Sourland

The man would not find her attractive, sexually. Yet that morning early when she’d set out on her journey — her pilgrimage? — she’d been an attractive dark-haired woman with a ready if unfocused smile of whom it was said by those who wished her well How rested you’re beginning to look, Sophie! How young.

How rested was a sort of code, Sophie supposed. Such words were only pronounced to widows, convalescents, survivors of terrible disasters. How rested and not rather how devastated.

How rested and not rather how dead.

Hurriedly Sophie combed her hair, that was snarled at the nape of her neck. She fumbled to put on makeup squinting into the leprous mirror. Her fingers were oddly clumsy, she dropped the tube of lipstick not once but twice onto the grimy linoleum floor.

Blood rushed into her face as she stooped to retrieve the lipstick. Groping in the cobwebby corner of the tiny lavatory. So it has come to this, Sophie! Such desperation.

No time to unpack her suitcase. Kolk was waiting for her. She could hear the panting little pig-dog snuffling and clawing at the base of the door she had no choice but to force open.

“S’reebi! Come over here, damn you sit.”

Kolk growled at the dog, that reluctantly obeyed him. How like a TV sitcom this was — was it? Sophie’s mouth smiled, hopeful.

Kolk had lighted a fire in the fireplace. He’d laid cutlery, plates, swaths of paper towels on a crude wood- plank table in front of the fireplace. Not a TV sitcom but a romantic scene, this was. In the Sourland Mountain Preserve, in snowy April.

Sophie would have thought that the prospect of eating would nauseate her. In fact, the aroma of something meaty and gamey stewing on the stove made her mouth water.

Kolk said, with forced exuberance: “Soph-ie! How d’you feel?”

“I–I — I feel — wonderful.”

Was this so? Light-headed with hunger Sophie leaned against the table smiling. Wonderful! Wonderful. Wonderful.

Her joints still ached, she felt as if she’d been hiking for hours in her sleep. But she would betray no weakness to the man. Glancing about for something useful to do, some task to which she might be put — setting the table. And there were stubby candles she located on a shelf, to set on the table and light with trembling fingers.

How romantic, candlelight! Sophie was thinking how, at home, a thousand miles away, she and Matt had eaten their evening meals by candlelight.

Maybe at this very moment — was this possible? — the Quinns were sitting down to dinner, in that house in Summit, New Jersey. There was Sophie, and there was her husband Matthew Quinn. Could this be?

“What happened to your face?”

Kolk was staring at Sophie. He’d removed his dark glasses.

“A spider bit me — I think.”

“A spider? Where?”

Where do you think? Where have I been?

“While I was sleeping, I think.”

Kolk came closer, peering at Sophie’s face. He was embarrassed, chagrined. His eyes were dark, puckered at the corners, deep-set and bruised-looking. It was something of a shock to Sophie, to see Kolk’s eyes, without his glasses. The man’s eyes fixed on her face. “Christ! I’m sorry.”

“Oh no, no — it’s nothing. Really it’s nothing.”

Sophie laughed, certainly it was nothing. She touched her lip that had swollen to twice its size. Beneath her clothes other bites itched violently, she dared not scratch for fear Kolk would be embarrassed further.

Muttering to himself Kolk stomped into the other room, Sophie saw him on hands and knees peering beneath the bed, cursing and grunting. With a rolled-up newspaper he swatted at something beneath the bed.

When he returned Kolk was flush-faced, frowning. He said that Sophie could sleep in his bed that night — he would sleep in the “guest room.”

Now it was supper! A romantic supper by firelight.

Kolk brought the stew-pan to the table. Self-consciously he ladled the rich dark liquid into bowls. There was also multigrain bread, he’d baked the previous day. And dark red wine, Kolk served in jam-glasses. Sophie thought I won’t drink, that would be dangerous.

The stew contained chunks of fibrous root vegetables, onions and pieces of a chewy meat, a dank-flavored meat Sophie couldn’t identify. Hesitantly she asked Kolk if it was — venison? — and Kolk said no, it was not venison; she asked if it was — rabbit? — and Kolk said no, it was not rabbit.

Other possibilities Sophie could think of — raccoon? — groundhog? — she did not want to ask about.

Still, she was hungry. Her hand trembled, holding a spoon — Kolk reached out to steady it.

Kolk said they could go hiking in the morning. Or snowshoeing, if the snow didn’t melt.

“Snowshoeing! In April.”

“This is northern Minnesota. We’re in the mountains.”

Sophie laughed a little too loudly. Sophie saw that her jam-glass was in her hand, she’d been drinking after all. Thinking of her husband in his grave, reduced to ashes. She had done that — she’d signed the document, for the cremation. And yet, she’d gone unpunished. No one seemed to realize.

On the drive from the airport Sophie had asked Kolk about his life since Madison, since he’d dropped out of school, and Kolk had answered in monosyllables, briefly. Discreetly she’d made no reference to the alleged bomb accident. She’d made no reference to Kolk’s anti-war activism, that had frequently crossed the line into civil disobedience. Now, Kolk began to speak. He told her about his father — who’d “disowned” him. He told her about his older brother — who’d been shot to pieces in Vietnam. He told her how he’d incurred the wrath of Sourland residents when he’d volunteered to speak at local high schools, explaining the “imperialist designs” fueling the Gulf War. He’d been arrested, “roughed up” by Grand Rapids cops, for picketing the army enlistment office there.

“And then —?”

“‘And then — ’ what?”

“What happened then?”

“Nothing happened then. As much as I’d expected.”

Sophie had finished the wine in her glass. Sophie felt her swollen lip throb with heat. Inside her clothes, the spider’s-bite rash pulsed and flamed.

He will touch me now. Now, it will happen.

Beneath the table the fat panting dog, that had been clambering about their feet through the meal, gave a sigh like a grunt and fell asleep.

Kolk poured the remainder of the wine into their glasses. He’d eaten twice as much as Sophie had eaten, and drunk even more. His skin exuded a ruddy heat, like the heat of Sophie’s swollen lip. She found that she’d been looking at the disfigured flesh of his jaw, the exposed teeth, without feeling repelled. Suddenly she wanted very badly to touch Kolk’s jaw — the soft melted-away scar tissue.

Kolk stiffened as if sensing Sophie’s thoughts.

The yearning between them. Like molten wax, dripping and shapeless.

Gently Sophie said, “Your — injury. It was an accident —?”

Kolk shrugged. Kolk’s face was flushed still, stiff.

Sophie said, uncertainly: “We’d heard about it — an accident. An explosion. We’d heard that you had been — killed.”

Kolk laughed. Possibly, Sophie had taken him by surprise.

“It was good, ‘believed dead.’ Nobody follows you there.”

Kolk lurched from the table to fetch a bottle of whiskey — Canadian Club. Without asking Sophie if she wanted any he poured the amber liquid into their emptied wineglasses. Not what Sophie’s fastidious husband would have done, this was an act of barbarism. Sophie laughed, and tasted the liquid. So strong! Sophie was not a drinker of whiskey, Scotch or gin; she was not a drinker at all; a single, small glass of wine was her limit.

In the shifting firelight Kolk’s ravaged face looked like the face of a devil reflecting flames. Sophie thought