“I’ve never told you a lot about my past.”
“You mean with Henri?”
“With others as well.”
“Yesterday’s box score.”
Wrong choice of words again.
“What?”
“That’s a baseball term,” I said.
We were stopped in front of her house now. I cut the engine and the lights. I hoped she was going to ask me in.
“I’ve helped you when you were in a bad place in your life, Aaron. Maybe you’re mistaking that for something else.”
“That’s really dumb,” I said. “The fact that you helped me is a positive, not a negative.”
“I’m dumb?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know,” she said. Her hands were folded in her lap. “I’m really tired.”
“Better get some sleep, then.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?” she said, opening the door.
“Sure. Hasta la cucaracha and all that kind of jazz.”
“Why do you have to say that?” she said, and slammed the door behind her.
* * *
I DROVE TO THE bunkhouse and went to sleep in my skivvies with the covers over my head. I could hear the rain drilling the roof. Sometime in the early a.m. the rain stopped, and I woke up and went down to the latrine. Or at least I thought I did. Altogether too often in my life, I could not distinguish dreams from reality. When I was a young boy, I took my difficulty to my father; he told me that perhaps all of life was a dream inside the mind of God. That wasn’t helpful.
On the return to my cubicle, I looked through the panes of glass in a side door in the hallway. Through the mist, I could see the Lowry house up the grade. A light was burning in one of the peaked towers. Steam was rising from the creek that ran through the property. I thought I saw the boss and horns of wild animals in the mists but could not be sure. I started back to my bed, then saw something from the corner of my eye that should not have been there.
Do you know the feeling I’m talking about? Caution tells you to flee and not let the flaws of the world possess you. But integrity and conscience tell you not to ignore danger any more than you would ignore someone breaking a bottle on a highway.
The moon had just broken through the clouds. A man in a hooded raincoat was staring straight at me. At first I thought he wore dark glasses. Then I realized his face was white, almost luminous, and I also realized he was not wearing glasses. His eyes were not eyes, either; they were sockets.
I rubbed my face and looked again. He beckoned at me as one would from the Great Shade. I twisted the doorknob slowly, automatically releasing the lock, and stepped outside. The air smelled like cistern water and mushrooms that bloom in forests that never see sunlight.
I have only minutes, he said.
Who are you?
I’m from the place where we all go.
You’re the man they call Bible-thumping Bob.
Ridicule is the flag of cowards.
What do you want of me?
You’re surrounded by evil forces. Your weakness is your guilt for events and deeds that are not yours to bear.