The Spot: Stories

She would begin to look for the house; she would track it down intuitively. What she knew was only what she remembered from coming down; there was an old lumberyard in the town where she would turn right, gloomy old storefronts empty of wares and falling into disrepair, a store that sold party items and gags and magic tricks wholesale, and then, after that, an old public library, stately and grand up along a sloping hill. There she would turn down the narrow road that, from what she remembered, sloped toward the river; at a street called Ross she would turn right into another road, narrow and elegant; she would go back to the old house and sit alone and find a way into something else, she thought; the weeds outside would give under the wind and sway softly and it would be beautiful; the soft tarry smell would arrive from the road; the house would heave and creak softly under the hot sun, and she would go from room to room and examine them for clues, for some long-lost remnants of the life that had gone on there before it was reduced to broken glass, to long cracked wounds in the plaster that showed the lath behind; she would bow down on all fours to God; she would find herself in the basement amid the dusty light from the window wells and the smell of heating oil and the earthen floor, compacted into the corner there, under the old table, in the cobwebby recess she knew was there because she had gone with the men when they explored the house and Byron had bonged on the old tank while August, heaving his weight around, did a dance and sang “Sympathy for the Devil”; she’d feel an urge to spend the rest of eternity there in the dark and the cool, because right now, driving in the car, her desire was to get away from the bright sun and the sensation of the wild passing landscape that seemed so surfaced with light that it was impossible to look at; then in the morning if she saw some kind of new light from the window, sifting down through the motes of dust, she might go up and out again into a new world, entering with bare feet and walking the dew-wet road down to the river, where maybe if all was right and the world was back into some order she would find a cool cove loaded with myrtle and elderberry, and sit and watch the currents move and the boats far off. Maybe there, in that place, she would be located and identified and brought forth into the world of men and justice the way Byron said she would; then fate would play its hand and she’d be where she was intended to be, she thought, holding the wheel, driving carefully, avoiding speed traps, passing through a town named Newburgh that seemed depleted of all life and grace except where a few old grand homes hung on, big and robust, kept up nicely; she was a good and careful driver when calm, and she knew that one way or another she would get back to the hideout and fulfill the vision she had of how this whole thing would come to an end.

All Wondering