She reached down. Her fingers clawed the damp soil. She took up a
handful and ground it against my chest. I felt a sudden all-enveloping
chill. She leaned over me and grasped the headstone in both hands
again and I rose up high to meet her.
I looked up into a face that was already trembling on the near side of
orgasm, past the blind-seeming eyes, and glimpsed myself as though
reflected in some dream image as clouds drifted by the moon. I saw us
as though from above, locked together, clashed in need. The headstone
behind me. I saw huge dead hands reach up out of the churning earth
and pull us down.
As she screamed, I felt those hands on me. Broken stalagmite fingers.
On my shoulders. On my neck. Lightly clutching.
Cold and sweating, I came too. And screamed along with her. While the
hands receded. Tendrils of smoky mist, climbing back into the soil.
'My god!'
I heard my own nervous 'You too, huh?' 'You were moving at me right up
out of the ground. I was fucking a dead man!'
I felt her shudder. Her body sparkled with beads of sweat. 'God!
Kiss me. Kiss me easy.'
It was very soft and warm. For a moment I felt the strangeness clear a
tiny space for us, like stepping into a dense fog and watching it swirl
away around your feet. I felt her cool breasts brush my chest,
laughter.
smelled the rich natural perfume of her damp hair. She was Casey,
just Casey. Slightly nuts but that was all.
I still lay inside her.
Like the dead, it would take only a little imagination to get me to
rise again.
I broke the kiss and gently lifted her away.
'No more?'
'I think we've educated old Liz Cotton.'
I stood up and pulled on my clothes. She sat still a moment fingering
a blade of grass, the picture of healthy life amid all those twisted
shapes of tombstones. Suddenly I heard the crickets and the frogs
again. They'd been there all along, but I was elsewhere.
She got dressed. The last thing she put on was her pullover blouse.
She tugged it on over her head and then thought of something. While it
was still around her neck she kissed the palm of her hand and pressed
it to the headstone of Elizabeth Cotton.
We walked back through the cemetery to the church. Neither of us
spoke. I glanced at the padlock on the door and shook my head.
'You know why I was so mad before? Back at your house. You know why I
hit you?'
'The windows. The broken windows. I don't blame you.'
'No. Just partly that.'
'What else?'
I pointed to the padlock.
'Look at that. It's ridiculous. A Yale lock wouldn't keep out a
determined ten-year-old.'
'So?'
'So I know. Remember I told you there was one other brush with the
law?'
'Yes?'
The blue eyes glittered at me.
'Breaking and entering. I was fourteen years old. It was no big
thing. A lot of scare tactics at the police station, that was all. And
bad times with my mom and dad for a while.'
'A lock like this?'
'God, no! You wouldn't want a lock lit than ashed. That's what I
mean. No, this was a house over on Maple. Properly closed for the
winter. I went through a window on the ground floor. Wandered around
awhile. Somebody saw my flashlight through the living-room window.'
'But why? What were you doing? Stealing?'
'Good thing I wasn't, or I wouldn't have gotten off with just a
warning. No matter how many cops my dad knew. No, that was the weird
part. I didn't go there to steal.
'When they got there- the cops, I mean- I'd just been sitting in the
living room, in this big old easy chair, wondering what the people were
like. And smoking a cigarette. I'd almost forgotten that. I guess I
did steal something. The cigarette. From a tired old pack on the
kitchen table.'
We walked to the car and I thought about it. I hadn't thought about it
for years And I'm not sure I'd ever asked myself exactly what the
point had been.
'I don't know why. It was exciting. I liked it. Hiked invading their
privacy. I looked through all the drawers upstairs, but they were
mostly empty. There were some clothes in the closet. I looked through
them. I didn't know the people at all, but being in the house gave me
the feeling that I did. I liked that. That's why I was sitting in
that chair. Just thinking about them. I could almost hear their
voices.
'I have this fantasy. I'm in the city, Portland maybe. Whatever. And
I see this girl on the street. She's very attractive, so I follow her.
I follow her for days, get to know everything she does and everywhere
she goes. But she never sees me. I get to know her completely without
her ever knowing me. And then when I think I've got her completely
down cold, I go away and never come back. Like leaving a lover. She
never even knows I was there.'
v oy g u r I s m.
'Sure. I get to be with her, know her, even care about her a little,
but I never have to do anything . I'm completely .. . aloof. At the
same time I'm completely committed to her, obsessive even. It's all I
do for days. You see?'
'I think so'
