They zigzag around fallen trees and swirls ofbramble.Daniel walks in front.He looks over his shoulder.Hampton is having a hard time keep-ing his balance.
“I’m ruining these shoes,”Hampton says.He leans against a partially fallen cherry tree and looks at the sole ofhis English cordovan.The leather is shiny, rosy, and moist, like a human tongue.
“Are you all right?”asks Daniel.
Hampton nods curtly.“I hate the woods,”he says.“I don’t even like trees.I prefer landscape that’s flat and open, where you can see what’s out there.”
“Well, you’re a long-range planner,”says Daniel.“So that figures.”
Hampton frowns.He seems to be questioning Daniel’s right to be making glib generalizations about him.
“My wife tells me she sees a lot ofyou during the week,”he says.
“Well, you know, the kids,”Daniel says.“Kate’s daughter worships your son.It’s Nelson this and Nelson that.Constantly.”
Hampton tries to remember the little girl’s name.He recalls it was the name ofone ofhis aunts—but his mother has four sisters by blood and three stepsisters, and then all those sisters-in-law.Hampton was raised in a swirling, scolding vortex oflarge, vivid women.
“It’s like seeing what it’ll be like when Ruby falls in love,”says Daniel.
Ah, right:Ruby.Actually, none ofhis aunts had that name, no one came any closer to that than his aunt Scarlet, a well-powdered librarian, whose upper arms were like thighs, and who, nevertheless, was usually in a sleeveless dress, which displayed not only her fleshy arms but her vaccination, a raised opacity ofskin and scar the size ofa pocket watch.
And Scarlet wasn’t even her name—it was Charlotte, but one ofthe other nephews mispronounced it and Scarlet stuck.
Hampton presses a button on the side ofhis watch, the dial lights up like a firefly for a moment.
“It’s almost five o’clock.”
“It’ll be dark soon,”says Daniel.“I wonder ifanyone’s found her.”
“This is so messed up.”
“Marie!”Daniel shouts, but his voice drops like an anvil ten feet in front ofhim.
“I have to be on the nine o’clock train tonight.That Monday morning train’s no good for me.”
Daniel keeps quiet about that, though he is by now, ofcourse, fully aware ofHampton’s hours ofdeparture and arrival.Infidelity is an ugly business, but it makes you a stickler for detail.You’re an air traffic con-troller and the sky is stacked up with lies, all ofthem circling and circling, the tips oftheir wings sometimes coming within inches ofeach other.
They reach the top ofthe small hill, but the sight lines are no better than below.The only sky they can see is directly above them, gray, going black.
“What do you think?”says Daniel.
”I think we’re lost,”Hampton says, shaking his head.
“Next they’ll be sending a search party after us,”Daniel says.He notices something on the ground and peers more closely at it.A dead coy-ote like a flat gray shadow.Sometimes at night, he and Kate could hear coyotes in the distance, a pack whipping themselves up into a frenzy of howls and yips, but this desiccated pelt, eyeless, tongueless, is the clos-est he has come to actually seeing one.
“What do you have there?”Hampton asks.
”The animal formerly known as coyote,”Daniel says.
Breaking offa low, bare branch from a dead hemlock, Daniel pokes the coyote’s remains.Curious, Hampton stands next to him.A puffof colorless dust rises up.The world seems so deeply inhospitable—but, of course, it isn’t:they are just in the part ofit that isn’t made for them.
Here, it is for deer, foxes, raccoons, birds and mice and hard-shelled in-sects, fish, toads, sloths, maggots.Hampton steps back and covers his mouth and nose with his hand, as ifbreathing in the little puffthat has arisen from the coyote will imperil him.Iris has often bemoaned her husband’s fastidiousness, his loathing ofmess, his fear ofgerms.He has turned the controls oftheir water heater up and now the water comes out scalding, hot enough to kill most household bacteria.There are pump-and-squirt bottles ofantibacterial soap next to every sink in the house;ifIris has a cold, Hampton sleeps in the guest room, and ifNel-son has so much as a sniffle, Hampton will eschew kissing the little boy good night, he will shake hands with him instead and then, within min-utes, he’ll be squirting that bright emerald-green soap into his palm.
An immense oak tree lies on the ground;Hampton rests his foot on it and then shouts Marie’s name.The veins on his neck swell;Daniel has a sense ofwhat it would be like to deal with Hampton’s temper, about which he has heard a great deal from Iris.No wonder Iris hasn’t told Hampton a thing.She is afraid.How could I have not seen it before?Daniel wonders.She has not told him, she will never tell him, and if she does Hampton will kill her.Or me.
Discouraged, exhausted, Hampton sits on the fallen tree—and immediately springs up again.He has sat upon the Roman candle in his back pocket and it split in two.He quickly pulls it out, with frantic gestures, as ifit might explode, and tosses the top halfofthe candy-striped card-board tubing as far from him as he can.
Now his back pocket is filled with the Roman candle’s black powder, a mixture ofsaltpeter, sulfur, arsenic, and strontium.If I kick him in the ass, he might explode,thinks Daniel.He has a vision ofHampton blasting off, sailing high above the tree line, smoke pouring out ofhis behind.
Suddenly, in the distance is a pop, and then a plume ofiridescent smoke rises above the trees, a vivid tear in the dark silken sky.
“Someone’s got her,”Daniel says.“I just saw a flare.”
Hampton looks up.Only a small circle ofsky is visible through the encirclement oftrees.“What’s a damn blind girl doing out here? Even with eyes you can’t make your way.”
“She was raised here,”Daniel says.“Her father was the caretaker.She came back to look after him when he got sick.Smiley.”
“Smiley?What do you mean?”
“That’s what everyone called him.I used to see him in town whenI
was a kid.”
Hampton shakes his head.“These people, they’re living in another century.They got their old family retainers, their fox-hunting clubs, their ice boats, they play tennis with these tiny little wooden racquets, and New Year’s Eve they put on the rusty tuxedos their grandfathers used to wear.”
“They can be pretty absurd,”Daniel says.“They’re halfmad, but it’s okay, ifyou have a sense ofhumor about it.”
“That was the first thing Iris ever said about you, how you have this terrific sense ofhumor.”
“Class clown,”says Daniel.“In my case, middle class.”
Hampton is still pinching black powder out ofhis back pocket, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.He tosses the powder into the darkness, as ifscattering ashes after a cremation.He rakes a handful of dead leaves offofa wild cherry tree, one that is still standing, and uses them to wipe his hands.“I used to make Iris laugh all the time.”
“I used to make Kate laugh, too,”says Daniel.He says it because he has to say something.He cannot simply let Hampton go on about Iris and not say anything in reply.It would be too strange, and it would be suspi-cious, too.“First couple ofyears, I had her in hysterics.”
He notices that Hampton’s shaved head has suffered a scrape.There’s a little red worm ofblood on the smooth scalp.
“Kate doesn’t think you’re funny anymore?”
“No, she doesn’t,”Daniel says.
”Iris thinks you’re funny.Maybe you’re funnier around her.”
“Maybe she’s just very kind.”
“Or very lonely.”
As far as Daniel is concerned, this is torture.It might be better just to come out with it, tell Hampton:I love Iris, and it seems she loves me.We belong together.We do feel bad…Oh, shut up about feeling bad.Do you think he cares? He’d like you to have brain cancer, that would be the sort ofsuffering he’d like for you.Why are you offering up your stricken con-science—to make him feel you’ve been punished sufficiently?Are you so afraid ofhim?And with that question, Daniel at last connects to the core ofwhat had been plaguing him from the moment he and Hampton set offtogether in search ofMarie.It is not really about conscience, after all.