The Fire-Dwellers (20 page)

  — Doll, let me ask you one simple question. Can you add more than two and two? Great teacher you’d make. Ian says
How do they expect me to do these problems when Mr. Gaines won’t explain?
And I say,
Wait until Daddy gets home from work, and maybe he can help you with them
. And Mac looks at the damn things and I guess braces himself and tackles it, because there’s nobody else to shove it off onto and then I have the gall to wonder why he bawls Ian out. He probably doesn’t know how to do them any more than I do. Teacher. Oh boy. But the lake the lake the lake and the way the trees looked, spearing up there into the sky and the loons’ voices and everything mysterious waiting to be discovered

Stacey pulls her sweater sleeves down around her wrists, and lights another cigarette. The wind is rising and she is cold. She resists the urge to look at her watch.

  — This erstwhile piece of the forest hurts my ass more than any pew in church when I was a kid. Go home, Stacey. You’ve got to, sometime. That’s for sure. Got to be there to get breakfast – the immutable law of something or other. Where’s the flask? Here. There. One more swallow and that’s it. I don’t want to go home. I want to go away. A long way off. I’m bloody sick of trying to cope. I don’t want to be a good wife and mother.

  — Okay. I see it, Sir. I didn’t see it before, but I see it now. Thanks for nothing. That’s the place I want to get away to, eh? The Cariboo? Up north? No. I’ve never been any of those places. I only think of Mac or else Buckle, on the road, up there somewhere. When I imagine it, it always looks like Diamond Lake. Like, I guess I mean, everything will be just fine when I’m eighteen again. Come on, Stacey. Home.

Hi. Do you mind me asking you what in hell you are doing there?

Crash. Out of the inner and into the outer. Stacey peers through the darkness. At least he is not accompanied by an Alsatian. Presumably this is the occupant of the dimly outlined dwelling she weaseled past some time ago.

I’m sorry. Is this your property?

Not exactly. I’m staying up there. It belongs to some friends of mine – they’re away at the moment, so I’m care-taking. The beach is supposed to be everybody’s property. Only this one being about a quarter of an inch wide and not that
accessible, we don’t often get people here. Especially around midnight. You contemplating a swim?

Well no

Don’t drown yourself, that’s all I ask. Guy drowned himself here not long ago and we haven’t heard the last of it yet. By all means do it, but not right here, eh?

I didn’t intend

Hey, sorry. Want to come up and have some coffee?

I think I should be getting home

Yeh, sure. Well, come and have some coffee first. Aren’t you cold?

Well

Stacey’s eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, examine him. He is shorter than Mac but not that much shorter, brown indifferent hair slightly too long and with an uncombed look, broad square face with outjutting chin and thick eyebrows, face supposed to be clean shaven but not all that recently, body solid but too young yet to have accumulated any extra fat around the belly or chest, dressed in paint-splashed brown corduroy pants and a brown and off-white Indian sweater in thick wool with Haida or something motifs of outspread eagle wings and bear masks.

  — He doesn’t look like a murderer. Oh doll. You have a great eye for a sweater or a muscle, but how in hell do you know what a murderer looks like? If it was Katie, going to this guy’s shack or whatever, for coffee, what would you think? I’d have a fit, that’s what. And yet right this minute I couldn’t care less. Maybe he
is
a murderer. “Salesman’s Wife Stabbed on Sound.” Should I go?

The young man is standing beside the log on which Stacey sits, and his eyes look amused.

You coming or not?

Well, it’s very nice of you

C’mon we don’t live on manners here if you’re coming, come

She follows him up the mud-soft trail to the house. The raw plank steps lead into the kitchen. It is an A-frame, fairly large but as yet unfinished, the boards unpainted, the lumber still yellow-brown and smelling of pinegum. The ceiling of the main room stretches pointedly upwards, and from one rafter is suspended a looped cord from which hangs an exposed bulb, alight. The room is filled with assorted junk – coarse-webbed fishnets in grey piles on the floor, the big smoke-green thick glass bubbles used as weights on nets, suitcases imperfectly closed and half spilling their underwear and shirts, teetering stacks of books in corners, books outspread or dog-eared on a low table made out of a polished pine slab glowing and golden but with roughly tacked-on uneven do-it-yourself wrought-iron legs, somebody having got sick of the job of an artisan. The half-finished greystone fireplace has no mantel and bears deep eyeless cement pits where future hand-selected stones will possibly one day go. Ten-foot-high unhemmed and floor-trailing curtains of moss-green sackcloth veil the huge front window. An open and beautifully illustrated child’s ABC rests on a rumpled loose-weave green and grey wool rug, Arabic-patterned.

  — Heavens. A semiclassy pad. If people have to safety-pin up the hems of their curtains – well. Okay, so a bourgeois I may be, but that kind of a slob I’m not. Still, all the books. What right have I to say? The hell with that. They’re trying to intimidate me with the superiority of unhemmed curtains.

The man points out a black canvas chair, and Stacey tensely sits on the edge. Then, seeing his smile, she slopes back. The stove in the outer region is kerosene – she can smell it. He returns in a little while with two mugs of coffee.

Sugar? Cream?

Well, thanks. Both.

He sits down on a hassock and looks at her. He is still smiling, but when he questions her she feels unprepared.

So, okay. What’s the bad news?

Stacey cradles the hot coffee mug between her hands.

What?

He grins now, but whether mockingly or not, she cannot tell.

The bad news. What’s with you? Why are you here?

I it’s nothing I just drove out

Oh. You just drove out? At this time of night? Here? Look, if you don’t want to level with me, don’t level with me. Go home. But don’t sit here and drink my coffee and tell me you were out for a little fresh air. By the way, my name is Luke. Luke Venturi.

Stacey mumbles her own name and he laughs.

Hey, you’re really scared, aren’t you? Whatsamatter? Think I’m gonna strangle you with one of your own nylons? Come on. Why you here?

Stacey does not look at him.

I didn’t want to stay at home any longer. I took off.

Her hand is too unstable to light her own cigarette. Luke takes it from her, lights it, hands it back.

You took off. Well, well. That’s all right. Don’t worry. Sometimes people do.

She can look at him now, but she feels her own eyes apologizing.

They don’t. They don’t. Not where I come from.

Luke laughs again, but it does not strike her as cruel, only removed from her, as though he were looking at things from some very different point of view.

Well, maybe not, where you come from. Wouldn’t know. You know, once I was up in the Cariboo, hitching, and I stopped off at this farmhouse in the middle of, like, nothing, this goddam broken-down old house, huge actually it was, and the usual pump and cows outside and all I wanted was a meal and only this one kid came out, see, kid about twelve he must’ve been, and I asked where was his dad and mum, and he said
My dad’s out there he’ll be back at five. Mum, she took off two-three months ago
. And you thought, Christ, no wonder she took off. But there he was, though. Hey, Stacey? What did I do? Is that where you live?

She has put her coffee mug on the floor and her head is in her outfolded arms. She does not know where the crying began or when it can end.

I’m sorry I’m sorry

It’s okay, Stacey, you don’t have to be sorry. It hurts?

Yes.

Well go ahead and bawl. No shame in that. You’re not alone.

She lifts her head and looks at him.

That’s where you’re wrong.

Luke picks up her coffee mug and goes to refill it

No, baby, that’s where
you’re
wrong.

She takes the coffee mug from him.

You’re real? You’re not real. I’m imagining.

He smiles.

You’re not imagining. But maybe I’m not
that
real, so don’t count on it. You drive far?

Not that far. What do you do?

Luke lights another cigarette for her, and takes one himself from her package.

Do? What do I do? Well, that’s a good question.

I mean, what work do you do?

Yeh, that’s what you have to find out, first thing, eh? Well, I think I’ll get on with a fish boat this summer, go north.

You’re lucky

Lucky?

I always thought I’d like to go somewhere up there. But I’ve got four kids.

Now we come to it, eh? Four kids. Well.

Don’t you do anything else, the rest of the year?

Sure. Work here and there. Sawmills. Sometimes I sign on as cook, lumber camps. Wouldn’t think I’d be a good cook, would you? But I’m not bad, if I do say so myself. Pastry is my downfall, though. I make pastry which is – not to put too fine a point upon it – like porcelain. Well, nobody wins them all. You make good pastry, Stacey?

Not bad.

I thought as much. I said to myself, there is a woman who looks like she makes good pastry.

Stacey has been drawn into his laughter.

It sounds like an insult to me.

What? You give someone a compliment and they interpret it in reverse. It’s a semantic problem we have. I do other things, too, sometimes. I write.

Oh? What?

Luke shrugs and bends his head.

Science fiction. SF. Not space opera with sex. Allegory, more, and all happening on this planet. The bug-eyed monster bit is dead. Don’t get me wrong. Asimov, Bradbury, Blish and all the old brigade don’t have to lie awake nights worrying about competition from me. Not yet, anyhow. I’ve had precisely one story published. Want my autograph? It’s free.

I like SF. I sometimes

Yeh? You sometimes what? You started to say it, then you quit, like I’d think you were way-out for mentioning it. How funny you are, merwoman. Who held you down? Was it for too long?

Stacey examines his face, unable for the moment to believe the easiness of his words.

Maybe. I never thought of it that way. Or – yeh, maybe I did, but I’m not sure any more. I was only going to say I sometimes you know like imagine that kind of situation SF I mean

Luke now cannot withhold his laughter, but it encompasses her as his hand encompasses her wrist.

Like it’s the secret of the confessional? Oh baby. You’re unbelievable. It’s so sensational?

She takes her wrist back and drinks her coffee, saying nothing. Luke accepts it but after a moment comes back again.

I’m sorry. Four kids, eh? What are you trying to be? A good example?

I can’t be.

Well, that’s good. So why try? Why don’t you come out a little?

What?

Come out. From wherever you’re hiding yourself. See – if I look very hard, I can just about make you out in there, but miniature, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

I can see what you mean, sort of. But it’s odd

Everything is odd, merwoman, everything

That’s what I think. Only

Only what?

They don’t think so

Luke’s eyebrows, heavy over the square quizzical face, now lighten purposely.

Well, I’m not them.

Stacey gathers her purse, gets out her car keys.

I have to go home. Thanks for the coffee.

That’s okay. And cheer up, eh?

I’ll try. Thanks for noticing I wasn’t so cheerful.

That’s me – perceptive to a degree. It only stood out all over you.

Stacey hesitates in the doorway, not wanting to go, wanting Luke to suggest that she might like to drive out again sometime. But he only smiles at her, so she finally turns.

Well, so long.

So long.

Stacey pulls up the Chev on Bluejay Crescent and goes with extreme quietness into the house. She tiptoes up the stairs. No sound. She creaks the bedroom door open.

Mac is sitting up in bed, smoking. He looks at her.

Great. You’ve decided to come home? Where in the bloody fucking hell have you been, Stacey? I damn near called the police.

I have been out driving.

Out driving? At this hour?

Yes.

All right. Did you go to Buckle’s place?

No.

That’s what you say.

If you don’t believe me, hire detectives. Who cares? I went out driving, that’s all.

If you had stayed out half an hour longer I would have called the

Why?

Because I have some sense of responsibility even if you don’t.

Yeh, well maybe you’re right. But I’m back in time to make breakfast. I’m not totally lacking in a sense of

Look all right I believe you what else can I do for God’s sake get to bed will you please it is two
A.M
.

Okay right away

Stacey pussyfoots into the bathroom, washes her face, puts on her nightly cold cream and steps back into the silent hall. There, in front of her bedroom door is Katie, in her yellow lace nightie, long red hair along her shoulders, not saying anything, just looking.

Katie –

Katie turns and goes back into her bedroom. Her words are on purpose not loud enough to wake the younger kids.