Free Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

supply / The thread that runs so truly / It has caught many a smiling lass / And now it has caught you. / Oh, it has caught one and it has caught two. / It has caught many a smiling lass / And now it has caught you. Gideon’s partner did not want to bring their arched arms down over Leah’s balky head, out of jealousy or out of simple fear that Leah might jab her in the ribs, but Gideon forced their arms down, trapping his cousin, and the boys who grasped her hands released them, and there Leah stood, blushing angrily, staring at the floor, as the children sang “The Needle’s Eye” through once again, now lustily, with an air of barely restrained violence. Leah was to be kissed. In public. Before everyone’s eyes. Leah Pym, her face gone a furious pink, her lower lip protruding, her gaze lowered in shame. The needle’s eye that does supply / The thread that runs so true. . . .
    Gideon was not accustomed to brooding over the past; he was not accustomed to thinking in this way, perhaps to thinking at all—it wasn’t in his nature. But the memory of that asinine game made his eyes fill with tears, and his pulses leapt, for he was, still, that sixteen-year-old boy, staring with dry, parted lips at his beautiful cousin, who had not spoken more than a dozen words to him in her life. How he loved her, even then! And how humiliating, how agonizing it was. . . . When he’d moved forward to grasp her shoulders and kiss her (for it was not only his privilege, it was his obligation according to the rules of the game: and though there were adults looking on they would not rush between the children, they would not shout, Stop! You nasty low-minded creatures! ), she had murmured a low breathy panicked protest and ducked to escape, lowering her head as if involuntarily, and butting poor Gideon’s mouth. While the children laughed uproariously Gideon had had to staunch the blood with some fussing old woman’s handkerchief. Leah had run out of the hall.
    Now he pulled at his wiry black beard, and ran his hands hard over his face, and sighed. Is it I, Gideon, who has transformed her?
    If he might take his brother Ewan aside, to speak frankly with him. To inquire. About women: about women who are anxious to have babies. (But it was possible that Ewan, married to that pallid spiritless woman, might not even know what Gideon was talking about. Or might turn it into a crude hilarious joke.) If he might take his father aside. Or his uncle Hiram. Or one of his cousins in the Contracoeur area, which he rarely visited now because of a disagreement that grew out of last year’s leasing of some land along the river. . . . And there was his cousin Harry whom he’d always liked, but he too was estranged, it had to do with finances, his father and Hiram, maneuverings Gideon knew very little about.
    But the family never spoke openly about serious things. So how might be begin . . . ? Embarrassing enough to speak of illnesses, accidents, debts, financial problems of any kind; risking old Noel’s anger and feigned ignorance. The official Bellefleur attitude was one of robust jocularity. Men drinking together, men at the hunting camp. Nothing so important it can’t be laughed away. Shouted away. (Across the lake old Jonathan Hecht, a cabinetmaker who had done work for grandmother Elvira decades ago, lay stricken with a “wasting” disorder that was a consequence of old war injuries, and spent most of his time in bed now, set up downstairs in the parlor or, in warm weather, out on the veranda: the old man was obviously dying, at times he was too feeble even to lift a hand in greeting, but when Gideon’s father rode over to visit him he spoke cheerfully, even harshly, with an air of subtle accusation, striding to the bed and whipping off his hat, all outdoors bustle, smelling of horse and leather and tobacco, Well, Jonathan, how the hell are you on this fine morning! Looking better, in my opinion! Feeling better too, eh? Oh, you’ll be