The Anything Box

tree trunk.
'Oh, God!' he thought wildly. 'I must be going crazy! I never hit her
before. I never tried to—' He beat his doubled fists against the tree until
the knuckles crimsoned, then he crouched again above his all-enveloping misery
until the sharp smell of burning food penetrated his daze. He walked blindly
over to the camp stove and yanked the smoking skillet off. He turned off the
fire and dumped the curled charred fish into the garbage can and dropped the
skillet on the ground.
He stood uncertain, noticing for the first time the scattered sprinkling of
rain patterning the top of the split-log table near the stove. He started
automatically for the car to roll the windows up.
And then he saw Ellena standing just outside the tent Afraid to move or
speak, he stood watching her. She came slowly over to him. In the half-dusk he
could see the red imprint of his hand across her cheek. She looked up at him
with empty, drained eyes.
'We will go home tomorrow.' Her voice was expressionless and almost steady.
'I'm leaving as soon as we get there.'
'Ellena, don't!' Crae's voice shook with pleading and despair.
Ellena's mouth quivered and tears overflowed. She dropped her sodden,
crumpled Kleenex and took a fresh one from her shirt pocket. She carefully
wiped her eyes.
''It's better to snuff a candle . . .'' Her voice choked off and Crae felt
his heart contract. They had read the book together and picked out their
favorite quote and now she was using it to—
Crae held out his hands, 'Please, Ellena, I promise—'
'Promise!' Her eyes blazed so violently that Crae stumbled back a step.
'You've been trying to mend this sick thing between us with promises for too
long!' Her voice was taut with anger. 'Neither you nor I believe your promises
any more. There's not one valid reason why I should try to keep our marriage
going by myself. You don't believe in it any more. You don't believe in me any
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more—if you ever did. You don't even believe in yourself! Nothing will work if
you don't believe—' Her voice wavered and broke. She mopped her eyes carefully
again and her voice was measured and cold as she said, 'Well leave for home
tomorrow—and God have mercy on us both.'
She turned away blindly, burying her face in her two hands and stumbled
into the tent.
Crae sat down slowly on the log beside his muddy shoes. He picked up one
and fumbled for the cleaning rag. He huddled over himself, feeling as though
life were draining from his arms and legs, leaving them limp.
'It's all finished,' he thought hopelessly. 'It's finished and I'm finished
and this whole crazy damn life is finished. I've done everything I know.
Nothing on this earth can ever make it right between us again.'
You don't believe, you don't believe. And then a wheezy old voice whistled
in his ear. Nothing works, less'n you believe it. Crae straightened up,
following the faint thread of voice. Happen some day you'll want to go
fishing— you won't forget.
'It's crazy and screwy and a lot of hogwash,' thought Crae. 'Things like
that can't possibly exist.'
You don't believe. Nothing works, lessen— A strange compound feeling of
hope and wonder began to well up in Crae. 'Maybe, maybe,' he thought
breathlessly. Then— 'It will work. It's got to work!'
Eagerly intent, he went back over the incident at the store. All he could
remember at first was the rocking chair and the thick discolored lips of the
old man, then a rhythm began in his mind, curling to a rhyme word at the end
of each line. He heard the raspy old voice again—
Happen some day you'll want to go fishing, you won't forget. And the lines
slowly took form.
'Make your line from her linen fair.
Take your hook from her silken hair.
A broken heart must be your share
For the Grunder.'
'Why that's impossible on the face of it,' thought Crae with a pang of
despair. 'The broken heart I've got—but the rest? Hook from her hair?' Hair?
Hairpin—bobby pin. He fumbled in his shirt pocket. Where were they? Yesterday,
upcreek when Ellena decided to put her hair in pigtails because the wind was
so strong, she had given him the pins she took out. He held the slender piece
of metal in his hand for a moment then straightened it carefully between his
fingers. He slowly bent one end of it up in an approximation of a hook. He
stared at it ruefully. What a fragile thing to hang hope on.
Now for a line—her linen fair. Linen? Ellena brought nothing linen to camp
with her. He fumbled with the makeshift hook, peering intently into the dusk,
tossing the line of verse back and forth in his mind. Linen's not just cloth.
Linen can be clothes. Body linen. He lifted the shoe rag. An old slip—ripped.
In a sudden frenzy of haste, he ripped the white cloth into inch wide
strips and knotted them together, carefully rolling the knobby, ravelly
results into a ball. The material was so old and thin that one strip parted as
he tested a knot and he had to tie it again. When the last strip was knotted,
he struggled to fasten his improvised hook onto it. Finally, bending another
hook at the opposite end, sticking it through the material, splitting the end,
he knotted it as securely as he could. He peered at the results and laughed
bitterly at the precarious makeshift. 'But it'll work,' he told himself
fiercely. 'It'll work. I'll catch that damn Grunder and get rid once and for
all of whatever it is that's eating me!'
And for bait? Take the tears that fall from her eyes …
Crae searched the ground under the tree beside him. There it was, the
sodden, grayed blob of Kleenex Ellena had dropped. He picked it up gingerly
and felt it tatter, tear-soaked and rain-soaked, in his fingers. Remembering
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her tears, his hand closed convulsively over the soaked tissue. When he loosedhis fingers from it, he could see their impress in the pulp, almost as he hadseen his hand print on her cheek. He baited the hook and nearly laughed againas he struggled to keep the wad of paper in place. Closing one hand tightlyabout the hook, the other around the ball of cotton, he went to the tent door.For a long, rain-emphasized moment he listened. There was no sound frominside, so with only his heart saying it, he shaped, 'I love you,' with hismouth and turned away, upstream.