Free Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet Page A

deranged, and his wealth, combined with the youth and good looks, makes it even more unlikely that The Wind and Pines would find itself by chance at the top of his list of winter vacation spots.
    â€œWhat’s he doing here?” I asked her. “I mean, why here ?”
    I wanted to ask, Why are any of us here? Why here ? But it was too pointed.
    â€œNot sure,” she said, as though it was all the same where he was.
    â€œWell, how about you?” I asked. “I don’t mean why aren’t you in Boston, I understand that. I mean how did you end up at this motel?”
    Again she looked indifferent to the question but passingly curious about why it had been asked, the way a person might look if you asked them, with intense and focused interest, where they bought their toothpaste.
    â€œI was here last summer,” she said, flipping through a magazine about trout. “I came back for the rest. It’s restful. You know. And Don’s such a nice guy. Isn’t he?”
    â€œDon’s great. But last summer,” I persisted—because it was gnawing at me, the casual presence of everyone, their unlikely presence, their stubborn persistence—“how’d you find it in the first place?”
    â€œJust the website,” she said, and put down the trout magazine in favor of a yellowing copy of Cat Fancy .
    As she reached for it one of her long sleeves rode up, and I saw a red scar along the wrist.
    BURKE CAME TO HELP with Lena’s lessons; he’s her tutor in botany. They planted seeds in a doll-sized greenhouse we put together from a kit, Burke bent over beside her, avuncular and kindly. The greenhouse has rows of light-green pots maybe two inches in diameter, a line of small lightbulbs and transparent plastic walls. It sits on our windowsill.
    Lena had said she wanted to grow a beanstalk, so Burke brought her several kinds of beans to plant. He cautioned her the stalk might not be large enough to climb on; it might not reach the sky. She nodded and told him that was just as well, because she didn’t want to meet a giant or a giantess, she didn’t want to hear a cannibal giant say “Fee, fi, fo, fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman.”
    She isn’t an Englishman, she said to Burke, but she still thought the giant might want her, even if she’s a girl and an American. She didn’t want to hear that giant talk about smelling blood.
    Burke patted her head.
    â€œI promise, sweetie,” he said, “there won’t be any giants speaking to you from this beanstalk.”
    As soon as he said it his face went pale. He stood there for a few seconds and sat down heavily on my bed, leaned over and stuck his head between his knees.
    I was taken aback—Burke had seemed more solid and self-assured lately, seemed to require less comforting.
    â€œAre you OK?” I asked, leaning over him, laying my hand against his back and taking it off self-consciously.
    He looked up and nodded.
    â€œSorry,” he said. “Panic-attack type . . . sorry. I’m fine. Heading back to my room.”
    Lena cocked her head, confused; I watched the door close behind him.
    â€œHere,” I said, picking up a library picture book on plants, “let’s read this part about how seeds germinate. Most seeds contain an embryo and food package . . .”
    IT OCCURRED TO ME , reading about the transmigration of souls, that my early assumption of some kind of nonhuman power or supernatural omniscience had been impressively unfounded. It might have been just a person ’s thoughts that had got loose, the memories or knowledge base of, say, some overeducated, possibly unhinged individual whose stream of consciousness flowed along carrying the debris of a lifetime. Could be that Lena caught the ruminations of a scientist or scholar.
    Maybe this is a ghost story after all.
    Or maybe the information that’s now carried by so many frequencies just caught in