Long After Midnight (36 page)

 
          
The
only miracle after that was how Jamie got out of it with his life.

 
          
Dad
poured Epsom salts into a dishpan of hot water, stirred it firmly, and said,
"You
oughta
known better, darn your hide. Your
mother sick an' you
comin
' home all banged up this
way."

 
          
Dad
made a leathery motion of one brown hand. His eyes were bedded in crinkles and
lines, and his mustache was pepper-gray and sparse, as was his hair.

 
          
"I
didn't know Ma was very sick anymore," said Jamie.

 
          
"Women
don't talk much," said Dad, dryly. He soaked a towel in steaming Epsom
salts and wrung it out. He held Jamie's beaten profile and swabbed it. Jamie
whimpered. "Hold still," said Dad. "How you expect me to fix
that cut if you don't hold still, darn it."

 
          
"What's
going on out there?" Mother's voice asked from the bedroom, real tired and
soft

 
          
"Nothing,"
said Dad, wringing out the towel again. "Don't you fret. Jamie just fell
and cut his lip, that's all."

 
          
"Oh,
Jamie," said Mother.

 
          
"I'm
okay, Ma," said Jamie. The warm towel helped to normalize things. He tried
not to think of the fight. It made bad thinking. There were memories of
flailing arms, himself pinned down, Billiard whooping with delight and beating
downward while Ingrid, crying real tears, threw her books, screaming, at his
back.

 
          
And
then Jamie staggered home alone, sobbing bitterly.

 
          
"Oh,
Dad," he said now. "It didn't work." He meant his physical
miracle on Billiard. "It didn't work."

 
          
"What
didn't work?" said Dad, applying liniment to bruises.

 
          
"Oh,
nothing. Nothing." Jamie licked his swollen lip and began to calm down.
After all, you can't have a perfect batting average. Even the Lord made
mistakes. And—Jamie grinned suddenly—yes, yes, he had
meant
to lose the fight! Yes, he had. Wouldn't Ingrid love him all
the more for having fought and lost just for her?

 
          
Sure.
That was the answer. It was just a reversed miracle, that was all!

 
          
"Jamie,"
Mother called him.

 
          
He
went in to see her.

 
          
With
one thing and another, including Epsom salts and a great resurgence of faith in
himself because Ingrid loved him now more than ever, Jamie went through the
rest of the week without much pain.

 
          
He
walked Ingrid home, and Billiard didn't bother him again. Billiard played
after-school baseball, which was a greater attraction than Ingrid—the sudden
sport interest being induced indirectly by telepathy via Jamie, Jamie decided.

 
          
Thursday,
Ma looked worse. She bleached out to a pallid trembling and a pale coughing.
Dad looked scared. Jamie spent less time trying to make things come out
wonderful in school and thought more and more of curing Ma.

 
          
Friday
night, walking alone from Ingrid's house, Jamie watched telegraph poles swing
by him very slowly. He thought, If I get to the next telegraph pole before that
car behind me reaches me, Mama will be all well.

 
          
Jamie
walked casually, not looking back, ears itching, legs wanting to run to make
the wish come true.

 
          
The
telegraph pole approached. So did the car behind.

 
          
Jamie
whistled cautiously. The car was coming too fast!

 
          
Jamie
pumped past the pole just in time; the car roared by.

 
          
There
now. Mama would be all well again.

 
          
He
walked along some more.

 
          
Forget
about her. Forget about wishes and things, he told himself. But it was
tempting, like a hot pie on a windowsill. He had to touch it. He couldn't leave
it be, oh, no. He looked ahead on the road and behind on the road.

 
          
"I
bet I can get down to
Schabold's
ranch gate before
another car comes and do it walking easy," he declared to the sky.
"And that will make Mama well all the quicker."

 
          
At
this moment, in a traitorous, mechanical action, a car jumped over the low hill
behind him and roared forward.

 
          
Jamie
walked fast, then began to run.

 
          
I
bet I can get down to
Schabold's
gate, I bet I
can-Feet up, feet down.

 
          
He
stumbled.

 
          
He
fell into the ditch, his books fluttering about like dry, white birds. When he
got up, sucking his lips, the gate was only twenty yards further on.

 
          
The
car motored by him in a large cloud of dust.

 
          
"I
take it back, I take it back," cried Jamie. "I take it back, what I
said, I didn't mean it."

 
          
With
a sudden bleat of terror, he ran for home. It was all his fault,
all
his fault!

 
          
The
doctor's car stood in front of the house.

 
          
Throught
the window, Mama looked sicker. The doctor closed
up his little black bag and
looked at Dad a long time with strange
lights in his little black eyes.

 
          
Jamie
ran out onto the desert to walk alone. He did not cry. He was paralyzed, and he
walked like an iron child, hating himself, blundering into the dry riverbed,
kicking at prickly pears and stumbling again and again.

 
          
Hours
later, with the first stars, he came home to find Dad standing beside Mama's
bed and Mama not saying much—just lying there like fallen snow, so quiet. Dad
tightened his jaw, screwed up his eyes, caved in his chest, and put his head
down.

 
          
Jamie
took up a station at the end of the bed and stared at Mama, shouting
instructions in his mind to her.

 
          
Get
well, get well, Ma, get well, you'll be all right, sure you'll be fine, I
command it, you'll be fine, you'll be swell, you just get up and dance around,
we need you, Dad and I do, wouldn't be good without you, get well, Ma, get
well, Ma. Get well!

 
          
The
fierce energy lashed out from him silently, wrapping, cuddling her and beating
into her sickness, tendering her heart. Jamie felt glorified in his warm power.

 
          
She
would
get well. She
must!
Why, it was silly to think any
other way. Ma just wasn't the dying sort.

 
          
Dad
moved suddenly. It was a stiff movement with a jerking of breath. He held
Mama's wrists so hard he might have broken them. He lay against her breasts
sounding the heart and Jamie screamed inside.

 
          
Ma,
don't, Ma, don't, oh, Ma, please don't give up.

 
          
Dad
got up, swaying.

 
          
She
was dead.

 
          
Inside
the walls of Jericho that was Jamie's mind, a thought went screaming about in
one last drive of power: Yes, she's dead, all right, so she is dead, so what if
she is dead? Bring her back to life again, yes, make her live again, Lazarus,
come forth, Lazarus, Lazarus, come forth from the tomb, Lazarus, come forth.

 
          
He
must have been babbling aloud, for Dad turned and glared at him in old, ancient
horror and struck him bluntly across the mouth to shut him up.

 
          
Jamie
sank against the bed, mouthing into the cold blankets, and the walls of Jericho
crumbled and fell down about him.

 
          
Jamie
returned to school a week later. He did not stride into the schoolyard with his
old assurance; he did not bend imperiously at the fountain; nor did he pass his
tests with anything more than a grade of seventy-five.

 
          
The
children wondered what had happened to him. He was never quite the same.

 
          
They
did not know that Jamie had given up his role. He could not tell them. They did
not know what they had lost.

 
          
He
put the gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.

 
          
No,
not that way. Louise wouldn't suffer that way. She would be dead and it would
be over and she wouldn't suffer. It was very important that this thing have,
above all, duration. Duration through imagination. How to prolong the
suffering? How, first of all, to bring it about? Well.

 
          
The
man standing before the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his cuff links
together. He paused long enough to hear the children run by swiftly on the
street below, outside this warm two-story house; like so many gray mice the
children, like so many leaves.

 
          
By
the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their screams you knew
what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the year. October. The last
day of October, with white bone masks and cut pumpkins and the smell of dropped
candle fat.

 
          
No.
Things hadn't been right for some time. October didn't help any. If anything it
made things worse. He adjusted his black bow-tie. If this were spring, he
nodded slowly, quietly, emotionlessly, at his image in the mirror, then there
might be a chance. But tonight all the world was burning down into ruin. There
was no green of spring, none of the freshness, none of the promise.

 
          
There
was a soft running in the hall. "That's Marion," he told himself.
"My little one. All eight quiet years of her. Never a word. Just her
luminous gray eyes and her wondering little-mouth." His daughter had been
in and out all evening, trying on various masks, asking him which was most
terrifying, most horrible. They had both finally decided on the skeleton mask.
It was "just
awfull
" It would "scare
the beans" from people!

 
          
Again
he caught the long look of thought and deliberation he gave himself in the
mirror. He had never liked October. Ever since he first lay in the autumn
leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw
the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that
sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.

 
          
But,
it was different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a
million years.

 
          
There
would be no spring.

 
          
He
had been crying quietly all evening. It did not show, not a vestige of it, on
his face. It was all hidden somewhere and it wouldn't stop.

 
          
A
rich syrupy smell of candy filled the bustling house. Louise had laid out
apples in new skins of caramel; there were vast bowls of punch fresh-mixed,
stringed apples in each door, scooped, vented pumpkins peering triangularly
from each cold window. There was a water tub in the center of the living room,
waiting, with a sack of apples nearby, for dunking to begin. All that was
needed was the catalyst, the
inpouring
of children,
to start the apples bobbling, the stringed apples to
penduluming
in the crowded doors, the candy to vanish, the halls to echo with fright or
delight, it was all the same. Now, the house was silent with preparation. And
just a little more than that.

 
          
Louise
had managed to be in every other room save the room he was in today. It was her
very fine way of intimating, Oh look,
Mich
, see how
busy I am! So busy that when you walk into a room
I'm
in there's always something I need to do in
another
room! Just see how I dash about!

 
          
For
a while he had played a little game with her, a nasty childish game. When she
was in the kitchen then he came to the kitchen saying, "I need a glass of
water." After a moment, he standing, drinking water, she like a crystal
witch over the caramel brew bubbling like a prehistoric
mudpot
on the stove, she said, "Oh, I must light the pumpkins!" and she
rushed to the living room to make the pumpkins smile with light He came after
her, smiling, "I must get my pipe." "Oh, the cider!" she
had cried, running to the dining room. "I'll check the cider," he had
said. But when he tried following she ran to the bathroom and locked the door.
He stood outside the bathroom door, laughing strangely and senselessly, his
pipe gone cold in his mouth, and then, tired of the game, but stubborn, he
waited another five minutes. There was not a sound from the bath. And lest she
enjoy in any way knowing that he waited outside, irritated, he suddenly jerked
about and walked upstairs, whistling merrily.

 
          
At
the top of the stairs he had waited. Finally he had heard the bathroom door
unlatch and she had come out and life below-stairs had resumed, as life in a
jungle must resume once a terror has passed on away and the antelope return to
their spring.

 
          
Now,
as he finished his bow-tie and put on his dark coat there was a mouse-rustle in
the hall.
Marion
appeared in the door, all
skeletonous
in her disguise. "How do I look,
Papa?" "Fine!"

 
          
From
under the mask, blonde hair showed. From the skull sockets small blue eyes
smiled. He sighed. Marion and Louise, the two silent denouncers of his
virility, his dark power. What alchemy had there been in Louise that took the
dark of a dark man and bleached and bleached the dark brown eyes and black hair
and washed and bleached the ingrown baby all during the period before birth
until the child was born, Marion, blonde, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked? Sometimes
he suspected that Louise had conceived the child as an idea, completely
asexual, an immaculate conception of contemptuous mind and cell. As a firm
rebuke to him she had produced a child in her
own
image, and, to top it, she had somehow
fixed
the doctor so he shook his head and said, "Sorry, Mr.
Wilder, your wife will never have another child. This is the
last
one."

 
          
"And
I wanted a boy,"
Mich
had said, eight years ago.

 
          
He
almost bent to take hold of
Marion
now, in her skull mask. He felt an inexplicable rush of pity for her,
because she had never had a father's love, only the crushing, holding love of a
loveless mother. But most of all he pitied himself, that somehow he had not
made the most of a bad birth, enjoyed his daughter for herself, regardless of
her not being dark and a son and
like'himself
.
Somewhere he had missed out. Other things being equal, he would have loved the
child. But Louise hadn't wanted a child, anyway, in the first place. She had
been frightened of the idea of birth. He had forced the child on her, and from
that night, all through the year until the agony of the birth itself, Louise
had lived in another part of the house. She had expected to die with the forced
child. It had been very easy for Louise to hate this husband who so wanted a
son that he gave his only wife over to the mortuary.

 
          
But—Louise
had lived. And in triumph! Her eyes, the day he came to the hospital, were
cold. I'm alive, they said. And I have a
blonde
daughter! Just
lookl
And when he had put out a
hand to touch, the mother had turned away to conspire with her new pink
daughter-child—away from that dark forcing murderer. It had all been so
beautifully ironic. His selfishness deserved it. But now it was October again.
There had been other Octobers and when he thought of the long winter he had
been filled with horror year after year to think of the endless months mortared
into the house by an insane fall of snow, trapped with a woman and child,
neither of whom loved him, for months on end. During the eight years there had
been respites. In spring and summer you got out, walked, picnicked; these were
desperate solutions to the desperate problem of a hated man.

 
          
But,
in winter, the hikes and picnics and escapes fell away with the leaves. Life,
like a tree, stood empty, the fruit picked, the sap run to earth. Yes, you
invited people in, but people were hard to get in winter with blizzards and
all. Once he had been clever enough to save for a
Florida
trip. They had gone south. He had walked in
the open.

 
          
But
now, the eighth winter coming, he knew things were finally at an end. He simply
could not wear this one through. There was an acid walled off in him that
slowly had eaten through tissue and bone over the years, and now, tonight, it
would reach the wild explosive in him and all would be over!

 
          
There
was a mad ringing of the bell below. In the hall, Louise went to see.
Marion
, without a word, ran down to greet the
first arrivals. There were shouts and hilarity.

 
          
He
walked to the top of the stairs. Louise was below, taking wraps. She was tall
and slender and blonde to the point of whiteness, laughing down upon the new
children.

 
          
He
hesitated. What was all this? The years? The boredom of living? Where had it
gone wrong? Certainly not with the birth of the child alone. But it had been a
symbol of all their tensions, he imagined. His jealousies and his business
failures and all the rotten rest of it. Why didn't he just turn, pack a
suitcase, and leave? No. Not without hurting Louise as much as she had hurt
him. It was simple as that Divorce wouldn't hurt her at all. It would simply be
an end to numb indecision. If he thought divorce would give her pleasure in any
way he would stay married the rest of his life to her, for damned spite. No, he
must hurt her. Figure some way, perhaps, to take
Marion
away from her, legally. Yes. That was it.
That would hurt most of all. To take
Marion
away.

 
          
"Hello
down there!" He descended the stairs, beaming.

 
          
Louise
didn't look up. "Hi, Mr. Wilder!"

 
          
The
children shouted, waved, as he came down. By ten o'clock the doorbell had
stopped ringing, the apples were bitten from stringed doors, the pink child
faces were wiped dry from the apple bobbing, napkins were smeared with caramel
and punch, and he, the husband, with pleasant efficiency had taken over. He
took the party right out of Louise's hands. He ran about talking to the twenty
children and the twelve parents who had come and were happy with the special
spiked cider he had fixed them. He supervised pin the tail on the donkey, spin
the bottle, musical chairs, and all the rest, amid fits of shouting laughter.
Then, in the triangular-eyed pumpkin shine, all house lights out, he cried,
"Hush! Follow me!"
toptoeing
toward the
cellar. The parents, on the outer periphery of the costumed riot, commented to
each other, nodding at the clever husband, speaking to the lucky wife. How
well
he got on with children, they said.

 
          
The
children crowded after the husband, squealing. "The cellar!" he cried.
"The tomb of the witch!" More squealing. He made a mock shiver.
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here!" The parents chuckled.

 
          
One
by one the children slid down a slide which
Mich
had fixed up from lengths of table-section,
into the dark cellar. He hissed and shouted ghastly utterances after them. A
wonderful wailing filled the dark pumpkin-lighted house. Everybody talked at
once. Everybody but
Marion
. She had gone through all the party with a minimum of sound or talk; it
was all inside her, all the excitement and joy. What a little troll, he
thought. With a shut mouth and shiny eyes she had watched her own party, like
so many serpentines thrown before her.

 
          
Now,
the parents. With laughing reluctance they slid down the short incline,
uproarious, while little
Marion
stood by, always wanting to see it all, to be last. Louise went down
without help. He moved to aid her, but she was gone even before he bent.

 
          
The
upper house was empty and silent in the candle-shine.