Sacred Dust (11 page)

Glen is a closet born-again, but he’s too damned scared to admit it. Glen has an abiding fear that someone will call him a redneck. He’s that enervating half-a-cut above, a two-damned-dollar millionaire with a college degree. There is an enormous distance between a degree and an education.

I took him for a dumb country boy and I pitied his wife. They all have wives. You see them out at Wal-Mart, their carts filled with hollow-eyed kids, their shoulders slumped, their faces pinched from wondering if they’re pregnant again. I pity those women. The sight of them terrifies me because I can’t shake the fear that God intended me for one of them.

Every now and again I’d catch him glancing down in my direction. No doubt he disapproved of my bathing suit. Or the sight of a woman at leisure in the middle of the day. That made me tired. I gathered up my book and my towel and started towards the house.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Do you have a grass rake I might borrow?”

He had a boy’s face except for some little lines around his eyes when he squinted. He was freckled and good looking. There was nothing saved or judgmental about him. That meant he was a hell-raiser. Yet, there weren’t any whiskey circles under his eyes. He stood at the edge of the yard awaiting permission to trespass.

His hair fell every which way. It was sun streaked almost white on the top. When his eyes found shade and he opened them good, I could see they ran deep, two pure gray almonds that had seen things and absorbed their meaning. He wasn’t dumb.

“Where’s Rose of Sharon today?” I asked.

“She took Miss Eula Pearl to the doctor.”

“Do I know you?”

“Heath Lawler. I’m Dashnell’s nephew …”

Dashnell’s kin. That gave me pause.

“ … but don’t hold that against me.” He grinned. It was guileless. It washed through me. It made me feel easy. It made me feel all
right. He was neither saved nor a hell-raiser. He was absolutely himself, whoever he was. That gave me permission to be myself.

“I wouldn’t know a grass rake from a tractor tire, but let’s look in the toolshed.”

He followed me a few paces behind. We dug out a rake.

“Beautiful place you have here.”

“It is that,” I said. I was lightheaded. It was probably the sun or the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything that morning.

“If y’all need any work done around here, I’m your man,” he said somberly. “I can always use work.” There wasn’t a hint of arrogance or flirtation about him. Yet he was no innocent. I generally divide the men in this world into two categories, those who want me and those who don’t. He appeared to be neither.

“I’m Lily Pembroke.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

His manner was so completely undecorated that it didn’t dawn on me for the longest time just how handsome he was. He either didn’t know it or he’d never used it against anyone.

“Thanks for the rake.”

He went on back to his work. Every now and then he’d glance my way and I’d look his. I could feel the loneliness knotted in my stomach. I could see by the shadows it was around three o’clock. The kids would be home at four-thirty. Suppertime and Glen and the darkness would follow. He came back with the rake.

“Tell your husband if he doesn’t put up a retaining wall at the edge of the lake, it’s going to flood come spring.”

“I’ve been telling him for six months. But nothing I say sticks with him.”

“Well, if you do get it to stick, tell him I’m the man for the job,” he mused. “Mind if I grab a drink from your hose?”

“Would you like a Coke?”

“I don’t want to be trouble.”

“I was about to get myself one. It’s no trouble.”

The wind was up when I came back. The thin May leaves were shimmering yellow-green in the late afternoon sun. The water was choppy and stippled. The sweat on his face had dried. His hair
fluttered over his forehead. He had helped himself to the chair next to mine and pulled it into the shade.

“Peaceful up here on the lake.”

“Quiet as a tomb,” I brooded.

He drank his cola in two sips. He set it down with an air of finality. I felt a sudden panic as if he was about to abandon me. I wanted his company. I wanted to feel I deserved it.

“I’m having a bad day,” I muttered more to myself than him.

“How’s that?”

“Husband trouble,” I went on, like he should care or show the slightest interest.

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“I was just lying here feeling lonely and sorry for myself and I wouldn’t mind if you passed a few more minutes with me.”

That’s what was crossing my mind. So I said it. It sounds so common to me now.

“Everyone is struggling in their own way.” He was talking about me, but I could see he had weights of his own.

“If they’ll only admit it.” I finished the thought.

“Most conversation begins with talk about nothing and ends just the same. People are afraid to say what’s on their minds.”

All either of us wanted that afternoon was the close proximity of another person. We talked easily and freely. We were like strangers on a train harmlessly spilling our hearts to each other because we would never see each other again. I told him I lived with a man I don’t love. He said he was trying to get his life started.

“Do you ever wonder if you’ll pass through this life and never touch another living soul? Or change anything? Or matter?”

“It’s my worst nightmare.” It is. This was no empty sodbuster looking for a joyride. He was talking to me one person to another. It was thrilling. I felt alive. We passed an hour like that. Then the school bus pulled up out front and Heath went back across the yards to his work. I sat on the back porch and helped the kids with their math and watched him quilt squares of sod into a lawn in Rosie’s yard. Later I gave Glen his supper. He fussed at me about a credit card bill. When it was dark, I walked down by the lake. I
could hear Heath’s voice low and polite among Rosie’s and Dashnell’s and the clink of silverware on china plates as they ate in the kitchen. Later when the lights came on I could see him silhouetted at the table opposite Dashnell while Rosie darted in the background cleaning up the kitchen.

I stood on the dock and waited. Finally he came down Rosie’s back steps to gather up his tools for the day. I picked up a minnow bucket and dropped it hard on the wood planks to catch his attention. He stopped. He looked towards me. I motioned to him. He moved towards me.

“Hey.”

He didn’t answer. He just stood there and looked at me.

“Beautiful evening,” I tried.

He just kept looking. Then he kissed me so hard I thought we were both going to fall into the lake.

I bathed the children and read to them before they slept. Glen worked at his bench in the garage until eight-thirty. He was asleep by nine. At nine-fifteen I slid down the back steps and moved through the dark backyards down the path through the woods beyond the last house. The air was a furry blue veil and there were scattered drops of rain. It was pure foolishness to compound my troubles by meeting a man I barely knew in a deserted place in the dark. For all I knew he’d kill me and throw me into the lake. Maybe word was out that I’d given the sheriff a hard time about that dead man and Heath was leading me into a setup. Or suppose Glen had followed me? I had given him plenty of reason to be suspicious in the past.

The moon was back by the time I reached the clearing. Heath sat so low and still I took him for a fallen limb until I was right on him.

He smelled like summer and I could see the trees overhead and the moon passing through the leaves. The blanket was soft and new and the stars drifted down in white rivers through the haze. His fingers were warm water flowing under my back. He was a slow and tender lover and his eyes were wet when he kissed me.

L
ily and I were riding on the back of a dragonfly. Dozens of passing stars made yellow spinning pinwheel fountains. When I woke around four A.M., the warm dropping rain pelted the tin roof.

Now, walking dumbstruck through my days, a small voice reaches out to me. Common sense tells me I can’t be in love with a woman I don’t know. Fear reminds me I slept with another man’s wife and ought to consider the consequences. But when I woke this morning, the world was new and when I let the hounds outside, I stayed in the yard and watched the pink-eyed sun float up over the woods.

Today I’ll go out and search for work. I’ll answer the blank looks of the indifferent world with smiling eyes. Tonight I’ll wait in the woods. Tonight I’ll roll her in my arms. I’ll feel her breasts tingling against my chest. Every cell in my body will give her the boundless joy she draws out of me. If she asked me to fly, I would fly. She is my unending happiness, my hope and my prayer. Lily turns the universe inside out and shows its wonder to me.

Hers is the breath of God on my shoulder. Lily is the sense of all things. She liberates my heart and sets my life in motion. I’m begun at last. I’m risen up out of darkness. I’m set apart from chaos. I’m moving. My heart is dancing. I see everything now, the bursting privet bloom and the shadowed patterns on the porch post. I see the
blue eternal sky through the brown and green pines. I rub my palms together and sense a soft, electric thrill. I brush the dry back of my hand across my cheek and get comfort because there is Lily. How can it be, this quick, burning happiness where for so long there was nothing? Lily is my mantra, my prayer and my song. She is the long awaited answer to all my supplication. Tonight in the shining grass I’ll kneel before her and humbly thank God for sending the promised angel. I’ll ask His guidance as I pledge my ceaseless vigilance and unqualified protection.

P
eople like me live their whole lives in fear. People like Lily dance with danger every day and never seem to know it. I’ve got a situation here. I told that girl. I says, “Lily, you do what you’re going to do. But you keep it to yourself.” Lord knows she’s not the first married woman to carry on with somebody while her husband’s at work. Some people do that. Some people don’t. You’d have to walk a couple miles in their shoes before you could even offer an opinion. But she’s pushing me here. So is Dashnell’s nephew Heath.

Dashnell hired him to sod the backyard. But somehow he twisted Dashnell’s head around and got him to say he could paint the house too. It was painted eighteen months ago. We had a mild winter. It doesn’t need it. It’s just an opportunity for Heath and Lily to get together. In
my
bed! I came in from the grocery this morning and the bedspread was on sideways. I had no choice but to tell Lily I wouldn’t be taken advantage of that way. She tore off home in a huff.

That didn’t stop Romeo and Juliet. He’ll slap three strokes of paint on my house and then slip down to her place for an hour. I got tired of it. I don’t want the boy hanging off a ladder outside my windows all summer. I don’t want Glen pointing fingers at me if he catches on either. You can find more trouble trying to mind your
own business than you can out looking for it. I went down to Lily’s and knocked on the door and Heath answered it with his shirt in his hand, grinning ear to ear saying he’d be back up here in a few minutes. I said, “Well, all right. But I am
not
paying you by the hour!”

An hour later Lily was at my back door.

“I thought we were friends,” she says, tapping her foot like a spoiled brat.

“Friends don’t do each other the way you are me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think you are.” I was making pickles. I didn’t have time to listen to how she was starved for love.

“I took advantage of you, Rosie. I’m truly sorry.”

I told her I wanted no part of it. I said I wasn’t about to incur the wrath of her husband when he got wind of it. There’s something touched about Glen Pembroke. I figured him for the very type to blame an innocent party. Apt as not he’d get Dashnell in on it. Lord knew what might happen then.

“You tell Heath I’ll get somebody else to paint my house.”

That’s when she told me she was trying to cut it off.

“Well, I’m glad of it,” I says, wondering how I’d get the pickle mess under control and make supper before Dashnell got home. I said that a little harder than I meant to. I’m twice her age and I wasn’t half that pretty when I was young. I couldn’t imagine having the chance to do what she had done. It never was an option. Lily’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, aren’t we sanctimonious?” she says, biting salty tears from her bottom lip.

“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Lily. I’ve got twenty quarts of pickles going and supper to start.”

“Rose, I’m scared,” she said in a matter of fact tone that wasn’t asking for sympathy. I thought she was telling me that Glen had figured it out.

“I wish I’d never met Heath Lawler.” She was sobbing, shaking from head to toe. She looked about six years old.

“I know I’m an imposition, Rose. I know you’d like to see me out and latch the back door against me.”

“I like you, Lily. It’s just that your timing isn’t always the best.”

“Along about now I get a dull line of pain around my middle because I know he’s on his way home.”

So did I. It’s a little panicked feeling. How many sheets to the wind will he be when he walks in the door? What will I do if he’s bad? What’s he going to say when I tell him I ran out of flour and with pickling I didn’t have time to run to the store in White Oak? How would I feel if the phone rang and a highway patrol officer told me that Dashnell was dead? Would it be sorrow or relief or regret?

“Rose, I know how it is with the afternoon sun dropping and a husband’s expectations to be met.” She had successfully ducked around the subject of Heath. Or so I thought.