People of the Dark (20 page)

I interrupted, "
Just
like people, Sarah. Hands and feet and heads and everything."

She looked me squarely in the eye. "Continue patronizing me, Jack, and I'll leave. Do you want me to leave?"

I said immediately, and meant it, "No. I'm sorry. I want you to stay."

She went over to the grocery bag, retrieved the crumpled cigarette pack, straightened it out, got a smashed cigarette from it, examined it. At last she came back to the table and lit the cigarette. "I don't always act this way, Jack." Smoke came out of several tears in the cigarette, so she drew harder. "I'm a little nervous tonight. I'm very nervous."

"That's obvious, Sarah."

"I'm being a real twitch, aren't I?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to know
where
these people come from, Jack?"

"I'm sure you're going to tell me," I said.

"They come from the earth." She pointed stiffly at the floor. "From there. From the earth." She smiled thinly, took a long sip of her coffee and set the cup down. "They come from the
earth
, Jack."

I looked quietly at her for a moment. Then I said, "Sarah—
I
come from the earth. We
all
come from the earth!"

"Not quite as directly as they do, Jack."

"Oh? What does that mean?"

"It means that they
sprang
from it, Jack. Like the trees did. And the mushrooms. And the azaleas." She took another long, slow, very satisfied sip of the coffee. "And I'll make a confession, too." She set the cup down. "I've been wanting to tell that to someone for a very long time. I mean—it's not a
theory
, it's not my pet theory. It's a fact. Like this table." She hit it with her fist, spilling some of her coffee. "And like that!" She pointed happily at the spill. "A fact. Accept it, don't accept it,
they
don't care!

"Jack, there are snakes with two heads, and there are fourteen-hundred-pound men, and amino acids in meteorites that have fallen in China, and there are people, here, around this house, who sprang up from the earth. Like mushrooms."

"Or azaleas?"

"Yes!"

"Are you one of them, Sarah?"

She grinned at that, flicked the ash off the torn cigarette she'd been smoking, shrugged. "I could be. Hell,
you
could be, Jack. I don't think that I am. I can recall a past, a childhood. I remember standing up in my crib when I was two or three years old and being frightened by some neighborhood boys peeking in the window. But those could be manufactured memories, and I think it would probably be very difficult to tell the difference between manufactured memories and real ones."

"Yes, I've heard that theory."

"I'm sure you have." A pause. When she went on, her tone was softer. "I would dearly love to be one of them. Of course. What more could a naturalist wish for than to be a creature of the earth,"—she looked earnestly at me—"a
creation
of the earth. Like the things that she studies—"

I cut in, "Carry it a little bit further, Sarah. Gee, an auto mechanic could be a car, a writer a book, a beekeeper a bee—"

She stood abruptly, stalked to the door, opened it, hesitated, looked around at me. She said, her voice quaking, "And now they're going
back
to the earth, Jack. That's what I believe. They're going back to the earth." She looked expectantly at me, was obviously waiting for a reply.

"I'm sorry," I told her. "Really, Sarah, I'm very sorry, but I have other things to think about."

She said, her voice steady now, "No, Jack, I'm afraid you don't." And she left the house.

E
rika and I went to Durand Eastman Park, near Lake Ontario, several years after we were married. We'd gone into Rochester to visit my mother, and decided we'd have a picnic and take a swim before driving back to Syracuse. We packed hot dogs, some macaroni and potato salad, baked beans, rolls, mustard, relish, and when we got to the park, we went for a swim first.

She is an excellent swimmer, much at home in the water, as if it is her second element, and we swam for a good hour together.

The beach was not terribly crowded. There were some children near where we'd set our towel down. They were playing a clumsy game of volleyball, sans net. Several yards on the other side of us a couple in their teens were busily fondling each other.

After swimming we sat on the beach together. We talked about my mother—Erika has always liked her, although my mother makes it clear that Erika should not get
too
close—and about the day—very warm and bright—about politics, though briefly. After a while I became aware that Erika was growing agitated, that her gaze was shifting from me to the young couple who'd been fondling each other. I looked. They'd stopped fondling each other. The boy was covering the girl with sand.

I asked Erika if something was wrong. She said no, though the strain and agitation was obvious in her tone.

I nodded at the couple, who were oblivious to us: "Does that bother you, Erika?"

"Why should it bother me, Jack? No. Of course it doesn't bother me." But it was clear, as the sand continued to cover the girl, that Erika was becoming increasingly agitated.

"Let's go eat," I suggested. I thought, at that point, that Erika was on the verge of saying something to the young couple, and of course, I wanted to avoid that.

She looked quickly at me. "I'm not hungry, Jack."

"Well, we've got to get the fire started—"

She looked at the young couple. She said to them, though low enough that they didn't hear her, "Why are you doing that?"

"Erika," I said, "please, it's nothing—"

"Don't
do
that!" she hollered at them.

The boy looked over, astonished; then the girl. "Huh?" said the boy.

"Why are you doing that?" Erika asked, her voice sharp and high-pitched.

"Somethin' wrong with you, lady?"

"No," I said to him, "we're sorry; nothing's wrong."

"Don't do that to her!" Erika hollered.

"Erika, let's go." I stood, leaned over, tried to pull her to a standing position. She wouldn't budge. "Erika, please—"

She screamed. It was long, shrill, and completely unexpected, of course. The couple near us jumped to their feet. The boy muttered several low and violent curses, and they ran off.

I stared at Erika for a good long time. She did not scream again. She stared quietly at the lake, and at last I sat down next to her and asked her why she'd screamed.

She shook her head. "Just dreams," she said.

"I don't understand," I said.

"I don't either."

And that's where we left it.

I
should have felt badly about driving Sarah
Talpey
away, but then, that night, while I sat at the kitchen table and watched her leave, and for the rest of the evening, I could afford to feel badly about nothing. I could afford to feel very little because I was being battered on all sides, because my life had gone topsy-turvy and the best I could do for myself, at that moment, was to put everything aside, as I'd been trying to do before Sarah arrived.

I decided to paint the kitchen. Erika and I had discussed painting it when we first moved to the house. It was an ugly dark yellow, streaked with age, and though the kitchen was twice the size of most kitchens, that color made it feel like a cave.

We'd bought some paint a month earlier, a pretty light blue that C. R. Boring swore would cover anything in just one coat. I got a gallon of it out of a closet in the laundry room—where we stored tools, paint, and the vacuum cleaner—took it into the kitchen, went back to the closet for a roller, a pan, and a stick to stir the paint with. With one hand, it took several trips. And when I was done and all the painting paraphernalia was neatly in place on the kitchen table, I asked myself, "What the hell am I doing?" And I put it all away and went to bed.

That was at about eight o'clock.

It was at one o'clock that Erika's voice broke into a particularly cold and nasty dream. "Jack?" I heard, her tone soft and casual, as if she were going to ask me what time it was. I struggled out of the dream, heard "Jack?" again, followed by "Are you here?" I woke, pushed myself up on my good elbow in the bed.

"Yes, Erika, I am," I said. The overhead light was on, the door open. I remembered closing the door, remembered turning the light off. I swung my feet to the floor, felt a deep, sharp pain in my shoulder, winced, let out a little groan, heard beneath it: "Jack?" The pain stopped.

"Erika?" I stood, went to the door, and looked out into the big, open room at the top of the stairs. The overhead light was on here, too; I had left it on as a sort of night-light. "Erika?" I called, listened a moment, called to her again, and again. Listened. Heard nothing. "Erika, please—"

"Jack?" I heard, very faintly, from the back of the house.

"Erika!" I called, urgently now, and made my way quickly through the open room, into the bathroom behind it, and then into the L-shaped and cluttered spare room. I flicked the light on. "Erika?" I said. "Erika, are you in here?"

"Yes," I heard.

But the room was empty.

"Where are you?" I called. I heard tension, frustration, and anger in my voice. "Christ, Erika, where are you?"

I stood in that room for an hour or more, listening for her, saying her name.

At last I went back to the bedroom, turned the light off, climbed into the bed. "My God, Erika," I whispered into the darkness. "My God, I love you."

Daylight was all over the room when I woke. I muttered an obscenity at it, got reluctantly out of bed, and cursed again, this time at the pain in my shoulder. It was very localized now, like a toothache, and at times it was all but unbearable. I went to the east-facing window and looked out at the driveway, hoping to see Erika's blue Volvo there, hoping that she'd decided, at last, to come back to me, as she had a half-dozen times before.

At the road a young, dark-haired man was walking slowly, hands thrust into his pants pockets, head lowered. He was talking to himself. I could see his mouth move and his head shake now and then, as if he were in disagreement with someone. An old Buick Electra that was caked with mud and loaded with people passed him as I watched. It slowed as it approached him. A rear window was lowered, and a square, middle-aged face appeared that looked as if it were cackling. The Electra veered toward the young man then, and I heard the long, coarse wail of its horn, followed by the squeal of its tires as it accelerated. The young man didn't flinch. I thought,
Some people around here are fucking crazy!
and straightened from the window, cursed again at a moment of pain in my shoulder, turned, and saw movement in the big, open room that adjoined the bedroom.

"Who's there?" I said. I heard a heavy thumping noise, as if someone had backed into a wall. I went quickly through the bedroom so I was close to the door, hesitated, said again, "Who's there?" and heard someone weeping very softly, as if from within a closed room. "Erika?" I said. The weeping came to a slow stop. I left the bedroom, went into the open room, said her name again and again. I even looked closely at the corners of the room, as if she might have been huddling in shadow.

"Erika," I pleaded at last, "for Christ's sake, what are you doing?"

J
erry Czech came to the house an hour later. He'd picked up my Toyota while I was in the hospital. When I answered the door, he nodded toward the driveway and announced, "She's done, Mr. Harris." I looked where he'd nodded. The Toyota was in the driveway behind his tow truck. The top was still caved in slightly, the left front fender folded back six inches or so.

"Good," I said. "What's the damage?"

"I fixed the damage," he explained confusedly. "Fixed it good's I could, anyway. You turn a car over and you're usually gonna have some damage that's gonna show—"

I interrupted, "No. I'm sorry. What I meant was, how much do I owe you?"

"Seven
hundred'll
do '
er
."

"Seven hundred dollars?" I was incredulous.

"That's the damage. Sure." He grinned.