(I)
The feeling made
Patricia think of the few times in college she’d smoked pot. A warm
buzz, a mental lightness, as though an
aspect of her persona were floating. She’d been at the cookout for
only an hour before it plainly occurred to her that she was not
herself, and this—to a high-strung D.C. attorney—was not
necessarily a bad thing.
It must’ve been that stuff I was drinking, she
decided rather giddily. Aid or whatever they
call it, kicked up with Judy’s booze.
But . .
.
So what?
It was a party, and
there was no reason why she shouldn’t have a good time. She picked
at more food off and on, and drank more ald. Judy was already drunk, but that was to be
expected. Everybody seemed to be fading off into the darkness
tinged by firelight. Patricia found herself chatting happily with
townsfolk and Squatters she didn’t even know, and several times,
when she noticed Ernie talking to some Squatter girls, she felt
some pangs of trifling jealously, after which she just laughed at
herself.
Eventually she lost
track of Judy entirely, and when she couldn’t make out Gordon Felps
anywhere in the crowd, she had to wonder, but that just caused her
to laugh too. I’m getting hammered! she
realized next, but with Judy not around to top off her ald with vodka, where was the inebriation coming
from? Had somebody else spiked the Squatter concoction and not told
anyone? That had to be the answer.
“How come we never
dated in high school?” Ernie appeared out of the dark to ask right
up front. He looked a little crocked, too. But what would compel
such an overt question?
Maybe the fact that I practically pulled his pants down in
the woods the other day? she
chided herself. Suddenly, though, she seemed remorseful. “I don’t
know, Ernie. I guess it was all me. I didn’t care about anything
except getting an education and getting out, after . . . well, you
know. What happened at Bowen’s Field.”
Ernie nodded,
probably not expecting his question to cause such a dark note. He
just nodded, then thrust a plate at her. “Try a mushroom stuffed
with crab roe. They’re great.”
Patricia laughed. She
ate one, then said very quickly, “I wish we had, though, Ernie,”
and wandered off.
“Wish we had
what?” he practically shouted after
her.
She giggled and
wended through more people, sensing him behind her. “Where’s Chief
Sutter?” she asked to change the subject. “I haven’t seen him in a
while.”
“I think I saw him
leave earlier.”
Patricia stopped,
peering between some shoulders toward the woods. She grabbed
Ernie’s arm. “Is that Everd Stanherd out there?”
“Can’t be,” he said,
squinting himself. “He’s wanted by the police.”
Even now she could
see the figure standing between some trees, firelight from one of
the cooking pits shifting across the thin, old face. For a moment
it appeared as though his intensely bright eyes looked right at
Patricia. “Don’t you see him? He’s right . . .” But before she
could point, a pretty Squatter girl stepped right in front of them.
Her ripe young body filled the skimpy shorts and makeshift top. A
trinketlike cross dangled about her swollen cleavage, and the smile
on her face seemed wanton, mischievous. Squiggles of some kind of
dark face paint adorned her cheeks—like a child at a carnival. More
bizarre lines curved down her bare belly and around her navel,
while still more traveled down voluptuous legs.
Patricia was taken
aback when the girl kissed both her and Ernie on the cheek, then
placed pendants around their necks, after which she scurried away
into the crowd.
“What is this?”
Patricia touched the object about her neck, a furry preserved
animal foot of some kind. “A rabbit’s foot?”
“Not quite. It’s a
badger’s foot.”
Patricia winced.
“Gross! Why would she . . . Like the Hawaiians and their leis, some
kind of welcoming gift?”
Ernie snorted a
laugh. “It’s sort of a fertility thing with them, a romance
thing.”
“Huh?”
“Lemme put it this
way. The Squatters must think you ‘n’ me would make a great couple.
Guess they didn’t see your wedding
ring.”
Patricia’s fingers
were unconsciously diddling with the dried foot. “How
strange.”
Ernie was obviously
frustrated and maybe even embarrassed. He peered back through the
crowd. “What were you sayin’? You saw Everd? If ya did, we should probably call Chief
Sutter.”
“I don’t think for a
minute that Everd Stanherd had anything to do with Junior Caudill’s
death, and neither do you.”
“No, I guess I
don’t,” Ernie verified, “but why’d he ‘n’ his wife head for the
hills the minute folks started sayin’ he did?”
Patricia couldn’t
answer. She stood on her tiptoes to look over the crowd. The fire
pit raged, but there was no one standing between the trees where
she thought she’d seen the Squatter elder. “Maybe it wasn’t even
him,” she dismissed. “Just someone who looked like him. What was it
they called him? Remember the guy who gave us the oysters the other
day?”
“Oh, Regert, yeah.
That name the clan has for Everd is sawon. It means ‘seer,’ or somethin’ like
that.”
Patricia kept looking
out. “Damn, I’m sure it was him, though.” Without even thinking,
she grabbed Ernie’s hand and pulled. “Come on; let’s go
check.”
She was tugging him
gently through the crowd. More firelit faces grinned at them as
they passed, many of them adorned as the girl had been, with the
carnival-like face paint. Again, and even more strongly, Patricia
didn’t feel like herself, but whoever that other self was . . . she
enjoyed the sensation. Another part, though—some remnant of her
rational self—probably knew what her subconscious was up to. Lewd
thoughts shouted at her in the baldest truth: I’m drunk, I’m horny, and, gee, look what I’m doing now.
I’m hauling this man into the woods on a stupid pretext—the same
man I almost had sex with the other day. I keep telling myself that
I’d never cheat on Byron, but . . . what am I really
doing?
She couldn’t even
fool herself.
Their footfalls
crunched into the woods. I should let go of
his hand now, she thought. But she didn’t. She led him in
deeper, until the moonlight showed them a footpath. “Let’s go this
way,” she said. “He probably came this way.”
Ernie said nothing,
but he was frowning.
Moonlight painted one
tree whose bark had been scraped away, and into the bare wood
beneath more odd Squatter etchings had been cut around a makeshift
cross. Would this be her good luck? And what of the bizarre badger
foot the painted girl had christened them both with?
The night shimmered.
As the cicadas thrummed, Patricia felt herself merging into that
other self. Her heartbeat had already picked up; she could feel her
nipples aching against the fabric of the sheer blouse. The evening
heat was caressing her, sensitizing her skin through pores seeping
sweat.
“Everd ain’t out
here, Patricia,” Ernie finally spoke his mind. He likely had
already deciphered her motives, even before she had herself. “This
is dumb. Let’s go back”
“No,” she whispered.
She was secretly desperate. “I’m serious. I really did see him.”
Now her fingers seemed manic, diddling with the dried foot as
though it were some talisman that would embolden her.
“I’m goin’ back,” he
insisted, agitation in his voice. “We both know what’s goin’ on
here.”
“What?” she
questioned ineptly. “What do you—”
“If we stay out here,
we’re both gonna get in trouble, and it ain’t gonna lead to nothin’
no ways. I ain’t comin’ out here just to be jerked
around.”
Patricia let go of
his hand and stopped. “Ernie, that’s ridiculous,” she insisted, but
her head was reeling—not so much from inebriation as from lust.
Lust felt stuffed in her head. Her
knees were almost shaking. “I really do want to talk to Everd
Stanherd—”
“Fine. Then go
talk to him. I ain’t gettin’ myself set
up again to wind up lookin’ like a fool. I’m goin’
back.”
When he turned, her
heart twisted in her chest. All reason was lost now, along with her
values and self-respect. “Ernie, wait. . . .”
He gruffed a sigh,
stopped midstep, and jerked back around.
Patricia had already
unbuttoned her blouse. Her breasts felt hot and very heavy on her
chest now, as though all that drunken desire had pushed more blood
into them. She skimmed off the blouse and let it fall to the twigs.
She was leaning against the skinned tree, her head just under the
crudely adorned Squatter cross. Her eyes riveted into
him.
“Christ, I feel sorry
for your husband, Patricia, ’cos you are one right pain in the ass
when you drink.”
She barely heard him.
She arched her back against the tree, elucidating her breasts, and
next she actually caressed them in her hands. When she pliered the
nipples between her fingers, she moaned out loud.
“You’re drunk,” he
declared.
“I know, but so
what?”
She slipped her
shorts down to midthigh, then openly played a hand through her
scarlet pubic hair.
Ernie gnawed his lip,
then decided. “You’re all bark and no bite, Patricia. You got some
midlife fucked-up city-chick thing goin’ on, like teasin’ it up
with some redneck sucker who had a crush on you since junior high’s
gonna show ya somethin’ about yourself you didn’t know. It’s just
bullshit, and I ain’t buyin’ it, and even if you were game, all that’d do is make ya feel guilty in
the morning ‘cos you’re fuckin’ married
and you and I both know you ain’t gonna cheat on your husband. You
might act like you’d cheat on him, but
you ain’t gonna do it, so’s I’m wastin’ my damn time standin’ here
like a fuckin’ idiot.”
Ernie turned around
and walked back to the cookout.
The reality collided
with her. She was almost in tears when she pulled her shorts up and
got back into her blouse. She stumbled to the fringes of the
gathering, finally letting some common sense reach through her
drunkenness. I am
really one screwed-up woman. It doesn’t have anything to do with my
childhood, or the rape or my parents. It’s got nothing to do with
Dr. Sallee or Byron or Ernie or anyone. It’s me, and I’ve got to
get my act together, and I’ve got to start right now. . .
.
The party was still
in full swing as some of the older Squatters lit the great bonfire
in the middle of the field. Patricia edged around the crowd,
cloaking herself in shadows. She didn’t look to see where Ernie was
and she felt too embarrassed to allow herself to be seen. After
several deep breaths, she felt a little less drunk, and she walked
back up the hill.
The only person who
even noticed her leaving was Everd Stanherd himself, who was
looking out from the trees he’d been hiding in. He watched her walk
home.
“Maybe she can help
us, like you said,” Marthe Stanherd remarked. She held her
husband’s hand in the dark.
“Maybe, my love,” he
replied in his strange, buoyant accent. “Or maybe I’m wrong about
everything, and the great Lord God has deemed me unfit to be a seer
even for myself. . . .”