Children of Light (32 page)

“Mine,” he said.

“They are your eyes,” she told him. “I’m your actress, that’s right. I’m wires and mirrors. See me dangle and flash all shiny and hung up there? At the end of your road? Mister what-did-you-say-your-name-is Walker? See that, huh?”

“Yes, I see.”

“Yes? Hey, that’s love, man.”

“So it is,” Walker said.

She cupped a hand beside her ear. “You say it is?”

“I said it was, yes.”

“Well, you’re goddamn right it is, honey.”

Walker was compelled to admit that it was and it would never do either of them the slightest bit of good.

“Why me? I wonder.”

“Why?” She looked at him thoughtfully. “Oh la.” She shrugged. “One day many years ago I think you said something wonderful and you looked wonderful saying it. I mean, I should think it would have been something like that, don’t you?”

“But you don’t happen to remember what?”

“Oh, you know me, Gordon. I don’t listen to the words awfully well. I’m always checking delivery and watching the gestures. Anyway,” she said, marking a line with her finger between his eyes and hers, “it’s the eyes. Down home they say you shoot a deer, you see your lover in his eyes. A bear the same, they say. It’s a little like that, eh? Hunting and recognition. A light in the eyes and you’re caught. So I was. So I remain.”

“If a hart do lack a hind,” Walker said, “let him seek out Rosalind.”

She smiled distantly. The lightning flashed again, farther away. “What good times we have on our mountain,” she said. “Poetry and music.” She closed her eyes and passed her bloody hands before her face, going into character. “If the cat will after kind, so be sure will Rosalind.”

Walker took a deep breath.

“But it never worked out.”

“Things don’t work out, Gordon. They just be.”

Walker stared at his friend. “You’re all lights,” he said. He was seeing her all lights, sparkles, pinwheels.

“Oh yes,” she said cheerfully. “Didn’t you see? Didn’t you?” She shook her head in wonder. “How funny you are.”

“I never did,” he said.

“This is the mountain where you see the things you never saw. There are eighty-two thousand colors here, Gordon. I’ve been your mirror. Now I’ll be more. And you’ll be my mirror.”

“More and a mirror,” Walker said. “How about that?”

“Gordon, Gordon,” she said delightedly, “your two favorite things. More and mirrors.”

“It’s a kind of cocaine image, isn’t it?”

“No, my love, my life. It’s the end of the road. It’s through the looking glass. Because there’s only one love, my love. It’s all the same one.”

“I’m not going to make it,” he told her. “I can’t keep it together.”

With her lissome arms and her long painterly fingers she wove him a design, resting elbow on forearm, the fingers spread in an arcane gesture.

“All is forgiven, Gordon. Mustn’t be afraid. I’m your momma. I’m your bride. There’s only one love.”

“I’ve heard the theory advanced,” Walker said.

“Have you? It’s all true, baby. Only one love and we’ll fall in it.”

“O.K.,” Walker said.

“O.K.!” she cried. “Aw-right!” She stepped toward him; he still saw her against the sky and the storm. “So you might as well come with me, don’t you think?”

“On that theory,” Walker admitted, “I might as well.”

Her limitless arms embraced him. He went to her. She pursed her lips, briskly business, and took the wad of cocaine and the Quaalude box from his pocket.

“Put your toys away,” she said. She flung them over her shoulder into the dry brush. “We don’t take our toys when we fall in love. We’ll be our toys when we fall in love. We’ll be our own little horses.”

He looked over her shoulder to where she had tossed the drug.

She frowned at him and pulled at his collar.

“And we take our clothes off. We don’t require clothes.”

Walker took off his windbreaker. As she was unbuttoning his shirt it began to rain. He shivered. He watched her unbuckle his trousers, smearing blood across them.

“I know there’s a reason,” he said, “that we don’t require clothes, but I can’t remember what it is.”

“Gordon,” she sighed, “don’t be such an old schoolteacher.”

He watched her blood seep into his clothes as she undressed him. He could not believe how much of it there was.

“Rain,” he said to her.

“We’ll pray,” she answered. “And then we’ll sleep.”

He looked up into the storm and saw the black sky whirling.

“No!” he shouted. “No you don’t.”

His pants fell down about his ankles as he started to run. He kicked them off, bent to pick them up and ran off dragging them behind him. Lu Anne stayed where she was, watching him sadly. He ran to where she had left her own clothes and scooped them up. The clothes and the sharp stones around them were covered with blood.

The door of the building looked massive, but half of it came off in his hand when he pulled at the latch. Behind it, about four feet inside the building, the owners of the grain had built a serious door, secured with a rusty padlock. Walker huddled in the sheltered space between the broken false door and the true one.

Outside, Lu Anne stood in the hard tropical rain and shook her hair. The rain washed the blood from her wounds and cleaned the grass around her.

“Lu Anne,” he called. “Come inside.”

She stopped whirling her hair in the rain and looked at him laughing, like a child.

“You come out.”

He picked up his windbreaker and went after her. He was wearing his shoes and socks and a pair of bloodstained Jockey shorts.

“Come on, Lu,” he said. “Chrissakes.”

He advanced on her holding the bloody jacket like a matador advancing on a bull. When he came near, she picked up a stone and held it menacingly over her shoulder.

“You better stay away from me, Walker.”

“You are so fucking crazy,” Walker told Lu Anne. “I mean, you
are
, man. You’re batshit.”

She threw the stone not overhand but sidearm and very forcefully. It passed close to his bruised right cheekbone, a very near miss.

“Fuck you,” he said. He turned his back on her but at once thought better of it. He began to back toward the shelter with the windbreaker still out before his face, the better to intercept stones. When he was back in his shelter he discovered the whiskey in Lu Anne’s tote bag.

“Hot ziggity,” he whispered to himself. He took two long swallows and displayed the bottle to Lu Anne.

“Lookit this, Lu Anne,” he shouted. “You gonna come in here and have a drink or stay out there and bleed holy Catholic blood?”

He watched her pick her way daintily over the sharp stones toward his shelter.

“I’ll have just a little bit,” she said. “A short one.”

Walker was wary of attack.

“You won’t hit me with a rock, will you?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said.

“You almost took the side of my head off just now.”

“It was just a reflex, Gordon. You presented an alarming spectacle.”

“Panic in the face of death,” Walker admitted. “Obliteration phobia.”

“You were washed in the blood,” Lu Anne told him. “You’ll never get
there
again.” She reached for the bottle he was cradling. “I thought I was offered a drink earlier.”

Walker watched her help herself to several belts.

“What was going to happen?” he asked her.

“I guess we were going to die. What’s wrong with that?”

“Living is better than dying. Morally. Don’t you think?”

“I think we had permission. We may never have it again.”

Walker took the bottle from her and drank.

“We’ll begin from here,” Walker said. “We’ll mark time from this mountain.”

“Who will, Gordon? You and me?”

“Absolutely,” Walker burbled happily. “Baptism! Renewal! Rebirth!”

Lu Anne pointed through the rain toward the road they had climbed. “It’ll be all down from here, Gordon.”

“Christ,” Walker said, “you threw my coke away. I had at least six grams left.”

“Takes the edge off baptism, renewal and rebirth, doesn’t it? When you’re out of coke?”

“We should have some now,” Walker said petulantly. “Now we have something to celebrate.”

“Screw you,” Lu Anne said. “Live! Breathe in, breathe out. Tick tock! Hickory Dickory. You get off on this shit, brother, it’s yours. And you may have my piece.”

Walker took up some of their bloodstained clothing and placed it over Lu Anne’s wounds to staunch the bleeding. The rain increased, sounding like a small stampede in the thatch overhead.

“What about your kids?” Walker said.

Lu Anne was looking up at the rain. She bit her lip and rubbed her eyes.

“Goddamn you, Gordon! What about your kids?”

“I asked you first,” Walker said. “And I told you about mine.”

“Mine, they’ve never seen me crazy. They never would. They’d remember me as something very ornate and mysterious. They’d always love me. I’d be fallen in love, the way we nearly were just now.”

Walker yawned. “Asleep in the deep.”

He arranged his windbreaker and his duck trousers to cover them as thoroughly as possible.

“Yeah,” Lu Anne said, and sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”

They settled back against the mud and straw.

“Things are crawling on us,” Walker said sleepily.

“Coke bugs,” Lu Anne told him.

For some time they slept, stirring by turns, talking in their dreams.
When Walker awakened, he was covered in sweat and bone weary. He kicked the false door aside. The sky was clear. He sat up and saw the yellow grass and the wildflowers of the hilltop glistening with lacy coronets of moisture. On his knees, he crept past Lu Anne and went outside. The
chubasco
had passed over them. The wall of low gray-black clouds was withdrawing over the valley to the east, shadowing its broad fields. An adjoining hill stood half in the light and half in the storm’s gloom. Its rocky peak was arched with a bright rainbow.

Walker examined his nakedness. His arms, torso and legs were streaked with Lu Anne’s blood; his shorts dyed roseate with it.

“Sweet Christ,” he said. There was no water anywhere.

When he heard her whimper he went inside and helped her stand. She was half covered with bloody rags and her hair matted with blood, but her stigmatic wounds were superficial for all their oozing forth. She had been making her hands bleed as much as possible, the way a child might.

She came outside, shielding her eyes with her forearm.

“How’s your Spanish?” Walker asked her.

“I can’t speak Spanish. I thought you could. Anyway, what’s it matter?”

“Sooner or later we’re going to have to explain ourselves and it’s going to be really difficult.”

“Difficult in any language,” Lu Anne said. “Almost impossible.”

“How do you think I’d make out thumbing?”

“Well,” she said, “you don’t seem to be injured, but you’re covered with blood. Only people with a lot of tolerance for conflict would pick you up. Of course, I’d pick you up.”

“We’d better have a drink,” Walker said.

“Oh my land,” Lu Anne said when Walker had given her some whiskey, “look at the rainbow!”

“Why did you have to throw my cocaine away,” Walker demanded. “Now I can’t function.”

“It’s right back there somewhere,” she said, indicating the brush around the stone house. “You can probably find it.”

“It’s water-soluble,” Walker told her. “Christ.”

“I have never been at such close quarters with a rainbow,” Lu Anne said. “What a marvel!”

“You know what I bet?” Walker said. “I bet it’s a sign from God.” He went to the shelter where they had lain and sorted through their clothes. There was not a garment unsoiled with Lu Anne’s blood. “God’s telling us we’re really fucked up.”

Lu Anne watched the rainbow fade and wept.

“What now?” Walker demanded. “More signs and wonders?” He held up his bloody trousers for examination. “I might as well put them on,” he said. “They must be better than nothing.”

“Gordon,” Lu Anne said.

Walker paused in the act of putting on his trousers and straightened up. “Yes, my love?”

She came over and put her arms around him and leaned her face against his shoulder.

“I know it must all mean something, Gordon, because it hurts so much.”

Walker smoothed her matted hair.

“That’s not true,” he told her. “It’s illogical.”

“Gordon, I think there’s a mercy. I think there must be.”

“Well,” Walker said, “maybe you’re right.” He let her go and began pulling on his trousers. “Who knows?”

“Don’t humor me,” Lu Anne insisted. “Do you believe or not?”

“I suppose if you don’t like my answer I’ll get hit with a rock.”

She balanced on tiptoe, jigging impatiently. “Please say, Gordon.”

Walker buckled his belt.

“Mercy? In a pig’s asshole.”

“Oh dear,” Lu Anne said. She walked away from him toward a rock against which he had left the whiskey and helped herself to a drink. When she had finished drinking, she froze with the bottle upraised, staring into the distance.

“Did you mention a pig’s asshole?” she asked him. “Because I think I see one at this very moment. In fact, I see several.”

Walker went and stood beside her. On a lower slope, great evil-tusked half-wild pigs were clustered under a live oak, rooting for oak
balls. A barrel-size hog looked up at them briefly, then returned to its foraging.

“Isn’t that strange, Gordon? I mean, you had just mentioned a pig’s asshole and at that very moment I happened to look in that direction and there were all those old razorbacks. Isn’t that remarkable?”

Walker had been following her with her faded bloodstained army shirt. “It’s a miracle,” he said. He hung the shirt around her shoulders and took hold of one of her arms. “The Gadarene Swine.”

Dull-eyed, she began walking down the hill. Walker started after her. She tripped and got to her feet again. He followed faster, waving the shirt.

“Lu Anne,” he shouted, “those animals are dangerous.”

She stopped and let him come abreast of her. When he moved to cover her with her shirt, she turned on him, fists clenched.

“Who do you think it was,” she screamed, “that breathed in the graveyard? Who was bound in the tomb?”