“I’m going home,” gasped Roman. “It’s almost dark out there. C’mon!”
“Yeah,” Markus said, “soon’s I get this last part reinforced.” There, he’d said it again, and with the board in one hand he now wiggled backward through the damaged part of the passageway into the room. He had just succeeded in forcing that board up into the ceiling as well, when the boys outside the hill witnessed a strange thing. They had all left the entrance and were trudging back to the broken shed to grapple out one more board before they left for home, when something soundless but palpable, some earthen energy, made them turn and look, curious, at the hill. At which point, with a sound like nothing else, a dull interior whomph, the hill relaxed. One moment it was a high domed shape. The next, its top sagged. It took the boys in their astonishment several minutes to remember Markus was still in it.
THE PINE NEEDLE BED was dry on top but still wet underneath, and for a while Mazarine and Franz didn’t do anything at all but talk together, sitting on a low shelf of stone near their tree. Lately, because of his football playing, Franz was getting an increased amount of attention from Betty Zumbrugge, and it upset Mazarine in a way she could hardly admit to herself. Betty drove her father’s car to school, wore a different dress for every day of the week, and silk stockings. Her hair was very blond, maybe too blond said some girls, and she wore a brilliant scarlet lipstick they said she’d bought in Minneapolis. Betty stopped Franz in the hallways and offered him rides after school. She tried anything, to the point of looking foolish, said Mazarine’s friends. So far, Franz had not responded, and Mazarine was too proud to say a word to him about it. For his part, he was unaware that anything that Betty did could possibly bother Mazarine. He looked at her in the dappled piney light.
“Come here,” he said, easing down onto the soft needles.
“They’re damp,” she shook her head.
“We’ll dry off before we get home,” said Franz. “Don’t worry about it.” So she slid down the side of the rock and curled beside him, looking up the spiked tower of the pine, from along the powerful trunk, into the sky. Franz leaned over and smoothed her hair away from her forehead. The line of her hair could have been drawn with a fine pen, it sprang so evenly away around her face. He kissed her eyebrows — brown and straight, very much like his own — and then he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her mouth, deeply, his heart pounding thick in his chest. The rain had brought out the scent of pine and the feral earthen odor of mold from the dead leaves. She smelled of harsh school soap, of paper, of the salt of her own body. He leaned back and held her hand carefully, desperately hoping that she’d place his hand on her breast again. This time he would not touch in a rough circle. But she did not.
With an electric movement, swift as an eel, a rustle of purposeful motion that stilled him, she twisted from his arms and knelt beside him. She reached forward and then slowly, with a firm calm, she slid the end of his belt out of the first loop, smiled at him and drew it from the hook, tugging it toward herself. He lay back in a state of wonder. She pushed away the two sides of the belt and rubbed the button on the top of his pants. He bit his lips and his whole brain begged Please. And she undid the button. Then with a mocking motherly care she slid the next button from its buttonhole, and the next, all the way down. She opened his pants and then she lay down next to him. She put her cheek on the thin cotton of his undershorts and he surged up toward her, aching. She put her arms around his hips. He fit alongside the curve of her throat. Reaching down, he held her shoulders, put his hands underneath her hair on the back of her neck, and murmured their private words to her. Her face was hot against him, heavy, her hair seemed molten trailing up his arms. A light wind came into the pines and made a rushing sound.
THE RAIN HAD BEEN extremely good for business — farmers used the rain as reason for a town visit, and during their dealings with Fidelis more than a few had decided to butcher a dozen old laying hens, say, a milked-out cow, even a fat enough pig or a steer so as not to feed it through the winter. He had a few busy and profitable weeks lined up and, in his mind, the pile of bills on his desk would happily shrink. He would be able to see the grain of the wood beneath, maybe, and even afford some new boots for the boys this winter. Things looked that much better. He had sold a bit more than usual on his rounds to the neighboring town grocery and general stores, and Zumbrugge had paid his outstanding account. So the constant nagging undertow of worry about money, a current that pulled on his strength, was weakened and he felt an unusual ease with the whole of life. When he greeted Cyprian, who was lounging in the yard on the hood of the DeSoto, waiting for Delphine, he offered him a beer and invited him in to take a load off, just as though nothing odd had occurred in their last meeting. Cyprian thanked him, politely enough, his tones neutral, and said he’d just wait with the car. That was when Fidelis should have left well enough alone.
It was his nature, however, to bring out everything within a situation. Usually, he got what he wanted by poking fun. This time, Fidelis didn’t want to joke around at all, his motivations were very different — he was simply feeling good. Also, without ever acknowledging it, he wanted to make up for the Gus Newhall story and the deafened Indian he’d laughed at in the telling. He wanted Cyprian to know he didn’t hold his being Indian against him and that even, if he were to tell the truth, that aspect interested Fidelis. He was curious about the whole way of life — he’d heard about that back in Germany and hadn’t seen much of it here. So instead of leaving Cyprian to himself, and letting the unsaid tension in their last meeting gradually release over a few days or weeks, Fidelis took two beers from the store’s cooler. He unlatched the beer caps from the tall dark amber bottles and a plume of cool smoke escaped each as he walked back outside.
“Here,” he said, offering the beer to Cyprian. “It won’t kill you.”
Cyprian took the beer, tipped it back, took one drink but said nothing. He found himself staring down, dumbly, at the churned muck of the delivery yard, examining with fake interest how the dirt had cemented itself in channels. He wondered at himself, why he couldn’t just say thanks and be easy with Fidelis. It would not happen. There was a huge rock in his chest. He couldn’t seem to breathe past it. Even the beer going down didn’t help, but tasted sour to him. Then he surprised himself, watched his hand upend the bottle and pour the beer in a stream onto the hardened mud. The bloom of hops drenched the air between the two men for a few seconds, then faded. Fidelis went still, and put his own bottle down on the hood of the car. Now it was too late. Now a wave of affronted rage gripped him and he moved to stand within Cyprian’s line of vision. As he did so, he stepped back, out of reach of a sudden punch, and carefully untied his apron. He dropped the stained white cloth, rolled his sleeves up his arms.