World And Town Part 33

"Nope. I did not."

She wanted him reborn for two reasons. One was so they could be buried with Rex someday. 'Cause while Everett was Christian, he was Eastern Orthodox, on account of his pa. Hungarian Greek Catholic. And that didn't count at the cemetery, see. That wasn't the right kind. But the other reason was, she didn't want to be unequally yoked. Yoked like draft horses? he said. Yoked like mules? But that was how Paul put it, she said. Unequally yoked. She wanted to be married to a committed Christian. Someone who'd given up trying to do things by himself. Someone who'd realized what a lot of bad decisions he'd made. Someone who had put his trust in Jesus instead. She wanted him to put the Lord on the throne of his life.

And one night, well, what the heck, he did sort of say that he would, now. He did. He was firming up again like a youngster, see, and in what you might call an agreeable frame of mind.

"I said I'd give you my life, and it's yours," he said.

"You did, didn't you."

"I certainly did."

"Meaning you're going to listen?" she said, touching him. "Meaning you're going to put your trust in Jesus?"

"Don't I always listen?" he whispered. "Ain't I listening now?"

"I love you," she said. Then she took him in her mouth, a thing she'd never done before. Worked her tongue in ways he didn't know she could. And that was a revelation, all right. Made him wonder if there was more instruction in the Bible than he knew. He did think he'd gone to see the angels. And, well, when he came back to himself, he might as well have been born again.

It was a good time. They were seeing his ma and pa more, and Ginny wasn't complaining. In fact, she was bringing them pie. Fruit. Articles from the paper. She was having folks from church over, now, too. It was kind of a trade. And what the heck-he was almost getting used to the Was he with Jesus thing. Figured it was like looking past Belle Tollman's parrot. What the heck.

But, now, the cafe stayed a sticking point, see. It stayed a sticking point. He made him a list of the issues, starting with privacy. Would a cafe in the house make them feel like they'd lost their privacy. Then there was cost. Was a cafe going to be the mower all over again.

But Ginny just said, "This is about keeping Jesus out of the house, isn't it?"

They went on building. Punched through their punch list, and come one day, Ginny was spending hours in the sunroom, just as he'd predicted. Loving it. She was spending hours in there, curled up with her Bible.

'Course, he hadn't predicted that part.

Just as he failed to predict that come one day the commune would subdivide the land. Sell it for housing. But, well, they had no choice, see. They had no choice. A lot of people felt sorry for them, but Ginny was blasting mad. And that was even before the hippies put a standing-seam roof on the house. Silver. The thing shone like a pie plate. So that where before you had to squint to see the farm from the sunroom, now you could see it plain. Now you couldn't miss it.

"We have to have the deck," she said then. "We have to."

'Cause what with the farm sitting a little lower than the house, their view of it would be blocked by a deck, see. And that'd be a good thing, she said. Because she didn't want to spend her time on earth in hate. She really didn't.

And he got that, now. He did.

Still one day he loaded up the woodstove and said, "Ginny. Gin. We can have the deck, but I just don't want a cafe. You can say this is about Jesus, but it ain't. It's about a cafe. It's about hanging up a sign and having strangers come for coffee. I don't want it."

She fingered her cross.

"I made us a new list of things to think on," he said. "Starting with coffee. I don't want my house to smell like coffee."

"Your house," she said.

"Our house," he said. "I just said that because I was trying to get across that I live here, too. It ain't just your house. I live here, too."

Her look was rock ice.

"This house," she said, "is what's left of the farm. The farm my family had for over a hundred years. It's not your house. It's my house."

"Ain't we married?"

"The money came from the farm."

"I built this house with my own two hands, Gin. I made every stick of furniture in it."

"You're a poor man's son who's done good," she said. "But this is my inheritance."

'Course, he wanted to deck her, then. If she'd been a man he probably would have decked her. Instead, he laughed. "Glad to hear I done good," he said. And that helped him, see. Helped him stop himself. And it gave him his pride back, now, to know he stopped himself. It gave him his pride back. "You mean, it's your house," he went on.

"It's my inheritance."

"Even if I put my heart and soul in it, it's yours."

"If you want to put it that way."

Now they were just plain fighting again.

"I never asked whose it was going to be, now," he said. "I just gave it everything I had. Gave you everything. I never asked."

"Well, maybe you should have."

"I'm talking about our marriage, now," he said. "Should I have asked about that, too? Should I have asked you what you were going to give me before I gave you my life?"

He did think she was going to stop and remember the dance at the Grange Hall, then. He did think she was going to remember how they danced with everyone watching and went walking in the dark, and about the stars and the trees and their warm bodies and the cold air. But instead her eyes just stayed this ice-green.

He could barely go on. "If I was a fool, you ought to just tell me now, Gin. If I wasted my life. 'Cause my life ain't worth much, but if I've thrown it away, I'd still like to know. I would. What the heck. I'd still like to know."

"Every life is precious to the Lord," she said.

"I'm not talking about the Lord."

"Well, you ought to be," she said. "Because it's His will that brought you to me. It was His will that you gave what you gave."

"Is that right." He laughed again, if only to make her mad, what the heck.

And what do you know, she was mad.

To be frank, they ought to have broke up right then, see. To be frank, they ought not to have gone on. But somehow he thought it was like a war, or like a bad winter on the farm. Somehow he thought things would come round again. Peace. Spring.

Guess he just didn't want to see the obvious.

They ought to have broke up. But then Jarvis and his wife got hit by a tractor trailer and died, see. And seeing as how Ginny and Everett had the bedrooms, they got the kids. Brian and Betsy, ages four and six. Good kids, but sad. For a bunch of years no one could think of much else but what those kids needed. Love. Those kids needed love. Then his pa died, and his ma. One right after the other, like they'd got planted together and so got cut down together, too. And wasn't that a tough harvest, now. Hard to say what the yield was. He buried them in a Greek Orthodox cemetery right the same day as Ginny found a lump in her breast. 'Course, the doctors cut that lump out in the end, see. In the end, Ginny was just fine.

But before they cut it out, she started talking about the commune all over again. And when she had some church folks over for brunch one day, he was surprised to hear how big she sounded. Fervent. How fervent in spirit, as they liked to say. 'Cause it wasn't her story anymore, now, see. It was His story, G.o.d's story. She was only in it because He put her there. 'Cause He arranged for her to be persecuted by the commune. 'Cause He arranged for her to be dispossessed and defrauded as a way of helping her discover Him. And she did discover Him, she said-that was the Good News. She did. She did discover Him. It was such Good News that she was on fire with the desire to share it. She was on fire with the desire to say how she had conquered injustice and bitterness. How she'd come to see it was all a test. A trial. How she was filled with forgiveness for her enemies-thanks, even. How she was filled with thanks. Because without them she might never have gotten G.o.d's plan. Without them, she might never have surrendered to G.o.d's will. Without them, she might have gone on trying to find meaning in a farm. Looking at her life as if it was about her. About her fulfillment, instead of about the fulfillment of His will. Now she was righteous and happy. Peaceful. She was peaceful. Because she'd surrendered, she said. Because she wasn't trying to direct her life anymore. Because she was putting her trust in Him. She was living her life in Christ.

'Course, all that made the church folk clap for joy to hear. And though Ginny had just said how she'd forgiven the commune, come to thank the commune, even, they said, "Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be as nothing and shall perish." Then they went on talking about how the whole country had gone wrong somehow. How it'd been founded a Christian nation, but how it had gotten lost, like Ginny. How it was following its own law instead of G.o.d's law. Trying to fulfill its own will instead of G.o.d's will. An abomination of desolation, they kept calling it. An abomination of desolation. A place with communes instead of families. A place with s.e.x instead of love. A place where men became women and women became men. They told Ginny she was Lazarus-that she was wrapped up in bandages, with a stone at her door. She was going to have to roll back the stone, they said. She was going to have to roll back the stone, and then she was going to have to take off those bandages and walk. It was a mighty task, they said, as she had her a mighty stone. But with the Lord's help she could do it, they said. She could. With the Lord's help, she could roll back the stone and walk.

It took Everett a while to realize he was the stone, now. Took him a while.

Unequally yoked. Ginny didn't want to be unequally yoked. But she couldn't just up and leave Everett, now, 'cause of Paul. 'Cause Paul said that even if a woman had an unbelieving husband, she couldn't just leave him. She couldn't just go. But, now, Paul also said that if an unbelieving husband should leave a woman, she could let him go. And so that was Ginny's idea, see-to get Everett to leave her. To drive him out. Or not Ginny's idea. It was the Lord's idea. It was the Lord's plan.

It took Everett some time to get all that, now. It did. It took him some time. But he figured it out eventually. That in Ginny's view, the Lord sent her the Wrights on purpose. And the Cambodian girl, too-He sent her the Cambodian girl. That Sophy Chhung. What in 'Nam they called a gook but did seem like something else here-she was a piece of the plan, see.

The plan to drive him out.

The fire wasn't no accident, now. Nothing was an accident. It all went together, somehow.

He knew it.

He just didn't know how.

But what went wrong to begin with was Ginny. What went wrong to begin with was her. 'Cause she had her a blinding kind of vision, just like Hattie said. A blinding kind of vision that Ginny saw plain as day. How the Lord was on her side. How He had a plan. How one day she was going to push back her rock and walk out of her cave, just like the Lord wanted. And then she was going to set the world back right, see-her and her church. They were going to set the world back right.

They were. She saw it. They were.

It was going to take time. But one day, they were going to do it. And then they were going to see it again: the ideal world. The world the way it used to be. The world the way it used to be. They were going to have it all back: The world the way it was, back when she was queen.

Hattie III: The Pride of Riverlake.

E-mails:.

You don't face what we face.

You don't know desperation, you don't know despair.

You don't remember.

Well, maybe they're right, thinks Hattie. But the World Trade Center; and Sarun in the hospital, all in bandages; and Chhung-Chhung, who used to make it past the Thai soldiers, Sophy once told her, with a sling full of rice-just wanting now to kill himself. He sits outside with his brace on. The weather isn't as cold as it usually is, a mixed blessing; who knows how long Chhung will be able to sit out there.

The weather's late.

Still, he should come in. He should. Instead of smoking and drinking the way he is, quiet. His quiet, in truth, as disturbing as the weather.

As disturbing as his yelling used to be.

The weather is going to come, after all. Even with global warming it will come. Riverlake's northerly. There's not much more than a fence or two between town and the Arctic, as people like to say; they've always gotten ice and sleet and hail. Not to say torrents like the one that overflowed Brick Lake, way back when-turned it into a raging river such as took out whole mills and barns, and a number of cows, too. Of course, if people hadn't gone and cut down the forests for farms, well, there might have been more trees to drink up some of the water-that flood wasn't all Mother Nature. But never mind. You'd still have to say that Riverlake gets torrents. Dumps. Wind. Sudden weather. Plummets where everything goes dry, and sounds start to change-snaps where the sound waves hug the ground and bring far-off things in. There isn't a pastor in the county who hasn't cracked the G.o.d's frozen people joke and people do laugh. This is deep-freeze country.

Chhung should come in.

Mum wants to know where you can go where there are no gangs and no churches; she asks via Sophy, in Khmer, having given up on English. Hattie doesn't know what to say. Mum prays. There's a Buddhist temple a few towns over, but she doesn't want Hattie to bring her there. Because there are hippies, Sophy says, and because the chants sound strange. Like they don't do that Cambodian nasal thing, she says; they don't do smout. Mum would rather pray at home, in her bedroom, where nothing sounds strange; she'd rather pray at her shrine, where nothing has changed. She has a small shrine, with a gray-green carpet sample to sit on; it doesn't look a whole lot more comfortable than the floor. But still she sits on it, her legs to the side. Holding her hands the way people used to in yoga-in that prayer position, only not as though she's in The King and I. Instead she presses the length of her forefingers to her nose, hard; it's as if she is trying to affix the cartilage more firmly to her face. She closes her eyes, moving her lips. No one knows what she is saying exactly, but Sophy thinks it's something like I go to the Buddha as my refuge.

I go to the Dhamma as my refuge.

I go to the Sangha as my refuge.

For the second time I go to the Buddha as my refuge

For the second time I go to the Dhamma as my refuge.

For the second time I go to the Sangha as my refuge.

Nothing too interesting, but of course that's the point. The point is to have no point-to empty the mind. To free oneself of oneself, good riddance. To rise beyond want, to rise beyond pain. Detaching oneself, da gun. One day Mum cuts her hair off short-even shorter than Sophy's, and using those same dull scissors. It's about as even as a pasture the sheep ate down. She doesn't care. She sports a white shawl, too, over her blouse, and the next day there it is again-a plain white swath that should show dirt like crazy but somehow doesn't-as if it's beyond dirt, somehow, as if it hails from a world beyond laundry. A better world, indeed. Sophy calls it the temple granny look, and Mum does look as if she belongs in a long line of women sitting on a floor somewhere. It's as if Chhung isn't the only one to have removed himself from the trailer; it's as if in her mind and spirit, Mum has, too.

A lot of the time she is too tired to clean, so Sophy cleans for her. She cleans though Hattie tells her she doesn't have to; she cleans though Hattie tells her she can find someone else to do it. Sophy cleans because she wants to clean, she says; she wants to clean and clean and clean. Plus, she doesn't want anyone to steal her mother's jobs. And so she cleans and cleans while Hattie cooks Chinese food for anyone who wants it. Pork with asparagus, shrimp with peas. Beef with broccoli. Simple things, home-style. They like them. Hattie tries to help with Gift, too-Gift, who likes it when Hattie brings Annie to play with him. And so she does, though it means protecting Annie from infant torture. For Gift will pull Annie's tail if Hattie lets him. He'll feed Annie candy. Hattie tells him how she once had a dog who ate a bag of chocolate and died; and though he's too young to understand, he does listen, wide-eyed. Barely blinking-children his age don't blink much. Hattie remembers from Josh what an event it was to behold his lashes lengthening, then retracting again. And now here are Gift's, an event, too. Gift has Sophy's lashes, and Sophy's eyes-bright eyes, with a tilt. Though how relaxed his face is; even his lips are relaxed. He breathes through his mouth, his wide chin s.h.i.+ny with dribble. A-beh! he says. A-beh! Putting the stress on the second syllable, she would swear, and looking at Hattie as if to see if she can say it, too. A-beh! she says finally. He stamps his feet, delighted. His cheeks jiggle; his pant legs pool by his feet. She rolls them up for him, feeling him pat her head as she does, his warm tummy pressing like a compress against her forehead. A-beh! His s.h.i.+rt is stained on the shelf of his belly, where food always lands-a problem she had when she was pregnant, a problem she understands. A-beh! she says again, and he answers again, A-beh! It's a conversation. He has a few words, now, some of them multipurpose: A-da! is dog, but also birds and maybe bugs, for example-creatures. As for what language he's speaking, that is not clear. Sophy thinks Ba-ba-ba! is "yes" in Khmer-doesn't it sound just like Bhat-bhat-bhat? she says. But now as he pats Annie with concern he says, A-beh-wanting to give her his bottle. A-beh, A-beh. No, Hattie says, No bottle. Bottle for Gift, not for Annie, no. Still he insists, A-beh. A generous soul, speaking his own language, maybe. His hair has never been cut, so it's downy up top and wispy at the bottom, the hair he was born with-hair from another world, it seems. Angel hair. Sophy says they should cut it, people think he's a girl, but what with everyone so scissor-happy these days, Hattie's hoping they'll leave his alone. He's too young to be shorn by these self-shearers, too young to be clipped.

Sophy wants to clean Hattie's house in return for her babysitting, but Hattie tells her she's been doing her own cleaning. Some things you've got to clean yourself, she says, and Sophy nods.

"I get that," she says.

The trailer is not so much about teaching Mum English now as it is about teaching Hattie Khmer. Of course, she will never learn to speak it properly. The Internet says Khmer has some twenty-three vowels and sixty vowel sounds; that's too many new sounds for an old lady like her. She sees how Mum must feel about learning English, how it's like standing at a doorway you just can't enter. Hattie's learning to recognize some words and phrases, though. Sra'ngout sra'ngat, for example, which means "sadness," and ah songkhim, "hopelessness." Those are for Mum. And for Chhung, ch'kuot, which means "crazy," and samlap khluon, "suicidal." Sophy and Mum show Hattie a children's book about the Khmer alphabet. Neither of them can decipher its little upright a.s.semblies of spears and zigzags and hooks and teardrops, but Sophy does know how there are no s.p.a.ces between words when they're written, and how a vowel can go beside a consonant, but above it or below it, too. Above a consonant? says Hattie. Below it? Or around it, says Sophy. And when Hattie asks, Around it? How can it go around it? Sophy writes a letter and draws a kind of C around it; it looks like a clamp from Carter's woodshop. Like this, she says. The C is the vowel? Hattie asks, and Sophy nods with a little pride. She knows because her dad used to try to teach her about it, she says. Because it's the kind of thing he knows, he knows a lot of things. She starts to cry.

They all cry and cry.

Sophy has not been in school since the accident, but the church is not worried, she says. She says they know she'll come back; they have confidence. They believe it's the Lord's plan-even the accident was His plan.

If only Hattie believed in a plan.

Yesterday there was a storm, with a big wind, and lines of white-caps that pa.s.sed and pa.s.sed; Hattie sat in her car at the town beach and watched them. One line, another, another. How do the loons stay put the way they do? This one loon calmly, magically, holding its place in the waves-a lone black periscope, under which the waves rolled and rolled. The loons are an ancient species-twenty-five million years old, people say, relatives of the dinosaurs. To hear their laugh, their yodel, their howl-their many unearthly warbles-is to be put in touch with the numinous. But how weird that they're still here. Thanks to the weather, they're still here, and not just the juveniles-the adults are here, too. And so many other birds, as well: What with the leaves down, Hattie can see not only all the birds' nests-all the secret birds' nests-but dozens of the nest-makers, perched like snipers at the very tippy-top of the trees. Watching. Chattering. Why are you here? Hattie wants to ask them. Go south! Go south!

They do not move.

Today it is warm again. Hattie has only to step in the shade to know it's not summer, because in the summer the shade's warm; this shade's cold. But the heat is building in a summerlike way, as if something's stalled-building and building so it can break. How can the holidays lie right around the corner? Turkey! Lights! Santa!

They watch for winter the way they used to watch for spring.

At least the days are shortening; there's that much right with nature. At least the planets are still in gear. Hear tell, too, that there's a bear hibernating under Grace's front porch. Imagine. People are surprised-warm as it's been, after all. If they were bears, they say, they would keep on with their fat-building, why stop? But they're not bears, and that bear has always wintered on Grace's property-claws her trees up good every year. And maybe there was a shortage of beechnuts this year-something. Of course, there're people who think she should get it out of there. Think how lightly it sleeps, they say. And they're right. A bear can wake in a flash. You might even call them nappers; a female can give birth smack in the middle of the winter. But Grace would never think of disturbing a creature's sleep. That's when you can feel its spirit, she told Hattie once-what it is besides its instincts and ways, namely innocent. They sense her interest in them, Hattie thinks. A couple of years ago Grace had a moose in her swamp, and the only silver fox ever seen in this area dug its burrow in her yard-a beautiful animal. More dark gray than silver, actually, with silver-white paws and a huge silver tail.

Oh, lake: Hattie's waiting for your sh.o.r.e to hem up and your waters to still-for a chill to spread itself over you once again, in so quick a sweep that it seems a spell has been cast-that some magician has waved a great wand and sonorously p.r.o.nounced, "Saran wrap!" For there it will be, then, suddenly, again: a thin, still covering, complete with minute gla.s.sine wrinkles, as if the magician somehow failed to quite pull the wrap tight. Not that the wrinkles will much matter, in the end. In the end, the ice will thicken just the same; in the end, it will blanket the life below and keep it all safe. (How lucky that ice floats! Hattie used to tell her students. How lucky that ice insulates!) And then in the spring, will come the thaw: cracks and slush and bays of melt. Open water. At the edge of the water there will be weasels, hungrily pulling up fish.

More of the e-mail she's been ignoring.