The 14th Day (25 page)

Vaniok stiffens: though there's no threat in the voice he feels accused. His impulse is to keep moving, pretend he didn't hear the call, but he's done nothing wrong, he reminds himself, he has a right to be here. He stops and slowly turns to see the couple advancing toward him. There's a welcoming smile on the man's face. The woman too seems to have recognized him with delighted surprise.

“I'm sorry,” the stranger says, “I can't remember your name. I'm Tom, Father Tom.” He gives a last name that Vaniok immediately forgets. “We met once before when I took a spill on my bike.”

“Yes, yes,” Vaniok smiles back, absurdly enthusiastic, as if he's just recognized the priest as an old friend. He's nodding as if answering a dozen questions, bowing toward both of them, dancing in place. He tells the man his name, recalling with pleasure that encounter that seems to have taken place years ago. But what is the priest doing with this woman?

“I'd like you to meet Ellen Bird,” the priest gestures toward the woman, who's holding her elbows as if to protect them from the cold.

“We've already met,” she says with a smile, leaning a little in his direction. “Vaniok helped us out at the library when we had a flooding problem.” It pleases him that she says his name.

“Sounds like just the kind of man we could use on our project,” the priest says. He motions toward the cart filled with snacks and drinks. “We're part of a group that builds houses for people who can't afford houses of their own.” He laughs. “That's why we look like we've just climbed out of a ditch.” He gestures toward the woman. “Ellen is a real carpenter but I think they sent us out to get snacks to keep me from hammering my thumb too many times.”

The woman shakes her head and gives Vaniok a look. “Don't believe half of what he says. Tom's a real workhorse.” In the library, though she was friendly, she seemed reserved and efficient; here, gesturing with her thin arms, she's more lively, even playful. Vaniok smiles in appreciation.

The priest shrugs off the compliment and once again Vaniok remembers something from their previous encounter: the sense that under his comic banter the man is capable of being serious, someone you can trust. “I grew up as a Catholic,” he finds himself volunteering, “but I haven't been to church in a while.”

The priest laughs. “I won't tell.” Then he says more quietly, “Nobody's keeping score. Anyway, I'll bet you know how to use tools.”

Vaniok shrugs but the woman nods for him.

“You ought to come by the Center,” the priest says. “We could use you. Couldn't we, Ellen?”

“For sure,” she says encouragingly.

Again Vaniok is nodding. He's actually been asked to join their project; the future seems rich, boundless. He smiles at his new friends. He can't explain what prompted him to volunteer that information about his religious past—this isn't a confessional, after all, but a supermarket. He isn't sorry he said it, though. He knows he wanted to make a connection with these two. He's convinced too that Ellen Bird with her thin arms and shadowed eyes likes him. “Yes,” he says emphatically, “I would be interested.”

“You could come by the Music Library too,” Father Tom says. “Ellen can give you the details.” He and the woman exchange a mysterious look though by now Vaniok has come to feel that the priest is on his side. Already he's decided to get in touch with him early next week. And certainly he'll drop by the library.

“We've got to be getting back,” the priest says, “or they'll think we've absconded with the funds. But I really hope we'll be seeing you.” Ellen Bird nods her agreement.

“Yes,” he says. “You will.”

After they leave he stays in the snack aisle for a moment, allowing them to make their way to the cashier—he doesn't want to overstay his welcome. Abstractly he takes a bag of potato chips from the counter and runs his hands along the smooth cellophane wrapping, then bunches it up and listens to the crinkling sounds it makes. He feels connected, he's part of this place, he knows people here.

Holding the bag of potato chips, he has a sudden thought of Jory, who's going to lose Ila and is possibly being hunted by Carl. I wouldn't want to be him, Vaniok thinks again. This time, though, he feels sympathy for the man's misfortune. The thought strikes him that the priest might be able to help his countryman. His friend, the priest.

Outside the supermarket he breathes in the already warm mid-morning air. The blue sky is clear and sharp with only a few flat, pale clouds pasted on the horizon, though he can foresee the growing heat, the haze, the thickening clouds and evening thunderstorms that have become familiar to him. Soon the long, hot days will be upon the town. He starts out toward his apartment by way of an old neighborhood set among thick, heavy trees, already darkly green with the ripeness of summer. The small, low houses with metal roofs and a few feet of shady porch were built in the last century for the mill workers, and some of them are hardly bigger than trailers. Still, all of them are marked by signs of individual lives: porch furniture of every variety, toys on the lawn, plaster figures of smiling animals and angels, plants in brightly colored pots and even a painting on cloth give each of them a distinctness. As he passes one of the houses an old black man sitting in a chair on his porch lifts his head. In spite of the warmth he's wearing an overcoat and a red woolen hat, his face seems to be covered by a fine dusting of flour. Vaniok nods to him and the man is still for a moment, then returns the greeting, lifting his hand slowly as if summoning a figure in his dream. Vaniok is warmed by the gesture. Is the man dreaming of home, he wonders, and if so, where am I in that dream?

Out on the street that leads to his apartment complex he passes the water treatment plant and other more recently built developments on the edge of town. He passes under the shade of the highway that circles town, the highway he can see from his window, and he's on the border of his own apartment complex when a car slows down beside him.

“Excuse me,” the driver calls, and asks Vaniok how he can get to the university.

“That way,” he points. “It's not far.” The man thanks him and drives off. Vaniok laughs to himself as he watches the car move in the direction he indicated.
Yes, I'm not a stranger here
. In the midst of his delight he thinks of Jory, who will always be a stranger here, Jory with his jar of soil and his memories. Maybe the priest can help him in some way. Maybe someone can help him.

Jory and Ila are on the lake at last. He can't explain why he resisted her suggestion for so long—maybe it's what Vaniok told him about those barking dogs. But out here in the sunshine the world seems friendly. Maybe this is just what he's needed.

It doesn't take him long to find his rhythm with the oars: he leans forward, he drives them into the water and they become heavy. His back and arms tighten, the muscles in his chest stretch as he pulls. When he completes the arc the oars go light and he lifts them, already bending forward, beginning his motion again. His breath comes in harsh gusts, the oarlocks creak, there's a muffled splash; the flat wood slices into the surface of the lake, pulling the boat farther from the dock. “You're quite a boatman,” Ila says. He makes no response but continues rowing with the fury of a man pursued. At last when they're a fair distance from the shore he raises the oars like wings. Hunched forward, he listens to the sound of the boat gliding on its own momentum: rushing water gurgles along its sides; it quiets and he can hear a plane's faint drone. No dogs. Ila too listens as the boat's motion slows. In a moment, when it starts to drift, Jory resumes his rowing at a more leisurely pace.

“You were going so fast,” Ila says with a sly smile. “Where did you think you could take us?”

Something in her teasing expression reminds him of the town they visited on their trip to the ocean, the flat, empty landscape, the bearded tree, the old abandoned house. How long ago it seems. “Maybe I thought we could get to the moon,” he offers.

He watches a dragonfly hover above the glistening oar, then dart away. “But we've already been there,” she answers.

It sounds like a reproach. “Don't they allow return trips then?” He's aware of an edge to his voice that he didn't intend. Already his spirits have slipped.

“Well,” she says noncommittally, “we'll have to see, won't we?”

“I'll just keep rowing. Who knows what we'll find?” He tries for a jaunty air but he's angry with himself for getting upset like that. This morning he resolved that he wasn't going to let anything intrude on their outing, he was going to look ahead, not behind; and now he drives the oars into the lake with sharp, regular strokes, as if to leave the past on the receding shore. The mechanical bending and pulling, the resistance of the water, the hypnotic repetition, allow him to drop into a dreamlike state. If only he could row forever. Splash, stroke, lift, splash: peace. And yet he can't put his mind to sleep entirely: under the creak of oarlocks and the splash of water he can hear the sound of Carl's voice, full of hatred. That encounter a few days ago upset him, made him lose his balance—for a while he didn't know what he was going to have to do. Though it's hard to believe, he'd actually imagined himself packing and leaving, a half dozen times he looked at the phone number that could get him into contact with Fotor; he'd been on the point of dialing it more than once. Now he resumes his rowing, hard, determined. In wonderment, he thinks:
If I'd have dialed that number, met that man, I might already be gone, I might even be on that island. Was I really thinking of leaving this place?

As he rows on he glances toward the shore, suddenly curious about where the basketball arena is in relation to this lake. It was there that he came very close to exploding in those few seconds at the bottom of the hill beside the overturned wheelbarrow. And yet, even now he isn't sure exactly what it was that Carl said to him then; though the words themselves didn't matter; something about that encounter disturbed Jory; it was as if the man had been transformed before his eyes into the shaggy creature of his childhood nightmares. Afterward he could almost convince himself that, like an inquisitor armed with evidence, his fellow worker could have named, if he'd wanted to, the precise intersection in the cold country where Jory knocked the man down and stood over him in the snow. “Where did you get that cut on your arm? What happened at the corner of Prince and Crown? Who helped you get out of that place?” The Carl of his imagination wouldn't have surprised him by telling him whether that man up north lived or died. Jory feels the breeze against his skin, the boat beneath him turns slightly with an adjustment of the oars. The wooded shoreline gives him no clue to where the campus is.

“I may have to change my mind.” Ila's words break the silence and he looks at her: she's shading her eyes with her hand as if she's also been looking for the basketball arena. “The way you're rowing, we may get to the the moon yet.” She's wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, a stripe of shadow covers her eyes but her mouth is in the sunlight, a musing quality about the lips.

Jory swings his head around but the lake's curve blocks his vision of where it ends. From around a bend a red canoe emerges. With smooth, efficient strokes, a shirtless young man brings the paddle into the water and the boat glides by in the shade near the shore. “This is good,” Jory says. He can even feel his wrist healing in the sun. He's grateful for the warmth, the distraction of rowing.

“Mmm,” Ila croons quietly to herself, her head turned toward the canoe, and something in the sound of her voice unsettles him, like music heard behind a closed door. Jory stands beside that door, suddenly without hope. He isn't thinking about Carl anymore. Carl's antagonism is no more to him than the buzzing of a mosquito. All at once there's a harsh, familiar taste in his mouth, the certainty that he's destined to know Ila only to lose her. On this sunlit expanse of water the two of them face each other in the small boat, close enough for touching; yet in her soft, unguarded humming he heard the distance that's come between them. Even when he holds her in the dark these days he's felt it, what he realized so strongly on the night of the riot, that though there may still be chapters to come, the end of their story has already been written.
And I'll be abandoned. Again
. He rows on in a silence become heavy. There are things they ought to talk about, things he's talked about with her only in the imaginary conversations he's had on nights when he hasn't been able to sleep.

But he says nothing. He continues to row, the boat moves steadily toward the lake's other shore, hidden from him as he pulls on the oars. Across from him Ila is silent again—for all he knows she's thinking the same things. His heartbeat quickened when he saw her coming down the corridor of the inn that stormy day, her white apron moving with her hips. And then there was the Constitution Day outing, the policeman, their visit to the mysterious town, the ocean itself. So short a time and already a history, already for him a sense of impending loss.

Just now she's leaning toward the dark green shoreline where the canoe went by. “What do you see there?” he asks. “Indians?” She says nothing.

He squeezes the wood in his hands, he pulls against the resisting medium, he lifts the oars and pushes them through the thinner air, a dance of silver following their path, then he drives the blades into the lake, drawing them through the water once more. The boat rushes across its surface as he tries to keep his hold on the moment he inhabits, this place, this instant; the smooth curved shape of the oar handle presses against his palm. What chain of events brought him to this lake? Who could have foreseen it as he and his uncle stood before the older man's house in Archbishop Street, the jar of soil in Jory's hands, a breakfast of eggs sitting uneasily on his stomach, his eyes brimming with tears. It was the chilly hour before dawn. Keslar, a burly man who worked for the family, was at the wheel of the rain-pocked black car and Jory couldn't help wondering what was going through his mind. After all, it was his country too. But Keslar's dark, round face was expressionless as he waited. He was going to drive Jory to a place near the border where arrangements had been made. “Don't be a fool,” his uncle told Jory. “Get out while you can. We've lost this battle but somebody has to remember.” Thunder rumbled sluggishly in the distance. “Go now,” his uncle said, his voice breaking for the first time. There was an embrace, the crinkle of his raincoat, the smell of whiskey. “Keslar, go.”