and within minutes was asleep.

  It took him a bit longer but not as much as he expected. And when he woke she was propped up on one elbow, with the sheet pushed off for the heat of midday and studying him serious as a science project. He reached for her and they tangled together sweet mouths and tongues until he slid one hand along her thigh and she pulled back and with delicate resolve stopped his hand, holding it in hers and drawing it up to her mouth to kiss and said, “No. Not yet.”

  He couldn’t help the groan. “Why?”

  She smiled. “Because we’ve got other things to do right now.”

  “Like what? Emily, I—”

  She put a finger to his lips. “Don’t think I don’t want to. But not yet. Not here.” She paused and when he was silent, absorbing, she went on. “Right now we’re going to get dressed and I’m going to make this bed up not quite right but almost and you’re going to go down the hall to the next room and pull apart the bed and then make it up again but not quite right. Then we’re going to drive up to Farrell’s and you’re going to get some jeans instead of those shorts. Although bring the shorts with you.”

  “I understand the beds. You want to explain the rest? You’re not trying to get rid of me, are you?”

  She was smiling. “Even if I wanted to you wouldn’t be easy to get rid of.”

  “I’m glad you know that.”

  “Listen—it’s Sunday so my mother is at church with my grandparents but because it’s warm and dry with that good breeze my brother Einer’s out tedding the first cut we’ve got down and Dad’s following him with the siderake and right after lunch they’re going to bale that hay. And you and I are going to get you into some work clothes and eat some lunch and then you’re going to help the boys put that hay up. Which will be good for you—”

  “I’ve done my share of haying.”

  “It’ll be good for you in more ways than one. I might be pretty much free to call my own shots but I was out all night with you. So you can sweat some of last night out and gain a point, because you’re maybe two or three points down now if you understand. And since it’s Sunday, once that hay’s on the wagons, or in the barn if there’s time, Dad’ll milk a little early and then we all come down here to swim and wash off the hay dust and chaff and cook burgers or whatever Dad decides out on the grill. And then maybe, just maybe, if it feels right we could slip off for a bit. Even if it’s just to sail again.”

  He was quiet for a bit, thinking.

  “Hewitt,” she said.

  “Emily.”

  She spoke carefully. “It’s your choice. It’s just I think it would be a really good idea.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You know what.”

  She stood from the bed in her underwear and pulled on the leotard and worked it up over her torso. She said, “And I’d really like it if you did. There. Is that what you wanted?”

  He lay on his back with his hands laced behind his head. She was stepping into her jeans and there was a moment when they were half on and she raised her other leg and inserted her foot and went a little off balance and his heart lurched—that inelegant instant penetrated more deeply than any single moment since the afternoon before and he said, “I’ll do anything you want.” His voice thickened beyond all expectation.

  She looked at him. He grinned and stood and reached for his clothes and said, “So the bed down the hall. Is your mother really going to look that close? We could’ve been anywhere.”

  “Oh, Hewitt,” she said, and he knew she heard and understood all of him once again. “Bear with me. Okay?”

  He went to her and kissed her and she wrapped up against him hot and hungry and then he pulled back himself this time and said, “I’m a little crispy. It’d be good to sweat. And food. Food would be good. What were you thinking about?”

  “I get a discount at the drive-in.”

  “That’s perfect. Any problem if I smoke a joint along the way?”

  “Not as long as you share.”

  * * *

  THE SUN WAS at its afternoon best and the heavy apple limbs were cool with the shade of new leaves and blossoms but his mood was off. It was no mystery that those long days of young adulthood would stand in vivid contrast to the otherwise downpouring of the years—not only moments but entire days etched forever vivid as if that very morning. He was a man alone and statistically at least growing closer to death than when those years fashioned and formed his life, but he was free of bitterness and knew this to be an odd blessing. He understood too well how bitterness seeps and poisons as if life itself was a liquid moving through old lead pipes. Yet the one passion most remote and untouchable was not static but grew and changed within him. He still had dreams where she was young as he remembered her daytimes. But the woman who increasingly replaced her girl-self for those night visits was more than his dreamworld keeping pace with age.

  This was not merely some inner maturity of his brain. He cheated.

  Although he didn’t think of it that way. His method was he thought not only exemplary but clever and clean. No drunken phone calls late at night. No letters to be returned unopened or not. No surreptitious visits even in the years when he was still legally empowered to drive an automobile.
None of that for him. Behaviors all perhaps equal to his passion and devotion but smacking clearly of violation. Passion has no degrees. It’s either the wildfire raging in your heart or it’s nothing. All else is simply control and respect. You have to respect the one you love. You have to drop to your knees daily at the silent invisible altar of your passion. And that’s all that’s allowed. His own code of honor.

  He subscribed to the Bluffport weekly paper.

  It had been four years between when he last saw her and that moment of staggering brilliance. So he’d missed her return to Bluffport. Thus mercifully both the engagement announcements and wedding pictures. And he’d had to take the chance to renew his subscription after a fruitless first year but had been rewarded halfway through that second year with a photograph and story of the opening of the new Bluffport clinic under the direction of Dr. Martin Nussbaum and read the article which noted the doctor’s wife Emily and their two young children. Hewitt did some quick calculations and realized the children would’ve been born while Martin and Emily were in medical school. So he’d knocked her up and knocked her out of her dream. That had been a hard strange day that sent him briefly back into his old dark dreaded self.

  Several years later a short paragraph with a photograph detailed how Emily Nussbaum was now a therapist and would be working in her husband’s clinic. The newsprint photo seemed to Hewitt somewhat grim and set, as if her achievement were only partial. He knew this could be his own simple reduction.

  The most recent photograph was three years old and of her alone. In shorts and a polo shirt. This time her smile was as it ever had been. She’d won the single-hand sailing regatta on the lake. She held no trophy but the water was visible behind her and she was standing on a dock of considerable size, speaking of a club or other such organization. She had cut her hair.