There he was, pushing his way through the thicket, his eyes already upon her and never leaving her, not for a stride, not for a glance. And the clock in the living room that had belonged to Morton’s mother and had never kept good time until she died, was sounding three o’clock. And all was well with the world.
They climbed the stairs unbuttoning as they went. By the time they reached the spare bedroom (they’d never made love in the marital bed) her breasts were bare, and he had his arms around her from behind, toying as they went. He loved nothing better than to pleasure her this way, his face against the nape of her neck, his chest hard against her back, his embrace absolute. She reached back to unzip him. As ever, she found her hands full.
“I’ve missed this!” she said, sliding her hand along his dick.
“It’s been three days,” he said. “I’ve been going crazy.” He turned and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling her down so she perched on his knees, then opening her legs by opening his own. His hand went into her with unerring ease.
“Oh baby,” he said, “that’s what I need.” He played with her, in and out. “That’s the hottest pussy, baby. You got the hottest fucking pussy—”
She loved to hear him say the words out loud, the dirty words she only wanted to hear or say when she was with him, the words that made her new, and ready.
“I’m going to fuck you till you’re crazy. You want that?”
“Yes—”
“Tell me.”
“I want you to fuck me—” She was starting to gasp.
“Now?”
“Till I’m—”
“Yeah.”
“Till I’m crazy.”
She fumbled with his belt buckle, but he shoved her hands away and rolled her over, face to the quilt, hoisting up her dress and tearing down her panties. Backside in the air, legs apart, she reached behind her, the words always easier than she’d thought they’d be.
“Give me your cock.”
And it was in her hands as though she’d summoned it, slick and hot-headed. She pressed it against her pussy. He held back for a few seconds, then slid it all inside, down to the zipper from which it still poked.
* * *
III
In the tiny committee room above the Chamber of Commerce, Larry Powell watched while Ken Hagenaner went through a full list of the weekend’s activities and heard not a word, preoccupied as he was with his return home to Montana the weekend after next.
And in the offices below, Erwin Toothaker waited while Dorothy Bullard called around to see if anyone could let the attorney into the old schoolhouse, where the Historical Society kept its collection, because he needed to do some urgent research. And while he waited Erwin eyed the yellowed tape at the top of the window frames, still holding down an inch of Christmas tinsel, and the faded photographs of the mayor before last with his arms around the Bethany twins on their sixteenth birthdays, and he thought: I hate this place. I never realized till now. I hate it.
And outside, on Main Street, a youth called Seth Lundy—just turned seventeen and never been kissed—halted in the middle of the sidewalk outside the Pizza Place and listened to a sound he had not heard since Easter Sunday: the din of hammers knocking on the sky from Heaven’s side.
He looked up, straight up above his head, because that was where the cracks usually began, but the blue was flawless. Puzzled, he studied the sky for maybe fifteen minutes, during which time the meeting in the committee room was brought to a tidy conclusion, and Erwin decided to tell the truth to the largest audience he could find, and somewhere behind closed drapes in a house on the edge of town, Phoebe Cobb began to quietly weep.
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t stop.”
“You’re crying, baby—”
“It’s all right. I’ll be all right.” She reached behind her; put her hand on his buttocks, pressing him home, and as she did, the three words she’d kept under lock and key escaped.
“I love you.”
Oh Lord, what had she said? Now he’d leave her. Run away and find some other desperate woman, who didn’t tell him she loved him when all he wanted was a fuck in the afternoon. A younger woman; a slimmer woman. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I,” he replied.
There! He was going to pull out and leave right now.
“It’s going to cause a lot of trouble, what’s happening with you and me.”
He kept fucking her while he talked, not missing a stroke, and it was such bliss she was sure she’d missed the sense of what he’d said. He couldn’t have meant—
“I love you back. Oh baby, I love you so much. I can’t think straight sometimes. It’s like I’m in a daze till I’m here. Right here.”
It would be too cruel of him to lie, and he wasn’t cruel, she knew that, which meant he was telling the truth.
Oh Lord, he loved her, he loved her, and if all the trouble in the world would come down on their heads because of it, she didn’t care.
She started to turn in his arms so that she could be face to face with him. It was a difficult manuever, but her body was different in his arms, lusher and more malleable. Now came those kisses she could feel the day after; the kisses that made her lips burn and her tongue ache; the kisses that brought the tremors that had her shaking and hollering as though possessed. Only today there were words between them, promises of his undying devotion. And the tremors, when they came, rose from some place that was not in any anatomy book on the doctor’s shelf. An invisible, unnameable place that neither God nor tumors could touch.
“Oh, I almost forgot—” he said while they were dressing, and fumbled around in the top pocket of his overalls. “I wanted you to have this. And after this afternoon—well, it’s more important than ever.”
He pulled out a photograph and handed it to her.
“That’s my Mom, that’s my brother Ron, he’s the baby of the family, and that’s my sister Noreen. Oh yeah, and that’s me.” He was in uniform, and shining with pride. “I look good, huh?”
“When was this taken?”
“The week after I came out of basic training,” he said.
“Why didn’t you stay in the army?”
“It’s a long story,” he said, his smile fading.
“You don’t have to—” The phone interrupted her. “Oh shit! I’m not going to answer that.”
“It could be important.”
“Yeah, and it could be Morton,” she said. “And I don’t want to talk to him right now.”
“We don’t want him getting suspicious,” Joe said, “at least till we’ve made up our minds how we’re going to handle all this.”
She sighed, nodded, and hurried down to the phone, calling back as she went: “We have to talk about this soon.”
“How ’bout tomorrow? Same time?” She told him yes, then picked up the receiver. It wasn’t Morton, it was Emmeline Harper, who ran the Historical Society, an overwrought woman with a puffed up view of her own importance.
“Phoebe—”
“Emmeline?”
“Phoebe, I need a favor. Dorothy just called, and apparently somebody needs to get into the schoolhouse to look through the records. I can’t get over there, and I was wondering would you be a sweetheart?” No was on the tip of Phoebe’s tongue. Then Emmeline said: “It’s that nice Mr. Toothaker, the attorney? Have you met him?”
“Yes. A couple of years back.” A bit of a cold fish, as she remembered. But maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad time to talk to a man who knew the law. She could quietly quiz him about divorce, and maybe she’d learn something to her advantage.
“I mean I’m sure he’s very trustworthy—I don’t think for a moment he’d tamper with the collection, but I think somebody should be there to let him in and show him what’s what.”
“Fine.”
“He’s over at the Chamber of Commerce. Can I call over and say you’ll be twenty minutes?”
THREE
I
Since it
s foundation in 1972, the Everville Historical Society had been a repository for all manner of items relating to the city’s past. One of the first and most valuable bequests came from Hubert Nordhoff, whose family had owned and run the mill that now stood deserted on the Molina road, three-quarters of a mile out of town. In the three and a half decades between 1880 and 1915, the Nordhoff Mill had provided employment for a good portion of Everville’s citizens, while helping to amass a considerable fortune for the Nordhoffs. They had built a mansion in Salem, and another in Oregon City, before withdrawing from the blanket- and fabric-making business and putting their money into lumber, real estate (most of it in Portland), and even, it was rumored, armaments. Hubert Nordhoff’s bequest of some thousand photographs of life at the mill, along with several other pieces of memorabilia, had been widely interpreted as a belated act of contrition for his ancestor’s sudden desertion; the years immediately following the closure of the mill had been Everville’s darkest hour, economically speaking.
The Nordhoff bequest had begun a small avalanche of gifts. Seventeen watercolors of local scenes, prettily if somewhat blandly painted by the wife of Everville’s first dentist, were now framed and hung in the walls of the schoolhouse (the renovation of which had been paid for by H. Nordhoff). A collection of walking sticks topped with the heads of fantastical animals, carved by one of the city’s great eccentrics, Milius Biggs, was displayed in a glass case in what had been the principal’s office.
But far outnumbering these aesthetic bequests were more mundane offerings, most of them from ordinary Evervillians. School reports, wedding announcements, obituaries, family albums, a collection of cuttings from The Oregonian, all of which mentioned the town (this assembled by the librarian Stanley Tharp, who had stammered traumatically for sixty-one years but on his deathbed had recited Milton’s Paradise Lost without a stumble), and of course family letters in their hundreds.
The labor of organizing such a large body of material was slow, given that all the Society’s workers were volunteers. Two of the schoolhouse’s five rooms were still piled high with boxes of unsorted gifts, but for those visitors interested in Everville’s past, the remaining three rooms offered a pleasant, if somewhat over-tidy, glimpse of the early days.
It was highly selective of course, but then so were most history lessons. There was no place in this celebration of the Evervillian spirit for the darker side; for images of destitution, or suicide, or worse. No room, either, for any individual who didn’t fit the official version of how things had come to be. There were pictures of the city in its infancy, and accounts of how its roads were laid and its fine houses built. But of Maeve O’Connell, who had ventured to the shores of another world, and returned to make her father’s dream real, there was no sign. And in that disinheritance lay the seeds of Everville’s undoing.
* * *
II
Phoebe was a little late coming for Erwin, but he was all politeness. He was sorry to be inconveniencing her this way, he said, but it really was urgent business. No, he couldn’t really tell her what it was about, but it would be public knowledge before very long, and he’d be certain to thank her for her kindness in print. There was no need, she insisted; but she’d be very grateful if after the weekend she could come and pick his brains in a legal matter. He readily agreed. Was she planning to make a will?
No, she said, I’m planning to divorce my husband. To which he replied divorce was not really his area of expertise but he’d be happy to chat with her about it. In confidence, she said. Of course, he told her. She should drop by his offices on Monday morning.
The schoolhouse was still baking hot, even though it was now close to six, and while Phoebe went around raising the blinds and opening the windows, Erwin wandered from room to stifling room, peering at the pictures.
“Can you tell me what you’re looking for?” Phoebe asked him. “I mean, vaguely.”
“Back issues of the Tribune, for one thing,” Erwin said. “Apparently they don’t have room to keep them at their offices, so they’re here.”
“And what else?”
“Well, I’m not familiar with the collection. Is it arranged chronologically?”
“I’m not sure. I think so.” She led Erwin through to the back room, where six tables were piled with files. “I used to come and help sort through things,” she said. “But this last year’s been so hectic—” She flicked through one of the piles. “These are all marked nineteen forty to forty-five.” She moved on to the next pile. “And these are forty-five to fifty.”
“So it’s in increments of half-decades.”
“Right.”
“Well that’s a start. And the newspapers?”
Phoebe pointed through the adjacent door. “They are in order. I know, ’cause I was the one did it.”
“Wonderful. I’ll get started then.”
“Do you want me to wait till you’re finished?”
“It depends how patient you’re feeling.”
“Not very,” she said with a little laugh. “Maybe I should just jot down my telephone number, and when you’re done—”
“I’ll call you and you can come over and lock up.”
“Right.”
“That’s a deal then.” She went to the front desk, wrote her number on one of the Society brochures, and took it back to him. He was already plundering the contents of one of the files.
“You will put everything back, won’t you?” Phoebe said, in her best forbidding manner.
“Oh yes. I’ll be careful,” Erwin replied. He took the brochure from her. “I’ll call you when I’m done,” he said. “I hope it won’t be too late.”
As she got into the car she thought: What would happen if I never went home again? If I just drove to Joe’s place now and left town tonight? It was a tempting idea—not to have to go back to the house and cook dinner and listen to Morton bitching about every damn thing—but she resisted it. If her future with Joe was to have a chance then she had to plan it: carefully, systematically. They weren’t teenagers, eloping in the first flush of love. If they were going to leave Everville permanently (and she couldn’t imagine their staying, once the truth was out) then they had responsibilities to turn over and farewells to take. She’d be happy never to see the house or Morton or the stinking ashtrays he left behind him ever again, but she’d miss Dr. Powell, along with a handful of his regulars. She’d need to take the time to explain herself to the people she valued most, so that they knew she was going for love’s sake, not because she was fickle or cruel.
So, she’d stay, and enjoy her last Festival in Everville. Indeed, thinking of it that way gave her a taste for the celebrations she’d not had in years. This weekend she’d get out and party, knowing that next year, come August, she’d be in another part of the world.
Hunger always made Morton bad-tempered, so rather than have him wait while she cooked, she went by Kitty’s Diner to pick up a burger and fries. It was now three years since the death of Kitty Cowhick, and despite hard economic times her son-in-law Bosley had turned the place from a shabby little establishment into a thriving business. He was Born Again, and brought his strict moral viewpoint to bear in managing the diner. He forbade, for instance, the reading of any literature he deemed indecent in the booths or at the counter, and if a breath of profanity was exhaled he personally requested that the guilty party leave. She’d seen him do it too. I want this to be a place the Lord himself could come to, he’d told her once, if He wanted a piece of pie.
Morton’s burger purchased, she set off home, only to find the house deserted. Morton had been back—his work jacket was on the kitchen table, along with a couple of empty beer cans—but he’d apparently tired of waiting for her to come home, and gone out in search of something to eat. She was pleased: It gave her a little more time to think.
She sat at the kitchen table picking over the soggy fries, and used the pad she usually made her shopping lists on to jot down the things she wanted to take with her when she
left. There wasn’t much. Just a few bits and pieces that had some sentimental significance: a chair she’d inherited from her mother; some needlepoint her grandmother had made; the quilt in the spare bedroom.
Thinking of the quilt, she left off her list-making and turned her mind back to the deeds of the afternoon. Or rather, to the deed performed in that room. It would not always be so wonderful, she counseled herself; the heat between them would be bound to mellow over the years. But if and when that happened, there would be a weight of feeling that remained. And there would be memories of events like this afternoon, that would spring to mind every time she pressed her face to the quilt.
* * *
III
A little after eight-thirty, with his stomach growling for want of dinner, Erwin’s search through the woefully disorganized files turned up an odd little pamphlet, penned by one Raymond Merkle. He knew the name, vaguely. The man had made himself a minor reputation as a chronicler of small-town Oregon. Erwin had seen companion volumes to this in the bookstore in Wilsonville. The text was a curious compendium of facts about Everville, written in the belabored style of a man who had aspirations to being a writer but precious little ear for language.
It was entitled These Dreaming Hills, which turned out to be a quote from a piece printed (without the name of the poet, so Erwin assumed it to be Merkle) of doggerel at the front of the pamphlet. And there, halfway through this little labor of love, Erwin encountered the following: