1.
Later, Johnny supposed that the reason he ended up finally making love to Sarah - almost five years to the day after the fair - had a lot to do with the visit of Richard Dees, the man from inside View. The reason he finally weakened and called Sarah and invited her to come and visit was little more than a wistful urge to have someone nice to come to call and take the nasty taste out of his mouth. Or so he told himself.
He called her in Kennebunk and got the former roommate, who said Sarah would be right with him. The phone clunked down and there was a moment of silence when he contemplated (but not very seriously) just hanging up and closing the books for good. Then Sarah's voice was in his ear.
'Johnny? Is it you?'
'The very same.'
'How are you?'
'Fine. How's by you?'
'I'm fine,' she said. 'Glad you called. I... didn't know if you would.'
'Still sniffin that wicked cocaine?'
'No, I'm on heroin now.'
'You got your boy with you?'
'I sure do. Don't go anywhere without him.'
'Well, why don't the two of you truck on out here some day before you have to go back up north?'
'I'd like that, Johnny.' she said warmly.
'Dad's working in Westbrook and I'm chief cook and bottlewasher. He gets home around four-thirty and we eat around five-thirty. You're welcome to stay for dinner, but be warned: all my best dishes use Franco-Amencan spaghetti as their base.'
She giggled. 'Invitation accepted. Which day is best?'
'What about tomorrow or the day after, Sarah?'
'Tomorrow's fine,' she said after the briefest of hesitations. 'See you then.'
'Take care, Sarah.'
'You too.'
He hung up thoughtfully, feeling both excited and guilty - for no good reason at all. But your mind went where it wanted to, didn't it? And where his mind wanted to go now was to examine possibilities maybe best left unconsidered.
Well, she knows the thing she needs to know. She knows what time dad comes home - what else does she need to know?
And his mind answered itself: What you going to do if she shows up at noon?
Nothing, he answered, and didn't wholly believe it. Just thinking about Sarah, the set of her lips, the small, upward tilt of her green eyes - those were enough to make him feel weak and sappy and a little desperate.
Johnny went out to the kitchen and slowly began to put together this night's supper, not so important, just for two. Father and son batching it. It hadn't been all that bad. He was still healing. He and his father had talked about the four-and-a-half years he had missed, about his mother - working around that carefully but always seeming to come a little closer to the center, in a tightening spiral. Not needing to understand, maybe, but needing to come to terms. No, it hadn't been that bad. It was a way to finish putting things together. For both of them. But it would be over in January when he returned to Cleaves Mills to teach. He had gotten his half-year contract from Dave Pelsen the week before, had signed it and sent it back. What would his father do then? Go on, Johnny supposed. People had a way of doing that, just going on, pushing through with no particular drama, no big drumrolls. He would get down to visit Herb as often as he could, every weekend, if that felt like the right thing to do. So many things had gotten strange so fast that all he could do was feel his way slowly along, groping like a blind man in an unfamiliar room.
He put the roast in the oven, went into the living room, snapped on the TV, then snapped it off again. He sat down and thought about Sarah. The baby, he thought The baby will be our chaperon if she comes early. So that was all right, after all. All bases covered.
But his thoughts were still long and uneasily speculative.
2.
She came at quarter past twelve the next day, wheeling a snappy little red Pinto into the driveway and parking it, getting out, looking tall and beautiful, her dark blonde hair caught in the mild October wind.
'Hi, Johnny! ' she called, raising her hand.
'Sarah!' He came down to meet her; she lifted her face and he kissed her cheek lightly.
'Just let me get the emperor,' she said, opening the passenger door.
'Can I help?'
'Naw, we get along just fine together, don't we, Denny? Come on, kiddo.' Moving deftly, she unbuckled the straps holding a pudgy little baby in the car seat. She lifted him out. Denny stared around the yard with wild, solemn interest, and then his eyes fixed on Johnny and held there. He smiled.
'Vig!' Denny said, and waved both hands.
'I think he wants to go to you,' Sarah said. 'Very unusual. Denny has his father's Republican sensibilities -he's rather standoffish. Want to hold him?'
'Sure,' Johnny said, a little doubtfully.
Sarah grinned. 'He won't break and you won't drop him,' she said, and handed Denny over. 'If you did, he'd probably bounce right up like Silly Putty. Disgustingly fat baby.
'Vun bunk! ' Denny said, curling one arm nonchalantly around Johnny's neck and looking comfortably at his mother.
'It really is amazing,' Sarah said. 'He never takes to people like... Johnny? Johnny?'
When the baby put his arm around Johnny's neck, a confused rush of feelings had washed over him like mild warm water. There was nothing dark, nothing troubling. Everything was very simple. There was no concept of the future in the baby's thoughts. No feeling of trouble. No sense of past unhappiness. And on words, only strong images: warmth, dryness, the mother, the man that was himself.
'Johnny?' She was looking at him apprehensively.
'Hmmmm?'
'Is everything all right?'
She's asking me about Denny, he realized. Is everything all right with Denny? Do you see trouble? Problems?
'Everything's fine,' he said. 'We can go inside if you want, but I usually roost on the porch. It'll be time to crouch around the stove all day long soon enough.'
'I think the porch will be super. And Denny looks as if he'd like to try out the yard. Great yard, he says. Right, kiddo?' She ruffled his hair and Denny laughed.
'He'll be okay?'
'As long as he doesn't try to eat any of those wood-chips.'
'I've been splitting stove-lengths,' Johnny said, setting Denny down as carefully as a Ming vase. 'Good exercise.'
'How are you? Physically?'
'I think,' Johnny said, remembering the heave-ho he had given Richard Dees a few days ago, 'that I'm doing as well as could be expected.'
'That's good. You were kinda low the last time I saw you.
Johnny nodded. 'The operations.'
'Johnny?'
He glanced at her and again felt that odd mix of speculation, guilt, and something like anticipation in his viscera. Her eyes were on his face, frankly and openly. 'Yeah?'
'Do you remember... about the wedding ring?' He nodded.
'It was there. Where you said it would be. I threw it away.'
'Did you?' He was not completely surprised.
'I threw it away and never mentioned it to Walt.' She shook her head. 'And I don't know why. It's bothered me ever since.
'Don't let it.'
They were standing on the steps, facing each other. Color had come up in her cheeks, but she didn't drop her eyes.
'There's something I'd like to finish,' she said simply. 'Something we never had the chance to finish.'
'Sarah ...' he began, and stopped. He had absolutely no idea what to say next. Below them, Denny tottered six steps and then sat down hard. He crowed, not put out of countenance at all.
'Yes,' she said. 'I don't know if it's right or wrong. I love Walt. He's a good man, easy to love. Maybe the one thing I know is a good man from a bad one. Dan - that guy I went with in college - was one of the bad guys. You set my mouth for the other kind, Johnny. Without you, I never could have appreciated Walt for what he is.'
'Sarah, you don't have .....
'I do have to,' Sarah contradicted. Her voice was low and intense. 'Because things like this you can only say once. And you either get it wrong or right, it's the end either way, because it's too hard to ever try to say again.' She looked at him pleadingly. 'Do you understand?'
'Yes, I suppose I do.'
'I love you, Johnny,' she said. 'I never stopped. I've tried to tell myself that it was an act of God that split us up. I don't know. Is a bad hot dog an act of God? Or two kids dragging on a back road in the middle of the night? All I want ...' Her voice had taken on a peculiar flat emphasis that seemed to beat its way into the cool October afternoon like an artisan's small hammer into thin and precious foil, '... all I want is what was taken from us.' Her voice faltered. She looked down. 'And I want it with all my heart, Johnny. Do you?'
'Yes,' he said. He put his arms out and was confused when she shook her head and stepped away.
'Not in front of Denny,' she said. 'It's stupid, maybe, but that would be a little bit too much like public infidelity. I want everything, Johnny.' Her color rose again, and her pretty blush began to feed his own excitement. 'I want you to hold me and kiss me and love me,' she said. Her voice faltered, nearly broke. 'I think it's wrong, but I can't help it. It's wrong but it's right. It's fair.'
He reached out One finger and brushed away a tear that was moving slowly down her cheek.
'And it's only this once, isn't it?'
She nodded. 'Once will have to put paid to everything. Everything that would have been, if things hadn't gone wrong.' She looked up, her eyes brighter green than ever, swimming with tears. 'Can we put paid to everything with only the one time, Johnny?'
'No,' he said, smiling. 'But we can try, Sarah.'
She looked fondly down at Denny, who was trying to climb up onto the chopping block without much success. 'He'll sleep,' she said.
3.
They sat on the porch and watched Denny play in the yard under the high blue sky. There was no hurry, no impatience between them, but there was a growing electricity that they both felt. She had opened her coat and sat on the porch glider in a powder-blue wool dress, her ankles crossed, her hair blown carelessly on her shoulders where the wind had spilled it. The blush never really left her face. And high white clouds fled across the sky, west to east.
They talked of inconsequential things - there was no hurry. For the first time since he had come out of it, Johnny felt that time was not his enemy. Time had provided them with this little air pocket in exchange for the main flow of which they had been robbed, and it would be here for as long as they needed it. They talked about people who had been married, about a girl from Cleaves Mills who had won a Merit scholarship, about Maine's independent governor. Sarah said he looked like Lurch on the old Addams Family show and thought like Herbert Hoover, and they both laughed over that.
'Look at him,' Sarah said, nodding toward Denny.
He was sitting on the grass by Vera Smith's ivy trellis, his thumb in his mouth, looking at them sleepily.
She got his car-bed out of the Pinto's back seat.
'Will he be okay on the porch?' she asked Johnny. 'It's so mild, I'd like to have him nap in the fresh air.'
'He'll be fine on the porch,' Johnny said.
She Set the bed in the shade, popped him into it, and pulled the two blankets up to his chin. 'Sleep, baby,' Sarah said.
He smiled at her and promptly closed his eyes.
'Just like that?' Johnny asked.
'Just like that,' she agreed. She stepped close to him and put her arms around his neck. Quite clearly he could hear the faint rustle of her slip beneath her dress. 'I'd like you to kiss me,' she said calmly. 'I've waited five years for you to kiss me again, Johnny.'
He put his arms around her waist and kissed her gently. Her lips parted.
'Oh, Johnny,' she said against his neck. 'I love you.'
'I love you too, Sarah.'
'Where do we go?' she asked, stepping away from him. Her eyes were as dear and dark as emeralds now. 'Where?'
4.
He spread the faded army blanket, which was old but clean, on the straw of the second loft. The smell was fragrant and sweet. High above them there was the mysterious coo and flutter of the barn swallows, and then they settled down again. There was a small, dusty window which looked down on the house and porch. Sarah wiped a clean place on the glass and looked down at Denny.
'It's okay?' Johnny asked.
'Yes. Better here than in the house. That would have been like...' She shrugged.
'Making my dad a part of it?'
'Yes. This is between us.'
'Our business.'
'Our business,' she agreed. She lay on her stomach, her face turned to one side on the faded blanket, her legs bent at the knee. She pushed her shoes off, one by one. 'Unzip me, Johnny.'
He knelt beside her and pulled the zipper down. The sound was loud in the stillness. Her back was the color of coffee with cream against the whiteness of her slip. He kissed her between the shoulder blades and she shivered.
'Sarah,' he murmured.
'What?'
'I have to tell you something.'
'What?'
'The doctor made a mistake during one of those operations and gelded me.'
She punched him on the shoulder. 'Same old Johnny,' she said. 'And you had a friend once who broke his neck on the crack-the-whip at Topsham Fair.'
'Sure,' he said.
Her hand touched him like silk, moving gently up and down.
'It doesn't feel like they did anything terminal to you,' she said. Her luminous eyes searched his. 'Not at all. Shall we look and see?'
There was the sweet smell of the hay. Time spun out. There was the rough feel of the army blanket, the smooth feel of her flesh, the naked reality of her. Sinking into her was like sinking into an old dream that had never been quite forgotten.
'Oh, Johnny, my dear ...' Her voice in rising excitement. Her hips moving in a quickening tempo. Her voice was far away. The touch of her hair was like fire on his shoulder and chest. He plunged his face deeply into it, losing himself in that dark-blonde darkness.
Time spinning out in the sweet smell of hay. The rough-textured blanket. The sound of the old barn creaking gently, like a ship, in the October wind. Mild white light coming in through the roof chinks, catching motes of chaff in half a hundred pencil-thin sunbeams. Motes of chaff dancing and revolving.
She cried out. At some point she cried out his name, again and again and again, like a chant. Her fingers dug into him like spurs. Rider and ridden. Old wine decanted at last, a fine vintage.
Later they sat by the window, looking out into the yard. Sarah slipped her dress on over bare flesh and left him for a little bit. He sat alone, not thinking, content to watch her reappear in the window, smaller, and cross the yard to the porch. She bent over the baby bed and readjusted the blankets. She came back, the wind blowing her hair out behind her and tugging playfully at the hem of her dress.
'He'll sleep another half hour,' she said.
'Will he?' Johnny smiled. 'Maybe I will, too.'
She walked her bare toes across his belly. 'You better not.'
And so again, and this time she was on top, almost in an attitude of prayer, her head bent, her hair swinging forward and obscuring her face. Slowly. And then it was over.
5.
'Sarah...'
'No, Johnny. Better not say it. Time's up.'
'I was going to say that you're beautiful.'
'Am I?'
'You are,' he said softly. 'Dear Sarah.'
'Did we put paid to everything?' she asked him.
Johnny smiled. 'Sarah, we did the best we could.'
6.
Herb didn't seem surprised to see Sarah when he got home from Westbrook. He welcomed her, made much of the baby, and then scolded Sarah for not bringing him down sooner.
'He has your color and complexion,' Herb said. 'And I think he's going to have your eyes, when they get done changing.'
'if only he has his father's brains,' Sarah said. She had put an apron on over the blue wool dress. Outside, the sun was going down. Another twenty minutes and it would be dark.
'You know, the cooking is supposed to be Johnny's job,' Herb said.
'Couldn't stop her. She put a gun to my head.'
'Well, maybe it's all for the best,' Herb said. 'Everything you make comes out tasting like Franco-American spaghetti.'
Johnny shied a magazine at him and Denny laughed, a high, piercing sound that seemed to fill the house.
Can he see? Johnny wondered. It feels like it's written all over my face. And then a startling thought came to him as he watched his father digging in the entryway closet for a box of Johnny's old toys that he had never let Vera give away: Maybe he understands.
They ate. Herb asked Sarah what Walt was doing in Washington and she told them about the conference he was attending, which had to do with Indian land claims. The Republican meetings were mostly wind-testing exercises, she said.
'Most of the people he's meeting with think that if Reagan is nominated over Ford next year, it's going to mean the death of the party.' Sarah said. 'And if the Grand Old Party dies, that means Walt won't be able to run for Bill Cohen's seat in 1978 when Cohen goes after Bill Hathaway's Senate seat.
Herb was watching Denny eat string beans, seriously, one by one, using all six of his teeth on them. 'I don't think Cohen will be able to wait until '78 to get in the Senate. He'll run against Muskie next year.'
'Walt says Bill Cohen's not that big a dope,' Sarah said. 'He'll wait. Walt says his own chance is coming, and I'm starting to believe him.'
After supper they sat in the living room, and the talk turned away from politics. They watched Denny play with the old wooden cars and trucks that a much younger Herb Smith had made for his own son over a quarter of a century ago. A younger Herb Smith who had been married to a tough, good-humored woman who would sometimes drink a bottle of Black Label beer in the evening. A man with no gray in his hair and nothing but the highest hopes for his son.
He does understand, Johnny thought, sipping his coffee. Whether he knows what went on between Sarah and me this afternoon, whether or not he suspects what might have gone on, he understands the basic cheat. You can't change it or rectify it, the best you can do is try to come to terms. This afternoon she and I consummated a marriage that never was. And tonight he's playing with his grandson.
He thought of the Wheel of Fortune, slowing, stopping.
House number. Everyone loses.
Gloom was trying to creep up, a dismal sense of finality, and he pushed it away. This wasn't the time; he wouldn't let it be the time.
By eight-thirty Denny had begun to get scratchy and cross and Sarah said, 'Time for us to go, folks. He can suck a bottle on our way back to Kennebunk. About three miles from here, he'll have corked off. Thanks for having us.' Her eyes, brilliant green, found Johnny's for a moment.
'Our pleasure entirely,' Herb said, standing up. 'Right, Johnny?'
'Right,' he said. 'Let me carry that car-bedout for you, Sarah.'
At the door. Herb kissed the top of Denny's head (and Denny grabbed Herb's nose in his chubby fist and honked it hard enough to make Herb's eyes water) and Sarah's cheek. Johnny carried the car-bed down to the red Pinto and Sarah gave him the keys so he could put everything in the back.
When he finished, she was standing by the driver's door, looking at him. 'It was the best we could do,' she said, and smiled a little. But the brilliance of her eyes told him the tears were close again.
'It wasn't so bad at all,' Johnny said.
'We'll stay in touch?'
'I don't know, Sarah. Will we?'
'No, I suppose not. It would be too easy, wouldn't it?'
'Pretty easy, yes.
She stepped close and stretched to kiss his cheek. He could smell her hair, clean and fragrant.
'Take care,' she whispered. 'I'll think about you.'
'Be good, Sarah,' he said, and touched her nose.
She turned then, got in behind the wheel, a smart young matron whose husband was on the way up. I doubt like hell if they'll be driving a Pinto next year, Johnny thought.
The lights came on, then the little sewing machine motor roared. She raised a hand to him and then she was pulling out of the driveway. Johnny stood by the chopping block, hands in his pockets, and watched her go. Something in his heart seemed to have closed. It was not a major feeling. That was the worst of it - it wasn't a major feeling at all.
He watched until the taillights were out of sight and then he climbed the porch steps and went back into the house. His dad was sitting in the big easy chair in the living room. The TV was off. The few toys he had found in the closet were scattered on the rug and he was looking at them.
'Good to see Sarah,' Herb said. 'Did you and she have ...' there was the briefest, most minute hesitation
- 'a nice visit?'
'Yes,' Johnny said.
'She'll be down again?'
'No, I don't think so.'
He and his father were looking at each other.
'Well now, maybe that's for the best,' Herb said finally.
'Yes. Maybe so.'
'You played with these toys,' Herb said, getting down on his knees and beginning to gather them up. 'I gave a bunch of them to Lottie Gedreau when she had her twins, but I knew I had a few of them left. I saved a few back.'
He put them back in the box one at a time, turning each of them over in his hands, examining them. A race car. A bulldozer. A police car. A small hook-and-ladder truck from which most of the red paint had been worn away where a small hand would grip. He took them back to the entryway closet and put them away.
Johnny didn't see Sarah Hazlett again for three years.