The Cannibal Heart

18

She returned through the woods, walking very slowly, with her arms folded across her breasts. Her eyes were still swollen with tears and her cheeks stung, as if she had bathed her face in the old well that had gone to salt, thinking the water would refresh her and finding out too late that it was sharp as acid.

She passed the swimming pool that she had boarded up herself, nailing it down like a coffin, without anyone even knowing about it except Mr. Roma who had helped her fetch the planks. (“A tarpaulin would be just as good,” Mr. Roma had said. “He couldn’t fall in then.” “No, no. It must be boarded. I had a dream, I dreamt he fell...”) What was under the planks now? What strange dark-loving creatures lived in the concrete coffin and crept through the dust and the leaves powdered by time?

At the end of one of the planks a black furry spider was spinning his web, oblivious to the wind, crossing and recrossing the silken strands with his humped legs. His old web was nearby, spangled with the remains of flies. She stopped to touch the spider. It curled up into a ball from fright. She drew her hand away and walked on.

On the other side of the barranca she saw Jessie and Mr. Roma coming along the path. She knew what they were looking for even before she heard Jessie calling, “James, here James, come on home!” Stepping out of sight for a moment behind a tree, she made a futile attempt to straighten her hair and to brush from her skirt the leaves and twigs that clung to it like guilt.

“James, here James!”

“He isn’t here,” Mrs. Wakefield said.

“We’ve been looking for him everywhere. He might be lost, so we’re leaving a trail of corn.” Jessie’s hands, and the pockets of her blue jeans were filled with kernels of corn, and Mr. Roma was carrying a paper bag.

Mr. Roma was faintly apologetic. “He likes corn, and we thought, just in case...”

“That’s a very good idea,” Mrs. Wakefield said brightly to Jessie. “You mustn’t forget to leave a trail through the barranca.”

“I won’t.”

“Can you do it all by yourself while I talk to Mr. Roma for a minute?”

“I’m not a baby!”

“I’ll wait for you here then.”

“All right.”

With the corn dribbling out of her hand Jessie slid down the side of the barranca.

“He may be hiding,” Mr. Roma said. “Like Billy.”

“Like Billy, yes.”

“James doesn’t like the wind, he gets frightened.”

“He won’t be frightened this time.”

“He always is. Always when there is a wind or before a storm...”

“Not anymore.” She reached out and touched the sleeve of his plaid shirt. “Mr. Roma, listen to me. I couldn’t tell you in front of the child, but James is all right. He’s perfectly safe.”

“You know where he is?”

“Yes. Yes, and he’s all right. He’s better off this way, really much better off.”

Mr. Roma bent his head. He saw the golden trail of corn winding in and out of the trees, and he heard Jessie still calling the gander, “James, James.”

“What have you done?” he said heavily.

“He was so old and helpless and half-blind — I put him out of his misery.”

“No, no, he was not helpless. He was not in misery.”

“It was only a matter of time anyway. I found him wandering here in the woods, lost.”

“He never went into the woods.” Mr. Roma pressed his palms together, and she thought suddenly how grotesque his hands were, with the brown leathery skin covering the tops like half-gloves, and the undersides as pink as Jessie’s cheeks. “Never further than the garage, Mrs. Wakefield. I only came out here to please the little one. I knew James never went into the woods.”

“He did. Why do you keep arguing like this? Don’t you believe me?”

He stood in silence with his head bowed. Beads of sweat glittered on his forehead and along his temples like tears.

“Getting emotional over a gander,” she said bitterly. “Have you nothing better to cry about? We should have fattened him up years ago and put him in a roasting pan. Don’t you see that?” He didn’t answer; his mouth moved, but formed no words that could be spoken. “Carl, listen. I cried today, too. Do you want to hear about it? It doesn’t matter now who knows.”

He seemed not to have heard. “Helpless and in misery, no, he was not. One eye, one eye was all he had, but it was all he needed.” He raised his head and looked at her, and she saw in his eyes no tears, only a dry terrible grief that seemed to be not for the gander but for her.

“Don’t look like that. What have I done?”

“Like Billy,” he said.

“What?”

“Out of his misery.”

“You keep talking about Billy. I don’t...”

“The little fellow trusted you. And you... you...” He couldn’t go on. He moved his head back and forth in helpless anger.

“I see now what’s in your mind. You think I deliberately left Billy alone on deck, that I was deliberately negligent.”

“You... never left him alone before.”

“I’ve told you how it happened. He was thirsty. I went to get him a glass of water. When I left him he was playing with one of those leather-covered dolls, flinging it up in the air and trying to catch it. They found the doll afterwards, floating around in the water. They actually fished it out and gave it to me. Thoughtful, wasn’t it? I was very polite. I said, thank you, thank you, good people. When it was dark I threw it overboard again. I’m the victim, don’t you see? I’m the one who’s suffered, not Billy, not a useless old gander...”

She turned her gaze toward the sea. Through an open space between trees she could see, dimly, part of the island, a little barren mountain rising out of the sea, where no one lived but a flock of sheep starving in the drought, and the black vicious ravens grown fat on sheep’s entrails.

“I couldn’t stand it anymore. Everywhere I went people stared and whispered, and then turned away breaking into self-conscious chatter. They never looked at me as if I were a person. To them I was the mother of that half-wit, the woman with the queer little boy. I was ashamed, yes, I admit it. Who wouldn’t have been ashamed? Then when I came back here I met Mark and he looked at me as if I was a woman, a real woman. And I felt like one, too, for the first time in years. I’ve been cheated. Perhaps it’s made a monster of me, I don’t know. I feel that from now on I’m entitled to anything I can lay my hands on.”

“My Luisa has been cheated, too — to be born half-mulatto, half-Mexican — but if she talked like you I would be worried. I would wonder about her — her mind.”

“Don’t worry about my mind. It’s very clear. I’m not muddled anymore at all.”

“What will you do? He — I’m sure he will not leave his family. He belongs to them.”

“Only half,” she said, softly. “He’ll never really belong to them. And Jessie — Jessie is all mine.”

“It is bad to talk like that.”

“You must try to understand me, Mr. Roma. After all, we’ve known each other a long time, and you’ve always admired me, haven’t you? You’ve always said I was a fine woman. Those were your very words.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll have a pleasant goodbye, then?”

“Yes, Mrs. Wakefield.”

They shook hands, but at her touch he seemed suddenly to grow smaller, like the spider that had curled up into a ball from fright.

At the bend in the path he began to run. She watched him through the trees, controlling an impulse to follow him and try further to explain herself, starting right at the beginning: I was born on a farm in Nebraska. It was a scraggly little farm. I hated it. I was always terribly ambitious. I wanted to make something of myself...

Like that, very simple and logical. But Mr. Roma had run away from her, like John, and like Mark. There was no one left to explain things to, only the deaf trees and the blithe lizards, the selfish chattering birds and the rocks worn smooth by the storms of other years.

She wheeled suddenly and called out, “Jessie? Where are you, Jessie?”

“Here.”

“I can’t see you.”

“Right here.” The top of Jessie’s head, and then the rest of her, appeared at the edge of the barranca. There were leaves caught in her yellow hair, and little spikes of twitch grass had pricked the front of her jersey.

“There you are,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “There you are, of course. Let me brush you off, darling.”

“You sound funny. Like my mother after she cries. Shivery, kind of.”

“Does your mother cry?”

“Sometimes.” Jessie began to pluck the twitch grass out of her jersey. “I made the trail. I hope he finds it and comes home.”

“Surely he will.”

“Maybe he’s gone out to lay an egg some place, eh?”

“He can’t because he’s a gander, you know.”

“I know. I just forgot for a minute.”

“Perhaps he just got bored with us and went to find some other ganders and some geese to talk to.”

“He’ll come back, though?”

“Oh, yes. Someday.” One by one she untangled the leaves from Jessie’s hair, and they fluttered away in the wind like brown butterflies. “I’ll come back, too, someday.”

Jessie’s mouth gaped in surprise. “Are you going away?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I thought you were going to live with us for a long time.”

“No, Jessie.”

Hand in hand they began walking along the path. When they came to the swing in the pepper tree they found Jessie’s doll sitting on the wooden seat. The doll was nearly scalped from being carried around by the hair, but it was dressed sumptuously in a purple scarf belted with one of Mark’s ties.

Jessie took the doll and flung it in the dirt. She suddenly hated it, and she didn’t care if her father’s tie got dirty or not.

“I could come with you,” she said at last.

“No. No, Jessie, not this time.”

“I wouldn’t be any trouble.”

“I know that, but... You’d better pick up your doll and clean her off. What’s her name?”

“Marie. I just hate her.”

“I’ll send you a new doll,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “The very best and biggest one I can find.”

“I like the kind that wet and burp.”

“Then that’s the kind you’ll get. What will you name her?”

“I don’t know,” Jessie said slowly. “I guess I don’t really want a new doll anyway. I’d rather just go with you.”

“Why?”

Jessie shook her head. She couldn’t tell why. She only knew that with Mrs. Wakefield she felt quite independent and grown up. Mrs. Wakefield never told her to be quiet or to go and wash her hands or to stop biting her hangnail.

“If I came with you,” she said, “we could catch lots of starfish and I wouldn’t mind a bit about them being boiled.”

“But you’d miss your father and mother.”

“I could write to them.”

Mrs. Wakefield had turned quite pale. “Someday — someday you’ll come and visit me.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“That’s the same as never,” Jessie said harshly.

“No, dear. No, it isn’t.”

“It just means never.” Never was not a word, it was a tone, a look, a gesture. “You don’t want me to come visiting you.”

“I do, very much. More than I can tell you.” She sat down on the swing and put her arm around Jessie’s shoulders. “You must be patient and so must I. We both had disappointments today. We have to face them, though. There’ll be other disappointments for both of us, all kinds and shapes and sizes.”

“You told me different before! You read my hand...”

She twisted out of Mrs. Wakefield’s grasp. Giving the doll a final and decisive kick, she picked it up by the hair and dragged it along in the dirt and through the piles of sharp oak leaves.

Cramming it under a fuzzy green anise bush she felt a bitter satisfaction. It was inevitable that someday her father would question her about the tie, and that Evelyn would ask what happened to “that lovely doll your Aunt Susan gave you.” But she didn’t care. The doll was the symbol of the disappointment, the image of both of her parents who wouldn’t let her go, and of Mrs. Wakefield who wouldn’t take her. It was the physical form of never, the impossible dressed in a purple scarf and a wig. Once the doll was thoroughly beaten and out of sight, her spirits began to rise a little.

She broke off a twig of anise and put it in her mouth. Mr. Roma said that anise was the favorite food of the swallow-tailed butterfly when it was a cocoon, and there was the magic possibility that if she ate enough of it she, too, would suddenly sprout wings and be able to fly anywhere she liked. The possibility of magic was delightful, but alarming, too, because if there was good magic there would also be bad magic. Her father had told her so when he was reading aloud from Grimm’s fairy tales. The system of weights and balances wasn’t perfect, he said; the darker magic was heavier.

“That’s not good for you,” Mrs. Wakefield said, coming up behind her. “Spit it out, Jessie.”

She spit it out, but the wind was against her and she had to borrow Mrs. Wakefield’s handkerchief to wipe off her face.

Mrs. Wakefield shook the handkerchief and put it back in her pocket. She was still very pale, and her eyes seemed misty and remote. She looked like never.

“If you come with me,” she said softly, “I know where we’ll go.”

“Where?”

“The island. See?”

Jessie looked, and there was the island, the magic island that appeared and vanished with every whim of the weather. Sometimes it was blue, and sometimes grey; or it was not there at all, or it was only a tip visible above the low fog, like a castle built on clouds.

“I was silly not to think of it before, wasn’t I?” Mrs. Wakefield said, laughing. “Why, the island would be a wonderful place for you and me. All the starfish we want, and other things, lots of wonderful things.”

“You said no one lives there.”

“Of course we can’t live there just yet. But we can go and look around. We can see if we like it or not.”

“When?”

“Right now. And then if we like it we can make plans.”

“It looks far.”

“It’s too far to swim, naturally. But you and I, we’ll take the boat, the rubber one because that’s safer. And you can help me make it go.”

Hesitating, Jessie scuffed the ground with the toe of one shoe. “I don’t much like boats.”

“You won’t desert me, too, will you, Jessie? No, of course you won’t, of course not.” She pressed Jessie’s hand between her own two hands. “You want to see the island, don’t you? Imagine a whole island all to ourselves.”

“I’ll have to go to school some place.”

“School?” Mrs. Wakefield repeated blankly. “Oh. Yes. Such a sober little girl you are. Like Mark, always thinking. All right, all right we’ll build a school. How’s that? Now we’d better hurry.”

“I’ve got to tell my mother. She may want me to put on a sweater or something.”

“But this is a secret, Jessie. You can tell her when we get back. Or she’ll be able to see for herself if she looks out of the window, that we’ve just gone for a little boat ride. We must hurry, though. Listen.”

Through the woods, harsh and clear, came the sound of Mr. Roma’s cowbell.

“Someone wants me,” Jessie said.

“We won’t pay any attention.”

“Maybe my father’s come home. He promised to bring me some gum.”

“I’ll buy you lots of gum,” Mrs. Wakefield murmured, close to her ear. “And the biggest doll we can find. And the island, too. We’ll build a school and a house as big as a castle.” But never, her eyes said, and the cypress mauled by the wind dropped its dying needles and whimpered, Never.

Jessie didn’t hear it or see it, but her skin pricked, and just under her left shoulder blade she had a little twinge of pain, sharp as a tack.

“I’m.. I better go home first anyway.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the wind. I just hate it!”

“But it’s pretty. Like music. Very special music so that only special people like you and me can hear it.”

Jessie listened, but she couldn’t hear any music, only the rhythmic clanging of the cowbell calling her home. She put her fingers in her ears and lowered her head against the wind.

“The wind will die down soon,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “Up here on the cliff we feel it more. Come on, Jessie.”

“Is there... is there really an island?”

“Of course, darling. You can see it for yourself.”

“Sometimes not.”

“It’s always there.”

She began to move along the path with her hand resting on Jessie’s shoulder. At first Jessie didn’t like her hand there — it was too heavy, it impeded her walking. But gradually it became a comfort to her, an anchor against the wind. She lengthened her stride to match Mrs. Wakefield’s. There was a little barb of excitement caught in her throat; she was walking beside Mrs. Wakefield, stride for stride like a grown woman, and she was taking a trip to an island where no one lived.

They skirted the side of the house and headed for the stone steps a hundred yards beyond. No one saw them or challenged them, though they had a glimpse of Mr. Roma standing where James used to stand, under the magnolia tree. The cowbell was silent.

“I think my father’s home,” Jessie said. “I saw the jeep.”

“You’ll see him when we come back.” She began to talk fast, trying to keep Jessie’s attention away from the house and the jeep parked in the driveway. “Last night I had a dream. It was funny. I dreamt the sea had dried up, and where the sea had been there was a vast hole covered with dust and crushed salt. In the hole, everything, all the fish and seals and porpoises, lay gasping and half-dead. There was no water anywhere in the world. Everything had come down to the sea to drink, birds and animals and people. Even people I know were there, Luisa and you — you were there, Jessie. But of course the sea had dried up, too. There was only this great hole.”

“That’s silly,” Jessie said.

“Dreams are. Then it began to rain, and the sea filled up, and everything came to life like magic. There was no lightning or thunder, just the rain. I walked in it. I walked in the woods, and out of the dust grew beautiful flowers, and the path was a velvet ribbon of grass. Not just devil grass, the kind we have now — this was real grass with a little clover in it. And the trees — ah, you should have seen the trees, Jessie. The live oaks seemed to reach almost the sky. Every orange tree was jeweled with gold, and the leaves of the peppers hung down like moist green lace. I could see things growing quite plainly. Buds opened before my eyes, and from bare wood little green sprouts emerged...”

“The sea was all right again, though?”

“Yes, it was all right. Just the way it is now.”

“Kind of rough?”

“Yes.”

“Did you swim in it?”

“No, I woke up too soon.”

“That’s a funny dream,” Jessie said, nodding gravely. “It certainly is.”

In single file they started down the stone steps holding onto the rust-blistered iron rail guard. Just before the house dipped out of sight Jessie turned to look back at it, and a secretive little smile crossed her face. She felt quite dashing and adventurous, following Mrs. Wakefield down the steps, and seeing ahead of her in the distance the island, the shape of a giant curled up on his side asleep. She wasn’t in the least afraid even when she thought of the giant image, because they had reached the bottom of the steps now and Mrs. Wakefield had taken her hand again and was holding it very securely.

“I’m glad you’re coming with me,” Mrs. Wakefield said gaily. “It wouldn’t be any fun visiting the island all by myself.”

“What will we do when we get there?”

“Explore. Or maybe we’ll watch the porpoises first.”

“How do you know there are porpoises?”

“A fisherman told me. He tried to catch one with a jig, but the porpoises were too clever to be fooled. Then he found out later what bad luck it is to catch a porpoise, so he stopped trying. Fishermen are superstitious.”

“Why?”

“Because they live by luck. You’re not getting cold, are you?”

“No.” But she was a trifle cold, in spite of the midafternoon sun. The masses of foam blowing along the beach like soapsuds had dampened her jeans, and they were beginning to feel soggy, flapping against her legs.

“Here we are, Jessie.”

The rubber boat was where Mark had left it, half-pulled up on the big rock out of reach of the tide. Mr. Roma’s old rowboat was there, too, upside down, showing its grey slivered bottom.

Mrs. Wakefield tugged at the raft until it came bouncing down into the sand. Tautened by the sun-warmed air inside, it seemed ready to burst. But when they dragged it across the sand into the cold water it began to shrink until it was quite flabby.

“It’s leaking,” Jessie said, stepping back up on the dry sand.

“No, it’s not. It’s just the change in temperature.” Mrs. Wakefield had kicked off her shoes and was standing in the water holding the raft steady against the pressure of the breakers. “Take your shoes off and roll up your jeans. I’ll hold it while you get in.”

Jessie obeyed, slowly. The raft, which looked so enormous when it was carried on top of the car, now looked hardly big enough for two.

“Hurry up, Jessie.”

“I am. I’ve got a knot.”

“Leave it then.”

Mrs. Wakefield’s dress was soaked all the way to her waist, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was smiling, and when a wave broke over the raft, slapping its flabby yellow flanks, she let out an excited little laugh.

“Isn’t this fun, Jessie?” she cried. “Look at me, I’m drenched! Come on now, climb in, darling.”

“But it won’t stay still.”

“Of course it won’t. Imagine a boat that would stay still. No one would want such a thing. Come on now.”

“I’m coming.”

Holding up her jeans she stepped into the water. An outgoing wave sucked at her feet and left her up to her ankles in sand. She wished that there was an easier way of getting to the island, such as a bridge or a big ferryboat that didn’t bounce so sickeningly.

She wriggled over the side of the raft, and sat down, stiff with pride and fright, on the little rubber seat in the stern.

“Good girl. Now when I get in we must both paddle as hard as we can to get beyond the breakers. Can you do that?”

“I... guess so.”

“All right then. Bon voyage, Miss Banner.”

Jessie giggled, holding her hand over her mouth.