Free Butterfly Sunday by David Hill Page B

mile up the dark hill and his breath was giving out. He felt silly now that he hadn’t accepted Leona’s offer of a ride. He couldn’t see more than three feet. A cold wind had kicked up and he could smell the rain in it. He stopped to rest. What was the sense of getting soaked? She’d offered him a ride. Why didn’t he go back to Leona’s? The thought made his cheeks burn. But why? She had taken him a little aback, brought him up a bit short, Daddy would say. He couldn’t fit in his head all the things they had said to each other, all the things he had said out loud for the first time. Did she know how right she was about a lot of it? Did he?

    He felt better. Yet some things she said practically sliced him in half. A woman who had so much bad to say about him couldn’t hold him in very high esteem. Still, he couldn’t fool himself here alone in the dark, she’d nailed him. And she’d done more good than harm. How much umbrage could he take when he felt like laughing out loud? The cold air smelled clean. The wet bark of the trees glistened silver blue. The warm earth breathed back the chilly mist.

    He thought of her there alone, closing her window and slipping on something to keep her warm while she slept. Was it true? Had she married Averill to give his name to another man’s child? What a desperate thing in this day and time. It made him feel very sad for her. Did she know where Averill went at night? Did she know it had been going on before she came to these parts? Was it betrayal or an understanding? Why did she stay there with him, dying of loneliness?

    Now an idea took over his mind, an idea so big it smothered all other thoughts. He should rescue her. He should save her from her dark existence. How he’d goabout it, he wouldn’t dare dream he knew. It was just a powerful inclination at the moment. She was finer than people around here seemed to know. Did other people already know the depth of her honesty? Did they appreciate her candor as sincere and second nature? Or did they think she was rude? Did they also see how beautiful she was? Did they realize she played it down because she had the gift of self-possession?

    Not these people, not his cousins and his neighbors and lifelong friends. They were good people. They meant well. They just didn’t always look close enough to see all the details that drew your careful attention. What was he thinking? Not these people? No. Not him. That was what he meant. He referred to his own blindness. The woods were so lovely just then that he almost had to retch at their exquisite isolation. Earlier he thought they had never been like this.

    Now he felt his heart release a heavy burden. The woods had always been this lovely. He’d covered every square foot of them in much worse weather than this. It wasn’t the rain. He’d easily be at the house in another fifteen minutes if he kept up his pace. It was Leona. He wanted to see her again. As he turned around on the path, the toe of his right boot jammed in a gnarled tree root. He lurched forward, trying to avoid twisting his ankle. He barely had time to see the limb before his forehead smashed into it. Pain burst, searing yellow and splintering into cascading stars that extinguished in the blackness as he fell forward.

5

    THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1999

    1:12 A.M.

    Alone in the darkness, Leona was grateful for the rain. It muffled the usual creaking and moaning of the trees and wild dogs barking and owls and such. The showering quiet overspread her thoughts like a luxuriant blanket of peace. She didn’t sleep much since the baby. Though part of that was Averill lumbering in at all hours, startling her. She had never quite settled her mind on what he might or might not do. Tonight, though, there were no thoughts of loneliness and dying to keep her burning eyes peering into the boding blackness until sunrise. Tonight as she had climbed into bed, she had felt a swirling rightness about things, as if a band of gentle