still wet with soapy water came up to clasp the back of his neck. Her eyes opened and he knew she was watching the doorway across his shoulder, and he could tell by the look on her face the doorway was empty. He dropped a hand to her hip and her pelvis moved involuntarily against him. He slipped the hand between their bodies, and she made some minute adjustment to accommodate it. He cupped her mounded fleshand she went slack and boneless against him. Her legs parted and her tongue was in his mouth for a moment, and she hugged him hard and suddenly pushed him away.
We’d better quit. Daddy’ll be here in a minute.
He’s listening to the radio.
That’s not all he’s listening to, she said.
There’s nothing in here for him to hear.
That’s exactly what I meant.
He released her reluctantly and stepped away from her. He drug a ladderback chair from the table and turned it backward and sat watching her with his arms crossed over the top slat. All right, let’s talk, then.
Okay. You were right, I did want you to come in here. I wanted you to do that, too. I didn’t want to quit.
What part? The kiss, or what?
She reddened. I don’t know. All of it. The kiss. I never kissed a boy before.
He grinned. Me neither.
A caramelcolored dog had roused itself from the corner where it slept. It looked about for the girl, then trotted over and lay back down with its chin on her foot and lay watching Tyler warily.
Why on earth is that dog wearing earrings?
Ain’t that somethin? Claudelle said. I saw this movie star in a book. She was holdin this dog that looked just like Carmie and it was wearin a pair of earrings. I bought these at the dimestore, and Drew pierced her ears for me with a needle.
Well, that’s the first one I’ve ever seen.
It’s only the second one I’ve heard tell of.
Claudelle.
She jumped. What, Daddy?
Wind up them dishes and get in the bed.
All right, Daddy.
Right now.
Where am I supposed to sleep? Tyler whispered.
In the front room, I guess. On the couch. It’s all there is.
All right. When everybody’s asleep, come in there with me.
Do what?
Come in there with me when they’re asleep.
Why would I do that?
Because you want to, Tyler said. Because I want you to. We can sit in there and talk.
She grinned. What else’ll we do?
Nothing you don’t want to.
I will if I can, she said. If I can stay awake till they’re all asleep.
You can if you want to.
You know I want to.
When all the lamps were blown out the darkness was absolute. He lay in the strange room with the mothball-smelling quilt pulled about his chin and listened to the sounds the house made. Being lost at sea would be like this, Tyler thought. In the stormy dark. There were no walls, no ceiling, no floor. No north or south, nothing a compass could affix to. Nothing save the dark and the wind funneling cold down the hollow and flattening itself against whatever contained him against the night. He thought of Sutter, and then he forced Sutter out of his mind and thought of Claudelle. Her eyes so near his own. Dark, wise, woman’s eyes in a child’s face. The taste of her mouth, the clean soapscent of her hair. He was utterly weary, and the womblike comfort of the quilt was like adream. I will wake up in a stumphole with the rain in my face, he thought. Maybe I’ll stay another night, he was thinking drowsily. Or two. The food’s not half bad. I could just move in and they could adopt me. Marry Claudelle. Have a little log cabin in the woods with a trellis for climbing roses. Claude could give us a cow and a hog for a dowry, and we already have a dog that wears earrings.
After a while it began to rain. Winter lightning bloomed and showed him a rainstreaked window. Inkstained Rorschach trees on the move. Beyond the window the night looked purple. The window vanished and thunder came rumbling down the corridors of the night. The rain came in hard, windy gusts, then subsided to a slow, steady winter drizzle, and he wondered where Sutter was. Under boughs of cedar, hidden with the nightbirds clotted about the branches like malefic fruit, driven to earth like the rest of the beasts of this fabled wood. Crouched in a dry spot beneath the caved roof of an abandoned house, malign revenant among other revenants keeping council. Cursing the rain and biding his time. Or maybe he had just trudged on, as impervious to the vagaries of the weather as stone.
He went to sleep thinking about the girl. Shucking her nightgown over her head, the pale secret bloom of her body. The warmth of it laid against him, breasts pooled against his chest.
But it was not Claudelle but Claude himself who shook him awake at some clockless hour. He came awake slowly as if he were rising in muddy yellow water.
Get up.
Just crawl on in here, Tyler said sleepily.
What? Wake the hell up, boy. He awoke instantly then, coming halfupraised in bed, eyes sweeping the room, though there was nothing save dark to see, and the voice came again, and in a drunken rush of relief he realized it was not Sutter but Claude.
What is it?
Get up. It’s mornin.
He looked about. He couldn’t even see a window. It was still raining.
If it’s morning why ain’t it light?
It’s getting light, Claude said inanely.
Where? Tyler wondered.
Claude fell silent though Tyler could hear the steady rasp of his breathing. He seemed to be leant forward in the dark.
What was it you wanted?
You didn’t have a little drink hid out, did ye? Down there by where we picked you up?
No. No, I don’t even drink.
I just thought bein as you was Moose’s boy, you might. I had some, but she’s hid it or poured it out, one. I wisht I knowed which. If it’s poured out, there’s no use lookin, but if it’s just hid, I might find it if I go on lookin.
Well. I don’t know what to tell you. What does she say?
She’s not sayin much one way or another, Claude said.
I thought you quit, anyway.
I did, I did. I just hate havin somethin and not knowin where it’s at. I reckon I’ll go back to bed.
Tyler lay back on the pillow. Footsteps wandered away in the dark.
He went back to sleep to the windy rain and when he awoke again, there was gray light at the window and it was raining still. He didn’t know if the rain or the light or the voiceshad awakened him.
If you ain’t the beat of all I’ve ever seen, Pearl was saying. You take the cake. Baptized one night praisin Jesus and up before daylight huntin whiskey. If that ain’t the beat.
Claude was trying a reasonable tack. The Bible ain’t down on spirits, he said. Why even them old prophets and disciples and suchlike of old was known to take a dram of wine.
They never blowed the grocer money on it, though.
Claude gave up. They would if they had a sourtongued old bitch like you doggin their ever move, he said.
They fell silent save the clatter of pans, the rattle of cutlery. After a while he could smell coffee boiling and this drew him up out of the warm quilts. It had turned colder during the night and he could feel drafts in the room,
