People of the Dark (8 page)

"What's that?" my mother said. "It sounds like
Carmen
."

Will said that it was
Carmen
. Erika, whose back was to the house's southern wall, glanced quickly toward it. "Yes," she said matter-of-factly, "it's from
Carmen
."

"Is there a house over that way, Jack?" Will asked.

"No," I answered.

Erika looked back at the table, munched some more of the chicken, "This is full of grease," she muttered.

I went to the kitchen door, opened it, and peered out into the early evening darkness. I saw nothing. I pushed the storm door open. The singing seemed to be coming from within the woods a hundred feet away. I felt someone behind me. It was Will.

"Nice voice," he said. "Some neighbor woman, you think?"

"Singing
Carmen
in the middle of my woods at 8:30 at night, Will? The people are strange around here, but I doubt they're that strange."

"Obviously, they are," Will said.

My mother appeared behind Will. "Is she a friend of yours, Jack? A neighbor?"

"Will and I were just discussing that, Mom."

"I don't know what you were discussing, Jack," she said testily.

The singing stopped.

"Someone's record player," Will said. "Sound probably carries awfully well in these hills, Jack."

"Probably."

"It was nice while it lasted, anyway," my mother said.

And from behind us, Erika called, "Come back and eat. It's getting cold. No one likes cold meat."

O
ur first lovemaking was an event.

It happened at night, in January, at the end of a cul-de-sac where new houses that had gone up several months earlier still waited for buyers. A single streetlamp cast a frigid blue glow on us, and even today, seven years later, I can get an amazing mental picture of the two of us writhing naked in the snow, much too involved in what we were doing to care about frostbite.

She caught me by surprise. I was taking her back to her apartment after dinner and a movie and my mind was furiously at work thinking of ways to get her into bed. My mind had been furiously at work on that particular problem, in fact, for the two weeks and a few days that I'd known her. That was part of the game, wasn't it? A part of the conquest? Sure it was a holdover from senior high school, but it was a holdover that I enjoyed.

She looked earnestly at me from the passenger seat and she said, "Jack?—Let's fuck."

It threw me. "Let's fuck?" I said. I grinned nervously, glanced at her, looked back at the road.

"Don't you want to fuck?" she asked. That threw me, too, because her tone was much the same kind of tone that she'd use to ask if I wanted to have another cup of coffee. "Don't you want to fuck?" she repeated.
Don't you want another cup of coffee?

I answered, feeling foolish and ill-at-ease, "You mean, just like that?"

She was wearing a beige skirt, a blue blouse, a long, bulky, white coat. She shrugged out of the coat, tossed it into the back seat, started unbuttoning the blouse.

"Erika," I said, "I'm driving."

She chuckled quickly, continued unbuttoning the blouse. "So, you'll stop driving and we'll fuck."

"Just like that?" I said again. She had her blouse unbuttoned completely; she hesitated; I glanced at her, saw in the light of streetlamps that goose bumps were rising on her breasts. I looked back at the road: "Jesus, Erika!" I was smiling; I couldn't help it. "Jesus, you'll make me have an accident."

"No"—she reached across the seat, put her hand on my crotch—"don't have an accident, Jack." She nodded to indicate a street sign just ahead. "Pull in there. We'll fuck in there." Underneath the street sign there was a sign that read, "
Knollwood
Acres: Prestige Living." I pulled into
Knollwood
Acres, stopped at the end of the cul-de-sac. By then, Erika was naked, and when I touched her I could feel the goose bumps on her.

"You'll catch a cold," I breathed. We were still in the car.

"Shut up," she said sharply.

I straightened in the seat, put my hands on the steering wheel; "You're confusing the hell out of me, Erika."

"I want to fuck. I need to fuck. Everyone needs to fuck." She got out of the car, stood with her back to me and the bluish glow of the streetlamp on her; she stiffened, clenched her fists at her sides and screamed into the still, cold air, "Fuck me, Jack! Everyone needs to fuck!"

What could I do? There were no lights on in the big houses all around us so I got out of the car, went to her, and put my arms around her; I was pretending, even to myself, that I was attempting to warm her with my body. But that pretense faded fast, and moments later, I had my pants off, then my shirt, and we were in six inches of snow making love.

I
used to mention that night every now and then because it really was an amazing night and I thought it showed, beautifully, what really primitive creatures we were beneath it all. But, slowly, she grew to resent it, and once even grew angry when I brought it up—"That's not the way
civilized
human beings behave!" were her words.

"I'm sorry," I said, and meant it.

She shook her head slowly, in self-condemnation. "So am I, Jack. It's just something kind of personal. You understand, I'm sure."

"Uh—huh," I said, "I understand," though I didn't. The subject hasn't been mentioned since.

S
everal nights after my mother and Will visited I was awakened shortly after midnight by the frantic roar of snowmobile engines. I nudged Erika, asleep beside me.

"Erika? Wake up."
                                                                             

She grumbled "No," turned over, and murmured, "Go back to sleep, Jack."

I got out of bed and went to the window that overlooked the road and the mountain on the other side of it. The drapes were closed; I drew them aside a few inches.

I would have guessed, from the noise level, that the snowmobiles were in our front yard. They weren't. They were across the road, on the mountain, ten or twelve of them, all in a line, the white glare of their headlights bobbing on a narrow path that wound up the mountain.

I watched for several minutes. Now and again, one of the snowmobiles would stop, as if it were having trouble, and the others would stop too. There'd be loud talking, some curses—the snowmobiles were at a distance of at least half a mile, but sound carried well on the still night air—and at last the line would get going again. They were on their way to what looked like a good-sized house halfway up the mountain. I could see the suggestion of lighted windows through the trees, the underside of a roof.

After a few minutes, Erika said behind me, "What's going on, Jack? What's all that noise?"

I said, without turning to look at her, "Just a bunch of snowmobilers, Erika."

"Oh," she said, as if that were all the explanation she needed and she could go back to sleep.

"I think those are the crazy people they told me about," I went on.

Erika said nothing.

"A bunch of crazy snowmobilers." People who get their kicks out of making lots of noise in the middle of the night are essentially easy to deal with, I decided; you either put up with their noise or you do something about it.

"If this keeps up," I went on, more to myself than to Erika, "I'll have words with them."

"Sure, Jack," she whispered.

T
he following morning, a Monday, I went across the road. I found the snowmobiles' tracks in the mud and snow, though little else. I thought about going to the house and giving whoever happened to be there my two cents' worth about the roar of snowmobile engines at 12:30 in the morning, but my cowardice got in the way. I told myself, instead, that if it happened again,
then
I'd talk to someone—and started back.

I heard a man call from behind me, "Wait there, please," and looked around. He was on the path that led to the house. He was tall, dark-haired; he wore brown pants, a red flannel shirt, and an orange hunting vest. He was also carrying a rifle, barrel down, in his right hand, and he was walking very quickly toward me. He raised his left hand a little when he was still a good fifty feet away and said again, "Wait there, please."

"Sure," I said.

He stopped several feet from me and smiled thinly. "Tell me who you are, please," he said. He had a broad, flat face, a wide nose, and small brown eyes—it was actually the face of a fat man, and it looked ludicrous on his tall, thin body.

"Who are you?" I said.

He nodded to indicate the house at the middle of the mountain. "I live there. My name's Martin. And this"—he nodded toward his feet to indicate the path we were on—"is private property."

I shrugged. "Then I'll leave," I said.

"It's not that I'm trying to be unfriendly," he said, and his thin smile reappeared, "but we really do like our privacy, Mr. Harris."

"How'd you know my name?"

He pointed at my mailbox across the road. "Easy enough," he said.

"Oh." I paused, added, "Who's 'we'?"

"'We'?"

"You said, 'We like our privacy.' Who's 'we'?"

He nodded a couple of times, as if to indicate that he understood. "Yes. That's me and my family, Mr. Harris. There are quite a few of us—"

"I know. I heard you last night."

His thin smile broadened. "Did we disturb you? I'm sorry." He sounded sincere. "I'll try to see that it doesn't happen again."

"Thanks. I don't mean to complain, it's just that my wife—"

"Of course you don't mean to complain, Mr. Harris. And I don't mean to sound unfriendly, either." He paused, smiled very broadly, then said, "But our privacy really is very important to us."

"As is mine."

"Of course. But for different reasons, I'm sure." It was clearly a spontaneous remark. And from his quick and short-lived frown, I got the idea that he regretted it at once. He nodded toward my house, smiled a dismissal. "Good day, Mr. Harris."

I said nothing; I turned and walked back to the house.

W
e had trouble with moles early in March. Spring seemed to have arrived early; we had little snow, and what snow there was melted quickly in temperatures that were in the forties and fifties. So the moles appeared, and our cats had a field day with them. They killed them, skinned them, and left the bloody carcasses in spots inside the house where we'd be sure to find them and, I assume, see what wonderful hunters they were. The moles were of varying sizes. Some were as small as a man's thumb, others much larger, and they apparently numbered in the hundreds around the house.

The killing of the moles had a strange effect on Erika. At first she didn't seem to care much, beyond the fact that neither of us enjoyed finding tiny corpses in the house every morning (our cats came and went through a small pet door I'd installed in the laundry room). But after a week or so I found her weeping over one.

"It's only a mole, Erika," I said.

"Of course it's only a mole," she said, and it was clear from her tone that she wanted the subject dropped.

Several mornings later I found her weeping over another one; the cats had left it at the bottom of the stairway.

"Erika," I said, "you're beginning to worry me."

"I don't mean to," she said, swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, and sniffled, "I'm sorry."

I got several paper towels, and scooped up what remained of the mole. "I'll go and toss it into the woods, Erika." It was what I'd been doing with the other animals the cats had killed.

She shook her head. "No. I want you to bury it, Jack."

I grinned. I couldn't help it. "I'd rather not."

"It came from the earth, Jack." She hesitated, turned back one of the folds of paper towel to reveal the tiny red body within, stared at it a moment, then looked earnestly at me. "So put it back into the earth."