Goddammit! Wayne shouted. He walked a quick circle, holding his hand close to his chest.
Jenny was too stunned to move, but after a minute she said Wayne’s name.
He shook his head and kept walking the circle. Jenny saw he was crying, and when he saw her looking, he turned his face away. She sat still in her chair, not certain what to say or do. Finally she knelt and tried to assemble the pieces of the broken dishes.
After a minute he said, I think I’m bleeding.
She stood and walked to him and saw that he was. He’d torn a gash in his hand on the meaty outside of his palm. A big one — it would need stitches. His shirt was soaked with blood where he’d cradled his hand.
Come on, she said. We need to get you to the hospital.
No, he said. His voice was low and miserable.
Wayne, don’t be silly. This isn’t a time to sulk. You’re hurt.
No. Hear me out. OK? You always say what you want, and you make me sound stupid for saying what I want. This time I just want to say it.
She grabbed some napkins and pressed them against his hand. Jesus, Wayne, she said, seeing blood well up from the cut, across her fingers. OK, OK, say what you need to.
This is my favorite place, he said. I’ve loved it since I was a kid. I used to come out here with Larry. He and I used to imagine we had a house out here. A hideaway.
Well—
Be quiet. I’m not done yet. His lip quivered, and he said, I know we talked, I know you want to go to Indy. Well, we can. But it looks like we’re going to be successful. It looks like I’m going to do well, and you can get a job teaching anywhere. I’ll just work hard, and in five years maybe we can have two houses—
Oh, Wayne—
Listen! We can have a house in Indy and then this — this can be our getaway. He sniffled and said, But I want to keep it. Besides you, this is the only thing I want. This house, right out here.
We can talk about it later. You’re going to bleed to death if we don’t get you to the emergency room.
I wanted you to love it, he said. I wanted you to love it because I love it. Is that too much to ask from your wife? I wanted to give you something special. I—
It was awful watching him try to talk about this. The spots of red in his cheeks were burning now, and the rims of his eyes were almost the same color. The corners of his mouth turned down in little curls.
Don’t worry, she said. We’ll talk about it. OK? Wayne? We’ll talk. We’ll take the blueprints with us to the emergency room. But you need stitches. Let’s go.
I love you, he said.
She stopped fussing around his hand. He was looking down at her, tilting his head.
Jenny, just tell me you love me and none of it will matter.
She laughed in spite of herself, shaking her head. Of course, she said. Of course I do.
Say it. I need to hear it.
She kissed his cheek. Wayne, I love you with all my heart. You’re my husband. Now move your behind, OK?
He kissed her, dipping his head. Jenny was bending away to pick up the blueprints, and his lips, wet, just grazed her cheek. She smiled at him and gathered their things; Wayne stood and watched her, moist eyed.
She finally took his good hand, and they walked back toward the car, and his kiss, dried slowly by the breeze, felt cool on her cheek. It lingered for a while, and despite everything, she was glad for it.
Then
The boys were first audible only as distant shrieks between the trees.
They were young enough that any time they raised their voices they sounded as though they were in terror. They were chasing each other, their only sounds loud calls, denials, laughter. When they appeared in the meadow — one charging out from a break in a dense thicket of thorned shrubs, the other close behind — they were almost indistinguishable from one another in their squeals, in their red jackets and caps. Late afternoon was shifting into dusky evening. Earlier they had hunted squirrels, unaware of how the sounds of their voices and the pops of their BB guns had traveled ahead of them, sending hundreds of beasts into their dens.
In the center of the meadow, the trailing boy caught up with the fleeing first; he pounced and they wrestled. Caps came off. One boy was blond, the other was mousy brown. The brown-haired boy was smaller. Stop it, he called from the bottom of the pile. Larry! Stop it! I mean it!
Larry laughed and said with a shudder: Wayne, you pussy.
Don’t call me that!
Don’t be one, pussy!
They flailed and punched until they lay squirming and helpless with laughter.
Later they pitched a tent in the center of the meadow. They had done this before. Near their tent was an old circle of charred stones, ringing a pile of damp ashes and cinders. Wayne wandered out of the meadow and gathered armfuls of deadwood while Larry secured the tent into the soft and unstable earth. They squatted down around the gathered wood and worked at setting it alight. Darkness was coming; beneath the gray overcast sky, light was diffuse anyway, and now it seemed as though the shadows came not from above but from below, shadows pooling and deepening as though they welled up from underground springs. Larry was the first to look nervously into the shadowed trees while Wayne threw matches into the wood. Wayne worked at the fire with his face twisted, mouth pursed. When the fire caught at last, the boys grinned at each other.
I wouldn’t want to be out here when it’s dark, Larry said, experimentally.
It’s dark now.
No, I mean with no fire. Pitch dark.
I have, Wayne said.
No you haven’t.
Sure I have. Sometimes I forget what time it is and get back to my bike late. Once it got totally dark. If I wasn’t on the path, I would have got lost.
Wayne poked at the fire with a long stick. His parents owned the woods, but their house was two miles away. Larry looked around him, impressed.
Were you scared?
Shit, yeah. Wayne giggled. It was dark. I’m not dumb.
Larry looked at him for a while, then said, Sorry I called you a pussy.
Wayne shrugged and said, I should have shot that squirrel.
They’d seen one in a tree, somehow oblivious to them. Wayne was the better shot, and they’d crouched together behind a nearby log, Wayne’s BB gun steadied in the crotch of a dead branch. He’d looked at the squirrel for a long time before finally lifting his cheek from the gun. I can’t, he’d said.
What do you mean, you can’t?
I can’t. That’s all.
He handed the gun to Larry, and Larry took aim, too fast, and missed.
It’s all right, Larry said now, at the fire. Squirrel tastes like shit.
So does baloney, Wayne said, grim.
They pulled sandwiches from their packs. Both took the meat from between the bread, speared it with sticks, and held it over the fire until it charred and sizzled. Then they put it back into the sandwiches. Wayne took a bite first, then squealed and held a hand to his mouth. He spit a hot chunk of meat into his hand, then fumbled it into the fire.
It’s hot, he said.
Larry looked at him for a long time. Pussy, he said and couldn’t hold in his laughter. Wayne ducked his eyes and felt inside his mouth with his fingers.
Later, the fire dimmed. They sat sleepily beside it, talking in low voices. Wayne rubbed his stomach. Things unseen moved in the trees — mostly small animals, from the sound of it, but once or twice larger things.
Deer, probably, Wayne said.