Lamb

Tommie stood for a long time in her nightgown facing the closed door to the shop and breathing, listening, holding her breath, listening: nothing. Wood hissing and snapping in the hot stove. Eight o’clock and dark as midnight. Their voices would have stopped humming some time ago. But she’d know they hadn’t gone inside, or washed the dishes.

She held her breath tight in her little freckled chest when she opened the door, just three inches and without a sound, and remained still and looking into the shop as her eyes adjusted to the light. Moonlight drenched the concrete floor and the pile of blankets where the two adults lay moving together before the stove. The white shape of Lamb’s face looked up at her, over the crown of Linnie’s head. So much light in the room Tommie could see where it made a white shining stripe in Linnie’s dark hair. Lamb’s eyes were blue-white in the silver dark. His face was at first twisted up in concentration but then it fell open, his eyes fell open, and a little smile. Tommie didn’t back away. She didn’t catch her breath or cry. She stood watching. Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds. He loved her for it. Her mouth a little open, her eyes open, stunned, transfixed. Lamb paused only a moment and Linnie lifted her head, reached up, and put her hands on the sides of his face so he moved again, smiling down at Linnie and lifting his face toward Tommie, their eyes deadlocked. He remained silent as he moved, watching Tommie, and when he finally shut his eyes and lifted his chin, teeth clenched, Tommie closed the door and stepped back into her room and crawled into the sleeping bag where she fell asleep, face pasted to the vinyl with tears and snot until Lamb came in and very gently, very carefully, woke her saying now, my dear, you know all my secrets. You are practically living inside of my heart.

“You’re wearing your nightgown.”

She nodded.

“You still love me, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you have to go the bathroom? Come. Come outside.” He opened the side door of the bunk room that opened to the old horse tank. “Go ahead. Pull up your nightgown.”

She hesitated. Looked at him and down at the dead grass and back up.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re going back in that room in twenty minutes. We don’t have all night.”

When she finished he put his jacket over her and they hiked out a small distance from the shop and sat on the cold grass beside the dark rivulets of water running off the river and into the beds of brown pigweed and dead goldenrod.

“What do I call you now? David?”

Lamb kept his head down. His eyes filled. “Come here,” he said. He took her between his legs, her back against his chest. “It’s like you’re Emily.” He brushed her hair back off her face and tucked it into the hood of his jacket.

“That was a game.”

“No it wasn’t,” he said quickly. He turned her face to him. “Take it back. It’s not a game. Everything I do in my life from here on out is to protect us, to protect this thing we’ve discovered. Do you understand? You’re braver than I am, Tom. I haven’t always had nice people in my life. It makes me behave a little erratically sometimes, right? I didn’t exactly know what was going on when we met. I didn’t know where this was headed. Do you believe me?”

Nod.

“It doesn’t matter what we call each other, does it? That’s just names.”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever you call me—John, or retard, or son of a bitch …” She smiled at this. “… you would still know my true heart, wouldn’t you? You know me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I know you do. It’s extraordinary. Come here. Closer. Yes. It’s cold, isn’t it? No one’s ever known me as you do. You smell like a healthy little animal.” His face was very serious now. “We’ve seen each other, haven’t we, Tom. Do you understand that this doesn’t happen with other people? I don’t know what to say about it. I know what other people might say.” He pressed his thumb hard into the little plate of bones where her ribs gathered just beneath her breasts. She blinked and watched him. “The body doesn’t lie, Tom. It doesn’t know how.”

“Are you and that lady?”

“It wasn’t what you’re thinking. I will tell you what it was—I’ll tell you every detail. But when the situation is reversed, Tom”—his eyes filled and his voice cracked—“I don’t want to know, okay?” He was whispering now, fat tears coming down his old wrinkled face. “Don’t tell me, okay? Swear you won’t tell me.”

“Does she still like you?”

“She’s in love with me, yes.”

“Do you like her?”

“Look at me, Tom. Look me right in the eye. No. I don’t like her even a little bit. I sort of hate her, even. And I don’t use that word lightly. She’s spoiled and selfish.”

“Sounds like Sidney.”

“That’s a good way to think of her. Like a grown-up Sidney.”

“Does she want to marry you?”

“I think she might. Is this okay? Can I hold you like that?”

Nod. “How long is she staying?”

“One more day. Maybe two. I’m going to stay with her for us, do you understand?”

“I should stay in the bunk room.”

“You should?”

“I should stay there until she leaves. She won’t even know I’m here.”

“You’re sure?”

“What else will we do?”

“No,” he said. “You’re right. You’re sort of a step ahead of me.” He grinned at her.

She ran her palm up against her nose and sniffled. “It’s no big deal,” she said. “It’ll be like camping.”

“In the bunk room?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll come visit you when it’s safe, right?”

“Okay.”

“And you can go out this side door to pee. Right?”

“Okay.”

“And when you know we’re out in the cabin—you’ll know because I’ll leave that little desk light on as a signal. You know the desk light on the workbench? I’ll leave it on when it’s safe for you to come out and raid the fridge, by which I mean the cooler, right?”

“Okay.”

He lifted her chin and kissed her mouth. “You’ll still call me Gary, won’t you? Promise me you will. Promise me you always always will.”

“Why?”

“Because no one else in the world calls me Gary. You’re the only one who knows me this way. Like I’m the only one who knows you as Emily. They’re our true names. If you could see through my flesh”—he took her hand and put it on his chest—“Gary would be the name written across my heart.” He kissed her on the temple and the forehead and the mouth. “You were wonderful.” He kissed. “You saved us, do you know that? Just like you said you would. And we have luck on our side. I want to tell you something, okay? Something I’ve never told anyone in my life.”

“What?” She sat up a little and looked at him.

“I’m telling you this so you’ll understand how precious you are to me. It’s about my brother.”

“You have a brother?”

“Three brothers.”

“Oh.”

“You won’t tell anybody about this, will you, Tom? You’ll give me your word?”

She nodded.

“My littlest brother, Tommie. He disappeared.”

“Where?”

“Nobody knows. He was just your age, just a little bit older. He was twelve.”

“He was kidnapped?”

Lamb was whispering now. “I don’t know, we never knew. He used to sleep behind the gas station, in his sleeping bag.”

“Why?”

“Our house was kind of a sad place. I think you know how that can be. And one morning he just… didn’t show up. Didn’t come back.”

“Not ever?”

“Not ever.”

She was quiet a moment.

And look. The two days that Lamb and Linnie and Tom spent arranged in this way—the dark early mornings with Tommie in the bunk room, she in her beautiful nightgown and he in his big sheepskin coat; breakfast with Linnie back in the cabin, back in the fold-out couch—the AM radio and eating canned sausages and mandarin oranges with their fingers; the evenings of sitting with Linnie beside the fire in the cold, sharing a cigarette in the dark, the smell of snow and cold dirt and dead grass in the wind; running a piece of chocolate or a kiss or a surprising mouthful of whiskey to the girl in her snug little sleeping bag nest. So much love all over everyone—they were sweet days for everybody. Any one of them would tell you so.