NINE

One morning thunderheads built on the western horizon and marched relentlessly eastward toward Eden. The trees whipped under the fury of the onrushing wind, and clouds of leaves filled the air. Then the rain came, at first a torrential downpour, slackening to a steady drizzle.

As the rain fell for the first time in weeks, Anne Harris got an irresistible urge to go home. She checked her watch. Ed should be at the bank, so why not?

She parked in the driveway. Rain pattered pleasantly on the umbrella as she sorted through her keys. With a click the door opened, admitting her into a silent, dark house. She put the umbrella in the decorator milk bucket by the front door to drain, wiped her feet on the mat, then walked slowly through the house taking everything in. She didn’t turn on any lights.

She felt as if she were visiting a former life, and she wasn’t sure she liked the feeling.

The kitchen…she went there first. Women always do that, Anne thought wryly. The kitchen is their room, the heart of their domain. Lord knows she had spent enough time in this one. She had coffee here in the morning, watched the morning shows on television, wrote letters and paid bills on the counter, sat here when she talked to friends on the phone, fried eggs and fixed dinner and made cookies and cakes—did all those domestic things, things that meant nothing in and of themselves and yet filled the days as the clock ticked mercilessly and the seasons swept past and lines appeared on her face and her figure thickened and her breasts sagged.

She hadn’t spent her whole life here, of course, just the last two decades of it. When she was young she assumed as an article of faith that if she could find the right man, life with him would be perfect. Perfect! She knew she could love a man, love him totally with every atom of her being, give him a love so pure and perfect that it would become the central event of his life. And of course he would love her the same way.

The songs told her how it would be. Not the lyrics, for the lyrics were just words. The sensual rhythms and harmonies of the music made her soul resonate. That was what love would be—the song of the essence of life.

The reality of the boys she dated had not spoiled it. Gawky, awkward, with pimples and strong, quick hands and ropy, muscular bodies and lying lips—with them she had dabbled in love, sampled the tenderness and mystery. Alas, as her girlfriends reported one by one that they had found it—found it—she knew that she had not. Not with the boys of the groping hands and shuffling feet.

Just when she had begun to despair of ever finding love, there was Ed.

Edward Morton Harris.

She had been a sophomore, he a junior.

They smiled at each other over Cokes; danced at little clubs, mostly to jukeboxes; held hands in the movies as lovers kissed passionately on the screen; listened to Elvis and Chuck Berry and the Four Tops…stood in the darkness near the women’s dorm wrapped in each other’s arms as the snowy wind howled and tore at their coats.

Oh, those had been good days, with the future stretching before them toward an infinite horizon. She had savored every moment, treasured it, because this was love and it was everything she hoped it would be. It made her laugh when she was alone, brought tears of joy to her eyes when she thought of him, made her a complete, total human being in tune with every living thing.

Standing in the house today surrounded by the artifacts of their lives, she remembered all that and wondered where they had lost it.

Lost it…as one loses the memory of a childhood friend or forgets the ecstasy of that first kiss. It slowly fades, then finally slips away as you go about the business of living. One day you reach for it and there is nothing there. Oh, an outline may remain, a shadow, a dim recollection of what once was, but the thing itself is irretrievably gone.

There was a spot of water on the counter near the sink, and without thinking she wiped it away with a dishcloth, then wrung the water from the cloth and draped it over the sink divider.

The dining room walls were decorated with framed photographs, photos of relatives, from way back when. Great-grandmother and great-grandfather, her parents, her husband’s parents, Granny Sarah in her wedding dress, Ruth and a boy outfitted for the prom…

Anne took her time, looked at every photo, then paused to examine the silver and china in the china cabinet, the good stuff used only on special occasions. Well, there were very few of those. Most of this stuff needed washing; all the silver was tarnished.

She moved on. Inspected the laundry room, climbed the stairs and looked in each bedroom, each closet. The rooms were full of things, artifacts, gifts from twenty-two Christmases and dozens of birthdays and souvenirs from vacations and weekend expeditions. Things! Junk, most of it, absolutely useless junk of no conceivable value to any living person.

She felt hollow, empty. Her life was ready for the estate sale and she couldn’t even cry.

After a while she found herself on the main floor again, by the front door. She was reaching for the umbrella, then drew her hand back.

The afternoon that Hayden knocked she had been in the kitchen. Heard the knocking. She came into the foyer and pulled the door open. Hayden had been standing there wearing an impish little grin.

He had looked better at that moment than he ever had before or since. Oh, he had flirted with her for years, and she guessed she had encouraged him. If she hadn’t, he would not have shown up at the front door grinning and telling her he had a few hours.

And of all afternoons, Ed picked that one to have a stomachache.

Oh, well. She wouldn’t have been very good at pretending it never happened.

It did happen. She had opened the door…like this…and Hayden was standing there. Hayden had never, ever come over to the house before when Ed wasn’t home. And he knew darned well Ed wasn’t home that afternoon.

He had smiled. She had greeted him. She could have merely told him to come back when Ed was home and closed the door. But she didn’t. She stepped back and Hayden came in and she closed the door behind him.

Just like that. When she stepped back to let him walk through the door, she had known what was going to happen. A half hour later they were in bed together, as if it were predestined, an event that had to occur because they were trapped in roles the gods had written. So the earth spun on and the fools played out their parts.

Did the gods applaud? Or hiss? Or did they care?

Anne took note of the fact that the rain had stopped. She closed the door and walked toward the den, remembering.

Hayden had suggested a drink. The liquor was kept in the den. Here, in this cabinet above this tiny sink. This morning, since she was standing there, she got ice from the small refrigerator, put it in a glass, and poured a splash of bourbon on it. Just as she had that afternoon.

She stood sipping it, looking around the room. Ed’s gun cabinet, the bookcases, the desk, that damned deer head…

She forgot about Hayden Elkins.

She sat on the sofa and stared at the trophy on the wall. The huge buck stared back with his brown glass eyes.

She hated that deer.

It wasn’t because she had a Bambi complex or thought all trophies grotesque. It was that deer she hated.

Ed killed it the week his father, Lane, died. The first week of December, two years ago. God, what a week from hell that had been!

Dying of cancer, the old man signed himself out of the hospital and went home. Ed’s sister from California fluttered about uselessly, unable to cook, unable to clean, unable to nurse, unable to cope. Ed’s mother wandered around in a senile daze while the wind blew and cold seeped into the nooks and crannies of that old farmhouse and snow reduced visibility outside to a few yards. And she had to handle the whole damned scene by herself because Ed went hunting. From an hour before dawn to well after dark. Three days of that. The storm reached its peak on the third day, and that evening at dusk he had staggered in half frozen with news that he had killed the buck. His father died early the next morning.

She would never forgive him for leaving her in that drafty old house with his dying father and senile mother and drifty, snot-rag sister. Never.

To shoot a damned deer.

Lane had wanted Ed to go, of course. Wanted him to hunt that big buck Lane had seen earlier that fall, but why on earth did Ed ever agree? There’s certainly nothing wrong with humoring a desperately ill person, within reason. But leaving your wife to feed and nurse and hold the bedpan for your dying father while you go hunting?

In all the years she had known Ed, he had never before hunted deer. Pheasants, yes, occasionally, in the fall with some fellow who had dogs. Hayden also went on those expeditions. But not deer. She hadn’t even known Ed owned a rifle. Yet as his father lay dying he stalked the wily stag.

She finished the drink and washed the glass in the sink, dried it and put it away. She didn’t want Ed to know that she had been here.

Then she changed her mind.

She got paper and a pen from the upper right-hand drawer of the desk.

“Why did you hunt that deer?” she wrote. She didn’t sign the note or date it, just left it on the desk.

Anne locked the house on her way out.

When the big Mercedes sporting New York plates pulled in at Doolin’s, Arch Stehlik was sitting on the bench out front visiting with Junior. “Looks like a cabin cruiser,” Arch told Junior, who got to his feet to inspect the thing.

The driver was the only person in the car. He wore a snappy Frank Sinatra fedora, a blue silk suit with contrasting silk tie, and a rather extraordinary pair of alligator shoes. While Junior inspected the car, Arch eyed the shoes. Well, alligator shoes look just like they do on TV, he decided.

“I’m looking for Richard Hudson’s home. I understand he lives nearby.” With that accent, the guy wasn’t from around here. Or anyplace close.

Arch gestured toward Vegan. “The right fork. Up about three-quarters of a mile on the left.”

“You can’t miss it,” Junior tossed in. “They plowed the whole place up, and it’ll be one giant mudhole after that storm this morning.”

The stranger nodded. He glanced at the various signs that festooned Doolin’s facade, then said, “I see that this establishment offers garage services. Are you gentlemen mechanics?”

“I am,” Junior acknowledged. “This other gent is just passin’ the time of day, though he does help out from time to time on a consultin’ basis.”

“When you screw something up,” Arch added.

“Got a problem with this beauty?” Junior asked the stranger, full of interest. The prospect of raising the hood and looking her over real good was enticing.

“How are you on Mercedes transmissions?”

Junior instantly realized that the answer to that question would take some finesse since he had never in his life laid a wrench on any piece of hardware manufactured in Germany. He would certainly like to, yet chances didn’t come along every day. Or year. Or ten years. Not in Eden. The only German iron in the county belonged to Richard Hudson, who took it to a dealer in Capitol City for servicing.

Junior was framing his answer when Arch let fly with “June, we watched that video last week, didn’t we? Mercedes transmissions?”

Junior winced and launched into his oration. “Well, sir, truth is, we don’t work on Mercedes stuff on a regular sorta day-to-day basis, so we don’t. But we do see all kinds of stuff just comin’ and goin’, passin’ through, like, with the usual little problems that afflict good machinery from time to time. I got the Triple-A towin’ contract and hook in stuff made just about ever’where—Italy, Japan…even had a car made in Korea in here last week, one of them there Hun—Hunadays. Got it right back out there rollin’ on down the Eden road in just under two hours, so I did. I’ll be delighted to see if I can figure out what’s wrong with your ride if you’d like to give me a few minutes with ’er.”

While Junior was holding forth, the stranger in the silk suit was eyeing Arch, really getting a good look at the scraggly beard and hair and the clothes soaked with diesel fuel and grease.

“The ol’ gal probably just needs a tender tweak and a pat here and there, so to speak,” Junior added, in what he sensed was a lost cause.

“It’s got me this far,” the stranger said. “Maybe it will get me home. Thanks anyway.”

“That there Hunaday had a transmission problem,” Junior said wistfully, with a last covetous glance at the Mercedes.

“You can get anything on video these days,” Arch said to no one in particular.

The stranger got behind the wheel of the big car.

“Nice-lookin’ ride,” Junior called as the engine came to life.

The Mercedes accelerated away up the Vegan road.

“ ‘Watched the video’…Thanks a lot, Arch.”

“I couldn’t resist. Did you see the look on his face?”

Junior giggled, then he laughed. Arch joined in.

“Let’s rewind that video on Mercedes trannies and watch ’er again,” Arch hooted. “Maybe we’ll learn something this time.”

 

The big man at the general store was right, Morton Sciata acknowledged when he got a look at Richard Hudson’s estate. It was indeed a giant mudhole. In fact, Sciata didn’t think he had ever seen so much mud in one place in his life.

He parked the Mercedes in front of the house. As he surveyed the denuded landscape he spotted a familiar figure sitting about a hundred yards away, right in the middle of the war zone, on the crest of a low ridge. Short, thick and balding, that had to be Hudson. There was someone with him. The two of them were sitting in the mud!

Sciata waited patiently for several minutes for Hudson to look his way. He didn’t. Finally Sciata waved. Then shouted. Hudson and the other person didn’t seem to hear him.

He was going to have to wade through that mud in these good shoes, the only ones he brought.

He took a deep breath and started. The mud looked worse than it was. Only the top one or two inches was goo, but it stuck to his shoes and coated the bottom few inches of his trouser legs within the first five steps.

Damn!

Ten yards into the field he stopped, raised one leg and examined a shoe. Unbelievable! He placed the shoe, and the shod foot it contained, back into the mud, looked at Hudson’s wide back, still hunched over examining something, and swore softly. Taking care not to let his feet slip out from under him, Sciata waded on.

Hudson turned around and looked at Sciata as he approached. The man was literally covered with this brown muck. His clothes were coated; it was on his hands and face, even in his hair. And he was sitting in it! So was the man with him.

“Richard, what in hell are you doing?”

“Hello, Morton. I’m hunting arrowheads. Goofy, show him the one we just found. Morton, this is my neighbor, Goofy. Goofy, this is Morton.”

Sciata merely nodded once at the retarded man and glanced at the offered stone. He didn’t reach for it.

“I’ve been calling you all weekend and leaving messages on your answering machine, Richard. You didn’t call me back.”

“I haven’t checked the answering machine in a while. I’ll get around to it eventually.”

“This won’t wait. I’ve negotiated a movie package for Prince Ziad. I need your approval.”

Richard Hudson nodded, then took the arrowhead from Goofy’s hand, adjusted his glasses and examined it again.

“Perhaps we can go down to your house and I will explain the offer,” Sciata said testily. “I’ve had a long drive down from New York and I’d like to sit on something dry.”

Hudson handed the arrowhead back to Goofy and struggled to his feet. He started walking toward the house. “This morning’s rain was a godsend. The flint really glistens in the mud.” The words were just out of the writer’s mouth when he stopped, bent over and reached for something. He picked up a stone and displayed it to Sciata. “See!”

“Terrific,” Sciata replied acidly. He marched on toward the house while he struggled to keep his temper under control. Halfway there he glanced back over his shoulder to see if Hudson was following. He was moseying along with his eyes down.

Hunting for arrowheads! By all that’s holy—

Sitting on the back porch—Hudson didn’t offer to take him into the house since both men looked like professional gravediggers—Sciata got right to it. “A Hollywood producer”—he named him and noted that Hudson’s face didn’t register a glimmer of recognition—“has offered a million for the right to make one feature-length film, with options for sequels at a million each and a television series at a hundred thousand per episode. And I got you one percent of the gross receipts.”

“Fine.”

Sciata started reciting the producer’s credits from memory, but Hudson cut him off with a wave of his hand. “That’s fine, Morton. You’re the agent. If you negotiated the deal and are happy with it, I’ll sign it. Do you have the papers in your car?”

“Yes.”

Hudson got up and led the way around the house to where the car was parked.

“Don’t you want to read the contract?”

“No.”

“Don’t you want to know who the producer plans to cast?”

“No.”

“Casting is very important, Richard. If they put the wrong actor in the lead role, the value of Prince Ziad as a property will be seriously damaged.”

“I don’t watch movies or television. I wouldn’t recognize a single name.” Hudson stopped by Sciata’s car and turned to face the agent. “Do whatever you think we should do, Mort. I trust your judgment.”

“Richard! You are sitting out there in the middle of a Mayberry mudhole with a congenital idiot looking for worthless rocks when there are millions of dollars at stake!”

Richard Hudson pulled a shirttail from his trousers and used it to clean his glasses. “Goofy’s retarded,” he said, “but he knows projectile points. He worked with Professor—”

“I don’t care if he dug up King Tut!” Sciata roared. “Look at yourself, man.”

“What is your problem, Mort? You think I just shit ideas on demand? You must put something into a brain before you get something out. This is my life—this is what I do. I sit in the mud dreaming up stories; you sit in an office in New York selling them. Don’t tell me how to write them and I won’t tell you how to sell them.”

A car drove into the yard while Hudson was summing up. The driver, a woman, parked it beside the Mercedes and got out. She was in her early twenties, trim, fit, and gorgeous. “Is Goofy here?”

“He’s up in the field, Diamond.”

She smiled. “I’m Crystal.”

Hudson was a bit embarrassed. He had lived here long enough to tell the girls apart. Of course, he wasn’t wearing his glasses. He resumed polishing with his shirttail.

Crystal critically examined the mud on the two men. She winked at Sciata.

“Crystal, this is Morton Sciata,” Hudson said. “Morton, Crystal Ice.”

“Hello,” Morton said, and despite his churlish mood a smile split his face. Beautiful women always had that effect on him.

Richard Hudson finished the job on his glasses and put them on. He left his shirttail hanging. “I think we have a village site up there,” he said to Crystal. “Lots of chips. Oodles. The earth is literally impregnated with them. And we’ve found bits of charcoal from ancient fires.”

Crystal nodded.

“The creek is right on the other side of that low ridge, so they were close to water and yet high enough to avoid the danger of floods.”

“Has Goofy been a help?”

“A big help. I’d like to come get him tomorrow, if I may. And I want to pay him for his assistance.”

“You’ll need to talk to Dad about that. I came to take him home so he can get cleaned up for supper.” She raised her voice and called to the figure still sitting in the mud on the ridge.

While they waited for Goofy to come down the hill, Crystal said to Morton, “You’re from New York?”

“New York City, yes.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a literary agent. I represent Mr. Hudson.”

Crystal Ice turned toward Hudson and stared into his face. “Richard Hudson…,” she breathed. Her eyes widened dramatically. “The Richard Hudson. Oh, my God! And all this time I thought you were just some doofus who inherited money. I never made the connection.” She slapped her forehead. “I never even dreamed…the Richard Hudson.”

A sick look crossed Hudson’s face. “You know my work?”

“Do I? Ha! Sand and Stars, The Arrow of Time, Forbidden Planet…” She rattled off four or five more titles before she paused for breath, then said, “But my very favorite was The Survivors. That is the best book ever written.”

“Didn’t sell many copies,” Hudson muttered. “Even the libraries didn’t buy it.”

Goofy arrived and used Crystal’s car bumper to scrape the worst of the mud off his boots. Then he sat on a newspaper that she arranged over the passenger seat.

Crystal was so excited that she couldn’t contain herself. She bounced up and down, just clearing the ground each time.

“Richard Hudson. Here! In Eden!”

She grasped Hudson’s hand and pumped it vigorously, looked at him full face one more time, then threw herself into the driver’s seat of her car. She leaned out the open window. “I’ll bring Goof back in the morning. And I’ll bring the books for you to sign. I think I have them all.”

The two men stood watching in silence until the car disappeared around the curve, going toward Vegan.

“I didn’t know that no one around here knew you were a writer,” Sciata said.

Hudson gestured helplessly. “Somehow what I do for a living never came up.”

“Wait until they find out that you’re Rip Hays and write Prince Ziad.”

“They had better not find out,” Hudson said forcefully. “I’ll bet Crystal is the only person in the Eden country who has ever read a Richard Hudson book—the publishers couldn’t give the books away. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten! How frustrated we used to get? For heaven’s sake, the prison libraries refused to accept them as donations.”

“I always liked your stuff.”

“You were the only person in the industry who never lost faith.”

“Those days are behind us, Richard. We need to—”

“I’ll sign any contract you send me, Mort. You’re a good literary agent, maybe the best. I’m just a scribbler who finally got lucky. The money hasn’t transformed me into Stephen King. I’m still the little fat nerd who ‘writes weird stuff for the intellectually challenged.’ Remember that review?”

“I remember,” Sciata acknowledged.

“You do the deals and I’ll sign them.”

“I’m sorry I told that girl who you were, Richard.”

“You didn’t know. Nothing to apologize for. But don’t come back.”

 

A frosty silence had the Elkins household in its grip. The adults spoke to each other only when necessary. Young Billy Joe was striving manfully to fill the void; he chattered incessantly, first at one adult, then another, always full of questions.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” his father snarled at him one evening.

“What kid wouldn’t?” Billy Joe chirped. “Two moms. Wow! Situations like this don’t happen every day. In fact, none of my friends has ever even heard of another family like ours. I want you to know how grateful I am. Very few fathers would expose themselves to the public ridicule necessary to make it happen. That mine would makes me a unique young man, and I deeply appreciate it.”

We will skip Hayden’s reply, which, unfortunately, was surly.

So when Hayden arrived home from the office this evening, he was shocked when his first wife told him, “Don’t put on your grubby clothes, dear. We’re having guests for dinner.”

“Are you joking? Guests?”

“Henry and Eufala Davis are coming over. I invited them.”

“The Davises? Have you gone mad?”

“I have always managed this family’s social duties. We ate at their home last month. We owe them a dinner.”

“Are you aware that that poisonous witch Eufala swore out a complaint against me for bigamy?”

“That sounds like Eufala,” Matilda acknowledged serenely. “She was always so enthusiastic.” She glanced at her only husband. “You might wish to change that shirt, put on a fresh one.”

“Is Anne going to attend this production?”

“I believe so. I mentioned it to her this afternoon, and she just nodded. Of course, she knows the Davises quite well, too.”

That certainly sounded like Anne the ice queen, Hayden told himself as he stormed up the stairs to his bedroom. But what in the world had gotten into Matilda? Even as this question zipped through his synapses, he dismissed it. Really, he didn’t understand either of the women in his life. Who the hell could?

Luckily he had a bedroom to himself. It was almost as if the gods on Olympus took gleeful note years ago when he told the architect that he wanted four bedrooms in the house, not three. Now they were making sure that little wart Hayden Elkins needed all four.

Yes, Anne Harris was the ice queen. That was her attraction. Do you have what it takes to warm her up? So he had tried, and tried and tried and got nowhere. For years. Then…

That irony he understood. You always want it until you have it, then you don’t want it anymore. They ought to engrave that on the lintel of the Capitol in Washington.

 

When Eufala Davis got the call from Matilda inviting her to dinner this evening, she initially refused, making some inane excuse. Five minutes later she got a call from the new minister, Cecile Carcano. After a long, long conversation with Cecile, she called Matilda back and accepted her invitation. Then she called her good friend the widow Wilfred with the news.

“Henry and I are going to dinner tonight at the Elkinses,” she said firmly.

“Oh, my heavens, Eufala!”

“It’s our Christian duty, Twila. I’ve just had a long talk with Cecile Carcano and she is of the same opinion. We owe a duty of support to poor Matilda.”

“My word…,” was all the widow Wilfred could manage.

“Henry doesn’t know we’re going yet—he’s still loafing across the street at Doolin’s—but I am sure he will agree.”

“I see,” said the widow Wilfred, who knew instinctively that Henry Davis would have no say in the matter. He was going and that was that.

They chattered on about how Matilda was bearing up under the strain and closed with comments upon the weather. Widow Wilfred didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to tell Eufala about the wonderful dinner she had had Monday night with Elijah Murphy. She knew Eufala’s opinion of Elijah Murphy.

It had been so long since Twila Wilfred had the opportunity to do for a man: fix the dinner, make the coffee, sit at the table afterward and talk about little things. She enjoyed every minute of it.

And Eufala would never believe that Elijah—she thought of him as Elijah now—had been the perfect gentleman all evening. He had praised her roast to the skies, said it was the best he had ever eaten. He had savored the coffee, eaten two pieces of cake and insisted on helping wash the dishes. After dinner he sat with her on the porch until it got too chilly; then he had built her a fire before he went home.

Eufala would never understand. She had Henry, and to hear her tell it, Henry Davis was the be-all and end-all in men. Even if he was, he was only one man, and Eufala had him.

Elijah—well, of course he had had a rough life. They hadn’t really gotten into that Monday night, and the widow Wilfred was pretty sure she didn’t want to get into it in the future, but she just knew. Underneath it all, he was a good man. That was as plain as the nose on your face.

The widow Wilfred relaxed on her sofa and sighed contentedly.

 

There was no contented sighing going on at the Elkins house.

Matilda was in the kitchen juggling pots and saucepans in a valiant effort to deliver everything to the table at the same time reasonably warm. She was calm, extraordinarily calm, the kind of calm that physicians usually see only after an overdose of tranquilizers. Yet she wasn’t on medication. She was calm as only a woman can be who has decided on a course of action that will settle the score.

Had Hayden understood his wife’s state of mind, he would have been even more upset than he was. As the dinner hour approached, he paced the den like a prisoner awaiting his moment with a firing squad.

Anne? She was in her room upstairs smoking a cigarette, quite unconcerned about the impending social crisis. She couldn’t imagine why Matilda would want to spend two hours with Henry and Eufala Davis, who were at least as old as Matilda’s parents and nosy prigs to boot. The Davises were precisely the kind of people Anne Harris purposely avoided. Since she didn’t understand Matilda’s reasons, she dismissed the problem. And Matilda.

Billy Joe had been sent to his room by his father when he arrived home from football practice. He put on clean clothes and sat looking out the window, waiting for the Davises to arrive.

Parents! Whooo boy!

The biology teacher had assured the class just the other day that parents were an absolute necessity, but you had to wonder. Was sex the only way nature could devise to bring the higher orders’ next generation into the world?

Two weeks ago Billy Joe would have punched anyone for even suggesting that his mother and father could ever get themselves into a grotesquely embarrassing sexual fix. But it had happened. Which proved to Billy Joe that he really didn’t know his parents very well after all.

Life is mighty strange, Billy Joe decided. The older you get the less you know.

 

When Hayden opened the door to admit his guests, he had a drink in his hand. Henry Davis gave him a frosty look of disapproval.

“Alcohol, counselor?”

Hayden had never particularly liked Henry Davis, who operated under the firm conviction that his particular brand of middle-class mores was dictated by the tenets of the New Testament. And he was in no mood for Davis’ prudery tonight; he surrendered to a wicked impulse and said, “Haven’t you heard, Henry? The Dead Sea Scrolls say that Jesus drank an occasional martini and enjoyed a good cigar.”

The blasphemy was wasted on Henry Davis, who with his wife stood mesmerized watching Anne Harris descend the stairs wearing some diaphanous pink boudoir thing that Ed bought her years ago for romantic evenings at home.

“Good evening, everyone,” Anne said gaily.

Hayden took one look at Anne and spilled his drink.

“Oh, darling, let me call Matilda,” Anne gushed. “She needs to clean that up before it stains the carpet.” She floated toward the kitchen calling, “Matilda…Matilda…”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Hayden Elkins said.

 

“Will you return thanks, Reverend Davis?” Matilda asked when they were seated at the table in the dining room.

Henry Davis prided himself on his ability to rise to any occasion with an appropriate, impromptu prayer, not too long, not too short, but long and solid enough that all present knew they had been prayed over by a pro and God had probably paid attention. Yet Matilda’s request was still hanging in the air tonight when he realized his mind was blank.

“Dear Lord,” he began, trusting that something would come. It didn’t. He racked his brain. Dinner…a dinner prayer…He was surrounded by flagrant, unrepentant sinners, and the whole situation was just too much. “Thank you,” he managed, and finally, when he realized that going on was impossible, “Amen.”

“That’s the way I like ’em,” Billy Joe remarked. “Short and sweet.”

Eufala sensed her husband’s agony and looked at him with sympathy as Anne said, “How perceptive you are, Billy Joe. That was an extraordinarily eloquent statement of the Christian message by the Reverend Davis. Never have I heard it summed up so well, or so succinctly.”

Matilda’s composure was unshaken. “I think you will enjoy these chops,” she told everyone. “The recipe was my mother’s and is Hayden’s favorite.” She asked him to serve the entrée. Once she bustled back to the kitchen to get more large spoons. Then she settled in to savor her meal with startling equanimity as the Other Woman flirted lightly with Hayden and Henry and doted on Billy Joe as if he were her pampered son.

Alas, Billy Joe was not on good behavior this evening. He called both women “Mom” and displayed horrible table manners. No one corrected him. Twice he reached across Eufala’s plate and snagged something that he should have asked for. When he told Henry, “The kids at school call Dad ‘the Legal Stud.’ His adventures have done thrilling things for my social life,” Anne laughed indulgently and patted him on the hand.

Hayden left the table momentarily and returned with a large drink in a water tumbler. He concentrated on his food, yet he ate little. His color wasn’t very good, Eufala noticed.

Somehow—thinking about it afterward, the Reverend Davis was not sure just how—the subject of religion came up. Due to the tense social situation in which the diners found themselves, it was a wonder that they allowed the conversation to take this turn, but once it did, Anne Harris jumped in.

“Tell me, Reverend,” she asked sweetly, “do you regard the Bible as allegory or literal truth?”

Only a person who rarely visited the Eden Chapel during his long tenure could have asked that, Reverend Davis reflected sourly. Sensing a pitfall, he weighed his words before he spoke. “The Bible is the revealed word of God.” That statement seemed safe enough and had truth to commend it.

“I’m troubled by a story in Genesis,” Anne said earnestly. “The Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. God put the tree there, and Adam and Eve, yet he told them that they could eat anything in the Garden except the fruit of that tree, which was forbidden.”

“That is the story, as I recall,” Reverend Davis said carefully.

“My problem,” Anne said, making a deprecating gesture that didn’t fool Davis for a second, “is that God comes off as terribly naive in that story. One is left with the impression that He was surprised that humans were attracted by the forbidden.”

“Sin does seem to tempt people,” Reverend Davis allowed, unwilling to address the question. He couldn’t help himself—his gaze momentarily went to his host, who was staring morosely at the liquid in the tumbler in his hands.

“Surely He knew that forbidding the fruit to man was an absolute guarantee that it would be eaten,” Anne stated, and jabbed the air with her fork. “As Mark Twain pointed out, the mistake was in forbidding the fruit. If He had forbidden the snake, they would have eaten that instead.”

“The apple makes it a better story,” Billy Joe noted, “with a certain Snow White flavor. Kids in Sunday school would gag over the snake, and the animal rights people would come unhinged.”

“You are so perceptive,” Anne murmured, smiling, then again took aim at Reverend Davis. “So we are left with two unpleasant alternatives: Either God is hopelessly naive, or the author of the book of Genesis horribly mutilated the revealed truth.”

Before Reverend Davis could decide which horn of this dilemma he liked the least, Anne rolled on. “If God is as naive as he is portrayed in Genesis, then man is just a crude, flawed experimental prototype, created so God could learn how to improve him in the next iteration. On the other hand, if the Garden of Eden story is mangled, we must reexamine the philosophical basis for the concept of sin. What if God intended for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit? Expected them to eat it? Wanted them to eat it?”

“That story forms the basis for the entire concept of original sin,” Matilda remarked, “and the traditional view of woman as temptress and man as morally weak when he surrenders to temptation.”

“We humans spend our lives apologizing for and confessing to being human,” Anne said to her, “and I am not sure that we should.”

As Reverend Davis cast about for a graceful way out of this conversation, Anne continued, quite innocently, “I am sure God is wiser than that quaint old tale would have us believe. I think He knew Adam and Eve would eat the fruit. And when they did, I doubt that He ejected them from the Garden of Eden—to do so would have been equivalent to punishing a child for eating candy that one left near his plate.”

“I have always been troubled by God’s sentence for Eve’s transgression,” Matilda said. “As her punishment, man should rule over her.”

“Obviously a translation or scrivener’s error,” Anne said firmly. “No man in history has been willing to accept responsibility for a woman’s conduct, not even Adam. When God questioned him about eating the forbidden fruit, he blamed his wife.”

“That was the only part of the story that struck me as probably true,” Matilda said. Billy Joe joined his two mothers in laughter.

When she and Anne were once again more or less under control, Matilda suggested, “Perhaps we are still living in the Garden. What do you think, Reverend Davis?”

Eufala rescued her husband, to his intense relief.

“We know Billy Joe has homework, Henry has several shut-ins he must visit this evening, we don’t want to intrude…” The Davises arose from the table and scurried for the living room to retrieve their wraps.

“Maybe He should have told them not to eat the snake,” Billy Joe mused, scratching his head.

“It was so lovely, Matilda,” Eufala called to the hostess, who was still extricating herself from the table. “Thank you.” Then they dashed for the door.

As Henry Davis piloted his car down the driveway, Anne and Matilda stood on the front porch waving good-bye. Anne looked quite stunning with the breeze whipping the filmy material of her peignoir.

Back inside, Hayden Elkins faced them. “You two should be ashamed. Questioning the basis of that old man’s faith—I find that offensive.”

“His faith is pretty shallowly rooted if our comments can shake it,” Anne retorted. “What I find offensive is the concept that men sin because they are weak and women sin because they are wicked.”

She turned and ascended the stairs.

 

Eufala Davis called the widow Wilfred the instant she got home.

“Twila, you should have seen her. To suffer as she is suffering and yet never turn a hair…to endure what she is enduring and be unable to express any of it for fear of coming apart—never in my life have I seen such grace! I tell you, Matilda Elkins is a saint. A saint!”