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4 MEDITATION ON RAIN WITH VARIOUS REMEMBRANCES DREAM WITH DEAD WOMAN THE FARMER'S FOLLY VIRGIL'S SILENCE NOAH CONVERSES WITH A NECK CHRISTMAS 1886 NOAH AND MAX DISCUSS ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY, DECORATE A MASK LETTER FROM OPAL, LIGHT NOAH AND THE SHERIFF, NOAH LOOKS OUT THE WINDOW, THOUGHTS ON HIS MISSING FINGERS, FINDS HIMSELF COVERED WITH INSECTS |
SOMETIMES, AS HE SITS in the shed, as he does now, Noah closes his eyes and listens, and, after a moment, though he has not stopped listening, the sounds of the shed, of the surrounding night, of his own faint, rough breathing fall far away, and every sound he hears is remembered.
rain
rain like cold ropes
rain in late winter cold
rain
Or spring. Spring and the rain falling
was rain they wanted and they would stop what they were doing every now and again and smile and say,
listen
Noah would listen
And in the summer it was the sound of oaks splitting, as if someone or something had grabbed one apart and left his ears and arms and teeth hurting. And the rain beat the leaves and slammed into the ground then stopped or did not stop but softened, so that the sound was round, then started again, hard again, and another oak split or enormous cannon shot or a vein of onyx air was ripped open, and someone in the house would wonder whether or not there would be hail. Then there was hail, and it was either small or it was not and either way he could hear it hitting off the roof and knew then that it must be hitting into the corn, Virgil's hands would start tapping on the edges of the armrests if he was sitting which is the way Noah remembers it, whenever it hailed—Virgil in the armchair next to the radio and Ruby by the window, always by the window, and Virgil watching her out of the corner of his eyes, tapping on the orange armrests, and Noah watching both of them, and then Ruby said,
it's stopped.
And it had stopped and when they went outside the sky was blue and the yard was white and Ruby could now talk about what she had been thinking about while she looked out the window
one of those books with pictures
I want one of them
one of those books with little pictures where the sky is open and God is there with a dove
and there is white manna covering the ground
she could talk about this because while the yard was white, the garden and the fields were still a deep, rich green or whatever color they were supposed to be after a deep, rich rain, and Virgil could say,
we will find that book
and to Noah,
try some
and Noah scooped up a handful of icy gravel-sized pellets and did.
Or it was autumn, late autumn, and the rain had been coming down for hours, and the grass and the yellow leaves on the grass and the small brown leaves that had blown off the hickory and onto the garden and the earth, the freshly plowed earth, and all of it, especially Noah as he went into the house or left the house and went into the barn where the cows stood steaming, was cold, Noah was cold as he carried something for Ruby across the yard, and he was cold as he carried something for Virgil across the wet garden, Noah's hands freshly bandaged, Noah looking back over his shoulder at something and seeing his tracks and the brown leaves he had mashed and then looking up and seeing Virgil and Virgil not smiling at him looking hard at him as if in that instant something had come up out of the earth and stuffed him full of cold leaves and smashed rock and sour liquid. Virgil much more in that moment than merely Noah's father—something enormous something quietly enraged, an embodiment of the cold, the rain, the miles of rough dark acreage around them. Noah wanting to wrap his ruined hands around all of it, Virgil most of all, and squeeze
Noah looking over his shoulder then turning and continuing
on across the cemetery where Virgil and Ruby were buried the stones all around theirs yawed and Noah yawed a little as he stood first ruined hands in pockets then ruined hands removed from pockets to cover his face or almost cover his face then his eyes open and his ruined hands at his sides and the rain raining cold and the freshly turned earth turned freshly for one then for the other then for Opal only that was in another cemetery and when he looked up there was no rain it was early winter this winter and in place of the rain there were stars and wind then cold wind and snow. Snow, deep and drifting, brings Noah back to the shed again. He crosses his arms over his chest, stretches his legs and sees that Virgil—his most frequent visitor—has left the grave in his head and is standing on the other side of the room staring at him. He stares and stares, and Noah stares back and thinks, I'm tired, then thinks what he has thought before around this time of night, I reckon now I've reached the deepest hours in which men and women and chickens drown.
Hello Virgil, he says, eventually. You here to tell me
you found time? That you got it figured out? That you
found that green mark?Virgil's mouth opens and begins moving, and as it
does the rest of him resolves itself into darkness once
more, so that for a moment there is just the mouth,
wide lips and large teeth, moving soundlessly. Then the
mouth, which strikes Noah as a tiny, almost pathetic
thing without its face, without the words it seems intent
on shaping, stops moving and vanishes too. And when
it does, as if they had been trailing along in its wake, the
words arrive, softer than usual, almost a whisper:
dreams again, riddles, half-stories, the whole joined by
other voices, threads of memory, shreds of an incomplete
pattern distilled in the Indiana night and poured
from a pitcher of cold air into his head.
HERE IS A DREAM. In going somewhere from somewhere else, which by the way is the oldest story, my companion and I are set the labor of transporting a recently dead woman to some destination along the way. She is stiff and very light. I take the feet and my companion the head and the neck. And so we walk. Then it has changed and we are tired and the dead woman is walking beside us to make it easier. After a while she climbs back onto our hands, which are still held as if we had never stopped holding her. At some point she divides herself into neat segments for us to carry. She says to me, Virgil you look tired, give Noah the heavy parts. I do, and we continue on along the road. The two of us. You and me. Although I guess it's really three of us. Maybe more. I can't tell anymore. We walk along and don't say anything. On and on.
HERE IS ANOTHER. Once upon a time there was a farmer who one night had this dream and the next morning fell into a folly. The dream was this: He was walking, blindfolded and waist-deep, in his own field, through a channel of smooth, rich, powder-soft dirt which gave less resistance against his legs than water. He walked and walked, following that channel and wondering where he could be going because the channel kept requiring him to curve and turn and sometimes even go back on himself. He walked, as I say, and walked and sometimes he was sure he was where he had already been and sometimes he was tortured by the thought that he wasn't and sometimes, not so very far off in the distance, he heard soft, muttering voices, that sounded to him, when he thought about it, much like his own. And then he woke. And that might have been the end of it, one strange dream among others, except that in his passage that morning from bed to bathroom he walked, as it occurred, between two mirrors, one hung opposite the other, one of them new and having been hung there—a hook being available—out of convenience, the previous afternoon, so that in one mirror was the image of the other, and in the other, the image of the one, and in that one, also, its own image, as in the other, and so on, so that the farmer, who was still to some degree stepping through the soft cool dirt of his dream, and now found himself strung between the two mirrors, and the effect they created of his repeated image being pulled away from him and into the walls, felt himself caught, stopped, he said afterwards, somewhere between dismay and delight, so that when his wife stirred, almost an hour later, woken, she said afterwards, by the sound of the cows complaining, "that was how I found him, that was how I found him," she said.
AT THE END, when your father wasn't talking at all any more and he got so he would wander, though of course not like what he used to, I got worried. I got so I would hide things. You know better than any how many ways there are to get hurt or to hurt yourself on a farm and I've never known a farm to have as many sharp edges as this one. There were times when you weren't around and I had to get out that I would lock him in the bedroom, but he didn't like that, you could tell. More often though, I'd leave him those notes in his pockets. I got Lois Wilson to write them so they'd be clear: Don't lean your forehead against the glass in the bathroom. Don't stand on the road. Come home now. I love you. Don't go looking for dead squirrels in the ditches. Ask Noah. Use the facility if you got business. The Lord is your shepherd, you listen to Him.
NOAH FOUND HIM ONCE. In the middle of the night. He was, in fact, standing in the bathtub with his forehead pressed lightly against the window-glass, and when Noah came in and spoke to him he made no move, and, after a minute, Noah went right ahead and used the toilet. Ten minutes later he returned, and Virgil was still there, and Noah came up behind him and took him gently by the shoulders and pulled him back. Sitting on the white windowsill in front of him were a shell, some dirt, and a small rusted spring. Noah could feel Virgil breathing. He could feel himself breathing. He could see the back of Virgil's neck, pale and deeply wrinkled and soft looking in the dim light. Why? Noah whispered into the neck. The neck did not answer. It looked, however, as if given time it might make some answer, and so Noah waited, holding his father by the shoulders, gently by the shoulders and looking into the neck, until, after a time, the neck did answer, or rather seemed to answer, for although it spoke to Noah, although Noah could quite clearly hear it, he had no idea what it said.
THERE ARE ALL KINDS of holidays or holy days or whatever you care to call them and each carries with it its own accretions of meanings and for each one of us those accretions are slightly different. Take an example. We, that's my brother, your Uncle Johnson, and myself, were up at Ginny Smith's for a tree trimming a few days before Christmas must have been 1886. It had been clear and we'd spent the morning sliding and throwing rocks at the creek then the sky changed fast and we went inside and the lamps had been lit and we looked out the window at the clouds. Then it started snowing. It snowed and we sat at the windows and watched it and when the windows froze over we rubbed pictures in them and then we left the windows to string popcorn and berries and sing songs. They had colored glass balls that made your nose look big if you looked into them and we started telling fortunes and all the fortunes were about having big noses and blue faces and then we ate and it was still snowing and the fire and our considerable hot air probably had warmed the windows and when you wiped your hands across them the glass smeared and your hands came away wet. What we were looking for through the window was not the snow it was Father and the wagon. But pretty soon it was just snow and dark outside then more snow and darker and wind and Ginny said all the roads were blocked so we knew we weren't going home a condition with which you might imagine two not-so-tiny boys might be satisfied and we were satisfied. But two days went by and still Father couldn't come and then it was getting on toward late afternoon on Christmas Eve and we were no longer satisfied and neither were our keepers and Johnson had already gotten his ears boxed for displaying some of his dissatisfaction and as a matter of fact when the knock finally came Johnson was standing with his seven-year-old nose in the corner. You can believe me he was the first of us dressed and outside. Now here is where the story really starts. Father was smiling. I had never seen him smile like he was smiling just then. He was standing in the snow next to the horses and I thought his teeth were fixing to fly right out of his head. He had a big lumber sled he'd borrowed from old Cousin Eddie and he and Mother had fixed up a box with colored blankets into which he lifted each of us although neither of us was particularly interested in being lifted and then he said Merry Christmas and thank you and we said Merry Christmas and good-bye and then he covered the box and it was dark though you could see snow through two chinks near the top. Then we could feel that he had turned the team and we were sliding away. I don't suppose he'd done much more than top the first rise when we heard him say woah! and the sleigh stopped and he said ha! and pulled the cover off the box and looked down at us grinning. Then he pulled the present out of his coat and handed it down inside. Open it, he said. We didn't open it straight away. It was wrapped in green foil and had a red ribbon tied around it. We did not have to touch it (or at least I did not have to touch it) to know it was a book. What book is it, Daddy? I said and he said to open it which neither of us showed signs of doing immediately enough so he pulled the present back up and tore off the foil and the ribbon and tossed it away into the snow then handed the book back to both of us and said read what's on the spine. I looked at it. Already it was almost dark. My father leaned forward and lit the lantern. The book was black with gold lettering. I had never seen letters like that. Virgil, I said. I looked up at him. It does not say that, Johnson said. But it did and I asked Father if the book was ours and he said didn't we just unwrap it. Only we had to wrap it back up before Christmas morning because it was supposed to be a surprise. Then he said, open it and read a few lines. I did so. Or started to but couldn't and he said grinning I will teach you that I will teach both of you. I'm cold, Johnson said. That's right, my father said and lifting the book away from me covered the box back up said something to the horses and we began to slide. We slid through the dark in the box and my brother was talking and then he was asleep and then I could hear my father's voice. It was my father's voice reading as he drove and it was sounds I didn't know although I knew it was about my name, Virgil, and then I was asleep and then we had stopped. Father uncovered the box. He was still holding onto the book and told me to stand up and look. We were about three miles from home and it was dark only the sky had cleared and there were stars and a little slice of moon was out and there were about five sleighs with bells and swinging lanterns moving toward us along the road. Then they had said hello and Merry Christmas and we had said hello and Merry Christmas and Johnson had woken up and said what? and Father had lifted him up to see and I was still thinking about those sleighs and lanterns and the pale faces like fire in the colored hoods then we were moving again Father was reading only it sounded now like he was singing Christmas songs like they had been in the sleighs and I was asleep again and then we were home and Mother was shaking us awake and scolding Father for having taken so long and Father grinning and telling us all that it was the happiest Christmas ever and Mother smiling and asking him just what on earth he was up to and taking us each by the coat sleeve and telling us that inside there was cocoa and dinner and hot baths and a decorated tree.
NOAH KEEPS THREE COLOR SLIDES taped to the east window in his bedroom on the second floor of the house in which he was born and in which, with the exception of fortytwo days sixty-three years ago, he has lived his entire life. On sunny days, when the light hits them, Noah likes to stand near the window and watch the cubes of color glow then fade like tiny lanterns. Most of the time, however, the slides are black with just the barest hint of color visible. Noah has prepared a slide of himself in which he is standing against a brown and green background looking just off to the left of the camera with his hands in his pockets on a bright blue day last October. He was happy that day. He remembers it quite clearly. Max came over with the camera then fried a couple of hamburger patties for lunch they sat on the back porch Max spotted the cardinal in the crab apple tree they drank a little sweet wine then got in Max's car and drove to the rest home to see Opal. There Max, with Opal smiling throughout the process, made the first mask. Last week, as Noah lay on his back on Ruby's old daybed in the front room, he made the mold for the second.
I want mine decorated, Noah had said.Decorated how?Noah thought about it for a while then said, come on.Together, they scoured the house and shed for old
coins, bits of colored paper, pressed flowers, the innards
of an old, broken watch, dried ladybugs, and wasp wings.There ought to be something representational about
electricity on it, Noah said.How's that? said Max.For Opal. I'd stick a damn ice cube on it if I could.That never happened. They never put her in any ice
baths. I've read her file and talked to the doctors.They say it never happened, said Noah. Don't believe
everything you read that's been written by doctors.They did follow more than one course of electroshock
therapy, that's in the file. Apparently they considered
but rejected coma-insulin.You hear what I said about not believing everything
doctors write or tell you?
It's true there's no doubt she was better off once you got her out of there.
Should of done it years earlier. Should have been
done from the start.
I don't know if a rest place could have served for
those earlier years. She was pretty sick.
Noah didn't say anything, shook his head.
A moment later, he looked up.
You probably think this is all foolishness from start
to finish.
What's making you say that?
You probably think this is just confirmation of what
they all said anyway: that there's some nails missing
from my house. Making up masks to bury in drawers
and carrying on.
I don't happen to think that, said Max.
Well, why not? said Noah. It's true. Didn't I always
try to tell them I was crazy as a jay-lark?
Max started to answer, then didn't say anything.
You must be crazy as a jay-lark to be helping me, said
Noah, tapping his finger on the table.
Max raised an eyebrow. Probably, he said.
Noah chuckled. I'll tell you one thing. I don't care
how foolish it is. It was her idea and that's good enough
for me.
For me too, said Max, smiling. What'd you have in
mind about electricity?
Electricity, said Noah. The same as what they kill
criminals with. Put diapers on them and such. Ought to
lock them damn doctors up. Ought to acquaint them
with some of that electricity.
Well, said Max.
Well ain't at all what I had in mind, said Noah.
They festooned the mask with bits of wire and glass
from a crushed purple insulator and a tiny diagram from
an old pamphlet on making radios with oatmeal boxes.
Noah wasn't finished with what he called his "Opal
imagery," so they snapped the blade off a paring knife,
called it "the scalpel," dipped it in red paint, and glued
it on. Noah then had the idea that he wanted, in addition
to what she had suffered, to attest somehow to
Opal's beauty, so they pulled a peacock feather off of
one of Ruby's hats and affixed it to the brow. Then they
picked their way through Ruby's costume jewelry and
stuck on every bright bit they could find. In one of her
letters, Opal had written Noah about Kublai Khan and
Xanadu and about the rare flowers she believed must
have grown there, so they picked petals off one of the
dried bouquets hanging in the attic and, though there
wasn't anything particularly rare about them, touched
them with glue, found places for them, then stepped
back and looked at what they had.
That's looking fine, said Max.
Yes sir it is, said Noah.
You want to do something with hers?
Noah thought a while. He thought about the first
time he had seen Opal. Standing on the other side of the
dance floor at Gerald and Minnie Roberts's, the light
coming down across her, her hands held, slightly open,
at her sides. There was heavy mist across what he saw,
and he couldn't tell if the mist accentuated or obscured,
but either way, he decided, what he saw was cool and
clear and clean.
No, he said. Let's leave hers be. I'll have the carnival
on mine.
Max said he'd take the mask and treat it so what
they'd put on would stay.
Don't go too far with that, I'm going to want it soon.
How do you mean you'll want it soon?
Never mind.
I'll bring it back.
When?
It'll take a few days to get what I need. Early next
week.
All right.
That's a fine piece of work, said Max.
It'll do, says Noah.
He picks up the mask and lifts it close enough that
his nose and the mask's touch and he can see the stovelit
darkness burning through its eyes.
Dear Noah,
The light lays across us all. It slants and covers us all and we stand together in a field. We all stand and wait. No one comes for us but the light. The electricity does not come for us and we stand and the ice and cold water does not come for us and the light comes across the field and burns us a little but is cool. It is cool like a spoon or a fork when you touch it in the evening. Touch a spoon, Noah. All around us it is snowing but it is warm where we stand and we sing and pretty boys and girls sing and we hold rakes and shovels and it is pretty and nothing but the light comes for us now.
THE SHERIFF USED TO COME for Noah. Always at night because that was when Noah, who was still seeing things regularly then, saw most clearly, when what he saw might actually, went the theory, be of some use. This too was Virgil's arrangement, an arrangement endorsed by Ruby, who agreed that Noah desperately needed something to take his mind off recent events. At first, Noah and Sheriff Dunn would just sit in the driveway in the near-wreck of a vehicle that served as the county cruiser and the Sheriff would talk and Noah would make the sounds and gestures that meant it was possible he was listening, although mostly, at first, he was not. At first, as the Sheriff talked about missing cars and tools and disputes about who had smacked whom down at the tavern, Noah thought about his walk up to Logansport and about his hands and about Opal, the time they had let him see her, sitting cross-legged and rocking back and forth on her bed in the big ward. Every now and again, though, the Sheriff would say something that Noah would listen to and about every second or third time he would see something and speak. When, for example, the Sheriff brought up the subject of a man under suspicion for having done away with his neighbor's litter of purebred collie pups, Noah saw something he didn't like, something dark and wet and ruined and cold, and he spoke.
He dumped them pups in the creek.
Which creek?
Sugar. Back of his property. Bag's still tied up there.
What's left of them pups is still there. Tied to a willow
root.
The bag with the drowned pups was found and the
neighbor, who had not been able to, he claimed, tolerate
their damned "yapping, yapping, yapping," was
fined, and the Sheriff came back and talked some more.
A week passed. Noah saw something else and
reported on it. An arrest was made. They took to driving
instead of just sitting in the car.
I reckon I could deputize you, the Sheriff said to
Noah one night as they drove the dark county roads.
Make your capacity more official.
Would there be any advantage to it beside that?
No.
Then no. I reckon I don't need to be any kind of
official.
Well, you know there isn't any other way to see you
get some kind of compensation.
Noah didn't say anything.
The Sheriff told him about a botched robbery that
had resulted in a woman getting shot.
She dead?
The Sheriff nodded.
Children?
Two of them. Husband's a wreck. He works up at
the elevator.
Noah sat there looking at his hands.
Anything? the Sheriff said.
Noah looked over at him.
I want her out.
Now, Noah, you know there's not a damn thing I can
do about it. Logansport's not even in my jurisdiction.
You get her out and I'll tell you what I seen.
The Sheriff turned the car around and pretty soon
they were back in Noah's driveway.
Is this what this has been about Noah? Is this why
you been riding around with me? I told you when we
started I was sorry and that there wasn't anything I
could do about it.
You're the law aren't you?
The Sheriff sighed. I'm the wrong kind of law, Noah.
You need a different kind altogether.
They sat there.
After a while, Noah shrugged.
It was the husband shot the wife. It wasn't no
botched robbery. He came close to shooting the little
girls too. I reckon you'll find some evidence in the
kitchen under one or another of the floorboards.
The next night Sheriff Dunn pulled up in the driveway
and after a few minutes Noah came out.
Says he got the rifle at an estate auction south of
Lebanon.
Noah nodded.
The Sheriff asked him if he was going to get in.
I reckon not, said Noah.
There's some real good you could do.
You get her out and I'll do all the good you want me
to.
That's kind of a mean position, Noah. You sure about
it?
Noah looked at the Sheriff then nodded.
Virgil and Ruby in?
Up at church. Singing program.
Well, you give them my regards.
It won't do any good to talk to them.
No, said the Sheriff, pulling away, I reckon it won't.
He had tried anyway. Virgil had broached the subject
as they were cutting horseweed in the west field. He had
not broached it again.
A few weeks later, Noah, whose conscience had
started in on him, called the Sheriff and told him that if
there were any more murders or such, he was willing to
help if he could, and the Sheriff thanked him, but years
and years had passed and there hadn't been.
NOAH LIFTS A FINGER and runs it across the glass. He does this twice. Then again, the third time using his nail. For a second, he wishes some part of himself was fast enough to run outside and stare into his own eyes through the glass, then realizes he is already looking at himself, or at least a pale reflection thereof, and that what he sees is even less appealing to countenance than the mask. There was a time, at least to hear Ruby and Opal talk, that Noah went pretty easy on the eyes, especially, apparently, his thick black hair and fine shoulders and strong chin, but that time, if it ever was (and looking into his own near imperceptible reflection he entertains more than a modicum of doubt about this), is long past. The wind has risen and now there is even less to see outside than before. Virgil once stopped late one night like this in the middle of the yard and asked Noah, walking ten or fifteen steps ahead, to turn around and tell him what he saw.
You, said Noah who was not, at that moment, at all
interested. But by the time he reached the house and
turned back again, Virgil, who had not moved, was gone
and there was only his voice calling,
Can you see me now?
No, says Noah. His hands itch. Where the fingers are gone. Sometimes, though much less frequently than before, the missing digits are still there, he can feel them, as if his hands, he has thought, were slightly haunted—just a bit.
Go away now fingers, Noah says.
The itching stops.
Then starts again.
Noah recently saw an advertisement for diamonds that showed a woman's bare hand held against a man's chest, and, printed in big block letters under it,
GIVE HER A DIAMOND, THE HAND LEADS STRAIGHT TO THE HEART.
Noah remembers holding Ruby's and Virgil's hands, swinging between the two of them on the way to church, or across the driveway, or up the front walk to the house, and he remembers touching each of them on the forehead before their velvet-lined coffins were closed. He remembers, also, touching Opal, and now, holding the double ruin of his hands against the window glass, he cannot help thinking that the messages they have brought back to his heart have long been imperfect. Or perhaps they have been perfect. Perhaps exactly perfect. He cannot tell them apart.
The two tin-roof hog sheds where Virgil kept pigs have long housed only giant spools of green wire, pulled from a small vineyard Noah once kept. Whenever Noah needs some wire he walks out to one of the sheds and clips off a piece. In the summertime, the insides of the sheds are warm and close and smell of old wood and rusted metal. Sometimes, as Noah stands leaning against one of the spools, he closes his eyes and inhales deeply, and just for that moment, believes Opal is about to walk up behind him and touch his arm.
Let's go on home now, Noah, she says.
All right, says Noah.
And they walk off through the warm afternoon, hand
in hand or arm in arm.
Right now, standing by the window, staring out through the reflection of his own pale eyes into the snowy dark, Noah smells nothing. And when he inhales the air that enters his mouth and lungs feels distant, strange. Much like the air, Noah thinks, the man in the story must have breathed when, having traveled so far and for so many years simply to reach the bleak ends of the earth, upon instruction from the gods, he killed the black ram.
And then they come, see?
Yes.
When he calls them up they come. They have to.
Why?
Because of the ram's blood. It is an ancient covenant.
But he can't touch them.
That's true. But he can hear them. And he can see.
The windowsill in front of Noah is littered with flies, and the corners of the window are clouded with frozen webs in which Noah can see, faintly glinting in the light from the stove, the tiny, wrapped husks of aphids and fruit flies. In one of the webs a dried, frozen spider lies alongside its prey. Noah reaches up with his left index finger and touches it. Or thinks he does. The dead spider is either too light or his finger too cold to tell. One of the many books Virgil read to him as a child was called Dreams for a Dark Winter, and in one of the stories, the boy dreaming is dreaming about a wolf, and the wolf in turn is dreaming about him. In the boy's dream the wolf is doing the hunting and eating and in the wolf 's it is the boy. Near the end of the story a character called Vulture, acting as go-between, has convinced the two that since each keeps dreaming about the other they must be destined to be friends. But they do not become friends. And at the end of the story Vulture flies away wearing a dark grin.
What we do is not always right.
Why not?
I don't know.
Why can't it always be right?
Virgil didn't answer.
Was what you did to us right?
Yes, I think so. Or I thought so. No. I don't know.
Holding the blunted tip of his finger against the infolded legs of the spider, Noah can remember lying with his face against the freshly cultivated earth in the middle of a soybean field: It is August and dark and he can hear the others moving through the waist-high soybeans looking for him. They call out to each other. And to him. We'll get you, Noah, they say. He expects them to. Desperately wants them to. Then begins to fear he will vanish into the earth before they can reach him.
Which is what happened to the old gods, said Virgil. After they had been forgotten for a long time they just dropped whatever they were holding, lay facedown on the ground, got still, and after a time the earth opened up and they slipped inside.
When was that?
A good while ago.
What are they doing inside?
I don't know. Maybe they're dead now.
Can gods die?
I think maybe anything can die.
Can you die?
I will die.
Can I?
Noah inhales. The air tastes unbearably rich. A slow, warm wind is moving through the beans, and there are insects all around him. They light on his arms and face and legs. Now, thinks Noah. He lies without moving and can hear the blood beating in his ears.