Full Dark, No Stars

He gazed at me, troubled. Dark. I hated to darken my son in such a way, yet part of me believed then and believes stil that it was not I who did it to him, but she.

“And think,” I said. “If she goes to Omaha, she’l dig herself an even deeper pit in Sheol. If she takes you, you’l become a city boy—”

“I never wil !” He cried this so loudly that crows took wing from the fenceline and swirled away into the blue sky like charred paper.

“You’re young and you wil ,” I said. “You’l forget al this… you’l learn city ways… and begin digging your own pit.”

If he had returned by saying that murderers had no hope of joining their victims in Heaven, I might have been stumped. But either his theology did not stretch so far or he didn’t want to consider such

things. And is there Hel , or do we make our own on earth? When I consider the last eight years of my life, I plump for the latter.

“How?” he asked. “When?”

“How?” he asked. “When?”

I told him.

“And we can go on living here after?”

I said we could.

“And it won’t hurt her?”

“No,” I said. “It wil be quick.”

He seemed satisfied. And stil it might not have happened, if not for Arlette herself.

We settled on a Saturday night about halfway through a June that was as fine as any I can remember. Arlette sometimes took a glass of wine on Summer evenings, although rarely more. There was

good reason for this. She was one of those people who can never take two glasses without taking four, then six, then the whole bottle. And another bottle, if there is another. “I have to be very careful, Wilf. I like it too much. Luckily for me, my wil power is strong.”

That night we sat on the porch, watching the late light linger over the fields, listening to the somnolent reeeeee of the crickets. Henry was in his room. He had hardly touched his supper, and as Arlette and I sat on the porch in our matching rockers with the MA and PA seat-cushions, I thought I heard a faint sound that could have been retching. I remember thinking that when the moment came, he would

not be able to go through with it. His mother would wake up bad-tempered the fol owing morning with a “hang-over” and no knowledge of how close she had come to never seeing another Nebraska dawn.

Yet I moved forward with the plan. Because I was like one of those Russian nesting dol s? Perhaps. Perhaps every man is like that. Inside me was the Conniving Man, but inside the Conniving Man was a

Hopeful Man. That fel ow died sometime between 1922 and 1930. The Conniving Man, having done his damage, disappeared. Without his schemes and ambitions, life has been a hol ow place.

I brought the bottle out to the porch with me, but when I tried to fil her empty glass, she covered it with her hand. “You needn’t get me drunk to get what you want. I want it, too. I’ve got an itch.” She spread her legs and put her hand on her crotch to show where the itch was. There was a Vulgar Woman inside her—perhaps even a Harlot—and the wine always let her loose.

“Have another glass anyway,” I said. “We’ve something to celebrate.”

She looked at me warily. Even a single glass of wine made her eyes wet (as if part of her was weeping for al the wine it wanted and could not have), and in the sunset light they looked orange, like the eyes of a jack-o’-lantern with a candle inside it.

“There wil be no suit,” I told her, “and there wil be no divorce. If the Farrington Company can afford to pay us for my 80 as wel as your father’s 100, our argument is over.”

For the first and only time in our troubled marriage, she actual y gaped. “What are you saying? Is it what I think you’re saying? Don’t fool with me, Wilf!”

“I’m not,” said the Conniving Man. He spoke with hearty sincerity. “Henry and I have had many conversations about this—”

“You’ve been thick as thieves, that’s true,” she said. She had taken her hand from the top of her glass and I took the opportunity to fil it. “Always in the hay-mow or sitting on the woodpile or with your heads together in the back field. I thought it was about Shannon Cotterie.” A sniff and a head-toss. But I thought she looked a little wistful, as wel . She sipped at her second glass of wine. Two sips of a second glass and she could stil put the glass down and go to bed. Four and I might as wel hand her the bottle. Not to mention the other two I had standing by.

“No,” I said. “We haven’t been talking about Shannon.” Although I had seen Henry holding her hand on occasion as they walked the two miles to the Hemingford Home schoolhouse. “We’ve been

talking about Omaha. He wants to go, I guess.” It wouldn’t do to lay it on too thick, not after a single glass of wine and two sips of another. She was suspicious by nature, was my Arlette, always looking for a deeper motive. And of course in this case I had one. “At least to try it on for size. And Omaha’s not that far from Hemingford…”