“Materialist!” Karen put out her forefinger and touched Lea’s cheek softly. “The light is coming back. The candle is alight again.”
“Praised be the Power.” The words came unlearned to Lea’s lips.
“The Presence be with you.” Karen lifted to the porch railing, her back to the moon, her face in shadow. Her hands were silvered with moonlight as she reached out to touch Lea’s two shoulders in farewell.
Before moonrise the next night Lea stood on the dark porch hugging her small bundle to her, shivering from excitement and the wind that strained icily through the pinion trees on the canyon’s rim. The featureless bank of gray clouds had spread and spread over the sky since sundown. Moonrise would be a private thing for the upper side of the growing grayness. She started as the shadows above her stirred and coagulated and became a figure.
“Oh, Karen,” she cried softly, “I’m afraid. Can’t I wait and go by bus? It’s going to rain. Look-look!” She held her hand out and felt the sting of the first few random drops.
“Karen sent me.” The deep amused voice shook Lea back against the railing. “She said she was afraid your toothbrush and nightgown might have compounded themselves. For some reason or other she seems to have suddenly developed a Charley horse in her lifting muscles. Will I do?”
“But-but-” Lea clutched her bundle tighter. “I can’t lift! I’m afraid! I nearly died when Karen transported me last time. Please let me wait and go by bus. It won’t take much longer. Only overnight. I wasn’t even thinking when Karen told me last night.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m going to cry,” she choked, “or cuss, and I don’t do either gracefully, so please go. I’m just too darn scared to go with you”
She felt him pry her bundle gently out of her spasmed fingers.
“It’s not all that bad,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Darn you People!” Lea wanted to yell. “Don’t you ever understand? Don’t you ever sympathize?”
“Sure we understand.” The voice held laughter. “And we sympathize when sympathy is indicated, but we don’t slop all over everyone who has a qualm. Ever see a little kid fall down? He always looks around to see whether or not he should cry. Well, you looked around. You found out and you’re not crying, are you?”
“No, darn you!” Lea half laughed. “But honestly I really am too scared-“
“Well-say, my name is Deon in case you’d like to personalize your cussing. Anyway we have ways of managing. I can sleep you or opaque my personal shield so you can’t see out-only you’d miss so much either way. I should have brought the jalopy after all.”
“The jalopy?” Lea clutched the railing.
“Sure, you know the jalopy. They weren’t planning to use it tonight.”
“if you were thinking I’d feel more secure in that bucket of bolts-” Lea hugged her arms above the elbows. “I’d still be afraid.”
“Look.” Deon lifted Lea’s bundle briskly. “It’s going to rain in about half a minute. We’re a long way from home. Karen’s expecting you tonight and I promised her. So let’s make a start of some kind, and if you find it unbearable we’ll try some other way. It’s dark and you won’t be able to see-“
A jab of lightning plunged from the top of the sky to the depth of the canyon below them, and thunder shook the projecting porch like an explosion. Lea gasped and clutched Deon.
His arms closed around her as she buried her face against his shoulder, and she felt his face pressed against her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she shuddered, still clinging. “I’m scared of so many things.”
Wind whipped her skirts about her and stilled. The tumultuous threshing of the trees quieted, and Lea felt the tension drain out. She laughed a little and started to lift her head. Deon pressed it back to his shoulder.
“Take it easy,” he said. “We’re on our way.”
“Oh!” Lea gasped, clutching again. “Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes,” Deon said. “Don’t bother to look. Right now you couldn’t see anything anyway. We’re in the clouds. But start getting used to the idea. We’ll be above them soon and the moon is full. That you must see.”
Lea fought her terror and slowly, slowly, it withdrew before a faint dawning wonder. “Oh!” she thought. “Oh!” as Karen’s forgotten words welled softly up out of memory-“arms remember when eyes forget.” “Oh, my goodness!” And her eyes flew open only to wince shut again against the outpouring of the full moon.
“Wasn’t it-didn’t you-?” she faltered, peering narrowly up into Dean’s moon-whitened face.
“That’s just what I was going to ask you,” Deon smiled.
“Seems to me I should have recognized you before this, but remember, the first time I ever saw you you were neck-deep in water and stringy in the hair-one piece of it was plastered across your nose-and Karen didn’t even clue me!”
“But look now! Just look now!”
They had broken out of the shadows, and Lea looked below her at the serene tumble of clouds-the beyond- words wonder of a field of clouds under the moon. It was a beauty that not only fed the eyes but made all the senses yearn to encompass it and comprehend it. It sorrowed her not to be able to fill her arms with it and hold it so tight that it would melt right into her own self.
Silently the two moved over acres and acres of the purity of curves, the ineffable delight of depth and height and changing shadows-a world, whole and complete in itself, totally unrelated to the earth below in the darkness.
Finally Lea whispered, “Could I touch one? Could I actually put my hands into one of those clouds?”
“Why, sure,” Deon said. “But, baby, it’s cold out there. We have considerable altitude to get over the storm. But if you like-“
“Oh, yes!” Lea breathed. “It would be like touching the hem of heaven!”
