“WATCH YOUR HEAD!” JOHN Bayles cautioned.
Ollie Gelston strolled dreamily along behind him. He held a branch aside for her while she ducked beneath it and swept past him, leaving in her wake the chaste fragrance of starched linen and bath cologne. Chastity was her motif. There was something perennially, almost aggressively chaste about her. And fragile. You could follow the workings of a whole vascular system in the pale blue tracery of veins clearly visible just beneath the surface of milk-white skin.
When she had passed he let the branch snap back, which it did, with a twang. A shower of leaves tumbled downward all about him. Then John Bayles resumed the path with a stolid air of gloom. Ahead, Ollie waited for him to move past her and take up the lead once more. Several paces in the rear again, she moved along behind him, a dreamy air of distraction about her.
For a moment her mind flashed backward across the space of years to a time nearly thirty-five years ago. It was her seventh birthday party. It was Sunday and she had just done her confirmation. She was in a white party dress, a gawky, inelegant creature with long, unflattering braids. It was at Leo’s house—after the cake and the ice cream and punch. They’d all gone out in the woods to play hide-and-seek and follow-the-leader. She and John. Leo and Sybil, Freddy and Albert Rogers and Helen. Dear Helen. Gladdy was there too, and hating it. Of course, she would. Under those circumstances—Ollie could understand it now. But at that time—well, it really hurt her. And then, of course, there was Harry Gage too, but she couldn’t recall him. He’d really spent so little time there.
She could recall all the others though that sunny carefree day so long ago. The hide-and-seek. The follow-the-leader in the forest. She could see all their faces too. Quite clearly. Even Helen’s. Poor, dear, dead, sweet Helen’s face, giddy and mischievous. She could see it framed in splashes of mottled green sunlight. And John, mournful, grieving, restive—the single gray shadow in that sunny canvas.
She looked at him now, the tall, stooped disconsolate figure with prematurely gray hair shambling along ahead of her.
“How long do you suppose we could go on like this in one direction before we reached anywhere?” she called up to him.
“Forever.” Bayles replied brusquely and plunged forward, his face riveted and immobile. He looked like a man who wanted to get something painful over with quickly. But the brusqueness of his reply hadn’t registered. She chattered on vivaciously:
“Every time I come out here it’s all different,” she went on. “New trees. New foliage. Paths that used to be here now vanished. Overrun. Gone without a trace. And now there are all these new paths. Where do they come from? Where do they go?” She laughed a little mournfully. “No one knows. Isn’t that right, John?” She trilled those words in a girlish singsong. “No one knows.”
“Yes. No one knows.” He said it not so much in agreement but in bitter consent.
She looked at him oddly, then shrugged and renewed the trek. She murmured something but it was lost in the buzz and chatter of insects and birds.
“Do you see any of them up there?” she asked after a while.
“I caught a glimpse of Leo’s shirt a moment or two back. They’re not very far off.” He lunged forward, butterflies dancing before him.
“Why do you let him torture you so?” she asked suddenly. She hadn’t meant to say anything, but there were the words in her mouth just blurting themselves out.
He didn’t reply. Merely trudged on, head lowered like a bullock toiling in its yoke. Thinking he hadn’t heard, she was relieved. But then suddenly she heard him sigh, a long, low, woesome sound, full of the lamentation of eons.
“We need each other,” he said, his eyes fixed resolutely before him. “He needs to inflict pain and I need pain inflicted.” He trudged on for a bit. “He was always like that, wasn’t he? A short, squat, ugly little boy torturing worms with a stick.”
“That was so long ago, John. Can’t you forget?”
“How can I?” he said, watching the butterflies pirouetting on a leaf. “Now I’m the worm.”
Rogers called out a series of points from somewhere up ahead. They paused to listen, then set their course in the direction of the voice. Tom Putney shouted back from somewhere to the right of them.
Bayles, several paces beyond Ollie, suddenly spoke. “I want to see just how long I’ll permit him to goad me with that stick before I kill him.”
The words stopped her in her tracks. “Dear God, please don’t talk that way. Even in jest.”
“Jest!” He laughed ruefully. “Who’s jesting? He wants to do to me what his father did to my father. Well, I won’t accommodate him. I won’t be a suicide.”
He didn’t stop when she stopped but kept right on walking in the direction of the surveyor’s voice.
“19 degrees south-southwest 28 rods 12 chains 8 links—”
The points boomed out from somewhere up ahead and to the left.
“Of course you won’t,” said Ollie. She had to run to keep abreast of him. “Of course you won’t.”
“Brave Ezra Garvix,” Bayles muttered fiercely beneath his breath, scarcely aware she was jogging beside him. “Warrior Garvix. Imperial Garvix. Liquidator and Bankrupter par excellence. It pleased me to see him die in such pain.”
Ollie winced, then looked quickly around to see if anyone had been nearby. “Hush, John. For God’s sake. Someone’ll hear.”
“I want them to. I weep for my father. And they’ll never get their hands on his property.”
“12 degrees east 19 rods and 5—”
Bayles strode on in the direction of the voice. “Quibbling over their property,” he muttered fiercely to himself. “Their rights. Dividing up the earth as if it were their own.” The word their tore from his lips with a sneer of contempt. “Deeds and titles. As if a piece of paper makes you own something. Well, goddamn their bits of paper. These woods will be here in full bloom long after we’ve all turned to carbon.”
Ollie stumbled along behind him. “I hate this kind of talk. I don’t like it. It scares me.”
“Greedy little worms!”
“You’re alone too much, John. Too much since Helen died.”
“I prefer my company to anyone else’s.”
“It’s five years now. You ought to think of remarrying.”
He came to a dead halt, then wheeled sharply. “For God’s sake, will you stop telling me what I ought to do with my life!”
“I only—”
“It’s none of your goddamned business anyway.”
The effect of his words made her recoil as if she’d been struck. She couldn’t bring herself to look into his raging eyes. When she averted her glance he caught her wrist and held her fluttering there like a trapped dove. “Don’t you ever dare tell me what to do with my life!” he went on through clenched teeth. “Just consider the wreckage of your own!”
He paused for a moment, relaxing his grip. It was as if he’d heard the cruelty of his own voice for the first time, and it shocked him.
“You see,” he said, suddenly contrite, full of sorrow that he’d hurt her, “I’m not fit company.” He wanted to pet her as if she were an injured child. “Is it five years? It seems like only yesterday.”
He glanced sideways at her and lowered his voice. “She’s still there you know. Still in the house. I hear her in the rustle of the draperies or a creak on the stairway late at night. My father’s there, too. There’s something that I feel when I sit in the library surrounded by his books, the dusty upholstery, the rack of pipes on his desk still with his teeth marks—” His voice trailed off. Then he turned slowly, resuming his baffled, plodding pace while she followed like a devoted retriever not far behind.
Suddenly she felt all of his pain. She wanted to take it from him. Shoulder it herself.
“Father misses you,” she said. A feeble attempt to change the subject. “He can’t understand why you won’t come round to see him anymore.”
“I miss him too. But I won’t go to see him.”
“Why?” She asked, trying desperately to understand.
“You know very well why,” he said flatly and plodded on.
“18 degrees east-northeast 17 rods, 4 links—”
They listened for a moment, then followed.
“He thinks you’re angry with him,” Ollie went on.
“He knows I’m not.” Bayles laughed ruefully. “I love him. Why shouldn’t I? The only father I had when the world came down on my head. Malty G. who stood by me when they all came like spoilers. Why shouldn’t I?” he asked again. “How is he?”
“Regular as a clock.” She laughed in spite of herself. “And a little inclined these days to be crotchety and disagreeable.”
He was suddenly warmer and less remote. “And you?” He turned and fixed her sharply. “Still at your chores? His cocoa and biscuit at eight? The warm bath at nine? Walk with him in the garden at ten?”
“Lunch at 11:30, siesta till two.” She laughed. “I love his routines and schedules. I feel peace around him. I’ve never felt that with any other man.”
“You’ve never given any other man a chance. You shoo them all away.” That harsh edge crept back into his voice. “You walk around all day like a bloody nun. All sallow and black. Looking slightly mad.”
Suddenly he was furious again. Not with her but with this day. This place. These people. Everything.
“He should’ve forced you out into the world long ago,” he raged on. “Made you do things. You have things in you, Ollie. I love Malty. But he’s been selfish.”
“No,” she protested, and started to reach for his sleeve. But in the next moment, she withdrew her hand. “He’s been waiting for you, John. He still thinks you’ll be coming for me.”
He gave a short, cruel laugh. “You’d be a fool to wait around for that.” Then he grew thoughtful and earnest. “There’s still time for you to get away from this graveyard. You’d better go while you can.”
Rogers’ voice suddenly pealed out like bells—great leaden circles rising and reverberating above the forest.
“29 degrees north-northeast to the bole of the oak and the heap of marked stones.”