World Made by Hand

Forty-six

I grabbed another pitcher of cider from the bar on my way inside, relieved to be back in the crowd with the electric lights and the laughter. We played some more square dance tunes, including a grand version of Brother Jobe’s requested “Virginia Reel.” Eric’s pipe went around again, and someone passed a whiskey jug and after a while we found our way into the old rock and roll songs, starting out with “The Midnight Hour” and moving through “Bring It on Home to Me,” “Under the Boardwalk,” “Twist and Shout,” “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” and “Be My Baby.” It felt pretty odd with only acoustic instruments-and my fiddle parts on the last two numbers were flat-out ridiculous-but Andy and Eric were both good singers (and had been in electric bands when they were kids), and Linda Allison, Bonnie Sweetland, and Jeanette Copeland climbed onstage to sing backup, vamping it up with all the little hand claps and steps in unison, and the saxophone player from Bullock’s band joined in too, and it was sure fun, whatever it sounded like. Out on the dance floor, everybody was dancing in the old style, orgiastically, with hips swinging and arms flailing-even Brother Jobe and the New Faithers-and things got a little blurry for me after that.

I don’t remember much about loading out, except when we stopped playing-or rather, got too wasted to keep playingBullock’s servants went around the barn with trays full of grilled hamburgers on real buns, stacks of them, which everybody greeted with astonished delight. I gobbled down two and stuck one in my pocket. Then I was in the box of Jerry Copeland’s wagon, lying in fresh hay looking up at the stars with several other people from town, jouncing our way down the rough roads back home. We were all too tired and drunk to talk anymore. I fell asleep more than once, and remained mostly asleep through the journey until the rig stopped in front of my house on Linden Street and Jeanette shook me awake. You could hear horses clomping elsewhere around town as other wagons wended through other streets, and here and there a cry of “goodnight,” and screen doors slapping. Laughter.

I was careful to close my screen door gently so as not to wake anybody, but discovered that Britney was up anyway. She was sitting in a big stuffed chair in the living room with a candle burning on the table beside her. She wasn’t reading or anything, just sitting huddled and small under an old blanket in a tattered cotton nightdress.

“How was the levee?” she said.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” I said. I had sobered up some on the ride home, so I didn’t say anything foolish like You should have been there. “Bullock served hamburgers before everybody left for home. Real ones on real buns.”

“That’s nice,” Britney said.

“I brought one back for you.”

It was not easy to extract the thing from my pocket. When I did, it was all compacted into the bun, a soggy mess with a deal of pocket lint around the edge. I tried to clean it off as I held it out for her.

“That’s all right.”

“There was nothing to wrap it up in.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No tin foil or plastic wrap. Not even a paper napkin.”

“I understand,” she said.

I put the squashed, linty hamburger on the table beside her. The clock on the mantelpiece said ten after three.

“What are you doing up so late?” I said.

She seemed to shudder in the dim light but didn’t reply.

“Are you okay?” I said.

She drew her knees up under the blanket to make herself look even smaller than she actually was. I went over and stooped down beside her chair.

“What’s wrong.”

“Those men from the general were here,” she said. Her voice quavered.

“Who was?”

“Wayne Karp and two others.”

“They came in here? Inside this house?”

“Yes.”

“You let them in?”

“They let themselves in.”

“What’d they want?”

“I think they were looking to steal things. I surprised them. Just being here.”

“What happened?”

Britney sighed and made a choked sound like a sob that couldn’t quite come out.

“Tell me,” I said.

“They demanded `refreshments.’ That very word.”

“What’d you do?”

“I told them there was some milk and leftover corn bread. They went out to the kitchen on their own and rooted around and found some of your apple jack.”

“Did they take anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is that all?”

“No.”

“What else?”

“They touched me.”

“Touched you?”

in my personal places.”

“What do you mean by `touching’?”

“I mean touching.”

“Nothing more?”

Britney looked into her lap and shook her head. “They talked about coming back another time for more `refreshments.’ They like that word.”

All kinds of blustery phrases echoed through my head. Ifthey set foot in here again, I’ll kill ’em, and things like that which I had probably heard on TV years ago. I didn’t say any of them. I was sober enough to know that they sounded stupid.

“Where was Sarah?” I said.

“She was upstairs. Asleep, I think.”

“Look, forgive me for asking, but I want to make sure I understand-they didn’t force you to have sex?”

“No, they didn’t rape me.”

“Look at me. Listen. Two things: I’ll make sure you’re not left in this position again. And these guys will pay some kind of price for what they did.”

She nodded.

“I don’t think this is the only house they went into,” she said.

She didn’t especially want to move out of that chair, but I persuaded Britney to come upstairs, and I literally tucked her into her bed. Her room was Daniel’s-my son’s-old room. His collection of birds’ nests was arrayed along a narrow shelf that I had built for that purpose high up along one wall. There was a large map of the world salvaged from the final days of the high school. On it, the great pink amoeba of Russia was still called the Soviet Union and Germany was divided in two. Britney had no belongings of her own to speak of, everything she owned having been consumed in the fire that destroyed her house. Some of the other women in town had given her a few items of clothing, a comb, a pin cushion, and sewing implements.

“We can find a place to store Daniel’s things if you like,” I said, “so you could make it more like your own room.”

She nodded. The sadness she carried was a palpable force, like gravity doubled. I wondered, if someone tried to lift her up now, would she weigh two hundred pounds?

As I sat there on the bed, her hand searched along the thin summer covers until it found mine. I held it a moment, then joined my other hand, and she hers, and we held each other’s hands for a while.

“The world has become such a wicked place,” she said quietly, just a statement of fact.

“There’s goodness here too.”

“Where is it?”

“In all the abiding virtues. Love, bravery, patience, honesty, justice, generosity, kindness. Beauty too. Mostly love.”

“I’m afraid sometimes that we drove those things out of existence.”

“No, we carry them in our hearts. They’re always with us.”

“I don’t know what’s in my heart anymore. It’s too dark to see.”

“Light follows darkness.”

“Thank you for saying so,” she said, and let go of my hands. She rolled over on her side and I left her there.

I looked in on Sarah before I went to bed. She was in what had been Genna’s room, full of the little wooden dolls and puppets I had made over the years, with doll and puppet clothing made by Sandy. Sarah was fast asleep, small, innocent, and perfect.