Part 21 (1/2)
”Marry me?”
”Now I'm going to do this: I'm going up to Canada, to British Columbia. They're giving away land there, practically. Thousands of acres. I have a little money and we're going to get clear of everything except the outdoors, we'll have a farm, I can learn how to work on one again-”
”Lowry, you're crazy-”
”Why am I crazy?”
”I don't know, it's just-I-”
”Why are you afraid?”
Clara pushed away from him and got to her feet. Her teeth had begun to chatter; she felt that the very air about her had turned brittle. ”I don't want to hear it,” Clara said. She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. ”Don't say anything to me. I'm afraid what I might do. How can I change ... ? Once there was a man that looked like you, in a gas station-”
”And?”
”He made me think about you all over again.”
Lowry got up. ”Honey, everything is beautiful here. This old house is beautiful. Out the window there-those trees-it's all beautiful. We'll have a place just like this in Canada, by ourselves.”
”Lowry, no.”
”You don't know what you have here, how beautiful it is. You don't understand what it is,” he said. ”Over there I thought about you all the time, Clara. You were at the center of what I was trying to think about. I remembered how it was by the ocean, and down by the river that day-how nice you were to me- n.o.body was ever as nice to me as you were, Clara. I know that now.”
Clara went out into the kitchen and stood at the screen door. She heard Lowry following behind her. Her fingernails picked nervously at the screen, at tiny rust specks or dirt embedded there. Outside, Swan was digging a hole by the fence that cut off the orchard from an old pasture. ”Swan?” she called. ”What are you doing?”
He looked around. ”This here,” he said, his small clear voice a surprise to her. He lifted the spade. After a moment, staring at her and at Lowry behind her, he turned away self-consciously.
”Suppose that was your kid, what then?” Clara said.
”It wouldn't matter, I would want him with us even if he wasn't,” Lowry said. And that answer, that should have sounded so good to her, somehow didn't; she had wanted something else. ”I'm thirty-two,” he said. ”I had my thirtieth birthday over there and I never thought I'd get that old. Now I'm back here and I could maybe forget about all that, if I could begin everything over.”
Clara stared at him. She did not understand.
”You're worried he's going to come?” Lowry said.
”No.”
”What are you worried about?”
She pushed past him. ”I've got to fix supper,” she said.
”Forget about supper.”
”You've got to eat, and Swan-”
”Forget about it. Come back here with me.”
”Lowry, I can't.”
”Come on.”
She stared miserably at the floor. Everything was draining out of her, all her strength, all the hatred that had kept Lowry close to her for so long. It struck her that she had fed on this hatred and that it had kept her going, given her life. Now that he was here and standing before her, she could not remember why she had hated him.
”You b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” she whispered. ”Coming back here like this- You-”
”Let me make you quiet,” Lowry said.
She looked up at his smile, which was exactly like the smile she remembered.
”That boy is still outside playing,” Lowry said. From the bed he was leaning to look out the window. Clara, lying still, watched the long smooth curve of his back. ”Any other kid would come bothering you, but he doesn't. How does he know that much?”
”Smart, like his father.”
”Why is he so quiet?”
”He isn't quiet. He was afraid of you.”
”He shouldn't have been afraid of me.”
#x201C;A strange man coming up the lane, walking up the lane like that.... I was afraid of you myself.”
”Are you afraid now?”
She wanted to say angrily that she would always be afraid of him, that there was nothing she could do to keep herself from him and that this was terrible, this power he had over her. But she lay still. Her hair was tangled around her damply; she felt soiled, bruised.
”I'm sorry if ... I upset you,” Lowry said gently.
He pressed himself against her again, hiding his face against her, and she felt how soft even a man's flesh can be, lying so delicate on top of his bones; and if it had all been blown apart, shot apart, what then? If the bullets that had shot about Lowry in the dark, over there in Europe, across the world in Europe, had hit him instead and stopped dead in his body, what then? He would not have come back to make love to her. Lowry's body, which was all of him that she could see and touch, would be rotted over there in a ditch in a place she would not even know by name, could not even imagine because she would not have the power to do so ... and what then? She caressed his back and her hand came away wet with sweat. That was all she had to go by. She felt how weak they both were, she and Lowry, how the terrible power he had in his body and in his hard muscular legs pa.s.sed over into this weakness that was not at all like the weakness before sleep but was something heavy and close to death, like lying on the bottom of an ocean of sweat, their bodies still trembling from all the violence they had suffered. She felt as if a wound had been viciously opened up in her, secret in her body, and that all her strength had drained away through it and left her helpless again.
”What is Revere going to say when I tell him what we're going to do?”
”He's got a wife.”
”But he loves me,” Clara whispered. ”He wants to marry me.”
”The h.e.l.l with him.”
”He loves me.”
”I don't give a d.a.m.n about another man's love.”
”He loves Swan too....”
”Well, I don't give a d.a.m.n about that either.”
”What if you get tired and leave me again?”
”That won't happen.”
”How do you know?”