relentless purpose, an inexorable will. He saw Jack, the hand that worked her puppet frame, and saw the Master whom Jack served. Harst understood this was the only utterance that would be granted him.
She tipped him backwards down the fissure, fed him down— gripping his calves, as she angled him to the aperture. Harst was dangling, arms stretched like a diver’s. His eyes flashed starkly, left and right, at the ribbed throat of swallowing clay that received him, and she let him drop.
Once more, on her Rube-Goldberg hinges, Susan’s corpse knelt down. On her knees at last, still seeming to daydream, she leaned over the fissure, and dove after.
XII
Chainsaws woke Karen. The crackly shusss of a fruit tree toppling out in the yard, and she remembered Kyle. Karen Fox, brandy-tree slayer, her troops had arrived and she had begun striking back. And the world, again today, was empty of Susan.
In the kitchen she opened a can of pineapple juice and guzzled thirstily and, from across the room, watched them out the back window without showing herself. They had two trees down and were trimming off branches. Kyle’s helper was like him, all shoulders and no stomach, but a good deal taller and much younger, with black hair sleeked back and a lupine, clean-shaven face that radiated handsomeness. There was something self-displaying about him, the postures he struck as he worked.
Well, they had their task, but what was hers on this Sunday, Day Two of Susan dead?
She knew, all right. Go back to the still-shed, where Susan had somehow caught her death, and get Dad’s papers. He was the black hole that had sucked half the life out of Karen. She’d seen those renderings in astronomy texts: a dimming star, with a ribbon of its substance snaking off of it, into that gravity-pit. A dimming star, that was her self.
* * * *
She spread Dad’s casualty photos on the kitchen table, in Mom’s domain, in the morning light. It didn’t help. Was Karen’s world from now on to be a world of corpses? Tears of self-pity filled her eyes; she wiped them angrily away and looked. Stills of the Dance of Death in the Central American jungles. The earth’s unstoppable clockwork ticking away the forms and features of the dancers. Collapsed men, like flowerpots sprouting shoots. In what spirit had Dad made this record?
In an older black and white group shot from Dad’s first war, Viet Nam, was dear old Dad younger than Karen had ever seen him, but still ten or twelve years older than most of the men around him… giving the camera the somber riddle of his gaze. He had gone to this war, though old enough to have skipped it, and Karen was born when he’d just been back a couple years. But six or seven years later, through some friends in the CIA who went back to his Nam days, back he went to the jungles of Central America. How strange to go back to war at almost forty like that.
Karen left the photos spread on the table and, weeping, came into the living room. She stood looking at Susan’s suitcase, there on the floor by the fireplace. “Oh sweetheart,” she choked, “what a shit hole I dragged you into!”
Willing the shock to wake anger and purpose in her, she took a cold shower, brushed her hair back and ponytailed it wet, and stepped into clean denim and flannel. Outdoors, Kyle was feeding rollers to the splitter. The helper was loading the splits into the truck bed, but as soon as Karen stepped out onto the back porch, this younger man turned towards her and exclaimed, “The lady of the house!”— and came striding toward her, snatching an apricot from one of the standing trees he passed. “I’ve gotta tellya, this is crazy, cuttin’ down these trees! There’s still good fruit on ‘em! Look! It’s delicious!” Standing in front of her, he took a bite, chewing noisily, demonstrating the fruit’s goodness. He wore a mock-innocent expression, while behind it, in the flinty black eyes, was a genuine stupidity, a simple
She tipped him backwards down the fissure, fed him down— gripping his calves, as she angled him to the aperture. Harst was dangling, arms stretched like a diver’s. His eyes flashed starkly, left and right, at the ribbed throat of swallowing clay that received him, and she let him drop.
Once more, on her Rube-Goldberg hinges, Susan’s corpse knelt down. On her knees at last, still seeming to daydream, she leaned over the fissure, and dove after.
XII
Chainsaws woke Karen. The crackly shusss of a fruit tree toppling out in the yard, and she remembered Kyle. Karen Fox, brandy-tree slayer, her troops had arrived and she had begun striking back. And the world, again today, was empty of Susan.
In the kitchen she opened a can of pineapple juice and guzzled thirstily and, from across the room, watched them out the back window without showing herself. They had two trees down and were trimming off branches. Kyle’s helper was like him, all shoulders and no stomach, but a good deal taller and much younger, with black hair sleeked back and a lupine, clean-shaven face that radiated handsomeness. There was something self-displaying about him, the postures he struck as he worked.
Well, they had their task, but what was hers on this Sunday, Day Two of Susan dead?
She knew, all right. Go back to the still-shed, where Susan had somehow caught her death, and get Dad’s papers. He was the black hole that had sucked half the life out of Karen. She’d seen those renderings in astronomy texts: a dimming star, with a ribbon of its substance snaking off of it, into that gravity-pit. A dimming star, that was her self.
* * * *
She spread Dad’s casualty photos on the kitchen table, in Mom’s domain, in the morning light. It didn’t help. Was Karen’s world from now on to be a world of corpses? Tears of self-pity filled her eyes; she wiped them angrily away and looked. Stills of the Dance of Death in the Central American jungles. The earth’s unstoppable clockwork ticking away the forms and features of the dancers. Collapsed men, like flowerpots sprouting shoots. In what spirit had Dad made this record?
In an older black and white group shot from Dad’s first war, Viet Nam, was dear old Dad younger than Karen had ever seen him, but still ten or twelve years older than most of the men around him… giving the camera the somber riddle of his gaze. He had gone to this war, though old enough to have skipped it, and Karen was born when he’d just been back a couple years. But six or seven years later, through some friends in the CIA who went back to his Nam days, back he went to the jungles of Central America. How strange to go back to war at almost forty like that.
Karen left the photos spread on the table and, weeping, came into the living room. She stood looking at Susan’s suitcase, there on the floor by the fireplace. “Oh sweetheart,” she choked, “what a shit hole I dragged you into!”
Willing the shock to wake anger and purpose in her, she took a cold shower, brushed her hair back and ponytailed it wet, and stepped into clean denim and flannel. Outdoors, Kyle was feeding rollers to the splitter. The helper was loading the splits into the truck bed, but as soon as Karen stepped out onto the back porch, this younger man turned towards her and exclaimed, “The lady of the house!”— and came striding toward her, snatching an apricot from one of the standing trees he passed. “I’ve gotta tellya, this is crazy, cuttin’ down these trees! There’s still good fruit on ‘em! Look! It’s delicious!” Standing in front of her, he took a bite, chewing noisily, demonstrating the fruit’s goodness. He wore a mock-innocent expression, while behind it, in the flinty black eyes, was a genuine stupidity, a simple
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