chapter 18
You been misled, Wilkie's stentorian voice proclaimed. You been had. You been took. And now you're trapped. You're double-trapped. You're triple-trapped. And what are you gonna do? You gonna sit-in? You gonna picket? You gonna march on Washington? Or are you gonna stand up and make some justice happen?
Light from beneath the shade illuminated his dull black coat; it was morning and he was hungry.
For years, the two of them had slept in the living room. But no longer. They did as they pleased now, climbing on furniture, the bed even, waking her at all hours, there whenever she opened her eyes.
See it's like when you go to the dentist and the man is going to take your tooth. You're gonna fight him when he starts pullin'. So they squirt some stuff in your jaw called Novocain to make you think they're not doing anything to you. So you sit there, and 'cause you got all that Novocain in your jaw you suffer peacefully. Blood running all down your jaw and you don't know what's happening. 'Cause someone has taught you to suffer peacefully, law-abidingly - their rules, their game - and you're surprised they win every time? Is your mind that weak, that soft? What you need is a do-it-yourself philosophy, a do-it-right-now philosophy, an it's-already-too-late philosophy.
He approached the bed and as he stretched his jaw open Charlotte could see down the minister's pink gullet.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
"Quiet," she pled. "There's no need to convince me."
For days she'd meant to get to the store to buy herself and the dogs some food, but having no appetite herself she'd forgotten, there being no room left in her mind anymore, it seemed, for anything but her single purpose.
Stepping out of bed, she crossed the room, the dogs following her to the closet. A dress didn't seem appropriate for this day. Something more practical was in order. She chose a pair of gardening corduroys and a pullover she'd patched at the elbows.
Sam started in where he'd left off the night before, shaking his head with that self-satisfied disappointment of his. I see that the devils are swarming about you this morning, like the Frogs of Egypt, here in the most retired of your chambers. And yet, like the sinner you are, you welcome them.
Slave owner! Wilkie shouted. White devil! Get your filthy paws off the woman's conscience. She's seeing at last that it's time for action. Time to swing up on some justice.
The Blood of the Soul of this poor Negro here lies upon you, Sam said, not deigning to speak directly to his dark companion, and the guilt of his Barbarous Impieties, and superstitions, and his neglect of God, if you are willing to have nothing done toward the salvation of his soul. Despite what you think, to convert one Soul unto God is more than to pour out Ten Thousand Talents into the Baskets of the Poor.
You listen to me, you cracker spook, Wilkie said, I'm not going to be taken in by your love-thy-servant nonsense. If a man speaks the language of brute force, you can't come to him with peace. Why good night, he'll break you in two, as he has been doing all along. You have to learn how to speak his language and then he'll get the point. Then there'll be some dialogue. There'll be some communication. There'll be some understanding.
Oh, who can tell, Sam called out, his indignation rising, but that this Poor Creature may belong to the Election of God! Who can tell, but that God may have sent this Poor Creature into your hands, Charlotte, that so One of the Elect may by your means be Called and by your Instruction be made Wise unto Salvation! The Blackest Instances of Blindness and Baseness are admirable Candidates of Eternal Blessedness. Though it be caviled, by some, that it is questionable Whether the Negroes have Rational Souls, or no, let that Brutish insinuation be never Whispered any more. They are men not beasts. Withhold knowledge of the Almighty from them and they will be destroyed.
At her heels they raged, traipsing after her down the hallway, down the back stairs, and into the kitchen, to the window above the sink full now of dishes.
Over the grass a morning mist hung. Its tendrils stretched under the maples and down the hill. Ten minutes or more she stood there waiting, until at last she saw Fanning come out of his front door, dressed not in a suit today, as he usually was, but in jeans and a sweatshirt. She watched with relief as he got in his car and drove up to the road. She was not, after all, in the business of killing.
Yesterday, after saying her goodbyes to Henry, she had seen in her mind's eye the mansion burning, and felt, in anticipation, its heat on her skin, the heat she remembered from the bonfires they used to have in the back field when they came up for Thanksgiving and dragged the fallen branches out of the woods and burned all the raked leaves, only how much greater would the heat be when it was an entire house consumed, wood and nails and glass and a thousand substances besides? Again now, she saw the fire, and then the charred frame and then that, too, crumbling, and from the blackened earth saplings rising, drinking sun and rain, thickening in nature's time to the testaments of endurance that trees became, shading again the river and the trout, the cardinals and the blue jays and the orange-winged butterflies flitting through a summer dusk, when she and Henry had played by the riverbank before being packed in the car and driven back to Rye, only years later to discover, at night in her dorm room, Milton's pentameter describing what the two of them had lost:
... whereat
In either hand the hastning Angel caught
Our lingering Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd.
She let the tap water run until it chilled the bones of her fingers and then she filled a glass for herself and the dogs' bowls. They lapped them quickly dry and were back at her side in no time.
They say overcome your enemies with your capacity to love. What kind of an idea is that? Wilkie asked. He's not going to be overcome by your love. I've never called on anybody to be violent without a cause.
There is a court somewhere kept, where your pride shall be judged, Sam warned. And it is not here in the False Church of this earth.
"I have not for one day believed in your God."
No, sure. And so in Great Folly you shall one day wander down to the Congregation of the Dead.
She took a box of matches from the ledge of the stove and beneath the sink found a canvas bag.
Sam and Wilkie followed her into the breezeway.
To concentrate just once more, she thought. That's all that it would take. And indeed, as she stepped down the ramp onto the floor of the barn, she began to feel as she'd imagined she would, reading those stories in the papers over the years of the environmentalists and the anti - free traders who broke the law in the name of some greater justice, the anticipation of the act clarifying experience, rescuing it from the prison of language, the inward purpose blessing the otherwise desultory with meaning. And yet, for that very reason, she'd always considered such extremism adolescent. Too simple. Willful in its ignorance of the world's complexity. And so deadly earnest. And yet how judgmental she had been. What, after all, was wrong with earnestness? Weren't Fanning and his kind earnest? Weren't all the polluters earnest, the physical and the cultural? And did anyone ever impugn or mock them for it? No one ever thought to. Avarice was never shackled by a concern for authenticity. It didn't care about image or interpretation.
The sit-down lawn mower, its paint cracked and axles rusting, stood where the family Jeep once had. Beyond it was the ladder to the loft, where the wooden tea crates full of Eric's books were still stacked, having remained there ever since they'd followed Charlotte up from New York. She didn't come in here much anymore, and for good reason.
Along with the cans of primer under the back shelf, she found tins of turpentine that she'd purchased a few years back, intending to call someone about doing the shutters and trim. She placed them in her bag with the matches.
My second wife, my dear friend Elizabeth, died of the measles on the afternoon of November 9, Sam started in again.
"For heaven's sake, can't you shut up!"
Ten days after giving me the twins, Eleazer and Martha. Oh, to part with so desirable, so agreeable a Companion, a Dove from such a Nest of young ones too! Oh! the sad Cup, which my Father appointed me! And when five days hence my maidservant succumbed, I tested the Lord's patience by imagining the malignancy to have gone up over us. Then the twins died. The sixth and seventh of my children to be taken up by the Almighty. And when a week later Jerusha too fell sick I begg'd the Lord for the life of my dear pretty daughter. I begg'd that such a bitter Cup, as the Death of that lovely child, might pass from me. But she too went to our Savior. And I died in life unto this world as all sinners must preparing for the world to come, knowing the Lord is in thy Adversity! Fifteen children I fathered. Thirteen I buried. Such a record of woe as no man should have to bear, my cross but a dry sort of a tree. But never did I despair of the Lord's infinite wisdom or cease in the business of Worship. And you stand here aggrieved by the bitter fruit of one sinful lust? One loss of a man not your husband?
"Damn you!" she shouted, pushing him aside with her knee.
Why it is useless for you to deny that it is in the shadow of his going that you have arrived here at this foolery, allowing your spirit to shape itself thus. What, after all, are your great Politics but a woe without end? What is your pessimistic liberal blather but the Bible's own warning of the Apocalypse shorn of the just Consolation of Heaven? You have decried this world as any of the Lord's preachers might, and lived as if in the End Times, yet every day you have succumbed to the pride of earthly wisdom, the pride of thinking of yourself as above the Savior's flock. And in your condescension you violate your own philosophy of tolerance. Yes, yours is a metaphysical pride. The pride of human knowledge.
"Your children must have died of boredom," she snapped, beginning to tremble.
How stupid to have no food in the house! Surely the weakness in her limbs came from hunger. Sam rubbed his wet nose at her waist, slobbering.
Among the rusting tools and old flowerpots she looked about for an implement in case she had to force a window. She found a trowel and added it to her supplies.
There are but a few sands left in the glass of your time.
Don't listen to that old bigot, Wilkie said. Now's your time to act.
Pushing the barn door open, she tried keeping the dogs blocked behind her, but they were too strong and they forced themselves by, running ahead down the driveway. The mist had cleared but overhead the sky was still a low ceiling of cloud, the nimbus of the sun visible only as a brightening patch of gray on the horizon.
Don't go, he said.
Slowly, she turned, the membrane porous, time's order shuffled.
Eric sat on the weathered oak bench by the ladder, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as young and beautiful as the night she'd met him.
Don't go, he said. Stay here awhile.
"But if the man comes back ... I'll lose my nerve."
You never did. You've always been beautiful to me, in that way. You never lost your conviction.
"I kept thinking of you."
I know. I heard you. You were heard. And Nate, you were good to him. You have to remember: our love isn't the only kind. You have loved, my darling. You have loved so much. I see it. I see it in you now. You're beautiful.
"No," she said. "Look at me. Look at what I'm about to do."
But you won't. I know you won't. It's okay. Close the door. Sam and Wilkie, you can let them go now. They'll be all right.
"But there's no one to feed them."
Someone will feed them.
She feared he would disappear if she stepped closer. And so she remained still, blessed now, she understood. The dearest thread in that old fabric of being had loosened, letting him pass back through to her. And so at last she could tell someone, "It's not the dogs' fault - the things they shout. They're in me, the ministers. The puritans and the slaves. God help me," she said, tears leaking from her eyes. "I tried to love my country."
As it should be loved.
"But weren't we fools?"
Yes. Loving fools.
She wiped at her dripping eyes. And when she looked again he was gone.
She stood motionless, gazing at the bench, at its bleached wood, still as stone. A mute object. Eternal in the perfection of its indifference. For the first time that morning, she noticed the clouds of her breath visible in the bitter air.
Heading back up the ramp, she crossed the breezeway, and stepped back into the kitchen. The fridge door hung open, its shelves holding nothing but a jar of pickles and a few bottles of soda water. In the drawer, greens rotted in a plastic bag. A sack of sprouted potatoes lay on the floor between the fridge and the counter. The counter itself was barely visible beneath the clutter.
Proceeding into the living room, she wondered how it was that she had never seen the mess. How long had she been living in this ruin? When, precisely, had the storm struck?
She sat on the one cleared spot of her sofa. She could hear the dogs barking at the door, clawing at it, trying to get back in, to get at her once more. Even at this distance, their voices reached her. They were no longer distinct and yet louder than ever. A roar that nearly drowned out the litany in her head, the one she'd lived by and with, her litany: Henry II and Magna Carta and Gutenberg and Calvin and Milton and Kant and Paine and Jefferson and Jackson's rabble and Corot and Lincoln and Zola and Dickens and Whitman and Bryan on his cross of gold and the patterned fabrics in the paintings of Matisse and Walker Evans and Copland and Baldwin and King in Memphis, the chorus exploding in her, the ideas all that were left, a pure narrative drive using up the last of her.
It had to stop, she thought, reaching into her canvas bag. She could make it stop. She could at last exercise her will over history's reckless imagination of her.
The open-faced books on the coffee table soaked up the turpentine like arid soil.
She thought to close her eyes as she struck the match and dropped it, but then that wouldn't be right. She would watch.