Nathaniel

CHAPTER SIX

Janet hung up the phone, then moved pensively into the kitchen, where Anna, expertly maneuvering her chair with one hand, was sweeping the floor with the other. As Janet watched, Anna moved the pile of dust toward the open back door, then gave the chair a quick spin, catching the screen door with one of its handles and knocking it open. At the same time, a last whisk of the broom sent the accumulated dirt flying into the backyard. As the screen door slammed shut, she turned the chair back to face Janet. "It took me two months to learn how to do that," she said in a voice that carried with it no emotion whatsoever.

Janet shook her head. "I wish you'd let me help-"

But Anna had already rolled across the kitchen to put the broom away. "I've been doing it for years." She wheeled herself over to the table, and gestured for Janet to join her. "Well, is it all taken care of?"

Janet nodded. "I guess so, but I'm still not certain I'm doing the right thing."

Anna shrugged. "It's done, anyway, and believe me, it's a lot easier to go along with Amos than to try to do it your way. Besides, I'm afraid he's right-it doesn't make any sense for you to go back to New York just to pack up. All you'd do is wear yourself out, and we don't want you to do that, do we? Carrying a baby always has its risks, you know."

Though there was nothing in Anna's voice to indicate that she was thinking of her own last pregnancy, Janet decided to use her mother-in-law's words as an opening. "Laura told me what happened," she said, softly. When Anna made no response, she pressed a little harder. "The night Mark left-"

Suddenly understanding, Anna's eyes hardened. "Laura had no right to burden you with that," she said. "Besides, she doesn't know the first thing about it. She was just a child."

"But she wasn't burdening me," Janet protested. "She's frightened. We were talking about you, and I asked her what happened. So she told me. At least she told me about you losing your baby, and Mark never coming home again." Janet's voice dropped slightly. "And she said that you never told her exactly what happened that night. I think she's been terrified ever since. Terrified that the same thing might happen to her."

Anna stared at Janet for a few seconds, then shook her head. "She shouldn't worry," she said at last. And then Anna's voice took on the same tone of recitation Janet had heard from Laura. "All that happened to me was that I overworked myself and brought the labor on prematurely. It was a breech birth, and the cord wrapped around the baby's neck." She paused a moment, then: "That's what they told me, and that's what I believe," she finished. The emphasis in her voice, though, only made Janet certain there was something Anna was leaving out, something she was not about to talk about. Indeed, she had already wheeled herself out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs, and was now calling to her husband and grandson.

"You mean we're not going back to New York at all ?" Michael asked. He'd sat in silence while Janet had explained to him that she'd decided to arrange for movers to pack them and let an agent handle the subleasing of the apartment. Now he was on his feet, his eyes stormy, a vein throbbing angrily in his forehead.

"It just seems best-" Janet began, but Michael cut her off.

"Best for who?" he demanded. "What about my friends? Don't I even get to say goodbye to them?"

"But you said goodbye when we came out here-"

"That was different!" Michael's voice began to rise., "When we left, we were coming back!"

Amos rose and moved toward the angry boy. "Michael! Don't talk to your mother in that tone of voice."

With no hesitation, Michael swung around to face his grandfather. "Don't tell me what to do," he said. "You're not my father!" Whirling around, his face contorted with fury, he stormed out of the dining room. Amos started to follow him, but Janet blocked his path.

"Let him go, Amos," she pleaded. "He didn't mean it. He's just upset, and he'll come back down to apologize."

"He can't talk that way," Amos said, his voice firm but bearing no trace of anger. "He can't talk that way to you, and he can't talk that way to me. And he'd better understand that right now." Moving around Janet, he, too, left the dining room. The two women watched each other warily, Janet knowing with all her instincts that Anna would back her husband up. But instead, the older woman seemed to sag in her chair.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I suppose I should have stopped him, but he believes children should be respectful, and even though I know that's old-fashioned, that's the way he is."

And he's right.

The thought skittered through Janet's mind, an alien idea long ago rejected by herself and her husband, and most of their friends. They were modern parents, ever-mindful of the tenderness of the young psyche, ever-striving to allow their son the same freedom of expression they themselves enjoyed. Mark, she knew, would not have reacted to Michael's outburst as his father had. Mark would have taken the time to explain the situation to Michael, and listened to Michael's point of view. And in the end he (and she) would have decided that the trauma of Michael having to leave his friends with no final goodbye outweighed the expense of that last trip to New York, even though logic dictated that they stay where they were.

But here, away from the city and its environment of advanced thinking and experimentation, the same thought kept drumming in Janet's head: Amos is right.

These people did things as they had always done them, and if they seemed in some ways backward or reactionary, they had other qualities that made up for it. They had a sense of community, of caring, that refugees to the cities had lost. They retained values that people of Janet's own environment had shed long ago and with no remorse.

There was a solidity to Amos, to all the people of Prairie Bend, that Janet was just beginning to realize she had missed in the years of her marriage.

She stood up and moved around to where Anna still sat, and rested one hand on the older woman's shoulder. "Thank you," she said quietly. "Thank you so much for all you're doing."

Anna covered Janet's hand with her own. "Don't be silly, dear. You're family. We're only doing what any family would do. And it's our pleasure. I lost Mark years ago, but at least now I have you and Michael."

Though neither of them could see the other's face, each of them realized the other was weeping, one for a lost son, the other for-

For what? Janet wondered.

If she'd been asked, which she was blessedly not, Janet would not have been able to say exactly why tears had come to her eyes. Partly for Mark, she supposed, though of that she was no longer sure, but partly for something else, something she was only beginning to discover. Mixed with her sense of loss, there was that something else, a sense of something recovered, a sense of values she had once held, but lost along the way, that were now being restored. She squeezed Anna's shoulder gently, then, wanting to be alone with her thoughts, she slipped out into the fading evening light.

Amos Hall stood at the door to the room that should have been Mark's and was now occupied by Michael, about to put his hand on the knob and open it. Then, out of a sense that he owed the boy the same courtesy he intended to demand, he knocked.

"Go away," Michael replied, his voice tight with anger. Ignoring the words, Amos opened the door, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. He stood still, saying nothing, waiting for Michael to respond. For several long minutes, the room was still. Then, his movement involuntarily exposing the uncertainty he was trying to conceal, Michael rolled over, propped himself up against the cast-iron bedstead, and folded his arms over his chest.

"I didn't say you could come in here," he challenged. "This is my room."

Amos's brows arched. He moved further into the room, seating himself on a wooden chair a few feet from the bed. "If I ever hear you speak that way to me again," he said, in a tone so low Michael had to strain to hear, "or speak to your mother or any other adult the way you did a few minutes ago, I will take you out behind the barn and give you a whipping such as I haven't given anyone since your father was your age. Is that clear?"

"You can't-"

"And when I knock at your door," Amos went implacably on, "I'm not asking for permission to enter. I'm simply warning you that I'm coming in." Michael opened his mouth once more, but Amos still gave him no opportunity to speak. "Now, three things are about to happen. First, you are going to have an experience I'm sure you've never had before. Ever heard of washing your mouth out with soap and water? Nod or shake your head. I'm not interested in anything you might have to say right now." Michael hesitated, then shook his head.

"I thought not. Well, you won't like it, but it won't kill you. When you're done with that, you and I are going downstairs, and you are going to apologize to your mother."

Again, Michael opened his mouth, but this time he thought better of it. Instead, he clamped his mouth shut, and his eyes narrowed angrily. In his temples, a dull throbbing began.

"Then, after you've apologized," Amos went on, "this is going to be all over, and we're going to fix some cocoa and forget about it. Do you understand? Nod or shake your head."

For a long minute, as the throbbing pain in his head grew, thoughts tumbled through Michael's mind. His father had never talked to him like that, never in his life. He'd always said what he wanted to say, and his parents had always listened to him. And no one, since he was a little boy, had come into his room without his permission, at least not when he was there. Then why was his grandfather so angry with him? Or was his grandfather angry with him? Maybe this was something else. He watched Amos, but could see nothing. The old man just sat there, returning his gaze, waiting. Michael began to feel sure that his grandfather was goading him, pushing at him, wanting something from him. But what?

Whatever it was, Michael decided he wouldn't give it to him, not until he understood what was really happening.

His head pounding, but his face set in an expression that revealed nothing of his growing fury, Michael got off the bed and walked out the bedroom door, then down the hall to the bathroom. He could feel more than hear his grandfather following him.

In the bathroom he stood at the sink, stared at the bar of Ivory soap that sat next to the cold water tap. He reached out and turned on the water, then picked up his toothbrush. Finally he took the bar of soap. Holding the soap in his left hand, he dampened the toothbrush, and began.

The sharp bitterness of the soap nearly gagged him at first, but he went doggedly on, scrubbing first his teeth, then his whole mouth. Once he glanced at himself in the mirror, and watched the foam oozing from his lips, but he quickly looked away from the reflection of his humiliation. At last he dropped the toothbrush into the sink and rinsed out his mouth, flushing it with water again and again until the taste of the soap had almost disappeared. He wiped his face and hands, put his toothbrush away, carefully folded the towel before putting it back on the bar, then wordlessly left the bathroom, his grandfather still following him.

Downstairs, he found his grandmother in the kitchen. Her eyes were flashing with anger, but Michael instinctively knew her fury was not directed at him. Indeed, as she glanced at him, he thought he saw a trace of a smile on her lips, as if she were telling him not to worry, that whatever had happened upstairs, she was on his side. Feeling a little better, he looked for his mother, but she was nowhere to be seen. Then, through the window, he saw her sitting under the elm tree. With his grandfather close on his heels, he went outside.

Janet looked up and saw them coming, but her smile of greeting faded as she saw the grim expression on her father-in-law's face, and Michael's own stoic visage of self-control. At last Michael glanced uncertainly back at the tall figure of his grandfather looming behind him, but the old man simply nodded.

Michael turned back to face his mother. "I'm sorry I spoke to you the way I did." He went on, "If you think we ought to stay here and not go back to New York, then we will."

Janet's eyes darted from her son to her father-in-law, then back to Michael again. "Thank y-" she began, then changed her mind. "That is what I think," she said. Then, softening, she reached out to touch Michael, but got no response. She hesitated, stood up and started toward the house, then turned back. "It's going to be all right, Michael," she said. He glanced at her, anger still clouding his eyes, then dropped his gaze to the ground.

"Go inside and give your grandmother a hand, son."

Amos said. "And tell me when you're done. We'll make some cocoa."

Knowing better than to do anything except follow his grandfather's instructions, Michael followed his mother into the kitchen and took the dish towel from his grandmother's hands. "I'll do that," he said.

Anna hesitated, then handed him the towel and wheeled herself over to the kitchen table. She busied her hands with some mending, but her eyes, clouded with a combination of love and apprehension, never left her grandson. He was so like his father, she reflected. So like his father- and so unlike his grandfather.

Michael began drying the last of the dishes. His head was still throbbing with pain, and the kitchen seemed filled with the same acrid smell of smoke he'd noticed the other day when he'd been so angry with Ryan. And somewhere, through the fog of pain in his head, he thought he could hear something-or someone-calling to him.

As he worked, he kept hearing his grandfather's words, about how after he had apologized to his mother, it would all be over.

But it wasn't all over.

Instead, he was sure it had just begun.

True to his promise, Amos Hall produced a pot of cocoa that evening, but it failed to serve its intended function. The four of them drank it, but a pall, emanating from Michael, hung over the room, and though Janet and Anna did their best, they couldn't dispel it. By nine-thirty, everyone had gone to bed.

Janet stopped at Michael's room, knocked softly at the door, waited for permission to enter. When there was no response, she hesitated; then, like her father-in-law before her, she opened the door and stepped inside. Michael was on his bed, propped up against the headboard, reading. "May I come in?"

Michael shrugged, his eyes carefully fastened on the book that rested against his drawn-up legs. Janet crossed the small room, sat down on the bed, then picked up the book, closed it, and put it on the nightstand. Only then did Michael look at her.

"Would you like to talk about what happened?" she asked.

Michael's brows knit into a thoughtful frown. He shook his head. "I've got a headache."

Janet frowned. "A bad one?"

"I took some aspirin."

"How many?"

"Only two."

"Okay. About what happened this evening-"

"I don't want to talk about it," Michael interrupted.

"Michael, this afternoon you said you weren't going to argue with me anymore. Do you remember that?"

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

"It didn't last long, did it?"

He shook his head. "I guess not," he admitted.

"Didn't you mean what you said this afternoon?"

"Yes, but -" He faltered, then fell silent.

"But what?"

"But we always talked things over before we decided things. Now it seems like Grandpa is always deciding what we should do."

"I'm making the decisions," Janet corrected him. "Grandpa is giving me advice, but I'm making the decisions. And for a while, that's the way it's going to have to be. Once we're settled in our own house we can go back to the old way. But right now, there are too many decisions to be made, and too much to be done, and I just don't have the time to discuss it all with you. And I have to depend on you to understand that."

Michael fidgeted in the bed. "I do. It's just that-"

"That what?"

Michael's eyes fastened self-consciously on the ceiling. "Grandpa made me wash my mouth out with soap."

Janet tried to stifle her laugh, but failed. "Then maybe you won't talk back to him anymore."

"He said it was because of the way I was talking to you."

"Well, maybe it was a little bit of both. Anyway, it's not the end of the world. Lord knows, I survived a lot of mouth soapings."

"When you were eleven?"

And suddenly Janet knew what the real root of the problem was. "I don't think I got one much after I was ten," she said carefully. "But on the other hand, when I was eleven, I'd learned better than to talk back to my elders."

"But you and Dad always let me talk back to you. Even when I was little."

"So we did," Janet said softly. "But who's to say whether we were right or not? Anyway, if I were you, I'd be careful how I talked, at least until we move out of here and into our own place." She stood up, then bent over to kiss Michael goodnight. "How's the headache doing?"

"Still there."

"Well, go to sleep. It'll be gone by morning." She turned off the light on the nightstand, and a moment later was gone.

Michael lay in the darkness, trying to understand what was happening. Brushing his teeth twice had failed to remove the bitter residue of soap in his mouth, and the aspirin had done nothing to alleviate his headache. Furthermore, the smoky odor in the kitchen had followed him upstairs, and as he lay in bed he suddenly felt as if he couldn't breathe.

At last he got up and went to the window. The prairie was lit by a full moon, and as he looked out into the silvery glow of the night, he began to feel trapped by the confines of the house. If only he could go outside…

He knew he shouldn't. He should stay where he was and try to go to sleep. If his grandfather found out he'd snuck out in the middle of the night…

That was what made up his mind. There was something about doing what he knew he shouldn't do that made it more fun, that made an adventure out of practically anything. And besides, this wasn't New York. This was Prairie Bend, where no one ever even locked their doors, and the streets weren't filled with strange people. And he wasn't going to be in the streets, because it wasn't the streets that called him.

He pulled his jeans on, and a sweatshirt. Taking his shoes and socks with him, he slipped out of the bedroom and down the stairs, carefully avoiding the third one from the bottom, the one that creaked. He went out the back door, stopping on the porch to put on his socks and shoes. Then, not looking back at the house, he dashed across the yard and around the corner of the barn. He waited there, sure that if anybody'd heard him or seen him, they'd call him or come after him. But after a few seconds that seemed like hours, with the silence of the night still undisturbed, he moved away from the barn, across the freshly plowed field, toward the stand of cottonwoods that bordered the river.

As Janet watched the small figure of her son fade into the gloom of the night, her first instinct was, indeed, to go after him. She put on her robe, hurried down the stairs, and was about to go out the back door when she heard a movement in the depths of the house. A moment later Amos appeared in the kitchen.

"What's wrong?"

Janet shook her head. "It's nothing, really. It's just Michael. He-well, he seems to have decided to go for a walk."

Amos frowned. "In the middle of the night?"

"So it seems. I was just going to go after him-"

"You'll do nothing of the sort," Amos replied, his frown deepening. "In your condition, all you should be thinking about is getting a good night's sleep. I'll go after him myself."

He disappeared back toward his bedroom, and Janet sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. But as she waited for him to dress, she began to change her mind. A few minutes later Amos returned, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. Janet rose once again to her feet as he started out the back door.

"Amos? Maybe-well, maybe we should just leave him alone." The old man swung around, his eyes fixing on her.

"He probably just needs to be by himself and think things over," she said. "Let's give him some time, all right?"

Amos hesitated, his eyes narrowing. "If that's what you want. But he oughtn't to be going out in the middle of the night. It's not right."

"I know," Janet sighed. "And I can't say you're wrong. But just this once, can't we let it go? You go back to bed. Everything will be all right."

"Don't you want me to wait up with you 'til he gets back?"

Janet shook her head. "No."

There was a long silence, and then Amos nodded. "Okay. But I'll have a talk with him in the morning, and I'll see to it that he doesn't do this again."

A moment later he was gone, and Janet started slowly up the stairs to begin her vigil.

Waiting was harder than she'd thought it would be.

The air had shed the cold bite of the month before, but had not yet acquired the soggy heat that would blanket the plains in the days to come, when temperatures of ninety and more would hang over the prairie like a cloying shroud, suffocating people and animals alike with a dank heaviness that was even less bearable than the freeze of winter. Now, at the end of May, there was a briskness to the night air, and the musky odor of fresh-turned earth foretold of the crops that would soon begin to fill the fields. The night was crystal clear, and as he walked, aimlessly at first, Michael gazed up into the sky, picking out the Big Dipper, Orion, and the Little Dipper. Then he came to the stand of cottonwoods bordering the river, and he paused. There was a darkness among the trees, where the moonlight was blocked out by the leaves that had already sprouted from the heavily intertwined branches. No wonder they called it the Dismal, he thought. What little light spilled through from the pasture only lent the woods an eerie look, shadows cast upon shadows, with no easy path apparent.

Shivering, Michael set himself a destination now and began walking along the edges of the pastures, the woods on his right, climbing each fence as he came to it. Sooner than he would have expected, the woods curved away to the right, following the course of the river as it deviated from its southeastern flow to curl around the village. Ahead of him he could see the scattered twinkling lights of Prairie Bend. For a moment, he considered going into the village, but then, as he looked off to the southeast, he changed his mind, for there, seeming almost to glow in the moonlight, was the hulking shape of Findley's barn.

That, Michael knew, was where he was going.

He cut diagonally across the field, then darted across the deserted highway and into another field. He moved quickly now, feeling exposed in the emptiness with the full moon shining down on him. Ten minutes later he had crossed the field and come once more to the highway, this time as it emerged from the village. Across the street, he could see Ben Findley's driveway and, at its end, the little house, and the barn.

He considered trying to go down the driveway and around the house, but quickly abandoned the idea. A light showed dimly from behind a curtained window, and he had a sudden vision of old man Findley, his gun cradled in his arms, standing in silhouette at the front door.

Staying on the north side of the road, he continued moving eastward until he came abreast of his own driveway. He waited a few minutes, wondering whether perhaps he shouldn't go back to his grandparents'. In the end, though, he crossed the road and started down the drive to the abandoned house that was about to become his home. As he came into the overgrown yard, he stopped to stare at the house. Even had he not known that it was empty, he could have sensed that it was. In contrast to the other houses he had passed that night, which all seemed to radiate life from within, this house-his house-gave off only a sense of loneliness that made Michael shiver again in the night and hurry quickly past it.

His progress slowed as he plunged into the weed-choked pastures that lay between the house and the river, but he was determined to stay away from the fence separating Findley's property from their own until the old man's barn could conceal him from the same man's prying eyes. It wasn't until he was near the river that he finally felt safe enough to slip between the strands of barbed wire that fenced off the Findley property and begin doubling back toward the barn that had become his goal.

He could feel it now, feel the strange sense of familiarity he had felt that afternoon, only it was stronger here, pulling him forward through the night. He didn't try to resist it, though there was something vaguely frightening about it. Frightening but exciting. There was a sense of discovery, almost a sense of memory. And his headache, the throbbing pain that had been with him all evening, was gone.

He came up to the barn and paused. There should be a door just around the corner, a door with a bar on it. He didn't understand how he knew it was there, for he'd never seen that side of the barn, but he knew. He started toward the corner of the barn, his steps sure, the uncertainty he'd felt a few minutes ago erased.

Around the corner, just as he knew it would be, he found the door, held securely shut by a heavy wooden beam resting in a pair of wrought-iron brackets. Without hesitation, Michael lifted the bar out of its brackets and propped it carefully against the wall. As he pulled the door open, no squeaking hinges betrayed his presence. Though the barn was nearly pitch dark inside, it wasn't the kind of eerie darkness the woods by the river had held, at least not for Michael. For Michael, it was an inviting darkness.

He stepped into the barn.

He waited, half expectantly, as the darkness seeped into him, enveloping him within its folds. And then something reached out of the darkness and touched him.

Michael started, but stood his ground, oddly unafraid. And then he heard a voice, flat, almost toneless, drifting hollowly from somewhere in the depths of the barn.

"Michael."

Michael froze.

"I knew you'd come." There was a pause, then the voice went on. "I have been calling you. I wasn't sure you heard me."

"Who are you?" Michael asked. His eyes searched the darkness, but could find nothing. Nor could he be certain just where the voice came from. As the silence lengthened, he began backing toward the door. "Tell me who you are," he said, more loudly this time.

And then a dog began barking outside with a sharp, staccato sound, once, twice, three times. And somewhere nearby, a door slammed. Michael darted out of the barn, swung the door closed, and dropped the bar back in the brackets. But just before he ran back into the comparative safety of the fields, he heard the voice once more. Its flat atonality echoed in his mind all the way home.

"I am Nathaniel," the voice said. "I am Nathaniel…"