Candlemoth (21 page)

    She
held that thing out towards me, and gingerly, cautiously, I took it.

    I
felt afraid, but I could not say no.

    I
felt that here was my first moment of trial, my first test of mettle against
the attitude and viewpoint of another.

    I
felt Eve Chantry watching me.

    
She
was saying: Don't do it, Danny, don't do it until you have decided first. It
has to be your decision, and your decision alone. Nathan was right. Nathan's
daddy is a minister and sometimes he does have God on his side. It is a moment
such as this that counts the most. Right now, right here.

    But I
did not decide.

    The
moment decided for me.

    I pressed
the thing to my lips and inhaled.

    At
first it tasted bitter, and then beneath that something sweet, and though I had
imagined myself choking and coughing and spluttering over Linny I did not. I
did as she had done. I inhaled and held my breath. I waited a while and nothing
happened. I inhaled again, and yet again a moment later. And then I felt
something coming, not at first, but a few moments later, or minutes perhaps, I
cannot remember. But it came, it most definitely came, and when it came it was
like the small weathered blanket you carried as a child, your best toy, the
feeling of warm security that closes around you when your ma holds you after a
bad dream… the sound of your father's voice as he lifts you from the sidewalk,
your knee grazed, your confidence bruised… the rush of excitement as daylight
fades and the lights of the funfair can be seen all across town… the rushing
whirl of music as the carousel starts up… and the smell of popcorn, fresh
donuts, red and white spiral sugarcanes…

    'Here,'
Linny said, and passed me another joint - fatter, coned like a trumpet, and
when it burned it crackled and hissed, and the smoke filled my eyes, my mouth,
my nostrils. I smoked it for a while, and when I passed it to her she shook her
head.

    'Have
my own,' she said, and held it up to show me.

    How
much I smoked I can't remember, two, perhaps three, maybe more. I wasn't
counting, and neither was Linny, and after a while she got up and walked away.
She returned a moment later, a bottle of tequila in her hand, and with it two
small glasses she had brought from the car.

    'Prepared
for every eventuality,' she whispered as she leaned close to me, and she filled
both glasses, urged me to swallow in one, and then she poured yet another and
another.

    She
kissed me then, and then her tongue was behind my ear, inside it, beneath it,
and all I could remember doing was laughing.

    I
felt I would burst with laughter.

    I
felt whatever seams had been sewn into my body would unravel in one great rush
and whatever was inside me would scatter across the sand and be washed out into
the Atlantic.

    And
then I felt I
was
the Atlantic, and inside me was the Savannah River,
and over in my right hand a thousand miles away was Greenleaf and my ma and
Karl Winterson's Radio Store… and the war was someone else's problem, and they
weren't looking for me… no, they weren't looking for me… perhaps for Nathan
Verney, but not me.

    Later,
much later, I opened my eyes. The sun was setting along the horizon.

    We were
both naked.

    Beneath
us was a blanket from Linny's car, and over us were draped her dress, my shirt,
and to the left, just there in the corner of my vision, I could see my right
shoe on its side.

    Linny
stirred but did not open her eyes. I could feel the weight of her breast
against my arm. Like Caroline Lanafeuille, but not. Different. Not better, just
different.

    And
different was good.

    I
closed my eyes again. I did not want this time to end.

    I
felt nothing. No guilt, no pain, no loss, no sense of heartache for anything at
all. I had not felt
nothing
for a long time it seemed, and in its
absence, in its deep and echoing hollowness, it felt good.

    Linny
felt good. Too good perhaps.

    I
slept then I think, for when I opened my eyes again it was dark and cool and
the sound of the sea closing up against the shore for the night was all I could
hear.

    Apart
from Linny's breathing.

    And
those sounds, those reverberations of the soul, would be something I would
remember for the rest of my life.

    Seemed
to me the most beautiful sounds in the world.

    And
they were mine.

    That
we had smoked grass and drunk tequila and slept on the beach seemed crazy. At
least to me. I wanted to tell Linny Goldbourne that this had been something
magical, that such a thing as this was so new to me it was scary, but there was
something about her that warned me to say nothing. It was not that I felt
unable to share my thoughts and feelings with her, it was that I imagined such
a confidence would really have no great significance for her. She appeared so
worldly, she drove her own car, she smoked grass. Christ, she brought grass
with
her. I would not even have known how to go about getting some had I
wanted to.'

    So I
said nothing, and that was okay.

    When
I opened my eyes the second time I could hear the radio from the car.

    Linny
was not beside me, she was out there in the sea and, acutely aware of my
nakedness, I hurriedly donned my pants and walked down to meet her.

    Linny
Goldbourne possessed no such inhibitions. She was naked, and the water barely
reached the tops of her thighs. She came up out of the water, and for a moment
- even as she walked towards me - I felt invisible. For one horrible moment I
felt I could have been anyone to her. And then she called my name, and the
feeling passed, and I shrugged away my misgivings and uncertainty.

    I was
here because she wanted me. After all, had she not returned from Atlanta and
found me out?

    'You
wanna go home, or somewhere else?' she asked.

    I
tried hard to keep my eyes on her face as she came closer.

    I
shrugged my shoulders. 'Whatever,' I replied, intending to sound relaxed and
nonchalant, but it came out weak and indecisive.

    She
smiled. 'You hungry?'

    I nodded.
I had not paid much mind to eating, but now she mentioned it I was aware of the
ravenous craving in the pit of my stomach.

    'We'll
go get lobster or something,' she said as we reached the car. She leaned over
the door to gather her dress from the back seat. I saw the sheer elegance of
her form, the way her breasts barely moved as she stretched, the way she raised
her arms to lift the dress over her head, and in the moment her face was
obscured I looked down to her stomach and, below that, the dark triangle of
color at once so magical and perfect.

    I
looked away, out towards the sea, the Atlantic Ocean, and when I turned back
she was watching me.

    She
stepped towards me, she raised her hands, and placing them on my shoulders she
pulled me close.

    Then
her arms were around my waist, I felt the side of her face against my neck, and
then she was leaning up towards me, kissing me, her tongue between my lips, in
my mouth.

    I
felt as if I was being swallowed. Emotionally swallowed. It was powerful and
intoxicating. A drug. There was little I could do but be devoured. Quietly,
gratefully, thankfully devoured.

    This
was Linny Goldbourne. She did not touch, she grasped. She did not caress, she
enclosed. She did not hesitate, she acted, and acted with certainty.

    And
yet, for all these things, she was never anything but a woman. Nathan, who in
time to come would also learn to love her, said being with Linda was like being
mugged by a beauty queen.

    'You're
okay,' she said, as we sat beside one another in the car.

    It
was not a question, more a statement of fact. My perception in that moment was
that she had sensed some slight misgiving on my part, something in my demeanor
that told her I was not here on the same terms as she was.

    'I'm
okay,' I said.

    'I
know you loved Caroline,' she said, almost in a whisper. 'I saw you together a
couple of times, and you can always tell.'

    I
looked sideways at Linny, and there was something in her eyes, something in her
expression that told me she perhaps understood more of what I was feeling than
I did myself.

    'You
can lose someone, Danny, lose someone without ever really losing them. You have
to recognize that there was a time and a place back there which you will never
find again…'

    Linny's
hand closed over mine.

    Her
skin was warm and soft, like a summer peach.

    'You
just keep the emotion somewhere quiet where it cannot be disturbed, and when
you're alone you can reflect on it, enjoy it once more as if it had never gone…
but when you're
not
alone you have to realize that there is no place for
that emotion. You have to be wherever you are, have to be
with
whoever
you are with when you're with them… and if you can't do that, then wherever you
might find yourself, and whoever might be there, then you're always going to be
alone…'

    She
squeezed my hand gently.

    'You
understand what I'm saying?'

    I
smiled. I nodded. I leaned towards her.

    She
closed her hand around my neck and pressed her cheek to mine.

    We
stayed that way for a long time, and she was the one who drew back slightly,
and then she kissed me, and she kissed me forever too, and then she released
me.

    'Lobster,'
she said, and turned the key in the ignition.

    And
we did eat lobster. Fresh, caught right there off the Sound. We sat on wooden
chairs on a pier with the sound of the sea beneath us, and we drank wine, red
and strong, and we stayed there talking, smoking cigarettes, watching the world
go about its business but with no wish to become involved.

    Boats
went by, fishers and shrimpers, and the rough faces of seafaring men observed
us with a wry and curious detachment: kids from the city come down to see how
real life can get. I had always felt that people like that would live more life
in a day, an hour, than I would in three score and ten.

    But
my viewpoint was changing. I was going on twenty- two, I had lost my father, I
had heard of Kennedy's death the day it happened, I had fallen in love with
Caroline Lanafeuille, at first from a distance and then up close, and now I was
losing my mind and my heart to someone called Linny Goldbourne whose father was
perhaps the third or fourth most important man in the State. I had been to
Atlanta to mourn for Martin Luther King. I had grown up with boys who were now
dead in some vast wilderness of jungle on the other side of the world. I had
smoked grass, made love in the sand near Port Royal Sound, had drunk tequila
with salt and lemon until I believed I would lose my stomach to the gutter. I
had shared time with a woman called Eve Chantry, and she had shared with me the
candlemoth.

    And
soon… soon enough, someone would write and tell me to go to Vietnam.

    It
came then - that thought, the name, the place, the things I imagined would happen
there. A shadow passed across me, and within its passing I felt myself shudder.
The war was out there, it was calling my name, and though I pressed my hands
against my ears and hummed a tune to myself, I could hear it echoing through
everything.

    I
closed my eyes.

    Was
this not a life?

    Surely,
yes.

    I
felt the breeze coming up off the sea that day, could almost taste the salt in
the air, and as that day closed I lay in

    the
back seat of a Buick Skylark with a girl I could so easily have loved for the
rest of my life, and she whispered secrets that meant everything, and yet
nothing at all.

    I
felt things had somehow simplified.