The Blackstone Commentaries (14 page)

He wasn't prepared for the house. It felt too small. In the living room where they took him was an old console-model TV that Rachel's mother, a thin woman in a shapeless, almost colorless dress, hurried over to shut off. A big Bible lay on top of the TV. Two tilt-back lounge chairs were pulled up in front of the screen.

A nearby sofa took up most of one side of the room, the wall behind it drooping with family pictures. In the middle of the room was a large kerosene heater, and on the wall behind the television was a portrait of Jesus, his eyes fixed on the heavens. The usual white Jesus, Elmore noticed, who might just as well have been a girl with a beard or a clean hippie, if he was anyone but Jesus.

“You been in the military?” her father asked almost as soon as he settled into one of the lounge chairs and swung it around to face Elmore. Rachel's mother, Sarah, clutched her hands to her lap.

Elmore had never seen anyone quite like Sarah before. She had a longish face with soft, fluid lips that curled somewhere between a smile and disbelief, yet a hard face, too, etched like her husband's. Her eyes, a serene greenish gray, seemed without hesitation or self-consciousness to probe deep into him, as though she'd found him asleep on the forest floor somewhere. In their deep stillness, they made him think of water, of eddies of memory and longing.

“Young man, you been in the military?” Rachel's father repeated.

“No, sir.” He turned to the tall, wiry man dressed in green khakis and slippers. In 1948, when his father had pulled the family car into Cady's Filling Station for the first time, Frank Cady had shown a natural reserve common in the mountains, bordering on xenophobia, Elmore now knew. But being a child then, Elmore had only sensed Cady's gentleness. Despite all the years that had passed, he looked just like Elmore remembered, only now there was no friendliness.

“What do you think of this war?”

“Vietnam? It has never made sense to me.” It was an honest answer, though Elmore knew he could have been a bit more diplomatic. But something about Cady, about the entire situation …

“So you never went to the army.”

“I would have if I'd had to, Mr. Cady, but I was deferred for my education, then got a high number in the lottery.” He kept his voice quiet and polite.
Just pretend you're in court,
he reminded himself,
and don't take it personally
. The fact was, he'd felt embarrassed for Rachel. Now he wasn't certain he should have. Seeing that house and her people, he wondered who Rachel McPherson really was, and who he had thought she was.

“Not a protestor. At least you don't look like one. It really is like a lottery, isn't it?” her father had said. “Only what you win is you don't have to risk fighting for your country and getting killed. You can live in the clear, as much as any of us do, and enjoy all the benefits of living in a free country.”

To even swallow at that moment would have been thunderous. Elmore threw a glance of disbelief at Rachel, but she couldn't or wouldn't look at him.

“David there,” her father continued, not looking at anybody but pointing at a gold-framed picture on a table beside the couch, rather like a shrine—it was no longer clear whether he was talking to Elmore or his daughter—“Rachel's late husband, he
wanted
to go. He volunteered.” Since there wasn't much to say to that either, Elmore waited. Rachel's father, his piece all said and not knowing where to go next, just stared at him. “I expect lawyering puts you right in the thick of Blackstone County, Mr. Willis. Politics, crime, business,” he declared finally.

“So it would seem.”

“You can get somewhere here being a lawyer. Being a doctor, you might even be able to accomplish some good.”

“I imagine,” Elmore said, breaking into a grin that provoked a grateful smile from Rachel's mother. Rachel, sitting bolt upright on the couch, only glared at her father, who pointedly ignored her.

“Don't get me wrong. I believe firmly in justice, Mr. Willis, and I don't believe there's any difference between Southern or Yankee justice, or justice anywhere, for that matter, if it works, something I have yet to see. Now, why'd you come here?”

“
Frank!
” Sarah said.

“Rachel invited me.”

“Rachel hasn't invited any man here since she lost David. She and David grew up together, went to grammar school and high school together. And church. Used to be here Sundays after church, and after school, like he was our own. He
was
our own. A hard worker and honest. He was going to be an engineer and already started going to college for it, except the war was going on. We scarcely know what her life's like anymore, these past three or four years.” He stared hard at Elmore, the way Elmore suspected he probably wanted to stare at his daughter. “I hear you have an appetite for cards and loose women. Is she part of that?”

“
FRANK
!”

“No, sir. Not that I know of.” But he let his anger show.

“Don't get prickly with me, Willis,” Cady had said, at which juncture Rachel jumped off the couch and stormed out the door, heading for the car.

Without even a glance at the man sitting in a righteous huff nearby, Elmore had stood and said, “You'll excuse me,” to Rachel's mother.

“You're really not upset, are you?” Rachel said now.

“I'm sorry it happened.”

“My father can't even be civil, and you're not upset? I don't know why I took you home!” She flicked her hair in disgust.

“Maybe I should go back and challenge him to duel,” Elmore suggested, reaching to turn on the headlights.

“Ha-ha!”

My God, I believe I'm right!
he thought, and tried to change the subject and make talk like they'd shared on the courthouse lawn and all the way to her parents' house, when he'd lost all sense of time. He couldn't recall ever talking to a woman so much. “You and David had no children?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

He shrugged. “I was just asking.”

“You think because we got married so young, we should have had kids? Maybe I was really married at thirteen and they're all grown up. Want to meet the little dears?”

“Whoa.”

“Elmore Willis, I would never,
never
marry anyone because I got pregnant! Especially if I loved him. I've seen that kind of hell.”

“Fine,” he said.

“We had to actually work hard so we would have a life someday. We didn't have any money. But you wouldn't understand
that
, would you?” She glanced over her shoulder at Phineas. “At least my parents approved of your dog.”

Is she nuts?
he wondered, but forgot even that as they suddenly climbed onto a high meadow, the sun sinking below a wooded ridge above them, pulling shadows up out of the valleys after it. “This is wonderful country!” he said.

They plunged into a grove lush with the smell of pine. Crossing a plank bridge, she said, “Stop here!” pointing to a wide place crisscrossed with tire tracks. Obeying, Elmore turned off the motor. In the heavy silence, he heard the downhill rush of a creek. “I hear you do a lot of skinny-dipping. Everyone talks about it, women especially. You going to deny it?”

“No.”

She flung the door open. “Well, I don't have a swimsuit, and I'm going swimming!”

Stunned, he watched her storm down a well-worn trail.

It was almost dark when he emerged alone from the trees onto a small bluff, the sudden thunder of water overrunning the forest. He looked down. Maybe forty feet below, the stream cascaded into a frothing pool. Above, all he saw was a thin pewter band of light silhouetting the trees that crested the high ridges. He heard Phineas bark and, again looking down, saw a pale figure scramble onto the rocks below, the shadow of the dog behind it.

“You coming?” Rachel's shout was swept away as she disappeared into the water. For a moment in that darkening, dreamlike world, he felt as lost and desolate as he ever had.

A frigid, convulsive blackness whipped his body when he dived into the pool, numbing him until his lungs began to scream. He had just surfaced, his wild gasps turning to laughter, when a shadow flew out of the water and knocked him backwards. He felt legs slide around his waist and lock, and then he was pulled under.

“Are you trying to goddamn kill me?” he roared as once again he burst into the night air, flailing wildly.

From behind, an arm glided around his neck and warm lips slid over his ear. “It's my pool,” she gasped, then turned him, jammed her mouth against his and drove him under.

Later he recalled a glimmer of light beckoning way overhead, and finally an exultant cry shouted into the high, dark reaches of the gorge. Smooth stone warmed his knees as the night air tickled his wet body. He clasped her head and, as her breath caught, pushed into her. Once more, he floated to the bottom, only there was no water, just vast heat in a sudden rush of unfathomable quiet.

He woke into roaring darkness, a warm tongue against his face. “Phineas,” he whispered, hugging the dog, grateful for his reality. Then from the darkness came weeping, the most desolate sound he'd ever heard.

XV

Drusilla

Drusilla found Rachel the next day sprawled face down and naked on a bed that filled most of a tiny room. When she shook her, Rachel groaned, flopped onto her back and dropped an arm across her eyes. The room reeked of sweat and damp sheets and unwashed clothes piled high in a corner.

Rachel peeked finally. Her eyes moved out of the sunlight streaming in the window and found Dru. Then she yanked the pillow over her head before finally, reluctantly, heaving out of bed and stumbling past her aunt into the kitchen. She shoved her hair back in exasperation and looked Dru's way but didn't seem to see her. “There's no damn air conditioning in this house,” she said. “Mr. Fleming next door, that old letch can just feast his eyes.” She turned her back on her aunt.

Dru looked around. It always amazed her how tiny Rachel's house was, a rented bungalow with a small, closetlike bedroom and kitchen, a bathroom and a living room not much bigger than any of the others.
When she glanced into the bathroom, she saw an empty gin bottle and a sopping towel on the floor next to the shower. She knew that Rachel, when she was unhappy, liked to sit down in the shower, sometimes for hours, letting the water go cold.

She shivered looking at it, then went into the living room and stood at the screen door staring out at the street, not seeing anything, just thinking.

“What time is it?” Rachel asked behind her.

She turned to find her niece leaning in the doorway to the kitchen, still with nothing on and looking utterly oblivious to the fact. Against her dark hair, her skin looked too pale. Her body verged on being muscular in an athletic way, but it was slim and shapely, too, she thought, and truly beautiful.
And she really doesn't give a damn!

Rachel waited, scratching one calf with the toes of the other foot.

“It's four,” Dru replied. “That's
P.M.
, honey.”

Rachel groaned and glanced over her shoulder into the bathroom, then defiantly back at her aunt.

“You've been crying again.” Dru tried to make it sound matter-of-fact, like it was an everyday occurrence and they could talk about it.

“Some other time, Dru,” Rachel said, and turned back into the kitchen. She walked like someone determined to get through life because that's what you did, like it was a duty. Turning on the cold water, Rachel reached for a glass, then took a long drink. Suddenly she thrust the glass to one side and plunged her head under the spigot, causing Dru, who had followed her, to smile with something like relief. Or maybe it was hope.

“Did you kill that entire bottle last night?”

Rachel pulled her head from under the water, shook her hair violently, then presented her aunt with a big, forced grin. “Can we talk another time, please?”

“No. Tell me, why do you keep going out with Pemberton?”

“It wasn't him.”

“So what sonuvabitch was it this time?”

“He was actually patient and quite nice, and has to think I'm a complete Looney Tune.”

“Who was he?”

“Just never mind. What brought you over here anyhow?”

“Lunch, remember? And if he's such a nice person, why don't you try telling him how you feel?”

“What, that every time a man screws me I cry because he's not David, and it's the loneliest, blackest feeling in the world, and they might do it to me until I was dead and I don't suppose it'd change? Great erection therapy.”

“Rachel, you've got to get on with your life.”

“Tell that to Papa.”

“Oh.” There was a long moment's silence. “Now why on earth would you want to take a man up
there
, of all places?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“It sure does, honey. You going to try to talk to him?”

“No, I don't think so. I'm going to sleep some more.”

“Uh-uh. You don't need any more sleep, you need food,” Dru said.

In reply, Rachel stomped off into her bedroom and slammed the door. Dru waited two or three minutes, then found her sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at her body where sunlight from the window splashed across her thighs.

“I wish it wasn't summer anymore, Dru,” Rachel said. “I want it to be over and school going, the kids and everything to worry about and no real time of my own.” Her gaze didn't move from the sunlit skin and stark black hair of her sex, like it fascinated her. “Ugly, isn't it?” she said finally, looking up at her aunt, her eyes red. “It's all ugly. Maybe if I could have done more for him, been better for him somehow, he wouldn't have wanted to go away, and then he wouldn't have gotten killed.”

“I doubt that,” Dru said, sitting on the bed and taking Rachel in her arms.