Free The Seasons Hereafter by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page A

every child, not the child Anna, for instance—but she wished she had never gone out of the house this morning, at least not across the harbor and down onto the wharf, to be drawn into this vortex of people. But the alternative would have been a dead child, and she couldn’t honestly say that did not matter to her. She studied the tablecloth, tracing a flower with her finger. “Come on, walk around the harbor with me,” Barry said. “I’ve got a chess game on with Nils Sorensen. You know his wife.”
    â€œSpend an evening with her ?” She laughed aloud and Barry looked hurt.
    â€œI suppose if she ran a whorehouse you’d find her real interesting company. What’s the matter with them around here, too goddam respectable?”
    He slammed the door when he went out. She stacked the dishes in the sink and took the Aladdin lamp upstairs. It made the room too warm and she opened the windows. There was a low hum of generators as those who had power plants prepared to watch television; it sounded as if the island itself were warming up engines, getting ready to voyage out into the dream-world of stars and black ocean.
    Much later, when the Aladdin smoked up and she had to turn it down to let the mantel clear itself of caked soot, she got out of bed to kneel by the window with her head and shoulders out. It was a soft night and sometime earlier the generators had stopped. Now from the cranberry swamp behind the house the peep frogs were singing; she used to hear them as she lay in bed when she was a child and longed to be out in the spring dark. Now there was no one’s permission to ask, but now, alas, she knew there was nothing out there for her.
    The lights around the harbor went out almost as on a signal, and then she heard Barry coming along the boardwalk; whistling a tune his father used to play on the fiddle for square dances at the Grange Hall. She blew out the lamp so he would think when he came to bed that she was asleep, and lay in the dark trying for ancient magic. There was this girl, and nobody knew who she was . . . . But it had become black magic, conjuring up the dreadful awakening and the fear that the madwoman who wrote the postcards might have passed something horrible on to her.
    She was almost glad when Barry came upstairs. He was in his stocking feet, and undressed quietly. He could be as stealthy as a cat when he chose. She wondered if he were being considerate, or if he was still too mad with her to want to speak. After he had got cautiously into bed and settled down she said in a normal voice, “Who won the game?”
    After a moment’s silence he said, “I got one, and Nils got two. He’s one of these deep guys. A real thinker.”
    â€œThat’s all he could be, living in that family. He’d never get a chance to be a talker.”
    Barry ignored that. “Jo was real disappointed because you didn’t come. I had to make up a good story about you taking a chill, and then she got worried about you.”
    â€œIf she comes poking around here tomorrow with a bowl of calf’s-foot jelly, I’ll tell her the truth,” said Van. “What you said earlier, that she’s too goddam respectable, among other things.”
    Barry chuckled as if she’d been witty. He was determined to avoid a fight, still warmed by the praise of her act. “Talk about respectable. Owen came in. That’s a real wild son of a bitch for you.”
    â€œYou mean there’s somebody in this paradise who raises hell once in a while? All the sweetness and light must drive him to it.”
    â€œOh, he talks respectable enough, and he’s a family man. In fact he had one of his kids with him, little girl twelve or so.” Barry’s voice trailed off, he yawned, and then said, “But you can see it right in his eye. Like something sleeping in a cage.”
    Barry could still surprise her after all. His words evoked the tiger