But he can't think of anything to say that can approximate his feelings at the moment.
'The spring,' Valerie notes. 'I'll dip it in the spring to get out the stains.'
'Are they bad, Val?'
'They add a primitive cache to the garment. It's a keepsake, after all. Imagine what I can tell my daughter about it.'
'You all right?'
'I'm great. Don't you think so?'
She looks at him with the same matter-of-factness she looked at the stains with, then a little smile breaks across her mouth, but fades as her eyes well with tears.
'I sure do.'
'Let's just walk with our arms around each other. We'll go see the spring in the cave and I'll wash the stains in the water.'
'You know you could just take it to a good cleaner.'
'I could tear it into gun rags, too.'
They emerge from the trees, John with the basket again and Valerie holding her big flowery hat.
'I feel like a teenager who just got away with something,' she says.
'Me, too.'
'Twenty-two years one way, then you're another. I feel like I'm supposed to think of everything differently now. I don't feel really different, though. There's a pain down there, and some blood on my clothes. I know what it is to have a man inside. I've made the offer and had the taking. But I'm not so sure this is the most revolutionary moment of my life. I mean, I was really crushed when I found out there wasn't a Santa Claus.'
'I guess I don't know what you mean.'
'Well, you know, just a time when the illusion is gone. Or the change is made. The page is turned. You've thought about it a lot and then it happens and you're still the person you always were. It's good. You're still there.'
'I'm glad you're still here.'
She turns her face to him and consumes him with the darkness of her eyes. He can tell she's going to ask him how he feel about it and he wishes she wouldn't. Too many gradients of the truth to register. Too much complexity to unite.
But she doesn't ask that, exactly. She looks away, out toward the water and leans her head against his shoulder.
'Does this mean I have to love you?'
He laughs. Then, quietly: 'I don't think so.'
'Well, I do. So there.'
'Then that's a good thing.'
John marvels for the millionth time in his life: How can a woman lead you to say something that's true in the way you say it but not true in the way they hear it? Somewhere in between the meaning changes direction, like a signal bounced off a relay. You both know it, which complicates rather than simplifies.
'Good?' she presses.
'Good.'
'Look, I gave my body to you. With it came my soul, my love, my devotion. You took all of me. And I expect all of you back. Every last cell of you. I demand love, affection, sacrifice-and I demand it forever. I demand that you love, cherish and honor me, 'til death do us part. I expect to be your new religion.'
'Sucker,' he says.
'Get down on your haunches, raise your paws up to me, and bark. Bark your adoration.'
'Woof.'
She stops and faces him, drops her hat, plants her feet and swings a big arching cross with her right fist. She opens and slows just before it hits his cheek. Her other hand shoots up and both pull his face down to hers.
'I love you anyway. Brute. Simpleton. Oaf. Dope.'
'In that case I love you, too.'
'There. We both win. I'll be satisfied with that, temporarily.'
The opening to the cave is now covered by a massive iron gate. It is connected to an equally stout frame, hinged on one side and fastened on the other by a long chain of forbidding size and heft.
'This wasn't here when I was a kid,' he says.
'Is now.'
'Who built it?'
'Who do you think? Said he wanted his very own dungeon.'
'Quite the party gag.'
'Just like everything else on Liberty Ridge-doors but no locks. Dad said if he couldn't build a safe home for his family here, he'd go somewhere he could. The electric fence might have something to do with it.'
She pulls out the chain a little, then it slides of its own weight to the ground. John steps away as Valerie uses both hands to pull open the gate. It creaks unmercifully, a long, shrill protest.
'Been a while,' she says. 'After you.'
The sunlight gives way to a partial darkness as John moves into the cool of the cave. He remembers the way the ceiling is low at first so you have to crouch a little, then opens up maybe twenty yards further down to the big cavern with a high ceiling, the smooth dirt floor and at the far end the opening in the rock where the spring bubbles forth in its aromatic, mineral-heavy steam. He remembers that the size of the opening is just big enough to climb into if you want to sit in the hot water, and the rock ledge around the opening is a good place to sit. He can smell the clean, fecund odor of fresh water pooling up from the earth. He remembers that once your eyes adjust in the cavern you can see just well enough to keep from banging into the walls or tripping on the rock ledges surrounding the spring.
'Want to crank up the lantern?' he asks, turning.
'Let's wait until we're in, okay?' Valerie has her hat on. In this minor half-light-just as in the glare of the sun- he finds her absolutely beautiful.
He senses the ceiling rising as he steps into the big cavern. He can't see the top but the echoes of their footsteps have extended resonance. He can make out the pale draft of steam rising from the pool at the far end of the vault. He feels Valerie's body press up against his side, the brim of her hat nudging his neck.
'Let there be light,' she whispers.
John sets down the basket. He steps to the other side of it kneels, lifts the lid. He looks up at her from across the basket beholding her form in the faint light that has followed her in from the cave mouth behind her. He looks up at her face but he can't see much except for the shine of her eyes. He gets out the lantern and turns the electronic ignition switch, hearing the click-click of the spark and the quiet hiss of the gas coming into the mantles.
'Thank you,' he says. 'For what you gave me back there.'
'You're really very welcome.'
'I feel more than welcome. I feel honored and blessed.'
'So do I, John.'
He smiles.
In the growing light he sees that she is smiling, too. She has knelt to face him across the picnic basket, her expression revealed by the whitening glow from the lantern that rests on top of it.
'You're beautiful,' he says.
'You're just flattering me now.'
She turns her back to him and John unbuttons the dress. She drops the top and steps out of it in a motion of pure femininity then walks to the bubbling pool in the rock. He watches her kneel and work the water into the material.
'I knew you'd come here,' she says.
'How could you know, when I didn't?'
'From a dream.'
'Tell me about it.'
'No,' she says quietly, looking over her shoulder at him. 'We're only as interesting as our secrets.'
